The Virgin Birth EXPOSED? What Mark’s Gospel REALLY Says | Dr. Elaine Pagels

Added: 2026-05-12

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[00:00:36]>> [music] [applause] >> Professor Ela Paggels, the virgin birth seems to be, and I just say seems to be because the Gospel of Matthew's the first one on the scene to do it based on chronology. And it's interpreting this passage, which most Hebrew scholars will say, "No, young woman, not virgin." But see, Matthew's good at doing this because he quotes the whole uh he'll ride on the back of the colt and he does two animals, but it's a Hebrew parallelism when you go to the Old Testament.

[00:01:06]>> Yes.

[00:01:07]>> So, here you have this virgin birth come on the scene. And who else does it?

[00:01:11]>> Luke. Luke wants to also mimic. He likes this virgin birth idea or at least he likes this birth narrative. Um, but you say there's a secret teaching or a teaching that isn't in the canon about the murder.

[00:01:24]>> Well, there are different ways to understand it. This the the start of this story is with Mark's gospel, right? That was written first.

[00:01:33]Now, what does it say about Jesus's birth?

[00:01:37]>> Nothing.

[00:01:37]>> Nothing.

[00:01:38]>> Nothing. Right? I mean, the story starts when he's an adult and he's baptized, right? and a voice comes from heaven and says, "This is my son." Okay. So, what it says about when Jesus goes back to his family in Mark 6, right? He goes back to his town and he he's been out preaching and doing miracles, healing people. So, he's come back with a great reputation.

[00:02:07]And the people in town say, and then he stands up in the synagogue and starts to preach and they say, "Where did this man get all this?" I mean, who who does he think he is? Isn't this the carpenter?

[00:02:19]Isn't this Mary's son? I we we know all four brothers of his, Joseph and and James and and Simon and so and so, and and we know his sisters. I mean, who does he think he is?

[00:02:33]and and um and then he finds out that he can't do any miracles there because nobody believes in him. And but the key thing is, isn't this the son of Mary?

[00:02:45]Now wait a minute. You don't call a Jewish boy the son of Mary. You call a Jewish boy Jesus Ben Joseph, which means in Hebrew, Jesus, son of Joseph, not Jesus Ben Miriam. You don't call him by his mother's name. if he has a legitimate father.

[00:03:03]So that raised a lot of questions about wait a minute.

[00:03:08]They're talking about Jesus as as a carpenter, a working man with brothers and sisters, lots of children in the family, a woman who has lots of kids, and and no husband. Well, okay. The tradition says the father had died.

[00:03:23]Well, even if the father had died, he'd still be called by the father's name.

[00:03:28]That's how it is today. If a father dies before a child is born, it's still his child and it's named with a father's name. Right.

[00:03:36]>> Right.

[00:03:37]>> Unless he doesn't have a a recognized father. So that's what the story suggests. It suggests that to a lot of people and then people say, "Wait a minute, Mark. You said this man is a Messiah. He's king of Israel. He's related to King David. What? He doesn't even have a legitimate father."

[00:03:56]So, Matthew and Luke try to respond to this story >> in Matthew. They're trying to respond to Matthew's story.

[00:04:04]>> Matthew and Luke both create birth stories >> and they say, you know, because and there are Jewish sources meanwhile saying, you know, he was illegitimate.

[00:04:15]>> Um, >> Panther, >> you know, he he he's he's nobody. I mean, he's really and and illegitimate children are very much despised in Jewish circles.

[00:04:29]So, he might have been a child who was ridiculed that way. And so, but Matthew Luke say no, no, no, wait a minute.

[00:04:39]There was a miracle. It was a virgin birth. I mean, so it wasn't Joseph's child, but it it was a miraculous conception. Well, people can take that literally and many do.

[00:04:52]It's part of the creed. Okay. Born of a virgin. Okay.

[00:04:57]But if you look at some of the secret gospels, for example, the gospel of Philip that was found with the secret gospels, it says, well, um, what it means is that Jesus had biological parents, Mary and Joseph, but he also was born again.

[00:05:17]And when he was spiritually born, he was the son of the father in heaven and the hol and the mother which is the holy spirit. So the birth from the virgin means that he's born of the holy spirit at um so that as is in the gospel of John whoever is born of water and the spirit is born again. And that's what it means to be born again. Nicodemus is wrong. It's not a literal birth, right?

[00:05:44]It's a it's a spiritual birth. So the gospel of Philip suggests that just as you have a biological father and mother and so do I, we can be born again and be born of the father in heaven and the the holy spirit in baptism because the name of the lord and the name of the spirit are pronounced over the person baptized. So that's an interpretation of virgin birth which gives it a very different cast.

[00:06:16]>> Although I realized later that Mark in a way addresses that issue in the first chapter because and this shows you that Mark is not thinking as a literalist.

[00:06:29]What is the first scene?

[00:06:31]Jesus is listening to John the Baptist.

[00:06:34]He goes to be baptized and he sees a vision and the heavens split apart and he hears a voice saying, "This is my beloved son."

[00:06:44]So the the the father in heaven is the father. I mean, Mark is saying, "Yes, he has a father. Don't worry about that.

[00:06:54]He's he's he comes from God." it that that fits a lot of the data in light of the fact that the disciples don't get it and he's constantly trying to tell you a secret kind of sort of he's like ah it takes God from heaven revealing this to you like like you guys are all stuck in this natural world not seeing the truth and it that's what happens in Mark over and over that's an interesting point you bring up is yeah maybe it didn't have maybe Mark wasn't thinking virgin birth maybe Mark's thinking Pauline in a sense some esoteric way of explaining a spiritual way or something.

[00:07:29]>> Paul says in Romans 6, which you recall, that we're buried with Christ in baptism. We rise again with you know so so baptism puts you through the same process that Jesus went through >> in burial sort of death going into the water burial and resurrection.

[00:07:48]>> Didn't Paul say that that those who believe were sons of God as well or something like that?

[00:07:52]>> Yes, he did. So this >> and also John's gospel says um that those who are born from above become children of God.

[00:08:00]>> Interesting. So I think as many as believed in him those he those became children or sons of God.

[00:08:07]>> Sons of God. Yes. Through water and the spirit. That is through baptism.

[00:08:11]Interesting. So, so the virgin birth can be taken literally as it often has been and it can be taken as a as a um a statement about being spiritually born.

[00:08:23]>> I wonder if Matthew misunderstood Mark or Matthew took it a different direction.

[00:08:28]>> Well, Matthew was worried, I think, because Jewish critics of the movement were saying he's illegitimate. What do you mean he's king of Israel? I mean, that doesn't make any sense. He can't be king of Israel if you're not from the right dynasty. And this guy is from a rural town in Nazareth. He comes from nowhere. I mean, it's he he's a working man. He's there's nothing royal about Jesus of Nazareth. So, Matthew creates a whole narrative to persuade you that you're wrong. He says, "Well, no. Did you notice that in Matthew Jesus and his his family, his parents live in Jerusalem? M >> they have a house in Jerusalem. That's Matthew 2:12. Um it says that the magi found this star which was the indication of the birth of a great prince and they went to the house where the child was.

[00:09:22]They entered the house and they saw the child with Mary his mother and they knelt down and and paid homage to him.

[00:09:29]Okay? So they have a house in Jerusalem.

[00:09:32]But then because of the king's anger, because of Herod saying, "Wait a minute.

[00:09:37]I don't want any any prince in the royal family being born.

[00:09:44]And Matthew's already told you that that Joseph is in the you know the royal line >> right >> now. There's a baby and the prophecy is that he may become the king of Israel.

[00:09:54]So Herod wants to kill him as you know and and Joseph takes the family to Egypt [snorts] and then until Herod dies and then this is Matthew's story and after Herod dies an angel tells him it's all right it's safe to go back but he doesn't go back to Jerusalem because at by that time Herod's son uh Herod Anti Antiper I believe >> Antipus yeah >> Antipus he is ruling in his father's place and [clears throat] Joseph is afraid afraid that the baby might be threatened. So what does he do? He takes him to a to a rural town where nobody knows who they are. So that's the way Matthew says, "Look, you don't know it."

[00:10:36]And maybe Mark didn't either, but they were from a royal family. They came from Jerusalem. They had a house there in the city of the royal family, but they had to hide. They went to live in Nazareth incognito.

[00:10:49]So the young prince could grow up. They think he's just an ordinary working guy.

[00:10:53]Yeah.

[00:10:54]>> Um, but he is actually the prince and that's why they call him Jesus of Nazareth, but you don't know that he's from the Davidic line. He's he's a royal prince.

[00:11:05]>> Interesting.

[00:11:06]>> So, that's how Matthew does it, trying to compensate for the challenges that Jewish critics bring up.

[00:11:14]>> That's I never knew that.

[00:11:15]>> I know. It's fascinating.

[00:11:17]>> Thank you.

[00:11:18]>> Well,