A couple of articles on the possibility of human virgin birth.
Is the Virgin Birth Scientifically Impossible?
godandscience.org
Skeptics have often stated that it is impossible for a virgin to give birth to a child. While it would be a scientific anomaly to give birth while a virgin, it is not a scientific impossibility. This has been known to happen in nature, although it is rare. When it does happen, all offspring are female, since the female has two X chromosomes, so that the offspring inherit, also, two X chromosomes. However, it could be possible in humans for a woman to give birth to a male. The way that it could happen is if the woman had both an X and Y chromosome, which occurs in 1 in 5 million women. So, this possibility cannot be completely ruled out as impossible.
Of course, the Bible describes the virgin birth as a miracle that resulted from the action of the Holy Spirit.1 We don't know exactly what was involved, but it would probably require at least some genetic source from the Holy Spirit.
Regardless of the method by which Jesus was conceived, it would have been very risky to document and claim that He was born of a virgin. In the Middle East there were "honor killings" for women who conceived out of wedlock, so to speak of a virgin birth was extremely dishonorable. In fact, the Bible alludes to some disparaging remarks made by the opponents of Jesus.2 In addition, if you look at the anti-Christian literature at the time, much of it focused on this aspect of Christianity. This makes one wonder why, if Christians were just making up a religion, they say something that would offend virtually everybody in the Middle East. It makes no sense to make up something offensive, unless it were true.
Science of the Virgin Birth
telegraph.co.uk
LEAVING aside the tricky theological issue of whether a miracle really requires a plausible explanation, various accounts of the biology of the Virgin Birth have been put forward by a London professor of genetics.
The genetic recipe for Jesus must, of course, have come from Mary alone. But, if she was normal, she would have only the genetic wherewithal - in humans, a bundle of genes called the X chromosome - to make a female.
For Mary to give birth to a boy by parthenogenesis, she would also have had to have another chromosome, the Y chromosome, which separates the girls from the boys.
This creates something of a headache. If Mary had passed on a Y chromosome, it suggests that she carried a working Y chromosome that would have led to her possessing male characteristics as well as being sterile.
Sam Berry, emeritus professor of genetics at University College London, has proposed biologically conceivable mechanisms by which the virgin birth of a male child could occur, drawing on research on a condition called intersex, where sex lies somewhere between the male and female extremes.
In the absence of a sperm to import a Y chromosome, Berry speculates that Mary could have been male but suffered a genetic mutation that had the effect of preventing target cells in her body from "recognising" the male sex hormone testosterone; Mary would have been chromosomally XY but would appear as a normal female.
As a result of androgen insensitivity, she would also be sterile and lack a uterus. However, Berry points out that the differentiation of the sex organs can be variable, and it is possible a person of this constitution could develop an ovum and a uterus. "If this happened, and if the ovum developed parthenogenetically, and if a back-mutation to testosterone sensitivity took place, we would have the situation of an apparently normal woman giving birth without intercourse to a son."
The possibilities are by no means exhausted. Berry points out that some men are apparently XX, that is, have a female genetic complement. "Examination shows that in them the male determining factor of the Y (the SRY gene, which triggers male development) has been translocated on to another chromosome."
If this male determining gene was translocated to the X chromosome and if that chromosome was inactivated in early development (one X chromosome is always inactivated on a random basis, so normally half of the cells will express one X, say, the maternal X, and half the paternal X), the carrier will have a female appearance, but have the capacity to pass on the male determining gene.
Men with XX chromosomes are sterile. However, with enough ingenuity, this need not present a problem. "Jesus never married and we do not know if he was fertile (although he was, of course, 'perfect man' in the theological sense)," said Berry.
He stressed, however, that there is no certain record of parthenogenesis in humans, nor of a male being conceived without fertilisation by a Y-bearing sperm, never mind the effects of imprinting. But miracles are highly improbable, by definition.
Prof Berry is well aware of this: "The mechanisms I have outlined are unlikely, unproven, and involve the implication that either Jesus or Mary or both) were developmentally abnormal. My purpose in describing them is simply to reduce the assumption of incredibility that seems to dog the doctrine of the Virgin Birth."
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