Mary’s Virgin Birth-Plagiarism?

Mary’s Virgin Birth-Plagiarism?

Another concept Christianity “borrowed” from older religions

Anyone familiar with Christianity is undoubtedly familiar with the concept of Jesus’ virgin birth. It may come as a surprise to some though that out of the four gospels included in the Bible the story only occurs in two of them. Out of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John the story only takes place in Matthew and Luke. Jesus’ virgin birth isn’t even referenced in any other New Testament books written by Paul or others.

Out of these two gospels Matthew has traditionally been claimed by the church to have been written by a disciple of Jesus, which historians and Biblical scholars pretty much unanimously agree at this point isn’t the case given the evidence. Not to mention the book never made a claim to be written by Matthew, that was just decided by the church.

Then Luke obviously has no claim of direct contact with Jesus since he was a traveling companion of Paul and only became a Christian about 20 years after Jesus’ crucifixion.

I lay out all of these points to try to paint the picture of what likely occurred. Luke pretty obviously used various documents going around the early church at the time, and stories from other Christians he spoke to, in his effort to compile his gospel.

I’m not sure who he went to for information such as the lyrics to the song that Mary sang when she was pregnant with Jesus and on her way to Elizabeth’s house…but maybe she had a stalker Luke spoke to?

We can assume he got the virgin birth story from the gospel of Matthew which had been written 10–20 years prior by most agreed-upon estimates, and just used it as source material for the tale. Or possibly both gospels sourced the story from the same word-of-mouth tales going around in the decades after Jesus’ crucifixion.

Maybe he even went to Mary herself and asked her about the song and if she was a virgin when she gave birth, if she was 12–14 when she gave birth to Jesus then she would’ve been in her 80s-90s when the gospel of Luke was written…so probably not. Christian tradition holds that she died when she was between the age of 59–72 years old, with some believing she was “assumed” by God into heaven and escaped death.