But this appeal to the general possibility of miracle quickly becomes very limited. For defenders of the tradition, a virginal conception or a virginal birth does not normally happen but, exceptionally, it has taken place in the one case of God’s activity in the birth of Jesus. They turn out to be just as biased against the miraculous when it comes to other miracles in the ancient world and no more willing than anyone else to accept at face value accounts of other miraculous conceptions in Graeco-Roman literature. This position is, in fact, dependent on a particular view of the authority of
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