(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The New York Times faced backlash on Christmas for publishing a blasphemous interview with self-described religion professor Elaine Pagels. Promoting her new book Miracles and Wonder, Pagels entertained the idea that Jesus Christ may have been fathered by a Roman soldier.
Pagels made these claims in a transcribed interview with Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for The Times, just three days before Christians celebrated the birth of Jesus, the Son of God. She repeated these assertions in her new book.
These assertions drew sharp criticism from Catholic leaders, including Father Gerald Murray, who dismissed Pagels’s statements as “propaganda masquerading as history” during an appearance on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle.
“This is all nonsense and garbage. This is retread stuff. She’s been doing this for many years,” Father Murray stated.
Critics pointed out that mainstream media would never dare run similar pieces against other faiths, including Islam.
“You have to accept this kind of thing in a pluralistic open society. Excited to see @nytimes’ pre-Ramadan feature on Muhammad raping his 6yo ‘wife,'” journalist Steve Robinson quipped.
When Kristof asked Pagels about baseless claims suggesting Jesus “might have been fathered by a Roman soldier, possibly by rape,” Pagels replied, “I love these stories from the Gospels.”
In her book, Pagels referenced dubious assertions that Jesus may have been fathered by a Roman soldier named Panthera.
“Yes, these stories circulated after Jesus’ death among members of the Jewish community who regarded him as a false messiah, saying that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier,” Pagels said.
While she admitted to previously dismissing such claims as “ancient slander,” she argued that there are “too many points of circumstantial evidence to simply ignore them.”
On Christmas Eve, the @nytimes publishes a piece debunking the Virgin birth and arguing that Mary either had an affair or was raped by a Roman soldier named Panthera. Exactly what you’d expect from the newspaper of the pagan cultural elites. pic.twitter.com/nJpnHZ4obH
— Marc Thiessen 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦🇹🇼🇮🇱 (@marcthiessen) December 24, 2024
Pagels also dismissed the birth of Jesus as a miracle. When pressed about other miracles, she claimed, “Calling something a miracle is a way of interpreting an event. A friend of mine was hit by a car and thrown about 20 feet and was unharmed. She told me that this was a miracle. Someone else might have said, ‘I was lucky.’”
She added, “Calling it a miracle interprets an event that others might see differently. This often happens with remissions of illness: Some people see many miracles, and some never see any.”
Pagels’s claims and The Times‘s decision to publish them drew widespread backlash on X.
Sadly unsurprising.
The NYT doesn’t bother to hide their odious hatred for Christians. https://t.co/qLa6W1HjVK
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 24, 2024
The New York Times is a disgrace.
And now they’ve added blasphemy to the sins of Walter Duranty. https://t.co/GBkvkvqXGL
— Jeff Clark (@JeffClarkUS) December 25, 2024
