Given that a) the messiah was to come from the line of David -
through the fathers lineage - and b) the new testament writers portray
Jesus as the result of a virgin birth and without a biological father,
does anyone have a coherent resolution/explanation for the above? From
my understanding, adoption by Joseph would not have been seen by
mainstream Jews at the time of Jesus as constituting Him being of the
line of David. Surely the fact that the messiah was to be of this
biological & spiritual lineage suggests that a virgin birth is not
necessary and was indeed, not expected by the Jews.
This strikes me as a fundamental question and I’d appreciate any input people can provide.
Virgin birth posts
up to a point
Andrew, thanks. this is useful up to a point, especially where you state: "The idea of incarnation does not require a virgin birth; nor did the story of the virgin birth arise out of belief in the incarnation."
interestingly you also state that an immaculate conception was not needed in order for Jesus to be sinless. i’m not closed to this possibility, even though it goes against the mainstream teaching that He had to be born of a virgin due to sin coming through the seed of the father and the world in need of a sinless sacrifice for eternal atonement.
if Jesus had in fact been born of two biological parents - with no direct divine involvement - how would he have escaped the inheritance of sin?
Immaculate assumptions
Just a technicality - wasn’t the ‘immaculate conception’ that of Mary rather than Jesus (ie a Roman Catholic dogma)?
Also, I don’t read Andrew as saying that a miraculous birth was not needed for Jesus to be sinless; I read him as saying that ‘sinlessness’ was not an issue in Matthew’s presentation of his birth; the birth was more to do with presenting Jesus as Messiah.
Then again there is the argument these days for the birth account in Matthew being a kind of Midrash, or semi-fictitious elaboration around some theological ideas and parallels with Moses. But I’m way out of my depth here.
I’m just not sure how far one can get with the idea that a ‘sinless’ birth is irrelevant to the account. Presumably there was some reason why Matthew says Mary conceived through the Holy Spirit coming upon her, and that Joseph assumed she was pregnant by somebody other than himself, until the angel told him otherwise. It all seems very clear - Matthew is saying that Mary was not pregnant by any human agent, and it was a virgin birth.
Again, sinlessness is not an explicit issue, but it certainly becomes an issue in the light of Romans 1-5: unless we are to detach one set of theology off from the other (as academic theology loves to do).
Anyway, I was hoping someone would address mutant’s original point: can Jesus claim to be a descendant of David if he was not the biological offspring of Joseph? (I assume somebody must have spotted this issue in the last 2000 years). I guess he can if the lineage is traced through Mary. Or maybe an exception to the rules of descent was made in this particular case - in view of the rather unique biological factors attending the conception.
Does this make sense?
I found this on the web @ http://biblia.com/jesusbible/jeremiah6.htm
Two Genealogies of Jesus
When we get to the New Testament, we discover two genealogies of Jesus Christ:
1. Matthew, as a Jew and focusing on Jesus as the Messiah, begins his with Abraham and follows the royal line through David, and the first surviving son of Bathsheba, Solomon, on to Joseph, the legal father of Jesus Christ.
2. Luke, however, as a doctor focuses on Jesus as the Son of Man, and takes his genealogy from Adam - the first man - and then from Abraham to David, they are identical.
However, when Luke gets to David, rather than go through Solomon, he follows the line from Nathan, the second surviving son of Bathsheba, and takes his genealogy to Mary, identifying Joseph as the son-in-law of Heli, Mary’s father… so, in this genealogy Jesus is not a descendent of Jeconiah… the curse on Jeconiah is overpassed!… For nothing is impossible with God. (Lk.1:37).
The above looks like a solid piece of writing & thought. Any comments from the more learned among us?
Mutant.
No
No. It is a story. The woman is as involved in conception as a man. Even if you believe a virginal conception, the woman presumably carries sin and she provided the egg. Ancient people thought the woman was just a box the foetus grew in. So it is a nonsense anyway. I doubt any medic will find a “sin” gene exclusive to the male line. As for the genealogy, they made it up. No one kept a record, did they.
It baffles me that intelligent people go on about these myths as if they have any history or any science.
http://www.pluralist.co.uk
Genealogies
I’d always thought that the Jews were very strong on genealogies - given the importance attached to them throughout the OT. Anyone in the early centuries could have questioned Matthew & Luke’s genealogies if they were such a weak point in the argument. Why didn’t they? Mutant’s comments are illuminating - but one has to add ‘father-in-law’ to make sense of Luke’s genealogy. But which myths did you have in mind, Pluralist? I’m still interested to know how Jesus became the legal descendant of David - even if one accepted your assertion about the stories.
genealogies.
hi Pluralist. regarding your statement about genealogies being made up, can you point me in the direction of proof? this would shed great light on my question because as far as i know, there was a very strong scribe culture within ancient Judaism and many of the "myths" of the old testament turned out to be factual, based on archeological evidence.
Thoughts on Jesus; ancestry and the Virginal Conception
In my opinion, it is extremely difficult at best to prove a negative. Can we prove Jesus was not born of a virgin?
Well, here are my thoughts for what they are worth.
First, the remark that the ancients thought of the woman as simply “the box” the baby grew in is erroneous. They did not need our knowledge of embryology to know that there was something about women that contributed to conception. Otherwise, “barrenness” makes no sense. If the woman were merely “the box”, they would say the MAN was barren. {And in some cases, he know doubt was}. But a woman would not be considered barren unless they knew that a woman was SUPPOSED to have something to do with conception.
So where did this story come from?
1} Not, as some believe, from a misreading of Isaiah 7. Luke includes a virginal conception with no reference to Isaiah.
2} Not out of a need to protect Jesus from the accusation of illegitimacy. If that were the case, all Matthew and Luke would need to do is portray Jesus being born to Mary and Joseph in the normal way. They would not need to invent a wild tale that could only draw more attention to the question!
So, while I doubt very much Jesus was conceived in any but the normal way, I have to conclude the story was written down because it was believed to have happened.
My wife is badgering me to come to dinner, so I will opine on Jesus’ ancestry later.
Stuart
Jesus Ancestry
I think Jesus was very likely a descendent of David. But this is not impressive. David lived over 900 years before Jesus, and would have had tens of thousands of direct descendants by Jesus’ time.
As for the genealogies, I suspect neither of them can claim to be documented, even to the authors. Each of us, going back 900 years, would have millions of ancestors. Could anyone in Jesus’ day produce such an unweildy family tree and prove a direct line of descent from any particular person who lived so long before? I was talking once with an Orthodox Jewish girl who told me her family was descended from the tribe of Levi. I asked if she could show me the scrolls! {Needless to say, this didn’t happen} Her family tradition was just that—-a family tradition that may or may not be correct.
Raymond Brown presents a theory in The Birth of the Messiah that Matthew has used an idealized “Messianic Geneaology”. I can’t recall all Brown has to say on this subject. But The Birth of the Messiah is an excellent source of material on this topic.
Stuart
Descendant
There is no need for an accusation of illegitimacy. It does not come into it. There is a mistranslation of Isaiah, but this is not all of the story. There are various, including a young woman who gave birth before her first period (because sex started early). It is common to give magical birth origins to figures where divinity or hints of divinity is suspected. It was done to Buddha, for example. But Jesus (nor the Buddha) did not claim divinity, and this only happened in the Christian community later, the one that wrote the texts and did construct the birth narratives using the Hebrew Bible as the guide to how and where the Messianic figure would be born.
The simplest explanation is that no one said and no one knew. Mary is not going to say, hang on how did this happen in public. If she did it would have led to rumour; but none of this is necessary for a rumour that the father was not involved. Once again people want to find history where it is inaccessible, instead of concentrating on what matters which is the writing process in the filter of a claimed resurrection.
http://www.pluralist.co.uk
mmm, a short post that
mmm, a short post that makes a number of statements, each of which could make for a thread of it’s own. regarding Jesus and Buddha, yes there were claims of divine birth origins around both, but this in itself says little regarding the validity of claims about Jesus’ divinity. Unlike the buddha, the gospels quote Jesus making a number of statements regarding divinity which, assuming he did in fact make them, set him apart from teachers like the buddha, Zoroastra etc.
further, stating that gospel writers purely constructed the birth narratives using the Hebrew bible as a guide to how and where the Messiah would be born, suggests they are mere fabrication, or at the very least, extremely misleading and therefore not to be trusted. i feel it is here that your statement needs to be backed up with some meat for others to chew on.
Tormenting the evangelicals
Nice try, Pluralist; but I’m still in rehab and not coming out yet.
emergent sans prozac
Peter, i would post you some prozac but i’ve just run out. don’t be coaxed out until you’re ready.
The point is not whether
The point is not whether there was a need for an accusation of illegitimacy; the fact is such accusations were made by Roman and Jewish critics. The theory was advanced that the Virgin Birth stories were created in order to deny the charge. I reject this theory for the reason s given above.
Stuart
Why?
Why were such accusations made? Were they not made at the same time as the claims? So the claims are not answers to critics who have historical doubts, they are critics following the claims. If indeed all this is so.
So many of you want to raise this idea of fabrication and dishonesty, as if they were running a history class. They were making an explanation. You see, there are real crunch historical misfits, such as Herod and Quirinius at the time of the birth. Presumably they knew this, so they were lying… But this is not my point. They did not check the records down at the local records office - did it matter? - but they made their theological points. In the same way, they built the narratives. Look at it this way - no one would have been required to travel from Galilee to Bethlehem to take part in a census (if there was one at all) for a person living in that area. But the story writer needs to get them there, to be in David’s place.
http://www.pluralist.co.uk
fundamental antitheses
Pluralist, you state: "one would have been required to travel from Galilee to Bethlehem to take part in a census (if there was one at all) for a person living in that area. But the story writer needs to get them there, to be in David’s place."
reading this statement - which makes a number of assumptions - it seems as if you might be in danger of doing the same thing. some historical facts here would be useful in order to engage your comments more fully.
in a previous post, you described yourself as a buddhist humanist christian. in the light of this i would expect you to have a fundamental problem with the concept of an almighty G-d, Yahweh, who is intimately involved with creation - this belief underpins both judaism and christianity and is implicit in Jesus’ teachings.
i quote buddhanet.net, a leading buddhist website: "There is no almighty God in Buddhism. There is no one to hand out rewards or punishments on a supposedly Judgement Day. Buddhism is strictly not a religion in the context of being a faith and worship owing allegiance to a supernatural being."
to embrace the above tenet - which the buddhist element of your belief would require of you in order to be classed as buddhist - is to deconstruct the teachings of Jesus to the point of rendering them misguided and the bible based on error.
while the moral & ethical outworkings of christianity and buddhism have much in common - compassion etc - the theological underpinnings are mutually exclusive. if you believe in the almighty G-d of the bible - YHWH - then you are not a buddhist and in reverse, if you don’t believe in an almighty being, YHWH or otherwise, then although welcome as part of the discussion, your beliefs will prevent you from emerging in the kind of way that the majority of us seek…
as more authentic, passionate, liberated, compassionate, relevant, creative christians.
all things can be explored but every structure requires a foundation and those who follow Jesus - not very well, speaking of myself - believe in a personal and yet almighty & unfathomable G-d, Yahweh.
Soteriology
No I do not believe in a God that Jesus believed in, one to bring in the Kingdom of God very soon. Not at all, he was wrong. I think God is a human invention. In this sense I follow a basic Buddhist view of “salvation” existing in removing attachment to what is not permanent. The principle non-permanent thing is one’s own life, and to accept its end, and to want life after death is a form of attachment. But I’d say Jesus was readying people for the end of what they knew and the beginning of something else. He understood impermanence, but he was within a supernatural culture that no longer means anything - to me for one and to a great many others.
As for other comments on requiring me to have evidence, it is not needed by me to say that accurate records were kept over hundreds of years about past ancestry. We do not even have that ourselves from this time back - and even our royalty where records were kept has some breaks and imagined links. Jesus was himself a Galilean, and we can assume (except by accident) no lineage anywhere. The proof has to be with those who demand this link, but it is fairly meaningless genetically anyway. In any case the tradition is double headed and confused, because it is making two theological points and lacks history. History is a contemporary concept, something we are careful about regarding primary sources and all that, and is not a test ancients can pass especially with an end-time preacher and healer who has no primary data about himself to begin with (historically the Bible relating to Jesus is all secondary sources).
http://www.pluralist.co.uk
foundation.
Pluralist, reading a number of your posts i was wondering what your core assumptions were - especially as you refer to yourself as a "buddhist humanist christian". i appreciate you now having stated your beliefs explicitly, regarding salvation/soteriology.
knowing that you don’t believe in a God that Jesus believed in, that God is a human invention and that Jesus was wrong about the kingdom, puts your posts in context. such beliefs are entirely consistent with the philosophical fundamentals of buddhism, but inconsistent with those of christianity.
Jesus also taught non-attachment insofar as putting others first, dying to self, realising the transitory nature of material things etc. however one cannot get around the fact that christianity differs fundamentally from buddhism insofar as we believe in an almighty God (YHWH) who is unfathomable yet personal, who because He seeks relationship with creation and humanity - being made in God’s own image - created a way for fallen humanity to be reconciled with it’s Source.
while your comments and input are welcome, i am sure you realise that the vast majority of people contributing on the board hold to the belief in the existence of YHWH and Jesus, the messiah. our explorations regarding emergence within a post-modern mileau does not intend to reject/not believe these fundamentals, as you do.
Proof
No, but they did not keep records and it went back a very long way. It is not viable historically by any contemporary test. It is theological association, not record keeping.
http://www.pluralist.co.uk
backing up.
Hi Pluralist. sorry if i’m sounding pedantic but it would be useful if you unpack each of these assumptions and back them up in some way as you make so many: no records kept, not viable historically, purely theological association. it’s hard to engage these in any way other than to pass them back to you and request more meat on the bone. i started this thread because i felt it was important and while you may be correct, you currently provide zero back-up - this does neither the question nor yourself any justice.