Andrew Lincoln's Born of a Virgin?
I am very grateful to the kind folk at SPCK I for sending along a copy of Andrew T. Lincoln's new monograph, Born of a Virgin?: Reconceiving Jesus in the Bible, Tradition, and Theology.Eddie Adams describes him as one of the finest exegetes of our time, and I must say, I consider him a must read in his fields of expertise, always a key scholar to learn from.
So I am very excited to read this book, especially as the issue he tackles head on is one I have personally wrestled with: the Virgin Birth. The lack of explicit reference across the NT to a Virgin Birth, the way the birth narratives in L and Mt reflect the particular theological concerns of the evangelists, the geographical problems associated with "Bethlehem", the import of the bio genre of the Gospels, all tend to lead most NT scholars to question the veracity of a literal Virgin Birth.
But are they right? Are our historiographical practices at fault? And then what to do with the creeds? What to do with the legitimacy of church tradition, and Maryology in particular? All of these questions and more I bring to Andrew's book with some excitement!
posted by Chris Tilling @ 12:44 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Again, if only these concerns would ever filter down to the average churchgoer. But come Christmas, all this will be completely ignored and 99.9% of parishioners won't even be aware of such issues. As usual, it's a tiny coterie of scholars talking amongst themselves.
It was, however, clearly an issue for the early church. The Protevangelium of James, for which we have manuscripts from the third century, goes to great lengths to establish not just that Jesus was born of a virgin, but that her mother was also.
Chris, I'm just about done with this book. Anxious to read your thoughts on it. I found it to be one of the best examples of careful Christian NT scholarship and argumentation. And it was persuasive on the whole.
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