Virgin Birth?

Recently, in a class at the college I attend, a professor made the comment that if one does not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, it is because they do not believe that God can do miracles. I however, propose that this is a false statement. To say that one is a deist on the sole account of their belief in the virgin birth is an unfair assumption. Furthermore, the virgin birth of Jesus is not an essential belief. I believe in the virgin birth. However, I want to point out that this is a matter of faith. Epistemologically speaking, one cannot know whether or not the virgin birth occurred historically. The only 'evidence' one has is the written attestation of Matthew 1 and Luke 1. Thus, I would first like to note that neither of these authors were present to verify. They had to believe it on account of the story told orally. If one thinks it right, they can take Matthew and Luke as strictly historical documents. However, before modern times, there aren't many historians who record strictly what was historical. And to place that modernist assumption on them due to their title of historian is unfair. Furthermore, contemporary literature to the gospels also had similar stories of heroes being born of virgins. The common critique is that these stories are not that similar and that those women weren't actually virgins. Such a different story applies to Alexander the Great:

It seemed to the bride [Olympias, Alexander’s mother], before the night when her marriage with Philip was consummated, that there was a clap of thunder, that a bolt fell upon her womb, and that from the stoke a great fire was kindled, and then, breaking out in all directions into sparks, was quenched; then later, after the marriage, Philip saw himself in a dream placing a seal over his wife’s womb; and the carving of the seal, as he thought, had a figure of a lion; and when the other seers viewed the vision with suspicion, as meaning that Philip should keep careful watch over things concerning his marriage, Aristander of Telmessus said that the woman was with child (since nothing that was empty required a seal) and that she would bring forth a son who would be high-spirited and like a lion in his nature. And on one occasion there appeared also a serpent stretched out beside Olympias; body as she slept, and they say this especially dulled the love of Philip and his ardor so that he did not thereafter often approach her – either because he feared certain sorceries that might be practiced upon him, or because he avoided her on the ground that she belonged to one greater than he.

However, the story of Plato is rather similar to the gospel's account:

Speusippus, Plato’s nephew, in his work called Plato’s Funeral Feast, and Clearchus in the Encomium on Plato, and Anaxilaïdes in the second book of his work On Philosophy, say that there was a report at Athens to the effect that Ariston [Plato’s father] sought to have union with Perictione [Plato’s mother], who was then of marriageable age, and did not attain his end; and that when he ceased from his violence he saw the appearance of Apollo; wherefore he kept her pure from marriage until she brought forth her child.[1]

Does this not sound similar to our account of Luke and Matthew? Indeed Diogenes' account is from the 3rd century A.D., but he is quoting literature from the 4th century B.C. I am not trying to say that the virgin birth is just a copy of other great stories. Or even that those stories stole from the Gospels. I am trying to point that Roman/Greek literature often included virgin birth narratives in order to show that such honorable and great men could not have been born like the normal human being. Is it so ridiculous to say that that virgin birth may have been an early Christian tradition to show that the Messiah of the Israelites was too great to be born by natural circumstances?

The great theologian Karl Barth did not feel the need to force the virgin birth to be historical. Rather, the story was written to make the point that salvation does not come through men - God's work to save humanity is not the result of the relations between a man and woman, but rather the result of God's intentional creation and planning in the world.

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[1] Diogenes Laertiusm iii. 2. Compare the translation by R. D. Hicks in “Diogenes Laertius,” i, 1925, p. 277, in the Loeb Classical Library. The Greek text is also found in that edition.