Ehrman's "evidence" against the virgin birth

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I found the CD with Bart Ehrman's lecture on the virgin birth. The reason he says that "almost surely" it did not happen?

"There's only one way to conceive a child and that's through sexual intercourse."

There you have it Ken B. Miracles don't happen, because it would be miraculous if they did!



Comments

  1. Prateek7:36 AM

    He also mentions in his writings and articles that:

    1. Jesus was meant to be the Messiah, and the meaning of Messiah is King of Israel, implying some belief of early Christians in him being a descendant of David.

    2. The king of Israel or Messiah is often informally called Son of God, but does not imply literally being Son of God.

    3. Paul of Tarsus said, "τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαυὶδ κατὰ σάρκα" or "born from the seed of David according to the flesh", which implies that even Paul strongly believed Jesus had a natural human birth.

    4. In the Greek Septuagint, there is a passage that was used by early Christians to imply the prophecy of Jesus' birth. It is "herefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb, and will bring forth a son, and you will call his name Emmanuel ...” (Isaiah 7:14)". This passage is assumed by various Catholic scholars to be just a prophecy of Hezekiah's birth, not that of Jesus.

    5. Even then, the word virgin in Isaiah, or "almah" in Hebrew or "parthenos" in Koine, really just means "young woman" and not necessarily or always "virgin". However, parthenos tends to be a bit closer to virgin, and the Jewish Christians who read this part of Isaiah before writing Matthew could have simply attached the virgin meaning to be a prophecy of Jesus' virgin birth.

    But of course, you chose to be cheeky and imply that Ehrman used very weak evidence against the virgin birth theory.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jesús P. Zamora Bonilla10:00 AM

    What is your evidence that this comment has arrived to you through a miraculous process, and is not just written by a mere human?

    ReplyDelete

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