Hi JC,
I always appreciate your comments and you make some very good points, but I'm affraid I lack your kind of faith and can only understand things from my perspective. I'm not saying my comments are correct, but I do think they raise interesting questions that deserve further investigation.
This is true, but its a moot point if this is considered a cryptic interpretation. That is, the gospel was interpreting "maid" in relation to the virgin birth, whether or not its meaning always meant virgin. Given a choice whether Isaiah meant just a young girl or a virgin is an option.
On its own this is a very good point, but when we take into consideration that the Gospel of Philip denies the Virgin Birth in the following quote, it raises serious doubts.
Some say Mary conceived by Holy Spirit. They are in error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive by a woman? Mary is the virgin whom no power defiled...And the Lord would not have said "My father who is in heaven" unless he had another father, but he would simply have said "my Father." (Philip II,3.25 The Nag Hammadi Library page 143)
We must also remember that the gospels were aimed mainly at the Gentiles and among the Greeks and Romans, the cult of the Virgin was very popular indeed. In fact, stories of the Virgin Birth can be traced back to early Semetic manuscripts, and seems to have had its origins in ancient Mesopotamia. But in Greek mythology, Zeus in particular, was belived to have had many lovers among godesses and mortals alike and some of the many women loved by Zeus gave birth to the heroic demi-gods. Therefore, the idea of Jesus being the result of a union between Yahweh and Mary, the virgin, would not have been out of place among the 1st. cent Gentile nations.
To the Jews though, and no doubt to Jesus himself, this idea would have been abhorrent. Why? Because it would have reminded them of the account in Genesis 6, where the angelic sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attractive, so they materialized and had sexual relations with them. The resulting offspring were the Nephelim and the angels responsible were punished by being put in "eternal bonds under dense darkness for the judgment of the great day". (Jude 6)
If therefore, Yahweh saw fit to punish his angelic sons for having sexual unions with women, its hardly likely that he would do the same himself, even if it was by means of His Holy Spirit.
As mentioned previously, Jesus' line, according to Jeremiah was cursed and that Ezekiel 21:26 records Yahweh's words:
Remove the turban, and lift off the crown. This will not be the same. Put on high even what is low, and bring low even the high one. a ruin, a ruin, a ruin I shall make it. As for this also, it will certainly become no (ones) until he comes who has the legal right, and I must give it to him. (NWT)
This suggests there was no need for the Messiah to have been of Davidic descent at all.
If Jesus was God's son, the very circumstances of his miraculous birth would have given him the "legal right" without him having to be a descendant of David. Yahweh himself had said of the Messiah's rulership; This will not be the same. The Messiah therefore, need not have been a royal king. Why then did Matthew go to all the trouble of tracing Jesus' ancestry through Joseph, his step-father's cursed line, when he could have just as easilly have stated; Jesus was the son of God, conceived by holy spirit. Surely this would have provided more legal right than any ancestry?
If Joseph wasn't Jesus' natural father would the Davidic bloodline have passed to him anyway?
Its also interesting that most scholars suggest that Luke was the earliest gospel and Matthew and Luke draw heavilly on this and from a document they know as Q. Mark though, contains no mention of the circumstances of Jesus' birth.
Again, I am not saying these conclusions are correct, but I certainly believe that the argument against the Virgin Birth is strong and in my mind, if Jesus was just an ordinary man like you and I, then this would make his sacrifice much more powerful than if he was the son of God. As the son of God, he would have been assured of a resurrection, but as a man there would always have been an element of doubt in his mind, no matter how much he believed he was right, and as William Shakespeare put it in Hamlets famous speech;
But that dread of something after death, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us bear those ills we have, than to fly to others we know not of. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all...
The thought of an ordinary man being willing to undergo such an awfull death as crucifixtion, and to take the sin of the world on his shoulders for the sake of his fellow humans, is very pwerful indeed. To me, possibly much more powerful than if Jesus was indeed the son of God.
Steve J