How is it possible to be born from a virgin mother?

How is it possible to be born from a virgin mother? I have no idea. If anyone would tell me about it it would be nice. The more I find out, the better it might be

Artificial Insemination (crappy spelling sorry) basically put eggs already fertilised into the womb of a women who has never had sex.

How old are you

A picture is worth a thousand words... ET had his way with Mary, and she didn't remember squat...

[edit on 7-10-2004 by Gazrok]

Invitro fertilization could be a possibility. Anyhow, by definition, a female virgin is a woman that has not known man. Since God is not man, she could have remained a vigin, so to say, and concieved the Son of God.

Ahh..but according to the Book, Man was made in God's image, so it'd really just be semantics, wouldn't it? I guess you could say "infused her with the Holy Spirit" as it sounds better than banged her in the hay...but again..semantics... I'm curious as to the lack of accounts of her pregnancy before the birth, and the actual birth itself... Perhaps the baby was found, not birthed, by Mary and Joseph? So many possibilities....

Am I the only one that finds it odd that Mary and Joseph would have been on the road all that time, as husband and wife, camped each night with no tv, radio, etc. and they didn't get down a few times??? Please...who are they trying to kid? If for nothing else than sheer boredom...c'mon!!!

Originally posted by Intelearthling
Invitro fertilization could be a possibility. Anyhow, by definition, a female virgin is a woman that has not known man. Since God is not man, she could have remained a vigin, so to say, and concieved the Son of God.

If god is not man then why go to the trouble of having human birth.Couldn`t he have beamed him down in a great ray of light and made the baby appear in front of a few hundred people.That really would have made the whole son of god thing more believable.But thats the whole point of religion nothing is or has happened that would explain beyond doubt the excistance of a God.

Couldn`t he have beamed him down in a great ray of light and made the baby appear in front of a few hundred people.

You mean like this?

parthenogenesis [Gr.,=virgin birth], in biology, a form of reproduction in which the ovum develops into a new individual without fertilization. Natural parthenogenesis has been observed in many lower animals (it is characteristic of the rotifers), especially insects, e.g., the aphid. In many social insects, such as the honeybee and the ant, the unfertilized eggs give rise to the male drones and the fertilized eggs to the female workers and queens. The phenomenon of parthenogenesis was discovered in the 18th cent. by Charles Bonnet.

Parthenogenesis

Comment: Of course it is possible to be born from a virgin mother. The phenomenon of partheogenesis is how it happens, unfortunately no male births are possible unless perhaps as a hermaphrodite.

Spot on.

Crap now l have to write somemore or they gonna deduct 20 pts for one liners the *********.

EDITED-To give a third line...

[edit on 7-10-2004 by Gazrok]

the great chasm exixts between the shore of reason, and the shore of faith. that Mary was a virgin, having never had sex with a man, and became pregnant, not to her husband Joseph, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, thus pregnant with the child Jesus, the son of God, is quite a story, and if one is to believe such, one must have made the leap from shore to shore, from that of reason, to that of faith. it is a great leap indeed. those who know it in their heart to be true, cannot be convinced otherwise. those who choose not to believe, have made their choce. the question begs.....who are you to say there is no God? in any event, were Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,.....all those mentioned as believers in the bible, along with all the saints, all those men and women of God through the ages, were they all wrong? i say, if that is your belief, then so be it, but of one thing i am certain, God either is, or He is not, and each of us has the capacity to choose that which we believe.

Okay.. Im gonna take a stab here

OKay..

Joseph you see.. considered sex as a sin. He wouldn't do it

Ex Nay on the Sexay

So....

Mary.. Said screw this... I'm leaving town

Joseph fell asleep.. Mary slowly snuck out of the house, tripping over the cat and breaking the dishes.

Joseph yells "What in Gods name was that?"

Mary says "I'm just looking for my glasses.... Go back to sleep"

So he goes back to sleep.. And God was suspicious.

She heads on down to the bad part of town. Finds a young guy.. And leaves happy

A few months later she discovers she is pregnant.

Joseph is now really confused. He realizes that Mary doesnt wear glasses and wonders what she was doing that night. He asks.

Mary replies

"Okay... I was getting into the leftover dinner. I'm sorry. I know we agreed to eat that for lunch the next day but I was hungry."

Joseph then says "Well you're getting pretty big there... Marybe you should cut down on the midnight snacks"

Mary realized that she could not hide the fact forever... So she planned to kill Joseph.

The plan was about to go through until Joseph came back and said..."Do you think I was born yesterday?"

Mary says No.

Joseph says "okay."

Mary gives birth

Now Joseph is mad.

Joseph says "Mary....How did this happen? I think I would have noticed if you ... you know, unless I was sleeping really hard"

Mary then says "I dont know... It must be a gift from god. This is gods child."

The End

Hey Atheix:

�Parthenogenesis� (virgin birth) may work in female turkeys in a Lab, but it does not work with female humans outside of glass testubes in the 1st century AD---no matter how �over-willing Christians are to accept the miraculous� (Josephus, Testimonium Flavium)�

I suspect we are dealing here with a much more MUNDANE issue: that of illicit birth (or even a pre-mature birth) possibly as the result of RAPE�---and the Midrashic covering up of something �embarrassing� for the church�

There are some hidden clues (previously discussed on other threads) buried deep within the text of the NT that all was not quite so cozy with the family of R. Yehoshua bar Yosef (�Jeeeeezzzuzzz�) : �Woman! What have I to do with thee ?� = what a way to talk to your mother at a Wedding! (John chapter 3).

One of these �embarrassing clues� occurs in the Gospel of John (again!) with �Iesous� having a confrontation with some group (Saduccees or Pharisees?, it is not specified but they seem to be making shall we say hints about �Iesous� parentage somewhere in here: see John 8:39-42)

The conversation is clearly not a literal event, but a combination of theological discussion heavily edited and made into a literary poem of sorts, but buried deep within the gist of the conversation is the odd phrase:

�WE were not born of Fornication: WE (emphatic in Greel HUMEIS) have one father !.� to which someone wrote in the margin (apparently) �even God� which is by the way quite out of the context of the Greek---since the discussion was about the descendants of Abraham, not God.

The Johanine context suggests a definite sneer is being made here, even behind all of the 4th Gospels smooth and symbolic Greek words�..

Certainly this WAS the LATER charge (i.e. being a Mamzer) of the middle 1st Century Judaean establishment at odds with the Daviddic Messianists (the sons of Zadok in the Temple were dancing very gently with Rome to stay in power) who found every shred of evidence available to deride whom they considered �the false prophet whom the Most High put to death by having him hung on a cross for leading Israel astray�and for sorcery�.

The question of the day is:

Were the Pharasim (or whatever group is meant) casting aspersions about Iesous� parentage PERSONALLY

(i.e. meaning: YOU were born of Fornication, a Mamzer---and do you DARE teach US?) or were they merely saying something racially i.e. more general

e.g. �You people up North in Galilee are nothing but a bunch of mixed breed bastards---at least WE (emphatic) have a genetic link to Abraham, but only God knows where YOU people up north come from---you bunch of mixed half breed spawn of Greeks and Sammaritans!!� etc.

Certainly, even if his �accusers� were hurling a specifically �personal� insult at �Jesus�, Jesus� himself hurls back a more or less class-oriented �collective insult� at the priesthood in general, claiming that the lot of them were �sons of your father the Devil��

But what are we to make of these slanderous accusations?

Was the man truly illegitimate as the Talmud would later suggest, the offspring of a young muscle-bound Roman Soldier named Joseph Ben Pantera, who was posted mainly in nearby Syria according to a recent inscription?

(Or is the Talmud actually speaking of another �Yeshu�, since there were many �false� Messiah�s running around at the time in the 1st century organizing armed seditionist revolts against Rome�usually ending up on a gibbet eventually)

Another curious fact that some have put forward---if the possibility that �Iesous� may have been illegitimate is assumed for a moment---is that throughout the gospel narratives, he seemed rather too �fixated� on a �Father Figure� image---and Freud was also fond of pointing this out, since according to Freud�s logic, �Jesus may have had no biological father� to call his own and so used the word ABBA to pray (lit. �Daddy!�) as a �father-substitute��

The more you dig into the gospels, the worse it gets�.

In �Matthew's� warped and contrary version of the lineage of the Messiah (Christ) �Iesous� was listed as having been descended from a list of several groups of �14� ancestors, most of them male---but---oddly--with 5 odd females mentioned along with the men�very strange in a 1st century Jewish geneaology which were always PATRILINEAL (names listed through the fathers� line not the mothers�)�

The issue is highly curious to some who have studied this text closely, because (if you read the Greek text very carefully) ALL FIVE OF THE WOMEN MENTIONED IN MATTHEW�S GOSPEL HAVE ISSUES OF SEXUAL PROMISCUITY CONNECTED WITH THEM �..!

The five women included were: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bath-sheba, and Mary.

l. Tamar: Genesis 38:6-30

Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Judah. A childless widow, she was given to her brother-in-law after her husband's death. Such a union was later called a Leverite marriage (Deut 25:5-6).

Tamar's brother-in-law refused to have proper intercourse with her and for this �Elohim killed him�. Judah would not give Tamar to any of his other sons soTamar disguised herself as a harlot and seduced Judah, became pregnant with his son Perez.

Rachab: Joshua 2:1-24

Rahab (whom Matthew spells RACHAB for some reason) was a �prostitute� who lived in Jericho. She hid the spies of Joshua. Because of this, the Israelites spared her life when they conquered Jericho. She later became the wife of Salmon, and the mother of Boaz.

Rahab's faith, despite her occupation as a professional whore, was later commended by the writer of Heb 11:30-31.

Ruth: Ruth 1:1-4:22

Ruth was a gentile Moabitess, an arch-enemy of Israel (�no Moabite shall ever enter into the Congregation of Israel, not even beyond the 10th generation, ever! . but had married a Judaean named Mahlon. .

Her mother-in-law, Naomi, lived in Moab, and the language used to describe their relationship bordered on what we would call �Lesbian�.

Ruth, the Moabitess, was later married to Boaz, one of Naomi's relatives.

The (Gentile) Moabetess Ruth later became the mother of Obed, the grandfather of David.

Bathsheba: 2 Samuel 11:1-27

Bathsheba was the Jebusite Princess Bath-Shebiti (�Daughter of the 7 gods of Jebus�) and wife of Uriah the Hittite (the Jebusites and Hititites were blood related and inter-married) , a soldier in the professional standing Hittite (i.e. foreign) army of David, who allegedly seduced her on a rooftop.

When David discovered Bathsheba was pregnant, sent Uriah back into battle, with orders that Uriah should be slain, so that David could marry Bathsheba who later became the mother of Solomon.

The fifth and last in the long line of promiscuous Females in the Genealogy is Mary, the very pregnant bride to be of Joseph, and mother of said �Jeezuz�.

One could make a case that even though there was sexual misconduct going on in all of these cases, eventually this women gave birth to heroes or famous men in some form, so it seems to be the point of the writer to suggest that even if Mary was pregnant, there is ample history to show that �God�s Plan of Salvation� can still be worked out�in other words, �he works in mysterious ways, and not to judge by appearances...�

As Professor C.K. Barrett used to ask us poor divinity students: �What exactly is the writer of Matthew trying to tell us?�

This also begs the Question:

If �Jesus� has no earthly father why do BOTH his genealogies trace their bloodlines through Joseph? Arguments in favour of �legal� genealogy fall on their face when the prophecies about the Messiah BEING OF THE SEED OF DAVID do not make any mention of legalisms.

The Question is: Did the Church make up the VIRGIN BIRTH story out of Isaiah 7:14 in order to cover up some of these inconsistencies and make a "physical negative" into a "spiritual positive" for the man they proclaimed as Messiah, such as they did with the way he died?

At any rate, the Hebrew word ALMAH in Isaiah 7:14 does NOT mean VIRGIN anyway:

(�Behold THAT WOMAN shall BECOME PREGNANT AND BEAR A SON AND YOU SHALL CALL HIS NAME �EL IS ON OUR SIDE� (Emmanuel) = which is a WAR CHANT.

It was a POETIC way of saying �in 9 months time, your enemies will be defeated..�

ALMAH merely means �a young woman of marriageable age.� Bethulah means �virgo intacta�, i.e. a virgin.

It was the Greek translation (the LXX Septuaginta) which chose the word PARTHENOS (�virgin� or �young girl�) which could be construed either way�it actually means young lady or young girl in Greek.

But the phrase in Isaiah 7:14 was NOT messianic originally. It only grew that way over time (read the Dead Sea Scrolls for a taste of what they did with certain passages in the Hebrew Bible!)

Why did both Matthew and Luke go to such obscene lengths to twist the meaning of Isaiah 7:14 into something more like the birth of a pagan god like Hercules or even Alexander the Great who was also thought to have been descended from the gods, and �partheno-theodikos� i.e. �a god born of a virgin�?

Wait�there�s more�!

Here's something more to think about ref: those pesky Matthean and Lukan Genealogies that "Don�t Quite Match Each Other�"

As most thinking �Christians� must know by now, the two �genealogies� of �Iesous� in the gospels of Matthew and Luke SIMPLY DO NOT MATCH each other very closely.

See Matthew 1:1-18 and Luke chapter 3:1-22

The author of Luke (whoever he was) wants to trace the ancestry of �Iesous� back to �Adam� (apparently to make him more Universal for his Gentile Audience) and names his paternal grandfather as Heli (or Eli).

Matthew�s version is only interested in tracing his �ancestry� in convoluted groups of 14 (the gemmatrial numerological code for the Messiah derived from the name in Hebrew for DVD or David = Daled = 4, Vav = 6, Daled = 4).

Moreover in order to make all those tidy little near groups of 14, the writer of �Matthew� has to eliminate at least four kings from his list (Matthew�s king lists lacks a King sitting on the Throne of Israel between BC 680 and BC 630), namely Kings Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, Jehoiakim, the last was cursed never to have any physical descendants to sit upon the throne of David: (see Jeremiah 36:30) !!


In the Matthean version, the paternal grandfather of �Iesous who is called Christos� is Yakkov (Jacob).

So which is it, is Joseph�s father Heli or Yakkov? And who cares anyway since �Iesous� was not even supposed to be related to him by blood anyway?

And no, these two contradictory genealogies are not one for Mary and one for Joseph either because any tracing back to David by bloodline would have to go through the male lineages.

Moreover to make all those tidy little near groups of 14, the writer of �Matthew� has to eliminate at least four kings from his list (Matthew�s king lists lacks a King sitting on the Throne of Israel between BC 680 and BC 630), namely Kings Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, Jehoiakim, the last was cursed never to have any physical descendants to sit upon the throne of David: (see Jeremiah 36:30)

So rather than turn to �Parthenogenesis� (miracle birth by a �Virgin�), one should rather perhaps see a possible rape-mamzer scenario where the 2nd century church, still smarting from Rabinnic accusations of Mamzerhood (among other things) of their hero �iesous� would have had to turn desperately to Old Testament verses to make up a MIDRASH on a VIRGIN BIRTH topic (ostensibly out of Isaiah 7:14) in order to cover up some of these inconsistencies, and somehow turn their Mamzer-Rabbi into a virgin birthed god the pagans could revere�and turn Mary into a goddess at the same time (cf: her later title as : Theodikos: �god-bearing�)---making the pair of them doubly attractive to the idol worshipping goyim�..

Interesting thoughts.

So, you in no way shape or form will consider the possibility of the Immaculate Conception?

(such a silly term, that. :lol

Originally posted by weirdo

If god is not man then why go to the trouble of having human birth.Couldn`t he have beamed him down in a great ray of light and made the baby appear in front of a few hundred people.That really would have made the whole son of god thing more believable.But thats the whole point of religion nothing is or has happened that would explain beyond doubt the excistance of a God.

I will quote a few passages from C.S Lewis as to why God landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.

"But supposing God became a man-suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person-then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; But God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God's dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all."

Believing in the virgin birth, which as we know is illogical, is a matter of faith. And our faith is a wonderful gift from God. Faith is the evidence of things unseen.



[edit on 7-10-2004 by rosebeforetime]

That Jesus was not the only child of Mary, that he did in fact have brothers and sisters; remember when Mary and Joseph lost him for days, and he could not be counted amongst his brothers?

The Virgin Mary... who said that the virgin part had to have been sexual? Was Mary naive? Innocent of the world? Could this be used instead of being a virgin in the sexual sense? Especially, if you consider that it was required that a man know his wife upon being married...

And granted, they may not have had turkey basters back then... but if you want to get rather... colorful, why not become pregnate by the dribble effect? It doesn't matter how the seman gets in, as long as it gets in.

I think I'm going to wash up now...

Or you could accept the most likely answer... she wasnt a virgin. Back in the biblical times, people thought that the man was the most important part of the reproductive process. The man created and delivered the semen, which they thought was the "seed" of life. The women was only a vessel for which to grow the "seed".
If it had been said in the bible that Joseph had done the impregnating, Jesus would have been thought of as his son, not god's. By saying that god impregnated a virgin, it casts away any doubt as to whether Jesus was divine. (i.e.- Whether he was god's kid, or just some poor carpenter's)
I'm not sure if I'm making any sense... lol

Have a look at the following ATS threads. The subject has been discussed in depth and you may get the answer you are looking for in one of them.

Virgin Births

Eve was older than Adam

Hey Groupies:

Check out Jane Schaberg's book THE ILLEGITIMACY OF JESUS (ISBN # 0-06-254-688-0) published by Harper & Row, San Francisco (1987).

Jane takes a lot of time delving into the texts of the so-called Infancy Narratives (Matthew and Luke--which stories DON"T MATCH by the way) and sees clues everywhere that the Church tried to cover up the MAMZER ("bastard") status of "Iesous" in several curious ways, one of last methods being a Virgin Birth concept sometime in the 2nd century (i.e. after AD 100) which reflected a desire to incorporate "post Destruction Jerusalem Christianity" with the much larger pagan gentile world of the Roman Empire---whose emperors even were born of Virgins (so they could be regarded as gods, like Alexander the Great did 400 years earlier)...

The book offers a lot of tantalising insight into the background of the virgin Birth stories, and discusses in quite a lot of detail the "stigma of bastardy" in Roman Occupied Judaea (BC 63 to AD 138)---a very common situation in those days "of brutal military occupation" by Rome where rapes of the local indigenous population were fairly common occurences...