Dear Editor,

Every year at this time, Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus – the supposed savior of the world. One of the main themes of Christmas is the claim that Jesus was born of a virgin mother, Mary, and directly fathered by God himself. I am still not sure who really takes this claim seriously anymore.

It has been well established that in order to give Jesus the divine authority that he needs to be “the Son of God” or even God himself, he could not have had a natural birth. Early Christianity was seen by most as some sort of laughing stock in the first century, so a spectacular claim had had to be invented about his birth.

It was felt then that if Jesus was to be God’s son sent down to us, he couldn’t just fall from the sky, now could he? His mother had to be “pure”. That wasn’t going to happen if his mother had already had children. So the early Christians came up with the idea that Jesus’s mother had to be a virgin — as virgins were as pure as they could get.

However, perhaps the best clues as to the nonsense of the claim that Mary was a virgin and God was his real father can be had from the

Bible itself, and indeed, from the actions of Joseph too. Now, Joseph, being kind to Jesus, his supposed “stepson” is not impossible, but in that culture, time and space, it was unlikely and indeed dangerous, to say the least.

The shame and crime that Mary would have been guilty of, in having a child out of wedlock, would have been so severe even Joseph would have had been too scared to have anything to do with her.

Even before Jesus was born, we have Joseph going out of his way to stay with Mary after getting the news that he was not the real daddy. Which man would not have been, at least, a little disturbed? Anyway, when Jesus was about to be born, it was Joseph — the should-have-been-father — who was doing all that should have been done by the biological father.

For some reason, which we don’t yet fully understand, we have Joseph taking Mary and the baby Jesus to Bethlehem for a census. Then, apparently, after going through a lot only to have Jesus delivered in a stable we have Joseph taking Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt to save the baby’s life.

Then, at age 12 we have Joseph taking Jesus and Mary to the temple. This is perhaps the best clue that Joseph could not have sustained his pretence forever. For, it was at that ceremony that Jesus was to “come of age”. Fathers were required by law to take their sons to the temple for this.

No doubt Jesus and Joseph would have been questioned by the religious authorities. I wonder what answer Joseph gave the authorities when they asked him if he was Jesus’s father. Even more important is the answer Jesus would have had to give those same authorities about who Joseph really was!

Everything that we have been told that Joseph did for Jesus proves that Joseph was not just being some sort of benevolent stepfather who wanted to give both Mary and Jesus a good chance in life, especially at that time. It is clear — Joseph was indeed the biological father of Jesus.

Michael A Dingwall

michael_a_dingwall@hotmail.com