medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Professor Landes,
Please cite your evidence for your claim that Jesus annulled the Jewish law on inheritance or that he or his Christian followers disowned Joseph as his legal father. You are using "law" here in such as way as permits you to have your cake and eat it too. The question of Christian (and Jesus') attitudes toward the law is much more complex and Bill East's summary of the Christian valorization of both Jesus' virgin birth and Joseph's non-biological fatherhood _and_ Joseph as Jesus' father in the eyes of the Jewish law is "messy" only if one begins with a blanket claim that Jesus "annulled the law." But that is your claim, not a claim made by early Christianity.
Dennis Martin
>>> [log in to unmask] 05/15/01 09:30AM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
At 06:56 AM 5/15/01 -0700, Bill East wrote:
> > >There is certainly a tradition that Mary, as well
> > as Joseph, was descended from David, but it is not based on any
> > information in the New Testament.
but their very existence attests to the need to deal with the problems
created by the NT genealogies for claims of virgin birth.
> >The two genealogies, in Matthew and Luke, set out to show
> > >that Joseph was the descendant of David. They also
> > deny that Joseph was the biological father of Jesus, but biological
> > parenthood was not the main issue. As Plummer says in the
> > International Critical Commentary on Luke (available in the theology
> > section of any good library), "In the eyes of the law Jesus was the
> > heir of Joseph; and therefore it is Joseph's descent which is of
> > importance." His whole discussion of Luke's genealogy (pages 101-105) is
> > of interest.
i'm sorry, but this strikes me as wanting to eat your cake and have it
too. jesus' genealogy is of interest only to those who are interested in
the messianic claims. for jews, who do not consider him the only begotten
son of god, his lineage may be thru joseph, but hardly of any
importance. for xns who do consider him so, then joseph is irrelevant (as
is the jewish attitude). to invoke a law that jesus as supposedly annuled
in order to make a messianic claim for jesus seems a bit odd.
somebody help me here. this reading strikes me as apologetics, and
deserves to be treated as such, no? in which case, what were these early
gospel writers thinking about jesus' parentage? they sure left xns with a
messy claim, at least insofar as they might also want to maintain a virgin
birth.
rlandes
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