The birth of Jesus

Louis Pernot

Translation Canon Tony Dickinson

 

The accounts of the birth of Jesus which are found in Matthew and Luke were written a long time after his crucifixion. These symbolic accounts are confessions of faith. In re-reading the account in Matthew’s Gospel, Louis Pernot shows that the text nonetheless teaches us a great deal about Mary, Joseph… and God.

 

Today, many people do not believe that Jesus could have been born of a woman without the intervention of a man: almost one person in two among Protestants, and the young believe it less than the others… they have the choice. We might think that that was a vivid way for the first preachers of the Gospel to tell people that Jesus was “Son of God”. Now, if affirming that Jesus is the Son of God is fundamental to Christianity, it is possible to understand this in different way from the gynaecological: he is Son of God because he is God’s best representative, because in the essence of what he was inwardly he takes after God himself, or that he is God’s servant, since in Hebrew the word “son” also means “servant”, as does the French word “garçon” (the “boy” of a family, or of a café).

 

There was even a heresy which was known as “adoptionism”, which affirmed that Jesus was not “Son of God” through his conception, but that he became Son of God at the moment of his baptism by John in the Jordan. So God would have adopted Jesus, and would have called him his son at the age of thirty. And the word which is said to come from heaven “this is my son in whom I have placed all my affection” would not be saying something true for the past thirty years, but instituting Jesus as Son of God. This “adoptionist” heresy was condemned by the Roman Church in the fourth century when its partisans were called “Nestorians”, but some still remain in the East, and Protestants have the right to be heretical!

 

We are accustomed to read in the biblical texts (e.g. Matthew 1:18-25) the idea of a virgin birth; however it is perfectly possible to read this text in a different way, and to understand what could have happened historically.

 

Let us read the text with new eyes:

 

18. This is how the birth of Jesus Christ took place. Mary his mother, was engaged to Joseph; before their union, she found herself pregnant.

So far no problem: Mary and Joseph were engaged and before they slept together Mary found herself pregnant, but not by Joseph. The text adds “by the Holy Spirit”; that does not necessarily speak about sexuality, but could mean that this event had something which will reveal itself to be positive and in the direction of God’s plan.

 

The question who was the biological father of Jesus is of little importance. Jewish tradition says a Roman soldier and gives his name Pandera (or Panthera). Perhaps this is a fabrication made with the aim of discrediting Jesus, but it could be true. Undoubtedly again with the aim of discrediting him a particular tradition said that Mary more or less offered herself to a Roman soldier, and others have even put forward the idea that she was a prostitute. The most plausible suggestion would be that Mary might have been raped. The armies of occupation were not gentle, and conquering soldiers would rape pretty young girls of sixteen years like Mary fairly easily.

 

19. Joseph her husband, who was an upright man and did not want to shame her, proposed to break with her secretly.

We understand then that in any event Joseph, knowing that he was not responsible for his fiancé’s pregnancy, decided to break off the engagement. Normally, in accordance with Jewish law, he would have had to denounce her to the Jewish tribunal of the Sanhedrin, and Mary would have been condemned to death, having her throat cut with the child whom she carried. That was the law. But the text tells us that Joseph, a kind man, proposes not to denounce her, but to break things off secretly. He says to himself that he will break off the engagement and send her away without denouncing her, which will save her life.

 

20. While he was thinking about it, behold an Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said:

Once upon a time, people believed that God spoke in dreams, and through angels. These were ways of expressing their experience. Today we think rather that God speaks to us in our heart, directly in our thoughts when we seek him, when we pray, when we reflect as we read the Bible. So, to transpose this into modern language, we might say that Joseph, while thinking about all this, in his faith, in his prayer, understands something which is coming from God.

 

Joseph, son of David do not be afraid to take Mary your wife, for the child which she has conceived comes from the Holy Spirit;

And what he understands is that if he sends Mary away he will certainly save her life, but he will condemn her to life of beggary and exclusion. Unmarried mothers were regarded in an extremely bad light: they could have no place in society, nor at work, and if that could be justified for her, the child who would be born would be condemned to this same squalid life. Now that would be very unjust, because it was not his fault. As Joseph understands it, the child is not the child of adultery, nor of rape, but he is, like every child, a child of God. Joseph decides therefore, because of the child, to keep his fiancée and to adopt the child.

 

This alternative reading of the account of the birth of Jesus is, certainly, fairly unconventional, and could shock some people; we could be content with a watered down version saying that Mary was indeed pregnant “of the Holy Spirit”, but that for Joseph and their circle of friends, that changed nothing. She became pregnant without having the right to do so. In any case then this historical reading has a very interesting meaning, it shows that starting from a dreadful situation of adultery, of violence or of deceit, we arrive in the end, through the goodness of a man inspired by God, at the birth of the Saviour of humankind. It is therefore good news: there is no situation so bad that one would have to despair; even out of the worst the best can emerge; evil can be transformed into good. It is also the meaning of the death of Christ which will become the basis of every Christian hope thanks to the resurrection. And in passing there is a criticism of established religion: in this bad situation religion does nothing but make things worse through judgment and the death penalty. And it is through the transgression of Joseph who chose, out of love and generosity, not to respect the letter of the law, that life will be saved and the Saviour can to be born.

 

But even if there was not a virgin birth from the biological point of view, the idea is very rich theologically, and one can defend the thesis of the virgin birth for the meaning which it has.

 

Indeed we see at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew a long genealogy with some famous people, not only the unknown. Now, the succession could have been prolonged indefinitely by unknown people begetting the unknown. But there in this unrelievedly human story there is the irruption of the Holy Spirit, and everything changes. The ordinary begets the extraordinary which will be Christ. It is therefore a human story which at a specific point in time encounters God, allows itself to be made pregant by him, and the two uniting give birth to salvation.

 

Our lives are like that: a succession of ordinary days and moments, and it is necessary for our own story encounters God at some time and lets itself be made pregnant by him, that a spiritual dimension is united to the physical unrolling of our life and then a new dimension of joy, love, salvation, freedom and eternity is born.

 

What happens to Mary is not a distant historic event, it is what our story must be; and like Mary, we can be made pregnant by the Holy Spirit to give birth to Jesus Christ, so that from our lives a Christic dimension full of divine promises may be born.

 

This is an old theme which is found even outside the Bible. The stoic philosophers taught that matter, which was feminine, had to let itself be made pregnant by the creative word in order to produce the world: the “logos spermatikos”, the spermatic word. And in the Bible, there is the whole theme of marriage, as in the Song of Songs, presenting the relationship of a lover to his beloved like an image of the relationship of God to humankind. Christ will present himself as “the bridegroom” and Paul will take that up (2 Corinthians 11.2): “I have betrothed you to a single spouse, in order to present you to Christ like a pure virgin”.

 

And so it is that to which we are invited, to be united with God, to arrive more and more at an intimate relationship, to make love with him as we unite ourselves with him and as we make him a partner in the whole of our life, and to let ourselves be penetrated by his word which is a well-spring of life which can transform us and make us fertile with love, with peace and with hope.

 

A.W. Dickinson

22^nd December, 2015

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