Not especially concerned by it, Amy. It doesn't just depend upon the supposedly mistranslated word. She also says "I know not a man." Since she was acquainted with her husband Joseph, it must have been one of those occasions where "know" means "to have sex with."

Whatever

I always felt a little sorry for Joseph. I mean, after your girlfriend has had sex with The Almighty, how do you have any chance of measuring up?

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Sorry Amy think your mom is wrong on this one. I personally do think that Mary was a virgin. Err..well I mean not in reality but it was how it was intended to be presented in the bible. The whole virgin birth is common across all cultures. Buddha was supposedly born of a virgin, Aztecs, Greeks & Romans had it. Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians.

We all now sex is yucky according to religions. What better way to eliminate it and have the woman remain "pure" than give birth as a virgin?

Hitch had a passage about this in the Religion book:

For some reason, many religions force themselves to think of the birth canal as a one-way street, and even the Koran treats the Virgin Mary with reverence.

Cooters are scary, man! Paglia, "Personnae":

Female genitals are literally grotesque. That is, they are of the grotto, earth fissures leading to the chthonian cavern of the womb.

(You've heard about that whole "menses" thing, right? Ewwwwww!)

Hey, Adam and Eve spoke Parseltongue. It's no big deal that Mary was parthenogenetic.

It's what thumpers do to be heard that's the real bother.

Even if we are talking about the ewwwness, which varies depending on culture...

you have to have this virgin birth thing so that you are tying the higher power or supernatural physically with the the human being.

In Jesus case, he had to be suitably human to server as the substitute person who can take the sin on, while also being God to survive it. How d'yer get that hybrid?

Now I dun know exactly how the writer's of the time thought of it, but the idea of substitution was well know even back then, and if they were repurposing older ideas, it makes sense with that.

At that time any young woman would have been presumed to BE a virgin, because they had NO value as a bride if they weren't, so I don't have much doubt that even if the word isn't specific within modern semantics, it would have been then. JUST LIKE maiden 500 years ago assuredly meant virgin.

But either you believe this stuff, or you don't, so I think the semantics reading is quite overblown. I learned the whole thing in 1980 in a High School Bible class, so it's not like this is new or different. THIS is why if you want to be a pastor in most protestant Christianity, you have to learn Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic. In seminary, they are going to make you do your OWN translations form the oldest and often conflicting texts.

But if you are looking to poke holes in the belief, having stuff like this neatly laid out where you can find where the 70 disagree with the Vulgate, makes everything easy.

The question is, will you sway anyone? And why do you care.

I'm sure lij can provide an opposing opinion, being well versed in doctrine as he is, but no longer believing in it.

> you have to have this virgin birth thing so
> that you are tying the higher power or
> supernatural physically with the the human

Yeah? Do you promise? Cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die?

Do you promise –even though there's a one-to-one correspondence between subjugation of women and masculine religious supremacy in these cultures, cultures composed by illiterate, brutal youths in the ancient mists of time– that it just so happens that we always see gynophobic foundations in the faiths?... Even when these "elders", working in a realms of untestable mysticism, could have deployed whatever philosophic underpinnings they wanted when selling their cosmologies to terrorized, idiotic congregations?

'Cause I'm thinkin' not. I'm thinkin' they just didn't like uppity, sexually-empowered sisters, and threats of eternal damnation were a great way to tamp that power.

So to speak.

Typo. Sorry. In realms, not in a realms. Outta-breath sentence there... Sometimes blog commenting is like driving drunk, and people get hurt.

On the other hand, the light bulb thing may be dead, so there's that.

Deets

"'Cause I'm thinkin' not. I'm thinkin' they just didn't like uppity, sexually-empowered sisters,"

Crid is soo right. It has nothing to do with " tying the higher power or supernatural physically with the the human"

You just never really notice a great importance in a man keeping his virginity-ever. EVER. Perhaps only Jesus, but there are no bible versus really saying what a great guy he was for being one. Now on the other hand every woman in the bible, sheesh, every other verse is about how great it is they never had a penis in their vagina.

Yes there is a trend for celibacy-sometimes....but it's okay if a man just can't do it because you know it's the womans fault for being so alluring.

But for a woman? You must ALWAYS be celibate and you're only allowed to have sex when you are tied to 1 man for a lifetime.

Ironically, it's a darker time anyway.

The story I always figured on was a little more fun. Mary got knocked up in the barn by Joseph, and thought, "Hmm, that'll never fly with Dad," so she took a fly at "Um...God did it!"

I always thought she got knocked up by someone other than Joseph and that was her excuse to him "Um, darling - I appear to be pregnant, you'll still marry me if it was God right?"

I mean, after your girlfriend has had sex with The Almighty, how do you have any chance of measuring up?

Nah, Steve, nothing to worry about. After all, He's only done it once, how good could it have been?

You just never really notice a great importance in a man keeping his virginity-ever. EVER

Not being religious I don't know where they got the idea from, but Catholic priests? More honoured in the breach than the observance perhaps, but still.

Which reminds me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujuGKvMSeWA

Yeah, I could Swiss, but on this occasion I think I'll just poke fun at the denominations who believe Mary was a virgin until the day she died

Wish I'd said that.

Catholic priests have a long tradition of not being celibate. Many of them had "wives". Anyways it never really had to do with sex-more to do with keeping Church property in the Church's hand.

Virginity in a man isn't praised in the Bible. What is praised is celibacy in the New Testament-and really only in the New Testament.

But once a woman looses her virginity in any religion, her worth is lowered. A man can loose it and then can convert to celibacy. A woman just can't make that argument. Just look at how women are treated in Islam vs men.

If they get one penis in their vagina? Forget it they're permanently labeled whores.

If a man does it? HIs action is ignored.

Wow, thanks for the links Crid. Sad to hear.

Makes me wonder, if there were a God wouldn't he at least spare us excruciating pain in our last moments? There should be an "off" button for pain or something.

Well, if you're willing to consider the question clearly —and Hitch's last piece in VF was handsomely blunt, so I think he'd respect the discussion— I'd recommend this book. Nuland describes occasions where the body is quickly and mortally overwhelmed, and offers evidence of glandular responses which block suffering to allow a last moment of clarity. I forget the details, such as how this is evolutionarily advantageous, but it's nice to think it's out there... Our corporeal arrangement could use a few more happy Easter eggs like that.

In Old Testament times, before paternity tests were invented, women knew who their biological children were. Men only had faith that they were the actual fathers of their children. In this regard they were no different than apes in the jungle. There was a purely biological imperative - controlling females to ensure paternity - dressed up and sanctified as a religious imperative.

"A man can loose it and then can convert to celibacy. A woman just can't make that argument"

Medieval nunneries had their share of former prostitutes and other fallen women.

Crid, thank you. I had missed that. Christopher Hitchens was one of the great writers of our time who *always* spoke his mind and took on all comers. And usually won. And I hope he was right, but if not I'll see him in hell.

"Medieval nunneries had their share of former prostitutes and other fallen women"

Right, not saying otherwise. A woman can be "loose" and then convert but she will never have the worth of a woman who is a virgin. A man can be "loose" and then become celibate/married and have more worth than a man who is a virgin. In fact virginity is never praised in man-but celibacy is, which is different. And then celibacy has to do with fighting off the allure of a woman-which is of course the fault of the woman for being so desirable.

You're right though, it's just religious BS we created because we are apes.

Glad that shit dont go down in Southern CA.

Wow thanks for the book recommendation!

I almost died once as a child. It was a complete accident. And I tell you I did have this bizarre clarity and for the life of me I can't remember the pain.

But when you are in your last days/weeks/months riddled with cancer. It's just painFUL. I've heard some people with cancer can't eat and shit anymore because they actually vomit feces.

Show's the body is indifferently designed by nobody.

Related: RIP, Hitch.

"There should be an "off" button for pain or something."

There is. It's labeled "Colt", "Beretta", "Smith & Wesson" or some such.

But people do not want to make a decision that cannot be reversed, one with finality, and so they don't use this particular switch. The idea of a comfortable, clean passage to not-life, sitting on the couch is too valuable.

OK, maybe Mary wasn't a virgin, but Pilemon and Baucis definitely turned into trees, right?

Seriously, why do you want to de-magic mythology? That's not very fun!

Well, now that I've sifted through the posts in this thread 90% of which are drivel, I should point out that Mary's virginity is established in the Bible with more than just one ambiguous term. We also read in Matthew's gospel that when Joseph discovered his betrothed was knocked up, he was intending to break off the engagement privately, so as not to make Mary a public example. He was told by an angel that Mary was impregnated by the Holy Ghost and to go ahead and take her as his wife.

Just to point out that if you want to suggest that Mary was no virgin, you'll have to do more that simply cast some doubt on the word translated as "virgin."

Scoff at the Biblical account all you care to. I'm simply pointing out that the belief that Mary was a virgin doesn't rely exclusively -- or even most strongly -- on the word translated as "virgin."

I can't find the article now, but while parthenogenesis in humans is widely discounted as impossible, it's not. Although the odds against the necessary chain events to cause asexual pregnancy in humans is astronomical, it's not technically impossible.

"Yeah? Do you promise? Cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die?" Crid.

Nah, because I was just making an observation anyway... I'm thinkin' at the time most of these religions were formed, they would have been much more mystical and much less cynical. They hadn't a clue about most of the inner workings of the body. They just knew that certain actions had certain outcomes. Also, why would they have to make things up to keep women in their place, when violence was quite acceptable?

But they DID understand that the only way to be certain about where a kid came from is to make sure a woman never had sex with anyone, until locked into some kind of relationship with that person otherwise there was no inheritance. Money had to be paid to make that exchange. Even in the earliest writings of Ur, that was how marriage was described.
And how much different is that than when a new alpha male lion takes over and kills every cub, to make sure only the cubs he sires live? We used our big smooshy brains to figure out another way that isn't quite so murderous, but the impulse seems the same.

So if figuring out WHO the sire is was so important to their societies and If that's the way they thought of it, why wouldn't they extend that back to their God? Why wouldn't they retroactively apply this to attain legitimacy?

> why would they have to make things up to keep
> women in their place, when violence was quite
> acceptable?

Everyone, EVERYONE knows this to be true: The bitches are relentless. They just NEVER stop talking! Ever hear of that Oprah woman? Talk talk talk!

At any given moment, no matter how violent the atmosphere, some little man out there is starting to listen to one of them. Maybe he's developing feelings for her... Or something.

Whatever. What's needed is an absolute, exhaustive, literally canonical body of thought to overwhelm the insidious feminine influence.

> how much different is that than when a new
> alpha male lion takes over and kills every cub

Well, first of all, we're not fucking animals.

Second of all, the implications of your argument are not jolly and rhetorical: See Hrdy.

Thanks for the link to Hrdy, Crid... never heard of that, though there is a certain grim sense to it. I didn't mean for the implications to seem jolly, because they are not. It is a better frame of reference to explain what is going on in China, and India in terms of infanticide, but it is relentlessly brutal and dark.

One curiosity I have for modernity, is what will future atheis society do. Do you think they don't have their own Canons in this?

Modernity's canon is like the loose-leaf notebooks of Sagan's library, rather than the hardbound books from Islam and the Vatican. You can swap in Einstein to replace (or more accurately, to augment) Newton and nobody takes it personally... Nobody pretends the parts worth reading have all been written already. We're looking forward to your chapter, even if you're a girl.

So just so I'm clear crid, first you say were arent animals, then provide a link which clearly lays out that we are.

I guess my question would be which is it that you believe?

If that's how you read this exchange, your clarity is not something for which I should take responsibility. Good luck out there!

Scoff at the Biblical account all you care to.

I intend to, Patrick. In some ways, you're right - nitpicking over individual mistranslated words is a bit of a waste of time with texts that in many cases weren't written down till decades or centuries after the events they describe, were most likely edited by people with their own axes to grind, and where there is almost no corroborating evidence. Historians never rely on one source if they can help it, and with good reason. The additional references to Mary's virginity don't impress me, they could have been added at any time.

I just don't take the Bible seriously. It's Chinese whispers on a grand scale.

Somehow, "The Raisin Mary" just doesn't have the same gravitas.

Oh, I dunno...

My clarity Crid?

You make a statment that we are not animals then post a link to a book synopsis which lays out than mankind (women specifically) kill their offspring in the EXACT SAME MANNER AND RATIOS when the smae few variables are at play as hundereds of other animal species.

Well, Crid, that would be just grape!

In some tribal cultures the mother's brother assumes the paternal role, since it is known the kids are related to him.

Know what word really, really sucks when we're talking about families? Garden-hose-sucks, Porsche-turbo-sucks, Pratt-&-Whitney-inlet sucks?

"Roles".

These are human souls, not Best Supporting Actor in a Foreign Shortform Comedy or Musical.

I find it bizarre that most Bible skeptics (and I'm certainly one of them) would rather believe that Mary was a cheat than believe that JOSEPH was the father. I can only assume this is because the general public prefers sordid stories to non-sordid. After all, if no angel spoke to Joseph, why WOULDN'T he "put her away," unless there never was any controversy in the first place?

And why all the focus on JOSEPH's ancestry? Unless...

Assuming Jesus ever existed, that is.....

It reminds me of George Burns in the movie "Oh, God!" when, in answer to the question "was Jesus your son" says: “Christ was my son. Buddha was my son. Mohammed. Moses. You. The man who said there was no room at the inn was my son…”