But keep in mind the context of this discussion.  This all started when Heath said that he didn't get why people were worried if Mary was actually a virgin or not.  He said why get hung up on whether she really was a virgin, since your salvation doesn't depend on that.  My point is not to say whether Mary really was a virgin or not (I have a view on that, but it's not really important to this discussion), but rather to explain to Heath (and anyone else who doesn't get why many christians would disagree that Mary being a virgin "doesn't matter), why accepting that Mary might not have been a virgin would likely cause them to question other aspects of their faith.

So again IF you accept that Mary wasn't a virgin, THEN Matthew doesn't just contain a mistake, but rather a deliberate falsehood.  And that calls into question the author's reliability as a witness.  And since that book is one of the key sources of information on Jesus, it doubting it's reliability as a source really undermines what one believes about Jesus.

Please note I put the "IF" in caps back there, to stress that making a conditional claim, not just focusing on the conclusion.  I'm not just here saying "Mary wasn't a virgin, you should all stop believing!"  I'm trying to explain why someone would be likely to stop believing IF they were to accept that Mary wasn't a virgin.  I'm countering Heath's position, which is that people should be able happily accept that Mary wasn't a virgin, but going on believing that Jesus was the son of God, died for our sins, etc.  I'm trying to answer Heath's question of "why do people care if Mary was a virgin or not?"  And the answer to that starts with "well, if she wasn't then..."

So, it's not me assuming what I'm trying to prove.  I'm explaining why the issue in question is important to people.

Going along Tycho's line of reasoning...

If one believed that Jesus was not born of a virgin, then one would have to accept that there are errors in the NT. This can lead to questioning and doubt, and questioning and doubt are healthy aspects of a mature faith.

In the long run, it's no big deal for non-literalists; I already know of errors in the NT, and I'm still a Christian. I accept that imperfect as it is, the NT is the best source we have of the life and teachings of Jesus. We make do with what we have.

I'm a non-literalist, and I'd say a quarter of the gospels being totally unreliable is something I'd consider to be a Big Deal.

In reply to hakootoko (msg # 59):

Again, though, it's not accepting that there are "errors" in this case.  Errors I can understand people accepting.  Humans make mistakes, and that's not a huge surprise for most folks.  In the case of the virgin birth, though, it's not an "error," it's a deliberate lie, either on Matthew's part, or whoever gave him the story's part.  My whole point is that there's a significant difference between "errors" and "lies."

I can totally understand how people wouldn't be bothered by a few simple errors.  Were I a believer, I'd have no trouble with those either.  But lies would be another kettle of fish for me.  If someone was willing to lie (again, not make an error, but straight up LIE) about the virgin birth, how could I trust them about the resurrection?  The feeding of the masses?  The water-into-wine?  On anything miraculous, really?  I could trust someone who makes a simple mistake.  But I once you lie to me about one miracle, I'm never going to believe your claims about another.  Miracles are sort of hard to believe in the first place, by their nature, so any history of dishonesty about them pretty much disqualifies a source for me.  And I'd imagine I'd not be alone in that.

I used error as an ambiguous term, but you see it as a more specific one, so I'll be more clear. If Matthew made up the story, it's a lie. If Matthew believed someone else's lie, it's an error.

If someone was able to show that Matthew indeed invented the story of the virgin birth, then that would call into question his honesty and his whole account. I just don't see that happening at this distance from the writing of the gospel.

Other classic authors have included stories that we know to be wrong (e.g., Herodotus, Livy), but we do not throw out these authors because we believe they had erroneous or lying sources and trusted those sources, and that most of what they have to say is still useful.

An error on Matthew's part, but a lie on one of his source's parts.  It'd show that someone we're getting info on Jesus was willing to lie to win converts.  Regardless of who's lying, and who's just made the mistake of passing the lie on, it calls into question the reliability of the information.


Oh, I agree that proof isn't likely to be coming.  I'm just working with the assumption of the discussion here.


Most, but not all.  And if they claimed miraculous things, we'd probably put that in the category we don't trust.  It takes a lot of trust to believe miraculous claims, and far less trust to believe mundane claims.  If one were to accept that Matthew contains a deliberate lie, they could probably still believe that the Romans crucified Jesus.  But accepting that he then rose from the dead would be a pretty big ask, I'd wager.  The more extraordinary the claim, the more trust you need to have in the source to believe it.  And what Heath would call "the important stuff" tends to be the really extraordinary parts of the gospels.  If Matthew was known to contain deliberate lies, it would still have value as a historical account, but people probably wouldn't believe the religious claims it makes.

No, if Matthew believed someone else's lie, he is in error. However, it is still a lie.

And considering how frequently every Christian has had to work to defend the Bible against claims that it's nothing but tall tales and lies, yeah, proving it has a lie is a pretty big deal.



I would be inclined to agree. Like I said though, this keeps coming back to Heath's original proposition (and huge kudos to Heath for bringing it up!)

Heath brought up some evidence to suggest Mary wasn't a virgin, and went on to say that Mary's sexual history shouldn't be a point of basis upon which we hang our faith. But I would argue that the gospels writing honesty would be one of those points of basis.



1) We aren't expected to take their crazy stories as true. If Matthew said 'here's a crazy story I heard, isn't that cool?' it wouldn't be an issue. He's saying it IS true.
2) We aren't expected to pin our immortal salvation on Herodotus's character as a witness.

One point that I think is being lost in the discussion is that Matthew was not a contemporary of Jesus.  His writing occurred many decades after Jesus died and is not based on firsthand accounts.  He recorded what he believed based on a translation that may or may not have been in error.

No, I get that.  I absolutely get that.  But as I've said several times, but which still doesn't seem to be registering, the translation error isn't the issue!  He didn't get the story of the angel talking to Mary, and about Mary being an actual virgin from that translation.  If it's not true, he, or somebody else, made it up.  It's not a simple mistake, it's not an "error", it's a lie.  The part where he mis-quotes Isaiah, sure, simple mistake.  Easy to do.  No one's going to fault him too much for that.  But again that is not the issue.  The issue is when he claimed that Mary actually was a virgin.  Getting Isaiah wrong isn't a big deal.  Saying an angel came and talked to Mary, and that Mary got pregnant without ever having sex, if none of that actually happened IS a big deal.

I feel like I've been saying this over several posts now, but people just keep saying "yeah, but he probably just read a dodgy translation of Isaiah, so it's not really his fault."  But really, the bit about Isaiah isn't really important in the context of this discussion.  It's important (outside this discussion) because it's arguably evidence that Matthew made the whole thing up.  But it's not important in this discussion because we're already assuming (for the sake of discussion) that Mary wasn't really a virgin at all, and asking if anyone should care if that's true.  At that point, the mis-translation of Isaiah is non-issue.  The fact that somebody made up this story about Mary being a virgin is the issue, and an important one I argue.

No, I get what you are saying.  That's why I went back to the Document Q argument.  Matthew (and the other synaptic gospels) were likely using a common source.  They did not create their books from wholecloth.  That's why I don't attribute anything necessarily deceitful to the author of Matthew, at least not purposefully.  I think he was putting it into words as he understood things.  The question is whether what he put down was inspired, influenced, or independent, or some combination.  But I don't immediately jump to a conclusion of deceitfulness.

I get your point, Tycho. I've gotten it since before I chimed in on this thread.

I still contend there is a big distinction between whether Matthew lied or whether he believed someone else's lie. It impacts significantly on the his character and the trustworthiness of his gospel.

I agree it reflects better on Matthew's character (at least his honesty). But I guess the gap from "the Bible is true and its creation was guided by God" to "the Bible includes complete fabrications" is larger for me than the gap between "The Bible includes complete fabrications, but they were made up by someone else" and "The authors of the gospels made up fabrications".

Whether Matthew is a great and honest fellow doesn't really matter for me because I'm not Matthew's friend, I'm not inviting him over to dinner, I'm not lending him money. That the Bible contains fabrications *does* matter, because I study and follow the Bible, and a major point of faith is that the Bible is an accurate testament of Jesus's life.

I guess for hakootoko and Heath, how honest Matthew is is a bigger point than how honest the Bible is. I'm okay with that, but I frankly can't understand it.

In reply to hakootoko (msg # 68):

I think you're by trying to save Matthew's integrity, you're just further undermining his credibility.  Sure, if he's just repeating someone else's lie, Matthew is innocent of deceit and intent.  But if that's the case, he's an even less credible source of information than if he had lied.  A liar at least knows that he's making stuff up.  Someone who believes the lies of others can't even tell fact from fiction.  If Matthew is just repeating stories from an unknown number of unknown sources, and we accept that some of those sources were feeding him lies that he believed hook, line, and sinker, that makes him a very, very unreliable source of information.  Not the kind of person who's word you want to hang your faith on.  Sure, he may not be a bad person, but he's a horrible source if information.

Put another way, it sounds like you and Heath are saying that Matthew is just one link in the telephone game; he's just repeating stories that he's heard, not the source of them himself.  Which is fine, and largely I can agree with it*, but it doesn't help the issue any.  It just means the person who authored Matthew is sort of a non-issue, and whoever told him the stories is the one that actually matters (or whoever told them, or told them, and so on back to the source), unless Matthew was changing these stories, which then just calls it further into doubt.

Remember we don't actually know who the author of Matthew even was.  I'm just treating him as a stand-in for whoever came up with the stories in his gospel.  If he's just repeating someone else's stories, call him Tim if you like, then just transfer all the things I've been saying about Matthew's credibility to Tim.  Matthew is just some a stenographer in that case, and not really a source of information, but just a recorder of it.  I'm focussing on the actual source, whoever that happened to be.  If it's Matthew, fine, if it's someone else, that's fine too.  But whoever the source is, that's where we're getting a ton of our info on Jesus from.  And if they're telling lies about Jesus being born from a virgin, it doesn't seem too hard to believe that they'd also be willing to lie about resurrections, miracles, angels, etc. too.


* in this particular instance, because the virgin birth story isn't in mark or john, and since it's generally though that the author of Luke was familiar with the gospel of Mathew, my guess is that the author of Matthew is actually the source of the idea of the virgin birth.  Also, the fact that Matthew seems particularly keen to link Jesus OT prophecies (real or imagined) of the messiah, tends to add to my feeling that the author of Matthew was playing fast and loose with the facts to make his claims.  But I stress that that's irrelevant to the current discussion.

Interesting point.

That's why I was trying to say that there are two issues: (1) one is that "virgin" is actually accurate, but (2) we just cannot say that is the definitive interpretation of Isaiah.  Just because I say "virgin" is not the only possible interpretation does not mean that it is not the correct one.  Matthew may very well have been entirely accurate and not lying or repeating someone else's lie.

My point is just that the jury's out on that.

In reply to Tycho (msg # 70):

I don't think it would cast doubt on the later miracles he reported (if he was gullible about the virgin birth), because the latter life of Jesus during the time of his ministry would have better and more numerous sources, and an audience that was familiar with them already. He'd have a harder time passing off untruths there.

In reply to hakootoko (msg # 72):

More sources, perhaps, but why necessarily "better"?  People are just as likely to lie about a resurrection as they are about a virgin birth, as far as I can tell.  I don't really see any reason that people would be willing to lie about one and not the other.

And as for having a harder time passing off untruths, again, I just don't see why.  Christianity spread largely in places so far away from where the events happened that the people who were adopting it had no practical way of checking out the claims.  Look at the letters that Paul wrote (which were older than the gospels, remember), to places like Ephesus, Philipi, Corinth, Thessalonika, etc.  These are places in Greece, not the holy land.  People there couldn't just take a walk to Jerusalem and do some fact checking.  There was no internet they could use to snope Mathew and see if it was a scam or not.  They pretty much either had to believe or disbelieve based on the claims the early christians were making alone.  And remember there WERE people at the time saying "this Jesus story isn't true, don't fall for it!"  (the fact that they were being rather heavy-handed about it doesn't make us very sympathetic towards them, however).

So, I guess everyone can (and will) believe whatever feels right to them, but to me, someone who is at best a gullible repeater-of-lies, and at worst a liar himself isn't someone I'm going to trust when they start making miraculous claims.  And that's not just because I'm an atheist.  Plenty of believers feel the same, which is why they feel it's important that Mary really was a virgin.  The idea that the gospel writers could never have gotten away with their claims if they weren't true is laughable to me, since I see founders of other religion pass of claims that people of the time scoffed at, but people many years later are willing to believe.  But we each have to make up our own minds about that, I guess.  To me, scepticism is important, but to those for who trust everything someone says until its proven wrong, I guess these things don't matter.  But again, I stress my position isn't just some anti-christian, only-an-atheist-would-say-that position, but rather is the position that lots and lots of christians hold as well.

My assumption (and it is my understanding that this assumption is shared by most Christians) is that everything in the Bible is true in one form or another. Minor details may be incorrect, for instance Abraham may not have traveled with camels, but it is true that he traveled. This assumption is something I accept on as an article of faith, so it's not something I specifically question without questioning the WHOLE faith package.

The whole angel visitation would be a massive untruth. Isaiah saying 'virgin' or 'young lady' isn't an untruth, but the Matthew passage would be.

For Tycho to bring it up, that would make sense to me. He has no assumptions about the authenticity of the Bible, so saying large swathes are incorrect is perfectly fine. However, for a Christian to say it is quite surprising. I guess I've never met anyone to say 'oh yeah, my holy book has a bunch of mistruths and huge inaccuracies, but it's the word of God and divinely inspired scripture, so I follow it anyway'.

I guess what I'm confused at is why is this discussion about an angel?  Whether Mary was a virgin or simply a young girl has no bearing on whether an angel visited her.  I agree with you that the angel visitation is pretty standard belief, and I don't see that we can refute it or prove it.

The virgin issue is slightly different because we can see that the interpretation of the word itself was incorrect--or not exactly correct, to be more exact.

In reply to Heath (msg # 75):

Because the story is that an angel came and told her she was going to be give birth jesus, despite being a virgin.  That whole "how can this be?" conversation didn't take place if she wasn't a virgin.  That's sort of the point I've been trying to drive home here.  Getting a translation wrong is no big deal.  But if Mary wasn't actually a virgin, the implications aren't just that Matthew mis-translated Isaiah.  The implication is that whole conversation where an angel tells Mary she's going to be a virgin-mother of God never happened, and somebody just made it up out of nowhere.  And stories that people just made up out of nowhere making it into the bible cast a lot of doubt on its credibility.

But "despite being a virgin" could also be part of the mistranslation of "despite being an unmarried young woman."  She still doesn't have to be a "virgin" in the physical sense of the word.

I just looked it up, and the only mention of "virgin" I see in Matthew was in quoting the Isaiah prophecy.  The rest of the verses just rely on the fact that Joseph and Mary were not yet married, and the angel convincing him that he still should marry her.

True, the "how could this be" conversation is actually in Luke, which would make someone else the liar if Mary wasn't a virgin, I suppose, but still a liar's story would be in the bible.

Also, Matthew creates a very clear message that the reason Joseph is going to divorce Mary is because he assumes she's had sex with someone else.  If that's not what he was actually saying, then I'd view it as intentionally misleading without (technically) being a lie.  It also says that "before they came together she was found to be pregnant through the holy spirit."  That, to me, sounds like a claim that she was a virgin, even if the word isn't actually used. And the angel tells Joseph that the child is "conceived of the holy ghost."  It also says that "Joseph knew her not until" Jesus was born, again indicating this wasn't Joseph's child, even if the word "virgin" isn't used.  If Mary wasn't actually a virgin, Mathew 1:18-25 seems pretty misleading, and Luke 1:27-35 is a complete lie.

I agree with you on that point, I suppose, but I do so with a grain of salt, which is this:

1) I actually do believe she was a virgin, so Matthew is consistent with my beliefs in any case (and in which case he would not be a 'liar' under any definition);

2) My point was simply that the Isaiah prophecy had been mistranslated, so focusing on a different passage in the New Testament strays from the point.  In other words, even if she was a "virgin," that doesn't mean that Isaiah must be translated as a "virgin."

3) The points you make have been made before and there are arguments going both ways  -- for example, arguments that the writing in the beginning of Matthew is different from the writing later in Matthew and may have been spliced together later (i.e., maybe not even put there by Matthew).  This is really why I hesitate to call Matthew a "liar" in any sense of the word; he was a true believer and recorded what the true beliefs were; and his writings are so ancient that we are not even positive all of Matthew was written by Matthew.

4) My point at the beginning was to give a credible argument to both Jews and Christians that either interpretation of Isaiah might be accurate.  Matthew is a Christian text and would adopt that view.  Therefore, except where it references Isaiah, it cannot be used to refute or argue against the Jewish teachings.  They don't accept it as scripture, so we have to look at the common canonical text, which is Isaiah.

As I recall, your original argument was that christians shouldn't care if Mary was a virgin or not, and you didn't understand why they would "hang their faith" on that idea.  You were arguing that it wasn't important for salvation, so people shouldn't base their faith on whether it's true or false.

You were saying things like:

And


And


After saying stuff like this, I don't think it's entirely fair to just say "well, I do believe it, so it's all consistent with my beliefs," or "oh, but I was only talking about a translation of Isaiah."  You made some very strong claims, telling people they were "absolutely, positively, 100% wrong" to care whether Mary was a virgin or not.  You were basically telling people they were doing religion wrong, and that there was something wrong with their type of faith.  It seems a bit disingenuous to claim you were only ever talking about a verse in Isaiah now.  But perhaps we can agree that it does matter if Mary was a virgin; not because it determines whether you get salvation or not, but rather because it should have a major impact one whether you believe that things that are said to get you salvation.  Is that something you could agree with now?

You are confusing two separate things:

1) Issue 1: I was talking about Isaiah and the mistranslation, which is its own issue; and

2) Issue 2: I was talking about whether historicity matters as far as religiosity.

These can both be compatible.

In other words, whether she was a virgin or not is irrelevant as to whether he was the Christ, and only whether he was the Christ is important to my salvation.  Why?  Because the prophecy (i.e., Isaiah) can be interpreted as simply a "young girl," so the prophecy can be true regardless of historical accuracy of whether she was a virgin.  The only reason I think Isaiah is particularly important is because that "prophecy" is somewhat determinative of whether the person proclaiming to be the Christ actually is the Christ.

Matthew, on the other hand, is a story for believers told to believers as a faith-inspiring account.  Regardless of whether a faith-based account is true or not, the underlying principles do not change.  That is why it is irrelevant to my salvation.

Second, the facts of what happened are irrelevant to salvation.  This is an entirely different discussion (and one that was in the other thread for a reason).  Mary's identity and status are irrelevant as to how I live my life, and if Jesus is the Christ, nothing else written down about what is or is not factual really matters.

So I can believe Matthew or not, and it doesn't change anything.  We can argue whether every fact he stated is true, but that can never escape the underlying principle that the historicity of it does not affect my personal salvation (or anyone else's).  It is merely a faith building story.  Just because I argue the facts back and forth does not change the underlying relevance (or irrelevance) of it to salvation.