One further piece of evidence is
Jesus’ use of Ps. 110 to confound his critics, recorded in Mark 12:35-37. He
asks if David calls the Messiah “Lord,” how he can be David’s son (i.e.
descendant). Now, Mark believed that Jesus was the “son of David” (Mark 10:47-48)
and it would be a great departure from Jewish ideas if he did not understand
that genealogically. Yet the implication of Jesus’ recorded teaching is that
the Messiah is more than just a son of David. At very least, Mark is claiming
that Jesus was more than just the heir to the throne of David, and for Mark,
that something more is bound up in the central claim of his gospel that Jesus
is the Son of God (Mark 1:1; 15:39). This falls short of requiring a virgin
birth, but is certainly suggestive.
But if Mark presupposed belief in the
virgin birth when he wrote his gospel, why does he not include any infancy
narrative? Firstly, we should question the expectation that Mark would include
an infancy narrative. Though we might expect modern biographers to give a full
life story from childhood to death, there doesn’t seem to be any strong reason
to expect Mark to follow this form. In fact, it is evident that Mark didn’t
feel compelled to include details about Jesus’ infancy (miraculous or
otherwise) or indeed any details about Jesus’ life prior to his baptism From
the gospel itself it is clear that Mark’s purpose is to given an account of
Jesus’ ministry. So, we have no reason to expect an infancy narrative in Mark’s
gospel. Instead, we should be more intrigued by the fact that both Matthew and
Luke choose to include an infancy narrative, and that, presumably, tells us
something interesting about their purposes. (Thomas Edmund Gaston, Dynamic
Monarchianism: The Earliest Christology? [2d ed.; Nashville: Theophilus
Press, 2023], 295-96)
