A Virgin Nativity Story

I’ve never really had trouble with the concept of Jesus’ virgin birth from a standpoint of it being an impossibility for God. I’ve long had issues with the way we often make it a huge issue, as though if Jesus were not born of a virgin, then he could not be God incarnate. Augustine’s doctrine of original sin as passed on biologically through male semen has never made any sense, and does not even take into account that a literal read of Genesis 3 would force an understanding that sin originated with Eve’s disobedience, not Adam’s.

Sure, Luke’s story of the nativity begins with a narration underscoring a claim to Mary’s virginity through the time of Jesus’ birth. Mark does not mention Jesus’ birth. John does so only in a roundabout manner, saying only that the “Word became flesh and lived among us.” Matthew offers the only other account of Jesus’ birth in the Scriptures. Despite his quotation from the Septuagint of Isaiah 7:12, Matthew in no way attempts to portray Mary as being a virgin up to Jesus’ birth.

So, Matthew’s narrative begins with Jesus’ genealogy. In it, four and only four women are mentioned. Their names and stories are very interesting regarding why they would be included. None of them are of Jewish or Hebrew lineage. None of them are paragons of sexual purity and virtue. They are an odd assortment of women who would all be deemed unworthy of being part of David or Messiah’s lineage, and yet these are the names included: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba.

Tamar shows up first, as she was daughter-in-law to Judah. Her first husband died, so per laws of levirate marriage, Judah gave her to his second son, by whom she was to bear a son in the name of Judah’s eldest. This brother did not want to sire a son for his deceased brother, so he refused to follow through in providing her with children to care for her in her old age. As the story goes, he was punished by God for his injustice toward her and died. Judah was afraid to give her to his youngest, so he sent her back to her father’s home to be forgotten as damaged goods. She knew Judah would be passing her way, so she made arrangements to seek him out as a prostitute, taking a couple of items from him as security for payment. She became pregnant from their encounter, and when Judah accused her of unfaithfulness, she brought out his staff and ring to prove his parentage of his grandsons to be.

Rahab is the second woman mentioned in the genealogy. She was a temple prostitute in Jericho at the time the Hebrews entered the land promised to Abraham. It was she who hid the spies Joshua sent to report on the land and conditions for battle against Jericho and its neighbors. She was an outsider to the Hebrew people and gained entry into the nation by virtue of turning traitor to her own people on account of their fear of Yahweh’s impending victory over Jericho and its neighbors.

Ruth is the next woman whose name enters the genealogical record. She was of Moab. In other texts, no one of Moab was ever to participate in the people of Israel for their part in not allowing the Hebrews to pass through their territory on their way to the Promised Land. Ruth married a man of Israel when his parents had taken the family to sojourn in Moab during a famine. She became a widow, but returned to Israel with her mother-in-law, vowing to remain with her and be of her people. In the course of their return to establish themselves again in their homeland, Ruth follows Naomi’s instructions to seduce Boaz and convince him to take her to wife as next of kin to her deceased husband. Thus she enters the genealogical list as Boaz claims her as his wife.

Bathsheba is the next woman listed in the genealogical record, mentioned by Matthew as the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Uriah was a foreigner. It would be expected that his wife would be the same, as there were social constraints against marrying one’s children to immigrants. Regardless, this was a woman whom David as king took in adultery. He then conspired to have her husband killed, then taking her as one of his wives. For the price of his adultery and murder, she was given the honor of becoming mother to David’s heir, Solomon.

Foreigners, women whose lives were tainted by connections to idolatry, tainted by aspersions of shady sexual pasts, these are the women in the genealogical line to which we are introduced. It is not a matter of accident that Matthew names them. On one hand, their stories were such that their names were known. On the other hand, their inclusion in the genealogical line points in the direction of God taking people who would be considered unworthy and specifically including them. Reminding us of theses stories as background to Jesus’ birth, Matthew then tells us that Mary was found to be pregnant before she and Joseph had consummated their marriage. They were still betrothed, but they were in that time of waiting to be sure than any child she bore would be Joseph’s beyond doubt.

Joseph decides that he would end the betrothal quietly, not dragging Mary and her family through a public show of disgrace. It was the upright thing to do, though he had the right to have her publicly shamed and put to death for her obvious infidelity. God, however, intervenes with Joseph through a dream in which he understands that however and through whomever this pregnancy occurred, the one conceived in her is holy in spirit. He is to take Mary as his wife and accept this child as his own, naming him Jesus.

For all legal and social purposes, naming a child was a declaration of paternity as binding as any DNA test we might use today. In this case, this pregnancy is claimed by Joseph with God’s stamp of approval as setting Jesus apart as holy in spirit. Matthew then cites a passage from Isaiah 7, in which a sign is given by Yahweh that in due course, in the time in would take for a young girl to become pregnant and bear a child that God’s promise would come to pass. The text of Isaiah never imagined the young girl in question to remain a virgin through the night of conception. It was simply noting the passage of time for an entire pregnancy from start to finish. Whether Mary’s pregnancy with Jesus were the result of the birth accounts akin to the children born to Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, or Bathsheba, this was a birth blessed by God for a very special purpose. As the messenger tells Joseph to name the child Jesus, “for he will save his people from their sin.”

However Jesus came to be conceived in Mary, he was claimed by God and granted a special purpose in this act of creating “flesh to live among us,” “full of grace and truth.” The preoccupation with sin that has so shrouded our concepts of salvation and claims of a virgin birth are here laid to rest as being irrelevant in God’s eyes.

Matthew’s story presents a very different theological take than what we find in Luke. His concern is not so much with miracles of biological paternity, but with God taking on flesh in the midst of a rumor-mill run a muck over this shameful pregnancy. It seems God is not so concerned with sexual purity as so much of Christian tradition has exclaimed. God’s concern is the redemption of people in all of our messed up living. This story of Jesus being born in humble circumstances, including the ignominy of a scandal surrounding Jesus’ conception is a rather fitting tale of grace.

I can’t claim to know Mary’s sexual history. I can say that whether it involved sexual acts in the context of idolatrous worship (Rahab), seducing a man to set aright his injustice (Tamar), pressing a claim to be cared for economically and socially (Ruth), or abused through rape (Bathsheba), God took on Mary to include her in a special role defying any such social taboos. When God came down at Christmas, it was neither in a palace, nor even within the middle of a socially respectable family setting.

Perhaps it’s time we tell the Christmas story more in accordance with Matthew’s take. This story of the Nativity just might be the best one, yet. It is God coming to people whose lives are messed-up. It is not about some miraculous birth of angelic visitation. It is God accepting a woman and a man whose relationship seems to have started off on the wrong foot, but was met with grace. Even if Matthew told that story pretty clearly close to two thousand years ago, to tell it again that way may be like telling it such that it falls on virgin ears—a virgin nativity story first told a long time ago.

— ©Copyright 2022, Christopher B. Harbin 

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