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Edited on Thu Mar-17-05 09:19 PM by Stunster
(twice now, as it happens) the fact that I never claimed that the gospel narratives prove the virginal conception really happened.
But let's say Matthew sets out to fabricate something, and Luke sets out to fabricate something. How likely is it that both choose, as the story to be fabricated, that Jesus was conceived without benefit of sexual intercourse, and that the woman who conceived him hadn't previously had sexual intercourse? Divine sonship is hard enough to believe as it is. Why add to the difficulty by making no mention of sexual contact or activity (even if initiated by God) with Jesus's mother?
In mythical stories, the gods often have sex with humans. Neither Matthew nor Luke state that Mary had sex with God (even in the form of an angel or something). There's simply no sexual or physically impregnating activity mentioned.
So, let's suppose that Matthew and Luke were intent on writing mythical accounts of Jesus's origins. That both authors would concoct a myth implying not merely that God and not any human father begat the human Jesus, but that God did so without any form of sexual activity occurring in relation to Mary is surprising. Why wouldn't at least one of them portray the divine conception in sexual terms? Why not have the angel Gabriel transmit the divine seed or something like that?
The clear implication of both authors is that Mary simply found herself pregnant with Jesus without ever having engaged in any sexual activity with either a man or a divine or supernatural being. One might have expected that one of them would say she conceived without intercourse with a man, and maybe the other to say that she did have a kind of sexual contact with God, as in pagan myths. After all, suggesting, or better still, describing some form of human-divine sexual contact between the mother of Jesus and God would make it even more 'obvious' and reinforce even more strongly that Jesus was indeed the Son of God in a literal way. If that was the purpose of the evangelists' 'mythic' intent, why did neither of them go the whole hog and refer to some kind of sexual activity on the part of God, or sexual rapture on the part of Mary?
For it to be a fabrication or a myth, then, if anything, the whole conception story seems rather understated and underdescribed if the idea is to convince people of the literal divine sonship of Jesus. This would be so especially for a Hellenistic audience, used as they were to hearing far more explicit sexual exploits by deities.
So, my strong sense is that neither author was fabricating the basic story that Jesus had no human father, nor that Mary was a virgin when she conceived him. They were reporting what they had independently heard, which would be an oral tradition circulating among early Christian communities, both Jew and Gentile, that Mary the mother of Jesus became pregnant with him while still a virgin.
That's not much to work on, and so they had to supply further context that would speak to their respective audiences and interpret the significance of the orally reported virginal conception--and each evangelist duly did so in his own way.
But where would the oral tradition have come from? Why it would have been thought necessary in the early Christian community to proclaim that Jesus was not merely the Messiah, but also Lord and Son of God (terms which occur in the earliest Pauline writings), especially among Jews (who would have considered literal divine sonship as blasphemy) is left unexplained by those who would assert that Jesus' divine sonship was a fabricated myth. After all, at the time Paul was writing, there were still plenty of people alive who had known or seen the human being Jesus of Nazareth, and were fully aware that he had been crucified. So it's rather extraordinary to then claim that this known and remembered Jewish man, who had been executed within living memory, was the Son of God, and not by any divine sex act either, but had been virginally conceived. Why would proclaiming such a thing be thought by early Christians to be anything other than an open invitation to ridicule and scorn?
But proclaim it they did!
It's one thing to say so-and-so was divinely and virginally conceived and lived in some far-off time and place beyond human ken. It's entirely another to go out and about in Jerusalem and say, "Remember that guy Jesus who was put to death back in Pontius Pilate's time? Well, guess what---his mother conceived him without having sex with either man or God." People might or might not have considered Jesus a candidate for Messiahship (though a crucified Messiah would be a tough sell to Jews.) But why make things any harder to believe than they needed to be, by making up stories about virginal conception, etc?
Unless, of course, that was what Mary had actually told people.
And why would she tell anyone that and expect any response other than utter disbelief?
The only plausible reason I can think of as to why Mary would be prepared to put such a story out there among Jesus's disciples and anticipate being believed is if those disciples had already experienced something very extraordinary about Jesus, and so would be prepared to accept the idea that he was 'from God' in more ways than one.
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