On Creationism

Christianity has claimed a virgin birth for Jesus almost from he start. Almost, but not quite. The very first Christians, including Mark and Paul, saw Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. The Jewish Messiah was prophesied to be a descendant of David, and those later Christians maintain that that is via Joseph by adoption (in Matthew) or via Mary (in Luke). Does that fit with what the Jews of Jesus day thought? This post is more specifically about whether they would accept a messiah whose descent was via a woman, as Christians claim for the genealogy in Luke. Women were not important enough to name In Genesis, Adam and Eve were supposedly the first man and woman, and the whole population of the world is descended from them. They had three sons, Cain, Abel and Seth. Presumably they also had daughters, but the daughters were not important enough to rate a mention. There were four men on Noah's Ark and four women. The men were Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth. The women, again, do not rate  a me...

With Christmas so near, I thought it would be interesting to review the evidence for the virgin birth. Paul The earliest writing we have is Paul, who says nothing of a virgin birth, but then again says nothing of Jesus' life at all, so we cannot really draw any conclusions there. Mark I think it is more significant that the virgin birth is missing from Mark, who, afterall, wrote a lot about Jesus' life. Mark is supposedly the account of Peter told through Mark. Peter was not there at the birth, so one might excuse Mark on this basis, but Peter was also not there at Jesus' baptism, and that is present in Mark. The reason, as argued here , is that Mark believed Jesus was adopted the Son of God at the baptism. To Mark, Jesus' birth was of no great significance, and when Mark was writing it is likely that the story of a virgin birth had yet to appear in the Christian community. None of the early texts mention a virgin birth because no one had heard of ...

I came across this blog page (and the two that follow it), and thought it worthwhile linking to: http://frted.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/jesus-augustus-christ-caesar-i/ Its claim is that the nativity was was written to compete with the Roman claims of divinity for their Emperors. For example, it quotes:  “The following was found chiseled on the ruins of an old government building in Asia Minor, dated 6 BC: ‘The most divine Caesar . . . we should consider equal to the Beginning of all things . . . for when everything was falling (into disorder) and tending toward dissolution, he restored it once more and gave the whole world a new aura;  Caesar . . . the common good Fortune of all . . . The beginning of life and vitality . . . All the cities unanimously adopt the birthday of the divine Caesar as the new beginning of the year . . . Whereas the Providence which has regulated our whole existence . . . has brought our life to the climax of perfection in giving to us (the empe...