The reader with biblical questions concludes:
3. Okay, this one’s from the New Testament: someone argued that the
notion of Mary being a virgin comes from an Egyptian belief in a virgin
mother & child ("Isis/Osiris").
Okay, this one is much easier than the former two.
First, in the accounts from Egyptian mythology that I am familiar with, there is no virgin birth here. In these accounts, Osiris was the son of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut. (No virgin birth there.) Then he married Isis. Then he got kilt by Set. Then he got reanimated. Then he (or part of him) conceived a son with Isis. (No virgin birth there, either.) That son was Horus.
So I’m not seeing a virgin birth.
That being said, Egyptian mythology is a mess. I mean, it’s a horrible jumble of conflicting accounts.
I mean, no matter what contradictions skeptics charge the Bible with (which can be explained), they PALE in comparison with those of Egyptian mythology, which is a huge, disorganized, shifting chaos. (And I say that as one who has an interest in Egyptian mythology.)
That being the case, I can’t rule out that there is, somewhere, an Egyptian text that contains some kind of virgin birth in it.
If so, what does that prove?
Not much.
It certainly doesn’t prove that the Virgin Birth in the Bible "came from" the Egyptian counterpart. That would be the post hoc, ergo propter hoc ("After this, therefore because of this") fallacy.
Even if there were already Egyptians who believe in some kind of virgin birth for one of their deities, why does that explain the birth of Jesus? Couldn’t the explaination be this:
- Suppose that you are the true God and that you have a Son.
- You send your Son to be born among men, and you want men to understand that he is your Son.
- You could choose to have him be born of a human mother via a human father, but if you do that you know that he will be faced with the challenge, "How can you be God’s Son when your father is obviously Joseph the carpenter"?
- Therefore, you choose to have your Son be born without a human father so that the effect of this objection is blunted and you have done a miracle that–at least for those who accept the miracle–demonstrates that your Son is none other than your Son.
In history, Jesus did face the question "Is this not Joseph’s son?" but at least there was the miracle on record for those who would accept it.
For those who do accept the miracle, it’s a certain proof of Jesus’ identity. How could there be any clearer sign that a man is God’s Son than that he be born of a Virgin by a miracle involving no human father?
It might not convince those who won’t have faith in your son (who can always posit a natural explanation for Jesus being born), but for those who accept the miracle, it is a clear sign of who your Son really is.
I suspect this myth of the virgin birth in Egyptian mythology stems from the work of the likes of Joseph Campbell. In order to try to prove that the Christian stories were not much different from other mythologies, he attempted to show that the Virgin Birth (among other things) was not unique in mythology.
The problem is that to do this he constantly drew false parallels between stories. For instance, he equated the story of the virgin birth with the myth that around the time Buddha was conceived his mother had a dream that an elephant impregnated her by entering her side. An interesting story maybe, but since Buddha’s father was well known and no virgin conception was claimed, the desired parallel to Jesus is simply not present.
The details of the Egyptian parallel are similar. Campbell took the facts Jimmy lays out and claimed that this was roughly equivalent to the Virgin conception. Basically, if there was any kind of mystery or miraculous circumstances surrounding either conception or birth in another mythology, he claimed that this was equivalent to the Virgin Birth and by extension showed the non-uniqueness of Christ’s conception story. The argument I suppose was that this non-uniqueness argued against the veracity of the Christian claim.
Since the parallels were mostly false, and the overall logic of the argument was poor, it seems that little credence should be given to the argument that the virgin birth comes from Egyptian mythology.
Suppose that you are the true God and that you have a Son.
Okay…
*mind explodes*
Actually even if they are related all it proves is that we have a narrow, linear view of time and a sequence of events. Both the catechism and the doctrine on divine revelation make reference to the pagans “dim understanding” of the Truth. God transcends time and space, the birth of Jesus was the single most significant event in human history and would have impacted the past as well as the future. All the pagan stories are simply attempts to grasp the Truth before the epiphany of the birth of Jesus. So to say that “this came first and influence that” is rather a backward way of looking at things. Whats wonderful about this teaching of the church is that it allows artists, writers, poets, musicians, etc to look for the truth in the pagan mythologies as inspiration to create “new epiphanies” of the divine.
Good point, Lawrence. The way I see it, the Incarnation sent reverberations through history, and was foreshadowed in other religions, perhaps revelations.
This might tie in with Jimmy’s comments about divine law from the other day.
This would be what you were looking for:
http://altreligion.about.com/library/texts/bl_historicaljesus2.htm
“…
Four consecutive scenes reproduced in my book are found pourtrayed upon the innermost walls of the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Luxor, which was built by Amenhept III., a Pharaoh of the 17th dynasty. The first scene on the left hand shows the God Taht, the Lunar Mercury, the Annunciator of the Gods, in the act of hailing the Virgin Queen, and announcing to her that she is to give birth to the coming Son. In the next scene the God Kneph (in conjunction with Hathor) gives the new life. This is the Holy Ghost or Spirit that causes the Immaculate Conception, Kneph being the spirit by name in Egyptian. The natural effects are made apparent in the virgin’s swelling form.
Next the mother is seated on the mid-wife’s stool, and the newborn child is supported in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the Adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the Gods and gifts from men. Behind the deity Kneph, on the right, three spirits–the Three Magi, or Kings of the Legend, are kneeling and offering presents with their right hand, and life with their left. The child thus announced, incarnated, born, and worshipped, was the Pharaonic representative of the Aten Sun in Egypt, the God Adon of Syria, and Hebrew Adonai; the child-Christ of the Aten Cult; the miraculous conception of the ever-virgin mother, personated by Mut-em-ua, as mother of the “only one,” and representative of the divine mother of the youthful Sun-God.
These scenes, which were mythical in Egypt, have been copied or reproduced as historical in the Canonical Gospels, where they stand like four corner-stones to the Historic Structure, and prove that the foundations are mythical.
…”
from Gerald Massey’s “The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ”, ca. 1883. Joseph Campbell was not born until 1904.