Episcopal priest and mother of two, Chloe Breyer, speculates about the illegitimacy of Jesus in her Slate.com article, The Earthly Father - What if Mary wasn't a virgin? [H/T: T-19]
The allegations as to Jesus' illegitimate birth go way, way back, to the Jewish leaders of the first century, and the anti-Christian polemicist, Celsus. Such charges have been revived in our day via the "historical Jesus" quest and its postmodern manifestation in the Jesus Seminar. The claim is that Mary was pregnant with Jesus by another man than her betrothed, Joseph--in one accounting by Panthera, a Roman soldier. The Christians, then, to cover over this embarrassing detail for one who was supposed to be the Son of God, claimed a miraculous virgin birth.
But what's at stake in all this? Why does the Creed insist on asserting the virginity of Mary? Is this just a bunch of dogmatic fundamentalism? Is it really necessary to Christian faith to believe in the virginity of Mary? Is this a core Gospel doctrine? What would it really matter if we allowed some good-hearted quibbling on Mary's virginity?
After all, if Orthodoxy insists on a virginal conception so as to safeguard Jesus' divinity by excluding human paternity, then, according to Rev. Breyer:
The illegitimacy tradition, by contrast, holds that the Holy Spirit supplemented, rather than replaced, Jesus' human paternity.
And isn't that sort of what the Holy Spirit does for us?
Therein lies the most important of two immediate problems for those who want to deny Mary's virginal conception: Jesus then becomes just like us. Period. Full stop. Just: Like us. This is the problem that makes this some other Gospel than the one received from the Apostles: it means Christ is not by nature God. He is only God by adoption. And if he is not really God by nature, we are not really saved.
More on the implications in a moment.
First a little background on how a minister, claiming the Christian faith, can boldly argue for the legitimacy of this as an alternative form of Christian faith. Breyer gets the bulk of her ruminations here from Dr. Jane Schaberg's 1987 book (excerpts of which can be found here).
In 1987, Schaberg, a biblical studies professor at the University of Detroit Mercy, published The Illegitimacy of Jesus. Her central argument was that Matthew and Luke's Gospels originally told of an illegitimate conception rather than a miraculous virgin one.
Breyer then rehearses the "few short passages in two of the four Gospels" which provide the sources for the virginal conception of Mary.
In Matthew, an angel appears to Joseph, who is perplexed about his fiancee's pregnancy. Should he divorce Mary or have her stoned her to death, as the law of Deuteronomy requires? "Joseph, Son of David," says the angel, "Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus." The angel then goes on to quote the Hebrew prophet Isaiah. "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel." (In fact, "virgin" comes from Matthew's use of a Greek mistranslation; the Hebrew in Isaiah reads "young girl.") The version in Luke is similar.
One first of all notes the simple assertion that parthenos "mistranslates" the Hebrew. Of course Rev. Breyer fails to note that the texts of the Greek Septuagint, from which Matthew takes his citation of Isaiah, are generally a millennium older than our Hebrew m