Jesus Theory #1: Speculation About an Unusual Birth (Part 1: Setting the Scene)

"Let's start at the very beginning, a fine place to start," to paraphrase The Sound of Music: the so-called virgin birth. To be more specific, we must establish some points of fact upfront that are related to the topic of this post.

• Isaiah's prophecy was never about a virgin birth. The whole thing came from a snafu when the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek (the famous Septuagint, so called either because 70 scholars participated in its translation or the work only took 70 days from start to finish -- pick the tradition you like) for the benefit of the large Jewish population in Egypt, then the intellectual center of the known world, who no longer spoke or read Hebrew. The passage we now know as Isaiah 7:14, with the three verses following, is entirely symbolic and intended as a prophecy of Israel's future. But leaving aside its actual meaning to its intended audience as opposed to the Christian interpretation, there's another little problem. Greek has one word for virgin, "parthenos," which means what you'd expect (i.e., a physical virgin, no sexual experience). But Hebrew has two -- "almah," a young unmarried woman, and "bethulah," which, like "parthenos," is the type of virgin you think of when you hear the word. Isaiah wrote "almah," but the Greeks had no equivalent, and rather than leave it blank, they slotted in "parthenos." And that's how you get a prophecy for the future author of Matthew to use when seeking portents from the past which might "predict" the unusual birth of Jesus, desperate to make sure he fulfilled every Hebrew prophecy about the coming Messiah. A young unmarried woman bearing a son, while taboo in first century Judea, was certainly not unheard of.
• There is a curious silence in some of the earliest Christian documents about Jesus' parentage, but what they do say is intriguing, if only by inference. The clues in the canonical Gospels, none of which refer to Jesus as the son of a virgin (well, neither Mark, the earliest, nor John, the latest, mentions it; Matthew and Luke have contradictory birth narratives that agree only on the parents being named Mary and Joseph, Mary allegedly being a virgin at the time Jesus is conceived [and virginity before conception, to be frank, would hardly be uncommon if one were properly brought up in this world of arranged marriage and betrothal -- that's just how it was for every marriageable woman, whether or not an angel showed up with news], and parts of the story occurring in Nazareth and Bethlehem), are both obvious and obscure; in his day, they'd have painted a clear picture that is lost to modern readers. 

What picture?

Well, it's not really a pretty one, but you asked...

In the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus speaks at the synagogue in Nazareth, his detractors call him the "son of Mary." The Jewish people didn't trace descent through the female until after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. When Jesus was alive, lineage was traced through the male. To refer to a man as the son of his mother was gravely offensive, not unlike referring to someone as a "son of a bitch" today. It meant that his paternity was uncertain. Gospels written 20 or 30 years after Mark, like Matthew, Luke, and John, go to great effort to eliminate this reference. (Matthew 12:55, for example, replaces Mary with Joseph, as does John 6:42, and later editors corrected copies of Mark to echo these glosses, substituting "the son of the carpenter.") 

The Gospel of John never mentions the name of Jesus' mother, nor do the epistles of Paul. And while we're meandering through John, let's stop at chapter 8, verse 41. Jesus is having a discussion with some of his critics in Jerusalem, and they say "We were not born of fornication!" as if to imply like you. There's a similar reference in the Apocrypha: the Gospel of Nicodemus (which dates to the 300s, but likely has origins in the late 100s) reports Jesus' trial before Pilate, during which one of his enemies erupts, "You were born of fornication!"

Just what exactly are you implying?!

(Apologies to Richard "Rocky Horror" O'Brien for stealing that last line.)

It's not what I imply; it's what the Good Book itself implies, in so many words or none at all. To spare your delicate sensibilities, I'll put it in indirect terms: at the very least, there was a widely reported -- and, it would seem, accepted -- rumor, possibly in his own lifetime, that Jesus was an illegitimate child. (This, incidentally, would make sense of Mary not being named in John's Gospel or Paul's epistles. If Jesus were truly illegitimate, this would be deeply embarrassing in their culture; his mother would be an outcast whose name was to be forgotten.)

To the extent it was true that this was a popular perception about Christ, it would seem he took the accusations in stride. Verse 105 of the Gospel of Thomas records Jesus saying "He who knows the father and the mother will be called the son of a harlot." Be prepared, my brothers; they'll call you terrible things because you speak the truth, he seems to say. They'll call you a bastard even if you know who your parents were.

It's certainly in keeping with that bit about a prophet not being accepted in his hometown, but rather a specific twist, don't ya think? And one that hadn't the slightest whiff of denial... granted, I don't think the tale of a virgin birth would have been believed had he offered it in answer to these insults, but surely if this allegation wasn't true, he'd have refuted it!

After all, terrible things happened to bastard children. Being called a bastard was the worst insult. Such children were considered the "excrement of the community." The Law and the Prophets were far from uncertain. Both the mother and the child would have been social outcasts, as the Wisdom of Solomon twice made clear.

3:16-19:

But children of adulterers will not come to maturity, and the offspring of an unlawful union will perish. Even if they live long they will be held of no account, and finally, their old age will be without honor. If they die young, they will have no hope and no consolation on the day of judgment. For the end of an unrighteous generation is grievous.

4:3-6:

...the prolific brood of the ungodly will be of no use, and none of their illegitimate seedlings will strike a deep root or take a firm hold. For even if they put forth boughs for a while, standing insecurely they will be shaken by the wind, and by the violence of the winds, they will be uprooted. The branches will be broken off before they come to maturity, and their fruit will be useless, not ripe enough to eat, and good for nothing. Children born of unlawful unions are witnesses of evil against their parents when God examines them.

Deuteronomy 23:2 even went so far as to suggest they were denied entry to the Kingdom of God after their deaths:

Those born of an illicit union shall not come into the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall come into the assembly of the Lord.

Being an atheist, of course, I don't give a damn about a possible life after death. An illegitimate child's life after birth, however, was not a rosy one; they'd have been punished in every way possible. They couldn't hold public office, the decision in a court case was invalidated if they took part, and they couldn't legally marry other legitimate Israelites (which I think, incidentally, makes the absence of a literal bride of Christ in the New Testament easier to understand, but I digress), and, as the Wisdom of Solomon states above, if they did somehow have children, there was a good chance the children would be killed.

So, I've laid the groundwork to suggest that Jesus was an illegitimate child and that some record of this is preserved in the canonical Gospels, both in what they do and what they don't say. That's potentially earth-shattering enough for readers of this blog with deeply held preconceived notions. But I'm gonna go one step further.

If the story of the birth of Jesus has any truth to it, and if he really was the result of Mary getting pregnant without Joseph's help, then it stands to reason that somebody had to be the daddy. Being an atheist, I rule out the presence of God, so the question is obvious: is there another candidate?

We'll find out... in Part II. ;) Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.