Language Studies

Difficult Sayings

The Virgin Birth, does it matter?
Isaiah 7:14 / Matthew 1:23

"Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14)

This Christmas week sees the annual nativity-bashing season upon us once again. In London, Madame Tussauds displayed a nativity scene with David and Victoria Beckham, a.k.a. Posh and Becks - the former Spice girl and famous footballer, which was described as "tasteless" and verging on blasphemous by some. After it was physically attacked by a member of the public the display was withdrawn. Theological attack came in the form of an article in the Sunday Telegraph (19 December 2004) by the Jewish scholar Geza Vermes critiquing Matthew's version of the nativity as myth, fable and flawed. Finally, Time Magazine (20 December 2004) ran its cover story on "Secrets of The Nativity" and explored the various viewpoints surrounding Jesus' birth. It included scholarly suggestions that the virgin birth was a Graeco-Roman inspired divine-human liaison, or indeed a rape by a Roman soldier, or that Matthew was working on a Greek mistranslation of Isaiah and that the whole virgin birth is an interpretative mistake. So what are we to think and does it matter?

The Catholic Church unlike the rest of Christendom believes in the perpetual virginity of Mary and reinterprets Jesus' brothers (technically half-brothers, I suppose) as cousins whilst Eastern Orthodoxy sees them as step-brothers from Joseph's unrecorded prior marriage. Until recent more liberal times the Protestant Church has always believed in the virgin conception of Christ, for all births are miracles of life, it was the conception that was by divine agent.

Did Jesus' sinless life require a virgin birth? Would a normal conception have caused him to inherit original sin (but that's another topic!). Of course, a normal conception would have made Jesus fully man and not divine at all. So some kind of implantation of the God-man was necessary without the vulgarity of Greek and Roman myths and their gods sleeping with humankind procreating heroes and demigods, such as Mars, the Roman God of war, fathering the twins Romulus and Remus by the Vestal Virgin Silvia; or the evil Nephilim of Genesis 6:2 and their lusting after the daughters of men. Even the Koran (Sura 21:91) confirms Mary's virginity but does not make the leap that this confirms Jesus' deity, merely a direct creation perhaps, like Adam.

Liberals and sceptics have noticed that in other religions a virgin birth legend is not unique. Buddha was supposed to have been born of the virgin Maya after a Spirit descended upon her; the Egyptian deity Horus was born of the virgin Isis and as an infant was reputedly visited by three kings, not dissimilar from Matthew's unnumbered Magi.

There is, however, a biblical pattern so we need not resort to pagan similarities. Ishmael, Isaac, Moses, Samson and Samuel, all had significant births or infancies vouchsafed by angelic announcements or miraculous interventions. For Jesus to be the second Adam an element of divine intervention in his creation would seem appropriate.

Justin Martyr, an early church writer of the 2nd Century, makes extensive use of the virgin birth in his discussions with Trypho the Jew and in his first Apology.^F1 He sees it as essential ammunition in his argument from the fulfilment of prophecy. This is not unlike Matthew's own understanding of the importance of the virgin birth, seeing it as an essential area in the fulfilment of Old Testament scripture (Isaiah 7:14 with Matthew 1:23), which Christ came to do (Matthew 5:17; 11:13). Thus, given Matthew's and Justin Martyr's interpretation of Isaiah 7:14, to deny the virgin birth would be to deny this scripture had been fulfilled or ever had that intended meaning.

A further doctrinal importance of the virgin birth was in the area of the mystery of God's will and His intervention in the history of mankind. Ignatius, writing at the turn of the 1st Century, stresses Mary's virginity as something "hidden from the prince of this world", "a mystery brought to pass in the deep silence of God".^F2 It all seems a part of his argument concerning the unfolding of God's plan to destroy death and sin. Although Christ's death is the necessary mediating sacrifice, which atones for our sin, Ignatius sees the virgin birth as an essential part in God's chosen method for removing sin by His sinless Son.

At first sight, the New Testament evidence for the virgin birth (parthenogenesis) seems scant, substantiated only by brief accounts in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. However, the argument from silence can be applied here, as by the very fact that later writers such as John and Paul do not contest the virgin birth they, by implication, agree with it. The evidence from the epistles is sparser still, though again its silence complies with the evidence of Matthew and Luke. The virgin birth played little or no part in the early church discussion about the nature of Christ and this could account for its absence from New Testament doctrinal thought, it was simply not thought a doctrinal matter, only an historical fact.

We encounter the first explicit evidence for the virgin birth on the first page of the New Testament. Matthew 1:18-20 is the specific narrative and verses 22-23, the Old Testament prediction. Each of these verses, even taken on their own, would imply some kind of miraculous, or scandalous, birth. In verse 18 we have, "she was found with child of the Holy Spirit", this is confirmed by the angel in verse 20, "that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit". On their own these phrases imply a supernatural birth of some type, for example that of a barren mother — an almost commonplace Old Testament miracle. But when coupled with the fact that all this happened, "before they came together", it certainly is a polite way of asserting that no human intercourse had yet taken place, thus placing the birth in the unique category of virgin births. This is reaffirmed in verse 25 when it is stated that they refrained from "knowing each other" until after the birth of Jesus.

We are given additional insight into this situation by Matthew's account of Joseph's reaction (which doesn't appear in Luke) to Mary's pregnancy. In verse 19 he clearly intends to divorce Mary, privately, before the customary two witnesses, even though he would have been justified in bringing a public case against her for her apparent adultery (cf., Deuteronomy 22:13-21; 24:1). Betrothal was considered as binding as marriage and unfaithfulness during it was therefore equivalent to adultery. Seeing this as a real possibility being considered by Joseph, God intervenes by sending an angel to reassure him concerning the nature of the forthcoming virgin birth.

Matthew, being interested in the prophetic climax of the Old Testament in the advent of Jesus as Messiah, sees in the virgin birth narrative the final fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy to Ahaz (Isaiah 7:14). In using the Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament he confirms that the Hebrew ‘almâh could/should be interpreted, like parthenos, as "virgin". Arguments against this usage of the word ‘almâh are irrelevant to our discussion, as the Jewish Septuagint translators and Matthew clearly accepted it. (However, the alternate word for virgin in Hebrew was once used of a married woman in Joel 1:8, whilst although ‘almâh might be used of a young woman, it does not seem to be used of a married woman, and its first occurrence in Genesis 24:16 specifically refers to a young woman whom no one had "known" — see further my Hebrew Word Study on ‘almâh). Even if it were accepted as an unusual or incorrect understanding of the word, Matthew's use of the prophecy could instead be seen as typological, like much of his Old Testament usage.^F3

There could be additional allusion to the virgin birth in Matthew 1:16 where it is said, "And Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born". This breaks with the traditional formula and rather than saying, "Jacob begot Joseph, and Joseph begot Jesus by Mary", introduces Joseph as merely the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born. The relative pronoun "of whom" in Greek is explicitly feminine and genitive, referring only to Mary, not to both of them. It is possible that Matthew had all this in mind as he was writing Jesus' genealogy. The reference to Ahaz in 1:9, and his son, already makes the reader think of Isaiah 7:14. Also, the four women^F4 mentioned in the genealogy apart from Mary were all renowned for the unusual or irregular circumstances surrounding their unions. Thus the genealogy itself provides a background, if not evidence, for the actual story of the virgin birth that follows it. Furthermore the very use of a genealogy implies an attempt at historical rather than just prophetical proof and Luke tried to be more historical still in his gospel.

Turning to Luke's account of Jesus' birth, we find confirmation of Matthew's account. In Luke 1:27 Mary is introduced as a virgin and in verses 34-35 she is told that the Holy Spirit will come upon her in order for her to conceive the child, since she was only betrothed and not yet married and thus not in a position to "know" a man. According to early versions of Luke 2:5, there is mention of Mary being only betrothed and yet already with child, later versions say "wife", but this could also be used to describe a betrothed woman.^F5

Later, in Luke 3:23, at the beginning of the Lucan genealogy, we are told that Jesus began his ministry, "being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph". The parenthetical "supposed" implies that people thought Jesus to be the son of Joseph, though others presumably knew different. This remark would have been unnecessary unless Luke were trying to enforce his earlier reference to the virgin birth by it.

In examining the separate narratives of Matthew and Luke it is worthwhile reflecting on the amount of agreement between the two of them, despite their differences in detail and language. In other words, they agree, but are not copies of each other or of an independent source. Both of the virgin birth narratives are integral parts of the gospel narratives surrounding them and therefore cannot be later additions. The language in each case is typical of the respective authors, unmistakeably Jewish-Palestinian in style and content, and therefore not ground for any interpolation theories. Neither is there reason to suggest these narratives arose out of pagan myths, since in the then known Graeco-Jewish world there were few concerning virgin births and the reading of Graeco-Roman myths would have been discouraged within Judaism.

Mark's gospel does not mention the virgin birth, but then we would not have expected to find it there. His gospel launches straight into the miraculous ministry of Jesus without mention of his early years. To argue against the virgin birth from his silence would be as nonsensical as denying other events mentioned in Matthew and Luke, yet omitted from Mark. In the pre-ministry years of Jesus a typical Harmony of the gospels mentions 17 separate events which are covered by Matthew and Luke but not by Mark (nor John and Paul), and during his Galilean ministry a further 4, yet there is no heated debate over their historicity. It is the very supernatural nature of the virgin birth that critics cannot accept and it is this that leads them to cast aspersions as to the reliability of the evidence of just two gospel narratives. There is, however, a possibility that the strange circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth are alluded to in Mark 6:3, where the Jews exclaim he is the son of Mary, rather than calling him son of Joseph. Jewish tradition elsewhere refers to men by their fathers, even if their father was dead, thus we could have here an insinuation concerning his birth, and similarly Mark may then have been acquainted with the virgin birth tradition.

Again, in John's gospel, there is no direct mention of the virgin birth, but then his gospel makes only theological reflections concerning Jesus' nature and origins (cf., his Prologue), and like Mark then propels us directly into the time of his ministry. Some commentators, however, see an accusatory aside in John 8:41 as to the nature of Jesus' birth, where, the Jews respond to Jesus' remarks with the defiant statement that "we were not born of fornication". It is said that this may be a veiled insult concerning the nature of Jesus' own birth, as in Mark 6:3, above. If so, this may mean that John was similarly aware of rumours concerning Jesus' birth.

Thus, there is evidence enough with at least two of the four gospels that the virgin birth was taken as fact not fable by early believers. Did they not also have the testimony of Mary herself who would have refuted any myths made by Matthew? The virgin birth is significant but being somewhat hidden from us we can certainly defend it but as St Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 it is the other end of Jesus' life that gives us life, not just the crucifixion but specifically faith in the resurrection. But if the same God can raise someone from the dead can he not also bring about a virgin birth?

FOOTNOTES:
F1: Justin Martyr, First Apology, chap.21,31,33; Dial.w.Trypho, chap.43,66,71,77-78
F2: Ignatius: Ephesians, 19.1
F3: e.g., Matthew sees typological fulfilment in 2:15 with Hosea 11:1; 2:17-18 with Jeremiah 31:15
F4: Tamar (Genesis 38), Rahab (Joshua 2), Ruth (Ruth 1-4), The wife of Uriah i.e., Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12)
F5: Deuteronomy 22:24 with 22:23, describes a “betrothed virgin” as a “neighbour's wife”

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