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F. F. Bruce is one of those scholars I have had to spend a lot of time reading in seminary. He researched and wrote some of the best material on the history of the Bible and its accuracy. In studying the ancient texts that we have, Bruce has noted that there are only around nine or 10 manuscripts of Caesar's Gallic War, which was composed between 58 and 50 B.C. The oldest manuscript we have originates from 900 years later.Bruce writes: "The History of Thucydides (c. 460-400 BC) is known to us from eight (manuscripts), the earliest belonging to circa...

A strange thread runs through the most prominent women associated with Jesus: they are all women of, shall we say, ill repute. Most of their notorious reputations spring from sexual scandals. What does this say about Christ? An awful lot. If your habit is to skip over the genealogies in the first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, you may have missed a treasure buried in this list of forty fathers who comprise Jesus’s ancestry (if we count Joseph), stretching as far back as Abraham. The hidden treasure is the five women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Jesus’s mother, Mary. Why are...

December has apparently proven to be an interesting month for the Rev. Andy Stanley, son of a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and lead pastor of North Point Community Church in Alpharetta — one of the largest congregations in the country. Though it is only now breaking in to the open, the Baptist world has been rocked by a Dec. 4 sermon in which the son of famed TV evangelist Charles Stanley discounted the importance of believing in the virgin birth of Jesus.

GERMANY, September 21, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — The German Bishops have presented a new “Unified Translation” of the Bible that follows a significant modernization of the language and will be binding for all German-speaking areas starting in 2017. On Tuesday, the German Bishops Conference (DBK) presented in Fulda the fruit of many years of scientific work: a new edition of the so-called “Unified Translation" (Einheitsübersetzung) of the Bible into German. It’s called “unified” because, from the original published from 1962 onward, these editions are supposed to be used ecumenically, unifying Catholics and Protestants in Germany. The original aim, however, was thwarted...

A 2013 Harris Poll found that while sixty-eight percent of American adults believe that Jesus is God, or the Son of God, only fifty-seven percent believe in the virgin birth. Disbelief in Jesus being born of a virgin, which is a fundamental tenet of Christianity, in turn implies a belief that the author of the Gospel According to Luke lied when he wrote: The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph…. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found...

Valerie Tarico wrote an article at Alternet, republished at Salon, that should get her a lot of invites to ironically themed liberal Christmas parties.  The title: "Why rape is so intrinsic to religion." Tarico lays out a series of myths from pagan traditions, mostly Greek and Roman, in which women are abducted, violated, and coerced.  We have Danae, Europa, Rea Silvia...and, what do you know, the Virgin Mary. Notably, Tarico avoids using the same dire language for the Blessed Mother that she uses for the pagan myths: "[I]n the Gospel of Luke, the Virgin Mary gets pregnant when the...

Question: Do Presbyterians believe in the virgin birth of Jesus? A friend of mine said the Presbyterian church did not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus from Mary. She said that Joseph was the biological father. I am sure she is mistaken but would like a clarification on the doctrine of the Presbyterian church on this. Answer:Thank you for your fine question. Your instincts were correct; we do firmly believe that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit. We affirm with the Nicene Creed: "We believe ... in one Lord Jesus Christ, ... who...

The Christmas season comes each year with the expected flurry of media attention to the biblical accounts of Christ’s conception and birth. The general thrust of the secular media is often incredulity toward the fact that so many people still believe the Bible’s accounts to be true. This year, the Pew Research Center released a report on Christmas Day indicating that almost 75% of the American people affirm belief in the virgin birth of Christ. Meanwhile, the Public Religion Research Institute found markedly lower levels of belief, with just under half affirming the historical accuracy of the biblical accounts. The...

Reprinted by permission of Faith Baptist Theological Seminary's Faith Pulpit, December, 1999. The virgin birth refers to Mary's miraculous conception of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, without any male participation, so that, though the birth process was not unlike that of other humans, Mary was still a virgin when Jesus was born. This Biblical doctrine should be distinguished from the Roman Catholic tenets of Mary's immaculate conception and her perpetual virginity (Erickson, 179). The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception According to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Mary was "preserved free from all stain of original sin"...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict published the last part of his trilogy on the life of Jesus on Tuesday, delivering an early childhood narrative which strongly reaffirms the doctrine of the virgin birth as an "unequivocal" truth of faith. In the book, 137 pages in its English version, Benedict also urges his readers to stop seeing God as someone who limits personal freedom. "The Infancy Narratives - Jesus of Nazareth" will be published around the world in some 20 languages. It goes on sale on Wednesday. It is bound to be another international bestseller like the previous volumes. The...

In the early months of 2002 the opinion pages of the local Iowa newspapers had many letters to the editors attacking my integrity and impugning my motives. It’s interesting to note that the documented quotes the writers of these letters we incensed about are not being challenged; but instead only non-rational appeals in an argumentum ad hominem (“an argument against the person” and not against the ideas he is presenting). Only one letter has attempted to repudiate the quotes and that was only for a single source. The writer objected to our position that the Mormon Church denies the “virgin...

Some of the most brilliant people who have ever lived have believed in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ and, in one sense, over half the world accepts it today. "The answer to that question would explain history for me." – Atheist Larry King on his show's 25th anniversary (June 5, 2010), on whether Jesus was virgin born. Some of the most brilliant people who have ever lived have believed in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ and, in one sense, over half the world accepts it today.[1] Its historicity is equal to that of any declaration in the Gospels.[2]...

Virgin Birth—or Prophetic Slip? by  A.P. Staff One of the first miracles recorded in the New Testament is the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. According to Matthew 1:22-23, Isaiah prophesied about the virgin birth in Isaiah 7:14. However, some in the scholarly community (particularly those within the atheistic and agnostic segments) deny that Isaiah was prophesying about a virgin birth. Isaiah 7:14 reads as follows in three separate translations: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (ASV, emp. added). Therefore the Lord himself...

In one of his columns for The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof once pointed to belief in the Virgin Birth as evidence that conservative Christians are “less intellectual.” Are we saddled with an untenable doctrine? Is belief in the Virgin Birth really necessary? Kristof is absolutely aghast that so many Americans believe in the Virgin Birth. “The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time,” he explains, and the percentage of Americans who believe in the Virgin Birth “actually rose five points in the latest poll.” Yikes! Is this...

any modern Mormons are unaware of the teaching of their own Church regarding the physical parentage of Jesus Christ. As startling and offensive as it sounds, Mormon leaders have consistently taught that Jesus Christ was physically begotten by God the Father, who they teach possesses a physical body. When Christians point out this blasphemous teaching, many LDS are quick to deny that their Church has ever taught such a thing. Other LDS, including scholars at Brigham Young University, dismiss this teaching as "nineteenth century speculation," and do all they can to distance themselves from the many plain statements given below....

 New evidence shows that boa constrictors can reproduce without sex. But one boa constrictor had babies asexually and the old-fashioned way. Her sexually produced snake (left) is shown beside one of the asexually produced females (right).   Courtesy of Sharon Moore In a finding that upends decades of scientific theory on reptile reproduction, researchers at North Carolina State University have discovered that female boa constrictors can squeeze out babies without mating. More strikingly, the finding shows that the babies produced from this asexual reproduction have attributes previously believed to be impossible. Large litters of all-female babies produced by the...

A female boa constrictor snake has given birth to two litters of extraordinary offspring. Evidence suggests the mother snake has had multiple virgin births, producing 22 baby snakes that have no father. More than that, the genetic make-up of the baby snakes is unlike any previously recorded among vertebrates, the group which includes almost all animals with a backbone. Details are published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. Virgin births do occur among animals. Many invertebrates, such as insects, can produce offspring asexually, without ever having mated. They usually do this by cloning themselves, producing genetically identical offspring. But...

Overall, Catholics liked the movie "The Nativity" but had several problems with it. For one thing they changed Scripture during the closing of the movie. On the screen they flashed the Bible passage from Luke 1:46-54. But they left out the words "for me" from middle of the sentence "The Lord has done great things for me, and Holy is his name." I don't think they should have taken that out of the Word of God, without using any elypses to show they skipped it. Another issue with the movie is they showed Mary screaming and pushing in pain as...

I was visiting an inner-city church one day and in the vestibule some graffiti was written on the wall which said, "Catholics, God has no mother," obviously referring to Mary's title as "Mother of God." How does one respond to such an objections? To understand the title, "Mother of God," we must first clearly understand Mary's role as mother of our Savior, Jesus Christ. As Catholics, we firmly believe in the incarnation of our Lord: Mary conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Cf. Lk 1: 26-38 and Mt 1: 18-25.) Through her, Jesus Christ — second person of...