IMO, devilsknew wondering, as a person who doesn’t believe in the Incarnation, how a story like the virgin birth is explained in light of the fact that there must therefore have been a physical father.
Was the Virgin Birth merely a “fulfillment of the scriptures” as is constantly said in Matthew, written years later*, and thus possibly a later addition, or was it a story that was spread around at the time of Jesus’ preaching? If so, why?
Perhaps:
A) to cover up some pre-marital dalliance between Mary and Joseph
B) to cover up some pre-marital dalliance between Mary and someone else
C) to cover the fact that Mary had been raped
D) to give Jesus some spiritual mojo as he went into his self-help guru schtick. “Ooh! Theres’ Jesus, the guy who says I can Change My Life[sup]TM[/sup] because God forgives me! I like how he talks!” “Didja hear his Mother was a Virgin?” “I heard he healed lepers too!”, etc. …
*For that matter, since none of the Gospels’ nominal writers was present at Jesus’ birth, they were all writing at least second-hand about an event that had occurred decades earlier.
I don’t believe in the virgin birth. Assuming Mary, the mother of God, claimed in her lifetime to have a virgin birth, I could imagine several reasons for her making that claim. But really, how does it matter who Jesus’ real biological father is? If there was no miracle, then the exact identity of the father seems irrelevant at this point in time.
There is no evidence that Mary claimed she was a virgin, and no evidence that the story of the virgin birth was even told during Jesus’s lifetime. This renders the travelling salesmen, UFOs, delusions and so forth quite unnecessary entities. And you know that happens to unnecessary entities, don’t you?
Forgot to say: and there would be no way to arrive at the truth, or even form an educated guess, unless you assume it’s her husband. It could have been a Zoroastrian traveller from Persia, named Caspar, or it could have been a good-looking young goatherder who lived around the corner.
My personal guess would be her husband, which is the most probable guess.
I’ve always admired the chutzpah of the evangelists (or a couple of them, at least) in first insisting that Joseph was not the real father of Jesus, yet still putting a long ass genealogy in which Jesus is descended from the House of David through … Joseph!
I would expect him to be biologically the son of St. Joseph. Twice in the Gospels, we are treated to big long pretentious genealogies of St. Joseph–it’s his lineage that’s trumpeted in the Gospels, not St. Mary’s. The fact that the genealogies contradict each other (& are, if I’m being honest, probably both fictitious) doesn’t change the fact that each is clearly meant to be the lineage of St. Joseph.
So, in this story, whether we call it myth, fiction, revelation, or history, certain things are “true” for the story: St. Mary conceived & gave birth as a virgin; and her son was considered the heir of her betrothed.
Seems to me that the miracle here is the teleportation of Joseph’s sperm to Mary’s ovum, or the creation in situ of a perfect copy of Joseph’s sperm, to conceive their prophesied child even before they consummated their marriage.
Kind of a cool love story, in a Messianic-hopes sort of way. Too bad certain sperm-hating ascetics tried to cut St. Joseph out of the picture so they could adore a perpetual virgin demigoddess. Bah.
I think there was some funkiness surrounding Jesus’ birth. Mainly because this was a funked up thing to make up – *Jesus sprang whole from Zeus * OK make that up – *Mary became pregnant and her husband didn’t believe her and wanted to throw her out - but had a dream not to * – sounded fishy to everyone right from ancient times to 6/03/06. In theory Mary could have been stoned to death for that – it wasn’t like having a baby daddy today – though it is unclear whether that would actually have happened in that time and place it is an extraordinary potential boomerang to make up.
In Mark (which has no Virgin Birth) Jesus is called the Son of Mary, which is an odd thing - to call a Jew son of the Mother - in the first century (e.g. Judas son of Hezekiah). In Luke and Mathew (which have the VB) they take care to change this to “son of Joseph”. In John it looks like the Pharisees and making fun of him asking “Who is your father?” though that is one interpretation. It would also explain why Jesus would not be married – as a bastard he couldn’t have a Jewish wife.
I have no evidence, because I don’t believe any exists, until at least 80ish years later, that anyone claimed it was a Virgin birth at the time. I am just saying that I don’t think it all that unlikely that Jesus was not born under traditional circumstances.
I admit there is a flaw: He probably could not have taught in Synagogues if he was clearly a bastard - and we see him do that all the time. So I would lean to “questions about the circumstances of his birth” rather than “clear and known bastard”
Let me say on the Pantheria thing – if we are going to believe Celsus on that we also need to accept that Celsus says Jesus had [Super Friends voice] fabulous magic powers learned from the Egyptians[/Super friends voice]. In full:
Jesus had come from a village in Judea, and was the son of a poor Jewess who gained her living by the work of her own hands. His mother had been turned out of doors by her husband, who was a carpenter by trade, on being convicted of adultery [with a soldier named Panthéra (i.32)]. Being thus driven away by her husband, and wandering about in disgrace, she gave birth to Jesus, a bastard. Jesus, on account of his poverty, was hired out to go to Egypt. While there he acquired certain magical powers which Egyptians pride themselves on possessing. He returned home highly elated at possessing these powers, and on the strength of them gave himself out to be a god.
Origen, Contra Celsum 1.28 (Celus wrote this ~175)