More on the BBC's Nativity

Last month I wrote about the BBC's new 4 part dramatisation of the Nativity story in which they portray Mary and Joseph as a kind of couple found in contemporary romantic fiction. I pointed out how this modern notion of Mary and Joseph's "enduring love story" was in striking contrast to the ancient sources, canonical and non-canonical, from which we draw the story in the first place. For ancient and medieval Christians and for the sources themselves, there's no love story at all, not least because marriage was not about love. For one of those sources, the Protoevangelion of James, not only is there no love story but there's not even a betrothal - the adolescent Mary is initially more of a ward of a very much older Joseph's care and protection. Marriage is more an afterthought, resulting from Mary's pregnancy.

The Protoevangelion also attempts to show the danger pregnancy might hold for the young Mary and, surprisingly, for the elder Joseph too. It seems the BBC drama attempted the same thing, causing a bit of a kerfuffle as a result. Matthew is the one canonical source that alerts us to the fact that being unexpectedly pregnant when betrothed might be the cause of a problem by telling us that when Joseph learnt of her condition, he decided to "dismiss her quietly" rather than "expose her to public disgrace" (Matt 1.19). The BBC's Nativity wasn't content with that. Instead, according to this report in the Guardian

It shows the mother of Jesus trying to flee a hostile Bethlehem crowd and a
rabbi refusing her the haven of his synagogue, letting her escape through a back
door instead.

Unsurprisingly, the former Chair of the Reform Judaism Assembly of Rabbis, Jonathan Romain, who also sits on BBC advisory panel on matters religious, has come out and criticised Nativity for turning the Nativity story into an exercise in bashing Judaism.

"The Gospels tell us there was no room at the inn, not that a rabbi kicked Mary
out of a synagogue," he said. "Having survived Mel Gibson's anti-Jewish Easter
onslaught The Passion now the season of goodwill has been spoiled."

I can understand Romain's concern and I'm also rather puzzled by this too. I assume the makers of Nativity want to bring home to a modern audience the cost that pregnancy might mean for an unmarried woman. But honestly a mob chasing Mary through the streets of her town? It sounds too melodramatic, over the top, for my taste. Pregnancy for a single woman in ancient a Palestine would no doubt have been a horrible disgrace. Her life could well have been at risk, not only from the pregnancy itself, but also from honour killing within the family. Honour killings happen now in parts of the Middle East, including Palestine; I don't believe they're an invention of Islam. If not honour killing she may also have faced rejection by her family and thrown out alone into the world. Even if she wasn't rejected by her family, her suitability for marriage was now finished. She might end up as a drudge in the family home, instead - and encumbered by a child. That is, of course, assuming the entire population of Judea or Galilee or wherever it was Mary came from shared such ultra-negative attitudes to pregnancy outside of wedlock. But again we can't be certain. I suspect that the ancient population we term Jewish, may well have been more diverse in its attitudes and beliefs than we imagine. Nevertheless, female virginity has always been highly rated in marriage economies and I think it a safe bet that most inhabitants of Judea and Galilee and even Samaria had that much in common. But a mob chasing a pregnant 14 year old through the streets, I don't think so. I suspect the programme's makers have as an intertext the story of the woman taken in adultery. But adultery is a different matter - it's a crime against the husband's ownership of his wife's womb and sexuality. The gospel passage doesn't say but the woman would have been a wife caught or accused of being with another man. Mary was not a wife, yet.

I also have a problem with the portrayal of the rabbi, who I beleive is also wearing a prayer shawl. Now I haven't seen Nativity but it sounds as if the rabbi is in relationship to the local synagogue as rabbis are today, at least in most Jewish denominations, and as most Christian clergy are to their local churches. In other words, here we have Bethlehem's parish rabbi. Now 200o years ago I'm not certain that rabbis and synagogues went together like horses and carriages. We get references to presidents of synagogues in the Roman world, but they're not necessarily rabbis, sometimes they were even women! Judaism was extraordinarily diverse back then and the Temple was also still in existence (plus a subsidiary Temple down the road in Leontopolis Egypt). Bethlehem is a stone's throw from Jerusalem and it's not surprising that, in the ancient accounts of the Nativity, synagogues don't get a mention but the Temple features quite strongly. There were Temple lands adjacent to Bethlehem where Temple flocks were grazed, most of which would end up as sacrifices. In Judea especially, priests were equally important religous functionaries, maybe more important than rabbis. Was there a synagogue in Bethlehem and if so would it have had a resident rabbi or any sort of rabbi for that matter? Rabbinic Judaism was just one thread in the ancient Jewish tapestry; it would take two or three wars against Rome and the destruction of the Temple and its cult to allow Rabbinic Judaism to become the norm for most Jews, and even then not without struggle and resistance.

I'm struck by the fact that Nativity has to resort to such melodramatic tropes to try and bring this story alive, especially given the richness of the primary narratives. Is it no longer possible to imagine worlds where marriage and love don't automatically go together? Is it no longer possible to imagine shame, disgrace and danger, unless there is mob violence involved? Or does the spectre of mob violence draw on, even invoke, a mixture of progressivist prejudices against the past mixed up with contemporary Western (neo-colonial?) prejudices against perceived hidebound and backward (Jewish and Islamic) alien cultures? After all, it's not that long ago, in my lifetime, when being pregnant and unmarried was considered a serious disgrace in our own English speaking and Western cultures too. And in many parts of the Anglosphere it might even still be.

Foucault and the Virgin Mary

I noticed the other day, over at Mark Goodacre's blog, that he had a post up about a coming BBC Christmas production called Nativity. It's a dramatised retelling of the events around Jesus' birth and seems to be based on the merging of the canonical Infancy gospels in Matthew and Luke. Mark's quoted some of the press release promoting Nativity and I was very struck by this bit

Over four half-hour episodes the drama will tell the traditional tale known to millions from a very human perspective. With Mary and Joseph's enduring love story at the centre this familiar story is given a contemporary twist, as the drama follows Joseph and Mary from their initial courtship – Joseph desperate to win the heart of Mary – to his emotional turmoil at her unexpected pregnancy.

Now maybe I missed something but I had no idea that Mary and Joseph had an "enduring" love story to begin with, let alone that he had been "desperate" to win her heart. This is a BBC production, too. The Beeb has a pretty strong reputation for quality and I'm sure this will be a quality production. Mark Goodacre himself is excited at the prospect and it also gets a good rap at Bible Films Blog. But I am still puzzled by the "enduring love story." Is that what is meant by giving the story a "contemporary twist"? Or is that how the story is understood anyway with the contemporary twist coming from some other feature?

I raise these questions because if we turn to the sources and even to subsequent tradition, an enduring love story is not what's found at all. The story or stories, nevertheless are quite fascinating, powerful even and I think it would be great to see a production based on them rather than the modern love story treatment.

And so right now I want to look at the five most ancient sources we have for the Nativity and the relationship between Joseph and Mary. These sources are Matthew's infancy narrative, Luke's infancy narrative, Ode 19 of the Odes of Solomon, the Ascension of Isaiah and the Proto-Evangelion of James. What they'll show is that ancient Christians had a very different understanding of the relationship between Mary and Joseph, such that they would probably be extremely puzzled by portraying the two in the context of a romantic love melodrama. But I should note by way of preamble that Joseph barely gets a mention in the other two canonical gospels, he's not an active character, he's not in the picture at all. He's really only referred to in passing as the father of Jesus. He completely disappears in one passage in Mark when Jesus is referred to as son of Mary. On the strength of such absence, the understandable tradition developed that Joseph had died when Jesus was young, certainly long before he began his public life.

So I'll start with Matthew. The infancy narrative comprises the first two chapters of this gospel. More than two thirds of chapter 1 is a genealogy of Jesus (1-17); the remaining 7 verses trace the relationship between Joseph and Mary and Mary's pregnancy. There's no sense of a deep romantic love here. Instead we are told that Joseph was a righteous man and on learning of Mary's pregnancy, decided to dismiss her quietly and not expose her to public disgrace. Perhaps Joseph feels kindly to Mary, but 'desperate' or ardent? - not really. He is only prevented from dismissing Mary by the appearance of an angel, who tells him just what sort of child Mary is carrying. Joseph relents and does not send her away. Chapter 2 relates the coming of the Magi, the flight into Egypt and the massacre of the children of Bethlehem. Here Joseph comes into his own, helping Mary and her child escape to Egypt. Without Joseph, their lives would be in the greatest peril. And yet, never at any time do Joseph and Mary converse. And then, once we quit the infancy narrative, Joseph disappears entirely. He gets mentioned a couple of times; in the parallel to the Mark passage cited above, he's referred to as the carpenter and not by name, while Mary is herself named. So what we have of Joseph in Matthew is an absence, following his appearance in the first two chapters, where the only person he interacts and converses with at all is an angel. There's nothing in Matthew about any enduring, let alone ardent, love.

In contrast, Mary is the main figure in Luke's infancy narrative, chapters 1 and 2 of the Gospel. Mary speaks and interacts with people and an angel too. The first chapter deals with the conception and birth of John the Baptist and the Annunciation, Mary's conception of Jesus and her visit to her cousin Elizabeth who is pregnant with John the Baptist; we are told that Mary is betrothed to Joseph but he makes no other appearance in chapter 1. His debut comes in chapter 2 but only as background figure: he and Mary go to Bethlehem to be registered in the census; he is present when the shepherds come, as bidden by the angels, to give homage to the Christ child; he accompanies Mary to the Temple for the Presentation scene. But at no time do he and Mary converse. In the Temple Simeon and Anna prophesy over Jesus and Simeon addresses Mary directly but Joseph remains a shadowy figure in the background. It's only in the final part of chapter 2, when Jesus is found in the Temple at age 12 after being lost by his parents, that Mary, when addressing Jesus, actually acknowledges Joseph's existence, by saying that she and his father had been searching for him anxiously. Jesus' response, invoking his heavenly Father, effectively contradicts any paternal claims that Joseph has. After that, Joseph as a character disappears in Luke's gospel. He gets a mention, unsurprisingly, in the genealogy of Jesus in chapter 3, and elsewhere Jesus gets referred to as son of Joseph, including in the Lucan parallel to the passages in Matthew and Mark referred to above. But again there is nothing to indicate any strong attachment between Mary and Joseph, he's a background figure at best and in chapter 1 Mary acts and speaks on her own initiative, apparently beholden to no one.

I'll break from narrative to poetry and turn to Ode 19 of the Odes of Solomon. You can read Charlesworth's translation of the Odes here. He dates the Odes to the 1st century, although others have opted for 2nd or even 3rd century. They've been called the first Christian hymn book and they have strong resonances both with the Johannine New Testament literature and with Qumran texts as well. Ode 19 gives a short but quite striking account of the Incarnation and Nativity not least for its gender bending imagery.

1. A cup of milk was offered to me, and I drank it in the sweetness of the Lord's kindness.

2. The Son is the cup, and the Father is He who was milked; and the Holy Spirit is She who milked Him;

3. Because His breasts were full, and it was undesirable that His milk should be ineffectually released.

4. The Holy Spirit opened Her bosom, and mixed the milk of the two breasts of the Father.

5. Then She gave the mixture to the generation without their knowing, and those who have received it are in the perfection of the right hand.

6. The womb of the Virgin took it, and she received conception and gave birth.

7. So the Virgin became a mother with great mercies.

8. And she labored and bore the Son but without pain, because it did not occur without purpose.

9. And she did not require a midwife, because He caused her to give life.

10. She brought forth like a strong man with desire, and she bore according to the manifestation, and she acquired according to the Great Power.

11. And she loved with redemption, and guarded with kindness, and declared with grandeur.

Hallelujah

I've quoted it in full because it's short and because I like it. Now assuming "the Virgin" refers to Mary (and I'm quite happy to allow for an ambiguity here, that the poem describes an event happening in the heavenly as much as the terrestrial realms), it seems that here the Lucan portrait has been brought to its logical conclusion. Mary is front and centre and she is an independent figure, a powerful figure in her own right. She has no need of a man, let alone a husband. If anything she might be reminiscent of the Woman of the Apocalypse (Revelation 12) who is herself a heavenly figure (the Hebrew goddess?) who was assimilated to Mary quite early in Christian tradition, too.

Returning to narrative accounts, our next stop is the Ascension of Isaiah. This text has been dated from the first to second centuries of the Christian era. It only survives in full in Ethiopian manuscripts but fragments also survive in Greek, Latin, Coptic and Slavonic. It's a composite text (Charles' translation of the full text can be read here). Chapters 1-5 relate Isaiah's persecution and martyrdom at the hands of King Manasseh. The second half relates Isaiah's vision in which he ascends through the Seven Heavens to meet Christ and Enoch and where he sees the future incarnation and nativity of Christ. Much of the Vision is reminiscent of the Enoch literature including the nativity of Christ in chapter 11 which I will now quote (from Knibb's translation chapters 6-11 available here):

1. And after this I looked, and the angel who spoke to me and led me said to me, "Understand, Isaiah son of Amoz, because for this purpose I was sent from the Lord."

2 And I saw a woman of the family of David the prophet whose name (was) Mary, and she (was) a virgin and was betrothed to a man whose name (was) Joseph, a carpenter, and he also (was) of the seed and family of the righteous David of Bethlehem in Judah.

3 And he came into his lot. And when she was betrothed, she was found to be pregnant, and Joseph the carpenter wished to divorce her.

4 But the angel of the Spirit appeared in this world, and after this Joseph did not divorce Mary; but he did not reveal this matter to anyone.

5 And he did not approach Mary, but kept her as a holy virgin, although she was pregnant.

6 And he did not live with her for two months.

7 And after two months of days, while Joseph was in his house, and Mary his wife, but both alone,

8 it came about, when they were alone, that Mary then looked with her eyes and saw a small infant, and she was astounded.

9 And after her astonishment had worn off, her womb was found as (it was) at first, before she had conceived.

10 And when her husband, Joseph, said to her, "What has made you astounded?" his eyes were opened, and he saw the infant and praised the Lord, because the Lord had come in his lot.

11 And a voice came to them, "Do not tell this vision to anyone."

12 But the story about the infant was spread abroad in Bethlehem.

13 Some said, "The virgin Mary has given birth before she has been married two months."

14 But many said, "She did not give birth; the midwife did not go up (to her), and we did not hear (any) cries of pain." And they were all blinded concerning him; they all knew about him, but they did not know from where he was.

15 And they took him and went to Nazareth in Galilee

The account resembles somewhat Matthew's infancy narrative and many scholars argue that it is derived from it. Enrico Norelli has argued that it is independent of the account in Matthew. If anything, I'm reminded of the nativity of Melchizedek in 2 Enoch, particularly in the manner of Jesus' birth. But I guess my main point here is that the author is not interested in any love between Joseph and Mary. In fact compared to the parallel scene in 2 Enoch, Joseph appears relatively nonchalant about being cuckolded by heaven, perhaps because it is very early days in the relationship, whereas in 2 Enoch the couple who have a heavenly child foisted upon them have been married for many (childless) years.

Finally I turn to the Protoevangelium of James also known as the Gospel of James i.e. James of Jerusalem known as the brother of the Lord. You can read this 2nd century text in full here and here. This Gospel is pretty much an infancy gospel only. It relates the conception and nativity not only of Jesus but also of his mother, Mary. It's not generally known in the Western Church and it was never included in any New Testament collection. Nevertheless it gives a considerable amount of 'back story' to the canonical gospels and their infancy narratives, such that it is almost a fifth Gospel. It's from this gospel that we get the names of Mary's parents, Joachim and Anna. It's from this gospel too that we get the idea that Joseph was a lot older than Mary and had children, one of whom being James, from a previous marriage. That way Mary's perpetual virginity is preserved and Gospel references to Jesus' brothers and sisters resolved. Unfortunately, the Western Church, in about the 4th or 5th centuries decided to make Joseph a perpetual virgin too, so the gospel was quietly discarded, even though much of its story entered into the Western tradition. While the East acclaims Mary's perpetual virginity it saw no reason for Joseph to be caught up in the gestalt of perpetual virginity. The East accepted the idea that Joseph had been married before and that James and the other brothers and sisters of Jesus were the product of that marriage. The Protoevangelium wasn't incorporated into the Eastern New Testament but the Eastern Churches hold it in very high esteem, counting it as coming from James and counting it as a key and inspired text of Tradition.

As I said the Protoevangelium relates the nativity of both Mary and Jesus. Mary's conception is miraculous, almost implicitly non-sexual. When she is born she is counted as a special, child of promise and her parents pledge her to the Temple. She's taken there at age two (there's a charming image of the two year old Mary dancing in the Holy of Holies) and she stays living there until she is twelve. At twelve she's on the verge of puberty and menstruation. The priests are concerned that she might breach the menstrual taboos and defile the Temple. So the priests summon a gathering of widowers so that the Lord will determine which of them will take Mary into his care and protection. After a miracle of the staves in which a dove emerges from Joseph's staff and perches itself on his head, Mary is placed in Joseph's custody to which he strongly protests due to his great age and her youth. In the end he relents but then leaves her in his home and goes away building houses. Mary is then summoned back to the Temple along with several other virgins and put to work on making the Temple veil. It's at this time that the archangel comes to her and announces that she will conceive. This she does and then sets off to visit her cousin Elizabeth who of course is pregnant with John the Baptist. While she stays with Elizabeth, Mary's belly starts to swell with her pregnancy and she gets frightened and returns to her home. Joseph then returns from his travels and finds her pregnant for which he berates her. Joseph resolves to divorce her quietly but then an angel comes to him to explain what has happened. Joseph relents and decides to protect Mary.

In the meantime the priests have discovered Mary's pregnancy. Joseph is accused of having violated Mary. Both deny the charge and both are subjected to trial by ordeal which they both pass. They are then allowed to go free and Mary returns with Joseph to his house. The narrative then relates the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem, the coming of the Magi, the slaughter of the infants of Bethlehem, the flight of Elizabeth and her baby and the murder of her husband, Zechariah, by Herod's men in the Temple sanctuary for refusing to divulge the whereabouts of his child.

Pretty gripping stuff! But again what I want to highlight is the relationship between Joseph and Mary. It is most definitely not a love match! Mary is in her early teens while Joseph is an old man. It's not clear that they are even married. Mary is addressed and behaves too as if she is Joseph's ward, not his wife. In contrast, there is much more concern and affection among Mary's parents in the text than there is between Joseph and Mary. Why is Joseph under suspicion of having violated her? Although Mary is living in Joseph's house and is in his care, it seems the text does not understand them to be married in any way. I guess what I then want to point out that early Christians were not actually interested in the relationship between Mary and Joseph. What was more important to them as Mary's integrity, her virginity, her autonomy. As Virgin and Mother, Mary encapsulates a suite of ancient motifs, not least the virgin and living soil of Eden, and, of course the ancient great goddesses; Mary is the new Eve and the new Sarah, the Mother of the New Covenant. She represents the end of the old ways, the start of a new way of being, one in which women are no longer subject to the rule of their husbands. We forget that early Christianity had a vision of world without marriage (Matthew 22:23 ff) and many Christians tried to live that vision literally, the majority through celibacy, and a minority by a form of sexual communism. The Acts of Thecla (sadly she was dropped by Rome from the Western calendar of saints in the early 1970s) gives another radical celibate vision of female autonomy.

Early Christians were not interested in any love between Joseph and Mary. Firstly because most marriages weren't contracted for love anyway. They were family arrangements, much as they still are in many parts of the world today. Love might grow during marriage, such that if a woman survived her childbearing years she might hope to have the respect and affection of her husband. Failing that, then, the honour due her as a matron. Hence not only is Mary a Virgin, but she is preserved the pains of (and the mortal threats from) childbirth.

By the high medieval period, Mary has become the Queen of Heaven, enthroned on the ceilings and walls of churches she presides over the mysteries of her Son. If she is represented with anyone it is usually him, but sometimes with her mother (Da Vinci played with that pairing rather delightfully in this image of Mary and Anne with the infant Jesus), and sometimes in the company of other virgins. But rarely, rarely with her husband. Marriage is part of this world which is due to pass way. She is Queen in the world to come, a world in which there is no marriage at all.

Consequently, early Christians would regard this production of the Nativity with puzzlement. A love story between Joseph and Mary would not make sense to them. Likewise with their descendants a thousand years later. For them Mary was the great Queen of Heaven, the Virgin Mother. If she is portrayed with Joseph, it is because he, too, in the West is now counted in the company of virgins. Joseph the ever-virgin makes an oddly queer character in the radical celibate imaginary. The ardent heterosexual lover of the BBC's Nativity is alien indeed to that exotic flower.

The BBC's Nativity signifies that there's been a discursive shift over the last few centuries, hence my nod to Foucault in the title of this post. For medieval and ancient Christians, the notion that Mary and Joseph would be in love, in some kind of romance, would seem bizarre; as it still would to many Eastern Christians, for whom Joseph was an old man and Mary a young teenager, barely into puberty. But for us in the West, it seems, especially the Anglisphere it appears to be unthinkable that they wouldn't be. That this is so is, I think, the result of a process that began in the late medieval period and was accelerated in the Reformation. Mary is kicked off her heavenly throne and made subject to her husband. To the more 'liberal' minded Protestant it's only natural that Mary had all those children after Jesus, because it's only natural, it's what marriage is all about. The Holy Family get to model the ideal bourgeois Protestant family and Mary is reduced to a shadow of herself. The discursive shift that Foucault identifies as taking place in the 19th century is really only a rationalist appropriation of the older Protestant discourse, reconfigured in a secular frame, appropriate to a modern 'progressive' and reasonable society in which religion becomes an individualised and privatised activity, its public and linking functions taken over by the liberal, capitalist and secular state.

The same process happens in the Catholic world too. Following the Catholic Reform around Trent, Mary gets diminished and located more and more within the family, the Holy Family. It's more difficult, of course; there's the whole weight of Marian tradition plus the celibacy of Joseph. This family is not like any bourgeois family out there in the real world. There's a real danger that this family of celibates can flip out of the heteronormative into some very queer spaces. And it's not as if the diminution of Mary happens without a fight, either. Marian apparitions, generally always to women and (mainly girl-) children, become more public and dramatic, Lourdes and Fatima, the most striking of all. Nevertheless, by the post-Vatican 2 period, the Reform push has triumphed and Mary ends up pretty much removed from her throne, kicked out to the kitchen to take her place, the ever-virgin wife, subject to the ever-virgin husband. All this happened with the rise of feminism, too, and sadly many feminists saw Mary as too hopelessly entangled in the webs of patriarchy to be bothered with her.

And yet seen through a feminist lens the Mary of Luke's gospel does not fit that that holy patriarchal family at all. She speaks and acts in her own right without need of any man. Ode 19 might also seem shocking to many (it certainly causes discomfort to conservative evangelicals). A text like the Protoevangelium of James is completely alien to modern sensibilities.

It sounds like Nativity is taking its cue from Matthew - Joseph is front and centre, not Mary. Presumably a toned down version of Luke's account will flesh it out somewhat but it will be framed within the broader context of the modern nuclear family and Western ideologies of marriage and marital love. I doubt we will see any sign of the perpetually virgin Mary, let alone a perpetually virgin Joseph, and from what I can make out Mary and Joseph will be age peers too, no June December romance here. No, it will likely be the Joseph and Mary of the Western bourgeois imaginary even if the central event, a miraculous pregnancy actively agreed to by the woman, would serve to challenge it. Will this Mary say "Fiat! so let it happen, I accept" and will she argue justifying her decision and challenge Joseph and his patriarchal expectations?

Unfortunately the Mary of the Protoevangelium doesn't challenge Joseph either but pleads ignorance of what happened instead. Perhaps she does so to enable the heavenly angelic intervention, a feature of Matthew, Ascension of Isaiah and the Protoevengelium itself. Does angelic intervention maintain patriarchal decorum? Nevertheless, because it is so alien I would like to see a Nativity made using the Protoevangelium to flesh it out, especially if it joins with Luke to put Mary front and centre, not Joseph, and to celebrate her "Fiat!". That would make a Nativity suitably alien to modern sensitivities, a shocking and disturbing story and not one that has been tamed.

Some Thoughts on Miraculous Motherhood and Christianity

In my previous post I quoted a couple of little known Christian texts relating to the conception/birth of Jesus. One, the Proto-Evangelion of James, should be better known and read, not least because it is the source of much of the back story that now frames the canonical accounts in Luke and Matthew. The other, Ode 19 from the Odes of Solomon, is from an ancient Christian hymn collection of extraordinary beauty and strangeness that should not only be better known but should, in my opinion, be incorporated into the liturgy, if not even the New Testament itself. The Proto-Evangelion is a harmony of the Matthean and Lucan accounts and incorporates other elements (the midwife) either derived from or shared with Ode 19. Matthew and Luke however are separate and independent accounts which don't appear to have influenced each other.


I overlooked another ancient account which, while it shares some elements with Matthew and Proto-Evangelion, is also quite odd. I refer to the Ascension of Isaiah, a Christian modified Jewish text, the Jewish parts of which could date to the 1st/2nd century BCE while the Christian parts of which could date to late 1st or 2nd century CE. The second and Christian part, also known as the Vision of Isaiah includes a birth narrative for Jesus recounted as part of Isaiah's vision. There is also a quite strange conception in chapter 10 account detailing the descent of Jesus' spirit through all the heavens to earth. The overall account can be read here but below is the birth narrative from chapter 11:

11. And after this I looked, and the angel who spoke to me and led me said to me, "Understand, Isaiah son of Amoz, because for this purpose I was sent from the Lord." 2And I saw a woman of the family of David the prophet whose name (was) Mary, and she (was) a virgin and was betrothed to a man whose name (was) Joseph, a carpenter, and he also (was) of the seed and family of the righteous David of Bethlehem in Judah. 3And he came into his lot. And when she was betrothed, she was found to be pregnant, and Joseph the carpenter wished to divorce her. 4But the angel of the Spirit appeared in this world, and after this Joseph did not divorce Mary; but he did not reveal this matter to anyone. 5And he did not approach Mary, but kept her as a holy virgin, although she was pregnant. 6And he did not live with her for two months. 7And after two months of days, while Joseph was in his house, and Mary his wife, but both alone, 8it came about, when they were alone, that Mary then looked with her eyes and saw a small infant, and she was astounded. 9And after her astonishment had worn off, her womb was found as (it was) at first, before she had conceived. 10And when her husband, Joseph, said to her, "What has made you astounded?" his eyes were opened, and he saw the infant and praised the Lord, because the Lord had come in his lot. 11And a voice came to them, "Do not tell this vision to anyone." 12But the story about the infant was spread abroad in Bethlehem. 13Some said, "The virgin Mary has given birth before she has been married two months." 14But many said, "She did not give birth; the midwife did not go up (to her), and we did not hear (any) cries of pain." And they were all blinded concerning him; they all knew about him, but they did not know from where he was. 15And they took him and went to Nazareth in Galilee. 16And I saw, O Hezekiah and Josab my son, and say to the other prophets also who are standing by, that it was hidden from all the heavens and all the princes and every god of this world. 17And I saw (that) in Nazareth he sucked the breast like an infant, as was customary, that he might not be recognized.

The Vision of Isaiah, with its ascents and descents through the various heavens, shows strong affinities with the Enochic literature, in which Enoch is taken on tours of the heavens, also multi-tiered. In this birth narrative, Jesus miraculously appears outisde his mother's body sparing her any travails of childbirth. Thus the birth narrative echoes a miraculous birth narrative found in one of these Enochic texts, the birth of Melchizedek in 2 (Slavonic) Enoch to which I will return.


Now it's often been argued that the miraculous/virgin conception of Jesus as recounted in both Matthew and Luke is a later Gentile intrusion on the original Jewish Christianity deriving from "pagan" misunderstandings of the term Son of God in the gospels and influenced by accounts in the Gentile world of kings (e.g. Alexander) and other figures reputed to be of divine human ancestry. Thus Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, was visited by Zeus in the form of a serpent who had sex with her and begot the world conqueror. The idea of miraculous conceptions at the behest of a divine figure was alien to Judaism as it was a strictly monotheist religion.


However my readings of ancient and even rabbinic Jewish texts made me come to question such thinking. Firstly miraculous motherhood as such is not an unknown in biblical texts. The matriarchs of Genesis, as well as Samson's mother in Judges and Hannah in in 1 Samuel are mothers who conceive by divine intervention and often with annunciation scenes.


Nevertheless the implication in these accounts is that divine intervention enables conception during sexual intercourse with their husbands but with one exception, Sarah. I was struck by a range of inferences in a number of Jewish texts such as the ancient Jubilees and the medieval Zohar, that Sarah's conception of Isaac might have been a non-sexual or 'virgin' one. Some of thses ideas were also found in some ancient Christian texts in which Sarah is understood as a forerunner of Mary and which recount a variety of miraculous elements found in rabbinic texts. In many of these rabbinic texts the miraculous prodigies that accompany Isaac's birth are signs as a guarantee of Abraham's paternity; in other words these texts display an anxiety that Abraham is not the real birth father, begetter of Isaac.


So what was going on here? It was then that a friend of mine told me about the birth of Melchizedek in 2 Enoch. Concerning 2 Enoch, it is a text that has only been preserved by Christians. All the extant manuscripts are in Slavonic and hale from late medieval Russia, 14th 15th centuries (fragments of a Coptic version have been found in Upper Egypt dating from 9th/10th centuries). There is no complete text of 2 Enoch either. It exists in multiple recensions and that relate only parts of the whole. The other thing about 2 Enoch is that not only are these Slavonic versions translated from older Greek forms but it is also clearly not a Christian text. The text narrates an antidiluvian world as we find in Genesis and recounts the experiences of Enoch in the heavenly realm and looks fwd to the destruction of the world in the Flood. Because these narratives are quite critical of the Temple establishment many argue that they originate from the days when the Temple was still operating i.e. pre 70 CE.


Temple themes are prominent in the account of Melchizedek's conception birth. Melchizedek's parents are part of an ancient Temple establishment prior to the Flood. Mechizedek's. mother , Sopanim, is wife to Nir, brother of Noah and priest in this temple. Melchizedek himself is a heavenly being, the heavenly high priest in fact. Here is the account of his conception ( from 2 Enoch 71, short version):

Behold, the wife of Nir, whose name was Sopanim, being sterile and never having at any time given birth to a child by Nir -

Sopanim was in the time of her old age and in the day of her death. She conceived in her womb, but Nir the priest had not slept with her. From the day that that The Lord had appointed him to conduct the liturgy in front of the face of the people.

When Sopanim saw her pregnancy, she was ashamed and embarrassed, and she hid herself during all the days until she gave birth. Not one of the people knew about it.

Sopanim gets no annunciation. Her consent is not canvassed in contrast to Mary and there is no indication that she even desires a child, unlike Sarah. She is nothing but a vessel and she is forced to hide herself from her husband. But pregnancy is not something that can be hidden easily over time, even with a husband like Nir

When 282 days had been completed, and the day of birth had begun to approach, Nir remembered his wife, he called her to himself in his house, so that he might converse with her.

Sopanim came to Nir, her husband; and, behold, she was pregnant, and the day appointed for giving birth was drawing near. Nir saw her and became very ashamed. He said to her, "What is this that you have done, O wife? Why have you disgraced me in front of the face of these people? Now, depart from me and go where you began the disgrace of your womb, so that I might not defile my hand on account of you, and sin in front of The Face of The Lord."

Sopanim spoke to her husband, Nir, saying, "O my lord! Behold, it is the time of my old age, the day of my death has arrived. I do not understand how my menopause and the barrenness of my womb have been reversed." . Nir did not believe his wife, and for the second time he said to her, "Depart from me, or else I might assault you, and commit a sin in front of the face of The Lord."

And it came to pass, when Nir had spoken to his wife, Sopanim, that Sopanim fell down at Nir's feet and died. Nir was extremely distressed and said in his heart, "Could this have happened because of my word? And now, merciful is The Eternal Lord, because my hand was not upon her."

It is only now that there is an angelic annunciation

The archangel Gabriel appeared to Nir, and said to him, "Do not think that your wife Sopanim has died because of your error, but this child, which is to be born of her is a righteous fruit, and one whom I shall receive into paradise, so that you will not be the father of a gift of God."

Nir however takes himself to his brother Noah for help because his main concern is scandal

Noah said to Nir, "Don't let yourself be sorrowful, Nir, my brother! For The Lord today has covered up our scandal, in that nobody from the people knows this. Now let us go quickly and bury her, and The Lord will cover up the scandal of our shame." They placed Sopanim on the bed, wrapped her around with black garments, and shut the door. They dug a grave in secret.

However while they are doing that:

... a child came out from the dead Sopanim and sat on the bed at her side. Noah and Nir came in to bury Sopanim and they saw the child sitting beside the dead Sopanim, wiping his clothing. Noah and Nir were very terrified with a great fear, because the child was fully developed physically, he spoke with his lips and blessed The Lord.

Noah and Nir looked at him closely, saying, "This is from The Lord, my brother." And behold the badge of priesthood was on his chest, and it was glorious in appearance. Noah said to Nir, "Behold, God is renewing the priesthood from blood related to us, just as He pleases.."

Noah and Nir hurried and washed the child, they dressed him in the garments of the priesthood, and they gave him bread to eat and he ate it. And they called him Melchizedek .

Noah and Nir lifted up the body of Sopanim, divested her of the black garments, and washed her. They clothed her in exceptionally bright garments and built a grave for her. Noah, Nir, and Melchizedek came and they buried her publicly. Noah said to his brother Nir, "Look after this child in secret until the time, because people will become treacherous in all the earth, they will begin to turn away from God, and having become totally ignorant, and in some way when they see him, they will put him to death."

Then Noah went away to his own place, and behold, great lawlessness began to become abundant over all the earth in the days of Nir. And Nir began to worry excessively about the child saying, "What will I do with him?" And stretching out his hands toward heaven, Nir called out to The Lord, saying, "How miserable it is for me, Eternal Lord, that all lawlessness has begun to become abundant over all the earth in my days! And I realize how much nearer our end is, on account of the lawlessness of the people. And now, Lord, what is the vision about this child, and what is his destiny, or what will I do for him, so that he too will not be joined with us in this destruction?"

The Lord heeded Nir and appeared to him in a night vision. And He said to him, "Behold already, Nir, the great lawlessness which has come about on the earth, which I shall not tolerate anymore. Behold, I plan not to send down a great destruction onto the earth. But, concerning the child, do not worry, Nir; because I, in a short while, will send My archangel Gabriel. And he will take the child and put him in the paradise of Edem.

He will not perish along with those who must perish. As I have revealed it, Melchizedek will be My priest to all holy priests, I will sanctify him and I will establish him so that he will be the head of the priests of the future."

Nir arose from his sleep and blessed The Lord, Who had appeared to him saying:

Blessed be The Lord, The God of my fathers,
Who has not condemned my priesthood
and the priesthood of my fathers,
because by His Word, He has created a great priest
in the womb of Sopanim, my wife.
For I have no descendants.
So let this child take the place of my descendants and become as my
own son, and You will count him in the number of your servants."

"Therefore honor him together with your servants and great priests and me your servant, Nir. And behold, Melchizedek will be the head of priests in another generation. I know that great confusion has come and in confusion this generation will come to an end, and everyone will perish, except that Noah, my brother, will be preserved for procreation. From his tribe, there will arise numerous people, and Melchizedek will become the head of priests reigning over a royal people who serve You, O Lord."

This is a pretty strange and disturbing story. The Melchizedek child is really quite monstrous and inhuman, as probably befits a heavenly (derived) being. Nir is a vainglorious klutz and Noah is not much better. The only person I can feel any connection with is the hapless Sopanim who is someone monstered in/by the narrative. The longer version which is not available online adds greater dialogue which only enhances the tragedy and horror of Sopanim's situation as well as the utter self centredness and crassness of Nir. Melchizedek in the longer version is no different - he makes no connection with any of the human protagonists. The story continues with Melchizedek being taken up into the heavens to be placed in Edem/Eden until a time after the Flood and concludes with Noah being instructed by the Lord to build the ark.

I wont go into the gender and sexuality issues of this story (I have written an Irigarayan analysis of these dynamics which is on its long journey to publication). Well I will but only in so far as they relate to the Temple themes that predominate throughout. And it's the Temple that's front and centre here. Indeed in some ways the story seems to echo Matthew's birth narrative but in very bizarre and monstrous ways while at the same time providing the Temple context that Matthew's narrative lacks (Luke's narrative focuses primarily on Mary and other women and at the same time puts the Temple in the foreground throughout).

It's important to remember that the ancient Temple/s represented the Garden of Eden. Indeed Eden was the mystico-mythical dimension of the Temple. Temple represents the cosmos and Eden is the cosmos the way it was meant to be, the idealised cosmos, the cosmos in which 'God is with us', Immanuel. The architecture of the Temple represents the 6 days of creation in Genesis 1 (and Genesis 1 is a poetic configuration of the cosmos as Temple). Eden/Genesis 2 represents the space/time complex before death came into life, which is also the sacred space within the Temple, the space where heaven and earth meet and where on the Day of Atonement, the Lord is physically present in the person of the High Priest who comes out of the Holy of Holies to heal the cosmos from sin with the divine life force (as represented by the blood of a sacrificed goat - blood is life). In that the Lord takes physical form in the Holy of Holies, the Holy of Holies is actually a kind of womb space. And indeed in Chronicles, especially, the Temple is configured in its dimensions as a kind of androgenously phallic womb.

As Eden, the Temple is regarded as standing on the site where the first human, the Adam or Earthling was shaped from the ground. A curious feature of this second creation story is that before YHWH Elohim forms the earth creature out of the earth the text says in Genesis 2:6 that "a mist (in some translations a spring or stream) came up from the earth and watered the face of the ground" - this was before the time YHWH Elohim caused rains to fall upon the earth. Rain falls from the sky which is the heavenly realm and the heavens in both ancient pagan and Jewish cosmologies are the masculine realms of the divine, the immortal. The earth on the other hand was the feminine realm of the human and mortal. But what we have here in Gen 2:6 is the earth fecundating itself so that the ground becomes alive in readiness for YHWH Elohim's shaping of the Earthling, the first human, and then all other living things. In other words, it's possible to read the creation of the Adam as a type of Virgin Birth from the potently alive earth.

The motif of Virgin Birth (or more properly conception) appears again in the Adam and Eve narrative this time relating to the birth of Cain, Eve's first born. The name, Cain, is a pun on the words Eve speaks in Genesis 4:1 when she gives birth to him "I have acquired (produced, created) a man from the Lord" Cain is a pun on the Hebrew for 'I have acquired'. Now the interesting thing about this verse, is that even though the earlier text says that Adam had sex with Eve, Eve's words deny any role to Adam at all. This phrase generated two readings in rabbinic texts. The most common one was that Adam was not the father of Cain. Instead the serpent had lain with Eve and begotten her first-born son. Another far more subversive and minority reading was that Cain was miraculously conceived by YHWH in Eve's womb. (Another even more dangerous reading in some Jewish esoteric circles is that Cain was YHWH incarnate through Eve).

So the Eden narrative contains within it two instances of miraculous conceptions, one definite and the other implied. Both instances are connected with new beginnings. In the first the earth can be seen as readying itself to collaborate with the Lord in the process of creating living creatures, human and other. The second involves the first-born human (neither Adam or Eve could be said to be born in any literal sense). The Eden that is the Temple is likewise associated with a miraculous Incarnation of the Lord in the person of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement in the wombspace of the Holy of Holies. The Day of Atonement is part of the larger New Year (Rosh Hashanah) high holy days. As part of the annual new beginning the Lord incarnates in the Temple to atone or heal/repair the cosmos of all the ill that had accrued in the previous year.

So, with this Edenic/Temple, perspective in mind lets return to the three miraculous mothers, Sopanim, Sarah and Mary. Starting with Sopanim, hers is clearly a miraculous conception of a heavenly being, Melchizedek who will be the progenitor of a new priestly lineage in the new world that will emerge after the Flood. Sopanim is wife to a priest, Nir, the last priest of the primordial Temple and so through her is guaranteed a continuity between the old Temple and the new. Even though Nir is not the biological father of Melchizedek, he is, as husband in the patriarchal order, the owner of Nir's womb and the products thereof. He may well have been cuckolded by Heaven but as priest, he stands as guardian of the sacred anyway and Melchizedek's occupation of Sopanim's womb can be interpreted as a claim on Nir's lineage as owner of that womb. The story is itself tragi-comic depending on which perspective you adopt, Sopanim or Nir. And it must not be forgotten that this is an end of the world story. The world is careering down to destruction in the Flood. This unravelling can be seen as affecting even the heavenly realm. And in the Enochic literature the final act in this apocalyptic drama is ushered in when the Sons of God, the Watchers, decide to come to earth and mate with human women, giving rise to the Giants who proceed to oppress and destroy the earth. Sopanim's fate, her death at the hands of a heavenly intervention, her lack of choice in everything that happens can be read as anticipating what will befall the earth itself. The earth is oppressed, suffering the monstrous chaos unleashed by the Sons of God and through which all life is corrupted. In the end the bounds of the earth are dissolved to wipe away the corruption and chaos in the Flood. Sopanim's story is both beginning and ending.

Turning to Sarah, what we have here is a new beginning analogous to the new beginning of Genesis 2. Sarah is the mother of Isaac her only son. Abraham is the father of many sons and thus, mythologically, the father of many nations. Sarah, however, has only one son, Isaac, and thus through him, mythologically, she is the foremother of two nations, Israel and Edom. The Israelites might call themselves children of Abraham but they are more truly and intimately the children of Sarah. Isaac, through Sarah, represents a new beginning. Unlike Sopanim, Isaac is a child long desired by Sarah and, unlike Sopanim, Sarah experiences an Annunciation of her forthcoming pregnancy (in Genesis 18). In this Annunciation she and the Lord speak directly to each other dissolving any patriarchal bounds from her marriage to Abraham. Furthermore, the Temple and more particularly the Day of Atonement come into view through the Binding of Isaac when Abraham takes Isaac to Mt Moriah to offer him in sacrifice to the Lord. Subsequent Jewish tradition associates Mt Moriah with the Temple Mount and furthermore the sacrifice of Isaac as also associated with the day of Atonement, anticipating the annual Atonement rituals in the Temple and thus Isaac is a type of both the High Priest and the Lord who annually make atonement through the metaphorical and symbolic giving of their life (blood). (And thus the Binding of Isaac mythically acknowledges the origins of Atonement rituals - Jewish and pagan both - in the scapegoating rites of human sacrifice). I should also add that Melchizedek's first appearance in the biblical texts is in the Genesis narrative of Sarah and Abraham as king (-priest?) in (Jeru-?)Salem.

Finally Mary. In Christian perspective, Mary marks the ultimate new beginning. Her son, like Isaac, is a child of promise, and, like Melchizedek, is a heavenly being, Son of the Most High. And indeed Psalm 110 with its Melchizedek oracle - The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (110:4) - is a key text deployed in the New Testament to understand Jesus. Jesus is also the new Adam (and Mary becomes the new Eve) thus evoking and confirming Edenic associations with Jesus. Unlike Sopanim but like Sarah Mary receives an Annunciation (Luke 1: 26 - 38). Unlike Sopanim too, Mary's consent is crucial. Her 'fiat' 'let it be done' has long been celebrated in Catholic traditions east and west as an act of free choice on Mary's part, a choice by Mary alone on which hinged the divine program for salvation. Mary's freely chosen collaboration echoes the earth in Genesis 2:6 which fecundates itself so as to collaborate freely with YHWH Elohim's great project of creating living creatures starting with the Adam. (Protestant traditions played down Mary's autonomy and free choice; in the case of Calvin, as Mary Daly would say, making Mary the ultimate rape victim). According to Luke, Gabriel tells Mary that "the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you" (Lk 1:35). Is this dynamic analogous to what was understood to occur in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement? Certainly the Lucan Infancy story puts the Temple front and centre which the Proto-Evangelion of James repeats and further develops making Mary herself a child of the Temple, a promised child too (with the inference, too, that hers is also a miraculous non-sexual conception). The later cult of Mary applies a myriad of titles to her evoking all manner of aspects of the old Temple. (And just as the Israelites are truly children of Sarah so Mary is celebrated as the mother of the Church, the mother of all Christians). The Christian proclamation too is that Jesus' death and resurrection constitute the final great act of Atonement, linking Jesus to Isaac who represents the originary primordial rite of Atonement. Early Christians saw the Binding of Isaac as foreshadowing the Crucifixion and understood both Isaac and Sarah as protoytypes of Jesus and Mary. Jesus, Isaac and Melchiszedek stand in an Edenic Temple gestalt, as do their mothers Mary, Sarah, and Sopanim together with Eve and the primordial earth itself.

And so I would say that miraculous/virginal conception/motherhood as applied to Mary and Jesus is not a pagan import into early Christianity based on a misunderstanding of the term of Son of God, but instead comes out of the heart of ancient Temple Judaism. It affirms a new beginning - I would suggest, drawing on the Day of Atonement liturgy, it affirms the restoration of Eden, a central theme of the new movement of Christians back in the first centuries. Eden is a time before patriarchy and I think virginal motherhood is based upon, recognises, perhaps even celebrates, the primal maternal power that patriarchy has sought to harness, contain and restrain. This maternal power is equated with the power of the earth itself.