The question of Mary’s status has some important ramifications for how we think about Jesus himself. As Smith told me, “In any slave society, a child born to an enslaved woman is born enslaved” in other words “Mary’s child, Jesus, is born enslaved.”

This facet of Jesus’s socio-economic status can explain other details in his biography, explained Smith. Take, for instance, the fact that Jesus did not seem to have been active before the age of 30. Under legislation passed in A.D. 4. by the emperor Augustus, 30 was the age of manumission for enslaved men (though women, and many men, waited much longer, if not the entirety of their lives, for freedom). Viewing Jesus as formerly enslaved can help explain why he waited to begin his ministry...

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