ABSTRACT
Some modern scholars, including Andries Van Aarde and Donald Capps, have convincingly asserted that, by reason of the unusual and unorthodox circumstances of his conception, the historical Jesus was not a completely accepted member of the house of Israel. Van Aarde understands there to have been seven categories of Israelite men based upon their parentage and the circumstances of their birth. Priests, Levites, and full–blooded Israelites made up three of these categories.1 "Illegal" children of priests––i.e., children of priests who had married prohibited women––and proselytes made up the fourth category. The fifth group was "made up of bastards, the fatherless, foundlings and those made eunuchs by human agency."2 The sixth group included those who for physical reasons could not have sexual intercourse, such as born eunuchs, men with deformed genitals, and hermaphrodites. The last group consisted of non–Israelites who by definition were "impure and outside the covenant and thus excluded from any kind of social relationships" with Israelites.3
