Born of a virgin?

[Hagoth]

Just in time for Christmas, here's some interesting discussion with Bart Ehrman about the virgin birth:

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cH ... HQAAAAAQAQ

[jfro18]

I had never heard about this until last year when I was listening to a podcast about the Christmas story and it's just mind blowing.

Even crazier is that a lot of scholars (Bart Ehrman included) believe that the first two chapters of Luke are late additions which really puts the story in Matthew on its own... and that really makes sense given how badly the author of Matthew is trying to fulfill prophecies from the OT.

To think that one of the most famous religious stories in history (if not THE most famous) is based on a bad translation of the original text of the OT!

[Hagoth]

... and that really makes sense given how badly the author of Matthew is trying to fulfill prophecies from the OT.!

And to do so he uses the inaccurate Greek translation, where Isaiah is actually talking about a young woman who not only wasn't a virgin but was already pregnant at the time of his writing, and whose prophesy has long been fulfilled.

So if Luke is a late addition, Matthew is a mistranslated proof text, and Mark, John and Paul (let alone George and Ringo!) don't even acknowledge a virgin birth, that leaves it pretty much in the realm of a rumor that showed up long after the actual events.

I still love the warm feelings I have for the Luke version, though, and we read it aloud every Christmas.

[Jeffret]

What's the gist of the podcast?

[jfro18]

What's the gist of the podcast?

Bart Ehrman goes through how the 'virgin' idea got into the Bible, why it's based on a mistranslation, and then talks a bit about how it's really nowhere else in the Bible and is actually contradicted by Mark/John and I believe he covers briefly that the birth story in Luke is likely a late addition.

It's a fairly quick listen esp at 1.5-2x.

[Jeffret]

Bart Ehrman goes through how the 'virgin' idea got into the Bible, why it's based on a mistranslation, and then talks a bit about how it's really nowhere else in the Bible and is actually contradicted by Mark/John and I believe he covers briefly that the birth story in Luke is likely a late addition.

It's a fairly quick listen esp at 1.5-2x.

Thanks! I'll see if I get a chance to listen to it.

It sounds consistent with what I've long read from a variety of scholars.

I presume the mistranslation is in Isaiah 7:14, which is hardly the only problem with that passage. It's one of the biggest prooftexts ever. A big example of cherry-picking one little bit in spite of everything around it to prove a desired point. Decades ago when I was really studying Mormonism, I happened to look up that scripture. Claiming that verse proves the divinity of Jesus is a huge stretch. (Orders of magnitude more than the verses to prove god hates gays, which is really saying something.) If you forget about Luke and read the whole paragraph, you'll come away wondering how it has anything to do with Jesus of Nazareth. And keep in mind, that was the way that Luke and his initial readers would've read it. It wasn't broken into the chapters and versus we assume today are god-breathed until hundreds of years later. I just read some Christian scholar's attempt to rescue it by saying how wonderful it is, because it was fulfilled twice, once in Isaiah's day and later at Jesus's birth. If you ignore Luke's unsupported claim and just read the passage from Isaiah, there's really nothing to connect it with Jesus. Once you read that, you realize Luke is a very unreliable narrator.

The ancient world in which Luke and his initial readers lived were awash in stories of virgin births. There was nothing particularly notable in the idea that Jesus needed one. It was practically de rigueur that any religious leader needed one. Virgin birth stories existed in Greek, Roman, and many other religious traditions of the day. Part of the claim by Julius to his right to rule Rome came from his ancestral claim to Aeneas, who was born of Venus. Virgin birth was particularly notable in Zoroastrianism, which early Christianity borrowed from heavily.

From a pragmatic perspective, claiming a virgin birth must have been an enticing option to an unmarried woman discovered large with child. If there was no man to claim her and her unborn child, a virgin birth story may have been appealing and there was no ready way to disprove it in societies where examples were common in shared stories. I'm not saying this was the case with Mary, though, as the opposite seems to be the case. If Jesus really existed (which I'm slightly inclined to believe), the context suggests that Jesus was known as Joseph's son.

What I find more intriguing actually, is how little the virgin birth is mentioned in the earliest texts, including those that have been accepted into what we know as The Bible. Of the "Four Gospels", only Luke mentions it. It is not part of the aggregated Pauline gospel. It is mostly missing from other early writings.

Over the centuries since the rise of Christianity, there have been dueling claims about the divinity of Jesus vs. his humanity. This is notably visible in religious art (which was the only acceptable, sponsored type of art in Christian Europe when the Church controlled everything, up until the Enlightenment). At times it was considered essential that art heavily emphasized the divinity of Jesus. In other periods, artists were required to depict his humanity and ignore any allusions to divinity. This is also shown in writings and other Christian media.

The earliest Christian writings have little interest in Jesus's divinity. Indeed, the first Council of Nicaea (325 CE), was primarily convened to answer this controversy once and for all. The Council placed its authoritative stamp on Jesus's divinity, though, of course, there is dispute about its authority to do so. (Its authority mostly derives from the Roman Emperor Constantine, and its decision, which was reached by consensus.) Some branches of Christianity, most notably here, Mormonism, don't accept the authority or results of the Nicene Councils or their Creeds. Yet, their claims were highly formative in establishing what Christianity is and is not.

Indeed, one of the main reasons why many Christians claim Mormons are not Christian is because of their rejection of the Nicene Creed. The BoM is highly consistent with the Nicene Creed, but Joseph and the Church later veered from it. The BoM neatly side-steps the issue of Jesus's divinity by having him appear in flesh and blood in dramatic, divine fashion, much like a deus ex machina. By Joseph Smith's time period, the divinity of Jesus had become commonly accepted, something that took centuries to establish in Christian history. One of the reasons for the claim that the BoM is the most correct book is that it easily resolves controversies it took Christianity centuries, in ways that were well established and commonly understood in the time period when Joseph wrote it. It's also one of the major illustrations of the non-divine origins of the BoM.

[Hagoth]

If you ignore Luke's unsupported claim and just read the passage from Isaiah...

Old Testament proof texting in the New Testament is overall pretty sloppy, if you ask me. Jesus was from Nazareth, but they have to cook up some pretty noncredible ways to have him come from Bethlehem and Egypt to fit the narrative they projected onto the OT revelations.

They also had to prove that Jesus was a descendant of David, which Matthew and Luke both do, but via different genealogies. And those genealogies only work if Jesus was the son of Joseph, so no virgin birth there.

Of the "Four Gospels", only Luke mentions it. It is not part of the aggregated Pauline gospel. It is mostly missing from other early writings.

If it was a commonly accepted tenet of early Christianity you would think John would be all over it, since his gospel makes Jesus more mystical and magical than the others. I think Paul would have really been talking it up too. If Luke's version is a late addition, then it comes down to Matthew. Mark has Jesus becoming the Son of God at the moment of his baptism.

[Jeffret]

Old Testament proof texting in the New Testament is overall pretty sloppy, if you ask me. Jesus was from Nazareth, but they have to cook up some pretty noncredible ways to have him come from Bethlehem and Egypt to fit the narrative they projected onto the OT revelations.

Definitely. It's making up a mythology to fit an existing mythology. Trying to glom onto and supersede what previously existed. Which is what I guess Christianity has always been about.

They also had to prove that Jesus was a descendant of David, which Matthew and Luke both do, but via different genealogies. And those genealogies only work if Jesus was the son of Joseph, so no virgin birth there.

Yes, I was thinking of that one, also.

I had a religion professor at BYU (McConkie, I think, but can't remember for sure), point out the different genealogies and how one is for Mary and one for Joseph. It was only later that I thought, "Wait -- that doesn't work if Joseph wasn't really the father." And then I also realized that's no different than Julius claiming Aeneas as his ancestor.

In context of this discussion, though, I find it most interesting that a lot more effort was put into trying to prove that Jesus of Nazareth claims Davidic ancestry than divine investiture. I think that suggests what those at the time considered the more important ancestry.

[Jeffret]

And because Mormonism is the principal focus here, I want to take a moment more and ruminate more on the comments I made earlier about the BoM.

Suppose we accept the Limited Geographic Model, desperately maintained by BoM apologists. It's very problematic, but suppose it's just a matter that we haven't looked in the right place for the huge civilization that the BoM describes, in spite of the fact that Joseph Smith clearly meant it to describe an ancient civilization in the areas where he lived.

Then we might have to look to the text to determine its claims to historicity. And it fails there as well. Even harder in my opinion.

The text displays no evidence of the changes a civilization would undergo over more than 1000 years. Most prominently, the Christology in the BoM springs fully-formed from the beginning, much as Athena sprung fully-formed from the head of Zeus. While there are inconsistencies within the book, these are minor, compared to what we would expect from different authors over a thousand years. Instead, it is clearly the work of a single individual attempting to keep the story consistent. It has none of the lengthy, messy efforts to establish doctrine and develop a relatively coherent Christology, all of which we observe in areas where we know Christianity to have actually existed.

We can say once again, that the problem reduces to an LGM -- we just haven't yet discovered the civilization yet that behaves like that. But, no. It just doesn't work that way. No civilization behaves remotely like that, so the idea of searching for one that does is preposterous.

Indeed, in our own real civilization, within relatively recent history, and certainly in the age of printing press, as Brodie described, we see a complete counter to that LGM of the Christology. The Christology within the BoM is relatively coherent, but within a few short years, Joseph Smith had completely abandoned it and converted to a different Christology.