Xtopher

Thanks, folks, great stuff.

You said "knob"...heh, hehe, heh

Ysabella

I'm new here and have only lurked a little, so sorry if I'm not being totally relevant here, but in Catholic doctrine, I think Mary was herself born "full of grace," without the Original Sin that every other human is supposed to carry. That's the big deal for them - Mary's conception, not Jesus's.

So if we're having a stoning at the gate, Mary is without sin, so she should cast the first stone!

Amos

Mary was the personification of "woman" that had not been created but was "taken from man" in Gen.2 Woman was therefore flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones. This makes her virgin and undefiled by the lesser serpent of the TOK and so the rebirth was incipient from God.

Opposite virgin birth must be a non-virgin birth or the word "virgin" would bear no significance. To know one is to understand the difference between the two.

Kosh

This all could have been avoided if she'd just
been willing to swallow....

CX

Hmmm... late in what respect? It's pretty well established that GMk dates to around 70 C.E., GMt between 80 and 90, GLk between 80 and 90 and GJn around 90 C.E. Earlier than that we have the Pauline corpus written between 50 and 67 or so. I know of no evidence for anything earlier than that though possibly "Q" if it existed could date to an earlier period. Also a passion narrative (Crossan's "Cross Gospel").

As far as derivative, well it is clear that GMt and GLk both use GMk and another source (to me anyway there is still some dispute over the 2 source hypothesis). Still there is a significant amount of unique material in each (what 4SH proponents call the "M" and "L" material). GJn clearly uses some different sources possibly including a semeia ("signs") source for the miracle stories AJn uses which he does not share with the synoptics.

The Pauline material appears to be original, a lot of it, as well as derivative from oral traditions. The reason I think the infancy narratives are late additions is because they are not mentioned by Paul or in GMk or any of the reliably early extra-canonical sources (even the "Infancy Gospels" don't have AMt and ALk's version). The tradition is alos not mentioned in the Church Father's until after the Gospels were clearly established and in circulation.

The problem with things like GThom and other Gnostic sources is a)The gnostics were extremely prolific in making up new traditional material out of whole cloth owing to their fundamental belief in ongoing revealed knowledge. I know of no gnostic source dated before the 2nd century. Most scholars conclude that GThom is 2nd century and not even especially early 2nd century (it's not mentioned nor quoted in Adversus Haeresus). An earlier dating for GThom is largely self-serving for those who want to shore up the argument for "Q".

ALk's rather enigmatic reference to the flight to egypt has always been a puzzle to me. Since he's the only attestation to the tradition it becomes less likely that it is historical or that it was a common tradition.

In any case, the bottom line is that the infancy narratives with the virgin birth in Bethlehem and the oriental Kings are clearly theological tractate. There is no reason to suppose that they are historical. A big argument against their historicity is the fact that when Jesus returns to his homwtown to preach, his family comes to see him because they think he is crazy. Now how in the space of 30 years or so could Mary have forgotten that her son was the son of God?

Quatermass

Maybe she disowned him when her free wine supply dried up?

Amen-Moses

Oops, I have to own up to a Doh! in one of my postings above, I should have said GMatt's link between JC and Egypt, my bad.

Amen-Moses

Metacrock

Meta => AT the time of the annunciation they were betrothed. They were not yet married, so it wasn't cool that she was pregnant.

All the other stuff is conjecture and based upon the inability to accept the V birth.

Metacrock

Meta => Questions CBX:

1) It is my understanding that Freasure and the The Golden Bough are pretty much rejected for a long time now. This being the case, what modern scholarship establishes all of these alleged virgin births in other cultures?

2) What influence would those source have upon Palestianian Jews?

3) Why count them as "virgin" since most of them just involve having sex with a God, which is not virginity but actually sex (I'm assuming here that Mary did not have sex with God since it doesn't say that, but just became with child, sort of a miracle of artificial insemination let's say).

CX

Well this is something that is overstated. The virgin birth in Xianity is an explicit holdover from Judaism. It's specific purpose is to tie into the Isaiah prophecy that AMt uses. Still its not unprecedented. Virigin birth stories are present in pre-Xian mythology (one of the perso-Iranian mystery cults as I recall claimed that Zoroaster was born of a virgin. Some texts say Krishna was born to a virgin. It's not an uncommon feature of early mythology)

As to your second question, well there is considerable evidence that early Judaism was strongly influenced by the interaction with different cultures during the various periods of captivity. I seems that some of the Judaic mythos is influenced by the Babylonians. There are some parallels from the Epic of Gilgamesh in later Judaic mythology which develop around the time of the Babylonian captivity. Many scholars believe that monotheism in Judaism was derived from external influences and point to the considerable tension in the Hebrew scriptures between YHVH and belief in other gods. Early Jewish literature does not say that there are no other gods only that they shouldn't be worshipped. By the time we get to Modern Xianity, the dogma is simply that there are no other gods at all.

As to question 3 there are numerous methods by which the gods impregnate humans in mythology. Not all of them involve having sex. One of the ancient Greek heros (may have been Perseus, but my Greek mythology is quite rusty so I'm not sure), was the product of Zeus and a mortal woman, but Zeus disguised himself as a mist and enveloped the woman, hardly the usual understanding of sex. PLus the Xian texts are unclear about the actual mechanism of Jesus conception. It is worded intentionally vaguely and delicately. even accepting that the virgin birth occured some physical means would still be required since the human body doesn't work without a Y chromosome and a)Ova don't have any Y chromosomes and b)Jesus is admittedly human even according to evangelicals. But all this is silly what-if games contingent on the virgin birth being historical which seems unlikely in the extremely.