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The Virgin Birth is a key doctrine of the Christian faith, and is also held to be true by Muslims. The doctrine asserts that Jesus was conceived in the womb of his mother, the Virgin Mary, without the participation of a human father. Instead, the conception took place miraculously when the Holy Spirit "overshadowed" Mary. This was not understood to mean that the human body of Christ was created ex nihilo (from nothing), for the tradition of the Church is that Christ "took his flesh from Mary." This is also understood to be a miracle, something not possible without divine intervention. This doctrine is frequently confused with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. The latter, held by Roman Catholics, states that the Virgin Mary was conceived "without the stain of original sin". Mary, however, unlike Christ, 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). Another reason that Christians consider the virgin birth to be significant is that it shows Jesus' divine and human natures at once united, paving the way for all of humanity to be united with God. Eastern Orthodox tradition says that from the time Jesus was born, the flaming sword was removed from the Garden of Eden, making it possible for humanity to re-enter Paradise. Note: today the above applies only to devout Christians. Research by many groups, including Christian Research 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 (for example, among male clergy in English Affirming Catholicism group less than 25% believe in Virgin Birth).
Scriptural and philological controversyIn the wider sense, arguments for and against the Virgin Birth depend on fundamental philosophical assumptions: if one believes God does not exist, or if God exists but does not perform miracles, the Virgin Birth cannot have taken place in any traditionally accepted sense. The Virgin Birth violates a materialist philosophy and science based upon it. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that many philosophers, including philosophers of science, since the modern era have come to accept the possibility of miracles. There are also objections to the doctrine of the Virgin Birth based on Scriptural and Philological debates. Alleged Late Appearance in the New TestamentThere are explicit references to the virgin birth in only two places in the New Testament: the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which are believed to be amongst the latest written parts of the New Testament. The apparently older Gospel of Mark, on which Matthew and Luke are believed to be partly based (see Markan priority), does not mention the virgin birth, and some scholars also argue from lexicon and style that the first two chapters of Luke, describing the virgin birth, were a later addition to the Gospel, which may originally have began at 3:1:
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 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. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the Virgin conception and birth is a tradition that fits within the criteria of "double 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. We should note, however, that 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. Saint Paul Many of the letters of Paul are considered older than Matthew and Luke, and Paul does not take a clear opportunity to refer to Mary as a virgin when he describes the birth of Jesus:
The phrase in Greek is γενομενον εκ γυναικος, genomenon ek gunaikos, "having-become of a-woman", not γενομενον εκ παρθενου, genomenon ek parthenou, "having-become of a-virgin". Christian apologists reply that Mary's virginity was not relevant to Paul's reasoning at this point, and point out that he uses a special verb to describe Jesus's birth, which he plainly regarded as a special event. However, Jesus's birth would have been special to Paul whether or not it had taken place by parthenogenesis, and if Paul had not known of the virgin birth, it could never have been relevant to any of his reasoning and so could never have appeared in his writing. This argumentum ex silentio, or "argument from silence", cannot be conclusive, but it does increase the probability that only the writers of Matthew and Luke knew of and believed in the virgin birth. If other writers had mentioned the virgin birth in the New Testament, it would be certain that they believed in it. They did not mention it, therefore it cannot be certain that they believed in it and, like the resurrection appearances, the virgin birth may be an example of the gradual supernaturalization of the Christian story. Some scholars have argued that early Christians did not claim that Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus. 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 (a group of Palestinian Judeo-Christians rejected by Gentile Christians as heretics) maintained that Jesus was naturally conceived. On the other hand, Paul frequently asserts the divinity of Jesus Christ in his writings and refers to him as υιος Θεου, Huios Theou, "Son of God". If he thought that Jesus was born in the usual way of a mortal father and mother, one would expect him to explain how a normal man could be God. His failure to refer to any problem of this sort could suggest that neither he nor his readers were faced with such a problem, possibly because they took the virgin birth for granted. Similarly, Paul mentions the setting of the sun -- "(Ephesians 4:26) Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath" -- but does not say that it goes down in the west, which would have been taken for granted by his readers. However, the precise direction of the sunset has no obvious theological significance. The Virgin Birth certainly does, and if Paul develops the theological significance of Jesus's death and resurrection at such length, why does he neglect the theological significance of Jesus's virgin birth? 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 ομοιωματι σαρκος αρματιας, homoiomati sarkos harmatias, 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 υιος του ανθροπου, Huiou 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 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 letter), then becoming concerned with his life (Gospel of Mark), and later faced with addressing his birth (Matthew and Luke). Dispute regarding Isaiah 7:14In the past two millennia there has been considerable controversy among Christians and their opponents about the plain translation and the precise meaning of a small section of Isaiah. 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 Bible, a traditional Protestant translation, the verses in question run like this:
Many modern translations concede that the word in the Hebrew does not mean "virgin". The Revised Standard Version says:
The New Jerusalem Bible says:
The Revised English Bible says:
The Good News Bible says:
The New Revised Standard Version says:
This demonstrates that many Christian scholars, both Protestant and Catholic, have conceded that the traditional translation of the Hebrew is not preferred in the context of Isaiah 7:14. Skeptics argue that this is not a very clear prophecy of the birth of Jesus Christ. For example, 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 their entire life in order to spit out the bad meat if it ever touched their lips". Note that the "butter and honey" reference is immediately followed by the comment on an ability to choose between god and evil; you may suggest that they are related.) And why is Christ, who was sinless from birth in the traditional Christian understanding, described as having to learn to refuse the evil and choose the good? Skeptics raise even greater questions about the translation of the first verse in this passage:
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 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. There 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); bethulah is accepted in modern Hebrew usage as the characteristic Hebrew word for virgin. There is no Hebrew tradition of virgin birth: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Hannah were infertile women who miraculously gave birth late in life. The Bible makes no claim of divine impregnation. Christian apologists nevertheless argue that many first century Jews, including Jewish converts to Christianity used the Septuagint Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which used the word παρθενος, parthenos, which they say clearly means "virgin". However, the great Greek-English Lexicon edited by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott lists other meanings for the word:
There is also archaeological evidence that Jewish speakers of Greek used the word "parthenos" elastically; Jewish catacombs in Rome identify married men and women as "virgins," 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. Nevertheless, it remains true that Jews stopped using the more explicit Septuagint translation as Christianity spread, and that post-Christian Jewish translations into Greek use νεανις, neanis, meaning "young woman" rather than "virgin". The Septuagint does not use parthenos very precisely and translates at least three different Hebrew words by it: bethulah, "maiden/virgin"; `almah, "maiden/virgin"; and נערה, na`arah, "maiden, young woman, servant". When we look at parthenos in the Septuagint, we discover that its meaning is sometimes expanded in a way not seen in Isaiah:
If the traditional Christian interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 is correct, the meaning of parthenos is obviously far more important in Isaiah than it is in Genesis 24:16 and Judges 21:12, and yet it is only in Genesis 24:16 and Judges 21:12 that the meaning of parthenos is expanded to remove any possible misunderstanding. Furthermore, even the use of a completely unambiguous word for "virgin" in the Hebrew or Greek text would not necessarily have settled the matter: "a virgin shall conceive..." might mean "a virgin shall lie with a man and conceive...". Every woman who conceives was originally a virgin, and a woman can actually conceive without a penis penetrating her vagina. Two thousand years of controversy might have been saved if Isaiah had added a few words to the original prophecy:
This may suggest that Isaiah did not intend `almah to mean "virgin", and certainly suggests that he did not make his meaning as clear as he might very easily have done. Alternatively, it may suggest that the Masoretic Text was altered between the time it was written and the time it was transcribed in the 8th or 9th century A.D. Note: There is also considerable controversy about the verbs used in Isaiah 7:14 and about the verses that directly follow it -- see the external links below for further details. Borrowing from PaganismSome have argued that the Virgin Birth is a Christian borrowing from paganism. The impregnation of mortal women by gods is common in pagan mythology, but Christian apologists have replied that the obvious sex of the pagan myths is missing in the Gospels:
However, because the Jewish God does not take human form in Judaism, he could not impregnate Mary in a physical way, and the absence of sex from the conception of Jesus does not disprove borrowing from paganism. Furthermore, a pagan myth of virgin birth may also underlie the disputed verses from Isaiah:
This philological reasoning seems to raise three possibilities: virgin birth is a pagan concept that Christianity has 1) taken from contemporary paganism; 2) taken from pre-Mosaic paganism through Isaiah; or 3) taken from contemporary paganism and justified from Isaiah, who took it from pre-Mosaic paganism. 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 pre-Mosaic paganism does not support Isaiah, there are several possibilities. For example, perhaps virgin birth was invented separately, first in paganism, then in Christianity 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. 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, for example, imitate Christianity or Judaism before either existed, violating the generally accepted historical rule that a culture cannot be influenced by a culture that does not yet exist. In other words, we don't generally accept that the past or present can borrow from the future. Christian apologists also 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, as described in the second argument above. However, if Isaiah borrowed the story from pagans, we might expect him 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. Religious language is generally conservative. 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. He didn't, which, as pointed out above, is an apparent difficulty for the Christian interpretation of the text. Isaiah 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 we would expect to find if the myth were borrowed from paganism: because Judaism has only one deity, who is male, a female deity in a borrowed myth must either become a female human or change sex and become a male deity. See alsoExternal links
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