Why is it hard for you to accept that Jesus was born of a virgin? Surely it’s not impossible for humans to give birth without sexual intercourse? I mean, there are animals that give birth without sexual intercourse, aren’t there? So why not humans?
Posted: October 21st 2010
George Locke
Where did Jesus get his Y chromosome? When an organism reproduces asexually, the offspring is genetically identical to the parent. So, it’s totally inconsistent with the story of Jesus. Among many other problems, Jesus would have been a lady if that’s how she were conceived. (The bigger problem, of course, is that humans do not reproduce asexually.)
In theory, someone could have artificially inseminated Mary, but who? I don’t know if livestock breeders used artificial insemination back then, but I don’t think this explanation exactly jives with the Biblical account either…
Posted: October 24th 2010
SmartLX www
1. Other babies have since been born of virgins, through artificial insemination or surrogacy. Neither was an option in Biblical times.
2. If it were possible that Jesus was born of a virgin by natural means (as with certain rare occurrences of parthenogenesis in sharks, for instance), it would merely be a freak medical phenomenon and not a miracle. What makes the event important to the dogma is that it is not possible except with divine assistance. That and the supposed prophecy, speaking of which…
3. The prophecy in its original Hebrew used the word almah, which means a young woman, much like the modern sense of the word “maiden”. This was translated into the Greek word parthenos, which explicitly means “virgin”, much like the more traditional use of the word “maiden.”
The explicit Hebrew word for “virgin”, which is used plenty of times throughout the rest of the Old Testament, is betulah, and betulah is not used to refer to the mother of the coming Messiah. The virgin birth likely wasn’t prophesied at all.
Posted: October 24th 2010
Eric_PK
Well, simply speaking, organisms that reproduce using sex need to have two partners to produce an offspring.
Unless you’re saying that you think Jesus was a clone of Mary, which would make him a chick instead of a dude. I think that causes a few problems with the Gospels.
Posted: October 24th 2010
Dave Hitt www
Are you suggesting that Jesus was an amoeba?
Posted: October 23rd 2010
Mike the Infidel www
Human beings cannot be born without genetic material from a male and a female parent. Animals which are capable of virgin birth undergo a process called parthenogenesis . In every single instance where it occurs in animals with X and Y-type sex chromosomes, the offspring is female. So no, from a purely natural standpoint, unless Jesus was really a woman, it didn’t happen.
Which is irrelevant, really. Despite the over 1000 years of tradition stating that Jesus was born of a virgin, that element of the story was simply crafted to match a prophecy from the old testament. However, not only was the prophecy speaking about a nation rather than a person, but the word which was mistranslated into Greek as “virgin” was originally just “young maiden” in Hebrew. So even if Mary really had never had sex with Joseph when Jesus was born, that doesn’t tell us much. After all, Joseph wasn’t the only guy around.
What is more likely? That the natural order has been suspended, or that a bronze-age Jewish girl told a lie?
Posted: October 23rd 2010