Was the virgin birth an original pagan doctrine?

The argument from many skeptics concerning the virgin birth of Christ is that the whole idea was borrowed from pagan myths of other so called virgin births that pre-ceded the times of Jesus. For example, Walter Bundy in his book, Jesus and The First Three Gospels, states: “The idea of a supernatural or virgin birth is pagan, and it must have found its way into the story of Jesus through Gentile-Christian channels (pg. 10; quoted from an article by Wayne Jackson on www.christiancourier.com).” Another such attack was levied by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy in their book¸ The Jesus Mysteries (pg. 9; quoted from the book Reinventing Jesus, J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer and Daniel B. Wallace). They write:”Why should we consider the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Mithras, and the other Pagan Mystery saviors as fables, yet come across essentially the same story told in a Jewish context and believe it to be the biography of a carpenter from Bethlehem.” Josh McDowell notes: "Some have attempted to account for the virgin birth by tracing it to Greek or Babylonian mythology. They argue that the Gospel writers borrowed this story from the mythology of their day. This view does not fit the facts, for there is not any hero in pagan mythology for which a virgin birth is claimed, and moreover it would be unthinkable to the Jewish mind to construct such a story from mythology. Many deities among Greeks, Babylonians and Egyptians were reported born in an unusual manner, but for the most part these beings never actually existed. The accounts are filled with obvious mythological elements which are totally absent from the Gospel narratives. They are reports of a god or goddess being born into the world by sexual relations between some heavenly being or by some adulterous affair among the gods and goddesses (A Ready Defense, pgs. 189-190).” This attack against the virgin birth of Jesus is one that, when researched actually proves that the event is found in the gospels only. After an exhaustive study of the claims, Louis Matthew Sweet stated: “After a careful, laborious, and occasionally wearisome study of the evidence offered and the analogies urged, I am convinced that heathenism knows nothing of virgin births. Supernatural births it has without number, but never from a virgin in the New Testament sense and never without physical generation, except in a few isolated instances of magical births on the part of women who had not the slightest claim to be called virgins. In all recorded instances which I have been able to examine, if the mother was a virgin before conception took place she could not make that claim afterward. (The Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ, pg. 188; quoted from an article by Wayne Jackson on www.christiancourier.com)” Even Thomas Boslooper, who denied the historical account of a virgin birth, admitted: “The literature of the world is prolific with narratives of unusual births, but it contains no precise analogy to the virgin birth in Matthew and Luke. Jesus’ ‘virgin birth’ is not ‘pagan. (The Virgin Birth, pg. 136; quoted from an article by Wayne Jackson on www.christiancourier.com)” As we see, the so called myths of a Pagan pre-Christian virgin birth do not exist. The evidence is overwhelming and the claims by the adversaries of the biblical story have no ground to stand on. Let me add to this the words of Dr. Thomas Thorburn, who writes: “All these various stories of supernatural conceptions and births, which we meet with in folklore and the history of mythology, have this one point in common-they serve to point not so much to the similarity as to the complete contrast and dissimilarity which exists between the Christian birth-story and the tales which are current in various pagan circles. (Josh McDowell, A Ready Defense, pg. 190)” My final statement is a quote from Dr. Norman Geisler. He writes: “Historical evidence that Jesus was supernaturally conceived of a virgin is more than substantial. Indeed, there are more eyewitness contemporary records of the virgin birth than for most events from the ancient world. The records show no signs of myth development. Indeed, they are surrounded by historical references to real people, places and times. Thus, there is no reason to believe Jesus was not literally, biologically born of a virgin just as the Bible claims he was. Only an unjustified antisupernatural bias is ground for any conclusion to the contrary. (Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, pg. 764)”