Lawyering the bible are you? And no, he would not be a descendant according to your belief, because Mary was only an incubator. So that's two strikes against virgin birth. Here's strike 3: the whole basis for the claim rests in Isaiah's prophecy. But the word he used was almah which does not mean virgin, it means maiden. The Greek translation used parthenos, which can mean either virgin or maiden or both. The prophecy, even if correct, was not for a virgin mother, but for a young mother. The question this all raises to me, is why insist on something so clearly wrong as a foundational belief. There have been examples in the past of other doctrine that has been vacated due to revealed factual data that countermands the original belief. Clinging to myth over metaphor only makes you look foolish.
"Really? Somewhat like the universe moving from being 20 billion years old when I was in grade school to 13-14 billion today?" - Dayton 3 Apples and oranges here. A percentage of a figure that's possibly a wild guess anyway, versus a birth that violates the physical laws of childbirth that have been in place since mankind came into being.
No. Because you are inferring that Mary was just a surrogate mother. As far as we know, Jesus's X chromosomes were in fact Mary's. If none of his biology was from Mary, then he could not be both God and man as described.
"Legally, Joseph was considered the father of Jesus by anyone concerned. Physically he was still a descendant of David given Mary's background IIRC."-Dayton 3 The Holy Spirit came down and impregnated her in an actual physical way - cells divided and made a baby. But Mary's family tree (her genes) goes back to David. Not saying it was aliens........
Why not? Sounds like you're saying that God alone couldn't produce a child that was both God and man as described. I guess your God isn't All Powerful?
DUDE! Imagine if they had modern science back in those days. Half the genes are the moms and the other half.......WTF?
Not unless God made a female woman from scratch (like an Adam and Eve thing all over again) and then impregnated her. Anyway, what if Maury Povich were alive back then? "Joseph, we have the test results.......you are NOT the baby's daddy."
It's interesting to imagine a version of Christianity based off the writings of the disciples we know not much about, and how it would differ.
Almost missed one of your mistakes. Jesus is a patralineal descendant. That means it is through Joseph.
Color me confused: a baby is made from the meeting of ONE sperm cell with ONE egg cell. If that one sperm cell came from Joseph how could it have also come from the Holy Spirit? Was Joseph a mild mannered carpenter by day and a crime/evil fighting spirit at night? Are Jesus' genes 1/2 mom. 1/4 Joseph and 1/4 spirit? What kind of kinky tag-team action was Mary into anyway? I knew I should have paid more attention in Sunday School.
Actually, the term "carpenter" might have been a colloquialism for an especially adept religious scholar.
Let's say that hypothetical records from the time are found, detailing a previously unknown talk between Jesus and his disciples. They lay out details of the birth of Jesus and present it as a standard biological pregnancy, however instead of a normal soul Jesus was instead given the spirit of God. In that scenario (assuming for the hypothetical that there is enough evidence to prove the writings as genuine) you would stop being a Christian? I find that hard to believe.
I'd be willing to lay dollars to donuts that CD wouldn't even be willing to consider that as a hypothetical. If the King James version of the Bible was good enough for Jesus, its good enough for CD.
Which is precisely the finding that M/M/Q starts out with: Why are some passages identical almost verbatim, while others are completely different? It then makes the utterly wild assumption that passages that are identical have been copied, while others haven't.
