There's something about Christmas and Christianity that seems more fair game to mock, many have pointed out over social media about a recent piece from The New York Times. "A Conversation About the Virgin Birth That Maybe Wasn’t," read the headline from columnist Nicholas Kristof, just three days before Christmas Eve, which Amy Curtis at our sister site of Twitchy also covered. Christmas tells the story of Jesus' birth, specifically to the Virgin Mary. It's also one of the four dogmas of the Catholic Church that Mary was perpetually a virgin.
Imagine the media of record doing this every year for any other faith’s holy days. pic.twitter.com/uJiqfLV6e3
— Alan Cornett (@alancornett) December 22, 2024
Christianity is the only religion they’ll have a “conversation” about. pic.twitter.com/Qj15QijkSD
— Adam Johnston (@ConquestTheory) December 23, 2024
... Right on schedule.
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) December 21, 2024
Hard to imagine them printing "Mohammad the Prophet, that maybe wasn't" pic.twitter.com/4xsCyYikSQ
The piece begins with a note, which reads in part: "This is the latest in my occasional series of conversations about Christianity, aimed at bridging America’s God gulf." If anything, though, it's a sense of mockery that has caused division and outrage among many. This particular piece is described as a conversation "with Elaine Pagels, a prominent professor of religion at Princeton University and an expert on the early church."
The conversation doesn't just dispute the virgin birth, it speaks to the theory that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier, and that's how he was conceived. As the interview begins:
Merry Christmas! This is a time when Christianity celebrates miracles and wonder — and “Miracles and Wonder” is the title of your fascinating forthcoming book. It raises questions about the virgin birth of Jesus, even pointing to ancient evidence that Jesus might have been fathered by a Roman soldier, possibly by rape. But before I ask you about that, I want to be respectful of readers who have a deep faith and may be upset by this line of inquiry. How do we follow the historical research without causing offense?
I love these stories from the Gospels. The skies opened up when I heard them. They picture human lives drawn into divine mystery: “God in man made manifest,” as one Christmas carol says. But at a certain point I had to ask: What do they mean? What really happened? They are not written simply as history; often they speak in metaphor. We can take them seriously without taking everything literally.
So let’s go back to the Nativity. Of the four Gospels, two describe the virgin birth of Jesus, and two don’t mention it. The Gospel of Mark has people of Galilee referring to Jesus as the son of Mary, when the norm was to describe somebody as the son of his father. So did the neighbors growing up with Jesus regard him as fatherless?
We don’t know. Mark is the earliest Gospel written; Matthew and Luke are basically just revising it. Mark has no suggestion of a virgin birth. Instead, he says that neighbors called Jesus “son of Mary.” In an intensely patriarchal society, this suggests that Jesus had no father that anyone knew about, even one deceased. Yet even without a partner, Mary has lots of children: In Mark, Jesus has four other brothers and some sisters, with no recognized father and no genealogy.
You note that Matthew and Luke both borrowed heavily from Mark’s account but also seem embarrassed by elements of it, including the paternity question. Is your guess that they added the virgin birth to reduce that embarrassment?
Yes, but this is not just my guess. When Matthew and Luke set out to revise Mark, each added an elaborate birth story — two stories that differ in almost every detail. Matthew adds a father named Joseph, who, seeing his fiancée pregnant, and not with his child, decides to break the marriage contract. Luke, writing independently, pictures an angel astonishing a young virginal girl, announcing that “the Holy Spirit” is about to make her pregnant.
The most startling element of your book to me was that you cite evidence going back to the first and second centuries that some referred to Jesus as the son of a Roman soldier named Panthera. These accounts are mostly from early writers trying to disparage Jesus, it seems, so perhaps they should be regarded skeptically. But you also write that Panthera appears to have been a real person. How should we think about this?
Yes, these stories circulated after Jesus’ death among members of the Jewish community who regarded him as a false messiah, saying that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier. I used to dismiss such stories as ancient slander. Yet while we do not know what happened, there are too many points of circumstantial evidence to simply ignore them. The name Panthera, sometimes spelled differently in ancient sources, may refer to a panther skin that certain soldiers wore. The discovery of the grave of a Roman soldier named Tiberius Panthera, member of a cohort of Syrian archers stationed in Palestine in the first century, might support those ancient rumors.
You write that there were early accusations against Mary of promiscuity, connected to this allegation of an affair with Panthera. But you say that Roman soldiers brutally occupied Galilee in the period before Jesus was born, killing and raping with impunity. So, acknowledging that this is uncertainty stacked on uncertainty, if Panthera was involved, was it probably a case of rape?
Jewish revolutionaries, fighting “in the name of God and our common liberty” to free their land from Roman domination, attacked a Roman fortress and killed many soldiers. The governor brought in Roman soldiers who crucified perhaps 2,000 Jews, then garrisoned thousands of soldiers less than four miles from Nazareth. The historian Josephus says that the soldiers stationed there ravaged the area, taking advantage of local people in every way they could. Josephus also notes that Galilean Jews were especially worried about their daughters’ virginity. Noting such diverse evidence, I thought that these stories sounded plausible in a way I had never imagined.
Recommended
When we're dealing with not only how there wasn't a virgin birth, but that the Virgin Mary, was raped or that there were accounts of "promiscuity," offense has already been caused, to Kristof's question. It's another part of Catholic dogma that Mary was conceived without sin.
When it comes to four accounts of the Gospels differing, with some mentioning and others not mentioning the Virgin birth, it's well known that the four Gospels differ one one another. They were from different accounts written from different perspectives and for different audiences.
Speaking of perpetual virginity, there's another line from Pagels that also goes against Catholic teaching. "Yet even without a partner, Mary has lots of children: In Mark, Jesus has four other brothers and some sisters, with no recognized father and no genealogy," she mentions as part of her response as to if neighbors "regarded Jesus as fatherless." These "other brothers and sisters" may merely be close relations in other ways.
The evidence that Mary may have been raped and impregnated with Jesus by a Roman soldier because the soldier "appears to have been a real person" comes off as absurd. Even Kristof himself acknowledges that "These accounts are mostly from early writers trying to disparage Jesus." Pagels also uses the term "Palestine" to discuss the region.
Kristof posted his piece on the morning it was published, receiving only 32 likes while hundreds chimed in to offer their outrage over such a take.
Elaine Pagels, the historian of the early church, discusses ancient accounts suggesting that Jesus might have been fathered by a Roman soldier, Panthera. The Roman soldiers stationed just four miles from Nazareth were notorious for rape. https://t.co/9Y7PhGrlmW @nytopinion
— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) December 21, 2024
Join the conversation as a VIP Member