We have seen one example of how historical study makes it difficult to accept the infancy narratives in the Gospels at face value. We have also seen an example of how research on the cultural and historical background of Luke’s narrative can be constructive and illuminating. The results of our theological reading of Matthew’s narrative has hopefully been helpful as well. What can we say in conclusion about the birth narratives, read specifically from the perspective of historians researching the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth?
First, we must recognize that it was almost inevitable, in an ancient context, that stories of a miraculous birth for Jesus would have appeared, and this in turn will make the historian skeptical with almost equal inevitability. The narratives of the heroes in the Hebrew Bible make a miraculous birth almost an essential pre-requisite for anyone who wants to have a significant role in Israel’s history.
Similarly, the Roman historian Suetonius, born around 69-70 C.E., had the following to say about a sign proceeding the birth of Caesar Augustus (the quote is from his work entitled The Twelve Ceasars):
According to Julius Marathus [the freeman and secretary of Augustus], a public portent warned the Roman people some months before Augustus’ birth that Nature was making ready to provide them with a king; and this caused the Senate such consternation that they issued a decree which forbade the rearing of a male child for a whole year. However, a group of senators whose wives were expecting prevented the decree from being filed at the Treasury and thus becoming law – for each of them hoped that the prophesied King would be his own son.
Suetonius also reports that another source tells the story of how Augustus was conceived miraculously by Apollo rather than by his human father. Any historian would look at such stories with skepticism. It is not necessarily that the historian lives in a worldview which excludes the possibility of the miraculous and of divine intervention a priori. But whereas the literature of the ancient world suggests that the miraculous was an almost daily occurrence, modern experience does not confirm this. And so even if one today were to admit that such things may occasionally happen, one would still feel justified in querying the large number of accounts of miraculous events from the ancient world. As David Hume said, “Extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence.” If your friend says he just saw a pink Volkswagen, you will probably accept his eyewitness testimony without hesitation. If he says he just saw a flying saucer, then unless you really want to believe (like Fox Mulder), then you will at least admit the possibility that he might have been mistaken, that his eyes may have deceived him, that there is some other explanation.
The problem with stories like those of Jesus’ miraculous birth from a virgin in Matthew and Luke, is that a historian would seem unjustified giving them credence while denying the historicity of other ancient accounts of miraculous births, ones from around the same time and with the same amount of supporting evidence. In fact, Matthew and Luke’s evidence seems to blatantly contradict the claims of Paul (our earliest source), as well as being internally incoherent. Both Matthew and Luke have preserved genealogies of Joseph, and two contradictory ones at that, while also affirming that Joseph was not really the father! Of course, Joseph’s acceptance of the child would have amounted to ‘adoption’, but Paul’s testimony is that Jesus really is the descendent of David according to the flesh (Romans 1:3; see also 2 Timothy 2:8). This does not mean that you as an individual cannot believe the virgin birth. What it does mean is that, as a historian, you do not have sufficient basis to justify the assertion “We can say with a great deal of confidence that we are certain that Jesus was born of a virgin.” But once again, we come back to the reverse as well: we cannot say how Jesus was conceived. We simply do not have enough relevant evidence. Could Joseph have been the father, as later Jewish Christian groups believed? It is certainly the most ‘natural’ explanation! Could Mary have been raped by a Roman soldier, as some later Jewish polemical writings claimed? It is certainly not a possibility that can be excluded. At the end of the day, one’s assessment of the stories of Jesus’ miraculous birth will be a judgment call, based above all else on one’s worldview. Those whose worldview accepts the possibility of God ‘interfering’ with the natural course of events in all sorts of minute details hidden from human scrutiny will find nothing implausible about Jesus (or Augustus or anyone else) having been conceived in a miraculous way, with accompanying signs and portents. Those whose worldview does not include experience of day-to-day miraculous divine intervention will quite naturally be skeptical of ancient accounts which imply that the world then was very different and ‘played by different rules’ than those that appear to be in force today.
Moving on, however, we may note one scholar’s sardonic and sarcastic wit that is not inappropriately applied to the Gospel narratives. Uta Ranke-Heinemann (Putting Away Childish Things, San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1994) notes that this star was just as responsible as Herod for the massacre of the infants. The star successfully led the ‘wise men’ from the East to Judea, and eventually led them to the right house, but first it led them to Jerusalem so that they had to ask Herod for directions. The rest, as they say, is history, but it is probably better to call it myth, rather than blaming the star or even God for a massacre of toddlers and infants that is not confirmed by any other historical source. To state that this was a natural phenomenon such as a comet or planetary conjunction does not help. As Ranke-Heinemann notes with her typically sharp wit, “a conjunction wouldn’t travel from Jerusalem to Bethlehem in order, as Matthew asserts, to come to rest over a house. Only a fairy-tale star can do that, and a very low-flying fairy-tale star at that, because there’s no way to determine over which house a star in the sky is ‘resting’” (op.cit., p.25).
One only needs to look at the way the later Church developed the legends concerning Jesus’ birth further still in order to see that the canonical Gospels are simply stages in the development of stories about Jesus’ origins and birth that are increasingly miraculous and of steadily decreasing value for a historian. It is a pity that we start our study of the information regarding the historical figure Jesus of Nazareth with the stories about his birth, because these are from relatively late sources and are among the least reliable material in the Gospel tradition (in historical terms, I mean, and not necessarily from a theological perspective). Once we move on from here to Jesus’ appearance on the stage of public history in the time of John the Baptist, we have a lot of information that is credible, valuable, and independently attested. And so, without further ado, let us move on…
FOR FURTHER READING (providing balanced surveys of the issues and evidence)
Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, Doubleday, 1993.
Hugh Montefiore, The Womb and the Tomb, Harper Collins, 1992.
MSNBC: The Birth of Jesus http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6653824/site/newsweek/
The Birth of Jesus Christ http://www.2think.org/hundredsheep/bible/birth.shtml
Jane Schaberg, "The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives"
Jocelyn Rhys, Shaken Creeds: The Virgin Birth Doctrine
British Clergy Have Doubts About Virgin Birth
Yahoo! Commentaries: The Virgin Birth