avi

Jesus' birthday is about ten days away, and I was wondering if someone on this lovely forum can assist me, in trying to understand some puzzling quotes from the new testament?

I encountered the quotes while struggling to make sense of the argument in Earl Doherty's new book. His thesis is a tad over my head, ok, it is way over my head. As a consequence, I thought maybe I could find some solace by inquiring from so many cognoscenti here, how it is possible for David to be the supplier of sperm for Jesus? Yes, I understand that such a banal topic is just too simpleminded for most of you, but, a couple of folks on this forum have, at various times in the past, come to my rescue, and I hope this will be another such fortunate opportunity....Christmas spirit of giving and all....

So, here's my dilemma:

Here's the Latin Vulgate translation:
de Filio suo qui factus est ex semine David secundum carnem

Yes, the Greek uses “spermatos”, and the Latin: “semine”, i.e. in English, sperm and semen, respectively.

Now why would anyone need to write something so explicit about the conception of baby Jesus? Why bother describing “sperm” if the male DNA component was furnished by the “Holy Spirit”? What, are we to believe that, God goes around inseminating females with human sperm? Not only Human sperm, but “DAVID'S sperm”. So, there were two miracles, not one, associated with the conception of Jesus:

1. God obtained David's sperm—quite a neat trick, since David had been dead for several centuries....

2. God transferred the sperm of David, into Mary's uterus, bypassing her vagina.
Latin Vulgate:
at ubi venit plenitudo temporis misit Deus Filium suum factum ex muliere factum sub lege

King James Version:
But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,

Does this logic seem reasonable? God can retrieve sperm from a man dead many centuries, and then impregnate a 13 year old girl using this sperm, without however, passing through her vaginal orifice.

Why is such behavior considered “lawful”? It strikes me as shameful. Alternatively, does “made under the law” mean that Mary did engage in conventional sexual intercourse, following the appropriate Jewish taboos, vis a vis washing the genitalia before/after intercourse? Then, was that the long since dead David, who served as her male partner???

If God can produce such miracles, what need has he for the “fullness of time”, i.e. 9 months gestation time? Why not cause the birth to take place instantly, upon successful penetration of Mary's ovum by long dead David's sperm, i.e. joining the two haploid gametes to form a diploid zygote?

Merry Christmas,
avi

Toto

Briefly -

They didn't understand about sperm and ovum in the first century.

I think you will find that "seed of David" (as it is usually translated) refers to all descendants of David, not just those conceived with his sperm.

The fullness of time is not the 9 months gestation period - it refers to something more abstract, about the time when Jesus was born.

"Born [made] of woman" and "under the law" are most likely anti-Marcionite interpolations, with no real meaning.

But otherwise, you are right, this story doesn't hang together.

GakuseiDon

Paul also says that Christ is the "seed" (sperma) of Abraham (Gal 3:16). So he probably means that Christ is a descendant of David and a descendant of Abraham.

Paul also says that he himself is of the seed of Abraham in Romans 11:1: "I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, [of] the tribe of Benjamin."

Also, Paul says that Christ came from the Israelites, not referring to the the word "seed" in Romans 9:3:

"For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my *countrymen according to the flesh, 4 who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; 5 of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came"

To me, it suggests that Paul didn't have a virgin birth in mind.

avi

You may be absolutely correct, and I may well be wrong here, but, it is my primitive opinion, and I mean that sincerely-->for I have literally read nothing on this subject, that, at least Galen (130-210CE) understood that male sperm fertilized female ova. Having never read anything about this, I stand ready for ten lashes....

avi

avi

Thank you GDon, seems reasonable to me, but, then, is the imperative for a virgin birth coming from only the old testament, or is there something from one of the gospels describing the birth as miraculous, i.e. Jesus exiting Mary without passing through the vaginal orifice? Does the text of the new testament anywhere explicitly offer a witness, real or imaginary, to the birth?

avi

GakuseiDon

I like "Life of Brian"'s version:

"Excuse me, but are you a virgin?"
"How rude, mind your own business!"
"She is!"

A virgin birth isn't in Paul or Mark. My personal speculation: the major hurdle that the early Christians faced was to show that Jesus was the Messiah, and the only way they could prove it was via the Old Testament. You can get a sense of this checking from various passages, including one in Acts where Paul is preaching in synagogues and everyone was comparing what he says to what is in the Old Testament.

So, you start getting claims like:
"Jesus was born in Nazareth..."
"What! The Messiah was born in Nazareth???"
"Er, did I say Nazareth? I meant... Bethlehem!"

By the time Paul brings Jesus to the gentiles, his life would have been defined by passages in the Old Testament. But the gentiles have their own notions about what a god is, and this brings in another round of OT checking. Somehow this leads to the virgin birth story.

avi

Yes, that is the English version, and the English interpretation. My question is how did we get from here to there? In other words, I don't see any notion of "house of David" in the original Greek. I see David's sperm.

So, let me rephase the question: Did the Greek original imply "house of David", rather than David's own sperm, to the Koine Greeks of that era? Shouldn't we accept the literal meaning of the Greek, rather than imagine something not written? Are we to read between the lines, as the ancient Greeks did? Did they? I would have assumed, a priori, that on the contrary, they wrote precisely, and with detail sufficient to make all issues very clear....

Wasn't there a Greek comedian about 400 BCE or thereabouts, who wrote a play satirizing one of the tragedians? Euripides maybe, don't know....They must have had several centuries of practice writing sharp, witty, clear, precise discourses....Why assume that it was necessary to read between the lines?
avi

neilgodfrey

We do not accept the literal meaning for a couple of reasons: one, the same author in Romans clearly used metonymy (or is it synecdoche or whatever figure?) when he said Abraham is "our father".

If he clearly did not mean to say that Abraham is literally our father and since the sense is clearly figurative, why not make the same presumption of figurative speech when faced with something equally nonsensical literally, as in your seed question?

A second reason to default to the interpretation of figurative speech is that figurative speech is a human universal and probably just about as common as literal speech in theological discourses, so if we are faced with literal nonsense, then we are entitled to the figurative out.

Related to this question, maybe, is how to explain the two different tales about the birth of Jesus: in our gospels we read about Joseph being from the line of David, but in noncanonical sources (Justin Martyr, Protoevangelium of James) the stress is on Mary being of the family line from David. How to explain this difference?

Neil.

Chili

From my point of view Christmas has nothing to do with birthday's (or even presents) but it is the final mass and culmination of the daily masses in the Catholic calender year. It is wrong to think that Jesus was born because Christ was born in the mind of Joseph in his fullness of time and thus after he had reached the end of his world where time is no longer. This will be on the darkest night of the calendar year where it was as if the sun had stopped on the other side of his world now coming to an end . . . wherefore Christmas is also celebrated for 2 days or alternalty the one and only night on which morning did not follow as a foreshadow of the 7th day on which evening will not follow ever again. The male sperm is identified here as being Zecharia's contribution to the somatic cells of Joseph that contain the 'Alpha chromosomes' to which Joseph is reborn. This then would be the same as Davids sperm who's Alpha is preserved in that same lineage via the incarnation process wherein the woman here called Mary is the current retainer of that identity and is wherein we have sonship with God and potentially are God as Man.

So no uterus, no vagina and no creation takes place here or Eden would not be Eden or Eden by any other name. The sperm is real in the same way as the star of Bethlehem is real in the essense of life and the essence of light both preempted of human defilement as co-creator with God. This then is what renders Mary the sinless theotokos (not human) and virgin of virgins who is perpetual as such to say to that an impure rebirth is possible as well. In short, we need both the somatic cell of Joseph and the purity of Mary to generate the Imaculate Conception from which the god-man is born = John and never Jesus. Under the law means that the rebirth of Joseph was a direct result of his sinfullness that came about only through the law that was given to Moses towards the conviction of sin. They were writ upon stone to be deeply engrained into human heart where they serve as an anvil to convict the outer man of sin, and thus it was as sinner that Joseph reached his state of mind called Bethlehem where he gave an account of himself (no room at the Inn) when he was reborn and we call him Christ.

I believe that the above also explains the word begotten as being reborn that which we already are but are not fully aware of.

Merry Christmas,
Chili.

Edit to say that I can keep adding but should perhaps clarify that "no room at the Inn" means that Joseph was beyond theology and further that Christ was born and we call him Jesus with Jesus being the now reborn Joseph.

Oh, and that would be the Inn being his conscious mind, of course, and be sure to know that the stable needs an ox a mule and a manger inside or Joseph would not have been present when the shepherds arrived while he was absent when the magi arrived.

avi

Thank you Neil.

As I understand the situation, Mary's lineage is irrelevant to Jewish notions of family lineage. Jesus, to ensure conformance with old testament prophecy, MUST be genetically related to the Davidian line, in order to claim status as "messiah".

The problem, is that the sperm for this operation are from two different named sources: David himself, and not his descendants (i.e. Joseph), else Holy Spirit.....

How can any educated person accept as valid this nonsensical sequence of events. Why do proponents of a mythical status for Jesus, persist in accepting uncritically the notion that one ought to regard as valid, existing English translations and interpretations of the original Greek manuscripts, when such translations are so obviously false???....
avi