TWO TYPES OF IGNORANCE

People who ignore something are not stupid. Einstein said, “We are all ignorant, but not all ignorant of the same things’. What is stupid, is to ignore information deliberately.

When one reads the first lines of the New Testament, it is easy to ignore that the four women – Rahab, Ruth, Batsheba and Tamar – that Saint Matthew mentions in the genealogy of Jesus all had extramarital relations. Not everybody who reads Saint Matthew is of course familiar with the stories of the Old Testament. When one is however aware of this, it is stupid to ignore that Saint Matthew found it important to point out that four of Jesus’ ancestors had relations with adulterous women.

When one reads the first chapter of the New Testament, it is easy to ignore that it holds an enigma. Not everybody who reads at the end of the genealogy of Jesus: “there are fourteen generations from Abraham to David, from David to the deportation to Babylon and from the deportation to Babylon to Jesus Christ” makes a list of these names and divides them in three columns of 14 generations, thus discovering that the traditional way for doing so (Abraham/David, David/Josiah, and Jechoniah/Jesus is inconsistent, since in the second column it repeats David, but does not do the same with Josiah in the third column. When one however knows this, it is stupid to ignore that the consistent way for dividing the genealogies – Abraham/David, David/Josiah/ and Josiah/Joseph+Jesus –means that Jacob first begot Joseph and later, when Joseph grew up, had Jesus from Joseph’s wife (Mary). And when also is aware of the fact that Judah, a direct ancestor of Jesus, had Perez from his daughter-in-law Tamar, one has to be real stupid to ignore that Saint Matthew tells us that Mary had Jesus from her father-in-law.

When one reads the New Testament, it is easy to ignore that Jesus never said he was born of a virgin; that two of the official gospels – Saint Mark and Saint John – do not refer to Jesus’ virgin birth; that Saint Paul, who supposedly wrote half of the books that compose the New Testament, does not mention this and even contradicts it by pointing out that Jesus was a descendant of David ‘according to the flesh’ (Rm1:3); and that the two official gospels – Saint Matthew and Saint Luke – that do mention there is a mystery regarding Jesus’ birth, offer different genealogies for Jesus. When one is however aware of this, it is stupid not to wonder where the idea of Jesus’ virgin birth really comes from.