God Without Religion

by Michael Arnheim

  By contrast with both Matthew and Luke, John, the author of the fourth Gospel, is not much interested in establishing Jesus’s credentials as the Jewish Messiah in the traditional Jewish sense. John’s Gospel, it is commonly maintained, was written for a non-Jewish readership, which explains why the claim that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah as prophesied in the Jewish Scriptures is played down in his book.

  In other words, John had no axe to grind as regards Jesus’s birthplace, so it is all the more intriguing to see what he has to say about it. Interestingly enough, he relates an incident which bears directly on this issue. He tells us252 that the Jews of Jesus’s time were debating the question of whether or not to accept Jesus’s claim to be the Messiah, the chief objection to acceptance being Jesus’s Galilean origin.253 Those rejecting Jesus’s Messianic claim confront him directly with the prophetic prerequisite: “Has not the scripture said that the Christ is descended from David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?”254 Does John make Jesus or one of his disciples object to this and explain that Jesus was indeed a descendant of David and that he had been born in Bethlehem as required? Not at all. On the contrary, John takes it for granted that Jesus did not meet these prerequisites of Jewish messianic prophecy. For John this did not matter very much; therefore there is all the more reason to believe him on this point.

  Jesus’s Genealogy

  The extract I have just referred to in John’s Gospel also introduces another very important question: Jesus’s genealogy. Jewish prophetic writings made it clear that the Messiah not only had to be born in Bethlehem but also had to be a descendant of King David. That is the really important requirement and is the reason for the insistence on a Bethlehem birth. In fact, the only reason for requiring that the Messiah be born in Bethlehem was precisely that Bethlehem was the city of David.

  But, even if, for argument’s sake, we were to accept Luke’s extremely improbable Bethlehem birth story, that story itself reveals that neither Joseph nor Mary had any relations living in Bethlehem. So what about the requirement that the Messiah be of Davidic descent?

  As we have just seen, John does not even try to persuade his readers on this score. As usual, however, both Matthew and Luke are more concerned to fit Jesus into the Jewish messianic scriptural mould. Both writers accordingly give us a detailed family tree tracing Jesus back to King David. Matthew’s family tree255 actually starts with Abraham, the first of the Jewish patriarchs, while Luke256 outdoes him by going all the way back to Adam! At first glance, this all looks very impressive. After all, how many modern families are able to trace their descent back for a thousand years? — which is the difference in time between David and Jesus.

  Closer scrutiny raises a number of questions. First, there is a huge difference between the two genealogies even in the number of generations separating Jesus from King David. Matthew specifically tells us that there were 28 generations, fourteen from David to the Babylonian Exile and another fourteen from the Exile to the birth of Jesus.257 Luke gives no figures, but a count of the number of names he mentions as Jesus’s ancestors yields a total of no fewer than 41 generations for the same period as represented by Matthew’s 28. For the thousand-odd-year period Luke’s 41 generations average out at just over 24 years apiece. Matthew’s fourteen generations from David to the Exile average out to about 28 ½ years each, but his last fourteen generations have a mean span of a whopping 41½ years.

  So what? These discrepancies are so big that they cannot just be ignored. What they reveal is an attempt on the part of both writers to juggle the figures. The two genealogies are very different from each other, but one thing they have in common is the number seven. We have already noted Matthew’s tally of 28 generations from David to Jesus. But what is perhaps even more significant is the fact that there were traditionally supposed to be fourteen generations from Abraham, the founding father of Judaism, to King David. This is specifically mentioned by Matthew as well,258 but he took it straight from ancient Jewish tradition.259 It seems that Matthew was determined to find the same numerical pattern in the descent of David from Abraham. But why fourteen generations each time? Because seven was considered a sacred, mystical or even a magical number in ancient times, and fourteen is simply twice seven. There were seven days in a week; the seventh day was a day of rest; Jacob worked for the hand of Rachel for seven years, and then, when cheated by his father-in-law, for another seven years; there were seven years of plenty in Joseph’s Egypt, followed by seven years of famine — to mention just a few of the many hundreds of examples of the significance of seven and its multiples in ancient Jewish tradition.

  Luke’s family tree uses the number seven as well, but in a different way from Matthew. There is a total of 77 (i.e. 11 x 7) generations in his line of descent from Adam to Jesus.260 In other words, both Matthew and Luke are determined to bring Jesus’s genealogy into line with traditional Jewish genealogies, using the mystical number seven in order to invest Jesus’s birth with an aura of divine destiny. But this fiddling with the figures together with the numerical discrepancies between the two genealogies can hardly inspire us with much confidence in either.

  This numerical question is, however, a minor problem by comparison with the ones we run up against when we start looking at the actual names in the two supposed lineages. Between David and Jesus, a period of a thousand years, only two names (three, if you include Jesus’s father, Joseph) occur on both lists! These are the names of Zerubbabel and his father Shealtiel.261 Now Zerubbabel was a leading figure in Jewish history at the time of the return from the Babylonian Exile, about five hundred years before the birth of Jesus. Zerubbabel was recognised at the time as the leader of the Jewish people and it seems quite likely that he was indeed a descendant of King David. From the point of view of Matthew and Luke, however, a more important question was whether Jesus could possibly trace his lineage from Zerubbabel. Both Matthew and Luke attempt to do so, but with totally conflicting results. Not a single name is common to their two genealogies between Zerubbabel and Joseph. Even the name of Joseph’s own father, Jesus’s grandfather, is different in the two lists. Matthew calls him Jacob, while Luke tells us it was Heli, two quite irreconcilable names. (Joseph’s grandfather, called Matthat by Luke and Matthan by Matthew, is the one person between Zerubbabel and Joseph to have even the possibility of being common to both genealogies.)

  Only one conclusion can be drawn from this huge gap between the two supposed genealogies: both Matthew and Luke are determined to trace Jesus’s descent from King David. Indeed, they have to do so in order to maintain that he was the Messiah as predicted by the Jewish prophets. But, it is quite clear that they had no evidence of his actual descent, so each simply invented a lineage to link him with Zerubbabel and thus with King David.

  Needless to say, this problem of the irreconcilability of the two lineages has not gone unnoticed. So desperate did some Christian commentators become that they resorted to the claim that the two genealogies were not even meant to be the same. Matthew’s family tree, they maintained, is that of Joseph, while Luke’s is that of Mary. In this way it was presumably hoped not only to solve the problem of the irreconcilable differences between the two genealogies but also to invest Mary as well as Joseph with Davidic ancestry. Unfortunately for them, however, the texts themselves are only too clear. Neither genealogy includes Mary, but both make it quite plain that this was Joseph’s lineage.262 Matthew does mention Mary, but only as married to Joseph, whose family tree is the one he presents.

  It certainly would have been more convenient for Christianity if either Matthew or Luke had attributed the descent from David to Mary rather than to Joseph. For according to the theory of the “virgin birth” Joseph was not Jesus’s father in any case!

  In other words, Jesus’s descent from King David through Joseph, which both Matthew and Luke are so anxious for us to accept, negates another of their most cherished beliefs, namely the idea that Jesus was the “Son of God” and his mother Mary a v
irgin. Belief in a virgin birth is even more difficult to accept than Jesus’s descent from King David, and it certainly does not make things any easier for Christianity when it is realised that these two unlikely beliefs are by their very nature mutually exclusive.

  The Virgin Birth

  What is the evidence for so remarkable and miraculous an event? As usual, the Christian Gospels themselves do not agree. Once again, Matthew and Luke alone claim a virgin birth for Jesus, while Mark and John make no mention of it. In general, the absence of some supposed fact from a source is not very good evidence against the truth of that fact. After all, every writer must select his facts from a large pool and he will do so in accordance with what he considers significant, the point being that no two writers can be guaranteed to have exactly the same set of priorities. But a virgin birth is so remarkable and so miraculous an event that it is hard to understand how any author could possibly omit to mention it — and least of all an author as concerned as both Mark and John were to show that Jesus was a remarkable man of miracles! We can only conclude that these two writers either did not know the story of Jesus’s virgin birth or else did not believe it. In either case, it is a telling blow against our acceptance of it.

  Both Matthew and Luke link the story of the virgin birth directly to their claim that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. Luke has the angel Gabriel appear to Mary and announce the impending birth of a son to her.263 In Luke’s graphic depiction of the scene, Mary is somewhat agitated at the news, making the specific statement that she has never had sexual intercourse.264 Besides this emphasis placed on Mary’s virginity, Luke makes several other points here:

  Mary, though unmarried and a virgin, is betrothed to Joseph.265

  The conception is to be seen as a sign of divine favour to Mary.266

  The unborn child is to be “the son of God”.267

  King David is described as the child’s “father”.268

  The unborn child is to “reign over the house of Jacob for ever”.269

  The child is to be named Jesus.270

  The description of David as the child’s “father” is obviously meant simply as “ancestor”, and this statement serves as a shorthand for claiming that the unborn infant is to be the Messiah. But, how can the unborn child be at one and the same time the “son of God” and the son of Joseph? The answer is that he cannot, for, as we have already seen, his claim to Davidic descent depends on Joseph’s paternity, the very attribute which is here being denied!

  The statement about reigning over “the house of Jacob” shows just how traditionally Jewish an image of the Messiah is presented here. “The house of Jacob” is just another way of saying “the children of Israel”, Jacob or Israel being one of the three Jewish Patriarchs. In other words, the Messiah is seen not only as a saviour but also as a ruler over an earthly kingdom — a concept typical of communal religions.

  Matthew’s briefer account of the annunciation271 is similar to that of Luke except that he has the angel appear to Joseph instead of to Mary. In addition, as usual, Matthew uses a Jewish scriptural quotation to “prove” the truth of his claims, on this occasion one of the very best known of all Messianic prophecies, derived from the prophet Isaiah:

  Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.272

  I say “derived” from the prophet Isaiah advisedly, because there is one very significant difference between Matthew’s version of the prophecy and the original.273 Isaiah’s prophecy is not about a virgin at all but simply about a young girl or young woman. The Hebrew language, in which of course the prophecy is written, has two quite distinct words. There is the word betulah, a word frequently found in the Jewish scriptures with the specific meaning of “virgin”. In Chapter 22 of Deuteronomy, for example, betulim, “virginity”, occurs no fewer than six times in a sexual context. Isaiah himself uses the word betulah on five occasions, even where there would merely be an assumption that the girl in question was a virgin. But in the prophecy with which we are concerned Isaiah uses a different word altogether, almah, a much more general word referring simply to a young girl of marriageable age.

  Is there some reason for the prophet’s choice of vocabulary here? The word betulah is used only of girls without any sexual experience. But in the passage in question Isaiah is dealing with a married woman who either is already pregnant or else is shortly to become so; someone, in other words, who could most certainly not be a virgin. It is clear from the context that Isaiah is not talking here of some Messianic figure of the far-distant future but of a specific unborn child, namely the son of King Ahaz, the later Hezekiah, one of the “good” kings of Judah — who lived some seven hundred years before the time of Jesus! It would have been quite wrong for Isaiah to refer to Ahaz’s queen as a “virgin”, which is why he does not use the word betulah here but the more general word almah.

  In fact, not only does the prophet use a different word but he also prefixes it with the definite article, “the”. Correctly translated, what Isaiah is saying is “the young woman shall conceive and bear a son…”, which confirms our initial impression that Isaiah is talking about a particular young woman whose identity is known to him.

  There might never have been any doctrine of virgin birth in Christianity had it not been for the way in which the Isaiah passage is translated in the Septuagint, the authorised translation of the Jewish scriptures into Greek which was the form of the Bible most familiar to the Jews of Jesus’s day. Greek was the lingua franca of the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean seaboard and it was used by Jews as well as by their non-Jewish neighbours.

  Greek does have a word, neanis, corresponding to the more generalised meaning of the Hebrew almah, but it is comparatively rare. This may be the reason why the Septuagint translators used the much commoner word parthenos or “virgin”, properly the equivalent of the Hebrew betulah, to represent the word almah in Isaiah’s prophecy.

  Luke was probably not even of Jewish origin, so it is unlikely that he would have been able to read the Bible in Hebrew even if he had wanted to. Though he does not quote Isaiah, he does relate the virgin birth directly to his claim that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. So, if he did get his idea of the virgin birth from Isaiah, then it could only have been from the Greek version, in which Isaiah is made to prophesy the birth of a son to a virgin, something which he had no intention of doing!

  But what about Matthew? He certainly was a Jew and, what is more, his Biblical citations are at least sometimes drawn from the Hebrew text. He is also said (by a certain Bishop Papias, who wrote in about the year 130) to have “composed the logia in the Hebrew language”.274 There has been a good deal of discussion of this statement, as the meaning of the term logia is not quite clear. It is a Greek word literally translated as “oracles”, and so probably refers to the Biblical “proof” texts which Matthew is so fond of quoting — he uses no fewer than sixty of them altogether. But, of course, even if Matthew really did go to the Hebrew Bible to find these passages, he may nevertheless have been influenced by the Septuagint in translating Isaiah’s “young woman” as “virgin”.

  But there may also have been other reasons for this. For one thing, it is quite clear that there had always been a big question mark hanging over Mary’s sexual morality. Unlike the story of the virgin birth, however, these doubts about Mary are reflected in all four of the Christian Gospels, and, in addition, in non-Christian sources. It was clearly a subject which caused the early Christians acute embarrassment.

  Both Matthew and Luke specifically describe Mary as betrothed to Joseph at the time of Jesus’s conception but not yet married to him.275

  In fact, from Luke’s account it does not appear that they ever got married. They are still only betrothed at the time of the supposed journey to Bethlehem276 and Luke never broaches the topic again. In other words, as far as Luke’s narrative is concerned, Mary appears to be an “unmarried mother”. Even today there is still a stigma attached to being an “unmarried mo
ther” among the adherents of certain religions. How much greater that stigma was in ancient times, and especially among the Jews, can be seen from the penalties for adultery detailed in the book of Deuteronomy. The extreme penalty, stoning to death, is reserved for the betrothed girl who voluntarily commits adultery before her marriage277 or the bride who turns out not to be a virgin on her wedding night.278

  In Matthew’s version of the story, Joseph and Mary do get married, but not until after Mary’s pregnancy is discovered and after Joseph is prevailed upon by an angel to have second thoughts on the subject.279 His first thoughts once he knew that Mary was pregnant were to send her away secretly, though he would have been entitled, as Matthew specifically tells us, to “put her to shame”,280 i.e. by announcing her adultery publicly and having her punished for it.

  In both Matthew and Luke, therefore, all that stands between Mary and adultery is the claim that her pregnancy was caused by divine rather than human agency. This same claim is also the only shield Jesus has against a charge of illegitimacy.

  Resorting to such a far-fetched explanation of the birth as a way out of the impasse may be a measure of the desperation felt by these two Christian writers. Significantly enough, nowhere else in the Christian scriptures is there any mention of a virgin birth for Jesus. This includes all Paul’s epistles, as well as the Gospels of Mark and John. While omitting any mention of any claim for Jesus to divine paternity, these two authors both do reveal something of the doubt surrounding his legitimacy.

  In the middle of the heated argument as reported by John, “the Jews” are made to taunt Jesus by remarking, “We were not born of fornication”.281 (I emphasise the word “we” because this is the force of the Greek, which here uses the pronoun “we”, which is normally omitted as the subject is already expressed in the verb ending.) This taunt would be meaningless on its own, if we did not know of the long-standing Jewish belief that Jesus was illegitimate. The force of the taunt is therefore clearly meant to be: “We were not born of fornication — but you were!”