I have a small contribution to this topic that's already "out there," in a post to the newsgroup alt.religion.christian.biblestudy July 15, 2000:

http://makeashorterlink.com/?C5E012DA6

Sometimes it's a real mess with these shorter links in email, so here is my part of the post in question:

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A literal-physical understanding of the "Immaculate conception" of Mary would make the entire genealogy of Jesus pointless and meaningless. The Old Testament  is a looooooong tale of selective breeding on the paternal side to provide Joseph with genes fit to sire a deity.

An embryo needs a male and a female cell to come into existence. That is a scientific fact. Some may choose to explain this away by talking about an all-powerful circus magician who plays dice with natural law, but common sense dictates that this is pure superstitious nonsense.

Rudolf Steiner's approach to this mystery was a different one. In the first place, if Joseph had not been the biological father of Jesus, his elaborate genealogy all the way from Adam, which is recorded in the Bible, would make no sense. Neither would the Old Testament, where the hereditary lineage of Jesus on his father's side is the central theme.

The mission of the Hebrew people, according to Steiner, was to provide the purest and the most highly developed physical vehicle to receive the Christ. And when the time drew near, when the seers and the initiates perceived that the God of the Spiritual Sun was approaching the Earth, a very special and unusual kind of conception had to be prepared for.

The reason for this is that according to the laws of heredity, we adopt not only certain physiological characteristics, but also soul spiritual ones like temper, inclinations, etc. At the moment of conception, we adopt a piece of soul-substance from each parent. Because we are in a state of passion during the hedonistic pleasure of lovemaking, inherent selfish tendencies enter the soul of the embryo as soon as sperm and egg unite. This is what 'hereditary sin' is all about, and why it has been associated with sensuality and sexuality.

In order to provide an untainted soul-substance for the Christ, it was necessary for the conception to happen in an unorthodox way. Joseph and Maria were so spiritually advanced that they were capable of an Oriental technique which provides for sexual intercourse without passion or hedonistic pleasure. On the contrary, it is experienced as a sacrifice. In this way, the purest body and soul substance was provided for the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. In this manner, the Saviour was born 'without sin.'

The picture of the Holy Spirit miraculously inseminating the Virgin Mary was a beautiful means of helping simple-minded people understand the Immaculate Conception and its supernatural significance. But unless the Christian mysteries are approached in a more mature way in the future, they will eventually become the exclusive property of irrational zealots and fanatical fundamentalists.

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Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/