The Muslim Christmas Story: Christ in the Qur'an

Gustavo, I enjoy such posts as these with passages from Qur'an.

I have been enjoying some of your other posts lately.  You are well-spoken, well-read, and have an excellent writing style.

I have always found it interesting that the Qur'an records something about Mary's upbringing as a child, which is missing from the Judaeo-Christian scriptures, but which has always been transmitted in Greek Orthodox oral tradition. 

Of course, I realized what shirk means in Islam, so what I am posting here is simply for the purpose of scholarly interest.

There is a Roman Catholic priest on myspace.com who often posts interesting things.   Today, he posted a poem by Wordsworth which for him touches upon the Roman Catholic notion of "the immaculate conception" of Mary. 

I post these things because it is good for us to have some insight into the reasoning of other religions, and also, to the ways in which various denominations within the same religion disagree on essential matters.

I should mention that I personally was raised by non-religious parents of Protestant ancestry, and never brought to any church even once.  Though my pen name for years has been Sitaram, I am an American with no Indian ancestry.  I mention this because someone has inaccurately stated that my agenda is to "bash" Islam and endorse "dharmic" religions of Hinduism and Buddhism.
My agenda is simply to study and reflect upon the comparative theologies of all the various religions.  I have not participated in any congregational form of corporate worship for many years now.  I no longer feel the personal need for organized religion, but there are many in the world who do, and I certainly understand and respect that need.  Carl Jung, who was perhaps the greatest of all the disciples of Freud, said that "if a person does not address the issues of psychic need for religion by mid-life, then they shall most likely suffer some psychopathology" (paraphrasing from memory).

So here is my post in reply to the priest's post:

Father, I always enjoy your posts!

When I was a novice for one year (at age 25) in a Greek Orthodox monastery (Holy Transfiguration in Brookline), I remember one reading, during trapeza (refectory meal), from some theologian of the 6th century (described as of Semitic tradition), who speaks of the upbringing of the Virgin Mary, in the Holy of Holies in the Temple  (this Greek oral tradition is actually recorded in the Muslim Qur'an), saying that she was "cleansed through a process of scouring, as it were, to approach as close as possible for a human to a  state of sinless purity."

Now, the Greeks never accepted the notion of an "immaculate conception" of Mary, to avoid the taint of "original sin" (which the Greeks also reject).  One Greek Bishop with quite a sense of humor once commented that the doctrine of Immaculate Conception was a poor solution to a non-existent problem.

My wife is a devout Roman Catholic from the Philippines, so I understand Roman Catholic beliefs, and mean no disrespect or contention by sharing these curious and little known views.

The Greeks refer to Christ as Theos-Anthropos (literally, God-man).  Their notion is that Mary must be completely human in every sense of the word, including some measure of potential for sin (however vanishingly small), so that the true synthesis of God and Human may give birth to the Theanthropos Logos. 

Various Greek hymns and prayers refer to Jesus as "the only sinless one."  Now it is interesting that Jesus tells two of the apostles that it is not possible for them to sit at Jesus left and right in the kingdom.  A Greek iconostasis always depicts Mary to the right of Jesus, and John the Baptist to the left.  Now, Jesus states that "no greater male was ever born of a woman (gynecka) than John the Baptist.  Gynecka, of course, is that Greek word from which we derive gynecology. BUT, Jesus was NOT born of gyneka, but of PARTHENOS (i.e. a virgin).

Now Jesus also states that "a wiser than a Solomon is in your midst (meaning himself)."  But, we see that Solomon prayed to God for wisdom, and God directly answered Solomon saying, "you shall be wiser than any man who came before you, and any man who shall ever come after you."  Well, if Jesus is saying that Jesus is WISER than Solomon, then, one might conclude that Jesus is not a man (anthropos) but is THEANTHROPOS.

I thought perhaps I would share the ancient but little known early Greek patristic observations for those who take interest in such topics.