Jesus – Page 15 – A Word in Edgewise

Page 15 of 16

December 31, 2013

The Virgin Birth: what did Mary provide?

Now that the 12 days of Christmas are in full swing, I want to propose what I think will be a controversial reading of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ virginal conception and birth. Consider it a theological thought experiment if you like, but it is an attempt to take seriously Matthew 1:20. The first Gospel says no more about the topic but what he does say is clearly suggestive:

“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 1:20)

Now immediately, we must set aside any modern notions of conception, for though Matthew and his audience would have been aware generally of how babies were made, they were not versed fully in the biology of it. The Greek word translated “conceived” in most modern translations does not mean what moderns mean when they think scientifically regarding conception. So we must not insist that it carry the full freight of our biological knowledge. The word simply means “to bring forth.” The same word was used earlier in the chapter dozens of times to refer to how fathers bring forth children: e.g., “Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob” (Matthew 1:2a,b). The King James read: “Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob” (Mat 1:2 KJV).

If we assume for a moment that Matthew was aware of at least some of the biological processes involved, would he have thought that Mary provided the ovum or was Mary for him more like a surrogate mother, a vessel in whom the Christ-child, Emmanuel, was destined to grow? If Mary provided the ovum, who or what supplied the seed? I suggest Matthew’s account should be interpreted as making Mary Jesus’ surrogate mother not his biological mother.

Now to be fair neither Matthew nor his audience could have been familiar with the notion of an “egg” as we know it. Not until the invention of the microscope were humans able to see the mico-world. Instead they viewed the woman’s womb as the ground upon which the seed could be planted. They were after all an agricultural people so many of their life images were drawn from agriculture. If the seed found favorable “ground,” then a child would result. If a woman’s womb were “barren,” then the couple remained childless.

Let”s be clear. Matthew does not see her pregnancy as a sexual act. In fact, the way he tells the story it is obvious he is trying to distance his account from any notion of sexual intercourse. Perhaps that is because during his days charges were being made by Jesus’ opponents about his legitimacy; or more likely in my view, Matthew had a theological and apologetic purpose.

According to the first evangelist, Mary is a virgin and stays a virgin up to the time of Jesus’ birth (Catholics and many other faithful believers say forever). Furthermore, the child which will come forth from her is “from the Holy Spirit” (likely a genitive of source governed by the Greek preposition ek). Matthew must have been aware of Greek myths and pagan stories of gods coming down and having sexual relations with women and giving birth to semi-divine beings (e.g., Hercules). His account of Jesus’ miraculous birth is meant to distance Jesus’ origins as far as possible from these pagan notions. That which is in Mary is from the Holy Spirit. Full stop. It is the work of God in her from start to finish.

Reading Matthew’s account in this way makes it possible to view Jesus as a new Adam in line with other NT writers (e.g., Paul in Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15 and the Gospel of Luke in particular). The genealogy of the third Gospel (Luke 3) begins with Jesus and traces his lineage all the way back to Adam (cf. Matthew’s geneaology which begins with Abraham and ends with Jesus: Matthew 1). Jesus is therefore the Son of Adam, who is none other than the Son of God.. The God who said, “Let there be light” and light “became” can surely say, “Let there be a child in the womb of my loyal servant, Mary,” and make it so. Adam was the product of adamah (Hebrew for “earth”) and the breath (Spirit) of God (Genesis 1-3). Jesus, son of Mary, was the product of the Holy Spirit, according to Matthew. Mary did not provide the biological raw materials. What she did provide–by common agreement with God–was a nurturing place or “ground” for the Christ child to grow and develop. Natalogists can explain to us all that the woman’s body provides a child that grows within her. Once implanted there is a great deal of exchange that takes place from the mother’s body to the baby’s. Needless to say, “we are wonderfully made.”

Now some may wonder whether reading Matthew’s account in the way I propose detracts from Jesus’ full humanity. How could Jesus be fully human if he did not have a biological mother the way we moderns understand it, that is, in sharing Mary’s DNA? Well was Adam “fully human”? He had no mother. His wife was to become the mother of all the living. God sculpted Adam from the earth and breathed into him the breath of life and he became a living soul, fully human. The analogy I suggest we consider here is new creation and new Adam. What was in Mary was “from the Holy Spirit” start to finish.

Now if we take Mary’s role as surrogate rather than biological mother, we do not detract one bit from her ultimate significance in the story of salvation. She remains the virgin mother in whom a miracle has taken place to bring forth a son who is properly called “Emmanuel” (God with us). All of the honor due Mary as theotokos (“the Mother of God”) is not set aside by this reading of Matthew.

October 13, 2013October 14, 2013

Did Jesus Have a Violent Streak?

I’m posing this question because it was posed to me. Actually, it was not a question; it was an accusation made by Rabbi Stuart Federow of Congregation Sha’ar Shalom in Clear Lake, TX. I had made the statement that Jesus was a model of non-violence. Federow’s jaw dropped and he began to list all the ways in which Jesus was violent, especially the temple incident when Jesus upset the tables of the moneychangers and drove out the animals being sold for sacrifice. According to the rabbi, this event proved that Jesus had a violent streak.

While I don’t have time to deal with all the charges Federow made, let me consider the temple incident and ask whether Jesus acted violently on this occasion.

You may recall that the temple incident is recorded in all four Gospels. The Synoptics place the episode late in the story right before Jesus’ execution. John tells the story early in his account. The majority of scholars follow the Synoptics and take it as an event late in Jesus’ life. Others think it is possible Jesus “cleansed the temple” twice: one early in his ministry and the other right before he died. Clearly, powerful people would have been upset with what Jesus did, and it is likely to have been the catalytic event that led to his execution by the Romans.

I suggest the best way to understand the temple incident is as a prophetic act. Prophets not only spoke their messages; they often acted them out. Isaiah walked around naked for 3 years to show the humiliation coming to the Egyptians and Cushites when the Assyrians took them into exile (Isaiah 20). Today Isaiah would be accused of public nudity and probably put in jail. Ezekiel laid on his left side in the road for 390 days in mock siege to signify the length in years Israel would suffer God’s judgment. Today Ezekiel would be accused of mental illness and hospitalized. Jeremiah purchased real estate near Jerusalem only days prior to the fall of his nation to the Babylonians. Today Jeremiah would be accused of being a bad real estate investor. These prophetic acts were usually accompanied with an oracle (sermon) which explained what was happening and why, from God’s point of view. By today’s standards many prophetic acts would be considered anti-social at least and perhaps even criminal.

When Jesus entered the temple he began to drive out those who sold and bought in outer court, the area where Gentiles were allowed to gather and worship (Mark 11:15-17 and par.). He overturned the tables of the moneychangers and did not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. Exactly what Jesus is objecting to is unclear, but together with the episode of the cursing of the fig tree (Mark 11:12-14, 20-21) and the Olivet discourse (Mark 13) we may make some reasonable conclusions. First, pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem needed sacrificial animals to participate in the temple worship. Providing them with appropriate sacrifices was an important service. But why did they set up their business in the one area where the nations (outsiders) were allowed to worship? Couldn’t they have offered their services outside of the temple? Imagine the urine and feces which flowed down the pavements from the animals kept in cages and fences. Imagine the stench and the noise of commerce. Was this a house of prayer for all the nations? Furthermore, the temple area was so large that merchants apparently used the porticos and porches as a shortcut so they could save themselves a few steps. Jesus expressly forbade them from making such casual use of God’s house. Essentially, each of these actions violated the sanctity of the temple. The Mishnah Berakah 9.5 gives us some examples worthy of consideration: “One should not act silly while facing the Eastern Gate [of the Temple in Jerusalem] for it faces toward the Chamber of the Holy of Holies. One should not enter the Temple mount with his walking stick, his overshoes, his money bag, or with dust on his feet. And one should not use [the Temple mount] for a shortcut.” If these actions violated the sanctity of the temple, how much more setting up stalls, selling animals, and exchanging money.

Quoting Isa 56.7 and Jer 7.11, Jesus may well have told us why he acted. God’s house was to be a house of prayer for all the nations, but the temple authorities had made it into a den of robbers. As long as people used the temple courts as a cut-through and merchants set up shop selling animals where the nations were to gather for worship, the sanctity of the temple was in jeopardy. Instead of being a place where the humble and repentant assembled, the temple porticos had become a haunt for criminals.

Do not forget that in Jesus’ day anti-temple sentiments were running high. The high priesthood had been bought and sold by scoundrels, and many faithful Jews had withdrawn completely from the temple.

Jesus’ actions in the temple that day are best understood as a prophetic act intended to portray the coming destruction of the temple. Jesus was not “cleansing the temple,” he was pronouncing divine judgment against it. He did so in a big, unforgettable way. But hyperbole characterized Jesus’ teaching all along: “If your right hand offends you, cut it off throw it away.” Was Jesus advocating self-mutilation or was he driving home a point about the seriousness of sin? Obviously, the latter is the case. Jesus was not advocating violence against oneself. When Jesus overturned the tables, scattered the animals, and put an end to that day’s commerce, he was acting out in one place what the Romans would do across the entire temple mount 40 years later. A few days after the temple incident, Jesus gave a sermon called “the Olivet discourse” which described in some detail the events prior to and during the fall of Jerusalem.

I do not think Jesus acted violently that day in the temple anymore than Isaiah was acting lasciviously in his own day. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi considered Jesus a great example of non-violence and so should we. These modern prophets in their own way inspired movements which shocked the world and profoundly shaped it.

August 27, 2013August 27, 2013

Did Jesus Have All His Teeth? (Part 2)

Last week I posed a historical question: when Jesus entered public life (at the age of 30) did he have all his teeth? It is a question which can’t be answered with certainty. There is no physical description of Jesus from contemporary sources to help us nor are there any physical remains, so to address the question you look analogically at what happens to 30 somethings who have limited access to dental care. Consider this: what would you look like today without the benefit of braces earlier in life? how about the bridges, the caps, the crowns, the whitening toothpaste? The chances are good you wouldn’t have that perfect, made for TV smile.

Sallman's Head of Christ — Sallman’s Head of Christ

This historical question has a theological component. You see most people have some image of Jesus in their heads. As they read the Gospels or pray, they imagine Jesus looking one way or another. Those images have been laid down in our experience. It may have come from a painting you saw on the wall in Sunday School like Sallman’s the Head of Christ (1941; see the Warner Sallman Collection).

It could have come from a favorite movie like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Jim Caviezel is a dashing, leading man type who portrayed Jesus in Gibson’s 2004 epic drama.

Or perhaps your favorite is the Laughing Jesus who has a nice set of choppers.

But there is another place where our image of Jesus comes. From our theology. Orthodox theology tells us that Jesus is fully God and fully man. This means, at least in our sanctified imaginations, that Jesus is a perfect man, a man with no physical flaws or blemishes. A man taller than most, with eyes more penetrating than most, with teeth perfect and whiter than most. Our commitment to the divinity of Jesus often trumps our understanding of his humanity so that we could well imagine the infant Jesus speaking fluent Chinese from the manger.

But to embrace the incarnation, a central tenet of faith, we must take seriously Jesus’ humanity. A truly human Jesus would have to learn to speak proper Aramaic and Greek. He would have to practice his letters to form them properly. What else could Luke mean when he said that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature (Luke 2)? He would have had to apprentice with his father in the carpenter shop in order to make goods his neighbors needed. He would have had belly aches, vomiting, and diarrhea. He would have been laid up for days with the flu and had bunions and blisters on his feet. A truly human Jesus would have had toothaches and probably lost some teeth before he was in his 20s. Fortunately, his wisdom teeth would have come in about then in order to fill in the gaps and help chew his food.

We are not very comfortable with a truly human Jesus because we’re not comfortable in our skin. So I guess it makes sense that we would think Jesus had a different kind of skin, skin that wouldn’t blister in the sun, freckle or wrinkle with age. Our Jesus may have been the Word made flesh (John 1) but He had a different sort of flesh than ours.

The 2^nd century Christians known as the Gnostics were so uncomfortable in their skin that they denied Christ his. He only appeared to be human. He only seemed to suffer for there can be no true participation of the divine in the ugliness of humanity.

If the incarnation is true, if God has become flesh and dwelled among us in the historic person known as Jesus of Nazareth, and if Jesus truly died on the cross and rose bodily from the grave, then this body we inhabit matters. It matters to God. It must also matter to us.

August 20, 2013

Did Jesus Have All His Teeth?

So, here is an interesting question: did Jesus have all his teeth? Now I’m not asking whether Jesus was born with a full complement of primary (or baby) and permanent teeth. I’m wondering whether Jesus had all his teeth when he left behind his private life in Nazareth for the more public life of an itinerant preacher and healer. According to Luke, he was “about 30” at the time. The question was prompted by two things. First, a conversation with colleagues, Dr. Randy Richards, dean of theology at Palm Beach Atlantic University, and Dr. Rodney Reeves, dean of theology at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri. We had co-authored a book in 2007 entitled Rediscovering Paul (InterVarsity). Randy had been a missionary in Indonesia for 10 years and had worked closely with indigenous populations far removed from the kind of health and dental care available to most western people. Second, last week I was in Boston and visited the Peabody Museum at Harvard. There was a photo-exhibition of indigenous people from Papua New Guinea. I noticed that most people photographed were missing teeth. Many of those people were of the same age as Jesus when he started his public ministry.

This may sound like strange question. I can hear someone say, “Of course, Jesus had all his teeth. This is America and we have the best health care and dental care in the world.” Someone else might state, “Of course he did. I have seen the movies. Jesus was a good-looking, leading-man type. Taller than most. He was a bit somber, but he did smile and I’m sure he had all his teeth.” Someone else might declare in good faith, “Of course he did. He was God’s Son. He may have been human but God the Father would have protected him from tooth decay and other disgusting human maladies.”

Now this is first of all a historical question and historians base their conclusions on evidence. That evidence comes primarily in two kinds: literary and material. Literary evidence refers to written documents composed roughly from the relevant time period. Material evidence refers to the kinds of things archaeologists can dig up. To answer my current question we would need some physical description of Jesus from a contemporary source and the body of Jesus to examine.

The earliest sources we have for Jesus (Christian and non-Christian) provide no details of his physical appearance. We don’t know how tall he was. We don’t know the color of his skin, his hair, or his eyes. The sources provide no description at all. We assume he had a beard based primarily on what was customary for men at the time. Now this may strike us as strange given our level of interest in peoples’ physical appearance. But our interests are different than the ancients’. Ancient biographies—the NT Gospels are types of biographies—were most interested in what a person said and did. That was the measure of a man, not the color of his eyes or the strength of his jaw.

So there is no literary evidence. What about material?

Well, if Christianity is correct, then the body of Jesus was transformed into a new kind of body at the resurrection on the first Easter. Therefore, no human remains would be available to examine. If Christianity is not correct, then the bones of Jesus could still be among us. The problem is: how would we know if we found them? Assume for a moment we unearthed a bone box (an ossuary) marked with the name “Jesus, son of Joseph.” Would that prove that we had discovered the remains of Jesus. No. Both Jesus and Joseph were common names at the time. To date no one has made a credible case that the bones of Jesus have been identified. So there is no material evidence to examine in order to shed light on this question.

OK, if we have no literary evidence or material evidence to go on, what do we do? Well, we proceed cautiously and consider the experience/culture of people who are roughly analogous to the time of Jesus. What happens generally to people who are 30 plus years old who do not have access to fluoride in the water, modern toothbrushes, toothpaste, dental floss, and the kind of dental care we are accustomed to. Now this is not to say that Jesus and his contemporaries had no dental hygiene at all. We know that ancient peoples used chew sticks, bird feathers, and twigs to clean their teeth. We know too that Greeks and Romans had developed what we might call toothpastes that were rubbed onto teeth with their fingers or rags. These methods were better than doing nothing at all. But even with these we don’t have to look far around the world to see that many adults in their 20s to 30s begin losing their teeth to decay and periodontal disease. In fact most people who have no access to dental care begin losing teeth in their 20s.

Tooth decay is caused by a combination of bacteria and food. Bacteria feed on the sugar in the foods we eat to create acids and those acids break down our enamel causing decay. Enough decay means we lose the tooth. The normal diet in Jesus’ time would not have included as many sugars as ours, but the wine people drank had some antibacterial properties. But that was not likely to have been enough for people to have kept all their teeth into their 30s or 40s.

It is always a bit dicey to move from the general to the particular. What is generally true for most people is not always true for an individual. While most people in their 30s across the world with limited dental care suffer tooth decay and loss, we cannot say for certain what has happened to a specific person in the past. So, did Jesus have all his teeth when he embarked on his public ministry? Probably not. We cannot say for sure. But even if he had, no one listening to Jesus teach would have thought it strange because most everyone they knew of that age had lost one or more teeth.

Now, as I said, this is first of all a historical question, but since Christianity is a faith based in history there are theological ramifications as well. In the next post we will explore some of those.

August 13, 2013

Judge Not

Someone last week accused me of being “judgmental.” My first thought was to respond, “how judgmental of you!” But I thought better of it. Instead I submitted my “questionable” comments to other people whom I trust and they disagreed that my tone was judgmental. I did later tweet the following: “If you accuse someone of being judgmental, are you being . . . judgmental?”

I looked up the word “judgmental” in dictionary.com. Here is what it says: “1. involving the use or exercise of judgment; 2. tending to make moral judgments.” Based on that definition, it seems to me all of us need to be “judgmental.” All of us need to exercise judgment, hopefully good judgment. All of us should be thinking about morals and ethics, pondering the consequences of our actions, and advocating for what is good and true and right. Seems to me we do this all the time.

Generally, Christians who want to accuse others of judging point to Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:1ff). Here is the King James Version:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

² For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

³ And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

⁴ Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

⁵ Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

If you study it carefully, you will notice that Jesus’ teaching has four parts:

(a) an admonition . . . do not judge

(b) a rationale . . . for you will be judged in the same way, by the same standard

(c) an example (in this case a particularly ludicrous example) . . . the log in your eye/ the dust in the other’s eye

(d) a restatement and clarification of the initial admonition . . . take care of your own issue before you try to address someone else’s

Some people have thought Jesus prohibited his followers from ever exercising judgment or expressing an opinion. Not true. If so, then Jesus violates his own principle time and again. In fact in the very next breath Jesus says: “Don’t give precious things to dogs. Don’t cast your pearls before swine. . . . “ (Matthew 7:6). Now Jesus isn’t talking about pets and barnyard animals. He is talking about people. Some people are dogs. Some are swine. In other words some people are like animals, unable to distinguish between one thing or another. You don’t share with them holy and precious things; they will ruin them and then turn on you. Later in Matthew (chapter 23) Jesus criticized the Pharisees for loving attention, keeping people from God, and stealing from the poor. He says, “Woe to you Pharisees, woe to you who teach the law, hypocrites! You traverse hills and mountains and seas to make one convert, and then when he does convert, you make him much more a son of hell than you are. . . Woe to you , teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like a grave that has been whitewashed. You look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside you are full of moldering bones and decaying rot” (Matthew 23:2-39). Seems to me Jesus has made a judgment. Seems to me he has expressed a judgment. Seems to me he is not being very PC. So what do we make of it?

First, let’s recognize that Jesus was a deeply polarizing figure. People either loved him or despised him. He made a lot of people angry, particularly people in power. Ultimately, he was crucified on a Roman cross for sedition. Let’s leave behind the silly, adolescent notion that Jesus walked around spitting out witty aphorisms and telling everybody to get a long. Jesus’ wasn’t crucified for being “nice” and urging everyone to be “nice” too. He came into a world deeply marred and broken. Some powerful people had vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Jesus muddied their water.

So what does Jesus want us to do? Well, he wasn’t saying: “don’t form an opinion.” He wasn’t saying: “don’t express an opinion.” Based on the entire teaching–admonition, rationale, example, and restatement—Jesus was urging his followers to examine themselves first before seeking to correct another brother or sister. In other words, correction is needed in the church. Your friend may have something in her eye. She needs help getting it out. But before you can help her, you must remove the obstruction in your own.

If you are addicted to money and what it can buy, don’t go around correcting others for the same problem. Do they need help? Absolutely. But you are not the best person to offer correction. If you have trouble being faithful to your husband, don’t condemn somebody who is struggling with the same problem. Does she need help? Absolutely. But you are not the best person to offer counsel. If you have a tendency to lash out in anger, don’t be hyper-critical of a brother with an anger-management issue. Does he need help? Absolutely. But you’re not the one to be able to bring correction. At least not until you have dealt with your own issue successfully.

Here is the punchline of Jesus’ teaching: “Remove the plank from your own eye, and then perhaps you will be able to see clearly how to help your brother flush out his sawdust” (Matthew 7:5, The Voice)

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