Virgin birth of Jesus
In Christianity and Islam, it is asserted that Jesus of Nazareth was conceived by his mother Mary solely through divine intervention and without sexual intercourse, thus resulting in his virgin birth. In accordance with these beliefs, Jesus had just one biological parent instead of the necessary two; Mary's husband Joseph was his father only in the legal sense. Most Christians hold that Mary's virginity was perpetual. Though not biologically related, Jesus being Joseph's adoptive son is cited as linking him to the Davidic line.
The Christian understanding is that the birth of Jesus by a virgin woman was made possible by the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. Christians regard the doctrine as an explanation of the combination of the human and divine natures emanating from Jesus Christ. The Eastern Orthodox Churches accept the doctrine as authoritative by reason of its inclusion in the Nicene Creed, and the Catholic Church holds it authoritative for faith through the Apostles' Creed as well as the Nicene. Nevertheless, there are many contemporary churches in which it is considered orthodox to accept the virgin birth, but not heretical to deny it.
In the New Testament, narratives that include the virgin birth appear only in and, and the modern scholarly consensus is that it rests on slender historical foundations, though conservative scholars maintain its historicity. The ancient world did not possess the thoroughly modern understanding that a male's sperm and a female's egg are both needed to form an embryo; this cultural milieu was conducive to many stories of miraculous births, and tales of virgin birth and the impregnation of mortal women by deities were well known in the 1st-century Greco-Roman world and Second Temple Jewish world.
The Islamic understanding of this event comes from the Quran, which also asserts the virgin birth of Jesus. According to Richard Bell, the Quran derives its narrative from the 2nd-century Protoevangelium of James. However, it explicitly rejects the Trinitarian interpretation of the Christian account, instead claiming that Jesus was nothing more than a human in service to God as a prophet and messenger.
New Testament narratives: Matthew and Luke
Matthew 1:18-25
18: Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
19: Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.
20: But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
21: She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."
22: All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
23: "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us."
24: When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife,
25: but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
Luke 1:26-38
26: In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,
27: to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary.
28: And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you."
29: But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.
30: The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
31: And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.
32: He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.
33: He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."
34: Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?"
35: The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.
36: And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.
37: For nothing will be impossible with God."
38: Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her.
Texts
In the entire Christian corpus, the virgin birth is found only in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. The two agree that Mary's husband was named Joseph, that he was of the Davidic line, and that he played no role in Jesus's divine conception, but beyond this they are very different. Matthew does not mention any census, shepherds, or presentation in the temple, and implies that Joseph and Mary were living in Bethlehem at the time of the birth, while Luke does not mention any magi, flight into Egypt, or massacre of the infants, and states that Joseph lived in Nazareth.Matthew underlines the virginity of Mary by references to the Book of Isaiah and by his narrative statement that Joseph had no sexual relations with her until after the birth, a choice of words which leaves open the possibility that they did have relations after that. Luke introduces Mary as a virgin, describes her puzzlement at being told she will bear a child despite her lack of sexual experience, and informs the reader that this pregnancy is to be effected through God's Holy Spirit.
There is a serious debate as to whether Luke's nativity story is an original part of his gospel. Some scholars have argued that Chapters 1 and 2 were written in a style quite different from the rest of the gospel, and the dependence of the birth narrative on the Greek Septuagint is absent from the remainder. There are strong Lukan motifs in Luke 1–2, but differences are equally striking—Jesus's identity as "son of David", for example, is a prominent theme of the birth narrative, but not in the rest of the gospel. Other scholars argued Semitisms occur throughout the Gospel of Luke, not just in chapters 1–2, with especially dense concentrations in chapters 4, 5, 7, 9–10, 13–19, and 24. In the early part of the 2nd century, the gnostic theologian Marcion produced a version of Luke lacking these two chapters, and although he is generally accused of having cut them out of a longer text more like our own, genealogies and birth narratives are also absent from Mark and John.
Cultural context
Matthew 1:18 says that Mary was betrothed to Joseph. She would have been twelve years old or a little less at the time of events described in the gospels, as under Jewish law betrothal was only possible for minors, which for girls meant prior to turning twelve or having their first menses, whichever came first. According to custom, the wedding would take place twelve months later, after which the groom would take his bride from her father's house to his own. A betrothed girl who had sex with a man other than her husband-to-be was considered an adulteress. If tried before a tribunal, both she and the young man would be stoned to death, but it was possible for her betrothed husband to issue a document of repudiation, and this, according to Matthew, was the course Joseph wished to take prior to the visitation by the angel.The most likely cultural context for both Matthew and Luke is Jewish Christian or mixed Gentile/Jewish-Christian circles rooted in Jewish tradition. These readers would have known that the Roman Senate had declared Julius Caesar a god and his successor Augustus to be divi filius, the Son of God, before he became a god himself on his death in AD 14; this remained the pattern for later emperors. Imperial divinity was accompanied by suitable miraculous birth stories, with Augustus being fathered by the god Apollo while his human mother slept, and her human husband being granted a dream in which he saw the sun rise from her womb, and inscriptions even described the news of the divine imperial birth as evangelia, the gospel. The virgin birth of Jesus was thus a direct challenge to a central claim of Roman imperial theology, namely the divine conception and descent of the emperors.
Matthew's genealogy, tracing Jesus's Davidic descent, was intended for Jews, while his virgin birth story was intended for a Greco-Roman audience familiar with virgin birth stories and stories of women impregnated by gods. The ancient world had no understanding that male semen and female ovum were both needed to form a zygote; instead, they thought that the male contribution in reproduction consisted of some sort of formative or generative principle, while female bodily fluids would provide all the matter that was needed for a baby's bodily form, including male sex. This cultural milieu was conducive to miraculous birth stories – they were common in biblical tradition going back to Abraham and Sarah.
Such stories are less frequent in Judaism, but there too was a widespread belief in angels and divine intervention in births. Theologically, the two accounts mark the moment when Jesus becomes the Son of God, i.e., at his birth, in distinction to Mark, for whom the Sonship dates from Jesus's baptism, and Paul and the pre-Pauline Christians for whom Jesus becomes the Son only at the Resurrection or even the Second Coming.
Tales of virgin birth and the impregnation of mortal women by deities were well known in the 1st-century Greco-Roman world, and Second Temple Jewish works were also capable of producing accounts of the appearances of angels and miraculous births for ancient heroes such as Melchizedek, Noah, and Moses. Luke's virgin birth story is a standard plot from the Jewish scriptures, as for example in the annunciation scenes for Isaac and for Samson, in which an angel appears and causes apprehension, gives reassurance, and announces the coming birth, the mother raises an objection, and the angel gives a sign. Nevertheless, "plausible sources that tell of virgin birth in areas convincingly close to the gospels' own probable origins have proven extremely hard to demonstrate". Similarly, while it is widely accepted that there is a connection with Zoroastrian sources underlying Matthew's story of the Magi and the Star of Bethlehem, a wider claim that Zoroastrianism formed the background to the infancy narratives has not achieved acceptance.