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Virgin birth erlove.com | Cosmetic dentist Jesus find dental implants Jesus or oral surgery die-endverbraucher.com | Birth Defect, Birth Defects, Birth Defect Attorney, Birth Defect Lawyer, lpklaw.com |
The virgin birth of Jesus is a tenet of Christianity and Islam which holds that Mary miraculously conceived Jesus while remaining a virgin. A universally held belief in the Christian church by the second century,[1] this doctrine was included in the two most widely used Christian creeds, which state that Jesus "was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary" (the Nicene Creed as revised by the First Council of Constantinople) and was "born of the Virgin Mary" (Apostles' Creed), and was not seriously challenged, except by some minor sects, before the Enlightenment theology of the eighteenth century.[1] The gospels of Matthew[Mt. 1:18] and Luke[Lk. 1:26-35] say that Mary was a virgin and that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. These gospels, later tradition and current doctrine present Jesus' conception as a miracle involving no natural father, no sexual intercourse, and no male seed in any form, but instead brought about by the Holy Spirit.[2][3][4][5] The Gospel of Matthew[1:22-23] additionally presents the virgin birth of Jesus as fulfilling a prophecy from the Book of Isaiah. Reference to the virgin birth of Jesus usually directs thought to his virginal conception, rather than to his actual birth. But in Roman Catholic and Orthodox usage, the term "Virgin Birth" means not only that Mary was a virgin when she conceived, but also that she gave birth as a virgin (remaining a virgo intacta), a belief attested since the second century.[6] (See Perpetual virginity of Mary.) The doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus (i.e., Mary's virginal conception of Jesus) is not to be confused with that of the Immaculate Conception. The latter holds that Mary herself was conceived in the normal way, but immaculately (i.e., without original sin). Mary's virginity at the conception of Jesus is also a tenet of Islam.[7] Muslims refer to Jesus with the matronymic Jesus son of Mary (Isa bin Maryam), a term repeatedly used in the Qur'an.[8]
[edit] New Testament
[edit] GospelsThe New Testament has four accounts of Jesus' life, commonly known as gospels. While they have much in common there are also differences of coverage and focus. The Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John essentially begin with Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist; whereas the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke essentially begin with Jesus' birth. Mark and John contain no birth narrative. The other two gospels, which are the only ones to give accounts of the infancy of Jesus (the first two chapters in each), explicitly state that Jesus was conceived without human father. [edit] MatthewThe Gospel of Matthew (c 80-85) begins with a genealogy leading from Abraham to Joseph, but then calls Joseph "the husband of Mary, of whom (Mary) was born Jesus, who is called Christ."[1:16] The original Greek text, which has "ἐξ ἧς" (feminine singular), shows that the phrase "of whom" refers to Mary, not to Joseph or to Mary and Joseph together.[1:16] It then states that, when Mary was found to be pregnant, she had not lived with Joseph, to whom she was engaged,[1:18] and that he did not have marital relations with her before the child was born.[1:25] It declares: "That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit",[1:20] in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, which Matthew refers to as: "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."[Mt. 1:22-23] On the actual text of Isaiah, see the Old Testament section below. The Gospel of Matthew presents the virgin birth of Jesus as fulfilling a prophecy in Isaiah 7:14, which Matthew adapts to his purpose.[9] Hebrew has a specific word, betulah, for a virgin, and a more general word, `almah, for a young woman. Since `almah is the word used in the Hebrew text of Isaiah, some commentators have believed it at least possible that Isaiah had in mind only a normal conception by a young mother and that Matthew applied this text of Scripture to the birth of the one he believed to be Messiah, as John seems to have applied to his death another text of Scripture that in its original context referred to the Passover lamb.[10] Others believe that Isaiah was directly prophesying the future virgin birth of the Messiah. The author of Matthew may have recounted the virgin birth story to answer contemporary Jewish slanders about Jesus' origin.[11] Miraculous but not virginal births appear in Jesus' own Hebrew tradition, as well as in other traditions. Hindu and Zoroastrian accounts of virgin births still involve male seed, while Christian and Muslim accounts of Jesus' virgin birth do not.  [edit] LukeLike Matthew, Luke (c 85-90) includes infancy narratives and a genealogy. In Luke 1:30-35 Mary asks how she is to conceive and bear a son, since she is a virgin; and she is told it will happen by the power of God. Luke 3:23-38 gives a genealogy, different from that given by Matthew. It traces the ancestry of Joseph, whose son, Luke says, Jesus was thought to be, back beyond King David and Abraham, to the origin of the human race. When the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she will bear a son conceived by the Holy Spirit,[Lk. 1:26-38] she responds with the Magnificat,[Lk. 1:46-55] a prayer of joy, probably from an early Christian liturgy.[11] The Magnificat is one of several formal set pieces the author incorporates into the gospel.[11] [edit] HistoricitySome writers have taken it as significant that two separate gospels attest to the virgin birth, although their details vary.[12] In this view, the virgin conception and birth constitute a tradition that fits within the criterion of multiple attestation. The accounts of Matthew and Luke are taken as independent testimonies of the tradition, thus adding significantly to the evidence for the historical reality of the event of the birth. That the conception itself was indeed miraculous appears to rest on a "single attestation", that of Mary. The attestation of the angel to Joseph on the miraculous nature of the conception would not be accepted by many scholars as historiographically valid. Some critics of the double attestation argument point to differences between the accounts of Matthew and Luke regarding Jesus' birth.[13][14] According to Matthew, an unnamed angel informs Joseph of the virginal conception; in Luke the angel Gabriel informs Mary before the conception occurs. Matthew says that Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem when Jesus was born[Mt. 2:1] and that they moved first to Egypt, to avoid Herod the Great,[Mt. 2:13-14] and later, to avoid living under Herod's son Archelaus, they moved to Nazareth;[Mt. 2:22] according to Luke, the couple lived in Nazareth and only traveled to Bethlehem in order to comply with a Roman census.[Lk. 2:4] Luke mentions that Mary was a relative of Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, has the new-born Jesus visited by shepherds, and attributes two long hymns (the Magnificat and the Benedictus) and one short one (the Nunc dimittis) to various characters. None of this is mentioned by Matthew, and Matthew's account of the visit of the Magi, the massacre of the innocents by Herod, and the flight into Egypt is not mentioned by Luke. Two rival explanations are put forward for the "double attestation" of Matthew and Luke regarding the virgin birth of Jesus:[15][16][17]
Among other theories that have been proposed as explanations of the origin of the accounts in Matthew and Luke of the birth of Jesus from a virgin is that of Stephen L Harris, who proposed that these were written to answer Jewish slanders about Jesus' illegitimate birth,[11] of which there is evidence from the second century.[18] [edit] AllegoryAccording to Uta Ranke-Heinemann, the virgin birth of Jesus was meant—and should be understood—as an allegory of a special initiative of God, comparable to God's creation of Adam, and in line with legends and allegories of antiquity according to which famous people originated from gods (as Augustus as the son of Apollo or Alexander the Great as the son of Zeus).[19] However, it must be noted that Heinemann was excommunicated for expressing these views, which are not accepted by the Roman Catholic Church. [edit] IllegitimacyA charge of illegitimacy against Jesus can be traced back at least to about 177-180, when Celsus, drawing on Jewish sources, wrote: "It was Jesus himself who fabricated the story that he had been born of a virgin. In fact, however, his mother was a poor country woman who earned her money by spinning. She had been driven out by her carpenter husband when she was convicted of adultery with a soldier named Panthera. She then wandered about and secretly gave birth to Jesus. Later, because he was poor, Jesus hired himself out in Egypt where he became adept in magical powers. Puffed up by these, he claimed for himself the title of God."[20] According to this view, the accounts in Matthew and Luke were intended as a response to this charge. [edit] DenialOthers deny the historical existence of Jesus and of Mary, and thus rule out completely any possibility that the accounts of Matthew and Luke had any historical basis whatsoever.[21] [edit] Epistles of PaulThe letters of Paul of Tarsus, considered to be the earliest texts in the New Testament, do not state that Jesus' mother was a virgin. Some passages in them have received special attention. In Galatians 4:4 Paul wrote:
This phrase speaks of Jesus as born "of a woman", not "of a virgin". Some see this as evidence that Paul knew of no account of the virgin birth of Jesus. Others see the phrase "born of a woman, born under the law" significant enough to imply that Jesus had no human father, especially since the emphasis on the mother and the omission of any mention of both parents is the opposite of that in Hebrew genealogy, where the father is often the only parent mentioned.[23] And some point to the curse upon Jeconiah[Jeremiah 22:30] as evidence of God's miraculous working,[24] saying that only by a virgin birth could Jesus have Joseph as a legal father, inheriting the promises through David, while avoiding the curse through Jeconiah that none of his descendants would prosper and sit on the throne of David [25] The Epistle to the Romans opens with the words:
Some take "descended from David according to the flesh" to mean that Joseph, a descendant of David, was the physical father of Jesus, thus denying the virgin birth of Jesus.[26][27][28][29] Others take it as indicating that Mary too was a descendant of David[30][31][32] and that the reference in this same passage to Jesus as "son of God" shows that the claim that Paul knew nothing of the virgin birth of Jesus is unfounded.[33] Romans 8:3-4 has:
While some see "in the likeness of sinful flesh" as meaning merely that Jesus was externally just like any other human being. This view is perhaps supported by Paul's remark elsewhere that Christ "knew no sin."[2 Cor 5:21] Others suggest a contradiction between Paul's notion of being "in the likeness of sinful flesh" and his having been born of a virgin. Some scholars have noted 1Timothy 1:4, where Paul urges people not to "occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations...". This could indicate Paul had a negative view of developing virgin birth stories and their variant genealogies, considering them fanciful and harmful to faith. [34] As has been remarked by students of the New Testament,[35] the order of writing of the books shows that the oldest Christian preaching about Jesus concerned his death and resurrection.[36] They turned their attention also to the deeds and words that came to them from the traditions of Jesus' ministry, which were formed into collections arranged in logical rather than chronological order, and which formed a basis for the four canonical Gospels, of which Mark is the earliest. Acts 10:37-41 gives an outline similar to Mark's, beginning with the baptism and ending with the resurrection, with no mention of the birth. Only later, for reasons not only of curiosity but also of apologetics and theology, attention was given to the birth and infancy, as in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The absence of reference in Paul's writings to the infancy and even the ministry of Jesus may be seen as fitting this pattern. It should also be pointed out, however, that Paul was not one of Jesus' original disciples. His only encounter with Jesus, apparently, was with the resurrected Jesus. Also, his epistles are focused primarily on ecclesiastical matters, not the life of Jesus. [edit] Old TestamentSee also: Isaiah 7:14 Stories of miraculous or unexpected births occur throughout the Bible. Early in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, Sarah gives birth to Isaac when she is 90 years old. In Genesis and later books, other women also give birth after years of infertility. There is something of a pattern of waiting for a son promised to the father or mother, a son who goes on to rescue the nation, often by leading it.[37] This is considered by certain scholars to be distinctive of the Hebrew theology of a divine right of kings.[38] Jesus' birth narrative is, therefore, interpreted as knowingly based on this particular archetype of a divine mandate to rescue, rule or both. A Christian is, literally, one who believes Jesus is the Christ, a divinely appointed saviour and king. Difference of opinion mainly concerns the historicity of New Testament accounts, rather than interpretation of their intention. Unlike the account that Matthew and Luke give of the miraculous conception of Jesus, all the miraculous births in Old Testament times, and that of John the Baptist in the New Testament, are presented as the result of sexual intercourse between a married couple. .jpg) Matthew, writing in Greek about the virgin birth of Jesus, quotes the Septuagint text of Isaiah 7:14-16, which uses the Greek word "παρθένος" (parthenos, virgin), while the original Hebrew text has "עלמה" (almah), which has the wider meaning of a young woman. In the King James Version of the Bible, a traditional Protestant translation, the verses of Isaiah appear as follows:
However, several notable modern translations do not use virgin for `almah in this passage. One explanation of the purpose of the passage in Isaiah is that the original prophecy was spoken in 734 BC, when, before a soon-to-be-born child knows the difference between good and evil, Syria (which threatened Israel at the time) would be conquered. This prophecy would be fulfilled 2 years later, when Syria was defeated by the Assyrians in 732 BC. This child also appears in chapter 8, where it is said that, before he comes of age, the northern kingdom of Israel would be destroyed, which occurred also at the hands of Assyria in 722 BC.[citation needed] Some say that the passage is a double reference[39]—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.[39] The Hebrew text 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". Some Jewish perspectives argue that Jesus was not in fact named "Immanuel" and point to other problems such as:
A more common view among Christian commentators is that Matthew applied this text to the conception of Jesus in much the same way that John applied[Exodus 12:46] to the crucified Jesus' legs not being broken like those of the two who were crucified with him.[John 19:36] [edit] Christianity and similar traditionsThe argument that Old Testament prophecies of the virgin birth of Jesus were what inspired seemingly similar pagan myths was made by Justin Martyr in The First Apology of Justin, written in the second century. He made this argument also in his Dialog with Trypho, in which he debates with a Jew called Trypho:
Some 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]. Others says that, if Isaiah had borrowed the story from pagans, he might be expected to speak in the same way as the pagans. This is the view of "the scholar quoted", who notes a "remarkable" similarity of the Ugaritic and the Hebrew. It is also said[citation needed] that Isaiah may speak the same way as the pagans simply because he came from a similar sociological and semantic context, and that, if Isaiah's prophecy came directly from God, he had no tradition to conform to, and could have expanded the meaning to make it completely unambiguous, and accordingly it could be argued that his not making it unambiguous is a difficulty for certain interpretations of the text, though the ambiguity could be seen as being intended, if one supposes that God had a dual purpose for the text: to serve one function in Isaiah's time and another function later. Isaiah's prophecy departs from the Ugaritic version of the predicted birth by having the female human, whereas in the Ugaritic culture, the virgin was another deity, on par with the male, a departure that would in any case be necessary, since Judaism has only one deity, spoken of as male. Isaiah departs much further still from the Ugaritic story by not attributing the forthcoming birth to sexual union on the part of any deity, male or female. [edit] PseudepigraphaThe Christian pseudepigraphon Ascension of Isaiah (probably of the first half of second century) has a narrative of the virgin birth of Jesus (AI 11:8). The narrative of the virgin nativity of Jesus can be found also in many Infancy Gospels, for instance the Gospel of James (probably about 150). A somewhat similar story concerning Melchizedek can be found in the Exaltation of Melchizedek, the last section of the Second Book of Enoch considered by some an addition, see also Melchizedek in the Second Book of Enoch. [edit] Other miraculous birthsMain articles: Miraculous birth and Virgin birth (mythology) Outside the Bible, legendary heroes and even actual kings are frequently portrayed as offspring of gods. Both Pharaohs and Roman emperors were considered gods, the latter being considered in Rome itself as divinized only after death. Extra-biblical birth narratives typically involve sexual intercourse, sometimes involving rape or deceit, by a god in human or animal form—for example, the stories of Leda, Europa or the birth of Hercules. However, an example of a story where the woman's physical virginity is explicitly maintained by the god who impregnates her by artificial insemination is found in the Hindu epic Mahabharata, the largest epic in the world. "The sun-god said: O beautiful Pṛthā, your meeting with the demigods cannot be fruitless. Therefore, let me place my seed in your womb so that you may bear a son. I shall arrange to keep your virginity intact, since you are still an unmarried girl."[43] Zoroastrianism also holds that the end-of-time Saoshyant (literally, "saviour") will be miraculously conceived by a virgin who has swum in a lake where Zoroaster's seed is preserved.[44] The birth narrative of Jesus is distinctive in that it speaks of the Holy Spirit, not of male seed, as the active agent in his conception.[Mt. 1:20] [Lk. 1:35] Some have tried to demonstrate Christian dependence on a Roman mystery cult called Mithraism, which was established prior to Christianity. Early reconstructions of the Mithras legend proposed, from Persian sources, that he might have been born of the union of Mother Earth and Ahuramazda, however the theory has not endured. Carvings illustrating the legend reinforce documentary sources that focus on Mithras being born purely from rock (saxigenus),[45] as Athena, the daughter of Zeus and Metis,[46] sprang from the forehead of Zeus. [edit] CelebrationMain article: Christmas Christians celebrate the conception of Jesus on 25 March[47] (Lady Day) and his birth at Christmas (25 December) or Epiphany (6 January). Among the many traditions associated with Christmas are the construction of cribs and the performance of re-enactments of elements of the story in the Gospels of the birth of Jesus. There has been debate about the reason why Christians came to choose the 25 December date to celebrate the birth of Jesus. One theory is that they did so in order to oppose the existing winter-solstice feast of the Natalis Solis Invicti (Birthday of the Unconquered Sun) by celebrating on that date the birth of the "Sun of Righteousness".[48] Another tradition derived the date of Christmas from that of the Annunciation, the virginal conception of Jesus.[48] Since this was supposed to have taken place on 14 Nisan in the Jewish calendar, calculated to have been either 25 March or 6 April, it was believed that the date of Christ's birth will have been nine months later.[49] A tractate falsely attributed to John Chrysostom argued that Jesus was conceived and crucified on the same day of the year and calculated this as 25 March, a computation also mentioned by Saint Augustine of Hippo.[48]  [edit] Immaculate Conception distinct from virginal conceptionMain article: Immaculate Conception The virginal conception of Jesus by Mary is often mistakenly confused with the Roman Catholic Church teaching of her "Immaculate Conception", namely Mary's conception by her mother in the normal way, but free from original sin. The Roman Catholic doctrine of Mary's Immaculate Conception has been defined as follows: "The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin."[50] [edit] Parthenogenesis vs. virgin birthIn Christian belief, the virgin birth of Jesus was not a case of parthogenesis (the scientific name for virgin birth), such as occurs naturally in some species, and has been artificially induced even in mammals, but generally produces only female offspring.[51] Like the story of Jesus' resurrection, the conception of Jesus is seen as a strictly miraculous occurrence, not explainable as a natural process, no matter how exceptional, or as a scientific achievement.[52][53] In fact, scientists believe that not even the most advanced techniques could induce parthenogenesis in humans, especially for producing male offspring.[54][55][56][57] On the other hand, it is perfectly possible for a virgin (a woman with no sexual experience) to give a birth, either by artificial insemination, or by embryo transfer. Human cloning could also potentially allow woman to have a child without any need for a sperm cell. None of these processes corresponds to Christian belief about Mary's virginal conception of Jesus. [edit] Gallery of art
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