The Virgin Birth
Before
setting out on this subject I have to confess that the virgin birth is a
mystery, a miracle and perhaps one of the most amazing events of history. I
certainly don’t understand it. For a human, a woman, to conceive a child
without the participation of a male is absolutely impossible. It is therefore
beyond human comprehension to understand, certainly mine. I cannot describe the
mechanism behind, or explain miracles. They happen outside observable science.
They cannot be tested or repeated in a laboratory. The virgin birth is
something we can only wonder at – and yet, it happened. It was a recorded event
in real history. Therefore, all true Christians are required to believe it.
Having
said this, we ought to notice that God has not shrouded the whole thing in
mystery. He has given us a few facts, and a some
simple statements, and He has referred to the virgin birth as true, so it must
be another stone of truth on which we may stand. It is revealed truth. We must
walk carefully, and with reverence, as we try to put together the whole
statement which God has made to us.
The virgin birth in prophecy.
First
of all, the birth of Jesus was predicted many hundreds of years before the
event.
From
the merely logical point of view, we would expect – if God entered our world as
a Man – that He would have an unusual way to do that. Simply
because God is, by character, a God who moves within the supernatural realm,
the miraculous. It is normal for Him to do miracles. They are a sort of
‘signature’, a personal style, with which He does things. We should look for
His entry in some miraculous way. The virgin birth was a very unusual way to
enter our world.
Which is why the virgin birth should not surprise us.
We
see that many predictions were made, hundreds of years beforehand, concerning
Jesus’ place of birth, His ministry, His manner of life, His death and His
resurrection, and His return after that, when He sets up His eternal kingdom.
All these things are described in the Old Testament. His birth is no exception.
It was to be by way of a virgin, and although it stands as very strange all by
itself, it is not remarkable when placed in the context of all the other
miraculous things surrounding Jesus.
The
first prediction (prophecy) is found in Genesis 3:15, where God says, "The
seed of the woman shall crush the head of the serpent." In these words we
find a very interesting concept. It is the "seed of the woman" not
the man that produces the conqueror. Of course a woman does not have a
"seed" but in prophetic language this refers to the fact that it is
the biological part of the woman that is destined to produce the Messiah. This
must refer to the virgin birth, and at the same time it totally excludes Joseph
from the event.
The
second reference is in Isaiah 7:14 where God says: "the virgin shall
conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."
Objections
have been made that the word "virgin" in Isaiah refers merely to a
"young woman" or a "young unmarried woman", but this
objection does not stand up to examination. The Hebrew word for
"virgin" which is used here occurs only six times in the Bible, and
its usuage is always consistent with the meaning
"virgin", and in some cases it is the only possible meaning.
Furthermore, when the scholars translated the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek
(the Septuagint) they used the standard Greek word for "virgin" in
Isaiah 7:14. So did Matthew when he quoted the prophesy
in Matthew 1:23. Matthew had no problem with acknowledging the birth of Jesus
as from a virgin.
Also,
when you read Isaiah 7:14 in context, the virgin birth was given as a
"sign" from the Lord. Critics who say Mary was not a virgin have a
huge problem, because what kind of "sign" would it be for a young
unmarried, or married woman to have a baby? Millions of women do this every
year! What sort of sign would it be to say, "A woman will have a
child"? None whatsoever. It had to be a miracle
otherwise the prophet was talking nonsense.
The bloodline.
There
are two genealogies of Christ given in the Bible. They appear to contradict.
One family tree follows the legal line and the other the royal or regal line.
Critics
have pounced on the family tree of Jesus, and questioned it. One criticism in
particular suggests that Jesus was the natural son of Joseph and therefore not a
miracle conception at all. (Critics come and go, and each generation God raises up able men and woman who answer the criticisms. The
same good defense for the truth is written again and again for each generation
– this defense is yet another attempt to present the truth to the unbelievers.)
One
line of criticism questions the bloodline list for Joseph and points out that,
way back in the past, one of Joseph’s progenitors – and that progenitor’s
children - were barred from the throne. Here is how the argument goes:
Through
Jeremiah 22:30 God pronounced:
"Thus
says the Lord (concerning king Jeconiah/Jechoniah/Jechonias,
Coniah),
Write
this man down as childless,
A
man who shall not prosper in his days;
For
none of his descendants shall prosper,
Sitting
on the throne of
And ruling anymore in
Logically,
if Jesus was a descendant of Jechoniah, he could not
claim a right to sit on the throne of David. This means that the virgin birth
was absolutely essential to the coming of the Messiah.
But
God anticipated this problem, and supplied a miracle. If Joseph was the
biological father of Jesus, the whole Bible is shredded, and no king from
heaven will ever reign over the world. The coming of Jesus had to be by way of
a miracle birth, excluding Joseph from the event of conception. If Jesus was
from the seed of Joseph, he could not fulfil the
promises made to
But
Jesus was the rightful heir of David's throne, and although he was was lineally descended from Jeconiah,
He was not biologically descended from Jechoniah. The
legal line was through Joseph, who, though His legal father,
was not His ‘real’, or natural father. So God solved the problem, and
maintained His integrity.
Having
failed to find fault with the Bible in the area of Joseph’s family tree,
critics have turned their sights on Mary, and claimed that she was also linked
to Jechoniah, because the name Salathiel
appears in her family tree. This name, say the critics, is that of one of Jechoniah’s sons or grandsons, so Mary must have been a
descendant, and this would disqualify Jesus. She was the biological mother of
Jesus after all.
There
are several good answers to this criticism – the last one in the list is
probably the best:
1. Jesus was the son of His
Heavenly Father, conceived by a miracle beyond our comprehension. Jesus was
conceived by the Holy Spirit (Mat.1:18,20, Luke 1:35)
This means, we could say, His descent was not through Mary, but through heaven.
2. Mary was only the vessel
from which God produced His Son. She contributed her ovum, not her seed.
Biologically there is a huge difference, therefore even if Salathiel
was a descendant of a cursed line, it was not linked
to Mary because she contributed only an ovum. (There is also a mystery here.
Sin is said to be passed on from Adam, not Eve. It seems that sin resides
inherently in the male seed, which opens up quite an interesting debate, which
we cannot spend time on here)
3. It could be argued that
"grace" covers any problems, i.e. because God works with mortal,
earthly things, He has to compensate by overlooking problems such as fallen
creation, cursed family lines and so forth. I find this approach quite useless.
I believe God keeps His word, and that He would not allow any of Jechoniah’s children, or their descendants be linked to the
Messiah.
4. The resurrection put paid
to any ‘bloodline’ claims, since Jesus rose in an immortal body, a new
creation, and started a whole new age.
5. The man Salathiel was not a direct bloodline descendant of Jechoniah.
Salathiel – the thin thread of God’s Hand in history
Just
recapping for a moment, Matthew gives the legal pedigree from king David, (by Bathsheba) down through Solomon, and on down
to Joseph, the legal father of Jesus.
Luke,
on the other hand, gives the biological pedigree, the actual bloodline, from king David, through another of his sons Nathan, (by
Bathsheba) all the way down to Mary, the biological parent. Luke’s family tree
goes in the other direction to Matthew’s, and starts with Mary then works
upwards to Nathan, brother of Solomon, and on upwards to David (Luke
3:31). But whichever way you read it, the name Salathiel
appears in in, and he, apparently, was a bloodline
relation to Jechoniah – the cursed king.
Some background
In the Bible, there are many instances where the whole plan of God hangs on a
thread, the very finest thread. If one tiny part of the Plan fails, all of it
fails.
We
see this in the Garden of Eden, where only two humans live, then one of them is
tempted, and then Adam is also tempted, and he sins, and it seems at that point
that the whole everlasting glorious kingdom Plan of God has failed – but a
sheep is killed, and Adam trusts in the shed blood of the "lamb slain from
the foundation of the world".
Again,
Abraham’s predicted seed does not come, and as he and his wife pass into old
age it looks as if the grand promises of God for Abram and Sarai
are about to fail, but Isaac is born.
Later
on Moses, the one male child needed to lead
The birth of Jesus, in unhygienic circumstances, his escape
from Herod’s slaughter, and many subsequent moments when He might have died.
The daughters of Zelophehad
Everything
recorded in the Bible is important. Every word is significant. There is no
wastage, no redundancy, no mere opinion. Every verse
in the Bible refers in some way to the Lord Jesus Christ, either in prophecy,
or typology, or allusion, or symbol. This is why the little event recorded in
the Old Testament, Joshua 17:3 we learn of a man called Zelophehad,
who had five daughters, and no sons. These daughters came to Joshua and pointed
out that they did not have a brother to whom any inheritance land could be
given, so God decreed that if there was no male, then the female in the family
could take the possession (as if she was a man).
The
daughters were told to marry their father’s brother’s sons – to keep things in
the family, and this they did.
Look
at Mary’s family tree again. She was the daughter of Heli,
who apparently had no sons, but Mary did marry within the tribe of
This
situation is beautifully expressed in the gospel of John, where he picks up a
prophesy about the Messiah: "But you, Bethlehem Ephratah,
though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come
unto Me (He who) is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from on
old, from everlasting." Micah 5:2
Jehoiachim and the curse
– some background.
Jehoichim (with an ‘m’) was king over
But
Jehoiakim was not humble enough or wise enough to
realize this, and in a fit of arrogance he provoked Nebuchadnezzar to attack
Nebuchanezzar reacted quickly. He attacked
Meanwhile
Nebuchadnezzar, having completed his Egyptian campaign, soon discovered that Jehoiakim was a treacherous man who could not be trusted by
friend or foe. Indeed, so treacherous Jehoiachim that
even the people of his own city, Jerusalem, turned against him, murdered him,
threw his body over the walls and left him unburied outside the city - exactly
as predicted by Jeremiah (22:18,19).
Nebuchadnezzar
must surely have known what had happened, but he did not interfere when Jehoiakin (i.e., Jechonias, No.
55) succeeded his father.
Jechonias was only eighteen years old when he sat on the throne (2
Kings 24:8) but he was no better than his father. He was proud, and arrogant,
and foolish, just like his evil father, and he provoked Nebuchadnezzar (after
only three months and ten days on the throne) to invest the city once more and depose
him (2 Chron. 36:9). Jechonias
and all his court were taken captive to
Jechonias, after being taken to
So
we have a man who is not allowed to produce a child to carry on the family
line, married to a woman of the same royal house who is allowed to.
If
Pedaiah’s widowed mother was married to Jechonias, he, Pedaiah, would by
Jewish custom become the son of Jechonias. So in this
sense, in the Biblical sense, Jechonias had a son.
(In Western terms we would say a ‘step-son’ but in Biblical terms he was a
"son".
But
Jechonias appears to have had a son of his own by
this widow of the royal line. This son's name was Salathiel.
By this marriage of a widow to Jechonias, these two
boys - sons of the same mother - would become brothers by Jewish custom.
However,
Salathiel died childless, (at least there is no
mention of him having had any children), though not until he had reached
manhood and married a wife. Jehoiakim's blood line
thus came to an end in his grandson Salathiel.
But
as it happens the actual title to the throne remained active. The curse of
Jeremiah 36:30 was to be fulfilled not by the removal of the title itself from Jehoiakim's line but by the denial of that title to anyone
who happened to be a blood relative in the line. With the death of Salathiel this blood line terminated.
But
now, according to God’s Law as set forth in (Deut. 25:5,6), it became incumbent
upon Pedaiah, the deceased Salathiel's
(step) brother, to take his widow and raise up seed through her who would not
therefore be of Salathiel's blood line but would be
constituted legally as Salathiel's son through whom
the title would pass to his descendants. The son of this Levirate union was Zerubbabel.
In
Matthew 1:12 and Luke 3:27 Zerubbabel is listed
legally as Salathiel's son: but in 1 Chronicles 3:19
he is listed as the son of Pedaiah by actual blood
relationship.
In
the terms of biblical reckoning these two statements are in no sense
contradictory. We might wish to be more precise by substituting such extended
terms of relationship as son-in-law, stepson, and so forth. But Scripture makes
its own rules. It is consistent with itself and does not change to suit our
opinions.
We
thus have a remarkable chain of events. Jehoiakim has
a son, Jechonias, who has a son, Salathiel,
who by God’s Law has a son named Zerubbabel. This
son, Zerubbabel, has no blood line connection
whatever with Jechonias, for he has no blood
relationship with Salathiel. The blood relationship
of Zerubbabel is with Pedaiah, and through Pedaiah with Pedaiah's mother,
and through this mother with Neri. Thus Neri begat a grandson, Salathiel,
through his daughter; and Salathiel
"begets" a son, Zerubbabel, through Pedaiah.
The
bloodline thus passes through Zerubbabel: but so does
the title also. The former passes via Pedaiah's
mother, the latter passes through Salathiel's father.
And though this mother and this father were also man and wife, the bloodline
stopped with Salathiel who literally died childless.
It is necessary to emphasize this word literally, for it appears that it was
literally true.
Jeremiah
22:30 had predicted that Jechonias would also die
"childless"- but this was qualified by the connection with sitting on
David’s throne. None of this man’s children would inherit the throne. The
nearest he got was probably Zerubbabel, but he was
just a governor.
A
happy ending… Jechonias spent 37 years in prison, but
one day Evil-Merodach set him free, with a pension.
By now he was nearly sixty and probably regarded as a harmless old man (2Kings
25:27-30, Jer.52:31-34) Perhaps he was a humbler man by then, with stories to
tell to anyone who would listen, about the workings of God, and the justice God
meted out on the proud?
The virgin birth – in context.
God,
the true God, the Creator, is a miracle God. Even on the level of creation, as
we examine it through science, we are faced with marvels and wonders beyond our
ability to fully record or understand. On the supernatural level therefore,
while we are amazed at the ‘shadows’ of God, the material shapes he has made,
we understand that there is a higher and deeper level, the spiritual, behind
all material things, and in which even these things are small by comparison.
All people should be filled with awe all the time simply by the sheer wonder of
creation! Words like "immortal, eternal, infinite, and incomprehendible"
spring to mind, when we come to the God who is behind creation. He is so big in
every way, we cannot find Him – which is why He has
done some small things, to help us on our way towards His glory. He wants to be
found. He wants us to recognise Him. Yet even on the
small scale our ability to comprehend Him is challenged. Atoms, molecules,
light, gravity and so on, all contain deep mysteries
which point towards Him, but never fully reveal Him.
The
virgin birth sits in amongst the miraculous, which to God is ‘normal’ and not
miracle. It is not difficult to accept the virgin birth, when we place it
within the context of the creation of the universe, of Adam and Eve, of the
making of all living things, of Jesus and His ministry of healing miracles, His
stilling of a storm, raising the dead, walking on the sea, and so on. He who
can feed 5000 people with a small lunch can easily come into this world by way
of a virgin. He who can rise from the dead, and surely be
conceived within the living.
The
virgin birth is also fixed securely within the framework of history. It is not
written in the Bible as some myth. It is connected to people, places, and
times, customs and a certain political situation. The virgin birth was recorded
by eyewitnesses, and written by Matthew, who followed Jesus about and saw the
miracles, and by Luke, a doctor, and by Mary.
Even
the enemies of Jesus had to acknowledge the unusual way He had come into the
world. Hear the venom in this statement:
"Then
said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we
have one Father, even God." (John 8:41)
Why
did they accuse Jesus of being born of fornication? Because
they would not accept the fact that He had been born of a virgin. Just
like many people today, they accused Jesus of being just a normal, biological
child, through either Joseph, or some Roman (an allegation made today by some
unbelievers)
A biological impossibility?
A
common objection, and quite reasonable too, if you discount the fact that God
moves easily in the miraculous, is that Jesus could not have come from a
virgin. Science has shown that the chromosomes don’t work that way, and DNA
needs the correct code, but 2000 years ago the people of the time knew enough
biology to know that Jesus was born by a miracle.
This
is what C.S.Lewis had to say:
"A
common objection to the virgin birth is that it is a biological impossibility,
acceptable only because of people's ignorance of these things. C. S. Lewis made
some pertinent observations on this view:
"Thus
you will hear people say, "The early Christians believed that Christ was
the son of a virgin, but we know that this is a scientific impossibility."
Such people seem to have an idea that belief in miracles arose at a period when
men were so ignorant of the course of nature that they did not perceive a
miracle to be contrary to it.
"A
moment's thought shows this to be foolish, with the story of the virgin birth
as a particularly striking example. When Joseph discovered that his fiancee was going to have a baby, he naturally decided to
repudiate her. Why? Because he knew just as well as any modern gynecologist that in the ordinary course of nature women do not have
babies unless they have lain with men."
The Virgin birth and mythology.
Another
criticism aimed at the virgin birth is that the writers of the gospels
‘piggy-backed’ on ancient stories and myths. Many deities among the Greeks,
Babylonians and Egyptians claimed, or were claimed to have had, unusual entries
into the world, but for the most part the accounts are filled with obvious
mythological elements which are totally absent from the Gospel narratives.
There are reports of a god or goddess being born into the world by sexual
relations between some heavenly being and an earthly woman, or by some adululterous afair among the gods
and goddesses.
Satan
is always trying to discredit or defame or destroy the Word of God, so it
should not surprise us to find various weird and strange stories from mythology
which sound slightly similar to the gospel story. The notable thing about these
stories from mythology and the gospel record is the contrast. The gospel record
is plain, simple and unadorned with any mythological decoration. It stands out
as honest.
The gospel writers deliberately tried to fulfil
prophecy.
This
criticism sounds reasonable too, until you examine it. The theory goes like
this. The gospel writers already believed Jesus was the Messiah, so they deliberately
looked in the Old Testament to find various predictions which matched Him. It
is possible to do the same thing with varous other
people, such as Kennedy, Martin Luther and others. If a prophet said the Messaiah would be a good man, quite a few men could claim
to be Him. Narrow that down to a man who was born in
Another
criticism suggests that Jesus knew the predictions, so He deliberately tried to
fulfil them. This would also be quite impossible,
because he could not decide to be born in
Islam
and the virgin birth
Most
cults, and false religions have a view on the virgin
birth, which is what we should expect, given that religions and cults are
attempts by sinful Man and rebellious Satan to distort and degrade the Word of
God. When we come to Islam we find that they believe Jesus was sinless, and a
prophet, but they denigrate him to a place lower than the man Muhammed. Surah 3:45-47 in the
Koran speaks of the virgin birth of Christ, but makes the distinction that it
is not the same sort of virgin birth as written in the Bible. Jesus is said to
be NOT the only begotten Son of God, and an angel, not God the Holy Spirit, is
said to have been the agent involved in the conception. The Koran says it is
repugnant that Allah should have a son (Surah 4:171)
So much for the Koran. It suits the religious, but it denies the truth –
and flies in the face of logic. If we follow the Koran we see that Jesus was
the product of an angel – a created being – and a human – another created
being. This raises some incredible difficulties. How could Jesus pay the price
for our sins if he was created? An animal could not do this, and Jesus, as a
created being, was no better than an animal. It was God who gave the Law, and
God alone must redeem us from the curse of the Law. If Jesus was a created
being, just a very good man, He could not atone for the world’s sin.
Edgar Cayce and others like him.
Another
example of spiritual counterfeit and misleading lies comes from Edgar Cayce,
who started the Association of Research and Enlightenment. He and his
followers, like all typical spiritualists, believe just about anything,
provided it isn’t written in the Bible. They also take pains to say things
which contradict the Bible. Thigs such as:
God
is a Father-Mother God.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, was virgin-born like her Son.
God
does not know the future.
Salvation
is something man does on his own. It is not a work of God alone.
Reincarnation
occurs in many human beings.
Jesus
was tutored in prophecy on
Jesus
grew up in
Luke
did not write the Acts of the Apostles as traditionally believed by the Church.
The true author was Cayce himself in a previous life as Lucius,
Bishop of Laodicea.
Biblical views by Cayce and others like him
Although
the A.R.E. claims to be a study group and not a religion, the readings made by
Cayce comment on God and consequently should be evaluated in the light of God's
revealed Word, the Bible.
First
and foremost, Edgar Cayce is a false prophet according to biblical standards.
He predicted many things which did not come to pass. Deuteronomy 18:21,22 applies here as well as with Jeane
Dixon.
When
Cayce said God does not know the future, he clearly contradicted Scripture. In
stark contrast to Cayce, the God of the Bible does know the future, telling
mankind of events before they come to pass. For example, God Himself says:
"I
declared the former things long ago and they went forth from my mouth, and I
proclaimed them. Suddenly I acted, and they came to pass.... Therefore I
declared them to you long ago; before they took place I proclaimed them to you,
lest you should say, my idol has done them and my graven image and my molten
image have commanded them (Isaiah 48:3,5, NASB).
Through
His prophets, the God of the Bible revealed many things in detail before they
came to pass. The predictions were specific and always accurate. Contrast that
to Cayce, whose predictions were vague and often inaccurate.
Cayce
and his followers have a low view of the person and work of Jesus Christ.
One
Cayce devotee expressed it this way:
"For
almost 20 centuries the moral sense of the Western World has been blunted by a
theology which teaches the vicarious atonement of sin through Christ, the Son
of God.... All men and women are sons of God.... Christ's giving of his life
... is no unique event in history.... To build these two statements,
therefore—that Christ was the Son of God and that he died for man's
salvation—into a dogma, and then to make salvation depend upon believing that diogma, has been the great psychological crime, because it
places responsibility for redemption on something external to the self; it
makes salvation dependent on belief in the divinity of another person rather
than on self-transformation through belief in one’s own intrinsic
divinity."
Final thoughts
"One
thing may be definitely said, that every time people want to fly from this
miracle, a theology is at work, which has ceased to understand and honour the mystery as well, and has rather essayed to
conjure away the mystery of the unity of God and man in Jesus Christ, the
mystery of
God's
free grace. And on the other hand, where this mystery has been understood and
men have avoided any attempt at natural theology, because they had no need of
it, the miracle came to be thankfully and joyously recognized.
The
idea, which some critics put forward, that the virgin birth teach gradually
rose as the years went by, is completely false. Right from the start, the
Christians believe in it. There was no need to make it up anyway, because the
Lord Jesus had demonstrated His miracle power over three years, and then risen
from the dead. Many of the first Christians saw Him rise into heaven, many also saw the change in the followers of Jesus
after Pentecost, and the miracles that followed the apostles. They did not NEED
to have a virgin birth to bolster their faith.
In
speaking of the early church, Aristides says,
"Everything that we know
of the dogmatics of the early part of the second
century agrees with the
belief that at that period the virginity of Mary was a part of the
formu-
lated Christian belief."
Very
important in the history of the early church's belief in the Virgin Birth
is the testimony of its early fathers. In 110 AD Ignatius writes in his
Epistle to the Ephesians, "For our God Jesus Christ was . . . conceived in
the womb of Mary ... by the Holy Ghost." 52/18:2
"Now
the virginity of Mary, and he who was born of her . . . are the myster-
ies most spoken of throughout the
world, yet done in secret by God."
Ignatius
received his information from his teacher, John the Apostle.
"We
have further evidence," writes Clement S. Rodgers, "which shows that
the belief in Ignatius' time was no new one. For we know that the belief of
Christians
in the Virgin Birth was attacked by those outside. Cerinthus,
for
example, was the contemporary and opponent of
the Evangelist, meeting him in the public baths, cried out, 'Let us flee
lest the bath fall in while Cerinthus, the enemy of
the truth, is here.' He [Cerinthus] taught, Irenaeus tells us, that our Lord was born of Joseph and
Mary like other men." So even in John’s time there were mocking critics
who spoke disdainfully about the virgin birth.
Another
of the post-Apostolic writers, Aristides in 125 A.D.,
speaks of the
Virgin
Birth: "He is Himself Son of God on high, who was manifested of the
Holy
Spirit, came down from heaven, and being born of a Hebrew virgin took on His
flesh from the virgin ... He it is who was according to the flesh born of the
race of Hebrews, by the God bearing virgin Miriam."
Justin
Martyr in 150 A.D. gives ample evidence to the concept of Jesus' miraculous
birth. "Our Teacher Jesus Christ, who is the first-begotten of God the
Father, was not born as a result of sexual relations . . . the power of God
descending upon the virgin overshadowed her, and caused her, while still a
virgin, to conceive .... For, by God's power He was conceived by a virgin ...
in accordance with the will of God, Jesus Christ, His Son, has been born of the
Virgin Mary." (Apology 1:21-33; Dialogue with Trypho
the Jew)
The
first great Latin-speaking Christian was the converted lawyer Tertullian.
He
tells us that not only there was in his days (c. A.D. 200) a definite Chris-
tian creed on which all churches agree,
but he also tells us, its technical name was a tessera.
Now things only get technical names when they have been established for some
time. He quotes this creed four times. It includes the words 'ex virgine Maria' (of the Virgin Mary)."
The
Early Jewish reaction
As
should be expected, there are negative arguments concerning the Virgin
Birth
also. These were brought forth by the Jews. Our purpose here is to show that in
the very early days of the church there was outside controversy concerning the
birth of Jesus and that for this controversy to have originated, the church
must have been teaching Christ's miraculous birth.
Ethelbert
Stauffer (Jesus and His Story, Alfred A. Knopf, I960) says that,
"In
a genealogical table dating from before A.D. 70 Jesus is listed as 'the
bastard of a wedded wife.' Evidently the Evangelist Matthew was
familiar with such lists and was warring against them. Later rabbis bluntly
called Jesus the son of an adulteress. They also claimed to know the name of
the father – Panthera. Obviously, gossip and slander
was just as common in those days as it is today.
Finally,
we are left with a choice. We can either accept the Bible as a supernatural
book, divinely inspired, and true in every word, or we can reject it as Manmade
and full of mistakes. If we choose the latter, we are left with no sure truth
in the world, and only strongly-held opinions to cling to. We also have no way
of verifying any truth as being absolute, final, never-changing.
On
the other hand, we can believe the Bible, which is self-verifying, and
supported by hundreds of millions of testimonies, which all say that, insofar
as the new life in Jesus is concerned, not a word in the book has failed. We
can also look at the hundreds of accurate prophecies, which have never failed,
or we can examine the real world, creation, and see that in every case, the Bible
matches perfectly with the observed world.
We
have also the testimony of Jesus, who called himself the "only begotten
Son of God", which actually implies that God was His father, not Joseph.
Six times in the New Testament Jesus is referred to as the only-begotten of
God, and twice Jesus uses the expression about Himself. Note that He does not
claim to be simply one who is begotten of God, but the ONLY ONE EVER BORN who
was begotten that way. No other person has ever been born of a virgin, and the
claim of Jesus must, by implication, exclude Joseph.
Logically,
the only way God could die for humans was by becoming
a human as well. Logically, if Jesus had been born through Joseph, He would
have inherited a sinful nature. If Jesus had come as God, He could not die for
humans. If Jesus had been only human, He could not rise from the dead. The
virgin birth meets every difficulty and solves it perfectly. This is why the
wise believe what the Bible says, and the foolish deny it, to their own
destruction.
……………………………
To
write this essay I needed a lot of help.
First from a bunch of Bible-loving guys who actually derive
great joy from studying the Bible. Thanks for your Emails, comments, suggestions, help.
Books
consulted:
Evidence
that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell
A
Ready Defense by Josh McDowell
The
Combined Genealogies of Matthew and Luke by Arthur C. Custance
Why
a Virgin Birth by Chuck Missler
The
Virgin Birth by Thomas Boslooper
The
Virgin Birth of Christ by J.Gresham Machen
And
various other articles gleaned from the Internet and elsewhere.