Conception Deception : Part One
Origins of the Virgin Birth Story
The doctrine of the Virgin Conception/Birth was fabricated by the Hellenist-Latin Church Fathers. It is not based on the Bible. Regardless of its current status in different denominations, the assertion that Jesus had no human father and that his mother Mary conceived him through supernatural means while still, a virgin is the foundation stone on which the vast doctrinal edifice of Christianity stands… or falls.
Origins
The ancient Hellenist and Latin world, the world of the Church Fathers, was a world of half-human and half-divine superheroes, of virgin goddesses such as the Greek Athena, Artemis, and Hestia and their Roman equivalents Minerva, Diana, and Vesta. And last but not least, that tribute to the Roman obsession with the virginity and purity of women, the College of Vestal Virgins.
The concept of virginity, especially consecrated virginity, was extolled and esteemed by the Fathers so it is no surprise that the first claims of the Virgin Conception/Birth of Jesus came from within this environment: Justin Martyr (in c.155 AD), Irenaeus of Lyon (in c.180 AD), and Tertullian (in c. 210 AD). These Fathers, and many others who came later, interpreted the available texts through the lens of Hellenist philosophical thought, with confirmation bias playing its insidious role at every step along the way, as it still does to this day. The teaching eventually made its way into the Old Roman Creed and the Apostles Creed and finally into the universally accepted Nicene Creed. (See Notes for the three states of Marian virginity — some Fathers believed in one, some in two and, after Nicea, some in three).
The brand of Christianity promoted by the Fathers began to grow and flourish because their teachings made the Jewish Jesus recognisable and acceptable to the general populace of the Roman Empire whose dominant cultures were Hellenism and Latinism. Who could be more acceptable to them than a half-human, half-divine superhero-like Heracles with a mother virtually indistinguishable from a priestess of Vesta or a virgin goddess? Against all odds, the brand became so successful that it outlived its origins in place, time, and culture, and… the rest is history.
Future articles in this series will address all the cherry-picked “proof texts” ripped out of their linguistic and cultural context and used to this day to justify the teaching of the Virgin Conception/Birth of Jesus.
Notes
It is asserted that Ignatius of Antioch confirmed the Virginity of Mary as early as 105 AD in the Epistle to the Trallians, one of seven so-called “genuine” Epistles. However, these Ignatian Epistles reflect conditions prevailing around 250 AD and are so riddled with anachronistic interpolations specifically tailored to suit the developing doctrine of a certain Latin state that they are not worth stating.
The three states of virginity: Mary was a virgin at conception and before birth (𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘮), at conception and during birth (𝘪𝘯 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘶), remained a virgin after birth (𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘮).
