Birth Narratives 3.3

Early Proof of Divinity
The Immaculate Conception of Jesus
Christ a Powerful God

Abstract

Why were Jesus’s family assessed for tax by the Romans when Quirinius taxed Jud�a. Galilee, where they lived, was not ruled by the Romans but by the puppet king Herod Antipas? Roman custom was to register people for a census at their place of residence not at their place of birth which imposed absurd burdens on people. If Matthew was written in Alexandria in Egypt, its birth narrative humours the large Jewish population there—the Jewish Son of God was sheltered in Egypt. Matthew exalted Jesus to the equal of Moses by giving him an equal history. No historian mentions Herod’s massacre. Even Luke, reputed a good historian by theologians, does not mention it. In Matthew, Magi saw the “star” and rejoiced with great joy. Soon they fell down worshipping Jesus. An interpolation disguises the rejoicing being over the prophesied man of destiny. The “star” is human. Essenes had twelve leaders and three priests, these latter were probably the three wise men.

Early Proof of Divinity

Asiatic religion had its Christs as well as the religions of nearer Asia and of Europe. The Sheng Mu (Holy Mother) of the Chinese and Japanese is commonly represented with a divine son. The God Yu, who was concealed in a manner similar to that of Moses was depicted as a babe on the knee or in her arms of his virgin. Even Kong-fu-tse, who escaped the common fate of reformers—deification—was credited with supernatural portents at birth. It is a natural urge of the devout mind to invest its hero with superhuman experiences.

Buddha’s teaching, as settled by modern scholars, was so decidedly non-religious that one would not expect him ever to be adorned with a supernatural halo. He not only plainly disavowed all the gods of India, but he bade his disciples waste no time in disputing about God and personal immortality. He was an Agnostic, a humanitarian. Yet, pure Buddhism almost perished from the earth. What is generally called Buddhism in Asia has no more relation to Buddha’s teaching than Roman Catholicism has to the teaching of Jesus. It is a system of temples and statues, priests and monks, rosaries and censers, rites and vestments, heavens and bells.

Buddha himself was degraded to the divine level. What would seem admirable and superior in Buddha and Jesus if they were men, becomes petty and trivial when one measures them by a divine standard. Christian apologists deny that there is any parallel between Buddha and Jesus because Buddha’s mother, Maya, was married. The real parallel is that Buddhists were like Christians in that they could not have their god born of carnal intercourse, and so his conception was miraculous. It does not matter that a woman who is not a virgin gives birth without intercourse. The point is not that the woman had had intercourse but that she had not had intercourse on this occasion. Buddhists did not call Maya “a virgin”. They believed in a “virgin birth”.

Krishna, Hercules, Zoroaster, Yu, Bacchus, Romulus, Moses and Cyrus, were each threatened with death but were miraculously preserved. The case of Augustus is related by Suetonius, that of Romulus by Livy, and that of Cyrus by Herodotus. Pharaoh, like Herod, to kill the infant Moses, ordered the death of all the male infants—though Herod did not exclude female infants. And cuneiform tablets found in Mesopotamia relate the same story as that of Moses about the great semitic king Sargon of Akkadia in the third millenium BC!

Saviours generally in early childhood have the ability to conquer danger or mental superiority over their opponents in argument. Christ proved his divine nature by equalling the doctors in the temple when only about twelve years of age.

The fame of Christ went out through all the region round about, according to Luke 4:14. The voice of fame soon published the birth of a miraculous child—not Christ this time but Æsculapius—and the people flocked from all quarters to behold him. In China, Confucius’s extensive knowledge and great wisdom soon made him known, and kings were governed by his counsels, and the people adored him wherever he went. He was rational and able from infancy. When the God Shang-ti, was questioned on the subject of government and the duties of princes while yet a child, his answers were such as to astonish the whole empire by his knowledge and wisdom.

One Grecian god killed serpents which attempted to bite him while in his cradle. The proof of Osiris’s divinity was a blaze of light shining around his cradle soon after he was born. Pythagoras displayed such a remarkable character, even in youth, he attractd the attention of all who saw and heard him speak. He was never at any time angry, never laughed, never acted irrationally or behaved badly. Because of his fame people flocked in multitudes to see him.

The people were astonished at Christ’s understanding and answers (Luke 2:47). The Gospel of the Infancy says that his tutor Zacheas was astonished at his learning. In the Mahabarata, the parents of the Saviour Krishna, to secure his education, sent him to a learned Brahmin, whom he astonished with his learning, and under whose tuition he mastered the sciences in a day and a night. Men, seeing the wonders performed by this child, told Nanda, his adopted father, that this could not possibly be his son.

As soon as Buddha was born, a light shone around his cradle, when he stood up and proclaimed his mission, and the River Ganges rose in a miraculous manner, but was stilled by his divine power, just as Christ stilled the tempest on the sea. He was born amidst great miracles, and soon as born, most solemnly proclaims his mission. The divine power and mission of Yu of China was very early evinced by the display of great miracles.

Moses, Solomon and Samuel showed mental superiority in early life; proving that if they were not considered by the Jews as gods, they were at least “from God”, endowed by him with divine power while yet mere children.

The Immaculate Conception of Jesus

The natural conception of Mary is exclusively “The Immaculate Conception” to Catholics, dirty and sinful though Christians consider sex to be, especially out of wedlock. But surely there can be no more immaculate conception than a conception by God Himself, not by the normal sinful biological appendage but by a miracle. Let us conclude with a concise summary of some puzzles and questions about Jesus’s supremely “immaculate” conception and virgin birth.

The gospels show that Christ himself did not claim to have a miraculous birth. He did not once allude to it, though as the principal evidence of his divinity, as Christians claim, he would have done so.
His paternal genealogy, as made out by Matthew and Luke, completely confounds his Virgin Birth. They both trace his lineage through Joseph, which they could only do if Joseph was his father.
His own disciple, Philip, declared him to be the son of Joseph, and several texts show that it was the original belief.
The story of the Virgin Birth rests on the slender foundations of an angel and a dream. Mary got it by an angel, and Joseph by a dream, and thereby we have the whole of the story of the divinity of Jesus Christ.
However, we have neither Joseph’s nor Mary’s report of these things, but only Matthew and Luke’s. We do not know that either of them ever saw or spoke with Joseph or Mary on the subject.
If Christ were a miraculously born god, would his mother have reproved him for misconduct when she found him in the temple, as she, if no one else, must have known his nature?
If Mary conceived miraculously, why was it kept so long from Joseph? Did the concubine of God intend to deceive her lawful husband? An angel had to be sent from heaven to let him into the secret.
Why did not God inform Joseph by “inspiration” instead of using the round about way of sending an angel to do it?
“Mary was found with child of the Holy Ghost”, but as we are told nothing more about the circumstances, does it not leave us suspicious?
Since it all seems to have been based on dreams, was carried on through dreams, and has no better foundation than dreams, why should we give it better credit than similar stories found in heathen mythology? Or is it that Christianity is just a dreamy religion?
In an educated and scientific age, should we accept reports of the birth of a God based on no better a foundation than dreams, angels and the legends of oriental mythology? In particular, can any scientist entertain the idea of infinite beings, themselves mere conjecture, actually impregnating human females?
Essene belief was that sexual intercourse was sinful, procreation was impure and human children were born thus contaminated. Human beings were imperfect and any god sent into the world as a saviour had to avoid such contamination. The solution was that incarnate gods entered the world through human virgins to avoid the impurity and the slander that the saviour might have arisen in more normal ways if the mother were not a virgin. Can anyone unbiased deny that such thinking is the source of the origin of the story of Christ’s Virgin Birth?
If Christ had to come into the world avoiding the impurity of human conception and birth, why did he not descend directly from heaven in person? If he can descend on the clouds at his—still awaited—second advent, why could he not do the same at his first advent, thereby pre-empting reasons for doubt and saving far more of fallen humanity?
Could anyone, free of religious guilt and indoctrination, presented with these stories as the truth today, willingly and joyfully accept them as proof that someone was a god? Or would they consider them to be fraudulent inventions, intended to gull the credulous?

There are so many incongruities in divine revelation that it becomes knavery to dismiss them as God’s mysterious ways, as Christians and Jews do. Yet both agree that God gave us reason. So why doesn’t He expect us to use it when He chooses to reveal something to us? Why are Christians so sure that they have not been hoodwinked by the Devil posing as God? As a supernatural theory of the events of the world, it makes more sense than the Christian idea.

Christ a Powerful God

The birth of an incarnate god had been annually celebrated for ages in the ancient world, and particularly where Christianity developed. Then, according to Christians, it actually happened! It is as plausible as Superman arriving today from the planet Krypton. The early Christians obviously attributed to their Saviour the kind of birth that was ascribed to rival gods.

Admittedly, this is a deduction, not a known fact, but the late acceptance of the idea among Christians noted for their gullibility tells against it being known among the first followers of the Christ. It is plausible if later converts from Pagan religions expected that such a god would be born in the conventional way for gods, and eventually so it was.

Paul knows nothing of it. Mark, which on many grounds we know to be the oldest gospel, knows nothing of it. Matthew in its original form knows nothing of it. Luke, the latest of the synoptics, has a long story about it. We reach something like the third decade of the second century before the story appears, though it must unquestionably have circulated in the Churches for some time before Luke could write it.

We are invited to believe that Christ the saviour is really a powerful god merely adopting the cloak of human form so that he can save the human race. A god disguised as an infant is surely still a god with the powers of a god. Why then is it that the powers of this disguised god seem to grow as a human grows? He is vulnerable to human enemies as an infant because he has not yet grown powerful enough. As an infant this saviour of the world cannot even save himself from wicked human beings.

If that is the case why did the hugely powerful Devil, the supposedly evil god, not notice and take advantage of the baby god’s weakness? Millions of human beings were later to die as devils, condemned by the professors of this loving religion, Christianity, yet the Devil was so weak or stupid that he could not succeed even when his enemy deliberately made himself helpless! If murdering innocent people is the criterion of the work of the Devil, then Christianity is the best candidate.

Christians claimed Pagan religions were devilish yet took from them. Some modern Christians think this is an unanswerable refutation of Christian “borrowing”. It is not at all unanswerable or a secure position. Those that think it is, think in terms of Christianity as it is now—complete, as they see it. In the early years of its adoption into the empire, it was not complete, was extremely malleable and church Fathers often used Pagan arguments as arguments for Christianity. They were ready to say, “Our religion is just like yours in such and such a respect”.

Rome, when it forced Christianity upon Europe, deliberately adopted a large amount of Paganism. Bits of ritual, altars, statues, hymns, local deities, were taken into the new religion. Does even the orthodox suppose that Jesus ordered the use of candles, incense, holy water and vestments? Yet these things were adopted by the new religion.

We have little historical knowledge of the Christians of the first century. Between the simple groups of Jesus worshippers of Paul’s Epistles and Acts, and the developed Christian doctrine of the second century, lies a whole world of evolution on which we have no positive light. The reasonable view is that the influence of the Old Testament, the shape given by the Jews to the supposed messianic prophecies, the natural impulse of ascetic and Essenic believers to isolate Jesus from all sexual intercourse and the broad beliefs of the Persians, Egyptians and Greeks about the birth of their saviours, together gave shape to the traditional figure of Jesus.

The impregnation of a woman by a god was a familiar idea, and, if she had been hitherto a virgin, she was held to be a virgin mother. Most prominent of all were the greatest of Egyptian goddesses, Isis, and the greatest of Greek goddesses, Cybele. When at last the Church was forced to permit a veneration of a semi-divine mother, to compete with the most popular feature of Pagan religion, statues of and hymns to Isis and Cybele were appropriated to Mary.

If religious history is to be believed, God had many well-beloved sons, born of pious and holy virgins, besides Jesus Christ. Despite this each is his only begotten, or his first begotten, son. All are as well authenticated as the story of Jesus Christ, that is, not very!

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.