Tag Archives: Virgin Birth

Like a Virgin. Or Not

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To arrive at the nativity story most of us grew up with and which your kids and grandkids might well be performing this Christmas (mine are), the one with a stable, shepherds and wise-men, involves some cunning sleight of hand, not to mention a liberal dollop of invention.

The biblical ‘account’ of the story is spread across two gospels, Matthew and Luke. Mark hadn’t heard of it when he wrote his gospel so you won’t find it there. In fact, Mark’s Jesus doesn’t become God’s son until his baptism. Paul, writing earlier still, thinks God adopts Jesus only at his resurrection. Paul has no knowledge either of the nativity myth. John has no time for it: his Jesus is an eternal being who has existed with God from the beginning.

For Matthew, however, Jesus comes into existence when the Holy Spirit impregnates a virgin. Luke likes the idea and so copies it into his gospel. And now we have a problem: the idea that a virgin will bear the Messiah is lifted from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Jewish scripture, which renders Isaiah 7:14 as –

Therefore YHWH himself will give you a sign: the virgin (almah) will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

In the Septuagint, the Hebrew word almah, meaning ‘young woman’, is translated as virgin. However, the word for virgin in Hebrew is betulah, an entirely different word. Isaiah 7:14 is not a prophecy that a virgin will bear a son: only that a young woman will do so; in other words, a commonplace event. Matthew allowed himself to be misled: in his eagerness to find prophecies of Jesus in Jewish scriptures, he alighted on a mistranslation. He wrote his story accordingly, riffing freely on the error. Luke picked up on it a decade later, adding his own embellishments.

Neither does Isaiah 7:14 suggest the child being talked about will be the Messiah, nor that he will appear hundreds of years in the future. As subsequent verses make transparently clear, a short period of time is all that is suggested; no more than a few years:

He (the child) will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, for before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste. YHWH will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim broke away from Judah – he will bring the king of Assyria (Isaiah 7:15-17).

These are all events contemporaneous with the writing of this part of Isaiah. All that is being said is that a young woman will become pregnant and produce a child in the near future. Even before this child properly knows right from wrong, YHWH will bring Israel’s enemies down upon it. (Because he’s such a caring God.)

None of this has anything to do with a virgin becoming pregnant, nothing to do with a Messiah, nothing to do with Jesus. It is not a prophecy about him, even if Matthew persuaded himself it was. Shamefully, almost all modern ‘translations’ of Isaiah retain ‘virgin’, when they know perfectly well it is not the word used, and that the context neither supports it’s use nor makes it necessary. They do so to maintain the lie that Isaiah 7:14 is about Jesus and to give credibility to Matthew and Luke’s ridiculous fiction that he fulfilled ‘prophecy’ by being born of a virgin. It’s a deception that will be repeated in church services around the world over the next couple of weeks.

End Of Term Test

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Which of the terms mythological, symbolic, theological is most appropriate when discussing biblical tropes?

Apparently, it’s ‘theological’ because it has an air of respectability, whereas the other terms suggest something with only theoretical underpinning. In fact, this also applies to ‘theological’, which by definition is the study of deities, for which there is no evidential verification. The use of ‘theological’ therefore is as unsubstantive as arguing that a concept is metaphorical or symbolic. None of these terms represents a sound, reliable way to determine the accuracy, historicity or truth of religious claims.

With this in mind see how you do with these questions:

1. Did the original hearers of the Genesis creation story regard it as –

a) true.

b) a theological statement.

c) an entertaining myth.

Of course we’ve no way of knowing what the story’s original hearers thought but there is nothing in the text that suggests they would have regarded the creation story as anything but true. The creators of Jesus’ script certainly seemed to think so, a few centuries later and its original hearers would not have felt the need to preserve it otherwise. In this belief they were wrong.

2. Which of these gospel stories is true, as in ‘really happened more or less as described’ –

a) The virgin birth with its surrounding detail.

b) Jesus meeting with Moses and Elijah (the transfiguration).

c) Resurrected corpses roaming around Jerusalem.

d) The resurrection.

The answer is that either all of them are true or none of them are. If only one of them is mythic, symbolic or ‘theological’ (and more than one of them most certainly is) then it is highly likely the others are too. If we are scrupulous, we cannot assert that one story is symbolic because it’s making a theological point while another equally implausible story is historically accurate because we want it to be.

The criteria for determining the historicity of any story from antiquity are corroborative evidence and, failing that, plausibility. We have already established that there is no independent corroboration for many of the gospel stories. There is no corroboration for some of them even in the Bible itself. We are left then with plausibility: how plausible is it that a virgin gave birth or that resurrected corpses presented themselves to Jewish authorities? Vanishingly small. Jesus’ encounter with Moses and Elijah is equally improbable.

Is his resurrection the exception? No, because dead people do not spring back to life 36 hours after being buried. If the virgin birth, the transfiguration and the resurrection of dead saints are all highly implausible (and they are) then so is the resurrection. It is at best, a story making a theological point but it is not history. The implausibility it shares with many of the other implausible stories in the gospels discounts it as history. There are no grounds for saying it is the exception.

There is also the cumulative effect of implausibility. It is highly unlikely that one of the implausible events above is historical, but it is impossible that all four of them are. Add all the other implausible stories in the gospels – the other miracles; the healings; exorcisms; Jesus sparring with the devil, walking through locked doors and beaming up to heaven: piling implausibility on top of implausibility doesn’t make any of the component implausibilities more plausible. It makes all of them less plausible and collectively impossible.

The things the gospels tell us happened to Gospel Jesus, and those they say he did himself, are equalled only by heroes of myth. Did Osiris or Romulus rise from the dead, as their stories claim? Did Augustus really become a god once he died? Of course not. These are the implausible, improbable events we find in myth. Jesus’ story is no different.

3. While many or all of the gospel stories are highly improbable as history because they are intended to convey a theological point, the words attributed to Jesus in the gospels –

a) are completely accurate.

b) are more or less what he said.

c) passed through an inestimable number of people, being invented, edited and altered in the process, before being written down 40+ years after Jesus supposedly uttered them.

d) are inventions of the gospel writers and/or their particular sect and frequently copied between gospels.

If you’re opting for a or b, you’re now making the logia the exception; the one oasis of historical truth in a desert of implausibility. That’s a big ask. To get this one off the ground, you have to call upon contrivances like –

completely reliable (but different and conflicting) oral traditions;

     hypothetical lists of sayings;

         Peter’s dictation to Mark;

             eyewitness authors;

                  secret teachings;

                     super-translators and

                         the odd spot of collaboration.

So, c and/or d is far more likely to be the answer to this one, representing the explanation that requires the least conjecture and fewest hypothetical components.

How did you do? I expect most of you aced this end of term quiz. If not, better get down to some extra study and repeat the semester next year.

The Meaning Of Matthew’s Mistakes

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So Matthew likes quite a lot of what he finds in Mark. Likes it so much he decides to lift over 90% of it into his own Jesus story. Of course he’ll tweak it a bit because, disappointingly, Mark hasn’t emphasised Jesus’ Jewishness enough. That definitely needs bumping up; it’s what his readers will expect. And Mark has missed a trick or two: he starts his story with Jesus’ baptism, when, as everyone knows, every godman needs a magical origin. Just look at Tammuz, Horus, Romulus and, according to some, the Jewish high priest Melchizedek. So Matthew sets about scouring the scriptures for a prophecy or fable, anything really, that hints that the Messiah would have a miraculous birth. And he comes across this in Isaiah (7.14):

Therefore, the Lord, of His own, shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin is with child, and she shall bear a son, and she shall call his name Immanuel.

It’s not really a prophecy about the Messiah as the context makes clear, but that’s okay. There’s enough of a hint that it could be about a future Messiah that it’ll do. So Matthew sets about creating a birth narrative for his godman based on this verse, yanked from its context. His godman is going to have a virgin birth too.

What Matthew doesn’t realise, however, is that he’s made a mistake. He’s picked up the verse in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the scriptures. If he’d checked, or even been able to read the original Hebrew, he would have soon seen that the verse actually reads:

Therefore, the Lord, of His own, shall give you a sign; behold, the young woman is with child, and she shall bear a son, and she shall call his name Immanuel.

The Hebrew word for ‘young woman’ is alma and that is the word used in Isaiah 7.14. The word for virgin is betulah. It does not appear. The use of it in the Septuagint is a mistake, a mistake that Matthew is not aware of. So he misappropriates the mistranslated verse to create a miraculous birth for Jesus and the myth of his virgin birth is born.

But Matthew hasn’t finished scouring the scriptures for prophecies that appear to be about Jesus. This time he alights on Zechariah 9:9:

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout Daughter Jerusalem! See your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Incredibly, this time Matthew has stumbled upon a prophecy about the Jewish Messiah! According to Zechariah, the Messiah-King’s victorious entry into Jerusalem will follow the defeat of his enemies and the establishment of universal peace. Matthew likes the sound of this. If he can shoehorn an episode into his story where Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, this will show his readers that Jesus really is the long-awaited Messiah-King. Never mind that the Jesus version bears little resemblance to the scenario predicted by Zechariah: Jesus is not an anointed king, he has not recently defeated his enemies nor has he just established universal peace. The only thing the original prophecy and Matthew’s version have in common is that the two principle figures, Zechariah’s Messiah-King and Jesus, ride into Jerusalem on a donkey.

Oh, no, wait. That’s wrong. According to Matthew Jesus approaches on two donkeys; a mother and her colt. He’s made another mistake. He doesn’t know that the use of ‘donkey’ and ‘colt’ in the prophecy refers to the same animal. He thinks there has to be two: a larger one and a smaller one. He is not familiar with the practice of parallelism, common in Jewish writing to emphasise a point by repeating it  but using alternative terminology. There aren’t two animals on which Jesus sits lop-sidedly, there’s one: a donkey, otherwise known as a colt which, to state the bleedin’ obvious, is also the foal of a donkey. Matthew misses all of this and places Jesus precariously on two mismatched animals.

What does this tell us? That Matthew is not describing an actual event. He has, rather, created a story based on a prophecy, designed to illustrate to his readers that Jesus is the Messiah-King prophesied by Zechariah. There is nothing historical about this story; it is an actualisation-in-fiction of a prophecy. A prophecy,  which, incidentally, still has not been fulfilled.

So Matthew is caught out at least twice. There are more examples in his gospel of his forcing an episode from the scriptures into his Jesus fable: other aspects of his birth narrative are clearly based on elements of Moses’ story; Judas’ thirty pieces of silver are based on a story from Zechariah 11, which has no relevance at all to the use he makes of it. There is also evidence that Matthew invented prophecy that he could then show Jesus ‘fulfilling’ (Matthew 2.23, for example.)

What all of this demonstrates is not that Jesus was foreshadowed in the Jewish scriptures, (foreshadowing being a technique beloved of some authors who use it to hint at future events in their fiction) but rather that many aspects of the Jesus story are literary re-imaginings of ‘prophecies’ and often unrelated episodes from the scriptures.

And if some, why not all?

The Virgin Birth: what really happened?

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Menachem Av: Month 2

I’ve missed twice. No pains or discharge now for two months. I thought the first time I was just late. I’ve not been having the uncleanness for long so it could have just been things not working like they should. That happens right? But then a second time. Not so good. And then I started to show. How as I going to explain it – to the family, the village and most of all to Yossef who they’ve decided I’m marrying?

It wasn’t him. We haven’t, you know, done anything. I’ve only met him a couple of times. He’s older of course, nearly twice my age. He seems nice enough, though it wouldn’t make any difference if he wasn’t. He’s going to be my husband. I’m going to be his wife. Or I am if I survive this.

So what am I going to say? Can’t tell them who it really was. Thaddaios, Shim’on the builder’s boy. Same age as me. We just got to messing about. I didn’t want to, knew it was wrong. Knew it would land us, specially me, in trouble one way or another. But I did want to do it too. It was nice. Nice being touched under my clothes. He was gentle and kind.

But then there was blood and mess. The blood was mine, the mess was his. I wasn’t expecting that – the blood, I mean. I was shocked. I touched it and cried. Touched myself after I’d touched him. That’s when it must’ve happened. Some of his mess found its way inside me, off my fingers, and that’s how the seed of his baby began to grow in me.

Technically, though, I’m still a virgin. I can tell Yossef that: ‘technically I’m still a virgin’, ’cause technically that’s true. Thaddaios never put his thing in me. I wouldn’t let him even though he wanted to, ’cause I know how important it is I’m a virgin on my wedding night. Yossef’s family could do bad things to me if they found out I wasn’t. But I am. Technically anyway.

So that’s the story. I’m a virgin but, you know, with child. Yeah, doesn’t make sense. Yossef’s going to have trouble believing it. I know I would. Maybe I can tell him the Lord had a hand in it somewhere. The Lord’s hand instead of my fingers! Maybe. He might go for that. His family’s very orthodox.

Ellul: Month 3

‘Come off it, Miriam,’ Yoseff said when I told him. ‘Who was it?’ But I stuck to my story. So he prayed about it and said the Lord told him he’d to stand by me, so he has done. He says that when it comes everyone’ll thinks it’s his and he’ll just let them. He’s not such a bad sort. It could be a lot worse. But, he says, it’d be best if we took off somewhere, away from all the questions, to hide my shame, he said, when I really begin to show So we’re trekking off to some God-forsaken part of the country where he has relatives or something.

Nissan: Month 9

So that’s how we ended up here, in one room where the animals come in at night. It could’ve been worse, I suppose. His aunt or whoever she is delivered it. The baby that is. It went okay, if you think having your body just about ripped in two is okay. The baby was fine though and I’m recovering. After, his aunt held it up; a bloody mess, arms outstretched. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it won’t change the world, but you have a fine healthy baby.’ I might’ve smiled then. She cleaned it up and wrapped it in the swaddling. I looked and thought, maybe it’s not too bad.

Yoseff came in and peered at it.

‘So,’ he said, as if he was interested, ‘what you going to call her?’

 

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 13: Jesus was born of a virgin… er, no, was descended from David, er…

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That most fallible of books, the Bible, often wants it both ways. Never more so than when it’s trying to add spin to its central character. It wants us to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, with no human male involved, and, at the same time, that he was physically descended from King David on his dad’s side.

He’s got to be born of David’s line, you see, because the prophecies say the Messiah will be just that. The writer of Acts (‘Luke’) knows this and tells his readers that God promised King David that through ‘the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne’. (Acts 2.30, KJV; my emphasis). The reference is to 2 Samuel 7:12, where Yahweh does indeed appear to tell David that he ‘will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his Kingdom’. This is to be a physical descendancy and is the reason for all those ‘begats’ at the start of some of the gospels; they are there to establish Jesus’ (supposed) royal descent on his father’s side. This is why, in his gospel, Luke contrives to get Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem for the birth: ‘Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David‘ (Luke 2.4). That’s Joseph who was descended from David. Not Mary, not Jesus’ uncle Charlie and not the Almighty himself. Joseph.

Perversely, it is also Luke who insists that Jesus is the product of divine impregnation and a virgin birth (Luke 1.32-35). Why doesn’t he realise that if Jesus was virginally conceived, he cannot be the fruit of any human male’s loins? Luke includes the virgin conception and birth in his nativity story while insisting, in both his gospel and in Acts, that Jesus is the Messiah precisely because he is a physical descendant of David (see, for example, Luke 1.27, 1.32, 1.69, 2.4, 2.11, 3.31, 18.38, 20.41). But Jesus can’t be both a physical descendent of David through Joseph and the result of the God helping himself to a nice young girl. Could it be the two conflicting accounts were written by different fantasists?

So, is Jesus the ‘Son of God’ because he was created by the Almighty’s impregnation of Mary or is he the Messiah because he’s King David’s descendant ‘according to the flesh’? Either Jesus is physically descended from David or he is a being conceived through divine rape, like other mythical god-men of the ancient world.

He cannot be both – though he could, of course, be neither.