Virgin birth
« previous post | next post »
It's surprising (at least to me) that this seemingly oxymoronic belief is so widespread. Check out this quote from Christopher Hitchens in “Religion Kills” from his 2007 book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything:
…the Greek demigod Perseus was born when the god Jupiter visited the virgin Danae as a shower of gold…The god Buddha was born through an opening in his mother’s flank. Catlicus the serpent-skirted caught a little ball of feathers from the sky and hid it in her bosom, and the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli was thus conceived. The virgin Nana took a pomegranate from the tree water by the blood of the slain Agdestris, laid it in her bosom, and gave birth to the god Attis. The virgin daughter of a Mongol king awoke one night and found herself bathed in a great light, which caused her to give birth to Genghis Khan. Krishna was born of the virgin Devaka. Horus was born of the virgin Isis. Mercury was born of the virgin Maia. Romulus was born of the virgin Rhea Sylvia.
Wayne Alt remarks:
Now we can add one more variation of the myth of human parthenogenesis to Hitchen’s multi-cultural list. David Nivison’s translation of strip #3 of The Bamboo Annals is: “His mother’s name was Fubao. She saw a flash of lightning around the star Shu in the Northern Dipper, its brilliance illuminating the countryside around her. Feeling it, she became pregnant. In twenty-five [lunar] months she gave birth to [Huang] Di on Longlife Hill. While still a weak baby, he was able to talk.”
It's interesting that the virgin daughter of the Mongol king and Fubao were both illuminated by a brilliant light. Even more interesting is how common this myth was.
To which I replied:
Yes, Wayne, and Jesus Christ, sure enough, was born of the Virgin Mary
Wayne responded:
Hitchens wonders why Jesus and his mother never mention this incredible event anywhere in the gospels.
Yet it's an article of faith for Christians around the world.
Incidentally, some folks have tried to explain virgin birth as a kind of teratoma:
…a rare type of germ cell tumor that may contain immature or fully formed tissue, including teeth, hair, bone and muscle.
(source)
but I don't want to get into that for the time being. For now I'll just leave it at this: it's amazing how, when it comes to faith, people can live quite comfortably, even fervently, with oxymorons.
Selected readings
- "No virgins on Danger Island" (10/6/10)
- "An eccentric translation of the bible" (5/1/24)
- "What we believe in" (6/29/11)
Philip Taylor said,
June 3, 2024 @ 7:34 am
Is believing in virgin birth any more unreasonable than believing in a supreme deity who can create not only the world and all of its inhabitants but also the universe in which it exists, all universes, time, space,etc., yet who can (or chooses to) do nothing to (for example) alleviate the plight of the people in Ghaza, Ukraine, etc. ? Personally I find both beliefs untenable, but the former no more untenable than the latter. Yet despite that, I still respect those who hold those beliefs — I simply do not agree with them.
Chris Button said,
June 3, 2024 @ 8:30 am
Isn't the Virgin birth often interpreted as metaphorical? Once you are the "son of god" (i.e. a virgin birth), your biological/physical origin as the son of your non-virgin mother becomes of secondary importance?
Hence no need for some "incredible event" as in the Fu Bao example?
Barbara Phillips Long said,
June 3, 2024 @ 8:35 am
So, with all these virgin birth stories, will AI invent new religious stories or go for medical accuracy? Since humans believe misinformation and disinformation, is there a way to train AI to provide factual information?
The really exasperating problem with these stories (for me) is that they show a pattern of devaluing almost all women, while somehow exempting men from being accused of rape. Danae wasn’t visited by a “shower of gold” and she was coerced by a surreptitious Jupiter. Do any of these virgin birth stories include explicit consent from the women before the light hits them, or the gold appears, or whatever? When Catlicus tucked the ball of feathers in her bosom, did she know that meant the stork was going to visit?
Philip Taylor said,
June 3, 2024 @ 9:08 am
Barbara — "[t]he really exasperating problem with these stories (for me) is that they show a pattern of devaluing almost all women" — that is not true, surely, for the Christian myth — Mary is elevated to almost the same level as God, only she and He being involved in the creation of Christ, the male protagonist (Joseph) being relegated to a mere bit part if not that of a cuckold …
Anthony said,
June 3, 2024 @ 9:18 am
Not that this is any more reliable than the rest of the tradition, but Mary is quoted as saying she had known no man.
Jonathan Silk said,
June 3, 2024 @ 10:34 am
I don't mean to be a stick in the mud, but (and Victor knows this well): there is not the slightest hint or insinuation anywhere in any (to my knowledge) traditional account of the origins of Siddhārtha suggesting that his conception was anything other than entirely conventional.
The process certainly followed the normal (for ancient Indian medicine) idea that his father contributed a element (white) his mother one (red, but also a seed, so to speak) and that a gandharva (here not a musician of course) enlivens the otherwise not animate foetus; this is what gives the being its identity, this is what transmigrates. The elephant depicted as entering Maya's side is a representation of this third element necessary for the production of a being.
The birth through the side is unrelated to the manner of creating the being in the first place, and has to do with ideas regarding the pain of childbirth and retention of memory of former lives, but I'll refrain from a full lecture here.
Anyway, the take away: nothing about virgin birth in any Buddhist traditions with which I am familiar.
OK: caveat: there are 4 forms of birth, one of which is spontaneous (Skt upapāduka), this is the way that beings in the "Pure Land" will gain birth inside a lotus–this it is true might qualify.
Cervantes said,
June 3, 2024 @ 10:49 am
I'm not sure I would call this an oxymoron. Many species of metazoans do in fact reproduce by parthenogenesis. It's just that there's no plausible way for Homo sapiens to do so. So it's just an error, criticizable in scientific but not linguistic terms. And of course, if you believe in miracles, well, that's what you believe.
Barbara Phillips Long said,
June 3, 2024 @ 10:58 am
Yes, Mary is elevated in Christianity. There are a few other women who are elevated. But many versions of Christianity restrict the roles of women in the religion, in society, or in the home — in part because there is only one mother of God, and the rest of the women are sinful or lesser than men in one way or another. King David can commit crimes against women and still be a hero of the Bible, but Eve makes one mistake and gets blamed for all the supposed shortcomings of women.
It isn’t Mary who is devalued, it’s all the rest of us women who don’t measure up somehow. Men, even theologians, don’t ever seem to ask Mary what she was wearing when she conceived, or imply that “she was asking for it.” Mary even gets to have a respectable husband. Countless women who have been raped throughout history, however, have been accused of somehow being complicit in crimes against them, to the point that their lives are ruined and their children are pariahs. Or they have been forcibly married to their rapists. Or they have been mutilated to prevent sexual expression or killed to avenge crimes against them that “shame” men. And let’s also note that there is a whole lot of freighted shame loaded onto men who are raped, because somehow being a victim of a crime that is usually inflicted on women somehow makes those men lower than the lowest woman.
In the comments about AI and Iain Banks’ ideas of the future, a lot of the focus is on economic outcomes. In addition to a future without war, I am eager to see a future without rape and forced marriage. Can anything bring about a future where women are safe from sexual assault to the degree that they do not even have to learn self-protective procedures?
Seth said,
June 3, 2024 @ 11:07 am
Old biology joke:
Q: In the phase "Jesus H. Christ", what does the "H" stand for?
A: Haploid
And if someone accepts God can create Eve from part of Adam, sort of doing the reverse doesn't seem like it's a big jump (it's not the same biology, i.e. XY -> XX is not XX -> XY, but that's too much realism).
@ Barbara Phillips Long – For "AI", it depends on the training data and other details. There's no one "AI". It would be an interesting exercise to train something focused on various world myths and religions in specific, and see what it generated. There might be an academic paper or two in that now.
Pedro said,
June 3, 2024 @ 11:14 am
It's not an oxymoron in the sense of a contradiction in terms. "Virgin sex" would be an oxymoron; "motherless birth" would be an oxymoron; but "virgin birth", while impossible in humans, doesn't directly contradict itself so it's not an oxymoron.
You could argue that "virgin birth" contradicts itself in the sense that everyone knows birth implies sex and is therefore logically incompatible with virginity, but that's just another way of saying it's physically impossible. By that reasoning, any term not describing something found in nature is an oxymoron, including "living mammoth", "interstellar travel", "three-headed dog", "perfect sphere" and so on.
J.W. Brewer said,
June 3, 2024 @ 11:52 am
What's the difference between an "oxymoron" and a "paradox," other than that "oxymoron" seems a more pejorative label?
Kingfisher said,
June 3, 2024 @ 11:54 am
The "Mongol princess" here is presumably Alan Gua, not Chinggis Khan's mother but his distant ancestor? From what I recall her circumstances were that she somehow became pregnant several more times after her husband had already died and, when her older sons confronted her about how this was possible (assuming that she had been sleeping with the family servant), she told them that a golden man had been descending into her hut at night to impregnate her and that her younger sons were therefore divine. Not sure "virgin" birth quite fits there.
Philip Anderson said,
June 3, 2024 @ 1:09 pm
@Jonathan Silk
Most of those stories that Christopher Hitchens lists don’t involve virgin births as such: Zeus/Jupiter was notorious for raping/seducing beautiful females, including Danae and Maia, but there’s no suggestion that conception didn’t involve intercourse. Isis was married to Osiris, before he was killed and brought back to life; there are different stories about the conception of Horus, but Osiris was involved.
I’ve noticed that polemical atheists like to claim that everything in Christianity was taken from other religions, and often distort those stories to prove their point – not necessarily deliberately, just copying something that fits their prejudices written without fact-checking.
There are however general parallels for many things, as theologians know.
David Marjanović said,
June 3, 2024 @ 3:05 pm
Why? Because biology is too mundane for deities; they have to be surrounded by miracles. :-|
Levantine said,
June 3, 2024 @ 4:24 pm
Muslims, too, believe that Mary was a virgin when she bore Jesus.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
June 3, 2024 @ 4:58 pm
Victor Mair said:
Faith and reason are perfectly compatible, unless you commit the empiricist fallacy of thinking that there ain't nothing but nails around just 'cause you happen to be a hammer.
Is the Virgin Birth an oxymoron? What about ex nihilo cosmos fit?
JPL said,
June 3, 2024 @ 5:12 pm
Why are all the products of the virgin births males?
AntC said,
June 3, 2024 @ 5:23 pm
@JWB What's the difference between an "oxymoron" and a "paradox,"
It used to be that 'oxymoron' is a contradiction in terms — logically impossibility; whereas, 'paradox' is merely the appearance of a contradiction. 'para' + 'dox' "statement seemingly absurd (or unexpected) yet really true" — etymonline.
Unfortunately about 20~30 years ago, the chattering classes got hold of 'oxymoron' as a 20-guinea word for 'paradox'. So these days they often mean exactly the same.
Prof Mair's seemingly oxymoronic belief suggests Victor hasn't got the memo about that change, and still operates as though 'oxymoronic' means logically impossible.
Speaking as a Logician/Philosopher, I'm upset at losing the ability to make that distinction succinctly. I now avoid 'oxymoron' as irretrievably skunked.
AntC said,
June 3, 2024 @ 6:04 pm
Errm, correction to the above [must take my morning coffee before engaging in etymology]
The original meaning of 'oxymoron' is combining two seemingly contrary terms to enhance the meaning of both. Shakespeare's "(parting is such) sweet sorrow" is the classic example. Also "bitter-sweet".
It's the loss of the notion of 'enhanced meaning' I rue.
The reason for it becoming trendy was presumably partly the hint of 'moron' without saying it out loud in these politically correct times.
Never the less, I can't see that "virgin birth" combines in any way to enhance meaning. Call me unimaginative. To @Barbara's many well-made points, why is female virginity so highly valued (allegedly [**]) and yet male abstinence not? — except possibly amongst the priesthood. Indeed in Islam, women must remain covered so as not to excite the passions of the feckless males. How does that end up making females the guilty party?
[**] My 'why?' is of course rhetorical: because females are property, and ownership must be transferred to a husband untainted [***]; whereas males are the owners they can sow their seed how they wish — especially the rich/powerful ones.
[***] Untainted because in Old Testament terms, Jewish descent is matrilineal. We wouldn't want to pollute the blood line.
Martin Schwartz said,
June 3, 2024 @ 7:22 pm
Hitchens' Romanization of Zeus and Hermes is one thing, but Coatlicue
as Catlicus??? OK Romulus, but what of Remus? Make that Agdistis,
not Agdestris (whose myth is more interesting than Hitchens has it),
nd Silvia, not Sylvia. I suggest mixing and matching myths: An oxyphant
entered Maya's side Mercury was born (always was something mercurial about Maya). There was a Zoroastrian myth (in the Young Avesta)
that a maiden (or 3 maidens) went bathing in a lake in which Zoroaster's seed was cryogenically preserved, became pregnant, and gave birth to
the final Redeemer (or 3 Redeemers) .St John Damascene held that
the Virgin Mary herself was conceived spiritually by her parents;
some Greek I've spoken to say this is a tenet of Greek Orthodoxy,
but that may not be the case; she is the Allholy in any event.
@Philip Taylor: the proper Arabic for Gaza is Ghazza, with geminate z.
Martin Schwartz
Stephen Goranson said,
June 3, 2024 @ 7:26 pm
On the claim, "… in Old Testament terms, Jewish descent is matrilineal,"
not so according to Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Origins of the Matrilineal Principle in Rabbinic Law,
AJS Review, 10 no 1 1985, p 19-53.
Stephen said,
June 3, 2024 @ 7:33 pm
Don’t most people know by now the word translated as virgin was supposed to be translated as young woman?
And it’s interesting. The atheists tend to take the Bible just as literally as the fundamentalists. And the fundamentalists disagree on their literal interpretations.
And of course, the ones who don’t take the Bible, literally disagree on their non-literal interpretations. I just wanted to acknowledge that.
I think I will stop there.
Victor Mair said,
June 3, 2024 @ 8:24 pm
@Stephen
Tell us what that mistranslated word was and kindly provide the citation of the sentence in which it occurred.
Brett said,
June 3, 2024 @ 9:43 pm
My understanding is that the disagreement is generally around the translation of Isaiah 7:14 as "Behold, a virgin shall conceive" rather than anything in the New Testament. The gospels of Matthew and Luke are keen to show that Jesus was a fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy, so they favour the Septuagint translation of עַלְמָה as παρθένος "virgin" rather than "young woman".
stephen said,
June 3, 2024 @ 10:04 pm
Wikipedia has a whole separate article on Isaiah 7:14. Here's the discussion on the talk page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Isaiah_7:14
Victor Mair said,
June 3, 2024 @ 10:21 pm
Matthew 1:18-25
King James Version
18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.
20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.
22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife:
25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus.
Brett said,
June 3, 2024 @ 10:34 pm
Matthew 1:23-25 Hawaii Pidgin Bible
23 “Lissen up! One young wahine
Who neva sleep wit nobody,
Goin get hapai.
She goin born one boy.
Dey goin name him Emmanuel.”
(“Emmanuel” mean, “God stay hea now wit us guys.”)
24 Joseph wake up an he do wat da angel guy from Da One In Charge tell him fo do. He take Mary home, fo come his wife.
25 But he neva sleep wit her befo she born her boy. An he name him Jesus.
AG said,
June 4, 2024 @ 5:48 am
I don't feel like the universality of the "virgin birth" concept in mythology needs much of an explanation beyond these two facts:
1) myths very frequently deal with origins, and origins require spontaneous generation (like Eve's being formed from Adam)
2) very nearly everyone in human history was astonishingly sexist.
Philip Taylor said,
June 4, 2024 @ 6:03 am
" very nearly everyone in human history was astonishingly sexist" — I would go further — "Almost everyone today is both sexist and racist to a greater or lesser extent". The fact someone is racist, for example, does not necessarily mean that he or she would object to a differently-coloured family moving in next door, but if they were seeking a medical consultation and given the choice between seeing a white consultant and a black consultant, then they might well prefer to see the white consultant (if they themselves were white) or the black consultant (if they themselves were black), all other things being equal. And in just the same way, a man who is mildly sexist might object to having a woman commentating on a men's football match while being perfectly willing to register with a female g.p.
Vanya said,
June 4, 2024 @ 6:33 am
Not only is "virgin birth" not an oxymoron, the traditional standard is rather easily achieved in the modern world. You only need to artificially inseminate a woman who has never had sexual intercourse with a man. I would not be surprised to discover that there are several "virgin births" every year in the United States.
GH said,
June 4, 2024 @ 6:37 am
@Philip Anderson:
In Roman-era syncretism Isis was combined with other goddesses, including virgin goddesses, and according to some interpretations she takes on this aspect in some depictions (though apparently it's somewhat ambiguous). In any case, this doesn't seem to have been incorporated into the Horus myth at any point, and AFAICT there is no suggestion in any classical version of the myth that it was a virgin birth.
Lasius said,
June 4, 2024 @ 7:01 am
@JPL
It would make sense if humans had a ZW sex determination system like birds and many lizards. Some of those lizards are able to reproduce parthenogenetically, but can only produce males this way, which the mother could then mate with.
David Marjanović said,
June 4, 2024 @ 7:09 am
That's a quantum fluctuation if the total energy of the universe (counting gravity as negative) is zero.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
June 4, 2024 @ 7:17 am
Quantum fluctuations / quantum mechanics // the Unconscious / Psychoanalysis // conflict theory / sociology, usw.
Andrew Usher said,
June 4, 2024 @ 7:26 am
I guess what I wanted to say has been said: 'virgin birth' is not an oxymoron in the usual sense (the way I understand it) of a contradictory statement, nor is it logically problematic. Of course it's not naturally possible, but all the stories do treat it as a miracle, and it is notable at least for that reason.
Philip Taylor's last point is precisely right, though it's not popular to say: it's really not possible to have no preference, conscious or not. And usually, that preference will be toward one's own.
k_over_hbarc at yahoo.com
Vanya said,
June 5, 2024 @ 2:35 pm
Case in point.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/women-who-have-never-had-sex-give-virgin-birth-through-ivf-say-doctors-a6670101.html
Andrew Usher said,
June 5, 2024 @ 6:09 pm
That's rather unnecessary, I think we knew what you meant the first time. It still seems absurd that that – i.e. anything involving a mortal man's seed – could ever be seen as meeting the mythological standard for 'virgin birth', nor would I want to describe it as such. I suppose that means 'virgin birth' isn't totally compositional.
Also, 'give virgin birth' seems very ill-formed, I don't think you can normally put anything between 'give' and 'birth' ('give live birth', standardly used of species, is an exception) any more than say 'give births'. It's essentially a phrasal verb now.
Vanya said,
June 6, 2024 @ 11:26 pm
The concept of artificial insemination wasn’t even understood until the 18th century, and even for farm animals has only been a common practice since the early 20th century. Many events people two thousand years ago considered miraculous are fairly easily explained. Jokes about parthenogenesis or spontaneous generation are overthinking things.
Which is not to say that the actual Catholic understanding of Christ’s conception doesn’t inherently contain a greater miracle, more to point out that Mair‘s description of „virgin birth“ as an oxymoron strikes me as a deliberate attempt to ridicule Catholic belief, rather than an accurate use of the term. l
Victor Mair said,
June 7, 2024 @ 9:50 am
"Which is not to say that the actual Catholic understanding of Christ’s conception doesn’t inherently contain a greater miracle, more to point out that Mair‘s description of „virgin birth“ as an oxymoron strikes me as a deliberate attempt to ridicule Catholic belief, rather than an accurate use of the term. l"
Think clearly and carefully. What are you really trying to say here?
David Marjanović said,
June 7, 2024 @ 10:29 am
In a word, no. The quantum stuff is, if marginally, observable.
Andrew Usher said,
June 8, 2024 @ 5:09 pm
Vanya wrote:
> The concept of artificial insemination wasn’t even understood until the 18th century, and even for farm animals has only been a common practice since the early 20th century. Many events people two thousand years ago considered miraculous are fairly easily explained.
So, artificial insemination didn't exist in the ancient world, and yet it inspired stories about virgin birth, or the idea of them? That makes no sense. I'm pretty sure they could grasp the idea of artificial insemination, were it presented to them, but even if not that's a long way from showing it has anything to do with the historical concept of 'virgin birth'.
And though the words 'virgin birth' are modern, as pointed out here, stories about it are ancient and the idea is more important that the words used to express it. You concede that for the conception of Jesus, more than physical virginity is meant, but there's no reason to suppose it would not always have been that way, for the same reasons. Hitchens's list may be exaggerated or sloppy, but no one claims the 'virgin birth' idea originated with Christianity.
Similarly the biologists's 'parthenogenesis' – which word I take as an exact equivalent of 'virgin birth' – also means an absence of sperm (more exactly, of a male genetic contribution), not an absence of sex in whatever sense. This is the historical and logical meaning, and though physical virginity is often inferred, it is not necessary. The newspaper article you linked to used it not because it is standard – few normal people would use it in that context – but for 'shock value'.