A Mamzer from Nazareth

I just finished reading Bruce Chilton's Rabbi Jesus: The Jewish Life and Teachings That Inspired Christianity in preparation for my trip. I have mixed feelings when I read this genre from those who are on a "quest for the historical Jesus," but there is one chapter I found especially interesting to reflect on as my own journey begins. It happens to be the first chapter, but I honestly did read the entire book!

Here is a verse I am certain I've never preached on from the second chapter of Deuteronomy. It reads like this in my Jewish Study Bible: " No one misbegotten shall be admitted into the congregation of the Lord..." In the RSV it says, "No bastard shall enter the assembly of the Lord..." Chilton says that neither word gets at the cultural issues here of what it meant to be a mamzer, however, in first-century Palestine. He isn't challenging the Virgin Birth; his point is simply that "...the conditions of Jesus' conception as Matthew refers to them made him a mamzer no matter what his actual paternity was."

The issue, as Chilton unpacks it, is that it is hard to exaggerate the isolation and unease that Jesus would have felt growing up with this label in Nazareth: he was, Chilton says, in effect "an untouchable" - someone who would have been ostracized by the elders in Nazareth. Someone who in fact would never expect to grow up and be called "Rabbi Jesus."

I realize above all in this reading that I don't think much, and haven't thought much, about Jesus a great deal outside of what the canonical gospels tell us. Partly this is an epistimological choice: I'm not sure what we can "know" from an historical perspective. And other than that one brief episode in Luke's Gospel they tell us almost nothing about his childhood.

I think what I found so interesting about this chapter, though, is that if Chilton is right about what this would mean about Jesus' life before we meet him at the Jordan River (and I have no reason to believe he isn't right about this) it colors so much of what follows in the canonical gospels. Chilton talks about Jesus' use of the term abba to speak of God as one example: by which Jesus doesn't mean "the God and father of mankind" so much as "my daddy." He uses it, in other words, in the most intimate of ways as a relational term that helps him discover his own identity.

Chilton also speaks as well about Jesus "homecoming sermon" in the synagogue in Nazareth which takes on an even more radical meaning if this mamzer who isn't even supposed to be there is finally finding and claiming his voice! (This is the gospel reading on the first Sunday after I come home so it's on my mind as I depart.)

Like Mary who pondered all of these things in her heart, I find myself open to doing the same as this journey begins. It is amazing to me how after all of these years of reading and teaching Scripture one text and indeed one word invites new insights and interpretations. Maybe even new wineskins for new wine!