Mary: Joseph, I’m pregnant.
Joseph: What? You’ve been cheating on me?
Mary: No! I have been with no man! I am still a virgin.
Joseph: Phew! That’s a relief. Well, these things happen you know...
The reality is their conversation looked nothing like that. First of all, they didn’t speak English. But more importantly, Joseph knew quite well that virgins don’t get pregnant. Even if they didn’t know all the details that we know, they still knew where babies come from. So the conversation was probably more like:
Mary: Joseph, I’m pregnant.
Joseph: What? You’ve been cheating on me?
Mary: No! I have been with no man! I am still a virgin. This child is from God.
Joseph: Do I look stupid? It takes two to tango. Seriously, who’s the father?
Joseph quite reasonably assumed Mary had been with another man — whether willingly or not, which may be why he was thinking to “divorce her quietly”. He was a good man; he didn’t want to make her situation any worse than it had to be, but it was obvious that she’d been with someone.
That’s why an angel had to come and back Mary up:
Angel: Don’t divorce Mary. Seriously, the baby is from God.
Joseph: You gotta be kidding me! Well, I’ll be jiggered.
People in that time may not have known everything we know about science, but they knew enough. Miracles were miraculous signs because they weren’t normal. A virgin birth was a big deal because that’s not the way babies are made. If dead people rose from the dead regularly, if virgins got pregnant all the time, these things wouldn’t have been extraordinary.
Miraculous signs are wonders because they are seemingly impossible. They are the proof that God is behind it, that God is working.
“But miracles don’t happen. Science has proved that.” No, it has not. Science has proved a great many things, but it has not — cannot — proved that. No one could.
Science can tell us how fast a ball will fall if dropped. It cannot tell us what would happen if an outside force interfered in some unexpected way in the path of the ball, nor can it tell us the probability of such an event. Modern scientists are smart, almost as smart as they think they are, but they cannot tell us that miracles cannot happen. If God is there, then an outside force can act on the universe.
There are two miracles that are really foundational to Christianity; if they happened, Christianity is true. Did God create the universe? It certainly appears that he did. Did Jesus rise from the dead? That seems to be the best explanation of the facts. If those two miracles happened, no other miracle is impossible. So there is no reason to doubt the virgin birth.
To believe, you don't need to turn off your brain; you only need to have an open mind.
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10 comments:
The idea of a "Mysterious Pregnancy" or the "God-man born of a virgin" wasn't a new or original trope in Bronze-age Judea. These stories pre-date the Christian era. They would be well known to many cultures, not just those of the middle-east.
What do we make of the fact that elements of this story existed in other pre-Christian traditions?
May I boldly suggest that the Christian story of the virgin birth is just as mythical as the birth of Dynonissus and the handful of other figures, who legend has it were also born of virgins? Romulus, Romulus, Ra, Persephone, the virgin mother of Jason.
My point is that you are offering a false dichotomy here. You look at this story and ask whether it happened or not.
Indeed it's more helpful to look at the New Testament as a whole and ask why it contains so many elements that have thematic and structural parallels to earlier pre-Christian literature and mythology.
Can the New Testament be considered a work of history when it contains so many markers of a work of mythology?
Some people have argued that beneath it all, there really was a teacher-mendicant christ whose teaching is preserved but whose story has been enhanced by the literary tropes of the era. I personally favour the notion that there was no single individual Jesus, and the character from the bible is really a combination of historical and mystical figures all rolled into one confusing mess.
I'd love your reaction to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEVrheGzIaQ
Hey, fake dobson, long time, no see...
The vast history of virgin births in mythology is usually grossly exaggerated. Most turn out to be quit physical unions between a god and a mortal woman -- no virginity about it. But if there are any actual virgin birth stories out there, I have no problem with CS Lewis' argument about the "corn king" -- that these stories existed to prepare people for Christ.
These alleged parallels don't prove -- or even really cast doubt -- on the historicity of the gospels. Dionysius, etc, lived "once upon a time", not "in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar."
I'm guessing you didn't watch that video featuring Robert M Price? I'd be happy to watch a video of your suggestion in return. I think watching the video would really explain why people take an issue with the argument you presented above.
> These alleged parallels don't prove -- or even really cast doubt -- on the historicity of the gospels. Dionysius, etc, lived "once upon a time", not "in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar."
I think you are missing the point - if we have examples of older stories set "once upon a time", which are clearly works of mythology, and then we have a later example which includes many of the same types of trope, might we not assume that the later story is an example of the same kind of thing? The writer might have updated the setting, given the hero a more modern twist but they are both mythology.
> I have no problem with CS Lewis' argument about the "corn king" -- that these stories existed to prepare people for Christ.
That's an odd feat of handwaving; You are saying, "There aren't really any parallels to the gospel story, but if there are, then they too are miraculous."
Isn't it simpler to observe that humans are storytellers? Our literature is full of tropes that are recycled. Story tellers take elements of older stories and weave them into contemporary stories. Is it crazy to think that aspects of the bible that resemble aspects of older stories were copied?
> Most turn out to be quit physical unions between a god and a mortal woman
So are you saying they share the same basic concept, but some details differ? That's precisely my point.
I suppose you could point out that Iron Man has quite different details to Bat Man. For example, one wears an orange metal suit and has thrusters in his hands and feet. The other wears a black suit and uses a grappling hook to fly around the city. I think most people would agree that despite these superficial differences, they are essentially the same trope.
You might point out that even though many literary characters share the same origin story as Jesus, no literary character does the exact same thing as Jesus. In other words, you could argue that they are not the SAME literary character. I'd agree with that, but even though Batman and Iron Man are clearly not the same character, if you look at the kinds of things they do, they fit into the same genre as other super-hero type characters. The tropes are never repeated exactly, but they get reinvented.
Also, I don't want to suggest that mythology equals fiction. Myth is a means of expressing certain universal truths about our species. Why are there so many stories of divinely conceived spiritual leaders? Why are there so many stories about dying and rising again, demigods? It's not because these things exist in our mundane universe - it's because these ideas speak some truth about our world. These are all useful stories, even if they aren't works of history.
I think we should credit that the ancient people who wove these stories were literate and familiar with the tropes of myth, just as we know our Marvel and DC comic book stories. The probably understood that these stories weren't to be taken literally. They are allegories and metaphors about who we are and what we do on earth.
No, sorry, there is no chance I'm going to sit through an hour and a half of that.
I'm not sure you quite followed what I was saying.
1. There are no other virgin birth stories that predate Christ. But if you do manage to dredge one up, it's really not a big deal to Christianity. (The idea that faithful Jews went around mining other mythologies for ideas is ridiculous.)
2. Where these parallels (no allowing for borrowing, just parallels) exist, there is a supernatural explanation that fits within Christian theism. This doesn't affect us at all.
This is the Titanic story all over again. Parallels are not proof of borrowing. Especially when the parallels really aren't all that parallel when you cut away what came into existence after Christianity.
> No, sorry, there is no chance I'm going to sit through an hour and a half of that.
Do you only read and watch content that confirms your prior beliefs?
Here's a shorter lecturer - same subject, less conversation. Only half an hour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzOrc_kwcU4
You can get the gist from the first ten minutes. Even if you reject what he says, I am sure you will find it fascinating. Refuting these ideas might even make for an interesting blog post.
> Especially when the parallels really aren't all that parallel when you cut away what came into existence after Christianity.
Why aren't they very parallel? If there are plenty of stories of dying and rising heroes or spiritual men born from a human mother and a celestial father, why aren't these considered parallels?
Your argument seems to be "because some of the details are different", and that's true... all of them have slightly different details. They have different names, different mothers, different times, different places.
But can't you agree that they all share the same trope. They are clearly all examples of the same thing.
We have a convenient explanation of why the same tropes repeatedly appear in literature: writers read older texts and reimagine elements as new stories. As the talking teapot once said: "tale as old as time". When we see those same tropes show up in The Bible, many will conclude that the bible is also literature, and it's genesis might have had something in common with older texts. It is the simplest explanation, since we know that humans tell stories and new stories are based on older stories.
> There are no other virgin birth stories that predate Christ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous_births
There are literally hundreds of stories of miraculous births. Your argument seems to be that no story has the same precise elements as the Jesus story, but you can see that almost every aspect of that story existed in pre-Christian literature.
Why do you think it even matters that your favourite virgin birth story is unique? All the stories in the list above are unique!
> Where these parallels (no allowing for borrowing, just parallels) exist, there is a supernatural explanation that fits within Christian theism. This doesn't affect us at all.
Doesn't this seem like a weak and desperate argument? Are all of those stories from thousands of years of human history just garbled attempts to herald the one true religion?
Why bother to invent a miracle when there's a simple, natural explanation? We know that authors write books. We know that authors are inspired by old books. It happens today and it happened just the same thousands of years ago.
> This is the Titanic story all over again.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, would you care to explain?
> Parallels are not proof of borrowing.
Parallels are evidence of borrowing. A substantial body of evidence and a dash of common sense is solid evidence that the bible is literature and mythology just like all the other books that have existed before or since.
> The idea that faithful Jews went around mining other mythologies for ideas is ridiculous.
This is also kind of wild. You don't really know what the religious beliefs of the bible authors were. These individuals are mostly lost to time in all but their written words.
But we know that faithful people do invent all kinds of things. One need only set foot in a Christian bookstore to see just how inventive religious people can be. In fact, you just did it yourself.
When you told me that you believed that the previous versions of these trope stories were actually miraculous, you referenced a miracle that has never been recorded in the bible.
I totally get that I'm here uninvited, and I am delighted that you are able to engage in such a respectful debate when somebody whose views you may find grossly wrong.
You seem like an intelligent person, but one whose reading has been confined to the narrow realm of evangelical Christianity. I would urge you to read outside your bubble a little bit. Perhaps look into some of those?
Frankly, I barely watch content that conforms to my beliefs. I'm more of a reader.
Here's something that dropped into my lap just today, almost like it was just for you:
https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/40huxv/jesus_is_just_a_made_up_saviour_copied_from_pagan/
TL;DR: This non-Christian details how these parallels aren't actually parallels. All of these "virgin births" are figments of the modern imagination (not ancient ones). Ditto for all of these dying and rising saviors. They weren't born of virgins. They didn't die and rise again, or they do it every year. Those closer parallels are stories from after Christianity, so the borrowing probably went the other way.
Fun, he actually does claim there is a crucified god, I'll have to read up on that.
But even to the limited extent these parallels have any basis, they don't prove borrowing. "The Titanic story" is the novel that predicted the sinking of the Titanic, called The Wreck of the Titan.
I don't believe that these old stories are actually miraculous. I'm simply saying, as Lewis said, it's possible that some of these stories could have began to providentially prepare the ground for the story of Jesus.
> But even to the limited extent these parallels have any basis, they don't prove borrowing.
You keep saying "prove", do you think anything is proven in this kind of history? We have a bunch of theories, some more plausible than others. We view the events of the first century through a very dim lens. You haven't proven anything either?
But which is most plausible? Which is more consistent with observable fact? Which story requires us to invent the least number of miracles?
That all these miracles actually happened, or that the Gospel is (in part) just another work of literature and mythology and therefore the explanation for its miraculous stories is the same explanation as every other miraculous story.
A question for you? Do you believe that the miracles of Apollonius of Tyana occurred? What about the Hindu god Shiva when he walked on earth? What about the greek philosopher Pythagoras? How about Joseph Smith and the Prophet Mohammed who both talked to angels?
Are these miracle stories true, or are they something else?
> I don't believe that these old stories are actually miraculous.
Do you mean that they are false? Just mythology, or fiction?
> I'm simply saying, as Lewis said, it's possible that some of these stories could have began to providentially prepare the ground for the story of Jesus.
How would that happen without the existence of the story being some kind of miracle? Did a Christian angel whisper the ideas of Shiva's virgin birth into the ear of the scribe who wrote the Baghavad Gita?
> "The Titanic story" is the novel that predicted the sinking of the Titanic, called The Wreck of the Titan.
"The Wreck of Titan", is a work of fiction written by Morgan Robertson. It's an adventure story that happened to include some details which were similar to the events of the sinking of the Titanic. Why do you think this is significant to our conversation?
I feel like we're getting lost in the weeds here. You originally said: "The idea of a "Mysterious Pregnancy" or the "God-man born of a virgin" wasn't a new or original trope in Bronze-age Judea."
The facts are that this is not true. That's what the link I shared was largely about. I already knew this, though I didn't realize Bill Maher was partially responsible for spreading this myth.
My other comment was simply that, even if this modern myth were correct, I wouldn't be terribly concerned for the reasons I stated. But the simple fact is this myth is not true. There is not a long history of virgin-born god-man stories.
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