For example, by the ideas of the Two Ways, resurrection from the dead, and an elaborate angelology adapted from Greek mythology and other beliefs over long centuries after the dispersion and Babylonian Captivity, to name but three.
Here:
We would have to suppose that, within the first fifty years of Christianity, a double move took place: from an early, very Jewish, high Christology, to a sudden paganization, and back to a very Jewish storytelling again. The evangelists would then have thoroughly deconstructed their own deep intentions, suggesting that the climax of YHWH's purpose for Israel took place through a pagan-style miraculous birth.
The simplest explanation for the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke sees them as defenses of Jesus' divinity against the charge that he was a bastard. Wright does not consider that it was the Pharisees who were obsessed with the sexual, while Jesus wasn't.
