The Real Virgin Mary

The most famous woman in the world? Kylie Minogue, Mother Theresa, Princess Diana, Joan of Arc, HM The Queen? No, it is, in fact, Mary, the mother of Jesus. From religious icons to school nativity plays the image of Mary is familiar to people of all generations throughout the world.

However, a new TV programme “The Virgin Mary” due to be screened on Sunday 22nd December seeks to blow away our misconceptions that surround the real Mary. While much of what the programme suggests is commendable as it strips away the religious myths from the living, breathing teenage mother of Jesus, some of the claims made by the experts are based on suspect historical evidence that most historians have dismissed. It is merely those with an anti- Christian axe to grind who foster their re-telling.

Was Mary raped?

For example, the programme will consider the impossibility of a virgin birth and suggest Mary was, according to one second century historian, raped by a Roman soldier called Panthera. It claims that the discovery of a gravestone of a Roman soldier bearing that name means this theory could be correct. While no doubt Roman soldiers did engage in such activities in occupied countries, the story was first circulated in the second century in an attempt to discredit the growing Christian movement. No serious historian gives the notion much credence.

Was Joseph the father?

The programme also considers the possibility of Joseph being the father. Dr Mark Goodacre, a New Testament specialist from the University of Birmingham, concludes, “The Christian in me wants to say that it is quite likely to be God because I like the idea of a wonderful, miraculous birth – something supernatural – happening right there at the origins of Christianity. The historian in me does have some problems with that and does wonder if Joseph is the better option.”

Some scholars have argued that Matthew was not intending to write a purely historical narrative, but that he freely expanded and embellished his sources, particularly by weaving in ideas from the Old Testament. It is claimed that a ‘mixture of history and non-history’ was a familiar form of Jewish literature in his day. But it is difficult to see how much myth-manufacturing could take place in a Jewish context such as Matthew represents. The very idea of an incarnation was something quite foreign to Jewish thinking. As Michael Green has commented, “If you had looked the whole world over for a more stony and improbable soil in which to plant the idea of an incarnation you could not have done better than light upon Israel! They would not happily have invented an idea so apparently contrary to their beliefs.” The Jews had had hammered home to them that there was one God, and no ‘runner-up’! Far from being imaginative creations out of Old Testament narratives, the virgin birth stories bear all the marks of being records of what actually happened. There is no suspicion in them of the plainly folk-religious elements which exist in the stories of Buddha’s birth or in the so-called ‘apocryphal’ Gospels.

Using out of date research

The BBC programme is also behind the times in its claims that there is no historical evidence for a census taking place in the Roman world at the time of the birth of Jesus. Quirinius went as legate to Syria in AD 6. Between AD 6 and 7 they carried out a census. However, this census was only a provincial one and not an Imperial decree “that all the world be taxed”. So claims the programme, the Bible’s named Governor was not in place at the time Christians claim for the birth of Christ, so there could have been no census. But in recent years the discovery of a fragment of a Roman inscription at Antioch reveals that Quirinius had been in Syria before on a mission from the Emperor Augustus in the days of Saturninus the pro-consul. At that time his assignment had been purely military. He led a campaign against the Homonadenses, a tribe in the Taurus Mountains in Asia Minor. Quirinius established his seat of government as well as his headquarters in Syria between 10 and 7 BC. The Governor was in place for the probable date of Christ’s birth in BC 6. (The date is calculated taking into account the miscalculations of the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus who lived in Rome, and in the year 533 was instructed to fix the beginning of the new era by working backwards. But he forgot the year zero which should have been inserted between 1 BC and 1 AD. He also overlooked the four years when the Roman emperor Augustus had reigned under his own name Octavian).

Born in Nazareth?

The programme also claims Jesus was born in Nazareth, and that Gospel writers just made up the idea of Bethlehem to tie in with Old Testament prophecies. This flies in the face of all historical evidence, both literary and archaeological and again is not a notion entertained by serious historical scholars.

“The Virgin Mary” does a good job in dismantling the popular image of a serene young woman, dressed in blue silken robes which was largely a creation of later writers and Renaissance painters. Dr Tal Ilan, a Jewish historian from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Dr Miriam Peskowitz, Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of History at Temple University, Philadelphia, do a good job in painting a picture of a teenage woman’s life at the time of Christ. The programme uses dramatic reconstructions and stunning visual effects, and is presented by actress Sue Johnston of Brookside and Royle Family fame.

If they don't say it it didn't happen!

The programme succeeds in portraying a very human Mary, but leaves the viewer doubting the credibility of the Biblical record. There is no serious analysis of the Gospel writers as recorders of history, just a claim that the different emphasises in the accounts of Matthew and Luke mean the writers disagree, and the suggestion that because Mark and John don’t “mention it” that it can’t have happened in the way Christians claim.

“I personally agree with many modern scholars who think that the virgin birth stories are legendary,” says Dr Chris Maunder, a Catholic theologian from the University of Leeds. “There’s no mention of it in the Gospels of Mark and John, nor in the letters of St Paul. Also, the versions of it that we read in Matthew and Luke are very different. If Jesus was born from a virgin, somehow it makes him not fully human and I think that it is the human story of what happened that is so powerful and poignant.”

Careful scholars have been impressed by both the differences and the agreements in the accounts of Matthew and Luke. It appears from the differences that Matthew and Luke composed their narratives from quite different and independent sources. Bible scholars also know that John claims that Jesus “came from above”, “came down from heaven” and “came into the world”. All these phrases are certainly consistent with the idea that Jesus was supernaturally conceived. Again, Paul writing of Jesus coming into the world uses unusual vocabulary. So in Galatians chapter 4 verse 4 he writes, “But when the right time finally came, God sent his own Son. He ‘came’ as the son of a human mother…” In spite of some modern translations, Paul does not use the same word for Jesus being ‘born’ which he uses later in the chapter of the birth of Ishmael and Isaac. It would appear that in this passage Paul wants to avoid the suggestion that Jesus had a human father on earth.

It is therefore false to say that the only witnesses to the virginal conception are a handful of verses in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. The references in John and texts such as Galatians 4:4; Philippians 2:7 and Romans 2:3 cannot simply be set aside as of no significance.

The virgin birth is important

Why is the virgin birth the centre of such controversy and debate? The importance of this doctrine lies in what it tells us about Jesus, rather than in what it tells us about his mother. She is to be honoured and esteemed. He is to be worshipped and adored. This doctrine interlocks with other New Testament truths concerning the nature of Jesus.

Jesus is fully human.

Plainly the ‘incarnation’ – the Son of God becoming the man Jesus- presents human reason with a problem? How can one person be at the same time both perfect man and perfect God? But our understanding of this problem is helped by carefully considering the manner of Jesus birth. He was born quite naturally, which emphasizes his full humanity. But he was conceived supernaturally, which is only imaginable if we believe also in his divinity.

Jesus was also God.

The virginal conception does not prove the divinity of Jesus. But it is in keeping with that fact. How else could the eternal Son become a man?

God breaking into our history

Nevertheless it must be admitted that we are moving in an area where the mystery of God among humankind is at work. There is no need to be afraid of admitting that the human mind cannot always keep up with God. How did Jesus return from his historical presence among men and women to the eternal presence of his Father? That too (the ascension) is not something we can understand scientifically. So also must the moment of his breaking into our history remain outside our historical understanding.

Watch the programme. Use it as a discussion starter, but be prepared to “give the reason for the hope within you.” Then contact the BBC and tell them what you think.

Sources used in the preparation of this article:

BBC Press Pack for the Virgin Birth;
Mary: Is this her true story? In Weekend 14 December 2002;
Jesus 2000 – a collection of essays published by Lion Publishing;
The Bible as History Revisited by Werner Keller.

Article written by Phil Hadley BA(Hons)
Phil teaches History at Bodmin Community College.

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