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.
Concerning the fact that Jesus himself went around and told people he was the son of God didn’t do him much good in the end if you for example watch The Passion of the Christ. I think the writers of the Bible (and their sources) may have been a tad on the dramatic side in prospect.
Some of the narrative in the gospels is concerned with fulfilling the prophesies of Isaiah, since that would build a case for Jesus being the Messiah, which was something people were interested in at the time.
Isaiah didn’t clearly prophesy a virgin birth, but the writers of Matthew and Luke were probably working from the Septuagint, a greek [mis-]translation which turns the prophecy into one of a virgin birth. So, thinking that a virgin birth was required, they wrote it into the story.
The question of whether someone claiming to be made pregnant by God is making a plausible claim, is fairly moot when the whole episode was probably made up anyway.
Mary tells Joseph she’s pregnant. Joseph realizes right away that she was an adulturer. If people found out, she was gonna be stoned. Joseph still loved her anyways, and was willing to protect her from that, so they went away. Joseph struggled knowing his wife was an adulturer. It wasn’t until God came to him in a dream and told him his wife was carrying Jesus that he found peace with it.
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.
Concerning the fact that Jesus himself went around and told people he was the son of God didn’t do him much good in the end if you for example watch The Passion of the Christ. I think the writers of the Bible (and their sources) may have been a tad on the dramatic side in prospect.
Some of the narrative in the gospels is concerned with fulfilling the prophesies of Isaiah, since that would build a case for Jesus being the Messiah, which was something people were interested in at the time.
Isaiah didn’t clearly prophesy a virgin birth, but the writers of Matthew and Luke were probably working from the Septuagint, a greek [mis-]translation which turns the prophecy into one of a virgin birth. So, thinking that a virgin birth was required, they wrote it into the story.
The question of whether someone claiming to be made pregnant by God is making a plausible claim, is fairly moot when the whole episode was probably made up anyway.
In the book of Matthew, the story goes like this:
Mary tells Joseph she’s pregnant. Joseph realizes right away that she was an adulturer. If people found out, she was gonna be stoned. Joseph still loved her anyways, and was willing to protect her from that, so they went away. Joseph struggled knowing his wife was an adulturer. It wasn’t until God came to him in a dream and told him his wife was carrying Jesus that he found peace with it.