Virgin birth of Jesus
The Christian belief that Mary conceived Jesus through the Holy Spirit without sexual relations, and gave birth while still a virgin.
Gospel of Matthew: A New Testament Gospel presenting Jesus’s life, teachings, death, and resurrection. Its opening chapters describe Mary’s pregnancy and connect it to a prophecy in Isaiah.
Incarnation: The Christian doctrine that God became human in Jesus Christ. The virgin conception is understood as the beginning of Jesus’s human life, not the entirety of the incarnation.
Historical Jesus: The first-century Jewish teacher and preacher reconstructed through historical methods. Historical inquiry evaluates the birth accounts using methods distinct from theological claims.
Christology: The branch of Christian theology concerned with the identity and nature of Jesus Christ. The virgin birth became one element in accounts of who Jesus is and how he entered human life.
Gospel of Luke: A New Testament Gospel recounting Jesus’s life and presenting him as savior for all peoples. Its infancy narrative tells of the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary and Jesus’s birth.
Annunciation: The event in Christian tradition when the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would bear Jesus. It is the moment when Mary learns of the conception described in Luke.
Immaculate Conception: The Catholic doctrine that Mary was preserved from original sin from the first moment of her own conception. It concerns Mary’s conception, not Jesus’s conception.
Theotokos: A Greek title meaning “God-bearer,” affirmed for Mary at the Council of Ephesus in 431. The title expresses the claim that the one Mary bore is truly divine as well as human.
Infancy Gospel of James: A second-century Christian text narrating Mary’s birth, upbringing, and perpetual virginity. It develops traditions about Mary’s virginity beyond the accounts in Matthew and Luke.
Mary, mother of Jesus: A Jewish woman of Nazareth, identified in Christian tradition as Jesus’s mother. Her role and status are central to every Christian account of Jesus’s virgin birth.