Speaking of "virgin birth".... How exactly does that work? I know that in today's world, it would at least be possible to artificially inseminate a woman who had never had sex with a man, and to deliver the child via c-section, leaving her hymen intact. But as far as I know, no such thing was possible in 1st century Palestine. But does it really mater whether her hymen is intact postpartum? If I'm not mistaken, Catholics think of Mary as the "eternal virgin". (They also think the bread and wine of communion literally turn into the body and blood of Christ - go figure!). So - either Mary had a very rugged and very stretchy hymen, or the baby just dematerialized and then rematerialized outside the womb!. By the way, did Jesus have a belly-button? Just wondering, because that might have complicated things as well, with the umbilical cord and all. And what about the baby's DNA? If he was truly the "son of god", it would have been interesting to see his DNA profile, to say the least!

A book that support the ideas that all bad things are caused because the original woman ate some kind of fruit, that snakes and donkeys talk, that the earth stopped spinning and then miraculously started again, that the earth was completely submerged in water for a year and it didn't wreck the environment, even that the earth is a circle covered with a metallic type dome and your worrying about a virgin giving birth to a demigod. We have all those other demigods like Achilles, Aeacus, Orion, Heracles and a hundred more. They were all over the place in those days. Of course we need to take Jesus just as serious and we do all the others.

IMO Mary was not a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus.

Matthew, did not meet Jesus until Jesus was about 30 years old. [Matthew 9:9]
Luke does not claim to be an eye witness but only a compiler who never had even met Jesus [Luke 1:1-3]
So both gospel writers who report the virgin birth were at least 30 years away from Jesus’ birth.
How could they know about Jesus’ birth?

My mother always tells me that I was born of a virgin.
Just like Jesus, there is no way to tell if a mother was a virgin when her child was born, nor is their any way to tell if a child was born of a virgin.

About the time that Mary became pregnant she went on a trip to visit her relative, Elizabeth, in the hill country. [Luke 1:39] So she was not being watched by her family or the people of her town. Any five minute interlude could have done the deed.

The relatives and people of Mary’s town could not be witnesses of Mary’s virginity. When it was noticed Mary was pregnant Joseph didn’t want to disgrace or embarrass Mary . [Matthew 1:18-19] So Joseph probably took “credit” for Mary’s pregnancy. To tell everyone that Mary was pregnant and still a virgin would have been ridiculous. Nobody would have believed him. LOL.

So the only possible witness could have been Mary, herself. Why should we believe her? Mary’s two or three witnesses are no where in sight.

Of course the story is pure fiction.

To fulfill prophecy he had to be descended from King David; and Joseph supposedly was but if he wasn't the father ?. Some sources now have Mary descended fro David as well. Marrige of cousins was quite common then

Fiction