I vaguely remember reading The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus in the mid-1970s. My “take-away” then was, “Whoa!”
In my not-so-humble opinion, the whole “was Mary a parthenos or an alma” conflict grew out of a desire to make Jesus as “God-given” as the Jews believed the Torah was. And make no mistake about it, many-if-not all 1st century Jews believed the Torah was given straight from Yahweh to Moses, somewhat in the same manner that devout Muslims believe the Qur’an was given by Allah to Mohammed.
In my research, carried out in another forum, on The Proto-Evangelium of James [cf. Infancy Gospel of James, I was led by my curiosity to the Talmudic discussion of The Fall in the Garden of Eden, which concluded with this:
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Shabbat 145b-146a:
Rabbi Yoḥanan then explained to them: Why are gentiles ethically contaminated? It is because they did not stand on Mount Sinai. As when the snake came upon Eve, i.e., when it seduced her to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, it infected her with moral contamination, and this contamination remained in all human beings. When the Jewish people stood at Mount Sinai, their contamination ceased, whereas gentiles did not stand at Mount Sinai, and their contamination never ceased. Rav Aḥa, the son of Rava, said to Rav Ashi: What about converts? How do you explain the cessation of their moral contamination? Rav Ashi said to him: Even though they themselves were not at Mount Sinai, their guardian angels were present, as it is written: “It is not with you alone that I make this covenant and this oath, but with he that stands here with us today before the Lord our God, and with he that is not here with us today” (Deuteronomy 29:13–14), and this includes converts.
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For more on the “cleansing effect” of the Torah and “standing at Sinai” on "the moral contamination that all of Eve’s descendant received in “The Fall”, see my thread: Notes on the Jewish Roots of the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin.
So,
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If the gift of the Torah at Sinai removed all Jews’ “Original Sin”,
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Then, logically, Jesus’ was conceived and born free of it; i.e. he was conceived and born sinless.
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But to transfer his sinlessness to non-Jews, he had to be more than born sinless, he had to have “merit”, i.e. “an abundance and storage of righteousness” from which his righteousness, dispensed to his followers, cleansed Jews and non-Jews alike from their inherited sin AND sins accumulated after birth.
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To be abundantly clear,
- I affirm that Jesus was conceived and born free of Original Sin;
- I affirm that Jesus’ so lived during his brief life as a human on earth that he was “blameless” before his Father;
- I affirm that Jesus’ merit, i.e. his righteousness, was sufficient to cleanse all that believe in and on him,
- And I affirm with Peter, that: "there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” [Acts 4:12]
- In other words, there was no need for Jesus to be conceived miraculously in his mother’s womb.