But it's only a "con artist" if you assume that he made up a lie and presented it as a fact. As soon as you see that this is not about "facts" but "truth" the whole question of "conning" people disappears. The writer is honestly trying to get the reader to understand the real truth of Jesus.
How is it "real truth" if it relies on saying things happened that didn't in order to line things up with the Septuagint?
As I noted earlier, my understanding from NT scholars I’ve heard or read is that the Greek preposition there is more ambiguous than the English “until.” Prepositions are weird things, and translating them isn’t always straightforward.
And yet the weird thing is that every English translation of Matthew I have come across uses " until" (or similar words). If there was ambiguity there, I would expect some translations to indicate this.
Yes, because “until” is the best English translation we have. But my understanding—again, happy to be corrected by people who actually know the Greek—is that the original Greek hēos does not imply, as the English “until” arguably does, that whatever is being described as not happening “until” Event X did happen after Event X. It simply means from the time of the announcement until Jesus was born they didn’t have sex. Hēos doesn’t imply anything about what happened after Jesus was born.
The phrase that comes to mind at the moment is "clutching at straws".
I would have to have a stake in a question like the perpetual virginity of Mary to need to clutch at straws. As I’ve already said, I’m agnostic on the issue, and it matters not a whit to my faith, nor does it matter to my faith whether James, Joseph, Judas and Simon were Jesus’s full brothers, half-brothers, step-brothers or cousins.
What I’m trying to do here, in the context of this thread, is deal with what the text actually says and doesn’t say, and separate that from assumptions we bring to the text or inferences we draw from the text. And that includes assumptions and inferences we make based on contemporary English translations when the text wasn’t written in contemporary English.
But you a) don't speak the language and b) don't live in the culture. So how are you going to separate your own "assumptions and inferences" from the text?
How does one do that when one studies any text, particularly a text from a different culture in a different language? Study and more study.
How are you able to study it if you don't know Greek?
By reading works—books, articles, lectures, etc.—written by scholars who do know the Greek, and the culture, and who, to the best of your ability to determine, are trustworthy and reliable.
So the whole point of starting this thread is to explore the fact that even if you are a legendary, expert scholar of ancient Greek, Aramaic, and/or Hebrew who knows the history, culture, etc. intimately, the words actually say and mean something specific. That's Ground Zero. One has to deal with that, and let it be exactly what it is, and go from there. But the there doesn't disappear.
But the viewpoint or the lens through which the texts are read do change.
Which is why I said "...different generations of Christians have ended up believing different things." So is it important what people believe, or to what degree?
Perhaps I should add that I have read a detailed analysis giving 5 reasons why the text does not refer to the Incarnation at the start, as has been traditionally supposed. I can follow those arguments as a scholar and they are complex, depending a lot on detailed analysis of the meanings of words and the accuracy of translations.
I can see where the analyst theologian is coming from but he seems to overlook an obvious point. This is generally reckoned to be a hymn! I find it pretty hard to believe that those who sang it in the 50s AD thought that it didn’t say something about the Divine and human nature of Jesus. Hymns are not codes to be cracked.
So having said that first, my puzzlement is believing that the text referred in some ways to Jesus baptism as his act of humbling or emptying himself. The traditional explanation is that the humbling or emptying (kenosis) refers to Jesus taking on human form.
It is certainly a form of poetry and again it’s hard for me to see how early believers would have thought of it any other way.
So I prefer the traditional view of the passage for that reason!
I think you are asserting that the virgin birth stories arose to answer the “yes but how” of God becoming Man.
No. I know of no one questioning the how. I really do not think the early Christians really cared. All I have said is Matthew--understand, I am only using his name because the book is attributed to him--seems to have drawn from the stories of the miraculous births of the Old Testament in addition to a bit of the Genesis story to testify to the that Jesus is the new Adam foretold in Scriptures and he is also God.
...my puzzlement is believing that the text referred in some ways to Jesus baptism as his act of humbling or emptying himself. The traditional explanation is that the humbling or emptying (kenosis) refers to Jesus taking on human form.
Bearing in mind that an early belief (subsequently rejected by the Church) was that Jesus "became" Son of God at his baptism (adoptionism), it seems possible that the early hymn could be understood as referring to the moment when the Son emptied himself and took on the human nature of Jesus at baptism. I'm not saying I believe it, but simply that if Mark's was the only gospel (and perhaps it was the only gospel known to the hymn writer), this could be a possible understanding of the hymn. In and of itself, I am not sure that the hymn demands incarnation through a virgin birth.
We’re certainly agreed that the Philippians text does not demand a Virgin birth.
Re adoptionism, which is a good point, it was certainly argued that Mark’s gospel (certainly the first) on it own features a low Christology and is therefore consistent with adoptionism. I’ve never been convinced by that myself. It’s a simple point but at his Baptism, the voice from heaven declares “You are my Son” not “You have become my Son”.
Also I’m not sure how you see this but my suspicion is that Mark’s gospel post dated Philippians. I thought the generally accepted view was that the Christians in the 50s AD would have had the oral traditions ( stories from mouth to mouth, possibly some written down,) but none of the written gospels. So I don’t think the suggested adoptionism in Mark would have been around for the hymn writer. Of course it could have been there in the early stories I suppose.
All in all I don’t think the adoptionist influence argument stands up. Which makes the traditional Incarnational view of Philippians 2 seem a lot better to me.
I think you are asserting that the virgin birth stories arose to answer the “yes but how” of God becoming Man.
I'd say that a lot of Scripture falls into the category of "yes, but how". The emphasis is on "yes" rather than "how", stories that provide a description of something important. For the early church, that small group of people who had travelled with Jesus for three years, their experience was that in Jesus they had seen God in bodily form - an impossibility according to all they had ever been taught. They also knew him to be the son of Mary. The Incarnation, and later developments of the Trinity as they fit the Spirit into their developing theology, addressed the "God became man" part of their experience; that still leaves the option of God somehow entering into a man (which in my mind seems far too similar to the concept of demonic possession), or that the God-Man had always been divine since birth. The birth narratives clearly express a belief that Jesus had always been God Incarnate, John in his prelude to his Gospel goes further by claiming that the Incarnate God had always been, and preclude any form of adoptionism.
You could apply the same thinking to the Pentateuch, Genesis and Exodus in particular, possibly into the the early "history" books of Judges and Kings etc, a "yes, but how" of the understanding of the people of Israel as being special people of God, especially in the context of Exile, what God called them to be and how they had failed.
But it's only a "con artist" if you assume that he made up a lie and presented it as a fact. As soon as you see that this is not about "facts" but "truth" the whole question of "conning" people disappears. The writer is honestly trying to get the reader to understand the real truth of Jesus.
How is it "real truth" if it relies on saying things happened that didn't in order to line things up with the Septuagint?
I think you are asserting that the virgin birth stories arose to answer the “yes but how” of God becoming Man.
No. I know of no one questioning the how. I really do not think the early Christians really cared. All I have said is Matthew--understand, I am only using his name because the book is attributed to him--seems to have drawn from the stories of the miraculous births of the Old Testament in addition to a bit of the Genesis story to testify to the that Jesus is the new Adam foretold in Scriptures and he is also God.
Or shown the parallels to the truthful and accurate description of Jesus' miraculous birth.
Scholars can pretty well tell if something is coming from an oral tradition. There are certain marks, which include:
Parallelism (“the first shall be last, and the last first”)
Triads (three temptations, three predictions, three prayers)
Chiasm (A–B–C–B'–A')
Catchwords linking sayings together
Short, vivid scenes with simple plots
These are designed for easy memorization and performance.
Matthew's narrative of the conception of Jesus has none of those marks. It shows every sign of being a literary creation by the evangelist, buit from Scripture, typology, and theological aims rather than from a pre-existing story circulating orally.
Matthew explicitly structures the story around fullfillment quotations;
Isaiah 7:14 (the virgin shall concieve)
Micah 5:2 (the birth will be in Bethlehem)
Hosea 11.1 (out of Egypt I have called my son.)
Jeremiah 31:15 (Racel weeping).
This is classic Jewish midrashic storytelling, a literary technique, not an oral one. The story reads like: "What must have happened so that Scripture would be fulfilled?" This is not how an oral tradition works.
I have already pointed out Paul never mentions it even when discussing Jesus' birth. Mark begins with Jesus as and adult. John uses a Logos theology. Also, it is not even mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles which relate how the early disciples gave testimony of Jesus
The mistake in the plain reading of the bible literature is that we are reading it through our own culture, personality, and all the things that make us what we are.
Scholarship helps us understand how the intended audiences would have read them, what they would have implicitly understood.
E.g. Matthew can be understood as literature that is repeating to a Jewish Christian community what they already believe about Jesus, using, as @Gramps49 said, midrash that they would understand, but also an altered style of Roman biography that focuses on who the person is, not a list of historical events.
@LatchKeyKid I was saving that last point for if we would discuss the birth narrative in Luke. Luke is writing to a Roman audience. He takes a much different tact than Matthew.
Yeah sure, a miracle, but what Chromosomes/alleles/genomes did the god-man have in his cells, and where did he get them from? The Orthodox view, and I think the Catholic view, is that he got 100% of his humanity from his mother. How does that work? I mean we can throw up our hands and say "goddidit" but then why bother having a SOF at all? I think Alan alluded to this.
Scholars can pretty well tell if something is coming from an oral tradition. There are certain marks, which include:
Parallelism (“the first shall be last, and the last first”)
That's more chiasmus than paralellism. The content is the same but the order is switched. Parallelism would be something like "The first shall be last, those who come before shall come after."
Yeah sure, a miracle, but what Chromosomes/alleles/genomes did the god-man have in his cells, and where did he get them from? The Orthodox view, and I think the Catholic view, is that he got 100% of his humanity from his mother. How does that work? I mean we can throw up our hands and say "goddidit" but then why bother having a SOF at all? I think Alan alluded to this.
Does humanity solely reside in genes? Would miraculous gene editing to turn an X into a Y (or merely activate the SRY gene) and fuse two eggs to make an embryo make the genetics other than human? Heck, would divine creation of an embryo to be implanted make the resulting baby non-human? Surely humanity also resides in being nurtured in the womb, nursed and raised, growing and learning as human? Even limiting it to biology, does not the building of the body in the womb from the mother's blood, flesh and bone not make the resulting baby fully human?
Scholars can pretty well tell if something is coming from an oral tradition. There are certain marks, which include:
Parallelism (“the first shall be last, and the last first”)
Triads (three temptations, three predictions, three prayers)
Chiasm (A–B–C–B'–A')
Catchwords linking sayings together
Short, vivid scenes with simple plots
These are designed for easy memorization and performance.
<snip>
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and not all oral tradition uses these techniques.
The scholar Kenneth Bailey describes what he calls informal controlled oral tradition where the ‘mechanism’ for preserving an account goes beyond oral mnemonic techniques.
Alongside that Matthew is generally considered to have been written 50 or 60 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus at a time when there will have been some eyewitnesses, and many more at only one remove from eyewitnesses. We’re not looking at centuries of oral transmission with what that might imply for corruption of the material.
I am not familiar enough with the Greek and Roman deities to make examples, but I think it is a fairly familiar motif that a deity impregnates a human woman.
I don't think that, in itself, is a particularly unusual story.
Yeah sure, a miracle, but what Chromosomes/alleles/genomes did the god-man have in his cells, and where did he get them from? The Orthodox view, and I think the Catholic view, is that he got 100% of his humanity from his mother. How does that work? I mean we can throw up our hands and say "goddidit" but then why bother having a SOF at all? I think Alan alluded to this.
Does humanity solely reside in genes? Would miraculous gene editing to turn an X into a Y (or merely activate the SRY gene) and fuse two eggs to make an embryo make the genetics other than human? Heck, would divine creation of an embryo to be implanted make the resulting baby non-human? Surely humanity also resides in being nurtured in the womb, nursed and raised, growing and learning as human? Even limiting it to biology, does not the building of the body in the womb from the mother's blood, flesh and bone not make the resulting baby fully human?
If that ever happened and there was a live birth, they wouldn't survive. Human genetics is particularly resistant to genetic mutations of this kind (for which there is a name that I don't remember) unlike for example strawberries.
Yeah sure, a miracle, but what Chromosomes/alleles/genomes did the god-man have in his cells, and where did he get them from? The Orthodox view, and I think the Catholic view, is that he got 100% of his humanity from his mother. How does that work? I mean we can throw up our hands and say "goddidit" but then why bother having a SOF at all? I think Alan alluded to this.
Does humanity solely reside in genes? Would miraculous gene editing to turn an X into a Y (or merely activate the SRY gene) and fuse two eggs to make an embryo make the genetics other than human? Heck, would divine creation of an embryo to be implanted make the resulting baby non-human? Surely humanity also resides in being nurtured in the womb, nursed and raised, growing and learning as human? Even limiting it to biology, does not the building of the body in the womb from the mother's blood, flesh and bone not make the resulting baby fully human?
If that ever happened and there was a live birth, they wouldn't survive. Human genetics is particularly resistant to genetic mutations of this kind (for which there is a name that I don't remember) unlike for example strawberries.
If we're already positing miraculous genetic modification, doing the GM right is hardly a stretch. Heck, Mary could have had a mosaic condition that gave her some functioning male gonadal tissue and she self-impregnated. Biology is weird AF when it comes to edge cases. Theoretical possibility indicated here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28282768/
I like @Arethosemyfeet’s nurturing point. Hadn’t thought of that simplicity before but it seems a pretty good speculative answer to the question “why on earth would God have done it this way”.
I think the critical evaluations of the texts of both Matthew’s and Luke’s birth narratives are very useful and informative to read and certainly show the different theological reflection of the authors and possible future editors. What may be easy to miss is their demonstration of the probable personal belief of these first century authors in the core reality of the Virgin birth. The alternative suggests or asserts that they were pious fraudulent propaganda for the sake of their audience. I really don’t buy that.
We’re certainly agreed that the Philippians text does not demand a Virgin birth.
Re adoptionism, which is a good point, it was certainly argued that Mark’s gospel (certainly the first) on it own features a low Christology and is therefore consistent with adoptionism. I’ve never been convinced by that myself. It’s a simple point but at his Baptism, the voice from heaven declares “You are my Son” not “You have become my Son”.
I don't think that this would be as significant as you are making it. "You are..." could easily be a declaration that produces the transformation. In some ways it is a bit like the declaration during a marriage ceremony - "I now declare that you are husband and wife". Not "I now declare that you have become husband and wife."
Also I’m not sure how you see this but my suspicion is that Mark’s gospel post dated Philippians. I thought the generally accepted view was that the Christians in the 50s AD would have had the oral traditions ( stories from mouth to mouth, possibly some written down,) but none of the written gospels. So I don’t think the suggested adoptionism in Mark would have been around for the hymn writer. Of course it could have been there in the early stories I suppose.
You're absolutely right! Mea culpa! I think I was too tired when writing this to be ultra clear. What I was referring to was the oral traditions that came to be written down as Mark's Gospel. If you like - Proto-Mark. My understanding is that Mark's Gospel is the nearest we have (in time and style) to the oral traditions of the works of Jesus. Those oral traditions would certainly have included the baptism, which however you regard it was a dramatic and powerful moment in the life of Jesus. And I am sure that the writer of the hymn would have known that story of the baptism - pretty much as we find it now in Mark's Gospel.
All in all I don’t think the adoptionist influence argument stands up. Which makes the traditional Incarnational view of Philippians 2 seem a lot better to me.
But YMMV and that’s fine.
Well adoptionism was rejected as a heresy and far be it from me to be a heretic! But I still think that the hymn in Philippians 2 doesn't demand an incarnational belief in terms of virgin birth.
(Can I just say that I have quite enjoyed this conversation. Even if we don't fully agree it has really got me thinking and drawing on stuff I read many years ago.)
Scholars can pretty well tell if something is coming from an oral tradition. There are certain marks, which include:
Parallelism (“the first shall be last, and the last first”)
Triads (three temptations, three predictions, three prayers)
Chiasm (A–B–C–B'–A')
Catchwords linking sayings together
Short, vivid scenes with simple plots
These are designed for easy memorization and performance.
Matthew's narrative of the conception of Jesus has none of those marks. It shows every sign of being a literary creation by the evangelist, buit from Scripture, typology, and theological aims rather than from a pre-existing story circulating orally.
Matthew explicitly structures the story around fullfillment quotations;
Isaiah 7:14 (the virgin shall concieve)
Micah 5:2 (the birth will be in Bethlehem)
Hosea 11.1 (out of Egypt I have called my son.)
Jeremiah 31:15 (Racel weeping).
This is classic Jewish midrashic storytelling, a literary technique, not an oral one. The story reads like: "What must have happened so that Scripture would be fulfilled?" This is not how an oral tradition works.
I have already pointed out Paul never mentions it even when discussing Jesus' birth. Mark begins with Jesus as and adult. John uses a Logos theology. Also, it is not even mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles which relate how the early disciples gave testimony of Jesus
Re Mark’s baptism account. I should have said that the language was reflective of Mark’s theology which was certainly low Christology but probably not adoptionalism. But we agree on the considered reflection on adoptionism anyway.
Re oral traditions. We agree the primacy of Mark as a written source and the evidence of its use in both Matthew and Luke. I don’t think this rules out other oral traditions which Luke and Matthew used, and Mark didn’t. Including for example a very early oral tradition or traditions about the Virgin birth.
As a side issue, without those prior oral traditions, we wouldn’t have the wonderful Samaritan and Prodigal parables.
The existence and significance of the oral traditions is a great topic.
As a side issue, without those prior oral traditions, we wouldn’t have the wonderful Samaritan and Prodigal parables.
The existence and significance of the oral traditions is a great topic.
I agree fully with regards to Good Samaritan and Prodigal parables! Absolutely foundational in understanding the significance of the teachings of Jesus in his time.
And there is always more to comprehend about the oral traditions and how they worked and changed over time. A fascinating little book that I used to have was by the German theologian Joachim Jeremias, about the "Unknown Sayings of Jesus". In it, Jeremias writes about a number of sayings of Jesus which didn't make it into the gospels but which we might have confidence in ascribing to him.
These days I feel slightly cautious about the word “traditions” as it seems to me to connote a long period of transmission.
The generally accepted date for Mark is around 70 AD. That means if it were being written now it would be recounting events which happened when I was in my mid to late twenties.
That’s right of course. Personally I think the interval between oral traditions and written records had something to do with the expectation of the parousia. But in any case it wasn’t that long.
The foundational Pauline letters were I think written in the 50s or very early 60s AD (probably with some subsequent editing and combining). That’s pretty early. The audience was a mixtures of Gentiles and diaspora Jews.
There’s a fair bit of argument about the dating of the Gospels. From memory. Bishop Robinson, hardly a conservative, thought they all emerged (including John) by AD 70. I’m not sure about that. But I think it’s hard to sustain an argument that they weren’t all first century AD. Given the parousia expectation effect, that’s not long after Gospel events either.
The evidence for a prior oral tradition is in the documents themselves and I find that argument convincing. Plus I’m convinced that the Gospel writers all demonstrate distinctive theologies. Which I think makes it quite difficult to distinguish between theological reflection re OT content and possible legendary additions.
There’s no doubt that the Gospels are a puzzle! But they are a pretty early puzzle!
When I hear the dates of the gospel being used to undermine their authenticity, I call to mind that my grandad used to tell me about life in the trenches in World War 1, and that was over 100 years ago.
Scholars date the Gospels by combining historical anchors, literary relationships, and community context. Mark is placed just after the 70 CE destruction of the Temple, which it appears to know. Matthew and Luke use Mark as a source, so they must be later, usually 80–90 CE. Their theology reflects a maturing church and post‑70 Jewish–Christian conflict. Luke is also dated through Acts, which assumes decades of Gentile mission. John shows the latest theological development, including Logos Christology and evidence of synagogue expulsion, placing it around 90–110 CE. Manuscript fragments and early Christian writers confirm all four were circulating by the early 2nd century.
Oral tradition shows signs of communal transmission—multiple versions, shifting contexts, mnemonic patterns, and later community concerns. A brilliant rabbi’s teaching shows a consistent voice—coherent themes, distinctive rhetoric, historical plausibility, and counter‑cultural elements. Scholars separate them by comparing versions, identifying editorial shaping, and testing coherence with Jesus’ broader message.
It is interesting to compare the teachings of Jesus found in Matthew and Luke against the versions in the Gospel of Thomas and indeed in other non-canonical gospels to see how each area/community developed the words of Jesus.
(If I could add any other books to the Canon of Scripture, the Gospel of Thomas would right up there alongside the Didache and the Martyrdom of Polycarp.)
I'm 'with' @Gramps49 and @Rufus T Firefly on the dating of the NT texts - I'm no expert but it accords with what I've read about current scholarly consensus on these things.
I'm also with @Barnabas62 on the traditional view of the virgin birth etc- as one would expect of course.
Something that may or may not be relevant to the discussion is that one of the issues determining which books should be canonised was the consideration of what should be read in church.
Which is why some of the eastern churches were the last to accept the Book of Revelation into the canon. They didn't want people getting whacky ideas if they heard it read in church.
Indeed, even though Revelation is considered canonical in the Orthodox Church and we base a lot of our liturgical ideas/practice on it - but no stinging scorpion guys as far as I can see but I'm sure we have more than our fair share of those - you won't hear readings from it in the Liturgy.
So, as far as we are concerned it'd be fine to read The Gospel of Thomas and the Didache or refer to them in sermons and talks etc but they wouldn't be read out in church services.
If the Gospel of Thomas is the one which has Christ saying, 'Cut into a tree with an axe and I am there,' then I think that's the quote Metropolitan Kallistos was referring to when he said there are extra-biblical sayings of Christ he'd be happy to accept.
The issue would be whether it squares with canonical scripture and the rest of Holy Tradition which includes the Fathers of course, the liturgical texts, iconography and the decrees of the Seven Ecumenical Councils.
If you are RC of course there are rather more Councils. Some 21 I think.
So whilst I understand and have some sympathy with views like, 'I wish we could have X, Y ad Z in the NT canon,' it doesn't make much sense from an Orthodox point of view as we probably have them anyway (unless they are obviously Gnostic or heretical) only we don’t read them out during the services.
Unless of course @Rufus T Firefly wants to hear 'The reading is from the Holy Gospel according to St Thomas.' 'Let us attend!' at an Orthodox service or a Protestant minister expounding on it in expository fashion.
Indeed, even though Revelation is considered canonical in the Orthodox Church and we base a lot of our liturgical ideas/practice on it - but no stinging scorpion guys as far as I can see but I'm sure we have more than our fair share of those - you won't hear readings from it in the Liturgy.
Revelation is indeed interesting. I am looking for a book that compares the city of Babylon to the New Jerusalem. It appears Babylon represents the world’s corrupt systems; New Jerusalem represents God’s healed creation. The book dramatizes the exodus from one to the other.
We'd have said something similar back in my restorationist house-church days.
And the radical Puritan sects went round singing 'Babylon is fallen, is fallen, is fallen / Babylon is fallen to rise no more!' after the execution of Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth.
Then we have Babylon as a corrupt world system in Rastafarianism.
Although if we were to include the Gospel of Thomas we'd have to contend with what some see as its rather negative view of women.
I've just skimmed through the Gospel of Thomas and can't really find anything negative about women. Perhaps saying 114, but that would open to interpretation.
I'd really love to hear someone preach on the Parable of the Flour Jar:
Jesus said, "The Father's kingdom can be compared to a woman carrying a jar of flour. While she was walking down [a] long road, the jar's handle broke and the flour spilled out behind her on the road. She didn't know it, and didn't realize there was a problem until she got home, put down the jar, and found it empty."
There is a big difference between the Didache and the Martyrdom of Polycarp on the one part and the gospel of Thomas on the other. The first two are straightforward works from the early post-Apostolic age. So they are not in the canon because they did not meet the criteria to be included. Although I think the Didache was lost for many centuries whereas Polycarp has always been known and passed on, as far as I know, nobody has ever suggested either that they be included in scripture or that they should be regarded as anything other than worthy and edifying.
There seems to be quite a lot of evidence that despite its bearing the title 'gospel', the gospel of Thomas always seems to have been regarded as dodgy, with garbled versions of familiar passages that recognised scripture already covered and tainted with current heresies which the orthodox of the time had a sharper nose for than we might have.
(114) Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life."
Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become
a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will
enter the kingdom of heaven."
That’s the verse from the Gospel of Thomas that, not surprisingly, causes upset. The obvious interpretation. that women can’t enter the Kingdom unless they become male, is very offensive.
Also, there are I think some concerns that some verses are Gnostic (e.g 39, 62). I’m not convinced. Quite a lot of it is the same or very similar to verses found in the Synoptic gospels. And some of that which isn’t is very strange, like the portion you quoted!
When I hear the dates of the gospel being used to undermine their authenticity, I call to mind that my grandad used to tell me about life in the trenches in World War 1, and that was over 100 years ago.
My grandfather died many years ago and made all kinds of claims to have been present at important events in history. Whilst some happened in his lifetime, most are unverifiable. Most likely he heard about these in the newspaper.
Memory is a strange thing, it is very easy to have false ones.
(114) Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life."
Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become
a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will
enter the kingdom of heaven."
That’s the verse from the Gospel of Thomas that, not surprisingly, causes upset. The obvious interpretation. that women can’t enter the Kingdom unless they become male, is very offensive.
Also, there are I think some concerns that some verses are Gnostic (e.g 39, 62). I’m not convinced. Quite a lot of it is the same or very similar to verses found in the Synoptic gospels. And some of that which isn’t is very strange, like the portion you quoted!
There is a reason why Paul writes in Galatians there are neither male of female ... all are one in Christ.
Comments
How is it "real truth" if it relies on saying things happened that didn't in order to line things up with the Septuagint?
How could Philippians 2 refer to Jesus baptism?
Oh and BTW my last post was addressed to Gramps49.
It is important to them.
Perhaps I should add that I have read a detailed analysis giving 5 reasons why the text does not refer to the Incarnation at the start, as has been traditionally supposed. I can follow those arguments as a scholar and they are complex, depending a lot on detailed analysis of the meanings of words and the accuracy of translations.
I can see where the analyst theologian is coming from but he seems to overlook an obvious point. This is generally reckoned to be a hymn! I find it pretty hard to believe that those who sang it in the 50s AD thought that it didn’t say something about the Divine and human nature of Jesus. Hymns are not codes to be cracked.
So having said that first, my puzzlement is believing that the text referred in some ways to Jesus baptism as his act of humbling or emptying himself. The traditional explanation is that the humbling or emptying (kenosis) refers to Jesus taking on human form.
It is certainly a form of poetry and again it’s hard for me to see how early believers would have thought of it any other way.
So I prefer the traditional view of the passage for that reason!
No. I know of no one questioning the how. I really do not think the early Christians really cared. All I have said is Matthew--understand, I am only using his name because the book is attributed to him--seems to have drawn from the stories of the miraculous births of the Old Testament in addition to a bit of the Genesis story to testify to the that Jesus is the new Adam foretold in Scriptures and he is also God.
Bearing in mind that an early belief (subsequently rejected by the Church) was that Jesus "became" Son of God at his baptism (adoptionism), it seems possible that the early hymn could be understood as referring to the moment when the Son emptied himself and took on the human nature of Jesus at baptism. I'm not saying I believe it, but simply that if Mark's was the only gospel (and perhaps it was the only gospel known to the hymn writer), this could be a possible understanding of the hymn. In and of itself, I am not sure that the hymn demands incarnation through a virgin birth.
Re adoptionism, which is a good point, it was certainly argued that Mark’s gospel (certainly the first) on it own features a low Christology and is therefore consistent with adoptionism. I’ve never been convinced by that myself. It’s a simple point but at his Baptism, the voice from heaven declares “You are my Son” not “You have become my Son”.
Also I’m not sure how you see this but my suspicion is that Mark’s gospel post dated Philippians. I thought the generally accepted view was that the Christians in the 50s AD would have had the oral traditions ( stories from mouth to mouth, possibly some written down,) but none of the written gospels. So I don’t think the suggested adoptionism in Mark would have been around for the hymn writer. Of course it could have been there in the early stories I suppose.
All in all I don’t think the adoptionist influence argument stands up. Which makes the traditional Incarnational view of Philippians 2 seem a lot better to me.
But YMMV and that’s fine.
You could apply the same thinking to the Pentateuch, Genesis and Exodus in particular, possibly into the the early "history" books of Judges and Kings etc, a "yes, but how" of the understanding of the people of Israel as being special people of God, especially in the context of Exile, what God called them to be and how they had failed.
I do enjoy the discussions, however. The Ship has a lot of very bright people on board and it’s a real privilege to engage with them.
This! This! This!
Or shown the parallels to the truthful and accurate description of Jesus' miraculous birth.
Parallelism (“the first shall be last, and the last first”)
Triads (three temptations, three predictions, three prayers)
Chiasm (A–B–C–B'–A')
Catchwords linking sayings together
Short, vivid scenes with simple plots
These are designed for easy memorization and performance.
Matthew's narrative of the conception of Jesus has none of those marks. It shows every sign of being a literary creation by the evangelist, buit from Scripture, typology, and theological aims rather than from a pre-existing story circulating orally.
Matthew explicitly structures the story around fullfillment quotations;
Isaiah 7:14 (the virgin shall concieve)
Micah 5:2 (the birth will be in Bethlehem)
Hosea 11.1 (out of Egypt I have called my son.)
Jeremiah 31:15 (Racel weeping).
This is classic Jewish midrashic storytelling, a literary technique, not an oral one. The story reads like: "What must have happened so that Scripture would be fulfilled?" This is not how an oral tradition works.
I have already pointed out Paul never mentions it even when discussing Jesus' birth. Mark begins with Jesus as and adult. John uses a Logos theology. Also, it is not even mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles which relate how the early disciples gave testimony of Jesus
Scholarship helps us understand how the intended audiences would have read them, what they would have implicitly understood.
E.g. Matthew can be understood as literature that is repeating to a Jewish Christian community what they already believe about Jesus, using, as @Gramps49 said, midrash that they would understand, but also an altered style of Roman biography that focuses on who the person is, not a list of historical events.
For Luke, the three hymns seem to be a reading back from the. Liturgy that Luke's audience was already using.
That's more chiasmus than paralellism. The content is the same but the order is switched. Parallelism would be something like "The first shall be last, those who come before shall come after."
(Trying to learn stuff from this fascinating thread!)
Does humanity solely reside in genes? Would miraculous gene editing to turn an X into a Y (or merely activate the SRY gene) and fuse two eggs to make an embryo make the genetics other than human? Heck, would divine creation of an embryo to be implanted make the resulting baby non-human? Surely humanity also resides in being nurtured in the womb, nursed and raised, growing and learning as human? Even limiting it to biology, does not the building of the body in the womb from the mother's blood, flesh and bone not make the resulting baby fully human?
The scholar Kenneth Bailey describes what he calls informal controlled oral tradition where the ‘mechanism’ for preserving an account goes beyond oral mnemonic techniques.
Alongside that Matthew is generally considered to have been written 50 or 60 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus at a time when there will have been some eyewitnesses, and many more at only one remove from eyewitnesses. We’re not looking at centuries of oral transmission with what that might imply for corruption of the material.
I don't think that, in itself, is a particularly unusual story.
If that ever happened and there was a live birth, they wouldn't survive. Human genetics is particularly resistant to genetic mutations of this kind (for which there is a name that I don't remember) unlike for example strawberries.
If we're already positing miraculous genetic modification, doing the GM right is hardly a stretch. Heck, Mary could have had a mosaic condition that gave her some functioning male gonadal tissue and she self-impregnated. Biology is weird AF when it comes to edge cases. Theoretical possibility indicated here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28282768/
I think the critical evaluations of the texts of both Matthew’s and Luke’s birth narratives are very useful and informative to read and certainly show the different theological reflection of the authors and possible future editors. What may be easy to miss is their demonstration of the probable personal belief of these first century authors in the core reality of the Virgin birth. The alternative suggests or asserts that they were pious fraudulent propaganda for the sake of their audience. I really don’t buy that.
I don't think that this would be as significant as you are making it. "You are..." could easily be a declaration that produces the transformation. In some ways it is a bit like the declaration during a marriage ceremony - "I now declare that you are husband and wife". Not "I now declare that you have become husband and wife."
But that's not a big thing.
You're absolutely right! Mea culpa! I think I was too tired when writing this to be ultra clear. What I was referring to was the oral traditions that came to be written down as Mark's Gospel. If you like - Proto-Mark. My understanding is that Mark's Gospel is the nearest we have (in time and style) to the oral traditions of the works of Jesus. Those oral traditions would certainly have included the baptism, which however you regard it was a dramatic and powerful moment in the life of Jesus. And I am sure that the writer of the hymn would have known that story of the baptism - pretty much as we find it now in Mark's Gospel.
Well adoptionism was rejected as a heresy and far be it from me to be a heretic! But I still think that the hymn in Philippians 2 doesn't demand an incarnational belief in terms of virgin birth.
(Can I just say that I have quite enjoyed this conversation. Even if we don't fully agree it has really got me thinking and drawing on stuff I read many years ago.)
I am with you all the way on this!
Thanks. Me too re enjoyment!
Re Mark’s baptism account. I should have said that the language was reflective of Mark’s theology which was certainly low Christology but probably not adoptionalism. But we agree on the considered reflection on adoptionism anyway.
Re oral traditions. We agree the primacy of Mark as a written source and the evidence of its use in both Matthew and Luke. I don’t think this rules out other oral traditions which Luke and Matthew used, and Mark didn’t. Including for example a very early oral tradition or traditions about the Virgin birth.
As a side issue, without those prior oral traditions, we wouldn’t have the wonderful Samaritan and Prodigal parables.
The existence and significance of the oral traditions is a great topic.
I agree fully with regards to Good Samaritan and Prodigal parables! Absolutely foundational in understanding the significance of the teachings of Jesus in his time.
And there is always more to comprehend about the oral traditions and how they worked and changed over time. A fascinating little book that I used to have was by the German theologian Joachim Jeremias, about the "Unknown Sayings of Jesus". In it, Jeremias writes about a number of sayings of Jesus which didn't make it into the gospels but which we might have confidence in ascribing to him.
The generally accepted date for Mark is around 70 AD. That means if it were being written now it would be recounting events which happened when I was in my mid to late twenties.
The foundational Pauline letters were I think written in the 50s or very early 60s AD (probably with some subsequent editing and combining). That’s pretty early. The audience was a mixtures of Gentiles and diaspora Jews.
There’s a fair bit of argument about the dating of the Gospels. From memory. Bishop Robinson, hardly a conservative, thought they all emerged (including John) by AD 70. I’m not sure about that. But I think it’s hard to sustain an argument that they weren’t all first century AD. Given the parousia expectation effect, that’s not long after Gospel events either.
The evidence for a prior oral tradition is in the documents themselves and I find that argument convincing. Plus I’m convinced that the Gospel writers all demonstrate distinctive theologies. Which I think makes it quite difficult to distinguish between theological reflection re OT content and possible legendary additions.
There’s no doubt that the Gospels are a puzzle! But they are a pretty early puzzle!
I agree.
(If I could add any other books to the Canon of Scripture, the Gospel of Thomas would right up there alongside the Didache and the Martyrdom of Polycarp.)
I'm 'with' @Gramps49 and @Rufus T Firefly on the dating of the NT texts - I'm no expert but it accords with what I've read about current scholarly consensus on these things.
I'm also with @Barnabas62 on the traditional view of the virgin birth etc- as one would expect of course.
Something that may or may not be relevant to the discussion is that one of the issues determining which books should be canonised was the consideration of what should be read in church.
Which is why some of the eastern churches were the last to accept the Book of Revelation into the canon. They didn't want people getting whacky ideas if they heard it read in church.
Indeed, even though Revelation is considered canonical in the Orthodox Church and we base a lot of our liturgical ideas/practice on it - but no stinging scorpion guys as far as I can see but I'm sure we have more than our fair share of those - you won't hear readings from it in the Liturgy.
So, as far as we are concerned it'd be fine to read The Gospel of Thomas and the Didache or refer to them in sermons and talks etc but they wouldn't be read out in church services.
If the Gospel of Thomas is the one which has Christ saying, 'Cut into a tree with an axe and I am there,' then I think that's the quote Metropolitan Kallistos was referring to when he said there are extra-biblical sayings of Christ he'd be happy to accept.
The issue would be whether it squares with canonical scripture and the rest of Holy Tradition which includes the Fathers of course, the liturgical texts, iconography and the decrees of the Seven Ecumenical Councils.
If you are RC of course there are rather more Councils. Some 21 I think.
So whilst I understand and have some sympathy with views like, 'I wish we could have X, Y ad Z in the NT canon,' it doesn't make much sense from an Orthodox point of view as we probably have them anyway (unless they are obviously Gnostic or heretical) only we don’t read them out during the services.
Unless of course @Rufus T Firefly wants to hear 'The reading is from the Holy Gospel according to St Thomas.' 'Let us attend!' at an Orthodox service or a Protestant minister expounding on it in expository fashion.
That might be fun, come to think of it.
Revelation is indeed interesting. I am looking for a book that compares the city of Babylon to the New Jerusalem. It appears Babylon represents the world’s corrupt systems; New Jerusalem represents God’s healed creation. The book dramatizes the exodus from one to the other.
We'd have said something similar back in my restorationist house-church days.
And the radical Puritan sects went round singing 'Babylon is fallen, is fallen, is fallen / Babylon is fallen to rise no more!' after the execution of Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth.
Then we have Babylon as a corrupt world system in Rastafarianism.
I've just skimmed through the Gospel of Thomas and can't really find anything negative about women. Perhaps saying 114, but that would open to interpretation.
I'd really love to hear someone preach on the Parable of the Flour Jar:
Jesus said, "The Father's kingdom can be compared to a woman carrying a jar of flour. While she was walking down [a] long road, the jar's handle broke and the flour spilled out behind her on the road. She didn't know it, and didn't realize there was a problem until she got home, put down the jar, and found it empty."
What do we make of that???
There is a big difference between the Didache and the Martyrdom of Polycarp on the one part and the gospel of Thomas on the other. The first two are straightforward works from the early post-Apostolic age. So they are not in the canon because they did not meet the criteria to be included. Although I think the Didache was lost for many centuries whereas Polycarp has always been known and passed on, as far as I know, nobody has ever suggested either that they be included in scripture or that they should be regarded as anything other than worthy and edifying.
There seems to be quite a lot of evidence that despite its bearing the title 'gospel', the gospel of Thomas always seems to have been regarded as dodgy, with garbled versions of familiar passages that recognised scripture already covered and tainted with current heresies which the orthodox of the time had a sharper nose for than we might have.
Here’s verse 114 from the GOT.
That’s the verse from the Gospel of Thomas that, not surprisingly, causes upset. The obvious interpretation. that women can’t enter the Kingdom unless they become male, is very offensive.
Also, there are I think some concerns that some verses are Gnostic (e.g 39, 62). I’m not convinced. Quite a lot of it is the same or very similar to verses found in the Synoptic gospels. And some of that which isn’t is very strange, like the portion you quoted!
My grandfather died many years ago and made all kinds of claims to have been present at important events in history. Whilst some happened in his lifetime, most are unverifiable. Most likely he heard about these in the newspaper.
Memory is a strange thing, it is very easy to have false ones.
There is a reason why Paul writes in Galatians there are neither male of female ... all are one in Christ.