A speculative explanation of the Virgin Birth
Christian tradition says Jesus was born to a virgin mother, Mary. If we could explain that by scientific means would that make it less a miracle/extraordinary event?
This snippet will describe a possible speculative scientific explanation of any virgin birth, but the biological method is so unusual that I think it remains a miracle!
Photo: Human implantation. Groll, J, Lessey, B, Glob. libr. women's med.,(ISSN: 1756-2228) 2009; DOI 10.3843/GLOWM.10318 (the moment of implantation of a fertilised ovum. )
Recent medical research describes strange occurrences of male cells in some women never pregnant or sexually active. These are whole male cells and not male sperm. This snippet will describe how those cells are known to come indirectly from a brother in a previous pregnancy of her mother, by an unusual transfer process. The condition is called microchimerism and although it is a long way from being an example of a virgin birth, this snippet will show it is so much closer to doing that, that it makes a virgin birth seem possible, though still extremely rare and amazing.
During pregnancy there is a surprising amount of interchange of cells between the baby and mother, through the placenta, and these “tourist” cells can survive for decades in the body of each other after birth. The exchange goes both ways. Mother-cells cross to the baby, and baby-cells cross to the mother. The amount of interchange is still quite small, at most a few percent in exceptional cases, but is a normal and medically well-known part of pregnancy.
Microchimerism from tourist cells improves health in the body they visit. The tourist cells seem to migrate to the site of any wounds and help healing. They also seem to protect against some cancers, for example breast cancer in the mother. Another example is that male tourist cells in a mother reduce the amount of ovarian cancer. The mechanism is still being studied, but it seems male cells can even get into ovaries, and somehow protect the mother.
Usually the tourist cells try to “do as the Romans do”, that is, take on many of the characteristics of the tissue cells as they settle in an organ. This is very much parallel to primitive “stem cells” from the umbilical cord which can behave similarly. Stem cells can grow into any type of cell – liver, lung, muscle, ovary. In this similar case the “tourist” cells become like some other cells in the ovaries.
Some of these tourist cells do not stay in the mother, but transfer into the next baby. They originated in the first baby, transferred to the mother and then transferred to the second baby. This means that the next baby can have cells not just from the mother, but even some from a previous sister or brother, though much more rarely.
Let us imagine the following sequence:
The mother of Mary, whom we shall call Anne, gets pregnant with a son, and gives birth to him, while accumulating quite a few male cells from him. Some of these tourist male cells from the first pregnancy then transfer from Ann during her second pregnancy, which is of her second child, Mary. Within Mary some transfer to her developing ovaries. We know this can happen, though it is quite rare. Mary is then born.
Then let us imagine within the ovaries of Mary the tourist cells act rather like ova. Ova would usually be released into the womb and be fertilised, through contribution of chromosomes from sperm. However the tourist cells have already got all the chromosomes they need, and don’t need fertilisation. If they were released like ova into the womb we could imagine speculatively a rare process, in which a male tourist cell might act like a fertilised ovum, implant in the womb wall, and develop as a male baby. This would give rise to the virgin birth of a male; Jesus. Speculative? Of course; highly. (There is no known evidence that Mary had older brothers.) Rare? Extremely. But not outside the bounds of imagination.
Would that mean it was not a miracle? Rather I think it would be so rare we would still look at the process and say Wow! It would be still God doing this from Go to Wow!
Wow.