From Virgin Birth To Miracles, A New Book Explores Historic Accounts Of Jesus
(REVIEW) Throughout his ministry, Jesus asked his followers and critics alike many probing questions. Some 307 to be precise, according to Biblical scholars. Perhaps the most pivotal was “Who do you say that I am?” — a query that remains central to the study and understanding of the Christian faith.
In this new analysis of Jesus’ life, renowned religious historian Elaine Pagels takes up the challenge of unpacking Christ’s identity through a compelling combination of historical background, Biblical criticism and theological reflection.
In her effort to answer Jesus’ question to his disciples, she poses many questions of her own: how do we explain the virgin birth, did Jesus really perform miracles, what is the significance of his crucifixion, did he really rise from the dead and how did this itinerant, first-century rabbi from a provincial Roman backwater become God?
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None of these questions are entirely new. They have been probed and picked over by theologians and church fathers dating back to the early centuries of the faith. What Pagels brings to the debate is a clear-eyed curiosity that will appeal to the skeptic who wants to believe but has doubts.
She is frank about her own doubts when recounting her religious background. Raised in the Methodist church in southern California, she was weaned on the polite platitudes of quiet, suburban Protestantism, which encouraged people to just “be nice.”
Yet she felt her congregation lacked the fiery “passion for social justice” advocated by the denomination’s founder, John Wesley. Exposed to Catholicism via a classmate, Pagels found the faith’s flickering candles and ritualistic mysteries intriguing, if not a little frightening. After a brief, ultimately disappointing flirtation with the evangelical church, she finally discovered what she was looking for in a doctoral program at Harvard, where she began her “life’s work,” immersing herself in the history of religion.
In “Miracles and Wonder,” Pagels, for the most part, maintains scholarly objectivity, frequently taking the position that she in fact has no position on any particular theory when it comes to Christological controversy.
On the virgin birth, for example, she approaches the issue, as any responsible academic should, by first examining the texts, which can be confusingly contradictory. Like many Christians, her earliest impressions of the nativity story were informed by Christmas pageants, carols, and greeting cards, which tend to conflate the actual stories related in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew (neither John nor Mark has anything to say on the subject).
In Matthew, there is no journey to Bethlehem, no shepherds, and the wise men visit the holy family in their house, not a stable. This latter setting appears only in Luke, who nonetheless makes no mention of a star or wise men, but does relate the journey to Bethlehem, purportedly to comply with the Roman census, but more likely to fulfill the prophecy that the Messiah will be born “in the city of David.”
More complicated is the matter of Mary’s pregnancy. In both Matthew and Luke, Jesus’ birth was the fulfillment of Scripture (Isaiah 7:14), which foretold that “a virgin shall conceive and bear a son” named Immanuel (“God is with us”). Yet the Hebrew word in Isaiah, “almah,” is ambiguous. It could mean virgin, but it could also simply mean “young woman.”
This mistranslation dates to the third century BCE, which informed subsequent Biblical translations, from the Vulgate (fourth century CE) on down. More recent scholarship also speculates that Jesus’ father may have been a Roman soldier, serving in Palestine around the turn of the first century CE, who took advantage of Mary.
Pagels cautiously advises her readers not to “jump to the conclusion” that she endorses such theories. Yet throughout the text, she nonetheless feels obligated to explore as many angles as possible when approaching an understanding of Christ’s life and ministry. His miracles, for instance, may not have been unique.
There were other so-called healers and magicians in and around Galilee during the first century CE. But what set Jesus’ miracles apart was his frequent claim that it was their own faith (effectively, a placebo effect) that cured the sick, not some magician’s trick.
The true significance of the miraculous cures wasn’t so much the end result but the act itself. According to historian John Dominic Crossan, who Pagels quotes, Jesus probably “did not and could not cure [leprosy] or any other disease.” Yet in reaching out to these marginalized outcasts, he set an example by curing their “social isolation and rejection,” which may have gone a long way towards improving their spiritual, if not physical, well-being.
That Jesus was condemned by Pontius Pilate and died by crucifixion is generally accepted by historians and theologians alike. How it was that this man on the cross was, in fact, God was more difficult to explain. While Jesus is often cagey about his divinity in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in John, he plainly states that he “and the Father are one” (John 10:30).
John also places the date of the crucifixion a day earlier than the other Gospels, to coincide with the slaughter of Passover lambs. Having already identified Jesus as “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29), John thus elevates the crucifixion from a routine Roman execution to a supreme sacrifice for all of humanity.
On the Resurrection, Pagels remains neutral, confirming only that “after Jesus died, many people claimed to have seen him alive.” She leaves it to Paul to explain to the faithful and skeptics alike that while physical remains are buried, “what is raised is a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44). Thomas’s need to see and touch the wounds of the risen Christ is more a lack of faith than evidence of a dead man’s resurrection.
In the end, Christianity’s appeal and triumph have always been its promise of eternal life and an end to earthly suffering. To regard the Gospels as historical documents is to misunderstand their meaning. Yet what they do provide, Pagels concludes, is “what we often need most: An outburst of hope.”
Tom Verde is a freelance journalist, specializing in religion, culture and history.