if jesus is the son of mary and a roman soldier that raped her, would that change your faith?

Question

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ApEiq0GkGCNuzbd.BgmnPNBIzKIX?qid=20070519125704AARYSrO

its just an excepted possibility.

its also a question my new testament professor strated his class with to weed out those with a weak stomach.

im curious to see what people will say it made people cry and scream and run out of the class. 1/4 dropped the class that first day. oddly enough my professor is an ordained minister. i know it all sounds "silly" as some have said, but its much sillier to have faith based on miracles alone.

Answer 1

the answer is that it shouldn't, yes this is an old question, but the answer is the same. faith supersedes truth sometimes. before anyone takes that the wrong way, just think, faith is so much more meaningful and deeper that an error in historical fact. we must remember that the church has rewritten the bible to serve its own purposes, often the truth has been deleted and made absurd.

Answer 2

Yes, it would change my faith. I definitely think that Christianity hinges upon Christ as an historical figure as presented by the Gospels (not to say that everything the Gospels say is precise history of the modern variety, but history is important). The content of my faith would have to change - currently my faith holds that Christ was born of a virgin through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, which obviously would be untrue if this were the case. This is what historic Christianity has preached, and historic Christianity has placed its bets on an historical person and not just some of his teachings abstracted and universalized.

That being said, I agree with another answerer that the question is a pretty big "if."

Answer 3

Dear ravenous thought,

First let me say that there have been many theories of this sort-- none of which have been able to provide any solid, concrete evidence. When you consider the Biblical account and how badly the Romans wanted to frame Christ had such a thing been true -- they surely would have exposed that.

If such a silly thing was true- off course it would change people's faith because it would make what the Bible says about Jesus untrue. And one un-truth would bring cause to question other truths.

But your question is irrelevant because there is no tangible evidence that proves this silly assertion to be true. It's a hypothetical question that has no basis to it...

Kindly,

Nickster

Answer 4

No. I don't think that Mary meant that she had never had sex when she said that she had never known a man/people (aner). The Koran makes it look like she had never been "touched" but the wording is different in the Bible.

She is responding to the angel's assertion that her son will be king of Israel, rather than news of the conception which is a few verses previous.

Any good mother knows that her progeny can do anything they want, so why is Mary surprised about her son's chances in life? She seems to be saying that she's not in the right circles for this to occur. I think that she seems just a slight touch narky. If this is so, then she might be a dreamer (Jude 8) or somebody who doesn't like authority very much. In fact, she seems to be suggesting that there are particular methods by which you can get your progeny the job they want.

I don't know why she was possibly narky though. There are many reasons why this could have happened. People don't usually live their day to day lives as if an angel is going to pop on by.

Why do you say a Roman soldier, in particular? Why not Joseph himself? Or another Jew?

Also, there does not appear to be any "with child" in the original text in Matthew, or Luke? I forget which one. This means that the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary could be in the sense that she didn't want any abortion attempts, doses of anything to cause her to miscarry etc. to occur. Especially if there was talk about the origin of the child, there could have been attempts to eject it by putting things in Mary's food. I think that prayer would help to deal with this situation so that Mary could take things one step at a time and see danger before it could occur to her baby.

Genesis 6:4 says that there were people who were the Nephilim. It seems that they were very tall. The Anakites were descended from the Nephilim and Goliath seems to have been one of them. My guess is that this refers to attempts at genetic engineering during pregnancy by doctors working under the influence of the occult. This could explain Mary's interest in realising that it would take more than just common sense to get through her pregnancy safely. Cults LOVE children. The younger they are, the better. There is so much pressure to product a perfect child, and I think that is nothing new. Cults also don't treat children very well as they tend to use their imagination more than science to understand the world and how it "should" be. They have all sorts of strange techniques to "enhance" life and don't seem to care too much when these produce catastrophic inhumane outcomes to the innocents, particularly children. They also like to reprogram people. Mary was living during a particularly nasty time of Herod's reign. The word used to describe what happened to the two year old boys later on is also used to describe what happened to Moses when the Egyptian princess took him to the royal household. It's possible that this refers to some sort of cult reprogramming, rather than wholesale murder. In fact, the practices are linked and also quite private, in terms of what is made known publicly. Rulers generally like to preserve their public reputations. This is true today as well, in regards to crimes against children by cults.

I'm not sure how much the Koran attempts to explain about the Bible record or how much is taken for granted as being necessary to the Bible story in order to show what "holiness" is but at least some of it seems to be bunkum.

Answer 5

This argument has been around since Christ time, the first record of it being written be Celsus, being it back to light as he used it against Origen.
Like everything you must find the truth yourself.
By praying and reading.

Answer 6

No,it would still be the same Jesus and the same teachings,the teachings are really the backbone of the faith. Also even if it was true not alot of people would believe it.

Answer 7

Why such an outlandish question??

If the Primordial Soup turned out to be chicken noodle, would that change your beliefs?

Answer 8

uh...that's actually Brian from Life of Brian by Monty Python

Answer 9

I'm already an atheist, so will it make a difference? Nope. But it would make more sense then being impregnated by a higher power.

Answer 10

That's a pretty big IF