Virgin birth in other religions and relevance to Christianity

Chesterton notes this assumption in the "Ball and the Cross"

With a smart journalistic instinct characteristic of all his school, the editor of The Atheist had put first in his paper and most prominently in his window an article called "The Mesopotamian Mythology and its Effects on Syriac Folk Lore." Mr. Evan MacIan began to read this quite idly, as he would have read a public statement beginning with a young girl dying in Brighton and ending with Bile Beans. He received the very considerable amount of information accumulated by the author with that tired clearness of the mind which children have on heavy summer afternoons--that tired clearness which leads them to go on asking questions long after they have lost interest in the subject and are as bored as their nurse.

The streets were full of people and empty of adventures. He might as well know about the gods of Mesopotamia as not; so he flattened his long, lean face against the dim bleak pane of the window and read all there was to read about Mesopotamian gods. He read how the Mesopotamians had a god named Sho (sometimes pronounced Ji), and that he was described as being very powerful, a striking similarity to some expressions about Jahveh, who is also described as having power. Evan had never heard of Jahveh in his life, and imagining him to be some other Mesopotamian idol, read on with a dull curiosity. He learnt that the name Sho, under its third form of Psa, occurs in an early legend which describes how the deity, after the manner of Jupiter on so many occasions, seduced a Virgin and begat a hero. This hero, whose name is not essential to our existence, was, it was said, the chief hero and Saviour of the Mesopotamian ethical scheme. Then followed a paragraph giving other examples of such heroes and Saviours being born of some profligate intercourse between God and mortal.

And this is our natural reaction to such statements:

Then followed a paragraph--but Evan did not understand it. He read it again and then again. Then he did understand it. The glass fell in ringing fragments on to the pavement, and Evan sprang over the barrier into the shop, brandishing his stick.

The Catholic doesn't think about these things unless provoked, he knows that the Virgin Mary is his mother and recognizes that other religions have other mothers and leaves it at that.

The prophecy that "A virgin (or even a young woman) shall bear a son and he will be called God with Us" (Isaiah 7:14) may be a prophecy that is not unique as a prophecy to Christianity or Judaism. But it is unique as a matter of fact, in that it came true.

Christianity is about covenants and renewal, God's part of the covenant is that He keeps His promises. How He fulfills them is purely up to Him. Nobody expected wis*m*n to come looking for Jesus following a star, except maybe the wis*m*n and God. Catholics also believe that whereas Christianity is the fullness of truth, other religions have hints of it and sometimes more than hints.

That these things should happen throughout history is just a foreshadowing of the goodness of God which is written on our souls when we're created. It's unavoidable that things which are the same should bear some similarity, it doesn't mean everyone looks at them the same way or everyone is right about how they look at them.

On other "virgin births" predating the concept of a virgin birth in Christianity:

The notion of the virgin birth in Christianity predates the actual birth of Christ too; it was prophesied explicitly some centuries earlier. Certainly in Isaiah, we have:

Isaiah 7:14 (MSG):

So the Master is going to give you a sign anyway. Watch for this: A girl who is presently a virgin will get pregnant. She'll bear a son and name him Immanuel (God-With-Us)

In addition, the fact that this verse in Genesis (known as the Protoevangelium*) talks of "her offspring" when it was/is more usual to refer to the offspring of a couple as being of the father rather than the mother, is interpreted by some theologians as a prophecy, or at the very least a hint, of a virgin birth:

Genesis 3:15 (MSG):

God told the serpent: "Because you've done this, you're cursed, cursed beyond all cattle and wild animals, Cursed to slink on your belly and eat dirt all your life. I'm declaring war between you and the Woman, between your offspring and hers. He'll wound your head, you'll wound his heel."

Because this happens right at the beginning of the human race, arguably this reference to virgin birth predates all others (although it is of course less explicit in meaning than the Isaiah prophecy).

Relevance of other virgin birth stories to Christianity

Because there is that hint of a virgin birth right at the beginning of things, the comparison you draw to flood legends is a good one. It is logical that any culture with a collective recollection of the Flood may also have a collective recollection of the events before it; the Creation and the Fall, in which we find the Protoevangelium. In that respect the relevance of legends of virgin births to Christianity is similar to the relevance of flood legends to Christianity.

_{*Not to be confused with the Protoevangelium of James}