• OldChicoAle@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    As a non-Christian, what the hell is up with this story? How do people know she wasn’t sleeping with some other man? Like is that explained? Were there no other men in the village or whatever? I have no idea how this makes sense. If a woman today said God got her preggo we would all assume it was just some guy she doesn’t want people to know about. I’m so confused.

  • Meow-Misfit@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    “Come on, just try to imagine Joseph’s reaction when Maria suddenly walks to him, pregnant, and goes “God impregnated me”, what would he think? “Damn, this bitch’s cheating on me!”!”

    • My dad at a family barbecue, making everyone laugh.
    • Wilco@lemmy.zip
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      1 hour ago

      Let’s add the crucifixion story on top of this. Romans historically left the crucified up until they rotted. However, the Romans here said “what Jesus is dead already? Whatever, you can take his body.” Then they put him in a cave and put Myrrh and Aloe on him. Myrrh was used as a medicine and ceremonies … but Aloe? No, that’s medicine. Then Jesus comes back 3 days later.

      This is the story of a con job imo. They are trying to show the Romans as inept and them being smart enough to steal Jesus off the cross.

  • Limonene@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    In those days, the predecessors that would become Christianity hadn’t invented the abstinence rules yet.

  • Grass@sh.itjust.works
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    19 hours ago

    My favourite is the idea that mary was hooking up with the wise men and either kept it secret or was clueless about reproduction and they were tricking her and the wise men came bearing gifts because each thought they were the father

    • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      I have a fun head-canon that combines Christian mythology with that of ancient Rome and/or Greece. It all starts with Jesus’s animal metaphors. Jesus is a lamb of God. Jesus is a dove of peace. Jesus is represented with a drawing of a fish.

      So it seems that Jesus has interesting shapeshifting powers. Sounds reminiscent of another deity, doesn’t it? Zeus famously transformed into animals in order to seduce women. He also had a jealous wife, Hera, who frequently punished his extra-marital partners.

      My thinking goes that Zeus seduced Mary once upon a time. However, knowing his wife’s wrath, he never disclosed it, and advised Mary to say she was a virgin in order to throw her off Hera’s radar.

      Thus, Jesus the shape-shifting son of God was born. In a manger, of all places. Perhaps Zeus was there to support Mary in the form of a sheep or something.

  • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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    19 hours ago

    Side-note, FYI (For those on about Christ throughout this thread), consider:

    Christ means the anointed one.

    Anointed with the holy oil.

    The holy oil made with large quantities of “Kaneh Bosm”.

    Kaneh Bosm correctly translated, fitting the description and effects, is Cannabis.

    So, the return of Christ, is the restoration of Cannabis.

    “All of these things I have done, you shall do too, and more.”

    (See Sula Bennet, and Chris Bennett’s work on this for more info.)

  • Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de
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    24 hours ago

    Isaiah 7:14 calls mary a “Almah” which is a unmarried but ready to marry woman; and the implication is virgin, which is why it was used for virgin too.

    Virgin Mary is almost certainly a mistranslation.

    The point was that jesus was the child of a unmarried couple, which was seen as bad, and yet jesus is fucking jesus.

    • YTG123@sopuli.xyz
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      12 hours ago

      Isaiah is Old Testament, it doesn’t refer to anything Jesus-related (unless you’re Christian and really love bending the text to your will).

    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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      55 minutes ago

      German uses the word Jungfrau (literally young woman), there’s no separate word explicitely defining a state of not having had sex.

      I’m guessing Almah is similar.

      But I heard a different story about the “virgin birth” - problem is I have no idea if it’s true or not. Anyhow:

      There was some sort of ritual where young women were invited to spend a night at the temple, with priests. Due to the religious nature of this, they were still considered to be virgins (“marriable” I guess?) afterwards. Quite the opposite, it was seen as an honour. Even if they got pregnant.

      So there’s your “Virgin” Mary who was “visited by an angel” to conceive.

      edit: there is some evidence that girls used to work and live at the temples, and my story is likely an interpretation of the Gospel of James.

    • lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      13 hours ago

      Isaiah 7:14 calls mary a “Almah”

      Isaiah didn’t talk about Mary or Jesus but talked about his own time. Messiah is this context meant savior in the political sense. It’s not a prophecy for the distant future, only in the Septuagint much later. But don’t take it from me, take it from Dan McClellan.

      • Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de
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        12 hours ago

        Frankly, I am not a scholar but a willing listener. So Dan probably knows better than me.

        But what i don’t understand about his point is the claim of mistranslation by using parthenos.

        parthenos does seem to mean the same thing as almah

        https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/parthenos

        https://biblehub.com/greek/3933.htm

        I am very willing to accept that isaiah 7:14 wasn’t talking about jesus, but like Dan says later authors do mean mary when talking about parthenos. So my point does seem to stand.

        But let’s say Dan is 100% correct, then almah got mistranslated and applied to Mary to fulfill the misunderstood prophecy and then my point is still kinda right that almah got mistranslated by Christians to made Mary a virgin.

        In short, I think my point kinda stands either way, while I might picked a bad verse to make my case and my argument and understanding was slightly misguided.

        • lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          11 hours ago

          I was reacting to the “Isaiah talks about Mary” part of your argument. I’m not a scholar either and I linked a very short video but in other contexts, Dan elaborates that the Greek has been used for a raped woman who therefore isn’t a virgin anymore but the main meaning is virgin.

          I’m not sure what your point was. I neither up nor downvoted your comment. But since the whole birth story is fabricated by arguably Christians, it either was by applying the mistranslation of Isaiah or, if the intended audience of the gospels understood it to mean “young woman”, it was an even later invention. If your point is that Jesus wasn’t the son of a virgin and never claimed to be, than sure.

          • Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 hour ago

            That is my point, yes.

            I am sorry if I wrote my comment in a way that sounded aggressive.


            My point is basically, (as far as I am aware of) all the “virgin mary” claims come from translating a word (different words in different languages) which could mean young woman or virgin, while she was obviously pregnant, making 1 translation much more likely than the other one and Christians somehow choose “virgin”.

      • lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        13 hours ago

        Jesus was the first born. Even if Mary was a virgin when he was born, this isn’t necessarily the case for his younger siblings

        • Seleni@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          Yeah, but you have to factor in the rabid Christian belief that she’s an eternal virgin. So they have to make up all kinds of complicated explanations for how any siblings could exist.

          (According to official doctrine they were either cousins or children of Joseph’s from a previous marriage)

    • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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      22 hours ago

      At what point did the mistranslation occur? There have been many translations.

      • Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de
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        24 hours ago

        It makes sense that mary literally just had premarital sex and got pregnant.

        It is insane that Christians get it wrong.

        • Valmond@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          My bet is it’s to weed out dissidents, question the obvious fake bullshit and we can cut your head off before you become an opposition leader or something. They did burn and torture so many people because of this.

          • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            The idea that Mary was a virgin predates Christianity having any sort of power. It’s more the influence of Greek philosophy (anti materialism)

  • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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    19 hours ago

    It’s weirder than that…

    If I recall correctly, I heard … Joseph was something like 80, and Mary was something like 12.

    That does not get said a lot.

    Is fun to dig into the apocryphal sources on that to check for plausibility.

  • Sundray@lemmus.org
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    1 day ago

    No one’s going to believe this story rn, and certainly not for over 2,000 years.

    • potoooooooo ✅️@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      One of those times you’re glad to just be a random nobody in the middle of nowhere, so you know your humiliation will soon just be forgotten.

  • cliffracer_cloaka@piefed.social
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    1 day ago

    Realisic now sisz n brovz.

    Mary: Bronze age dude raped me hard, ye bronze age sperm squirting in me as fuc. As. Fuc.

    Mary(thought): My lot be stoning. GOOD thing me Yosupph be a dumb man.

    Mary: Husband. The ghost squirted the sperm in me. Son of God. Nothe seccks. I’m also without sin, ask Annæ.

    Dumbest story makes world.

    • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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      19 hours ago

      Even dumber in that it’s conjured by others after the fact.

      … Whatever that fact is.

      Considering the many popularly held mistranslations, and the efforts to correctly translate… like elohim, basically meaning aliens, not monotheistic cosmic creator god…

      The fact may be… aliens impregnated her.

      Truth stranger than fiction?

      Depends what strangeness has grown normal to us.