How Babies Were Made in Jesus’ Time

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Sexual intercourse in order to conceive children is such a basic human activity that we sometimes assume that all cultures have had more or less the same ideas about it as we have. So in reading accounts of procreation and conception in the Bible, it is often simply taken for granted that these people operated within a framework where, though the giving of life may be traced back to God, the human male and female participants must both have made their genetic contribution to any resulting offspring. Once it is pointed out that our modern assumptions are just that—modern in the sense that they depend on a biological science that has only been available for a couple of centuries—and that ancient accounts of conceptions had their own literary conventions, interpreting Biblical texts relevant to the conception of Jesus becomes interestingly more complicated. At the same time, recognition of these differences sheds light on how ancients could think of the product of a virginal conception as human and how some would have had no difficulty combining an account of a virginal conception with a normal conception involving a human father.

The most well-known view of Jesus’ conception, recounted in the annunciation stories of Matthew and Luke (Matthew 1:18–25; Luke 1:26–38) and given subsequent prominence in the creeds and Christian tradition, is that Jesus was conceived without the participation of a human male. But matters are already more complicated because other New Testament writings assume that Jesus had two biological parents, that Joseph was his actual father and that he was “born of the seed of David,” giving him patrilineal descent from David (cf. John 1:45; 6:42; Acts 2:30; 13:23; Romans 1:3; 2 Timothy 2:8; Hebrews 7:14; Revelation 22:16).

Let us focus initially on what became the dominant tradition and agree with the scholarly 043 044 consensus that Matthew and Luke contain accounts of a virginal conception. For many present-day readers this poses an obvious problem. We now consider both parents’ contributions to be necessary for human DNA, with, in the case of a male, the mother providing the X chromosome and the father the Y chromosome. To be a fully human male, Jesus would have needed Mary to supply the X and a human father to have provided the Y chromosome. Without this latter genetic endowment, Jesus would have no real continuity with the human race. How, then, we may ask, can the male product of a virginal conception be truly human?

Our difficulty did not occur to ancient writers and readers. Their understanding of conception, shaped by a patriarchal culture, would have been some variation of the dominant Aristotelian theory.^a On this view, the male semen provides the formative principle for life. The female menstrual blood supplies the matter for the fetus, and the womb the medium for the semen’s nurture.¹ The man’s seed transmits his logos (rational cause) and pneuma (vital heat/animating spirit), for which the woman’s body is the receptacle. In this way the male functions as the active, efficient cause of reproduction, and the female functions as the provider of the matter to which the male seed gives definition. In short, the bodily substance necessary for a human fetus comes from the mother, while the life force originates with the father.

The larger understanding of sexuality, of which this is a part, prevailed until the eighteenth century and is what Thomas Laqueur has called a “one sex/flesh model.”² On this model, masculinity was at one end and femininity at the other within a hierarchical spectrum where women’s sexual organs were viewed as essentially the same as men’s but, because of women’s lack of vital heat, they had been retained inside the body, and so women were essentially men who lacked anatomical perfection.

On this understanding also there was no clear distinction or sharp boundary between male and female in regard to the fluids the body produced. Blood, semen and milk were each seen as interchangeable discharges, and all bodily fluids were basically forms of blood, their variety being determined by the heat of that blood. So Aristotle thought that the menses might be viewed as a type of impure sperm; the Hippocratic Corpus and Galen held that women produced sperm,^b but it was less refined than that of men.³ Within this continuum, male heat, dryness and hardness were superior to female coldness, moistness and softness.

Even though in general women were seen as lacking the necessary heat of men, the one place in the woman’s body that was seen as hot was the woman’s womb. Both Aristotle and the Hippocratic Corpus look upon the womb as an oven in which the male seed is cooked in order to enable it to spark into life and shape the substance provided by the female. For Galen, if the offspring was female, this was because it had been undercooked in the womb and had therefore not reached its full potential.⁴

Jewish scriptural writings of the time assume 045 the dominant biological understanding that the male seed is implanted in the womb and gives life to the blood, the substance contributed by the mother.⁵ The contemporaneous Jewish philosopher Philo states, “The material of the female is supplied to the son from what remains over of the eruption of blood, while the immediate maker and cause of the son is the male.”⁶ Later rabbinic traditions concerning embryology and procreation were deeply embedded within this Greco-Roman tradition,⁷ as were patristic views.⁸ This ancient understanding continued to be held by Thomas Aquinas: “The female supplies the matter, while the male is the active principle of generation.”⁹

What becomes clear is that, in terms of ancient biology, even without a human father, Jesus would have been seen as fully human. His mother, Mary, provided his human substance, and in this case God, through the agency of the divine Spirit, supplied the animating principle instead of a human father.

It was this understanding that enabled patristic writers in the second century C.E. to respond to docetic and Gnostic views, which claimed that Jesus only appeared to be human. Patristic writers like Ignatius and Irenaeus saw clearly that Jesus, as the one who redeems humanity, must himself be in full solidarity with the human race. In making that argument, they pointed to his being born of the virgin Mary, since simply originating from a human mother was sufficient to guarantee his true humanity from the beginning of his earthly existence.¹⁰ This produces the irony that, while on ancient views of biology the virginal conception was thought to safeguard the humanity of Jesus, present-day biological understanding of such a conception undermines the notion of Jesus’ being fully human. We no longer think that a mother’s genetic input alone is sufficient to produce a fully human male. For Jesus to be fully human, he would need to have had both a human father and mother. A Jesus without complete human DNA would now actually be the sort of docetic figure the patristic writers refused to accept—a semi-divine or a wholly divine special creation that only appeared to be human.

Combining a fully human Jesus with a virginal conception depends then for its coherence on ancient biological assumptions that we no longer share. To claim in response that all things are possible for a Creator God who must have supplied the missing human chromosome would be to have God contributing to Jesus’ human substance and thus no longer to hold to the same understanding of a virginal conception as that of Matthew, Luke, the patristic writers and those who formulated the creeds. While they held that Jesus’ humanity came from Mary and that God supplied the life principle in a nonphysical fashion, this modern restatement of a virginal conception requires God to have acted in a biological way to provide part of the genetic material necessary for Jesus’ humanity.

But how did it become possible for some to entertain simultaneously the notions of a virginal conception and a normal conception for the same person, as reflected in Jesus’ descent from King David? In the case of Jesus, Jewish literary accounts of some conceptions, in which the part of the male is missing, prepared the way. Envisaging God’s involvement in the process of human procreation, Job says, “Did not he who made me in the 046 womb make them? And did not one fashion us in the womb?” (Job 31:15; cf. also Job 10:8–12). The well-known psalm, attributed to David, proclaims, “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb … Your eyes beheld my unformed substance” (Psalm 139:13–16).

As present-day readers, we tend to assume that this language was understood metaphorically and is simply attributing the whole process in a general way to God as the creative source of life. But the matter may not be so simple. Ancient biology and Jewish theology were not kept in separate spheres—but intermingled. Scriptural texts share the dominant Aristotelian view of how conception occurs but adapt it distinctively so that there are three parties involved—God, the male with his seed, and the female with the blood or fluids of her womb—and all three parties are understood to be actively involved in the production of a human fetus. The account of Cain’s birth states, “The man knew his wife, Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have acquired a man with the Lord’” (literal translation, Genesis 4:1–2).¹¹ Cain’s conception is a three-party affair, but Eve’s pronouncement gives the credit to the divine rather than the human male party. When Rachel says to Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die!” Jacob angrily responds, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” (Genesis 30:1–2). Later it is, of course, God who heeds Rachel and opens her womb, so that she conceives (cf. Genesis 30:22–23).

The notion of three partners in reproduction is even more explicit in the rabbinic writings that employ (and interpret) Biblical texts. God’s active involvement is seen in a particularly striking fashion in the rabbinic text Leviticus Rabbah 14.5. This text takes Psalm 51:7 (in Hebrew; verse 5 in English) and its statement about David’s conception, “Behold I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (JPS)—as well as Psalm 27:10, “For though my father and my mother have forsaken me, the Lord will take me up” (JPS)—and explains the passages as follows:

David said before the Holy Blessed One, “Master of all the worlds, my father Jesse had no intention of having me, he only intended [to satisfy] his own needs. Know that this is such because when they were taking care of their needs, one turned his face this way, and the other turned her face the other way. And you inserted each and every drop [into my mother’s womb].” Like that which David said, ‘Though my father and my mother have forsaken me, the Lord will gather me in’ (Psalm 27:10).

Here David is seen as conceived in iniquity because his parents had no intention of procreating; they apparently engaged in some form of coitus interruptus. Though in this sense David was forsaken by father and mother, God nevertheless gathered David in, literally, by inserting the semen in his mother’s womb. This example graphically conveys the extent to which God’s creative activity was envisaged as ongoing and as necessary for conception.¹² Yet what is significant about a number of the literary references to conception is that, as in the case of Job 31:19 and Psalm 139:16, it is simply God and the mother’s womb with its unformed substance that are mentioned. When in Judges 13 the angel of the Lord appears to Manoah’s hitherto barren wife (Samson’s mother), he announces, “You shall conceive and bear a son.” What follows stresses her preparation, by refraining from drinking alcohol or eating anything unclean, for the conception of one who will be a Nazirite to God from birth. The Biblical account does not mention Manoah’s “going into her” or “knowing her.” Readers fill in the gap and assume that the third party played his appropriate part, but the narrator feels no need to state this.

Not only in the case of Samson but also in the case of the conceptions of other key figures, the male partner in the reproductive threesome is omitted from the picture. Of the prophet Jeremiah, God says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). And the servant figure in Isaiah is told in Isaiah 44:2, “Thus says the Lord who made you, who formed you in the womb and will help you” (cf. also Isaiah 44:24; 49:1–6).

In each case the life force that generates and develops the fetus in the mother’s womb is divine. In emphasizing the divine initiative, any mention of male seed disappears. Similarly in rabbinic traditions, because of this concern to show God as active in procreation, what is also noticeable is “the extent to which men’s contributions through seed are de-emphasized relative to God’s.”¹³

One might argue in the light of this literary convention that readers of the annunciation stories in Matthew and Luke with their apparent absence of male involvement were simply meant to assume such involvement and these Gospels were following 047 048 what Scripture had done with other key figures in Israel’s history: They were eliding any mention of the male contribution to the conception of this child who had been elected from the womb in order to stress God’s initiative and special purpose for him.

It is more likely, however, that the accounts in Matthew and Luke signal that they have taken the omission of the male one stage further: They make Mary’s womb a virginal one (cf. Matthew 1:23; Luke 1:34); she has never had intercourse.

Luke, interestingly, makes this move, while retaining the early proclamation that Jesus was in the physical line of descent from David (Acts 2:30; 13:23). Luke also includes straightforward references to Joseph as Jesus’ father (Luke 2:4, 27, 33, 48; 4:22).

Present-day readers often find this contradictory and seek to explain away one element in favor of the other. But another ancient literary convention lay at hand. It is now widely accepted that in terms of their genre the Gospels are best categorized as a subset of ancient Greco-Roman biography.¹⁴ It is also relatively well known that in depicting the beginnings of Jesus’ life, the accounts in Matthew and Luke conform very closely to those of the birth of heroes or great figures in ancient biography, where there are predictions, prophecies and omens of their future greatness. And their conception is traced back to a union between one of the gods and a human mother, with no human male involved in the process.

What has often not been noticed, however, is that the writers of such biographies were also sometimes content to juxtapose two different sorts of tradition, one natural and one miraculous, about their subjects’ origins. Plutarch’s biographies of legendary figures, such as Theseus and Romulus, contain accounts of both an ordinary human conception and one involving a human mother being impregnated by a god (Poseidon or Neptune in the case of Theseus¹⁵ and Mars in the case of Romulus¹⁶). Similarly, in Plutarch’s biography of Alexander, after first telling how Alexander was believed to be the son of Apollo, who, in the form of a serpent, 049 lay with Olympias, Plutarch then offers two apparently contradictory reports: In one Olympias tells Alexander the secret of his divine conception. Then at the time of his first military expedition, she tells Alexander how to behave with the courage suitable to his divine extraction. In the other report, Olympias denies ever having said anything of the kind and instead was in the habit of saying, “When will Alexander leave off slandering me to Hera [the wife of Zeus and goddess of marriage]?” Finally, when Olympias’s husband, Philip, hears the news of the birth of Alexander, Plutarch relates this in terms of Philip’s receiving it with great delight as would be true at the birth of his own son.¹⁷ Similar accounts abound in classic Greek and Roman literature.¹⁸

Evidently it was not unusual for ancient readers to entertain simultaneously two different stories about the origins of a great figure. One recounted ordinary physical lineage. The other, suitable in the light of his later heroic achievements, involved a miraculous conception and envisaged him as a son of the gods.

This is not of immediate help in interpreting Matthew’s story. That version of Jesus’ conception does not simply have the two traditions side by side but brings the early tradition of Jesus’ physical descent from David into line with a miraculous conception by a different route. It stresses that, while Joseph was not Jesus’ actual human father, he—by naming Jesus (Matthew 1:21a, 25b)—adopts him as his own and thereby enables the child to inherit his Davidic lineage (see the adapted genealogy in Matthew 1:1–17).

But such a linkage is not part of Luke’s story, where Mary is the parent who is to do the naming (Luke 1:31). Instead, like the biographical accounts we have discussed, Luke-Acts juxtaposes the two different perspectives: (1) a virginal conception in the annunciation story (Luke 1:26–28) and (2) the tradition that Jesus was of the seed of David through Joseph (Luke 3:23–38; Acts 2:30; 13:23). What may appear on a present-day reading to be a blatant inconsistency can now be seen as in line with the literary conventions of some ancient biographies, in which giving dual paternity was one way of treating the birth of those who were perceived to have achieved greatness in their later lives. Early Christians believed that the mission and death of Jesus had been vindicated through God’s raising him from the dead and establishing him as Son of God; see, e.g., Romans 1:3–4 which describes God’s “Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.” Luke’s annunciation story retrojects this future greatness of Jesus, son of Joseph, to his conception and depicts him as Son of God from the very beginning of his earthly life as a direct result of Mary being empowered by God’s Spirit.

In the New Testament, then, we have the tradition that Jesus was physically descended from David through Joseph as his natural father found in writers like Paul (Romans 1:3; cf. also 2 Timothy 2:8) and John (John 1:45; 6:42), and we have a story of a virginal conception in Matthew. If ancient biology indicates how someone born without a human father could still be considered human, ancient biography and its adaptation by Luke show how a conception with and a conception without a human male’s involvement could both be attributed to the same subject. In so doing, Luke indicates that any of his readers aware of the separate traditions had a means of interpreting them in combination that could do justice to what each was saying about the identity of Jesus.¹⁹

Sexual intercourse in order to conceive children is such a basic human activity that we sometimes assume that all cultures have had more or less the same ideas about it as we have. So in reading accounts of procreation and conception in the Bible, it is often simply taken for granted that these people operated within a framework where, though the giving of life may be traced back to God, the human male and female participants must both have made their genetic contribution to any resulting offspring. Once it is pointed out that our modern assumptions are just that—modern […]