'A matter of faith'

To the skeptical, it's an oxymoron. To the faithful, it's a miracle or, at the very least, a faith-promoting metaphor. Two thousand years after the fact — or the fiction, depending on where you come down on the virgin birth — the story continues to inspire and confound.

Mary's virginity is now central to the Nativity story and is a staple of various Christian credos affirmed by congregations as diverse as Greek Orthodox and liberal Protestant denominations. A 2004 poll by Newsweek magazine found that 67 percent of American adults think the Christmas narrative is historically accurate, and 79 percent believe the virgin birth is literal.

But all that unanimity masks a concept fraught with nuances. Even the word "literal" is problematic, says Tom McClenahan, academic dean of the Salt Lake Theological Seminary, who prefers the word "historical" when referring to the virgin birth (by which he means the account as interpreted by the gospel writers). And too, the term "virgin birth" itself is a point of contention. Except for the Catholic Church, Christians really mean the "virgin conception," says McClenahan. (And that's not to be confused with the "immaculate conception," which is a Catholic term for the belief that Mary herself was conceived without original sin.)

Students at the Salt Lake Theological Seminary occasionally struggle with the notion of the virgin birth, says McClenahan. After all, they've grown up in a culture that gives priority to science over revelation — and a baby conceived by the Holy Ghost instead of a human father makes no sense, according to 21st century science.

Like much of the Bible, he says, the Nativity story should be read not as literal word-for-word or as a newspaper account; instead it's "the story as a whole" that counts. "The acceptance of this as historical is a matter of faith. It's not something that can be proved, only revealed," he says, adding that "in the end it's a question of whether we're prepared to believe in the creative power of the Spirit of God intervening in this world for the sake of our salvation from sin and evil."

Many modern Biblical scholars — most, in fact, says professor Robert J. Miller — view the story of Jesus' birth as more metaphorical than actual. The exceptions to this more symbolic interpretation, he says, are fundamentalist Christian and LDS scholars.

Miller himself is a churchgoing Roman Catholic, a professor of religion at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pa., and author of "Born Divine: The Birth of Jesus and Other Sons of God." He argues that "all Biblical scholars who practice the historical critical study of the Bible understand the Nativity story is a combination of legend and early Christian storytelling."

Mary's virginity at the time of conception was not a universal belief during the early Christian era, Miller says. Biblical scholars who question the literalness of the Nativity story point to the gospels of Mark and John, which do not mention Jesus' paternity. If an angel had actually visited Mary to proclaim that "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee" to conceive a son (Luke 1:35), they argue, wouldn't all the Gospels have written about it? (These same critics also point to other details that may be embellishments: There is no historical evidence, for example, that the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus conducted a census that would have propelled Mary and Joseph to travel to Bethlehem.)

First century Christians, Miller says, were comfortable with Roman and Greek biographies of what he calls "the wonder boys," including Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus and Plato. The only way the ancients could explain the accomplishments of men like this, Miller says, was to create a mythology that made them part human, part divine. All were said to have human mothers but to have been sired by gods such as Apollo.