Krishna, the Indian savior, was born of a chaste virgin called Devaki, who, on account of her purity, was selected to become the mother of God. Gautama Buddha was born of the virgin Maya and “mercifully left Paradise and came down to earth because he was filled with compassion for the sins and miseries of mankind. He sought to lead them into better paths, and took their sufferings upon himself that he might expiate their crimes and mitigate the punishment they must otherwise inevitably undergo.”
The great father of gods and men sent a messenger from heaven to the Mexican virgin, Sochiquetzal, to inform her that it was the will of the gods that she should immaculately conceive a son. As a result she bore Quetzalcoatl, the Mexican savior, who “set his face against all forms of violence and bloodshed, and encouraged the arts of peace.” The Mexican god Huitzilopochtli was likewise immaculately conceived by a woman who, while walking in a temple, beheld a ball of feathers descending in the air. She grasped this and placed it in her bosom. It gradually disappeared and her pregnancy resulted. The Mexican Montezumas were later supposed to have been immaculately conceived by a drop of dew falling on the exposed breast of the mother as she lay asleep.
The Siamese have a virgin-born god and savior whom they call Codom; the Chinese have several virgin-born gods, one being the result of his mother’s having become impregnated by merely treading on the toe-print of God; while the Egyptians bowed in worship before the shrine of Horus, son of the virgin Isis.
Setting aside the mythological interpretation of the miraculous conception of Jesus and the theory that his history is entirely fictitious, and viewing his birth from a natural human standpoint, even admitting that he may have been a “divinely inspired man,” a little better than any other human being, there seems to be only one explanation for his peculiar conception as recorded in Luke i.
Some critics of the rational school have not failed to notice a solution of the problem in the appearance of the angel Gabriel and his private interview with Mary (Luke i, 28–38). Say they very pertinently, why may not some libidinous young man, having become enamoured of the youthful wife of the aged Joseph, and, knowing the prophecy of the messiah, have visited the object of his desire in angelic guise and, having won her confidence in this rôle, gained those favors that produced the miraculous birth? And such an explanation is not improbable when we consider that it is an historical fact that young and confiding women often resorted to the pagan temples at the instigation of the unscrupulous, where they enjoyed the embraces of ardent but previously unsuccessful lovers, under the impression that they were being favored by deities.
So those Christians whose reasoning powers will not allow them to believe in the absurdity of an unnatural conception, and whose superstitious adoration will not permit of their believing Mary guilty of an intentional faux pas, try in this manner to reconcile the two, and declare Joseph the guilty man.
According to the Gospels, Joseph, the husband, knowing Mary to be with child, married her (Matt. i, 18); but that is no reason for believing that he regarded the Holy Ghost’s responsibility for his wife’s condition with faith. He told of a dream in which he had been informed that such was the case (Matt. i, 20–23). He may have believed the dream, and he may not. The most sensible view is that he, “being a just man,” took this method of preserving her reputation, and that he himself was the actual parent. Having betrayed the girl, he honestly married her, but, to defend her and himself from the accusation of a serious misdemeanor among the Jews (Deut. xxii), he invented the dream story to account for her unfortunate condition. Girls have ever told improbable stories to explain like misfortunes. Danæ concocted the shower of gold yarn; Leda preferred to accuse herself of bestiality with a swan to acknowledging a lover, and Europa blamed a bull. Modern damsels have invented more modern but just as innocent agents.
It would seem from the subsequent actions and words of Mary that she must have forgotten that her son was miraculously conceived of God, for we find her reproaching him for remaining in the temple of Jerusalem to argue with the rabbis with, “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing” (Luke ii, 48). Again, when Simeon and Anna proclaimed the messiahship of Jesus (Luke ii, 25–32; 36–38), we are told that “Joseph and his mother marveled at those things which were spoken of him” (Luke ii, 33). This would hardly have been the case had they already known him as “the Son of the Highest, who shall reign over the house of Jacob forever” (Luke i, 32–33). Neither would Mary, had she realized that she was the mother of God, have considered it necessary to resort to the temple (Luke ii, 22–24) to be purified from the stains of her childbirth. Women, having borne natural children, were considered to have become defiled in the act of parturition, through the contact of the perpetually active agency of original sin, whereof they must be purified. The mere fact of her submitting to such a churching is evidence that Mary did not know that she had done anything remarkable in bearing Jesus, and was ignorant of an unusual conception.
Their neighbors, despite the dream, always recognized Jesus as Joseph’s son (Matt. xii, 55; Luke iv, 22; John ii, 45; vi, 42; Nicodemus i, 2). The orthodox explain this on the supposition that Joseph and Mary kept all these things in their hearts, and did not tell the actual facts of the case, which seems unlikely. Joseph would want to explain the early birth of Jesus, and Mary would be desirous of saving her reputation, and both would naturally boast of the honor conferred by the Holy Ghost, had they known of it, for in such case Joseph’s relation to his god was the same as that of the peasant to his seigneur in the days of the jus primæ noctis. The liaison was an honor, and would have been related to save Jesus from the disagreeable allusions made by his neighbors regarding his birth (John viii, 41).
Conforming to the narrations of the miraculous conception in Luke, Mary, and the Protevangelion, is an old miracle play called “Joseph’s Jealousy,” in which we find a very natural picture of the good old husband discovering a condition in his wife for which he is not responsible and accusing her in plain old English of adorning his brow with antlers. The following is the dialogue as given in Hone’s “Ancient Mysteries Described”:
Jos.
Say me, Mary, this childys fadyr who is?
I pry the telle me, and that anon?
Mry.
The Fadyr of hevyn, & se, it is,
Other fadyr hath he non.
To which Joseph very naturally replies in a burst of anger:
Jos.
Goddys childe! thou lyist, in fay!
God dede nevyr rape so with may.
But yit I say, Mary whoos childe is this?
Mry.
Goddys and your, I sey, I wys.
Then in wrath at her obstinacy he breaks forth:
Jos.
Ya, ya! all olde men, to me take tent,
& weddyth no wyff, in no kynnys wyse.
Alas! Alas! my name is shent;
All men may me now dyspyse,
& seyn olde cokwold.
Mary tries to explain and says that her child is from God alone and that she was so informed by an angel. The suspicious Joseph will not be deceived, and gives way to some words that have since been accepted as a true explanation of the miraculous conception:
Jos.
An A’gel! alas, alas! fy for schame!
Ye syn now, in that ye to say;
To puttyn