Born of a Virgin?: Reconceiving Jesus In The Bible, Tradition And Theology

by Andrew Lincoln

this case, however, there has to be doubt whether Jesus’ illegitimacy is in fact in view. The verse reads: ‘They said to him, “We are not illegitimate children [literally, ‘not born of fornication’]; we have one father, God himself.”’ While this could be taken as an ironic attack on Jesus by his opponents because of rumours in circulation about the abnormal circumstances of his birth, this is highly unlikely given that John has just had the Jewish opponents say precisely the opposite – that Jesus is the son of Joseph and that they know his father and mother (6.42), and in any case the context of the debate about spiritual paternity and their emphasis on having one father makes another interpretation far more plausible.