Ben C Smith

????

I have no idea at this point what you are on about. I said that the birth narratives may echo Judges 13. I also think that the connection between the two has something to do with miraculous births (and also something to do with the Nazarite-Nazoraean connection). But I explicitly opined that the virgin birth itself came from an overinterpretation of Isaiah.

Ben.

Solo

Yeah, yeah, ....good try Ben, but I can see your nose growing as you type !

Jdgs 13:5 For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb...
....
13:7 But he said unto me, Behold, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and now drink no wine nor strong drink,

Compare with:

Luke 1:15: For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb.

That's John the Baptist, Ben, John's birth - not Jesus'. You remember ? John was the ascetic type in both Luke and Matthew, the Son of man came eating and drinking.....

You also said that "not a few scholars" saw a parallel between Judges 13 and the virgin birth. Care to name one ?

No, you explicitly opined thus:

Jiri

jgibson000

Try R.J. Miller (Born Divine: The Births of Jesus and Other Sons of God (or via: amazon.co.uk), 2003).

Jeffrey

Ben C Smith

The connection between Nazarite and Nazoraean is, in my opinion, artificial in the case of Jesus. But we have Matthew 2.23:

This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets: He shall be called a Nazarene.

Compare Judges 13.5, 7:

...for the child shall be a Nazirite to God....

Also compare Judges 13.5 and Luke 1.31.

Yes, I did say that. Read it again. I said that the virgin birth may echo the familiar OT story. Echo.

I do not hold that the virgin birth was based on or derived from that familiar OT story.

I later gave a potential and exact source for the virgin birth itself:

Start with Maarten J. J. Menken, The Sources of the OT Quotation in Matthew 2:23, JBL 120/3 2001, pages 451-468, who writes on page 457:

The view is also widespread that the OT sources of the quotation [in Matthew 2.23] are to be found in Judg 13:5, 7; 16:17.

Continue with J. A. Sanders, ΝΑΖΩΡΑΙΟΣ in Matt 2 23, JBL 84/2 1965, pages 169-172, who writes on page 171:

It is in Matthew that we hear of Joseph's understandable doubts about Mary's pregnancy, and it is in Judg 13 that we hear of Manoah's concern. The annunciation in each case involves the husband in a dramatic but not biological role....

From R. C. Symes (an Anglican divine):

It is also interesting to note that Luke uses Old Testament motifs about the births of Isaac and Samson as models for the angelic annunciations to Elizabeth and Mary (Genesis 17:15-21; Judges 13:2-24).

Jeffrey gave you another, one which I have not checked. And I have read such notions elsewhere, as well, though I do not remember exactly where.

Ben.

Larsguy47

Just a historical note on the above comment. Herod was very ill near the end of his death and it affected his mind. Just before his death he ordered lots of people into the Hippodrome where he gave orders to have everybody killed. So his paranoia over this coming "messiah", especially since he himself was considered the "messiah" by some (Herodians) could be blamed partly on his deminished mental capacity. When you consider he was about to kill all his friends in a mass murder before he died, killing a few infants under two years of age in the small town of Bethlehem doesn't seem extreme.

Wars 1.33.6 "6. He then returned back and came to Jericho, in such a melancholy state of body as almost threatened him with present death, when he proceeded to attempt a horrid wickedness; for he got together the most illustrious men of the whole Jewish nation, out of every village, into a place called the Hippodrome, and there shut them in. He then called for his sister Salome, and her husband Alexas, and made this speech to them: "I know well enough that the Jews will keep a festival upon my death however, it is in my power to be mourned for on other accounts, and to have a splendid funeral, if you will but be subservient to my commands. Do you but take care to send soldiers to encompass these men that are now in custody, and slay them immediately upon my death, and then all Judea, and every family of them, will weep at it, whether they will or no."

He also had his own son executed just before he died.

"8. So Herod, having survived the slaughter of his son five days, died, having reigned thirty-four years since he had caused Antigonus to be slain, and obtained his kingdom; but thirty-seven years since he had been made king by the Romans."

So this is a very insecure and murderous individual and this reference might explain why his seeking to kill the babies in Bethlehem, probably a secretive event might gone "unnoticed", besides the fact that Herod was making bigger news killing lots of other people before his death. At any rate, historically, it is not out of character for Herod to have done such a thing which supports the credibility of the gospel account (not saying you should believe anything else in the gospels--Heaven forbid!-- but this baby killing incident seems to check out pretty well. :>)

Larsguy47

Solo

So, if the connection is artificial, as you say, why would you consider it as a means of relating the nativity settings of Samson and Jesus ?

I understand, Ben: you want to suggest it but you don't want to be held responsible for it. In truth though, the story of Manoah's wife does not 'echo' in the manner you suggested it, i.e. by equating Samson mother's barren womb to Mary's virginal one. Put plainly, the reproductive fitness of the two women is not comparable. In the case of Manoah's wife/Elizabeth the issue was infertility but a presumed sex function and a desire to have a child. With Mary there was no health issue, she was innocent. Elizabeth of course resembles Manoah's wife by the poor reproductive health and in the dedication of their respective promised sons to God's work. But the matters of their conception are different. The annunciation to Manoah's wife includes deferred conception ('behold you shall conceive and bear a son' so don't do this and that) but there is no hint that the impregnation will be non-biological. Luke's John annunciation is to Zechariah and includes a paternity certificate ('Elizabeth will bear you a son'). But when Elizabeth conceives she hides herself for some time to escape neighbours' reproach believing the Lord had "done to me in the days when he looked on me". By contrast, Mary is virginal, and her subjective view of the divine impregnation is thus confirmed by her chastity. She consents to be the "handmaid of the Lord".

How could anyone in these scenarios (and let me know if I left out anything substantial) seriously maintain that the virgin birth echoes Manoah's wife pregnancy remains unexplained to me.

Thanks Ben, but the Nazarite-Nazarene connection is just too flimsy, unproven and tangential to the subject at hand.

But the doubts relate to completely different issues, don't they: Manoah has trouble believing his infertile wife will conceive (presumably by him). Joseph finds his wife-to-be pregnant knowing he did not touch her. Where's the echo ? The Matthean annunciation assigns a non-biological role to Joseph, true. It's a fait accompli as far as Mary's pregnancy is concerned. But there is no hint that Manoah was to be displaced, or was displaced, in the biological function of fathering Samson. The angel simply appears to both parents, announces the impending conception and birth and instructs the woman to abstain from drinking alcohol and to observe sensible diet.

We were not discussing or comparing annunciation similarities between OT & NT. What was and remains at issue is whether there was anything in the OT which could be linked - in whatever liberal way - to the idea of God impregnating women through agency other than the human biological function of males.

Thanks again for the quotes; they help to clarify the issues for me.

Jiri

Solo

Thanks, Jeffrey. I'll check it out. If you care to comment on my query I sent to Ben, please, do:

Jiri

Ben C Smith

I want to be held responsible for what I was arguing, which is that the virgin birth story echoes barren womb stories (especially Judges 13) in the OT. I do not want to be held responsible for your overinterpretation of what I wrote, which is, near as I can gather, that I was was deriving the virgin birth itself from the barren womb stories. That is not the case. I have always held Isaiah 7.14 LXX as (one of) the main source(s) for the actual idea of a virginal conception. Rather, I regard the miraculous birth motif as the connection between the NT nativity stories and the OT barren womb stories, the rationale behind mining Judges 13 for ideas for Luke 1-2 and Matthew 1-2.

That is what I was bringing up. I was talking about the virgin birth story as a whole. Where did the whole thing come from, piece by piece? The virgin birth itself, from Isaiah 7.14 LXX, IMVHO. Certain pieces of and structures in the story, from the OT barren womb tales.

You are now arguing with scholars whom you have not even read. Let me know when you have read the relevant material so we can continue this discussion.

Ben.

gstafleu

Is hierarchical classification really that difficult to understand? The nativity stories of Samson, JtB and JC are all cases of Tale Type 1: Couple has not had children yet; Angel communicates to (part of) couple that with divine help they will now have a child; child will be special to God. In that sense they are all similar. However Samson and JtB are of TT 1.1: Couple is old married couple but childless due to infertility, not for lack of trying; no virginity implied. And JC is of TT 1.2: Couple has not yet had sex, woman is virgin; no infertility implied. So in that sense the JC story is different from the other two.

That means it is not useful to say that the stories are or are not similar in any absolute way. You always have to specify: similar with respect to what. I suspect that Ben's "echo" is trying to do that in a way: it seems to imply similarity in some, but not all, relevant aspects.

The only way in which you can say that the JC nativity is "totally" different from the other two, is if you consider the difference (virginal birth, no prior or successive sex) as infinitely outweighing the TT1 similarities. That is a matter of weighing. That is valid, but should be presented as such.

Gerard Stafleu

Solo

...all of which is made with a single purpose: to deny the undeniable. There were no virgin births in the OT (or if you will, Judaism, before it came into contact with the Hellenic culture). None, nada, zero, zilch. The miracle of late pregnancy does not equal the miracle of God-sent snakes, white elephants, magic showers or holy ghosts impregnating women.
But in a certain period, the latter type of miracle (and conceptual tool) begins to emerge in Judaic thought (John Kesler provided a great example of that with Philo) and finally it appears in the Christian canon, with a single reference back to OT, which it turns out to be hilariously malapropos.
Therefore, the most natural, self-evident, and logical explanation of the virgin birth, is that it belongs to post-Torah and post-prophet imported religious imagery making contact with the Jewish traditions during the Apocalyptic period. You and Jeffrey want to engage in a game of twisted logic and credentials mongering, to prove that "the structure" of the virgin birth myth draws on Judaic material (therefore cannot be said to "derive" from pagan sourcing). It won't work because it isn't true.

The fact of the matter remains that,

a) Isaiah 7:14 does not prophesize virgin being impregnated by God or anticipate Jesus' birth in any way. This was a mistake likely by some later editor of Matthew, and
b) the Judges 13. parallel, of the minor miracle of God reversing a mature woman's infertility, was deployed by Luke in structuring the mythical birth of not Jesus, but John the Baptist. In any case, Judges 13. does not forward reference a non-biological conception. This is a mistake traded hopefully only by marginal academics.

Jiri