Virgin Births a dime a dozen

[The Valkyrie]

Claims of virgin births in U.S. near 1 per cent: study

From a study published in a British medical journal. Among young women followed over a period of 14 years approximately 0.8% claimed to have become pregnant without engaging in sexual intercourse.

Those who made such claims were much more likely to have signed a chastity pledge and also to say that their parents talked to them rarely or never about sex and birth control.

If the claim of Jesus' birth originated with his mother, this phenomenon provides a plausible explanation. After all, the penalties back then for pregnancy outside marriage were much harsher than the shame of breaking a chastity pledge.

Personally, I think the claim was more likely to have originated with his fan club after they started to claim divine status for him. There are plenty of examples in the ancient world of hero-figures whose birth was said to have resulted from a human woman being impregnated by a god—e.g., Alexander the Great.

Claiming a virgin birth for so-called divinities, whether a legandary warrior, a hero, a general or some type of other leader was, as you say, surprisingly common in ancient times. It's as if they considered a woman who had sex was somehow unclean - which, it seems, many fundies in the modern world still do.

ANd you are correct, a young girl who gets pregnant in a society where the punishment for doing so, unmarried, is to be killed. Of course she's going to claim whatever it takes to stay alive.

And, for Drich. The prophecies CHrist suposedly fulfilled from the Torah: The Jewish Rabbis said he didn't, and since it's their holy book, I'm more likely to believe them.