A Question of Paternity

[SallyF]

Jesus visited this the planet of his creation through the uterus of the Blessed Virgin Mary so he could provoke the Roman Empire into killing him as a human sacrifice to mollify the ethnic deity, Jehovah.

Jehovah is known as "God the Father". But according to the sectarian promotional literature, Jesus was actually sired by the Holy Ghost.

Is Jehovah a cuckold …?

[Jagella]

Is Jehovah a cuckold …?

Probably not, but Jesus may have been illegitimate or even a child of rape.

What are we to make of the virgin-birth story? One possibility is that Mary, in fear for her life, concocted the story of her being “overshadowed by the Holy Spirit� [Luke 1:35 (KJV)] to save her skin. I think it's wise not to be too quick to believe young girls who are found to be pregnant when they claim that God did it without her having sex. Mary had a very good reason to make up such a story, and the possibility of her lying needs to be considered as a possibility.

Who, then, is the father of Jesus? One obvious possibility is that the father was Joseph. He had enough access to Mary to discover her pregnancy perhaps because he was already sexually involved with her. In order for him to escape any trouble he may have encountered from public knowledge of his impregnating her, he may have denied his sexual involvement. He, claiming to be a just man, wanted to put his betrothed wife away (divorce her) “privately� in effect blaming only Mary if the knowledge of her pregnancy became public. Joseph may have welcomed the potential for divorcing Mary for alleged adultery because he may have decided she was not a desirable woman to marry.

If Joseph was not the father of Jesus, then who was the father? The Bible does not mention any other man that Mary may have been sexually involved with. However, a story has grown up in which it is claimed that the father of Jesus was a Roman soldier, Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera. According to the Christian writer Origin, the Greek philosopher Celsus in his anti-Christian work The True Word (which has been lost) claimed that Jesus was conceived in a love affair between his mother Mary and a Roman soldier. Although it is very possible that this story is true, Celsus's The True Word is not available to check. Even if it was available, it is evidently a very biased and hostile account of Jesus' life meant to discredit the virgin-birth story and other Christian doctrines about Jesus. Biased works should always be taken with a grain of salt. Finally, all we have is Origin's word that Celsus wrote the account of Jesus' being fathered by a Roman. Even if Origin agreed with Celsus (and he didn't agree with Celsus), Origin's account of the story is second-hand.

If Mary was impregnated by Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera or some other Roman soldier, then she may have been raped. According to one source, some Roman soldiers were encamped near Nazareth at the time Mary lived there. The Romans soldiers were there to put down an uprising on the part of the Nazarenes. In retaliation for that uprising, the Roman soldiers raided Nazareth. According to some Jewish accounts, the Romans practiced “strategic rapes� against rebellious Jews. Mary could easily have been one of their victims.

[Zzyzx]

.
About one percent (1.0%) of women giving birth in the US claim to have been virgins.
www.cbsnews.com/news/virgin-births-clai ... oms-study/

Thus, with 4 Million births per year, there are claimed 40,000 virgin births or spiritual impregnations annually -- some really horny 'gods' -- OR just maybe some people may not be telling the truth.

Can a supporter of the biblical virgin birth story tell us how virginity is determined? AND how it was known to be true in the case of 'Mary'?

[Divine Insight]

Can a supporter of the biblical virgin birth story tell us how virginity is determined? AND how it was known to be true in the case of 'Mary'?

It's a faith-based religion Z. You have to have FAITH that God would pull a stunt like this.

You need to have FAITH that you are unworthy of God and deserve to be damned.

You need to have FAITH that the only way God could save you was to arrange to have his very own corrupt priests call for the crucifixion of Jesus to be your penal substitute.

You need to have FAITH that all this was done because God LOVES YOU!

And if you refuse to have FAITH your damnation will be guaranteed because this is a jealous God who will HATE YOU if you fail to play his silly games.

Of course you need to have FAITH the the above sentence is true as well.

[SallyF]

We are (thankfully) spared artistic representation of the actual exchange of genetic material in the impregnation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In the (commandment-breaking) image below, we have the BVM, the archangel Gabriel and the Holy Ghost as a very un-ghostlike ghost in the form of a dove.

According to "scripture" (sectarian promotional material) the exchange of genetic material came from the dove …!

Given that - according to Trinitarian doctrine - the Jesus character already existed since "The Beginning" we may wonder what in the name of all that's holy actually happened under the modest virginal blue Hijab …?

Because (as usual) "God the Father" - the elusive but ultimately genocidal Jehovah - is nowhere to be seen …?

[SallyF]

Because we haven't yet had a Christian response to this most fundamental Christian question, I thought I'd nudge it back up the list again.

Is the mythological ethnic god Jehovah the father of the Jesus character in the literature, or is he a cuckold …?

Is the nebulous "Holy Ghost" the father of Jesus …?

If Jesus already existed, did he plonk himself into the womb with no input from either …?

Are the characters in the image above imaginary …?

Could we be dealing with the same style of make-believe we find in many/most/all belief systems …?

[SallyF]

The mythological (and possibly cuckolded) Jehovah and the it-could-only-fly-by-magic (and therefore imaginary) Gabriel are missing from this imagining of the BVM being visited by the HG.

The zygote that became the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and was somehow implanted in the BVM by the HG (we imagine) is perhaps also not in the artistic imagining.

Are the leaves that so cleverly remind us of the genocidal global flood that Jehovah sent about 1,500 years before this glorious scene took place, the beginnings of Jesus …?

[SallyF]

Here is another Christian depiction of a version of "God".

THIS depiction of "God" appears to reflect the idea that the artist has imagined that all three members of the Most Holy Trinity are responsible for implanting the Zygote Jesus in the womb of the BVM.

Would this mean that the mythological Jehovah is NOT a cuckold …?

[SallyF]

This thread has been up for a week now.

It's had 124 peeks … a number of which, I expect, have been from Christians.

But not one Christian has leapt to the defence of their faith.

Could that be because they too recognise that we are dealing with make-believe …?

The graphics are Christian graphics.

They are powerful and confronting when presented here.

And obviously they are effective.

The graphics are NOT atheist propaganda, or shouting.

If Christians have difficulty with the Christian graphics, Christians perhaps should examine the Christianity they have faith in.

And, after all, we are here to argue for and against Christianity, and I hope that we do it effectively and with all legitimate means.

[Aetixintro]

[Replying to post 1 by SallyF]

Let me point out, saying that genetic material is the expression of the soul, not the soul itself. Just as we can say that the Universe is an expression of God's (white list: Allah/Brahman/Buddha/Yahweh/God Dynamic/Shinto/Manitou/etc) mind for us, the Universe of all things!

There are more between Heaven and Earth than what is commonly known and there is no credible jr. high school book for it either.