Moses and Jesus: the birth of the Savior

These are naturalistic scenarios. However, there is another possible scenario which is based on an alternative interpretation of the tradition found in the Babylonian Talmud. Pharaoh issues his decree; Amram divorces Yokheved. A considerable time later, Miriam intercedes and Amram remarries his divorced wife, who is already pregnant, having conceived during the period of abstinence through some miraculous manner. This legend is not found as is, but is reconstructed from the known parts of the story. It fits the tenor of the other miraculous aspects of the pregnancy: conception at age 130, and the rejuvenation of Yokheved. It fits the image of the remarriage ceremony pictured by Rabbi Judah ben Zevina, of the angels singing, "The mother of the children rejoices," and of the children dancing before Yokheved. The great emphasis on Yokheved in this picture points to her being pregnant with the Hebrew savior.

Numerous parallels exist between the birth of Jesus as told in the New Testament and the birth of Moses as described in the Midrash. Both births are preceded by announcement of the coming of a savior. Both children are marked as special at birth. The births are accompanied by a manifestation of light. Each child faces a serious threat to life during his infancy. The one parallel to the birth story of Jesus which is conspicuously absent in the Midrashim of the birth of Moses is the Divine conception. The Midrash does, however, point to Divine assistance in the birth process of the Israelites in Egypt, and possible references to a miraculous conception are scattered in the Midrash. The suggestive tone of the line in the Passover Haggadah, "And God knew," as well as the statement in the Talmud that Yokheved was pregnant for three months before Amram remarried her, lead us to the possibility that a Jewish legend of a miraculous conception of Moses did, in fact, exist. If, indeed, there was such a legend, it was clearly suppressed. Ample reason certainly existed for such suppression by the rabbis. In Christianity, the belief in the divine conception of Jesus became a key element in the depiction of Jesus as son of God. This concept had no place in Judaism, nor in the story of its greatest hero, Moses. The hints that remain in rabbinic literature are, therefore, but traces of lost legends.

ALLAN KENSKY is Associate Dean of the Rabbinical School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

1. H.W. Obbink, "On the Legends of Moses; in the Haggadah,"' Studia Biblica et Semitica T.C. Vriezen Dedicata, ed. W.C. van Unnick and A.S. vander Woude (Wageningen, 1966), p. 252.

2. Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (Garden City, 1979), pp. 112-116.

3. P. Winter, "Jewish Folklore in the Matthean Birth Story," Hibbert Journal 53 (1954-55):40.

4. Renee Bloch, "Quelques Aspects de la Figure de Moise dans la Tradition Rabbinique," Moise, l'Homme de l'Alliance, pp. 164-165.

5. Brown, Op. cit., p. 312.

6. Ibid., p. 524.

7. Erwin R. Goodenough, By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism (New Haven, 1935), p. 155.