The New York Times and Ivy League Professor Team Up To Debunk Christmas

Hate to barge in on your Christmas joy as you reflect on the miracle of the Incarnation, but The New York Times has delivered its annual dose of skepticism wrapped in tinsel. This time, it’s an interview with Elaine Pagels, a famed Ivy League biblical scholar. You’d expect some highbrow insights from the hoity toity Times, but instead, it’s a predictable grab bag of speculation and lazy thinking.

Kristof of the NYT starts with this question:

So let’s go back to the Nativity. Of the four gospels, two describe the virgin birth of Jesus and two don’t mention it. The Gospel of Mark has people of Galilee referring to Jesus as the son of Mary, when the norm was to describe somebody as the son of his father. So did the neighbors growing up with Jesus regard him as fatherless?

Pagels responds:

We don’t know. Mark is the earliest gospel written; Matthew and Luke are basically just revising it. Mark has no suggestion of a virgin birth. Instead, he says that neighbors called Jesus “son of Mary.” In an intensely patriarchal society, this suggests that Jesus had no father that anyone knew about, even one deceased. Yet even without a partner, Mary has lots of children: In Mark, Jesus has four other brothers, and some sisters, with no recognized father and no genealogy.

Oof. Where to even start? First, this is the classic “no independence” assumption—that Matthew and Luke are just riffing on Mark (and perhaps the hypothetical Q gospel) without offering any independent historical insight. But here’s at least one problem: Luke explicitly claims to have done his homework, gathering information from eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1-4).

And if Luke traveled with Paul, as the evidence strongly suggests (see the “we” sections of Acts), he would’ve had opportunities to talk to people in Jerusalem who knew the story firsthand, including James, Jesus’ own brother. (See Acts 21:8) Mary herself could have still been alive and available for interviews. Why treat Matthew and Luke as mere copy-paste jobs and totally fictional where they diverge from Mark? If you’re not rolling your eyes yet, brace yourself. It gets a lot worse.

NYT: You note that Matthew and Luke both borrowed heavily from Mark’s account but also seem embarrassed by elements of it, including the paternity question. Is your guess that they added the virgin birth to reduce that embarrassment?

Pagels: Yes, but this is not just my guess. When Matthew and Luke set out to revise Mark, each added an elaborate birth story — two stories that differ in almost every detail. Matthew adds a father named Joseph, who, seeing his fiancée pregnant, and not with his child, decides to break the marriage contract. Luke, writing independently, pictures an angel astonishing a young virginal girl, announcing that “the Holy Spirit” is about to make her pregnant.

Oh boy, so Pagels also seems to think the differences in their accounts somehow support the idea they fabricated the Virgin Birth to smooth over a scandal. This is taken as a slam dunk argument. I shouldn’t have to point this out to the Esteemed Prof here, but differences are not the same thing as contradictions. Of all the variations between their accounts, only one even rises to the level of an apparent contradiction, and that’s easily explained.

Luke 2:39 says that after Mary’s purification, they “returned to Galilee, to their own city of Nazareth.” If you read Luke in isolation, it might seem like they went straight back. But harmonize it with Matthew, and you get a fuller picture: after the purification, they settled in Bethlehem, where the Magi visited. Then came the flight to Egypt to escape Herod, and only after Herod’s death did they return to Galilee.

Either Luke wasn’t aware of the flight to Egypt, or he chose to stick to a source that left it out—possibly for political reasons. But this hardly amounts to “profound and difficult” differences, let alone evidence of making stuff up to cover Mary’s tracks.

Now, you might say, “But Erik! The accounts are soooooo different! If the name ‘Jesus’ weren’t connected to both, you’d never guess the infancy stories in Matthew and Luke were about the same person.” To that, I’d say: slow down and think this through. As C.S. Lewis points out, reflecting on the improbability of your own life—by historical standards—can be a valuable exercise. It fosters a healthy skepticism about what we think “should” look consistent in complex, real-world narratives.

Philosopher Lydia McGrew gives a personal example inspired by C.S. Lewis:

Infancy Story 1:
1) Born to an unwed mother.
2) Mother was poor at the time.
3) Born with a misshapen skull, leading doctors to suspect mental disability.

Infancy Story 2:
1′) Raised by loving parents from infancy.
2′) A child prodigy quoting Scripture before age two.
3′) Parents worked hard to send her to college.

These stories seem completely unrelated—until you learn they’re both about McGrew. She was placed for adoption at birth and adopted in early infancy. The skull anomaly turned out to be nothing.

As McGrew notes, and Lewis emphasized, the improbability of one’s own life should remind us to be cautious before dismissing historical narratives as “contradictions” or reading into them more than the plain truth. Life is messy, and history is no different.

There’s also a whopper of an argument from silence here that needs addressing. Just because Mark doesn’t mention the virgin birth, it doesn’t mean he’s unaware of it. Omitting a detail isn’t the same as denying it, and history is full of examples where major events go unmentioned.

Take Pliny the Younger, for instance. In two detailed letters to Tacitus, he describes the eruption of Mount Vesuvius but says nothing about the destruction of Pompeii or Herculaneum—two of the biggest stories from that disaster. Or consider Henry Oldenburg, who wrote extensively during the Great Plague of 1665-1666 but barely mentioned the plague itself. Paul doesn’t mention Jesus’ miracles, but I’m guessing Pagels still believes Jesus was known as a wonder-worker.

If these omissions don’t equal denial, why assume Mark’s silence does? Our assumptions about what a writer should include are notoriously unreliable, especially when we have two solid, early, independent sources affirming that Jesus was born of a virgin. Consider the earlier claim that because Mark is silent about Joseph, Joseph must not exist in Mark’s view. Yet in Luke 4:22 and John 6:42, the crowds clearly recognize Jesus as Joseph’s son—and notably, John also doesn’t mention the virgin birth. That’s two flimsy arguments from silence from Pagels in one go.

It only goes off the rails from here. Kristof raises the infamous Panthera theory:

NYT: The most startling element of your book to me was that you cite evidence going back to the first and second centuries that some referred to Jesus as the son of a Roman soldier named Panthera. These accounts are mostly from early writers trying to disparage Jesus, it seems, so perhaps should be regarded skeptically. But you also write that Panthera appears to have been a real person. How should we think about this?

Pagels: Yes, these stories circulated after Jesus’ death among members of the Jewish community who regarded him as a false messiah, saying that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier. I used to dismiss such stories as ancient slander. Yet while we do not know what happened, there are too many points of circumstantial evidence to simply ignore them. The name Panthera, sometimes spelled differently in ancient sources, may refer to a panther skin that certain soldiers wore. The discovery of the grave of a Roman soldier named Tiberius Panthera, member of a cohort of Syrian archers stationed in Palestine in the first century, might support those ancient rumors.

What. In. The. Actual. Heck? Pagels entertains the Panthera theory like it’s actually quite probable, but this idea traces back to Celsus—a second-century pagan critic—and dubious Talmudic traditions written centuries after Jesus. Neither source is remotely reliable.

Celsus, for instance, claimed:

• “His mother was turned out by her husband, a carpenter by trade, because she was convicted of adultery. She had a child by a certain soldier named Panthera.”
  (Origen, Contra Celsum 1.28)

This wasn’t historical inquiry—it was polemical mockery. Celsus wrote over a hundred years after Jesus, far removed from the events, with no firsthand knowledge or credible sources. Robert Van Voorst notes that while “Panthera” was a common name among Roman soldiers, many believe it was used as a pun on parthenos (“virgin”) in reaction to the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Birth.

The Talmud isn’t any better. Compiled centuries after Jesus, it offers conflicting and slanderous accounts:

• Sanhedrin 67a: “Was he the son of Stada or the son of Pandera? His mother was Miriam, and she was unfaithful to her husband.”
• Shabbat 104b: “His mother was Miriam, the women’s hairdresser, who committed adultery.”

The Talmud also places Jesus in a completely anachronistic time period. Sanhedrin 107b and Sotah 47a describe him as a disciple of Joshua ben Perahiah, a figure who lived during the Zugot period, around 100-150 years before Jesus’ birth! What a great source!

And now we’re supposed to take the grave of a random Roman soldier with a common name—Pandera or Panthera—as “circumstantial evidence” for these slanderous claims? Pagels leans on sources that are all about trolling Christians instead of perfectly reliable first centuries sources. This is about as credible as claiming Jesus married Mary Magdalene based on the apocryphal Gospel of Philip, the infamous “kissing gospel”. Billy Carson would be proud.

At least Pagels admits it’s somewhat speculative, but she sure seems to think it’s plausible—as her next leap makes obvious. She goes on to suggest that Mary might have been raped by a Roman soldier, citing Josephus’ reports of Galileans worrying about their daughters’ safety during the Roman occupation:

NYT: You write that there were early accusations against Mary of promiscuity, connected to this allegation of an affair with Panthera. But you say that Roman soldiers brutally occupied Galilee in the period before Jesus was born, killing and raping with impunity. So, acknowledging that this is uncertainty stacked on uncertainty, if Panthera was involved, was it probably a case of rape?

Pagels: Jewish revolutionaries, fighting “in the name of God and our common liberty” to free their land from Roman domination, attacked a Roman fortress and killed many soldiers. The governor brought in Roman soldiers who crucified perhaps 2,000 Jews, then garrisoned thousands of soldiers less than four miles from Nazareth. The historian Josephus says that the soldiers stationed there ravaged the area, taking advantage of local people in every way they could. Josephus also notes that Galilean Jews were especially worried about their daughter’s virginity. Noting such diverse evidence, I thought that these stories sounded plausible in a way I had never imagined.

Yikes. Yes we know that the Romans ran an oppressive regime. But if this reasoning were used in court, it’d be tossed immediately. “Your Honor, Roman soldiers committed crimes in the area, so this specific event must have happened!” That’s not how evidence works. Why favor this over Matthew and Luke, written closer to the events by people who knew Mary and accurately report many confirmable facts? Simple: Pagels thinks Mary being raped by a Roman solider is more plausible than a miracle.

NYT: The Virgin birth is just one miracle among many in the Gospels. Jesus walked on water. He raised people from the dead. He multiplied loaves and fishes. He’s resurrected and ascends to heaven. So how should those of us in the 21st century see miracles?

Pagels: Calling something a miracle is a way of interpreting an event. A friend of mine was hit by a car and thrown about 20 feet, and was unharmed. She told me that this was a miracle. Someone else might have said, “I was lucky.” Calling it a miracle interprets an event that others might see differently. This often happens with remissions of illness: Some people see many miracles, and some never see any.

Obvious bias alert. Comparing walking on water or raising the dead to a friend surviving a car accident? Are we being for real here? There’s a pretty big difference between events open to interpretation and miracles like feeding 5,000 people—things you can’t just “see wrong” or chalk up to “I was lucky.” This is just some goofy fuzzifying here.

Let’s be real. Her entire response assumes the Gospel accounts aren’t from reliable witnesses. I’m sure she has all the usual “Assured Results of Modern Scholarship™” reasoning for thinking so, but when she flaunts her bias like this, it’s hard not to feel that the verdict was decided before the trial even began. Weak arguments from silence, claiming contradictions where there are only differences, and leaning on speculative, distant, and highly polemical sources just doesn’t cut it. But we have to trust her because she’s an Ivy League scholar, ok?

Pagels wraps it up by questioning the Virgin Birth as a historian while saying she still loves the Christmas Eve service where the story is celebrated as a miracle. Neat-o. So basically: “I like Christmas and some of the moralizing parts of Christianity, but miracles are nonsense, biblical scholarship has it all figured out, evangelicals are too dogmatic, and Jesus was probably a rape baby.” Great backhanded patronizing to stick it to the fundies on Christmas, New York Times. Very cool. Much editorializing. Muh scholarship.