When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded, and brought home his wife, but did not live with her until she had given birth to a son. The child’s name he called Jesus.
Someone asked if belief in that doctrine was essential. Creeds were quoted (“born of the Virgin Mary”). Stephen remarked that Paul, who wrote his letters before the Gospels were compiled, seemed unaware of such a belief, saying of Jesus only that he was “born of a woman”. Al had been silent for a while and Melanie wondered if he was out of his depth. But he clearly had been doing his homework as he raised a question about the words of the prophet: “Behold! The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call His name Immanuel.”
He said that he had read somewhere that the word “virgin” didn’t appear in the original source and he wondered also why no one called Jesus “Immanuel”. Martha, full of information, was quick to respond. “Al is right about the word ‘virgin’. In the Hebrew text of Isaiah 7:14, where the quotation comes from, the word was “young woman.” But when translation was made into Greek, the word for ‘virgin’ was used.” Someone remembered the publication of the Revised Standard Version in 1952 when fundamentalist Christians attacked its translation of Isaiah 7:14 (“a young woman will conceive”) as an undermining of the Doctrine of the Virgin Birth.
On the question of the name, “Immanuel,” Webster remarked that it does not appear anywhere else in Matthew (or in any of the other Gospels, for that matter). Al added the comment: “We all hear ‘Jesus Christ’ used casually in the street. ‘Immanuel Christ’ would sound a little strange.”
Webster had been looking ahead to Chapter 2 and he remarked that if one omitted the second part of Chapter 1, then the text flowed nicely and there would be no debate about Virgin Birth, which many Christians found problematic. They needed to look at the flow from the end of the genealogy:
. . . Eliud was the father of Eleazar,
Eleazar was the father of Matthan,
Matthan was the father of Jacob,
Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, who was the mother of Jesus who is called Christ
There are, therefore, in all, fourteen generations from Abraham to David; fourteen from David to the Removal to Babylon; and fourteen from the Removal to Babylon to the Christ.
And then go on to the beginning of Chapter 2:
Now after the birth of Jesus, which took place at Bethlehem in Judaea in the reign of King Herod, excitement was produced in Jerusalem by the arrival of certain Magi from the east, inquiring, “Where is the newly born king of the Jews? For we have seen his Star in the east, and have come here to do him homage.”
Since Chapter 2 was the topic for the following week, Melanie displayed the full text for all to ponder:
Now after the birth of Jesus, which took place at Bethlehem in Judaea in the reign of King Herod, excitement was produced in Jerusalem by the arrival of certain Magi from the east, inquiring, “Where is the newly born king of the Jews? For we have seen his Star in the east, and have come here to do him homage.” Reports of this soon reached the king, and greatly agitated not only him but all the people of Jerusalem. So he assembled all the High Priests and Scribes of the people, and anxiously asked them where the Christ was to be born.
“At Bethlehem in Judaea,” they replied; “for so it stands written in the words of the Prophet, ‘And thou, Bethlehem in the land of Judah, by no means the least honorable among princely places in Judah! For from thee shall come a prince—one who shall be the Shepherd of My People Israel.’”
Thereupon Herod sent privately for the Magi and ascertained from them the exact time of the star’s appearing. He then directed them to go to Bethlehem, adding, “Go and make careful inquiry about the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and do him homage.” After hearing what the king said, they went to Bethlehem, while, strange to say, the star they had seen in the east led them on until it came and stood over the place where the babe was. When they saw the star, the sight filled them with intense joy. So they entered the house; and when they saw the babe with his mother Mary, they prostrated themselves and did him homage, and opening their treasure-chests offered gifts to him—gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But being forbidden by God in a dream to return to Herod, they went back to their own country by a different route.
When they were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise: take the babe and His mother and escape to Egypt, and remain there till I bring you word. For Herod is about to make search for the child in order to destroy him.”
So Joseph roused himself and took the babe and his mother by night and departed into Egypt. There he remained till Herod’s death, that what the Lord had said through the Prophet might be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”
Then Herod, finding that the Magi had trifled with him, was furious, and sent and massacred all the boys under two years of age, in Bethlehem and all its neighborhood, according to the date he had so carefully ascertained from the Magi. Then were these words, spoken by the Prophet Jeremiah, fulfilled,
“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and bitter lamentation: it was Rachel bewailing her children, and she refused to be comforted because they were no more.”
But after Herod’s death, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, and said to him, “Rise from sleep, and take the child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” So he roused himself and took the child and His mother and came into the land of Israel. But hearing that Archelaus had succeeded his father Herod on the throne of Judaea, he was afraid to go there; and being instructed by God in a dream he withdrew into Galilee, and went and settled in a town called Nazareth, in order that these words spoken through the Prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”
They read the familiar words and thought about Webster’s suggestion that the Virgin Birth narrative might have been a later addition to the text. “It almost looks as though some one slipped in an extra page and didn’t change anything else.” This gave rise to a debate about such a possibility. “Surely you wouldn’t get away with tampering with Holy Writ.” It was pointed out that in the early times, the writing wouldn’t have such stature and it could be done and copies of the new text circulated. They were now getting used to the idea that their discussions were going to be often inconclusive. As Webster said, “I am putting forward this idea but don’t have any evidence for it, so I will go on saying the Creed every Sunday!”
A new contribution was made by Andrew who had, up to this point, joined in the general discussion without saying anything particularly memorable. Andrew was a considerable reader of Bishop Spong, the controversial bishop of the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. He wished to acquaint the group with the idea of midrash, a way of interpreting a text which had been developed by Jewish rabbis: to take a text and “fill in the details,” as he put it, using careful imagination. “Spong is entranced with the idea that midrashic interpretation is the key to understanding the Gospels,” Andrew reported. “He thinks that Matthew Chapter 2 is a midrash on Old Testament texts.” The argument went something like this: early Christians, still thinking of themselves as a part of Judaism, trawled the Jewish scriptures for predictions which might apply to their Leader. The four which are quoted in Matthew, Chapter 2, then provided a framework for imaginative story telling; since Jesus was the fulfillment of all these texts, his life must have been thus and so. It is then possible to build the midrash and get Chapter 2 as we have it today.
This line of