A Christian Response to the Ancient Jewish Anti-Gospel

[Deadworm]

Jesus' Jewish enemies and later Jews in the Diaspora persecuted Jesus and then His followers and converts in an effort to stamp out our faith.  To pursue this goal they promoted their own anti-Gospel, a version of Jesus' life  that portrayed Him as a magician.  This version twisted factual material with misunderstandings, distortions, and outright lies and was apparently effective anti-Christian propaganda in the first and second centuries.  In this thread I want to document this anti-Gospel to demonstrate what early Christian apologists were up against, and then I want to show hoe the tables can be turned on this lying portrait to the advantage of effective Christian witness.  Here, then, is the hostile ancient Jewish caricature of Jesus' life that was used by Jews to counter early Christian missionary activities:

"Jesus was the illegitimate son of a spinner named Mary and Panthera, a Roman soldier  (so ancient rabbinic sources and Celsus).  In his earlier life he went to Egypt to study magic and even had his arms tattooed with magical spells (Celsus).  His so-called healings were not real and the cures didn't last (Quadratus).  On the contrary,, his miracles were either magically produced hallucinations or demonically inspired.  His disciples were sailors of the worst sort and he traveled around Galilee with them, making his living shamefully as a beggar.  He taught Jews to violate the Law of Moses authorized by God and he taught his followers magical rites in which they ate the body and drank the blood of babies!  He was crucified for practicing magic and promoting sedition (Celsus, again).  The gardener at the tomb where he was buried removed his corpse to prevent Christian sightseers from stepping on his cabbage (a Jewish view reported by Tertullian).  His disciples exploited his missing body to claim that he rose from dead and used this lie to justify the continuation of his cult."  

Morton Smith, a Columbia University professor, collected the evidence for this early Jewish portrait of Jesus in his book, "Jesus the Magician."  As an ex-Theology professor, I used this portrait as a pretext to teach an apologetic defense of the Gospel.  Professors are not supposed to proselytize the students at universities; so this Jewish portrait was a blessing in disguise because it gave me historical cover to justify my counter-arguments against skepticism about the historicity of Jesus'  incarnation, miracles, and resurrection.  J will demonstrate how in this thread in the hope that it will give Christian readers new ways to defend the Gospel.

[Deadworm]

First century Jews and Christians agree on one point--that Joseph is not the biological father of Jesus.  After Jesus begins his spectacular ministry, He returns to his home town to a hostile reaction.  The locals in Nazareth remember Him as "the carpenter, the son of Mary" and are "scandalized" by Him and His later claims (Mark 6:4).  In that patriarchal culture men were identified as the son of their named father.  So the reference to Jesus as "the son of Mary" seems to imply His illegitimate birth.  Indeed, first century rabbis ultimately identify a Roman soldier named Panthera as Jesus' true father!  How they came up with that name is an interesting question that I will take up in a future post.  For now, my point is that first-century Jews and Christians agree on one point-  that Joseph is not the natural father of Jesus.  This agreement rules out a common claim of anti-supernatural skeptics--that Jesus was born in the customary way to married human parents.  The portrait of Mary in our Gospels depicts a very humble and devout young Jewish woman, a woman who is hardly likely to be sexually promiscuous.  For that very reason, the ancient Jewish and Christian consensus that Joseph is not Jesus' true father serves apologetic interests as another reason to accept the Gospel tradition of Jesus' virgin birth.

The anti-Gospel's claim that Jesus' mother was a "spinner" is not attested in our Gospels, but may well reflect accurate oral tradition.  Archaeologists have found remnants of spinning equipment in a first-century  Nazareth home that that has for good reason been identified as the house of Mary and Joseph.  Google "archaeology and Jesus' house in Nazareth for detailed information about this case.   In the first century poor Jewish women often had to weave their family's clothes, and so, Mary's status as a "spinner" seems quite plausible.

The Jewish claim that Jesus studied magic in Egypt is a slander that takes as its starting point the Matthean tradition that Mary and Joseph took the baby Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod's persecution.  Of course, Jesus' family only stayed in Egypt until Herod's death om 4 BC and then went to Nazareth, while Jesus was still a small child (2:13-23).  So the rabbinic view that Jesus studied magic in Egypt is absurd perversion of Matthew's Christmas story.

More commentary on the unintended apologetic value of the Jewish anti-Gospel to follow.

[Deadworm]

According to anti-Christian ancient Jewish polemic, Jesus' alleged real father was a Roman soldier named "Panthera."  Where did they come up with that name?  The Greek equivalent of "panther" is "pentherides," which means "husband's brother."  If rabbis transliterated that noun into a name, they would drop the suffix "ides," leaving "penther."  But Hebrew is often written without the vowels.  So "penther" could easily become "panther."  So originally the phrase "Jesus the son of Panthera" meant "Jesus the son of the husband's brother."  But this would mean that, after Joseph died childless, Mary married Joseph' brother Clopas to fulfill the OT law of levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5-10).  According to John Chrysostom (born 347 AD), bishop of Antioch, that is exactly what happened!  He claims that after Joseph's death, Mary lived as a wife with Clopas, Joseph's brother.  If this scenario is true, then Jesus' 4 brothers would actually be biological sons of Clopas.  This would explain the early Jewish Christian tradition that Jesus' brothers were also His cousins!  They would be His biological cousins and legally His brothers through levirate marriage; and Clopas would be Jesus legal father. 

 

Joseph figures in no story of the adult Jesus' ministry and the crucified Jesus entrusts the care of His mother to the Beloved Disciple.  The scholarly consensus is that Joseph has died before Jesus' adult ministry.  This understanding changes the interpretation of John 19:25:

"Standing near the cross of Jesus were His mother and His mother's sister, namely Mary the wife of Clopas (His mother!) and Mary Magdalene (His aunt, His mother's sister)."

This is John Chrysostom's understanding of this verse.  Why might this be important for Christian apologetics?  If Jesus were Joseph's biological son, then it would be incest for Mary to marry Joseph's brother.  But if Jesus was born through a virgin birth, then Mary's marriage to Clopas would be obligatory.  So such a marriage would be the best conceivable evidence for Jesus' virgin birth.

Edited August 5, 2020 by Deadworm

[Who me]

I cannot see the relevance of this to Christianity.

[Deadworm]

Just now, Who me said:

I cannot see the relevance of this to Christianity.

You don't think evidence for Jesus' virgin birth is relevant to Christianity?  

[Who me]

23 minutes ago, Deadworm said:

You don't think evidence for Jesus' virgin birth is relevant to Christianity?  

The evidence is there in the Bible. You have not presented evidence that says it is not reliable.

[Deadworm]

7 minutes ago, Who me said:

The evidence is there in the Bible. You have not presented evidence that says it is not reliable.

YOu haven't understood my post.  Mary could legally marry Joseph's brother Clopas if Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus.   Therefore, if the ancient  tradition of this marriage is true, this would prove that Jesus is not the natural son of Joseph and thus provide evidence for the virgin birth.

Such evidence is helpful to response to the skeptical scholarly consensus that the Gospel virgin birth stories are later legends.  This claim is based not only on skepticism about the possibility of a human virgin birth, but on 3 additional facts:

(1) Paul's epistles and Mark's Gospel are decades earlier than Matthew and Luke, but know nothing about the claim that Jesus was born of a virgin.  

(2) In fact, Paul claims that Jesus is by descent "a sperm  of David."  Skeptics argue that Paul means Jesus us more ommediately a sperm of Joseph.  So Gospel virgin birth traditions can use a defense against the  charge that they are later legends.

Edited August 5, 2020 by Deadworm

[Who me]

22 hours ago, Deadworm said:

Mary could legally marry Joseph's brother Clopas if Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus.

An irrelevant claim, we know Mary was not married when Jesus was crucified, if the option to Mary Clopas was there that option could have been made by Jesus.

To claim she could is basically arguing from silence as there are no documentary records about that.

[Deadworm]

1 hour ago, Who me said:

An irrelevant claim, we know Mary was not married when Jesus was crucified...

Modern scholarship recognizes that Joseph is dead at the time of Jesus' public ministry.  The Greek of John 19:27 can imply that "Mary the wife of Clopas" is Jesus' mother!  Or are you claiming that Mary would defy the biblical law of levirate marriage?  How else can you account for the ancient Jewish Christian tradition that Jesus' brothers were in fact His cousins?  And how do you explain the possibility that rabbinic Judaism viewed Jesus as the son of the husband's brother--a fact nicely explained by levirate marriage theory?

[Who me]

20 hours ago, Deadworm said:

Modern scholarship recognizes that Joseph is dead at the time of Jesus' public ministry.  The Greek of John 19:27 can imply that "Mary the wife of Clopas" is Jesus' mother!  Or are you claiming that Mary would defy the biblical law of levirate marriage?  How else can you account for the ancient Jewish Christian tradition that Jesus' brothers were in fact His cousins?  And how do you explain the possibility that rabbinic Judaism viewed Jesus as the son of the husband's brother--a fact nicely explained by levirate marriage theory?

All rendered unnecessary by Jesus's instruction to John to take care of Mary. If she was married it would be her husband's responcibility. If widowed again, it would be her children's responcibility, children from this other marriage.

That Jesus was responsible shows she was not married and that she had not married again.