Demolishing Triablogue, part 2: Yes, Steve Hays, the virgin birth is poorly attested, Mark's silence screams

Less than a week after I showed up at Triablogue to challenge Engwer and others on their Christian claims, somebody there banned me, but did so in a way that caused my posts to disappear while leaving up the reply posts made by Engwer and others, so that the only part of my posts that survived was the part they chose to quote in their replies.

(!?)

This is akin to a Christian who posts his unedited video recording of a live atheist-Christian debate to youtube, but after deciding he doesn't wish to interact with the atheist debator's remarks, removes it and posts an edited version of the video that removes all the atheist's speaker's remarks, except for a few that the Christian doesn't feel threatened by.

 Anyway, what follows is my direct point-by point reply to Steve Hays's post, followed by a justification for the argument from silence and why it is powerful in light of Mark's silence on the virgin birth.

Is the virgin birth poorly attested?

Thursday, December 29, 2016 

1. A stereotypical objection to the virgin birth is that it's only attested in two of the four Gospels. Likewise, Paul is silent on the subject.

The more detailed form of the objection is that if the virgin birth was believed to be historical truth by any NT writers beyond Matthew and Luke, those other authors would surely have mentioned it, since they clearly intend to exactly "repeat" truths that their originally intended addressees were presumed to already trust in.

A potential problem with stereotypical objections is how they condition people who view an issue. If an issue is routinely framed in a particular way, it may not occur to people to think outside that framework.

It's not that complicated, Steve.  All that needs to be done is to show the proper criteria for justifying an argument from silence, and then showing that the silence of the NT authors outside of Matthew and Luke on the virgin birth, fulfills that criteria.

2. Before getting to my main point, Paul's silence is to be expected. He was an adult living in Jerusalem at the time of Christ's public ministry. It's hardly surprising that he talks about events so close to his own time and place, in the life of Christ. By contrast, the birth of Christ probably took place several years before Paul was born.

That is not biblically sound.  Yes, the birth of Christ took place several years before Paul was born, but Paul  refers to the birth of Jesus nonetheless in Galatians 4:4.  Since Paul here refers to an event in Jesus life preceding Paul's life by a few years, then, contrary to your argument, Paul cannot be presumed to stay silent about things in Jesus' life merely because they happened a few years before Paul was born.   You'll have to find something other than "it's old news!" to explain Paul's silence.

3 Apropos (1), I'd recast the issue. If anything, what's striking is not that the virgin birth wasn't recorded in more than two Gospels, but that's recorded at all. Reporting the circumstances of his conception poses a dilemma.

It also provides "reason" to believe Jesus is the son of God, so there's clearly more than mere "concern to tell the historical truth" in the motives of Matthew and Luke to tell this story.

In the nature of the case, a NT author can't mention the virgin birth without simultaneously informing his readers that Mary was pregnant out of wedlock. After all, you can't have one without the other.

I don't see your point, Matthew and Luke make it clear that this particular out-of-wedlock pregnancy was the will of God.  They solved the dilemma before it had a chance to exist. 

But the moment he says Mary was pregnant out of wedlock, that opens a can of worms. Only people who are already Christian believe the story of the virgin birth.

And as you'll find out later in my post, Matthew's likely intended readership was not unbelievers or unbelieving Jews, but Jews who already had a Christian faith.  If that theory is more likely than the theory that he wrote for unbelieving Jews, then Matthew was telling the virgin birth story only to Christians, and as such, your attempt to create a dilemma so you can argue Mathtew and Luke only mention the story because it is true, fails.

By contrast, people who aren't Christian are inclined to view the virgin birth as a cover story for a prenuptial scandal.

And since Matthew didn't write the virgin birth story for the purpose of convincing unbelievers, there is no potentially embarassing situation to speak of, and hence, no basis for an argument that Matthew and Luke wrote solely out of concern for historical truth.

Indeed, that was Joseph's initial reaction. When he discovered that she was pregnant, he was planning to divorce her, on the assumption that she had a child by another man.

Ok, so are you writing this solely for Christian readers of your blog?  Apparently so, since you know perfectly well a skeptic is not going to presume the historical accuracy of anything in the virgin birth story, as you just did.

So why would Matthew and Luke record the virgin birth unless they thought it happened?

Maybe for the same reason Pindar wrote 450 years previously that Zeus took the form of a golden mist at the time he got the virgin Danae pregnant?

You might say the reported the virgin birth despite the virgin birth. For surely they knew that by recording that story, their account invited a contrary interpretation.

So by your logic, surely Pindar knew that by recording Zeus getting Danae pregnant without taking away her virginity, he invited a contrary interpretation, hence he only told the story by constraint of the historical truth?  Either way, Matthew only "invites" a contrary interpretation if he intended his story to be used to evangelize unbelievers.  He didn't, and you offer no compelling evidence that he did.

By narrating the virginal conception of Christ, they were starting a fire they couldn't extinguish. Enemies of the faith will seize on that to discredit Jesus.

 A first century orthodox Jew would have to be a fool to think the virgin birth is true because the Christians say it's true.  Matthew surely knew the Jews, who hated Christ more particularly than anybody else, surely wouldn't be persuaded by his simply putting down in writing the kind of miracle story the Jews would surely balk at.  Luke writes for a Theophilus so that he may be sure of the things he has been previously taught about Jesus.  Matthew and Luke intended no other original audience except Christian believers.  Since there is no scandal to be inferred from the original audience of these two gospels, your scandal-based argument falls flat.

They will say this is a transparent alibi to camouflage the fact that Mary had premarital sex. Not only would that stigmatize the mother, but stigmatize the illegitimate child.

Perhaps so, but again, you need to worry about who Matthew and Luke intended as their original target audience.  First argue that Matthew and Luke were intended by the authors to be used to evangelize unbelievers. Until you do that, you are seeing potential scandals where no such potential exists.

So, if you think about it, NT writers had to overcome a disincentive to report it at all, since the very mention of it would play into the hands of their enemies.

The risk of ridicule is counterbalanced by the edifying nature of the story for existing Christians.  Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith also had to overcome a disincentive to publicly proclaim himself finder of additional inspired scripture, but without more, that argument hardly gets near suggesting his motives were honest. False prophets are often willing to suffer greatly because they are so deluded and obstinate.

They only record it because that's what happened, even though it hands enemies of the faith a propaganda coup. Sometimes you have to tell a true story knowing that people will twist the truth.

Thank you for confirming, by how quickly you draw your conclusion that the story is true, that you didn't write this for skeptics.  If you wish to re-write it for the purpose of refuting skeptics, let me know, and I'll respond to that too.

4. Now, a critic might object that my explanation misses the point. Given the rumors of a prenuptial scandal, they had to say something to squelch the rumors.

I don't know any skeptics who seriously believe the purpose of Christians concocting the virgin birth fiction was to persuade non-Christian Jews that the rumors of Mary's out-of-wedlock pregnancy was nevertheless from god.   That just makes first-century Christians more gullible than most skeptics assert.

But there are problems with that objection. For instance:

 i) That would be a counterproductive alibi. Rather than draw attention away from the specter of a prenuptial scandal, it would draw attention to the specter of a prenuptial scandal. Hostile readers will view this as a coverup.

Which only has force if you assume, as you appear to be doing, that Matthew and Luke intended their stories to be used to evangelize or refute non-Christians.  The minute you try to defeat this objection by saying "yeah, that was some of their purpose" then you make Matthew and Luke equally as gullible as the rest of the first-century laity.  Paul apparently had great difficulties persuading many Jews despite his doing so involving heated lengthy arguments.  It doesn't make much sense to assume Matthew and Luke thought their writing down a miracle story would suffice to evangelize unbelievers.  Therefore, it is more than likely that these two NT authors did not intend any other original audience, except Christians.  In that case, they were not writing to squelch rumors.  Again, your "they-wouldn't-say-such-scandalous-thing-if-it-weren't-true!" theory is largely unpersuasive, primarily because it blindly assumes, without any evidence or argument, that unbelievers were part of Matthew's and Luke's originally intended target audience.

ii) If the Gospel writers were attempting to conceal a prenuptial scandal, and if they felt free to invent a cover story, why not just say Jesus was conceived after Mary and Joseph got married? After all, the Incarnation doesn't require a virgin birth. The sinlessness of Jesus doesn't require a virgin birth.

Why didn't Pindar just say Zeus took a form "different than human" when he got Danae pregnant?  After all, the conception of Perseus doesn't require Zeus take the form of a golden mist. And again, since I deny the gospel authors were trying to invent a cover story, your questions here don't threaten my own basis for unbelief toward the virgin birth story.

If some people find the story of the virgin birth fishy, there's nothing suspicious about saying he was born to married parents. So that would be a better cover story.

But the motive of Matthew and Luke involved more than merely inventing a cover story.  Their details in the virgin birth narratives also strongly "support" the idea that Jesus is God, the Son of God, and Savior.

5. But a critic might say that misses the point. If Mary was known to be pregnant out of wedlock, then it's too late for Matthew and Luke to fabricate a cover story that denies that fact. The best they can do is to spray paint it with miraculous whitewash. But there are problems with that objection, even on its own grounds:

i) People who deny the virgin birth typically think Matthew and Luke were written about a century after the birth of Christ.

Then count me out.  My objections are persuasive even assuming Matthew and Luke finished the currently canonical form of their gospels 41 days after Jesus died.

They don't think Matthew or Luke had access to firsthand information about the circumstances surrounding his conception and birth. So what, exactly, is there to rationalize or cover up? By that late date, who knews any better what really happened?

Again, the virgin birth story doesn't just "cover" a sex scandal, it's details also "support" important doctrinal themes like Jesus being God, Son of God and Savior.

ii) Likewise, even if we take the historicity of Matthew and Luke far more seriously, how many people were really privy to the timing of Mary's pregnancy in relation to her engagement and marriage?

Again, I don't think the virgin birth narrative is a cover story.  I think it is mere fiction invented to "support" other gospel themes like Jesus being God, Son of God and Savior.  Good writers back then didn't just provide a bulleted list of factoids, they weaved romance and drama and scandal and unexpected stupidity and moral lessons around their "facts".  The later authors of the Christian pseudopigrapha must have learned the technique of embellishment from somewhere.

Other than some relatives and villagers, who else would know about it?

That depends on how much effort Christians in the first 20 years after Jesus death, went around advertising Jesus as Savior.  Acts contains a mixture of embellishment and fact., it does not suffice to explain any of these missing years.

Mary wasn't born famous. She was a nobody. She's one of those people who becomes retroactively famous in association with a famous person. Jesus himself only became relatively famous towards the end of his short life, and even then he was just a local celebrity at the time of his death.

What is this now, your third or fourth indication that you aren't writing to refute skeptics, but writing to people who presume the biblical facts about Mary and Jesus are true?

Had anyone heard of him outside some pockets in Palestine?

You have a knack for asking questions that you know no biblical or other history provides answers to.   It's called a question-framing fallacy, "First, a proper historical question must be operational-which is
merely to say that it must be resolvable in empirical terms."  Fischer at 38. Your question is not resolvable in empirical terms, unless you equate conjecture and speculation with "empirical terms", so it is a fallacious question.

So why assume, decades later–when Matthew and Luke were written–that there'd be a widespread rumor about the illegitimacy of Jesus?

I don't assume the virgin birth narrative was a cover story, because even as a skeptic, for the sake of argument, I think Matthew and Luke weren't quite that dumb.   Regardless, it could just as easily be that yes, there was some scandal going on about Mary being pregnant out of wedlock, and Matthew and Luke responded by limiting the story of the miraculous truth solely to Christian believers.  So the scandal interpretation can be true yet without implying that the story was told because it was true.  No, the Christians invented a miracle-story to explain the scandal, and their original intent was not to provide that explanation to anybody except other Christians.  You act as if Matthew was just screaming the virgin birth of Jesus in the Temple through a bullhorn in 34 a.d., but you have done exactly nothing to substantiate your view that either gospel author ever intended the story to convince the gainsayers.

iii) Presumably, the target audience for Matthew and Luke are people who don't already know about the life of Christ.

Then your presumption is false.  Only by assuming first-century people were embarrassingly more gullible than we are today, could we think Matthew seriously believed his writing down miracle stories about Jesus would be the least bit persuasive to non-Christians.  Then again, today's Christianity has some treacherously gullible people in it, as testified by the Pentecostals and TBN and KJV Onlyism and others.  So it remains at least a possibility that yes, Matthew and Luke, like gullible Christians today, seriously thought that publishing miracle stories about Jesus would convince non-Christians to believe.  And we have direct evidence, assuming apostolic authorship, that at least one apostle seriously thought mere storytelling was sufficient to compel faith.  See John 20:31.  Paul similarly thinks his written words would be sufficient to overcome the Judaizer arguments that caused his Galatian churches to abandon his gospel, Gal. 1:8-9.

So what would possess Matthew and Luke to introduce a cover story about the circumstances of his conception? That would create a problem that hadn't existed before in the mind of the reader. For the average reader would never have reason to suspect anything untoward unless Matthew and Luke gratuitously interject this subterfuge.

 I don't have a problem with gratuitous interjection.  That's what's happening every single time a gospel author says Jesus did a miracle.

Left to their druthers, I wouldn't expect any NT writer to mention the circumstances of Christ's conception if they could avoid it, since the story of the virgin birth will be used against them.

Again, you unreasonably place too much stock in the theory that Matthew and Luke were originally intended to evangelize unbelievers, when in fact you make no argument to that effect (you admit said presupposition is a "presumably"), and other evidence indicates it makes more sense to say they originally intended their gospels to do nothing more than edify and instruct those already in the Christian faith.

It's one of those dilemmas where doing the right thing looks like doing the wrong thing. What's striking, therefore, is that we have even one, much less two Gospels, that record the virgin birth. For they must do that despite the derision which that will provoke.

Why should be think telling the story was so compelling on Matthew and Luke, but not compelling for any other NT author?

You also ignore the fact that Jesus made clear that discipleship consists of future followers obeying all that HE had taught the original disciples, see that part of the Great Commission most people forget, Matthew 28:20.  Jesus never expressed or implied that his birth was in any way supernatural or that it had the slightest thing to do with the gospel, and when given the perfect opportunity to highlight his birth (Luke 11:27) he disagreed and insisted that things outside the issue of his mother's blessedness in giving birth to him, were the key to true blessedness (v. 28).  Skeptics can be confident that the virgin birth story is irrelevant to the gospel, they have god's word on it.

==================

That concludes my point-by-point reply to Hays, and I finish up with argument based on Mark's silence:

First, the main players at Triablogue are not free to say arguments from silence are automatically fallacious, for example, Engwer argues from the early patristic silence about Peter that Catholics are wrong to view Peter so highly.

Even Peter himself isn’t referred to as having papal authority among the early post-apostolic sources. Terence Smith explains:  “there is an astonishing lack of reference to Peter among ecclesiastical authors of the first half of the second century. He is barely mentioned in the Apostolic Fathers, nor by Justin and the other Apologists” (cited in Robert Eno, The Rise of the Papacy [Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, 1990], p. 15)   
Again we see Mr. Engwer engaging in an argument from silence...

Second, historians disagree on what exact criteria must be met for the argument from silence to be forceful.
Howell/:Prevenier assert the person creating the silence must a) have intended to give a full account and b) the author had no compelling reasons to leave a known fact out of his report:

Of course, an argument from silence can serve as presumptive evidence of the "silenced" event only if, as in this case, the person suppressing the information was in a position to have the information, and was purporting to give a full account of the story from which he omitted the crucial information, and if there were no compelling reasons why he should have omitted the information (other than the wish to conceal). Hence, it is usually a considerably greater leap to conclude that "silence" means "con¬cealment" than it was in the case of Shamir's selective omissions during his interview. In most cases, historians have to guess a bit more. They must presume that a suspected fact was an integral part of the story being re¬ported and so central a part of such a story that the reporter would auto¬matically have included it. That he did not becomes, then, presumptive proof that he was deliberately suppressing this piece of information.

the person suppressing the information was in a position to have the information
Under the fundamentalist assumption that Peter believed in the virgin birth story as true, and the other assumption that Mark wrote Peter's preaching, yes, Mark was in a position to "have" the virgin birth information, but because he is described as a "young man" (Mark 14:51), it is unlikely he knew of the virgin birth first-hand, but would only have known it second-hand. 

was purporting to give a full account of the story from which he omitted the crucial information
There are several reasons to characterize Mark as intending to provide a "full account" of Jesus:

First, Mark 1:1 characterizes its opening as the "beginning"  (Greek: ἀρχή) of the gospel.  Why would Mark characterize his opening as the "beginning" of the gospel?  Probably because where exactly in Jesus life the gospel "starts" was in dispute or could be misunderstood, and Mark's clarification helps end that dispute:  the gospel begins with John the Baptist baptizing Jesus in fulfillment of OT prophecy.

Second, according to standard lexicons, this Greek word means the first or first part.  Mark uses the same word in 13:8 to say that certain disasters will merely be the first of many, which means those initial disasters are to be considered the very first in the chain of disasters spoken of there.  In ἀρχή, God created people as male and female (Matthew 19:4), meaning, the very first persons were male/female. The only reason an apologist would deny the implications of cognate usage here is their prior commitment to biblical inerrancy, forcing them to insert a bit of wiggle room in the ἀρχή to allow legitimizing other gospels who start their beginning points earlier in Jesus' life than Mark did.  If they had no theological axe to grind, they would have no trouble believing the cognate usage is consistent and determinant.

Third, Mark 1:1 says it is the beginning of "the" gospel (Greek: τοῦ εὐαγγελίου, NA28, τοῦ is the definite article, its not just "a" gospel, but "the" gospel.  That is, if you want to know what "the" gospel of Jesus is, you get it by reading Mark's account of it). Again, Mark knew he could characterize his version as the beginning of "my" gospel, so why does he choose to employ the more dogmatic sounding definite article (i.e., he is giving "the" gospel)?  Most likely because he wants the reader to believe what he has written will sufficiently instruct them in gospel basics.  In other words, Mark didn't omit anything that was essential to the gospel.

Fourth, under the fundamentalist assumption that Papias is telling the truth about Mark's relation to Peter, then because Papias says Mark omitted from his gospel nothing that he heard Peter preach, a fundamentalist would be compelled to agree that Mark was intending to give a full account.  Richard Bauckham, sadly aware of what "omitted nothing" implies, weakly argues that this phrase was nothing more than literary convention, thus not literal, but a) to clarify, Papias doesn't say Mark omitted nothing from his gospel, he says Mark didn't omit from his gospel anything he heard Peter preach, , b) the literal interpretation of "omitted nothing" is supported by Papias' prior statement that Mark wrote down "whatever" he remembered of Peter's preaching;  c) the context in which Papias wrote "omitted nothing" is highly defensive of Mark's integrity and accuracy, so that the statement that he "omitted nothing", was likely intended to be taken as more significant than mere literary convention.

Sixth, Eusebius at H.E.6.14 says, on authority of 2nd century Clement of Alexandria, Peter's original audience requested that Mark write down Peter's preaching, and there is nothing in the context to suggest they only wanted a few, or certain specific subjects.  Those who have no theological axe to grind would take the statement to mean that Mark wrote down whatever he could remember of Peter's preaching.   Indeed, had you been one of the Roman citizens who heard and converted at Peter's preaching, how comprehensive would you want the written record of said preaching to be?

Seventh, yes, it's possible that Peter preached the virgin birth, but if so, questions are raised that fundies cannot easily answer:  If Peter preached the virgin birth, how could it be that Mark either didn't remember it, or remembered it but felt it wasn't as important as other gospel material Peter preached?  Are we to believe that Mark, whose theme was "Jesus is the Son of God", felt that other stories like the feeding of the crowds were more important than the shockingly unprecedented (so fundies say) circumstances of Christ's birth, which in Matthew and Luke strongly support the Markan theme that Jesus is the Son of God?

Eighth, some apologist will try to duck these problems by saying it is more likely Peter's preaching didn't preach the virgin birth in the first place, but a) you don't know of any statement in historical sources to that effect, you like the theory for no other reason than that it is the type of speculation that can get your ass out of a theological jam, nothing more; b) the consequence of employing the "Peter-didn't-preach-the-virgin-birth" is severe:  Mark's gospel is filled with gospel BASICS.  Peter was not preaching to seasoned theologians, but unbelievers who needed salvation.  So if Peter believed the virgin birth to be true, but didn't preach it to unbelievers, it is most likely because he didn't think the doctrine was a legitimate part of the gospel...which then puts him in disagreement with Matthew and Luke, who apparently think the virgin birth IS a part of the gospel.

Some apologist will say "no, Peter's silence only implies he didn't think the virgin birth to be essential doctrine", but again, Matthew's and Luke's details on the virgin birth provide strong "support" for the essential doctrine that Jesus was truly divine and the Son of God.  The idea that Peter knew and believed these strong supports for his doctrine that Jesus was the Son of God, but "chose to avoid" employing them when making his case that Jesus was the Son of God, is absurdly unlikely.  Peter was faced with unbelieving pagans in Rome, if Clement and Papias are correct about where said preaching took place.  If the fundies are correct to say there is no pre-Christiain pagan parallel to Jesus' virgin birth, that is yet another reason to say Peter would have employed this unprecedented historical fact in his preaching for the same reason apologists so violently oppose the pagan copycat thesis today: the uniqueness of Jesus' birth story argues for its truth.  Sure, you can have Peter choosing to avoid using the most powerful tools at his disposal, but the person who wins the historiography debate is the one who shows his theory is more likely than the others, not the one whose runs to the corner and simply carps "but my theory is always possible!"

Ninth, most fundies unreasonably argue that Mark omits the virgin birth because he saw no need to repeat what his audience already believed.  But this is foolish for two reasons:  a) the patristic sources linked above assert that Mark's motive in writing was exactly to repeat in writing, what the church, who had requested his writing, had already heard and believed in Peter's oral preaching, they obviously weren't asking to hear new things; b) Mark's alleged unwillingness to repeat what his intended audience already believed, is an excuse conjured up out of thin air, it is not based on any biblical, patristic or historical statement.  IF apologists be allowed to rest on crass speculation, doesn't fairness and academic integrity require that benefit be extended to skeptics?

So under the criteria of Howell, et al, for the argument from silence, Mark's and Peter's desire to convince unbelievers that Jesus was the Son of God necessarily implies, absent sheer stupidity on their part, that they would have found the virgin birth story particularly useful to their preaching purpose, and therefore, Mark's silence on Jesus' birth is explained better by the theory that he either didn't know about, or disapproved of, the virgin birth story, either of which does violence to the fundie position.

Historian Gilbert Garraghan has slightly different criteria:

 To be valid, the argument from silence must fulfill two conditions: the writer[s] whose silence is invoked in proof of the non-reality of an alleged fact, would certainly have known about it had it been a fact; [and] knowing it, he would under the circumstances certainly have made mention of it. When these two conditions are fulfilled, the argument from silence proves its point with moral certainty. (§ 149a)

 would certainly have known about it had it been a fact
 No problem: if as most fundies believe, Mark was the naked man in Mark 14:51, he was in a position to have known, before authoring a gospel, that Jesus was born of a virgin.  It is unlikely, if the doctrine be true, that the apostles somehow never heard of it or didn't discuss it enough to keep it in memory.

he would under the circumstances certainly have made mention of it
 That has already been established by the prior arguments in this post.  The virgin birth details strongly "support" Jesus being the Son of God, which most scholars say was Mark's intended theme.  Here's what one scholar says in the inerrantist-driven New American Commentary:
 

8.  Occasion and Purposes

..Mark clearly was not content merely to give an account of the life and teaching of Jesus. He wanted to set forth his own understanding of Jesus and thus develop his Christology. He wanted to do so in such a way as to minister to the needs of his own church. He used and applied the accounts at his disposal—something Christian teachers and preachers have been doing ever since. Mark’s concept of Jesus was that he was fully human and fully divine, both Son of Man and Son of God. Furthermore he was both the Jewish Messiah (Christ, Son of David) and the Lord of the Gentiles. Such a balanced Christology as Mark’s weighs against the theory that he was battling a heresy. Mark was especially concerned to emphasize the suffering and death of Jesus as a ransom for sinners.

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.).

Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 29).

Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers

Gee...how well does the virgin birth story support Mark's intended theme of Jesus being Son of God and the Jewish Messiah?   Mark wanted to show Jesus was Son of Man and Son of God, so having God come down to earth via virgin birth from a typical female virgin without the aid of human seed, would have underscored his points very strongly.
 
Tenth, courts of law are concerned with making sure juries get the straight admissible and relevant facts as much as possible, and therefore, the "rules of evidence" American Courts use, are a reliable guide for determining whether evidence is admissible.  As luck would have it, American jurisprudence lays out the rules juries must use to evaluate arguments based on silence.  It says, quoting the undisputed authority of Wigmore, that American common law has always allowed juries to take a witness's failure to assert a fact, when it would have been natural for the witness to mention it, to be the functional equivalent of a positive statement that the alleged fact is false:

Common law traditionally has allowed witnesses to be impeached by their previous failure to state a fact in circumstances in which that fact naturally would have been asserted. 3A J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1042, p. 1056 (Chadbourn rev. 1970). Each jurisdiction may formulate its own rules of evidence to determine when prior silence is so inconsistent with present statements that impeachment by reference to such silence is probative.

Cunningham v. Commonwealth, 501 SW 3d 414, 418 - Ky: Supreme Court 2016

quoting v. Anderson, 447 U.S. 231, 100 S.Ct. 2124, 65 L.Ed.2d 86 (1980).

If Courts of law are always applying their rules of evidence to help fact-finders decide what actually happened, then it would seem only a foolish Christian apologist would trifle that court is "too different" from historical analysis.  We just saw that historians agree there are times when the argument from silence is valid, so that's something historiography has in common with Wigmore's above-cited rule.  Court proceedings might be "formal", but it is only for the good goal of getting to the the actual truth, that court rules instruct the judge on what should be admissible and relevant.

Well then...did Mark write "in circumstances in which that fact [of the virgin birth of Jesus] naturally would have been asserted..."?

Hays did his best to argue that we shouldn't expect Mark to have mentioned the virgin birth, but his arguments are unconvincing, here's a recap:

Hays' reason for Paul's silence is that "the birth of Christ probably took place over several years before Paul was born", but this is nonsense, Paul says what he does about Jesus because he considers himself divinely inspired and an apostle (1st Cor. 9:1).  Paul also curiously uses the OT to support his notion that the gospel has already gone out into the world, despite the fact that he cites such OT text a few years after the public earthly ministry of Jesus (Romans 10), Paul mentions Abe and David too (Romans 4), so Paul cannot be presumed to avoid mentioning something merely because it happened before he was born.  If he can quote Abe and David to support his theology, what in blazes could have possessed him to think that the commentary by God himself, coming to earth as Jesus just a few years before Paul wrote, was less reliable for supporting theological points, than the more obscure OT?  Isn't the word of Jesus the "later light" that tells the world the "true" meaning of the OT?

Hays' next argument is that it is astounding that the virgin birth would have been recorded at all if indeed it be false, since it opened up Christians to a charge that this is a mere cover story for Mary getting pregnant out of wedlock, therefore, to record the story at all is to testify to it's historical veracity.  This too is foolish, since he assumes Luke and Matthew were intended to evangelize unbelievers, when in fact Hays doesn't want skeptics to say first century people were excessively gullible.  If that is the case, then Matthew and Luke can hardly have believed they could break down unbeliever-resistance by simply publishing their written versions of Jesus' life.  Jerome, writing in the 4th century and thus with a solid 200 + years of history behind him on which to draw, asserts Matthew wrote "for the sake of those of the circumcision who believed" (Live of Illustrious Men at 3)

Inerrantist scholar Craig Blomberg asserts in the NAC that the larger context of that quote seems to indicate Jerome was there talking about a Gospel to the Hebrews, which was a corrupt form of Matthew Jerome errantly attributed to Matthew.  I think Blomberg is really stretching here.  First, Jerome plainly talks about the gospel he thinks Matthew wrote.  What are the odds he only means the heretical gospel so controversially connected to Matthew, and not the genuine gospel?  Second, yes, in ch. 2, Jerome mentions the GoH, but he qualifies that it was a thing he recently translated into Greek, and a document Origin sometimes makes use of.  These qualifications make clear that Jerome thinks the GoH's authenticity is uncertain at best.  Therefore, when in ch. 3 he candidly asserts that Matthew wrote a gospel, he likely isn't still talking about the GoH, but rather the Matthian gospel that was non-controversial in the churches.  Therefore, when he says there that Matthew wrote for those Jews "who believed", he is saying apostle Matthew wrote the authentic gospel for Christian Jews.

 If this be so, then Hays' problem with the idea of gospel authors mentioning a scandal, disappears.  If Matthew was writing to Christians, then saying Jesus was born of a virgin  would cause no more scandal than the writing down of any other oral tradition would.  In fact, the Christians for whom Matthew wrote would likely know the Jews would mock such a story as an invention, and therefore the Christians would likely guard the story and only permit it to be taught to serious converts.

Matthew cannot be credited with an authorial purpose merely because of how the gospel happened to be used later, anymore than a modern author can be credited with a purpose to use his book as a coaster simply because that's how somebody else outside his intended readership put it to use.


Hays also says he wouldn't expect Paul to mention the virgin birth, but here again, Paul is willing to mention the resurrection of Jesus and repeat it over and over, was this not scandalous to the Jews, as Matthew alleges (27:63 ff)?  Apparently then, fear that the Jews would find the story scandalous, is, alone, insufficient to justify saying a NT author would avoid mentioning a subject.  On the other hand, Paul repeatedly asserts what he thinks the gospel consists of, and it's always the two things that scandalize non-believing Jews far more than a virgin birth story:  Christ died to pay for sin, and rose from the dead three days later (1st Cor. 15).  Paul scandalized unbelievers so much, the last half of the book of Acts primarily consists of how this got Paul arrested and sent to Rome to face Caesar.  Paul would constantly go to the synagogues (places of worship for orthodox Jews) and debate long and loud that Jesus was the Christ.  Acts 17:17, 18:4, 19:8-9.

More controversially, Paul disagrees with modern-day Calvinists and asserts the OT is sufficient to prepare the Christian minister to preach the gospel (2nd Timothy 3:16-17), i.e., that is, the OT as interpreted by Paul.  But even with that caveat, Paul is not just being silent with respect to the earthly ministry of Jesus.  His claim that the OT as interpreted by him is sufficient to equip Christian ministers for every good work, logically excludes any need to use anything beyond Paul's understanding of the OT to so equip, and that means logically excluding whatever Matthew or Luke have to say, thus logically having Paul exclude any need to equip Christian ministers with the virgin birth doctrine.

But Paul's silence on the life of Jesus and other such issues go beyond the scope of this already-long post.

In short, Hays' attempt to provide objective reasons consistent with his fundamentalist view of the bible, for why most NT authors are silent on the virgin birth, fails. Jesus positively asserted that it is what HE teaches, that is what his disciples must follow (Luke 11:27-28, Matthew 28:20), Jesus never taught that his birth had anything to do with the gospel, and when put into a circumstance where it would have been natural for him to affirm the blessedness of his mother giving him birth, he rebukes the lady who calls him blessed, and reminds the hearers that blessedness is rather what anybody has when they hear the word of God and do it (Luke 11:27-28).  This fulfills Wigmore's rule that the silence should be taken as a positive statement that the alleged fact is false.