Very important lesson about Bible and history

Here is a very important piece of information about human social history that has a great bearing on your ability to understand certain passages in the Bible. It also provides context for what people may think were confusing sexual and inheritance mores (customs, rules and attitudes).

Being able to be absolutely certain of maternity and paternity was essential to human survival throughout most of human history. This is because whatever the parents accumulated in their lifetime was passed on to their legitimate children. This was true whether you were the poorest of the poor or a wealthy monarch (but you will see there are special considerations a bit later in this posting). The vast majority of people throughout human history had very little to pass on to their children, but what they did have was vital to survival. For example, the tools that the father had in order to hunt, fish, farm, build and protect his family were the main “inheritance” of the legitimate offspring. Likewise the tools the mother had in order to farm, maintain the family’s supplies of clothing, food, and water were her prized possessions. Look at the children in Haiti today, searching for fresh water in their hurricane flooded villages. Notice the prized possessions they are holding: buckets, pails, plastic containers and bowls to carry water should they find it. For much of human history a simple barrel, pail or bucket was often one of the family’s prized possessions and meant the difference between life and death. Notice in the Bible many events take place near the well. Each water drawer would bring his or her family’s own prized bucket to the well in order to obtain life maintaining water for the family.

Another example is utensils. People did not use them and when they were developed, they were for the rich. This is why people such as the Chinese serve food in bite sized pieces, “pre cut” so to speak. This is because another prized family possession was the single knife. It was used in hunting, carpentry and to prepare food. This is why the custom of the man of the house carving the turkey developed. The man had the only family knife, using it on behalf of his family, and passing it on to his son. Eventually in medieval times families often acquired a single spoon. That was a prized possession and often it was first in the form of a ladle for broth and soup. So most families had at most a single example of a prized, usually hand crafted or inherited tool that was essential to survival. Thus paternity of children in the family was obviously something that was not trifled with because the offspring literally inherited the very humble but essential accoutrements of the family to survive.

Now, think about the kings and queens. Not only is wealth inherited through their offspring but title and position. Additionally the royalty in all cultures were viewed as having some divine right and lineage, and that too was passed on to their offspring. So many royal households developed customs to ensure legitimate offspring that people today would totally misunderstand, especially since today everyone has the viewpoint of “pleasure” rather than “duty” and “survival.” So here is one example of what often happened when the king or his heir married. Court attendants were often required to be in the bedchamber and observe the actual first sexual intercourse of the king and queen, or the prince and princess. This was to ensure that both the king was not hiding an impotency, but more importantly, that the queen, should she become pregnant, had done so with her legitimate spouse, the king.

When I was a teenager there was a charming historical fiction story about King Ferdinand and Isabel of Spain, regarding this very requirement of the consummation of their marriage. In this fictional account the young king has to explain to the very young queen bride what is going to happen. But he fakes the actual encounter so that the courtiers are satisfied they have observed their mating, and then later in privacy they have their actual first moment of intimacy.

The second time you see this type of rule take place is upon the imminent birth when the queen is isolated in the bedchamber with attendants but also court observers. This is so that a false baby is not swapped with the baby that is the real heir. The birth watch would go into effect for weeks before birth was expected, in order to foil anyone smuggling in a false baby and claiming the queen had just given birth to that infant.

Unfortunately modern people, especially you young people, are no longer taught about these customs and their reasoning in school. But this gives you a great disadvantage to understanding why what seemed like oppressive cultural mores developed and also you have trouble understanding the implied meaning in Biblical scripture that would be very obvious to any scholar of the period. Worse, a dirty and twisted interpretation is placed on very holy and clean statements because many today view every custom as either an example of lust, self gratification, or “oppression of the weak.” Trust me; no queen “minded” ensuring that her heir was accepted without question as being legitimate. They didn’t worry that someone was watching “what sexual position” the king and queen used on their honeymoon. (In fact, that is one reason that beds had curtains, so even the courtiers in the room obviously were not tracking each bead of sweat and whose hand was doing what). It was in everyone’s interest to follow these rules and no one was being “oppressed” and they certainly were not being peeping toms for the kicks of it.

So how does this have a bearing on understanding the Bible? In today’s Mass the Gospel reading from Matthew describes how the Virgin Mary came to be with child through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, and Joseph’s puzzlement and reaction. The first point I want to make is that the angel Gabriel in addition to being the announcer of the conception functions as the “court witness.” The conception occurs invisibly while Gabriel is present. This is why Gabriel is named and these details are preserved in the scripture. Mary was, essentially, being declared a Queen at that moment, and the royalty of her descending from the House of David and now bearing the heir who would be Jesus is being affirmed. This is why ancient people all the way through Medieval and Renaissance times had absolutely no trouble understanding what is described as the Queenship of Mary. Reading the scriptures people well understood that the pregnancy of the Queen was witnessed to make absolutely unquestionable the legitimacy of the heir. This is why it is the most insulting scandal that modern people have even questioned the virgin conception of Mary and that was totally unthinkable among people until these crass times. Gabriel, as God’s courtier, “witnessed” the conception, exactly in the tradition of kings and queens that actually continued on for hundreds of years after the time of Mary and Jesus.

Second, there is a verse that people with dirty minds in their ignorance have glommed onto, showing their total lack of understanding, as they try to argue that surely Mary and Joseph were sexually intimate (since these people cannot imagine otherwise, to their shame). The verse is Matthew 1:25.

Matthew 1:25
But he had no union with her as her husband until she had borne her firstborn Son; and he called His name Jesus.

People who are ignorant of their own history and who possess dirty and weak minds read into that a chronological statement, which is totally in error. It is only a statement of affirmation, not of chronological activity. In other words, just as courtiers would continue to witness that the queen was not with any other man but the king, Matthew is routinely documenting that Joseph was not intimate with Mary during her pregnancy. This is, again, exactly as the courtiers would have observed and witnessed to the sanctity of the pregnancy of the queen throughout her term. Thus the meaning of “until she had borne her firstborn Son” does not mean they didn’t have sex until after Jesus was born. It is a statement of witnessing that just as Gabriel witnessed the royal conception, there was no other intimacy during her term of pregnancy. That is the only meaning of this statement and it is far from implying that Mary and Joseph had sexual relation, for they most certainly did not and it is ignorant and scandalous to imply otherwise. There is no word other than “until” that really could be used to satisfy modern readers who are ignorant of the intent. The Gospel is a document of the divine royalty of Jesus, not an account of intimacy events. Thus Gospel writers phrased things correctly in accordance with the standards of bearing witness to the legitimacy of the royal heir.

That is also why the word “firstborn” is used. This is not an implication that there was intimacy between Joseph and Mary and that they had children. Far from it, as you will see when you remind yourself of the essential legitimacy in royal households of the first born. That is where no chances are taken. Courtiers observe the “honeymoon” and birth in order to ensure that the first born is absolutely positively totally legitimate. From the second born onward, people “relax” more. We all know that kings throughout history ran around and did some seed spreading. But they sure did not do it when they were trying to establish their legitimate first born. So the courtiers did not observe conceptions after the first born, although efforts against baby swapping upon birth continue unabated, as that was a constant threat. It would be easy for someone to kill the queen in childbirth (when things were so medically risky anyway) and substitute a baby for the grieving king to think it is his own. This is why Matthew phrased things that seem mysterious and full of implication to modern ignoramuses, but were clean and proper in their phrasing to those of the time who understood the critical points of witnessing to the conception and birth of the firstborn heir.

As an aside, this is, as I’ve mentioned before, another reason why Gabriel is the angel who provided the Qur’an on behalf of God to the Prophet (PBUH). Gabriel is in addition to being kind of the archangel of God’s announcements is also the “witness” to the legitimate conception of gifts from God. This is why the Qur’an is filled with references to Mary, and information about the birth of Jesus (Isa). Gabriel is repeating his witnessing of the legitimacy of the conception of Jesus to those who would hear and believe the word of God in the Qur’an and he is also, by implication, witnessing to the legitimacy of the “conception” of the Qur’an.

The Arab culture has missed that point because they did not have the customs of concern about the legitimacy of the firstborn in exactly the same fashion as did the West and Mediterranean. This is because order and legitimacy was maintained through the system of multiple wives. So they missed the connection in their scholarly work between witnessing the conception of Jesus and witnessing the conception of the Qur’an. They, correctly, interpreted Gabriel as being the sign of the legitimacy and high honor that God has given to them, and they also preserved the sanctity in the purity of Mary in their honoring of her. But this is a little extra insight to give all of you, readers, about how God operates within the culture of humans in order to do all things correctly and with mercy. In other words, God gives affirmations that are well understood in their contemporary times, but later as people forget their own history (or do not understand the culture of the other) they misunderstand or miss out in enjoying the blessing.

This is one reason why I find such great refreshment in reading the Talmud and the interpretations and teachings of the great Jewish rabbis, especially the Chassidim. Unfailingly they understand the culture within which Biblical events took place and thus can extract and extrapolate incredible spiritual insight and truth. For example, through their formidable and accurate knowledge of both law and custom, they have successful recreated through spiritual interpolation conversations that took place (for example, with Moses) that are not documented in the Torah or the books of the Bible. How can they do that? Well, all comes from the grace of God, but the mechanism is that their minds totally retain the context of the participants, even thousands of years ago, so that they can know with certainty what the reactions and even spoken words to certain events most certainly had to be. Whenever I read what they wrote (as I did for some time yesterday, as refreshment), I find myself nodding and thinking to myself, “Ah, how refreshing. They get it; they still get it and truly understand.” Even when they disagree or I know they are too far out on a limb in their speculation, they are never untrue to the spirit of what did actually happen. Modern Christian biblical scholars could learn a lot from them, and they should.

I hope this helps. It certainly should. I can’t believe how skewed and smoky the lenses of modern humans have become to understanding even their own history and cultural ways and as a result, what distorted and depraved views they have acquired.