virgin birth - PhillyBlog

Steve · #1 (**permalink**) 12-21-2004, 02:17 PM

Is the Virgin birth of Christ absolutely essential to a proper understanding of who he is and what he supposedly came into the world for? For instance, one of the important doctrines of Christianity is the Trinity which means, among other things, that Jesus is God.

Can Jesus be God without having been born of a physical, literal, actual virgin?

Does it even matter?

chrissayer · #2 (**permalink**) 12-21-2004, 04:17 PM

And what about Jesus' brother, Joseph.

Steve · #3 (**permalink**) 12-21-2004, 04:23 PM

Wasn't there another brother, too? James?

chrissayer · #4 (**permalink**) 12-21-2004, 04:29 PM

Could have been James - I was guessing about the name.

I saw something about it the other day - on Sixty Minutes, maybe. I always thought Jesus had been an only child.

IMPAQ · #5 (**permalink**) 12-21-2004, 04:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrissayer

I saw something about it the other day - on Sixty Minutes, maybe. I always thought Jesus had been an only child.

Jesus was not an only child, however, the Vatican wishes people believe he was and refer to James and Jesus' other brothers and sisters as cousins. This, of course, is to retain the idea of Mary being a virgin till death.

Quote:

"Is not this the carpenter's son?," the Jews asked, "is not his mother called Mary? And his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are thy not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?" (Matt. 13: 55, 56)

peacemover · #6 (**permalink**) 12-21-2004, 04:59 PM

The whole question of the Virgin Birth is an interesting topic for discussion around this time of year (even though most scholars believe Jesus was probably born closer to May or June than December).

The Christian Gospels of Matthew and Luke tell us that Mary was a virgin who conceived a child through the Holy Spirit, and that Joseph, her betrothed, did not have relations with her until after Jesus was born.

This is a claim that is radical and rationally difficult to accept or prove. Still, many people, including me, believe it to be true. Some notable Biblical scholars and theologians such as Raymond Brown and Marcus Borg (http://www.united.edu/portrait/borg.shtml) have challenged the notion of the virgin birth, however- leading to some interesting scholarly debates on the topic.

Brown wrote "The Birth and Death of The Messiah" a series of scholarly volumes on the person of Jesus (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...ce&s=books)

There were interesting cover stories on the nativity and birth of Jesus in last week's issues of Time and Newsweek:

Time- "Behind the First Noel"

http://www.time.com/time/archive/pre...009720,00.html

Newsweek- "The Birth of Jesus" (from Dec 13th issue- registration required)

www.newsweek.com

Here is an excerpt from the Time article about the Virgin Birth:

Quote:

Of all the miracles surrounding the Nativity, the central and essential one is Jesus' birth to a woman who had "never known a man." In Luke, the angel Gabriel explains to Mary about her son's conception as follows: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." Although neither of the Nativities marks a moment for the beginning of her ensuing pregnancy, Christians have long assumed it followed directly upon her "Let it be" response.

To suggest that this (and Matthew's verse, "that which is conceived in [Mary] is of the Holy Ghost") is anything other than reported fact is to court blasphemy. The Holy Spirit's role in the conception in Mary's womb of God's Son, so spectacular and yet also touchingly intimate, is part of Christianity's theological bedrock and began entering the faith's creeds by the 2nd century. (Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy's beliefs go further, maintaining that Mary remained a virgin during and after Jesus' birth.) Says John Barclay, a New Testament expert at the University of Durham, England: "Theologically, this is the one thing that people will go to the stake for. If they defend the historicity of anything in the Christmas stories, they will defend this."

Raymond Brown was one who did not. Brown, author of the landmark work The Birth of the Messiah, dean of historical Jesus scholars until his death in 1998 and a Sulpician priest, observed that the idea of divine conception in the womb appeared to be part of a theological progression. The very first Christians thought that Jesus had become God's Son at his Resurrection; Mark, the first Gospel written, seemed to locate the moment at his baptism in the Jordan; and it is only by the time that Matthew and Luke were writing that believers had dated his Sonship to before his birth. Thus, if Mary was the eyewitness source for the Holy Spirit's direct involvement in Jesus' birth (and who else could it be?), her testimony was lost to Christians for half a century before Luke somehow picked it up. Weighing this, facts like Jesus' relatives' seeming ignorance of his messiahship in Mark and John and other clues, Brown concluded that both Matthew and Luke "regarded the virginal conception as historical, but the modern intensity about historicity was not theirs." Applying modern standards, he called the question "unresolved."

Such irresolution irks other Christians, who see Luke's line that "Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart," as a sign that she simply delayed telling people, and who must fight claims, some 2,000 years old, that the Nativities got the virginal conception wrong. Fellow Jews early on challenged Matthew's Gospel assertion that it fulfilled a prophecy in the Book of Isaiah that the Messiah would be born to a "virgin." (Isaiah's Hebrew actually talks of a "young girl"; Matthew was probably working from a Greek mistranslation.) Critics may also have alleged that Jesus' birth early in Mary's marriage to Joseph was the result of her committing adultery; much later Jewish sources named a Roman soldier called Panthera. Those accusations, some scholars believe, account for the verse in Matthew in which Joseph considers divorcing Mary before his dream angel allays his doubts. Related notions of Jesus' illegitimacy have never totally disappeared. Jane Schaberg, an iconoclastic feminist critic at the University of Detroit Mercy, has long maintained that parts of Luke's introduction to the topic echo the beginning of an Old Testament passage on rape ("If there be a virgin betrothed to a man, and if another ... should have lain with her"), suggesting violation as the cause of Mary's pregnancy. The Holy Spirit, in Schaberg's version, transmutes a ritually taboo pregnancy into an occasion of glory and the birth of the Holy Child.

As New Testament scholars have delved deeper into the pagan faiths that competed with early Christianity for followers, Mary's virginity has been challenged from the opposite direction--not as an impossible novelty but as a theme borrowed from the literature of the non-Jewish world. Stephen Patterson of Eden Theological Seminary lists divinely irregular conceptions in stories about not only mythic heroes such as Perseus and Romulus and Remus but also flesh-and-blood figures like Plato, Alexander and Augustus, whose hagiographers reported he was fathered by the god Apollo while his mother slept. "Virgin births were a rather Gentile thing," says the Very Rev. John Drury, chaplain of All Souls' College at Oxford University. "You get it in a lot of the legends in Ovid where the god impregnates some young girl who has a miraculous son."

This line of thought, with its possible implication that the Gospel writers imagined the Holy Spirit and Mary engaged in the kind of physical divine-human intercourse that vividly marked many Greek and Roman myths, is one of the most rancorous areas of the new scholarship. Brown found no merit in it. "Every line of Matthew's infancy narrative echoes Old Testament themes," he argued. "Are we to think that he accepted all that background but then violated horrendously the stern Old Testament [rule] that God was not a male who mated with women?" Other scholars claim that Luke especially might have been familiar with pagan models closer to the spiritual interaction that today's Christianity believes marked Jesus' conception.

Ezra · #7 (**permalink**) 12-22-2004, 08:51 AM

Don't forget Brian.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrissayer

Could have been James - I was guessing about the name.

I saw something about it the other day - on Sixty Minutes, maybe. I always thought Jesus had been an only child.

Ezra · #8 (**permalink**) 12-22-2004, 09:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by peacemover

The whole question of the Virgin Birth is an interesting topic for discussion around this time of year (even though most scholars believe Jesus was probably born closer to May or June than December).

Right. The December 25th thing is a made up date.

Quote:

Why December 25?

For the church's first three centuries, Christmas wasn't in December—or on the calendar at all.

Elesha Coffman

It's very tough for us North Americans to imagine Mary and Joseph trudging to Bethlehem in anything but, as Christina Rosetti memorably described it, "the bleak mid-winter," surrounded by "snow on snow on snow." To us, Christmas and December are inseparable. But for the first three centuries of Christianity, Christmas wasn't in December—or on the calendar anywhere.

If observed at all, the celebration of Christ's birth was usually lumped in with Epiphany (January 6), one of the church's earliest established feasts. Some church leaders even opposed the idea of a birth celebration. Origen (c.185-c.254) preached that it would be wrong to honor Christ in the same way Pharaoh and Herod were honored. Birthdays were for pagan gods.

Not all of Origen's contemporaries agreed that Christ's birthday shouldn't be celebrated, and some began to speculate on the date (actual records were apparently long lost). Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215) favored May 20 but noted that others had argued for April 18, April 19, and May 28. Hippolytus (c.170-c.236) championed January 2. November 17, November 20, and March 25 all had backers as well. A Latin treatise written around 243 pegged March 21, because that was believed to be the date on which God created the sun. Polycarp (c.69-c.155) had followed the same line of reasoning to conclude that Christ's birth and baptism most likely occurred on Wednesday, because the sun was created on the fourth day.

The eventual choice of December 25, made perhaps as early as 273, reflects a convergence of Origen's concern about pagan gods and the church's identification of God's son with the celestial sun. December 25 already hosted two other related festivals: natalis solis invicti (the Roman "birth of the unconquered sun"), and the birthday of Mithras, the Iranian "Sun of Righteousness" whose worship was popular with Roman soldiers. The winter solstice, another celebration of the sun, fell just a few days earlier. Seeing that pagans were already exalting deities with some parallels to the true deity, church leaders decided to commandeer the date and introduce a new festival.

Western Christians first celebrated Christmas on December 25 in 336, after Emperor Constantine had declared Christianity the empire's favored religion. Eastern churches, however, held on to January 6 as the date for Christ's birth and his baptism. Most easterners eventually adopted December 25, celebrating Christ's birth on the earlier date and his baptism on the latter, but the Armenian church celebrates his birth on January 6. Incidentally, the Western church does celebrate Epiphany on January 6, but as the arrival date of the Magi rather than as the date of Christ's baptism.

Another wrinkle was added in the sixteenth century when Pope Gregory devised a new calendar, which was unevenly adopted. The Eastern Orthodox and some Protestants retained the Julian calendar, which meant they celebrated Christmas 13 days later than their Gregorian counterparts. Most—but not all—of the Christian world now agrees on the Gregorian calendar and the December 25 date.

The pagan origins of the Christmas date, as well as pagan origins for many Christmas customs (gift-giving and merrymaking from Roman Saturnalia; greenery, lights, and charity from the Roman New Year; Yule logs and various foods from Teutonic feasts), have always fueled arguments against the holiday. "It's just paganism wrapped with a Christian bow," naysayers argue. But while kowtowing to worldliness must always be a concern for Christians, the church has generally viewed efforts to reshape culture—including holidays—positively. As a theologian asserted in 320, "We hold this day holy, not like the pagans because of the birth of the sun, but because of him who made it."

Quote:

Originally Posted by peacemover

The Christian Gospels of Matthew and Luke tell us that Mary was a virgin who conceived a child through the Holy Spirit, and that Joseph, her betrothed, did not have relations with her until after Jesus was born.

Historical fact shows that the Christmas holiday is manufactured. If the birthday is made up then why should the birth be taken as hard fact? To be honest I'd have an easier time believing in an immortal spirit knocking up a virgin than believing something like this:

Mary: I love you Joseph, my husband. Yes, in that way. I just...
Joseph: Yes Baby?
Mary: I just want to wait until after God has a shot at me.
Joseph: Alright...

Alternately, maybe Joe was gay. Or Mary was a good time girl and blamed God on her "condition". In that day and age, I think people would accept virgin conception as an explaination for a mysterious pregnancy.

peacemover · #9 (**permalink**) 12-22-2004, 10:05 AM

Ezra, I can understand your skepticism and questioning, but it is all far more complex than anything about Jesus birth being "manufactured."

AS your article alludes there was a lot of debate among the "Church fathers" of the early centuries about when Jesus' birth should be celebrated. Many scholars believe that the celebration of Christmas originated as a counter to the pagan celebration of the winter solstice, and was not celebrated until several hundred years A.D. (or C.E.) around or just after the time of Constantine.

The timing of when Jesus' birth is actually celebrated, however, does not in any way undermine the authenticity of the event itself or the validity and truth of the Gospel accounts- the Gospels do not say "Jesus was born in December." As the article points out, they did not even have the month of December back then- the present calendar with the twelve months did not come along until the mid to late late 17th century.

So raise questions and voice skepticism if you wish, but the actual date Jesus was born is not important to the vast majority of people- any more than we can pinpoint the date the world began, but we still know that it did begin.

ACE · #10 (**permalink**) 12-23-2004, 11:38 AM

Did the Roman Church pick the winter date to correlate with the pagan customs relating to the Winter Solstice?

I like the whole idea of The Immaculate Conception. I love how it is depicted in art forms.

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