Do you as a Christian believe in the virgin birth?

[Dynasty]

I am rather dubious, I must admit, although if Jesus was born of man it wouldn't negate his divinity in my eyes. I was just wondering what other people think, although what denomination you are..

And just to address atthestrokeoftwelve's question about why the church sees sex as sinful, I would say two things. Firstly that there is a huge diversity of views within the Christian church as a whole - for example between the Reformed (Protestant), Catholic and Orthodox traditions, and within those traditions too. It's a bit meaningless to talk about 'the church' having a view about sex as it were one thing, because it's not.

And it is just as meaningless to talk about sex as a whole being sinful - sin is at least as much to do with the context and intentions of an any act as the act itself.

Thanks pigeon, it was a slightly mischievous question but i appreciate you answering ot so accurately. I love the bit about conceiving through the ear-

• that would be aural sex is it not?

Many people on this thread are very well versed in their scripture and theology which I am enjoying. However, wasn't Jesus' birth the fulfillment of Isiah's prophecy that he would be born of a virgin? My understanding is that the word used meant "virgin" or "young woman" but in most contexts that was considered the same thing. There would be nothing amazing or prophetic about a messiah being born of a young woman surely? So therefore it has always been understood by the church that his birth was miraculous. I also read a Rabbi who said it would be considered offensive to imply anything except that the word meant "virgin" in almost any context.

I believe that she was a virgin but I have never experienced Mary as an "unapproachable, sinless Queen" she is the opposite of unapproachable. It's interesting how her virginity should be so hard to accept by modern Christians. Instead it speaks to me of how out of all the humans who ever lived she was chosen to help God's plan for the world come to fruition - physically, within herself, her own flesh and blood. That is much more interesting and fascinating to me.

I also read a Rabbi who said it would be considered offensive to imply anything except that the word meant "virgin" in almost any context.

The actual meaning of words in the real world is not a matter of religious faith, but of historical fact. It means what it means to the majority of people at the time.

Did the Rabbi perhaps mean that if someone said "I know a young woman called Sally" then it would be offensive to assume Sally wasn't a virgin?

He was referring to the words as used in the Jewish scriptures, that is the context he was discussing.

Surely the same thing. The words used to write the scriptures would have been the same words the Jews used at the time.

From what I can remember of my Hebrew and OT studies many moons ago, the word for young girl is synonymous with virgin. It's the same idea as maid/maiden, the notion of virginity is integral to the meaning of the word, as in Maid Marion or old maid. You can't separate one meaning from the other.

Virginity amongst young women was expected . Not being a virgin would have had a serious effect on marriageablility. So taking the etymological stuff in conjunction with the idea of sin passing through the male line and the social expectation of virginity, then the idea that Mary was a virgin when she conceived was pretty integral to Jesus's Messiahship, iyswim.

Here in Germany Jungfrau (maiden/virgin) is the word used for Mary the mother of Jesus and also Virgo the starsign. It is not used very much in everyday life any longer because of the connotations of maidenhood and virginity which are considered dated.

Thinking about this there are lots of ideas about inheritance in the Pauline epistles - that through Jesus. The son of God, we are adopted as children of God and are co-inheritors in the Kingdom. In terms of that set of ideas it makes absolute sense that Mary is a virgin.

This is a fascinating discussion - it's really challenging my thinking and making me see how deep and many-layered the image of Mary as Virgin is.

OP, have you considered reading Marina Warner's "Alone of all her sex"? Yes, it was published in 1976, but is still a fascinating read about the changing attitudes towards the Mother of Christ. Cracking read.

I'm sorry I am rubbish at creating links but there was scientific research which was published in 2012 from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle that showed that after pregnancies mothers had the DNA from their son's cells in their brains. They looked for male DNA because female DNA would be hard to distinguish from their mothers. How and why it migrates to the brain is a mystery at the moment.

The first thing that occurred to me when I read this was "Woah! What about Mary? She still had Jesus' DNA in her body after his birth?!"