A Review of the Age of Reason (Part 5): The Virgin Birth

"Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24).

One of the reasons that public sentiment turned against the once-popular author, Thomas Paine, was due to the fact that he attacked every major doctrine the Bible teaches, along with the Bible itself. He did not just offer up a few challenges against these truths; he launched a full-scale attack on the doctrines that the majority of people believe. He did not merely criticize some who abused the Scriptures or were making money off religion (which would be legitimate), he went after every major teaching in the Book. And he did so without an ounce of humility—without so much as a thought about whether he had his facts right or if his assault on the Scriptures was valid. Particularly is this the case with his diatribe against the virgin birth and the genealogies of Jesus.

He introduces the subject of the virgin birth with a comparison to the Qur’an. He states that he saw no angel speaking to Muhammad; so he had a right not to believe him. Then he adds:

When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but we have not even this—for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so—it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence (10).

Paine’s problem is that he fails to either know or to consider the rest of the evidence that the Bible provides for this wondrous event. The real evidence for the virgin birth of Jesus is not the word of Mary and Joseph, but prophecy dating back to the beginning of time, supplemented by additional prophecies.

One must begin with the first prophecy that God gave of the virgin birth, which occurred in the Garden of Eden. Moses pens this account about 1445 B.C., although some date his writing 200 years later. It makes no difference so far as the point here is concerned. One must remember that the Jews always traced families through the men, not the women. After Adam and Eve sinned, God pronounced a curse upon the man, the woman, and the serpent. What God said to the serpent, who also represents Satan, included these words:

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel (Gen. 3:15).

The fact that anyone might be referred to as “the seed of woman” is remarkable. The seed comes from man, which is the reason that in the genealogies, we read of man after man who begot succeeding generations. Never do we read about the seed of woman—except here in this prophecy. The Seed of the woman is Jesus, Who crushed the head of the serpent when He arose from the dead. The serpent inflicted a minor injury to His heel by having Him crucified. Much could be written on all that is involved in this verse, but the pertinent portion of it is that Jesus is described as the Seed of woman. The reason is that no male human was involved in His conception. He had only a human mother; therefore, He is the seed of woman but not of a man. Thus, in the very beginning of the Bible, Moses writes concerning the virgin birth of Jesus.

While Paine might be excused for not realizing the significance of this passage, what can anyone offer in the way of his justification for trying to refute the passage clearly relating to the virgin birth in Isaiah 7:14? Paine says that “it has no more reference to Christ and his mother than it has to me and my mother” (164).

Really? Does anyone recall hearing anything about Thomas Paine’s mother being revered all over the world? No, but Mary is; so perhaps he overstated his comparison a wee bit. Paine seeks to overthrow the prophecy of Isaiah by saying that it was fulfilled in Isaiah’s day. What is his argument, and does it have any merit?

Isaiah 7:14

The prophecy was made to the wicked King Ahaz who refused to ask for a sign when given the opportunity. Paine quotes part of verse 14, which ordinarily is permissible; not everything in a verse is necessarily relevant to a given topic. But what he omitted is significant in this instance. Therefore the entire verse, along with verse 16, is presented below from the King James (a common translation available to Paine). It begins after the prophet rebukes the king:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.

No mention is made concerning a translation being used, but when Paine quotes verse 16, he changed the word from the to this in front of the word child. He then insists upon a fulfillment in the days of Isaiah the prophet based upon two considerations. The first is the child in question had to have lived in Isaiah’s day for the passage to have any relevance. The second is based upon the fact that Isaiah “went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bare a son” (whose name was Maher-shalal-hash-baz (165). It does not occur to him that his interpretation might be wrong; he arrogantly states:

Here, then, is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story, that the book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid interests of the priests in later times, have founded a theory which they call the Gospel; and have applied this story to signify the person of Jesus Christ, begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of woman engaged to be married, and after married, whom they call a virgin, 700 years after this foolish story was told… (166).

Several points practically scream at the reader. First, Paine carries such hostility towards Roman Catholic priests (and they are blameworthy for many things) that they fabricated the virgin birth fulfillment, which is not rational. Matthew wrote around A.D. 62. We have entire manuscripts from the late 300s and fragments even earlier. How clever were these guys to have inserted the account of the virgin birth into Matthew before a separate priesthood was even formed? In the New Testament, we read that all Christians are priests (1 Peter 2:5, 9). It took a long time for an unauthorized priesthood to develop. Later, priests had absolutely nothing to do with what Matthew wrote.

Second, Paine’s bias against the Bible and Christianity is seen in his referring to the Holy Spirit as a ghost. While it is true that the King James does use the word Ghost, nevertheless Paine still omitted the word Holy which precedes it in Matthew 1:18, 20, and Luke 1:35. He does refer to the ghost being holy, but he presents it as hypothetical and contrasts the holy with the carnal.

Third, perhaps Paine is so biased against the Scriptures that he does not realize what is involved in the giving of “a sign.” A sign (in this context) involves something miraculous, given by God, which cannot be mistaken. When God gave “a sign” to King Hezekiah, He brought the shadow on the sundial backward six degrees (Isa. 38:5-8). Likewise, in Isaiah 7:14 God is providing a miraculous sign to prove to King Ahaz that the nations that are troubling him will not conquer Judah, nor will they even be powerful themselves much longer. And what is the sign of this amazing event--that Isaiah and his wife will have a child? Exactly what is so amazing about that? Married women have been having children since time began. The wondrous portion of the prophecy cannot be that the child grows up; such is fairly normal with youngsters. Attempting to remove Mary and Jesus from this prophecy reduces the “sign” to an absurdity.

The fourth problem that Paine has is that he would have to prove that the virgin of the prophecy is Isaiah’s wife. The text of Isaiah 8:3 says that Isaiah “went to the prophetess and she conceived and bore a son.” It does not say that she was a virgin at the time; in fact, on the very occasion of Isaiah giving this sign to Ahaz, he had his son, Shear-Jashub, with him (7:3)! Isaiah’s wife cannot be “the virgin.”

The fifth error the skeptic has is that the names do not match up. Immanuel and Maher-shalal-hash-baz do not mean the same thing; they are not even closely related. The former is an encouraging designation: “God with us.” The latter is translated “speed the spoil; hasten the booty” and is a gloomy message of doom for Assyria and Samaria. They were about to fall, and the name of Isaiah’s son reflects that fact. “God with us” is a message of hope that applies to Jesus as it could to no other. Jesus is the Word (John 1:1-3), Who became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). Of no one else could this description be more appropriate. While upon the earth, Jesus was literally “God with us,” reconciling man back to God.

Isaiah is talking about the period of time that it takes for a child to be able to choose good and refuse evil—which is roughly twelve years. It’s the length of time that is the focus of attention in the prophecy—not when that twelve years takes place. Matthew removes all doubts about the fulfillment of this prophecy:

Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: “Behold, a virgin shall be with child and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us” (Matt. 1:22-23).

The only objection to the facts as presented above might be that what happened 700 years later could scarcely serve as a sign to Ahaz. Remember, however, that Ahaz had refused to choose a sign that he would have lived to see fulfilled. God therefore chose this sign, and it was not just to the wicked king. The Hebrew word translated “you” is plural: “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you [plural] a sign.” Thus, the sign was to Ahaz and all of those in the southern kingdom—both at this time and for all succeeding generations. All might look forward to its fulfillment.

Micah 5:2

This verse is noted for foretelling the place of Jesus’ birth (Bethlehem). It should not be overlooked, however, that it describes the One born to be Ruler over Israel as One Whose “goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” This harmonizes perfectly with the fact that the Word was in the beginning, was with God, and is God. This Eternal one became flesh (John 1:1-3, 14). How could God become a human being? The answer is, as described in Matthew 1, that the Holy Spirit (God) came upon a woman (Mary); therefore, her child is both the Son of Man and the Son of God.

Jeremiah 31:22

A final prophecy relating to the virgin birth is found in Jeremiah 31:22: “How long will you gad about, O you backsliding daughter? For the Lord has created a new thing in the earth—a woman shall encompass a man” (Are these words reminiscent of Genesis 3:15?). What do these last words in the verse mean? Actually, several interpretations are suggested by commentators, but in light of the fact that a new covenant brought by Jesus is mentioned just verses later (31-34), it seems reasonable to conclude that the new thing refers to His virgin birth. No other interpretation makes as much sense, and Mary did encompass the Son of Man, the Savior of the world. No earthly man was involved in the conception. It might be argued that this is too vague of a prophecy, but if so, Genesis 3:15, Isaiah 7:14, and Micah 5:2 are not.

Pagan Myths

The evidence, therefore, is abundant for the virgin birth of Jesus. Who else has ever made such specific prophecies so far in advance—and been accurate? Isaiah and Micah prophesied over 700 years before Jesus was born. 700 years prior to 2011 is 1311. Columbus would not be born for another century, let alone set sail for the new world. If any prophecy (even a vague one) had been made in 1311 which was fulfilled in 2011, would we not be impressed?

But Paine’s next complaint is that the virgin birth was neither new nor original. “Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods” (10). He says that Jupiter, the king of the Roman gods, was reputed to have cohabited with hundreds of woman (11). Although those stories exist, there is no comparison. Does anyone in the world today (or for the past 1,500 years, for that matter) regard any of those myths as true? People do, however, believe that the Bible is true. And how many of those pagan demi-gods were prophesied of 700 years in advance? The entire mythology did not last that long. How sad it is to see someone of Paine’s intelligence so confused as to not be able to tell fact from fiction! Those of Jesus’ day would not have believed in Him if He had not worked miracles, either. How arrogant was Paine to think that everyone else (besides him) is so obtuse as to be duped?

Carnal Debauchery?

Paine calls the story of the virgin birth “blasphemously obscene” as a young woman is “debauched by a ghost” (194). Paine posits that Mary is like Leda who was seduced by a swan, which is too absurd to refute. The Holy Spirit did not take the form of a man to have sex with Mary. Luke writes that the angel told Mary the Holy Ghost would “come upon” her, and “the power of the Highest” would overshadow her (Luke 1:35). These two phrases comprise a parallelism. The word translated “come” has no sexual significance. The Greek word [1904] is used 9 other times, such as James 5:1, which talks about the miseries that would come upon the rich.

The Greek word [1982] translated “overshadow” is used 4 other times. A bright cloud overshadowed Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:34). After the church had been in existence for a little while, people brought the sick into the streets that “the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them” (Acts 5:15), that they might be healed. The Bible does not speak about the Holy Spirit debauching Mary. He overshadowed her, and that was all that was necessary for her to conceive. The problem with Paine is that, although he professes to believe in God’s power to create this universe, the fact is that he does not believe God has the power to create Adam out of the dust of the ground, Eve from Adam’s rib, or Jesus by the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary.

Genealogies

Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies do not agree; so the Bible must be discounted, alleges Paine (197). The problem is easily resolved. Matthew provides the genealogy of Joseph, mentioning that he was the husband of Mary, “of whom was born Jesus” (1:16). Joseph was not called the Lord’s father. Luke records the lineage of Mary, saying that it was supposed that Jesus was the son of Joseph (3:23). Although Joseph was said to be the son of Heli, he is actually his-son-in-law because the Jews always gave the husband’s name in a genealogy instead of the wife’s. No conflict between the two exists.

The criticisms that Thomas Paine brought against the virgin birth of Jesus are both base and baseless. It is obvious that he never looked for any kind of harmony between passages of Scripture. His extreme prejudice was undoubtedly obvious to those who gave some thought to his wild assertions.