When I began voicing my objections to the Virgin Birth doctrine, stating there was no precedent in the Old Testament for such an occurrence, I was met with the claim that the Creation of Adam is the needed precedent for the Creator to create again.
Let’s evaluate what took place in the beginning and test that claim.
In the Beginning…
Genesis 1:1 establishes the notion of a Creator God when it records:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth land. (Genesis 1:1 KJV, adaptation mine)
For six days, the author lays out the creation or fashioning of the heaven and the land and seas with vegetation, seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees, and all that is in them, to include: winged fowl, sea creatures, land animals and mankind.
On the 6th day of Creation, Genesis 1:26-27 establishes the notion that the Creator made man in his own image.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth land, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Genesis 1:26-27 KJV, adapted)
Genesis 2:7 establishes the notion that man was formed from the dust of the ground, and the LORD God (YHVH) breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. This is when man became a living soul.
These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth land when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth land and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth land, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth land, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth land, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:4-7 KJV, adapted)
Genesis 2:21-24 establishes the formation of the woman, made from that which was taken from the man.
And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. (Genesis 2:21-24 KJV)
Given this, the claim for a Virgin Birth precedent suggests that if God made man then, he could do something like that again in the future.
The problem however, is that when YHVH created man on the 6th day in Genesis 1, chapter 2 tells us that He ended/completed/finished His work of creation, and He ceased/rested from that creative work on the 7th day.
Thus the heavens and the earth land were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work, which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work, which he had made. (Genesis 2:1-2 KJV)
While there may be evidence of barren wombs being opened, bodies being framed within the womb, lepers being made whole and the dead being raised to life throughout the Old Testament, there is no evidence of mankind being created from the dust of the earth or any other substance after the sixth day of creation.
In the day that man was created, Genesis 1:28 establishes man’s role to be fruitful and multiply, to reproduce after like kind and be the progenitor of all mankind going forward.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth land, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth land. (Genesis 1:27-28 KJV, adapted)
This is what I call the Natural Order of Mankind.
On Thursday, 8/11/16, I led a nearly 2-hour long conference call entitled “Challenging the Virgin Birth Doctrine”, laying a foundation from the Old Testament (starting with the subject matter of this blog post), and then addressing the two separate pre-birth accounts of Yeshua in the New Testament in great detail. To hear a recording of that call, dial phone # 712-775-7029; enter Pin # “573-735-000#”; and select Reference # “51#”.
