Was Jesus really born of a virgin?

What the Bible says

Two books of the New Testament tell the virgin birth: Matthew and Luke. They approach it from different sides. Matthew tells it through Joseph.

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged in marriage to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.

Matt 1:18

Joseph, a righteous man, meant to end the engagement quietly. Then an angel told him in a dream that the child was "from the Holy Spirit" (Matt 1:20). Matthew reads the event as the fulfilment of a prophecy.

"Behold, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call Him Immanuel" ( which means, "God with us").

Matt 1:23

Luke tells it through Mary. The angel Gabriel comes to her in Nazareth in Galilee, and she asks the obvious question.

"How can this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" The angel replied, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.

Luke 1:34-35

Her answer is not that she has understood everything but that she accepts the word.

"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it happen to me according to your word." Then the angel left her.

Luke 1:38

The two accounts differ in almost every detail: whose eyes we see through, which angel appears, what is said. Yet they agree on the core. Mary and Joseph were engaged but had not come together, Joseph belonged to David's house, the child was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and his name was Jesus. Many scholars think Matthew and Luke wrote independently of each other. If so, the shared core comes from two lines of tradition, not one author's invention. That does not prove the event, but it is not what a single made-up story usually looks like.

Matthew also admits the awkward part: Mary's pregnancy was a scandal for Joseph. Someone inventing a hero's birth would hardly have told it so uncomfortably.

The church's witness

The church confessed this from early on. The Apostles' Creed says Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary Apostles' Creed. The Nicene Creed says he became man by the Holy Spirit from the virgin Mary Nicene Creed. East and West hold this together.

The Fathers knew the word problem in Isaiah. Jerome asks what would be remarkable about a sign if a young woman simply bore a child: "what wonder is this, since these are words signifying age and not purity?" Jerome His argument has force, though it is not beyond dispute, as the next section shows.

Chrysostom explains the angel's answer to Mary this way: "Look not for the order of nature in things which transcend and overpower nature." Chrysostom If God is the creator of nature, nature's regularities cannot rule out in advance that he begins something new.

Matthew Henry counsels humility before the mystery: "The mystery of Christ's becoming man is to be adored, not curiously inquired into." Matthew Henry The Fathers also insisted that the body Jesus received from Mary was truly human. Athanasius says it was the same by nature as our own, because "Mary is our sister" Athanasius. So the virgin birth does not mean Jesus was less than human. It means he was truly human and also a new beginning.

One note on a different point: churches disagree about whether Mary remained a virgin all her life. The Orthodox and Catholic churches teach that she did; most Protestants today think Scripture does not say so. All agree that she was a virgin when Jesus was conceived.

In the original languages

The word most often discussed is the Hebrew almah (עַלְמָה) in Isaiah 7:14. Many English Bibles say "virgin," but the Hebrew means a young woman of marriageable age and does not itself state virginity. Hebrew has a more explicit word, betulah. This should be admitted plainly: the word alone cannot prove that Isaiah predicted a virgin birth.

But Jewish translators who put Isaiah into Greek, some two centuries before Christ, rendered almah as parthenos (παρθένος). That word usually means "virgin," though it could be used more loosely. Matthew quotes Isaiah in wording close to that Greek version. So his reading did not begin with Christians; it leaned on an earlier Jewish translation. Isaiah's own setting, however, was a sign to King Ahaz, and the child was probably expected in Ahaz's own time. Many interpreters therefore say Matthew sees a fuller fulfilment of the promise "God with us" in Jesus. Some call this a double fulfilment, others type and fulfilment.

The weight does not rest on one verse. Matthew does not build the story out of Isaiah; the more natural reading is that he explains an event already known by means of Isaiah. Luke tells the same event without quoting Isaiah at all.

Common objections

"Ancient myths are full of gods fathering heroes. This is the same kind of story." The ancient world did tell of heroes and kings born of gods, and the point should not be waved away. But most of those stories involve a god having physical union with a woman. The Gospel accounts have nothing of the kind, and the Holy Spirit is no god's consort. Jews also kept God sharply distinct from creation, so a god pairing with a woman would have been offensive to them. And the tone differs: the accounts do not glorify a hero but centre on the obedience of a poor country girl. "Borrowed myth" fits the shape of the stories poorly.

"Mark, Paul and John never mention it. Wasn't it added later?" It is true that they do not. Mark opens with John the Baptist, and Paul says only that God sent his Son "born of a woman" (Gal 4:4). But silence is not denial; they wrote for other purposes. Matthew and Luke, meanwhile, probably wrote independently yet agree on the core, which points away from a late invention by one hand. To be candid, historians cannot test this event as they can others. The evidence is two accounts and the church's steady confession, and accepting it includes the belief that God, if he exists, could do such a thing.

"Wasn't Jesus rumoured to be illegitimate?" Some point to the people who called Jesus "the son of Mary" (Mark 6:3) and to the retort "We are not illegitimate children" (John 8:41). Whether these verses mean that is disputed. Later, as Origen reports, the second-century critic Celsus spread the story that Jesus was a soldier's illegitimate son. That cuts both ways. A sceptic will see the virgin birth as a cover story. But Matthew states the situation that would give rise to the gossip, an engaged woman found pregnant and a troubled Joseph, before telling the angel's word. Those who cover things up do not usually write that way. Evidence alone will not close the question; it is weighed with the reliability of the Gospels as a whole.

Going further

The virgin birth is a sign that the beginning of Jesus' life was not a human achievement but God's own initiative. John says those who believe are "born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God" (John 1:13). That fits the shape of salvation: we do not build it, we receive it. And Immanuel means "God with us," a promise that starts with this birth.

You might ask yourself: Am I someone who receives what God does first, or someone who believes only what I can explain? If this story is hard for me, what exactly is hard about it? Where could I say, as Mary did, "May it happen to me according to your word"?

To read further, see Who is Jesus?, Is Jesus God? and Why did God become human?.