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However, the possibility of a virgin birth is often questioned for the fact that, from a biological viewpoint, parthenogenesis has never been observed in a human being. Also, some proclaimed Christians do not believe in the Virgin Birth. Research by some groups[citation needed], including Christian researchers, indicates that among both the clergy and the laity (in all branches of Christianity) beliefs in central tenets of the faith such as Virgin Birth or bodily Resurrection is highly variable. Although they believe in the Virgin Birth, Muslims do not call Jesus "Son of God", rather "Servant of God". In the Qur'an, Jesus (Isa in Arabic) is consistently termed "Isa ibn Maryam" - a matronymic - because, in Muslim belief, he had no biological father.
Philosophical controversy
In the New TestamentIn Matthew 1:23 is attested, "a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." [1] In Luke chapter 1 Mary even asks how this can happen, since she is a virgin, and is told it will be by the very power of God. [2] In John 8:41-42 is seen the clear contrast between what Jesus claimed and accusations some Jews had against Him. [3] He claimed God to be His Father (i.e. virgin birth), whereas Jews instead horribly accused the thing of being a sham suggesting it was instead by fornication (i.e. sex outside of marriage). That the Gospel writer would include such an accusation certainly speaks to his belief that the virgin birth was indeed defensible. Earliest booksThe virgin birth is not known to appear in the Gospel of Mark. Some claim the Pauline epistles void of reference to the virgin birth as well, while others claim Galatians 4:4 shows differently. [4] Paul of TarsusMany of the letters of Paul are considered the earliest works of the New Testament, and some claim Paul does not refer to the virgin birth[citation needed]. They believe he misses an opportunity to refer to Mary as a virgin when he describes the birth of Jesus:
The phrase in Greek is γενόμενον ἐκ γυναικός, genomenon ek gunaikos, "having-become of a-woman", not γενόμενον ἐκ παρθένου, genomenon ek parthenou, "having-become of a-virgin". Christian apologists point out the phrase "made of a woman" is unique. They question the use of a word translated "made" rather then "born" resulting in "born of a woman" as applied to John the Baptist in Matthew 11:11. [5] They also point out the emphasis of Paul on the mother rather then of both parents, when in Hebrew genealogy it is the other way around, and the father is often the only one referenced. [6] Others point to the curse upon Jeconiah as evidence of God's miraculous working.[7] Only by a virgin birth could Christ have Joseph as a legal father, inheriting the promises through David, while avoiding the curse through Jechoniah that none of his descendants would prosper and sit on the throne of David (Jeremiah 22:30). [8] Skeptics argue that like the resurrection appearances, the virgin birth may be an example of the gradual supernaturalization of the Christian story.[citation needed] Some scholars have argued that early Christians did not claim that Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus.[citation needed] They point to the geneaologies in Matthew 1-2, and Luke 1-2, which use descent through Joseph to demonstrate that Jesus was the heir to King David. Moreover, the Ebionites (an early group of proclaimed Jewish Christians, considered heretical by other Christians) maintained that Jesus was naturally conceived.[citation needed] It might be argued, given he asserts the divinity of Jesus Christ in his writings and refers to him as υιος Θεου, Huios Theou ("Son of God"), Paul's failure to reflect upon the nature of Jesus' birth could suggest that neither he nor his readers felt the need to confront the issue, possibly because they took the divinity of the Virgin Birth for granted (much as they might take the direction of sunset for granted in Ephesians 4:26, when Paul does not specify that it occurs in the West - which appears to be correctly referenced in Isaiah 45:6). However, the precise direction of the sunset has no obvious theological relevance, while the Virgin Birth certainly does; and, given Paul writes expansively about the theological significance of Jesus' death and resurrection, one might ask why he neglects this aspect of Jesus' life. Examine, for example, Paul's words at the very beginning of Romans:
This seems to say that Jesus was human by the flesh and divine by the spirit: he was the "seed of David" by descent in the male line through Joseph. Furthermore, he was declared to be the Son of God by his virgin birth as well as by his resurrection from the dead, and later in Romans Paul says this:
Why is a body begotten of a virgin by the Holy Spirit called a ὁμοιώματι σαρκὸς ἁμαρτίας, homoiomati sarkos hamartias, a "likeness of sinful flesh"? These and similar references may suggest that Paul does not mention the Virgin Birth because it had not yet been created as a way of honoring Jesus or overcoming the difficulties of reconciling human flesh and divine spirit, and although Paul refers to Jesus as "Son of God" after his death, Jesus repeatedly refers to himself in life as υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, Huion tou Anthropou, "Son of Man" (Matthew 8:20 etc; Mark 2:10 etc; Luke 5:24 etc; John 1:51 etc). In light of this, most recent scholars[citation needed] of the infancy narratives have argued that the theological significance of Jesus' Birth did not become a Christian concern until later in the 1st century (See R.E. Brown, Birth of the Messiah - J.A. Fitzmyer Gospel of Luke). That is, the early Church seems to have "worked backwards" in its theology - focusing initially on the death and resurrection of Christ (see nearly all of Paul's letters), then becoming concerned with his life (Gospel of Mark), and later faced with addressing his birth (Matthew and Luke). Mark, the first gospelSome scholars argue from grammar and style that the first two chapters of Luke, describing the virgin birth, were a later addition to the Gospel, which may originally have begun at 3:1:[citation needed]
At 3:1 there is an abrupt change of subject and the story begins again. Nevertheless, this is characteristic of many stories in the Gospels[citation needed] and the author of Luke may simply be beginning a new segment of his narrative. Arguments regarding the addition of material to a narrative (Redaction and Form criticism), especially when the material in question is present in the earliest manuscripts, have received significant criticism in the last 20 years and are now regarded as dubious by some textual critics.[citation needed] Double attestationTwo separate gospels attest to the virgin birth, although their details vary. The Virgin conception and birth is a tradition that fits within the criterion of multiple attestation, that is, the same event appears in two independent traditions (most scholars argue that the authors of Matthew and Luke worked independent of one another). For many historians, independent testimony is a significant evidence for the historical validity of a said event. Matthew and Luke are testifying to an event, the birth, about which there was a tradition, namely, that it resulted from a miraculous conception. That the conception itself was indeed miraculous appears to rest on a "single attestation", that of the Virgin Mary. The attestation of the angel to St Joseph on the miraculous nature of the conception would not be accepted by many scholars as historiographically valid. Critics of the "double attestation" argument cite many "inconsistencies" between the accounts of Matthew and Luke regarding Jesus' birth[citation needed]. According to Matthew, Joseph was forewarned of the virgin birth by an unnamed angel; in Luke it is Mary who is notified of this by the angel Gabriel. Matthew tells us that Joseph and Mary were residents of Bethlehem who moved to Nazareth after Jesus' birth in order to avoid living under Archelaus: according to the better-known story in Luke the couple lived in Nazareth and only traveled to Bethlehem in order to comply with a Roman census. Luke mentions that Mary was the relative (cousin) of Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, has the new-born Jesus visited by shepherds, and mentions several long hymns uttered by various characters, such as Mary's Magnificat. None of this is mentioned by Matthew, who instead tells us of the visit of the Magi, the massacre of the innocents by Herod, and the flight into Egypt. There are thus two rival explanations[citation needed] for the "double attestation" of Matthew and Luke regarding the virgin birth of Jesus:
Dispute regarding Isaiah 7:14In the past two millennia, there has been controversy among scholars about the translation and the meaning of a small section of Isaiah[citation needed]. For many scholars,[citation needed] the crux of the matter is the translation of the word : עלמה, `almah which has been translated as young woman and as virgin. In the King James Version of the Bible, a traditional Protestant translation, the verses in question run like this:
Some newer translations also use the word "virgin": The New King James, The English Standard Version, The Contemporary English Version, Young's Literal Translation, among others. Many modern translations concede that the word in the Hebrew does not mean "virgin", including The Revised Standard Version, The New Jerusalem Bible, The Revised English Bible, The Good News Bible, The New Revised Standard Version, among others. This demonstrates that some Christian scholars, both Protestant and Catholic, prefer the traditional translation of the Hebrew in the context of Isaiah 7:14, while others do not. Skeptics argue that this is not a very clear prophecy of the birth of Jesus.[citation needed] In addition to the objection that Jesus was not in fact named "Immanuel" there are other problems: for example, (1) what does the "butter and honey" refer to? (One possible response to the "butter and honey" problem: it is a reference to one who, metaphorically, "has eaten good meat his entire life in order to spit out the bad meat if it ever touched his lips". Note that the "butter and honey" reference is immediately followed by the comment on an ability to choose between good and evil; this may suggest that they are related.) (2) Why is Jesus, who was sinless from birth in the traditional Christian understanding, described as having to learn to refuse the evil and choose the good? and (3) This passage within the latter translations states clearly that the "young woman" within this prophecy is already pregnant with a child. This makes this prophecy about the coming Messiah Jesus very difficult to explain as the prophecy would have already been fulfilled during Isaiah's time. Some Christian apologists have attempted to explain this problem of temporal context as: a) the latter translations are in error, and b) the latter translations are correct, but that the prophecy has a "double-application" for both Isaiah's time and the first century. Christian apologists respond that the passage is a double reference[citation needed]— a sign both to Ahaz that the alliance against him would be destroyed, and to the house of David as a whole that was threatened with extinction[citation needed]. This is shown by the Hebrew which uses "singular you" for the former and "plural you' for the latter. With the former, Isaiah reassures Ahaz that the alliance would be destroyed before his own son Shear Jashub, who was present (v. 3), would "learn to refuse the evil and choose the good". Greek translationIs it accurate to translate עלמה (`almah) as virgin? The Greek version of the Book of Isaiah 7:14 (see below and the articles on Biblical canon, Tanakh, Septuagint and Old Testament) translates עלמה (`almah) as παρθένος (parthenos). Parthenos is conventionally translated into English as virgin. Furthermore, the Gospel of Matthew 1:22–23 explicitly links the Isaiah prophecy to the birth of Jesus. Accordingly, many Christians understand the Isaiah prophecy as referring to Mary and the birth of Jesus. Unlike the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint is known to have existed before the birth of Jesus, and was considered a divinely inspired translation by several patristic writers, notably Augustine of Hippo. The New Testament references to the Old Testament often follow the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic Text as well[citation needed]. However, Jerome, whose Latin translation has been declared to be singularly authoritative in Roman Catholicism, believed it to be an inferior translation of the Hebrew in many places and so used Origen's corrected edition for his first two editions of the Vulgate before using mainly the Hebrew in his third edition. Jerome rendered the Hebrew as virgo, the Latin equivalent of parthenos. Bethulah and 'AlmahThere are two important words in Hebrew that can be translated into English as "virgin": בתולה, bethulah, and עלמה, `almah. Isaiah uses `almah in the Masoretic Text, and so conservative Christians have tried to demonstrate that the word unambiguously means "virgin", while other scholars, Christian, Jewish and otherwise, have tried to demonstrate that the word means simply "young woman", without any necessary connotation of virginity. `Almah occurs seven times in the Hebrew Bible and usually seems to mean a young woman of marriageable age (e.g. Genesis 24:43), and is used specifically in Proverbs 30:19 to refer to a married woman; bethulah is accepted in modern Hebrew usage as the characteristic Hebrew word for virgin. However, it is qualified by a statement ‘neither had any man known her’ in Gen. 24:16, and is used of a widow in Joel 1:8 (although not necessarily one who had relations with her husband, as betrothal historically preceded cohabitation in Jewish family life). In the Ugaritic tablets, btlt was used of the goddess Anath who was a consort of Baal; and in other records, the Aramaic counterpart of betûlah is used of a married woman[citation needed]. Some Christians would point out in response that the word Bethulah is clearly used in ways that can not mean virgin (Joel 1:8)[9], making the scholars who suggest Bethulah to be a suitable alternative to Almah seem ill-learned in their Biblical knowledge. ParthenosThe fact that there is no Hebrew tradition of virgin birth — Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Hannah were infertile women who miraculously gave birth late in life — is consistent with the view that the Messiah would be unique, and Christian apologists argue that many first century Jews, including Jewish converts to Christianity, used the Septuagint, which explicitly uses the word παρθένος (parthenos) to mean "virgin": the root from which we derive words such as parthenogenesis. Some scholars, however, claim that the Septuagint does not use parthenos very precisely, as it translates at least three different Hebrew words by it: bethulah, "maiden/virgin"; `almah, "maiden/virgin"; and נערה, na`arah, "maiden, young woman, servant".[citation needed] The meaning of the word parthenos in the Septuagint is sometimes expanded in a way not seen in the Isaiah of the (albeit centuries younger) Masoretic texts:
Additionally, the Greek-English Lexicon edited by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott lists other meanings for the word:
Finally, there is archaeological evidence that Jewish speakers of Greek used the word parthenos elastically; Jewish catacombs in Rome identify married men and women as "virgins,"[citation needed] and some have suggested that in this case the word was used to call attention to the fact that the deceased was someone's first spouse (although it is notable that this usage is from several centuries before the translation of the Septuagint[citation needed]). Certainly, Jews stopped using the more explicit Septuagint translation as Christianity spread, and post-Christian Jewish translations into Greek use νεᾶνις, neanis, meaning "young (juvenile) woman", rather than parthenos. Possible borrowing from PaganismSome have argued that the Virgin Birth is a Christian borrowing from paganism.[citation needed] The impregnation of mortal women by gods is common in pagan mythology. However, this is not technically virginal conception, since virginity is lost by definition when the sex act is initiated. Christian writers have noted that the obvious sex of the pagan myths is missing in the Gospels[citation needed]:
A pagan myth of virgin birth may also underlie the disputed verses from Isaiah:
This philological reasoning seems to raise four possibilities: virgin birth is a pagan concept that Christianity has 1) taken from contemporary paganism; 2) taken from pre-Mosaic paganism through Isaiah; 3) taken from contemporary paganism and justified from Isaiah, who took it from pre-Mosaic paganism; 4) produced independently of all forms of paganism, though sharing similar vocabulary. If pre-Mosaic paganism supports Isaiah, and Isaiah supports Matthew and Mark, paganism has anticipated Christianity, perhaps because God was preparing the way for Christianity or because, as some Church Fathers argued, the Devil was blasphemously imitating Christianity. On the other hand, if paganism does not underlie Isaiah, there are several possibilities. Perhaps virgin birth was invented separately, first in paganism, then in Christianity. Perhaps the idea of asexual conception was so different from the idea of conception through sexual intercourse with a deity that there was little or no borrowing in either direction. Or perhaps, despite the earlier date of the Ugaritic text, virgin birth existed first in Judaism, without any other instances than this one, and was borrowed by paganism. The obvious difficulty with this idea is that virgin birth was much more prominent in paganism, where it occurs in many myths in many different areas, than it was in Judaism, where it occurs (if at all) in a single verse late in the Old Testament[citation needed]. Nevertheless, the argument that virgin birth was a Jewish concept first borrowed by paganism and later incorporated into Christianity was first made by Justin Martyr in The First Apology of Justin, written in the second century. Justin also made this argument in his Dialog with Trypho, in which he debates with a Jew called Trypho:
Justin was clearly not referring to any Ugaritic texts, as these texts were not known in his day; he was referring to Greek paganism. That the Devil is responsible for the similarities between paganism and Judaism is not generally accepted by modern scholars, partly because the Devil's influence would be impossible to disprove. The Devil could not, for example, imitate Christianity or Judaism before either existed, without violating the generally accepted historical rule that a culture cannot be influenced by a culture that does not yet exist; even though in point of fact it is likely that if "the patriarch Jacob" existed, he was contemporary with the inscriptions at Ugarit. In a similar vein, it might also be argued that God had chosen to out-do these earlier human myths, all as part of his Plan. Christian writers point out that if in fact the writer of Isaiah intended to borrow the idea of a virgin birth from an older pagan tradition, we might expect to find Isaiah using more explicit language to indicate that a virgin was meant[citation needed]. However, if Isaiah had borrowed the story from pagans, he might be expected to speak in the same way as the pagans, and that is what he does, according to the scholar quoted, who notes the "remarkable" similarity of the Ugaritic and the Hebrew. However, Isaiah may speak the same way as the pagans simply because he came from a similar sociological and semantic context. If Isaiah received a new prophecy direct from God, on the other hand, he had no tradition to conform to, and he could have expanded the meaning to make it completely unambiguous. That he did not choose to make it unambiguous is thus an apparent difficulty for the Christian interpretation of the text, though the ambiguity could be seen as being intended, if one supposes that God had a dual purpose for the text (i.e., to serve one function in Isaiah's time and another function later). Isaiah's prophecy departs from the Ugaritic version of the virgin birth by having the female be entirely human, whereas in the Ugaritic culture, the virgin was another deity, on par with the male; but this is exactly what might be expected if the myth were borrowed from paganism, since Judaism has only one male deity; a female deity in a borrowed myth might thus conceivably become a female human. Mary's Immaculate ConceptionThe virgin conception of Jesus is often referred to as the "Immaculate Conception." However, this is contrary to the term's original meaning. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, taught by the Roman Catholic Church, states that Mary was conceived "without the stain of original sin". Mary, however, unlike many people's views of Jesus, was conceived in the ordinary way: i.e. she had a human father as well as a human mother (whose names, according to Catholic and Orthodox tradition, were 'Joachim' and 'Anna'/'Anne' - or 'Jehoiakim' and 'Hannah' in Hebrew). Whilst Protestant denominations adhere to the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, they do not adhere to the idea of Mary's Immaculate Conception, nor of her perpetual virginity (see below). Insurance to cover a virgin birthIn June 2006, it was revealed that a British insurer, britishinsurance.com, had provided a £1 million insurance policy to three Scottish women to provide cover in the event of one of them having a virgin birth. The payout was to cover the costs of bringing up the Christ. The policy was cancelled following pressure from the Catholic Church. [11]. See also
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