How NOT to concisely argue for a Traditional view of Jesus' childhood, a reply to Jason Engwer

This is my reply to a Triablogue article by Jason Engwer entitled

How To Concisely Argue For A Traditional View Of Jesus' Childhood

Monday, December 09, 2019

Engwer, true to form, once again choose to pay attention to meaningless trifles.

Engwer is forced to agree with his apostle Paul that to disprove the resurrection of Jesus is to turn Christians into false witnesses who are still in their sins, 1st Corinthians 15:15 (which then means they deserve the death penalty even if they do real miracles in support of their theology, Deut. 13).  Since I have demolished Jesus' resurrection by showing that the naturalistic theory has more explanatory scope and power, I must conclude that arguing about Jesus' childhood can never be sufficient to fix the wormwood infecting Christianity's linchpin doctrine.

I therefore only answer Engwer point by point on Jesus' childhood solely out of my preference to demolish fundamentalist Christianity in all its forms, not because of any stupid worry that justifying the canonical Nativity stories somehow makes Christianity worthy of the slightest credence. 

There are a lot of ways to argue for a traditional view of the childhood of Jesus, and we've been making those arguments for a long time. But it's often helpful to be able to argue concisely for what you believe. That can be hard to do when a subject is as large and complicated as the earliest years of Jesus' life.

Actually, its not complicated at all.  The gospel authors say nearly nothing about Jesus' childhood, likely because they knew that trying to convince the public that some infant crapping his diaper was the creator of the universe just sounded a bit too stupid even for pre-literate religious fanatics, and most people would more readily accept divine-man claims if the person at issue was at least an adult.  By limiting Jesus' miracles to some life-point past his infancy, stupid shit questions about how a baby could be god and yet still not have control of his own bowel movements are conveniently avoided.

For example, to say that Jesus was the creator is to imply that he never sinned.  A child who never disobeys his parents?   How believable is that?  Since people who believe in miracles don't always think the most outlandish things, it appears the gospel authors, despite willingness to tell miracle stories, still recognize that some miracle stories can go too far.  The mark of a good professional liar is that they know where employing circumspection will cause their story to "ring" more true.

We are addressing years of his life, after all, unlike the narrower focus of Easter, for example. But here are a few summary arguments I recommend using:

If you paid more attention to what Jesus actually told you to do, you would have no time to engage in the sin of word-wrangling (2nd Timothy 2:14).  The very fact that Paul showed zero interest in Jesus' childhood should be enough to prove that Paul doesn't think anything is missing by simply leaving Jesus' childhood completely alone.  So your desire to engage in such debate anyway is reasonably construed to signify your lack of satisfaction with Paul's gospel.  But again, if you spent more time doing what Jesus and Paul demanded of their followers, not only would you have no time to spend on debatable pionts, but your obedience to clear commands would make it more likely your efforts would reap spirtiual reward.  you cannot really say whether God gives a fuck whether you say anything about Jesus' childhood or not.  Clearly, you have a morbid interest in controversial questions, the trait that apostle Paul said renders you a stupid heretic (1st Timothy 6:4).

The NT authors never made Jesus' childhood that big of a deal, so you run a significant risk of trying to do better than your god by attempting to satisfy public curiosity about a subject that your god did not see fit to provide any answers to.

Furthermore, if you believe Matthew was written to non-Christian as well as Christian Jews, you get in more trouble, since that would mean that Matthew, the alleged apostle and author, seriously thought that a mere story about Jesus' childhood should "suffice" to "convince" non-Christain Jews, showing your Matthew to be far more anti-intellectual than you'd ever dare credit to him.

You cannot say Matthew would have been there to explain the story, as the patristic evidence, that you treat as infallible without honestly admitting it, says Matthew wrote the gospel to make up for his absence given his intent to leave Jerusalem and travel abroad:

Eusebius, Hist.Eccl. 3:24
Nevertheless, of all the disciples of the Lord, only Matthew and John have left us written memorials, and they, tradition says, were led to write only under the pressure of necessity. For Matthew, who had at first preached to the Hebrews, when he was about to go to other peoples, committed his Gospel to writing in his native tongue, and thus compensated those whom he was obliged to leave for the loss of his presence. 

 [1] Schaff, Chrysostom, Homily on Matthew 1

Of Matthew again it is said, that when those who from amongst the Jews had believed came to him, and besought him to leave to them in writing those same things, which he had spoken to them by word, he also composed his Gospel in the language of the Hebrews. And Mark too, in Egypt, is said to have done this self-same thing at the entreaty of the disciples.

This is quite sufficient to allege that what we find in Matthew's Nativity story is what Matthew preached.  It is also likely that beacuse the gospel followed Matthew's preaching, the written nativity story is likely a polished form of that preaching, so that the written form provides more details than Matthew's oral preaching did.  he was an anti-intellectual.  John was the same way, he expected faith to just magically materialize in the hearts of his readers merely because they read his words (Matthew 20:31).

- Reliable sources on Jesus' childhood were available to the early Christians and their opponents for a long time.

Mary allegedly had visions.  So since Christian apologists never attempt to justify visionary material in the NT, even they agree that when a source is a 'vision', it can be safely discounted.

Close relatives of Jesus lived for more than half a century after his birth.

Which only hurts your cause, as those relatives found nothing in Jesus' public ministry to convince them Jesus was a truly divine person, see Mark 3:21, Mark 6:4 and John 7:5.  You have no interest whatsoever in evaluating the testimony of these alleged eyewitnesses to Jesus' alleged "miracles".  Your other comments that perhaps they were too overcome with jealousy, or they "just didn't understand" are too foolish to deserve comment.  What the fuck would even a stupid person do, if their brother was going around town raising the dead and curing diseases science still deemed incurable?

For a discussion of the credibility of the early reports about Jesus' relatives in general, see here. Regarding how long individuals like Mary and James lived, see here and here.

In the first linked article, you say "He had siblings, and they were initially unbelievers." That's an understatement.  Those siblings committed the unpardonable sin (Mark 3:21, to say somebody was insane was to accuse them of demon possession, see John 8:52, 10:20) and even after a full year into Jesus' public ministry, his brothers were refusing to believe in him and mocking his ability to do miracles (John 7:1-5).  Worse, Jesus himself testified after coming home from his first preaching tour that his own relatives did not properly honor him (Mark 6:4).  In all fairness, though, in the first linked article you admit:

Furthermore, some of the gospel accounts are particularly unlikely to have been fabricated, because of their embarrassing nature. Jesus' mother and brothers refer to Him as insane (Mark 3:20-35), Jesus considers His unbelieving brothers (future church leaders) incompetent to care for His mother (John 19:26-27), etc. John 19:27 tells us that Mary lived past Jesus' death for some unspecified period of time as well, which is corroborated by Acts 1:14 (which, like John 19, has Mary in the region of Jerusalem around the time of Jesus' death).

And I couldn't agree more.  The embarrassing nature of these admissions gives them slightly more historical likelihood than statements that Jesus did real miracles or was the son of god.  Engwer continues:

And those relatives held some prominent positions in the early church, as we see in Acts,

I'm not seeing anything in Acts that definitively puts a relative of Jesus in a prominent place.  Two Jameses were original apostles (Mark 3:17-18), so when two Jameses appear in Acts 1, the more likely truth is that these were the same exact men, and since neither of them can possibly have been the James the brother of the Lord (i.e., he was son of Joseph and thus not a son of 'Zebedee' or son of 'Alphaeus'), and most Christian apologists say the specific brother of Jesus named James was among the relatives in Mark 3:21 who rejected Jesus' message before the crucifixion, therefore, neither James in Acts 1 can be James the brother of Jesus.

Yes, there is an unqualified James in Acts 15, but since there were two different Jameses who were original apostles (supra), saying the James of Acts 15 was one of the original apostles with the same name requires less ad hoc speculation than the hopeful theory that the James of Acts 15 was specifically Jesus' brother.

Galatians 1:19, 2:9-12,

No, inerrantist Christian scholar George, T. admitted that Galatians 1:19 is ambiguous as to whether Paul was saying James the Lord's brother was one of the apostles.  George says:

1:19 Paul claimed that he saw none of the other apostles except James, the brother of Jesus. The expression is ambiguous in Greek, so we cannot be sure whether Paul meant to include James among the other apostles.  Did he mean: “The only other apostle I saw was James,” or “I saw no other apostle, although I did see James”? Probably he meant something like this: “During my sojourn with Peter, I saw none of the other apostles, unless you count James, the Lord’s brother.”

(2001, c1994). New American Commentary, Vol. 30: Galatians,  p. 74)

The James of Galatians 2:9 ff is at least 15 verses away from 1:19, so it clearly isn't close enough to justify pretending that Paul was talking about the same exact person, he could just as likely have been referring simply to another apostle James whose headship of the Jerusalem church did not need to be specified.  But I would argue that because Paul refers to Peter (Cephas) James and John (2:9), it is most reasonable to assume these men achieved leadership in the Jerusalem church because they were previously among Jesus' inner circle, the precise type of apostles most likely to attain a high leadership position. See Mark 5:37, 13:3 and Matthew 17:1, 9).  The reasonableness of this interpretation is not going to disappear merely because there are other bare possibilities.  However,

Engwer continues:

1 Corinthians 9:5,

First, the mere fact that early church fathers debated whether Jesus had multiple brothers is itself enough to justify the person who says 1st Cor. 9:5 is too ambiguous to think it can yield conclusions of reasonable certainty.  See here.

Second, Paul distinguishes the "rest of the apostles" from the "brothers of the Lord".  This is naturally expected if Paul felt Jesus' brothers did not qualify as apostles, and merely sometimes accompanied the apostles during missions.

Third, Mark 6:3 lists 4 brothers of Jesus, James being one, so that the plural "brothers" in 1st Corinthians 9:5 would still be accurate even if we asserted one specifc brother, James, never converted to Christian faith.

Fourth, the mere fact that the head apostles gave Paul the 'right hand of fellowship' (Galatians 2:9) need not imply those apostles agreed with Paul's gospel, so that even if 1st Cor. 9:5 proves that James the brother of Christ sometimes accompanied other apostles on missions, his presence in such context doesn't demand that he was a convert to Christianity.  In the mid-40's there was a terrible famine in and around Palestine, and the Jerusalem apostles could very well have viewed Paul as a meal-ticket and that's the only reason they pretended to support his version of the gospel (though it is weird that in Gal. 2:9, they allocate the entire Gentile mission field to Paul and confine themselves solely to Jews,  when in fact the risen Christ allegedly said THEY were to evangelize the Gentiles (Matthew 28:19).

Fifth, other historical "facts" about James the Lord's brother show that he did not agree with Paul's theology, he was a Judaizer and likely for that reason was held in high esteem among non-Christian law-observant Jews, which would hardly be the case if this exact James preached the same message Jesus did, you know, the one that incurred the wrath of the Jewish people (Matthew 12:14, 27:25).

the letters of James and Jude, etc.

There is nothing about the authorship of James' epistle that suggests he was specifically a brother of Jesus, and there were two original apostles of Christ named James whose authorship could just as easily account for that epistle's echoing some of Christ's alleged sayings.  I would argue their aurthorship is ore likely than by James the brother of Christ since they spent three years with Jesus before he died, whereas the brother of Jesus name James was a late-comer, so that naturally either of the two original apostles of the same name are more likely to have more familiarity with Jesus' sayings.

For both epistle of James and epistle of Jude, it is quite difficult to believe, in light of Jesus granting specific authority to certain apostles (Matthew 16:18), and in light of Paul's admission that the early Christian laity recognized certain apostles as authoritative (Galatians 2:6), and in light of Peter's belief that only TWELEVE men could possibly be legitimate apostles (Acts 1, his seeing a need to replace Judas with Matthias), that the authors, if they are true apostles, would fail, as they do, to specify their authority and position.  1st Peter starts out with the author declaring he is an "apostle", 2nd Peter doesn't matter because it is reasonably construed a forgery despite the trifles of fundamentalists otherwise, and Paul is always identifying himself as an apostle and authority.   Yet James and Jude place themselves at the level of other Christians by declaring themselves "bond-servants" of Christ (James 1:1, Jude 1:1).  The reasonableness of saying the true authors were not the leaders bearing those names, but lesser persons who either had the same names, or wrote what they thought such leaders would have written, is not going to disappear merely because other authorship theories are also within the realm of viable possibility.

Keep in mind that Jesus' relatives were critical of him at times, so his enemies would have had an interest in and ability to get information about his background from those relatives.

Agreed.  Which probably accounts for why we have no surviving records from the 1st century of those hostile to Jesus.  When the enemies can use Jesus' family against him, us Christians must "destroy the memory of Amalek from under heaven..."  Paul wanted to 'stop' the mouths of Jewish Christians who were teachings things he didn't approve of, see Titus 1:11.  That's not calling for democratic debate, and its not asking those listening to the jewish Christians to "check out" Paul's competing claims, that's asking for the Jewish Christian assertions to cease circulation altogether.

Some of Jesus' neighbors, coworkers, and contemporaries in places like Bethlehem and Nazareth also would have lived past the time of his death, even for decades in some cases. The same is true of the religious authorities and others who opposed him and had him executed. Just as the early Christians passed on information from generation to generation, so did their enemies. The early Christians and their opponents produced many documents in the earliest decades of Christianity, not just the ones we possess today, as I argue here.

 Except that it is also reasonable to conclude that the Judaizers wrote letters critical of Paul (their ability to convince Peter and "even Barnabas" (Galatians 2) might suggest the case for the Judaizer gospel is more powerful than what you can tell from mirror-reading Galatians and Acts 15), yet we have no such thing from the 1st century.

And see here for some comments from Larry Hurtado about how the literacy of the early Christians is often underestimated.

Many of Paul's converts were illiterate (1st Corinthians 1:26).  perhaps you will argue that the Greek word for "many" need only mean "two".

- We have a lot of evidence for a traditional view of Jesus' childhood.

The significance of which is completely debunked by Jesus' own complete apathy toward and silence on his own childhood, as if he was of the belief that what happened in his childhood had no significant bearing on his claim to the Messiah.  Add to this the fact that 25 of the 27 NT books show zero concern for events in Jesus' childhood, and you are a fool to insist that skeptics are somehow intellectually obligated to give two shits about these speculations that you just cannot resist wasting your time with.  Then again, Jason Engwer thinks it is proper use of God's money to help digitize and preserve the audiotapes of the Enfield Poltergeist, which according to his bible constitutes using god's money to preserve records of the manifestations of demon activity.  We can safely assume Engwer is so fanatical in his desire to prove bible inerrancy and apologetics, he ends up often contradicting the bible.

I don't think the evidence supporting a traditional view of Jesus' childhood is consistent, for example, Luke 2:52 doesn't say Jesus' human nature increased in wisdom, it says "Jesus" increased in wisdom, and it is eisogesis to read the orthodox resolution to the Arian and Nestorian "heresies" back into the earlier text, when it is more objective to prioritize the author's own context.  If that requires that Luke was saying all parts of Jesus (i.e., both divine and human) grew in wisdom, that will only bother fundamentalist Christians, skeptics will not worry too much that this makes for a bad day in classical theism-land.  Let's just say that the average person of the first century appears to have believed, in rather uncritical unquestioning way, that the gods could take on human form, Acts 14:11.  The point is that these kinds of statements make the historical Jesus so utterly unbelievable that what one might "prove" from his childhood is absurdly irrelevant.

Much of what the early Christians report about the childhood of Jesus meets modern historical standards, like multiple attestation,

First, multiple attestation is a weak criteria, it assumes that if you have at least two witnesses who agree on a fact, the jury has no choice but to consider the fact established.  That's just stupid, especially in the first century where thousands of Christians testified in favor of the "fact" that Paul was hypocritical in his preaching (Acts 21:20) and is therefore an example of how even today's Christian apologists will quickly dismiss multiply-attested "facts".  How many thousands of witnesses testify to Roman Catholic miracles at Fatima and elsewhere?  Engwer will trifle that he doesn't deny their miraculous nature but only the conclusion that God approves of Roman Catholicism, but that misses the point:  God's approval of Roman Catholicism is ALSO what's multiply attested in such modern-day miracles.  That is, Engwer will find it impossibly difficult to continue parading multiple attestation as the final nail in the skeptic's conffin.  If he dares attempt to look objective by pretending he doesn't necessarily always believe miracles merely because they are multiply attested, then he cannot blame skeptics who, like him, cite other evidentiary shortcomings in a claim and its evidence which they feel are greater than its "multiple attestation".

Second, Matthean priority is also meets multiple attestation in the church fathers, but most Christian scholars insist in Markan priority.  Matthew's authorship of the gospel now bearing his name is also multiply attested in the patristic literature, but because it appears the latter fathers are basically all merely echoing the Papias-tradition, such multiple attestation is more correctly characterized is mere echoing, not independent corroboration.

Third, multiple attestation barely operates here in the debate about Jesus' childhood:  you only have two accounts.  You are not going to place intellectual compulsion on skeptics by trifling about John 1:13 and Mark 6:3.  The very fact that no other NT author finds Jesus-childhood- stories edifying enough to warrant mention would justify the view that the earliest apostles were not in agreement on whether the virgin birth story was true (they would have to agree that if true, it would certainly do as much to support their claims about Jesus as do their own unique claims about the miracles he did in adulthood).   So the silence of most NT authors on the virgin birth remains significant.  That's not going to disappear merely because you can always posit some other possibility to explain such silence such as "maybe they knew their audience accepted it so it didn't need to be repeated".

the criterion of embarrassment,

Which justifies skepticism in the case of Mark 3:21, 6:4 and John 7:5.  Then again, Matthew and Luke obviously weren't "apologetics" by any stretch, and their fallacy of argument by assertion (i.e., preaching to the choir) might warrant the conclusion they were written only for believers, in which case, the authors would not think their tales of Jesus' nativity were "embarrassing", so that such tales do not "pass" the criteria of embarrassment.

and the criterion of coherence.

Nah, that's just another way for you to say "bible inerrancy".  Plenty of scholars find real discrepancies between the gospels, including Mike Licona, who remains unimpressed with Lydia McGrew's sin of word-wrangling.

For some examples, see here and here.
 - There's a significant lack of support in the ancient sources for skeptical alternatives to a traditional Christian view of the childhood of Jesus.

First, not if common sense is allowed in.  If Jesus' human vocal cords necessarily implicated his divine nature when he spoke a phrase that many conservative Christian scholars don't think he actually spoke (John 8:58), then there is nothing necessarily fallacious in saying Jesus' human acts implicated his divine nature, in which case it follows with equal logic that when the baby Jesus' mouth was spilling slobber, his was also implicating his divine nature (i.e., the creator of the universe slobbered).  The logic of the incarnate logos does not allow desperate Trinintarians to decree which acts of the human Jesus implicated his divine nature and which didn't.  Any such attempt would be necessarily arbitrary.  Jesus' human nature never implicates his divine nature, where doing so would overturn your cherished doctrine of classical theism.

Second, thanks for indicating that you don't think the argument from silence is always fallacious.

Third, you are assuming that the Christian claims in the early period would have so interested skeptics as to not only prompt them to research Jesus' childhood, but to publish the results in a way that would have survived the next few centuries in which Christian leaders insisted on burning "heretical" books which disagreed with orthodox doctrine.  In truth Jesus was at best a local miscreant whom history would have nearly completely forgotten had it not been for the efforts of his fanatics to keep his memory alive.  Jesus was not such a big deal in his own lifetime nor in the lifetime of Paul for anybody outside that religion to give two fucks about documenting facts about Jesus' childhood in a way likely to survive the burn barrels of the next 4 centuries.  25 of the 27 NT books make absolutely zero effort to preserving Jesus' childhood events for posterity.  The fundamentalist is going to spin that silence in a way that foists any intellectual obligation on a skeptic to either agree or admit being unreasonable.

Fourth, our knowledge of the early Christian sects that denied Jesus' divinity and virgin birth are limited to church fathers who always embellished their descriptions of the sects with hateful vitriol, justifying a degree of hesitancy before blindly accepting all negative slurs therein as objective unbiased historical truth.

Justin Martyr describes some such Christians.  Dialogue, Chapter XLVIII

For there are some, my friends,” I said, “of our race,150 who admit that He is Christ, while holding Him to be man of men; with whom I do not agree, nor would I,151 even though most of those who have [now] the same opinions as myself should say so; since we were enjoined by Christ Himself to put no faith in human doctrines,152 but in those proclaimed by the blessed prophets and taught by Himself.
150 Some read, “of your race,” referring to the Ebionites. Maranus believes the reference is to the Ebionites, and supports in a long note the reading “our,” inasmuch as Justin would be more likely to associate these Ebionites with Christians than with Jews, even though they were heretics.
151 Langus translates: “Nor would, indeed, many who are of the same opinion as myself say so.”
152 [Note this emphatic testimony of primitive faith.]
Roberts, A., Donaldson, J., & Coxe, A. C. (1997). The Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol.I : Translations of the writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. The apostolic fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems.

Irenaeus A.H. Book 3, ch. XI:

For the Ebionites, who use Matthew’s Gospel¹⁴¹ only, are confuted out of this very same, making false suppositions with regard to the Lord.

141 Harvey thinks that this is the Hebrew Gospel of which Irenaeus speaks in the opening of this book; but comp. Dr. Robert’s Discussions on the Gospels, part ii. chap. iv.Roberts, A., Donaldson, J., & Coxe, A. C. (1997). The Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol.I : Translations of the writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. The apostolic fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems.

Obviously Engwer has forgotten that the views of the Ebionites count as "ancient".  Engwer will trifle that the Ebiontes are not as early as the the gospels of Matthew and Luke, but he doesn't actually know that.  All he knows is that references to the Ebionites are later than the gospels, he cannot establish that they originated in the 2nd century.  Furthermore, most Christian scholars date Matthew and Luke to about to 80 a.d. or even later, which means those who denied the virgin birth wouldn't be doing so until late 1st century.  Gene Bridges from Triablogue apparently thinks the Ebionites of the 2nd century were the outgrowth of the Judaizers present at the Council of Jerusalem:

And as matter of fact, we can see that the Judaizers of the First Century are the very ones who turn into Ebionites of the second order later on. That's what the conflict that the Jerusalem Council recorded in Acts was meant to address. (link here).

So it remains reasonable, even if not infallible, to infer that the Judaizers of the Council of Jerusalem were not merely demanding Gentile circumcision, but were also denying Jesus' divinity and virgin birth. I defy anyone to dare attempt to show that the specifically Jewish Christians believed Jesus to be god manifest in the flesh.

Dr. James Tabor, Professor of ancient Judaism and early Christianity, thinks the Ebionites were the original followers of Jesus, see here, so the position adopted in responsible scholarship must remain reasonable despite Engwer's ceaseless trifles otherwise.

Eusebius significantly says that while Ebionites could not get some Christians to agree with all they believed, they were successful in getting such Christians to adopt other forms of "heresy", so that the Ebionites position, could be sustained against rebuttal to some degree, that is, the "heresy" had some teeth to it and wasn't just the casual unthinking uncritical happenstance conjuring up of doctrine that Engwer seems to think characterizes everything christian alternative he doesn't agree with:

Eusebius, church history, Book 3, ch. 27

The Heresy of the Ebionites 

The evil demon, however, being unable to tear certain others from their allegiance to the Christ of God, yet found them susceptible in a different direction, and so brought them over to his own purposes. The ancients quite properly called these men Ebionites, because they held poor and mean opinions concerning Christ. For they considered him a plain and common man, who was justified only because of his superior virtue, and who was the fruit of the intercourse of a man with Mary. In their opinion the observance of the ceremonial law was altogether necessary, on the ground that they could not be saved by faith in Christ alone and by a corresponding life. There were others, however, besides them, that were of the same name, but avoided the strange and absurd beliefs of the former, and did not deny that the Lord was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit. But nevertheless, inasmuch as they also refused to acknowledge that he pre-existed, being God, Word, and Wisdom, they turned aside into the impiety of the former, especially when they, like them, endeavored to observe strictly the bodily worship of the law. These men, moreover, thought that it was necessary to reject all the epistles of the apostle, whom they called an apostate from the law; and they used only the so-called Gospel according to the Hebrews and made small account of the rest. The Sabbath and the rest of the discipline of the Jews they observed just like them, but at the same time, like us, they celebrated the Lord's days as a memorial of the resurrection of the Saviour. Wherefore, in consequence of such a course they received the name of Ebionites, which signified the poverty of their understanding. For this is the name by which a poor man is called among the Hebrews.  

Engwer continues:

For example, the early opponents of Christianity not only don't seem to have opposed the Bethlehem birthplace of Jesus, but even corroborated it.

The evidence that Jesus stayed dead is overwhelming, whether he was "really" born in Bethlehem is something I couldn't give a shit about.

Not only does Celsus not agree with the popular modern notion that the virgin birth claim didn't arise until decades after Jesus' death, but he even attributes the claim of a virgin birth to Jesus himself (in Origen, Against Celsus, 1:28). See here for a further discussion of how inconsistent many modern skeptical views of the virgin birth are with ancient non-Christian sources.

Well gee, apostle Paul was "inconsistent" with the Judaizer gospel.  How ancient is the Judaizer gospel, and do you personally give a fuck? No.  Then quit being a hypocrite and pretending the ancient Christian sources YOU favor are somehow more deserving of credence.

Secondly, if Justin attributes the virgin birth claim to Jesus himself, sounds like your star church father had a nasty habit of drawing inferences from the canonical NT that it could not logically support.  Sure is funny that you don't really care how "heretical" your own church fathers were when they say something that supports your particular view.

For more examples of what ancient non-Christian sources said about Jesus' childhood, see here.

I believe there is basic historicity to the nativity stories (when Jesus was born, the family had to move around), I simply assert that they do indeed justify the charge of tension or contradiction, and of course I always use Mark 3:21, Mark 6:4, John 7:5 and other arguments to justify the conclusion that the miraculous portions of the nativity stories are total bullshit.  For example:  most Christian scholars understand Mary to be among the family members who in Mark 3:21 conclude Jesus is "insane" and try to publicly arrest him.    Minority scholars who trifle that Mark 3:21 isn't talking about Jesus family might exist, but do not render unreasonable the skeptics who side with the majority of Christian scholars and apologists on the matter.  And even if we forget Mark 3:21, the hatred Jesus' family had toward him during his alleged "miracle ministry' is still clear from Mark 6:4 and John 7:5, texts that apologists cannot get rid of with trifles about errant translation.

Engwer himself sees James being skeptical of Jesus in Mark 3:21, see here, so I'm not seeing what explosion of exegetical dishonesty anybody would allege is involved in my seeing Jesus' mother in the same verse, a conclusion held by most Christian scholars, including conservatives.

It doesn't matter if excuses can be made to "explain" how Mark 3:21 can be harmonized with the Nativity stories (i.e., maybe Mary experienced amnesia after the visions, etc), it is reasonable to conclude that any woman who experienced the divine confirmations alleged in the Nativity stories would not likely ever conclude that her son was "insane" unless she saw later proof that he prior visions were mere delusion.  Such is not probable, and probability is the key to historicity.  Unless apologists can show that Mary's later becoming forgetful, dismissive or apathetic toward her prior alleged visionary experience is MORE LIKELY than her continuing to trust that it was real, the skeptical position derived from Mark 3:21 will continue being reasonable.

And since they lived in an honor/shame society, the fact that Jesus' immediate family intended to publicly "arrest" him (Mark 3:21) reasonably implies that they had inquired diligently into his claims to make sure they were not basing their shaming behavior on a mistaken notion.  So if they intended to actually arrest him, they more than likely didn't reach that conclusion willy-nilly but only after robust discussion they decided that lesser means would be insufficient.  That is, apologists cannot reasonably charge Jesus' family with impulsiveness or stupidity, as that would then have consequences when such apologists later assert that some of Jesus' stupid impulsive family became leaders in the early church.  Once again, Mary's desire to arrest a son she concluded was "insane" is reasonably viewed as irreconcilable with her having experienced real divine visions while pregnant with Jesus that allegedly confirmed he was the son of God.  "Maybe she just forgot about those when she wanted to arrest Jesus" does not foist an intellectual compulsion on a skeptic, whatsoever, and of course, the paucity of NT evidence on Mary makes it impossible to "argue" that Mary's skepticism of Jesus in Mark 3:21 resulted from some type of mental or psychological imperfection.

The family's desire to arrest Jesus also reasonably justifies the assumption that they didn't experience anything about Jesus in his childhood that would have tipped them off that he is a divine being.  Yet if we are to believe Jesus was god, that necessarily implies that Jesus never, between birth and age 30, sinned.  How many Jews in the first century believed that a regular human being could avoid committing sin for the first 30 years of their life?  So if the Nativity stories were true, the mother of Jesus in Mark 3:21 wasn't just desiring to dishonor her son, but desiring to dishonor that son despite her having noticed that Jesus never sinned in his 30 years.  Now what, Engwer?  Was Mary just high on crack when she concluded Jesus was insane and tried to have him arrested? 

The brothers continuing to persist in unbelief toward Jesus as late as the completion of the first third of his public ministry (John 7:5) is also reasonably interpreted to mean that those brothers did not see anything in Jesus' alleged "miracles" that justified drawing the conclusion that he was the true son of god.  And since John 7:5 passes the criteria of embarrassment, it has greater likelihood of being true, than the laudatory statements in the gospel that Jesus performed miracles.

On the modern skeptical assertion that Luke's census account is radically inaccurate, see this post.

Nothing about my skepticism is affected in the least by admitting that Luke got this right.  Only fools who see so much non-existence relevance to biblical inerrancy would waste their time trifling about this bullshit.

On modern skeptical claims about the authorship of the gospels, see here.

That link goes to a defense of Matthew's authorship of a gospel.  Your arguments are largely irrelevant to my skepticism of his authorship:  you cannot accuse a skeptic of being unreasonable to adopt the position that most Christian scholars adopt:  markan priority (Mark was the first gospel written, and Matthew extensively copies off of Mark).  Yet, I'm sure that as Christian apologists, you will blindly insist that any Christian scholarly theory that happens to also help the skeptical case, is "unreasonable".

Mark was not an eyewitness, Matthew allegedly was, so that's the first problem:  Matthew's use of mark is so extensive that it implies Matthew's author was far more ignorant about the details of Jesus life than Mark was, making it reasonable to conclude Matthew's author was not an eyewitness.  The reasonableness of that theory is not going to disappear merely because you can conjure up another reason, such as Matthew experiencing amnesia (unlikely given your completely gratuitous and unprovable theory that Matthew was inspired by God).  There are no other examples from the 1st century of an eyewitness relying this extensively on a non-eyewitness version of events.  Mike Licona also says apostolic authorship is the "fuzziest" in the case of Matthew and John, which thus prevents you from saying denial of Matthean authorship is "unreasonable".  Your ability to trifle about the patristic details does not suddenly convert Licona's position over to "unreasonable".  You are the one calling the Matthean authorship denial "unreasonable" so YOU have the burden to demonstrate that the denier's interpretation of the internal and external evidence is "unreasonable", and you are never going to do that, and you know it.  The more you condemn such Christian scholarly majority view, the more rational justification I have to conclude, as a skeptic, that serious study of the gospels does precisely nothing to increase the chances that my views of such matters will be reasonable, justifying the further conclusion that atheists who choose to disregard the gospels completely, are not doing anything except protecting themselves from plaguing their lives with ultimately pointless complexities and uncertainties.

Most Christian scholars think authentic Mark ends at 16:8, which makes it reasonable to conclude the earliest form of the gospel did not say a risen Christ actually appeared to anybody, making Matthew's resurrection appearance narrative less likely an "addition" and more likely an "embellishment", as most scholars agree Matthew was published after Mark, and embellishment is more normally found in the later accounts, not the earlier accounts.  Engwer will trifle like N.T. Wright that the various resurrection predictions in Mark scream out for the reader to insist on a resurrection appearance narrative ending that simply got lost.  Unfortunately, apologists never explain where they get this idea that if a gospel story character predicted something,  we are obligated to believe the gospel author added a fulfillment story about it to the gospel, even if the present canonical form of the gospel lacks such addendum.

Acts 1:3 says the risen Jesus spoke to the disciples things concerning the kingdom of God over a period of 40 days, which is reasonably construed to signify speech slightly more extensive than a 15-seconds worth of talking, even if it doesn't mean Jesus spoke like an auctioneer from 9 to 5 for each of those 40 days.  Yet in Matthew, the risen Christ's total words to the apostles take less than 15 seconds to speak.  

You will automatically say "compression!", but because the author of Matthew has such an extensive interest in both sayings of Christ in general, and "kingdom of God" Christ-sayings in particular, it is highly unlikely that such author would have knowingly "chosen to exclude" most of the kingdom-of-God statements which Acts 1:3 alleges the risen Christ uttered, and to instead compress it all down into a 15 second summary that does precisely nothing to guide the nascent church through the Judaizer controversy, despite the fact that even conservative dates for Matthew (50 a.d.) still place it after the Council of Jerusalem (49 a.d.).

There are many examples where Matthew expands on Mark in circumstances that increase the probability that Matthew is simply fabricating Christ sayings.  According to Mark, Peter's confession of Christ consisted of "thou art the Christ" and nothing more from Jesus on that occasion...but in the undeniably parallel account in Matthew, which is obviously talking about the same exact occasion, Peter's confession is longer and more theologically sophisticated, and is followed by what must have been a very important teaching from Christ about Peter's authority, Christ sayings that Mark's account also lacks.  See here.  Since inerrantists and fundies insist that Matthew is reporting what really happened, they are thrown into a dilemma because of Mark's shorter version:  If we must assume Mark's source was Peter, how likely is it that Peter would have said the fuller form of the confession now confined to Matthew, but only gave the shorter form to Mark?  How likely is it that Peter didn't tell Mark about Jesus' important authority-establishing statement, or that Mark knew about it but "chose to exclude" it?  What exact rule of hermeneutics or historiography is the skeptic violating by saying a person like Mark would not likely have "chosen to abbreviate" this kind of information?

All of this makes it reasonable to conclude that the reason the risen Christ in Matthew only gives 15 seconds worth of speech is because that's all the author thought this risen Christ had to say, not because the author is knowingly excluding such words through the artifice of "compression,  thus contradicting the 40-day period of risen Christ speeches alleged in Acts 1:3...a book that comes along LATER and is therefore the logical choice to blame for embellishment.

You will say Mark was based on Peter's preaching so Matthew was actually borrowing text from another apostle, but since it was already shown that Mark's version of Peter's confession is shorter than Matthew's, Matthew's dependence is more upon Mark than on Peter...who surely would have given to Mark all those extra details now confined to Matthew's account.

Finally, patristic accounts allege that Mark was writing for a Roman audience, so that if all else be true, Matthew was not merely relying on "Mark" or "Peter", he was relying on a version of Christ's sayings that Peter had adapted to his Roman audience...which is highly unlikely for the Matthew-author, whose gospel all scholars agree is the most intensely "Jewish" of the 4 canonical gospels.  What, did eyewitness Matthew RE-adapt the secondary Roman form of the the Christ-sayings for his Jewish audience?  Does that sound like somebody who was in a good position to have first-hand knowledge of Jesus' teachings?  Of course not, so then authorship of Matthew by the apostle of the same name, highly unlikely and profoundly irrelevant regardless.

And so on. As with the other two points above, you'd have to be selective in choosing one or more examples to illustrate the point, but we've provided many to choose from.
 To summarize these three points even further:
 1. the presence of reliable sources
2. the presence of evidence for a traditional Christian view
3. the absence of support for skeptical alternatives among the ancient sources
 And you could make it even easier to remember as: presence, presence, absence.
 The importance of these three points can be seen by thinking about how easily the relevant circumstances could have been different than they are and what implications would follow if they were different. What if individuals like Mary and James hadn't lived as long as they did, the earliest Christians hadn't shown so much interest in writing, etc.? What if there wasn't so much information about Jesus' childhood that meets the evidential standards for historically reliable material?

In light of the admissions of Christian scholars like Licona that Matthew wasn't as concerned about historical accuracy as inerrantists are, and in light of the fact that you don't have the first fucking clue how Matthew came up with the Nativity story material (if "how-it-could-have-been" scenarios work for you, you must accord that luxury to skepics also, to avoid charges of hypocrisy).

I'm not aware of any rule of historiography that says a person is intellectually compelled to give the benefit of the doubt to just whatever ancient document he looks at, until somebody comes along to prove it false.  That crap only started with Josh McDowell's dishonest reference to "Aristotle's dictum", but even if such initial trust is legitimate rule of historigraphy, so what?  How many historians say this benefit of the doubt must be given?  Mike Licona's admissions about how historians cannot even agree on methodology, reasonably justifies the conclusion that unless ancient words can be demonstrated to have relevance to the skeptic today, the skeptic cannot be unreasonable if they choose to completely ignore all things from ancient history...which is what the vast majority of people do their whole lives, except for religious fanatics and historians.

Refusing to give the benefit of the doubt to the document isn't like denying a law of physics, as historiography is an art, not a science.  Refusing to waste time learning what ancient authors had to say, can never be shown to result in the same level of disaster that looms over the person who chooses to disagree with the laws of logic, physics or math.  You'd have to show that a skeptic's disagreement with what most historians care about, makes the skeptic unreasonable, but then again, you don't think the skeptic unreasonable to dismiss from consideration the vast majority of ancient religious material.  It's only when we tell YOU to fuck off, that suddenly the only rational people in the world are those who give a fuck about ancient religious sources.

So if skeptics simply laugh at the NT and dismiss it, they aren't committing any academic "error", they are merely making life very hard for a few dipshits at Triablogue who themselves cannot even agree on what the bible teaches (Hays is a Calvinist, Engwer is not, etc).

Nevermind that there is no evidence, whatsoever, that anything stated in ancient history has any significance to modern-day people beyond one's personal preferences and intellectual curiosity.  If we were as objective about ancient history as christian apologists require, we'd never have time to investigate Christianity, because there are so many other possibly true religious claims from the ancient world, whose veracity we'd have to kindly presume true until they were proved false, an enterprise that would take a lifetime.

Gee, what rule of common sense, historiography or literary analysis dictates how long the skeptic should study a religious rooted in ancient claims, before the skeptic can be justified to start drawing ultimate conclusions about it?  Christian apologists will necessarily have to insist that it should take less than a lifetime, so that the skeptic can free up some time to bother with Christianity, but since there is no such rule, the amount of time the skeptic deems sufficient is a highly subjective affair and hence cannot be dicated by worried apologists at Triablogue who are guilty of the sin of ceaseless word-wrangling (2nd Timothy 2:14).

What if the early opponents of Christianity had made significantly different claims about Jesus' childhood, such as by corroborating the Christian claims much less than they did?

What if they did, and those records were destroyed just like thousands of other ancient christian writings?

What if most of the Arian bishops had shown up at the Council of Nicaea?  What if Constantine hadn't bribed anybody but bade them attend at their own expense?

What if the gospel alleged that Jesus sinned a few times during childhood?

 This approach I've outlined doesn't cover every issue, and you still have to address whatever objections are raised. It's a good way to start a discussion and summarize your view, even if it doesn't end the discussion.

And my rebuttal to you is a good way to show that skeptics are not being "unreasonable" in alleging that Jesus was an imperfect child whose history was embellished more than 50 years later, in a way that most NT authors did not seem sufficiently edifying to justify repeating, despite their willingness to repeat most of their issues.