Hail Mary, Full of Grace.. Was The Lord With Thee?

Let’s get straight to the point. If the vir­gin birth did not hap­pen, then, as Mark Driscoll rightly observes:

If the vir­gin birth of Jesus is untrue, then the story of Jesus changes greatly; we would have a sex­u­ally promis­cu­ous young woman lying about God’s mirac­u­lous hand in the birth of her son, rais­ing that son to declare he was God, and then join­ing his reli­gion. But if Mary is noth­ing more than a sin­ful con artist then nei­ther she nor her son Jesus should be trusted. Because both the clear teach­ings of Scrip­ture about the begin­ning of Jesus’ earthly life and the char­ac­ter of his mother are at stake, we must con­tend for the vir­gin birth of Jesus Christ¹.

As I said in my pre­vi­ous post, I’ve been hear­ing quite a lot of peo­ple down­play or even reject the vir­gin birth as a fan­ci­ful bit mythol­o­giz­ing ².

Larry King was asked who he would inter­view if he could inter­view any­one through his­tory. He answered Jesus. He was then asked what ques­tion he would ask Jesus, to which he replied that he would like to ask Him if He was virgin-born. The answer to this ques­tion, for Larry King, defines history.

In deny­ing the vir­gin birth of Jesus we deny not only an inter­pre­ta­tion of Scrip­ture, but the Scrip­ture itself. What are some exam­ples of Scrip­ture that would be lost?

Luke 1:26–38

26Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth,
27to a vir­gin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, (of the descen­dants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.
28And com­ing in, he said to her, “Greet­ings, favored one! The Lord is with you.“
29But she was very per­plexed at this state­ment, and kept pon­der­ing what kind of salu­ta­tion this was.
30The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God.
31“And behold, you will con­ceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus.
32“He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David;
33and He will reign over the house of Jacob for­ever, and His king­dom will have no end.“
34Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a vir­gin?“
35The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will over­shadow you; and for that rea­son the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.
36“And behold, even your rel­a­tive Eliz­a­beth has also con­ceived a son in her old age; and she who was called bar­ren is now in her sixth month.
37“For noth­ing will be impos­si­ble with God.“
38And Mary said, “Behold, the bond­slave of the Lord; may it be done to me accord­ing to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

Matthew 1:18–25

18Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as fol­lows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.
19And Joseph her hus­band, being a right­eous man and not want­ing to dis­grace her, planned to send her away secretly.
20But when he had con­sid­ered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, say­ing, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been con­ceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.
21“She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His peo­ple from their sins.“
22Now all this took place to ful­fill what was spo­ken by the Lord through the prophet:
23“BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL,” which trans­lated means, “GOD WITH US.“
24And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord com­manded him, and took Mary as his wife,
25but kept her a vir­gin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus.

Isa­iah 7:14

14“There­fore the Lord Him­self will give you a sign: Behold, (A)a vir­gin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.

Isa­iah 9:6

6For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the gov­ern­ment will rest on His shoul­ders;
And His name will be called Won­der­ful Coun­selor, Mighty God,
Eter­nal Father, Prince of Peace.

Gen­e­sis 3:15

15And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

Isa­iah 7:14 is an inter­est­ing case in that a very com­mon objec­tion has been lev­eled against it. If Isa­iah had wanted to describe or proph­esy a vir­gin birth, he would have used the word betu­lah. As it stands, how­ever, he used the word almah, which means ‘young woman’. Thus, there is noth­ing in Isa­iah 7:14 that would sig­nal a vir­gin birth 700 years later: the authors of the Gospels as well as mod­ern trans­la­tors were mis­taken in their view of these Scrip­tures. Sam Har­ris writes, “The writ­ers of Luke and Matthew, for instance, declare that Mary con­ceived as a vir­gin, rely­ing upon the Greek ren­der­ing of Isa­iah 7:14. The Hebrew text of Isa­iah uses the word almah, how­ever, which sim­ply means “young woman,” with­out any impli­ca­tion of vir­gin­ity“³  Christo­pher Hitchens writes much of the same, “we know that the word trans­lated as ‘vir­gin,’ namely almah, means only ‘a young woman’”[4. Christo­pher Hitchens, god is not Great: How Reli­gions Poi­sons Every­thing (Toronto: McClel­land & Stew­art, 2007), 115].

In reply we must keep in mind that the genre of Hebrew prophecy is com­plex, how­ever, the above is not beyond answer. Ravi Zacharias notes that there are numer­ous exam­ples of prophecy that have a com­pen­e­tra­tion of two ful­fill­ment, Isa­iah 7:14 in one such prophecy. Zacharias writes:

If Isa­iah had used the typ­i­cal Hebrew word for vir­gin, betu­lah, it would have been the wrong word for the sit­u­a­tion. The imme­di­ate ful­fill­ment of the prophecy comes in Isa­iah 8:3, when Isaiah’s wife gives birth to a son. The peo­ple had asked for a sign that God would indeed send the Mes­siah, and the birth of Isaiah’s son was the imme­di­ate sign that the greater prophecy and promise of the vir­gin birth would be ful­filled… Isa­iah used the world almah, which is lit­er­ally trans­lated as “young maiden” and can include vir­gin­ity. There­fore, it is the very word he needed in order to cover both situations–that of Isaiah’s wife and of Joseph’s fiancée, Mary⁴.

Fur­ther­more, it should be noted that even if almah did not mean ‘vir­gin,’ but only ‘young woman,’ there is still very lit­tle rea­son to believe that Mary would not have been a vir­gin. If we read Matthew — and Isa­iah — with the mind­set one of their audi­ence would have had, then we would have instinc­tively con­nected ‘young woman’ with ‘vir­gin,’ the two were vir­tu­ally syn­ony­mous. In fact, if a young woman were not a vir­gin, her pun­ish­ment under the law would have been death. Any ques­tions of her vir­gin­ity would have resulted in a phys­i­cal inspec­tion (Deuteron­omy 22:14–22)⁵.

Lastly, it is often objected that the vir­gin birth of Jesus is merely a copy­ing of pre-existing myths. This is a ques­tion for another time, how­ever to say quickly that this is not the case, espe­cially as one stud­ies and com­pares the vir­gin birth ‘myths’ of pre-existing reli­gions with the vir­gin birth account of Jesus. For more infor­ma­tion on this, see  N.T. Wright’s The Res­ur­rec­tion of the Son of God.

If Chris­tian­ity is to be fac­tu­ally true and mean­ing­ful, the Vir­gin Birth must be an event in space time. With­out the vir­gin birth, we lose Jesus. It goes with­out say­ing that if we lose Jesus, well, then we’ve lost every­thing. As Al Mohler writes:

Can a true Chris­t­ian deny the vir­gin birth? The answer to that ques­tion must be a deci­sive No. Those who deny the vir­gin birth reject the author­ity of Scrip­ture, deny the super­nat­ural birth of the Sav­ior, under­mine the very foun­da­tions of the Gospel, and have no way of explain­ing the deity of Christ.

Any­one who claims that the vir­gin birth can be dis­carded even as the deity of Christ is affirmed is either intel­lec­tu­ally dis­hon­est or the­o­log­i­cal incom­pe­tent⁶.

Related posts:

1. Vir­gin Births and Naked Gospels
2. Brick Walls and Trampolines