The Miraculous Conceptionor, the Divinity of Jesus Christ Considered as the Foundation of the Christian Religion

This is a bracing work of rationalist biblical criticism from the Enlightenment era. Peter Annet turns the tools of logic and historical inquiry onto the Gospel accounts of Jesus' nativity, systematically dismantling the contradictions between Matthew and Luke's divergent birth narratives that orthodoxy had long ignored. He argues that the miraculous conception story emerged not from historical fact but from a deliberate effort to elevate Christ's status in response to contemporary prejudices. Annet dissects each Gospel account with relentless precision, showing how the accepted interpretation rests on theological convenience rather than textual coherence. His central provocation: what if the most fundamental doctrine of Christianity was never a fact at all, but a story invented to serve a religious movement's ambitions? This is religious skepticism at its most courageous and intellectually rigorous, a book that asks readers to question what they've been taught to revere.