Was Jesus really born of a virgin? For many, this is the greatest hindrance they have for believing and trusting in Jesus for salvation. Perhaps you are familiar with a comment made in 1998 by Larry King from CNN when he was asked: “who would he most want to interview if he could choose anyone from history?” His response was, “Jesus Christ.” Then, Larry King was asked what he would want to ask Jesus. Larry King replied, “I would like to ask him if he was indeed virgin-born. The answer to that question would define history for me.”
Notice that he did not want to ask if Jesus rose from the dead which is interesting, I thought. I think that is because if Jesus was truly born of a virgin then he could certainly rise from the dead. So for Larry King, who Jesus claimed to be doesn’t come down to the resurrection, it comes down to whether or not Jesus was born of a virgin.
For Larry King, and others like him, the foundation of Christianity begins with Jesus’ virgin birth. To believe in the message of the gospel one must believe in the virgin birth. They’re right! So, is there evidence supporting the virgin birth of Jesus? My answer is yes. And here are five pieces of evidence to consider.
Evidence #1: Prophecy.
Seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus the prophet Isaiah prophesied: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14). Matthew quotes this verse in his account of the gospel in Matthew 1:23 to show the Jews that the child Mary had conceived – Jesus – was indeed the child Isaiah spoke of 700 years before.
Now, some critics will argue that Matthew misquotes Isaiah. They argue that in the original Hebrew Isaiah did not use the word ‘virgin’, but used the word ‘almah’ meaning ‘young woman.’ And Matthew, when he wrote his gospel in Greek used the word ‘virgin’ instead of ‘young woman’ thus twisting the meaning of the Hebrew word ‘almah’ to fit his motive; as a result, they believe that our New Testament translations are incorrect.
Here’s the problem with their objection: according to Sean McDowell, a professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University, “the Hebrew word ‘almah’ can mean both ‘young woman’ or ‘virgin’ in Hebrew.” McDowell goes on to say, “because of the word’s traditional usage, readers of Isaiah’s time understood he did mean that a virgin would conceive. And that is why the Jewish scholars over 200 years before Jesus was born rendered the Hebrew word ’almah’ as the Greek word for virgin when translating Isaiah 7:14 for the Septuagint. Matthew wasn’t twisting things at all”. That also means your New Testament is right when it uses the word virgin.
Evidence #2: Mary was indeed pregnant.
Both the gospel of Matthew and Luke record eyewitnesses that confirm Mary was indeed pregnant and had given birth. If you study those gospel’s you’ll see that Joseph was the first one who observed her pregnancy (Matt. 1:18). So did Elizabeth, her cousin who Mary visited (Luke 1:39-45). Also, the shepherds who tended their flocks by night visited Mary the night she gave birth (Luke 2:8-21). And finally, the wise men who came from the east visited Mary two years after she had given birth (Matt. 2:1-12). All of these are eyewitnesses to Mary being pregnant and to the birth of Jesus. Also, we know for a fact that this same Jesus of Nazareth was historically real, according to eye-wintess testimony. So, we have eye-witnesses of a pregnant Mary, eye-witnesses of a baby, and eye-witnesses of that same baby grown up.
Evidence #3: Joseph’s reaction.
Joseph was her fiance. According to Matthew 1:18 – 19, Joseph found Mary to be pregnant and naturally assumed she had sexual relations with another man. Of course, when he discovered this, he was going to divorce her quietly, because he knew Mary could be stoned for such an act and did not wish that for her; Joseph was a very upright person.
However, we know from Scripture instead of divorcing her, he went through with the marriage. Why did he marry her? It’s because he was corrected and informed of the truth. An angel sent by God revealed to Joseph that while Mary was indeed pregnant, it was not from another man but from the Spirit, and thus he resolved to marry her. He was determined to go through with the marriage because he was convinced of the truth – that Marry had not cheated on him, she was still indeed a virgin, and that the child that she was pregnant with was from God.
Evidence #4: The reaction of the people.
Have you ever wondered what people’s reaction in Jesus’ day was to the claim that he was born of a virgin? The reaction Jesus received was not very kind. It definitely did not win people over. In fact, during Jesus’ lifetime everyone recognized that Jesus was indeed born from Mary. However, they did not recognize that Mary was a virgin when she bore him nor did they recognize Joseph as the father. As a result, many did not believe in his testimony and some even accused Jesus as being an illegitimate child.
For example, as Jesus was teaching in the synagogue at Nazareth, Mark 6:3 tells us that the people of Nazareth – the very place Jesus grew up as a child – took offense to Jesus because they recognized Jesus as “the carpenter, the son of Mary”. Notice, they did not call Jesus “the son of Joseph.” And in fact, Jesus wasn’t; he was and is the Son of God. So, they’re not wrong; however, this was not their purpose. This was actually considered an insult. According to Sean McDowell, “the label “son of Mary” was an unambiguous insult in a society that called children by the name of their fathers—except, of course, in the case of children whose paternity was doubted as Jesus’ certainly was.
Also, in John 8, when Jesus was speaking to Pharisees as he was on his way to the Mount of Olives, the Pharisees called out to Jesus saying, “we were not born of sexual immorality.” That statement was an insult and accusation that Jesus was in fact born out of wedlock and therefore an illegitimate child.
So according to Sean McDowell, “it seems very likely that the circumstances of Jesus’ miraculous birth to a virgin caused him to be labeled as an illegitimate child.” In other words, the fact that people insulted Jesus for being Mary’s illegitimate child is evidence that corroborates Mary’s testimony and the testimony of Scripture.
Evidence #5: Mary’s reaction.
Ever wonder how Mary reacted to all this? According to the gospel of Luke 1:26-38, Mary was as surprised as anyone else by this news. We see in Luke 1:34, after she was told by the angel Gabriel that she was going to conceive a son in her womb and his name was to be Jesus, that Mary herself even questioned “how will this be, since I am a virgin?” Mary was just as shocked and bewildered by the mystery of all this as anyone was and would be.
But have you ever noticed that you never find in the gospels that Mary never tried to convince anyone of anything different? According to our last piece of evidence it was common knowledge of the testimony that Mary held to and resulted in insults for Jesus. Despite that, she always maintained her testimony that she gave birth to Jesus as a virgin. Why do that if it wasn’t true? Why risk being ridiculed and persecuted by the community, if her claim was a lie?
Again, Sean McDowell makes this point very clearly saying: “When Mary turned up pregnant, why would she have insisted she was a virgin? She knew that such a story would certainly be considered too wild to believe; why didn’t she come up with something more credible? She could have concocted an excuse to make herself look innocent, or at least to put part of the blame on someone else. She could have claimed she was raped, or that Joseph had pressured her into yielding to his desire. He would have known better, but no one else would have. But instead of a rational explanation that would fit the known laws of nature, she told people she was pregnant by God’s Holy Spirit. Why would she have said such a thing when it was the least believable of explanations? Only one reason makes sense. It was true.”
But someone might say to you: well, we don’t know the Bible can even be trusted? What they’re saying is that these evidences are not based on historical fact, because they are based on Scripture. I would remind you that historians around the world who are Christian, skeptics, agnostic, and atheist believe the Bible, at the very least, is historically true. In fact, they know that it is because it was written based on eyewitness testimony; especially the New Testament. We even have literature outside the Bible that corroborates much of the New Testament from non-believers. Which is why we can rely on these five facts to provide evidence to support the doctrine of the virgin birth.
So if this is the case, if the evidence proves the virgin birth, how does a virgin have a baby? The obvious answer is God. I know that for some, that answer is a turn off. For others, the evidence offered and the answer just given may not be convincing enough. Some want a scientific explanation. The truth is, science cannot explain this. And that’s why some who believe that the Bible is historically true, still don’t believe in the virgin birth. They deny the virgin birth because it is not supported by science.
But here’s the problem with trying to make sense of the virgin birth with science instead of relying on historical, eyewitness testimony: science only operates to describe the regular workings of nature by definition. Nothing about Jesus’ birth is regular. It is, in fact, irregular; and science is of no help here. There are some things in Scripture that science cannot explain. We know how the reproductive system works from a scientific standpoint, but that does not apply here and that’s because Jesus’ birth was miraculous and Science does not exist to explain the miraculous.
The fact is, we have to accept the virgin birth by faith and eyewitness testimony. The Bible claims that this happened by the Spirit in Matthew 1:18 – “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” The Bible says in Luke 1:35 after Mary asked how she, a virgin, could conceive a child: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy – the Son of God.”
So truly, the only way to fully believe in the virgin birth is to believe in God and accept that Scripture is historically true. God is the only logical explanation behind the virgin birth. Rebecca Mclaughlin once said, “some of the world’s top scientists believe in the virgin birth—not because they don’t understand how human reproduction works, but because they believe Jesus’s claims about who he is and the historical testimony about him.”
Consider this: if there is a God who made the universe, is it irrational to think that He could make a human being in a supernatural way? The answer to that is, no. For that reason I say: people’s objection to the virgin birth isn’t scientific, it’s historical and spiritual issue. It’s not a science problem; it’s a problem of accepting the virgin birth as historical fact and accepting that God is indeed real.