Illegitimacy

Only Matthew and Luke assert the ‘virgin birth’ of Y’Shua, and the teaching is found nowhere else in the N.T., the belief that Mary’s pregnancy resulted from a divine act of G-d without any male involvement developed into a fundamental theological dogma in early Believers, and viewed as scandalous if not outright heresy. There are some indications in our gospels that the charge of illegitimacy was circulating behind the scenes. Mark is our earliest gospel, written around A.D. 70. He includes an important scene in which Y’Shua returns home to Nazareth as an adult. There is a buzz about Him among the townsfolk. Mk. 6:3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? Matt. 13:44 Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? Calling Y’Shua the son of Mary indicates an unnamed father. In Judaism children are invariably referred to as sons or daughters of the father – not the mother. Mark never refers to Joseph at all, by name or otherwise. He avoids the paternity issue altogether. There has to be some good reason for this silence. Matthew, in contrast, is quick to reshape Mark’s wording so that the illegitimacy issue is not even hinted at. Here we have evidence of a progressive move to mute or play down the scandal that had been familiar in the hometown village of Nazareth decades earlier. Rumors and gossip die hard and seldom completely disappear. In the gospel of John things are even more explicit. At one point Y’Shua was in Jerusalem sparring with His Jewish critics. The conversation became very heated and almost turned violent. One of their responses to Y’Shua was the startling assertion in 8:41 – We were not born of fornication, as if to imply, as You were. Something is clearly going on here. This was a very low blow: an obvious attempt to undermine Y’Shua’s’ standing by reference to a rumor about his illegitimate birth. In a 4th century A.D. Christian text called the Acts of Pilate, which might have origins reaching back to the late 2nd century, there is an account of Y’Shua’s trial before Pilate. One of the charges of His enemies is “You were born of fornication”. No one takes the text as a historical record of the trail, but it does witness to the longevity of the illegitimacy charge. Whoever wrote the text found it necessary to construct a trial scene that addressed the same charge we encounter in the 1st century gospel of John. Mark and John, the two gospels that say nothing about Y’Shua’s birth, and little or nothing about His father, seem to preserve for us these subtle hints of the charge of illegitimacy. Both Matthew and Luke try to mitigate the issue by claiming Y’Shua was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but both of them freely admit that Joseph was not the father. And that is the point. The notion of illegitimacy is a consistent element found in all four N.T. gospels. Each seems to agree – Joseph was not the father of Y’Shua! This charge of illegitimacy is not limited to these four gospels. The Gospel of Thomas was discovered in upper Egypt at ta place called Nag Hammadi by an Arab farmer who was digging in the area for fertilizer. It had been sealed in a clay jar and buried in a field, along with a dozen other lost text, all written on papyri in ancient Coptic. It was likely hidden in the late 4th century to protect it from those that would have destroyed it as heretical. Many scholars date it as early as the 2nd century A.D. It is clearly the most precious lost document discovered in the last two thousand years. It contains 114 sayings of Y’Shua. Some have called it a fifth gospel in that is supplies so many missing pieces of Y’Shua’s teaching – otherwise lost and forgotten. Toward the end of the collection, Y’Shua tells His disciples: One who knows His Father and His mother will be called the son of a whore. The term whore (porne) in this context is a term of slander for one guilty of sexual immorality or unfaithfulness. In this cryptic saying an eco of the ugly label that Y’Shua had faced throughout His life – namely that His mother Mary had become pregnant out of wedlock. The implication is that the charge was unjust and that Y’Shua knew the circumstances of His birth as well as the identity of His unmanned and absent Father. What circumstances led to Mary being accused of fornication and labeled as such? If we were filling out Y’Shua’s birth certificate today we would have to put down father unknown. Can you feel their pain in all this? Y’Shua’s enemies would have made the worst of things and freely used the labels. There is no reason to endorse their assumptions. When it comes to family scandal, unwed, pregnancies, and broken engagements, the street gossip of the rural Galilean village is the last place one wants to turn for any objectivity. Were you born out of wed lock? Did you feel the sting of judgments? Have you found that the accusations have never truly died down? Well your in good company for so was our Savior. We can understand why something’s are to be keep quite to avoid assumptions. We should not pass judgments and make negative assumptions on any of our fellow human beings. We have not come so far as not to practice gossip even today. Put yourself in another’s shoes before being quick to speak, practice loving kindness.