Mark gives no birth story whatsoever but when Jesus returns to Nazareth, where he grew up, he is called “the son of Mary,” implying something irregular about his birth (Mark 6:3). In Judaism children are always identified as “son of” the father, not the mother. Joseph, who became the husband of Mary, and legal father of Jesus, is nowhere even mentioned in Mark. Matthew, in editing this passage in Mark changes it to read “Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary?” (Matthew 13:55). Luke drops the reference entirely to Mary and has “Is this not Joseph’s son” (Luke 4:22). Of course both Matthew and Luke contain birth narratives in which Mary’s pregnancy is noted, but also her marriage to Joseph. This, I think, is a very good example of the way in which Mark preserves a valuable and early tradition in which Jesus is known simply as “son of Mary.” John seems to know something of this “illegitimacy” tradition as well. He also lacks any birth story and he never offers us any narrative material about the husband Joseph. At one point Jesus’ opponents seem to challenge him with the implicity charge that his birth was irregular–”We were not born of fornication” (John 8:41). This “illegitimacy” motive can be traced into other later texts, as Jane Schaberg has shown in her enlightening work, The Illegitimacy of Jesus.

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