The Parentage of Jesus

No – you definitely aren’t the only one. I’ve heard and read discussions about this topic before.

I think the problem is that some LDS authorities have dogmatically held to the position that Jesus was biologically divine because that must be how He was able to be resurrected. I don’t know the etymology of this idea because I haven’t put the time into studying it but I don’t know that it’s valid.

I’m not entirely sold on the idea that He had to be the literal son of God to accomplish His life and ministry or even the resurrection.

Couldn’t God the Father have raised Him up regardless as we all hope will happen to us one day? If He was sinless, had the knowledge and kept the required laws to abide the Celestial Kingdom, resurrection would be a given according to our theology. It would be the only just outcome, irrespective of His biology.

Honestly, I don’t really care – and I know how far out there that puts me within Mormondom. It’s OK. I can teach the standard, traditional version at church, since I think there is great power in it and since I have no idea, when it comes right down to it, which possibility is accurate.

That fits my approach to a tee. I absolutely don’t care in the least about Jesus’ conception. It’s impossible to know.

I do believe that the greek converts frequenly mistook the mistranslation of “almah”/hebrew for “young woman” for “parthenos”/greek for “virgin”, and the ‘scriptures’ used by early greek converts was the septuagint/greek translation of the tanakh/old testament. As such, they crafted a birth narrative that fit the prophecies in order to legitimize Jesus as the Christ. Nothing in the early writings insists on this virgin birth, and it was not part of the hebrew/aramaic-speaking church traditions of the mid-first-century.

With greek infusion, then the virgin story was important, because god being perfect and ideal, could not be touched by the profane. As well, the virgin birth narrative fit the mythological framework of the greek converts, so it was easier to believe in a virgin born god.

These responses are helpful. Yeah, I’m really not believing that the stories about Jesus’ birth (and about the nature of Jesus) are literally true anymore. It seems most likely to me that Jesus was a remarkable (probably Stage 6) human whose followers put him through a theosis. Or perhaps the Q source contained the sayings of several different people. As pointed out in the documentary “The God Who Wasn’t There,” Jesus fits the hero archetype that we see in other myths quite well. And he fits the archetype of the dying-resurrecting God and probably other archetypes.

It’s true that the need for an atonement is diminished or negated if Jesus was not the literal Son of God. This fits my personal feelings (which I have always felt, even as a TBM) that I didn’t understand why I needed an Atonement to save me. A non-literal interpretation of the Christian story resolves a whole lot of problems for me.

FWIW I think in the BY years it was also taught that Mary was actually on of HF’s wives – which would solve some problems but introduce others. I think it’s best to just acknowledge that some things really cannot be known.

And because it is not known, and because we have no further revelation on it, it is open to fitting into the story that makes the most sense for me and my faith, and others have no authoritative source to tell me differently.

I’ll throw my unsolicited opinion in the mix.

Here we go:

Mary was indeed sealed to HF. Possibly when she was overcome with the spirit. There is no incest there due to the many generations that had past.

An exalted being, with a body of flesh, bones, and water…breeds with a mortal being of flesh, bones, and blood. The result is a being that, when you pierce a sword in his side, would emit…..yep…..blood and water.

I’m probably reaching here but ya gotta explain it somehow…. 🙂

Inquiring mind, I re-aranged your your original post to put like topics together.

On my mission I had an investigator who voiced a concern that Jesus was an “illegitimate child” because his parents (Heavenly Father and Mary) were not married….It seems to me that, if Jesus is the Son of God, that Heavenly Father must have cheated on his wife (or wives) to father a child with a single woman (Mary) to whom he was not married. Think of the scandal: Here we have a man who is already married who fathers an out-of-wedlock child with a woman who is engaged to another man. If I take the story at face value, there just doesn’t seem to be any way of getting around it.

As others have mentioned, there is a line of thinking in LDS thought that God and Mary were sealed together somehow, so I wouldn’t rule out this possibility. Now, I doubt you’ll get any evangelicals to go with this line of thinking–they’d be happier to hand-wave the problem away.

It is clear from the Biblical story that there was no sexual activity between God and Mary.

We don’t have all the details, and I would say this may or may not be true. I wouldn’t immediately rule out sexual activity, though such a thought makes the evangelicals howl!

But it gets more complicated in LDS theology, because Latter-Day Saints believe that God already has a wife: Heavenly Mother (there is at least one heavenly mother, because God is possibly a polygamist.) in heaven, Jesus’ parents (God and Mary) can’t be married, because God is already married to Heavenly Mother (and possibly other women) and Mary is married (and presumably sealed for eternity) to Joseph….And it also gets complicated when we think of it in terms of eternal families. In the traditional LDS view, one is able able to live with one’s family for eternity, which presumably includes one’s married parents. But So while many people spend eternity with their married parents, Jesus can’t spend eternity with his married parents because his parents were never married.

I personally think this idea of a nuclear family hanging out together forever is an immature idea of how things really work. In my mind, the only sealing that really matters is the sealing to my wife. My wife and I will be our own heavenly father and mother, and my children will be sealed to their spouses. We’re not going to be hanging out in a nuclear family because it just doesn’t make sense. I personally think the Church overemphasizes “born in the covenant”. To me, it seems that BIC isn’t really that big of a deal, and is more akin to the idea that Catholics baptize infants “just in case.” The sealing that matters is the sealing to your spouse, not children. The BIC is a stop gap sealing in case you don’t live long enough to be sealed to a spouse, just as baptism keeps catholic infants from burning in hell.

Surprised no one’s mentioned Panthera yet.

That would just open up Pandira’s box…

’tis a story too remote to rely upon for any degree of facts. But it might explain a blondish, blue-eyed Jesus if Pandira was buried in his home in germany…