Question:

It is said that Matthew and Luke have skirted around the obvious contradiction of Jesus’ conception; that Mary and Joseph were only betrothed and not married. Clearly, Virgin Mary would not have allowed Joseph to have sex until they were married. Thus, he must have raped her. This is covered up by using his title of “Holy Spirit”. In addition there is a writing and a Jewish text that claims that Mary was raped by a roman soldier called Pantera (leopard).  How can I refute the above claims?

Answer:

Jesus proved that he was God by walking on water, by raising the dead, by healing the blind, the deaf and the lame, by turning water to wine, by calming a great storm and by himself being raised from the dead on the third day.  Jesus fulfilled multiple prophecies about the Messiah such as being crucified (Psalm 22:16), being betrayed for 30 pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12-13), being born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), being despised, rejected, pierced and silent when accused (Isaiah 53:1-7) and many more prophecies of the Messiah that he fulfilled.

In addition, the mother of Jesus claimed that she was a virgin when Jesus was born, as was prophesied in Isaiah 7:14.  Joseph clearly believed her, otherwise he would not have married Mary.   These are the facts about Jesus which we bring to the table to discuss this spurious charges.

People say that Joseph raped Mary.  What is their evidence that he raped Mary?  Do they have any witnesses from that time, or are they just making this up? This is a viscous charge for anyone to make against Joseph.   I hope they have evidence for this charge.  I believe that they do not.   Jesus was the worker of amazing miracles, he was the greatest teacher of all history, he fulfilled all the prophecies of the Messiah and was raised from the dead on the third day, yet his enemies say that Joseph raped Mary.  This is a terrible and irresponsible charge in light of the evidence.  The same can be said of the terrible and completely unsubstantiated charge that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier.  I suggest that you do not attempt to spread this false and hurtful rumor and that you ask anyone else who tries to spread this irresponsible rumor also to stop casting false charges about the greatest man who ever lived and about his mother.  This is a baseless and evidence-less charge which is so out of step with the other things that we know about Jesus that they were clearly invented, not to explain the birth of Jesus, but to try to deflect attention away from his extraordinary life.  We should either ignore these false charges as not even deserving a response, or, if we respond, it should be in the strongest possible terms to this false charge.

John Oakes