Word: jewish
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...Testament scholars have delved deeper into the pagan faiths that competed with early Christianity for followers, Mary's virginity has been challenged from the opposite direction--not as an impossible novelty but as a theme borrowed from the literature of the non-Jewish world. Stephen Patterson of Eden Theological Seminary lists divinely irregular conceptions in stories about not only mythic heroes such as Perseus and Romulus and Remus but also flesh-and-blood figures like Plato, Alexander and Augustus, whose hagiographers reported he was fathered by the god Apollo while his mother slept. "Virgin births were a rather Gentile thing...
Matthew was once again trying to tie his Nativity ever tighter to the Old Testament so that potential Jewish converts could feel comfortable with the new religion. The clue is Herod, whose failure to track down Jesus leads him to order the death of all local children under age 2. That "Slaughter of the Innocents" is a near replay of a much earlier infanticide: Pharaoh's murder of all the male infants of Israel in Exodus. Jews would recall that Pharaoh's most famous escapee (via those bulrushes) was Moses, who eventually received the Law from God at Sinai. Through...
...Syrian governor Quirinius, seems inaccurate. There is no other record of a census in Palestine at the time, and Quirinius was not yet governor. But he did administer an infamous census on Augustus' behalf some 12 years later, in A.D. 6. Resentment over it sparked a rebellion by Jewish messianic zealots that seethed for decades and finally backfired horribly in the Romans' razing of Jewish Jerusalem...
...Joseph and Mary's compliance with Quirinius' census, he was broadcasting to Roman readers that his fellow Christians were not that kind of messianists, intent on armed revolt. But by framing Christ's birth in the context of that empire-wide tally, he was also suggesting that not just Jewish Palestine but also the entire known world was a possible horizon for Christ's kingdom. It was a delicate line. The adult Jesus would later put it nicely (although Luke may have inherited this particular phrase from the earlier-written Mark): "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar...
...importance to Matthew. For some Jews it probably brought to mind a verse from the Old Testament book Numbers alluding to David's messianic status--"A star shall come out of Jacob and a [king] shall rise out of Israel." By making the star the object of the non-Jewish Magi's curiosity, Matthew showed that if he lacked Luke's detailed pagan background, he at least had some knowledge that stellar displays had meaning to non-Jews as well. In fact, stars were associated with the founding of Rome and the fall of Jerusalem, plus the birth...