G.B. Singh

"Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son," Isaiah, chap. vii. ver. 14, has been interpreted to mean the person called Jesus Christ, and his mother Mary, and has been echoed through Christendom for more than a thousand years; and such has been the rage of this opinion that scarcely a spot in it but has been stained with blood, and marked with desolation in consequence of it. Though it is not my intention to enter into controversy on subjects of this kind, but to confine myself to show that the Bible is spurious, and thus, by taking away the foundation, to overthrow at once the whole structure of superstition raised thereon, I will, however, stop a moment to expose the fallacious application of this passage.

Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah, to whom this passage is spoken, is no business of mine; I mean only to show the misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more reference to Christ and his mother than it has to me and my mother. The story is simply this: The king of Syria and the king of Israel, (I have already mentioned that the Jews were split into two nations, one of which was called Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem, and the other Israel), made war jointly against Ahaz, king of Judah, and marched their armies toward Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people became alarmed, and the account says, verse 2, "And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind."

In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and to satisfy Ahaz that this should be the case, tells him to ask a sign. This, the account says, Ahaz declined doing, giving as a reason that he would not tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who is the speaker, says, ver. 14, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son"; and the 16th verse says, "For before this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest, (or dreadest, meaning Syria and the kingdom of Israel) shall be forsaken of both her kings." Here then was the sign, and the time limited for the completion of the assurance or promise, namely, before this child should know to refuse the evil and choose the good.

Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary to him, in order to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet and the consequence thereof, to take measures to make this sign appear. It certainly was not a difficult thing, in any time of the world, to find a girl with child, or to make her so, and perhaps Isaiah knew of one beforehand; for I do not suppose that the prophets of that day were any more to be trusted than the priests of this. Be that, however, as it may, he says in the next chapter, ver. 2, "And I took unto me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah, and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bare a son."

Here, then, is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story, that the book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid interests of priests in later times, have founded a theory which they call the Gospel; and have applied this story to signify the person they call Jesus Christ, begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of a woman, engaged in marriage, and afterward married, whom they call a virgin, 700 years after this foolish story was told; a theory which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to disbelieve, and to say, is as fabulous and as false as God is true.^*

But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah, we have only to attend to the sequel of this story, which, though it is passed over in silence in the book of Isaiah, is related in the 28th chapter of the second Chronicles, and which is, that instead of these two kings failing in their attempt against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had pretended to foretell in the name of the Lord, they succeeded; Ahaz was defeated and destroyed, a hundred and twenty thousand of his people were slaughtered, Jerusalem was plundered, and two hundred thousand women, and sons and daughters, carried into captivity. Thus much for this lying prophet and imposter, Isaiah, and the book of falsehoods that bears his name.

^* In the 14th verse of the 7th chapter, it is said that the child should be called Immanuel; but this name was not given to either of the children otherwise than as a character which the word signifies. That of the prophetess was called Maher-shalal-hash-baz, and that of Mary was called Jesus.

As an update to what Thomas Paine wrote, the New Revised Standard Version of the modern English translation of the Bible has changed the word “virgin” to a “young woman.”

Gospel According to Luke, Chapter 1

26. And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, 27. To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. 28. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. 29. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. 30. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. 31. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. 34. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

I need not go into the absurdities and contradiction here, but I am glad to see angel Gabriel making his presence here in the Luke account. This is the same angel who about six hundred years later visited Mohammad many times in Arabia. Can you imagine the moral import of the above verses? It is apparent that before the Christian period started, there were a number people attributed to have been born to virgins: Krishna, Buddha, Egyptian gods Ra and Apis, Egyptian queen Hetshepsut, Pharoah Amenophis III, Persian "prophet" Zoroaster, Melchizedek, biblical High Priest and King of Salem, Persian king Cyrus, Plato, "the divine" and "son of Apollo," Julius Caesar, Apollonius of Tyana, Taliesin, Merlin and Llew Llaw of the British Isles, and Chinese philosophers Fohi and Lao-Kium.

My purpose of introducing the Biblical verses extolling virgin birth is simply this: The birth of Jesus Christ is a myth and it is in no way different from many other myths of the ancient times. To accept these myths as facts is to denote that the reader has lost the ability to distinguish reality from fiction. Bottom line is that from the virgin birth mythology, we invite a failure to answer objectively: Who is Jesus Christ?

Infancy and Childhood

What do we know of Jesus’ infancy and childhood until he grew to be an adult? You will be surprised that the Bible is silent here with one exception. Only in the Gospel according to Luke, Chapter 2:39-52, there is a miniscule account of Jesus’ infancy period and the incident that transpired in the synagogue at the time Jesus was twelve years old. That is it, and from there on the Gospel accounts in the Bible introduces us to the adult Jesus who is thirty years old. Why would there be so little account of Jesus’ formative years? Could this omission be intentional?

The young Jesus is depicted in the two gospels accounts by the names of: “The first Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ” and the “Thomas’s Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ.” These Gospels along with many others never made it to the canonical version--thanks in part to the politics of the times of the 4th century CE at which time the Bible, as we have it, was compiled. These two Gospels of Christ’s infancy are problematic: they often display Jesus with an enormous vicious ego.

For example, in the 1st Infancy Gospel, we learn that because of the other parents’ complaints to Joseph against Jesus, Joseph makes a remark to Mary: “… we will not allow him [Jesus] to go out of the house; for every one who displeases him is killed.” In the 2nd Infancy Gospel account, young Jesus looks no better. We learn that a boy running through the streets brushes against Jesus’ shoulder. Jesus, in his uncontrollable anger, causes the boy to fall down dead. When various members of the community accuse him of murder, he causes them to go blind.

We are confronted with serious problems here: (1) We don’t know of Jesus’ real name, (2) We simply cannot accept his miraculous un-natural virginal birth, and (3) His infancy and young-life accounts are too bombastic to be taken as accurate and objective. At this stage of the research and our analysis of it, we cannot answer the question “Who is Jesus Christ?” However, we can answer the same question differently: There is no Jesus Christ. Period.


Copyright ©2006 G.B. Singh. About the author