One other little-known fact is that when the gospels were written, the followers of Jesus were defending him against the charge of the critics of the Jesus movement that their founder was “base born”—that is, illegitimate. How do we know that? We find hints of it in the texts of the gospels themselves. In the reference just mentioned from Mark’s gospel the anonymous voice in the crowd calls Jesus “the son of Mary.” Every Jew would know that to refer to a grown man in Jewish society as “the son of a woman” was to suggest that his paternity was unknown.
