Born to a virgin? just one of several pagan myths [Answered]

 

Jesus was not born of a virgin. In fact, we have traditions that actually tell us who Jesus’ real father was—and it wasn’t Joseph! Anyway, the idea of a god being born to a virgin is just one of several pagan myths that made its way into the New Testament.

The fact of the virgin birth was something that made the ministry of Jesus harder, not easier. You try telling someone that your Master and Teacher was born of a virgin! Almost everyone thought that Joseph was his real father, and it was known that Joseph was a descendant of David, something which could have only helped, not hurt, Jesus’ cause.

If not for the virgin birth being a fact—and one which was also foreshadowed in the Hebrew Scriptures—the New Testament writers would have never created such a story. As for the virgin birth being a borrowed pagan myth, could you tell me which pagan myth you are referring to? There is none!

Let’s get away from the Bible for a moment and think about this whole subject in contemporary, real-life terms. Let’s say that you were a chaste young man engaged to be married to a lovely young woman. Both of you were virgins, committed to having no sexual relations until your wedding night. One day your fiancée comes to you and says, “I’m pregnant—but I haven’t slept with anybody. I’m still a virgin! Trust me.

An angel appeared to me in a vision and told me that I would become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Messiah.” What would you say? Probably something like, “Right, and my name is Santa Claus and my pet dog is actually a reindeer.” Such a reaction would be perfectly understandable!

Now, take a look at this New Testament account which I cite here to underscore the fact that the concept of a virgin birth was hardly an easy pill to swallow:

Here is how the birth of Yeshua the Messiah took place. When his mother Miryam was engaged to Yosef, before they were married, she was found to be pregnant from the Ruach-HaKodesh [the Holy Spirit]. Her husband-to-be, Yosef, was a man who did what was right; so he made plans to break the engagement quietly, rather than put her to public shame.

But while he was thinking about this, an angel of Adonai [the Lord] appeared to him in a dream and said, “Yosef, son of David, do not be afraid to take Miryam home as your wife; for what has been conceived in her is from the Ruach-HaKodesh. She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Yeshua, [which means ‘Adonai saves’,] because he will save his people from their sins.” …

When Yosef awoke he did what the angel of Adonai had told him to do—he took Miryam home to be his wife, but he did not have sexual relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Yeshua.

Matthew 1:18–21, 24–25 jnt

The virginal conception of the Messiah came as quite a shock to Miriam and Joseph. And after their marriage, Joseph still had no relations with Miriam until after Jesus was born—not the easiest thing for a newly married couple. But these were sacred, supernatural times.

You might be saying to yourself, “Look, the fact is that there was no way to prove that she was a virgin. Maybe Joseph’s dream was just an example of wishful thinking on his part.” That’s an interesting idea, but it’s not accurate. According to the Torah, there was a way to prove one’s virginity. The Book of Deuteronomy states:

If a man takes a wife and, after lying with her, dislikes her and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” then the girl’s father and mother shall bring proof that she was a virgin to the town elders at the gate. The girl’s father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’

But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, and the elders shall take the man and punish him. They shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the girl’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.

If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.

Deuteronomy 22:13–21¹⁵⁸

So, if Joseph doubted his wife’s account, even after the dream, he could have simply gone ahead immediately with the marriage (which, in fact, he did), slept with Miriam, and then checked to see whether she had bled.¹⁵⁹ After all, if she had slept with another man, she would have been guilty of a terrible sin, and there is no way in the world that Joseph would have wanted to go ahead with the marriage.

This was not modern America, after all! It would have been unthinkable for a godly man like Joseph to have married a nonvirgin. (In today’s terms, think of how you would feel if your son—your wonderful, dear son—came home and told you he was going to marry a stripper who had already been married and divorced five times and who was currently pregnant with the child of another man.)

But there was no reason for Joseph to have any doubts. God abundantly confirmed the supernatural character of the child who was born to them, both in his infancy (to the continued amazement and awe of Joseph and Miriam), then at age twelve, then throughout his public ministry, culminating with his resurrection from the dead.

(For the early years, see Matt. 2:1–11; Luke 1:39–55; 2:8–51.) There was no reason for Yeshua’s mother or father or any of his disciples to question his virgin birth in the least, while there were plenty of reasons to believe it without doubt.¹⁶⁰ It explained how the Son of God could be born into the world and yet still be fully human as well. (See vol. 2, 3.1–3.4 for the Messiah’s divine nature; for the virgin birth being foreshadowed in the Hebrew Bible, see vol. 3, 4.3.)

Of course, you still might say, “Maybe this whole virgin birth story was just a cover-up for adultery. Who knows what rumors were circulating?” Actually, we do know one of the most common rumors that circulated: “This man is just the son of Joseph the carpenter. Who does he think he is? He’s just a regular, neighborhood guy like us, and we know his whole family!” That is what the people were saying:

“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother called Miryam? and his brothers Ya‘akov, Yosef, Shim‘on and Y’hudah? And his sisters, aren’t they all with us? So where does he get all this?” And they took offense at him. But Yeshua said to them, “The only place people don’t respect a prophet is his home town and in his own house.”

Matthew 13:55–57 jnt

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

Luke 4:22

Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.

“Come and see,” said Philip.

John 1:45–46

At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”

John 6:41–42

The fact is, the primary reason that some later, Jewish traditions began to circulate the scurrilous myth that Miriam committed adultery with a Roman soldier¹⁶¹ was because of the virgin birth account in the Gospels. In other words, because the New Testament taught that Joseph was not the real father of Jesus, later protagonists seized upon this and tried to turn it into a mockery.

The only hint of this within the Gospel accounts themselves is found in John 8:41, based on which Bruce Chilton wrote, “The charge that he was illicitly conceived plagued Jesus all his life. Even far from his home, during disputes in Jerusalem after he had become a famous teacher, Jesus was mocked for being born as the result of fornication (John 8:41).

The people of his own village called him ‘Mary’s son,’ not Joseph’s (Mark 6:3).”¹⁶² While this is somewhat of an overstatement—seeing that it overlooks the bulk of the New Testament evidence—it underscores the fact that the virgin birth is hardly the kind of story you would want to make up! Of course, this does not conclusively prove the truthfulness of the Gospel accounts, but it remind us again that the virgin birth account is hardly something that the Messiah’s followers would choose to invent.

What of the question of the New Testament borrowing a pagan myth here? First, it is interesting to note that in all the major cults and world religions that have arisen in the last 1,900 years, I am not aware of any of them which claim that their founder or leader was born of a virgin. This is quite important, since many of the cults and false religions try to pattern themselves after the Bible, using Scripture to disguise their new, twisted beliefs.

Thus, modern cults use terms such as “Christ-consciousness” and “new birth,” often claiming that their leaders are a new incarnation of Jesus or are a manifestation of God in the flesh. Yet none of them claim that their “anointed” leader was born of a virgin! And, unfortunately for the cults, while some of their founders were expected to rise from the dead, none of them ever succeeded. In reality, none of these deluded men or women resembled Jesus in any way, shape, size, or form.¹⁶³

And while they were foolish enough to think they could even rise from the dead—that’s pretty foolish!—they were not foolish enough to claim that they were virgin born. This should make you think again before skeptically rejecting the New Testament account.

Second, the whole notion of a pagan myth being borrowed is not accurate. Simply stated, there are no pagan or Jewish parallels to such a virginal conception. As documented in the massive, technical commentary on Matthew by W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr., “Conception without a male element in some form, parthenogenesis in the strict sense, does not seem to be attested.…

None of the proposed parallels, either pagan or Jewish, seemingly accounts for the story we find in the NT.”¹⁶⁴ While there are myths about gods or angels taking on human form and having sex with a woman, who then conceives, none of these resembles the Gospel accounts in the slightest.¹⁶⁵ As Keener emphasizes,

Yet most alleged parallels to the virgin birth (see Allen 1977: 19; Soares Prabhu 1976: 5–6; cf. Grant 1986: 64) are hopelessly distant, at best representing supernatural births of some kind (Barrett 1966: 6–10; Davies and Allison 1988: 214–15; Hagner 1993: 17; even further are ancient biological views, e.g., Arist. Generation of Animals 3.6.5; Ep. Arist. 165). Certainly pagan stories of divine impregnation, which typically involve seduction (e.g., Ovid Metam. 3.260–61) or rape (Ovid Metam. 3.1–2) bear no resemblance to a virgin birth.¹⁶⁶

As for such crude, “parallel” accounts, the fact is that you have rough, pagan “parallels” to the biblical creation account, the biblical flood account, and even the account of baby Moses in the Nile River, some of which provide closer parallels to the biblical accounts than the alleged parallels to the Messiah’s virgin birth. The “parallel” stories only make the biblical accounts shine all the more brightly.¹⁶⁷

According to professor Raymond Brown, one of the world’s leading New Testament scholars and a man who is by no means a fundamentalist believer,

it is difficult to explain how the idea [of the virgin birth] arose if not from fact. Many parallels for a virginal conception have been suggested from world religions, from paganism, and from pre-Christian Judaism; but they are not really satisfactory… and there is little reason to believe that most of them would have been known or acceptable to early Christians.¹⁶⁸

All in all, there is no good reason to question the reliability of the New Testament account of the virgin birth of Jesus. If you will study the Scriptures carefully, especially regarding the divine nature of the Messiah, you will see that his supernatural birth makes perfect sense (vol. 3, 4.3). And when you make the wonderful discovery that even now, Jesus is alive and well, bringing his Father’s will to pass throughout the earth, you will know that the New Testament account of his virgin birth is gospel truth.

You may have dismissed it all your life—as if the Messiah’s supernatural birth were a Catholic myth—but you will find it to be a powerful, biblical truth, one of the great treasures of the Jewish faith.

Oddly enough, some anti-missionaries claim that the New Testament authors as a whole didn’t seem to know about Yeshua’s virgin birth.¹⁶⁹ This is easily refuted: First, Matthew and Luke describe it at length, devoting a good part of two chapters in each of the accounts to describe this important event (see Matthew 1–2; Luke 1–2). Second, neither Mark nor John speak of his birth or early years, but Mark calls Yeshua the Son of God—in fact, that is the opening statement of his Gospel (see Mark 1:1)—and John calls him the divine Word made flesh (John 1:1–18).

While these terms aptly describe the virgin-born Messiah, they can hardly be applied to a mere mortal man. Third, Paul’s statement in Romans 1:3–4 is consistent with a belief in the virgin birth, while it is difficult to explain otherwise. He calls Jesus God’s “Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus [the Messiah] our Lord.”

So, Paul understands Jesus to be both David’s son and God’s Son, consistent with the New Testament witness. Notice also Paul’s well-known statement in 1 Timothy 3:16 that Yeshua “appeared in a body.” This is not how you speak of someone who was born naturally! Now, when we recognize that Matthew, Luke, Mark, John, and Paul account for more than 95 percent of the New Testament, it’s clear that the notion that the New Testament authors were ignorant of the virgin birth is totally unsupportable.¹⁷⁰

¹⁵⁸ As Jeffery Tigay explains, “The evidence, as indicated in verse 17, is a garment or cloth that was spotted with the girl’s blood when her hymen was perforated on the wedding night. The bride’s parents would save it as evidence of her virginity. This custom is well known in the Middle East and has been practiced among various Jewish and Arab communities until recent times; in some places the cloth is displayed by the proud parents.

They save it because their daughter, their reputation, and the bride-price they receive all depend on it. As Ramban notes, the mother joins the father here, though only the father speaks, because it was women who kept the cloth after the consummation of the marriage.” See Deuteronomy: The Traditional Hebrew Text With the New JPS Translation, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1996), 266, with documentation in n. 47.

¹⁵⁹ Someone might argue that medically speaking, a woman might lose her virginity and yet still preserve the physical signs of virginity, or, on the other hand, she might really be a virgin but not bleed when she loses her virginity. While this is possible, the issue here is Torah law, not medical possibility. Also, note that the Talmud deals with cases of women whose hymen was broken when they were young girls, through an accident or unusual occurrence of some kind.

They are referred to as those “broken by a stick” or “injured by wood” see b. Yev. 59a–b; Ket. 10a, 11a. In the same context, the Talmud discusses cases of little girls who were sexually abused, but whose hymen was still intact and thus, technically speaking, are still to be regarded as virgins. Amazingly, anti-Semites have quoted the Talmud here, as if the rabbis said that it was no problem for a man to abuse a little girl!

Of course, what it was saying was that, should such an event take place, when the little girl grew up she was still to be regarded as a virgin, something which makes perfect sense. See further Michael L. Brown, Our Hands Are Stained with Blood: The Tragic Story of the “Church” and the Jewish People (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 1992), 68–69, with additional references on 199–200, 236.

¹⁶⁰ The fact that at times, Jesus’ immediate family seemed to have trouble with some of his actions during his ministry years (see, e.g., Mark 3:20–21) is no reason for surprise. The Bible is full of examples of people (from Abraham to Moses to Elijah) who had a very supernatural experience with God and then became either discouraged or unbelieving. Such is human nature!

¹⁶¹ The name of the Roman soldier is found in the Talmud as either Pandera or Panthera, apparently a play on words on the Greek word for virgin, parthenos; see Rashi to Sanhedrin 104b, who explains that he (i.e., Jesus) was called Ben Pandera after the name of his father, even though he was an illegitimate child; for a recent adaptation of this myth, see James D. Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty:

The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006). Of course, modern Jewish scholars, with the exception of some ultra-Orthodox, would be among the first to point out that the myth of Miriam’s adultery was nothing more than an ugly, polemical attack against Jesus, a mere fable of no historical value at all.

¹⁶² Bruce Chilton, Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 6. Note that this chapter (3–22) is called, “A Mamzer from Nazareth.”

¹⁶³ For an excellent, well-researched, and highly readable survey of modern cults, see Ruth A. Tucker, Another Gospel: Alternative Religions and the New Age Movement (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989).

¹⁶⁴ Davies and Allison, Matthew 1–7, 215–16.

¹⁶⁵ It is unfortunate that Gerald Sigal, The Jew and the Christian Missionary: A Jewish Response to Missionary Christianity (New York: Ktav, 1981), 283, claims that according to the New Testament, God seduced Mary and committed adultery with her. Not only do such ludicrous statements insult the thoughtful reader, but they also undermine any attempt by Sigal to be taken seriously.

¹⁶⁶ Keener, Matthew, 83–84.

¹⁶⁷ After reviewing the evidence for alleged pagan parallels to the virgin birth of Jesus, D. Moody, “Virgin Birth,” G. A. Buttrick, ed., Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1962), 4:791, noted that, “The yawning chasm between these pagan myths of polytheistic promiscuity and the lofty monotheism of the virgin birth of Jesus is too wide for careful research to cross.”

¹⁶⁸ R. E. Brown, “Virgin Birth,” in Keith R. Crim, ed., Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible Supplementary Volume (Nashville: Abingdon, 1976), 942.

¹⁶⁹ See, e.g., Singer’s bizarre claim that, “at the time Paul penned the Book of Romans, he was completely unaware that Christendom would eventually claim that Jesus was born of a virgin birth”! (See “Mary’s Genealogy,” Outreach Judaism, http://www.outreachjudaism.org/mary.html.) That would be like saying, “At the time Abraham Lincoln penned the Emancipation Proclamation, he was completely unaware the United States would eventually claim that there had been a terrible Civil War that divided the nation.” How ironic it is that the anti-missionaries frequently accuse Jewish believers in Jesus of making outlandish and completely unfounded claims.

¹⁷⁰ As an interesting historical sidelight, in the first four centuries of this era, there were different groups of Jewish followers of Jesus, some of them “kosher” in terms of their basic beliefs being in harmony with the New Testament, and some being heretical. One of those heretical groups, the Ebionites, rejected both the writings of Paul and the virgin birth, along with the doctrine of Messiah’s divine nature. This separated them from other Jewish believers who accepted the clear testimony of their Scriptures. The point of this is that it was only a fringe Jewish-Messianic group that denied the virgin birth.

Brown, M. L. (2007). Answering Jewish objections to Jesus, Volume 4: New Testament objections. (70). Grand Rapids, Mich.; Baker Books.

Born to a virgin? just one of several pagan myths [Answered]