Alternate Nativities: In the Beginning...

A couple of weeks ago I began a bible study in the gospel of Mark with some folks in our congregation.  We discussed how, in contrast to Matthew and Luke's gospel, Mark's gospel does not have a birth story for Jesus.  Mark says nothing about angelic announcements, imperial censuses, travels to ancestral homelands, visiting shepherds and magicians, or virginal conceptions.

The group then, briefly, discussed how the two accounts of Jesus' birth can't be satisfactorily reconciled.  The details of their accounts make them incompatible with each other.  A question was asked - which, then, is the 'true' one?  Which one is the more historically accurate?

My answer was that, without finishing the time machine that I'm building in my garage we have no way of knowing.  And that in all likelihood, even if we did finish that time machine, we might discover that neither Matthew nor Luke's account is entirely historical.  The nativity stories are highly theological stories - with numerous elements and themes drawn from the old testament.

Jesus' birth story might have been (and probably) was entirely different from what we read in Matthew or Luke. But that got me wondering.  What other alternate birth stories could have been written about Jesus?

And so, consider this an Alternate Nativity:

₁In the beginning of the new heavens and the new earth, the Lord God raised up his servant Joseph, a man of labor who worked with his hands to build and to craft the necessary things from stone and from wood.  ₂ And the Lord God said, “It is not good for Joseph to be alone.” ₃ And so he brought to him a wife, Mary, who had not yet known a man.  ₄ The two were married and they became one flesh. 

₅ And the Lord God caused a great sleep to fall upon them and they slept.  ₆ And the Lord God opened the womb of the woman, Mary, and placed in her his son, Jesus, and closed over the flesh again. ₇ And, upon awakening, she said, “I have got a son with the Lord.” ₈ Therefore is the man, Jesus, the Son of Man and the Son of God and men and God have become one together in him; ₉ man and his God, and they were no longer ashamed.