The Virgin Birth

The Gospels of the New Testament are written in a manner not common to other forms of literature. Their method of construction was no accident, however, for they had a common specific purpose and were not intended to relate history. The aim of the Gospels was to convey an evangelical message (Greek "eu-aggelos" which means "bringing good news"). The English word "Gospel" is an Anglo-Saxon translation from the Greek, meaning precisely the same thing. In large measure, they can be regarded as enthusiasm propaganda and, on that basis, we should be wary of accepting their contents at face value. (Author's Note: There is more to the Gospels than Sir Laurence mentions here...we will explore how they came to be canonized in another section.)

The original unedited Gospel of Mark (inspired by Peter) was written in Rome in around AD 66. Clement of Alexandria, the 2nd-century churchman, confirmed that it was issued at a time when the Jews of Judea were in revolt against the Roman occupiers, and were being crucified in their thousands. (Author's Note: Clement also figures very prominently historically as trying to suppress the truth about Jesus, which will be addressed in a later section which will discuss heresies.) The Gospel writer therefore had his own safety to consider, and could hardly present a document that was overtly anti-Roman. His mission was to spread the Good News, not to give cause for its condemnation. Mark's Gospel was a message of brotherly support, a promise of independent salvation for the needy people subject to the overwhelming domination of Rome. Such a forecast of deliverance eased the people's minds amd took some of the pressure off the governors whose subjugation was felt throughout the growing Empire. The Gospel of Mark subsequently became a reference source for both Matthew and Luke whose authors anticipated on the theme.

The Gospel of Luke appears to have emerged from Antioch in about AD 80, and could indeed have been written by Luke 'the beloved physician' (Colossians 4:14). The account credited to Matthew (sponsored by the priest Matthew Annas) appeared first in Corinth about five years later. Both Matthew and Luke used the Mark version as a partial source. For this reason, the three are known together as the Synoptic Gospels (Greek "synoptikos" or "seeing with the same eye"), even though they do no agree in many respects.

The Gospel of John differs from them in content, style, and overall concept, and is much more difficult to date. Published in Samaria, John's Gospel was compiled under the joint authorship of John Mark (Acts 12:12) and Philip the evangelist. It was influenced by the traditions of a particular community sect, and is far from naive in its account of Jesus's story. The Gospels consequently has its own following of believers who preserve its distinction from the other Gospels. It also includes countless small details which do not appear elsewhere -- a factor that has led many to believe that it is a more accurate testimony in terms of both history and chronology. Although the Gospel of John did not see the light of day until after the other Gospels, it is likely that its unpublished content was compiled as early as AD 37. (Author's Note: Some people believe that Jesus was the actual author of the Gospel of John, not John himself.)

The first published Gospel, that of Mark, makes no mention of the Virgin Birth. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke bring it into play with varying degrees of detail and emphasis, but it totally ignored by John. In the past, as now, clerics, scholars, and teachers have thus been faced with the difficulty of analyzing the variant material, and they have made choices of belief from a set of documents that are very sketchy in places. As a result, bits and pieces have been extracted from each Gospel (whether or not the same information is contained in the others) to the extent that a whole new, unwritten Gospel has been concocted. Students are simply told that "the Bible says" this, or "the Bible says" that. When being taught about the Virgin Birth, they are directed to Matthew and Luke. When being taught about other aspects, they are directed to the Gospel or Gospels concerned, as if they were all intended to be constituent chapters of the same overall work, which of course they were not.

Through the passing years, various speculations about Biblical content have become interpretations, and these interpretations have been established by the Church as dogma. The emergent doctrines have been integrated into society as if they were positive facts. Pupils in schools and churches are rarely told that Matthew says Mary was a virgin but that Mark does not; or that Luke mentions the manger in which Jesus was placed whereas the other Gospels do not; or that not one Gospel makes even the vague reference to the stable which has become such an integral part of popular tradition. Selective teaching of this kind applies not only to the Nativity at Bethlehem but to any number of incidents of Jesus's recorded life. Instead, Christian children are taught a tale that has been altogether smoothed over; a tale that extracts the most entertaining features from each Gospel and merges them into a single embellished story that was never written by anyone.

The concept of the Virgin Birth of Jesus sits at the very heart of the orthodox Christian tradition. Even so, it is mentioned in only two of the four Gospels, and nowhere else in the New Testament. Matthew 1:18-25 reads:

"Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise. When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

"Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.

"But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, 'Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.'

"And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins.

"Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, 'Behold, 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.'"

The "prophet" referred to is Isaiah who, in 735 BC, when Jerusalem was under threat from Syria, proclaimed to the troubled King Ahaz, "Hear ye now, O house of David...Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:13-14). But there is nothing in all of this to suggest that Isaiah was predicting the birth of Jesus more than 700 years later. Such an anachronistic revelation would have been of little use to Ahaz in his hour of need. Like so many instances in the New Testament, this illustrates how events of the Gospels were often interpreted to conform with ambiguous prophecies.

(Author's Note: I disagree in part with what Sir Gardner is saying here. I do believe that since prophecy is by definition communication from God, and God is the Alpha and the Omega, a lot of what we get goes backward and forward through time and is hard to understand because of that. It has been my own personal experience that such revelations from the Lord therefore apply to the moment in time in which they are received, as well as to the past and future. Isaiah was an extremely gifted prophet and I do not doubt that he was able to see 700+ years into the future to see the misinterpretation of Jesus' birth...remember Paul's words that "we see through a glass dimly." We do not have the mind of God and are therefore not able to see things in the way they are being sent to us in total. Also it is human nature to keep repeating the same events over and over again so that hopefully we learn from our mistakes, both on a personal level and on a worldwide level, and I believe this is also part of the nature of prophecy. So let's continue on....)

Moreover, Mary and Joseph did not actually call their son Emmanuel (Hebrew. Immanu-El "With us (is) God"); they called him Jesus (Hebrew, Yehoshua, Jehovah saves." (Author's Note: Yes this is true...Jesus's parents did not call him Emmanuel, but the Church continues to do so by perpetuating the myth of Jesus's divinity. Again, we must look a little closer at the nature of prophecy to understand what Isaiah was trying to tell us. The Church created a mythology about Jesus which says very clearly that He was God incarnate...this would mean that one his names SHOULD be Emmanuel. I believe that what Isaiah saw was the coming of the Church Age would be built on sand.)

That apart, popular understanding of the Gospel text is based on numerous other misconceptions. The Semitic word translated as "virgin" is "almah" -- which actually means nothing more than "a young woman." The Hebrew word denoting a physical "virgin" (that is virgo intacta) is "bethulah." In Latin, the word "virgo" means no more than "unmarried"; to imply the modern English connotations of "virgin", the Latin word had to be qualified by a further adjective (intacta) denoting sexual inexperience. (Author's Note: And this statement by Sir Gardner confirms what I have said about the nature of prophecy. Sometimes prophets see things and do not understand their meaning and yet are bound to speak them. Many times they see things so far down the road that it is impossible for the prophecy to be properly interpreted at the time, and many times, prophets only get pieces of the story. This is why Paul said that where there are two or more prophets, each one should speak in turn so that we can get the whole picture. God gives us words according to His purposes for each one of us, for the work He needs us to do, which makes me wonder if there was anyone with Isaiah who had the gift of interpretation and knew what God was trying to say with all of this and squashed it, because this was so clearly a warning.)

The physical virginity attributed to Mary becomes even less credible in relation to that dogmatic Catholic assertion that she was a virgin forever. It is no secret that Mary had other offspring, as confirmed in each of the Gospels: "Is this not the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And his brethren James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?" (Matthew 13:55). In both Luke (2:7) and Matthew (1:25), Jesus is cited as Mary's "firstborn son" The quotation from Matthew above furthermore describes Jesus as "the carpenter's son" (that is, the son of Joseph), and Luke 2:27 clearly refers to Joseph and Mary as Jesus's parents. Matthew 13:56 and Mark 6:3 both indicated that Jesus also had sisters.

The portrayal of Jesus as the son of a "carpenter" is yet another example of how later language misinterpreted an original meaning. It is not necessarily a deliberate mistranslation, but it does show how some old Hebrew and Aramaic words have no direct counterparts in other tongues. (Author's Note: This may be true, but I also believe that the wording of Scripture was twisted to suit the Church's purposes. They did not want the life of Jesus told as it really was. The mythology of Jesus was created for political reasons and Jesus was intentionally portrayed to have come from very poor beginnings, which he did not, in order to "humble" the flock...or in my opinion, intimidate the sheep into submission.) The word translated into English as "carpenter" represents the much wider sense of the Greek "ho tekton," which is to turn a rendition of the Semitic word "naggar."

As pointed out by the Semitic scholar Dr. Geza Vermes, this descriptive word could perhaps be applied to a trade craftsman, but could equally well define a scholar or teacher. (Author's Note: Dr. Vermes translated the version of the Dead Sea Scrolls that I use.) It certainly did not identify Jesus and Joseph as woodworkers. More precisely, it identified them as men with skills, learned men, who were masters of what they did. Indeed, one translation of the Greek "ho tekton" relates to "a master of the craft" as may be applied to modern Freemasonry.

(Author's Note: Websters defines the word "techtonic" as follows: (1) of or having to do with building; constructional. (2) architectural. (3) designating of or pertaining to changes in the structure of the earth's crust, the forces responsible for such deformation, or the external forms produced. I think both definitions apply to the life of Jesus and the family of David in general. Yes they were master craftmen of different degrees and field (technology) but they were also put here on this earth to lead the way and to shake things up if necessary. They were put here to build the Church the right way. I hope that you, gentle readers, are beginning to see the many different levels upon which events happen and the subtle shades of meaning between each one.)

In much the same way, the mention in Luke of the Baby Jesus's being placed in a manger has given rise to the whole concept of the Nativity being set in a stable, complete with its familiar cast of attentive animals. But there is no basis whatsoever for this image. No stable is mentioned in any Gospel. In fact, Matthew 2:11 states quite clearly that the baby Jesus lay within a house: "And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him."

It is also worth noting that the precise words used in Luke 2:7 are to the effect that Jesus was laid in a manger because there was no room for the family "in the inn," not "at the inn," as is so frequently misquoted. The journalist and biographer A.N. Wilson specifies that the original Greek (from which the New Testament was translated into English) actually states that tere was "no 'topos' in the 'kataluma," denoting that there was "no place in the room." In reality, it was not at all uncommon for mangers (animal feeding boxes to be used as substitute cradles.