The Parentage of Jesus Mt 1:18-21
Identifieur interne : 000897 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 000896; suivant : 000898The Parentage of Jesus Mt 1:18-21
Auteurs : L. CantwellSource :
- Novum Testamentum [ 0048-1009 ] ; 1982.
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DOI: 10.1163/156853682X00213
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<p>THE PARENTAGE OF JESUS Mt 1:18-21 by L. CANTWELL Cardiff Most modern commentaries and translations tend to mislead the reader at the very outset by the title they give to the passage, Mt 1:18-25.* * If it is headed 'the virginal conception of Christ' (Jerusalem), 'the conception of Jesus' (Brown) or 'the birth of Jesus Christ' (Good News Bible and most commentaries), then the reader comes to the passage with the wrong expectations. Unless he sheds these expectations he will have the impression that Matthew is an almost ludicrously incompetent story-teller. The conception of Christ takes place before the main events recorded here, and is simply mentioned as a necessary presupposition for understanding them (v. 18). Similarly, the virgin birth is the logical outcome of the story, and is therefore mentioned only in a subordinate clause in the last sentence (v. 25). The title which Matthew himself gives to the section is 'the genesis of Jesus Christ', the very word that is used at the beginning of the genealogy ( I : I ) and here having very nearly the same sense. It is closer to the English word 'parentage' than 'birth'. What follows then will not be some new and unrelated story of the way Jesus came to be born, but rather an extension or explanation of the genealogy. Its point will be to explain the curious and careful wording of v. 16. After the oft-repeated formula of the preceding verses a reader would expect to hear: 'and Joseph begat Jesus'. When he is told that Joseph was 'the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born', a reader might be expected to ask, 'Well, did, or * Bibliographical Note. The fullest exegetical and textual treatment of Mt 1: 18sq is by Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (NY, 1977). A complete theological and historical survey is contained in John McHugh, The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament (NY, 1975). Both these books contain complete bibliographies. My pur- pose in this article is not to duplicate, or compete with, or criticise these out- standingly learned works, but simply to present what I see as the inner consistency and consequentiality of the passage considered as a literary entity. We can discern Matthew's theological strategy only once we are clear about his narrative tactics.</p>
<p>305 didn't Joseph beget Jesus? If he did, why don't you clearly say so? If he did not, how did it happen that he was the husband of Mary and that the line of succession to Jesus passes through him?' These are the questions Matthew now sets out to answer. 'The parentage of Jesus was like this.' But even this observation does not fully account for the almost casual way in which the virgin conception of Christ is mentioned. To me the most natural explanation is that Matthew assumes that his readers or hearers already know about it, at least in a general way. But what they may need to be told, or be reminded of, or have explained to them, is that, despite having no physical human father, Jesus is nonetheless in the fullest legal sense Son of David and therefore rightful claimant to the royal throne of Israel. It would smack too much of paraphrase, but I do not think it would be false to the sense of the passage to translate v. 18 as follows: You know that Mary, the betrothed wife of Joseph, was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit before they had come to live together. Well, this is what happened... The story begins then with mention of the betrothal of Joseph and Mary.l Betrothal, the reader is expected to understand, is very nearly as strong a mutual commitment as marriage itself. It had the force of a legal contract between the families concerned. It could however be dissolved by a declaration before two witnesses, and no explanation needed to be given. It would not have to be assumed that any sexual infidelity had taken place. A modern reader needs to remind himself that a dissolution, while having full legal authen- ticity, would normally be a very domestic affair. Joseph need do nothing more than go with two trusted friends to the house of Mary and declare before her parents his intention not to proceed with the wedding. Provided there were then no challenge regarding any financial readjustments, that would be the end of the matter. There was no need for the case to be brought before the synagogue. Mar- riage was not for the Jews a matter of church bells and registrars, 1 In what follows I shall, for convenience, treat the story as an accurate account of actual events. If, however, Mt 1:18-21 is regarded as little more than pious fic- tion, then the points that I am making will carry even greater weight. If charged with implausibility, the historian can reply, 'Well, that's the way it was'; but a fiction-writer has to be careful that his story is psychologically coherent and credi- ble. Fiction may certainly be as strange as fact, but, to be successful, it has to be more convincing.</p>
<p>306 and there was therefore no reason for divorce to go to the courts at all. 'She was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit' v. 18. Com- mentators tend to be rather coy about this phrase, but when its practical implications are examined the difficulties in the common interpretation are almost overwhelming. In order to maintain that Joseph suspected Mary of adultery, the phrase 'of the Holy Spirit, has to be understood as a comment by the evangelist, giving the reader a piece of information which was unknown to Joseph. But since almost the whole point of the story, understood in this way, is that Joseph did not at this time know the origin of the unborn Child, one is at a loss to know why this is not made clear. J. B. Phillips and Raymond Brown in their translations are driven to in- serting a dash into the text, by which the percipient reader (but what about the hearer?) is supposed to understand, 'actually it was by the Holy Spirit, but Joseph did not know this'. It seems a heavy load for one poor dash to carry! It should be noticed that the story would make perfectly good sense (in any interpretation) if the phrase 'of the Holy Spirit' were omitted. Given that it has been deliberately inserted but with no special excluding clauses, the natural way to understand it is as included in what 'was found'. The discovery was not merely that Mary was with child, but that the conception was due to divine agency. Once the verse is read in this natural way, with no arbitrary suppositions and with no silently implied excluding clauses, it becomes clear that the point of the story is not going to be 'how Jesus was born of a virgin', nor even 'how Joseph came to find out about the divine origin of Jesus', but (as one would expect from the ending of the genealogy) 'how Joseph became the legal, but not physical, father of Jesus'. This is corroborated by the slightly clumsy use of the passive Given that the story is about Joseph, one would have ex- pected him to be the subject of the sentence ('Before they came together he discovered that she was with child'). The passive here can only mean that we are being told that Mary's pregnancy was known to others beside Joseph. Indeed it suggests that it was general knowledge among those it would directly concern, her im- mediate family, Joseph, and perhaps his family too. One should banish for good and all the image of Joseph as a lonely young fiance, a kind of conflation of Hamlet and Othello, sulkily brooding over his private suspicions and resentment.</p>
<p>307 The early life of Jesus was not so much hidden as domestic. The knowledge of his divine origin is most naturally understood as hav- ing been kept 'within the family', but there is no suggestion of its having been treated as an embarrassing secret, mentioned only in whispers and by enigmatic phrases, the sort of thing that could only foster rumour, gossip and scandal. It is of course Luke's Gospel that most signally witnesses to the joyful openness and manifesta- tion of Christ's birth and infancy, but it is not unreasonable to take Luke as our interpreter of what Matthew leaves unsaid, and therefore to read the atmosphere of the Benedictus and the Magnificat into Matthew's somewhat bald and terse account. In any case Mat- thew himself will tell us of a star that led and enthralled wise men from the East and brought them to adore the infant Christ while Herod trembled for his throne. There is no reason to think that here he means us to regard the virgin conception of Christ as a private riddle or secret to which even Joseph was only reluctantly and tardi- ly made party. This becomes even more evident if we consider more closely the meaning of 'being found' in this context. Before the days of scien- tific pregnancy-testing there were only two ways in which it could be known that a woman was going to bear a child: either by the cessation of her monthly periods or by the physical growth of her womb after about the sixth or seventh month of pregnancy. Let us take the second case first. We are to understand that if Mary's and Joseph's families learnt of the pregnancy only by the evidence of Mary's physical ap- pearance, then for the past five or six months (since the first cessa- tion of her periods and perhaps longer) she has known that she is pregnant, but has not told anyone about it. Such behaviour is con- tradicted by Luke's account, is thoroughly irrational (since the birth could not indefinitely be kept secret), and seems to be a denial of the rights of her future husband. It shows little trust in him and is insensitive to his feelings. Of course under the psychological strain of an unwanted or shameful pregnancy it does occasionally happen that unmarried girls act in this irrational and unjust way, but no such explanation is given or implied in the text, and it is utterly gratuitous to supply one. Such behaviour on Mary's part would further mean that if Joseph had the betrothal annulled there could be little doubt in anybody's mind as to his reason. Mary would have been publicly disgraced by the very fact of being manifestly pregnant.</p>
<p>308 Most important of all this supposition rests on the extraordinary hypothesis that no one says anything. A girl is noticed to be preg- nant while still living in her father's house, but none of her family nor even her future husband apparently take any steps to find out who is the father. Or maybe one is to imagine Joseph and all the members of both families angrily berating Mary while she sullenly and silently keeps her own counsel? However one tries to interpret it, the whole supposition that Mary's pregnancy was discovered on- ly by her outward appearance seems thoroughly implausible. We must therefore suppose that the news that she was going to bear a child was actually communicated by Mary herself, pre- sumably fairly early in the pregnancy. In such a case there are three main possibilities: 1. Mary knew she was pregnant, but did not know how or why. She, her family and Joseph are simply presented with a mysterious event to which at this stage none of them knows the explanation. Finally the mystery is cleared up when the future husband is assured by an angel that 'that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit'. As an explanation this certainly does explain, but (quite apart from being contradicted by Luke) it is utterly unacceptable. It sug- gests an image of God and an idea of the way he works which is crude, mechanistic, insensitive and alien to the traditions of Israel and of the Infant Church. Whatever else it is, the appearance of the angel to Joseph is clearly intended to put right what might other- wise be going wrong. On the above supposition, then, we are to im- agine God setting in motion the great work of salvation (v. 21) by miraculously causing a virgin to conceive (v. 18), but telling no one about it, not bothering to enlist human co-operation, and only finally informing the parties concerned as a sort of afterthought when, through their misunderstanding, they act in a way that will thwart God's intention. Perhaps some can envisage the God of the New Testament as a 'male chauvinist' who regards the Mother of his Son as little more than a physical, child-bearing body, whose wishes, feelings and consent are of no importance, a God who will communicate directly only with the husband to whom she belongs; but even on this distasteful supposition we are given no explanation why God left it so late. Elsewhere in the New Testament word and deed are inextricably linked. It is unimaginable that this great in- augural act of God should not have been preceded or accompanied</p>
<p>309 by a word of God, but that the word should have been supplied only in order to prevent some incidental dislocation of God's plan. 2. Or we might suppose that Mary knew the origin of her child, but did not tell Joseph, either because she had been forbidden by God to do so, or because she mistakenly thought she had been so forbidden, or because, for some reason or other, she refused to carry out God's wishes in the matter. Alternatively it could be con- jectured that she did tell Joseph, but that he refused to believe her. I do not doubt that any of these suppositions provides material for an interesting, psychologically convincing and even religiously edifying story. The fundamental difficulty is that in every case it is not the story as Matthew tells it. These conjectures are not inciden- tals adding verisimilitude, explanation and interest, but substantial alterations of the story's whole point, purpose and effect. You could retell the fable of Cinderella with every conceivable addition of flowery description, psychological probing and precise reference to time and place, and the story could still remain substantially the same. But mention that the Fairy Godmother was really one of the Ugly Sisters in disguise, and immediately you have a completely different story-better or worse according to taste, but undeniably different. And so here. Once we allow gratuitous speculations of this sort into our understanding of the story we have abandoned faithful elucidation of the narrative and entered the realms of romance and pious fiction. 3. We are left then with a straightforward reading of v. 18 by which we are to understand that at this point Mary, Joseph and ap- parently certain other people knew of the pregnancy and had been told of its divine origin.2 2 Raymond Brown rejects this understanding of the text, but his reasoning is somewhat opaque. He writes: 'The suggestion that it was Mary who told Joseph about the divine origin of her pregnancy is questionable inasmuch as it presupposes something like the Lucan annunciation to Mary, a scene of which Matthew betrays no knowledge' (op. cit., 126-7). The reasoning seems to be: (i) Matthew does not mention the Annunciation. (ii) Therefore he did not know of the Annunciation. (iii) Therefore he believed there had been no Annunciation. (iv) Therefore, according to Matthew, Mary could not have known of the divine origin of her pregnancy. Since no stage of this sorites is entailed by its antecedent, I assume Fr Brown does not mean this, but it is unclear what other sense his words can carry.</p>
<p>310 V. 19 is the crux of the passage. Taken in isolation it is certainly open to various interpretations, but the range is much narrowed once it is read in conjunction with the following v. 20, and it is therefore to this that I next turn. 'Do not fear', li' 71 It has been repeatedly pointed out that this is the normal, almost classical, formula to introduce a divine revelation or command. It is however more than a cliche. It is a kind of diagnostic sign of a genuine divine word that it should con- tain the two dialectic elements of fear and confidence. Both reac- tions to the divine or angelic voice are equally necessary, for it is almost a definition of God that he alone inspires such fear and that he alone has the power to set it aside. The point is that both the fear and the casting out of fear have a manifestly divine origin. The peaceful confidence that comes from God is characterized, not by the absence of fear, but by the mastery of it. Confidence is not a naive, unthinking trust, but a complex synthesis in which terror is contained, sustained and controlled. When the angel says, 'Do not fear', he does not blame you for feeling fear, but commands and enables you to pass beyond fear into peace. Here, then, when the angel appears to Joseph, the fear which is over-ridden is one which already exists and has already inclined Joseph towards a definite form of action: Do not fear to take Mary as your wife. This command to Joseph implies that his dominant and decisive motive for wanting to dissolve the betrothal was one of religious fear. This is what the angel clearly says. He does not say, 'Do not be too ashamed, or too proud, or too angry, or too disgusted, or too hurt, to take Mary', but 'Do not fear', and in context the only credi- ble cause of such fear is the terrifying portent of his betrothed wife's virgin pregnancy. Once we have taken the opening words of the angel seriously we are in a position to appreciate the startling reversal of human logic contained in the following phrase. Perhaps its very preposterous- ness has been part of the reason why commentators have played down Joseph's fear. Modern languages often use the word 'afraid' or its synonyms to mean little more than a vague regret or worry l'l'm afraid I won't be able to come to the party'. 'I'm afraid you're wrong there.' 'I'm afraid I've lost my key.') and if we tacitly understand the words of the angel in this diminished sense, the</p>
<p>311 blandness is carried over into the explanation. We hear the angel saying: Stop worrying about not marrying Mary because her child was not conceived adulterously. But cpopeTaOat never carries this attenuated sense. What the angel said was: 'Do not be too terrified to marry Mary', and then a reason is of- fered which might be thought to increase rather than resolve the fear: 'for it is by the Holy Spirit that she has conceived.' In fact divine pronouncements not uncommonly employ a logic quite as paradoxical as that used here. At the Annunciation Mary was told to set aside her fear for the very reason why she was afraid in the first place-because she had found favour with God (Lk 1:28-31). Something similar occurs in another passage which is an even closer parallel to the one in question. Peter's reaction on haul- ing in a netful of fish was not joy or gratitude, but a scalding fear and humiliation: 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 0 Lord' (Lk 5:8). If the words mean anything, they imply that Peter has glimpsed that God has not merely come very close, but intends to stay very close. He finds it unbearable that God should have designs on him and cries out to be released from the burden of that choice. Yet when Jesus serenely soothes and overrides his fear, it is by saying clearly and definitely what Peter has already obscurely glimpsed: 'Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men' (Lk 5: 10). Though human frailty is terrified when with its natural powers it feels the active and elective presence of God, it requires to be told, not that God is not actively present, but that, being present, he will himself give strength to bear the burden of being chosen. And so here. Joseph was terrified to be told by Mary of the virgin conception, but now he is calmed and fortified, not by having it denied, but by having it confirmed by the word of an angel. Fur- thermore he is himself given a definite and decisive part to play in the great event that is being unfolded. It is for him to give the pro- phetic name of 'Jesus' to the child that is to be born. If the people come to Jesus to be saved from their sins, giving him the loyalty due to the Son of David, it is partly because Joseph has done what the angel commanded. Mary had been called to become the physical mother of God's Son. Joseph is now being called to become his legal father.</p>
<p>312 In thus describing the order of events I have so far treated Joseph's mind and motivation as though they were completely clear-cut, single and definite. But a closer, more sensitive reading of the text suggests something more subtle and complex. True, Joseph had come to a definite decision (to have the betrothal annulled), but there is no reason to think that his motivation and reasoning were equally clear-cut. We are told in v. 20 that he had thought it over (iv8vplq8ivxoq) when the angel appeared to him. To guess what these thoughts were we need to consult, not the lurid cliches of romantic literature (Don Juan passing through Nazareth, a Galilean Othello, the Eternal Triangle in first century Palestine!) but rather our own sensibilities and comparable reactions. If I were told by someone I knew and loved (say, my mother or my wife) that she was pregnant, but she assured me that there was no other man involved and that the pregnancy was due to some divine or angelic visitation, I hope that I would not seriously consider that she was trying to deceive me. On the other hand, a healthy scepticism would leave me open to doubt her explanation. There are many people of whom we can be sure that they will not deliberately deceive us. We can be less sure that they themselves are not being deceived. To someone of our century the idea of a phantom pregnancy or of some schizophrenic aberration would be almost certain to occur. In other ages the thought of some diabolical possession or incubus would at least present itself to the mind. To a devout Jew of first century Palestine the sacred literature of Israel would be the resort to which he would spontaneously turn in order to make sense of what had happened. References to unspoken parallels in sacred literature need to be handled with sympathetic delicacy. It is unrealistic to imagine Joseph laboriously hunting through a biblical concordance to find a text to help him. Still less should we suppose that Matthew in tell- ing the story is using deliberate artistry by working unspoken OT allusions into his text. Matthew was no modern scholar, riffling through his well-stocked book-shelves till he found the precise phrase or situation he wanted in one of the many alternative edi- tions of his source material. Rather we should understand existing stories as establishing, whether consciously or unconsciously, whether for participant, writer or reader, definite patterns or motifs or cliches, over which new events or new stories are overlaid. Stories often owe their intrinsic interest to the way in which they</p>
<p>313 parallel or subtly modify existing more basic stories. All the brooding morbidity and psychological probing of Hamlet, for in- stance, is a kind of complex counterpoint weaving in and out of a simple revenge-story like the Spanish Tragedy or Titus Andronicus. Books like Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson and Coral Island set the optimistic pattern which William Golding in Lord of the Flies devastatingly and disturbingly destroys. It is in some such way that the book of Tobit may be recognised as stating a theme which the story of Joseph here extends, develops and (to use a scriptural word) fulfils. Tobit is thought by modern scholars to be of Palestinian origin and to have been written in Aramaic. It establishes an austerely beautiful ideal of morality and religious observance which could well have characterized the righteousness for which Joseph is prais- ed. In this book the young Tobias recognised his duty to marry his kinswoman, Sarah, but there were problems: I am afraid that if I go in I will die as those before me did, for a demon is in love with her, and he harms no one except those who approach her (Tob 6:15[14]). It was no discredit to Sarah that she had thus been in the power of a spirit. Indeed the spirit, though an evil one, had nevertheless served God's purpose by keeping Sarah free and a virgin until Tobias, her divinely appointed bridegroom, arrived to claim her as his bride. Joseph was faced with a comparable crisis. Without recalling ex- actly where he got the idea from, it would have been natural for him to make his own the fearful sentiments of Tobias: I fear that I may die and bring the lives of my father and mother to the grave in sorrow on my account (Tob 6:15[14]). In the event the angel, like another Raphael, will sweetly show him that he has misread the message. Joseph was not to be like the seven men who died because they were not divinely intended to be Sarah's husband. Instead, like another Tobias, he will be assured by an angel that he has been chosen to be the husband of a new and greater Sarah. The talisman by which Tobias was saved was the burning of a fish's liver, prayer, self-control, singleness of heart and freedom from any lustful motive. Of Joseph even more is demand- ed. He is not to have carnal knowledge of his wife, at least (according to Matthew) until the birth of Jesus, and (according to the immemorial tradition of the Church) for the whole length of his</p>
<p>314 life. But if much was demanded of him, even more was conferred. As successor to King David, he will hand on the throne of Israel to the Messiah, his own Son and Successor. The echo of the Tobias story in this first chapter of Matthew's Gospel serves to emphasise how the noble morality of late Judaism was yet more refined in its New Testament fulfilment. Christians of every age have marvelled at the fruitful virginity of Mary to which Luke's Gospel bears witness. But Matthew is hardly less forthright in witnessing to the virgin paternity of Joseph. If the Virgin Mary was, according to the flesh, the true mother of Christ, then the virgin Joseph was equally, according to the Law, his true father.3 3 In this light it becomes clear that in v. 20 the angel is saying not: Contrary to all your expectations and assumptions it was by the Holy Spirit that Mary has conceived, but Yes, it was by the Holy Spirit that Mary has conceived, and now you can put aside all your qualms and questionings, for God has a task for you to do as well. Once v. 20 is read in this way the ambiguities and difficulties of v. 19 tend to evaporate. The word 8ixa?os can be variously understood according as the participial phrase of which it is a part is taken to mean, 'because he was a righteous man' or 'although he was a righteous man'. Fortunately if we understand the whole paragraph in the way I have outlined we are not forced to choose one special sense of the word. There is no need here to dismember the complex richness of biblical righteousness to make it fit into one narrow specialised category. Certainly it does not exclusively mean 'an upholder of the Mosaic Law'. It is impossible to imagine anyone in the early Church, even a Judaizer, regarding it as a special mark of virtue to be a faithful follower of the Law of Moses without at least some implied concern for the 'weightier matters of the Law' (Mt 23:23). But, in context, there is every reason to think that legal scrupulousness is at least an element in the meaning of the word. When the phrase is 'unpacked', then, Matthew seems to be saying something like this: 'Joseph was too God-fearing and humble to presume that he could marry one who had been so singled out by God; he was also a loyal and faithful Jew so that he 3 Syriac translations strongly and repeatedly emphasize the true (but non- physical) paternity of Joseph. Cf. Eduard Schweizer, Das Evangelium nach Matthiius (Gottingen, 1973) in loc.</p>
<p>315 would conduct the annulment in the correct legal manner; and he was also kindly and sensitive enough to see that Mary would be spared any unnecessary publicity.' The main theological interest of the story, of course, occurs in vv. 21-25, but this lies beyond the scope of this short article, which was merely to expound the story as a simple, psychologically credible narrative. In conclusion, however, I append a translation which in- corporates the nuances of meaning I have defended above, and is now presented to the judgement of my readers: Now the parentage of Jesus Christ was like this. His mother, Mary, was betrothed to Joseph, but before they were married she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Her husband, Joseph, however, being a good man and not wishing her to be exposed to publicity, resolved to have the contract annulled quietly. But after he had thought this over, what should happen but that an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, and said: 'Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for holy is the Spirit by whom she has conceived. She will give birth to a son, and you will give him his name, Jesus (Saviour), for it is he who will save his people from their sins.'</p>
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