Jeffrey Gibson

Isn't it only Matthew's "infancy" story that bases the idea of Mary being a virgin on what's found in, and as a fulfilment of "and a virgin will conceive and bear a son" passage in Isaiah 7? Where is a reference or an allusion to Isaiah 7 or any other OT prophecy to be found in Luke?"

FWIW, Robert Miller has provided good arguments in his Born Divine: The Birth of Jesus and Other Sons of God (or via: amazon.co.uk)to show that there is nothing in the infancy stories that rules out the idea of human agency in Mary's pregnancy.

Jeffrey

Robert Tulip

<edited for consistency> ... it seems that Mr Gibson simply failed to read what I wrote and what I asked him to read as providing evidence for my opinion. Freethinkaluva provides a screenshot of the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament citing perfectly respectable and conservative scholarly evidence as to why the Pyramid Texts say Isis is a Virgin. I asked Mr Gibson to review this, but it seems he did not bother. His emphasis on ability to read hieroglyphics is the purest distraction, since the standard theological dictionary provides a translation, which it appears Mr Gibson in his scholarly wisdom disputes.

I can understand why a fundamentalist Christian like John Milton who anathematised Isis as a Satanic demon might hold this view that there is no evidence of the purity of Isis, but I do not understand why any sensible person would feel inspired to dispute the dictionary.Flat earthers don’t cite mainstream sources. It seems your knowledge of history is weak Jeffrey. Mythicists were burnt, jailed, sacked and ostracised for their scholarship. As Acharya explains in the Easter Address that I drew to your attention, when Robert Taylor was jailed for blasphemy, Charles Darwin realized the power of the church to suppress scholarship about Jesus. Your comparison of mythicism, a prominent but suppressed theological scientific strand, to creationism and hollow earthism, is a weak insult, revealing much about your standards of analysis. <consistency edit>

outhouse

Jeffery, your intelligent, don't keep getting me wrong.

But Stark is a sort of a quack, who makes negative statements about evolution, and is a known apologist after changing his agnostic views.

Yes I know about Stark, and some of his work was decent, but he does not follow mainstream scholarships or science regarding the obvious.

He certainly does not change the details of what made the movement successful.

Robert Tulip

To clarify, Godalmighty and Acharya have made the following points While I am happy to defend Massey, Kuhn and Harpur, I should note that Murdock's discussion of this material in Christ In Egypt relies on primary sources and credentialed scholars.

aa5874

There is nothing in gMatthew to rule out mythology. There is no claim in gMatthew that Jesus had a human father or required one.

The conception and birth of Jesus after his mother became pregnant by some kind of Holy Ghost was acceptable and quite plausible in antiquity.

The claim that Jesus of Nazareth was born of a Virgin is compatible with Mythology of the Greeks and Romans.

In fact, Justin Martyr admitted that the story of Jesus is nothing different to the Mythology of the Greeks and Romans.

Justin's Dialogue with Trypho LXVIIJustin's First Apology XXI
Justin's First Apology LXIV Church writers of antiquity claimed Jesus was God and a product of the Holy Ghost.

Ignatius' to the EphesiansAristides' Apology Tertullian's On the Flesh of Christ Preface to De Principiis The Jesus character in gMatthew was the Son of God born of some kind of Ghost and a Virgin.

Virtually all the activities of Jesus in gMatthew require Mythology not history.

Bernard Muller

Here are my views on how the virgin conception started for Christianity (nothing to do with Isis!). From my website, with some minor editing:

In those days, many Christians, under the influence (or because) of Jewish Christians, avoided to mention the divisive (and controversial) issue of a distinct other God, the pre-existent and eternal "Son of God":

a) Only a few fragments survive from the uncanonical gospel of the Hebrews. This gospel (likely written early 2nd century) enjoyed great favor among Jewish Christians, as reported by Eusebius, 'The History of the Church' (HC):
3, 25 "Some have found a place in the [canonical] list for the 'Gospel of the Hebrews', a book which has a special appeal for those Hebrews who have accepted Christ"
3, 27 "... but nevertheless shared [with the (true) Ebionites] their refusal to acknowledge his pre-existence as God the Word and Wisdom ... using only the 'Gospel of the Hebrews', they treated the rest with scant respect."

From the gospel of the Hebrews itself, we read:
"When the Lord [Jesus, after the baptism] ascended from the water, the whole fount of the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon him, and [the Holy Spirit, NOT the Father] said to him,
"My son, in all the prophets I was waiting for you, that you might come, and that I might rest in you. For you are my rest; and you are my firstborn son,
[of the Holy Spirit (figuratively & happening right after the baptism) and NOT of the Father! No pre-existence here!]
` who reigns forever." Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 11:2

b) Paul in 1Cor 8:6a "yet for us there is but one God, the Father,"

c) Mk 12:29 "The most important one [of the commandments] ," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one [part of the Jewish Shema] ... '"

d) Jas 2:19a "You believe there is only one God. Good! ..."

e) Some early Christian writings have Jesus as "Son of God" but do not mention any pre-existence (Ephesians, 2 Peter).

f) Finally, and one step further, some Christian authors even refrained to use the expression "Son of God" (1 Peter, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus).

So a compromise (between a second deity and just a honorary title) was proposed:

Jesus is the Son, not by being the pre-existent Word of God (not acceptable to Jewish Christians), but by having God (or the Holy Spirit) as his biological father. And as reported by Eusebius, that was accepted by the latter Jewish Christians (HC, 3, 27, 27 "They did not deny that the Lord was born of a virgin and the Holy Spirit ..." ).
And the virginity of Mary had become a necessity in order to prevent the thought that Jesus was conceived with a human father!

Note: neither in GMark, GMatthew or GLuke (and 'Acts'), there is a clear mention of the pre-existence of Jesus. What follows can be considered a denial:
Lk 1:32a "He will be great and will be called the Son of the most high"
Lk 1:35b "So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God"
Ac17:31

Cordially, Bernard

Toto

Moderator's Note:

If you feel you are insulted, the procedure is to report the post, and not to comment on it. Once there has been substantive comment, it is difficult to get the thread back on track.

I have usually removed comparisons to creationists here because the comparison is inherently insulting, and is usually an insult without any particular content or understanding.

Toto

Hello Jeffrey - this is not a classroom. Please stop playing college professor.

I assume you are capable of going to the link or checking a library, and reading the entry for yourself. If you did, you would realize that the author recognizes the difficulty at times of knowing whether the term refers to a virgin intacta or a young woman of marriageable age.

Jeffrey Gibson

Meaning what?

[

And just what does that mean?

.

I tied the link, but I couldn't get to the page. But I was not able to get to a library today..


I would? Why couldn't you have said that up front instead of implying that my question was illegitimate or too "College Professor-ish"

I hadn't any impression of that from the way that RT and others have been appealing to what that text says.

Jeffrey

Robert Tulip

Thanks Tom. Isis is not a woman, but a goddess, as we might say is the Queen of Heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception.

As I recall, Mary purportedly "had a kid" with Jehovah, her Eternal Father in Heaven, and yet is held up by some as an example of virginal purity. Is not this just the same mythical contradiction we see in the very concept of virgin mother?

Those who are in denial about the abundant continuity between Isis and Mary don't "really know a whole lot about Egyptian religion."

It is quite wrong to imagine that the myth of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ sprang forth fully formed in Christianity like Athena from the brow of Zeus. The virgin birth is a deep archetypal mythic story, with abundant evolutionary continuity with its memetic sources in older religion.