The virgin birth
Posted by: The Presbyterian Outlook in Untagged on
Dec 14, 2010
Last week, we discussed Biblical inerrancy. In this season, what better question of Biblical inerrancy to examine in depth than the Bible’s account of the miraculous conception and birth of Jesus? Is it a pious legend, discredited by modern science? Was it a whopper designed to top the claims of pagan religions? Was it a lame attempt to cover up an embarrassing secret in a gullible age?
We can dismiss the chronologically bigoted claim that we are smarter or less gullible than the people of New Testament times. These folks were just as skeptical as we are about virgin births and resurrections. See how Origen in 250 A.D. points to parthenogenesis in nature as evidence for the credibility of Jesus’ birth without human father. In terms of modern science, he makes the virgin birth more believable than the resurrection.
Not every critical scholar rejects the historicity of the virgin birth. While he notes that the matter is beyond historical proof, John Meier argues in his book A Marginal Jew that this claim is not a “late legend” created at the end of the 1st century A.D. He proves that Celsus’ rumor about Jesus’ illegitimacy must be traced to Judaism outside Palestine, to no earlier than the mid-second century A.D., to people who were in no time or place to know the facts.
Larry Hurtado, professor of New Testament at the University of Edinburgh, concurs. He argues that the accounts in Matthew and Luke are clearly independent, and that the claim that Jesus was miraculously conceived must be earlier than either account (Lord Jesus Christ, p. 318).
Another critical scholar who outright defends the virgin birth as historically credible is C. E. B. Cranfield, author of the famous ICC commentary on Romans. In an article in the Scottish Journal of Theology 41 (1988): 177–89, after reviewing an impressive amount of exegetical evidence, Cranfield suggests that doubters of the virgin birth have allowed “an atheistic world view … to exercise a veto over their thinking.”
Eighty years ago, J. Gresham Machen critically examined the supposed pagan parallels to the virgin birth in his famous book The Virgin Birth of Christ. He shows that the Christian claim is far different from the claims of pagans, all of which involve physical intercourse, and only one of which (Zeus and Danaë) involves a virgin.
Machen asks, Could supposed pagan analogies, in the minds of first century Christians who thought that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, have ever produced the strange belief that Jesus was born without human father? Could “men who had a wholesome horror of the degraded mythology of the pagan world” have ever derived from the stories of divine lust for mortal women “the belief that Jesus was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Ghost?” Machen thinks this claim is “unlikely.”
What about the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14? Machen comments that although it is possible to read the virgin birth back into this passage after the Gospel account was already known and believed, “it never could have produced that story; and indeed the pre-Christian interpretation of prophecy was moving in an entirely different direction.”
(I would add that we can dismiss the claim that the Hebrew term ‘almah in Isaiah 7:14 really means “young woman.” The word, in both its masculine and feminine forms, emphasizes the subject’s youth and inexperience, such as when young David is called an ‘elem in 1 Samuel 17:56. Miriam is called an ‘almah in Exodus 2:8, and Proverbs 30:19 refers to the seduction of an ‘almah. The real issue is how a miraculous birth 700 years later could be a sign to Ahaz, which leads me to believe that the first fulfillment of this prediction was a natural one. Jesus’ birth is Isaiah 7:14 “on steroids.”)
Machen does not make the virgin birth an essential belief. He asks, “Who can tell exactly how much knowledge of the facts about Christ is necessary if a man is to have saving faith? None but God can tell.” In fact, Machen thinks the virgin birth will “hardly” be accepted when taken apart from the rest of Jesus’ story. But taken together with the rest, the virgin birth adds to, and receives from, the convincing quality of the rest of what the New Testament says about Jesus.
Machen asks, Is the Virgin Birth unnecessary? If so, he says, then so is the very existence of Jesus. We end up with a “Christ-less Christianity” (a term Machen borrows from Warfield) that is independent of events in the external world.
May we all take comfort and joy from the miraculous conception and birth of Jesus in this holy season.
TOM HOBSON of Belleville, Ill., a PC(USA) pastor for 27 years, has degrees from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (M.Div.) and Concordia Theological Seminary (Ph.D.).
We can dismiss the chronologically bigoted claim that we are smarter or less gullible than the people of New Testament times. These folks were just as skeptical as we are about virgin births and resurrections. See how Origen in 250 A.D. points to parthenogenesis in nature as evidence for the credibility of Jesus’ birth without human father. In terms of modern science, he makes the virgin birth more believable than the resurrection.
Not every critical scholar rejects the historicity of the virgin birth. While he notes that the matter is beyond historical proof, John Meier argues in his book A Marginal Jew that this claim is not a “late legend” created at the end of the 1st century A.D. He proves that Celsus’ rumor about Jesus’ illegitimacy must be traced to Judaism outside Palestine, to no earlier than the mid-second century A.D., to people who were in no time or place to know the facts.
Larry Hurtado, professor of New Testament at the University of Edinburgh, concurs. He argues that the accounts in Matthew and Luke are clearly independent, and that the claim that Jesus was miraculously conceived must be earlier than either account (Lord Jesus Christ, p. 318).
Another critical scholar who outright defends the virgin birth as historically credible is C. E. B. Cranfield, author of the famous ICC commentary on Romans. In an article in the Scottish Journal of Theology 41 (1988): 177–89, after reviewing an impressive amount of exegetical evidence, Cranfield suggests that doubters of the virgin birth have allowed “an atheistic world view … to exercise a veto over their thinking.”
Eighty years ago, J. Gresham Machen critically examined the supposed pagan parallels to the virgin birth in his famous book The Virgin Birth of Christ. He shows that the Christian claim is far different from the claims of pagans, all of which involve physical intercourse, and only one of which (Zeus and Danaë) involves a virgin.
Machen asks, Could supposed pagan analogies, in the minds of first century Christians who thought that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, have ever produced the strange belief that Jesus was born without human father? Could “men who had a wholesome horror of the degraded mythology of the pagan world” have ever derived from the stories of divine lust for mortal women “the belief that Jesus was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Ghost?” Machen thinks this claim is “unlikely.”
What about the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14? Machen comments that although it is possible to read the virgin birth back into this passage after the Gospel account was already known and believed, “it never could have produced that story; and indeed the pre-Christian interpretation of prophecy was moving in an entirely different direction.”
(I would add that we can dismiss the claim that the Hebrew term ‘almah in Isaiah 7:14 really means “young woman.” The word, in both its masculine and feminine forms, emphasizes the subject’s youth and inexperience, such as when young David is called an ‘elem in 1 Samuel 17:56. Miriam is called an ‘almah in Exodus 2:8, and Proverbs 30:19 refers to the seduction of an ‘almah. The real issue is how a miraculous birth 700 years later could be a sign to Ahaz, which leads me to believe that the first fulfillment of this prediction was a natural one. Jesus’ birth is Isaiah 7:14 “on steroids.”)
Machen does not make the virgin birth an essential belief. He asks, “Who can tell exactly how much knowledge of the facts about Christ is necessary if a man is to have saving faith? None but God can tell.” In fact, Machen thinks the virgin birth will “hardly” be accepted when taken apart from the rest of Jesus’ story. But taken together with the rest, the virgin birth adds to, and receives from, the convincing quality of the rest of what the New Testament says about Jesus.
Machen asks, Is the Virgin Birth unnecessary? If so, he says, then so is the very existence of Jesus. We end up with a “Christ-less Christianity” (a term Machen borrows from Warfield) that is independent of events in the external world.
May we all take comfort and joy from the miraculous conception and birth of Jesus in this holy season.
TOM HOBSON of Belleville, Ill., a PC(USA) pastor for 27 years, has degrees from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (M.Div.) and Concordia Theological Seminary (Ph.D.).
