Comment and poem
By Ron Crowe

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Virgin Births, Ascensions, and All That.

        How many people know that the idea of a virgin birth, in Jesus' day, was about as common as Coca Cola at a Tennessee country store?  I didn't know it when I was young. Like my friends and acquaintances, I just assumed Jesus' supposed virgin birth was the first and only one. 

Later in life, as I read more, I was quite surprised to discover that virgin birth stories (people conceived by gods) had been circulating up to 2000 years before Christ. By Jesus' time most if not all the surrounding pagan religions contained some version of a virgin birth myth. Not only that, but almost any great man, real or mythical, had stories floating around about his miraculous conception by a god. This was apparently an attempt to explain why certain famous men had achieved great wisdom or performed great feats. To be so great, it was reasoned, they must have in them the stuff of the gods.

        Virgin births were claimed for: Alexander the Great; various Roman Emperors, like Augustus and Claudius; as well as such pagan gods as Zoroaster or Dionysius.

        We can even find in Genesis a reference to the sons of God who came down and got the daughters of men pregnant (Gen. 6:1-4). This was apparently an attempt by a Genesis writer to explain why certain biblical characters lived so long, like Noah who conceived a child at age 500 and Methuselah who lived 969 years.  

        My point is: the idea of  women being made pregnant by a god and giving birth to extraordinary men had for centuries before Jesus been the common explanation for the origin of occasional great men (some of whom supposedly became gods) on earth.  The claim that Jesus had been fathered by a god, and had undergone such a miraculous birth, rather than being an exception, was just one of a long series. This ancient, long-enduring belief inspired a poem that I published several years ago in the American Rationalist magazine:

AND THE GODS YAWNED

Christians have been taught to think

Jesus's virgin birth unique,

but history shows more than a few

to those who would the record seek.

Fifteen centuries before Mary's crisis

in seeking a room at the inn,

Hours was born of the Virgin Isis

and received neat gifts from three wise men.

And Krishna, one of the gods Hindu,

born twelve hundred years before,

was birthed of Devaki, a virgin too--

and thus became eighth avatar*.    

Adonis of Babylonian birth,

whom the goddesses would adore,

was born of Ishtar virgin queen of earth, 

goddess of heaven, love and war.

Eight hundred years ere Christ's advent

came Indra from a virgin in Tibet.

And like Jesus when he came to die,

also ascended into the sky.

Six hundred years before "the Son,"

Buddha was born of Maya the pure;

virgin-born also was Quirrnus of Rome,

Zoroaster of Persia, and Mithra for sure.

The last virgin birth before J.C.'s,

according to our miracle lore,

Attis was born of the virgin Nama

in Phrygia, two hundred years before.

So by the time Joe and Mary found shelter

and amid oxen their tired bodies sat,

virgin births, wise men, and ascensions,

had become, for the most part, old hat.

_____

*Avatar: Hindu mythology, the descent to earth of a deity in human or animal form.