“Let us turn our attention to the Church and to the Church Doctrine. How early in the history of the Church, the doctrine “that the end justifies the means”, came into existence, we are not prepared to say; but the early fathers in preaching to the Pagans constantly met the Pagan belief that their gods were divinely begotten; and no doubt when the early Christians presented the Lord Christ to the Pagans, they said that he was inferior to their gods because their gods were divinely begotten, begotten by a miraculous act on the part of Deity, while Jesus Christ was born of man and woman.
Justin Martyr, one of the Christian fathers, says: “It having reached the Devil’s ears that the prophets had foretold the coming of Christ (the son of God), he set the heathen Poets to bring forward a great many who should be called the sons of Jove; the Devil laying his scheme in this, to get men to imagine that the true history of Christ was of the same character as the prodigious fables related of the sons of Jove.”
Again he says, in his Apology to the Emperor Adrian: “By declaring the Logos, the first-begotten of God, our Master Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin, without any human mixture, we Christians say no more in this than what you Pagans say of those whom you style the sons of Jove. For you need not be told what a parcel of sons the writers most in vogue among you assign to Jove. . . . As to the Son of God, called Jesus, should we allow him to be nothing more than man, yet the title of ‘the Son of God’ is very justifiable upon the account of his wisdom, considering that you Pagans have your Mercury in worship under the title of the Word, a messenger of God. . . . As to his, Jesus Christ’s, being born of a virgin, you have your Perseus to balance that.” (Quoted in “Taylor’s Syntagma”, page 169.)
Meeting such formidable opposition as the Pagan belief presented to the early Fathers, we must admit that it would be a strong temptation to add to the Christian Doctrine and to the written records that were exclusively in their hands, the account of the Miraculous Conception and Virgin Birth as found in Matthew and Luke, and also the parenthesis in Luke’s account.
Again, we notice upon carefully reading the Gospel according to Matthew, that his account of the birth of Christ, beginning with the words, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise”, is written in a different style and with a different word-formation from the rest of the chapter, and it is so set apart so that it may well be considered an interpolation. The same is true concerning Luke’s Gospel; and these two Gospels are the only Gospels in which the birth of Jesus is recorded.
There are two facts that stand out before us, namely, was Jesus that Christ prophesied by Moses and by many of the prophets? If he was, then he was the son of Joseph, the son of Abraham. If he was not the Christ prophesied of, then we may admit for the sake of argument that he was Divinely Begotten. No prophecy from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation prophesies a Messiah Divinely Begotten; on the contrary, all the prophecies concerning the Messiah prophesy a man, not only born of woman, but of the literal descent of Abraham according to the flesh.
In Matthew’s account, in order to substantiate the miraculous conception, we find quoted the words of Isaiah 7:14: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” That this refers to the Christ there is grave doubt, but that Mary was a virgin prior to her conception of the Lord Christ is probable.
The word “virgin” is rendered “a young marriageable woman”, in the margin of the Revised Version and also in Rabbi Leeser’s translation of the Bible. There is no thought here whether she had known a man or not, but “a young marriageable woman shall conceive.” That is all there is in this quotation, and that Mary was a young marriageable woman and a virgin; and that she did conceive by Joseph and thereby produced the body in which Eloah, a member of the God of the solar system, was incarnate, we have no reason to doubt.”
Hiram Butler
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 