Is the Story of the Virgin Birth a Historical Fraud?

Of all the traditional doctrines of Christianity, none elicits quite as much eye-rolling scorn from "the cultured despisers of religion" (as Schleiermacher put it) as the story of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. This is not surprising; to the crude and disenchanted minds of modern skeptics, anything that calls upon the supernatural is a target for derision--and even more so a supernatural act that turns the messiest, most carnal of human experiences (conception and birth) into something unutterably holy. A Christian can easily (and rightly) reply that with God, all things are possible. But to many doubters, the virgin birth smacks too much of the kind of religious fabulism that was common all across the ancient Mediterranean world. Why, then, should Christians believe the Gospels' story of the virgin birth? 

I recently preached on the prophecy of the virgin birth found in Isaiah 7:14. There I noted that the Hebrew word used, 'almah, was not a word that specifically meant "virgin" in the same way that our word does. Rather, it means "young woman," used of a woman of marriageable age until the birth of her first child. There is another word for an unbetrothed young woman, still in her father's care, which one might more readily go for if "virgin" is specifically what was meant. For this reason, some skeptics suggest that the Isaiah 7 passage was simply meant to refer to a contemporaneous event--the birth of a baby into either Isaiah's family or the royal household in Isaiah's time--but that it held no import for a future messianic figure. The problem with that, however, is that the text clearly implies something stunning is about to happen--indeed, something miraculous, which the birth of an ordinary baby would not fulfill. Further, the candidates often proposed (Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz? Hezekiah?) simply do not match all of the data in the text (the former does not appear to be the first child of its mother, and according to biblical chronologies, the latter would have already been born). Even more, the overriding context of the prophecy, as the prophetic hinge on which the whole section of Isaiah 7-12 turns, suggests a future Messianic connection--Isaiah 9 and 11 especially so.

So why did Isaiah use this particular Hebrew word, if a virgin birth was in view? Importantly, there is no single specific word for "virgin" in ancient Hebrew to call upon, merely the two terms applied to young women of marriageable age--and when one considers this, and Mary as a possible referent, then it immediately becomes clear that 'almah was the correct choice: Mary was betrothed and no longer under her father's care, so she could not have fallen under the semantic range of the other word; and further, in a case like hers, virginity would absolutely have been assumed. The word 'almah itself might lean ever so slightly in this direction, etymologically appearing to refer to a marriageable woman who is somehow "hidden" or "enclosed." All of this is worth knowing, but it still doesn't make for an open-and-shut case that Isaiah 7 makes reference to Jesus and Mary. The Christian argument is bolstered, however, by the fact that the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, the Septuagint (LXX), translates 'almah as parthenos--that is, virgin (at the very least, it leans much more heavily toward that part of the semantic range). This means that two centuries before Christ, the best Jewish textual scholars were interpreting Isaiah 7 as indicating a miraculous, virgin birth. (There's even a charming apocryphal story from later tradition--likely untrue, to be sure--which says that Simeon, of Luke 2 fame, was one of the LXX translators, who was told by an angel that he would remain alive until he saw Isaiah 7 come to pass--which would make him something like a quarter of a millennium old in the Gospel, and which gives some added poignancy, and even a little humor, to his great "Nunc Dimittis" canticle.)

Anyway, after my sermon, I encountered a question relayed from a skeptical family member of one of my parishioners. They enumerated several reasons why a skeptic might legitimately think that the virgin birth story in the Gospels was an early Christian fraud, dreamed up because the Gospel-writers thought (maybe erroneously, thanks to the LXX translation) that the Messiah had to be born of a virgin. Why doesn't Paul mention it? Why isn't it prophesied in other places in the OT? Why do only two of the four Gospels mention it? This got me thinking about the solid textual and historical reasons that Christians have for believing this wild and beautiful story, so I wrote out a few notes in response, which might prove helpful to others, too.

While in strict historical terms, one cannot definitively rule out a possible interpretation of the virgin birth tradition as being an invention of early Christians in response to a misunderstanding of Isaiah 7:14, there are several quite good reasons for thinking otherwise:

 Old Testament foreshadowings: While only explicitly prophesied in Isaiah 7, there are several other possible allusions to the virgin birth throughout the Old Testament.

-   These begin as early as Genesis 3, in the “curse” narrative, where the prophesied “seed” who will crush the serpent’s head is said to be the seed of the woman. This is extremely unusual language; in almost every parallel construction referring to biological descent, reference is made to the seed of the man, not the woman (for cultural and, frankly, biological reasons—women didn’t have “seed”). To have the Messianic figure identified as the seed of the woman implies that the identity of his mother and the nature of his birth—presumably lacking a biologically male father-figure—will be exceptional.

-   In Jer. 31:22, as part of a longer section which refers to the coming of the new covenant, there is this intriguing line: “For the Lord has created something new on earth: a woman shall encompass a man.” [This is sometimes translated differently in modern versions, because the literal meaning of the Hebrew words makes almost no sense given the surrounding context (unless, that is, it’s a reference to the virgin birth), so some versions stretch the translation to try to make it fit other themes in Jeremiah.] The word for woman here is the term for the specifically biological/gynecological aspect of female identity, while the word for man is the word for a hero, a strong one, a mighty man. This appears to indicate, then, that in bringing forth his new covenant, God will do something new, something never before seen on earth, and that the miracle will center on a woman’s physical body encompassing (as in pregnancy) a mighty hero. If the virgin birth story is not true, then this is an exceptionally weird verse that makes little sense in its broader context; but if the virgin birth story is true, then it makes perfect sense and would seem to be a reference to that very event. Since this verse’s Messianic meaning is most clearly seen in the Hebrew, not in Greek translations like the Septuagint, the earliest Christians did not seize on this as a proof-text for the virgin birth; it went pretty much unnoticed until Jerome’s time in the early fifth century. This is important, because it means that here we have a plausible prophecy of the virgin birth that cannot be accused as having been a misunderstood passage that motivated early Christians to invent a virgin birth story for Jesus; rather, it stands as an independent witness to the plausibility of the traditional reading of Isaiah 7.

-   Other possible allusions to the virgin birth also exist: for example, the fact that Jesus’s progenitor David regularly uses references to his mother’s womb in his psalmic prophecies (rather than, as would be more culturally normal, references to his father’s house); and the Messianic “Servant” character in Isaiah 49 giving emphasis to divine action in fashioning him in the womb. None of these are definitive, of course, nor as clear as Isaiah 7, but there enough hints strung out throughout the OT canon that they give some support to the plausible reading of Isaiah 7 as pointing toward the virgin birth of Christ.

 Paul: While it’s true that Paul makes no direct reference to the virgin birth, to take this as evidence against the virgin birth is an argument from silence, so not particularly strong. An argument from silence is only compelling if there is silence where one would reasonably have expected something else. In Paul’s case, this is not so—Paul’s writings are not interested in providing a narrative of Jesus’s life—where they mention it, they focus only on the Lord’s Supper, the cross, and the resurrection (Paul also mention’s Jesus’s ancestral pedigree at least once, but there his main concern is about Jesus’s connection to the Davidic line). Paul’s silence would only be instructive if it came as part of a passage in which Paul was mentioning Jesus’s birth or his early life.

-   Many scholars think that Paul does make reference to it obliquely, even if not directly. In Gal. 4:4 he writes that Jesus was “born of a woman,” which would be a strange way of putting it in that culture unless he believed there was something exceptional with regard to Jesus’s parentage and birth.

-   Acts shows that Paul is also intimately acquainted with the evangelist Luke (and in a couple places he even quotes lines that match exactly with Luke’s Gospel), so given the prominence of Mary and the virgin birth in Luke’s writings it’s hard to imagine that Paul would somehow be unaware of that tradition.

-   Furthermore, the doctrine of the virgin birth is usually tied to a high Christology—i.e., seeing Jesus as divine. Some of Paul’s letters are usually counted as the earliest NT writings we have, and yet Paul’s Christology is remarkably high, which suggests that a high Christology was part of the early Christian movement from the beginning. The argument that Paul’s failure to mention the virgin birth says anything that would cast doubt on the traditional Christian view of Jesus is therefore highly questionable.

Gospels: Some skeptics will point out that the earliest Gospel, Mark, also has no narrative about the virgin birth (nor does John, which, although probably later, is the only “independent” Gospel account in the canon, while the other three lean on each other in various ways). Nevertheless, Mark seems to assume that knowledge on the part of the audience—in Mark 6:3, Jesus is called “the son of Mary,” which is a very unusual way of speaking of someone in that culture; reference would usually be made to the father. It’s also the only reference to Mary in Mark’s Gospel, which probably means that her place was so well-known in the early Christian community that no further comment was needed. And, like Paul, Mark seems to portray a higher Christology than one would expect if Jesus’s origin was merely human. John, for its part, has a wildly high Christology, and while it doesn’t reference the virgin birth directly, some take the verbal escalation in the conversation in John 8:41 as implying that the crowds had some questions about the legitimacy of Jesus’s parentage from Joseph (as one would expect if the virgin birth story were true), to say nothing of Jesus’s repeated insistence throughout the Gospel of John that he has come down from heaven and that God alone is his Father. Matthew and Luke, of course, form the main source material for the virgin birth narrative, and it’s worth pointing out that Luke tells us that some significant research went into the Gospel, and the content of chapters 1-2 suggests that one of Luke’s sources might very well have been Mary herself. All that to say, while the Gospels may not be as early as Paul’s earliest documents, they are still the earliest narratives of Christ’s life available, and all appear to testify to a unanimous conception in early Christianity that Jesus’s birth was miraculous and that he himself was divine.

Early Christian Unanimity: The other early Christian documents also appear to be unanimous in holding to the virgin birth narrative, which is not necessarily what one would expect if it were an invented story. If it had been invented, one would expect pushback from alternative traditions in the earliest sources, such as by James or Jude, who certainly would have been in a position to speak on the matter if an erroneous version of their own family’s history was being circulated. Yet James and Jude make no attempt to rebut the virgin birth narrative, nor even to cast doubt on Jesus’s identity in any way (an argument from silence, to be sure, but one where the silence may be telling). The immediate post-NT documents attest to this unanimity and deepen it, with specific references to Mary and the virgin birth in ways that affirm and expand upon the traditions in Matthew and Luke. This can be seen in the letters of Ignatius, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Odes of Solomon, the Protoevangelium of James, and the writings of Aristides, Melito, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus (all first- or second-century sources). To my knowledge, the earliest alternative narrative does not show up until the late second century, some hundred and fifty years after Christ, when the critic Celsus brings up a rumor that Jesus was fathered by a Roman soldier, Pantera. The lateness of that alternative theory, compared to the unanimity of the earlier Christian tradition, does not give it much of an air of credence. Further, the very fact that the alternative theory was a theory of illegitimacy, suggests that even the early skeptics accepted as common knowledge that there was something unusual about Jesus’s parentage. The first appearance of the more obvious alternative theory—that Jesus could have been Joseph’s biological son—comes into view just a few years later, when Irenaeus castigates the heretical Ebionites for holding that theory. (The Ebionites were a schismatic sect that appears to have broken away from the orthodox Jewish-Christian group known as Nazarenes; for their part, the Nazarenes are believed to have descended in continuity from the original Jerusalem church, and patristic writings show that they held a high Christology, including the virgin birth). All told, then, the evidence for compelling alternative theories of Jesus’s parentage in the earliest sources is severely lacking, and the unanimity of the traditional Christian reading is significant.

Evangeliad News!

Regular readers of my blog will have noticed that things have slowed down considerably for me here in recent months, so I thought I'd give a quick note of explanation for why that is, and what comes next.

- In addition to a new book on historical missiology coming out this December, my Evangeliad is now also on the road to publication! This is big news, because I never really knew for sure if my longstanding poetry project would ever be more than something I did for my own joy (and the enjoyment of a select few blog-readers). Poetry books do not command a large market at all these days, so it's rare to find a publisher or literary agent who will even give such a thing a glance. But I'm happy to report that I'll be putting out the completed text next year through Resource Publications (an imprint of the major Christian publisher Wipf & Stock). This means that I'll be able to get it out less than a decade after I started, which at this point feels like a real win.

- For this blog, that means that my regular posts from the Evangeliad will cease for the time being. I'm planning, however, to bring back a regular cycle of articles dealing with various topics of interest in culture and theology. In my midweek Bible study at my church, I'll shortly be shifting over to soliciting questions from my parishioners on any matter they would like an answer on (probably starting in less than a month), and my intent is to answer worthwhile questions both here, in writing, as well as in the Bible study sessions themselves. Hopefully some good fruit will come of that. Even if no substantial questions are forthcoming, I have a few of my own that I'll be bringing out on the blog in the next few weeks: reflections on how to approach the culture of skepticism in some circles of New Testament studies (e.g., Bart Ehrman and his ilk), and an exploration of the hiddenness of God, especially with regard to the lived experience of Christians.

Anyway, that's what's coming. I've been told by some that perhaps I should switch over to one of the sleek new blogging venues like Substack ("blogging" is itself, I'm told, too old-school of a term), but I think I'll stick it out here in the pre-2010 corner of the Internet for awhile yet, if only because most of online life after that point has not been worth keeping up with. Besides, if readers come away with the sense that I'm some sort of Luddite dinosaur because I'm clinging to an antiquarian way of presenting my writing to the world, well...they'd probably be right, so there's no harm in properly representing myself. So for the faithful few that keep wandering over to this dusty old corner of cyberspace, keep the faith: at the very least, you'll still have randomly infrequent articles to look forward to. 

The Evangeliad (30:35-39)

(Click here for an introduction and previous installments of the Evangeliad)

Section 30:35-39 (corresponding to Luke 17:15-19)

The ten men, as one, obeyed this command--

They tuned and went back; they hurried; they ran;

Then as they hastened, the miracle came,

And no sign of leprosy on them remained.

And then amid all their joy, one man paused,

Turned back again, shouting glory to God;

He ran back to Jesus, fell on his face,

Filling the air with thanksgiving and praise.

This man, a Samaritan, lay there alone,

Prostrate in wonder on the pilgrimage road.

Jesus received the man's thanks and his praise,

But there remained more for the Savior to say:

"How many were healed--wasn't it ten?

And where are the other nine lepers, then?

They've kept my command, but this shows their thoughts

Are all for themselves, not the glory of God.

For none of the nine came back to give praise,

Nor to turn their hearts to gratitude's ways,

But only this one, a stranger to us,

Whose faith has rendered to God all his trust."

And Jesus said to the Samaritan man,

"Arise, my friend, give thanks once again,

For your faith has made you well; go your way."

And the man went off, still shouting his praise.

Update

 Just a quick update on a few things:

- My series of low-video-quality (but hopefully decent teaching quality!) studies on the Book of Revelation is complete. You can access it by clicking here.

- With several weeks of wonderful family vacations behind me, I'm currently in the midst of some book-related projects: my next work of historical missiology, Let the Earth Rejoice, will be coming out in December, so I'll be sharing some details about that in the coming months. I'm also in the process of finding publishers for a couple other projects, too, so keep me in your prayers as I discern whether the Lord has a place for those writings in a wider context.

- With the school year resuming, I'll be back to more of a regular schedule for my study and writing, so expect to see posts here with a bit more regularity.

The Evangeliad (30:31-34)

(Click here for an introduction and previous installments of the Evangeliad)

Section 30:31-34 (corresponding to John 5:1; Luke 17:11-14)

And now it had come to that time of year

When Jews in Jerusalem all should appear,

So out on the pilgrims' festival road

Did Jesus and all his followers go.

And as he was walking, making his way,

He came on ten lepers shouting his name.

These men stood far off, well back from the road,

Girded with grime and with tatters of clothes.

For they knew Jesus, had heard of his fame,

So when he was passing, they cried out his name:

'Jesus, our master, have mercy on us!'

And there Jesus' feet stood still in the dust.

He turned to the lepers, all ten of them there,

And gave the command for the blemished-made-fair,

The law to confirm one's leprosy cleansed:

'Go and show yourselves to the priests, my friends.'

How Jesus Explains One of the Weirdest Stories in the Old Testament

(Note: This is an original piece of biblical exposition. I've written and spoken about it on a couple of occasions, but never in a full article like this. It's an interpretation that has not been noted before in the history of Christian exposition so far as I can tell, but I believe it holds up. I'm working toward producing an article on this topic for a peer-reviewed theological journal, and I'll certainly post here if that happens.)

Tucked away in Genesis 15 is one of the strangest stories in the Bible—a bizarre theophany in which God appears to Abram as a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch, together making their way down a blood-soaked avenue between bisected animal corpses. This story is easy to overlook, both for its strangeness and for the fact that it falls between the Melchizedek story on the one hand, and the Hagar/Ishmael story on the other, and so is obscured by better-known arcs in the Abrahamic narrative. But this curiously unsettling story is actually something quite important—something that, if we had eyes to see, would unveil for us an enacted parable of the gospel itself. Its imagery, passing before Abram’s wondering eyes some two millennia before the Incarnation, portrays in visible form the very ideas that later Christians would call upon to articulate the mystery of Christ. The strange story of Abram’s covenant shows the gospel of Jesus Christ, painted in terms that would later find their echo in the great creed of Nicaea.

To careful readers of Scripture, the importance of Genesis 15 is plain to see. It ritually establishes the covenant between God and Abram, and it includes repetitions of the divine promises: to give Abram an heir and possession of the land of Canaan, as well as to redeem his descendants from their future bondage in Egypt.

Truth be told, some of the story’s strangeness finds easy explanation in our knowledge of the biblical world. While the rite which is portrayed seems both curious and macabre to modern readers, it is not unknown. God asks Abram to take one of each of the main kinds of sacrificial animals—bull, goat, and sheep (as well as some doves)—and to cut their bodies in two, arranging the bisected sections so that they are lined up on opposite sides of each other. This creates a blood-soaked pathway between the corpses.

To ancient readers of this passage, this would be a recognizable scene. We have evidence of a similar (though much later rite) described in Jeremiah 34:18-20, as well as contemporary attestations from elsewhere in the ancient Near East. This was the act of “cutting a covenant,” the solemn rite in which the two parties of a covenant would pledge themselves to the covenant stipulations. Each party to the covenant was to walk down the bloody pathway, with the implication being that if either party broke those stipulations, the penalty was the very one depicted by the outpoured blood at their feet.

This brings us back to Genesis 15, in which Abram has set up the scene of the covenant rite just as God requested it, and then—presumably waiting for God to show up so they could proceed with the ritual—Abram falls into a deep sleep, and a great darkness comes upon him. These are clues that the theophany is at hand: the deep sleep echoes Adam’s deep sleep as God was bringing forth Eve from his side, and the darkness foretells a similar darkness that enshrouds Mount Sinai when the presence of God is there. When the narrative of the ritual scene resumes, we come to the strangest part of all: “When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the pieces” (Gen. 15:17, ESV).

There are two unexpected and curious things about this. First, there’s the fact that Abram is not a party in the covenant rite. He does not walk the bloodied pathway. And second, the symbols themselves are bizarre: a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. What could this mean? Any good set of commentaries will tell you that the basic symbology of these items—both related to fire—show them to be a theophany. Fire is a frequent image of God’s presence throughout the biblical narratives, from the pillar of fire in Exodus to the tongues of flame at Pentecost. The fire pot and the torch are thus both meant to represent God.

The fact that there are two such symbols seems to indicate that God is taking the place of both parties in this covenant rite. Remember, it was supposed to be the two persons entering the covenant with one another who would pass between the animal corpses: in this case, God and Abram. But instead, it is God and God, even as Abram and his descendants are declared to be the heirs of the covenant promise. And here we come to the first wondrous insight, which thunders with the message of the gospel: by playing both roles, God is pledging to take upon himself the punishment for any transgression of the covenant. Should Abram or his heirs violate this covenant of promise in any way, it is not Abram on whom the penalty will descend, but it will fall on God himself, for he is one who walked the avenue of sacrifice in Abram’s place. The punishment that should have fallen on the rebellious covenant-heirs will fall instead on God. This is nothing less than the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Yet we still have to reckon with the specificity of the images involved. God could have appeared in a plainer and more obvious form—say, as two pillars of flame—but instead he chooses a smoking fire pot and a burning torch. Why? These are two common household objects, which everyone in the ancient world would recognize. The element of fire certainly binds the two together, but there is another aspect by which these images are related: the burning torch is drawn from the fire pot’s flame. The first image, that of the fire pot, is the central source of fire for an entire household, used for cooking and heat and always kept alive in a bed of glowing embers. Every other fire-bearing implement, in one way or another, draws its flame from there. The torch, then, shares the very same nature as the fire pot does—the flame itself—but it is customarily lit from the fire pot, and not the other way around.

What we have here, then, are two divine images, which share the exact same nature in all of its qualities, but one is the Begetter and the other is the Begotten. This is not only the way that the New Testament describes the relationship between the Father and the Son; it is also the way that the Nicene Creed articulates the divine nature of Christ: “Light from Light.” It is perhaps no accident that the very function of a torch was as a bearer of light, bringing the flame from the fire pot’s heart out into the darkness of a benighted world. The mystery of the Trinity, which we still speak forth in the words of Nicaea, written seventeen hundred years ago, was played out before the patriarch’s eyes all the way back in the pages of Genesis.

Come back once more to the story of Abram’s covenant, then. We not only have a double theophany, in which God himself takes Abram’s spot. We can now describe the scene in even greater detail: the person of the Godhead who takes Abram’s spot in the ritual is none other than the Son of God. Here God the Father and God the Son walk the covenant pathway together, pledging themselves forever to Abram and his heirs, and it is the Son, moving second through the pieces, who assigns the penalty to himself should any of the human parties fail. Jesus pledges to take the punishment that should have fallen on us. This is a passion-play of Calvary, acted out by God himself two thousand years before the fact. Is it a strange story? Certainly. But even in its strangeness, we catch clear-eyed glimpses of a stranger story still to come: that the eternal Son of God, the Light from the Father’s own Light, would bear the curse of our darkness so that we might inherit the promises of God.

The Evangeliad (30:26-30)

(Click here for an introduction and previous installments of the Evangeliad)

Section 30:26-20 (corresponding to Matt. 22:10-14)

So the servants go out, the banquet is set,

All those brought in, in the King's hall are met;

They've responded in joy to His gracious call,

Arrayed in obedience, one and all.

Except, as the King comes, He sees one man,

Who gives no regard to the wedding-feast plan;

That man is not wearing the feast's festive robes,

No garment to answer the grace of the host.

The King says to him, 'Friend, how came you here,

Without the robes in which my guests should appear?'

But the man is silent; he gives no response;

So the King tells his servants, 'Tie him in bonds.

Yes, bind up his hands and bind up his feet,

And then toss him right back out in the street--

Out in the darkness, where grief is profuse,

For the called are many, but the chosen are few.'"