Letters

Guy Liardet

with regard to the Virgin Birth question and Dr Mason's letter, my 'libel' of the early church fathers was based on St Augustine of Hippo's fathering of a son on his North African concubine, his disertion and subsequent statement that it was wrong for a woman, even an elderly sister, to live under the same roof as a Servant of God. St Jerome, always a rich source of misogynistic quotes, wonders whether it is licit for a virgin to bathe at all, 'for in seeing their own bodies there is the potential for desire'. The 'Custody of the Enclosure' in the Rule of the Poor Clares is redolent of a prurient sexual repression and mistrust. The historian Howard Bloch in his chapter 'The Poetics of Virginity in 'Medieval Misogyny and the Birth of European Romantic Love' (1991)paints a sad picture of the church's deep psychosexual muddle. Paul in Galatians Ch4 is heralding the essential normalcy of God's gift of his Son - the Word made Flesh, if you like- if he had known about,believed in, needed a virgin birth to prop up Christ's divinity, he would surely have said so, loud and clear. Geza Vermes (The Changing Face of Jesus 2001)deals with the 'mistranslation' question in scholarly fashion - the meaning of the words betulah and parthenos, Jewish legal definitions of virginity which include a girl pregnant before her first menstruation (not unusual in some societies even today) who is classified as a 'virgin mother'