yoel- The concept doesn't exist. What's the purpose for it? I think that
orthodox Jews have a much more healthy attitude towards sex than most
Christians I have met. (Still screwed up, though- in my humble opinion.)
What is the purpose of a virgin birth? God created sex! There is nothing
"evil" about sex (as long as it's performed within God's perimeters)! The
entire Song of Songs is based on sex! What is it in the act of sex which is
so detrimental to human character and developement and would make it
necessary for the messiah to be conceived in chastity?
(COURT 3/12) Hello Yoel: I don't think there is any indication from any on
this listing, or from the gospel accounts, that sex is an evil thing
(although the "use" of sex can be evil in some instances). Your question is
a very good one, but I would rephrase it as such: why is it necessary to
have Jesus born to a virgin? For that, I don't have an answer, but it
certainly doesn't argue whether Jesus actually WAS born to a virgin.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that the question of "why" something
is doesn't help us to identify whether it "is" or not.
MWF 3-13
Asking the question "why" something _ought_ to be, i.e., why it logically
flows from antecedent conditions most certainly can help identify whether it "is"
or not.
Indeed much of science is an attempt to answer "why" questions.
Scientists have simply learned not to ask too large of a question at once, and
instead answer smaller ones. Good scientific theories answer a LOT of little
"why's", (e.g., evolution).
So Yoel asks a legitimate question, although it can perhaps be better
framed, and the possibly confusing word "why" dropped from the reformulation:
"Does an independent reading of Hebrew scriptures require that the
Messiah be born of a virgin?"
Would be one way to phrase it--and the rabbinical answer appears to be
not just a resounding "NO", but a fallout " Just _WHAT_ are you thinking about?"
Dieing and rising saviour gods--born of virgins--are no part of Jewish
lore, and indeed very few Jews seem ever to have converted.
Dieing and rising saviour gods born of virgins were very much a part of
assorted pagan traditions. And it was Gentile converts who formed the core of
Christianity.
Yet once again, I'll quote Will Durant on the subject:
" Just as Philo, learned in Greek speculation, had felt a need to
rephrase Judaism in forms acceptable to the logic-loving Greeks, so John,
having lived for two generations in a Hellenistic environment, sought to give
a Greek philosophical tinge to the mystic Jewish doctrine that the Wisdom
of God was a living being, and to the Christian doctrine that Jesus was the
Messiah. Consciously or not, he continued Paul's work of detaching
Christianity from Judaism. Christ was no longer presented as a Jew, living
more or less under the Jewish Law; he was make to address the Jews as
"you," and to speak of their Law as "yours"; he was not a Messiah sent "to
save the lost sheep of Israel," he was the coeternal Son of God; not merely
the future judge of mankind, but the primeval creator of the universe. In this
perspective the Jewish life of the man Jesus could be put into the
background, faded almost as in Gnostic heresy; and the god Christ was
assimilated to the religious and philosophical traditions of the Hellenistic
mind. Now the pagan world--even the anti-Semitic world--could accept
him as its own.
"Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. The Greek mind
dying, came to a transmigrated life in the theology and liturgy of the
Church; the Greek language, having reigned for centuries over philosophy,
became the vehicle of Christian literature and ritual; the Greek mysteries
passed down into the impressive mystery of the Mass. Other pagan cultures
contributed to the syncretist result. From Egypt came the ideas of a divine
trinity, the Last Judgment, and a personal immortality of reward and
punishment; from Egypt the adoration of the Mother and Child, and the
mystic theosophy that made Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and obscured
the Christian creed; there, too, Christian monasticism would find its
exemplars and its source. From Phrygia came the worship of the Great
Mother; from Syria the resurrection drama of Adonis; from Thrace, perhaps
the cult of Dionysus, the dying and saving god. From Persia came
millenarianism, the "ages of the world," the "final conflagration," the dualism
of Satan and God, of Darkness and Light; already in the Forth Gospel Christ
is the "Light shining in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out."
The Mithraic ritual so closely resembled the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass
that Christian fathers charged the Devil with inventing these similarities to
mislead frail minds. Christianity was the last great creation of the ancient
pagan world."
THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION, Will and Ariel Durant
In summary, the question of why the HEBREW'S religion would require a
_virgin_ born Messiah is a quite legitimate one. Since it appears that it is a
completely meaningless concept, theologically, within the Hebrew religion, then
any cult which claims authority from Hebrew scriptures--but uses pagan symbols
has just revealed its purely human source.
-- Michael Fisher, ET1/SS USN ret., law student* * * He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. Thomas Paine