[Oe List ...] 11/08/12, Spong: The Birth of Jesus, Part I: Introduction
Jim Wheeler
oferwheeler at gmail.com
Fri Jan 11 09:05:12 PST 2013
Ellie, I appreciate your postings of Spong writings. I inadvertently "lost"
the one on Ruth. Could you please repost it or forward it to me directly at
Jim Wheeler jimandjo at sbcglobal.net.
I like to add it to my files on Spong's NT background work.
Grace and peace,
Jim Wheeler
On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 2:42 PM, Ellie Stock <elliestock at aol.com> wrote:
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> The Birth of Jesus, Part I: Introduction
> Most of the portraits of the mother of Jesus that hang in the great
> museums of the world are dependent first on the biblical stories of Jesus’
> birth and second on the presumed appearances of his mother at the foot of
> the cross. Take those two traditions away from the New Testament and the
> mother of Jesus almost totally disappears. Indeed, what remains is mostly
> negative. She is portrayed in Mark (chapters 3 and 6) as thinking that
> Jesus was “beside himself,” that is “out of his mind” and she, along with
> his brothers, moves to “put him away.” He had, this story implies, become
> an embarrassment to the family. In the Fourth Gospel, in the narrative of
> the water being changed into wine, the mother of Jesus is portrayed as
> inappropriately pushing Jesus to act and she receives from him the rebuke,
> “Woman, what have you to do with me, my hour has not yet come?” She is
> also not present at the cross in the writings of Paul or in any of the
> earlier gospels of Mark, Matthew or Luke. Only with the appearance of the
> Fourth Gospel at the end of the first century did anyone think to portray
> her at the foot of the cross.
> These biblical facts force us to recognize that most of the ideas we have
> about the mother of Jesus are late developing myths that make assumptions
> the Bible does not make. The birth stories are found first in Matthew, the
> dating of which is generally between 82 and 85, and second in Luke, which
> is generally thought to have been written about a decade after Matthew.
> This means that the New Testament’s accounts of Jesus’ birth are both
> products of a time 52-65 years after the life of Jesus came to its earthly
> end and some 82-95 years after the time of his birth. This is not eye
> witness reporting. Clearly the tradition that was built around the mother
> of Jesus is both late developing and continues to grow with the passing of
> years.
> Once the time of the writing of the New Testament has passed, however, the
> mythology that developed around the mother of Jesus apparently knew no
> bounds. The virgin mother of the birth narratives became in successive
> generations, first, the permanent virgin, thus redefining Jesus’ siblings,
> referred to by name in both Galatians and in Mark, and referred to in John
> simply as “his brothers,” as half brothers or cousins. Next she was
> declared to have been a “post-partum” virgin, which suggested that even the
> birth of Jesus did not disturb her virginal hymen. In the service of that
> idea the “Fathers” of the church even searched the scriptures for biblical
> texts that would support this growing conviction. They settled on two.
> First, they looked at the writings of a sixth century BCE prophet named
> Ezekiel, who in the first verse of the 44th chapter wrote these words:
> “This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened and no one shall enter
> by it, for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it
> shall remain shut.” Without either apology or embarrassment, they leaped
> on these words to claim that the “post partum virginity” of the “Blessed
> Virgin Mary” had actually been predicted by the prophets! The second text
> was found in the resurrection story according to the Fourth Gospel. In
> that narrative the disciples were in hiding in an upper room with the doors
> and the windows closed and locked and Jesus came and stood in their midst.
> If the risen Christ could pass through walls guarded by locked doors, they
> argued, it was no great stretch to imagine the infant Christ passing
> through the birth canal of his mother without breaking the hymen.
> Mythology always does strange things to facts and to reality.
> By the 19th century, devotion to the mother of Jesus became so strong
> that the Roman Catholic Church, in which this devotion was most encouraged,
> declared that she, unlike all other human beings, had been “immaculately
> conceived.” That is, her mother had been miraculously cleansed of the sin
> of Adam, which was believed to have infected all human beings and to have
> been passed on from generation to generation. For Jesus to have been born
> without sin, his mother would have to have been especially prepared for
> this birth. This necessity also reflected the fact that in the early
> years of the 18th century, the discovery had been made that women have an
> egg cell and therefore that the woman literally contributes half of the
> genetic makeup of every person who has ever been born. Prior to this the
> assumption was that the woman simply provided the womb that nurtured the
> male seed to maturity. Like “Mother Earth” into which the farmer planted
> the seed, the woman’s role had been seen as simply to bring to birth the
> life that came from the male. When the egg cell was discovered, the
> realization dawned on the leadership of the church that the mother of Jesus
> was, like all women and indeed like all people, a child of Adam and so the
> sinlessness of Jesus was compromised through his mother’s line. That had
> not been a problem in the old view of reproduction. The Immaculate
> Conception addressed that theological problem demonstrating once and for
> all that even “infallible” doctrines are forced to adjust to new
> discoveries.
> The final chapter in the mythological development of the mother of Jesus
> came in the 20th century when Mary was declared to have been bodily
> assumed into heaven. Since she was born without sin, she was not required
> to go through the passage of death, since death, according to the story of
> the Garden of Eden, was punishment for sin.
> Carl Jung rejoiced in the Vatican’s declaration of the bodily assumption
> of the mother of Jesus into heaven because in his world of symbols this
> meant that the feminine had finally been lifted into God and the
> patriarchal tyranny of a God conceived of in only masculine terms and
> always addressed as “Father” had finally been tempered.
> In this new series of columns over the next few months, I want, first, to
> get underneath the mythology of the ages and second, the development found
> in the New Testament itself, so that we can look at Jesus, the mother of
> Jesus and the entire Christian story with a set of eyes honed by
> scholarship and tempered by the facts of history as we can demonstrate
> them. I trust it will be an illuminating and worthwhile story for my
> readers.
> If the familiar biblical images of the mother of Jesus are late
> developing, what do we have that is original and perhaps trustworthy? That
> is the question we will address as this series unfolds. I begin with some
> statements of fact that I will pursue in detail going into each of them
> deeply before any conclusions are reached, probably some time in February.
> For now, I simply file them as bullet points for your consideration. As the
> Book of Common Prayer in my church states these bullet points are designed
> to be “read, marked, learned and inwardly digested.” This series will
> provide the time to do just that.
>
> - We can now date the life of Jesus with some degree of accuracy.
> Recent discoveries have made it possible to fix the life of Jesus between
> the years of 4 BCE and 30 CE. We get to these dates first by the discovery
> in ancient Roman records that King Herod died in 4 BCE and since the clear
> New Testament tradition is that Jesus was born when Herod was the king so
> we fix the date of Jesus birth at 4 BCE. Second, we learn, once more from
> secular records, that Pilate was the procurator of Judea for the Roman
> Empire between the years 26-36 CE. If, as each of the gospels asserts, the
> crucifixion occurred under the authority of Pilate, then the crucifixion
> has to happen some time between those dates. Roman records also provide us
> with some other facts in the life of Pilate that have to do with the
> reasons for his removal from office. Since they appear to have happened
> well after the crucifixion we can squeeze those dates a bit closer to
> perhaps 28-32 as the time of the crucifixion. We then split the difference
> and settle on 30, with the knowledge that we might be off two years in
> either direction. So for our working purposes, we set the life of Jesus
> between 4 BC and 30 CE.
> - We have nothing preserved in writing anywhere of anything concerning
> the life of Jesus before the year 51 CE. That is a silent and dark
> historical tunnel, which can be illumined only by speculation. It is
> filled in only by what we call “the oral tradition” that we have almost no
> way of recreating, entering or capturing.
> - Paul the first writer, whose work was destined to be included in the
> New Testament, did all of his writing between the years 51 and 64. Not all
> of the epistles attributed to Paul are authentically from his hand. The
> ones about whom a consensus of the certainty of Pauline authorship exists
> are I Thessalonians, Galatians, I and II Corinthians, Romans, Philemon and
> Philippians. This means that II Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, I
> and II Timothy, Titus and Hebrews are not considered to be from the hand of
> Paul.
> - Nowhere in any part of the authentic Pauline corpus is there a
> reference of any kind to the birth of Jesus, nor is there any mention of
> the mother or father of Jesus. There are in Paul, however, several
> references, mostly in Galatians, to James, the brother of the Lord.
>
> Our study of the birth of Jesus will therefore start with Paul, the
> earliest writer in the New Testament. That means that we will start our
> investigation in the sixth and seventh decades of the Christian era.
> I hope that whets your appetite. We will continue the drama in subsequent
> columns.
> ~John Shelby Spong
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> Question & Answer
> Ed Branthaver, via the Internet, writes:
> Question:
> You have been a long time favorite author of mine ever since I read *Rescuing
> the Bible from Fundamentalism<http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=fa340b680d&e=db34daa597>
> .* I have every one of your books in my personal library. I grew up in
> the tradition of a liberal Church of the Brethren to which I still hold
> some loyalty. However, in all my years, I was never able to understand
> much of the biblical language or teachings. I was in my 60th year before I
> discovered you and your writings. Let me say you are the first person who
> has helped me understand what for a long time has confused me. Recently, I
> came across a small book by Anthony Freeman, *God in Us*. He claims that
> his use of the term God (instead of referring to a supernatural being)
> refers to the sum of all values and ideals in life: Positive values like
> goodness, love, knowledge, wisdom, power (used rightly), etc. and negative
> values like freedom for the fear and tyranny of death, of suffering, etc.
> He says, “Do you believe in God? is like asking “How long is a piece of
> string? Just tell me what sort of God you have in mind and I will tell you
> whether I believe in him (her, it.)” He labels his philosophy, Christian
> Humanism, and his call to “radical insecurity” which carries an element of
> uncertainty, sure sounds a lot like your recent call to “Think Different,
> Accept Uncertainty.” Could you call the New Christianity for a New World
> Christian Humanism?
> Answer:
> Dear Ed,
> I have known and admired Anthony Freeman for a long time. He was an
> Anglican priest until the Anglican hierarchy decided that his view of God
> was not sufficient for him to represent that church as one of its ordained
> servants. I would never have made such a judgment. No person’s view of
> God is the same as God! I’m not at all sure that the view of God reflected
> in those Anglican hierarchical figures is a view of God that is sufficient
> for them to remain in their respective positions of authority either. They
> simply validate tradition while Anthony has challenged the adequacy of that
> tradition. Only time will tell which attitude is closer to the truth and
> history has consistently shown that those who stand outside the traditional
> theological lines are harbingers of the future majority.
> Does this mean that I believe that Anthony’s view of God is complete? No,
> but neither is the view of his hierarchical theological judges or my view
> of God. What ecclesiastical heresy hunters never understand is no human
> mind and no religious tradition can ever fully embrace or express the truth
> of God in any human words or in any established doctrines and dogmas of any
> church. Churches are always pretending that they possess the ultimate
> truth of God. I think that is nothing short of idolatry. I believe I
> experience God and I can talk about my experience. I do not believe I can
> define God, nor do I believe anyone else can.
> I find the phrase Christian Humanism to be an appealing one. The opposite
> of humanism is not the lack of or the inability to embrace the reality of a
> supernatural deity. The opposite of humanism is to be inhumane! I think
> Jesus is about expanded life and expanded consciousness; about calling us
> into the fullness of lour humanity. Humanism shares that goal, but would
> probably not embrace my definition. Humanism is thus not my enemy, but my
> ally. I think of myself as a Christian Humanist, but I want both of these
> words to carry equal weight.
> I hope this helps.
> ~John Shelby Spong
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