Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [145]
Did the word “virgin” mean the same thing two thousand years ago?
Although Matthew and Luke both go to great lengths to make Mary’s virginal status clear, the whole question of the Virgin Birth is one more case of mistranslation. Way back in the prophecies of Isaiah, there were many references to a coming Savior. The author of Matthew would have used the Greek translation of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah in which the coming of the Messiah is prophesied. Once Isaiah talked about a son being born to a young woman (see page 225). But the Greek translation for Isaiah’s Hebrew “young woman” was a word that can also mean either “virgin” or “young woman.” In other words, Isaiah never prophesied a virgin birth, and he wasn’t even talking about the Messiah when he prophesied the birth of a child to King Ahaz of Judah. But to fulfill the mistranslated prophecy, the author of Matthew believed that Jesus must be born of a virgin. Since neither John, Mark, or Paul in his writings discuss the Virgin Birth, some theologians have suggested that this aspect of Jesus’ birth was a later invention, as with the relocation of the birth to Bethlehem, to fit the Nativity events into a prophetic scheme. Once again, the entire episode of Jesus’ birth reminds readers that the Bible is a work of faith, not history or biology.
The “Cult of Mary” that grew over the next few centuries has almost no biblical foundation. But the veneration of Mary quickly grew among early Christians. The title “Mother of God” was used as early as the second century in referring to Mary. But by the fourth century, there were divisive debates among church leaders over the divinity of Jesus and the status of Mary. A monk named Nestorius insisted that Mary was the mother of Jesus, not God. Condemning his teachings, the Council of Ephesus said in 431 that Mary was to be called Theotokos, or “Mother of God.” Later Christian teaching held that Mary was “ever-virgin,” even though there are frequent mentions of Jesus’ brothers and sisters in the Gospels. Theologians explained these troublesome siblings away as references to either Jesus’ cousins or other near relatives, or children of Joseph by a previous marriage—an interpretation with absolutely no biblical underpinnings. In the birth narrative in Matthew, Joseph is said to have had “no marital relations with her until she had borne a son,” certainly leaving open the possibility that Joseph and Mary had “marital relations” afterward.
Later theologians went a step further in a leap that also has no biblical justification: Mary herself was said to have been conceived without “original sin.” This belief, the doctrine known as “Immaculate Conception,” began early in Christian history and was officially accepted as dogma essential to Roman Catholic beliefs by Pope Pius IX in 1854. “Original sin,” a Christian theological idea also not found in the Bible, attributes the universal sinfulness of the human race to the first sin committed by Adam. The prominent Christian writer Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, didn’t coin the term but expanded the notion of “original sin” to mean that the taint of human sin is transmitted from one generation to the next by the act of procreation. The notion of the Immaculate Conception, often confused with the Virgin Birth, was developed in the Middle Ages to explain that Mary not only hadn’t had sex in conceiving Jesus but also was free from “original sin.”
Mary’s popularity grew tremendously during the Middle Ages, particularly during the period of the “Black Death.” As the