Was "Jesus" a "bastard" & the Church tried to Cover it up with the VirginBirth Stories?

Was Jesus a Bastard? (& did the Church hide the Fact with a Virgin Birth Myth based on Isaiah 7:14?

Now remember�keep a civil keyboard under your fingertips...

Obviously it is hard for any critical thinker to take everything in the 4 Gospels literally at face value since, besides the many internal contradictions between them, it is generally conceded by scholars that the Gospels are not to be meant to be read as �pure history� anyway but were meant to be �read in the Churches� as haggadic (i.e. legendary) midrashic stories (based on �Messianic� OT verses) set out to prove �that Iesous is the Christos� to increase faith in the minds of �believers�.

See for example the blatant "give away" in the Gospel of John 20:31

�These things were written so that you might believe that Iesous is the Christos and by believing you might have life in his name�� not exactly the stuff of historical impartiality�!

Still, there are a number of intriguing historical echoes of (distorted) facts buried within all this Midrashic tapestry about R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean (�Jeeezuzz�) which sometimes oddly float up to the surface often where you least expect to find them.

One of these occurs in the Gospel of John (again!) with �Iesous� having a confrontation with some group (Saduccees or Pharisees?, it is not specified but they seem to be making shall we say hints about �Iesous� parentage somewhere in here: see John 8:39-42

The conversation is clearly not a literal event, but a combination of theological discussion heavily edited and made into a literary poem of sorts, but buried deep within the gist of the conversation is the odd phrase:

�We were not born of Fornication: [at least] we KNOW who OUR father is...�
(lit. "WE (emphatic in the Greek: HUMEIS) are not bastards: we only have one father") !!!!!!

Ouch.

That�s hitting a little below the belt, even for Pharisees and Sadduccees.

Some pious Chrisitan scribe back in the 3rd century AD seems to have taken it into his head to add in the margin the additional words [�even God�] kind of out of place, right next to their accusation, probably to take the sharper edge of the obvious insult out of the discussion. They are talking about Abraham and his seed, not "Ho Theos" ("God"), so the addition is OUT OF CONTEXT.

In other words to make it look like the original conversation was not about �Jeezuz� being a Mamzer,( i.e.born of illicit union, or a �bastard�.

Apparently �Iesous" in the narrative is portrated as having not liking this diatribe very much, according to the author of John�s Gospel (whoever he was), for in it he retorts,

�Yes� you are the spawn of your own Father the Devil�.�

Not exactly the sweet parable of a harmless little rebbe telling harmless little stories.

Whereas his �accusers� were clearly hurling a more personal insult at �Jesus�, he hurls back a more or less class-oriented �collective insult� at the priesthood in general, claiming that the lot of them were sons of vipers.

It could be that they were making general racist comments about Galileans in general (of mixed blood e.g. Assyrians and Greeks who were re-located into the area and mixed with the local Phoencian-Israelites: in fact, The Galilee derives from the Hebrew phrase HA GILGAL HA GOYIM ("circle of Gentiles...") so perhaps theses Sadduccees/Pharisees were actually meant to be saying something like "We in JUDAEA know we are descended from Abraham, but god-knows where YOU PEOPLE come from!!" etc.) but the text is curiously ambiguous about the "fornication" issue and seems, rather, shall we say, personal.

But what are we to make of these slanderous accusations?

Was the man "Iesous" truly illegitimate (Heb. MAMZER: "born of an illicit union") as the Talmud would later suggest, the offspring of a Roman Soldier named Joseph ben Pantera whose grave in Syria (he died around AD 25 and had been posted in the Galilee between BC 12 to AD 6) was found recently?

(Or does the Talmud speak of another �Yeshu�, since there were so many Messiah�s running around at the time organizing armed revolts against Rome�including JUDAH THE GALILEAN)

Is the fact that �Iesous� may have been illegitimate the reason why he seemed to �fixated� on a �Father Figure� image, as Freud was so fond of pointing out , since according to Freud�s logic, �Jesus may have had no biological father� to call his own and so used the word ABBA to pray (lit. �Daddy!�) as a father-substitute�.?

It gets WORSE.

In Matthew's version of the lineage of the Messiah (Christ) �Iesous� was descended from a list of male ancestors, oddly, with 5 females mentioned along with the men�very odd in a Jewish geneaology.

The issue is highly curious to some who have studied this text closely, because ALL FIVE OF THE WOMEN MENTIONED IN MATTHEW�S GOSPEL HAVE ISSUES OF SEXUAL PROMISCUITY CONNECTED WITH EACH ONE OF THEM !!

The five women included were: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary.

l. Tamar: Genesis 38:6-30

Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Judah. A childless widow, she was given to her brother-in-law after her husband's death. Such a union was later called a Leverite marriage (Deut 25:5-6).

Tamar's brother-in-law refused to have proper intercourse with her and for this �Elohim killed him�.

Yehudah/Judah would not give Tamar to any of his other sons soTamar disguised herself as a harlot and seduced Judah, became pregnant with his son Perez.

Rahab: Joshua 2:1-24 (which Matthew spells RACHAB for some reason)

Rahab was a prostitute who lived in Jericho. She hid the spies of Joshua. Because of this, the Israelites spared her life when they conquered Jericho. She later became the wife of Salmon, and the mother of Boaz.

Rahab's faith, despite her occupation as a professional whore, was later commended by the writer of Heb 11:30-31.

Ruth: Ruth 1:1-4:22

Ruth was a Moabitess, an enemy of Israel (�no Moabite shall ever enter into the Congregation of Israel, not even beyond the 10th generation! . but had married a Judaean named Mahlon. . Her mother-in-law, Naomi, lived in Moab, and the language used to describe their relationship bordered on what we would call �Lesbian�.

Ruth, the Moabitess, was later married to Boaz, one of Naomi's relatives.

The (Gentile) Moabetess Ruth later became the mother of Obed, the grandfather of David.

Bathsheba: 2 Samuel 11:1-27
Bathsheba was the Jebusite Princess Bath-Shebiti (�Daughter of the 7 gods of Jebus�) and wife of Uriah the Hittite (the Jebusites and Hititites were blood related and inter-married) , a soldier in the professional standing Hittite (i.e. foreign) army of David, who allegedly seduced her on a rooftop.

When David discovered Bathsheba (Bath-Shebiti) was pregnant, sent Uriah back into battle, with orders that Uriah should be slain, so that David could marry Bathsheba who later became the mother of Jedidiah nicknamed "Solomon" (peaceful).

The fifth and last in the long line of promiscuous Females in the Genealogy is Miryam/Mary, the very pregnant bride to be of Joseph, and mother of said �Iesous".

One could make a case that even though there was sexual misconduct going on in all of these cases, eventually this women gave birth to heroes or famous men in some form, so it seems to be the point of the writer to suggest that even if Mary was pregnant, there is ample history to show that �God�s Plan of Salvation� can still be worked out�in other words, �he works in mysterious ways, and not to judge by appearances...�

As Professor Barrett used to ask us: �What exactly is the writer of Matthew trying to tell us?�


This also begs the Question: If Jesus has no earthly father why do BOTH his genealogies trace their bloodlines through Joseph?

Arguments in favour of �legal� genealogy fall on their face when the prophecies about the Messiah BEING OF THE SEED OF DAVID do not make any mention of legalisms.

The Question is: Did the Church make up the VIRGIN BIRTH story out of Isaiah 7:14 in order to cover up some of these inconsistencies and make a "physical negative" into a "spiritual positive" for the man they proclaimed as Messiah, such as they did with the way he died?

At any rate, the Hebrew word ALMAH in Isaiah 7:14 does NOT mean VIRGIN anyway:

ALMAH merely means �a young woman of marriageable age.�

It was the Greek translation (the LXX Septuaginta) which chose the word PARTHENOS (�virgin� or �young girl�) which could be construed either way. But the phrase in Isaiah was NOT messianic originally. It only grew that way over time (read the Dead Sea Scrolls for a taste of what they did with certain passages in the Hebrew Bible!)

Why did both Matthew and Luke go to such obscene lengths to twist the meaning of Isaiah 7:14 into something more like the birth of a pagan god like Hercules or even Alexander the Great who was also thought to have been descended from the gods, and �partheno-theodikos� i.e. �a god born of a virgin�?

Wait�there�s more�!

Here's something more to think about ref: those pesky Matthean and Lukan Genealogies that "Don�t Quite Match Each Other�"

As most thinking �Christians� must know by now, the two �genealogies� of �Iesous� in the gospels of Matthew and Luke SIMPLY DO NOT MATCH each other very closely.

See Matthew 1:1-18 and Luke chapter 3:1-22

The author of Luke (whoever he was) wants to trace the ancestry of �Iesous� back to �Adam� (apparently to make him more Universal for his Gentile Audience) and names his paternal grandfather as Heli (or Eli).

Matthew�s version is only interested in tracing his �ancestry� in convoluted groups of 14 (the gemmatrial numerological code for the Messiah derived from the name in Hebrew for DVD or David = Daled = 4, Vav = 6, Daled = 4).

Moreover in order to make all those tidy little near groups of 14, the writer of �Matthew� has to eliminate at least four kings from his list (Matthew�s king lists lacks a King sitting on the Throne of Israel between BC 680 and BC 630), namely Kings Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, Jehoiakim, the last was cursed never to have any physical descendants to sit upon the throne of David: (see Jeremiah 36:30) !!

In the Matthean version, the paternal grandfather of �Iesous who is called Christos� is Yakkov (Jacob).

So which is it, is Joseph�s father Heli or Yakkov? And who cares anyway since �Iesous� was not even supposed to be related to him by blood anyway?

And no, these two contradictory genealogies are not one for Mary and one for Joseph either because any tracing back to David by bloodline would have to go through the male lineages.

Moreover to make all those tidy little near groups of 14, the writer of �Matthew� has to eliminate at least four kings from his list (Matthew�s king lists lacks a King sitting on the Throne of Israel between BC 680 and BC 630), namely Kings Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, Jehoiakim, the last was cursed never to have any physical descendants to sit upon the throne of David: (see Jeremiah 36:30)

The Question is:

Did the Church make up the VIRGIN BIRTH story out of Isaiah 7:14 in order to cover up some of these scndalous accusations of the 2nd centiry rebbes and other inherent inconsistencies, and somehow turn their Messiah-Rabbi into the kind of god the pagans could revere?






[edit on 28-10-2004 by Amadeus]

I don't believe that Jesus was illegitimate. At least not in the spiritual sense in which he exists and in which the story is told.
The Virgin Birth story has too many predecessors within paganism. The symbolism behind the conception of Christ doesn't have anything to do with illegitamacy.

The historical Jesus is open to question. But then we don't even know if he actually existed.

For starters, isn't a bastard child one born without a father, out of wed-lock? Joseph and Mary were married before Jesus' birth.

But, yes, I do hear what you are saying... in fact, the History Channel a while back did a special on Jesus, in which he was the 'product' of a Roman raping Mary... I didn't watch it, there are some things you don't really want to know.

Your approach is flawed. you are holding certain verses as true while disregarding the many verses that disprove your theory

If you read the New Testament, you will find many references to the virgin birth

then, you use the talmud to further your point. well guess what, the talmud is full of blasphemies and insults towards jesus, and that is one of them.

I do agree with your interpretation of the insult presented to jesus by the pharisees, however this proves nothing but the evil in their hearts

a virgin birth in an age where people easily would believe thier neighbor..........where info was passed down through a gaint game of 'telephone'.....and of course there has never been prof of another virgin birth...........oh...so many ?'s ...so little answers. remember a belif is merly an opinion that is held has fact.

p.s. i have my hip waders on so ...................

I've read your posts before and didn't quite know what your position on Jesus Christ was. This has made it clear to me. I hope not, but you are probably influencing some who don't know Christ, but sadly your leading them away from Him. I think you better read 2 Peter Ch. 2&3. You are a fulfillment of some verses there.

Amadeus - Christs birth was foretold through prophecy and is clearly documented in the bible. How many years before his birth do you contend the cover up started? 500? 1000?



I too have read a lot of your posts and I am curious why you have such ill feelings for God and Jesus. It seems you will go to any extent to disgrace the Lord. I am sure there is a reason why you are mad, maybe we could talk about the injustice you believe has been done to you.

Our father, the Lord in heaven, our great and merciful God. I pray that you forgive Amadeus for his words, and set a new path for him that he may have wisdom and understanding in your ways. Father, you know the weakness of the flesh and the battles that are fought in the flesh. Please help Amadeus find the answers he needs to get past this conflict he is fighting. I pray these things in the truest of hearts, In Jesus name, Amen.

Amadeus, I am not interested in arguing with you about history and conspiracy, but I am available if you would ever like to talk about the Lord. My purpose is not to try and save you, that is between Jesus and you, but sometimes even true discussion can help us see our way.
Love in Christ, Popeye

LOL @ Amadeus .

They want to save you dude!!!! Hallllllllllllellllllllujah!!!!!


Seriously though, whilst I doubt the illigitemacy, the poster above brings up a good point in the prophesies of Jesus' coming.

When we look at the OT from the Christian perspective, isn't the prophecy of Christ's birth about the only thing that is pertinent to the religion? The rest of the book is Judaic law and only pertains to Jews. There are a few moral stories and the Commandments but apart from those, what else is in there that is useful to Christianity?

I believe that the only reason that Christianity used the OT was so that they could fit Jesus into history. It made him easier to sell.
There's some doubt as to wether or not the prophecies are authentic. Either way it doesn't matter. If they are authentic all the authorities had to do was work around them. And let's remember - these prophecies were for a Jewish messiah. Something that Jesus was not. In Old Testament interpretation Jesus failed to become the Jew's messiah when he died on the cross.

It's probable that they knew of the prophesies and once Jesus was born applied them to him. They then started getting the editing pen going on his life.

Hello there Leveller (and also :dbrandt):

I'm not sure if there are any people on this thread who can read Greek or Hebrew texts in their originals in order better to understand them....but many of you seem to think that by reading some random version of the text families in English you can understand everything about "Iesous" ...you can't.

(Newsflash; none of your different Old or New Testament manuscripts match each other..but that's another thread altogether ! )

l. The book of 2nd Peter is a classic 2nd century FORGERY placed into the mouth of Shimeon bar Yonah ha Kephah (Simon son of Jonah, the Rock), a Galilean fisherman who could not read or write Greek. This is why he toted John-Mark around with him as a translator, since the only language "Peter" knew was Galilean Aramaic. And 1st century Galielan fishermen do not write in the style of the Greek Stoics.

You would have to a. understand a little Galilean Aramaic and Koine Greek to see that this is an example of pseudonymous writing (very common in the church where famous dead people are supposed to have written books, e.g. the Testaments of the 12 or 1 Henoch quoted "as scripture" in Jude v. 14).

I'm afraid most of the people on this thread cannot read the texts in the original: my question is: if you cannot even read it, then HOW IN THE WORLD CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

2. As for all the "fake" Midrashic Messianic "prophecies" that the early church "searched the scriptures" for and then dragged into their pseudo-arguments after their hero was executed, having believed that certain passages were somehow magically "fulfilled" in R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean ("Iesous" or "Iesus" or "Jeeezzuzz" to you non Hebraists out there who like to call him something in Greek or Latin)---check out a book called THE FIRST MESSIAH by Michael O Wise and THE MESSIAH BEFORE JESUS by Israel Knohl which shows (for the lay reader who cannot read the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Original) that 150 years BEFORE Jesus, the Teacher of Righteousness was ALSO thought by HIS OWN FOLLOWERS AT QUMRAN (=Seccacah, or the "Monastery of Damascus" as they called it) as HAVING FULFILLED THE SAME ALLEGED "Suffering Servant" PROPHECIES in Deutero Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) written around BC 520, i.e. long after the prophet Isaiah died, in c. 701 BC but placed into his mouth under his name.

In other words.... you need to know INTIMATELY how first century Messianic Jews in Palestine handled the text of their own copies of the Hebrew Bible and the Apocrypha (does not match your bibles, sorry to announce) before you can understand that the early church HAD A CLEAR PREVIOUS MODEL TO FOLLOW when they started to apply all those silly prophecies to a naked, dead 1st century rebel rabbi ("with Daviddic blood maiing him that much more dangerous to the Romans) hanging from a gibbet for ARMING HIS DISCIPLES ON THE HILL WITH SWORDS IN A COUP ATTEMPT ON THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE INVASION OF ROME INTO PALESTINE BY POMPEY in BC 63 ... no doubt hoping for some miracle of angels to save him...

3. The alleged "prophecies" of the "Messiah" as handled by the 4 "canonical" Gospel writers are all 1st century Jewish "midrashic haggadah" , not "history" which makes very curious mis-use of the Old Testament with hundreds of "Messiah" verses taken out of their original contexts and "skewed" into a new meaning (you'll have to look it up and learn a little of this technical languae on your own, since these posts would be 100 pages otherwise. They are NOT actually fullfilments of anything since most of the prophecies were bent out of their original shape.

e.g. Proto-Isaiah 7:14 (c. 730 BC) is A POETIC WAY OF EXPRESSING THE CONVICTION OF THIS PROPHET THAT A WAR BETWEEN THE NORTHERN KINGDOM (and "its two enemies") WILL HAVE ITS TIDE TURNED ((and NOT ABOUT ANY DEAD RABBI EXECUTED 760 years later ON A CROSS BY ROME FOR ARMED SEDITION...): Go look up the verse for yourself and read the CONTEXT (not just part of the verse and say, See, it's about "Jeeezuzz!")

Cf: Isaiah 7:14 BEHOLD THAT YOUNG LADY (not VIRGIN) WILL BECOME PREGNANT AND WILL BEAR A SON AND YOU WILL CALL HIS NAME EL IS ON OUR SIDE ! (Heb. "emmanuel") :

Emmanuel is a WAR CHANT... not a title for the Messiah, originally, even though the Jews of the 1st century sometimes mis applied it that way.

"Emmanuel" does NOT MEAN "God with us" in the sense of "among us" as modern Christians understand it, but was something warriors shouted as they hit the fray of battle.

This half-verse was DRAGGED INTO the Virgin Birth Mythology to GIVE JUSTIFICATION to a growing Virgin Birth theology in the 2nd century AD.

BUT IT HAS NO RELEVANCE to ANY HISTORICAL 1st CENTURY AD SETTING.

If "Iesous" was actually "born of a Virgin" (like Alexander the Great was supposedly, despite his mother's shady past, or like Julius Caesar was when the Senate voted him in as a "god" and built temples to him, or like Hercules or many of the other pagan "gods" in the 1st century AD) you would think that his own family would have at least believed his message
("for even his own family did not believe him...they said, he is Insane...").

Even James (his blood brother R Yakkov bar Yosef the Tsaddiq, or "James the Just") took over the Galilean Nazorean Messianic Movement not based on belief (he was NOT a disciple) but based on his DAVIDDIC bloodline, i.e. he was considered by the same group as the NEXT IN THE DAVIDDIC LINE once Yehoshua was executed

I was hoping for more of a 'discussion" on this thread rather than a rambling by fundamentalists who believe in texts that they cannot read, and even pray for people who are trying to raise this uncomfortable questions, as I mentioned, the CHURCH SPENDS A GREAT DEAL OF TIME NOT TALKING ABOUT THESE ISSUES, which is why we are talking about it.

If you have anything useful to add, please do. But I would strongly advise all of you on this thread to READ THOSE TWO BOOKS I MENTIONED which show how the 1st century Messianic Jews twisted and contorted "prophecies" to fit their own pre-conceived agenda.

Also, all of you, try opening your mind a little....reading the texts is NOT going to bite you....

Originally posted by Amadeus
Was Jesus a Bastard? (& did the Church hide the Fact with a Virgin Birth

Yes yes yes, yes yes yes, yes, yes, yes yes. I think so , she was human after all. And all it would have taken was one lie.

while that is a probabillity, my personal theory was that jesus was an alien hybrid and mary was impregnated by aliens posing as divine forces to make her go along with it. hey anything is possible.

Amadeus. Whilst I sympathise with your point of view, I believe that the question over wether or not Jesus even existed, over-rides the topic here.

As you aware, Christianity and the Jesus story is based on paganism. It's probably nothing more than a symbolic story. To start putting such technicalities into the arena means that we are overlooking the deeper truth. I don't find it possible to place such characteristics on a probably fictional character. There is nothing in the symbolism to suggest that Jesus was illegitimate. The whole point of him is that he followed the other pagan gods and was born of a virgin.

I believe that the verses you placed in your first post are there to reinforce Jesus' divinity. They are symbolic not literal.

If there was a historical, real Jesus, it is possible that he was illegitimate but the proof is not in the Bible. To my mind, those verses are referring to something else entirely.

I have to agree with Ashlar regarding the Talmud. Jesus certainly wasn't flavour of the month with the Jewish mainstream and it's not improbable that he was the victim of a smear campaign. The precedents are already there in the Bible - you can see how the Jews wrote about those whom they disagreed with.

Hey there, Leveller:

I have to agree that the Gospels have heavilly overlaid R. Yehoshua bar Yosef with several layers of pagan mythology paint in order to sell him as a more universal (less rabinnic) Saviour God...

But in dealing with the mythology in the gospel narratives perhaps we should not "throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater..." and think that every single word is "mythologically" overlaid, although most sentences to do with "actions or events" seem to have an old testament "midrashic" or "pesher" parallel...artificially padded with material taken from the Old Testament (e.g. Psalms 22 or Isaiah 53) along the lines of the Teacher of Righteousness was handled by the Dead Sea Scroll Community.

It is possible in the gospel narratves there exists SOME very tenuous biographical nuggets buried deep insie the texts which have not been expurgated by later scribes or councils, i.e. actual physically verifiable hints that an individual (or if you subscribe to Composite Theory, several Messianic figures, e.g. a combination of the words of John the baptist and "Jesus" sort of smashed together into one pseudo-individual "personality") may have existed in time and space which lived and died (and ate and defecated) in Palestine (c. BC 12 to AD 36) on to which was grafted the "hopes of the Messianic community"...beyond all human recognition of course. If we were to go back in time and catch the man in the act, as it were, we would of course not be impressed at all with what we would be looking at, and would clearly wonder what all the fuss was about.

But, Leveller, one of the main reasons I support the "historical kernel + mythology" theory of the warped gospel material is the so-called Historical Evidence by "Criteria of Embarrasment" ...which I'm sure you have heard of and know something about.

In other words, if the early Church were really to make up a whole person from thin air, they would hardly have had him executed by having him nailed up naked on a cross as an armed seditionist following a failed coup attempt during a feast, castrated and possibly debowelled as well...nor would they have had his own family so utterly reject him ("he is insane"..."even his own family did not believe him...") nor would they have had a PURELY MYTHOLOGICAL HERO "baptised for the remission of sins by John the Baptist" if he was supposed to be "sinless from birth" etc.

The Criterion of Embarrassment must always be considered when dealing with this kind of mythological overlay...

But as Professor Barrett used to tell us poor theology students..."reconstructing the "Jesus of History" is like trying to "reconstruct the Pig from the Sausage..."

Originally posted by Amadeus
Evidence by "Criteria of Embarrasment" ...which I'm sure you have heard of and know something about.

Heh. To tell the truth, that one gives me many sleepless nights when pondering it.
I still believe that a lot of it can be explained away with paganism and that 90% of the things that the Criteria of Embarrasment cover have their origins elsewhere. Some of the others I put down to a new symbolism which Christianity itself invented, some to the need to sell the new religion to a Roman audience and some I put down to Judaic defamation and a wish to stifle Christianity at it's conception. So as a concept on it's own, I have to admit that the Criteria of Embarrasment doesn't really hold that much of a sway over me.

I guess a lot of the subject is about understanding the psychology of the people of the time. In this modern world, so much has changed, that this is a very hard thing to do with our space-age outlooks. So without being able to judge their minds exactly, I'm not in the position to totally disagree with you and as I said before, I can therefore sympathise with your argument.

If you pushed me though, I'd say that I'm 70/30 in favour over whether or not Jesus actually existed - I tend to believe that there had to be an historical character behind the myth - if only because the law of averages states that most myths have their origins in fact (however the later story pans out). But I am 100% sure in my own mind that if he did exist, he was nothing like the character that we see in the Bible.
My question would be wether Jesus (or R.Yehoshua bar Yosef if you prefer) came after the new religion had already formed it's basic concept and that his legend was tweaked to accomodate it and to give it credence.

As far as Jesus being a bastard, that would have been far easier for his followers to explain that the heretical claim that he was sired by the Holy Spirit.

Unlike our own time, pre-renaissance people were not embarrased about bastardy.

I was just reading the account of Joan of Arc. Most of our knowledge comes from a nobleman sired by a claimant to the throne by a serving wench. The writer had become the Marshall of Orleans. He signs his letters, "The Bastard of Orleans."

The duke known to modern historians as "William the Conqueror" was referred to freely in his own time as "William the Bastard." No one was horrified by that until Tudor times, when Henry VIII had so much trouble producing a suitable heir.

The church was taking on a far more difficult task by claiming Jesus had a divine parent, than if they had just said, hey, he was one.

And now I really must point out the very loose way that you pick and misrepresent the texts you choose.

For instance, you wrote about John 8:41:

"Some pious Chrisitan scribe back in the 3rd century AD took it into his head to add in the margin the additional words [�even God�] kind of out of place, right next to their accusation, probably to take the sharper edge of the obvious insult out of the discussion. "

I DO have some ability with Koine, the Greek of the New Testament. The only version of Nestle-Aland I have at home is 3rd corrected edition. The critical notes don't list a single major version that is lacking "even God" (hena patera echomen ton theon). So presumeably the 'namely, God' appears in Vaticanus as well as the Byzantine texts. Even P66, the SECOND CENTURY text has that phrase.

So how exactly do you know a third century scribe inserted that? What evidence?

Again, looking at the text at hand, there is nothing to show that these scribes were questioning Jesus' paternity here. Jesus has said that their leader and protector (pater familias) is the devil, and they are asserting abraham as their spiritual forbear.
It is a serious misreading of the text to claim they are impugning Jesus' paternity. If they didn't hesitate to call Jesus crazy, and demon-possessed (a serious charge), they would not have hesitated to call him a bastard as well.

you wrote �We were not born of Fornication: [at least] we KNOW who OUR father is...�

The term "AT LEAST," the crux of your argument here, is one you have inserted into the text yourself! It isn't in the greek or the KJV, which you pretend to quote.

You claim that the church has mutilated the text, and twisted it.

From where the rest of us sit, it's "Amadeus" who's doing the twisting and mutilating of texts.



You argue with 'shotgun rhetoric.' You throw enough lead around that you figure you're bound to score a hit occasionally.

I'm booing you're shoddy rhetorical form.

If you had sound conclusions, they could stand up on their own.

Hey Strange Craft:

I like your spirit, misplaced energy though it is.

FYI the insertional marginalium "even God" is actually quite typical of 2nd and 3rd century scribal additions to such Christian texts such as the socalled Canonical Gospels which were heavilly tampered with every time they were hand copied, especially in the early stages of the transmission before they were deemed "holy writ"...

Even your precious p66 (which cannot be dated before AD 200) is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a Greek text (or possibly from an "assemblage of non-matching texts" from which a scribe or scribal group chose certain readings to keep--and others to ignore or alter-- according to their own particular theology (or in the case of haplography, dittography etc. unintentional scribal mistakes in the copying out process). Either way a marginalium by definition is not "original" to the first copy of the text, but was added in order to clarify a certain "connotation" over another meaning of the text.

In this case, the additional words were certainly meant to soften the direction (or what he might have considered a possible misunderstanding) of the conversation which was none to savory.

Of course, the sloppy patchwork conversational pericopes we find in John's gospel are not historical narratives but tiny theological treatises, and I did not wish to paiint the picture here that we were dealing with a stenographer in the room taking notes of what "was actually spoken" during this "scene" with the pharisees/saduccees/benei Shammai etal. whoever the author (whoever he was) imagined the confrontation to be with in this instance.

And as you must be aware, "marginalia" which later creep into any textus receptus itself over time can often alter the grammatical structure of a sentence (whether in Greek, Hebrew, Latin etc.) as well as change the essential meaning (whether deliberately as with the infamous Testimonium Flavium "Chrsitianized" marginalium additions) and more often than not interrupt the flow of the original. This is particularly true of certain books like the Apocalypse of Yohanon the Elder (whoever he was) which is sometimes referred to by believing Christians as "the Book of Revelation" which many persons on this thread refer to in the plural for some strange reason.

Perhaps I should have written "early 3rd century scribe" for this particular marginalium but I have a tendency to type too fast and take shortcuts on these threads, which can often confuse people who are not as intimate with the material as others.

I do however think we have to beware of reading too much into this particular Johanine pericope: it is odd that the word fornication would have been chosen to be a topic of conversation between the pharisaic (?) party and the Messianic Nazorean representative at the time (Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean) i.e. the Daviddic pretender whose blood line was probably the largest sore spot for the ruling parties in Jerusalem (you rmemeber the Macabbees don't you? can you say, Non Daviddic Levetical Preists who called themselves Kings?) at the time (i.e. the REAL Davidds were supposed to be re-instated on the throne of Jerusalem in the Last Days, cf: Amos chapter 9: "And I will rebuild the Tabernacle of David which has fallen..." )---unless of course you object to my own translation of the difficult poetical Amos-like Un-pointed Paleo Hebrew of that chapter...

By the way, what criticvs apparatvs version of the Greek Text of the 4th gospel are you looking at?

The 3rd edition of what?

Just curious is all...

I'm looking at the third edition of the Novum Testamentum Graece, by Kurt Aland and (wilbehard?) Nestle. The critical apparatus was edited by the committee chaired by Bruce Metzger.

I'm kind of surprised you've never heard of it. Most folks would call it the standard.

Yes, I know all about how marginalia get inserted into the text.

But the critical apparatus notes additions to the text at the bottom of the page, with a superscript asterix, followed by the inserted material, followed by the major texts that have the isertion.

Nestle-Aland doesn't show any marginal additions for John 8:41.

You mention that p66 wasn't written until ~200AD. But it's reading of this verse seems to match p75, which WAS written around 175 AD.

Apparently, every major text has those words, in situ.

So why did you say it was a scribal insertion? Based on what evidence?

This is precisely why said you use "shotgun rhetoric"

I may be mistaken. But from my chair it looks like you're just making stuff up about the Bible, and expecting everyone to be so impressed with your pontifications that they won't question you.

I am questioning you now.

Do you stand by your original assertion that it's a scribal insertion?

Why or why not?

The "Jesus is a bastard" theory sounds plausible and it makes some sense but here is my problem with it.

First of all, I'm one who believes Jesus was just a prophet and his father was in all sense of the word Joseph and only Joseph, and Joseph was married to Mary.

Had Mary been raped or if she was some whore who slept a lot and then got pregnant and for nine months she walked around being pregnant without a husband? See where I'm going?

She would've been beaten, stoned, or even killed if she was pregnant without a husband according to Jewish custom and law.

I believd the whole Virgin story is a good night story and nothing all. She was a young woman, or "Virgin" who was married and gave birth to "Jeezus" or Yehoshua ben Yosef (It's not Yehosua bar Yosef as you type it, ben being Hebrew for son)

And I wonder where Joseph in the Bible goes to? All we hear from him is that an angel comes in his sleep to tell him to take his family to Egypt, then what?

It's a possibility that maybe Joseph died when Yehoshua was very young, perhaps in his "lost years".. Maybe Joseph was Yehoshua's inspiration for the revolutionary cause of the Jews against the Romans...

Another thing is this..

Let's pretend Mary was a whore and she gave birth to her son without a husband. Let's pretend that she escaped many death threats for giving birth to a bastard... the bastard child would've grew up with a mark on his back. This was not the case for Yehoshua.

He was a loved man in his 30's.. loved by man, hated by few. He was a Rabbi and he taught in the temple.

To gain the title Rabbi and be respected while being a bastard child??? see where I'm going?

You don't teach in the temple by being a bastard. The way he was loved and respected leads to believe Jesus himself was married (Mary Magdalene) and that maybe he had his own children.

Perhaps that is what the Roman Catholic Church is trying to hide, not that he was a bastard.

Yehoshua wasn't the begotten son of God and he wasn't a bastard..

For what it's worth one of the two "historical" mentions of Jesus say he was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier named Panther. I'm guessing this is where the "Mary was raped by a Roman" idea comes from.