The Sunday Mail
THERE are three basic assumptions about Yahoshua’s paternity:
First, according to the historical Hebrews, Yahoshua is the biological son of Miryam and a secretly known father. Yosef took Miryam as his wife despite her pregnancy by a secret man. Neither Miryam nor Yosef considered the conception as a condemnable act.
Second, according to the theologically immature Europeans and religious literalists, Yahoshua was the son of a humanoid Divine who impregnated a Hebrew maid called Miryam/Miriamne outside the laws of nature. From a Hebraic historical point of view, this should be dismissed contemptuously. The European narrative about Yahoshua’s life and teachings was constructed around the 4th century using Greek Mythology and the political authority of the Roman Empire.
Third, according to mythicists (internalists), there may have been a historical Yahoshua the Nazarene elaborately undermined by a human construct, a mythical Greek “Iesous (Jesus) the Christos.” Yahoshua’s scriptural conception was an adoption of the mythical humanoid figures of Heru (Horus) of ancient Egypt, Krishna and Buddha of India, Dionysus of Greece, Mithra of Persia. The scriptural conception happened outside laws of nature and is best considered as the humanisation of mythology. Mythicists notice an allegory about the scriptural conception and birth. To these mythicists, a number of aspects of Yahoshua’s are a historicisation of myths to cloth a deep meaning about human life, communicate some usually cryptic perennial truths and situate them geographically and culturally.
Let’s now trace the birth of Yahoshua’s mother, Mary. ‘Mary’ is the English transliterated word for ‘Maria or Mariam’ in Greek and ‘Miryam’ in Hebrew.
There are no details of Miryam’s birth in the four conventional Gospels. Her mother was called Anna/Annein English, as derived from Hebrew, ‘Hannah’ phonetically spelt as ‘Channah’ meaning, “grace or favoured,” being stem of ‘hanan’ meaning “he was gracious, showed favour”. Anna is a Syrian name that also means feminine divinity.
All the details about Hannah and her husband are also not found in conventional texts but “derived from apocryphal literature, the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Protoevangelium of James.” – Catholic Encyclopedia.
The Protoevangelium Gospel of James narrates events that took place prior to Yahoshua’s birth. The Gospel is among the Gnostic texts discovered in 1945 although according to the writings of the Early Christian theologians, Clement of Alexandria at the end of the 2nd century and Origen in the early 3rd century knew of it.
The author, James the Just, was Yahoshua’s half-brother (Matthew 13:55). He is assumed to be Yosef’s son by a previous marriage. According to James, Hannah and her husband Joachim were rich and pious Hebrews childless.
The high priest called Rueben or Issachar is said to have told Joachim that he was not allowed to have offerings at the temple for being childless, since according to Hebrew tradition, all righteous people should raise children of their own.
For 40 days and 40 nights, Joachim deserted his wife and stayed away very far from home. In the meantime, his wife, Hannah, was distressed and mourned both for her own widowhood for she thought of her barrenness and that her husband had died. She then fell pregnant under circumstances later to be discovered and linked to the Temple priestly class.
She committed herself to “offer the child as a gift to (the Divine) and he/she will minister to (the Divine) for his/her entire life.”
Later, upon hearing that his wife was pregnant, Joachim came back.
He offered ten young she-lambs for the Divine, twelve young calves for the priests and council leaders and 100 male goats for all the people.
When the days of Hannah’s purification were over, she named the child Myriam. The “days of her purification” was a period of eighty days after giving birth to a female child (Leviticus 12:2-7).
At Myriam’s first birthday, Joachim held a great feast and invited the priestly class, leaders and many people.
At the same time, the priests blessed Hannah and Joachim later gave the girl over to the chief priests turning Myriam into a “consecrated female” or “temple maiden.” The priests blessed her saying, “The (Divine) of our fathers bless this girl, and give her a name famous and lasting throughout all generations,” and “O most high (the Divine), regard this girl and bless her with an everlasting blessing.”
At this early age, Myriam was brought to the Temple by her parents in fulfillment of her mother’s vow when she fell pregnant.
The parents were very happy that the girl did not run away from the Temple as a maiden.
The priestly class then educated her. She remained in the Temple in the “community of virgins” until puberty to fulfill Hannah’s promise to “offer her as a gift to (the Divine) and she will minister to (the Divine) her entire life.”
Later, Myriam’s response to the “angel” over her pregnancy was, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.” – Luke 1:38. From this text, there are “details lacking, clues hanging and possibilities offered.”
Next, we dig deeper.
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