No Virgin Birth? Was Jesus ADOPTED by God to be His Son?

[00:00:01] No virgin birth. Was Jesus adopted by God to be his son? [00:00:06] By Bart D. Ehrman, read by John Paul Middlesworth did Luke originally have the story of Jesus's virgin birth? In my previous post I gave reasons for suspecting that Luke did not originally have chapters one and two, the birth narratives, but that it started after what is now the preface in one verse one through four, with what is now chapter three, verse one. One of the reasons it is hard to know for certain is because we simply don't have much hard evidence. Our two earliest manuscripts of Luke, p. 75 and p. 45 are lacking portions of Luke, including the first two chapters. We can't say whether they originally had them or not. Our first manuscript with portions of the opening chapters is the third century, p. Four, but our earliest patristic witness is over a century earlier. As it turns out, the witness is the heresy arc Marcion, and as is well known, he didn't have the first two chapters as early as Aranius's adversis, heresus Marcian was accused of excising the first two chapters of his gospel because they did not coincide with his view that Jesus appeared from heaven in the form of an adult man in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, that is, that he was not actually born into the world. But who is to say that Erenius, Tertullian, and their successors were right that these are chapters that Marcian excised from his account? It is at least possible, has occasionally been recognized that the version of Luke in circulation at Marcian's home church in Sinopi on the coast of the Black Sea, didn't have these chapters, and that his view that Jesus simply appeared on the scene as an adult was surmised from the text as it was available to him. I might point out that we have an analogous situation elsewhere in early Christianity, where heresaologists attacked their theological opponents for a certain understanding of the text that was, unbeknownst to the heresaologists, based on a different form of the text from that more widely known. This is true, for example, in the case of Origen and Herclion, where Origen occasionally points out grammatical difficulties with Herclion's understanding of a passage in John, not realizing that Herclion's interpretation was based on a different form of the passage from that known to origin. [00:02:24] Could something comparable have happened in the case of Marcion? Is it possible that, in fact his form of Luke was lacking chapters one and two? For the purposes of this paper, I'm less interested in exploring how a dosetist like Marcian might read Luke if it were lacking these chapters than in seeing how an adoptionist might read it without these chapters. The first reference to Jesus comes in connection with John the Baptist, who bears witness to him as a powerful apocalyptic judge. Chapter three, verses 16 and 17. Jesus is then introduced as one who is baptized. The spirit comes upon him in the form of a dove, and the voice comes from heaven. But what does the voice say? [00:03:06] In the vast majority of our textual witnesses, the voice of the baptism of Luke speaks the same words as the voice in mark. Quote, you are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased, unquote. But in the so called western tradition the text is different. In codex pose and some of the latin witnesses, the voice instead quotes the words of psalm two. Quote, you are my son today have I begotten you. Unquote. It should not be thought that this is merely an aberrant text of an aberrant western textual tradition. For as it turns out, this reading did not originate with these later manuscripts that attest it. As I have already pointed out, we do not have very many early manuscripts of Luke's gospel. Third century, p. Four has this passage, and it quotes the words as found in Mark. But long before p. Four was written, there were church fathers who quote the text, and so it would be of interest to see how they read it, that is, to see what their manuscripts read. At this point. What is striking is that every patristic quotation of the passage from the second and third centuries quotes the passage in the so called western form, you are my son today I have begotten you. This is the form of the text cited by Justin Clement of Alexandria, the gospel according to the Ebionites, the gospel according to the Hebrews, Origen, Methodius, the didescalia, and so on. I give the evidence in my book on the orthodox corruption of scripture. P. Four. In other words, rather than giving the standard text of the third century, appears to have given the minority text. [00:04:41] Not only is the quotation of psalm two, verse seven, better attested in our earliest sources, it is the wording that makes the best sense in the context of Luke's two volume work. I won't give all the argument here just one key aspect of it. As is well known in Mark's Gospel, the voice at the baptism, you are my beloved son, is echoed on the mount of transfiguration, where the voice tells the disciples, this is my beloved son. Chapter nine, verse seven. Luke, of course, used Mark's account in creating his own, and so we should not overlook the voice at Luke's transfiguration scene when trying to reconstruct the earlier words spoken at the baptism. And here the textual situation is clearer. Luke has changed Mark's heavenly voice in the second instance, so that now, rather than confirming to the disciples that Jesus is the beloved Son, it confirms that Jesus is the elect son. Quote this is my son, my chosen one, unquote. If the voice in Luke's transfiguration scene refers back to the scene of Jesus'baptism and confirms to the disciples what was there revealed to Jesus, that he, quote, has been chosen, unquote, one is hard pressed to see how the more commonly attested text of Luke 322 could be original for this reading, you are my son in whom I am well pleased constitutes a mere identification formula in which Jesus is recognized as the son of God. It is only in the variant reading, the one that is attested in virtually all the earliest witnesses, that God is actually said to confer a new status upon Jesus today I have begotten you only here, then, is God said to elect Jesus in a manner that is presupposed in chapter nine, verse 35. [00:06:28] Confirmation for this understanding comes in a summary speech in acts where Peter is in Cornelius's house affirming that it was at the baptism of John that God, quote, anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with the power, unquote, and that it was from this point that, quote, he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil. Unquote. Chapter ten, verse 38. Luke originally seems to have portrayed Jesus as one who was appointed son of God at his baptism and empowered then for his ministry. And so, without the first two chapters of Luke and with the earliest attested reading of 322, it is easy to see how an adoptionist reading of Luke makes sense. Consider also the genealogy placed immediately after the baptism. This is a peculiar genealogy for several reasons, all well known. But what is striking christologically is that it too functions in order to show that Jesus is the Son of God, for the genealogy, in fact is traced all the way back to God, the father of the human race. Jesus is supposedly the son of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matat, and so on, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. [00:07:42] In other words, according to the early references to Jesus in this gospel, he is the son of God like everyone else, in that he has descended from God as a human. But he is uniquely the Son of God because he was begotten at the baptism as the special chosen Son of God. Jesus of course, is empowered by the spirit both to resist the devil, as in the temptation scene that follows, and to engage in a miraculous ministry among those in need. An adoptionistic reading of the text makes particular sense of the sermon in Nazareth, relocated by Luke from the middle of Jesus's ministry in mark to the very opening of it. And how is it that Jesus is able to perform his miraculous ministry of preaching and healing? It is because, quote, the spirit of the Lord is upon me, unquote, in the words of Isaiah 61. In other words, Jesus can proclaim the good news and heal the blind, and so on, not because he has some kind of innate power as the son of God, but because God has invested him with power through the spirit, presumably simply meaning at his baptism, when the spirit of God came upon him in the form of a dove.