Yes. Under Jewsh law, a person can’t be convicted of a capital crime without the testimony of two witnesses to the crime.
Are you suggesting that the god part comes from God, but the man part comes from Joseph? I don’t think it works that way.
We’re talking about a royal line of succession here. Literal loodlines are kind of the whole part. The Messiah is supposed to be of the “seed of David.” That means he has to be a biological descendant through the father. Whether such ideas of inheritance may now be seen as archaic is beside the point. That’s what the OT promises. The prophesies are what they are. The Jewish Messiah is by definition the legal heir to the throne of David.The idea of a demi-god or a literal “son of God” will do such a thing is alien to Jewish theology.
Although I am not qualified to debate the matter, it’s possible that the word rendered “virgin” in English may have simply meant “young woman” in Hebrew or Greek. Virgin Birth doesn’t sound feel or sound like a Biblically Jewish story to me. It makes more sense to me, in the context of Biblical Jewish story-telling, that Mary was a normal young bride with normal marital relations informed by heavenly messengers that she was chosen to bring the Jewish Messiah into the world. Joseph was likewise notified that the child of his seed had a divine destiny.
Maybe a lot got changed in the translation to Greek. The Ancient Greeks and Romans seem to be much more literal than the Ancient Jews. When a Greek or Roman spoke of the son of Zeus/Jupiter, they meant that quite literally. But from what I’ve read, when Jews spoke of a “son of God,” their intent was figurative.
In any case, I suspect the story of the Virgin Birth is an early (but not the earliest) example of fanwanking (also known as continuity porn).
This all depends on if you’re talking about the New Testament or Isaiah. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke (both Greek compositions) unquestionably say that Mary was a virgin.
However, Matthew’s derivation of that idea comes from Isaiah and (aside from being taken totally out of context) DOES stem from a mistranslation of the original Hebrew.
Isaiah 7:14 contains a prophecy that a “young woman shall bear a child and she will call his name Emmanuel.” The Hebrew word in the original text is almah which means “young woman” (the Hebrew word for “virgin” would be bethulah). But the author of Matthew used a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (called the Septuagint) which erroneously translated almah into the Greek word parthenos – “virgin.”
In ins original context, the whole Emmanuel prophecy has nothing to do with the Messiah but the authors of the Gospels still search the Jewish Scriptures for anything they believed might give them information about Jesus. Verses and passages were plucked from their surroundings and recontextalized as Messianic or predictave of Jesus, regardless of their original meaning.
Matthew saw the Emmanuel passage as Messianic (possibly because of the meaning of that name in Hebrew) and constructed a virgin birth story based on the mistranslation found in the Greek text.
It interests me that Mary’s conception is called. at least by some, an act of adultery. But isn’t adultery an act of will? And if there is any truth to the biblical tale, Mary was merely informed that God’s seed had been implanted in her andf that she had no willing part in the transaction. That sounds to me more like a rape.
No, it’s not remotely Jewish. But it is the Christian mythology.
Jewish prophecies are not interested in the virginity of the messiah, nor do they consider the messiah to be divine, in any sense. He is a man who will fulfill certain prophecies (which Jesus is notable for not having fulfilled). The Jewish prophecies are fairly simple: a great king fixes everything for the Jews.
Make that the virginity of the messiah’s mother, although the way I originally wrote it is also true.
Wouldn’t being pregnant be enough? I’m sure they could have found two witnesses to testify that she was pregnant.
You might find some Christians who would buy this, but Jews would not and do not. They reject the whole “Son of God” thing and therefore do not have to reconcile, as Christians do, how a person could be both the Son of God and the son of humanity. But as far as Christians go, there is AFAIK no denomination that posits that Jesus had two actual, biological fathers, God and Joseph; God was the father in fact of Jesus, and Joseph was the human father who raised Him – His stepfather, IOW.
Where does it say that only patrilineal descendants are “of the seed of David”?
People have been arguing for centuries the meaning of “alma” (Hebrew) and “parthenos” (Greek), as those words are used in Matthew and in Isaiah (which prophesies the Messiah, not necessarily born of a virgin). It’s clear from the NT, however, specifically the book of Luke, that Mary the mother of Jesus was a virgin. Regardless of the word used, the context clearly establishes her virginity. The angel comes to her and says "You’re going to have a child. She says “How can this be? I’m a virgin!” He says “God will come to you and the Holy Spirit will move over you, and your son will be the Son of God.” The entire exchange doesn’t make sense if “young woman” or “girl” is substituted, since being a young woman or girl is no impediment to having a child, while being a virgin obviously is.
Well Florence King’s grandmother had a simple solution :
‘Girls in occupied countries tend to get into trouble’
Not quite. The passage in the Gospel according to Luke is as follows (KJV text) :
So Mary is first told she is the chosen one, then what is to happen, then how it is to happen, THEN says “why, now that you put it that way, sure, go right ahead”.
Which is, of course, an oblique reference to the theory that Mary was raped by or voluntarily slept with a Roman soldier, who was the father of Jesus. IIRC such a story is somewhere in the Talmud, although it’s not at all clear the man described in the Talmud story was ever intended to be Jesus. IIRC.
Women don’t have “seed.” There was an ancient idea that women reproduced only by being the receptacles for the male seed and that said seed could only be transmitted through the father.
Beyond that, Jewish laws of succession were purely patrilinear. Matrilinear bloodlines weren’t even recorded. Some of the verses from the Tanakh used to support this are found in
Exodus 28:4, 29:9-30, 30:30, and 40:15 (which give the rules for priestly lineage), Numbers 1:18, Genesis 49:10, I Kings 11:4, and I Chronicles 17:11-19 are all read as statements that kingship can only be passed through the father.
The Emmanuel passage in Isaiah 7:14 has nothing to do with the Messiah. Only Christian apologists really try to argue over the meaning of almah in Isaiah. The verse was clearly not about the Messiah and a virgin birth would have made no sense in the context of that story.
Diogenes, for context for our discussion, you said:
I asked:
Your response:
Women obviously do not have “seed” but nevertheless are also equally obviously “of the seed” of men – they are “of” their fathers just as much as their brothers are “of” their mothers. The “ancient idea” of women reproducing “only by being receptacles for male seed” is AFAIK not consistent with either Jewish or Christian beliefs. Certainly that idea appears to be contradicted by the Jewish idea, coopted by Christians, that women (mothers especially) were deserving of respect and women, just like men, might be honored for bravery and rectitude.
But this isn’t quite correct, is it? The OT is replete with geneologies in which women are named. Just paging randomly through Kings and Chronicles: “In the 20th year of Jeroboam king of Israel, Asa became king of Judah, and he reigned in Jerusalem 41 years. His grandmother’s name was Maacah, daugher of Abishalom.” (1 Kgs 15:9.) “In the second year of Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel Jotham son of Uzziah king of Judah began to reign. He was 25 years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem 16 years. His mother’s name was Jerusha daughter of Zadok.” (2 Kgs 15:32.) The sons of Abraham are listed in Chronicles by reference to their mothers.
I’m not arguing that Judaism isn’t historically a patrilineal faith – it is, as is Christianity – but there is nothing in the OT or the NT that demands that being “of the seed of David” “means he has to be a biological descendant through the father;” certainly none of the verses you cited are so clear and unequivocal. You may be faithfully staing the Jewish interpretation, but it is worth noting that it is not the Christian one.
It was what ancient Jews belived. Sorry.
What does respect have to do with anything? We’re talking about laws of succession.
So what? That’s still not a matrilinear genealogy. It’s just a more detailed patrilinear one.
It may not be as explicit as you demand it to be but that is definitely what the phrase denoted at the time, that’s how succession was practiced and that’s always been the belief in Judaism.
Certainly none of the verses you cited are so clear and unequivocal. You may be faithfully staing the Jewish interpretation, but it is worth noting that it is not the Christian one.
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The Christian interpretation has no relevance. We’re talking about Jewish scripture, Jewish history and millenia of Jewish interpretation of their own writings. The authors who envisioned a heroic heir to David would never have considered anything but a direct patrilinear descendant to be the legitimate heir. This is just one of many ways in which Jesus did not fit the OT expectations. Matthew and Luke apparently thought that Jewish kingship could be transmitted through adoption (as the Romans did), but they were wrong.
I should also add that the discussion of Jesus’ matrilinear heritage is kind of pointless anyway since nothing in the New Testament claims that Mary was descended from David.
Dio, you may be looking for an argument, but I’m afraid I’m not going to indulge you.
Yes, so I gathered. Which is why I limited myself to pointing out that this is not Christian belief.
Christian interpretation has no relevance to Christian thought, to a discussion of the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary? Seriously? 
Actually, if you’ll review the entire discussion, I think you’ll find that we’re talking about Joseph’s role in the birth of Christ and the geneologies of Jesus as set forth by Matthew and Luke – both authors who quite obviously believed He was the Messiah, and one of whom had a pretty explicit mission to convince Jews of the fact. How that whole discussion suddenly became irrelevant escapes me, so I’ll have to decline to join you in proclaiming it so.
:: Shrug :: I’m not much for throwing around terms like “wrong” and “right” in matters of faith. I find it comes across as antagonistic. This is also not necessarily correct for the reason given below.
There is no explict statement, no, but the generally the accepted gloss on the geneology of Jesus that is presented in the Book of Luke, is that it is the lineage of Mary. That’s the most obvious answer to the question of why the geneologies of Matthew and Luke are not the same. Jesus is commonly understood to trace His lineage back to David through both Joseph and Mary – and His lineage back to God more directly. The latter, of course, is the reason why lineage is only even mentioned in two of the four Gospels; having accepted that Jesus is the Son of God, most Christians consider his earthly lineage to be largely irrelevant.
It also is worth noting that in the King James Bible, Jesus is referred to as the “seed of David” no less than three times, in John 7:42, Romans 1:3, and 2 Timothy 2:8. (I love teh internetz!) So arguing that He was or wasn’t “seed of David” is silly, since Christians will say “yes” and Jews will say “no” and both are entitled to their beliefs.
Which one had a mission to Jews? The audience for the Gospels were primarily Gentile, not Jewish. Christianity was basically dead as a Jewish movement before either Matthew or Luke were ever written.
This tangent started as a discussion as to whether Jesus could meet the criteria for the OT Messiah. That is a question can only be answered by looking at the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition. You said yourself that Jesus’ lack of patrilinear lineage from David was seen as an “objection” to Christianity. I was pointing out why Christian answers to that question don’t work to resolve the problem. Simply reiterating that they are Christian answers is neither here nor there.
I wasn’t saying anything about faith. I said that it would be factually wrong to state that Jewish kingship could have been passed through adoption. Faith has nothing to do with that. It was a statement about Jewish law.
Generally accepted by who? Maybe by defenders of inerrancy but not by Biblical scholars or historians. Luke says no such thing, either explcitly or implicitly. Here is Luke’s genealogy:
23Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph,
the son of Heli, 24the son of Matthat,
the son of Levi, the son of Melki,
the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph,
25the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos,
the son of Nahum, the son of Esli,
the son of Naggai, 26the son of Maath,
the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein,
the son of Josech, the son of Joda,
27the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa,
the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel,
the son of Neri, 28the son of Melki,
the son of Addi, the son of Cosam,
the son of Elmadam, the son of Er,
29the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer,
the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat,
the son of Levi, 30the son of Simeon,
the son of Judah, the son of Joseph,
the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim,
31the son of Melea, the son of Menna,
the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan,
the son of David, 32the son of Jesse,
the son of Obed, the son of Boaz,
the son of Salmon,[d] the son of Nahshon,
33the son of Amminadab, the son of Ram,[e]
the son of Hezron, the son of Perez,
the son of Judah, 34the son of Jacob,
the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham,
the son of Terah, the son of Nahor,
35the son of Serug, the son of Reu,
the son of Peleg, the son of Eber,
the son of Shelah, 36the son of Cainan,
the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem,
the son of Noah, the son of Lamech,
37the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch,
the son of Jared, the son of Mahalalel,
the son of Kenan, 38the son of Enosh,
the son of Seth, the son of Adam,
the son of God.
(Luke 3:23-38)
I bolded the portion where Luke explicitly identifies Joseph as the son of Heli. Mary’s name does not even appear in Luke’s genealogy and (contrary to the suggestions of some apologists) there is absolutely no evidence that there was any convention of tracing a maternal bloodline through the father or for referring to a man as the “son of” his wife’s father.
The most obvious answer is that Luke had no knowledge of Matthew and that each author created his own genealogy without beng aware of the other’s existence.
Commonly understood by who? The overwhelming scholarly consensus on this is that both authors created independent (and unintentionally contradictory genealogies). Most NT scholars believe that Luke had no knowledge of Matthew’s Gospel and there is nothing wrong with the explanation that the authors simply created his own mythic genealogy for Joseph unless one is unwilling to accept that the Gospels can contradict each other (and there are far more contradictions between these two authors than their genealogies, I assure you).
I should also point out that even if Luke’s genealogy went through Mary (which it doesn’t), it still wouldn’t make him eligible to be the OT Messiah sin the Messiah is supposed to be descended from David through Solomon while Luke’s genealogy goes through Nathan.
Yes, but that requires a complete redefinition of the OT Messiah.
What does the NT or Christian belief have to do with understanding authorial intent in the OT? All that matters is what the authors of the Hebrew Bible meant by the phrase. It was their prophecy, after all.