The doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus is so well accepted and cherished by most Christians that it has become a criterion for membership in most Christian organizations. All those who would dare to question it are generally held in contempt. Devout Christians religiously carry their Bibles to church, and some are even involved in Bible study classes, and yet most haven’t the slightest idea what their Bibles teach. Few know where their Bibles originated or how they were assembled and edited. It is assumed that their Bibles just dropped down from heaven somehow. This subject, however, is never brought up in preaching or Bible studies, thus leaving most Christians effectively biblically illiterate. The question is never asked: where the Bible came from, or how and when was it edited and canonized? However, we will take the Bible at what it says, and in this article, compare the birth stories of Jesus as they are related in the mainline gospels.
Most Bible scholars tell us that the Gospel of Mark is the earliest of all the other gospels. Yet, there is nothing in this gospel about the birth of Jesus. The Gospel of Mark opens by simply stating, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Then Jesus was baptized and preached in Galilee. The Gospel of John, we are told, is the most recent of the four mainline gospels. We also find nothing in this gospel about Jesus’ birth or His childhood. The writers or editors of these gospels either did not know about the virgin birth of Jesus or thought it was not noteworthy enough to mention. The opening statement in the Gospel of Mark is much closer to the first gospel, known as the Evangelicon or the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, that was in the first canon of the Christian Bible that was transcribed, compiled, and canonized by the evangelist Marcion of Sinope in 128 C.E. After the prologue the Evangelicon also opens with Jesus preaching in Galilee.
The other two gospels, Matthew and Luke, mention Jesus’ birth and contain the traditional nativity stories.
Both of these gospels agree on the following events:
Joseph and Mary were the parents of Jesus; they were betrothed but were not yet married when she became pregnant (Matt. 1:20 & Luke 1:27, 2:4). Although the details differ significantly, both tell of an angelic announcement about the baby Jesus who was to be born (Matt. 1:20-23 & Luke 1:30-35). Both seem to indicate this child was not conceived in the usual human way but rather by an intervention of God’s Spirit (Matt. 1:20, Luke 1:34). Both have an angel saying His name was to be Jesus and that He would be a Savior (Matt. 1:21 & Luke 2:11). Both set the time of His birth during the reign of Herod the Great (Matt. 2:1 & Luke 1:5). Both tell us He spent His youth in Nazareth (Matt. 2:33 & Luke 2:51).
From this point on, the details of the nativity stories are very different and even conflict with each other. Luke’s genealogy begins with Adam (Luke 3:38). Matthew’s genealogy starts with Abraham (Matt. 1:32). It traces the lineage of Jesus’ ancestry through the royal line of David. At the same time, Luke goes from David to Nathan, not Solomon, and ignores the royal line. Matthew also has several women in his genealogy; some were not Hebrew, such as Rahab, the prostitute. Some other women mentioned in this genealogy also had a cloud over their morality. Luke and Matthew have Jesus’ lineage through Joseph, but they disagree on who Joseph’s father was. Luke says it was Heli, and Matthew says it was Jacob. Some have tried to explain this contradiction by saying Matthew’s genealogy was that of Joseph and Luke’s was for Mary, but seeing that Luke has Jacob as the father of Joseph, if this is also the genealogy of Mary, this would make Joseph and Mary brother and sister. This creates a more significant problem than it solves. Neither does it deal with the issue of Joseph having two different fathers. Giving a physical genealogy of Jesus through Joseph is contradictory, as both gospels do if the Holy Spirit rather than Joseph were His father. The Christian community seems to ignore this contradiction altogether, pretending it doesn’t exist.
Luke uses a Roman census with no historical record to get Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem (Luke 2:1-2). At the same time, Matthew assumes they already live there in a known house over which a star can stop (Matt 2:11). Matthew contains nothing regarding a stable, a manger, an angelic chorus, or wandering shepherds; In contrast, Luke knows nothing of a star in the east, wise men, any gifts, nor Herod’s slaughter of the infants in Bethlehem. These two gospels also contradicted what happened right after Jesus’ birth. Matthew has Joseph having a dream wherein an angel tells him to take the child and flee to Egypt. After they had been in Egypt for some time, the angel told Joseph that Herod had died and it was safe to return to Israel, but not go to Judea as Herod’s son was reigning instead of his father, so to avoid danger, go to Galilee (Matt. 2:21-23).
Luke’s story is altogether different. When Jesus was eight days old, Joseph and Mary took him to the synagogue in Bethlehem to circumcise him. When they finished, they went directly to their home in Nazareth. These two nativity stories lack agreement and consistency, so they cannot be accurate. They could not go south to Egypt and north to Nazareth simultaneously. This contradiction is far too great to be ignored.
The editor of the Gospel of Matthew generated his story and tried to support it with passages from the Hebrew scriptures, which he took out of context. He had to get Jesus into Egypt so he could misapply Hosea 11:1 in Matt. 2:14. It says: “…and called my son out of Egypt.” He did not use the entire verse, which would have killed his story. This verse reads, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.” One does not have to be a genius to understand that the son referred to here is Israel, and the calling out of Egypt was the exodus, which had no reference to Jesus.
One might say ‘the golden text’ used for the virgin birth myth is found in Matthew 1:23. However, verses 23 & 24 are in brackets in the original 1611 King James Version. This is an indication of an insert by the editors. Isaiah 7:14 was inserted here to support their doctrine of the virgin birth. If we keep this prophecy within its context, we will learn that Yahweh had promised Isaiah the defeat and downfall of Israel’s enemies, who were an immediate threat. This passage reads:
“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a young woman shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.”
This prophecy is fulfilled in Isaiah 8:4 when it says: “For before the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and my mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be taken away before the king of Assyria.”
One can see at once that this prophecy’s young woman, not a virgin, was Isaiah’s wife, a prophetess, and the mother of this conceived son. His name was Immanuel because the fulfillment of this prophecy was proof that Israel’s God, Yahweh, was with them. This prophecy was made about 700 B.C.E. and fulfilled in a few months. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the birth of Jesus. To insert this passage to promote the virgin birth of Jesus is deception and a misrepresentation of scripture. Perhaps the editor of this gospel used the ‘double fulfillment theory’, like the futurist’s do in our time. They disregard the first fulfillment so they can try to make it fit somewhere else at a later time.
Then we are confronted with “…Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” (Matt. 2:18). This passage is taken from a poem or song (Jer. 31:2-22). This song or poem reminisces the past hardships of the children of Israel and has no reference whatsoever to any future events. The editor of this gospel uses this to establish his generated story about the slaughter of the infants at Bethlehem and of Joseph fleeing to Egypt. “…Rachel weeping for her children..” was not in Bethlehem but in Rama, which is in a mountain area of Galilee and is nowhere near Bethlehem but about 80 miles to the north. It seems as though the editor did not expect anyone to check on his references. He was essentially correct because only a very few do. Otherwise, this story would have no credibility or audience.
It is common knowledge that the Apostle Paul’s writings outdate all others in the so-called ‘New‘ Testament. What did he have to say about the birth and lineage of Jesus? Nothing. In his original and non-interpolated epistles, as preserved within the Marcionite Apostolicon, the Apostle Paul says nothing about the virgin birth of Jesus. Paul died around 67 C.E., and at this point, the virgin birth of Jesus had not yet been thought of. If there was a virgin birth of Jesus, the Apostle Paul and his contemporaries either knew nothing about it or thought it was unimportant enough to mention in their writings. Further, if the Holy Spirit was the father of Jesus, the Apostle Paul was also unaware of it or completely ignored it. It was also ignored by the Apostles John, James, and Peter.
Perhaps the best witness of the impossibility of a virgin birth is Jesus Himself. In His conversation with Nicodemus, He said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit” (Evangelicon 2:49). He makes it very clear the flesh and the spirit are distinctly different. The flesh consists of matter made up of atoms; there is not a single atom of material matter in a spirit. Therefore, we conclude that the Spirit of God did not possess a single atom of material matter, not even sperm, to father a human child. It had been commonly believed for centuries that the man planted a seed into the woman, much like planting a seed in the soil, otherwise known as ‘Mother Earth.’ This is why one is called a husband, from ‘Husbandman‘, an old-fashioned way of saying ‘farmer‘.
The myth of the virgin birth was not first with Christianity, but early Judaizers of Christianity stole it from previous non-Christian religions. In the Hindu religion, Vishnu had an incarnate Son, Krishna, by virgin birth. This was about 1156 B.C.E. It is also interesting to note that at his birth, there was a special star in the sky, there were shepherds, and the local king, out of jealousy, slaughtered infants. The myth of a Virgin birth of other gods is the Buddha, the Egyptian god Horus, a Roman savior Quarrnus, the Greek deity Adonis, and the Persian god Mithra, who was born December 25th. The list could go on and on, including the god Zoroaster from around 500 B.C.E., but this list should be sufficient to make the point.
So when did Christianity begin to believe and teach that Jesus was born of a virgin? It seems to have been shortly after the first Christian missionaries returned from India. This was sometime shortly after the turn of the first century. Having learned of the birth story of the Hindu god Krishna, the Christian leaders felt the Son of God they worshipped should also have these credentials. This is why they adopted the Hindu story, with some variations, including the star, the shepherds, and a king whose jealousy motivated him to murder infants. They stole the birth story of Jesus from the Hindus.
Many fantasy stories circulated during the 2nd century, such as Jesus speaking to His mother shortly after His birth. This story came from the stories of the Buddha and Krishna. The present-day Koran has a story circulated in the 2nd century, in which Jesus, while a boy, made mud birds and then commanded them to fly away, which they did.
It still stands that there is no solid evidence of any virgin birth stories of Jesus that came out of the 1st century. There is no record of the four mainline gospels, as we now have them until mentioned by Irenaeus 190 C.E. If this subject were investigated from all available sources, not just one-sided history, one would see at once the four mainline gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were developed during the 2nd century using some 1st-century material. At this time, the Church of Rome edited and even inserted passages into the scriptures.
The evangelist Marcion of Sinope introduced the first Christian canon around 128 C.E. This canon consisted of one gospel, the first gospel, the Evangelicon or the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the then-known epistles of the Apostle Paul. This gospel opened with Jesus preaching in Galilee, and there was no birth story. Those who considered themselves the ‘orthodox’ Christian leaders then did not have a canon of scripture. At this time, there was no agreement by the ‘orthodox’ theologians on what to put in a canon.
Some believe that Theophilus, the bishop of Antioch, edited and added Marcion’s Evangelicon around 169 C.E. He doubled its size by adding other information that he thought essential for a gospel, such as a virgin birth narrative, and then named it ‘The Gospel of Luke.’
During the latter part of the 1st century, there were various stories about Jesus, primarily transmitted orally from one generation to another. There were very few written texts at that time. The surviving oral stories were eventually written down and edited by scholars in the 2nd century. They kept what sounded reasonable and rejected that which they considered fantasy. Bits and pieces were taken from texts written long after Christ’s death and resurrection. The ‘orthodox’ church leaders compiled what supported their doctrinal views using some of these previous writings. So, the four mainline gospels we now have were edited and canonized using information from earlier writings and other information that had been passed to them orally. Luke’s author said this is how he got his information (Luke 1:1-2).
In conclusion, the teaching of the supposed virgin birth of Christ is an unfounded fable. This myth was invented and placed in the gospels to support the doctrine that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, thus tying him to the Hebrew Bible prophecies and Davidic lineage. This doctrine developed during the 2nd century. The virgin birth is a physical impossibility, a fable borrowed from pagan religions. One should not be required to commit intellectual suicide in believing a lie to be a Christian.
What is truly important for Christians to focus on is what Jesus accomplished before, at, and after the Cross. The Christian faith is founded upon the death and resurrection of Christ, not His supposed birth. The Christian faith either stands or falls on the fact of the resurrection of Christ. The Apostle Paul tells us we are not to know Christ after the flesh (2 Cor. 5:16). We are to know Him as “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Our salvation is in our relationship with Christ, knowing Him and the power of His resurrection, and is not in the teachings of Judaizing theologians, nor in the doctrines of men or even in the interpolated and expanded mainline Christian Bible, but in Christ only.