Guest Post: Miraculous births and divine parents in the time of Jesus

by Meredith J C Warren, University of Sheffield

Many people are familiar with the stories in the New Testament gospels of Luke and Matthew about Jesus’ conception and birth. But what is less well known is how common such stories are when the lives of great men are told. From the initial announcement of an impending conception (to Mary in Luke, to Joseph in Matthew) to the signs and portents signalling the birth of the miraculous child, ancient Greek and Roman writings share a lot with the gospel accounts.

The Annunciation by Fra Angelico (1430-1432)

The gospels claim that Jesus’ birth was foretold in advance. Matthew quotes from the prophet Isaiah to establish Jesus’ birth as a divine promise that would usher in a time of peace and justice.

Virgil, writing in the early first century AD, wrote about a promised child, the offspring of the gods, who would bring a golden age of peace and prosperity to the Roman Empire – in other words, the emperor. Augustus Caesar’s birth was foretold by portents, according to the Roman historian Suetonius. Unusual astronomical occurrences were understood as divine omens in Roman culture, so it is no wonder that Jesus’s birth – like Augustus’s – was depicted as important using a miraculous star.

Alexander the Great’s birth also had meteorological omens surrounding it. Plutarch tells us that both Philip and Olympias, Alexander’s parents, were sent dreams from the gods announcing Alexander’s birth. Olympias dreamed that her womb was struck by lightning, while Philip dreamed that he put a seal on his wife’s womb in the image of a lion. Most significant, though, is the report that Philip spied a divine serpent sleeping next to his wife, which he took as a sign that he should avoid sleeping with her himself, since it was clear that she was to conceive from a divine rather than human source.

Massacre of the Infants

Just as Matthew records Herod’s attempts to stop the prophesied child by killing all newborn babies, Suetonius tells a similar account of Roman leaders attempting to prevent Augustus’s rise to power by ordering that no male child be reared. In Matthew, Jesus and his family escape the “Massacre of the Infants” by fleeing to Egypt – whereas in Suetonius (like in the Moses story) fathers- and mothers-to-be thwart the murderous plans, in the Roman case, by preventing the decree from being officially registered with the treasury.

Son of a god

Although both Matthew and Luke trace Jesus’s lineage through his non-biological father Joseph, Jesus is depicted as God’s own offspring.

Augustus Caesar was also adopted by his father, Julius Caesar, and likewise considered himself the descendent of a god – Venus Genetrix. Augustus traced his lineage to Venus through his ancestor Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome. Romulus, and his twin brother Remus, were conceived by the virgin priestess after the god Mars impregnated her. This priestess, as Virgil reports, was herself descended from Venus through her ancestor Aeneas, Venus’s beloved son.

Alexander the Great’s divine parentage was reinforced he grew up. Just as the adult Jesus was publicly claimed by God as his son in all four gospel accounts, Alexander’s father, Zeus Ammon, confirmed his son’s divine identity. Plutarch tells us that when Alexander approached an Egyptian oracle to ask whether he had avenged his father’s murder, the priest made him rephrase his request, since his father was not a mortal man, and addressed Alexander in oracular speech as “O son of Zeus”.

Jesus the hero

One of the most common places to find stories of miraculous births is in the life of heroes, often born of a union between a god and a human being. Hercules, perhaps the most famous of the Greek heroes, is the son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene, for example. Zeus disguised himself as Alcmene’s husband in order to trick her into bed with him. The divine parentage that Hercules enjoyed enabled him to do many wondrous feats.

Likewise, Asclepius, son of Apollo, rescued from the womb of Coronis, was gifted with miraculous healing abilities and was later considered divine in his own right.

Since Matthew and Luke don’t agree with each other about what happened when Jesus was born, it’s especially interesting that they both relate something miraculous in their narratives. The idea of Jesus’s own miraculous birth may have supported the Gospel’s claims about Jesus’ miracle working ability, including healings and other wondrous feats.



Meredith J C Warren, Lecturer in Biblical and Religious Studies, University of Sheffield

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Guest Post: The very strange history of the Easter Bunny

by Katie Edwards, University of Sheffield

While you’re biting the heads off your chocolate bunnies this weekend, you might wonder how cartoon rabbits became so central to our Easter celebrations. It’s tempting to assume that because there’s no biblical basis for the Easter Bunny, rabbits and hares have no religious significance – but that’s just not the case.

Also available in chocolate.
Shutterstock

Leviticus 11:6 states that the hare is an unclean animal: “The hare, for even though it chews the cud, it does not have divided hoofs; it is unclean for you”“, but in Christian art, it is regularly associated with rebirth and resurrection.

In fact, the symbol of a circle of three hares joined by their ears has been found in a number of churches in Devon. Like much of our cultural "bunny” symbolism, the meaning of this image remains mysterious – and The Three Hares Project has been set up to research and document occurrences of the ancient symbol, examples of which have been found as far away as China.

Rabbits and hares have also been associated with Mary, mother of Jesus, for centuries. Their association with virgin birth comes from the fact that hares – often conflated mistakenly with rabbits – are able to produce a second litter of offspring while still pregnant with the first.

Virginity or fertility?

Titian’s painting The Madonna of the Rabbit depicts this relationship. Mary holds the rabbit in the foreground, signifying both her virginity and fertility. The rabbit is white to convey her purity and innocence.

Linking rabbits with purity and virginity is odd, however, since they’re also associated with prolific sexual activity, a reputation Hugh Hefner appropriated for his now infamous Playboy logo. Hefner claims that he chose a rabbit as the logo for his empire because the bunny is “a fresh animal, shy, vivacious, jumping – sexy. First it smells you, then it escapes, then it comes back, and you feel like caressing it, playing with it. A girl resembles a bunny. Joyful, joking.”

Symbolic bunnies.
Shutterstock

Hefner’s striking sexism aside, rabbits’ reputation for fecundity has also meant that they’ve been used as a symbol of fertility for centuries and have become associated with spring.

Ye olde Saxon mythe

Indeed, some folklorists have suggested that the Easter Bunny derives from an ancient Anglo-Saxon myth, concerning the fertility goddess Ostara. The Encyclopedia Mythica explains that:

Ostara is the personification of the rising sun. In that capacity she is associated with the spring and is considered a fertility goddess. She is the friend of all children and to amuse them she changed her pet bird into a rabbit. This rabbit brought forth brightly coloured eggs, which the Greek goddess gave to children as gifts. From her name and rites the festival of Easter is derived.

Indeed, in his 1835 book Deutsche Mythologie, Jacob Grimm states that “the Easter Hare is unintelligible to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara … Ostara, Eástre seems therefore to have been the divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, whose meaning could be easily adapted by the resurrection-day of the Christian’s God.”

Nuremberg Chronicle’s depiction of the Venerable Bede.
Wikimedia Commons

The myth of Ostara, then, has become a popular theory for the derivation of the Easter Bunny – although it is a contested one. Either way, it seems that the association between the Easter Bunny and Ostara began with the 8th-century scholar the Venerable Bede in his work The Reckoning of Time. Bede said that our word “Easter” stems from “Eostre” (another version of the name “Ostara”). There is, however, no other historical evidence to support his statement.

Modern bunnies

The earliest reference to an egg-toting Easter Bunny can be found in a late 16th-century German text (1572). “Do not worry if the Easter Bunny escapes you; should we miss his eggs, we will cook the nest,” the text reads. A century later, a German text once again mentions the Easter Bunny, describing it as an “old fable”, and suggesting that the story had been around for a while before the book was written.

From Germany with love.
Shutterstock

In the 18th century, German immigrants took the custom of the Easter Bunny with them to the United States and, by the end of the 19th century, sweet shops in the eastern states were selling rabbit-shaped candies, prototypes of the chocolate bunnies we have today.

So whether bunnies are unclean, symbols of prolific sexual activity, or icons of virginity, the enigmatic Easter Bunny looks likely to remain a central part of Easter celebrations – recently, one was even involved in a surreal mass brawl in a New Jersey shopping centre. Just where they came from, however, will probably have to remain a mystery. At least for now.

Katie Edwards, Director, SIIBS , University of Sheffield

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.