The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 2) — Page 54
CH. 3 ĀL-E-‘IMRĀN to. In chapter 5 of the said Gospel we read that when the high priest made a public order that all the virgins living in the temple who had reached their fourteenth year should return home, all the other virgins yielded obed- ience to this command, but "Mary the virgin of the Lord" alone answered that she could not comply with it; and for this refusal of hers she assigned the reason that both she and her parents had devoted her to the service of the Lord, and that she had vowed virginity to the Lord, which vow she was resolved never to break (Gospel of Mary, 5:4, 5, 6). Mary's subsequent marriage with Joseph was thus contrary to the vow and against her own wish. She was, however, compelled by circumstances to marry when found with child. The priests had to arrange her marriage with Joseph in order to avoid scandal. It does not, however, appear from the Gospels how Joseph was prevailed upon to consent, for he was obviously in the dark about her being pregnant at the time of marriage (Matt. 1:18, 19). Presumably some plausible excuse was found to justify the breaking of the vow. Christians and Jews are both agreed that the birth of Jesus was something out of the ordinary-the Christians holding it as supernatural and the Jews as illegitimate (Jew. Enc. ). Even in the family birth register, Jesus' birth was recorded as such (Talmud). This fact alone should constitute a sufficient proof of Jesus' birth being out of the PT. 3 ordinary. But it was neither supernatural nor illegitimate. To quote only one medical authority: "Medical men have not ruled out altogether the possibility of natural parthenogenesis of the production of a child by a female, without any relation to a male. Such a statement off-hand appears ridiculous, yet its possibility, from a purely biological standpoint, under certain conditions cannot be disregarded. Dr. Timme calls attention to this possibility as the result of a certain type of tumours, known as arrhenoblastoma (from the Greek words for "male" and "germ") which are occasionally found in the female pelvis or lower body. These tumours are capable of generating male sperm cells. Naturally, if these male sperm cells 494 were alive and active and came in contact with the female's own egg cell or ovum, conception might occur. There is nothing illogical in this process of reasoning. . . Dr. Timme states that there are twenty authentic cases reported in Europe in which an arrhenoblastoma had been found to develop male sperm cells. . . The arrhenoblastoma is a tumour that contains blastodermic cells. . . These cells are creative structures and are capable of development at any time and the fact, therefore, that arrhenoblas- toma containing these "embryonic cells" might create testicular tissue, capable of producing male sperm cells seems scientifically not impossible. If living male sperm cells are produced in a female body by