The Archbishop and the Virgin

Dan Wooding, of ASSIST, reports, 'In an interview with Simon Mayo on BBC Five Live on Wednesday, December 19, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, cleared the confusion on some key details in the story of the birth of Jesus Christ, including his birth in a manger to the Virgin Mary.
When asked by Mayo, "the baby Jesus in a manger; historically and factually true?" the Archbishop replied, "I should think so.yes, he's born in poor circumstances, slightly out of the ordinary."''

Now there is a real piece of British understatement if ever there was one.

'Regarding the accuracy of Mary being a virgin, Dr. Williams said, "The two gospels that tell the story have the story of the virgin birth and that's something I'm committed to as part of what I've inherited."...When asked by Mayo on Five Live just how important it was as a Christian to believe in the Virgin Birth, the Archbishop said it should not be regarded "as a kind of hurdle that people have to get over before they, you know, be signed up.""But I think quite a few people that as time goes on, they get a sense, a deeper sense of what the virgin birth is about," he added. "I would say that of myself. About thirty years ago I might have said I wasn't too fussed about it - now I see it much more as dovetailing with the rest of what I believe about the story and yes."'

How good to hear the liberal archbishop has become more biblical and grown to really believe the creed he has said since childhood.

'The story said that the Archbishop also remained untroubled by doubts over the use of the term 'virgin' to describe Mary at the time of the conception of Jesus, saying that it need not be regarded as a mistranslation.
"One of the gospels quotes a prophecy that a virgin will conceive a child," he explained. "Now the original Hebrew doesn't have the word virgin, it's just a young woman, but that's the prophecy that's quoted from the Old Testament in support of the story which is, in any case, about a birth without a human father, so it's not that it rests on mistranslation.St Matthew's gone to his Greek version of the Bible and said, 'Oh, "virgin"; sounds like the story I know," and put it in."'

Or perhaps Matthew knew that if unmarried girls in Israel were not virgins they would big in BIG trouble. In their culture,unlike ours, unmarried girl and virgon were the same thing.