The Virgin Birth 7: Solid historicity stands despite dubious doubts

In this final episode of my Virgin Birth series I treat the viewer to a reading of various interesting quotations from, unfortunately, evangelical scholars expressing...well, you can decide for yourself what they are expressing. Something about the infancy narratives in the Gospels. Something about how defensible they are or are not, historically.  What's the point? When you hear doubts raised by anyone, even an evangelical Christian, about the historicity or defensibility of some portion of the Gospels, you should never assume that these references to profound problems are based on some especially cogent evidence, merely because the person speaking is himself a Christian. An anti-supernatural bias is not the only route to some *highly* misguided conclusions. Fortunately there are not really deep, serious problems with the historicity of the birth narratives. In fact, they fare well historically, and therefore so does the Virgin Birth, even under severe historical scrutiny.  

In the course of the episode I refer to Robert Gundry's commentary on Matthew. Here in order are links to an exchange in the 1980s between Gundry and Douglas Moo on Gundry's dehistoricizing claims about Matthew:  https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/26/26-1/26-1-pp031-039_JETS.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1vxCAgQUkG5vO4V_GFgPBVo6MUhRRyRKC0BrFBg1f8KhL_o6mccZRK-7k  https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/26/26-1/26-1-pp041-056_JETS.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2NsxbGeEsJ87MzAMguweoCS3dw_rFMVkuv22xs18YyvWVq5n_XHfJclFY  https://static1.squarespace.com/static/537a4700e4b0cc86709d564c/t/538e0b36e4b08cd19602c159/1401817910720/MatthewandMidrashRejoinder.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0SeqUSvwHutbUUZ6Psc-h6Tvurkdmiu--4d0BbZWEdCrM3BLLuYqqnZAQ  https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/26/26-1/26-1-pp071-086_JETS.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2sQhD9MGaT8wdmSPQkL3oo4xkA3F-xP7chCMaXraALy0-cN_Ilj0LijO4  Here is D. A. Carson's critique of Gundry's commentary:  https://s3.amazonaws.com/tgc-documents/carson/1982_Gundry_on_Matt.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1vxCAgQUkG5vO4V_GFgPBVo6MUhRRyRKC0BrFBg1f8KhL_o6mccZRK-7k  

Here is my Themelios article on probability theory and the misuse of the concept of independent attestation to try to bolster the historicity of some minimal "core" of facts even after we have refused to defend robust reliability. I use as one example Michael Licona's mistaken statements about what (he says) would be the case even if Matthew and Luke invented the non-overlapping portions of their birth stories:  https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/finessing-independent-attestation-interdisciplinary-biblical-criticism/  Be sure to watch the rest of the series if you haven't already! Like, subscribe, and hit the bell for notifications.  

Orig. uploated to YouTube Jan 4 2021