https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/02/nun-receives-death-threats-suggesting-mary-virgin Nun receives death threats for suggesting Mary was not a virgin Lucía Caram sparks anger in Spain after appearing to contradict Catholic teaching on perpetual virginity of mother of Jesus Yes, never touch people's mythologies. Very dangerous that. In 1992, when Switzerland was celebrating its 700th anniversary, the history museum in Lausanne had an exhibition about the myth of William Tell, pointing out that there was zero evidence he had ever existed but that such a figure was needed by the early Swiss union as propaganda. The curator promptly received a number of death threats. I suppose that when you try to be rational about things, you're undermining the foundations upon which a lot of dingbat psyches repose.
You see emotional and/or irrational response to evidence based logical arguments all the time. We see a number of posters do that here regularly.
Wait...perpetual virginity? That's a new one on me. I get the virgin birth...Son of God and all that, but accepting that, we're supposed to believe that she and Joseph never got horizontal and superimposed even after Christ was born? Didn't he have a brother?
Yes, I've often thought that -- defending God against blasphemy and whatnot, eh? Somehow I think He'll get over it without your help.
Except (and no I don't wish to derail this thread) that there is ton after ton of conclusive evidence that it was no hoax. If people flip out, they're flipping the same as one might at someone insisting that 2+2=5.
That is exactly what the Catholic Church teaches, and it is very important to them. Mary, according to Catholic doctrine, was born sinless and never engaged in something as carnal as sex. Jesus' "brothers" were either cousins or sons of Joseph by a first marriage. There is absolutely zero support for those teachings in the Bible, but that really makes no difference. It is official Catholic doctrine, and you are often safer in the Catholic Church saying bad things about Jesus than saying bad things about Mary.
Somewhere I read a postulation that "virgin" was simply a synonym for "unmarried" at the time. I guess, back then, it was assumed that an unmarried woman must be a virgin. Hence the surprise when she turned up preggers, and the subsequent habit of applying the term as a title attached to her name. Which of course brings up the cynical theory that Joseph knocked her up, and they came up with the "But I'm a virgin! Jehovah must have done it" story to keep her from being stoned in the square.
Religion, the original Trek geeks patching up canon glitches. Mary's virginity, the orginal ridgie vs smoothie Klingons.
Yes, as Zombie says, I'm afraid you'll get a stoning for that bit of heresy. As a translator, I have to think that many odd things in the bible are mistranslations, or other misunderstandings. But once it gets etched in stone, as it were, it becomes part and parcel of received faith. Then you get stoned for speaking sense.
As Thomas Paine points out in "Age Of Reason", if God tells me something, it's revelation, the exact second I tell anyone else, it's hearsay. So, the whole under-girding concept of revealed religions that even gives them their name is a misunderstanding of language. No, they're not revealed, they're hearsay. Wars, violence, bigotry, suppression, all over magical hearsay. Course, all this confusion would vanish if God just revealed himself to everyone at once, instead of employing this lame-o "talk to a prophet", bullshit. Don't hold your breath for it. It's always going to be some lone asshole making claims. Like UFOs and Bigfoot.
Without religion, people would just find some other pretext for those things. That's why I don't think that atheism is The Answer, accurate though it probably is. Ah, but how else can He test our faith? I assume you've read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Not exactly. The Hebrew word "Almah" has a semantic range that includes "virgin", "young girl", "young woman", and "unmarried woman". But the Greek word "parthenos" from the Greek version of the Old Testament (and the New Testament) simply means "virgin".
William Tells tale is like all other tales from the old days, its a core of truth with a coating of embellishment.
One of my favorite could-bes of history is this: Jesus's father was said to be a Roman soldier called Pantera, and early opponents of the Christians mocked Jesus as Yeshua bar Pantheri (Jesus, son of Pantera). In Germany, there is a gravestone of a Roman archer called Pantera, and we know that his legion was stationed near Nazareth at around the time of Jesus's birth, and that he would've been a young man at the time.
Considering that the debate over the word "virgin" comes from texts that predate Jesus by several hundred years, the actual language that Jesus spoke while He was alive isn't really relevant.
Well, your appraisal of what the Hebrew word means is dubious at best. And why is the Greek even relevant?
So what's the deal with the Catholic hard-on for "Child Jesus"? Was he supposedly more holy when he was an infant? Or is it because he lacked the power of speech and thus hadn't yet come out with all that later stuff that the Catholics' (and not just that branch of Christianity) find embarrassing, like the whole "works before Faith" deal?
As near as I can tell, it stems from two sources. One is that it allows strong visual emphasis on Mary. Mary as an adult with a grown man next to her doesn't say much, but Mary with a baby in her arms clearly insists on the "Mother of God" idea. The other is that "baby Jesus" is no threat to anyone. He's a baby. People want a god who is big enough to do nice things for them, but small enough to negotiate with (meaning, who has needs of his own, so you can get something by providing something). The point of faith is to submit to God's will, but the point of religion is to bend God to our wills. Mind you, the Catholic church is by no means unique in this way. Protestants do it differently, but do it just about as much as Catholics, from what I have seen. Other religions do, too. The idea is always to set up a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" arrangement with God, so he will deliver us from our problems (problems in this life, or problems after death, such as hell). People like a god small enough to work that way, and religious leaders gain power, money, and various other fringe benefits by providing it.
On what basis do you make that assertion? Because the New Testament, which tells us that Jesus was born of a virgin, was written in Greek, and the Greek Septuagint (the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament) was "THE BIBLE" generally in use at the time of Jesus' life and ministry, and it appears to be the version that the New Testament authors quoted from any time they quoted the Old Testament. The Greek Septuagint was, for all intents and purposes, the King James Bible of Second Temple Judaism in the 1st Century. The Septuagint was compiled by Jewish scholars who understood Hebrew. And they chose to render the Hebrew word "almah" (which could mean anything from "virgin" to "young unmarried woman") using the Greek word "parthenos" which unambiguously means "virgin". So the Hebrew speaking Jewish translators knew that "almah" was supposed to mean "virgin" or else they'd have used a word other than "parthenos.
