Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§11.1 Beginning from the Baptism of John
sequently used his text; but it may be no more than that — too casual. If the implication
was so obvious, would Mark himself not have attempted to avoid or
correct it? 42 As for the women named in Matthew's genealogy, there is no hint of
illegitimate births in the cases of Rahab and Ruth, and Solomon (son of David
and Bathsheba) was not illegitimate; 43 and in Jewish tradition these women were
well regarded. 44 As for John 8.41, sexual innuendo has always been a means of
insult and denigration. 45 And the idea of illegitimacy has to be assumed behind
the text of Matthew and Luke before it can be discerned there. 46
What the core tradition affirms (Matthew and Luke) is that Jesus' birth was
special — 'from the Holy Spirit' (Matt. 1.20), by the power of the Holy Spirit
(Luke 1.35). That of itself need not imply a virginal conception, 47 but a virginal
conception could well have been an elaboration of the basic affirmation, 48 especially
when Isa. 7.14 was brought into play. 49 More to the point, the association
42. Schaberg, Illegitimacy 162-63, suggests that Mark 'met the charge not by dismissing
it, but by, in a sense, dismissing the mother and brothers of Jesus' (3.31-35). But would dismissing
Jesus' 'adoptive family' really 'meet the charge' of illegitimacy?
43. Brown, Birth 593-94.
44. Davies and Allison, Matthew 1.170, 173-75.
45. We need only think of the regular use of the term 'bastard' in street conversation today.
46. Brown, Birth 635-37, 707-708. Other, later texts cited by Schaberg are almost certainly
dependent on and developed from the earlier hints. Chilton thinks Jesus would have been
classified as a mamzer, an Israelite of suspect paternity; he had been conceived by Joseph and
Mary 'soon after meeting and well before their marriage was publicly recognized' (that is,
when they were not yet living together), and so was not illegitimate in the modern sense of the
word (Rabbi Jesus 6-7, 12-13; also 'Jesus, le mamzer (Mt 1.18)', NTS 47 [2001] 222-27).
47. Both Brown and Fitzmyer point out that neither of the verbs used by Luke 1.35 —
'come upon' (eperchesthai) and 'overshadow' (episkiazein) — has a sexual overtone (Birth 290;
Lute 337-38, 351).
48. See the discussion in Freed, Stories 59-69. Here we also need to be aware of the biological
and theological corollaries of insisting that the virginal conception/birth was a historical
fact. E.g. Arthur Peacocke concludes his brief study, 'DNA of Our DNA', in G. J. Brooke, ed.,
The Birth of Jesus: Biblical and Theological Reflections (Edinburgh: Clark, 2000) 59-67, with
the blunt statement: 'For Jesus to be fully human he had, for both biological and theological
reasons, to have a human father as well as a human mother and the weight of the historical evidence
strongly indicates that this was so — and that it was probably Joseph. Any theology for a
scientific age which is concerned with the significance of Jesus of Nazareth now has to start at
this point' (66). Cf. Brown's sensitive handling of a sensitive subject (Birth 517-33, 697-708).
49. As is well known, the sense 'virgin' for Isa. 7.14 derives from the LXX term
parthenos used for the less explicit Hebrew 'alma ('young girl'). It is unnecessary to hypothesize
the influence of pagan parallels to explain the idea of virgin conception/birth (Schaberg, Illegitimacy
179-80; for data see, e.g., T. Boslooper, The Virgin Birth [Philadelphia: Westminster,
1962] 135-86), since stimulus from Jewish background and very early Christian reflection provide
a much more obvious explanation for the distinctive features of the birth narratives (see
particularly Davies and Allison, Matthew 1.200-202, 214-17).
347