Virgin birth of Jesus

20: But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

22: All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23: "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us."

26: In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27: to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David.

[16]Luke introduces Mary as a virgin, describes her puzzlement at being told she will bear a child despite her lack of sexual experience, and informs the reader that this pregnancy is to be effected through God's Holy Spirit.

[19] There are strong Lukan motifs in Luke 1–2, but differences are equally striking—Jesus's identity as "son of David", for example, is a prominent theme of the birth narrative, but not in the rest of the gospel.

[20] In the early part of the 2nd century, the gnostic theologian Marcion produced a version of Luke lacking these two chapters, and although he is generally accused of having cut them out of a longer text more like our own, genealogies and birth narratives are also absent from Mark and John.

[23] If tried before a tribunal, both she and the young man would be stoned to death, but it was possible for her betrothed husband to issue a document of repudiation, and this, according to Matthew, was the course Joseph wished to take prior to the visitation by the angel.

[27] The virgin birth of Jesus was thus a direct challenge to a central claim of Roman imperial theology, namely the divine conception and descent of the emperors.

[8] This cultural milieu was conducive to miraculous birth stories – they were common in biblical tradition going back to Abraham and Sarah (and the conception of Isaac).

[32] Nevertheless, "plausible sources that tell of virgin birth in areas convincingly close to the gospels' own probable origins have proven extremely hard to demonstrate".

[5] Both Matthew and Luke are late and anonymous compositions dating from the period AD 80–90, though this still places them within the lifetimes of various eyewitnesses, including Jesus's own family.

[4] Raymond E. Brown suggested in 1973 that Joseph was the source of Matthew's account and Mary of Luke's, but modern scholars consider this "highly unlikely" given that the stories emerged so late.

[47] Matthew presents the ministry of Jesus as largely the fulfilment of prophecies from the Book of Isaiah,[48] and Matthew 1:22-23, "All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 'Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son...'", is a reference to Isaiah 7:14, "...the Lord himself shall give you a sign: the maiden is with child and she will bear a son..."[49][50] The Book of Isaiah had been translated into Greek,[48] and from this translation, Matthew uses the Greek word παρθένος (parthenos), which does mean virgin, for the Hebrew עַלְמָה‎ (almah), which scholars agree signifies a girl of childbearing age without reference to virginity.

[52] Conservative scholars argue that despite the uncertainty of the details, the gospel birth narratives trace back to historical, or at least much earlier pre-gospel traditions.

[58]Matthew and Luke use the virgin birth (or more accurately the divine conception that precedes it) to mark the moment when Jesus becomes the Son of God.

[31] The Ebionites, a Jewish Christian sect, saw Jesus as fully human, rejected the virgin birth, and preferred to translate almah as "young woman".

[59] The 2nd century gnostic theologian Marcion likewise rejected the virgin birth, but regarded Jesus as descended fully formed from heaven and having only the appearance of humanity.

[64] This division remains in place, although some national synods of the Catholic Church have replaced a biological understanding with the idea of "theological truth," and some evangelical theologians hold it to be marginal rather than indispensable to the Christian faith.

[71] The doctrine is often represented in Christian art in terms of the annunciation to Mary by the Archangel Gabriel that she would conceive a child to be born the Son of God, and in Nativity scenes that include the figure of Salome.