Answering the Pagans Who Mock the Virgin Birth

These things are affirmed on the authority of the prophetic Scriptures, and so they may perhaps silence the Jews, unbelieving and hard to persuade though they are. But the pagans are in the habit of ridiculing us when they hear us speak of a birth from a virgin. We must therefore say a few words in reply to their objections. Every birth, I suppose, depends on three conditions. There must be a woman of mature age, she must have intercourse with a man, and her womb must not be barren. Of these three conditions, in the birth we are speaking of, one was missing: the man. And since he whose birth we speak of was not an earthly but a heavenly man, this was supplied by the heavenly Spirit, while the mother’s virginity was kept unbroken. [a]

And yet why should it be thought marvelous for a virgin to conceive, when it is well known that the eastern bird they call the phoenix is born, or born again, without any mate, in such a way that it always remains one, and by always being born or born again takes its own place? That bees know nothing of mating and of bearing young is common knowledge. There are other creatures too that are found to follow some such law of birth. Shall it be thought unbelievable, then, that something was done by divine power for the renewal and restoration of the whole world, when instances of it are seen in the births of animals? And yet it is strange that the Gentiles should think this impossible, when they believe that their own Minerva was born from the brain of Jupiter. What is harder to believe, or more contrary to nature? Here there is a woman, the order of nature is kept, there is conception, and in due time birth. There, there is no female, only a man, and yet a birth! Why does someone who believes the one marvel at the other? Again, they say that Father Bacchus was born from Jupiter’s thigh. Here is another monstrous tale, yet it is believed. Venus too, whom they call Aphrodite, was born, they believe, from the foam of the sea, as her compound name shows. They claim that Castor and Pollux were born from an egg, and the Myrmidons from ants. There are a thousand other things contrary to nature that they credit, such as the stones thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha, and the crop of men that sprang up from them.

When they believe such myths, and so many of them, does one thing alone seem impossible to them: that a woman of mature age, not defiled by a man but made pregnant by the Holy Spirit, should conceive a divine offspring? If they are slow to believe, they surely ought never to have given credit to those marvels, so many as they are and so degrading. But if they do believe them, they ought much more readily to accept these beliefs of ours, so honorable and so holy, than their own, so shameful and so vile.