Was Jesus a Virgin?

[doppelganger]

you don't have to be obtuse. I obviously know how babies are made. What's not quite so clear to me is your grasp of Christian theology. Had you a good grasp, you wouldn't have said what you did here, for mainstream Christian belief maintains that the necessary component is that Jesus is God Incarnate, as God the Son.

That's one of many things about mainstream Christian theology. Another is that Jesus was born the child of Mary of Jehovah. Mary was a virgin. Somehow, Jesus picked up 23 chromosomes from God.

What does this suggest to you: "The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[b] the Son of God."


Ever read "Leda and the Swan"?

Whether there was intercourse or not, there was some kind of sexual reproduction. How does mainstream Christian theology get the other 23 chromosomes into place according to your understanding?

Or do you not believe those 23 chromosomes actually came from God? And if not, then who contributed them?

 

[Bob Dixon]

wordz

Somehow, you've not picked this fact up while researching Christianity, so I'll just state it here:

God is omnipotent. He doesn't NEED TO HAVE SEX. He can DO ANYTHING.

 

[doppelganger]

Somehow, you've not picked this fact up while researching Christianity, so I'll just state it here:

God is omnipotent. He doesn't NEED TO HAVE SEX. He can DO ANYTHING.

I understand you think that statement means something. It is just noise to me though.

 

[ChristineES]

It doesn't talk about Jesus sex life or lack thereof in the bible, so I really would have no way of answering the question. In fact, we also don't know Jesus' favorite color is or if he preferred fish over leg of lamb.

 

[Pegg]

God created ALL of Adams chromosomes... why couldnt he have provided ALL of Jesus chromosomes as well?

a child can be born through a surrogate and not have the surrogates chromosomes.

 

[Acim]

Jesus is a virgin, this I know
For the bible thumpers tell me so

 

[Bob Dixon]

I understand you think that statement means something. It is just noise to me though.

I don't know how to make it any simpler.

God, the Ruler and Creator of the Universe, is capable of doing anything.
There is no limit for God. He is not limited by the Laws of Physics. This is why we call Him "Almighty".

 

[doppelganger]

I don't know how to make it any simpler.

God, the Ruler and Creator of the Universe, is capable of doing anything.
There is no limit for God. He is not limited by the Laws of Physics. This is why we call Him "Almighty".

Still means absolutely nothing to me. Human beings have 46 chromosomes. They reproduce through "sexual reproduction" with half of those chromosomes coming from each of two parents (setting aside cloning technology for a moment). So Mary provided half the chromosomes. And by whatever magic she was "overcome by" and "overshadowed" by the "Holy Spirit" who put the other 23 there in some action of sexual union of gametes. This is Biology 101. I don't know how to make it any simpler. In the story, if it's literal, "God" engages in sexual reproduction with Mary.

 

[doppelganger]

I think you're getting confused because you are confusing "sexual reproduction" with "sexual intercourse." They are not the same thing.

 

[doppelganger]

Now, a more interesting question to me is why the notion that God sexually reproduced with Mary is disturbing to some people?

In other mythologies, the sexual union is much more explicit. As I alluded to earlier, the story of Zeus's rape of Leda while in the form of a bird is very similar. I like this version from the Yeats poem:

"Leda and the Swan" by William Butler Yeats

A sudden blow:
the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower[20]
And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?


I think of a scene something like this when I read Mary is "overshadowed" by the Holy Spirit and Jesus is thereby conceived in her womb.

It's brutal, animal, and yet beautiful too. Just like "God," right?

After all, we are made in "his image," aren't we?

 

[sojourner]

Actually it was the Gnostics who invented Christianity. The Jesus of the gospels was a humanized version of the Isu Chrestos of the Gnostics.

Marcion?s New Testament The first version of the New Testament (140 CE)

Bull crap. Read your history.

 

[sojourner]

Whether there was intercourse or not, there was some kind of sexual reproduction. How does mainstream Christian theology get the other 23 chromosomes into place according to your understanding?

Since the Bible authors knew nothing about chromosomes, or how they are put together to form a baby, it makes not difference to the theology, as presented by the bible.

But if Mary was a virgin, she obviously didn't have sex with God. She became miraculously pregnant. That's the theology.

 

[sojourner]

I understand you think that statement means something. It is just noise to me though.

If it's just noise to you, then you don't buy into the theology, which means you don't have a dog in this fight.

 

[sojourner]

Now, a more interesting question to me is why the notion that God sexually reproduced with Mary is disturbing to some people?

In other mythologies, the sexual union is much more explicit. As I alluded to earlier, the story of Zeus's rape of Leda while in the form of a bird is very similar. I like this version from the Yeats poem:

"Leda and the Swan" by William Butler Yeats

A sudden blow:
the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower[20]
And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?


I think of a scene something like this when I read Mary is "overshadowed" by the Holy Spirit and Jesus is thereby conceived in her womb.

It's brutal, animal, and yet beautiful too. Just like "God," right?

After all, we are made in "his image," aren't we?

It's OK, except it doesn't fit the concept of how Mary conceived, according to the Bible.

What does this have to do with Jesus' alleged virginity?

 

[Tellurian]

Bull crap. Read your history.

The problem is that there is NO biblical Jesus in the historical records. He is only found in the stories promoting a new religious belief, and those evolved from Marcion's Euangelion.

Many different religions have many different religious texts with stories often called myths. If you accept the Christian myths as being true, then does that mean you also accept the myths from the other religious beliefs also? How do you decide which myths to accept and which to reject, especially when the mythological figures in the myths are not found in the historical records. :sarcastic

 

[doppelganger]

It's OK, except it doesn't fit the concept of how Mary conceived, according to the Bible.

What does this have to do with Jesus' alleged virginity?

I said it was similar. Not the same. Though the details are almost completely missing in the one story that has the account (Luke). So it could have happened just this way. Nobody indicates that she was ever asked before a child was conceived in her womb by the overshadowing power of the Holy Spirit.

So it doesn't not fit the concept, either.

As for what it has to do with Jesus as virgin, there's a seemingly pathological need to strip the characters in this drama of their sexuality. Jesus, God, Mary - none of them can be sexual and still be holy.

There's something important to take away from the fact that this religion appears to be fixated on human sexuality being unholy. And Phil's point is an excellent one. These characters aren't human precisely because they are contrived to fit a peculiar theology that has little relevance to people who wrestle with different sorts of challenges, like what to do when you hit sexual maturity at age 12, but live in a society that doesn't consider you a sexual adult until at least 18, and in practice more like 25?

Perhaps this is one of many signs that the Bible is the wrong tool for the job.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

40,000 Year Old Virgin - Coming to Theatres this Friday.

 

[doppelganger]

It's no accident that people are more interested in reading a Harry Potter story, or a tale of angst-ridden vampires coming to grips with their power, than they are this ancient story from the sands of a different time. They might profess to "believe" in it, but they don't find out who they are through it as well as they can in stories that can be read through the lens of their own real life.