All of that is to emphasize that aged and barren parents could only conceive by a miraculous divine intervention. And, had you been there, it would all have been empirically verifiable at least with regard to age and sterility.
Hannah. The birth of Samuel is another such story in the biblical and Jewish tradition. In 1 Samuel 1–2, Hannah and Elkanah are a barren couple who are not explicitly aged, although it is repeated twice that, “year by year” (1:3, 7), “the Lord had closed her womb” (1:5–6). So Hannah vows to God: “If only you…will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head” (1:11). The priest Eli promises that God will answer her prayer for a child and, after discreetly noted marital intercourse (1:18–19), “Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel” (1:20).
Then, as she had vowed, Hannah dedicates the infant Samuel to God as an ascetic or nazarite (from the Hebrew for “a separated one”) according to the protocols of Numbers 6:1–21. She then breaks into a long canticle that begins: “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God” (2:1). Once again, you can see that story model behind Luke’s account of John the Baptizer as one who, by divine command, “must never drink wine or strong drink” (1:15) and Mary’s triumphant canticle, the Magnificat, which begins, “‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (1:46–47). But more later on those parallels.
Why, then, to repeat our question, did that earlier tradition behind both those Christmas stories insist not just on a divine conception, but on a virginal divine conception? Why not follow Jewish tradition of at least sterile if not aged parents?
The only reason we can suggest is part of a deliberate exaltation of the New Testament over the Old Testament. That is certainly how Luke takes it. John the Baptizer, as the end of the Old Testament, is born of barren and aged Elizabeth (1:7), but Jesus, as the start of the New Testament, is born of a virginal Mary (1:27, 34). And, as we see next, exaltation over its contemporary matrix applies likewise to one very specific contemporary Roman tradition.
DIVINE CONCEPTION IN ROMAN TRADITION
In Greco-Roman tradition a transcendentally predestined child is conceived by divine intercourse with a human being—either female goddess with human male or male god with human female. The most important one from that matrix is the conception of Octavian, whose parents were Atia and Octavius and who would one day be the emperor of Rome and the god Augustus.
Around 120 CE, Suetonius, imperial secretary and palace gossip, wrote The Lives of the Caesars, and in the section The Deified Augustus he recorded this omen:
A few months before Augustus was born a portent was generally observed at Rome, which gave warning that nature was pregnant with a king for the Roman people; thereupon the senate in consternation decreed that no male child born that year should be reared; but those whose wives were with child saw to it that the decree was not filed in the treasury, since each one appropriated the prediction to his own family. (94.3)
That attempt to destroy the boy born to be king by killing all contemporary male children is, of course, a standard folkloric tradition, which we saw already in the story of Pharaoh in Exodus 1–2, which was carried over into Jesus’s story in Matthew 1–2.
Suetonius then records the divine conception of Octavian, later to be Augustus. He cites it from the Theologoumena (Discourses on the Gods) by Asclepias of Mendes in Egypt, which probably means that it originated when Octavian was there after the battle of Actium, between 31 and 29 BCE, in mopping-up operations against Antony and Cleopatra:
When Atia had come in the middle of the night to the solemn service of Apollo, she had her litter set down in the temple and fell asleep, while the rest of the matrons also slept. On a sudden a serpent glided up to her and shortly went away. When she awoke, she purified her self, as if after the embraces of her husband, and at once there appeared on her body a mark in colors like a serpent, and she could never get rid of it; so that presently she ceased ever to go to the public baths. In the tenth month after that Augustus was born and was therefore regarded as the son of Apollo. (94.4)
But Suetonius only furnishes that information after he had fully detailed Augustus’s life and accomplishments up to and including the portents that warned of his death. By then, as it were, readers might be ready to believe a divine conception!
The story of Octavian’s divine conception is modeled on the earlier and similar conceptions for the Greek general Alexander, imperial conqueror of the Persians, and for the Roman general Scipio Africanus, imperial conqueror of the Carthaginians. Augustus was destined to out-conquer them both. We already saw a similar modeling of Jesus’s conception story on that of Moses by Matthew
Whether we look for elucidation on divine conceptions to the general Jewish tradition of barren and aged parents or to that specific story about Octavian, the reason for an emphasis on virginity in the pre-Matthean and pre-Lukan Christmas story is in order to exalt the divine conception of Jesus over all others—especially over that of Augustus himself.
In Jewish and biblical tradition, ordinary marital intercourse takes place between aged and barren parents—even if conception is thereafter divinely miraculous. In Greco-Roman tradition, and notable in that Augustan story above, divine intercourse takes place in a physical manner, so that it was necessary for Atia to purify herself “as if after the embraces of her husband.” Even with Greco-Roman divine conceptions, the male god engages in intercourse, so that the human mother is no longer a virgin after conception.
What pre-Matthean and pre-Lukan Christianity claimed was that Mary remained a virgin before, during, and after conception (not birth)—and that made her divine conception different from and greater than all others.
Anti-Christian polemicists often argue that Christianity simply copied its story from those of other contemporary divine conceptions, and so it is irrelevant. Pro-Christian apologists often insist that nothing exactly like Luke 1:26–38 occurred in ancient tradition, and so is unique. Both extremes are incorrect, because Christianity described the divine and virginal conception of Jesus precisely to exalt it over all those other ones—and especially over that of Caesar Augustus. Is it, by the way, ungracious to note that the Holy Spirit requested Mary’s agreement to her divine pregnancy, but Apollo accorded Atia no such courtesy?
In any case, virginity, sterility, longevity, or anything else one can imagine are simply ways of emphasizing, underlining, and “proving” that the conception was divine. It is that divine conception that counts. It is the theology of the child and not the biology of the mother that is at stake.
IN A PRE-ENLIGHTENMENT WORLD
Among the ancients, did all or most or many or only some individuals take stories of divine conceptions literally and historically, or metaphorically and parabolically? Did they even press that distinction as relentlessly as we so often do? Or were they quite capable of understanding the meaning of those stories without even asking about their mode?
We begin with two preliminary warnings. First, in an ancient world, where understanding of the microscopic interaction between ovum and sperm was almost two millennia in the future, “conception” was a rather mysterious affair. The ancients knew, of course, that human intercourse was normally necessary and that both female and male fluids existed, but the dominant metaphors for conception as “sowing the seed” and for birthing as “opening the womb” leave much room for puzzle, miracle, and mystery.
Second, it is neither helpful nor accurate to exalt Jewish or Christian divine conceptions over their pagan equivalents. Conception by human-divine interaction was a cultural given in that pre-Enlightenment world, so that, although any specific example might be denied, the general possibility was presumed. The exact mechanics depended on how literal the writer’s imagination or the hearers’ understanding was. Pro-Christian apologists could argue that pagan divine conceptions did no
t happen, and anti-Christian polemicists could argue back that Christian ones did not happen, but both sides presumed they could happen. Even to argue that ours are divine while yours are demonic simply derides actuality without denying possibility.
Granted those warnings, how can we tell when people in a pre-Enlightenment world—where divine interventions were generally accepted as possible—took those stories of divine conception as literal or as metaphorical? Here are a few examples of how at least some writers thought about that problem.
In the first century CE, the Roman historian Livy commented on two very famous divine conceptions in his history of Rome, From the Founding of the City. You will recall him from Chapter 4 prudently refusing to judge for or against Augustus’s alleged descent from Aeneas. Speaking of those divine conceptions of Alexander and Scipio, he declared them “equally empty and absurd,” but he also notes that “Scipio himself never said a word to diminish belief in those marvels; on the contrary, he tended to strengthen it by skillfully and deliberately refusing either to deny or openly to affirm their truth” (26.19).
In the second century CE, the historian and biographer Plutarch wrote Parallel Lives about famous Greeks and Romans and, among them, a Life of Numa, the legendary second king of Rome after Romulus in the 600s BCE. He tells how “the goddess Egeria loved him and bestowed herself upon him, and it was his communion with her that gave him a life of blessedness and a wisdom more than human.” Plutarch notes similar stories from other traditions about mortals “who were thought to have achieved a life of blessedness in the love of the gods.” But this is his concluding judgment: “There is some reason in supposing that Deity…should be willing to consort with men of superlative goodness, and should not dislike or disdain the company of a wise and holy man. But that an immortal god should take carnal pleasure in a mortal body and its beauty, this, surely, is hard to believe” (4.1–3).
In the third century CE, the philosopher Iamblichus wrote Life of Pythagoras about that earlier philosopher from the sixth century BCE. Iamblichus quotes a claim that “Pythagoras was the son of Apollo” and a human mother, but he then denies it and explains how the rumor started. Pythagoras’s father, Mnesarchus, impregnated his wife, Pythais, and then went away on business before he learned of her condition. At Delphi, Apollo told him that “his wife was now pregnant, and would bring forth a son surpassing in beauty and wisdom all that ever lived, and who would be of the greatest advantage to the human race”—that, by the way, is a perfect job description for a human being divinely conceived. In other words, Pythagoras’s greatness was foretold by Apollo, but Pythagoras’s conception by Apollo “is by no means to be admitted.” Still, Iamblichus continues, “no one can doubt that the soul of Pythagoras was sent to humanity from the empire of Apollo, either being an attendant on the God, or co-arranged with him in some other more familiar way” (2).
For Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians in that ancient and pre-Enlightenment world, interaction of the human and divine–—however imagined, described, or micromanaged—could produce a child who would bring transcendental benefits to the human race. And, of course, that logic also worked in reverse—a transcendental benefactor must have had a divine conception. If male, that child could be termed “Son of God”—a relational metaphor just like Word of God, Lamb of God, or Image of God. In fact, as we just saw, Luke’s genealogy could describe not only Jesus as “Son of God” (1:35), but Adam as “Son of God” (3:38).
Finally, then, it is unwise to imagine that those pre-Enlightenment ancients told incredible histories, which we post-Enlightenment moderns have learned to deride. It is wiser to realize that they used powerful metaphors and told profound parables, which we have taken literally and misunderstood badly. And that is a warning against either accepting or rejecting metaphor literally and parable factually in texts from a pre-Enlightenment world. Whether taken literally or metaphorically, a divine conception was their way of asserting an individual’s transcendental character and extraordinary gifts to the human world. We may, of course, deny that ancient explanation for extraordinary individuality, but we must also admit that we moderns have no better one to take its place.
It would be wiser, therefore, to presume that the ancients were as wise as we moderns are—when we are both wise—and as dumb as we moderns are—when we are both dumb. But, whether taken literally or metaphorically, historically or parabolically, any claim of a divine conception—whether from virginal, barren, or aged parents—claims that this child has brought or will bring extraordinary or transcendental benefits to the human race. And, therefore, the proper question is not about the biology of the mother, but the destiny of the child. What is that destiny and, once you know it, are you willing to commit your life to it? To Caesar the Augustus, for example, or to Jesus the Christ?
CHAPTER SIX
IN DAVID’S CITY OF BETHLEHEM
We saw in a preceding chapter that the Christmas stories of Matthew and Luke disagree on the location of Jesus’s conception by the Holy Spirit. It was Bethlehem for Matthew, but Nazareth for Luke. They both agree, however, on the location of his birth in Bethlehem and, furthermore, they both agree that Joseph was a descendant of David.
Matthew says that, “Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea” (2:1) and that Joseph is the “son of David” (1:20), and so, therefore, “Jesus the Messiah [is] the son of David” (1:1). Luke brings those two elements together: “Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child” (2:4–6).
Matthew and Luke agree, therefore, that Jesus was the new David. But, recall that, as we already saw in Chapter 5 and will see again in this chapter, Jesus is for Matthew the new Moses. Matthew’s Christmas story combines, in other words, Jesus as new Moses and as new David, so that Jesus will “save his people from their sins” (1:21) nonviolently rather than from their enemies violently.
Since Matthew and Luke agree independently on those two points about Jesus—that he was descended from David’s lineage and born in David’s city—those must come from an earlier tradition than either of their Christmas stories. And, in fact, we find both of those points elsewhere in the New Testament.
First, Paul, in opening his letter to the Romans, speaks of “the gospel concerning his [God’s] Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh” (1:3). Second, John records the crowd’s discussion of Jesus’s messianic status with this interchange: “Others said, ‘This is the Messiah.’ But some asked, ‘Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he? Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?’” (7:41–42). This is a typical instance of Johannine irony. He presumes that Jesus was born at Bethlehem and, therefore, the crowd’s ignorance confirms what they deny. Jesus is the Messiah, and he was born in Bethlehem. Paul and John indicate that common Christian tradition that Jesus was the Davidic Messiah and was—whether literally or metaphorically—born in Bethlehem.
While we are on this subject of agreements between Matthew and Luke in their overtures, here is a fuller list of their Christmas story agreements:
Matthew 1–2
Luke 1–2
Mary was engaged to Joseph.
1:18
1:27; 2:5
Mary conceived while a virgin.
1:18, 25
1:27, 34
Mary conceived by God’s Holy Spirit.
1:18, 20
1:35
Jesus was named by God.
1:21
1:31
Jesus was “to save” or was “Savior.”
1:21
1:47, 69; 2:11
Jesus was the Davidic Messiah.
1:1, 16–17, 20
1:27, 32, 69
Jesus was born at Da
vid’s city of Bethlehem.
2:1
2:4, 11
Jesus was born under Herod the Great.
2:1
1:5
Mary, Joseph, and Jesus live in Nazareth.
2:22–23
2:39, 51
As we saw at the start of Chapter 5, Matthew uses the title of Messiah five times in his Christmas story. And—whether deliberate or accidental there—and here once again—he also mentions Bethlehem five times:
“Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea.” (2:1)
“They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea.’” (2:5)
“And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah…” (2:6)
“Then he sent them to Bethlehem.” (2:8)
“He sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem.” (2:16)
Luke mentions Bethlehem twice, once when Jesus’s parents go there in 2:4 and again when the shepherds go there in 2:15. What is fascinating, however, is that, although their common tradition furnished them with information about a Bethlehem birth, it did not tell them how Jesus happened to be born in Bethlehem. How was Jesus of Nazareth born in Bethlehem?
Here is the sequence for this chapter. First, we look at the original David to see what made him the once and future king of Israel, so we can determine how Jesus could be the new David. Next, we discuss the birth of Jesus in Matthew’s Christmas story. And you will not be surprised to be back once more with his model from those midrashim about the birth of Moses. Then, we look at the birth story of Jesus in Luke with special attention to titles for Jesus such as “Lord” and “Savior” in that account. That involves a focus on those same titles for Roman emperors from Caesar Augustus onward. Finally, we focus on two more words in Luke’s overture, and indeed in all of Luke-Acts—gospel and peace—within that same context of Roman imperial theology. Our question is this: if Caesar Augustus and his kingdom of Rome and Jesus Christ and his kingdom of God both promise a transcendental peace for earth, so that their end is the same, must not the difference between them be in their means to get to that end? What, then, are those divergent means for peace on earth?
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