The Deification of Jesus: Matthew Part 2

These series of posts are a non-literalist Christian's exploration of images of Jesus as Divine in Christianity and the New Testament. I am examining where these images came from and the reasons they were created. This is also an investigation of these image's meanings to those who created them and what meaning they may hold for myself and others today.

After exploring the Gospel of Mark, I began an investigation of the Gospel of Matthew with the last post. Again, I plan to investigate the images this community used to express who Jesus had become to them and to explore whether any of them portrayed Jesus as in any sense Divine, or more than human.

In the last post, I looked at the first chapter of Matthew which begins with, "the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham". I stated that, if the community of Matthew took the Divine conception portrayed later literally this would be an odd way to claim Jesus' lineage.   If Joseph is only Jesus', "adoptive", father, then why claim his legitimacy as based on descent from Abraham and David through Joseph?  And why make this claim so important that it is the opening of the Gospel?

18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about[d]: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet[e] did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

So, the Gospel writers start off by naming Jesus as the Messiah, God's chosen king for Israel, and state that he meets the eligibility requirements due to his descent from Abraham and David through Joseph.  They make this their primary statement about Jesus and spend the first half of the chapter listing a detailed genealogy to back this claim.  Then half way through the chapter, the Gospel writers completely discredits this argument by having Joseph testify that he is not Jesus' father.  As I explored in the last post, there is no precedent in Jewish Scripture for an "adopted" son claiming his adoptive father's lineage.  In fact, there is so little evidence of adoption, taking another's child as one's own, in the Scriptures that it has been doubted whether this was practiced at all. Even, Ishmael, Abraham's first son by Hagar, his wife Sarai's Egyptian handmaiden, is denied his birthright and heritage because he is not also the child of Sarai.

Joseph's testimony not only shatters Jesus' eligibility as Messiah, but also to have any legitimate voice in the Jewish community.  It brands Jesus as a "Mamzer". As Bruce Chilton, in his Book, "Rabbi Jesus", explains, this was a caste in Jewish society of Israelites of suspect parentage, born of a prohibited sexual union such as incest or with a non-Israelite. Also called a shetuqi or "silenced one" in the Mishnah at a later period, one without a voice in the public congregations of Israel.

"No one born of a forbidden marriage" (footnote - Or one of illegitimate birth) "nor any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD,"(Deuteronomy 23:3 NIV The Holy Bible)

One view that could be taken on this would be that it speaks to the Gospel's honest and unbiased reporting of the facts, even those that undermine the Gospel's contention. This argument for the credibility of the Gospels has been made around the story of the two Marys being the first to report Jesus' resurrection. Since women were not viewed as credible witnesses in Jewish society, this argument contends that they would not have been given this role if the Gospel was not unbiased in its reporting.

I think it much more likely that the belief in the community of Mathew and the wider Jewish community that Joseph was not Jesus' father and that Jesus did not have a legitimate claim as the son of any Jewish father was strong enough that the writers felt compelled to address it. This belief must have been prevalent enough and enough of a stumbling block that it required the writers to give a reason why this did not completely discredit Jesus and his teaching.  Jesus' parentage as a contemporary issue might also be suggested by the fact that the Gospel of Mark, believed to be written earlier, avoids Jesus' parentage and his life before being baptized by John completely.
 

Another perspective which may be helpful when looking at this apparent contradiction between Jesus' eligibility resting on his descent through Joseph and the testimony of Joseph that Jesus is not his child, is the understanding that the Gospel is a compilation of a number of early Christian writings by various authors assembled by a Christian community between 80 and 90 AD into one book, most likely by a, "decision of committee".   There are three main sources of material, the Gospel of Mark, the collection of sayings known as the Q source, and material unique to his own community, called "Special Matthew", or the M source. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew)

During University, I had the privilege of having Dr. Herbert W. Basser, a Jewish theologian and scholar of religion, as a Professor for one of my two religion electives.  A friend of mine recently had him as a Professor for New Testament studies while he was finishing his book, The Gospel of Matthew and Judaic Traditions: A relevance based commentary, I asked her how Dr. Basser would address this contradiction in Matthew.  Her reply was that Dr. Basser would point out that the book was a collection of early Christian writers from various authors, "assembled by committee", and that the genealogy at the beginning of our present form of the book is believed to be a later addition.  He would also assert that the Jewish mindset of this time would not have seen any problematic contradiction here, but would recognize the parentage story as myth and metaphor similar to what is found in other rabbinic writings of the time.

Next post, I will look at the story of the Divine inception in Matthew, the sources for this metaphor from pagan mythology, and the metaphorical meaning it may have held for this community.