What happens when a modern physician starts asking difficult questions of familiar biblical stories?  Here is one answer:  an intriguing post covering a topic that will not have occurred to most of us.  Let’s think about how a Virgin Birth works when (now, unlike antiquity) we have a pretty good idea of how Births work in general.  If God made Mary pregnant through the spirit, what does that have to say about the nature of Jesus’ at the biological level and, well, the chromosomes of God?

This Platinum guest post is delivered to us courtesy of Platinum member Doug Wadeson.  As I’ve mentioned, Platinum members can publish posts for other Platinum members, and they then vote on one to go to the blog at large.  Doug won *twice* recently, so here’s the second one.

I have to admit, HERE is something I never thought of before! But I don’t know, does it sound controversial to you?

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Does God Have Chromosomes?

Dr. Ehrman has many posts discussing the technical difficulties of the two birth stories of Jesus presented in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. I want to concentrate on one aspect of Jesus’ birth, from a medical science perspective.

You probably know that the Gospels of Mark and John begin with Jesus already as an adult. Perhaps they did not think there was anything unusual or special about Jesus’ birth, or maybe it just did not matter for their portrayal of Jesus. On the other hand Matthew and Luke (using the traditional author names assigned to those Gospels) clearly have reason to detail Jesus’ birth. They both make a point of having Jesus born in Bethlehem, as was thought befitting for the Messiah, but then raised in Nazareth, since people knew that was Jesus’ hometown. But both also make a point of saying that Jesus did not have an earthly father, but rather, in some way, God Himself was the father, so Jesus was literally the Son of God. (It is also worth reviewing James Tabor’s guest posts about the father of Jesus.) Matthew phrases it as “she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit,” without explanation for how that was done. Luke says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.”

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