Answer: No. The doctrine of Incarnation came from paganism.
1) Is the "Incarnation" in the Bible? No!
"incarnated" - occurs 0 times in 0 verses in the KJV.
"incarnation" - occurs 0 times in 0 verses in the KJV.
"incarnate" - occurs 0 times in 0 verses in the KJV.
"Incarnated Christ", "incarnation" or "incarnate" is not in our Bible. These words and ideas are coming from paganism.
2) What is the "Incarnation"?
The teaching that God Himself became a man is the essence of "Incarnational theology." This doctrine is not from the Bible. This is even admitted by Trinitarian scholars:
"Incarnation, in its full and proper sense, is not something directly presented in Scripture." (Dunn, op. cit., Christology in the Making, p. 4, quoting M. Wiles.)
The doctrine, which took classical shape under the influence of the controversies of the 4th-5th centuries, was formally defined at the Council of Chalcedon of 451...(F. L. Cross, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, p. 696.)
Teaching the Jews that God came down in the form of a man would have completely offended those living at the time of Christ and the Apostles and greatly contradicted their understanding of the Messianic Scriptures. This doctrine is derived most prominently from the gospel of John:
John 1:14
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
But was "the Word" synonymous with "the Messiah" in Jewish understanding? No. The Jews would have understood "the word" to mean a "plan" or "purpose," that which was clearly and specifically declared in Genesis:
Genesis 3:15
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
A "seed" of a woman who would destroy the works of the Devil. This plan of Yah for the salvation of man finally "became flesh" in Yahushua Christ.
This verse is not establishing a doctrine of Incarnation contrary to all prophetic expectations, nor a teaching of pre-existence. It is a teaching of Yah's great love in bringing into existence His plan to save mankind from their sin.
3) What is traditionally understood by the "Incarnation" of Christ?
The traditional "formula which enshrines the Incarnation …is that in some sense God, without ceasing to be God, was made man." (New Bible Dictionary, Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub., Grand Rapids, MI, 1975, p. 558.)
It appears to mean that the divine Maker became one of His own creatures, which is a prima facie contradiction in theological terms. (Ibid., p. 558.)
When the Word "became flesh," His deity was not abandoned or reduced or contracted, nor did He cease to exercise the divine functions which had been His before… The Incarnation of the Son of God, then, was not a diminishing of deity, but an acquiring of manhood. (Ibid., p. 560.)
How a pre-existent "God the Son" can become a man without any "diminishing of deity?" Or how could he live a "fully human" life without ceasing to exercise the divine functions he had been exercising since eternity began? This makes no sense.
But Trinitarians say this is part of the "mystery" of the Incarnation. The New Bible Dictionary admits that the concept is not developed or discussed in the New Testament:
The only sense in which the New Testament writers ever attempt to explain the incarnation is by showing how it fits into God’s overall plan for redeeming mankind…This evangelical interest throws light on the otherwise puzzling fact that the New Testament nowhere reflects on the virgin birth of Jesus as witnessing to the conjunction of deity and manhood in His person—a line of thought much canvassed by later theology. (Ibid., p. 559.)
If the deity of Jesus was not at first clearly stated in words (and Acts gives no hint that it was), it was nevertheless part of the faith by which the first Christians lived and prayed…The theological formulation of belief in the Incarnation came later, but the belief itself, however incoherently expressed, was there in the Church from the beginning. (Ibid., p. 558.)
We disagree with the assertion that the doctrine of the Incarnation was "in the Church from the beginning." Since the doctrine is clearly not in Scripture, how can it possibly be considered a part of "the Apostles’ Doctrine"?
"Incarnation," at least in the most common Christian conception, is the belief that Yahushua is not a created being, but the invisible God "clothed" in human flesh.
Thus the biblical account of the creation of the Last Adam is exchanged for a myth. The concept of God, or any spirit being, becoming a human baby is completely inconsistent with biblical truth.
Church leaders of the third and fourth centuries after Christ were not diligent to allow the whole of Scripture to determine Christian doctrine. In the absence of a complete commitment to the whole Bible, they misconstrued the language of the gospel of John and used it to establish a doctrine that does not harmonize with Old Testament prophecy, the Synoptic Gospels and the rest of the New Testament.
4) The Incarnation came from paganism
The idea that God Himself came and lived among us in the form of a man echoes pagan mythology. A pre-existent divine being taking on human flesh and being raised by regular human parents sounds so mythological that it has often been derided by critics, especially Jews and Muslims. This is even admitted by our Trinitarian source:
Such an assertion, considered abstractly against the background of Old Testament monotheism, might seem blasphemous or nonsensical— as indeed, orthodox Judaism has always held it to be. (New Bible Dictionary, p. 558)
Robinson discusses the mythological character of the traditional and popular understanding of the Incarnation, or “the Christmas story”:
Traditional Christology has worked with a frankly supranaturalist scheme. Popular religion has expressed this mythologically, professional theology metaphysically. For this way of thinking, the Incarnation means that God the Son came down to earth, and was born, lived and died within this world as a man... As the God-man, he united in his person the supernatural and the natural: and the problem of Christology is how Jesus can be fully God and fully man, and yet genuinely one person.
The traditional supranaturalistic way of describing the Incarnation almost inevitably suggests that Jesus was really God Almighty walking about on earth, dressed up as a man. Jesus was not a man born and bred—he was God for a limited period taking part in a charade. He looked like a man, he talked like a man, he felt like a man, but underneath he was God dressed up—like Father Christmas…Indeed, the very word “incarnation” (which, of course is not a Biblical term) almost inevitably suggests it. It conjures up the idea of a divine substance being plunged in flesh and coated with it like chocolate or silver plating…The supranaturalist view of the Incarnation can never really rid itself of the idea of the prince who appears in the guise of a beggar. However genuinely destitute the beggar may be, he is a prince; and that in the end is what matters. (Robinson, op. cit., Honest to God, pp. 65 and 66.)
4) Did Apostles believe in Incarnation and Triune God? No!
The idea that God or the gods could come down in the form of men was a common view in New Testament times. We see a very clear example of this in the book of Acts, following the healing of a crippled man:
Acts 14:11-13
When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, "The gods have come down to us in human form!"
Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker.
The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them.
Paul and Barnabas did not take this opportunity to explain that it was not they who were gods come in human form, but Yahushua (who was supposedly "God made man"). Instead, they argued against the mythological basis of such pagan beliefs and practices:
Acts 14:14-15
But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting:
"Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them."
As this section of Scripture implies, most people influenced by Greek and Roman religion and culture believed in a variety of myths involving the intermingling of gods, men, women, and even animals.
The Roman mythological pantheon included a triad, meaning a group of three gods, composed of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus. Jupiter was the god of the heavens and Mars the god of war, while Quirinus represented the common people (the Greeks had no similar god).
By the late 500’s B.C., the Romans replaced the archaic triad with another triad of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. Juno was associated with Hera [the wife of Zeus], and Minerva with Athena, who sprang fully grown from Zeus’ head.
The chief god in the Greek pantheon, Zeus, visited the human woman Danae in the form of golden rain and fathered Perseus, a “god-man.” Hercules (Herakles) was the son of Zeus, who fooled Alcmena by impersonating her husband, the general Amphitryon. In his descent into the realms of death, Hercules had become the Saviour of his people...
Conclusion: The idea of the Incarnation of Christ comes not from the Bible, but from paganism. While people believed that "The gods have come down to us in human form!", the Apostles denied this idea. Yahushua Christ was not God, is not God and was not pre-existent before his birth on earth.