gospel narratives are to be believed, and I would certainly stress caution in this regard, then we have to weigh the competing stories of Jesus’ conception and birth upon the basis of reasonableness and likelihood. To help us do this, I’ll call upon an abridged version of the brilliant logical formula created by William Ockham, popularly known as ‘Occam’s Razor.’
Occam’s Razor:
If you have two competing explanations for something, the simplest explanation is likely to be the correct one.
So, if we are to pit these two unhistorical claims against one another, which is more likely? Was Jesus the child of a virgin and a virgin-raping ghost-daddy, or did he or his mother lie about his Egypto-Grecian-styled incarnation?
If you accept the most reasonable of the two claims to be true, then you may be justified in asserting that Christianity, with its suicidal martyrs, its Dark Ages, its Inquisitions, Crusades, murderous missionaries and its 40,000 confused denominations, is but the lie of either an adulteress or her bastard-son that got way out of hand.
Sources: 1.Bart Ehrman. Jesus Interrupted. Harper-Collins. (2009). p. 149.
2.Steven T. Katz. The Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 4. Cambridge University Press. (2008). p. 321.
3.Ibid. p. 667.
4.Ibid. p. 840.
5.Fred Skolnik & Michael Berenbaum. Encyclopaedia Judaica. 2nd Ed. Vol. 20. Keter Publishing House. (2007). p. 29.
6.Catherine M. Murphy, PhD. The Historical Jesus For Dummies. Wiley Publishing Inc. (2008). p. 270.
7.Steven T. Katz. The Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 4. Cambridge University Press. (2008). p. 840.
8.Maurice Goguel. Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History? D Appleton and Company. (1926). p. 21; Robert Price. The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man. Prometheus Books. (2003). p. 40; G.R.S. Mead. Did Jesus Live 100 BC.? University Books (1968). Pp 135-51, 302-23, 388-413; Hugh J. Schonfield. According to the Hebrews. Duckworth. (1937). pp. 101, 122, 146-47.
9.Jewish tradition of the faked resurrection (Stolen Body Hypothesis) found in rabbinical traditions also appears in the Gospel of “Matthew” (28:11-15).
10.Philip Schaff. Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. 4: Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library. p. 699.
the tale, with a Roman soldier. [6] But the earliest of these sources dates to the third century and the earliest of these sources that mention Jesus’ “illegitimate” birth, dates to between the third and seventh centuries CE. [7] Also, as many scholars have noted, these unflattering descriptions of Jesus and his mother appear to be polemical in nature, drawing their adulterated narratives from pre-existing Christian sources. [8]
If we factor history into the equation and take into account the horrendous anti-Semitic atrocities committed by Christians, it makes sense that the rabbis sitting safely in Babylonia, might wish to sully the name of Christianity’s most adored character, but the truth is, these stories go back well before the composition of the Babylonian Talmud. In fact, some of the Talmudic and rabbinic traditions about Jesus can be found in the gospels themselves. [9]
One of the earliest sources we have for the claim that Mary conceived Jesus out of wedlock, comes to us from the second century philosopher Celsus, whose works have all been destroyed, but for the fragments which remain in the third century Church father Origen’s ‘Contra Celsum’ (Against Celsus).
The relevant excerpt reads as follows:
...[Celsus] accuses [Jesus] of having "invented his birth from a virgin," and upbraids Him with being "born in a certain Jewish village, of a poor woman of the country, who gained her subsistence by spinning, and who was turned out of doors by her husband, a carpenter by trade, because she was convicted of adultery; that after being driven away by her husband, and wandering about for a time, she disgracefully gave birth to Jesus, an illegitimate child…[10]
According to the Jewish tradition relayed by Celsus, Jesus wasn’t the bastard-son of a lying adulteress, but the lying bastard-son of an otherwise honest adulteress. Further, Celsus likely received this information about Jesus from his Jewish associates, which demonstrates that this Jewish tradition existed in the second century, if not earlier.
This still places the ‘Bastard Hypothesis’ after the composition of the original birth narratives contained within the falsely named gospels (Matthew and Luke), and is still suspect, well, only slightly less suspect than the original birth narratives, which seek to assert that the tribal deity of the Jews impregnated a Jewish virgin with a ghost version of himself. And here we arrive at the central point of this little piece. If any of the aspects of the