Re: [asa] Creation and Incarnation

Quoting Bill Hamilton <williamehamiltonjr@yahoo.com>:

> My understanding is that the Jewish custom was to trace the lineage even of
> an
> adopted son through the father.
>
> --- mrb22667@kansas.net wrote:
>

That would make sense -- a patriarchal culture to be sure. In that time they
were convinced that a woman's body did not contribute anything at all toward a
baby's identity. Her role was "limited" to being its nourishing host. It was
thought that the man's seed constituted the entire new being and that the
woman's body was simply the receptical. So through most of the last 2000 years,
to say that Jesus was "begat of the Spirit" would have been (according to the
knowledge of the times) to deify Jesus in a complete way. So they would have
had no more reason to emphasize Mary's lineage than Joseph's, and the fact that
Mary's is brought up at all turns out to be the real surprise given the
patriarchal culture. My original musing was a 'contempocentric' imposition
modern DNA issues into pre-modern cultures.

Thanks for reposting my last post, Janice.

--merv

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Received on Fri Aug 11 10:31:06 2006