-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
So Why A Virgin?
- Thread starter Skwim
- Start date
Skwim
Veteran Member
But nowhere in the Bible is this virginity ever established. It is simply claimed. And why? So as to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy I suspect. A matter of need fulfilling need. Need the Divine Son of God to be born of a virgin, then that's what his mother needs to be. Hence "Mary was a virgin." Doesn't mean she necessarily was a virgin, only that it's believed she was. Of course, if her virginity isn't predicated on the need to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy then I see no reason to insist she was; god certainly being capable of impregnating a non-virgin just as easily as a virgin.
.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Doesn't matter what you choose to take as the correct translation. The fact remains that Bibles and preachers today are teaching that the truth of the matter is that Mary was a virgin, with all the connotations of the word. That Mary fit the definition of a virgin: "a person who has never had sexual intercourse."
.
.
RedDragon94
Love everyone, meditate often
No she isn't, she didn't sin.
That's not what happened.
I'm about to say something very unenlightened to you.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Best answer yet.
Establishment through need rather than being a matter of fact..
Not sure me mum was a virgin; so doubt it... Yet the idea of an avatar being misunderstood by religious people does happen.
In my opinion.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Yes, Joseph adopting Jesus is a similitude of being sons by adoption, heirs to the promise by adoption.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
If Mary didn't sin, then there's then two contradictory standards for the same laws in regards to marriage and children out of wedlock. I guess you could say Mary had "connections" to get her out of the rap Scott free.
As far as the last part, that was very Howard Stern-ish, tasteless John Waters type dry humor. I guess I deserve any unlightened response that can be thrown at me. My defense?
"The devil made me do it". *Grin*
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
But wasn't the messiahship supposed to be strictly from the davidic bloodline, and not from any type of adoption?
He was from the tribe of Judah by adoption, so it fullfills the prophecy and also shows that the bloodline is irrelevant. So even Gentiles are heirs to the promise and children of Abraham even though they are not of that bloodlilne.
Ephesians 3:6 This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.
Galations 3:29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Then there has to be something wrong with it because "God's Own chosen people" the Jews, don't recognize Jesus. There's a conflict between Christianity and Judaic qualifications for messiahship. There's been a few threads made on the subject in the past about it.
Horus
Very little in the Bible is, especially the NT.
In fact, lots of things one would think easily established are not. For example, a solar event and earthquake sufficiently powerful to damage the Temple, coming together, on the day before Passover, within a timeframe of a few years, while Judea is struggling to throw off a pagan occupation,
would seem like an event that even people who didn't know about Jesus would be thunderstruck by and talk about for years afterwards! But nobody besides a Gospel writer seems to have noticed and recorded it.
Tom
See whether the Jews recognize it does not matter to God. And many Jews did recognize Jesus.
The closest the Bible comes to establishing the virginity of Mary is in Luke 1. The angel has told Mary that she will conceive and bear a child. Mary responds in Luke 1:34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
The Infancy Gospel of James, a non-canonical 2nd century work, has Mary be a virgin before, during and after the birth of Jesus, the delivery being miraculous. This is verified by post-natal inspection. That this work got written making this point so forcibly suggests that there was much debate on the matter in those days.
IMO Matthew wrote about Mary being a virgin not to fulfill a prophecy but to make the title of ‘Son of God’ as literal as possible, maximizing the status of Jesus. The handy passage in Isaiah was employed to lend credence to the notion. The fact that this passage does not work that well for Matthew’s purpose and only works at all in Greek does not really matter if it is part of an awesome story. Who of Matthew’s readers would have known Isaiah well enough to quarrel?
Skwim
Veteran Member
Paul appears to say that as Saul he persecuted those who followed Jesus. You may also be aware of the >Gabriel's Vision stone<, which dates to the later 1st century BCE and at one point refers to an angelic leader who will die and rise again after three days. This may indicate the existence of a cult within Judaism with similarities to Christianity earlier than the traditional dates, and if that were correct, perhaps protoChristianity itself. It would also make the figure of the historical Jesus more elusive and perhaps more allusive.
My reading supports dating Paul's letters to the 50s. But the fact and date of the Crucifixion depend on the existence of a real Jesus. I think there's no clincher either way to that question. And whether there was a real Jesus or not, the earliest we meet Jesus in history is with Paul's letters, and Paul never met Jesus and has no clue about the earthly biography of Jesus ─ that he was a Jew, preached in Jerusalem, instituted the Last Supper (which in fact is a Greek borrowing) and was crucified and buried. Even after visiting 'James the brother of the Lord' and the Jerusalem Christians for a fortnight he has added not one biographical datum to his knowledge.
He also quotes what some scholars think is the earliest Christian document (if Gabriel's Vision is not): the 'kenosis hymn' in Philippians 2:5-11. It is (I read) written in poetic meter, and in verse 8 the phrase 'even death on a cross' appears to be a later gloss, since it breaks the meter. This raises the possibility that the crucifixion is a later part of the story, or that two stories are combined. And in verses 9-10 it says Jesus was not called Jesus ('Yeshua', old 'Yehoshua', the same name as Joshua, meaning 'Yahweh is salvation') until after his death.
There's only one biography of Jesus, that in Mark (about 75 CE). Imagine the wife of Mark's author comes home and finds her husband, pen in hand, staring at a blank sheet of paper. What are you doing? she says. I'm trying to write a biography of Jesus, but no one has any facts about him: I'm going nuts. She kisses him sweetly on the forehead and says, That's easy! Make a list of things that look like messianic prophecies in the Tanakh and have him perform them one after another. Then you can fit in the sayings on your other list! And he smiles widely and goes to get his Tanakh.
There may be some biographical clues to a real Jesus in there nonetheless. With only one exception, Jesus is sharply antagonistic to his family and to his mother every time she's mentioned (Mark 3:31, Mark 6:3, Mark 15:40, Matthew 10:35, Luke 11:27. John 2:3, contrast John 19:26). And it may be that Jesus was of puny build or had some visible disfigurement that would account for Luke 4:22 ('Physician, heal yourself'). Nor would the 'King of the Jews' sign as a piece of mockery work if Jesus had Arnie's build. But perhaps those elements are in the story because Isaiah 53:2 is taken as a prophecy for the messiah to fulfill.
As I said, I think it's a 50-50 chance: there may have been an historical Jesus or there may not have been; none is essential to account for what we know.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Tom[/QUOTE]
.
Think Luke or anyone else was around to record such an exchange? Of course not. In fact much of the supposed dialogue between people in the Bible is fabricated or at least rephrased so as to suit particular needs.
"Verified by post-natal inspection"? What the heck is that?
A status that would have been established by those virgin births mentioned in the legends of previous gods---which was noted by Evangelicalhumanistin post 17.)
In other words, that the OT prophecy doesn't really apply to Jesus doesn't matter as long as it's believed.
.
Grandliseur
Well-Known Member
We had the prophecies which had to come true, and if a married woman had a child how big a deal would this be to anyone! If Joseph had married her, and, afterwards, she had been made to bear this child in a miraculous manner, how could Joseph know this child wasn't his doing?! I am not the only one who don't seem to make sense.
Naturally, unbelievers take her for a loose woman. That is also their choice. As long as things can be done this way it is just a problem of being a believer or unbeliever.
Thus, for the sake of prophecies and for the sake of believers, for the sake of all things proper, he used a virgin to get this done. Not believing it is your prerogative.
That is where we have what is recorded for us who believe. In this we see another miracle from God, and later on, his son gave us healings and resurrections witnesses by hundreds of whom we have this record for us.