Centroids :
Setting aside the theology of the article, which raises a
number of important questions,
here is a verse from the NT that is very interesting and
usually ignored :
"though he was rich, yet for your sake he became
poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich" (2
Corinthians 8:9).
The author says that this "must" refer to Jesus'
pre-existence. However, where does
the "must" come from ? I once came across another thesis,
namely that Jesus was,
in fact, the scion of a wealthy family. That would explain,
for instance, his knowing
some rich people personally, like Joseph of Arimathea.
.
In any case, the carpenter story might actually be a
theological interpretation
of someone raised by, say, the owner of the equivalent of
a construction
company or possibly a woodworking / cabinetry business. But
then, somewhere
along the way, Jesus rejected a life of wealth.
.
Thought for today.
.
Billy
.
.
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HuffPo
Author, 'Paul and Jesus: How the
Apostle Transformed Christianity'
Did Paul Invent the Virgin Birth?
Posted: 12/23/2012
Christians regulary affirm that Jesus was "conceived by the
Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary." This faith is
embedded as a cornerstone of all the major Christian creeds
and is central to the Christmas story, read and re-told
countless times at this season in both word and song.
Surprisingly, the gospel of Mark has no account of the birth
of Jesus. It opens with Jesus as an adult, traveling from
Nazareth down to the Jordan River to be baptized by John.
Since Mark is our earliest gospel the question arises--what
is the origin of the idea of Jesus' virgin birth? When and
where did it originate?
In contrast to Mark both Matthew and Luke give us different
versions of the "Christmas story," but they both agree on
the source of Mary's pregnancy. In Matthew's account Joseph
had a dream shortly after finding out about the pregnancy.
In this dream an angel told him that her pregnancy was "by a
holy spirit" and that he was to go ahead with the marriage
regardless. He was to name her child Jesus. By marrying a
pregnant woman who carried a child that was not his, and
legally naming that child, he was in effect "adopting" Jesus
as his legal son. The phrase "by a holy spirit" implies that
the pregnancy came from the agency of God's spirit but falls
short of saying, outright, that God was the father of Jesus
in the sense that, say, Zeus was said to be the father of
Hercules by his seduction of his mother, Alkmene. In that
sense the account is different from those miraculous birth
stories so common in Greco-Roman mythology.
Nonetheless, scholars who question the literal truth of
Matthew and Luke's birth stories have suggested that they
are a way of affirming the divine nature of Jesus as "Son of
God" by giving him an extraordinary supernatural birth. This
idea of humans being fathered by gods is quite common in
Greco-Roman culture. There was a whole host of heroes who
were said to be the product of a union between their mother
and a god--Plato, Empedocles, Hercules, Pythagoras,
Alexander the Great and even Caesar Augustus. In text after
text we find the idea of the divine man (theios aner) whose
supernatural birth, ability to perform miracles, and
extraordinary death separate him from the ordinary world of
mortals. These heroes are not "eternal" gods, like Zeus or
Jupiter. They are mortal human beings who have been exalted
to a heavenly state of immortal life. In the time of Jesus
their temples and shrines filled every city and province of
the Roman Empire. It is easy to imagine that early
Christians who believed Jesus was every bit as exalted and
heavenly as any of the Greek and Roman heroes and gods would
appropriate this way of relating the story of his birth. It
was a way of affirming that Jesus was both human and divine.
Modern interpreters who view the stories in this way usually
maintain that Joseph was likely the father and that these
supernatural accounts were invented later by Jesus'
followers to honor Jesus and to promote his exalted status
in a manner common to that culture.
These legendary stories from Greco-Roman culture may well
have contributed to accounts of Jesus' miraculous birth in
Matthew and Luke but I would suggest an alternative. I am
convinced that the idea of Jesus' birth from a
virgin--without a human father--implicitly goes back to the
apostle Paul. Paul's letters date several decades before our
New Testament gospels and it is Paul's understanding of
Jesus as the pre-existent, divine, Son of God, that lays the
conceptual groundwork for our Christmas stories.
Paul never explicitly refers to Jesus' virgin birth nor
does he ever name either Mary or Joseph. What he does affirm
is that Jesus pre-existed before his human birth and
subsequently gave up his divine glory through his birth as a
human being. He writes that Jesus "though existing in the
form of God" emptied himself and took on human form, "being
made in the likeness of humankind" (Philippians 2:6-7). He
says further "though he was rich, yet for your sake
he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become
rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9). He has to be referring
here, metaphorically, to the "riches" of Jesus'
pre-existence with God, since all our sources have Jesus
born of a poor peasant family. Paul also writes "In the
fullness of time God sent forth his Son, made of a woman . .
." (Galatians 4:4). The implication of these texts is that
Jesus' mother was merely the human receptacle for bringing
Jesus into the world. It is not a far step from these ideas
about Jesus' pre-existence to the notion of Jesus as the
first-begotten Son of God--eliminating any necessity for a
human father. Paul's entire message centers on a divine not
a human Jesus--both before his birth and after his death.
For Paul he is the pre-existent Son of God, crucified, but
now raised to sit at the right hand of God. Like the
Christian creeds that jump from Jesus' birth to his death
and resurrection in single phrase, entirely skipping over
his life, Paul paves the way for a confessional
understanding of what it means to be a Christian.
An alternative way of thinking about being a Christian is
preserved in the gospel of Mark--our earliest narrative
account of the career of Jesus. Mark mentions neither Jesus'
birth, nor any resurrection appearances on Easter morning
(according to our earliest manuscripts that end with chapter
16:8). When a would-be follower addresses Jesus as "Good
Teacher," Jesus sharply rebukes him with the retort: "Why do
you call me good, there is One who is good, God" (Mark
10:17-18). Mark emphasizes the suffering of Jesus on the
cross, but only as a call to others to also "take up a
cross" and thus give their lives as servants to others. In
Mark Jesus defines true religion as loving God and loving
ones neighbor, in contrast to all systems of religion. Mark
sees being a Christian as a call to a certain way of life
more than an adherence to a set of creedal statements. I am
not sure how Mark would have celebrated Christmas but his
version of the Jesus story is surely one that should not be
forgotten this season.
-- 