The Birth of Jesus Finalv2

The Birth
of Jesus
John Shelby
Spong
Bestselling Author of Jesus for the Non-Religious
The BirTh of Jesus
The BirTh of Jesus
Bishop John shelBy spong
Gig Harbor, WA
Copyright © 2014 by ProgressiveChristianity.org
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information address contact@progressivechristianity.org.
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Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
1. The Legend Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2. Paul and the Virgin Birth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3. The Testimony of Mark, the Earliest Gospel . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4. The Two Versions of the Birth Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6. Rehab the Prostitute: The Second Woman in

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
7. The Role of Ruth: The Seductress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
The Wife of Uriah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
9. Was There Scandal at the Manger? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
. . . . . . . . . . . 55
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
12. Making Sense of the Wise Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
13. Introducing the Lucan Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
. . . . . . . . 79
15. The Journey to Bethlehem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
16. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
v
Preface
It has been a pleasure and an honor to have had the op-

portunity to publish the Bishop John Shelby Spong weekly
essays for our subscribers over the last three years. During
that time we have had, and continue to have, requests for
as we reviewed all the essays, we concluded it would be

possible to group together some of the essays as a series
and publish them in a booklet form. That is what we have
done here with the essays dealing with the birth stories
of Jesus.
We started with the birth series because no series has
generated more comments from our readers. As one sub-
scriber wrote, “It all starts with the birth story—get that
wrong and we probably get it all wrong.” No one does a
intention for readers, regardless of their training or back-

ground, to get it.
the birth of Jesus, is lyrical and inspiring, Spong persua-

sively demonstrates it is allegory. Layer by layer, Spong
weighs every element of the New Testament stories
vii
viii Preface
Zachariah and Elizabeth, for example, are childless into

old age until she conceives John, forerunner to Jesus. This
mirrors the story of Abraham and Sarah whose son, Isaac,
step backward and forward through the scriptures dem-

onstrating why each element was chosen by the early
-
-
tion of Biblical scholarship.
satisfy the regular subscribers who continue to ask us for

printed materials but will also allow us to reach a new au-
work continues to break new ground pointing the way to a

new understanding of the Jesus story and as a result a new
Christianity for the 21st century.
We look forward to your continued support, your com-
Fred Plumer
President
ProgressiveChristianity.org
1 The Legend Revisited
M ost of the portraits of the mother of Jesus that hang in
sumed appearances of his mother at the foot of the cross.

Take those two traditions away from the New Testament
and the mother of Jesus almost totally disappears. Indeed,
what remains is mostly negative. She is portrayed in
Mark (chapters 3 and 6) as thinking Jesus was beside him-
self, that is out of his mind. She, along with his brothers,
moves to put him away. This story implies he had become
an embarrassment to the family. In the Fourth Gospel, in
the narrative of the water being changed into wine, the
mother of Jesus is portrayed as inappropriately pushing
Jesus to act. She receives from him the rebuke, “Woman,
what have you to do with me, my hour has not yet come?”
She is also not present at the cross in the writings of Paul
foot of the cross.

These biblical facts force us to recognize that most of
the ideas we have about the mother of Jesus are late de-
veloping myths making assumptions the Bible does not
dating of which is generally between 82 and 85. Second

they are found in Luke which is generally thought to have
1
2 The Birth of Jesus
This is not eye witness reporting. Clearly the tradition

built around the mother of Jesus is both late developing
and continues to grow with the passing of years.
passed, however, the mythology that developed around

the mother of Jesus apparently knew no bounds. The vir-
gin mother of the birth narratives became in successive
-
ferred to by name in both Galatians and in Mark and John
cousins. Further, she was declared to have been a post-

partum virgin. This suggests that even the birth of Jesus
did not disturb her virginal hymen.
In the service of that idea the Fathers of the church
searched the scriptures for biblical texts to support this
at the writings of a sixth century prophet named

th
chapter he wrote these
and no one shall enter by it, for the Lord, the God of Israel,
either apology or embarrassment, they leaped on these

words to claim the post partum virginity of the Blessed
Virgin Mary had actually been predicted by the prophets.
The second text was found in the resurrection story
according to the Fourth Gospel. In that narrative the dis-
ciples were hiding in an upper room. The doors and win-
dows were closed and locked when Jesus came and stood
in their midst. If the risen Christ could pass through walls
guarded by locked doors, they argued, it was no great
stretch to imagine the infant Christ passing through the
The Legend Revisited 3
birth canal of his mother without breaking the hymen.

Mythology always does strange things to facts and to reality.
By the 19th century, devotion to the mother of Jesus
grew even stronger in the Roman Catholic Church in
which this devotion was most encouraged. She, unlike all
other human beings, had been immaculately conceived
it was declared. That is, her mother had been miracu-
lously cleansed of the sin of Adam. This was believed to
have infected all human beings and to have been passed
on from generation to generation. For Jesus to have been
born without sin, his mother would have to have been es-
pecially prepared for this birth.
years of the 18th century that women have an egg cell.

Therefore the woman literally contributes half of the ge-
netic makeup of every person who has ever been born.
Prior to this it was assumed the woman simply provided
a womb to nurture the male seed to maturity. Like Mother
role was simply seen as to bring to birth the life that came
from the male. When the egg cell was discovered, the re-
alization dawned on church leadership that the mother of
Jesus, like all women—and indeed like all people—was
a child of Adam. Thus the sinlessness of Jesus was com-
problem in the old view of reproduction. The Immaculate

Conception addressed that theological problem. This dem-
onstrated once and for all that even infallible doctrines are
the mother of Jesus came in the 20th century when Mary

was declared to have been bodily assumed into heaven.
Since she was born without sin, she was not required to go
through the passage of death. According to the story of the
Garden of Eden, death was punishment for sin.
bodily assumption of the mother of Jesus into heaven. In
-
ceived of in only masculine terms and always addressed
mythology of the ages. Second, I want to trace the story de-

velopment found in the New Testament itself. Then we can
look at Jesus, the mother of Jesus and the entire Christian
by the facts of history as we can demonstrate them, I trust

it will be an illuminating and worthwhile story.
If the familiar biblical images of the mother of Jesus are
late developing, what is original and perhaps trustworthy?
That is the question we will address as this story unfolds.
I begin with some statements of fact I will pursue in detail
going into each of them deeply before any conclusions are
your consideration. As the Book of Common Prayer in my

church states these bullet points are designed to be “read,
marked, learned and inwardly digested.” This series will
We can now date the life of Jesus with some degree of
life of Jesus between the years of 4 and 30 . We get to
. The clear New Testament
. Second, we learn,
once more from secular records, that Pilate was the procu-
rator of Judea for the Roman Empire between the years
26–36
has to happen sometime between those dates. Roman re-

cords also provide us with some other facts in the life of
The Legend Revisited 5
Pilate having to do with the reasons for his removal from
years in either direction. For our working purposes, we set

the life of Jesus between 4 and 30 .
We have nothing preserved in writing anywhere of
anything concerning the life of Jesus before the year 51
. This silent and dark historical tunnel can be illumined
tradition which we have almost no way of recreating, en-

tering or capturing.
included in the New Testament, did all of his writing be-

tween the years 51 and 64 . Not all of the epistles at-
tributed to Paul are authentically from his hand. The
ones which have earned a consensus on the certainty of
Pauline authorship are I Thessalonians, Galatians, I and
II Corinthians, Romans, Philemon and Philippians. This
means II Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, I and II
the hand of Paul.

Nowhere, in any part of the authentic Pauline cor-
pus, is there a reference of any kind to the birth of Jesus,
nor is there any mention of the mother or father of Jesus.
There are in Paul, however, several references, mostly in
Galatians, to James, the brother of the Lord.
Paul, the earliest writer in the New Testament. That means

we will start our investigation in the sixth and seventh de-
cades of the Christian era.
2 Paul and the Virgin Birth
I n the writings of Paul there is not a single reference to a

supernatural birth tradition regarding Jesus of Nazareth.
This fact is easily established. Determining what it means
is a bit more complicated.
Does this omission mean Paul was unaware of this part
of the Christian tradition? Is it possible a story as dramatic
as the one appearing 20–30 years later in the gospels of
had been known? Paul was an educated man. The idea of

a great person being born in a supernatural way that pre-
saged his greatness was not unknown. For example, there
were birth legends surrounding the nativity of such icons
as Alexander the great, Romulus and Remus and the deity
called Mithra. All of them were almost certainly known
by Paul. So the evidence suggests Paul did not include
cause he had never heard of it. If Paul had never heard of

this tradition, the overwhelmingly probable explanation
Paul gives us some biographical details in the Epistle
7
man nor was I taught it but it came through a revelation of

Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:10–12). Then he recites his history as
the Book of Acts in the tenth decade of the Common Era.
Paul then describes his life in Judaism in which he as-

serts he was “extremely zealous” for “the tradition of my
fathers” (Gal. 1:14). Then he described his conversion say-
ing God had “set me apart” and was “pleased to reveal
his son to me in order that I might preach him among the
Gentiles.”
-
sion, which scholars place between one and six years fol-
at some time no earlier than four years and no later than
the Corinthians in chapter 11 and in chapter 15, Paul uses

the phrase, “For I received from the Lord what I also de-
-
-
tion.
learned many of the details of the Jesus story from his as-
to know Jesus directly by way of a revelatory experience.

Paul and the Virgin Birth 9
of Jesus had been a fact of history instead of a later devel-

oping legend, it seems obvious an event of this presumed
degree of importance would have been communicated to
-
tion of the mother of Jesus, the father of Jesus or the birth
of Jesus.
This still remains an argument from silence and as such
continues to be weak and inconclusive. So, back to the
we discover Paul actually discusses the origins of Jesus.
opposed to being a slave in a family, he argues that chil-

dren are heirs. Even though they are placed under the au-
thority of guardians, teachers and trustees until they come
of age, they are nonetheless destined for freedom and their
inheritance. Paul uses this analogy to explain the role of the
law given to the people of Israel. The law is to them what
guardians, teachers and trustees are to children who are
not yet of age. They are obedient to them while they wait
Jesus was to give to all human life, Jews and Gentiles alike,
the inheritance of full humanity. This is called sonship in
-
mation, Paul asserts, “When the time had fully come, God
sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, so
we might receive adoption as sons.” (Gal. 4:8).
For Paul, Jesus was born of a woman. That is, he was
suggesting, to be born in any other way. Could the word

translated as woman have in it any connotation of virgin?
Not a chance. The Greek word used here is a form of the
word gunos from which we get the word gynecology. It is
not the word parthenos from which we get the word par-
thenogenesis. This is to give birth by a single sex and does
include the connotation of virgin. Jesus came from God the

way every life comes from God, he was born of a woman.
Like every Jew, Paul says, Jesus was also born under the
law. Paul could not be clearer. The idea of a miraculous
or virgin birth is never hinted at by this early Christian
purposes was to assert that from the moment of his birth,

Jesus was uniquely related to God. It is also clear this idea
was not one entertained by Paul. To make this case we turn
to the opening verses of the Epistle to the Romans.
Paul certainly gives expression to his conviction that
somehow and through some means, the reality of God
they thought of as transcendent had been experienced as
present in Jesus of Nazareth. In his early epistles he was
content to simply proclaim the reality of this experience
not to explain it. So he wrote that “God was in Christ.” The
content that made this claim real was the experience of rec-
onciliation. In the Christ experience, those people who had
once been separated are brought together. In Galatians, the
apostle again proclaims that inside the Christ experience,
In Christ, there is no such thing as tribal identity. There is

no Jew or Greek, no Jew or Gentile, but one humanity. In
Christ, there is no gender identity, no male or female, but
a single humanity. In Christ, value is not established by
economic or social standards, there is no bond or free, no
slave or master, but a new creation, a new oneness. That
was the God experience Paul found in Jesus.
This theme resonated throughout the New Testament.
people are said to be able to communicate in the same

language of human oneness. We see it in the divine com-
Paul and the Virgin Birth 11
instructed in the name of Jesus to go to those whom they

have previously described as unclean and unworthy and
to proclaim to them the limitless love of God. We see it in
giving abundant life to all. That is the God experience his

followers believed they had met in Jesus. When did this
God presence enter into Jesus? Paul says it was at the time
of the resurrection. This was the moment in which God
and Jesus became one in the mind of Paul. To the Romans
Paul writes that Jesus was descended from King David
in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrec-

tion from the dead” (Romans 1:3–4).
As the tradition developed, the moment when God
and Jesus became part of each other would get earlier and
and Luke, it was when he was conceived. In John it was
later gospels. In that later development, the story of the

Virgin Birth would be born and it would begin to grow.
Paul, however, knew nothing of this tradition since it was
Virgin Birth. This fact begins to qualify the power of this

claim as revealed truth. The Virgin Birth is not an essential
ingredient in the Christian story. Why? Because one can
hardly say Paul, who had never heard of the Virgin Birth
tradition, was not a Christian.
3 The Testimony of Mark,
the Earliest Gospel
T was composed in the early years of the 8th decade

(70–72). It contains no story of and no reference to the birth
of Jesus. To explain this omission there are only two pos-
sibilities. Either the author of Mark had never heard about
the birth tradition because it had not yet been created or he
knew about it and deemed it unworthy of inclusion. For
generally agreed to be the overwhelming probability.
that would have been either impossible or incomprehen-

sible if he had been aware of a miraculous birth tradition.
I will look at three of them.
story of Jesus coming to John the Baptist to be baptized.

The preamble to this episode is not a birth story or a child-
hood story. It is a reference to the fact that Jesus was be-
of the prophets. Mark builds this case by quoting Malachi

3:1 and II Isaiah 40:3, although he only acknowledges his
dependence on Isaiah in the text. Then he launches into a
description of John the Baptist developed in such a way
13
and wild honey (Mark 1:6–7 and II Kings 1:8). By turning

-
has thus been designated by Mark to play this role in the
interpretive portrait painting. The synagogue audience for

whom Mark was writing would immediately understand
the symbols he was employing.
-
tized by John in the Jordan River. There is nothing about
-
ferent or supernatural because of some aspect of his birth.
Mark employed the custom of that day by introducing

Jesus by name followed by his home town. If any further
of Nazareth, the son of ____” and then named his father.
Indeed, the father of Jesus, whether human or divine, is

never mentioned in this gospel.
-
pernatural references are mentioned by this writer. First,
he said, the heavens opened. The sky was thought of as a
dome separating the realm of God above from the realm of
human life below. In the creation story, which would have
have served to separate “the waters above from the waters

below.” The heavenly waters falling from the sky as rain
formed the earthly waters that became the oceans, rivers
and streams. In time, that heavenly water came to be iden-
-
ens opened to the dwelling place of God and the Spirit
descended from God to fall on Jesus like a dove.
The Testimony of Mark, the Earliest Gospel 15
Then a voice from heaven rang out across the earth
writer of this gospel. In Isaiah, God referred to the “suf-

fering servant” as “My chosen in whom my soul delights”
come to dwell on him permanently. Thus, he becomes a

God-infused human life.
dropped from heaven on the fully human adult Jesus at

this baptism to indwell him in an ongoing manner. This
-
dwell permanently in him would not have been necessary.

-
lous birth had clearly not yet been thought of or composed
by anyone.
The second Marcan episode revealing he had never
heard the story of the virgin birth comes in chapter 3. Jesus,
we are told, has broken onto the public scene in a series
-
tonished a congregation at Capernaum with his teaching
demons and healed the sick of an entire city, cleansed a

leper, healed a paralytic and called Levi from his tax col-
from John the Baptist, violated the Sabbath by picking and

the Sabbath. Finally, in the synagogue, he healed a man

with a withered hand on the Sabbath (see chapters 2 and
3). This Sabbath healing was not an emergency act which
would have made it legitimate since the hand would still
-
lated Sabbath violation. All of these provocative acts at-
tracted immediate public notice.
Then Jesus went home to Nazareth and his family be-
gan to hear of these things. They were not pleased, Mark
says. “They went out to seize him, for all the people were
Galatians. It is not, however, until the end of this chapter

-
tally disturbed, which is what the words beside himself
to where he was.” Standing outside the crowd, they sent a

message to him asking him to come out. When informed
of their presence, Jesus not only declined to accede to their
does “the will of God,” he said, “is my brother and sister

and mother.” (Mark 3:35)
Note that the mother of Jesus thinks him mentally dis-
turbed. This is not the behavior of one to whom an angel
might have appeared to tell her she would be the mother
his mind when he reaches his adult life. When Mark wrote
this gospel he had not heard of the tradition that Jesus had
a supernatural birth because it had not yet been created.
-
rative of Jesus was not part of the original Christian tradi-
tion, but a late-developing addition to the story, comes in
the sixth chapter of Mark. Jesus had returned to his home
in Nazareth from a series of adventures described in chap-
The Testimony of Mark, the Earliest Gospel 17
ters 4 and 5. This included casting a legion of demons out

of a demented man. Allowing these demons to enter a herd
of swine caused a stampede that resulted in the drowning
-
ter from the dead and healed the woman with the chronic
to suggest that the people were talking of his power and

wondering about its source.
At this point, Mark says, Jesus entered his synagogue
and created astonishment at his teaching. The people,
who had been his neighbors, could not believe what
they were hearing. So Mark had an anonymous member
of the crowd ask this question: “Is not this the carpenter,
the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joses, Judas
and Simon and are not his sisters here with us?” (Mark
6:3–4) Please note the following things about this pas-
of the carpenter has been mentioned. It is Jesus who is

cast in that role, not Joseph. That will change when we
no mention of a father in this family. In addition to his

mother, four brothers are named. The plural word sis-
ters is used indicating there were more than one. Finally,
be aware that for an anonymous voice in the crowd to
call a grown man named Jesus the son of Mary was pe-
the son of a woman unless his paternity was suspect.

This phrase meant his father was unknown. It thus sug-
gests Jesus was base born or illegitimate. Rumors to this
echoes of these charges can be found in the other gos-

pels. These rumors would in time create the necessity
for developing the virgin birth tradition, but that time
had not yet come
passed since the birth of Jesus. Mythological traditions

build slowly. The story of the virgin birth of Jesus is one of
these mythological traditions.
4 The Two Versions
of the Birth Story
T
rated by perhaps a decade. The original narrative was
we call Luke somewhere between 89 and 93. The second

story is by far the more familiar one, primarily, I suspect,
because it is dramatized annually in our Christmas pag-
eants. The typical pageant follows the story line of Luke
from the annunciation of Mary, to her visit to Elizabeth, to
birth to a group of hillside shepherds who go in search

of the promised child. With this entire cast of characters
in place, usually portrayed around a stable, the pageant
rooted in the minds of most people they are surprised to

learn the two biblical stories of the birth of Jesus are in
people called magi or wise men who follow the star in

search of its meaning. In Luke there is no mention of a
star or of wise men. Instead, Luke tells us of a vision of
angels appearing to hillside shepherds near the village of
Bethlehem who inform them of the birth of the messiah.
19
Armed with only the two clues the angels provided, these
shepherds went to seek out this child. They had been told
the babe would be wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid
in a feeding trough called a manger. Miraculously, they
found him and made known abroad what had been told
them by the angels.
king of Israel could be found. Troubled by this visit, King

-
mine where the messiah was to be born. They consult
prophet Micah. This suggests Bethlehem, a village less

than six miles from Jerusalem, was destined to be the mes-
to Bethlehem. They are led once again by the mysterious

star. When they reach the exact location, it appears to stop
and to bathe the house in which this birth has occurred
with its bright unearthly light.
-
when they have located this child who presents a potential
return. The magi, having been warned by God in a dream
soldiers to Bethlehem with orders to kill all the boy babies

up to two years of age. The tradition has called those baby
of Jesus forces Joseph, who was also warned of this peril
for safety.
Not a single one of these narrative details is mentioned
in Luke and no Christmas pageant ever portrays the kill-
The Two Versions of the Birth Story 21
ing of these babies. Even though it is in the Bible, it is not

regarded as a suitable story for the Christmas season.
Luke portrays them as having the child circumcised on the

eighth day and giving him the name Jesus. Next on the 40th
day, the day for the presentation, Mary and Joseph take
the infant Jesus to the Temple, presumably in Jerusalem. In
then do the members of the holy family make their quite

leisurely way back to their home in Nazareth of Galilee.
Comparing the two narratives makes us aware of the
and Joseph as residents in the city of Bethlehem. They live

there in a house where the baby is born and over which a
are said to have gone to Egypt. When the threat is over,

they are able to return to their home in Bethlehem.
was referred to in his lifetime as Jesus of Nazareth. The

Galilean origins of this man are deep in the tradition.
of Bethlehem, the place of his birth, and into Nazareth,

-
in the town of Nazareth.
that Jesus would be called a Nazarene. This is a real stretch

because no one can locate a text that includes such a des-
holy man, known as a nazirene. They did not drink wine

or strong drink and did not cut their hair as in the story
of Samson. That designation, however, had nothing to do
with living in the town of Nazareth. Another possibility
is he was referring to the idea that the messiah would be
born out of the root of Jesse, who was the father of King
lived in Nazareth. According to Luke, the annunciation
however, Luke wanted to honor the tradition that the mes-

siah, as an heir to the throne of David, had to be born in
up with a story line that would get Mary and Joseph to

Bethlehem to make it possible for Jesus to be born there.
-
sus or enrollment had been ordered by Caesar Augustus.
It required everyone in the empire to be counted. Luke
goes on to say this enrollment occurred when Quirinius
was governor of Syria. It also carried the stipulation that
everyone had to return to his or her ancestral home for this
census. For Joseph, and presumably for Mary, this meant
Joseph was of the house and lineage of David, he had to

return to Bethlehem with his betrothed who was, in the
lovely language of the King James Bible, great with child.
There are a number of problems with this story line.
First, there is no evidence anywhere of a government
one kept records that went back 1000 years, the approxi-
mate time between King David and the birth of Jesus.
. Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until the

winter of 6–7
The Two Versions of the Birth Story 23
which Luke asserts in chapter 1:5, he would have been 10

or 11 by the time Quirinius became governor.
multiple wives. The exact number is not given but the

guesses range up to 300. If you count a generation as 20
years, it was 50 generations from David to Jesus. In 50 gen-
erations the direct heirs of King David would have num-
there would certainly have been no room in the inn.

Fourth, the distance between Nazareth and Bethlehem
was approximately 94 miles. To navigate it by foot or on a
donkey, which were the only two methods of transporta-
tion open to them, it was a seven to ten-day trip. If Mary
had been great with child, as Luke suggests, it is safe to
assume she must have been in her eighth or ninth month
of pregnancy.
The literal accuracy of both narratives falls apart on
close examination of the two radically inconsistent and
contradictory texts. They cannot both be true. The prob-
ability is that neither is true. They are interpretive narra-
tives intended to say Jesus was the designated messiah
from the moment of his birth.
texts, the more fascinating they become.

5
Matthew’s Original Story,
the Prologue; and Tamar,
the Incestuous One
M
version of the genealogy of Jesus, but we refer to them as
the who-begat-whom verses. Yet, while incredibly tedious,
I am convinced we can discover clues revealing both why
why it seems to be of such importance to the author of this
First, some comments on the genealogy in general.
duced Jesus with Abraham, the traditional father of the
ditional Jewish faith community. Therefore he was very

interested in grounding the Jesus story in the very DNA
The next historical marker in Jesus background re-
25
into the land of their conquerors. They spent this period

of Jewish history, known as the Babylonian captivity, as an
underclass of laborers. This Exile lasted for two to three
generations and was the time in history when the life of
the Jewish nation quite literally hung by a thread. The
Exile to the birth of Jesus.
history had been 14 generations long. This is the point

at which every shred of literal accuracy people like to at-
tribute to this gospel begins to break down. Abraham, if
he lived at all, would be dated around the year 1850 .
year 1000 and seven years later in Jerusalem, his newly-

conquered capitol. So, between Abraham and David, there
are some 850 years. If a generation is considered to be 20
years, which actually might be far too long in that time
when life expectancy did not exceed 40 years, there would
have been 42 generations between Abraham and David.
The time from King David to the Exile would be 400 years
plus or some 20 generations. The time from the Exile to the
birth of Jesus would have been around 600 years or some
history into the stages he wishes to describe breaks down

quickly. To achieve his 14 generation mathematical sym-
of the kings in Judah who reigned between David and the
The next problem gives a biblical commentator pause

with this genealogy. It goes from Abraham to David to
David. When he arrives at the virgin birth story, his nar-

rative completely denies the role of paternity to Joseph in
the life of Jesus. The Virgin Birth story says Joseph, the
presumed male agent in conception, was replaced by the
Matthew’s Original Story 27
life of the Jewish people is compromised by the account of

his miraculous birth. Literalism wobbles visibly.
as the lineage of Jesus was the inclusion of the names of

four women in the genealogy. In this patriarchal world
that was quite unusual. Women were not thought to be
equal partners in the procreation process. In that day, no
one knew women produced an egg cell and were biologi-
cally co-creators of every baby who had ever been born.
Women were rather thought of only as nurturing wombs
into which males placed the seeds of life. Women simply
brought them to maturity.
They were not mythical women either. The story of each

of these women can be found chronicled in the pages of
they had not been known, anyone could go to the Bible

and read about them. There was another fascinating real-
ity about these women. By the standards of the day, each
-
mised woman. Please listen to the drama being presented
-
troduced the story of the Virgin Birth, he made the claim
that four of the women in the line that produced Jesus of
Nazareth, were what his generation would have called
unclean or scandalous women. What do you imagine was
can be found in Genesis, chapter 38. She was the wife of
-
portant as the story unfolds. This chapter tells us Er was
“wicked in the sight of the Lord and the Lord slew him.”
son, to marry the wife of his deceased brother in order “to

-
-
cording to this story, and so we are told God also killed
when they were married to Tamar, he was eager to avoid

this fate.
So Judah violated the code of behavior and the de-
mands of the Torah and sent Tamar back to her family of
-
archal society, Tamar was now damaged goods and she
would no longer be thought of as marriageable. Judah,
seeking to perfume his behavior, promised to send for her
when Shelah grew up.
Some time passed during which Shelah did grow up
-
ing, Judah returned to his business as the owner of large
his sheep shearers. When Tamar learned of this intended
the clothes of a prostitute. She positioned herself at the en-

trance of her town which was on the road to Timnah. She
knew where Judah would have to pass by.
As she intended, when Judah saw her, he assumed she
her. They bargained for a price. It was agreed her pay-
which would be sent to her the next day. Wise to the ways
of the world, Tamar, still veiled, required Judah to give her
something of value, something she would return when his
Matthew’s Original Story 29
signet ring as well as the cord wrapped around his waist
her widowhood.
The next day, Judah, true to his word, sent one of his
servants with the lamb to redeem his property. This ser-
the people of the village as to the identity of the prostitute

who solicited business at the gates of this village. They
claimed no one in their town had ever done that. The ser-
vant returned and reported to Judah his failure to locate
this woman.
number of months passed. Then Judah heard the local

gossip that his daughter-in-law, Tamar, was pregnant and
would soon produce a child by harlotry.
Judah was incensed at this news. Exercising his au-
-
dered her to be brought out and burned at the stake. As
she was being led to her place of execution, she sent word
to her father-in-law, saying, “I am with child by the man to
whom these belong.” She included his signet ring, his cord
-
licly repented. “She is more righteous than I, inasmuch as
I did not give her to my son Shelah,” he said. Because sex
be incest, Judah did not “lie with her again.” (Gen. 38:26)
-
ried her and brought her into his harem. Tamar became
the mother of twins whom she named Perez and Zerah.
story into the genealogy of Jesus. Through this device he

was saying the line that produced Jesus went through
Judah to Perez to the son of Perez, whose name was
had an ancestor who was guilty of incest. It is certainly an

interesting way to open a narrative about the Virgin Birth.
alludes to in this genealogy. The other three are equally as

fascinating and provocative. We will turn to each of them
in detail as this story unfolds.
6 Rahab the Prostitute
The Second Woman in Matthew’s Genealogy
T he second woman mentioned in the genealogy of
of that book. There are two noteworthy things about this

woman. First, she is not a Jew. Rather she is a citizen of
Jericho and thus presumably a Canaanite, i.e. a Gentile.
Second, she is introduced and described in a single word,
harlot. Rahab was a prostitute. She sold sex for gain.
Rahab had clearly entered the folk lore of both Judaism
Scriptures in the book of Job: 9:13 and 26:12, in the Psalms:

87:4 and 89:10 and in the book of Isaiah 30:7 and 51:9. In
also referred to in the Christian Scriptures in two places,
Testament references so we have to assume the story of

Rahab must have been a popular one in both Judaism and
in early Christianity. Following is a recounting of the nar-
rative of Rahab as it appears in the book of Joshua.
The context is this: Moses has died in the wilderness
number one military captain, has assumed the position of
31
the leader of these wandering, nomadic people. As if to

validate Joshua with the authority of Moses, a crossing of
the Jordan River in Red Sea fashion has been promised to
While the people were encamped west of the Jordan pre-

paring for the miraculous crossing, Joshua sent two men
to spy on Jericho. These spies are unnamed, but they pre-
sumably managed to cross the river in daylight and enter
the city, the gates of which were not closed until nightfall.
They immediately went, as if by some pre-arranged
plan, to the house of Rahab the prostitute. Perhaps there
was some kind of prior relationship. Perhaps they sought
out this house, the only local brothel, for their own enter-
was conveniently located, built as it was into the wall en-

circling the city. A brothel might have been chosen simply
to give the spies cover. We will never know.
There is also the probability this location and the
strangers alike. It was certainly in the public domain.

Reality suggests that for a stranger to enter the city and
-
lodged. It seems they remained there for several days. In

time, their presence became known. It would certainly
-
cause of the presence of these strangers. The public ut-
-
tion of the authorities in Jericho including the king. Almost
entered the land. So the king, apparently knowing where

Rahab the Prostitute 33
they were, sent a deputation of soldiers to the house of

Rahab with orders for the spies to come forth. Presumably
they were to be executed, the normal fate of spies.
Rahab, however, turns out to be more loyal to the spies
than she is to her city. When she gets wind of the danger,
-
sengers about their continued presence. She did not deny
they had been there since that seemed to have been a well-
told them she had no idea where they were from or what
their business was in Jericho. They have now gone, she
said, telling the authorities the two men departed before
the gates of the city were closed when darkness fell.
What might have been her motive? Perhaps she was
-
veloped a relationship with one of the spies that altered
representatives to pursue these spies rapidly. Their depar-

ture from the city, she told them, had been recent and they
could surely be overtaken. All the while, according to this
narrative, Rahab had taken these men to the roof of her
on her roof.
what they thought were the escaping spies to the Jordan

River and across it into the surrounding countryside.
the night. No one could now leave and the pursuers could
not return until dawn when the gates were reopened.
Rahab then goes to the roof to uncover her hidden
guests. She speaks to them as one who knows they are
destined to conquer Jericho. She tells them the fear of the
has caused their courage to melt away. She tells them the
people have heard of the miracle at the Red Sea and of
their conquest of the Amorites in the wilderness. The citi-

zens of Jericho felt doomed.
Then she extracts an oath from the two spies. As I have
protected you and dealt kindly with you, she said, I am
prepared to continue to serve you by helping you escape.
people conquer Jericho, you will repay my kindness by

sparing my family from death. That means, she tells them,
brothers and sisters, their spouses and children. The spies
family” was the deal. It seemed to them a fair bargain so

it was agreed.
A sign was established. Rahab was to hang a scarlet
cord in the window of her house in the protective wall.
This cord would be seen by all who passed by. The spies
swore that all who were gathered in this house with the
scarlet cord would be spared. Then Rahab made a rope
and lowered each of the spies in a basket to the ground
outside the wall to safety. She instructed them to go to the
hills through which their pursuers had already swept and
hide there for three days until their pursuers had returned
to the city.
woods, they returned to Joshua with their report. The peo-

ple of Jericho are faint hearted, the spies said. They know
the Lord has given Jericho and its people into our hands.
Rahab then disappears from the drama until the con-
quest of Jericho occurs in chapter six. In the meantime, the
the river bed on dry land. They set up siege positions out-
side the walls of the city of Jericho.
For six days, the army walked around those walls
-
Rahab the Prostitute 35
tended by priests blowing constantly on their trumpets
-
plete, the trumpets blew a long and sustained blast. The
people shouted with loud shouts and, we are told, the
walls around Jericho fell to the ground. Perhaps the sound
vibrations from the shofars and the shouting people were
more than their structures could tolerate. Perhaps the mi-
raculous aspects of this story were enhanced with its tell-
taken place.
The important thing for our purpose is to note that this
book says Joshua and his army destroyed Jericho. They put
everyone to the edge of the sword—all men, all women, all
old people, all young people and all the animals—in an act
of genocidal fury. True to their word, however, they spared
all those who gathered in the house of Rahab. Joshua gave
out of it the woman and all who belong to her as we prom-

ised.” The book of Joshua concludes the story by saying
Rahab the harlot was saved and all her household “and
she dwelt in Israel until this day.”
Salmon and Rahab had a baby boy whose name was Boaz.
This line would lead directly to Jesus of Nazareth who was

of the house of David.
-
relationship with her father-in-law, the second was a pros-
-
tive way, the line that produced Jesus of Nazareth traveled
through incest and harlotry. Why would he introduce the
virgin birth this way? What was his agenda? What was
genealogy next and she is a seductress.

7 The Role of Ruth
The Seductress
T
name is Ruth and she, like Rahab, is a foreigner. Rahab
was a Canaanite citizen of Jericho. Ruth was a Moabite,
found in the tiny book bearing her name nestled in the
dramatic tale involving some unfamiliar Jewish practices

that are strange to us today. They made sense in terms of
the Jewish values of the day, rooted as they were in both
It was around the year 1100 when a time of famine
a citizen of Bethlehem, his wife Naomi and their two sons,

Mahlon and Chilion, moved to the land of Moab in search
died leaving Naomi with her two sons as strangers and

aliens in a foreign land. The two sons assumed the care of
about ten years. During that time they even took Moabite
women to be their wives.
Tragedy struck once again when both Mahlon and Chilion
family of three widows, women who had no male support
37
and no male protection. This patriarchal society had not

developed any way of enabling lone women to care for
themselves. Nothing was more frail or tragic in this society
than a woman who had no father, no husband and no son.
An independent woman was an unimaginable category.
be cared for by the nearest male kinsman in the family.

Normally this meant the next oldest brother in the family
must take the widow of his deceased brother as his wife. In
no younger brothers. With Naomi being of post-meno-

pausal age, there was no chance of ever producing any.
She thus fell out of the social safety net meant to care for
the vulnerable. The next level of support was to identify
the male who was the closest of kin and to turn all of her
assets over to him. This included his taking the widowed
woman to be his wife, or at least a member of his harem,
privileges with the stated hope of raising up children to

honor her deceased husband.
As long as this fragile trio of women lived in the land
of Moab there was no male closest of kin. Naomi, facing
this reality, called her two daughters-in-law to her and told
them she was moving back to the land of the Jews, presum-
ably to Bethlehem. She instructed the young widows to do
to their families and to the protection of their fathers. This

was a demeaning option as these widows would from then
on be considered damaged goods. They would be unable
to contract another proper marriage. Perhaps some men
could be found to take them, but prospects were bleak.
They were not as bleak, however, as what they faced as a
-
cepted that option and returned to her family, disappear-
ing from this story forever.
The Role of Ruth 39
Ruth, however, declined and informed Naomi she

would go with her back to the land of the Jews. She did
not want to leave her mother-in-law alone. Together they
would face the hardships both knew awaited them.
In one of the most beautiful passages in this book, Ruth
says words that have been set to music. Today we know
them as The Song of Ruth. “Entreat me not to leave you
will die and there will I be buried.” (Ruth 1:16–17) This

song of Ruth is frequently sung at weddings as the bride
how many couples would choose this music if they knew
The two single women returned to Bethlehem and be-

gan their struggle for survival. It was the time of the begin-
was aware her husband, Elimelech, had a kinsman named

Boaz, who owned much land in the Bethlehem area. She
reapers should not seek to harvest every grain of barley.
the reapers had missed. She brought it home, ground it
and herself from starving.

-
Moabite daughter-in-law. She had asked permission to
remains from sunup to sundown without resting. Inspired

by this example, Boaz spoke to Ruth, telling her not to
to water drawn by the young men for the workers in the
Ruth thanked Boaz for his kindness, inquiring as to

why he was so gracious to a foreigner. Boaz replied that
her faithfulness in the care of Naomi had inspired him.
-
band and of her willingness to leave her own people in
order to care for Naomi. Boaz then instructed the reapers
to leave some of the sheaves they had gathered for her to
glean. When Ruth told Naomi about the kindness of the
the harvest season was over before she put her plan into
operation.
Naomi shared with Ruth that Boaz was a distant rela-
tive of Elimelech, her father-in-law, and thus of Mahlon,
to care for her. When the reaping was over, Boaz and his
bathing and anointing herself with perfume. She put on
-
ished eating and drinking. The text says until “his heart
was merry.”
sleep. Ruth came over to him, placed a pillow under his

head and covered him with a blanket. Then the text says
she uncovered his feet, and lay down at his feet. In the
scriptures the word feet was a euphemism for the male
genitals. The fact is, Ruth undressed him and climbed un-
der the blanket with him. This was an overt act of seduc-
tion.
The Role of Ruth 41
no idea who she was or what he might have done in his

drunken stupor. “Who are you?” he asked her. She re-
plied, “I am Ruth, you are my next of kin. Marry me.”
a younger man, but he was not quite ready to accept this

new responsibility. There was one other, he said, who was
refusal. Boaz went to meet with him, telling Ruth not to let
reported back to Naomi with this grain and Naomi re-
Boaz, gathering ten men of the city to serve as wit-

nesses, met with this nearest kinsman and the negotiations
widow, had returned from Moab. She has a parcel of land
-
deem this land? If not, I am next in line.
The nearest of kin agreed to redeem it. Then Boaz said
your wife and to raise up children to her deceased hus-

-
clude any children he might have with Ruth among those
who would inherit his estate. So he declined. “I cannot re-
-
tance.” So, in the presence of the elders, he renounced his
exchanging a sandal.
Thus Boaz was authorized to buy the parcel, to be-
come heir of all that belonged to Elimelech, Mahlon
become his wife so the name of Mahlon would not be cut
your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore

to Judah,” thus linking these two stories. Boaz and Ruth
maturity, he had a son named Jesse. Jesse in turn grew up

and had a son named David, who became the great king of
of King David.
the incest of Tamar, the harlotry of Rahab and the seduc-
in the veins of the Jewish King David. This countered all
-
ogy. We will turn to her story later. But surely by now we
the agenda he chose to introduce the Virgin Birth story in

this way?
8
The Fourth Woman
in Matthew’s Genealogy
The Wife of Uriah
T nealogy of Jesus with which he opens his gospel is

the best known of them all. Simultaneously, he introduces
into the Christian tradition the story of the virgin birth. In
by her name. Rather he refers to her as the wife of Uriah.

Those who are familiar with the Jewish scriptures, as
the story in the 11th chapter of II Samuel that her name is

Bathsheba. You and I can read her fascinating story any
time we want by turning to that chapter of the Bible. For
those who might not be familiar with this narrative here
are the details.
“In the spring of the year,” is the way the author of this
book of Samuel begins his story. The spring of the year is
the time when the sap rises and romance is in the air. This
author observes, it was also the time “when kings go forth
emy, the Ammonites. Not only was he to conquer the

land of Ammon, but his army was to accomplish this by
besieging and then destroying the capitol city of Rabbah.
43
Meanwhile, the king remained safe and secure in the com-

fort of his palace.
Thus the stage was set in which this particular episode
would transpire. While the king was at home, far from the
-
through them, the history of the world. Great changes do
details.
-
ace was the tallest building in the city, he could look down
to the delight of his lecherous eyes, his gaze fell upon a

young woman who was bathing herself in what she be-
lieved was the privacy of her own roof top. David was im-
state are prone to do, he assumed his desires should be
-
vitation for her to come to the palace to have a tryst with
the king. She came. Whether or not she had a choice, we
do not know. The rights of women were very restricted in
that patriarchal society.
as necessary for “purifying herself from her uncleanness.”

This was the euphemistic way the Bible explained she had
to the developing plot of this story. It demonstrated con-

clusively she was not pregnant at that moment. When she
arrived at the palace David greeted her and then “took her
and lay with her.” The act complete, this woman, having
-
The Fourth Woman in Matthew’s Genealogy 45
the last, this kind of activity had happened in his life. It

was, however, destined to be a life-changing experience in
In a few weeks Bathsheba, noticing some revealing cir-

cumstances, sent a message to the palace marked for the
she was pregnant with his child. David, seeking to cre-

ate some room in which to maneuver, asked her how she
could be sure this baby was his child. “You are a married
woman,” he reminded her. “Why do you assume this is
Bathsheba informed him that though she was indeed

married, her husband, Uriah, was a professional soldier.
under Captain Joab in the war against the Ammonites.

“There is no way, oh King,” she concluded, “that you are
not the father of this baby.”
David felt the noose tightening around his neck.
-
senger to Joab, his military army chief, ordering him to
honor. While on this special leave, David reasoned, Uriah

would stay in his home and lie with his wife. When the
that such an explanation had been successfully employed.

So a very surprised Uriah received orders to return
to Jerusalem in order to provide a personal and private
slept quite ostentatiously in the street at the gate of the

counted on Uriah being the ultimate Boy Scout. Uriah told
pleasures of his home, his wife and his bed while his com-
and risking their lives in the siege of Rabbah. “I could not

think of doing such a thing,” he concluded. David must
have thought to himself, “What a turkey!” Now he was
forced to resort to plan C.
The king next took out the royal quill and on a piece
of royal parchment, he wrote out new orders to be carried
Captain Joab via the hand of Uriah who was returning to
to charge the gates of the city of Rabbah with a V shaped
honor of leading the charge. It was a position in which few

survived.
It was done as the king commanded and Uriah was
struck down and killed immediately. Joab then sent the
king a message to inform him his problems were over.
Uriah was dead. In turn, David sent for Bathsheba and she
came to his palace to be one of his wives and thus a mem-
ber of his harem.
Bathsheba turned out to be a wife who exercised con-
siderable power. The child of her adulterous liaison with
by King David, was destined to succeed King David at

his death. This was in spite of the fact he was not close
the throne. With the assistance of a priest named Zadok,

a military leader named Benaiah, and a prophet named
Nathan, Bathsheba maneuvered to secure the throne for
her son. King Solomon in turn secured the power of the
The Fourth Woman in Matthew’s Genealogy 47
the Bible.
Solomon through the kings of Judah until the royal family

was destroyed by the Babylonians in the period of history
called the Exile. Then he picks up the genealogy and traces
it from the Exile to a man named Joseph. The conclusion
of his genealogy says “Jacob was the father of Joseph, the
husband of Mary, of whom Jesus is born, who is called
supernatural or virgin birth, is brought to a conclusion.

As we come to the end of this opening genealogy ask
gospel in this way? Why did he deem it necessary and ap-

propriate to say the line that produced Jesus of Nazareth
began with Abraham and traveled through the royal family,
into the exile and concludes at the life on which the whole
story is to focus? Finally, what is he trying to communicate
when he places into the background of Jesus, four well-
known women in Jewish history? All of them, by the stan-
dards of that day, were sexually compromised women. At
the very opening of his story, the line that produced Jesus
the prostitution of Rahab (Joshua 2, 6), the seduction of

Ruth (Ruth 3) and the adultery of Bathsheba (II Samuel
reveals.
Perhaps that accounts, at least in part, for the fact that
were called the most boring verses in the Bible, the who-
begat-whoms. No one was encouraged to look at them
or take them seriously. Perhaps this strange introduction
reveals there is far more to the story of the virgin birth

than we have imagined in the past.
-
Studying the Bible can be quite exciting once one removes

the blinders of literalism and begins to look at the texts
for what they are. So stay tuned. We will move next to
9 Was There Scandal
at the Manger?
T
Jewish community who were also the followers of Jesus,
has grounded the life of Jesus deeply into Jewish history.
Jesus is the son of Abraham, the heir of King David, in a
line produced by those who had lived the various periods
of Jewish life. The Jews were a people who had been born
free in the persons of the great patriarchs.
Driven by famine into the land of Egypt they descended
into slavery but broke free once more in the Exodus.
Wandering through the wilderness they reclaimed what
they believed was their promised land. They established
a lasting monarchy but were torn by secession and civil
they were once more exiled to a foreign land where they

believed the songs of Zion could never be sung again.
homeland. They rebuilt their ruins, including their holy

city of Jerusalem, and revived their ancient calling to be a
blessing to the nations of the world. These were the people
lieved the hope of the Jews was vested in this life of Jesus.
also begun to respond to the critics of Jesus. At this time
49
New Testament. I will turn to them when we have stitched

together the content of this criticism. Then I believe we
genealogy the references to those women I have called
and adultery.
Religion has always been in the business of control.
This is why those who cannot abide by its rules face ostra-
cism and excommunication. The religious lines of power
are clear. God reveals the divine law to the religious lead-
ers. These religious leaders then claim for themselves
alone the power to interpret and to enforce those rules.
leaders, but it is also to disobey the God who has chosen

and empowered these leaders. A religious trouble-
maker is, therefore, the most direct threat to ecclesiastical
power. Religious reformers and religious visionaries are
thus thought of as dangerous people. They challenge the
security around which the religious community is orga-
nized. That is why reformers are banished, tortured and
executed, sometimes by being burned at the stake. Prior to
-
sonally, becoming the victims of character assassination.
-
-
son might be prone, they assumed, to struggle against the
That is why there is so much discussion in the gospel

Was There Scandal at the Manger? 51
by the religious hierarchy as a legitimate religious leader.
wrong side of the tracks. Nothing good could come out

of Nazareth. Where did this man get his knowledge, his
power? We know his family, his mother, his brothers and
his sisters. Echoes of his inadequate origins are found
throughout the gospel tradition. Some even suggested he
might be possessed by demons. By the power of Beelzebub,
he casts out demons, is the way they put it.
there is no birth story, the family of Jesus is portrayed as

becoming alarmed at the reputation Jesus was accumulat-
ing. Believing him to be beside himself, that is, out of his
mind, his mother and his brothers actually come to take
family, his real mother and siblings, are not his birth and
blood relatives but those who hear the word of God and
obey it.
By the time one arrives at chapter six of Mark, these
-
able paternity. A member of the crowd shouts, “Is not this
the carpenter?” Note that Joseph has never been men-
-
ten. This nameless voice in the crowd goes on with this
the mother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon and
are not his sisters here with us?” Then Mark says, “They
Three things must be noted here. First, to call an adult

Jewish male the son of his mother was a deliberate in-
sult. It carries with it the implication that his paternity
name Mary in any Christian writing before the ninth de-
have about the family of Jesus, no father—earthly or oth-

erwise—is mentioned. Joseph does not enter the Christian
he is introduced, his role is to name the child and thus to

legitimize him.
in the Song of Mary, called recorded only

by Luke. In that song, God is said “to have regarded the
low estate of his handmaiden” and to have turned her to a
state of blessedness. God exalted her, who was of low de-
gree. There was no status of lower degree or lower estate
expecting a child.
A third scriptural hint that rumors were abroad about
that disqualify him from being able to make the messianic

claim clearly being made for him. In this passage someone
in the crowd shouts at Jesus, “We were not born of fornica-
Jesus was.
abroad that he was base-born, a bastard, if you will. This is
being base-born, his life was born holy. God is his father.
Borrowing a popular Mediterranean tradition which at-
tributed personal greatness to divine origins and virgin
Was There Scandal at the Manger? 53
-
dered parthenos in which there is a connotation of vir-
virgin birth of Jesus to appear in Christian history.

The text in Isaiah actually grew out of a time in the
th
8 century when the city of Jerusalem was under
siege by the combined armies of Syria and the Northern
Kingdom. The prophet Isaiah wanted to provide a sign to
reference was to the current pregnancy of a woman in the

royal family, probably the daughter-in-law of King Ahaz.
The birth of her royal child would be a sign that the nation
child.” The context makes it obvious this verse did not ap-
ply to someone who would be born 750 years later.
that God was in and with Jesus in a deep and dramatic
Scriptures to know the text he had chosen would not bear

the weight he had assigned to it. So, in the prologue, he
covered his other bases. This life is holy. This life is of
persuaded by my argument from scripture, I want you to

know that whatever were the circumstances surrounding
his birth, God is capable of bringing holiness through any
incest, prostitution, seduction and adultery, this holy life

of God has emerged. Thus it is a powerful story.
around Jesus for the rest of his birth narrative. As he does

so, the history of the Jewish people and the characters out
of that ancient Jewish story re-emerge to bear their wit-
ness. Those who possess Jewish eyes will be able to see
them. Among these characters will be Moses, the Pharaoh,
Joseph the patriarch, Rachel, Isaiah, the Queen of Sheba,
-
ticular, must be read through a Jewish lens. We will turn
to these other texts and biblical characters as we continue
10 Matthew Sources and
the Hebrew Scriptures
R eading the Bible with any real comprehension in the

21st century is not an easy task. The gospels are a
late easily. Most Christians do not realize Christianity it-
movement did not separate itself from the synagogue un-

til late in the ninth decade of the Christian era. This means
While the disciples of Jesus were still members of
Scriptures being read each and every Sabbath. They

would have searched within them for what they were
certain were messianic clue. They believed this would
help them process and understand their experience with
Scriptures to enable them to understand both his meaning
wrapped the memory of Jesus inside their understanding

of these Scriptures. As fellow members of the synagogue,
55
they knew the stories of their Jewish past. They would
in preaching and later in gospel writing to illuminate the

Jesus experience.
By the middle years of the second century of the
Christian era, however, the followers of Jesus had be-
come almost exclusively a Gentile movement. This meant
the Jewish knowledge necessary to understand the gos-
pels, which were products of the synagogue, had no rel-
evance among the Gentile faithful. So it was that these
Gentile Christians began to manifest profoundly ignorant
-
dency toward literalization and a heightened sense of the
supernatural and the miraculous. That distortion plagues
the Christian Church to this day. These ideas, almost un-
known among Jewish worshipers, became quite popular
in Gentile Christian circles. This is despite the fact that
they badly distorted the relationship of the story of Jesus
the prophets.
Among the disciples of Jesus the historical reality is
that the process was the other way around. Convinced as
these followers were that Jesus was the promised messiah,
they pored over the messianic expectations permeating
century . Then they forced their memories of Jesus to

conform to what they determined were scriptural pro-
phetic expectations. Thus the Servant passages of II Isaiah
of the story of the cross. In the process, Jesus was obliged
-
ure. The Shepherd King came riding to his people on a
donkey. Then he was removed for 30 pieces of silver by
Matthew Sources and the Hebrew Scriptures 57
those who bought and sold animals in the Temple. This is

a good illustration of how the process worked.
-
retold about Jesus of Nazareth. When we read the gos-

pels, we should not be surprised to discover events that
occurred in the lives of former Jewish heroes. People like
-
they had happened in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
happening to Jesus during his infancy was in fact designed

-
was seeking to defend Jesus and the Jesus movement

against charges being leveled against them. First there
was what came to be called the scandal of the cross. Jesus
expectations. The passion stories in both Paul and the gos-

pels speak to this issue. When critics in the 9th decade of
-
thing that might be called the scandal of the crib arose.
-
tive about the birth of Jesus, responded directly to those
charges.
deep, historic division in Jewish history between the tribe

of Judah and the ten other tribes, who came to be called
the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Judah was ruled by the
descendants of Joseph, the favorite son of the patriarch

proceeded through the royal house of David, which ruled

Judah from 1000 to 586
life was thus clear. Next he introduced into his story an
earthly father, whose role it was to protect and to legiti-
mize Jesus and gave to him the name Joseph. To make his
readers certain of his purpose, he then developed the bio-
graphical details of this Joseph character right out of the
Please be aware that no father of Jesus was ever been
are no references to Joseph in any of the epistles of Paul (
70–72). There are some who argue that both the Q docu-
ment and the Gospel of Thomas also antedate Mark. I do
not agree with that, but even if they were proved to be true,
there is no reference to Joseph in either of those sources.
of Joseph for the character he would create as the earthly

father of Jesus. This Joseph was then assigned a primary
-
chal society, someone had to be the guardian of this vul-
nerable, pregnant woman and eventually of her infant and
-
It should come as no surprise he would draw that content

from the story of the patriarch Joseph in Genesis (37–50).
In this Genesis story, one discovers three primary iden-
a father named Jacob. Second, he is associated again and

Matthew Sources and the Hebrew Scriptures 59
again with dreams. In the Genesis story, the young Joseph

is always dreaming about how important he will become.
In his adult life, while in prison, he becomes the inter-
preter of the dreams of two people hauled into prison by
political power in Egypt. The Genesis patriarch, Joseph, is
Third this Joseph is also given the task in Jewish his-

tory of saving the people of the covenant from death. This
food was still plentiful.

Now look closely at the character of Joseph as drawn
-
ing constantly associated with dreams. God never speaks
to him except through a dream. In a dream God, or the
angel of the Lord, instructs Joseph to take Mary to himself
in a dream, Joseph is told to seek the safety of a town in

Galilee called Nazareth so the child might grow up in rela-
of Genesis was to save the people of the covenant from
with him to Egypt.

This is not literal history. Joseph is a literary creation,
device to link Jesus to Moses. This Joseph then disappears

from the biblical story as soon as the birth narratives are
complete and is never portrayed again in any context.
Gentile readers would not. Because they did not under-

stand, they would assume they were reading history.
they have been incorporated into the memory of Jesus. We

will examine those quoted passages from Isaiah, Micah,
of the expectations found in the Jewish Scriptures.

Matthew Weaves Together
11 Proof Texts from Isaiah,

Micah, Hosea and from an
Unknown Source
C hristianity was born in the synagogue and the origi-

nal followers of Jesus were primarily observant Jews.
They regularly gathered for worship in the synagogue
reading, learning about and becoming conversant with

the sacred scriptures as the Jews understood them. Each
worship.
from what the Jews called the Torah. This part of the
The Books of Moses. In
quired the entire Torah to be read in the synagogue on the

Sabbaths in a single year. To accomplish this, the Torah
take a minimum of 10 to 15 minutes to read a passage of

that length. In more moderate or liberal synagogues this
requirement was loosened and the Torah was allowed to
be read over a three-year cycle.
61
The second lesson would come from the portion of the

The Former Prophets. These
Moses. It includes those works known as Joshua, Judges,

I and II Samuel and I and II Kings. At an earlier point in
Samuel or I, II, III and IV Samuel. It was a later interpola-

tion to call the last two I and II Kings. These books covered
Jewish history from the conquest of Canaan under Joshua,
around the year 1200 , to the defeat of the nation of
Judah at the hands of the Babylonians. The subsequent ex-
ile of the Jewish people to the land of Babylon began in 586
. They were not as important as the Torah so there was
The third synagogue scripture reading was from what

the Jews called . That title referred to
the books we now call Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the
scroll and were referred to by the Jews as The Book of the

Twelve. Christians tend to call them The Minor Prophets.
Please note, Daniel did not come into the canon of Jewish
Scripture until about 165 . As a late arrival, it was
not generally included in synagogue readings. Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Ezekiel and The Book of the Twelve are about
the same length and each tended to be read one chapter a
week, one book a year. These four books would be rotated
over a four-year cycle. The singing or reciting of selected
psalms would break up and separate the various scripture
readings.
Following these three readings, the members of the
congregation would be invited to comment on the read-
ings. The followers of Jesus began to wrap their memories
of Jesus around and into the stories from the sacred text of
Matthew Weaves Together Proof Texts 63
This linked him to the spiritual power of his Jewish ances-

tors.
or from one of the psalms would illuminate an experience

they once had with Jesus. A tradition started in which
other. We will see this reality occurring over and over as

we work through the gospels. For now, all I want to dem-
narratives and we cannot read them intelligently unless

we recognize the process that created them.
We have already noted that the story of a wicked king
or Pharaoh, who tried to put to death the infant Moses as
Jesus around a series of carefully chosen texts suggesting

the history of the Jewish people is somehow being relived
-
try preacher trying to bend the biblical text to the needs
in brief detail. All of them are, at the very least, enormous

stretches in literal accuracy.
-
-
saying, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and

his name shall be called Emmanuel, which means God
this text is that he did not quote it accurately. Was this an

say what he needed it to say to suit his literary purposes?
I put these words from Isaiah into their original context.
when one is expecting a baby. Indeed, the word virgin ap-

pears nowhere in this verse from Isaiah.
The context is this. Two kings, Pekah from the Northern
Kingdom called Israel, and Rezin, the king of Syria, are in
siege positions outside the walls of Jerusalem. They have
made war on Judah and its king named Ahaz because he
goal in this war was to topple Ahaz and put a puppet king
Assyrians.
King Ahaz is atop the walls of Jerusalem inspecting
its defenses when he is met by Isaiah the prophet. First,
Isaiah assures the king that Jerusalem will not fall to
“these smoldering stumps,” which is what he calls Pekah
and Rezin. Ahaz is not convinced. Isaiah then says to him:
you that you will be delivered. Ahaz refuses to ask.

Irritated, Isaiah says you will be given a sign whether you
like it or not. “Behold a woman is with child.” This baby,
soon to be born into the royal household, will be the heir
to the throne, a sign this kingdom will endure. Before this
baby, is able to eat curds and honey and before he is old
enough to choose between good and evil, these kings be-
fore whom Ahaz was quaking, will be long gone. The facts
of history are this. The land of Judah was destined to work
still alive. Both Syria and the Northern Kingdom of Israel

were destroyed by Assyria. This text in Isaiah had nothing
to do with predicting the birth of the messiah almost 800
Matthew Weaves Together Proof Texts 65
-
ers wildly by using the text the way he did.
weaves into his story, comes from Micah. The wise men,
described later in this narrative, stop to ask directions
priests and scribes to determine where the messiah is to

be born.
-
siah must be a descendant of King David and thus heir
-
store the throne of King David. Micah the prophet refers to
Bethlehem as the town out of which David emerged to rule
the land of the Jews. Therefore, the messiah must follow
surely born, to Bethlehem. Thus the messianic claim can
tragic moment in Jewish history when the Assyrians con-

quered and destroyed the Northern Kingdom. According
to tradition, the Northern Kingdom was primarily made
up of the descendants of Joseph, the son of Rachel, who was
-
trays Rachel, the tribal mother of the Northern Kingdom,
as weeping for her children who are now lost forever.
to Egypt. Previously, God called the Jewish people out of
Moses and the Exodus, and parlays it into the time when
Mary and the Christ Child were also called out of Egypt.
The messiah, you see, must relive the history of the Jews.
called a Nazarene.” Such a prophetic expectation cannot

be found anywhere in scripture. The closest we can come
to it is in Isaiah 11:1 where the prophet writes “There shall
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” It is another text

used to prove the messiah must be related to David. The
. It sounds a bit
stretched all of his texts, but this last one was stretched to
absolute fantasy.
My point is to show how the debate waged in the syna-
gogue as the followers of Jesus sought to understand him,
his relationship to the concept of messiah and his relation-
century Jewish interpretation of Jesus. We are not reading

12 Making Sense of
the Wise Men
H aving described the miraculous birth of Jesus in chap-
how the birth of Jesus was divinely rolled out to bring it to
this is to tell us a story of magi who follow a star moving

across the sky. This star, they are purported to believe, will
found contained in the life of this Jesus. Was this narrative
not. That is never the source of powerful interpretive leg-
tional source for material, in order to tell his story of Jesus.

In those scriptures he found all the elements he needed
to weave together the familiar narrative we now know as
ample, I invite you to come with me to look deeply into
60. It calls to its readers to “Arise, shine, for your light has
tirety of his gospel was that in Jesus of Nazareth, the light
in fact arrived. Please note the universal quality of the star

which serves as his symbol of this light. A star is visible
to all the people of the world. A star is trans-national and
67
it has the mystical power, he believes, to draw all nations

toward its light.
Following a star is a familiar mythological reference to
in the darkness of the entire world. Kings, Isaiah asserts,

will therefore “come to the brightness of your rising.” In
out of the shadows as he is inspired by this passage. Isaiah

goes on to say that these kings will come on camels. Then
he says they will come from Sheba and guess what they
will bring? Gold and frankincense, says Isaiah. Does that
There are always among us, however, those who are

religious literalists. So inevitably they will ask, “But where
wise men from this text hardly makes a conclusive case.
(60:1–6) and ask you to read it again, this time even more
carefully. The Isaiah narrative states, “Those from Sheba
will come.” Sheba? Can you not hear the Jewish minds
seeking connections by ranging over the entirety of their
will occur in the land of the Jews, which deserves, he be-

lieves, the homage of the world.
The word Sheba in the text immediately reminds him of

another celebrated occasion in Jewish history. At that time
another royal visitor came to pay homage to another king
of the Jews. So, back into his memory of the scriptures he
goes until he brings forth the story of the Queen of Sheba
visiting King Solomon (I Kings 10:1–13).
Reading that story he discovers this queen also comes
Making Sense of the Wise Men 69
That text emphasizes the spices. It was, the text says, “an
abundance of spices.” The Queen of Sheba brought wag-
The only spice familiar to the people of the Middle

East at this time was myrrh, a sweet smelling resin derived
Cleanliness and personal hygiene were in short supply in

that day. Myrrh tempered body odors. Secondly myrrh
came to be used as the spice of death. The Jews did not
embalm their dead. They simply wrapped the deceased
sweet smelling myrrh to mask the odors of death and de-

cay. Burial was not postponed for very long in that time
and place.
of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The essential elements

of the story of the wise men are thus found in the Jewish
Scriptures.
Christ child were also symbols used by this gospel writer
We Three Kings
a hymn known and loved by all. Because
Jesus was perceived as a king, the hymn continues by hav-
ing one of the wise men say: “Gold I bring to crown him
-
ning of his gospel as the expected messianic king who was
There were no birth records he could have searched for
would surely have understood that fact.
-
ences to incense used in worship. It was supposed to be
the sign of universalism is that “in every nation incense
Jesus.
-
-
rative and then goes on to devote about 40 percent of his
signal this climax by introducing his death into the story

of his birth. That is exactly what the presence of myrrh in
the story of the wise men does.
trying to tell us in the story of the wise men. Essentially

he begins his gospel by saying ‘let me tell you the story of
was to reveal the presence of God in human form through

Making Sense of the Wise Men 71
turning Isaiah 60 into a narrative of magi or kings coming
this story lay a sermon, preached in a synagogue by a fol-
mind this sermon was delivered on the Sabbath when the
audience in the synagogue knew his sermon was never

meant to be thought of as literal history.
When Christianity moved out of its Jewish womb and
into the Gentile world, however, there was a vast ignorance
of the Jewish Scriptures in the Christian Church. They no
longer saw the connection between the stories told about
of reference with which to interpret the gospel narratives,

these Gentile Christians simply began to literalize the sto-
ries. They did this through their art, in sermons, in their
hymns and in their liturgy.
Rescuing the Bible from this kind of fundamentalism
is now one of the necessary steps Christianity must adopt
on its pathway to survival in the 21st century. Being able to
step in accomplishing this task.

A few more facts frequently missed the need to be
noted by the readers of this gospel, so let me point them
the wise men. Camels are only mentioned in Isaiah 60.
-
gold, frankincense and myrrh.” It does not say one gold
see the wise men came to a house in Bethlehem over

which their guiding star rested. In that house lived Joseph
with Mary and her baby. There was no stable. There was
There was no census ordered by Caesar Augustus when

Quirinius was governor of Syria. Those are details from a
story.
Christian tradition until the 9th decade . About ten years
gospel writer we call Luke.

13 Introducing the
Lucan Story
S
Luke had a second common source, a collection of the say-
ings of Jesus they call Q. This source, however, has never
been discovered in any independent way. Its only exis-
Luke made of it.

There are a few scholars who do not accept the exis-
tence of Q as a separate source. They account for the non-
these similarities exist because Luke not only had access
daction of Mark.
issues and state a conviction among most American bib-

lical scholars. There is an overwhelming consensus that
there once existed a now lost document called Q. For our
purposes, we only need to note there is substantial agree-
ment in content beyond having Mark in common between
and Luke diverge sharply, we need to enquire as to why.
73
-
ing the audiences for which each gospel was created.
-
cantly to the predominantly Gentile world in which they
lived. They saw Jesus in much more universal terms as the
one who transcended all human barriers and brought hu-
When we survey the books of the New Testament we
about the birth of Jesus. Then we discover these two birth
narrative with a genealogy of Jesus rooting him deeply in

Jewish life and history. Luke introduces his narrative of
moves quickly forward to its more universal meaning.

For example, Luke also has a genealogy but he uses
it not as a preamble to the birth of Jesus, but as a way to
-
nealogy goes back to Adam, the father of the entire human
Judah, going not from David to Solomon to Rehoboam as
who try to force the Bible into literal harmony cannot get
past these dual genealogies.
Luke also gives us a story of the birth of John the
Baptist found nowhere else in the New Testament. The
purpose of this particular nativity narrative is to indicate
Introducing the Lucan Story 75
the subservience of John the Baptist to Jesus which Luke
he was born to postmenopausal parents, a repeat of the
more spectacular in that he was the son of a virgin with the
When John the Baptist was born, the neighbors all

gathered to celebrate his birth. That celebration pales be-
side what Luke claims transpired when Jesus was born.
Angels broke through the darkness of the night sky to cel-
ebrate and to announce the birth.
Luke goes so far as to say that while John and Jesus
were both in the wombs of their respective mothers,
Elizabeth and Mary, the fetus of John actually leapt to sa-
lute the fetus of Jesus. Even prior to the birth of either of
-
tablished. In the community for which Luke wrote, this
reveals the high probability that there was considerable
tension between the movement that grew up around John
the Baptist and the movement that grew up around Jesus.
Luke was weighing in on that debate in order to claim the
priority for Jesus.
As we noted earlier in this narrative, Joseph tends to
made to Joseph in a dream by an unnamed angel. While in

Luke, Mary is the focus. In this version the annunciation is
not in a dream, but in real time.
principals in the drama, thus turning what might have
Zechariah, at the birth of his son John, is made to sing the

words that have come to be called the . Mary
sings the words we now call on her visit to
Elizabeth, her kinswoman. She lives, we are told, in the hill
country of Judea. The angels sing the words we now call
the to the hillside shepherds. Finally, an

old priest named Simeon sings the words we know as the
This occurs when he sees the baby Jesus for
promise for which his entire life had yearned.
then leisurely makes his way with his family back to his
Nazareth home in Galilee. While Luke certainly asserts
a virgin status for the mother of Jesus, he never tries to
ground that reality in the scriptures of the Jewish people.
to Joseph as the father of Jesus.

-
the Angel Gabriel to a virgin in Nazareth causing her to

visit Elizabeth in Judea. These pageants then proceed with
-
with child. When they arrive they discover there is no room

at the inn. She probably had the baby in the open country
and placed him in a conveniently located feeding trough.
imagination has created the stable and populated it with
not even one who says, “Do you see what I see?”
There is no star and there are no wise men in Luke.
Luke apparently did not care for magi. In the book of Acts,
authored by the same person who wrote the gospel we
Introducing the Lucan Story 77
heavenly host of angels. The symbols Luke employs are

not gold for a king, incense for a deity or myrrh to mark
clothes and a manger. Luke appears to have taken both of
In the apocryphal book known as the Wisdom of
“When I was born, I was carefully swaddled for that is

the only way a king can come to his people.” The man-
They do not recognize that God is the source of everything

that sustains them. In this way Luke introduces the story
of Jesus by saying that from the moment of his birth this
the feeding trough and will relate to God as a symbol of

faithfulness, unlike the historic witness of the Jewish na-
tion. Through this Jesus, not only the Jews, but the people
God has made.
her prayers have been answered and she will bear a son.
-
natural events.
very similar to sung by Mary. Indeed most

scholars think
-
ship center of his nation and dedicates him to the service
of God under the tutelage of Eli, the high priest. That story
12–year old Jesus to the Temple for Passover, probably in

a kind of Bar Mitzvah ceremony. Finally, to return to the
publicly announced, we note once again that Luke says
priest under whom Samuel served. Perhaps in using this

name Luke was signaling he was drawing on the story of
Samuel to tell his story of Jesus.
14
The Old Testament
Antecedents in Luke’s
Story of Jesus’ Birth
I n order to understand the birth narratives found in
there is no way these stories were intended to be re-

garded as remembered history or as narratives that were
literally true. That must be stated clearly. This means there
never was a star in the east or wise men who followed it.
There never was a heavenly host of angels who sang to
hillside shepherds. There never was a miraculous birth.
These stories are memorable, engaging and fanciful,
recording something that actually happened at the time
in which they used symbols to interpret the adult experi-
of Nazareth.
The proof of this is grasped when we discover how
witness accounts, were used to provide the context of their
ample, was originally the creative work of an imaginative
of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon (1 Kings 10) with

some other illusions from the story of Balaam and Balak
79
other toe-dips into such sources as the books of Daniel,

Exodus and Malachi. It is an exciting adventure to unravel
this biblical mystery story.
immediately see here a familiar Jewish story. First, the par-

ents of John the Baptist are introduced. Their names are
and Elizabeth are described as righteous people, who “fol-

lowed the laws of God in a blameless way.”
They were now elderly, childless and thus without an
heir. This, in a typically patriarchal way, was blamed on
the woman who was called barren. No one knew anything
in those days about low sperm counts. Readers familiar
with the book of Genesis will recognize this story as a re-
telling of the Genesis story of Abraham and Sarah prior to
the conception of Isaac.
priesthood responsibility was to perform the sacred func-

tions in the Temple. By lot, the opportunity to burn the
-
ered to be a moment of intense meaning and high honor.
A multitude of people waited outside for this ritual to be
completed. People are always drawn to moments when
Inside, however, Zechariah was delayed by what we

are later to learn was a revelatory vision. An angel of the
Lord appeared to him standing on the right side of the al-
tar of incense. Zechariah fell away in fear. The angel spoke
been heard and Elizabeth would bear a son. This son, the
angel says, will accomplish great things working “in the
The Old Testament Antecedents in Luke’s Story of Jesus’ Birth 81
this is so? My wife and I are well advanced in years.” In

Genesis, Sarah was said to have been 90 years old and past
the time of women to produce children. Identifying him-
self as Gabriel, the angel gives Zechariah a sign. “You will
be unable to speak until the child is born.” That too elic-
ited Jewish scriptural memories. In the eighth chapter of
Daniel, a vision of the Angel Gabriel appeared to Daniel in
the Temple. Following this vision he was commanded not
to speak. These stories are being replicated by Luke.
This episode took so much time the crowd of wor-
shipers began to wonder what was happening. What
must have had a vision, it was speculated, but its content

was not disclosed to them. Zechariah then completed his
priestly duties and returned to his home. There, we are
-
proach among men.”
Assuming this story is not history, we ask why Luke
decided to name the parents of John the Baptist Zechariah
and Elizabeth. Names are always clues in interpretive
Scriptures. The most important one is the prophet whose

work is recorded in the Book of the Twelve, also called the
Minor Prophets.
followed only by the book of Malachi. Malachi is not the
that means my messenger. Malachi is thus a nameless

voice whose task is to be the messenger, who “prepares
the way for the coming of the Lord.” The book of Malachi
angel tells Zechariah the promised child will come “in the
prepares the way for the Lord, then why not signal that
of the immediate predecessor of Malachi? Luke sends a

message with this name. It was not accidental.
-
ter of Aaron. There is only one other Elizabeth in the entire
but Elisheba. That single Elisheba is the wife of Aaron.

This also makes her a sister-in-law to both Moses and his
successful crossing of the Red Sea.
analogy of the family of Moses? I believe he does and this
Mary. In the entire New Testament only in Luke is there

any sense that Jesus and John the Baptist are kin. In the 14th
sole hint of relatedness is found in the story Luke tells of

the Annunciation by Gabriel to Mary when she learns she
words, “your kinswoman, Elizabeth, in her old age, has

also conceived a son and this is the sixth month with her
was to be Mary, then Elizabeth and Mary were going to
second born, the messiah. They would clearly have been

The Old Testament Antecedents in Luke’s Story of Jesus’ Birth 83
Luke then has Mary, pregnant with Jesus, go into the

hill country of Judah to visit her kinswoman, Elizabeth,
-
tive experience occurs. There is a fetal salute. The baby in
the birth of either. What in the world does that mean?

-
ously tension between the Jesus movement and the John
the Baptist movement. That tension is recounted in the
book of Acts. Jesus originally was a follower of John. John
only when John the Baptist was imprisoned that Jesus

-
The disciples of Jesus felt a need to establish the priority

of Jesus. Luke accomplishes this by suggesting there had
where do you suppose Luke got the idea for that story?
There is only one other story in the entire Bible in
book of Genesis. In chapter 25, Rebekah, the wife of Isaac

was pregnant. When the baby leaped in her womb, she
went to an oracle to help her understand what this leaping
meant. There she was informed she was having twins. The
of the twins, who would be named Esau, would actually

serve the second born of the two, who would be named
Jacob. Luke takes this Genesis story and transforms it.
Jesus and John the Baptist are not twins but they are kin,
he suggests. John was the elder by six months, Luke tells
us. In this case the elder of the two, John, was to be the
servant of the second born, Jesus.
destined to be the servant of the second born, Jacob. John,

who was to prepare the way for Jesus, will later be made
Scriptures. The vision in the Temple and the inability to

speak came from Daniel. The post-menopausal pregnancy
comes from Abraham and Sarah. The superiority of Jesus
to John, as well as their kinship, comes from the story of
Jacob and Esau.
15 The Journey to Bethlehem
T Luke, used two motifs in interpreting the life of Jesus

of Nazareth. First, each was historically aware that Jesus
the gospels report there was debate about his origins but
this is not true. Galilee was the rustic, impoverished, illit-
erate and non-cultural part of the Jewish nation. Nazareth
Yet, they could never escape the fact that Jesus was called
Jesus of Nazareth and referred to as a Galilean.
was ridiculed because of the historical facts of his origin.

“Search the scriptures,” his critics invited the crowds to
messiah will come out of Galilee.” It was thought even

more impossible for the messiah to grow up in Nazareth.
“Nothing good can come out of Nazareth,” they declared.
tives.
was born in Nazareth and he grew up there. When his

place of origin began to be a problem for those eager to
assert the messianic claim, the pressure began to build to
85
when the second motif around his birth appeared and had
to be served.
There were many messianic images in Jewish history.
restore the throne of King David. In time, this meant the

messiah had to have a claim to be a descendent and thus
an heir to the royal line of King David. That throne was
lost to the Jews in 586 . In that year the Babylonian con-
the Babylonians rounded up and murdered all the heirs to

the Davidic line. They imprisoned a man named Zedekiah
thought to be vacant.
Then the idea of the messiah began to grow both in
Jewish thought and in Jewish mythology. The coming of
the Messiah was part of the national dream of restoration.
The royal line of King David was an important symbol in
all the hopes expressed for the coming kingdom. The de-
by being born in Bethlehem, the city of David. This was
Slowly, this town, with its royal connections and its lo-
cation in the land of Judah about six miles from Jerusalem,
began to rise in the messianic dreams. The Messiah must
be of the house of David and he must be born in Bethlehem.
house in Bethlehem. For this baby to be born there seemed
a way to deal with actual history. This baby, though born

in Bethlehem, would grow up in Nazareth of Galilee.
-
The Journey to Bethlehem 87
could it be arranged for a couple who lived in Galilee to be

in Bethlehem when the child was born? Luke hit upon a
scheme that probably has some semblance of history to it.
of us today.
There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all
the world was to be enrolled. Was this a census? Was it for
that the Jews periodically wanted to count their citizens.

There are historical hints of a census ordered within a de-
.
undertaken stretches credibility to the breaking point.
-
cords stored anywhere. Travel was hard and slow.
Luke, however, needed to have a hook on which to cre-
ate his story of the Bethlehem birth of a child whose par-
ents were citizens of Nazareth. So he used the presumed
census to account for the fact that Joseph and Mary had to
go to Bethlehem.
This enrollment, Luke said, occurred when Quirinius
was governor of Syria. That was an interesting addition.
Luke has already related that the births of John the Baptist
Judea. We know from secular records, however, that
know that Quirinius did not become governor of Syria un-

til the winter in which the year 6 CE turned into the year 7
been 10 to 11–years old when this enrollment was ordered.

The presumed history behind this birth narrative begins to
wobble perceptibly.
Next we learn that Joseph, because he was of the house
and lineage of David, must, as a prerequisite for this
census, return to his ancestral home to be enrolled. This,

Luke asserted, was the key that resulted in a Bethlehem
birthplace for Jesus.
Does this mean all the direct heirs of King David had
-
ing to the Bible had many wives and many concubines,
reigned in Judah from the year 1000 to 960 . If we count
a generation at 20 years, a rather generous number in a
would be about 48 generations between David and Jesus.

If David had only 50 children, a rather small number for a
king with a large harem, his direct descendants in 48 gen-
erations would be well over a billion people. Suppose, as
Bethlehem to be enrolled? It is no wonder there was no
with him for this enrollment. Why this was necessary is not
stated. In that patriarchal era, women were not enrolled,
counted or taxed. They were thought of as property, part
baby is to be born in Bethlehem, however, Mary must be

in Bethlehem. So Luke tells us Joseph took her with him
even though she was great with child, to use the beautiful
means near to term so we can assume she was in her last

month of pregnancy.
was 94 miles from Nazareth? Do we embrace the idea that
century were walking or riding on a donkey? Do we un-
have to average nine to 12 miles a day? Are we aware that

in this era there were no restaurants or hotels along the
way? Now ask yourself, what man in his right mind would
The Journey to Bethlehem 89
Whether on a donkey or actually walking, the literal rea-

son for taking her does not hold any credibility. It was a
Roman Catholic lay theologian, Rosemary Ruether, who
this story.”
Mary riding side saddle on a donkey led by a walking
the text there is no donkey. That should not surprise us.
around the Christ Child in the stable because there is no

stable. There is only a feeding trough, called a manger.
it could be inside a structure. Be aware, pageants and hu-

man imagination have created images for us that are in
fact not biblical.
Nazareth-based family has managed to be located physi-

cally in Bethlehem when the child is born. The messianic
connection has been established. Mythology has been en-
hanced.
Luke does two more things mentioned earlier. I repeat
takes a text from the Wisdom of Solomon where the rich-

est of all the Jewish kings says, “When I was born I was
carefully swaddled, for there is no other way for a king
to come to his people.” So Luke says they wrapped the
babe in swaddling clothes. This clue was given to the shep-
manger, an image Luke borrowed from Isaiah 1. This one

faithful Jew, unlike the history of his people in the time of
Isaiah, would know from the moment of his birth who was
his father and what largesse he received from the God he

represented. There are many levels on which the stories of
the birth of Jesus can be read. Literalism is not one of them.
-
sis reveals it was never understood by the authors of both
, did not know

the Jewish Scriptures well enough to understand what the
original stories meant. Literalism is not only an expression
of biblical ignorance, but it is a distortion of the gospel so
dangerous as to be destructive of Christianity itself.
16 Conclusions
L uke concludes his birth story with a series of episodes

designed to point to the story of the adult Jesus. First,
rites of Judaism to root Jesus deeply inside of the faith of
th
day. At
that time a prophetess named Anna, later to be viewed in
mythology as the mother of Mary, and an old priest named
Simeon, are introduced in brief cameo appearances. In this
baby, Simeon proclaims he has seen the promised salva-
tion that will bring light to the Gentiles and glory to Israel.
closed with a summary statement informing his readers
narrative is thus completed.

Luke then describes an episode that turns out to be
the only story in the entire New Testament that purports
the 12-year old Jesus being taken up to Jerusalem at the

time of the Passover. It is a puberty rite story couched
91
with familiar mythological content. It was intended to
before his introduction to the wider public as an adult
need to identify.
Those familiar with these scriptures would also be fa-
-
ceive. In that patriarchal world, the woman was blamed
for this condition and so she was called barren. She was
second wife, Peninnah, had children and was honored by
at her inability to have a child. She was even ridiculed by

Peninnah because, as she said, “the Lord had closed her
womb.”
the shrine weeping and praying for a child. In her prayers

she stated her willingness to dedicate her child to God if
her prayers were answered. In the emotional power of this
am a woman sorely troubled. I have drunk neither wine

nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul
promised her prayer would be answered. So he said to her,

“Go in peace and may the God of Israel grant your pe-
Conclusions 93
of praise that began with the words, “My heart exults in the
he puts in the mouth of Mary that we call
I believe there is one other oblique reference to the
in the book of Samuel is related, Luke says, to the life of

Jesus. Finally, when Mary and Joseph take the boy Jesus
to present him in the Temple when he was 12-years old,
taking the boy Samuel when he was weaned to the shrine

-
God. The visit to the Temple completed the cycle of Jewish

initiatory liturgies. Luke tells us Jesus was circumcised on
the 8th day, presented on the 40th day and dedicated at the
age of 12 in the Temple at Jerusalem. The child Jesus was
therefore born with the destiny to serve God in all aspects
of the Jewish tradition.
with hints of things to come. The boy Jesus claims the
as an adult. In this episode Jesus acknowledges God as
-
tive he is also said to have been lost for three days. When
reveals echoes of another three days in which Luke will

say he was lost until raised by God into a new dimension
New Temple.
It is interesting to note that Luke then moves imme-
Jordan and the inauguration of his messianic career. Now
the mythology of the ages out of which he had come in the

-
introduced to his followers. With this story we also reach

the end of this chronicle so it is time to summarize.
and Luke that was ever intended to be viewed as literal

history. Both of these gospel authors knew the birth nar-
ratives were designed to explain the source of power ex-
perienced in the life of the adult Jesus of Nazareth. Both
were trying to say they had met a power and presence in
the life of Jesus that human beings could not themselves
-
troducing a new idea into the developing Christian tradi-
tion. Both were surely aware their stories of a miraculous
as one who was born of a woman as every human being

is, and born under the law as every Jew was. The only spe-
cial claim Paul made for Jesus was that he “was descended
God had declared Jesus to be the son of God, not through

a miraculous birth, but through his resurrection from the
dead (Romans 1:1–4).
had incorporated into their gospel accounts, not only had
as thinking the adult Jesus was beside himself or out of

his mind (Mark 3) when he came into his adult life. That
is not the response of one who has been told in advance
her child will be holy, the son of the highest. It is clear both
Conclusions 95
of Jesus. That will be the agenda of the fundamentalists to

come much later.
Then we saw how these two evangelists developed
-
rowed from Isaiah who wrote of kings coming to the
frankincense to fashion his narrative of wise men and their
of Joseph the patriarch in the book of Genesis (37–50). The

two Josephs are almost interchangeable.
got the news he was to be a father and why he could not
birth out of the Abraham and Sarah story in the book of
-
rows a text from Isaiah to get his manger and a text from
the Wisdom of Solomon to get his swaddling clothes. Both
No Jewish reader would fail to notice that. The two sto-

ries are deeply contradictory if one treats them literally.
of Jesus, introducing themes that will be developed more

fully in their later gospel accounts.
For most people the birth stories are probably the most
familiar part of the New Testament. They are also prob-
ably the most misunderstood. They are victimized by the
annual Christmas pageants held in most churches. They
are distorted by hymns sung, oratorios heard and sermons
preached each Christmas season. They are celebrated in

lawn crèches built, Christmas cards sent and store win-
dows dressed during the holiday season.
Like all birth stories, however, they are not really about
the birth of the hero, but about the adult life of the hero.
on a new wonder, a new meaning and a new power. That

is what this account has also been designed to do. I hope I
have succeeded and the next Christmas season can be en-
tered into with open minds and hearts without the need to
defend Jesus from those who think the only way to be true
to Jesus is to literalize the words of the New Testament.
While Luke’s narrative, the most detailed account of the birth of Jesus,
is lyrical and inspiring, in The Birth of Jesus Spong persuasively
demonstrates it is allegory. Layer by layer, Spong weighs every element
of the New Testament stories against Old Testament legends building
a convincing case. Spong’s essays step backward and forward through
the scriptures demonstrating why each element was chosen by the early
CE writers to establish Jesus’ lineage and divinity. It is a fascinating and
persuasive journey and a remarkable illustration of Biblical scholarship.
John Shelby Spong, whose books have sold more

than a million copies, was bishop of the Episcopal
Diocese of Newark for 24 years before his retire-
ment in 2001. His admirers acclaim him as a teach-
ing bishop who makes contemporary theology ac-
cessible to the ordinary layperson — he’s consid-
ered the champion of an inclusive faith by many
both inside and outside the Christian church.
A committed Christian who has spent a lifetime studying the Bible and
whose life has been deeply shaped by it, Bishop Spong says he was not in-
terested in Bible bashing. “I come to this interpretive task not as an enemy
of Christianity,” he says. “I am not even a disillusioned former Christian,
as some of my scholar-friends identify themselves. I am a believer who
knows and loves the Bible deeply. But I also recognize that parts of it have
been used to undergird prejudices and to mask violence.” A visiting lectur-
er at Harvard and at universities and churches worldwide, Bishop Spong
delivers more than 200 public lectures each year to standing-room-only
crowds. His bestselling books include The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish
Mystic, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, A New Christianity for a New
World, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, and Here I Stand. Bishop Spong’s
extensive media appearances include a profile segment on 60 Minutes as
well as appearances on Good Morning America, Fox News Live, Politically
Incorrect, Larry King Live, The O’Reilly Factor, William F. Buckley’s
Incorrect
Firing Line, and Extra. Bishop Spong and his wife, Christine Mary Spong-
have five children and six grandchildren. They live in New Jersey.

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The Birth

Bishop John shelBy spong

Interior design by Robaire Ream

ISBN: 978-0-9844659-5-8 0-9844659-5-2

1. The Legend Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2. Paul and the Virgin Birth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

3. The Testimony of Mark, the Earliest Gospel . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

4. The Two Versions of the Birth Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

6. Rehab the Prostitute: The Second Woman in

7. The Role of Ruth: The Seductress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

The Wife of Uriah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

9. Was There Scandal at the Manger? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

12. Making Sense of the Wise Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

13. Introducing the Lucan Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

15. The Journey to Bethlehem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

It has been a pleasure and an honor to have had the op-

as we reviewed all the essays, we concluded it would be

intention for readers, regardless of their training or back-

the birth of Jesus, is lyrical and inspiring, Spong persua-

Zachariah and Elizabeth, for example, are childless into

step backward and forward through the scriptures dem-

satisfy the regular subscribers who continue to ask us for

work continues to break new ground pointing the way to a

M ost of the portraits of the mother of Jesus that hang in

sumed appearances of his mother at the foot of the cross.

foot of the cross.

dating of which is generally between 82 and 85. Second

This is not eye witness reporting. Clearly the tradition

passed, however, the mythology that developed around

cousins. Further, she was declared to have been a post-

at the writings of a sixth century prophet named

either apology or embarrassment, they leaped on these

birth canal of his mother without breaking the hymen.

years of the 18th century that women have an egg cell.

problem in the old view of reproduction. The Immaculate

the mother of Jesus came in the 20th century when Mary

bodily assumption of the mother of Jesus into heaven. In

mythology of the ages. Second, I want to trace the story de-

by the facts of history as we can demonstrate them, I trust

your consideration. As the Book of Common Prayer in my

We can now date the life of Jesus with some degree of

life of Jesus between the years of 4 and 30 . We get to

. The clear New Testament

has to happen sometime between those dates. Roman re-

Pilate having to do with the reasons for his removal from

years in either direction. For our working purposes, we set

tradition which we have almost no way of recreating, en-

included in the New Testament, did all of his writing be-

the hand of Paul.

Paul, the earliest writer in the New Testament. That means

I n the writings of Paul there is not a single reference to a

had been known? Paul was an educated man. The idea of

cause he had never heard of it. If Paul had never heard of

Paul gives us some biographical details in the Epistle

man nor was I taught it but it came through a revelation of

the Book of Acts in the tenth decade of the Common Era.

Paul then describes his life in Judaism in which he as-

at some time no earlier than four years and no later than

the Corinthians in chapter 11 and in chapter 15, Paul uses