Anthony Buzzard’s (and hence the Restora­tion Fellowship’s) posi­tion of retain­ing the vir­gin birth doc­trine hangs largely on this sin­gle verse.

Luke 1:35
The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will over­shadow you; and for that rea­son the holy child shall be called the son of God.

How­ever, if we read this verse in con­text we dis­cover a cou­ple of prob­lems with it as some­how it doesn’t fit into the con­text. (more…)

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There is no com­plete agree­ment among schol­ars regard­ing these groups of Jew­ish fol­low­ers of Jesus. From the Church fathers we can gather some ideas regard­ing their beliefs and prac­tices. It appears that the early Jew­ish believ­ers were known by both these names, but from the third cen­tury they became two dis­tinct groups, with the Nazarenes adopt­ing a more ortho­dox doc­trine, but the Ebion­ites either adopted or retained a quite non-orthodox one.

Let’s con­sider some of these quotes. (more…)

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The idea of some kind of sin nature — along with many other ideas — was devel­oped through­out the lat­ter part of the early cen­turies. Spare me from dig­ging out the “when”, you can find plenty of info on Google if you dig hard enough.

The Jew­FAQ has a very good arti­cle about what Jews think about human nature. Here is the link, read “The Dual Nature” portion:

http://www.jewfaq.org/human.htm (more…)

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Here is a puz­zle you may want to think about.

In Judaism in effect betrothal was already a mar­riage, but with­out mov­ing in together. If such cou­ples wanted to break up, they had to go through the process of divorce.

Jews take bear­ing chil­dren very seri­ously because they believe it is their duty to ful­fill the com­mand “go forth and mul­ti­ply”, indeed, hav­ing less than two chil­dren is con­sid­ered sin for a Jew­ish fam­ily. Thus, the very hope of every Jew­ish women is hav­ing chil­dren, a num­ber of them.

Now, know­ing this we stand per­plexed at Mary’s ques­tion. (more…)

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