Comments on: Virgin Birth

By: danny [Visitor]

danny [Visitor] — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 22:00:16 +0000

Didn’t Matthew use Mark as a source? If Mark would use a pagan story
and Matthew would use Mark, then it doesn’t seem that mysterious.

I’ve never heard someone claim that because two versions of a story are
very different, then there must be a true story in back of them. There
probably was an older, less detailed story, just as many of Mark’s
stories are older and shorter. Then the authors of Matthew and Luke
came along and embellished like they did with so many other stories.

The Jewish-pagan-Jewish thing assumes that there’s one linear thread of
early Christian thought. That’s just not the case. They were spread
over an empire and the traditions were diverging in several directions.
Some writers were trying to make the story more Jewish, others were
pulling it toward the Gentile worldview.

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By: Honzo [Member]

Honzo [Member] — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 22:33:36 +0000

No one is claiming that Israel was in a bubble. What Wright is pointing
out is a couple of literary curiosities in the origin stories from both
Luke and Matthew. With Matthew’s audience being largely Jewish, and
considering his overt concern with showing that Jesus was a good Jew,
the best of all Jews as a matter of fact, it does not make sense that
Matthew would include a pagan origin story. One would expect that from
Mark, but not Matthew. Why would someone concerned with all matters
Jewish reinterpret an obscure Hebrew Bible story into realized prophecy
with a pagan bend? One of the most plausible answers is that it was
widely believed that he was born of virgin. The invention where none is
necessary is a clue to something actually happening.

Wright puts it this way:

The only conceivable parallels are pagan ones, and these
fiercely Jewish stories have certainly not been modeled on them. Luke
at least must have known that telling this story this story ran the
risk of making Jesus to be a pagan demigod. Why, for the sake of an
exalted metaphor, would they take this risk - unless they at least
believed them to be literally true?

The second thing is the presence of the virgin birth (a pagan concept,
see the writings of Virgil) in two conflicting stories. If there was a
common literary or oral source for this, one would expect the details
of the origin to be the same. That is an indicator of a common source.
Instead, the stories vary wildly. This suggests that the story is
rooted in something deeper than a common oral or literary source.
Things that are based in multiple sources are more likely to be
historical than something that only has one oral or literary source.

Wright puts it this way:

If the evangelists belived them to be true, when and by
whom were they invented, if by the time of Matthew and Luke two such
different, yet so completely compatible, stories were in circulation?
…We would have to suppose that, within the first fifty years of
Christianity, a double move took place: from an early very Jewish, high
Christology, to a sudden paganization, and back to a very Jewish
storytelling again.

Again, these are only evidence for something that cannot be proven or disproven historically.

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By: Danny [Visitor]

Danny [Visitor] — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 17:06:12 +0000

Israel wasn’t a bubble. I think it’s too much to assume that no
cultural influences were seeping into their religious life, as much as
they were prone to resist it. There are other elements of the Jesus
story that look similar to pagan ideas. And there are other ways that
early Christianity broke with Judaism, too.

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