48 Hours

Did a Special on the Virgin Birth-the other night. In it they had John Dominic Crossan on speaking openly against why the Virgin Birth didn't happen.

He made two points I heard the next day.

1. Mark,John, and Paul didn't mention it.

Response: If Matthew and Luke didn't mention it than this would be Crossan's ammo. Crossan denies the Resurrection which all 4 Gospels and Paul mention. As far as why Mark doesn't mention it a lot has to do with the way, Mark is written. Everything is written from the persepctive of an eyewitness. So since Mark reads like a news-reel this is why it maybe isn't mentioned. John claims Jesus is God in Human Flesh, this is the very crux of why the Virgin Birth is important, so it's not a contradictory doctrine here. Paul maybe didn't mention it since it wasn't really a disputed fact, also Paul doesn't reflect a lot on events in the life of Jesus. Liberals like to quote Galatians 4:4 as arguing against a Virgin Birth, but no one disputes Jesus was born of a women in human flesh, and this does not contradict the accounts of Matthew, and Luke.

2. It was copied from a Pagan Religion.

I wrote a paper on this topic debunking this point from J.Gresham Machen's The Virgin Birth of Christ. Most Pagan Virgin Birth narratives deal with Gods engaging in sex with mortals, this is not the claim of the Virgin Birth. Machen goes through about every one of these stories, people like to cite and point out their differences. I could post what I wrote at a later date to debunk this. But the main point is that they are dissimilar stories in comparing Pagan Birth narratives to the Birth of Jesus Christ.