andrewcriddle

I'm dubious whether Matthew should be regarded as part of Pauline Christianity.

Andrew Criddle

John A. Broussard

Except that virgin births are almost essential for divinity everywhere. If Matthew hadn't introduced the idea, someone else would have.

It's so important, in fact, that virgin birth may not even involve women, as in the case of Athena springing full-armed from Zeus' brow.

No! A major selling point for the divinity of Jesus was that he must be born of a virgin, even if meant bowdlerizing the Old Testament to support that belief.

Clivedurdle

My apologies johnny.

Been looking at other threads and what I saw as you making quite negative comments about yourself - turd - now make sense from where you are!

andrewcriddle

Pedantic Point

I'm not sure that bowdlerize is the right word here.

Andrew Criddle

Diogenes the Cynic

Mark definitely is, and Matthew is dependent on Mark. Matthew seems more Jewish in some ways but more anti-Jewish in other ways. Whatever Matthew is, it was written for Gentiles and was not a product any Jewish community and certainly does not represent any sort of Jewish Messianic or exegetic tradition.

judge

Really? hopefully it is Ok to be sceptical of sceptics at times.

How on earth do you know that no first century jewish believers heard of a virgin birth.

Isn't this just a faith position. I maen really isn't this assertion as bad a a fundamentalist assertion.

I will ask again the question that never gets answered here.
Just which first century jewish wrting that survived do you imagine should have preserved this?

Your position is pure speculation that you have transformed into a fact IMHO

John A. Broussard

On the contrary. Bowdlerize is very fitting. What would the ordinary person in Mary's day have thought about a woman becoming pregnant and acknowledging that her husband wasn't the father?

This is a delicate matter that certainly needed glossing over, even in retrospect.

Diogenes the Cynic

I say that because a.) it is a decidedly unJewish idea which directly contradicts Jewish expectations of the Messiah and b.) because it is not found in any Christian literature before Matthew. It's not in Paul or Thomas or Q or even in Mark. If the VB had any origin in Palestinian Jewish-Christianity or in the Jerusalem cult, we should be able to find it before Matthew.

I would also argue that the burden of proof is upon anyone who would want to assert that the VB existed before Matthew.

andrewcriddle

This does depend on whether or not Luke is independent of Matthew.

Andrew Criddle

Diogenes the Cynic

How so?