Was Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Indeed a Virgin?

Post Reply New Topic

Aye, true there. Of course, even today it's possible for a woman to get pregnant without breaking the hymen (if she's still got it by that point, I'm amazed honestly), but then again, I doubt they did much else other than just intercourse in those days.

Gods and goddesses have been in the habit of knocking people up for years. Greco-roman mythology is littered with the bastard offspring of randy deities. Given the roman influence on the bible, could this not be just another example of a spot of syncretism?

"See your god, making babies with the ladies.. our god does it too. Maybe theyre the same god?"

Link. At the end of the news item is a reference to the original publication.

No!

Are you thinking of Paul Bunyan?

We don't know if Mary was a virgin or not. The oldest gospel, the Gospel of Mark, doesn't mention the virgin birth at all. The virgin birth is probably a younger tradition and Mark probaly didn't know anything about it. Luke and Matthew have different accounts of what happened when Jesus was born. John doesn't bother himself with such insignificant details and just declares that the Logos became flesh...

A Messiah and a "Son of God" doesn't have to be born by a virgin.

In case you wonder: I didn't read the preceding comments.

Actually, not so. The woman caught in the act of adultery was unnamed in the Bible. The notion that this woman was Mary Magdalene was first mentioned by one of the Popes.
The pastor of my church believes that the person the woman committed adultery with was a Pharisee who was trying to find reason to condemn J-s-s. The woman was caught in the act, meaning the man would have been caught too. The Law of Moses condemns both male and female adulterers to death, but the man was not being stoned with the woman. Now, if J-s-s agreed that the woman should be stoned, He would have run into troubles with the Roman government. If He said the woman should not have been stoned, He would have been accused of questioning the Law of Moses.
Nowhere does the Bible say that the woman caught in adultery was a whore. The Bible never mentions her receiving any payment for her act. She may have just done this the one time, or she may have simply been an actress the Pharisees used to condemn J-s-s.

If I understand correctly, she isn't, she got boned by god. EXTREME INCEST!! !

With Adam God needed a rib to make Eve. With Mary it was done purely as a clone job. So, evidently, Jesus was obviously a bearded lady since no dna was added.

If Jesus only had Mary's DNA, then how do you account for the beard?

The severed lack of answers to this topic's question from the Bible troubles me. Allow me to answer the question from the definitive source.

Luke 1:26-31 (The Jerusalem Bible from 1966) reports that it was to “a virgin” whose name was Mary that the angel Gabriel carried the news: “You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus.” At this, verse 34 states, “Mary said to the angel, ‘But how can this come about, since I am a virgin [“I do not know man: i.e., as husband,” The 1970 New American Bible, Saint Joseph Edition footnote; “I am having no intercourse with a man,” New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, 1984 edition]?’” Matthew 1:22-25 (The Jerusalem Bible from 1966) adds: “Now all this took place to fulfill the words spoken by the Lord through the prophet: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Immanuel, a name which means ‘God-is-with-us’. When Joseph woke up he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do: he took his wife to his home and, though he had not had intercourse with her, she gave birth to a son; and he named him Jesus.”

Is this reasonable? Surely it was not impossible for the Creator, who designed the human reproductive organs, to bring about the fertilization of an egg cell in the womb of Mary by supernatural means. Marvelously, Jehovah transferred the life-force and the personality pattern of his firstborn heavenly Son to the womb of Mary. God’s own active force, his holy spirit, safeguarded the development of the child in Mary’s womb so that what was born was a perfect human.—Luke 1:35; John 17:5.

The Bible itself is the principal evidence that Jesus Christ is a historical person. The record in the Gospels is not a vague narrative of events at some unspecified time and in an unnamed location. It clearly states time and place in great detail. For an example, see Luke 3:1, 2, 21-23.

The first-century Jewish historian Josephus referred to the stoning of “James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ.” (The Jewish Antiquities, Josephus, Book XX, sec. 200) A direct and very favorable reference to Jesus, found in Book XVIII, sections 63, 64, has been challenged by some who claim that it must have been either added later or embellished by Christians; but it is acknowledged that the vocabulary and the style are basically those of Josephus, and the passage is found in all available manuscripts.

Tacitus, a Roman historian who lived during the latter part of the first century C.E., wrote: “Christus [Latin for “Christ”], from whom the name [Christian] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.”—The Complete Works of Tacitus (New York, 1942), “The Annals,” Book 15, par. 44.

With reference to early non-Christian historical references to Jesus, The New Encyclopædia Britannica states: “These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.”—(1976), Macropædia, Vol. 10, p. 145.

So you can see both religious and secular authorities from antiquity and modern times agree Jesus was a real, historical person.

Males have hormones that allow lots of facial hair to grow. This would have undoubtedly been included in Jesus' genetic code. But the real reason Jesus wore a beard had to do with the customs strictly held by the Jews at that time. Jesus, born a Jew, “came to be under law” and he fulfilled the Law. (Galatians 4:4; Matthew 5:17) Like all other Jews, Jesus was dedicated to Jehovah God from his birth, by reason of the Law covenant, and was under obligation to keep the whole Law, including the prohibition on shaving the extremity of the beard. Also, at the time that Jesus was on earth, the Roman custom was beardlessness. Therefore, if Jesus had been beardless, he would have been challenged as being either a eunuch or a Roman. Significantly, a prophecy concerning Jesus’ suffering states: “My back I gave to the strikers, and my cheeks to those plucking off the hair.” — Isaiah 50:6.

The hebrew word translated as virgin in in Isaiah 7:14 is alma (false cognate with the spanish word for spirit weird)
it means young woman. in Proverbs 30:18-20 it refers to a women who is clearly not a virgin.

the word translated maid maid is alma

link to the hebrew

Betulah is the word for virgin used in torah.

I suppose that it could have been a fake beard.

I wonder if the original actually said "virgin", and then the Jews changed the Hebrew later to "young woman" just to spite the Christians.