Virgin Birth
- This article refers to the virgin birth of Christ. For information on the biological phenomenon, please see parthenogenesis.
The Virgin Birth is a key doctrine of the Christian faith, and is also held to be true by Muslims.
The doctrine asserts that Jesus Christ was conceived in the womb of his mother, the Virgin Mary, without the participation of a human father. Instead, the conception took place miraculously when the Holy Spirit "overshadowed" Mary. This was not understood to mean that the human body of Christ was created ex nihilo (from nothing), for the tradition of the Church is that Christ "took his flesh from Mary." This is also understood to be a miracle, something not possible without divine intervention.
This doctrine is frequently confused with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. The latter, held by Roman Catholics, states that the Virgin Mary was conceived "without the stain of original sin". Mary, however, unlike Christ, was conceived in the ordinary way: i.e. she had a human father as well as a human mother (whose names, according to Catholic and Orthodox tradition, were 'Joachim' and 'Anna'/'Anne' - or 'Jehoiakim' and 'Hannah' in Hebrew).
Another reason that Christians consider the virgin birth to be significant is that it shows Jesus' divine and human natures at once united, paving the way for all of humanity to be united with God. Eastern Orthodox tradition says that from the time Jesus was born, the flaming sword was removed from the Garden of Eden, making it possible for humanity to re-enter Paradise.
Note: today the above applies only to devout Christians. Research by many groups, including Christian Research indicates that among both the clergy and the laity (in all branches of Christianity) beliefs in central tenets of the faith such as Virgin Birth or bodily Resurrection is highly variable (for example, among male clergy in English Affirming Catholicism group less than 25% believe in Virgin Birth).
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1.1 Alleged Late Appearance in the New Testament
2 See also1.2 Dispute regarding Isaiah 7:14 1.3 Borrowing from Paganism 3 External links |
In the wider sense, arguments for and against the Virgin Birth depend on fundamental philosophical assumptions: if one believes God does not exist, or if God exists but does not perform miracles, the Virgin Birth cannot have taken place in any traditionally accepted sense. The Virgin Birth obviously violates the rules of science, but as it is described as a miracle this objection matters little to the faithful. Nevertheless, there are other objections to the doctrine of the Virgin Birth based on Scriptural and Philological debates.
There are explicit references to the virgin birth in only two places in the New Testament: the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which are believed to be amongst the latest written parts of the New Testament. The apparently older Gospel of Mark, on which Matthew and Luke are believed to be partly based (see Markan priority), does not mention the virgin birth, and some scholars also argue from lexicon and style that the first two chapters of Luke, describing the virgin birth, were a later addition to the Gospel, which may originally have began at 3:1:
Scriptural and philological controversy
Alleged Late Appearance in the New Testament
At 3:1 there is an abrupt change of subject and the story begins again. The letters of Paul also appear to be older than Matthew and Luke, and Paul does not take a clear opportunity to refer to Mary as a virgin when he describes the birth of Jesus:
The phrase in Greek is γενομενον εκ γυναικος, genomenon ek gunaikos, "having-become of a-woman", not γενομενον εκ παρθενου, genomenon ek parthenou, "having-become of a-virgin". Christian apologists reply that Mary's virginity was not relevant to Paul's reasoning at this point, and point out that he uses a special verb to describe Jesus's birth, which he plainly regarded as a special event. However, Jesus's birth would have been special to Paul whether or not it had taken place by parthenogenesis, and if Paul had not known of the virgin birth, it could never have been relevant to any of his reasoning and so could never have appeared in his writing. This argumentum ex silentio, or "argument from silence", cannot be conclusive, but it does increase the probability that only the writers of Matthew and Luke knew of and believed in the virgin birth. If other writers had mentioned the virgin birth in the New Testament, it would be certain that they believed in it. They did not mention it, therefore it cannot be certain that they believed in it and, like the resurrection appearances, the virgin birth may be an example of the gradual supernaturalization of the Christian story. Some scholars have argued that early Christians did not claim that Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus. They point to the geneaologies in Matthew 1-2, and Luke 1-2, which use descent through Joseph to demonstrate that Jesus was the heir to King David. Moreover, the Ebionites (a group of Palestinian Judeo-Christians rejected by Gentile Christians as heretics) maintained that Jesus was naturally conceived.
On the other hand, Paul frequently asserts the divinity of Jesus Christ in his writings and refers to him as υιος Θεου, Huios Theou, "Son of God". If he thought that Jesus was born in the usual way of a mortal father and mother, one would expect him to explain how a normal man could be God. His failure to refer to any problem of this sort could suggest that neither he nor his readers were faced with such a problem, possibly because they took the virgin birth for granted. Similarly, Paul mentions the setting of the sun -- "(Ephesians 4:26) Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath" -- but does not say that it goes down in the west, which would have been taken for granted by his readers. However, the precise direction of the sunset has no obvious theological significance. The Virgin Birth certainly does, and if Paul develops the theological significance of Jesus's death and resurrection at such length, why does he neglect the theological significance of Jesus's virgin birth? Examine, for example, Paul's words at the very beginning of Romans:
- 1:1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, 2 (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,) 3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; 4 And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
- Romans 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
In past two millennia there has been considerable controversy among Christians and their opponents about the plain translation and the precise meaning of a small section of Isaiah. The crux of the matter is the translation of the word : עלמה, `almah which has been translated as young woman and as virgin.
In the King James Bible, a traditional Christian translation, the verses in question run like this:
Skeptics argue that this is not a very clear prophecy of the birth of Jesus Christ. For example, what does the "butter and honey" refer to? (One possible response to the "butter and honey" problem: it is a reference to one who, metaphorically, "has eaten good meat their entire life in order to spit out the bad meat if it ever touched their lips". Note that the "butter and honey" reference is immediately followed by the comment on an ability to choose between god and evil; you may suggest that they are related.) And why is Christ, who was sinless from birth in the traditional Christian understanding, described as having to learn to refuse the evil and choose the good? Skeptics raise even greater questions about the translation of the first verse in this passage:
Dispute regarding Isaiah 7:14
Many modern translations concede that the word in the Hebrew does not mean "virgin". The Revised Standard Version says:
The New Jerusalem Bible says:
The Revised English Bible says:
The Good News Bible says:
The New Revised Standard Version says:
This demonstrates that many Christian scholars, both Protestant and Catholic, have conceded that the traditional translation of the Hebrew is not preferred in the context of Isaiah 7:14.
Is it accurate to translate עלמה (`almah) as virgin? Greek version of the Book of Isaiah 7:14 (see below and the articles on Biblical canon, Tanakh, Septuagint and Old Testament) translates עלמה (`almah) as parthenos shall conceive a child called Immanuel (meaning "God with us"), "parthenos" which is conventionally translated as into English as virgin. Furthermore, the Gospel of Matthew 1:22-23 explicitly links the Isaiah prophecy to the birth of Jesus. Accordingly, many Christians understand the Isaiah prophecy as referring to Mary at the birth of Jesus.
There are two important words in Hebrew that can be translated into English as "virgin": בתולה, bethulah, and עלמה, `almah. Isaiah uses `almah in the Masoretic Text, and so conservative Christians have tried to demonstrate that the word unambiguously means "virgin", while other scholars, Christian, Jewish and otherwise, have tried to demonstrate that the word means simply "young woman", without any necessary connotation of virginity. `Almah occurs seven times in the Hebrew Bible and usually seems to mean a young woman of marriageable age (e.g. Genesis 24:43); bethulah is accepted in modern Hebrew usage as the characteristic Hebrew word for virgin. There is no Hebrew tradition of virgin birth: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Hannah were infertile women who miraculously gave birth late in life. The Bible makes no claim of divine impregnation. Christian apologists nevertheless argue that many first century Jews, including Jewish converts to Christianity used the Septuagint Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which used the word παρθενος, parthenos, which Christian apologists say clearly means "virgin". However, the great Greek-English Lexicon edited by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott lists other meanings for the word:
- παρθενος, parthenos, I. 1. maiden, girl; virgin, opp. γυνη gynê, "woman". 2. of unmarried women who are not virgins, Iliad 2.514, etc. 3. Parthenos, hê, the Virgin Goddess, as a title of Athena at Athens. 4. the constellation Virgo. II. as adj., maiden, chaste. III. as masc., parthenos, ho, unmarried man, Apocalypse 14.4.
- Genesis 24:16 And the damsel [parthenos = Hebrew na`arah] was very fair to look upon, a virgin [parthenos = Hebrew bethulah], neither had any man known her: and she went down to the well, and filled her pitcher, and came up.
- Judges 21:12 And they found among the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead four hundred young virgins [parthenous = Hebrew bethulah], that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.
- Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, עלמה (an `almah) shall conceive without lying with any man, and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Note: There is also considerable controversy about the verbs used in Isaiah 7:14 and about the verses that directly follow it -- see the external links below for further details.
Some have argued that the Virgin Birth is a Christian borrowing from paganism. The impregnation of mortal women by gods is common in pagan mythology, but Christian apologists have replied that the obvious sex of the pagan myths is missing in the Gospels:
Borrowing from Paganism
However, because the Jewish God does not take human form in Judaism, he could not impregnate Mary in a physical way, and the absence of sex from the conception of Jesus does not disprove borrowing from paganism. Furthermore, a pagan myth of virgin birth may also underlie the disputed verses from Isaiah:
This philological reasoning seems to raise three possibilities: virgin birth is a pagan concept that Christianity has 1) taken from contemporary paganism; 2) taken from pre-Mosaic paganism through Isaiah; or 3) taken from contemporary paganism and justified from Isaiah, who took it from pre-Mosaic paganism. If pre-Mosaic paganism supports Isaiah, and Isaiah supports Matthew and Mark, paganism has anticipated Christianity, perhaps because God was preparing the way for Christianity or because, as some Church Fathers argued, the Devil was blasphemously imitating Christianity. On the other hand, if pre-Mosaic paganism does not support Isaiah, there are several possibilities. For example, perhaps virgin birth was invented separately, first in paganism, then in Christianity or perhaps, despite the earlier date of the Ugaritic text, virgin birth existed first in Judaism, without any other instances than this one, and was borrowed by paganism. The obvious difficulty with this idea is that virgin birth was much more prominent in paganism, where is occurs in many myths in many different areas, than it was in Judaism, where it occurs (if at all) in a single verse late in the Old Testament. Nevertheless, the argument that virgin birth was a Jewish concept first borrowed by paganism and later incorporated into Christianity was first made by Justin Martyr in The First Apology of Justin, written in the second century. Justin also made this argument in his Dialog with Trypho, in which he debates with a Jew called Trypho:
- "Be well assured, then, Trypho," I continued, "that I am established in the knowledge of and faith in the Scriptures by those counterfeits which he who is called the Devil is said to have performed among the Greeks; just as some were wrought by the Magi in Egypt, and others by the false prophets in Elijah's days. For when they tell that Bacchus, son of Jupiter, was begotten by Jupiter's intercourse with Semele, and that he was the discoverer of the vine; and when they relate, that being torn in pieces, and having died, he rose again, and ascended to heaven; and when they introduce wine into his mysteries, do I not perceive that the Devil has imitated the prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses? ..."[1]
See also
External links