Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 12:08:47 -0700 From: Bob Schacht To: Mike Grondin , crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Virgin birth & GThom #105 At 12:19 PM 5/23/98 -0400, Mike Grondin wrote: >Bob- > >People who try to follow our arguments on this thread carefully (are >there any such people?) may wonder how to reconcile my claim that GThom >speaks to the illegitimacy issue with your claim that it is silent on >the virginity issue. Both are true, of course. The saying to which I was >referring is, as we both know, #105: > >> JS said, "He who knows the father and the mother will be called >> 'the son of a harlot'". (Lambdin trans) > >This logion is, of course, open to a variety of interpretations, but it >seems clearly at some level to echo Jewish objections that the messiah >could not have been of illegitimate birth. > >Mike G. > > Mike, Thanks for the reminder. This logion constitutes possibly relevant evidence relating to an evaluation of the literary development of the virgin birth claim, even though, as you note, it does not speak directly to the issue of virgin birth per se. Thanks, Bob Robert Schacht Northern Arizona University Robert.Schacht@nau.edu "This success of my endeavors was due, I believe, to a rule of 'method': that we should always try to clarify and to strengthen our opponent's position as much as possible before criticizing him, if we wish our criticism to be worth while." [Sir Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1968), p. 260 n.*5]