Well, as an honest question considering Jesus supposedly had no father.
Do you or have you ever considered that Christianity, Catholicism, etc could all be the offshoot of Mary having an affair and simply making an excuse about him being Gods son to hide it?...
(Considering the star that led the shepherds was in fact Halley's comet and all.)
The Virgin Birth was probably a later-early interpolation imposed on the text, some of the earliest Jewish Christians did not believe in the concept. John and Mark didn't think such a concept important enough to list, and it's kind of odd to include a geneology for Joseph in Luke if he's not the real father. It was a fairly controversial subject for scholars in the early 1900s but the arguments never really got refuted, and swept under the rug. The Gospel of Nicodemus for one thing confirms Joseph as the father.
Messianic lineage makes sense only in terms of a Davidic messiah. In other words, a ruler or king anointed by (or with the approval of) god. The emperor during Jesus' day was known as the son of god, as were emperors before him (notably Alexander the Great). Could it not be that the birth narrative both explained why Jesus of Nazareth wasn't actually born in Nazareth (where no messiah would come from) but Bethlehem, and simultaneously rely upon the widely spread stories about kings/emperors who were sons of God?
You wouldn't need a virgin birth to explain his birth in Bethlehem. As for making him the equivalent of kings/emperors considered to be the offspring of gods, sure. But I think that's problematic as an explanation. Such an idea would be appealing to Gentiles nurtured in a pagan environment but as I said would complicate things for a potential Jewish believer. Since originally all Christians were Jews attempting to persuade other Jews to accept Jesus as Messiah the logical thing would be to provide (or invent) his messianic credentials which would include a clear lineage back to King David. We actually see this in Matthew and Luke. But once you introduce a virgin birth you essentially break that line of descent.
So if such a genealogy existed what happened to it? Why was it not preserved intact as a valuable tool of evangelism?. The genealogies of Matthew and Luke widely differ from one another and from my perspective it looks like neither was part of the original gospels. I think they were both added later by scholars who knew Jewish prerequisites for being the Messiah.
Now if the virgin birth story was created merely to impress potential Gentile converts why does the greatest missionary to the Gentiles, Paul, not make use of it? Why does he state instead in Romans 1:
Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared [to be] the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead
Do you or have you ever considered that Christianity, Catholicism, etc could all be the offshoot of Mary having an affair and simply making an excuse about him being Gods son to hide it?
Actually, you can consider that Jesus was never born. There's some evidence that points to that.
All the earliest writings of the messiah Yeshua focus on the crucifixion. This was a hot punishment in Judea because it was a distinctly Roman punishment. And for centuries, they tried to get Rome to go away. Some of the crucifixion of the messiah place other rulers and emperors, dating it from 100 BCE to the 40s or 50s AD. The time of Herod was just the popular choice. That could be because there was a real guy, or because Herod was a colossal ******* - even for Roman rulers.
However, miracle births in those days (heck, even today) to cover a baby out of wedlock were not uncommon. So that's a possibility too.
Here's the only thing you need to believe as a Christian: that Jesus's two commandments of loving God and loving others as yourself are the path to glory and the kingdom of God. You don't have to believe in an afterlife, that God is a being who can send angels. God and his kingdom can just be a metaphor for endless compassion and building a world of peace in your life.
Or, it can be a description of the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - always just and loving, but sometimes jealous and angry (personally, I've never been jealous and loving, but God can do anything - I just don't understand that kind of God). Maybe Jesus was a Bodhisattva, an incarnation of Vishnu, an avatar of a powerful spirit or God.
Maybe he was just a righteous liberal, looking to end the corruption in his religious institutions as well as his government, and then his followers, when writing down his story at least 30 years after he was supposedly crucified, wrote the stories and couldn't help using them to further their own ideas of political idealism (such as Paul's marked disdain for Rome's permissive culture, Jewish people, and women).
Every word is written in human language by humans. The spirit is what's important, not the semantics.
And I've checked snopes enough to know that, even in an age of overwhelming information, you don't need a real comet, or a real virgin birth, or even a real person to get some people to believe the message you are telling them.
Some people believe in The Force, and the guy who made that up is still alive and advertised it as fiction! There's nothing wrong with that. You can be a Jedi Christian.
Jesus's message was that details of your faith are not important. What's important is the actions you take in accordance to your deepest faith and belief, which should be love God (the entire universe) and treat everyone with compassion, including yourself.
Believing Jesus is God or that he was real and everything else in the Bible is optional to following the Way that Jesus teaches.
No, but you'd need it (or could use it) to explain why Jesus of Nazareth wasn't really from Nazareth but from the place where the anointed of YHWH should be.
As for making him the equivalent of kings/emperors considered to be the offspring of gods, sure. But I think that's problematic as an explanation.
Philo believed Moses was god and Greek philosophers of old were Jewish. He was pretty extreme for Jews of the time, but despite the fact that the movement began in Galilee, all of the gospels were written in Greek, Paul's letters are in Greek and written to groups that were probably composed of some Jews and some gentiles who frequented Jewish places of worship because they wanted to honor YHWH as they did other gods. This was, actually, probably the central mechanism through which Christianity spread: the already existing connections between gentile worship of YHWH.
Since originally all Christians were Jews attempting to persuade other Jews to accept Jesus as Messiah the logical thing would be to provide (or invent) his messianic credentials which would include a clear lineage back to King David.
The Davidic Messiah was supposed to restore Israel to its people and rule as the chosen of God as king. There's not much motivation for setting up a connection allowing a Davidic King when none existed and instead of a restored Israel we have a destroyed temple.
What we see is a nice sleight of the hand. Matthew has Ἰακὼβ δὲ ἐγέννησεν τὸν Ἰωσὴφ τὸν ἄνδρα Μαρίας, ἐξ ἧς ἐγεννήθη Ἰησοῦς ὁ λεγόμενος Χριστός
["and Jacob begat Joseph husband of Mary, from whom was born Jesus the one called Christ"]
The English "from whom" lacks gender, but the Greek does not: ex es can only mean "a female from whom". Matthew uses ἐγέννησεν/begat over and over again until we get to Jesus. Then suddenly we have Joseph, who didn't "begat" anyone. He is merely named the husband of she from whom Jesus was born.
Also, Mark 6:3 & Matthew 13:55 don't name Jesus' father, and Mark doesn't even include the word "son" (οὐχ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ τέκτων/"isn't this guy the carpenter?"; no "carpenter's son").
Luke two is careful to tread a fine line here, as in 2:49-50
(48.) καὶ ἰδόντες αὐτὸν ἐξεπλάγησαν, καὶ εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ, Τέκνον, τί ἐποίησας ἡμῖν οὕτως; ἰδοὺ ὁ πατήρ σου κἀγὼ ὀδυνώμενοι ἐζητοῦμέν σε. (49.) καὶ εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτούς, Τί ὅτι ἐζητεῖτέ με; οὐκ ᾔδειτε ὅτι ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός μου δεῖ εἶναί με
{"and seeing him they [Mary & Joseph] were amazed, and his mother said to him, 'Child, why do you do this to us? See how your father and I we were in pain looking for you!' And he said to them, 'Why is it that you sought me? Don't you know that it is necessary I be in the place of my father?'"}
We get a clear contrast between Joseph as "father" vs. who the real father is, and the contrast is explicit: Mary names Joseph as Jesus' father, and in reply Jesus speaks implicitly denies her claim but explicitly states his real father is the one whose house/place they found him in: the temple.
But once you introduce a virgin birth you essentially break that line of descent.
And that was done. Either the gospel authors thought that the connection through surrogacy was adequate, or they were willing to have a pseudo-Davidic line for the sake of an ability to appeal to scripture for a messianic proof that wouldn't fall apart thanks to an executed messiah instead of a king of Israel.
So if such a genealogy existed what happened to it?
Paul mentions the line of David, Matthew has that insufferably long list, Luke has a similar and equally tedious one, yet there is little else connecting Jesus with the line of David and much else severing it. I imagine that some sort of connection between Jesus and the Davidic line would be important early on and for a while after Christianity was distinct from Judaism (just the way the Jewish scriptures were important enough that the first attempt to get rid of them by Marcion was deemed heretical). But it was not important enough to be particularly clear. First, the connection to the line of David was central for an anointed King of Israel, but not for a redeeming savior for whom God's kingdom was not geographical. Second, the idea of a virgin
(if it hasn't already been said, it's true that neither the Hebrew nor Greek words used mean "virgin"; that's because they didn't have a word for virgin like we do as a "maiden" or "young unmarried woman" was a virgin and so the terms implied this)
is motivated by scripture. The early Christians had a messiah who didn't do what a messiah was supposed to, and those that remained believers or who became believers required a reinterpretation of what the messiah was supposed to be. So they went through Jewish scriptures to "find" whatever it was that they had clearly missed or misunderstood that now, in retrospect, made it clear that Jesus' life and death were consistent with what they should have expected.
The genealogies of Matthew and Luke widely differ from one another
Widely? They differ. But then so do the lists of the 12 disciples. Oral traditions can and do retain things that no longer have meaning for the community/group. However, it is more likely cross-culturally for such components of "oral history" to be partially or wholly forgotten, altered, etc., because there is no clear impetus to reinforce it.
Now if the virgin birth story was created merely to impress potential Gentile converts
It wasn't. The son of god part was both a Jewish and gentile notion that was particularly relevant during Jesus' time, as the emperor himself was the son of god. Far from impressing anybody, a more gentile interpretation of son of god would set a deliberate contrast between Jesus and Augustus, and a challenge of the latter's divinity.
why does the greatest missionary to the Gentiles, Paul, not make use of it?
Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared [to be] the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead
Notice the contrast:
(3.) περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαυὶδ κατὰ σάρκα, (4.) τοῦ ὁρισθέντος υἱοῦ θεοῦ ἐν δυνάμει κατὰ πνεῦμα
["regarding his son the one coming to be from the seed of David as to the flesh, being marked/declared/ordained son of god with power as to spirit/soul"]
Kata sarka & kata pneuma are coordinated clauses, one referring to how Jesus came to be in terms of a flesh and blood human, the other in terms of the son of god in a more essential and defining way: the spirit/essence/soul. Once again, we get ambiguity and a sort of two-for-one deal. A connection to David, even if nebulous and rather trivial, and the son of God according the spirit. One of these two didn't last, as Paul actually indicates here too: Jesus isn't just kata pneuma, but κατὰ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν ("as to/according to spirit of holiness through resurrection from death"). The part that matters (as Paul says explicitly elsewhere) is this resurrection. And it is according to this spirit/essence sense that Jesus is the son of god not seed of david.
Well, as an honest question considering Jesus supposedly had no father.
Do you or have you ever considered that Christianity, Catholicism, etc could all be the offshoot of Mary having an affair and simply making an excuse about him being Gods son to hide it?...
(Considering the star that led the shepherds was in fact Halley's comet and all.)
Admittedly I have considered that back during the days when I was more skeptical than what I am now. However, I now believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary conceived Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit and that she remained a virgin for her entire life.
