[Timotheist]

Originally Posted by awareness

But there's nothing wrong with critical readings of the Bible.

For example -- and you know this one -- examining the virgin birth, one finds how it became 'virgin' because of a mistranslation in the Septuagint, while in the Masoretic text of Isaiah 7:14 the word actually means almah or "young woman," not virgin.

Add to that that only two of the gospels mention this very hard to believe virgin birth, that is so phenomenal you'd think that all the gospel witnesses would cover it.

Moreover, there's no mention of it in our earliest NT writings, by Paul. Must be because the virgin birth wasn't being orally passed around during Paul's times, or he would have remarked about it. The virgin birth came along later, in the much later written gospel witnesses, but only two.

The virgin birth would be such a phenomenal event that surely all witnesses would have remarked about it.

Then again, virgin births were common to the gentiles back then. So virgin births would not be too far fetched to the Hellenized early first century Christians, who were competing with the occurring of virgin births in Greek mythologies. So must be that two witnesses we have are telling what their target audience would like to hear, to win them over. I suppose we could consider the virgin birth as a syncretism of Greek mythologies and later first century Hellenized Christians.

In the end, there's a pretty good chance that bro Timotheist is correct.

Nice summary, and I tend to agree with the last statement.