The Virgin Birth 6: The Last Two Objections

Here I discuss the last two objections I plan to cover to the accounts of the infancy and Virgin Birth of Jesus. These are 1) the claim that Luke contradicts Matthew about when Mary and Joseph returned to Nazareth and 2) the claim that Luke's genealogy of Jesus contradicts Matthew's. Note that the second of these strictly speaking goes outside Luke's birth and infancy story, since he gives the genealogy of Jesus when he tells about his baptism.  I discuss responses to these that would be incompatible with the doctrine of inerrancy but that I consider plausible. 

These theories involve understandable, good-faith errors (as it happens in both cases on the part of Luke) resulting from his not having additional information found in Matthew. I also say what approach I would suggest that inerrantists take--that is to say, what responses consistent with inerrancy I consider to be the best options.   Given the nature of these errors (if they are errors), there is no serious "hit" to Luke's very high reliability as an histo3rian even if those theories are true, and no reason whatsoever to think that anything (such as the story of the flight to Egypt) has been deliberately invented by anyone or that any fact has been deliberately changed. 

I also discuss how bad arguments from silence are when used as skeptics use them for evaluating historical statements and why we should be extremely reluctant to consider a story in Source A invented merely because we don't find it in Source B and "surely" so-and-so would have mentioned it if it were true. In this case, that argument is relevant to the claim that "surely" if Mary (or a document based on Mary's memories) were Luke's source, she would have told him about the flight to Egypt. Enjoy!  

Orig. uploaded to YouTube Dec 31 2020