Ehrman and I are talking about very different things. OT prophesies almost always had a meaning in their immediate context and the meaning applied to Jesus was not understood until that immediate context. Unlike Erhman, I don’t think this is an example of how people fabricated a religion, I think it is an example of how prophesy worked in the Jewish faith community. They were always looking for recapitulations of their salvation history, and those recapitulations are powerful signs.
The sign promised to Ahaz was not a miraculous conception, it was a child, and the events that would happen before the child was mature enough to know right from wrong. The child’s life span gives a time frame. In the time it takes a virgin to marry, conceive, have a child and before the child reaches moral accountability at 12 or 13, Israel and Syria will be deserted. The child’s name is a promise that God will not desert his people, even in their suffering. Isaiah 8:3 says, “Then I made love to the prophetess, and she conceived and gave birth to a son.” That’s the normal way. By the time the child is three, Assyria defeats Syria. By a decade later, Assyria has destroyed Israel and turned against Judah. So many people died that milk was abundant, but other food was not, so everyone ate curds (a way of preserving milk) and honey (something you scavenged for). The sign was fulfilled.
I agree with you that virgin is a perfectly appropriate translation since it was implied that young unmarried women were virgins. I think the Matthew audience would have definitely understood it as virgin. My point in arguing with @SkovandOfMitaze was that even if you can make the word mean something other than a virgin, the idea of the Annunciation (the Holy Spirit miraculously creating a child in Mary’s womb with no sex involved) is not based on a quote from Isaiah, it’s based on a narrative that describes what happened. Secondarily, that event fulfilled prophesy from Isaiah. But again, the sign isn’t a miraculous conception, the sign is the child, God incarnate, Emmanuel, God with us, Yeshua, Our God Saves, a promise of redemption and the fulfilment of salvation history begun long ago.
Calling the text ridiculous is not going to win any confidence in your commitment to Christianity. I would not say this idea that the conception of Jesus was a result of rape is impossible. There are all kinds of theological problems with it such as God using evil means to achieve His ends. More important I think is the following…
But since we don’t know what happened and what means God used then it ONLY makes sense to focus on the more important belief that the conception of Jesus was the work of God, and not on some particular theory on how it might have been accomplished.
There is no great scientific or logical reason to repudiate the claim that it was a virgin birth. It IS quite scientifically and logically POSSIBLE. Unlikely? sure. But that is what you expect for a miracle.
Soooo ARE you denying that …
Jesus’ conception was the work of God?
Jesus’ conception was in any way miraculous?
conception is possible without sex?
or is this a repudiation of Christianity… building the case that Jesus was not God but just some human born in the usual ways… You are hardly alone in such beliefs… Jehovah Witnesses and Muslims are many.
I don’t think the text is ridiculous. I think some peoples interpretation of the text is ridiculous.
As for the rest I feel like I answered it clearly. I see no reason to think Mary literally got pregnant by God through the Holy Spirit somehow connected to his shadow falling on her and ect….
But I am done with the convo and so I won’t be responding any further to it. I don’t think it’s a valuable use of my time to say the same thing multiple times to multiple people. If someone wants to think God supernaturally got Mary pregnant, or god supernaturally made a golem become a man and so on, that’s fine. I don’t. I never will. I matter how many times people tell me their beliefs.
Wow! Excellent summary of the whole flow, @Christy! I had been speed bumped by your use of the word “appropriated”, but seeing this I’m truly happy to let this summary stand uncontested! It’s very clear, as well as theologically and logically sound.
A miracle is enough - Jesus in adult life used power from the Father to do so many miracles that one New Testament writer speculated that if all of them were written down the whole world might not suffice to hold all the books - that is far fetched but expresses the mega-plurality of Jesus during His ministry on earth.
Here is an approach from the other end - astoundingly unlikely but absolutely feasible in regular terms.
(a) Look up meiosis - it can make huge mistakes, and they tend to be fatal.
(b) BUT one possibility is that Mary was an XY female - this is known to happen, or XXY due to an extra sex chromosome winding up in the egg that became Mary.
(c) Now turn up the dial of meiosis playing oopsies with chromosomes - 47 chromosome Mary produces and egg cell with 46 chromosomes instead of 23 or 24, and the sex pair comes out XY - the “missing” 47th chromosome was one of the two X’s.
(d) The egg, fully populated with diploid 46 chromosomes, implants and becomes the Christ.
Long story short, if you look hard enough you can find clever side effects GOD enabled via evolution - and the meiosis kind of chromosome oopsy is in fact enough of an evolutionary advantage that it was there ahead of time, needing only a pair of tiny fiddles to achieve what God planned.
But the virgin birth is clearly in the birth narrative. Matthew refers to the septuagint Greek translation of the Hebrew, and the Jewish scribes who translated it choose to use ‘virgin’. He clearly viewed it as a virgin birth. And the story only makes sense in that context, otherwise Joseph’s reaction becomes meaningless. He obviously believed Mary had been unfaithful during their betrothal and had sex with another man, hence her pregnancy. So God had to tell him directly that that was NOT the case. Hence Jesus did not have a human father.
also “the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace”…“everlasting” —which presumes an eternity future and an eternity past. A virgin birth rather precludes having “her” genes in there somewhere. Like Vinnie said, there has to be room for the miraculous here. Also there seems to be “potentially” (within the text of the New Testament) some possible snide remarks about Jesus’ parentage. It’s just part of what people discuss…and presumes some question in that era about this issue.
Thanks ralphellis. I believe that this document—the Protoevegelum [sp?] of James was written in mid 2nd century — long after the time of James? Origen was skeptical of it and I have read (might not still be true) that the Catholic church, among others, is skeptical of this as well. The late date of composition is also problematic, ralphellis.
20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,[f] because he will save his people from their sins.”
God, the creator of Heaven and Earth, can certainly add chromosomes to an egg and create a baby.
That is hardly the most miraculous thing about Jesus’ life.
Thanks Beagle Lady. I appreciate the input. People are so skeptical of biblical texts that do have connection to the first century CE/AD…and then accept-by-faith texts that are/were undoubtedly written centuries or more down the road.
Using a basic definition of sin as the breaking of God’s moral law, I was merely making the point that Jesus didn’t leave any genetic material because he wasn’t married and didn’t have sexual relations outside of marriage.
This is an interesting question but, ultimately, I don’t think we’ll be able to completely explain a miracle by natural processes. I am neither a Biologist nor a Theologian, but I am interested in the insights of people here in their areas of expertise.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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Clever. And couldn’t agree more on the latter. Attempts to explain how the Spirit has to work, has to accommodate our understanding, when They truly can seamlessly and impossibly configure nature as They see fit, by will, by fiat, by magic, is absurd. If God is the ground of being, He can except every rule, every law of nature, because He does, has eternally from the start (i.e. from the ground up) by instantiating nature. The Spirit is the ultimate get out of jail free card.
The Protoevangeilium appears to have been taken into Catholic and Orthodox traditions as additions to the gospels but not given a NT status. Its origins are not verifiably known if it is was genuine why was it not included by the Fathers in the NT? It may well be because there was no certainty of its origin and its reliability. I can see it may have have arisen from an apologetic purpose and also deference of celibacy as a way of life, with Mary as an icon of such self dedication.
Just a story. Not a part of the Deposit of Faith. There is no requirement to believe it. Just like when Protestants sing about “Three Kings” at Christmas time. (The Bible never says that Magi were three in number or kings)
