Well. I'm sure we all know how babies get started inside their mother's womb, but just in case, I'll refresh your memory. First there is a human woman of childbearing years who has functioning ovaries which release an egg once a month. Then there must be a human male of appropriate age who has functioning testicles which can release enough sperm to fertilize an ocean of eggs, should they become available. Then the male and female must have sexual relations so that at least one sperm can make its way to the one egg that has been released from the woman's ovary and is only available to be fertilized during a short window of time, perhaps a few days. Then the woman becomes pregnant.
The obvious question is "How was Jesus concieved?" Matthew only tells us Mary was found with child by the Holy Spirit. Luke, however, tells us that the Holy Spirit will "overshadow" Mary. What does that mean? Did the Holy Spirit have sex with her? We are told in both books that Mary was a virgin when she concieved Jesus, and that she had not had sex with a man. I guess the Holy Spirit doesn't count.
Seriously, there are only three options here: 1. One of Mary's eggs was caused to spontaneously reproduce without sperm from the Holy Spirit. 2. The Holy Spirit had sperm. 3. The elementary cluster of cells that would become Jesus just miraculously poofed into existence, with the help of the Holy Spirit, but without Mary's egg. Let's look at each option.
1. If one of Mary's eggs spontaneously reproduced without any human sperm, Jesus would have been Mary's clone and a female. Most males have a Y chromosome which they get from their sperm donor father. It seems that this is out of the question.
2. If the Holy Spirit had sperm, how was it delivered? Does the Holy Spirit have other male apparatus? Sperm have genetic information provided by the human parent. The Holy Spirit is not human, does he have genes? Did the Holy Spirit provide Jesus's Y chromosome? (Assuming Jesus was a typical male.) Would Jesus have been fully human if part of his DNA came from the Holy Spirit who is not human? What genes for eye color, hair color, and height did the Holy Spirit contribute to Jesus? This option is confusing and disturbing on many levels.
3. If the cells that would become Jesus just miraculously appeared in Mary's womb, Jesus would not have been her child at all. She would just have been a surrogate mother. Since there would have been no human egg or sperm, Jesus would not have been a human related to anyone on earth, but some kind of brand new person with unique genetics. Or maybe he wasn't human and didn't need all that microscopic stuff inside to determine his physical makeup. Maybe he was a kind of illusion performed by God.
Oh, wait! He was God. The God of the universe put himself inside a woman's womb for nine months, then acted like a regular human for another thirty years or so, and just let the rest of the world carry on by itself. Maybe that's why there were so many demons around by the time Jesus was grown. When the cat's away, the mice will play.
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