Recently I shocked an evangelical friend of mine, when I told him I do not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, actually of anyone. It occurred to me this morning I might share my reasoning with you.
Long ago I had the realization that God gave me intelligence and expected me to use it.
I began to question and explore.
So here is a brief outline of my thinking.
Paul wrote between 52-64 CE. The only thing he said about Jesus' birth was he was "born of woman under the law." He surely would have said something about a magical birth, if it were being talked about.
The next writing we have is Mark who starts his Gospel with the baptism. Not a word about a virgin birth. All three baptism stories have Jesus see a dove or spirit and hear a version of Isaiah or Psalms saying he is my son. Indicating he did not know that before this time.
Then there is the episode in Mark 3 where his mother and brothers want to take him away "for he has gone out of his mind." That does not seem consistent with Mary being made pregnant by God. It seems that story does not develop until The Way has moved fully into the Greek/Roman world where they already had such stories.
For these and other reasons, such as the genealogies in Matthew and Luke all through Joseph, I am pretty well convinced that Paul spoke the truth
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