Christianity
Birth Narratives 2: Pantheros, Parthenos—Victim or Virgin?
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, July 04, 1999
Monday, 05 April 2004
Prophecy of a Virgin
An attempt was made, in Matthew 1:22-23, to justify the virgin birth story by referring to Isaiah 7:14 where is written:
Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.
Though Matthew interprets this as a messianic prophecy it is not—it is part of a warning Isaiah is giving regarding events of that time—and indeed it is absurd even in the gospel because Matthew’s angel has just directed Joseph to call the child “Jesus”, not “Immanuel!” Nevertheless, Matthew’s reading of it as a messianic prophecy is the sort of thing that Essene pesharists did. Matthew even uses the pesharist’s formula, “which being interpreted is”. In their books of commentaries, Essenes would take parts of the scriptures and reinterpret them in ways that suited them. That Christians freely did the same indicates their common roots—and they still happily call Jesus “Immanuel” though that was never his name.
The word translated “virgin” employed in the Greek version of the Jewish scriptures was “parthenos”, but a reference to the original Hebrew yields the word “almah”. Both “parthenos” and “almah” did not necessarily mean a virgin as we understand it, a woman who had never had intercourse. In Greek, it could mean youth, the state of unmarriage, or even a person who is first married. In Hebrew, it could mean, beside the usual meaning, an immature girl who could not conceive because she had not yet started to menstruate. The Hebrew word for “virgin” is “bethulah ” and would surely have been used in Isaiah if “virgin” was the meaning the author intended.
Young girls were betrothed to their future husbands until they could legally marry at the age of twelve and a half—menstruation usually started later. A married virgin could therefore conceive—in Joel 1:8 a virgin’s husband is mentioned. Mary was described as betrothed to Joseph implying that she was a minor under the age of twelve and a half—Joseph might have broken the law by having sex with a minor, and pretended he was surprised at the outcome to protect himself. Matthew 1:25 is at pains to refute any such thought by stating that Joseph “knew her not” till she brought forth her first born son—the euphemism “knowing her” meaning having sex with her. In any event, the virgin Mary could have given birth with no miracle involved.
The idea of a virgin as a premenstrual girl allows her to have children and still be a virgin. If she were to conceive from her very first ovulation, she would not have menstruated but would be a mother and still a virgin. If she conceived at the first ovulation after the birth, she could be a virgin mother of two children of different ages. Since Jewish girls often married before menstruation, “virgin” mothers were not unusual, explaining the case in Joel 1:8. Mary was a minor who could become Joseph’s wife when she reached the age of twelve and a half. Thus the “virgin” Mary could have given birth.
If she did, the truth was misunderstood in the gentile world of the Roman Empire, and indeed beyond, where it was de rigeur not only for gods but also great men to be born of virgins. Ra, Hatshepsut, Amenophis III, Cyrus the Great, Julius Caesar, Pythagoras, Alexander, Augustus and others, were thought to have been born miraculously. Plato was born of Paretonia, begotten of Apollo, not Ariston, his father, according to one authority. Perseus, Apollonius of Tyana, Fu-Hsi, Lao Kium, Zoroaster and Attis all came of virgin mothers according to their believers.
Pantheras
The earliest gospel written, Mark, has nothing to say about Jesus’s father. Though Jesus is described as a carpenter, his father is nowhere mentioned either as the carpenter or as Joseph. This suggests that, in the earliest tradition, Jesus was a waif or a foundling. The earliest refutation of Jesus is that he was the illigitimate son of a Roman soldier called Pantheras. The name Pantheras was found among Roman soldiers.
If the belief of the Christians were to come true and Jesus were to return at his second coming as a black man, how would he be received by negro-hating Christians? Would they bow their knee to a black god, asking forgiveness for the grave error of their racialist ways? Or would they decide that he was an imposter and crucify him afresh?
According to Origen (185-254 AD) in Contra Celsum, the Pagan philosopher Celsus, who was famous for his arguments against Christianity, claimed in 178 AD that he had heard from a Jew that Jesus’s mother, Mary, had been divorced by her husband, a carpenter, after it had been proved that she was an adultress. She wandered about in shame and bore Jesus in secret. His real father was a soldier named Pantheras, possibly a Moor to judge by the name. Tertullian, in 198 AD, quoted the Toldot Yeshu, where Jesus is several times called Ben Pandera to the same effect. So, Jesus was the son of the Panther, ben Pandera, and so he was known from an early time by the Jews. In the Jewish material, besides Ben Pandera, Jesus is called Ben Stada. In one story, this is a besmirching name of Mary, from a pun on “stada” as meaning a woman who has rejected her husband. Interestingly, this Mary is called a braider or hairdresser, implying a meaning of “magdalene”.
Christians always argue that this is an attempt to denigrate (oops) Jesus because “son of a virgin” is “huios parthenou”, in Greek, and “huios pantherou” (son of a panther) is a plain enough pun on it. The presence of the name, Ben Pandera, in the Jewish writings shows that the rumour probably began in Palestine, yet Pandera is not a pun on the Hebrew or Aramaic words for a virgin, so it arose among Greek speakers. If the excuse is true, some Greek speaking Jews must have been laughing at the Christian birth story by punning on the word “parthenou” to get the name “Pandera”.
Equally, however, the stories of the virgin birth could be a way of trying to explain that Jesus was called Ben Pandera. There was nothing unusual in Paganism about demi-gods being born of virgins, so there seems no obvious reason why the pun should have been invented by Pagans, but that it should have been used by gentile Christians to defend their new god against a true but undesirable rumour seems quite likely. Which is the chicken and which the egg is not evident, but since Matthew all but admits the truth writing about 100 AD, it is rather more likely that the virgin birth narratives were invented to dispel the rumour that Jesus was the bastard son of one Pantheras than that Pantheras was invented to denigrate the birth stories. There must have been a pressing need for them because they spoiled the purpose of the genealogies. With a convenient interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 as a messianic text, though it plainly is not, Matthew was able to justify his invention. Luke’s version is also aimed at refuting the same rumour, so that when an angel appears to Mary to say she will conceive, she immediately replies, with no thought of Joseph to whom she was betrothed:
How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?Luke 1:34
The gentile bishops came up with the ruse of changing the Greek name “Pantheros” to “parthenos”, the Greek word for virgin, to explain the defaming story of “the panther”. It is not a mistake that is easy to explain accidentally in Greek. Not only do the “n” and “r” interchange, but also the vowel “e” in Pantheros and Parthenos differ in the Greek. One is epsilon and the other eta. The bishops pretended the misunderstanding was in Hebrew, the name “Pandera” being a Hebrew attempt at pronouncing—“parthenos”—but problems remain, and the change still looks deliberate rather than accidental.
Since the birth stories are accepted as late additions to the gospels, Jesus did not have the title, “Son of the Virgin”, until late in the second century of Christianity, and the Pagan pun on the title could not have arisen before, unless it was not a pun but a genuine tradition. The tombstone of a soldier was found in Bingerbrück, Germany, inscribed:
Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera of Sidon, aged 62, a soldier of 40 years’ service, of the first cohort of archers, lies here.
The first two names are the obligatory Roman names he took when he was granted Roman citizenship. “Abdes” is his own Semitic birth name. “Pantera” is the personal or nick name his friends knew him as.
Eventually, in typical fashion, the Christian bishops incorporated a Panthera into the holy family, as the father of Joseph, to have an excuse for the name. “Pantheras” (Greek, “panther”, “leopard”, whence “hunter”) was popular as a personal name of Macedonian soldiers in the armies of the Seleucids. Epiphanius (320-403 AD), with no evidence he was willing to quote, cites Origen as saying that “Panther” was the nickname for Jacob (James) the father of Joseph. He took the name as an epithet giving him some dignity, thus explaining the name “Pandera”, but in that case, it implied that Jesus’s ancestry was not Jewish but Macedonian. He was fair and red-headed, after all!
Now you have to question the motives or efficiency of God, or the Holy Ghost, one of whose tasks was to ensure the inspiration of the Holy Word. Why was all of this necessary? Why did God make the twelve year old Mary pregnant before she even got married? Or why did the Holy Ghost have to tell the story as if she had been impregnated as a minor, causing all the questions and doubt. She could have married Joseph normally, and God could then have seen that the “Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee”, making her respectably pregnant by the Holy Ghost without any knowledge of Joseph or any impropriety to the outside world. It is not a question that Christians are supposed to think about, but the need for it from the plain fact that the girl was illegally pregnant is obvious.
The silence of the gospels over Mary’s condition cannot dispel the doubts about it any thinking person must have. The easy acceptance of the miracle does not gel with the harsh treatment the Jews meted out to promiscuous women, indeed, even victims of male lust. It tells against the Christian myth that this was a family. A Jewish husband would have been outraged, and notionally the adulterous woman could have been stoned to death. Had the girl been raped, then the rapist could have been stoned, but, as today, the suspicion fell upon the victim as encouraging the act.
In practice, stoning under the Roman Peace was probably itself illegal, but the social attitude behind it must have remained strong, and it happened as a mob action. Where stoning was impossible, social rejection must have been the usual rersponse. The Essenes had systems of fines and penances, leading to ultimate expulsion from the community, so their attitude might have been more like that of Jesus in the instance in John, where he invited the guiltless to throw the first stone. The crime was dire and frowned upon, but could be dealt with less harshly than death. So, if the scandal is to be accepted as real, then the seduction of the maiden looks more compelling within an Essene community than in Judaism at large. The Essenes famously maintained their numbers by taking in those troubled by the vicissitudes of life, and what could have been more of a vicissitude than being born in scandalous circumstances?
Since the perpetual virginity of mother Mary is absurd, what could have suggested it other than the need to hide a scandal. Apologists like Geoffrey Ashe (The Virgin ) think this is “inadequate to inspire such a doctrine or secure general assent”. The story was invented a minimum of half a century later, among gentiles not Jews, in a country distant from Palestine, and among bishops who had already secured themselves a following among Godfearing gentiles and Hellenised Jews. Are we to imagine that believers, even then, would accept the scandalous truth when the bishops had a well prepared explanation? These believers, as they are today, are not called sheep for nothing.
The lie was perfectly acceptable in a society that expected miraculous conceptions and births of gods and demi-gods. Believers were happy that the new Christian demi-god, Jesus Christ, conformed. Ashe concedes “the logic of the son of God concept” was enough. The miraculous nature of the relationship between the god, his son and the chosen virgin was sufficient. These early believers noticed the parallels with the previous gods and demi-gods, and virgins that had given birth and remained virgins because they received the same titles and epithets as their illustrious predecessors. What right has a poor Jewish girl to the title Queen of Heaven? The simple fact is that Mary was not the first Queen of Heaven, nor was Jesus the first son of God. These honours were transferred from classical precedents.
Ashe accepts that religious fiction was indeed written, but he cannot bring himself to believe that it was written from the outset over the basic events of Christian and Marian belief. But the ultimate truth could uphold the origin of the mythology as not being utter fiction, though at another cost.
A suggestion on these pages is that the Essenes had various rituals that have not come fully to light, but can be hazily seen in the New Testamant and Christian practices. One was a rebirth ceremony, one a ritual wedding and one a ritual feeding, the precursor of the Eucharist. We know there were women Essenes, because some Essenes married and the strictness of their practices would demand that they married wives of the same beliefs. We do not know that there were female celibates to match the male ones, but the graves of women have been found at Qumran, and the closely similar Therapeuts, described by Philo, had female celibates in the order. Moreover, women as well as men could be consecrated to God as Nazarites. It seems most unlikely that there were no female Essenes, and to judge from the gospel ceremonies they served ritual roles.
Mother Mary was one of these celibate nuns and she served as the ritual mother of Jesus at his rebirth ceremony, a ritual probably associated with Baptism, as it still is. This Mary, therefore had an important relationship of a ceremonial kind with Jesus in the order, but she was not his natural mother, indeed could not have been because she was a chaste nun, but was his ritual mother. As a ritual mother, she could remain utterly virginal forever, while having a son. Equally, Jesus could have this ritual mother, but have no recognisable earthly father, but consider himself reborn of God. It is likely that all the Essenes considered themselves reborn as angels, at least from the age of thirty, and therefore directly sons of God. Barabbas was the ritual name of these born-again men.
Virgin Mothers
Thomas Boslooper, considering the assertion of many Christian critics that other religions had precedents for the miraculous birth of gods and demi-gods, is quoted by Ashe as saying:
It is difficult to find a statement in all the literature of biblical criticism which is more misleading.
There is no example so clear of the Christian technique of argument. Come out with the devastating criticism whether it is true or not, and every Christian will automatically believe you. It is the Christian big-lie technique. This “devastating” assertion is true only in the sense that no other miraculous birth precisely matches that of Christ. Few of them are known in more detail than a sentence or two, or a short account at best, so it is easy to claim—with Boslooper—that there are actually no precedents at all. It is a popular Christian apologetic ploy. What does not match in every detail does not match at all! What does match does not match in meaning or interpretation!
The central point is that conception in classical mythology was often unusual. The details are irrelevant so long as the character has an unusual introduction to the world that marks him out as special. The degree of restraint or flamboyance in the telling is a cultural matter with no bearing on the peculiarity of the conception. Christianity began opposing sexuality as sinful, so no sexually prurient detail entered into the story, whereas the classical religions were more sexually honest. Christians now, after two millennia of indoctrination over sexuality, think the “tastefulness” of the Christian stories proves them. No justification could be more circular!
A man, even if he were thought of as a god, had to be born of a woman, and this could not be concealed, but paternal parentage is never so obvious, being known only to the mother, if anyone. The ancients felt that an offspring of a god, a son of god, should have a purer maternal origin than mortals, and this was evidence of his supernatural or divine origin. So, the purity of his maternal parentage required the saviour to be born of a pure woman—a maiden. Hence, saviours often were born of virgins. Pure, holy and chaste virgins, just like Mary, mother of Jesus, gave birth to gods, sons of god and saviours, but often long before her.
The Christ had to be a man, so had to be born like a man, but with a father who was God. The age old magical conception was the best that could be invented given the constraints, but Luke is suggestive:
The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.Luke 2:35
Today people would rightly not believe a woman, however virtuous, giving birth to a child and saying she had not had sexual intercourse. In an age of miracles and ignorance of natural law, she was believed with credulity and many maidens claimed that gods fathered their sons. At one time it became so common in Greece that a decree made death the punishment of any woman insulting a god by charging him with fathering her child.
The idea of miraculous birth goes back to ancient myths that preceded any direct knowledge of how people were conceived. Birth seemed arbitrary, and primitive ideas of why conception happened involved natural phenomena like wind, sunlight, eating things, and seeing things, and it could be by touch, through the ear, the navel and the eyes. Moreover, in societies of extended families, the identity of the father was not known until taboos, even in primitive societies meant that people sought partners outside the extended family.
Another source of the myth was the practice of priests of deflowering virgins, or curing the barrenness of infertile matrons (often the impotence of their husbands) by allowing the woman to sleep in a temple when a god might impregnate her. Details came from the woman’s dreams, because when the ploy was successful, the clues were in dreams, just as they were in the biblical stories. Like Freudian psychoanalysis, to dream of a snake or a swan was to dream of phallic symbols, and the child would be that of any god symbolised in the dream. Olympia, the wife of Philip of Macedon, conceived Alexander while she was sleeping in the temple of Apollo, where she was impregnated by Zeus in the form of a snake. How can a woman be impregnated by a snake or a swan, unless she too is in that form? Ultimately, these are psychological matters, but careless young girls found them useful excuses for the consequences of their adolescent adventures. Christians might smile, but how is Mary different? A man, according to Luke, pretended to be an angel called Gabriel. He was charming and persuasive, and the young girl was naïve and innocent because she was only twelve. What is so impossible about this that Christians deny it, substituting something utterly unbelievable, that they then say is proof it is divine?
In remote time, the virgin mother of Osiris claimed her son was begotten by the father of all gods. The likeness of this virgin mother, with the divine child in her arms, is commonly shown in old temples in Egypt. Scholars have said that the worship of this virgin mother, with her God-begotten child, prevailed everywhere. Her son of God was shown in effigy, lying in a manger, just as the infant Jesus was afterward at Bethlehem. The worship of this virgin mother and her god is of ancient date as is proved by ancient sculptured figures.
In their myths, virgin births were familiar to every Greek. Christians will complain that these virgin births were utterly unnatural, forgetting that all virgin births are! Herakles had a virgin birth. His mother Alcmene (Alcmena) was married, but had vowed to remain chaste until the death of her brothers had been avenged. Zeus had selected her as the mother of a mortal hero he needed to help him win a battle against the giants. Alcmene was still a virgin [Comment] when Zeus impregnated her. Zeus’s heavenly spouse, Hera, was against the child and opposed him in every way she could. Eventually she promised Zeus that she would desist if the young demi-god would achieve twelve great works. In the end, the wife of Herakles poisoned him, and he made a funeral pyre and got a shepherd to ignite it. A cloud came down from heaven, and the disciples of Herakles saw him rise from the summit of the pyre physically in the cloud to heaven. Hundreds of years later, the virgin-born Saviour from Nazareth was “taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight” from the summit of a hill (Acts 1:9).
According to Chinese mythology there were two beings—Tien-Chu and Shang-Ti—worshipped in that country as gods (Lords of Heaven) in the Chou dynasty more than twenty five hundred years ago, born of virgins who knew no man. Shang-Ti also was the father of the first emperor of the Chou dynasty, impreganting the mortal woman when she stepped on his footprint. Maia, mother of Buddha, Semele, mother of Dionysos, and Persephone, mother of Zagreus, Shing-Moo, mother of Fu-Hsi all had miraculous confinements and births, as did Io, called in Æschylus, the chaste virgin, whose son was the son of god.
The Latin inscription “Partura Virginis”, “the virgin about to bring forth”, has been found on Pagan temples in Celtic countries. Mayence was, it is said, the virgin-mother of the god-sired Esus of the Druids. In images more than two thousand years old, she is depicted enveloped in light, with a crown of twelve stars upon her head, exactly the same as the apocalyptic figure of the Christian Book of Revelation. She is also shown with her foot on the head of a serpent.
Apologists say that the classical stories are not virgin births like Mary’s. Ashe declaims that “male sexuality is always present” in Pagan birth narratives. He knows it was not in the Christian case. Why? Because he believes it was not! That’s faith for you!
The Virgin Birth of Christ was without sex, without physical agony.
But why is he so certain Mary’s was? The original Pagan idea was that the mortal girl should have been a virgin before she conceived, like Alcmene, not that she remained a virgin after she had given birth! Besides normal conception ordinary birth was also too ignominious for a god. It had to be spotless, or immaculate. Jesus Christ in an apocryphal gospel, like Krishna was born through his mother’s side, rather than the impure route. Though not in the canonical works, some of the Christian fathers endorsed this story. And, in some cases, the mother, like the mother of Krishna, was still held to be a virgin, even after she had given birth to other children—a greater miracle than the biblical version, though deprecated by Christians. Yet even this parallels Mary, who remained a virgin even though she had given birth to Jesus and his brothers and sisters.
Christians, for no good reason, believe that Mary was perpetually a virgin, but again this is just like important Pagan goddesses. However, what goddesses can do, human women cannot. No woman can physically give birth while remaining a virgin—her hymen remaining intact—even if she had managed to conceive somehow while remaining one. Even if a fatherless conception is possible, a birth in which the woman remains a virgin is not, unless we are to admit Caesarian sections, like Krishna’s, into the reckoning. If they are admitted, then it is another miracle that Mary survived what was possible but dangerous until recently, but such a birth was not miraculous. Because of the danger to the mother, the Romans usually permitted it only on dead women, to save the foetus in the last four weeks of a pregnancy.
None of this is available for discussion among Christians. They know Mary was a perpetual virgin, and Pallas Athene was not, despite her myth. Many ancient goddesses were perpetual virgins such as Athene, Isis and Cybele. Apologists claim these are only myths or metaphors! When Philo speaks of “God-begotten children” and “virgin mothers”, apologists dismiss it too as metaphor. Could the whole of the Christian gospels be just metaphor? Askance looks of hatred and incomprehension. Ashe concedes that the ancient goddesses were indeed virgins and mothers, but that is to “leave humanity behind”, meaning they are myths about supernatural beings! There is some subtle difference between a Catholic praying to Mary and a Canaanite praying to Anath, so at least Christians think, though what it is is impossible for the outside observer to see. In fact, it is different for no other reason than that they believe it is.
The doctrine of immaculate conception is ancient but the manner of the holy conception was different in different countries. Fu-Hsi (Fo-hi), the legendary founder of China, was conceived when his mother ate a flower she found while bathing. His gestation period was twelve years. His successor was also miraculously conceived. Christians will bleat that being conceived by eating a flower is not the same as being overshadowed by the Holy Ghost. Quite so! It is utterly different in the detail, but the detail is not what is important in these stories. It is the theme of a miraculous—particularly fatherless—conception that is the same. It is without sex and without physical agony despite the enormous brain Fu-Hsi must have developed while twelve years in the womb.
The ecstasy of S Theresa of Avila
No Christian can admit it as equivalent, though, to the Christian birth stories. It is actually too miraculous. When Luke says “the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee”, there is a broad hint of sexuality. Something “kind of” sexual happened! But a flower? Don’t be silly! When pushed on this “overshadowing”, the Christian apologist can retreat again. Whatever it implies, a spirit cannot enjoy normal sex with a material woman. But then neither can a flower. If these stories were meant to be true in any sense, it could only have been that the desperate mother made some such excuse for her condition. Mary was penetrated in her excuse by the Holy Spirit, or the archangel Gabriel, if he is different. Gabriel is the messenger of God, so he equates with Hermes, the messenger of the Greek gods but who was also a phallic god. Gabriel therefore brought more than messages to Mary. Perhaps, like saintly Christian nuns, she had fantasised it in her adolescent dreams. S Theresa of Avila dreamed she was penetrated by Christ. The mother of Fu-Hsi dreamed she had eaten a water lily. In reality, such stories meant she had dallied with a human seducer but was too young to understand what he was up to, what she had done, or what the risks were.
Zoroaster was immaculately conceived by a ray from the Divine Reason or Word. Herodotus also explained that such conceptions occurred by way of a ray of light and according to Plutarch’s book on Isis and Osiris it entered through the ear. Tertullian confirms it was a ray of light. Thus medieval pictures of Mary at the moment of conception show a ray of light entering her ear. But the idea of being “overshadowed by the Holy Ghost” seems to have been most current. God, the father of a god was believed to “overshadow” the mother of a god, to impregnate her. In 550 BC, Pythias, the mother of Pythagoras, conceived by a spectre or ghost of the god Apollo, the sun god. Does the ghost of the sun god differ in principle from the Christian Holy Ghost?
A Chinese sect worshiped a saviour known as Xaca, who was conceived of his mother, Maia, by a white elephant, which she saw in her sleep, and for greater purity, she brought him forth from one of her sides. Tamerlane’s mother conceived having had sexual intercourse with the god of Day. The mother of Ghengis Khan, being too modest to claim that she was the mother of the son of God, said only that he was the son of the sun.
Juno of Rome also grew pregnant at the touch of a flower to give birth to Mars. No impregnation could have been purer. So the most immaculate conception of all was that of the god of War! If it sounds absurd, how is it more senseless than conception by a ghost? Botany has shown that, at least, a flower can fertilise other flowers but no science has yet investigated the virility of ghosts.
The Greek Juno, Hera, was immaculately impregnated by the wind to give birth to Vulcan. Here is a close parallel indeed for the word habitually translated as spirit or ghost in the scriptures and continued into the Greek of the New Testament really means breath or wind! So literally the virgin Mary was impregnated by the wind just like Hera. Regarding the observations of G Higgins on Juno, Andreas Ardus writes by email to correct the citation, and offer the suggestions which follow:
The Goddess Februa, or Februata Juno, became the Purificata Virgo Maria. The old Romans celebrated this festival in precisely the same way as the moderns—by processions with wax lights, and so on, and on the same day, 2 February. The author of the Perennial Calendar observes, that it is a remarkable coincidence that the festival of the miraculous conception of Juno Jugalis, the blessed Virgin, the Queen of Heaven, should fall on the very same day the modern Romans have fixed the festival of the conception of the blessed Virgin Mary. Being merely a continuation of an ancient festival, there is nothing remarkable in it.G Higgins, Anacalypsis
Andreas Ardus also notes:
This festival of the Purification of the Virgin corresponds with the old Roman festival of Juno Februata (purified) which was held in the last month (February) of the Roman year, and which included a candle procession of Ceres searching for Proserpine.Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds—their Origin and Meaning
Oskar Seyffert says Juno was known under many names as the goddess of nuptials, and the name Iuga (Yoke) is one of them. He gives no feast day for her but he says the calends were a bad day for marriage, one reason perhaps why the festival was on 2 February, another being that the first was devoted to Juno Sospita, the national goddess. 2 February is actually the date of the “Presentation of the Lord” in the Catholic Calendar, celebrating when the infant Jesus was presented in the temple, and Mary was purified (Lk 2:22). This seems to be the real link between Juno and Mary, Godfrey Higgins was suggesting. It was not the conception but the purification of the virgin that was celebrated on this date. William Woods (A History of the Devil ) confirms that 2 February was the Roman day of purification. Since the Church adopted 25 December as the birth date of Christ, in Mosaic law, 41 days later would have been Mary’s date of purification, 4 February. It fell so close to the official Roman festival on 2 February, that was the day chosen.
The second century Stoic, Aelianus, in De Natura Animalium, describes what seems to have been a version of the virgin birth of Christ. He says in Herod’s reign a Judaean maid had made love to a serpent, become pregnant and fathered the son of a god. At the time, Asklepios of Epidauros was well known as fathering many a demi-god to matrons who made the appropriate sacrifices and slept overnight in the sanctuary. She would dream that Asklepios appeared to her as a serpent, and if she later had a child, she was sure it was the offspring of the god. Augustus was called “Divus ”, it is said, because his mother conceived him in the temple of Apollo, the god appearing to her as a serpent. Julius Caesar too was immaculately conceived, being the son of the beautiful virgin Cronis Celestine and begotten by the Father of all Gods, Jupiter.
Both Buddha and Krishna, of India, were immaculately conceived. The mother of Krishna was overshadowed by the supreme God, Brahma, and the Holy Ghost was Naraan. Krishna’s mother had given birth seven times previously but remained a virgin. Philostratus, the biographer of Apollonius of Cappadocia cites his source Damis as saying the virgin mother of Apollonius—the contemporary and rival saviour of Jesus Christ—gave him birth by being overshadowed by the god, Proteus.
Several of the virgin mothers of gods and great men go ten months between conception and delivery.
The tradition of the miraculous conceptions of gods, sons of gods, saviours and messiahs was prevalent in the world from ancient times on, beginning long before the mother of Jesus was overshadowed by the ghostly representative of the Most High. The belief in immaculate conception extended to every nation in the world. The furtive pregnancy of young women by a god is a recurring theme in Greek mythology.
Dishonest Christians will insist their own fantasy is unique, but it is no more unique than any other. Both the prevalence and antiquity of the idea of divine conception among the heathen is conceded by earlier Christian writers in their arguments from precedents of the divinity of Christ. S Augustine, Origen and Lactanius tried to persuade us of the immaculate virginity of the mother of Jesus Christ by the example of similar Pagan events. They conceded that the doctrine of divine conception was long anterior to Christ and not unique in his case.
In Luke, the birth of John the Baptist is no less miraculous than that of Jesus. John’s mother is an old woman, Elizabeth, and his father is an old priest, Zachariah, who complains that he is past it! Yet John is conceived and born six months before Jesus, according to Christians. So, an impotent old man and a barren old woman have a son. Are we to assume that this was old Zachariah suddenly became a stud again, once his old dear had turned into Liz Hurley? Objectively, this is a better miracle because the factors of age and impotency preclude pregnancy utterly. Presumably Elizabeth was not a virgin, so this was not a virgin birth, but that is often not the point—it is the miraculous conception.
Comment from Schmuel
Could you supply the source for the account of Hercules… And as close as possible any dating information.
Mike
Homer was regarded as sacred or almost sacred. Just as people take inspiration from the bible, the Greek poets and playwrights took their inspiration from him. Nowadays, Greek myths are collected from everywhere and all are included in the corpus. It would be like including the story of every biblical novel and epic film in the corpus of biblical mythology. So, there are often different versions because they came from different authors each of whom had their own purpose in changing the story, and from different regions because people were always glad to claim a god or demi-god as their own just as Christians claim various saints.
Anyway, that really is not your problem, it is just that your source is pretty narrow in its scope. If you go to any library or good bookshop, you should find a book about Greek myths that will give you the story. I have for example a book called, in the UK, Who’s Who in Classical Mythology, by M Grant and J Hazel which is a Teach Yourself book published in the US by David McKay and Co Inc, 750 Third Avenue NY. It explains that Alcmene refused to sleep with Amphitryon until he had avenged her brothers. When this had been accomplished Zeus appeared to the beautiful and wise Alcmene looking like her husband and impregnated her. Soon after, Amphitryon himself arrived and was disappointed by his tired reception, whereupon his wife explained why she was cool about his seeming vigour. Told what had happened by his wife, he sought the explanation from the prophet Tiresias, who said Zeus had cuckolded him, because he had chosen Alcmene as the mother of the valiant mortal who would save the gods the bother of fighting the Giants. Amphitryon, fearful of divine jealousy, resolved never to have intercourse again with his wife, who went on then to have the twins from her only two occasions of sexual dalliance.
The Greek Myths by Robert Graves is another good source. Have several sources, to get some variants. In one variant, Amphitryon tried to burn Alcmene to death for her infidelity, but Zeus saved her with a rainstorm. It is all ultimately solar mythology. Alcmene is the moon, Zeus the sky and Heracles the sun. According to Hesiod, the single night that Zeus slept with Alcmene the God gave the length of three by having Helios unyoke the chariot of the sun and rest for a day! So the period of conception of the sun is three nights!
Perpetual Virginity and the Holy Family
From as early as the second century, Christians took Mary to be, like the Pagan goddesses, a perpetual virgin, and so, rejecting any other of Mary’s possible confinements as supernatural ones, she must have remained as chaste as a pious nun, once Jesus had been born. S Jerome insisted on this article of dogma. Curious, then, that the leader of the Jerusalem Church was James the Just, described by Josephus as “the brother of Christ”. Matthew 1:24-25 implies that Joseph had sexual relations with Mary once she had given birth to Jesus. In Luke 2:7, Jesus is described as Mary’s “first-born”, implying she had others. All four gospels speak of brothers pf Jesus, and two mention sisters. The direct and simple interpretation is that Jesus had a large family of brothers and sisters, children of his own mother, Mary, and the Christians in the first century accepted it as so.
Catholics, who still believe the perpetual virginity tale, say the “brothers and sisters” of Jesus were really cousins, indicating more incompetance by the Holy Guardian of the Word, and that the Jews were indifferent to proper family relations. Christians delight in finding excuses for the lapses of the Holy Ghost, but the frequency of the need for it illustrates the immense credulity of the believer. Why is God, or His spiritual agent, so incompetent at putting over the message of salvation? The most cunning excuse invented by professional Christians is that God made it hard to believe to test the believer’s faith! Thus faith becomes synonymous with foolishness.
Joseph could have been an elderly man who had married before and had several children by earlier wives. Thus, the brothers and sisters of Jesus were his half brothers and half sisters. The word used for brother is “adelphos” usually meaning a blood brother, but the Septuagint uses “adelphos” for other relationships like that of Lot and Abraham (Gen 14:14,16), Jacob and Laban (Gen 29:12.15) and 1 Chronicles 23:22 where it means cousin. Moreover, the assignment of Mary to the care of John (Jn 19:25-27) suggests that Mary had no other family.
The brothers of Christ in Mark are James, Joses, Jude and Simon, but none of his sisters are named, perhaps because they were all called Mary! The Jude who supposedly wrote the epistle called himself the brother of James but “a slave of Jesus Christ”. He does not sound like a brother of Jesus Christ, even though he is a brother of James. The Essenes were a brotherhood but they had ranks, and the lower ranks were servants, or slaves, of the higher ones, explaining this usage. Jesus was of the highest rank among the Essenes, but had, in the view of his followers gone on to an even higher status in opening the gates of God’s kingdom. Everyone therefore was a slave to him. Followers of deities were their slaves from the earliest times in Sumer. Jude ranked himself below Jesus but level with James. In fact, Jude’s letter is a later pseudepigraph, but shows that the Essene terminology was still in use over a hundred years after the crucifixion, and continued in use into modern Christianity. It is again something that Christians have to deny since it shows that Jesus did not bring an original revelation. He was a part of the Essene brotherhood.
Mary, Joseph and the Holy Family
Two men, James and Joses, appear in Mark 15:40 with a Mary:
And also women were watching from a distance, among whom also was Mary Magdalene, also Mary the mother of James the less, and of Joses, and Salome.Mark 15:40
Are these part of Jesus’s family, or is she the “other Mary”?
And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.Matthew 27:61
In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.Matthew 28:1
And is she the Mary described as “mother of Joses” or “the mother of James” or “of James”?
And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld where he was laid.Mark 15:47
And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.Mark 16:1
Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children.Matthew 27:56
It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.Luke 24:10
And who is who in this passage in John?
Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.John 19:25
Is this four women or three? Is Mary of Cleophas (or Clopas) the sister of Mary his mother? Here “the wife” is inserted by pious translators before “of Cleophas”, whereas in the previous cases above, “the mother” is inserted before “of James”. So, the natural reading of it becomes that Mary the mother of Christ had a sister, also called Mary, who was the wife of Cleophas. If this sister of the Virgin Mary were the mother of James and so on, then they were Jesus’s cousins, as the Catholics always maintained.
But could Mary the Virgin have had a blood sister also called Mary? It has to be accepted as possible, but God’s agent is again doing a terrible job of arranging the story to be understandable because it seems so unlikely. If the Inept Ghost arranges for brothers-in-law to be called brothers, then sisters-in-law can be called sisters, and then this Mary would be the sister-in-law of the Virgin, and Cleophas is possibly her brother—who married another Mary (the other Mary)—and Heli was their father. If Joseph joined this family as an apprentice, he would have been taken as an adopted son of Heli, so he too could have been listed as a son of Heli. Geoffrey Ashe surmises that Joseph eventually married a Mary, one of Heli’s daughters. When Heli died, his son, Cleophas, became the head of the family, continuing to employ Joseph. The brood of children of Cleophas grew up with the solitary son of Joseph and Mary, so that they all seemed to be brothers and sisters to their friends and neighbours. So it is that Ashe ingeniously explains away the extended family of Jesus in the gospel accounts, but Joseph remains a cipher, less significant than Cleophas in this scheme.
Since we are speculating as hard as we can, the “other Mary” could have been Joseph’s sister and still been the sister-in-law of Mary. Cleophas was therefore married to Joseph’s sister, or perhaps Cleophas was Joseph’s blood brother, taking in the young widow when Joseph died young. These reconstructions might be plausible, the main criterion of Christian “history”, and it seems more plausible in Judaism that a brother would take into his family his brother’s widow and child than that a brother-in-law would, but the figure of Joseph never gets any clearer. He has to die young leaving the young girl a widow, or unmentionable is that he was feckless and had only one son by Mary because he left her destitute, perhaps before they were even married, being only betrothed, the girl being a minor. Mary the Virgin then depended on her sister’s husband or Joseph’s brother to support her. Christians do not want to hear that.
Another excuse could be that Joseph was an elderly man with several children including a daughter, Mary, the “other Mary”. Perhaps this old man took in the poor naïve girl who had been ravaged by a Roman soldier called Pantherus—a Moor from north Africa. Joseph legitimised the “adoption” by betrothing the girl, and she and her son were brought up in this old man’s large family. When he died many years later, his own son, Jacob (James), grandson of Joseph’s father, Jacob, according to one of the genealogies, it being a social custom to name eldest sons after their grandfather, became head of the family. Jesus hated Romans for the treatment meted out to himself and his mother, becoming a leader of a rebel band and dying on the cross. Fine for Christians except for the end of it.
Ashe boasts that even if the virgin birth doctrine is nonsense his reconstruction of Mary’s family relations is an “unsuspected answer”, “implicit in the record”. Yet to get the unsuspected answer the “Mary of Cleophas” has to have “wife” supplied by the reader for it to mean anything. Why then do we not have a “Mary wife of James”, supplying “wife” in these cases instead of “mother”? The words are missing but reconstructions depend on them. Arbitrary insertions become gospel truth, and then “history” is rewritten by pious liars on their basis. Whether Ashe’s reconstruction is valid or not, the great historian convinces himself that it is, and so is blind to its omissions. There is something about the myth of Christ that taints otherwise honest people, turning them into liars and confidence tricksters.
A Brotherhood?
It is an entertaining game, reconstructing the bits of the story the Holy Ghost forgot to clarify, but where does it get us? Such reconstructions are meaningless when there is nothing to distinguish them. All are plausible but desperate attempts to keep the idea of a Holy Family, maintaining as much as possible of the gospels’ persistence that Jesus had brothers and sisters, yet had to be an only child if the virginity of Mary was perpetual. The criterion of parsimony demands the simplest explanation of the central historical facts set in the proper historical context.
All of it is better explained by rejecting the invisible holy family as a construction of the early Church, and accepting that Jesus was a member of an apocalyptic fraternity with an associated sorority, and one that has undoubted and extensive similarities with Christianity. The James the Less, son of Mary (Mk 15:40) is listed as an apostle. The epithet will signify rank in the brotherhood. Another James had a higher rank. If it is James the son of Zebedee, then James the Less became the leader of the Jerusalem Church. The last shall be first! James the Less also seems to be the son of Alphaeus, a problem solved by equating Alphaeus with Cleophas, both being different Greek attempts to translate Halpai or Chalpai, according to the degree of gutterality of the “h”. Chalpai is a form of the name Caleb (Chalubai), who was, with Joshua, the only two of twelve spies, each standing for a tribe, sent into Canaan to bring good news back about the prospects. Caleb stood for the tribe of Judah. God, therefore, allowed only these two to cross into the Promised Land. Jesus identifies with Joshua, so Chalpai/Cleopas seems to be another title in the Essene setup, their idea of entry into God’s kingdom being modelled on the original entry into the Promised Land. If the ceremony of inauguration of an Essene required a rebirth, then each Essene had a ritual mother. It begins to look as if these ritual mothers were called Mary.
The Book of James, later called the Protevangelium, written in the second century but showing signs of an Essene original, offers yet another plot. It says Mary was the daughter of a wealthy but previously childless couple. Told by an angel she would give birth, the woman, Anna, resolved to consecrate the child to god. It is a copy of the mother of Samuel, also called Hannah, doing the same (1 Sam 1). The child was therefore a Nazarite! The story says Mary became a temple maiden, living in the temple precinct, and ministered to by angels. The High Priest, Zachariah, eventually entrusted the adolescent Mary to the guardianship of Joseph, an elderly carpenter, who already had sons. Mary remained in the service of the temple and was spinning thread (suggesting the word “magdalene” meaning braider!) when the angel Gabriel brought her his news. Joseph the guardian was suspected of illegal seduction, but the accusation passed by and Mary thereafter remained a virgin. Here, then, is yet another version of Jesus’s brothers, but Mary’s father is named as Joachim, not Heli.
The great historian and apologist, Geoffrey Ashe, tells us “it is not history” and has “little genuine tradition” behind it. He knows the author was ignorant of the setting, but for no other reason that he believes the gospel accounts rather than this one. That is not good historical methodoloy. The people in the Protevangelium were members of a village community of “Israel”, in which they were all close neighbours. Moreover, the Jerusalem temple did not employ young virgins! Ashe thinks it comical to imagine the small girl skipping about the feet of the armies of workmen employed by Herod who was rebuilding the temple at this time. So, the author was ignorant. Unless, that is, it is Christian apologists who are ignorant.
Ashe knew about the Dead Sea Scrolls, though it did not dent his prejuduces. The Essenes called themselves “Israel”, as opposed to Jews generally who were “All Israel”. The distinction between them was righteousness. Only the Essenes were, and that is why they alone were the true Israel. So, James, if he was the author of the Protevangelium, was quite plainly and characteristically describing an Essene community. They, above all Jews, kept themselves apart from All Israel when they could, although they were practical enough to have a book of rules, the Damascus Document, for those who had no choice but to meet the impure and unrighteous in their everyday business. They preferred to live, like the modern day Amish, in their own “camps” or villages separated from the villages of other Jews, and those who lived in cities, like Jerusalem, had their own houses in their own Essene quarter, where intercourse with their impious neighbours would be minimised. Thus they were clearly identifiable with the community described in the Protevangelium.
What Ashe thinks utterly proves the author’s ignorance is that Mary was a temple maiden. Essenes rejected the built temple, but considered their own congregation as a living temple. They themselves were in transit between heaven and earth and so were embryonic angels. Anyone not aware of the Essenes, or not wanting to admit it if they were, would have read the references to the temple and angels as being actual, and not the product of a particular understanding. Gentile Christians quickly wanted their belief to seem to be a unique revelation, and so they expunged everything obvious about the Essenes. They never appeared in the New Testament for example, and here Mary was depicted as a maiden brought up in the Jerusalem temple. It rather convincingly shows that the community were indeed Essenes because of the way they thought of themselves as a living temple.
The prejudices of the great historian, and Christian apologists in general are inexcusable. They believe the gospels are God-given, with no proof other than what they have always been led to understand, and that therefore suffices. It does not suffice for anyone who is properly scholarly. Christians cannot be scholarly and simply believe their childish fairy stories with no conclusive proof they should have the respect they give them. It does not matter that their parents believed it and so do millions of their friends. They all suffer from the same lack of discernment. They just believe what they are told. No historian could make such cavalier assessments of competing texts. The fact that the texts they prefer are religious texts is an excellent reason for treating them with suspicion. People will give them excessive credence simply because they have been accepted as authoritative in the past, irrespective of their validity. Once the canon of acceptable books had been decided by the Church, other books that were historically more valid, were forgotten, or even deliberately destroyed in the Church’s timeless war against unorthodoxy and heresy. So it is that a book like the Protevangelium, long ignored, might contain genuine tradition quite contrary to the beliefs of the dogmatised.
In this book, Joseph is not the husband of Mary but her guardian. The reason is given—she has been devoted to God as a life long Nazarite vowed to perpetual virginity, and could not marry, just as modern Catholic nuns cannot without breaking their vows. She was seduced by a charmer pretending to be Gabriel, or by her own guardian, betraying his trust, or by one of his sons, or by a Roman soldier called Pantherus, to consider the various options open, and gave birth to an illicit child. It might well have been that he too was consecrated to God as a Nazarite and an Essene, becoming a great but unrecognized Jewish martyr, and gentile god.
Gabriel is not described as appearing to the girl at Nazareth, but contrary to the views of the apologists, that is a point in its favour, for Nazareth seems to be another Christian fiction. She is, though, described as would a Nazarite, a much more likely origin of the description Nazarene than Nazareth is. That Mary was vowed to chastity also explains her question to the angel, “How shall this be?” It is typical of apologists that Ashe asks, “How is it that she married if she had a vow of virginity?” When Christ enters, all reason departs. The different story offered simply does not register in their consciousness. The evidence mounts up that the girl was seduced contrary to her vow of chastity. Mysteriously getting pregnant was itself a scandal, as it generally has been ever since, and the Church found it convenient for more reasons than one to hide it as a miraculous conception. The putative marriage was to legitimise what seemed illigitimate in fact. But the truth might be the idea offered here, that the girl was a ritual mother, and no scandal occurred, merely a misunderstanding that could not be righted without the Church having to admit it had emerged from an older Church—the yahad or congregation of the Essenes.
In summary, Joseph is a cipher. His son is homeless and owns nothing but a coat. His wife had to be left to someone else’s care when the son died, yet Jesus had brothers. This is not a description of a family. The Essenes owned nothing except their clothes. Yet everyone had a means of support from the communal purse, and everyone had somewhere to stay in the communal houses. Acts is utterly clear that the first Christians lived in the same way, and it was a crime to violate the rules of poverty. The Holy Family was a brotherhood!
