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From: gary@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (gary w buchholz)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Virgin Birth - reply to Evangelical Protestantism
Message-ID: <509@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-May-85 15:50:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: sphinx.509
Posted: Fri May 17 15:50:18 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 19-May-85 09:47:57 EDT
Organization: U. Chicago - Computation Center
Lines: 55


  I think that as far as contemporary academic biblical sholarship is 
concerned (ie academic in the sense that it is NOT necessarity done in the
service of the church) the virgin birth narrative is seen within its 
contemporary milieu as a legend articulted more for the interest of 
significance than for disinterested historiography.
  If seen in the socio-cultural matrix of the 1st century such a story is
neither unusual nor unbelievale.  Children born fron the union of a God
and a motral woman were not common but not unusual.  Was this not one the
legends surrounding the birth of Alexander the Great ?  Such births were
common in Homeric times.  Even later, the great philosophers were said to
be born in this way.
  I think the birth narrative reported in Luke and Matthew has a purpose
more to set Jesus within this context of "greatness" than anything else.
To see the gospel writers in the same light as modern disinterested 
historiographers is to assign them a role which could not be conceived
in those times.
  One may sample the later apocyphral texts (2nd century) to see how this
bith narrative found in Luke and Matthew has been elaborated and embellished.
Why is it embellished ?  Becuase they have more facts ?  Has more data come
to light ?  I think rather the interest in embellishment has to do more
with preaching and theology then with a acquisiton of more "factual" data.
  If Evangeliacl Protestants assign "legend" to the rather full blown and
embellished apocyrphal birth narrative account and "truth" to the rather
simple accounts in Luke and Matthew then they have put too much weight on
the notion on canonicity.  Canonicity is consensus and does not guarantee
"truth" under the criteria of modern historiography.  I see no reason why
the Xian texts can NOT be seen to partake of the same literary devices,
codes, rhetoric and genres of its contemporary non Xain literature.
   
  For these reasons and others I think biblical scholarship right in 
assigning non facticity to the birth narrative considering its appearence
in the gospels more expected than strange.
  Those who think it stange and wornderful and incarnational are usually
those who cannot recreate the historical context in which the texts were
produced.  And in this case they have every right to read this narrative
with awe and wonderment.
 
  For the sake of preaching and ministry one ought seriously consider what
criteria of truth is operative and normative.
  One may want to make the distinction - "truth" as adequation to the 
historical facts as they can be reconstructed by disinterested historiography
or "truth" as adequation to human being as human being tries to make sense
of the world.
 
  Clearly, if Xianity is seen as an idion for comstruing the world, or better,
as an idion for re-making the world fit for meaning-full human habitation
then the virgin birth narrative insofar as it participates in an essential
way within the Xian story must be taken as a fact.
  
  It all depends on where YOU live and the particular way that YOU have 
re-made the world that decides if the "virgin birth" is Reality or is not
Reality.
 
   
  Gary