My understanding is that rather than Jesus being crucified on a towering cross atop a hill, he was actually crucified on a tree in a clearing, with the tree having a horizontal beam fixed to it. That being the case, should the Church dispense with the whole story about him carrying his own cross up that hill? Reason: the more historically accurate the gospel, the more likely people are to believe it.
I suppose it would depend on where your understanding came from, and if it was actually true or not.
Guys, Jesus carried the cross on his back while they whipped his ass up that hill. Didn’t you see The Passion of The Christ?
I doubt that correcting any historical details in the gospels will convince people that the general story is true, it’s the supernatural events in the story that puts them off.
It’s the biological ones that throw me off. The fact that a woman gave birth as a virgin proves God exists. How else could a virgin get pregnant?
I got it from a TV documentary, so it’s obviously the truth.
Nope - too squeamish for that bloodfest.
You’re right, but I think it would be interesting to see if “they” would be prepared to change any of it.
I remember reading an article a few years ago that explained how it’s possible for a “woman” to give birth without impregnation. Basically, she needs to have a condition whereby she has both male and female sex-stuff in her body. The story about Mary could therefore have a fully mundane origin.
And America has already been invaded by Aliens, didn’t you see Independence Day?
To base your facts on a film: isn’t the best idea.
Does it not perhaps prove that our biological assumptions about Birth my be short-sighted? Some female sharks can impregnate themselves…they’ve been doing it for centuries.
So you’re saying that you think a virgin woman who doesn’t have both sexual organs can give birth?
To my knowledge, parthenogenesis hasn’t been observed in any mammals.
So I would be disinclined to use that as an explanation.
No, I’m not, I’m saying we are still discovering and interpreting human biological processes. Perhaps, we will discover that some women can give birth without the help of a man, I severely doubt it, but hypothetically…I won’t rule it out…imginatively.
Are you Christian?
Do you believe in the Virgin Birth Myth?
Do you have any evidence for this ‘fact’ that a woman gave birth as a virgin? This would suggest that you believe a woman can give birth without having been impregnated by a man.
Mary was a hermaphrodite?
I’m with you on the idea that it’s hardly likely that we’ll discover women who can make babies without men.
I’m playing the role of a xtian who believes in virgin birth for the purposes of this thread.
The “evidence” that I’m referring to is in the Bible.
I was asking if you believed that a woman can give birth without the help of a man. I’m saying, (for the purposes of this thread), that I do believe that a virgin gave birth, because it says so in the Bible, and that because we can’t get any modern day virgins to do the same, that divine intervention is the best possible explanation, (Unless Mary was a hermaphrodite).
Maybe she was miraculously a hermaphrodite in which both organs worked.
Well, for the sake of argument, we must ask ourselves:
Is there any possible way that the Virgin Birth is verifitable?
The short answer is: No.
There is no way to verify that Mary had a Virgin birth, unless you accept the Biblical account, without any question or qualms.
I would ask this question, is the Myth of a Virgin Birth, evident in any other Ancient Texts? Either mythological or Fictional? Homers Odyssey? Dyionsus? Greek Gods?
I have heard that the bible itself fits into a fictional template: and many of the myths within it, are common mythologies of the ancient world.
Does anyone know of these other titles?
There are some virgin births in other myths. I forget the name of the hero, but an Egyptian myth talks about Re landing in a woman’s lap as a swallow and she becomes preggers. I am not sure whether we can count the birth of Horus in there too, since we don’t know whether Isis was a virgin or not (actually, this applies to the first story too, since the Egyptians didn’t have a word for virgin) but Horus was conceived after his father had had his ha-ha cut-off. Buddha is also sometimes described as having been born from a non-sexual union. Something about an elephant, but I don’t properly recall. Anyway, virgin births are actually less common than is often touted in myth.
However, gods having mortal children, now that is incredibly common.
So, is the ‘virgin birth’ more important to Jesus’ divinity or is the ‘son of God’ more important to Jesus’ divinity?