So, it might surprise you to know that Boyarin thinks Judaism and Christianity are compatible. His goal, stated on pages 6-7 is to help Christians and Jews to stop vilifying each other. He doesn’t follow Jesus and isn’t asking fellow Jews to do so. But he demolishes all ideas that Christian devotion to Jesus is contrary to Judaism or that Christianity is anything other than a Judaism to which mostly non-Jews have been drawn. Jews in the time of Jesus were looking, he says, for a divine messiah. And Jesus’ earliest followers were kosher Jews. The sad separation and enmity of Judaism and Christianity is something to get beyond, not something to perpetuate.

Among the themes of the book are some startling claims which deep six the status quo that Judaism and Christianity are separate and incompatible ideas about God and faith:

• Jews in the time of Jesus were expecting a divine-man Messiah figure.
• Many Jews already believed in something very much like what Christians call the Son and Father.
• Some accepted Jesus as divine-man and some did not; both groups were Jews; one of these groups we now call Christianity and the other Judaism.
• Christianity is a Judaism.
• It is not just that Jesus is a Jew, but Christ, the exalted and divine figure, is also a Jew.
• The doctrinal police represented by some rabbis and church fathers are the ones who sought to make Judaism and Christianity incompatible (he gives the specific example of Jerome who rejected people with orthodox faith who wished to remain Jews, saying they had to renounce Jewishness to be true Christians).
• Early Messianic Jews (Christian Jews) called Nazarenes must have been a sizable group even in the fourth century.
• The false boundary between Judaism and Christianity needs to be blurred.
• “Son of God” originally meant the human Davidic ruler; “Son of Man” originally was a divine figure equal with God though submitted to him.
• The roots of the All-Transcendent God [Father] and the Immanent Agent God [Son] go back even to pre-Israelite days as Canaanites sought to understand deity as both.
• The Similitudes of Enoch (part of the book called 1 Enoch) give the lie to the notion that Judaism rejected a divine redeemer who is a God-man.
• The Similitudes, written about the same time as Mark, parallel the ideas of a divine man almost identically to Mark, but neither text was aware of the other.
• Yeshua (Jesus) and his early followers were kosher (he documents how Mark 7 and the “all foods clean” passage have been misunderstood).
• There was a history of faith in a suffering Messiah (Isaiah 53 style) before Jesus and the usual debate about whether Isaiah 53 concerns Israel or Messiah is a moot argument.
• The liberal Christian notion that the church developed the suffering Messiah idea by misinterpreting the Hebrew Bible is false.
• The Gospels are a conservative return to an earlier idea of a Second Divine Figure, who represents the Immanent Aspect of God.
• Jesus, or Mark, knew his way around a halakhic argument.

Boyarin also gives many intriguing solutions to long-held puzzles about Christology, the theology of the divinity of Jesus and his humanity, and how the Gospel texts are using the Hebrew scriptures and dealing with the seeming paradoxes of Yeshua (Jesus):

• The debate about “Son of Man” as “human one” or “divine redeemer” can be resolved if we understand “Son of Man” as a simile: one who is divine but it is like he is human.
• Contrary to much Christian scholarship, Yeshua (Jesus) saw himself as Son of Man from the beginning, not just at the Second Coming.
• Daniel 7 has two ideas in tension: Son of Man is divine redeemer but also Son of Man is Israel.
• The root of Jesus’ saying “the Son of Man” must suffer is Dan 7:25-27 where Son of Man is Israel and must suffer a time, times, and half a time. Jesus midrashically reads this as the Son of Man (himself) suffering for Israel as Ideal Israel.
• Christianity long ago deemed adoptionism a heresy (Jesus became divine at his baptism when filled with Spirit). This idea is called apotheosis (a man becomes divine by indwelling divine spirit). Yet the gospels contain this theme, especially Mark, argues Boyarin (though he becomes God at his ascension, not his baptism). However, see the next bullet point.
• The opposite of adoptionism (apotheosis) is theophany (incarnation, God becomes man) and the divine man is shown to have pre-existed and been divine before birth as a human. This theme is also in the Gospels and is emphasized over the apotheosis theme.
• Boyarin sees both theophany (God became man) and apotheosis (a man became God, Jesus became God as his ascension) in the Gospels. Are these two incompatible streams? See my thought below.

What about Boyarin’s notion that the Gospels have both apotheosis (Jesus becomes God at the ascension) and theophany (Jesus was already God who became man at his birth)? As he shows extensively, the same thing happens in the Similitudes of Enoch, which Enoch chapters 70-71 seemingly contradicting what had been said earlier about Enoch. While earlier it seems Enoch became the Son of Man when, as it says in Genesis, he “walked with God and was not,” in truth, he was already Son of Man before he was born, according to chapters 70-71. Are these ideas really a contradiction? Perhaps they are relative to whether Enoch is viewed from the earthy viewpoint or the divine. This is a way to take Boyarin’s notion that in the Gospels Yeshua (Jesus) both becomes God and already was God. In reality, he already was God, but in appearance his divinity was revealed at his ascension. This way of reading it is compatible with the creeds of Christianity and the strong divinity statements in Paul, Hebrews, and Johannine writings.

The Jewish Gospels is a short, approachable book. Even people who don’t read academic literature can enjoy it and understand most of it. Boyarin gos out of his way to define terms in simple language. The body of the book is only 160 pages.

I can’t honestly think of a sound reason to criticize the book, although it seems my review may be weak for lack of finding fault. I found the entire book engaging and finished it in about three hours. In my opinion, this is a great step forward in Jewish-Christian relations and is a mind-opener worthy of being read by many thoughtful Jewish and Christian thinkers.

Only two out of four gospels have birth narratives about Yeshua. And the two birth narratives we have are so very different. They agree on major points, twelve of them, which I will list, but they are so different in other ways. It has often been said, and I think this is valid, that the gospel tradition developed backwards: the Passion and Resurrection narratives were first. Then the miracles, deeds, and sayings traditions developed. Last were the birth narratives. Childhood stories about Yeshua were not included until later gospels in the second century, gospels which the Yeshua-communities did not accept as apostolic in authority.

Meanwhile, we have the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke. They have agreements such as Yeshua’s Davidic origins, his virginal conception, and his birth at Bethlehem. They have major differences which are often smoothed over with little thought about the difficulties in harmonizing them. Luke doesn’t mention a trip to Egypt. Matthew doesn’t mention that Joseph and Mary were from Nazareth.

The Yeshua-story has birth issues. How reliable are these narratives? Should we who accept them as inspired tradition expect the world to subscribe to them as history? What is at stake in the birth story of the Messiah?

From the outset, I have to say that in a less-than-fifteen-minute talk on the birth of Messiah, I can only summarize large issues. Let me say as well that accepting tradition and theology from the Bible does not depend on historical verifiability. We do not have to limit our faith to things that have strong historical evidence. If we believe that God inspired a set of traditions coming from ancient Israel — the Hebrew Bible — and from the early Yeshua-movement — the New Testament — then our faith is not in historical reconstruction. I highly recommend Luke Timothy Johnson’s chapter in The Historical Jesus: Five Views for those who want more information about this approach.

So, let me begin by stirring the waters and showing some of the problems. These are problems precisely for people who do take the tradition seriously and who read with attention to details.

Consider Mark 3:21 and 31-35. Mary and the brothers of Yeshua come to Capernaum to remove Yeshua from a crowd scene. They heard people saying Yeshua is “beside himself.” They have doubts or concerns about what Yeshua is doing.

But wait! Is this the same Mary to whom the angel spoke in Luke 1:26-38? She was told that this child would be born without a human father, that he would be conceived by the Holy Spirit, and that he will reign as king. How could Mary have doubts about such a son? How could Yeshua’s brothers not understand? How could this all not have become known earlier? Why, when Yeshua comes back to Nazareth in Luke 4:16-30 do his townspeople not know he is a miraculously conceived man destined to be king?

I’m not saying there are not possible ways of understanding both lines of tradition. I’m just saying: we have a tension here between Mary’s knowing the origins of Yeshua and yet doubting him. Mary is not among the disciples before the resurrection, but only after.

And that is another way of showing the tension. It is the resurrection of Yeshua that quite obviously changed the view of the disciples and others about him. How could his greatness have gone relatively unknown until then in light of angels appearing and a virginal conception?

And let’s look at the birth issues surrounding Yeshua another way. The stories in Matthew and Luke are very different. Some believe they can be harmonized. Others do not.

Here is Matthew’s story in outline form: an angel appeared to Joseph in an unspecified location to explain the virginal conception, Yeshua was born in Bethlehem, magi came looking for him and this caused Herod to slaughter babes in Bethlehem, the Yeshua-family fled to Egypt, and after Herod died they came back but settled in Nazareth to hide from Herod.

Here is Luke’s story in outline, leaving out the John the Baptist material: an angel appeared to Mary in Nazareth to explain the virginal conception, the Yeshua-family came to Bethlehem for a census registration and Yeshua was born there, the family came to Jerusalem for a time to fulfill the Torah, and then they returned to Nazareth after the census and obligations in Jerusalem.

Can these stories be harmonized into one account? Some think they can and would place the order roughly this way: Luke 1, Matthew 1, Luke 2, and untold story of a return to Bethlehem, and then Matthew 2 (Raymond Brown mentions this common harmonization in The Birth of Messiah in a footnote on pg. 35). Here is the possible order of events if the stories go together:
…an angel appeared to Mary in Nazareth to explain the virginal conception
…an angel appeared to Joseph in an unspecified location to explain the virginal conception
…the Yeshua-family came to Bethlehem for a census registration
…Yeshua was born there
…the family came to Jerusalem for a time to fulfill the Torah
…the family returned to Bethlehem after Jerusalem for a time, though no gospel mentions it
…magi came looking for him in Bethlehem and this caused Herod to slaughter babes
…the Yeshua-family fled to Egypt
…after Herod died they came back but settled in Nazareth to hide from Herod

This harmonized account is possible. So why have any doubts about it?

First, what are the sources of Matthew’s and Luke’s information? It is not possible that Joseph could be a source. Every indication is that Joseph is dead before the resurrection. If Mary is the source, how could the two accounts be so different?

Second, how can we harmonize two accounts that are so different? Luke knows nothing of a flight to Egypt. Matthew knows nothing of Nazareth as the original home of Joseph and Mary. And why would Matthew omit the Jerusalem scenes, since it is Matthew’s purpose to show Yeshua as a fulfiller of Torah?

Having considered the difficulty in harmonizing, now let us consider what the two accounts have in common. Both Raymond Brown in The Birth of the Messiah and Joseph Fitzmeyer in The Gospel According to Luke I-IX list the common points. I will use Fitzmeyer’s basic points:
(1) Yeshua’s birth is related to the reign of Herod.
(2) Mary is a virgin betrothed to Joseph and they do not live together.
(3) Joseph is of the house of David.
(4) An angel announces Yeshua’s birth.
(5) Yeshua is recognized as a son of David.
(6) He is conceived by the Holy Spirit.
(7) Joseph is not involved in the conception.
(8) The name “Yeshua” is given by God through angels.
(9) Yeshua is proclaimed beforehand a Savior.
(10) Yeshua is born after Mary and Joseph come to live together.
(11) He is born at Bethlehem.
(12) Yeshua settles in Nazareth.

I am not saying that these points must all be taken as verifiable history simply because they are common to both gospels. But consider: the two stories in Matthew and Luke are completely independent. How did they develop? And why do they have similarities as well as differences?

The only reasonable conclusion, with coincidence being unreasonable on so many specific points of convergence, is that Matthew and Luke independently wrote birth narratives based on earlier sources. These could be oral or written. They cannot have exactly the same sources or, if they do, they took a lot of freedom in filling in the gaps.

The possibilities of how these earlier sources could have become known is too complex to consider here. It is possible and even likely that Mary gave testimony in the early Yeshua-movement. But the tension remains: if Mary made her story known, how did the divergences develop?

And the most important issue is the tradition that Yeshua was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Often called the “Virgin Birth,” this story should more properly be called the “Virginal Conception.” How did this tradition develop?

Here is one theory, one I will reject, but which even we believers in the gospels should be aware of:
…Those who came to believe through the resurrection of Yeshua that he was the Son of God realized a problem.
…Yeshua could not have suddenly “become” Son of God at his resurrection.
…So he had to be Son of God before the resurrection, even if his identity was not widely recognized.
…But it does not seem that someone with a human father could be Son of God in the full sense like Yeshua is.
…Therefore, he must not have had a human father.

From here, some people think, early believers turned to pagan myths about divine conceptions.

Some others think that Isaiah 7:14 was interpreted in Hellenistic Judaism as being about a virginal conception. But there is no evidence for this and linguistic evidence is actually to the contrary.

As Raymond Brown says, though, there is no reason to believe that early Yeshua-followers would know about or make use of pagan myths to solve a puzzle about Yeshua’s identity.

But where did the story come from. It is easy to think it may have come from Mary. But why didn’t Mark use it? And why did John skip the birth altogether and solve the origins of Yeshua question another way, with the idea that he is the forever-pre-existent Word of God?

Some people think the pre-existence idea about Yeshua’s identity is not compatible with the virginal conception idea. I don’t agree.

We who believe in the gospels as inspired tradition do not have to assume the evangelists got all their stories “right” in terms of history. As we see in many cases, it is possible for inspired scriptures to have discrepancies.

But the virginal conception is a teaching about which we will have to say that: (a) it cannot be verified historically, (b) it comes from an earlier tradition than the gospels, (c) it has possible sources in eyewitness testimony, (d) it is hard to explain tensions in the divergent accounts, (e) it is hard to explain tensions in the seeming lack of faith by Mary prior to the resurrection, and (f) yet there is no good explanation for it by which it might have been invented fictitiously.

The birth story of Messiah is a good example of why our faith is not based on rationalism or mere historical investigation. History does matter, but it is not the final court of belief. This is not only true in religion, but in all matters of what people believe about life.

Those of us who believe Yeshua is the pre-existent Word of God have no trouble believing that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit. We can simply wonder about the struggles of the evangelists to find out how it all came about and the apparently confusing sources and traditions through which they sought to go back, long after the fact, and find out how Yeshua entered the world.

With the various problems the birth narratives present to us, it is reassuring to consider the common elements in Matthew and Luke’s accounts, which suggest a tradition that pre-dated both of them. Fitzmeyer gives a suprisingly detailed list of the doubly attested traditions of Yeshua’s birth and some of these elements may surprise you:

SOURCE: Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, The Gospel According to Luke (Anchor Bible, 307).

(1) Yeshua’s birth is related to the reign of Herod (Luke 1:5; Matt 2:1).

(2) Mary is a virgin engaged to Joseph but they have not yet lived together (Luke 1:27, 34; 2:5; Matt 1:18).

(3) Joseph is of the house of David (Luke 1:27; 2:4; Matt 1:16, 20).

(4) An angel announces the birth of Yeshua (Luke 1:28-30; Matt 1:20-21).

(5) Yeshua is recognized as the Son of David (Luke 1:32; Matt 1:1).

(6) His conception takes place through the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35; Matt 1:18, 20).

(7) Joseph is not involved in the conception (Luke 1:34; Matt 1:18-25).

(8) The name Yeshua is imposed by heaven prior to the birth (Luke 1:31; Matt 1:21).

(9) The angel identifies Yeshua as Savior (Luke 2:11; Matt 1:21).

(10) Yeshua is born after Joseph and Mary come to live together (Luke 2:4-7; Matt 1:24-25).

(11) Yeshua is born in Bethlehem (Luke 2:4-7; Matt 2:1).

(12) Yeshua, Joseph, and Mary settle in Nazareth (Luke 2:39, 51; Matt 2:22-23).

The burial of Yeshua is an early belief of his followers, cited, for example, in 1 Corinthians 15:4 as a longstanding tradition by the time of the 50’s when Paul wrote the letter. In recent times it has been claimed that Yeshua’s burial is a highly unlikely event, that criminals were generally refused burial or at most put in a shallow grave where carrion animals could disgrace the corpse. The burial of Yeshua has been the center of a number of rationalistic refutations of the resurrection: the body was lost in a shallow grave and the resurrection story resulted as a mistake, the body was moved by Joseph and the disciples could not find it, etc. Therefore, we are confronted with the question: is the burial of Yeshua realistic in light of Roman practices (and especially if Yeshua’s execution fit into the category of treason)?

Whenever we ask history questions, we need to think more deeply than usual about what history is and what to believe about it. Knowing “history” is neither as simple as many make it at face value nor as impossible as many make it.

History is story. Someone tells a story. We read the story. The story has some connection to events that were witnessed and reported. We cannot recover the Event, but only the Story. No Story could ever be a completely accurate rendering of the Event. What people often want to know is whether the Story is “true.”

I have said in Yeshua in Context that we should evaluate stories based on whether they are internally coherent and externally believable. There is no such thing as “certain knowledge” about events. But if a story is internally coherent and externally believable, we should grant the likelihood that the Event has some true correspondence to the Story.

In considering the believability of the burial story of Yeshua, I have used as my main sources Raymond Brown’s The Death of the Messiah, Vol. 2 and Craig Evan’s chapter, “The Silence of Burial,” in Evans and Wright’s Jesus, the Final Days. I would point to the following as indicators of the believability and coherence of Mark’s burial story:

(1) Certain believable tensions are evident in the Mark story: Joseph needs “courage” to approach Pilate about the matter, Joseph does not cooperate with the disciples who watch from a distance, women are the only witnesses with the men apparently afraid to show themselves, and Joseph is not described here as a disciple.

(2) There is a certain ambiguity about whether Joseph is a disciple or not and the theory that he was not a disciple, or at least openly, until after the resurrection, adds believability to the account. Matthew and John report him as a disciple, but Mark does not.

(3) Jewish piety demanded burial and the demand would be heightened by the sanctity of the feast. That burial of the dead is a matter of Jewish piety is confirmed in many sources, but especially in the book of Tobit. Tobit’s righteousness is described again and again in terms of his work to bury the dead. Corpses defiled the land in Jewish thought. No one would want Jerusalem defiled at Passover.

(4) While Pilate might have been reluctant to allow burial for one executed for treason, he had political pressure not to go against Jewish piety at a crowded festival and pressure from the fact that Joseph was a high-ranking official.

(5) The tendency in the gospels, as Richard Bauckham has shown, is to name characters only if they are famous or if they were known to the Yeshua-community personally. Joseph of Arimathea is named in all four gospels. Evangelists in many cases would not name a character even if he or she were known in other gospels. Bauckham has argued that the tendency was to name only characters whose eyewitness testimony was known to the evangelist first or second-hand.

(6) The so-called evidence that Rome would absolutely refuse burial to one executed for treason is overstated. Many examples involve the Jewish War, which is a different case. The Mark story demonstrates tension over this matter, since Joseph had to muster “courage” to request the body. And when a member of the Sanhedrin at a feast with numerous thousands of pilgrims in Jerusalem made a request related to Jewish piety, Pilate is not likely to refuse it.

(7) Against the argument that Yeshua would have been put in a shallow grave, which could possibly satisfy the requirement to remove the bodies and keep the land pure, is the piety of giving proper burial. A righteous man like Joseph would not likely have been satisfied with a shallow grave. It is possible that to a Sanhedrin member Yeshua did not deserve an honorable burial in the tomb of his choice. But piety would insist on a proper burial and not something that could expose the land to defilement through carrion animals.

(8) There are a number of reasons to think Joseph was not a disciple: (1) Pilate would be less likely to release the body to a disciple; (2) the women were not in cooperation with Joseph, but had to observe secretly; (3) there are reasons why a pious Jewish council member would bury Yeshua even if not a disciple; and (4) some texts such as Acts 13:29 speak of the “they” who took down Yeshua’s body; and (5) Mark, the earliest account, does not say Joseph was a disciple. Yet Matthew and John say he was a disciple. Also, the fact of Joseph being named suggests that the later Yeshua-community knew his testimony as a witness. A good scenario which handles all this evidence is that Joseph was not a disciple at the time, but became one after the resurrection. Thus, his request for the body would not have raised concerns from Pilate that the disciples would venerate the body or create a martyr.

In conclusion, then, the story, as presented in Mark, is coherent and believable. There was tension over whether a Roman ruler would allow a body to be buried when crucified on a charge related to treason. The one requesting burial had suitable motivation, was highly placed, and was not identified at that time as a disciple. The disciples (women) had to passively watch and note where the body was buried, not having any power to interfere.

Deciding whether to believe the Story of Yeshua’s burial is about a real Event is an important step in asking the bigger question: are the resurrection Stories of Yeshua about a real Event?

If you are not religious, the idea of some great importance being attached to the figure of Yeshua might seem ludicrous. Religious figures (Buddha, Mohammed, Zeus, Krishna, Israel’s God) are a dime a dozen. Why should Yeshua command any special inquiry or attention?

If you are religious and, in fact, Christian, the same question may be at the back of your thoughts. Are we overemphasizing this guy from Galilee?

If you are religious and not Christian or Messianic Jewish, you may be absolutely convinced that Yeshua is not worthy of such devotion, study, and faith. So, is Yeshua just another religious figure?

Some religious figures present a philosophy which you may or may not find compelling (Buddha). Yeshua does more than that. Even if you have grave doubts about some of his sayings, he left an impression on history that is tangible, real, and hard to explain away. Perhaps you have not evaluated the evidence that Yeshua did, in fact, rise from the tomb and leave behind a Presence in this world that is not easily dismissed.

Some religious figures are not credible in their literal sense (Zeus), although the meaning of myth is much deeper than the literal sense. Much can be learned from myth on the level of human needs and archetypes. Yeshua is more than that. He is myth become real, the Presence of Omnipotence in the real world (or at least that’s what he claimed and left signs indicating was true). He deserves a closer look than mythical figures do.

Some religious figures came along late to the scene and simply modified existing religious ideas in ways that are not credible (Mohammed). Yeshua is not like this. His take on the Hebrew Bible, the identity and ways of God, the realization of the hopes of Judaism, is compelling. His message is beloved even by those who do not follow him explicitly (look at the impact of the image of the cross and sacrificial death and resurrection in art and literature).

Yeshua is not just another religious figure. He broke into history and changed something fundamental (the finality of death). He left an imprint that is about more than sociology (a religious movement) and more than philosophy (a teaching). He left a movement of eyewitnesses claiming that the Realm Above broke through to Here Below. It is history as surely as events you more readily accept as true.

The real question is why so few people give Yeshua the inquiry and attention his legacy deserves.

For an in-depth and rather academic case that the resurrection of Yeshua truly happened, see N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God. For a simpler case, see Jesus, the Final Days by Craig Evans and N.T. Wright.