Information about Virgin Birth

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.

Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.
This article has been tagged since September 2007.

For the biological phenomenon of female-only reproduction, see .

In religion and mythology, a Virgin Birth is a miraculous birth of a child to a woman who is a virgin.

Although, apart from stories of births resulting from sexual intercourse by a god in human or animal form,^[1] there were some prior beliefs about virgin birth, the concept is best known from Christianity and Islam. In those faiths, the Virgin Mary is said to have given birth to Jesus without having sexual intercourse. This is according to the Christian Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and Qur'an 3.47 in the Islamic faith.

Modern biology finds that, although parthenogenesis, conception by the female of a species without fertilization by a male, is possible in some vertebrates, it cannot naturally happen in mammals because of genomic imprinting, and in those species in which it does occur the offspring are always female.^[2]

Though polls in Western countries indicate that contemporary belief in central tenets of the Christian faith, including the Virgin Birth, is highly variable among both the clergy and the laity, in all branches of Christianity, belief in the virginal birth of Jesus is professed by the great majority of Christians and is expressed in the two most widely used Christian creeds, the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed.

Because of the teaching of the Qur'an, which consistently calls Jesus (Isa in Arabic) "Isa ibn Maryam" (a matronymic), stating that he had no biological father, belief in the virginal birth of Jesus is an essential part of the faith of Muslims. They do not call Jesus "Son of God", rather "Servant of God".

Christians too believe that Jesus had no biological father.

In the New Testament

A of articles on
Jesus Christ and Christianity Chronology Virgin Birth Ministry • Miracles • Parables Death and resurrection Second Coming Christology Names and titles Relics
Cultural and Historical Background Aramaic • Greek • Race Genealogy of Jesus
Perspectives on Jesus Biblical Jesus Religious perspectives Christian Jewish Islamic Historicity • Non-historicity Historical perspective Mythographic perspective
Jesus in culture Cultural depictions of Jesus Images This box: • • [ edit]

The gospels

Two of the four canonical gospels explicitly state that Jesus was conceived without human father.

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy leading from Abraham to Joseph, but then calls Joseph the husband of Mary "of whom (Mary) Jesus was born, who is called Christ" (Matthew 1:2-16). It then explicitly states that, when Mary was found to be pregnant, she had not lived with Joseph, to whom she was engaged (1:18), and that he did not have marital relations with her before the child was born (1:25). It declares: "That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit" (1:20), in fulfilment of the prophecy, "a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us" (1:22-23).

In Luke 1:30-35 Mary asks how she is to conceive and bear a son, since she is a virgin; and she is told it will happen by the power of God. Luke 3:23-38 gives a genealogy tracing backward the ancestry of Joseph, whose son, Luke says, Jesus was thought to be. From David to Joseph, the two genealogies are almost entirely different (see Genealogy of Jesus).

Some have interpreted John 8:41-42 as referring implicitly to the virginal conception of Jesus.^[3]

The Gospel of Mark begins with the baptism of Jesus and contains no mention of the birth of Jesus or of its circumstances.

The epistles of Paul

There are differing interpretations of how the letters of Paul of Tarsus (considered to be among the earliest texts in the New Testament) deal with the question of the birth of Jesus.

In Galatians 4:4 Paul describes the birth of Jesus in a way that does not explicitly refer to virginity:

But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law...

The phrase in Greek is γενόμενον ἐκ γυναικός, genomenon ek gunaikos, "having-become of a-woman", not γενόμενον ἐκ παρθένου, genomenon ek parthenou, "having-become of a-virgin".

Christian apologists point out the phrase "made of a woman" is unique. They question the use of a word translated "made" rather than "born" resulting in "born of a woman" as applied to John the Baptist in Matthew 11:11. [1]

They also point out the emphasis of Paul on the mother rather than of both parents, when in Hebrew genealogy it is the other way around, and the father is often the only one referenced. [2] Others point to the curse upon Jeconiah as evidence of God's miraculous working.[3] Only by a virgin birth could Christ have Joseph as a legal father, inheriting the promises through David, while avoiding the curse through Jechoniah that none of his descendants would prosper and sit on the throne of David (Jeremiah 22:30). [4]

Skeptics argue that like the resurrection appearances, the virgin birth may be an example of the gradual supernaturalization of the Christian story. Some scholars have argued that early Christians did not claim that Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus. They point to the geneaologies in Matthew 1-2, and Luke 1-2, which use descent through Joseph to demonstrate that Jesus was the heir to King David. Moreover, the Ebionites (an early group of proclaimed Jewish Christians, considered heretical by other Christians) maintained that Jesus was naturally conceived.

It might be argued, given he asserts the divinity of Jesus Christ in his writings and refers to him as υιος Θεου, Huios Theou ("Son of God"), Paul's failure to reflect upon the nature of Jesus' birth could suggest that neither he nor his readers felt the need to confront the issue, possibly because they took the divinity of the Virgin Birth for granted (much as they might take the direction of sunset for granted in Ephesians 4:26, when Paul does not specify that it occurs in the West - which appears to be correctly referenced in Isaiah 45:6).

However, the precise direction of the sunset has no obvious theological relevance, while the Virgin Birth certainly does; and, given Paul writes expansively about the theological significance of Jesus' death and resurrection, one might ask why he neglects this aspect of Jesus' life. Examine, for example, Paul's words at the very beginning of Romans:

1:1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,

2 (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,)

3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;

4 And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.

This seems to say that Jesus was human by the flesh and divine by the spirit: he was the "seed of David" by descent in the male line through Joseph. Furthermore, he was declared to be the Son of God by his virgin birth as well as by his resurrection from the dead, and later in Romans Paul says this:

Romans 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh

4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

Why is a body begotten of a virgin by the Holy Spirit called a ὁμοιώματ? σαρκὸς ἁμαρτίας, homoiomati sarkos hamartias, a "likeness of sinful flesh"? These and similar references may suggest that Paul does not mention the Virgin Birth because it had not yet been created as a way of honoring Jesus or overcoming the difficulties of reconciling human flesh and divine spirit, and although Paul refers to Jesus as "Son of God" after his death, Jesus repeatedly refers to himself in life as υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, Huion tou Anthropou, "Son of Man" ( etc; Mark 2:10 etc; Luke 5:24 etc; John 1:51 etc).

In light of this, most recent scholars of the infancy narratives have argued that the theological significance of Jesus' birth did not become a Christian concern until later in the 1st century (See R.E. Brown, Birth of the Messiah - J.A. Fitzmyer Gospel of Luke). That is, the early Church seems to have "worked backwards" in its theology - focusing initially on the death and resurrection of Christ (see nearly all of Paul's letters), then becoming concerned with his life (Gospel of Mark), and later faced with addressing his birth (Matthew and Luke).

Luke's gospel

Some scholars argue from grammar and style that the first two chapters of Luke, describing the virgin birth, were a later addition to the Gospel, which may originally have begun at 3:1:

2:51 And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart.

52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.

3:1 Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene,

2 Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.

At 3:1 there is an abrupt change of subject and the story begins again. Nevertheless, this is characteristic of many stories in the Gospels and the author of Luke may simply be beginning a new segment of his narrative. Arguments regarding the addition of material to a narrative (Redaction and Form criticism), especially when the material in question is present in the earliest manuscripts, have received significant criticism in the last 20 years and are now regarded as dubious by some textual critics.

Double attestation

Two separate gospels attest to the virgin birth, although their details vary.

The Virgin conception and birth is a tradition that fits within the criterion of multiple attestation, that is, the same event appears in two independent traditions (most scholars argue that the authors of Matthew and Luke worked independent of one another). For many historians, independent testimony is a significant evidence for the historical validity of a said event. Matthew and Luke are testifying to an event, the birth, about which there was a tradition, namely, that it resulted from a miraculous conception. That the conception itself was indeed miraculous appears to rest on a "single attestation", that of the Virgin Mary. The attestation of the angel to St Joseph on the miraculous nature of the conception would not be accepted by many scholars as historiographically valid.

Critics of the "double attestation" argument claim that there are inconsistencies between the accounts of Matthew and Luke regarding Jesus' birth. According to Matthew, an unnamed angel informs Joseph of the virginal conception; in Luke the angel Gabriel informs Mary before the conception occurs. Matthew says that Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem when Jesus was born (Matthew 2:1) and that they moved first to Egypt, to avoid Herod the Great (2:13-14, and later, to avoid living under Herod's son Archelaus, they moved to Nazareth (2:22; according to Luke, the couple lived in Nazareth and only traveled to Bethlehem in order to comply with a Roman census (Luke 2:4). Luke mentions that Mary was a relative of Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, has the new-born Jesus visited by shepherds, and attributes two long hymns (the Magnificat and the Benedictus) and one short one (the Nunc dimittis) to various characters. None of this is mentioned by Matthew, and Matthew's account of the visit of the Magi, the massacre of the innocents by Herod, and the flight into Egypt is not mentioned by Luke.

Two rival explanations are put forward for the "double attestation" of Matthew and Luke regarding the virgin birth of Jesus:

The virgin birth was believed to be a historical event, and the stories of Matthew and Luke are based on different aspects of the event and witnesses' reports of it.
Matthew and Luke both wanted to make Jesus fit prophecies from Hebrew scripture. Both were aware of prophecies concerning a virgin birth and Bethlehem, and therefore these elements of their stories match. But each author wove these prophecies into an overall narrative in a different way. For example, both authors had to explain how Jesus was born in Bethlehem when he was known to be from Nazareth (as mentioned in all four gospels) - and each came up with an explanation that some see as contradicting the other.

Dispute regarding Isaiah 7:14

In the past two millennia, there has been controversy among scholars about the translation and the meaning of a small section of Isaiah concerning the word : "עלמה", almah, translated variously as young woman or as virgin. In speaking of the virgin birth of Jesus, what Matthew quotes is the Septuagint text that, being in Greek, does not have that Hebrew word, but instead has the word "παρθένος".

In the King James Version of the Bible, a traditional Protestant translation, the verses in question run like this:

7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.

16 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.

Some newer translations also use the word "virgin": The New King James, The English Standard Version, The Contemporary English Version, Young's Literal Translation, among others. Many modern translations concede that the word in the Hebrew does not mean "virgin", including The Revised Standard Version, The New Jerusalem Bible, The Revised English Bible, The Good News Bible, The New Revised Standard Version, among others. This demonstrates that some Christian scholars, both Protestant and Catholic, prefer the traditional translation of the Hebrew in the context of Isaiah 7:14, while others do not.

A plausible explanation for the purpose of this passage is that the original prophecy takes place in 734 BC, where before an soon-to-be-born child knows the difference between good and evil that Syria (that threatened Israel at the time) would be conquered. This prophecy would be fulfilled 2 years later, when Syria was defeated by the Assyrians in 732 BC. This child also appears in chapter 8, where before he comes of age, that Northern Israel would be destroyed, which occurred also at the hands of Assyria in 722 BC.

Skeptics argue that this is not a very clear prophecy of the birth of Jesus. In addition to the objection that Jesus was not in fact named "Immanuel" there are other problems: for example, (1) what does the "butter and honey" refer to? (One possible response to the "butter and honey" problem: it is a reference to one who, metaphorically, "has eaten good meat his entire life in order to spit out the bad meat if it ever touched his lips". Note that the "butter and honey" reference is immediately followed by the comment on an ability to choose between good and evil; this may suggest that they are related.) (2) Why is Jesus, who was sinless from birth in the traditional Christian understanding, described as having to learn to refuse the evil and choose the good? and (3) This passage within the latter translations states that the "young woman" within this prophecy is "with child" in the present tense (i.e. already pregnant).[5] This makes this prophecy about the coming Messiah Jesus very difficult to explain as the prophecy would have already been fulfilled during Isaiah's time. Some Christian apologists have attempted to explain this problem of temporal context as: a) the latter translations are in error, and b) the latter translations are correct, but that the prophecy has a "double-application" for both Isaiah's time and the first century.

Christian apologists respond that the passage is a double reference— a sign both to Ahaz that the alliance against him would be destroyed, and to the house of David as a whole that was threatened with extinction. This is shown by the Hebrew which uses "singular you" for the former and "plural you' for the latter. With the former, Isaiah reassures Ahaz that the alliance would be destroyed before his own son Shear Jashub, who was present (v. 3), would "learn to refuse the evil and choose the good".

Greek translation

Is it accurate to translate עלמה (`almah) as virgin? The Greek version of the Book of Isaiah 7:14 (see below and the articles on Biblical canon, Tanakh, Septuagint and Old Testament) translates עלמה (`almah) as παρθένος (parthenos). Parthenos is conventionally translated into English as virgin. Furthermore, the Gospel of Matthew 1:22–23 explicitly links the Isaiah prophecy to the birth of Jesus. Accordingly, many Christians understand the Isaiah prophecy as referring to Mary and the birth of Jesus. Unlike the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint is known to have existed before the birth of Jesus, and was considered a divinely inspired translation by several patristic writers, notably Augustine of Hippo. The New Testament references to the Old Testament often follow the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic Text as well.^[4] However, Jerome, whose Latin translation has been declared to be singularly authoritative in Roman Catholicism, believed it to be an inferior translation of the Hebrew in many places and so used Origen's corrected edition for his first two editions of the Vulgate before using mainly the Hebrew in his third edition. Jerome rendered the Hebrew as virgo, the Latin equivalent of parthenos.

The neutrality of this section is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.

Bethulah and 'Almah

There are two important words in Hebrew that can be translated into English as "virgin": בתולה, bethulah, and עלמה, `almah. Isaiah uses `almah in the Masoretic Text, and so conservative Christians have tried to demonstrate that the word unambiguously means "virgin", while other scholars, Christian, Jewish and otherwise, have tried to demonstrate that the word means simply "young woman", without any necessary connotation of virginity. `Almah occurs seven times in the Hebrew Bible and usually seems to mean a young woman of marriageable age (e.g. Genesis 24:43); bethulah is accepted in modern Hebrew usage as the characteristic Hebrew word for virgin. However, it is qualified by a statement ‘neither had any man known her’ in Gen. 24:16, and is used of a widow in Joel 1:8 (although not necessarily one who had relations with her husband, as betrothal historically preceded cohabitation in Jewish family life). In the Ugaritic tablets, btlt was used of the goddess Anath who was a consort of Baal; and in other records, the Aramaic counterpart of betûlah is used of a married woman.

Some Christians would point out in response that the word Bethulah is used in ways that can not mean virgin (Joel 1:8)[6]. Secondly, it is argued that the use of almah in Genesis 24:43 to refer to Rebekah is one example of almah being used to refer to a virgin.

Parthenos

The fact that there is no Hebrew tradition of virgin birth — Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Hannah were infertile women who miraculously gave birth late in life — is consistent with the view that the Messiah would be unique, and Christian apologists argue that many first century Jews, including Jewish converts to Christianity, used the Septuagint, which explicitly uses the word παρθένος (parthenos) to mean "virgin": the root from which we derive words such as parthenogenesis.

Some scholars, however, claim that the Septuagint does not use parthenos very precisely, as it translates at least three different Hebrew words by it: bethulah, "maiden/virgin"; `almah, "maiden/virgin"; and נערה, na`arah, "maiden, young woman, servant". The meaning of the word parthenos in the Septuagint is sometimes expanded in a way not seen in the Isaiah of the (albeit centuries younger) Masoretic texts:

Genesis 24:16 And the damsel [parthenos = Hebrew na`arah] was very fair to look upon, a virgin [parthenos = Hebrew bethulah], neither had any man known her: and she went down to the well, and filled her pitcher, and came up.

Judges 21:12 And they found among the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead four hundred young virgins [parthenous = Hebrew bethulah], that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.

Additionally, the Greek-English Lexicon edited by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott lists other meanings for the word:

παρθένος [parthenos], I. 1. maiden, girl; virgin, opp. γυνή [gynē], "woman". 2. of unmarried women who are not virgins, Iliad 2.514, etc. 3. παρθένος, ἡ [parthenos, hē], the Virgin Goddess, as a title of Athena at Athens. 4. the constellation Virgo. II. as adj., maiden, chaste. III. as masc., παρθένος, ὁ [parthenos, ho], unmarried man, Apocalypse 14.4.

Finally, there is what is seen as archaeological evidence that Jewish speakers of Greek used the word parthenos elastically: Jewish catacombs in Rome identify married men and women as "virgins", but it has been suggested that in this case the word was used to call attention to the fact that the deceased was someone's first spouse. Certainly, Jews stopped using the more explicit Septuagint translation as Christianity spread, and post-Christian Jewish translations into Greek use νεᾶνις, neanis, meaning "young (juvenile) woman", rather than parthenos.

Pre-Christian References

Virgin Birth occurs frequently in pre-Christian mysticism, and stories of the impregnation of mortal women by gods are common in pagan mythology, including the then well-known story of Hercules, born to Alkmene by the god Zeus, who took her husband's form to have sexual relations with her.

According to Feinberg, BibSac, July 62, pagan myth of virgin birth may also underlie the disputed verses from Isaiah:

It all boils down to this: the distinctive Hebrew word for 'virgin' is betulah, whereas `almah means a 'young woman' who may be a virgin, but is not necessarily so. The aim of this note is rather to call attention to a source that has not yet been brought into the discussion. From Ugarit of around 1400 B.C. comes a text celebrating the marriage of the male and female lunar deities. It is there predicted that the goddess will bear a son ... The terminology is remarkably close to that in Isaiah 7:14. However, the Ugaritic statement that the bride will bear a son is fortunately given in parallelistic form; in 77:7 she is called by the exact etymological counterpart of Hebrew `almah 'young woman'; in 77:5 she is called by the exact etymological counterpart of Hebrew betulah 'virgin'. Therefore, the New Testament rendering of `almah as 'virgin' for Isaiah 7:14 rests on the older Jewish interpretation, which in turn is borne out for precisely this annunciation formula by a text that is not only pre-Isaianic but is pre-Mosaic in the form that we now have it on a clay tablet.^[5]

Although the Ugaritic text envisages the birth as the result not of a virginal conception but of sexual union between two deities, this philological reasoning is claimed to raise four possibilities about virgin birth in Christianity: 1) as a pagan concept taken from contemporary paganism; 2) as a concept taken from pre-Mosaic paganism through Isaiah; 3) as a concept taken from contemporary paganism and justified from Isaiah, who took it from pre-Mosaic paganism; 4) as a concept produced independently of all forms of paganism, though sharing similar vocabulary. If pre-Mosaic paganism supports Isaiah, and Isaiah supports Matthew and Mark, paganism has anticipated Christianity, perhaps because God was preparing the way for Christianity or because, as some Church Fathers argued, the Devil was blasphemously imitating Christianity. On the other hand, if paganism does not underlie Isaiah, there are several possibilities. Perhaps virgin birth was invented separately, first in paganism, then in Christianity. Perhaps the idea of asexual conception was so different from the idea of conception through sexual intercourse with a deity that there was little or no borrowing in either direction. Or perhaps, despite the earlier date of the Ugaritic text, virgin birth existed first in Judaism, without any other instances than this one, and was borrowed by paganism. The obvious difficulty with this idea is that virgin birth was much more prominent in paganism, where it occurs in many myths in many different areas, than it was in Judaism, where it occurs (if at all) in a single verse late in the Old Testament. Nevertheless, the argument that virgin birth was a Jewish concept first borrowed by paganism and later incorporated into Christianity was first made by Justin Martyr in The First Apology of Justin, written in the second century. Justin also made this argument in his Dialog with Trypho, in which he debates with a Jew called Trypho:

"Be well assured, then, Trypho," I continued, "that I am established in the knowledge of and faith in the Scriptures by those counterfeits which he who is called the Devil is said to have performed among the Greeks; just as some were wrought by the Magi in Egypt, and others by the false prophets in Elijah's days. For when they tell that Bacchus, son of Jupiter, was begotten by Jupiter's intercourse with Semele, and that he was the discoverer of the vine; and when they relate, that being torn in pieces, and having died, he rose again, and ascended to heaven; and when they introduce wine into his mysteries, do I not perceive that the Devil has imitated the prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses? ..." [7]

Justin was clearly not referring to any Ugaritic texts, as these texts were not known in his day; he was referring to Greek paganism. That the Devil is responsible for the similarities between paganism and Judaism is not generally accepted by modern scholars, partly because the Devil's influence would be impossible to disprove. The Devil could not, for example, imitate Christianity or Judaism before either existed, without violating the generally accepted historical rule that a culture cannot be influenced by a culture that does not yet exist; even though in point of fact it is likely that if "the patriarch Jacob" existed, he was contemporary with the inscriptions at Ugarit. In a similar vein, it might also be argued that God had chosen to out-do these earlier human myths, all as part of his Plan.

Christian writers point out that if in fact the writer of Isaiah intended to borrow the idea of a virgin birth from an older pagan tradition, we might expect to find Isaiah using more explicit language to indicate that a virgin was meant. However, if Isaiah had borrowed the story from pagans, he might be expected to speak in the same way as the pagans, and that is what he does, according to the scholar quoted, who notes a "remarkable" similarity of the Ugaritic and the Hebrew. However, Isaiah may speak the same way as the pagans simply because he came from a similar sociological and semantic context. If Isaiah's prophecy came directly from God, he had no tradition to conform to, and could have expanded the meaning to make it completely unambiguous, and it could be argued that his not making it unambiguous is a difficulty for the Christian interpretation of the text. However, the ambiguity could be seen as being intended, if one supposes that God had a dual purpose for the text: to serve one function in Isaiah's time and another function later. Isaiah's prophecy departs from the Ugaritic version of the predicted birth by having the female be entirely human, whereas in the Ugaritic culture, the virgin was another deity, on par with the male; but this is exactly what might be expected if the myth were borrowed from paganism, since Judaism has only one male deity; a female deity in a borrowed myth might thus conceivably become a female human. And Isaiah departs much further still from the Ugaritic story by not attributing the forthcoming birth to sexual union on the part of any deity, male or female.

In Mithraism, a precursor and rival religion to early Christianity, Mithras was born of a virgin on December 25. In 320 AD, Christians declared by decree December 25th as the birth date of Christ. Due to their similarities, Mithraism is often referenced as a likely origin for many Christian rituals and beliefs.

Mary's Immaculate Conception

The virgin conception of Jesus is often referred to as the "Immaculate Conception." However, this is contrary to the term's original meaning. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, taught by the Roman Catholic Church, states that Mary was conceived "without the stain of original sin". Mary, however, unlike many people's views of Jesus, was conceived in the ordinary way: i.e. she had a human father as well as a human mother (whose names, according to Catholic and Orthodox tradition, were 'Joachim' and 'Anna'/'Anne' - or 'Jehoiakim' and 'Hannah' in Hebrew).

Whilst Protestant and Orthodox denominations adhere to the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, they do not adhere to the idea of Mary's Immaculate Conception, and Protestants do not adhere to her perpetual virginity (see below).

Insurance to cover a virgin birth

In June 2006, it was revealed that a British insurer, britishinsurance.com, had provided a £1 million insurance policy to three Scottish women to provide cover in the event of one of them having a virgin birth. The payout was to cover the costs of bringing up the Christ. The policy was cancelled following pressure from the Catholic Church. [8].

References

1. ^ Examples are the stories of Leda and Europa
2. ^ [9]
3. ^ The Virgin Birth of Christ
4. ^ Occasions where the Septuagint is quoted in the New Testament against the sense of the Hebrew text
5. ^ Feinberg, BibSac, July 62; the citation to Gordon is: C. H. Gordon, "`Almah in Isaiah 7:14", Journal of Bible and Religion, XXI, 2 (April, 1953), p. 106.

External links

Vocabulary in Isaiah 7:14 (1) — Essay arguing that bethulah does not mean "virgin" while `almah does.
Vocabulary in Isaiah 7:14 (2) — Essay arguing that `almah does not mean "virgin" while bethulah does.
What Does Almah Mean? By William F. Beck
Fundamentals: The Virgin Birth of Christ — Analysis of the question from a doctrinally orthodox Christian perspective.
The Virgin Birth Analysis of the question from a skeptic perspective.
"Virgin Birth of Christ". Catholic Encyclopedia. (1913). New York: Robert Appleton Company.

Virgin Birth