Those Pagan Virgin Birth Stories Evaporate
By
James Scott Trimm
Anti-Missionaries, Atheists and other critics have spread far and wide a false claim that the virgin birth doctrine was borrowed from paganism. The fact is that this claim is an outright lie. A close examination of the alleged origins/births of the pagan gods these persons claim were “virgin births” shows that not one of these pagan gods was supposed to be the result of a virgin birth.
Horus
Horus was the son of Osiris and Isis. Isis was impregnated by Osiris after she gathered the parts of the dismembered body of her husband Osiris and resurrected him. In the oldest accounts of the story, she retrieved the whole body, but in later versions she could not locate his male member and so she fashioned a new member for him out of gold. There was no indication that Isis was a virgin, and the gold member was by implication fully functional. Horus did not have a virgin birth.
Attis
The myth of the origin of Attis begins with the daemon Agdistis. Agdistis initially had both male and female genitalia. But the Olympian gods, fearing Agdistis, castrated the male member and cast it away. An almond-tree grew up from the male member, and when its fruit was ripe, Nana (a daughter of the river-god Sangarius), picked an almond from the tree and laid it in her bosom. It then disappeared, and she became pregnant with Attis. There is no indication in the myth that Nana was a virgin, and her impregnation resulted from a seed which came forth from a male member, so there is no virgin birth here either.
Dionysus
Dionysus was born to the mortal woman Semele and the Greek god Zeus… but since Zeus’ wife Hera discovered that Zeus was having an affair with Semele, this is certainly not a virgin birth, but a very physical, sexual relationship between Zeus and Semele which resulted in her pregnancy.
Krishna
Krishna was also not the result of a virgin birth. In fact Krishna was the eighth child of the union of his mother and father. That’s right, Krishna’s mother was not only not a virgin, but she had seven sons before Krishna!
Mithra
The original story of Mithra’s origin had Mithra crawling out of a rock. Now unless the rock was a virgin, then there is no virgin birth here either. There was a later Roman Mithra cult, and this later version of Mitha (known as Mithras) was born thru a form of artificial insemination, when his mother bathed in water in which his father’s semen had been preserved. Even if we take this as a virgin birth, this Mithra cult did not exist yet at the time of Yeshua’s birth. So if this was a virgin birth, then it might have been copied from the birth of Yeshua, but it could not have been the other way around.
None of these pagan gods were alleged to be the result of a virgin birth, and thus the virgin birth of Yeshua was not simply copied from paganism.
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