"The Prophecy of the virgin birth appears in Matthew Matthew 1:22-23. Matthew wrote this seventy years after Jesus Christ was born (35-40 years after he died). Up until that point no other text mentions Jesus' virgin birth. He quotes Isaiah 7:14 which was written 700 years before Jesus was born - thus claiming it was a sign, a prediction of the Messiah's virgin birth.But there is a serious problem. Matthew states that, due to prophecy, it is true that Jesus was a male line descendant of King David, and presents a genealogy at the beginning of his gospel tracing Jesus' lineage through Joseph. Matthew, apparently, like Luke and Paul and the rest of the early Christians, did not believe in a virgin birth. There are two theories that I see explain how this contradictory state of affairs occurred. (1) The first is that a Septuagint mistranslation of the word "virgin" instead of "young woman" caused the discrepancy. This means that the prophecy is not that someone called Immanuel will be born of a virgin, but merely that someone called Immanuel will be born. In the original context of the story, this makes a lot of sense. (2) The second theory is that Matthew, writing for a Roman gentile audience in Greek, included popular myths surrounding sons of gods, who in Roman mythology were frequently said to be born of virgins. In either case, it is clear that Matthew's prophecy of a virgin birth was a mistake, and modern Bible's actually include a footnote in Matthew pointing out that the virgin birth is probably a mistranslation. "
From "Matthew, the fraud (click for complete text)" by Vexen
True Words
What was the passage really saying? If the two assumptions are ignored: There is not a reference to a virgin, and it is not a prophecy; it all becomes clear:
"A young woman is with child, and will bear a son, and will call him Immanuel."
“When the gospels were written, many years after Jesus' death, nobody knew where he was born. But an Old Testament prophecy (Micah 5:2) had led Jews to expect that the long-awaited Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. In the light of this prophecy, John's gospel specifically remarks that his followers were surprised that he was not born in Bethlehem: 'Others sai, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the scripture said, That Christ shall cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?'
Matthew and Luke handle the problem differently, by deciding that Jesus must have been born in Bethlehem after all. But they get him there by different routes. Matthew has Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem all along, moving to Nazareth only long after the birth of Jesus [...]. Luke, by contrast, acknowledges that Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth before Jesus was born. So how to get them to Bethlehem at the crucial moment, in order to fulfil the prophecy? Luke says that, in the time when Cyrenius (Quirinius) was governer of Syria, Caesar Augustus decreed a census for taxation purposes, and everybody had to go 'to his own city'. [...]
Except that it is historical nonsense, as A.N. Wilson in Jesus and Robin Lane Fox in The Unauthorized Version (among others) have pointed out. David, if he existed, lived nearly a thousand years before Mary and Joseph. Why on earth would the Romans have required Joseph to go to the city where a remote ancestor had lived a millenium earlier? [...] Moreover, Luke screws up his dating by tactlessly mentioning events that historians are capable of independently checking. There was indeed a census under Governor Quirinius - a local census, not one decreed by Caesar Augustus for the Empire as a whole - but it happened too late: in AD 6, long after Herod's death.”
"The God Delusion" by Prof. Richard Dawkins, p93-94
The roman census, Bethlehem
Within his nativity story Luke also tells us that Caesar, the famous Roman Emperor, called for a census and Joseph and Mary had to return to their town of origin, Bethlehem, until the census was complete. The Roman Empire is well documented, including documentation of the Romans taxation laws and system which was based on property and wealth. At no point did the Romans require people to return to their place of birth for a census. Luke was clearly wrong about the census, the reasons for Joseph and Mary being in Bethlehem, and wrong on his opinion that Jesus' birth was of a virgin.
Matthew, the only other gospel to include information on this, does not include any of these aspects of Jesus' birth, and merely states that he was born in Bethlehem, whilst Herod was king. All of Luke's insertions about singing angels, barns, mangers and virgin birth are not mentioned in Matthew's version.
Despite the long-winded and desperate attempts to get Jesus from Nazareth into Bethlehem, it may be that they did not read Micah 5:2 correctly.
"Since the early Christians believed that Jesus was the Messiah, they automatically believed that he was born in Bethlehem. But why did the Christians believe that he lived in Nazareth? The answer is quite simple. The early Greek speaking Christians did not know what the word "Nazarene" meant. The earliest Greek form of this word is "Nazoraios," which is derived from "Natzoriya," the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew "Notzri." (Recall that "Yeishu ha-Notzri" is the original Hebrew for "Jesus the Nazarene.") The early Christians conjectured that "Nazarene" meant a person from Nazareth and so it was assumed that Jesus lived in Nazareth. Even today, Christians blithely confuse the Hebrew words "Notzri" (_Nazarene_, _Christian_), "Natzrati" _Nazarethite_) and "nazir" (_nazarite_), all of which have completely different meanings.""The Historical Basis of the Jesus legend" by Hayyim ben Yehoshua
The Date of the Nativity in Luke: irreconcilable date contradiction 4BC or 6AD by Richard Carrier - this is a much more detailed essay about the Matthew/Luke contradiction. "Out of the two accounts, one of them simply has to be wrong."
Christians for a few hundred years did not celebrate Christmas. Early Christian fathers note that only pagan sun-worshippers celebrate on the 25th of December (by our calendar). Sun worshipping religions have worshipped on Sundays, and on the Winter Solstice, for many hundreds of years before Christianity took up the practice. Jesus was not born in December, or in January. Luke 2:8 states that shephards were out watching their flocks by night. No flocks would have been out, during winter! The average winter temperature in Israel is 5 or 6 degrees celsius. Farmers in Israel did not allow their flocks out during such cold nights.
One of Matthew's plotlines is the three visitors from the East who visit the newborn Jesus. They say that a star came up in the East, however no other people in the story appear to notice this. It must have been a relatively unnoticeable event, a fairly faint star, only noticed by people who study the stars. The three visitors are called 'Star Readers' in Matthew 2:1. However no other astrologers across the world at that time document this phenomenon.
The language used in the Bible indicates that this element of the story was taken from Zoroastrianism, as the magi are given Zoroastrian titles and bear the same gifts as stated in Zoroastrian myth.
The next part of Matthew, two, tells us of King Herod's anger at the three wise men and then of the killing of every child. Surely, the slaughter of every male child (Matthew 2:16-17 in Bethlehem, Ramah, and the surrounding area would have got mentioned in many places, such as Josephus' detailed accounts of the times, in fact it would likely cause the downfall of such an immoral, monstrous leader who issued such orders! Incidentally, the other 'great' leader in the Bible to issue such orders was Moses, Numbers 31:17-18, Joshua 6:21-24, in both cases killing all the women/young/old in a city in two separate occasions.
Many other myths, including more ancient Roman ones, had an event where all the male children were killed, and the famous Romulus and Remus story is (once again) a good, famous example.
It is likely that Herod's orders to kill all those children, and the star that went noticed by all except three astrologers from "the East", did not actually happen. Both Luke and Matthew appear to, well, make things up, and none of these things are mentioned in the other two gospels, nor in the recovered Gospel of Thomas.
There are no birth records for Jesus, nor any first hand accounts of his life, so that these two contradictory and inaccurate accounts are the only snippets of information that we have. It is possible that Matthew/Luke were referring to a myth when they talked of Jesus' and his early life. It seems highly likely that Luke, when writing of the events that surrounded Jesus' birth, was thinking of the famous Roman myth (that was around well before the Jesus' myth) of Romulus and Remus - who also were born by a virgin, and also had a king ordering the slaughter of all the other children in the same area.
"Sometimes non-Christians complain that Christmas is too Christian, and sometimes hardline Christians complain that Christmas is too pagan. Agents of the Politically Correct complain it is too culturally or religiously homogenous. In reality, Christmas is already a multicultural, multi-religious festival. It combines sun worship, polytheism, pagan nature religions, Christianity, and other later myths and traditions. The date of the 25th accords with Sun Worship thousands of years old, the Christmas tree and some of the decorations are pagan, the Nativity stories are pagan, Mithraistic, Roman and Christian. In addition to all of its rich history, Christmas has now become largely a secular holiday and a commercial enterprise with many tacky, mass-produced, plastic and branded items such as Santa Claus's red uniform, designed by Coca Cola. The non-religious can celebrate the commercial and social event, Christians can pretend Christmas has something to do with Christ, pagans can celebrate nature, and all can be happy. Unless of course you are an anti-commercialist anti-popularist secular cynic like me."
Mostly derived from pagan myths, Jesus' birth stories are very dubious, and it very likely that all such beliefs were written retrospectively by the Roman gospel writers, or were assumed from the outset. There is no evidence or reason to believe that they actually occurred. Events such as King Herod's killing of every male child simply could not have gone unnoticed, these pagan myths were however assumed of all god-man saviours. Jesus' existence remains a mystery, we cannot validate even the most simple facts about his birth.
Dawkins, Prof. Richard
"The God Delusion" (2006 hardback). Published by Bantam Press, Transworld Publishers, Uxbridge Road, London, UK.
Ehrman, Bart
"Lost Christianities" (2003 hardback). Oxford University Press, New York, USA.
Wilson, A.N.
"Jesus" (1993). Flamingo Press, Harper Collins, Fulham Palace Road, London, UK. First published in UK in 1992.
External Links:
A HIGHLY RECOMMENDED page: The Historical Basis of the Jesus legend.
ReligiousTolerance.org: Different Christian views on the paternity and conception of Jesus
Infidels.org: The Virgin Birth and Childhood Mysteries of Jesus by James Still.
Infidels.org: The Date of the Nativity in Luke: irreconcilable date contradiction 4BC or 6AD by Richard Carrier.
Vision: The First Christmas - Or was it?
By Vexen Crabtree 2000 Oct 22