Loading...This post will provide a brief respite from my discussion of the authorship of 2 Thessalonians.
I went back “home” to Kansas last week to spend a few days with my mom here before the holiday season. Dutiful son that I am, I took her to church. I go to church about once every year or two, these days, and normally when I go it is to an Episcopal church on Christmas Eve. This was a conservative evangelical Free Methodist Church – one that my mom has attended for many years. It’s not really my style – I rather prefer centuries-honored liturgy to electric guitars and drums, myself – but I wasn’t there to satisfy my own aesthetic preferences. (She doesn’t like the guitars and drums either, but we missed the earlier service with the choir).
The sermon in that kind of church is very different from what one hears in an Episcopal church and is also very different from the kind of sermon I learned to preach when I was in my Masters of Divinity program at the Presbyterian Princeton Theological Seminary. No need for me to explain how Episcopalians on one hand and Presbyterians on the other (tend to) do it; this sermon at my mom’s church was really more of a reflective point-by-point verse-by-verse discussion of a text of Scripture. A fairly long text (20 verses?). And a fairly long sermon (40 minutes?).
In the church bulletin there was a kind of hand-out that had the key points of the sermon given in outline form with blanks that the parishioner was supposed to fill in as the pastor got to that part. “Mary responded _____________ when she heard the angel’s voice.” You’re left guessing how to fill in the blank – is it “fearfully?” “hopefully?” “joyfully?” – until the pastor tells you the right answer. When the sermon is over, you have all the blanks filled in, and since you’ve been actively participating in the sermon by writing down the key words, presumably the message will stick with you longer.
Most of the sermon, then, involved the pastor reading the passage bit by bit and then telling the congregation what it meant – a kind of exegetical sermon. Fair enough. It wasn’t bad, if you appreciate that kind of thing.
The text was from Luke 1, the long chapter that is the lead-up to the birth of Jesus in Luke 2. Luke’s first chapter includes the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist, the miraculous pregnancy of Elizabeth who had been barren, the “Annunciation” of the angel Gabriel to Mary that she too would conceive, even though she was a virgin, and the songs of joy sung on each occasion by the father of John, Zechariah, and the mother of Jesus, Mary. It’s a historically really important chapter, of course, and nothing makes it more important than the fact that it is one of the two passages of the entire New Testament that mentions Jesus’ virgin birth.
I was struck by one of the things that the pastor said in his exposition of the text, that belief in the Virgin Birth “is not optional” for Christians. In his forcefully stated view, if you are a Christian, “you have to believe in the Virgin Birth.
It makes sense that conservative evangelical Bible-believing Christians insist that you have to believe in certain things or you can’t be a Christian. In my part of the world (and in my mom’s church, I’m sure), you “have to” believe in the Bible or you can’t be a Christian. That one has always thrown me for a loop, since in none of the historical creeds of Christianity – the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed, for example – is there one word about having to believe in the Bible. Christianity is belief in Christ; it’s not Biblianitry – belief in the Bible. But conservatives stress that, for good reason, if you take the Bible away from them they won’t have “objective” authority for telling you what else you have to believe and how else you have to live your lives. Without the Bible they wouldn’t have written grounds for arguing their favorite doctrinal positions (Trinity), moral positions (anti-abortion), social positions (it *used* to be used to argue for slavery, but luckily we’re past that one now….) etc.
But back to my point. There are certain fundamentals of the faith that very conservative Christians insist you have to believe in. That’s why, originally, that kind of Christian proudly took on the name “fundamentalist.” This wasn’t a negative term used by outsiders, but a positive one that insiders used to describe their commitment to the fundamental aspects of the faith: the complete inspiration of Scripture; the physical reality of hell; the bodily resurrection of Jesus; and the …. virgin birth. These things needed to be believed literally, otherwise, well, otherwise you weren’t a Christian. And if you weren’t a Christian — that’s where the physical reality of hell came into play.
The older I get the more I’m a “Live and Let Live” kind of guy. But I do wonder about those who insist that you “have to” believe something. Take the Virgin Birth. Is it actually a biblical teaching that you have to believe in it? The reality is that the virgin birth is mentioned by only two authors of the New Testament, Matthew and Luke. And only in their opening narratives. Matthew says that Jesus was born of a virgin to fulfill a prophecy (Isaiah 7:14). He also says that he was born in Bethlehem to fulfill a prophecy (Micah 5:2). And that Herod killed all the boys of Bethlehem to fulfill a prophecy (why God had to make that part of his plan he doesn’t say; think about all those bereft families. And for what???). But he nowhere says that you “have to” believe that Jesus was born in Bethlehem or that Herod slaughtered the innocents or you can’t be a Christian. He doesn’t say that about the virgin birth either. And either does Luke.
If the Virgin Birth was so important – vital! – to these authors, why don’t they make a bigger deal of it? Why, for example, don’t they ever (not once!) refer to it again later in their Gospels? And if it’s an “essential” part of the faith, why doesn’t Paul show the slightest knowledge of it? Or John? Or James? Or Peter? Or anyone else? If someone were to ask Paul “Do I have to believe in the Virgin Birth to be saved?”, what do you imagine he’s say? I myself imagine he’d say “believe in the … what????”
In no passage of the NT does it say that anyone “has” to believe in the Virgin Birth. I can see why some modern Christians (and a lot of ancient ones – starting about a century after the Gospels) think so: without the Virgin Birth, isn’t Jesus just a human, like the rest of us? Well, that’s an interesting question, since John, who does not even hint at the virgin birth, thinks that Jesus is not at all human like the rest of us.
I’ll have more reflections on the Virgin Birth in a few days. First I need to finish my posts on 2 Thessalonians.
Great post.
“Christianity is belief in Christ; it’s not Biblianitry – belief in the Bible”
I will be using this quote.
Have a Merry Christmas, Mr. Ehrman.
Very interesting. (By the way, I am sorry for the difficult times you have been going through lately.)
Thanks. Some real sadness about hardship friends and loved ones are experiencing. But life is also good in many / most ways. I appreciate the thought.
Faithfully I am keeping you and yours in my daily meditation practice.
It took me years to realize various denominations don’t really have the authority to determine who is and isn’t a Christian. All they can determine is who is or isn’t in their particular church. This segued into an understanding of how bizarre Protestant “orthodoxy” is since Protestants weren’t around until the 16th century. Protestant “orthodoxy” is the living proof that orthodoxy is just the belief of an individual group and not really handed down from God through Jesus and his disciples.
I’ve noticed you often mention fundamentalists but distinguish evangelicals from them. Are you defining evangelicals as believing in salvation by faith in Christ’s atonement for sin which doesn’t necessarily have to include inerrancy or literalism? Rob Bell certainly doesn’t believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. On the other hand I don’t know if he still considers himself evangelical.
There are a lot of conservative evangelicals who have a somewhat more open understanding of the inspiration of scripture than the die-hard fundamentalists who hold to absolute inerrancy.
Over the years, a similar thing has happened repeatedly to me. I will start to attend a local church (the mega churches are everywhere here) and enjoy the moral/life lessons that are preached for a few weeks – I think introspection is a good thing, and these lessons are often valuable for this. Invariably though, the tone of the sermons change over time and suddenly the lessons are about defeating evil, the congregation is extolled that they “must believe” in the devil as a living entity or some other thing – and this just makes it impossible for me to continue attending. It is always disappointing.
As I (raised Catholic) recall the Apostles’ Creed, it does include among the things one is supposed to believe that Jesus was “born of the virgin Mary.”
Here’s a bit of Catholic doctrine that…may intentionally be unclear? You can’t commit a mortal sin unless you *know* you’re committing a mortal sin.
To be “not committing a mortal sin,” is it necessary you were *never told* that, say, not attending a Mass during the prescribed hours every week is a mortal sin?
Or could you be “not committing a mortal sin” if you have been told that, but you personally can’t believe God would consider it a mortal sin?
I doubt most modern Catholics believe people would be condemned to Hell for non-belief in doctrines, especially if they keep their dissenting ideas to themselves.
In any case, it’s great that you’re addressing the “virgin birth” issue this particular week!
I recently heard that somewhere fairly near here (upstate New York), the Freedom From Religion group is protesting a sign that local firefighters put up outside their station every year. It reads, “Happy Birthday, Jesus! We love you.” Yikes! I don’t know whether it’s worth protesting, but I think even some intelligent Christians should object to their children’s being given the idea Dec. 25 is Jesus’s actual birth date.
What Paul does say only mentions belief as in Romans 10:9, a belief in the resurrection, whatever the reality of that was. Instead Paul emphasizes how the Spirit of Christ must dwell in a person who belongs to Christ, Romans 8:9. Paul writes about how that looks in Galatians 5:22-26. It doesn’t sound like someone saying, “You can’t be Christian if you don’t believe in the virgin birth,” to me.
Of course, I’m a liberal. I choose to believe whoever and whatever is true, not authority. There are some risks in that.
Matthew’s argument of the Virgin Birth was based on Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7:14. The more accurate translation in the NRSV is clearly a prediction that King Ahaz’s enemies will be defeated and in no way is a prophesy of the virgin birth of a Messiah to take place some 700 years later. Doesn’t the NRSV destroy the only reason to believe in the Virgin Birth?
No, I’d say that the question of whether was or was not a virgin is independent of what the Hebrew word in Isaiah 7 was.
Actually I was referring more to the tense. The NRSV says “a woman (or virgin) is with child” which clearly applies to the prediction that King Ahaz’s enemies will be destroyed in the near future whereas the earlier translations from the Septuagint say “a virgin shall conceive…” which could be taken as a prophesy of an event to come. Are these tenses rendered correctly in these two translations? However, in either case it is clear from the rest of the Chapter that the prediction is something that will happen in the near future, not something that is supposed to happen some 700 years hence.
Hebrew doesn’t actually have a past tense or a future tense. It has a tense for action that has been completed and action that is not yet complete. The verb for her having conceived is completed action; the one about what is name will be called is incompleted.
Here’s William Barclay on the virgin birth: “In this passage we are face to face with one of the great controversial doctrines of the Chrisian faith – the virgin birth. The Church does not insist that we believe in that doctrine.” Barclay wrote that in 1953, as part of his daily Bible study series. Christianity is a very big tent. Even so, when my study group discussed this section we gave short shrift to this issue. There seemed to be no point in challenging the faith of those who had made up their minds in favor of the doctrine of virgin birth. That’s why I love your blog. It gives me a chance to listen, learn and to even participate in the discussion without stepping on anyone’s toes.
Thanks.
From reading your blogs, my assumption is that the Virgin birth might have been added in order to elevate the specialness of Jesus’s birth? It’s a question. I visited an elderly Maya woman in her home this morning. She escaped into one of her back rooms and minutes later popped back out carrying a large baby made of plaster whom she had carefully dressed in winter white knit clothing. It was her Baby Jesus. An assortment of crosses and rosaries hung from his wrists.
Yes indeed. And so interesting to hear about the plaster Jesus.
I happened to have my camera with me and photo to follow. This particular Maya viejita is described among Maya as “limpia” (stainless soul). It’s a term reserved for only a few elderly people. btw; EVERY Maya palapa or shanty (for westerners fit for animals) has an altar laden with relics in the sala.
I’m wondering too if the addition of Mary as a Virgin was not also then a useful conversion tool? .. given as I’ve read from one of your books this aspect would have run parallel to Roman God myths
Interesting idea — but I’m not aware of it being used that way. Who knows?
Great post! I often wonder at why aceptance of the virgin birth would be a requirement for inclusion in the faith. I understand all the historical reasoning but it is just that: reasoning. Reasonable people can agree to disagree when it comes to the conclusions their reason produces.
How does the Pastor of a mid sized suburban Kansas congregation react to having a best-selling agnostic New Testament expert sitting in the pews? Does s/he even realize it, or is it more like they’re hyper-acute, taking a driving test or something?
Even though my mom introduced me to him, I wasn’t sure he knew who I was or what I stand for. If he knew, he hid it very well!!
And I imagine later upon learning sighed relief as he avoided the question/answer period at the end of his sermon 🙂
Once people deny the virgin birth, they start down the slippery slope that risks collapse of the whole house of cards.
There was motivation to identify with an existing ancient religion to gain respect, credibility, and perhaps Roman religio licita protection. If you insist Isaiah is talking about Jesus, you’re stuck with the virgin birth. That of course is based on a misinterpretation, perhaps simply because they read the Septuagint but never the Hebrew.
Finally, if you think the sacrifice must be pure, spotless, and sinless, and if you also hold a doctrine of original sin, then you can’t afford to have Jesus corrupted by inheriting original sin from Adam through the male line.
All the gospels were written after Paul died. Philosophy expanding on the original simple idea of a universal sacrifice had not yet gotten far enough to consider these things.
I’ll bet that even Jesus didn’t believe in the Virgin Birth.
I won’t take that bet!!
Oh, I don’t know. I think a lot of us convince ourselves that our parents never, ever were sexually active.
Can I ask a relatively unrelated question about Luke? I find Luke a very good writer (the English translation anyway), more so than most of the other authors in the NT. But maybe a little too good. I feel like I’m reading a professional fiction writer. Especially Acts. I feel less like he’s writing what he’s heard, and more like he’s making it up. Just how reliable is Acts?
Good historians could write very stylistic prose, and Luke does in places. But it doesn’t make him (or them) any less of a historian. His historical credentials have to be decided on other grounds.
Of course. It just seems to me the author describes a lot of details that I can’t see how he or anyone else would know. Anyway I’m looking forward to the next census that requires everyone to physically return to the town of their ancestors a thousand years ago. Talk about a ghost town!
Details in a story are not necessarily known. They can be passed-on legend or simply invented. That was normal for the bios genre. No confirming evidence has ever been found for this census or for the slaughter of the innocents. Those are evidence the gospels were never intended as what we today call history.
Dr Ehrman, do you feel that Matthew is mistranslating the Isaiah text from a Septuagint reading? I understand that the word for virgin could be translated as young women?
I also note that Matthew and Luke fundamentally disagree on the journey to Egypt. I would tend to go with Luke, that the family, if they were ever in Bethlehem in the first place, returned to Nazareth.
See today’s post!
Sorry Bart but I have to tell you that you have the wrong ideas on prophesies; You wrote, ” Matthew says that Jesus was born of a virgin to fulfill a prophecy (Isaiah 7:14). He also says that he was born in Bethlehem to fulfill a prophecy (Micah 5:2). And that Herod killed all the boys of Bethlehem to fulfill a prophecy (why God had to make that part of his plan he doesn’t say; think about all those bereft families. And for what???).
Please let me be clear: a prophecy is telling you something before it takes place, the event is not necessarily the will of God as you have wrongly understood. If that was as you say, God would not longer be Holy, but He would be considered a sadistic criminal even by human standard. Please consider this: God having foreknowledge of future events, makes that event known before it occurs, to validate the full message of the prophet. If all your thinking is like this, then you will be one that believes that Christ crucifixion is also one of God’s deed. Please read my article “the will of God and that of the high priest” page 140 of my book. I know I don’t write at your level, but the message is there just the same.
I think the entire point of Matthew’s narrative is that Jesus’ birth was all going according to the divine plan. But that means God planned it that way.
Yes the birth is a divine plan, but what happened because and around His birth wasn’t God’s will.
I don’t claim to know the mind of God (and how can you or anyone else!). That may be why I prefer history to theology, and hope that we can keep the discussion to history.
Oh thank you Bart. I prefer science and history to fantasy and myth. You are a breath of fresh air to the Biblical world just as Pope Francis is becoming a breath of fresh air to the Catholic Church!
Yes Bart, history is good, if history was not adulterated as you know it was. For me It is like this, it may be not like this for everyone. I know my heavenly Father’s character and what doesn’t fit with His Holy character is not from God.
I also know the character of my earthly father well: and if anyone accuses him of cruelty, dishonesty and immorality I would jump to his defence. I am certain you would do the same.
So Simonelli, is it the omnipotent God’s will that the holocaust (God’s chosen people) happened? Is it God’s will that children starve to death? Is God the almighty asleep at heaven’s gate that he lets atrocities happen? Please, your God is a monster!
There is only one person who could know if Jesus was born of a virgin…and that would be Mary herself. Mathew’s appeal to OT prophecy is terribly misguided. Again and again he pulls passages out of context to try and transform the events surrounding Jesus’ birth into miraculous fulfillments of prophecy. All one need do is go directly to the passages that Matthew quotes and read them in context, and it becomes glaringly apparent that none of them could possibly refer to Jesus. As such it is difficult not to question the integrity of the author of this gospel.
My view is that technically speaking Mary herself may not have known. The only one who would know would be her gynecologist.
I disagree with you . lets check this scenario Mary found out herself pregnant and she shows no man touched her then decided next day to see her gynecologist. he is going to examine her and find out she is pregnant as well as virgin but if Mary went to see gynecologist after she lost her virginity by her husband joseph so there is no way that her gynecologist would know that she got pregnant while she was virgin therefore only Mary would have known .
You think there was such a thing as a gynecologist in the first century? Or that people, especially common people, would even think of seeing some form of physician for something as simple and routine as a pregnancy?
As it turns out, we have writings from ancient gynecologists! The most famous was named Soranus. But no one but the very wealthy could afford them, I would assume. Midwives were normally used for births, when they were available.
Even then, it would have had to have been before the birth. Do we have 1st century records of gynecologists? LOL
Yes indeed — we have some of their writings, esp. those of Soranus.
I stand corrected, thank you! We still agree that only the rich could afford one. But even today, in societies we call primitive, it’s common for a woman to leave the fields just long enough to bear her child, and then go back out to work. I can’t think of any other species where the female requires assistance to give birth.
LOL! Merry Christmas, Bart!
Soranus sounds more like a name for a proctologist.
!!
But why should we consider Matthew’s interpretation as misguided? It was a very common practice to interpret earlier scripture to apply to one’s own day. The Pesher of Habakkuk in the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, quotes Habakkuk and then applies a new interpretation for its own day. Their view of the Kittim as Romans, rather than the Greeks, is an example of this. Dr Ehrman’s given countless examples of various interpretations by various proto-orthodox and Gnostic groups on Luke and other scripture. For modern historians and Christians, we often prefer a single interpretation that everyone agrees upon. Which is why there is only one Christian church today (/sarcasm).. But that is not how ancient people viewed their inspired teachings. Scripture was a rather open-ended and malleable concept.
I would say that for Christians of his day, Matthew’s interpretation was not misguided at all!
Well then the Christians of His day did not read the OT very carefully at all. For example, when Matthew says that Jesus returning from Egypt was a fulfillment of Hosea 11:1 (out of Egypt have I called my son), did he not read the first part of that verse? It reads “When ISRAEL was a child, I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.” Is this not clearly referring to the Exodus? How could Matthew (or whoever) determine that this referred to Jesus when it clearly states it is Israel? When Matthew quotes Jeremiah 31:15 as a fulfillment of the alleged slaughter of the Bethlemite children, did he not read verses 16 and 17, where the Lord promises that those children will return to their land? In what way would the murdered children in Bethlehem have “returned” to their land? Maybe “misguided” is the wrong word. He seemed to be on an agenda, to prove that Jesus fulfilled many OT prophecies. But these were not prophecies. These were “historical” references. Matthew pulled them out of context, often quoting 1/2 a passage to support his position. But read in context, he was clearly mistaken. Same applies to the “virgin” birth.
I would say that they *did* read their texts very carefully — but not in the way we today read texts. They read them as speaking to their own situation, rather than asking what they meant in *their* situation. Maybe I’ll post on this.
True, pesher is the practice Christians were following when they claimed texts from Tanakh were talking about Jesus. I think a gospel diarist is less likely to make his own interpretations than to write about the interpretations which were already popular.
“Christianity is belief in Christ; it’s not Biblianitry – belief in the Bible”: knowing that Christian books and NT canon (the books selected as Scripture) are a product of the Church, then “inspired” books seem to be the expression of Church traditions and faith, rather than the other way round.
The Virgin Birth is part of the Apostle Creed and, like the formulation of Trinity, probably became more relevant as part of development of the doctrine – therefore it can be important for Christian faith even though Scriptures do not make it always explicit.
From an historical point of view, I believe it’s clear that there are good reasons to consider virgin birth accounts as mythological narratives (as made clear even by catholic historians like John p. meier).
However, I don’t think it’s easy to know if Paul (and Mark, and John..) knew about Virgin Birth, arguments from silence are always tough to tackle.
At least it seems that Virgin Birth, like miracles (that are not even mentioned in Apostle Creed), was not always and widely considered theologically important for faith in early Christians circles.
For example: John informs us that the “Word became flesh” in Jesus, but he nowhere explains how. So, whatever happened, I may assume that such technical detail wasn’t theologically relevant for the evangelist. In this case it might be possible that John knew about Virgin Birth tradition even if he doesn’t write about it (similarly, John doesn’t provide a detailed account of the Last Supper meal, although I wouldn’t conclude that he wasn’t aware of such details, pretty relevant for liturgy).
Could this possibly be the subject of one of your next posts? 🙂
Thank you, Happy Christmas everyone.
My sense is that if Paul is summarizing what he thinks really important for faith (1 Cor. 15:3-5) and if John is giving a full account (21 entire chapters!) of the incarnation of the Word, that had they known about the virgin birth tradition, they at least would have mentioned it. (John doesn’t have the Last Supper because he has Jesus die the day before Passover)
Grat article. It’s interesting how presumptions of what has become “fountational” via later centuries of theological strife gets super-imposed back onto history and onto the text without basis.
I realize this is tangential to your main point but I have a similar experience as you when I go visit my Dad back in Georgia. I have no belief but it pleases him to have his family around him in church so I go with him. It is interesting to note the changes to the service in what is still essentially a country Baptist Church. They have dispensed entirely with a piano or organ and the music consists almost entirely of pop styled choruses, apparently known as “praise” music. The instruments used are guitar, synthesizer and drums. I find this very amusing since I recall many sermons delivered in my youth against the evils of rock music and popular culture! Apparently the irony of a group committed to setting themselves apart from the “world” being so suffused with popular culture is lost on them. Alas, some things never change; namely the loooooong sermons.
1. Thanks so much for sharing this. Again, your personal anecdotes are always the best part of this blog.
2. It is interesting that Paul never mentions the virgin birth.
3. “Fill in the blank” preaching is fascinating, I thought I had heard of them all, but not that one.
4. I don’t care much for electric guitars and drums either.
5. I recently read that Maya, the mother of Buddha, became pregnant when some sort of god entered her side and that the Hindu god Shiva had sex with a woman named Madhura and gave birth to indrajits. It’s interesting how different religions, in this case gods having sex with human women, often have similar themes.
6. I had a “coming home” church experience in college. I had just written a letter to the local newspaper about how one really should not take certain religious positions or drawn certain religious conclusions unless one had read certain books which I listed including Schweitzer’s “The Quest of the Historical Jesus.” The preacher spent the whole sermon criticizing me, in essence saying that only the Bible is needed. The problem was that I was sitting next to my future mother-in-law and found this to be quite embarrassing. So, you got off easy. Did the preacher know who you are? Merry Christmas
Your preacher clearly had never read Schweitzer! My spiritual leader when I was in my late teens/early twenties always used to say that the Bible was the greatest book ever written. It was only later that I realized he hadn’t really read very many other books. So what were the grounds of comparison??? Can you imagine a 2014 Book Prize being given to a book which was the only book the committee had read?
My opinion is that whether you “have to believe in the virgin birth” depends on what you believe Christianity or “being a Christian” means. For a fundamentalist then I’d say yes you’d have to believe that, otherwise the main foundation of your beliefs would be undermined. To be a liberal Christian (non-fundamentalist) I suppose you would not need to believe that. But, I don’t understand why anyone wants to be a Christian if they aren’t adherents to the fundamentalist doctrines. To me there is nothing to base their “beliefs” or religion on. I am saying this as someone who has only been associated with fundamentalist churches all my life and I am nearer 100 years old than I am 0 years old 🙂 I am “sitting on the fence” so to speak now, and let me say it is a strange place to be, surrounded by friends and family who have no idea that I have come to question everything that our Christianity has been based on. Thanks Bart for the manner in which you approach your subjects and your subscribers to your blog. I also want to say I am truly sorry for the grief you are experiencing and for your family/friends who are going through enormous struggles and pain. I too am seeing terrible experiences that loved ones are going through and it really hurts to know there is nothing you can do to change things for them. All one can do is extend their love and care to others.
Others would argue that the Incarnation is what matters, not the Virgin Birth, and that there is no necessary connection between the two (since two Gospels have one but not the other; and a third Gospel as the other but not the one!)
Thanks, Bart. Your reply clarifies that subject for me very well.
Since Paul doesn’t mention a virgin birth, is Paul’s beheading by the Romans dated prior to the writing of the four gospels?
Paul’s execution is usually dated to 64 CE (I’m not sure if that’s accurate or not); the Gospels are usually thought to have been written 70-95 CE.
I doubt any gospel author translated Isaiah. More likely they just used the Septuagint. Historians, by today’s meaning, were extremely rare in that era. As I said, they are much more likely bios narratives.
Egypt was one of several attempts to explain why Jesus of Nazareth could have been born in Bethlehem, because they thought ancient texts about Bethlehem were talking about Jesus.
Well I just can’t take it. Is anyone going to mention the fact that there is no such thing as a virgin birth. Unless some freak of nature event occurred where Mary had both sex organs in her body or she had artificial insemination then for the love of all sanity who can say they believe in virgin birth? Are you people nuts? Honestly, this is the 21st century kindly step into it. And for the love of decency leave women’s bodies out of this mess.
Ha! I think for a lot of us that has been assumed, but not stated. I for one don’t think for a second that Jesus’ mother was a virgin!
I knew you didn’t but for people like Simonelli and many others on this site, they still believe. Whooo It boggles the mind. Besides it does need to be stated and loudly. I’m sick of tip-toeing around silly religious sensibilities. They are so easily offended which tells me they need to get out of denial mode. Thanks for letting me rant, Bart. You are my savior even tho. you weren’t born of a virgin!! 🙂
A virgin birth is not at all impossible. Although rare, Parthenogenetic reproduction could occur among human females yet remain unnoticed. A number of rare events would have to occur in close succession, and the chances of these all happening are virtually zero, but not impossible. Parthenogenesis in humans may seem far-fetched, but 50 years ago no-one suspected that parthenogenesis could occur in any vertebrate: now all-female species have been documented in fish, amphibians, reptiles and birds (all major orders of vertebrates except mammals).
For a virgin to get pregnant, one of her eggs would have to produce, on its own, the biochemical changes indicative of fertilization, and then divide abnormally to compensate for the lack of sperm DNA. That’s the easy part: These two events occur in the eggs or egg precursor cells of one out of every few thousand women. These two genetic deletions might each have a one in 1 billion chance of occurring, and that’s not counting the calcium spike and division problem required to initiate parthenogenesis in the first place. There’s an actual case in recent years, according to a 1995 report in the journal Nature Genetics. Fact is stranger than fiction!
so if the chances are one in a billion, you mean there are 7 people in the world today who were born of virgins? Does anyone really think this???
Professor Ehrman I find it interesting that in your original post you state that the major creeds do not require belief in the bible, but you fail to mention as has been brought up in at least one comment that those same creeds contain statements affirming the virgin birth! It seems clear that one is supposed to believe in the virgin birth to be a Christian even though this belief would be quite foreign to the Apostle Paul and even to the authors of the Gospels of Mark and John.
Many years ago upon learning of the charge recounted by Origen in the Contra Celsum that Jesus was the illegitimate child of Mary and a Roman soldier named Panther I was initially horrified, but after some reflection I concluded that I might actually prefer a Christianity in which the Son of God became incarnate as the son of an adulterous woman who had been tossed out by her carpenter husband. I was thinking along the lines of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:28 “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” Obviously that story would have made for a tougher sell than a virgin birth however much more credible it might be.
The idea of a virgin birth likely arose after Paul but before Matthew and Luke were written (probably 80-120 CE), before any NT texts came to be considered scripture, and of course long before any written creed we still have today. Since the Johannine community was much more Greek and Gnostic than Jewish, they may never have even had that idea as part of their tradition. They may have been so isolated from the proto-orthodox community that they hadn’t even heard of the idea. There’s very little overlap between John and the rest.
The story of Pantera and Mary was by Celsus as part of an attack on Christianity, but Origen thought the story had been fabricated.
I believe as you noted in your initial post that the reason that both Luke and Matthew composed their stories of a virgin birth was to confirm that Jesus was born in David’s city and thus the legitimate Messiah. HOWEVER in the centuries that have passed the virgin birth has become important to Christians for another reason. This maybe due to Augustine’s teaching that the original sin of Adam was transmitted in the semen. Thus all mankind is born sinful and in need of a Redeemerl. It has become more and more important that Jesus be seen as the perfect sinless man who was crucified to atone for all human sins.
The problem for most fundamentalist and evangelicals was Darwin. If indeed evolution is correct then there was no Adam to commit the original sin. Thus there is no inheritance of this original sin via the normal human conception via semen in intercourse.
SOooooo the virgin birth has become the foundational act that supports all the Christian theology of the importance of the crucifixion where Christ’s blood was shed and we poor sinners today must accept this sacrifice to be saved from our sins and thus inherit eternal life in Heaven.
Ergo … no virgin birth then there is no foundation for the most fundamental teachings of soterology in the Chrstian faith.