Loading...I have talked about the virgin birth in both Matthew and Luke, and noted its absence from the earlier Gospel, Mark. In response, I have been asked about its presence/status in the last canonical Gospel, John. I’ve posted on this before, even within living memory, but maybe to round out the presentation, it would be good to deal with it again. Here is the original post from years ago.
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I have pointed out that our earliest Gospel, Mark, not only is lacking a story of the virgin birth but also tells a story that seems to run precisely counter to the idea that Jesus’ mother knew that his birth was miraculous, unlike the later Gospels of Matthew and Luke. It is striking to note that even though these two later Gospels know about a virgin birth, our latest canonical Gospel, John, does not know about it. This was not a doctrine that everyone knew about – even toward the end of the first century.
Casual readers of John often assume that it presupposes the virgin birth (it never says anything about it, one way or the other) because they themselves are familiar with the idea, and think that John must be as well. So they typically read the virgin birth into an account that in fact completely lacks it.
As is well known, John’s Gospel begins …
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Marcion is believed to have preached that Jesus just came into being as an adult, right? He’s a fascinating figure – I wish we had more of his work preserved.
Yes, for Marcion Jesus descended from heaven as a full adult. Lots of interesting books written on Marcion. You might start with the one by Judith Lieu.
I read on the Interwebs that “many scholars” believe that rather than Marcion’s gospel being a variation of Luke’s Gospel, it’s the other way around. Someone took the gospel Marcion used and added a lot of stuff to it, such as the first two chapters and the genealogy (possibly? the sources I read were unclear). Is there any truth to this claim apart from it being on the Internet?
It’s theoretically possible, but is usually seen as unlikely, since it would mean that Luke was not produced until the middle of the second century, which is surely too late.
John’s idea of Jesus may in fact be closer to Paul’s–but it’s not an idea any of Jesus’ disciples would have had while he was alive.
The more important Jesus became in their minds after his death, the more his miracles became magnified in the retelling, the more they’d need to explain why they weren’t like the idealized Jesus in their heads. So there had to be something about him that was inherently different, even though he had told them they could work the same wonders if they believed enough. Jesus knew he was human, but to others he could seem divine, because of his strange charisma. You can never fully know another person, so you can imagine all kinds of things about them, particularly after they’re gone.
Paul began that process of deification (without necessarily intending to do so), because he never knew Jesus. And this tends to argue against the notion that the author of John knew Jesus (as Richard Bauckham believes he did). I think it’s possible the author of Mark knew him (perhaps not well), but even there it’s hard to be sure.
The possible reference to Jesus’ illegitmacy in John is interesting, and typical of John’s obsession with the emnity between Jesus and the Jewish establishment. Obviously by that time there would have been many Jews who routinely slandered Jesus, believing him to be a heretic and a troublemaker. Nobody could have known the precise circumstances of his birth, but people make up stories about those they dislike or fear. The most obvious insult to fling against a man of obscure parentage is to call him a bastard.
What do you think of this idea–the Virgin Birth was a story cobbled up in response to utterly unsubstantiated claims that Jesus was conceived out of wedlock? It never made sense Joseph would marry a woman who had gotten pregnant by another man, but it makes perfect sense that people (everywhere, always) gossip. Faced with a calumny that could never be definitively disproven, Christians came up with a way to counteract it–claim that God was Jesus’ father. Can’t disprove that either! And it was where they were headed, anyway.
Yes, I think that’s possible.
It’s nice to be agreed with (in theory, since we don’t have the facts), but the problem is, then you don’t get to have a fun argument. 😉
Bart – Not sure what “phases” you went through when you no longer considered yourself a Christian before you became content with your newfound belief – or should I say disbelief – but after the last couple of years of my awakening I’m still upset that I actually believed such nonsense for so long.
And I’m still aggravated when I find myself debating someone who believes this bologna – especially when I provide or direct them to evidence supporting my position.
I was wondering if you ever feel this way?
About five times a week is all….
And I’m fighting with myself to keep from thinking it’s the greatest hoax there ever was or that could ever be. I do not want to think of Jesus that way.
I don’t think it was a hoax, not at all. There was no intentional effort to deceive people. Often people proclaim views that are simply not true — but there doesn’t have to be anything malicious about it. That’s how I see both the earliest Christians and their modern advocates.
Thanks. Maybe I can learn to understand it that way.
You are not alone.
All of this assumes ancient people understood reproductive biology, which might be a big assumption. The story of Noah and the Ark is the first well-known example that it takes two to tango, but I can’t see explicitly where ancient people understood the egg and sperm biology as the mechanism, rather than that magic moment repeated over time. There are other dynamics to consider also, such as any social premia or stigma associated with virginity or non-virginity (Don’t you dare look at Webster’s online for suggested antonyms. Dictionary compilers are a judgmental bunch.). It’s an enthralling topic of discussion, well-suited for online analysis where people can safely hide behind screen names as they sort through the dirty laundry of antiquity from the standpoint of their own cultural quagmires.
They certainly didn’t have a modern understanding of reproduction (or of anything connected with biology, anatomy, or … well, anything connected with science). But they also certainly understood that people had babies by having sex!
How could one know whether John held to the doctrine of the virgin birth? How could we know he did not. The best it seems we can say is that we don’t know what he thought about it. Right?
Yes, end of the day that’s right. But there may be *hints* in his text, and that’s what I was looking for.
” Is this a suggestion that Jesus was known to have been born out of wedlock?”
I know we can’t know for sure what happened but I wonder what your thought is, do you think that Jesus was conceived out of wedlock and Joseph married Mary anyway?
I think that’s a possibility, but I don’t really know.
It’s possible Jesus was conceived out of wedlock with Joseph as the father. Mary was probably a bit young to get married when they became betrothed, in an arranged marriage, as was common then. Bethrothal was a state not equal to marriage, but still a very significant commitment on both sides (much more than an engagement). Joseph might have jumped the gun, exercised his marital prerogatives before the marriage happened, and Mary got pregnant. This would lead to various social complications, as has happened innumerable times in peasant societies throughout all history (and not just peasant societies).
This could have led to gossip about who the father was, and Joseph couldn’t very well admit what he’d done, but neither could he disavow his first-born son, or put Mary aside for something that wasn’t her fault.
Most would have realized what really happened, but it would have been difficult to just come out and say “Okay, fine, they got a little ahead of themselves, where’s the harm, mazel tov!” (I am well aware ancient Palestinian Jews didn’t speak Yiddish, but couldn’t resist, and the phrase is derived from Hebrew.)
Gossip is an everpresent part of all societies. Mary might well have been very religious, and might have said some things about how God had blessed this pregnancy, and then time passes, and memory does its magic. All of a sudden, it’s a miraculous birth. Then Matthew needs to believe Jesus was born of a virgin. Then Luke does his take. Then it becomes a religious doctrine. But it could all have started when an eager young bridegroom couldn’t wait for the wedding day.
Or that might not be it at all. But the most likely culprit in a young Jewish woman who is betrothed getting preggers would be the man she was betrothed to. And Joseph wasn’t wriggling his way out of that. They didn’t have shotguns then, but they had plenty of other methods of inducement. 😉
All the Gospel of John addresses is His pre-existence as LOGOS.
It does not address the birth of Jesus.
It should not be used to argue either for or against the belief of the Virginal birth.
So great post, Dr. Ehrman.
However, you included a reference to the Gospel of Mark as providing support for the notion that Mary was unaware of a miraculous birth. What are you talking about?
If this is a reference to your blog post of yesterday discussing how modern scholars equate the term “those around Him” as being His family, then you are doing exactly what you would correct your students for doing. Bending a text to mean what you want it to mean. You are illustrating, in my opinion, the problem with narrative-crafters who seek to undermine the faith of others, as well-intended as they may be in doing so.
Neither the Gospel of John nor the Gospel of Mark address in any way, shape or form, the birth of Jesus. To argue otherwise is not scholarly but rather reflects a bias that is either theological or anti-theological in nature. These two gospels should not be included in a discussion of the biblical evidence for or against a virginal birth. They simply do not address it and doing so only confuses or muddies the issue.
Well, I *may* be doing that, but I don’t think so. I didn’t come to this passage having this view ahead of time. I acquired this view only after studying the passage. (Before that I didn’t have a view on the matter — never even occurred to me.)
How do we know that the gospel writers were writing down existing oral traditions rather than making it up as they go?
Lots of reasons. One is that Gospels that appear not to be familiar with one another (e.g., Mark and John) tell the same stories. So neither one of them could have made them up.
Clearly they were doing both. Many of the Gospel episodes were obviously invented. Someone, somewhere, invented the idea that at the moment of Jesus’s death, zombies walked the earth (Matt 27:50-54). It’s possible that the inventor spoke his invention to others, creating an oral tradition, or that he wrote it down directly into a Gospel document. Either way, it was certainly invented from whole cloth. Not knowing the identities of the Gospel writers, I don’t see why we should assume that every story written into the Gospels was first an oral tradition.
The writers of the gospels of Mark and John make no mention of the doctrine of the virgin conception, or for that matter, of Jesus’s birth at all. It seems, therefore, that these writers either have not heard of the doctrine, or if they have they do not accept it. This is particularly noteworthy in the case of the Gospel of John. When the author writes in chapter 1:45 about Jesus calling his first disciples, he has Philip refer to Jesus as “son of Joseph from Nazareth.” He tells us in chapter 20:31 that his purpose in writing the book was “that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” Had he known about and accepted the doctrine of the virgin conception, would this not have been an appropriate place to mention it? The writer tells us in chapter 21:24 that he got much of the information for his gospel from one he calls “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” He had written in chapter 19:26,27 that Jesus on the cross had instructed this disciple to look after his (Jesus’s) mother, and “from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” Since any information about the circumstances of Jesus’s conception would have had to come first from his mother, is it conceivable that she would have revealed this information to someone else and not to “the beloved disciple?”
Yes, that’s one of the conceivable options.
I believe Origen cites Celsus as saying that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier named Pantera. Do you assign any credibility to that idea?
Ah, long story that. But what is usually thought is that this charge resulted from a confusion in the Christian stories that Jesus was born from a Parthenos (= virgin), that in Jewish polemic came to be transformed into a firth from “Pantera”
Is John’s theology here influenced by the Two-Powers in Heaven belief?
Some interesting debate about htat, but it certainly seems possible.
1) From where do you think John and Paul got their idea that Jesus was the personified Wisdom of the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Proverbs 8) and the Apocrypha (e.g. Sirach 24)? 2) Do you think that Philo influenced either or both authors or that they came to this identification on their own?
1. My guess is that any Christian who read Proverbs 8 could well come to think that, since it is referring to a divine being with God in the beginning who was a separte being from him, it must have referred to Christ. I don’t know if Paul was teh first to come up with the idea or not. 2. I doubt it. Certainly not Paul, who was writing too early. My sense is that hte views embodied by Philo were not distinct to him and the same *kinds* of thought entered into the Christian traditions early on.
Great post! It makes me wonder why the story of the virgin birth evolved in the first place. I had assumed the stories about Jesus being born out of wedlock emerged after the virgin birth stories, as a way to mock early Christians. Is there reason to believe, historically, that Mary actually had premarital sex and Jesus was conceived before she married Joseph? I’ve heard the stories about a Roman soldier being his father, but thought that was pure legend.
Yes, that’s certainly possible.
As always, “Life of Brian” (in, for me, its most hilarious sketch) has the answer.
Does John use the term “The Word” to symbolize Jesus at least partly because it is reminiscent of the New Covenant? Or would that distract from his insistence about preexistence?
Hard to say. The idea of Jesus being the new covenant is found in the Synoptics, but offhand I’m trying to think if it’s in John — and nothing comes to mind. His Logos doctrine seems to have other roots: Genesis 1 and, possibly, Hellenistic philosophical traditions.
The term “smash it together” always makes me smile. Yet it is a rather sad smile. I have to think of little children in their sand-pit. Aren’t we all (a bit more or less) up to “baking our beautiful cakes” no matter how!? What a tragicomedy!!
Dr. Ehrman,
What is your educated guess to why a stream of tradition included the virgin birth? Was it to boost the “memories” of Jesus as divine? Was it remembered in order to fulfill prophecy? The tradition that Mark pulled from did not include that memory, nor did the stream of tradition for John. So is there a connection somewhere that helps explain why the tradition started?
Thanks, Jay
I think one or both of those reasons, for one author or another. And possibly to cover over the unusual circumstances of his birth that were otehrwise being talked about.
Matthew 1:21 tells us Jesus is given his name because he will save his people form their sins. 2:6 tells us these are the Lord’s people. So Jesus is given a name meaning yahweh saves because he will save his/the lords people.
1:22,23 tells us Jesus fulfills the prophesy “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”. Jesus is never called Immanuel so the only way he can fulfill the prophesy is by fulfilling the meaning of the name, which Matthew has helpfully told us means “God is with us”.
Luke chapter one “Lord” clearly refers to God. However 1:76 tells us of John the Baptist “will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him” ; which clearly refers to Jesus.
I think Matthew and Luke speak of Jesus in the same terms as John’s prologue.
Very interesting. There is of course also John 1:45, where Phillip refers to Jesus as the “son of Joseph,” which is echoed in 6:42 by “Jews” who decry Jesus’ claim that he has come down from heaven by calling him the son of Joseph (and his mother). But my question is actually about John 1:14 that you mention. I can’t read Greek, but have heard it said that the verse actually reads something like “the Word became flesh and pitched its tent among us.” If this “tent-pitching” reflects the notion of tabernacling, then it of course has great precedent in the Biblical tradition. But does the Greek of John 1:14 say this? Thank you!
Yes, the word literally means something like “pitched his tent among us”
I have a question about the “Word” as in John. This refers to the “Logos” in Greek which has a somewhat different or fuller meaning than our English “Word” has. My understanding is that there are different subtle meanings that have been used by Greek Philosophers. In what sense would you see how Logos is being used in the text of John? How could the first line be re-written to reflect the fuller meaning?
Ah, entire books written on that one! Shortest story: I think it is an allusion to Genesis 1 (God creates the world by speaking a word) with philosophical overtones (e.g., Stoics who think that “word” or “reason” infuses all of existence as a divine element in all there is)
Hi Bart, You make a very good case for John not believing that Jesus was not born of a virgin, but do you think that John may also not have accepted that Jesus was born in Bethlehem? He’s clearly aware of the scriptural tradition that the Messiah will come out of Bethlehem (John 7:42) but puts this tradition in the mouths of people who are ignorant of the Bethlehem birth story and therefore deny Jesus’ messiahship. This could be Johannine irony. Or it could just mean that John assumes that his readership of believers already know that Jesus was indeed born in Bethlehem, and had no need to be reminded of this fact. But I still find it strange that, if he believed it and thought it important, John would not have taken this or other opportunities to assert Jesus’s Bethlehem birth and Davidian lineage.
Yes, it could go either way, and I’ve never been completely sure. (Either he’s denying it or showing he doesn’t know the tradition or using irony; my guess is that he simply doesn’t know the tradition.)
Most people knew in the first century not to take these myths literally.
There is a spiritual message in the virgin birth, and it is the same message that was first scripted in Egypt with the virgin birth of Horus, and can later be found in Greek mythology with the virgin birth of Perseus.
Mary (or Isis or Danae) is pure; in that she represents that part with each of us that is free from imagination.
The Holy Spirit, which is our inner God (Third Eye) may only be perceived by one who is free of imagination – one who is not living in the imagination of the past or future, but in the moment. (This is the esoteric meaning of ‘virgin’ one is free of imagination.)
The Divine wisdom of the Holy Spirit (i.e. Third Eye, the Father, Atman, Osiris) inspires the innermost chamber of the heart (i.e. Mary, Danae, Isis) and a ‘hero’ is created within us (Jesus, Perseus, Horus, etc.) who is able to repel those parts within us that wish us to live in imagination or negativity.
The battle between the Hero and the lower self (i.e. serpent, devil, Seth) is a moment to moment throughout our lives. It is the battle between living in imagination or in Presence.
The path of the inner hero leads to the inner God. Hence, no one can come to the Father except through the hero.
The virgin birth, like the resurrection, occurs within each of us each time we transform imagination into Presence. We rise from the spiritual death of the lower self into the awareness of the Divine that dwells within us.*
The myths of the raising Lazarus or the twelve year old daughter of Jairus from the dead is simply another way of relating the role of the hero, who acts from the inspiration of the heart and the wisdom our inner God.
*Alas, this is where Bart, who in my humble opinion has a brilliant mind, tossed out the baby with the bathwater.
Going from the extreme of fundamentalism to the extreme of atheism, he missed the mystical.
The Gospel of Thomas, along with several other Gnostic texts abound with the teaching of the higher Divine inner realm overshadowing the spiritually dead lower self.
Bart, you give so much in your writings, you deserve to receive another perspective from a grateful reader.
When I look at Rorschach ink blots, I often see faces. What could it mean?
It means that if you saw ink blots you would require more sustained analysis.
I’m curious about the number of days, months, in ancient Jewish calendar and when they actually Started taking records of time. We know that the days of the week were named after the classical planets (derived from the astrological system of planetary hours) in the Roman era. More how exactly do we know the exact age of Noah, and Abraham…?
For the most ancient times, we don’t know how (if) people kept track of what we call days, months, and years. But the stories about the great ages of the ancestors are all legends, not to be taken as literal descriptions of historical fact.
We still have calendars from Sumer going back to the 21c BC, so the Jewish calendar (heavily influenced by the Babylonian calendar — thanks exile!) is by comparison a Johnny-come-lately.
Fascinating.
Even if these posts are repeats, these 6 or so Christmas posts have been excellent. Thanks
On the topic of “Luke’s Christmas”, is this alternate proposal reasonable or is it possibly special pleading?
https://legacy.tyndalehouse.com/Bulletin/69=2018/Armitage-22.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0YbBWq1RFA_xIC7CP0xy1k3TFWDlXRWRQXe-byZlqrfY06P3yeKfDlF9Q
I’d be happy to respond if you want to summarize the argument.
This may be a repeat as my previous attempt may not have made it through – it was marked as spam.
If my attempt at clarification below is convoluted, then please just disregard the question.
The paper proposes a potential solution to the problematic association of Jesus’ birth and the Quirinius census in Luke 2:1-7. Luke uses a distinctive transitional phrase (in Luke 2:1, and elsewhere in Luke-Acts), ἐγένετο δὲ, that marks a transition from the narrative background (continued from Luke 1:80, i.e. time of John’s childhood) to a narrative sequence taking place against this background (the census). The ἐγένετο δὲ in Luke 2:6 can be seen as indicating the return to the main narrative following the digression (the link between the two times being the location).
The overall result is that Luke may agree that Jesus is born in Bethlehem in the time of Herod. Luke then transitions briefly to a future time, the known Quirinius census (possibly to emphasize Davidic ancestry), and then returns to the main narrative. This would imply more than one trip to Joseph’s home town over the ten year period between Herod’s death and the census, but the approximate date of birth would then be similar to gMatt’s account. The author (David Armitage) goes into a lot more detail.
Armitage does formally acknowledge that the syntax does not demand his proposed reading, but it does nevertheless permit it.
So my question is whether in your view, this is a “permissible reading” based on the syntax?
I’m afraid it’s a stretch. ἐγένετο δὲ is simply a “semiticism” — an attempt to express a typical Hebrew expression (“and it came to pass”: very common in the Hebrew Bible) with a highly unusual Greek phrase. No Greek, simply writing Greek, would put it that way. It simply means something like “It happened that….” or “And then….”
DR EHRMAN:
Jesus is considered the ‘ONLY BEGOTTEN son of God, but Jesus was not begotten by God! God did not have sex with Mary!!!
Jesus was already the son of God before he was born a man. (for God so loved the world that he gave his only son…)
There were several men who came from God, but who were not THE son of God, as Jesus was, So that’s why, I think, that Jesus is the ONLY begotten son of God… There were others sent from God who were begotten, but who were not God’s Son….God only has one son, through whom he created all things!
John the baptist was a man sent from God, but john was not the Son of God… yet, John had a father and mother – so how was John the baptist sent from God?
The same is true with Jeremiah? God knew Jeremiah before he was born, yet Jeremiah had a father and mother? Therefore one can be sent from God and not necessarily have to be born of a virgin woman.
Paul also says in (Romans 1:3) that Jesus was born of a descendant of King David, according to the flesh…How could Jesus be a true human descendant of David if he didn’t have a father?
Also, the apostle Paul doesn’t say anything, in any of his letters, about Jesus being Born of a virgin woman, Paul says, that Jesus was born of a woman, … period! (Galatians 4:4)
I think that when John says that Jesus was “the only begotten son of God”, he means that although Jesus existed as the immortal son of God, yet he gave it all up, and was “begotten by Joseph through Mary, and was born as a human being, from the tribe of Judah, by the process of reproduction.
Jesus didn’t claim to be the Son of God.
Kings David & Solomon were both Sons of God.
Israel was the Son of God. Exodus 4
Believers are the Sons of God. Romans8 plus John 1, 1 John 3
Believed by many to be J S Bach’s final composition: “et incarnatus est de spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine; et homo factus est.” (within his b minor mass, in the Credo section [per Dr. E’s text] although this piece is in e minor, just sayin’) THERE WE ARE!
The music: Sublimest of the sublime representing nonsense. Go figure.
Yup, there it is!
And mea culpa. Bach’s ‘et incarnatus’ is in b minor, not e minor.
The master is rolling over in his grave.
Since both genealogies come down to Joseph… it makes sense that the authors of these two books thought Joseph was his father.
Maybe! But then it’s hard to explain why they detail a virgin birth.
“Obviously most Jews and Christians would not be comfortable with the idea of God literally having sex with a mortal (although divine beings *do* do that in the Bible. See Genesis 6!”
I am bothered by the notion that the gospel writers picture God getting a woman pregnant who is not his wife. Why does all of Christianity give God a pass on this? And why is this okay– because God did it? How does this act NOT violate God’s nature as pictured in the Bible– a holy God without sin who hates immorality and would never impregnate a woman who is not his wife. As his righteous nature goes, it is impossible for God to violate his own nature; this act of impregnating Mary seems impossible for God to do, as he has been depicted by the biblical writers across the board as holy and righteous.
They apparently didn’t see it as immoral, but within God’s own prerogative, not contrary to his nature at all, any more than creating Eve from the rib of Adam was.