>My understanding, without background references is that the traditional justification for the virgin birth was that it was how Christ obtained a sinless nature. My suspicion is this related to ancient ideas on how conception occurred, that the man planted the seed in the woman who essentially provided the a suitable host. This idea of conception seems to have survived into the early microscope era, I recall seeing early drawings of sperm where people thought they could see homunculi in the sperm.<
I do not know about ideas current in the first century AD, but I believe that there were advocates of principally maternal origin of babies, as well as of principally paternal origin, in the medieval to early modern eras. The drawings of homunculi get more publicity, but this was not universal opinion.
Dr. David Campbell
Old Seashells
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That is Uncle Joe, taken in the masonic regalia of a Grand Exalted Periwinkle of the Mystic Order of Whelks-P.G. Wodehouse, Romance at Droigate Spa
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