Born Divine: The Births of Jesus & Other Sons of God, by R. Miller
Probably the most comprehensive treatment of the Christian virgin birth claim is this recent book by Robert J. Miller, a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar. Check it out and then give up such a claim as the liberals have already done.
4 comments:
I haven't read the book, but it's interesting to note that virgin births were somewhat commonplace in the various pagan mythologies during the time of Jesus. Even in some Jewish literature possibly from the 1st century there were virgin births.
The mysterious figure Melchizedek was also born of a virgin according to the ending of 2 Enoch. However, Melchizedek in this story is placed during the time period of Noah and is rescued from the flood by the angel Gabriel.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews makes the connection between Jesus and Melchizedek...
Often when reading the reviews of these types of books you see either "great book" without much explanation or you see the "terrible book" with the explanation that the writer must be a Jesus-hater, so I am surprised to find a review that actually provides reasons why the reviewer finds the book so bad. Could someone with actual expertise in this area provide feedback and comments on the review by Jeri Nevermind entitled "Found the errors in scholarship yet??",
It starts poor but it builds steam:
Miller's badly written "Born Divine" goes through the usual litany of problems with the infancy stories, but he never makes reference to the counter arguments. This is poor scholarship and "Born Divine" ends up sounding like one of those atheist rants by Dawkins.
Ignoring the anti-atheist slant, what of his points and contentions? By the way, it does appear based on even the good recommendations that the book is both poorly written and structured. For me, that is not a reason to not try the book, but it is often a turn-off for those people that probably need to read it the most.
I've never read Enoch, but in the Bible Melchizedek wasn't born of a virgin. He was without a father and without a mother only in that they were unknown and he was without descent in that his genealogy has not been preserved. He is without beginning and end in that the OT doesn't mention his birth and death. The connection with Jesus isn't virgin birth, just that they are both great priests not in the order of Aaron, because the OT prejudice was that good priests could only come from the order of Aaron.
I referred to Born Divine when showing that claims that Jesus' supernatural birth was similar to the late account regarding the birth of Apollonius of Tyana were unpersuasive. Miller also points out that the idea that Jesus was divine in no way necessitated the fabrication of a virgin birth account.
As Robert J. Miller notes, "There is no story of a supernatural conception for Apollonius. Instead, his very pregnant mother has a vision in which she learns that her son will be the incarnation of the shape-shifting god Proteus. Nothing in this implies that there was anything unusual about how Apollonius was conceived. This shows that the ancient imagination accepted the notion that someone could be a god incarnate and yet be conceived in the natural way." Robert J. Miller, Born Divine, The Births of Jesus and Other Sons of God, page 149.
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