whom they are attributed in the narrative, and produced at a time
Surely a possible explanation is that the hymn was circulated separately, and was delivered to the author of the narrative as a hymn of Zacharias, but without definite indication of the time when it was produced.66 Like the Magnificat it may well have been the product of partly conscious, though inspired, art.67
The absence, then, of specifically Christian ideas in the Magnificat and Benedictus, the absence of reference to facts in the life of Jesus, points to a time when the Messianic hope was still couched in the terms of Old Testament /pg. 98/ prophecy. On the other hand, the hymns are not simply Jewish hymns, composed in some unknown situation; for if they were, they could not have found a place in Lk. 1– 2. They must, therefore, really have been produced by the persons to whom they are attributed in the narrative, and produced at a time when Old Testament prophecy had not yet been explained by its fulfilment. The fulfilment is at the door; it is no longer a thing of the dim and distant future: but the fashion of it is still unknown. The promised king has arrived at last, but the manner of His reign must still be learned only from the mysterious indications of prophecy. The Messiah is there, but He is still unknown. The hymns belong, in other words, exactly where the Evangelist has placed them. If the hymns really were composed by Mary and by Zacharias, then they were no doubt composed either in Hebrew or in Aramaic. The former hypothesis would explain best of all the Old Testament spirit and coloring of this poetry. And that the priest Zacharias, at least, should have composed such a hymn in the sacred language, rather than in the language of every-day life, is by no means impossible; indeed, in view of the judgment of experts with regard to the language of Palestine at the time of Christ, it might almost be pronounced the more probable alternative. That a woman (Mary) should have composed a hymn in Hebrew is less natural,68 though perhaps not altogether impossible. If the hymns were composed in Aramaic—and in the case of the Magnificat that is more probable—then the task of the Greek translator was harder. He would not be able to use Septuagint renderings which had already been formulated for the very expressions which lay before him, but might be forced to
consider first (of course quite naturally, and almost unconsciously) the Old Testament Hebrew expressions which were equivalent to the Aramaic expressions of the hymns. In view of the similarity between Hebrew and Aramaic, the task would not be over-difficult, especially if the translator was at home in the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Scriptures. Or else the Septuagint phrases might have occurred to the translator directly without reference to the Hebrew passages, as natural translations of the Aramaic. The suffusion of the original Aramaic hymns with the thought and language of the Old Testament would not be unnatural; for the Scriptures in an Aramaic form had become familiar to all through the oral translations in the synagogues.
The preceding discussion of the Magnificat and the Benedictus has at least served to refute the view of Harnack that the hymns were composed by the /pg. 99/ Gentile Christian Luke. Even if they were not actually spoken by the persons whose names they bear, and at the period of time dealt with in the infancy narrative, still their Palestinian origin might be, and has often been, maintained; they may be at least Jewish Christian even if they are not preChristian.
Thus Ladeuze69 agrees with Spitta in supposing that the hymns were circulated separately, before they found a place in their present context. But he rightly rejects the view that they were simply Jewish psalms. They were found in use, he thinks, by Luke in the Christian communities of Palestine. "May they not be," he says, "both of them, simply that which, detached from the context, they seem to be, true psalms—Christian psalms spoken, under the action of the Spirit, in the meetings of the first communities in Palestine, and found by Luke at the same time as his Jewish Christian document concerning the infancy of Christ?"70 Indeed, Ladeuze continues, Mary herself may have been the one who first sang the Magnificat among the believers. The concrete circumstances were already in the past; so she simply considered as a whole the work of which she had been the instrument.
This view, it may be remarked, does not explain so well as the view which we have advocated the absence from the hymn of definite references to the later events, such as the events in the public ministry of Jesus or such as the crucifixion and resurrection. But at least it preserves to the full the Palestinian character of the hymn.
J. Weiss, in the first and second editions of his commentary on the Gospels,71 suggested that possibly the Magnificat may be regarded as a Jewish Christian psalm in which the Christian community gives thanks for the blessing which God has given it, verse 48 being an addition made in order to suit the song to its present context. The aorists in verses 51–54 refer, according to this hypothesis, to experiences of the Jewish Christian Church. The mighty act which, according to verse 51, God has performed is, Weiss suggests, the sending of Christ; the "lowly" of verse 52 are the members of the Christian community, who, strangely enough, were chosen from among the humbler classes of the people; the mighty ones who have been cast down from their thrones are, perhaps, Pilate and Herod, as also the persecutor Herod Agrippa, who died a sudden death in A.D. 44.
This interpretation of the psalm is, we think, hardly correct; the aorists of /pg. 100/ the Magnificat may, for example, be understood, with Gunkel,72 as referring to future events. Or, rather, some of the aorists may be understood in that way, since we see no reason why they must all be understood alike. The speaker of the hymn may already have experienced a mighty dispensation of God's grace; and then, in reflection upon that, and upon other acts of divine mercy in the past history of Israel, may in prophetic vision have included with these events of past and present other events that were still to come; the future glories may thus be regarded simply as the unfolding of what God had already done and as so necessarily involved in it that distinctions of time lost their importance.
It is perfectly true, as J. Weiss suggested, that even if the aorists of the Magnificat refer to the future, there must have been some special
occasion for praising these future acts of God just at the particular time when the poet was writing. This occasion, however, was present to Mary, at the time described in Lk. 1, as well as to a writer of the Jewish Christian Church. After the marvellous experience which Mary had undergone at the annunciation, the coming of the Messiah was to the eye of faith already accomplished, and also (in principle) all the acts of God's grace which are celebrated in verses 51–54.
The view of Wilkinson73 with regard to the Magnificat is somewhat similar to that of J. Weiss, which has just been discussed; like Weiss he regards the hymn as "a hymn of the early Christian Church at Jerusalem." Only, unlike Weiss, he is not obliged to regard verse 48 as an interpolation into the original poem; for he supposes—in what, it must be confessed, is a very unnatural way—that the term "handmaiden" in that verse was originally applied (in a collective sense) to the Christian community.
No doubt there are objections to these views of Wilkinson and Weiss. But at least these scholars have performed a service by insisting (as over against the view of Harnack) upon the genuinely Palestinian character of the hymn. In that respect they join forces with the advocates of a merely Jewish, as distinguished from Jewish Christian, origin for the Magnificat and Benedictus. It is true that Weiss does believe that the original Magnificat has suffered interpolation (at verse 48) when it was incorporated in the narrative as we now have it; and he holds that in the Benedictus (the former part of which otherwise he regards as the work of a Jewish Christian poet) verses 76f.74 (though not all of verses 76–79) constitute a later addition. This latter opinion, as we have seen, is shared (with respect, however, to all of verses 76-79) quite generally by those scholars who regard the Benedictus as a merely Jewish /pg. 101/ hymn. But a significant admission is made in this connection by one of the most distinguished of these scholars—namely by Gunkel.75 The Christian writer who added verse 48 in the Magnificat and verses 76–79 in the Benedictus, he says, "knew the Old Testament well and perhaps wrote in a Semitic language," so that "his additions
are not perfectly easy to distinguish." As a matter of fact, we think that the supposed "additions" are not to be distinguished at all, but are to be regarded as original parts of the hymns.76 But at least it is interesting that so distinguished a student of Semitic language and literature as Gunkel supposes that even the Christian interpolator must have been thoroughly familiar with the Old Testament and probably wrote in a Semitic language. We have here a strong testimony, among many others, to the Palestinian origin of the hymns.
The whole trend of recent investigation, therefore, has been strongly opposed to the view of Harnack that the Magnificat and Benedictus are artificial compositions of a Gentile Christian. The Palestinian origin of the hymns is recognized both by those who regard the hymns as purely Jewish, and by those who regard them as hymns of the Jewish Christian Church, this second view constituting a salutary protest against the error in the first. The element of truth in both these two views can be conserved, we think, and the element of error avoided, only if we suppose that the hymns actually originated in the situations where they are now placed in the infancy narrative. But at any rate the Palestinian character of the hymns stands firm.
That conclusion tends to confirm our opinion with regard to the Palestinian character of the whole narrative in Lk. 1–2. It is conceivable, of course, that a Gentile Christian writer, freely composing a narrative of the birth and infancy of Jesus, should have embellished his work with two genuinely Palestinian psalms; but that is less likely than that a Jewish Christian writer should have done so. At least, it would have to be supposed that the Gentile Christian writer was familiar enough with Palestine to pick up what suitable poetic material that country afforded. We can say, at any rate—to speak cautiously—that the Magnificat and Benedictus, far from tending to weaken our conviction as to the Palestinian origin of the whole narrative, as would certainly be the case if Harnack's view of these hymns were right, really tend strongly to confirm that conviction. The character of these hymns is just what we should
expect in a genuinely Palestinian narrative of the birth and infancy of Jesus.
CHAPTER V:
THE ORIGIN AND TRANSMISSION OF
THE LUCAN NARRATIVE
It has been shown in Chapter III that the whole narrative in Lk. 1–2 is Semitic and Palestinian in character, and displays a striking lack of acquaintance with events in the later history of the apostolic Church. These characteristics, it has been shown further (in Chapter IV), appear with special clearness in the two hymns, the Magnificat and the Benedictus. But how is this Palestinian character of the Lucan infancy narrative to be explained? Various hypotheses suggest themselves.
The most obvious hypothesis, of course, is that in this section the author of Luke-Acts made use of a Palestinian source, written originally in Hebrew or Aramaic, which either had already been translated into Greek or else was translated by Luke himself.
This hypothesis has been opposed in recent years especially by Harnack.1 By a detailed examination of the language of the infancy narrative he has sought to show that after subtraction has been made of the words and phrases taken from the Septuagint what remains is so characteristically Lucan that Luke must have been the author, and not merely the editor, of the narrative. He does not, indeed, exclude the possibility that Luke may have used an Aramaic source in these chapters, but he insists that if Luke did so he must have translated the source himself; he could not have found it already existing in
Greek; the Greek form of the infancy narrative must be due to Luke alone. And although Harnack admits this possibility that Luke translated an Aramaic source, he is evidently inclined to favor the other view, that in the composition of this narrative oral tradition only was used, so that Luke was in the fullest sense the author, and not merely the editor or the translator, of the written narrative. How then does Harnack explain the Semitic coloring of the language in this section? He does so very largely by insisting upon conscious imitation, on the part of Luke, of the style of the Septuagint. In the prologue, he supposes, Luke is writing according to his own natural style; in the following narrative he is imitating the style of the Septuagint. /pg. 103/
At first sight the hypothesis may seem to be very unlikely, since it seems to attribute to the author of Luke-Acts a refinement of art which is hardly natural in an ancient writer. But possibly first impressions in this matter may have to be modified. As a matter of fact, imitations of the Septuagint, or, to say the least, detailed influence of the Septuagint, in the Lucan writings cannot altogether be denied. For example, despite his Greek literary affinities, Luke uses the Hebraistic phrase, "it came to pass,"2 far more than it is used by any other New Testament writer. Evidently he had a keen appreciation for what may be called the "Bible style" of the Septuagint, and felt that that style was peculiarly fitted to be the vehicle of his own sacred narrative. Harnack's contention would simply lead us to say, in effect, that in treating in a poetical manner the events connected with the Saviour's birth, Luke carried the imitation of the Septuagint style somewhat farther than he did when he was narrating in a more matter-of-fact way the events of the public ministry, and very much farther than he did when he came to events that took place in a Gentile environment, like the events of the missionary journeys of Paul. In the case of the public ministry, we might say that Luke was hindered by his sources from carrying out his stylistic plans with perfect freedom; and in the case of the missionary journeys of Paul the subject-matter did not lend itself at all to imitation of the Septuagint. But in the infancy narrative there
would be no such hindrances, and the style of the Septuagint could freely be employed if the author pleased.
Thus the hypothesis of Harnack cannot be regarded as inherently impossible. In support of it he has in a very careful way3 gone through representative sections of Lk. 1:5–2:52, pointing out Lucan peculiarities—that is, words or usages which occur only in Luke-Acts among the New Testament writings or else occur more frequently there than in the rest of the New Testament and especially in Matthew and Mark. The work of Harnack has received a valuable supplement from Zimmermann,4 who examined in detail those portions of the narrative which were left unexamined in Harnack's earlier discussion. In /pg. 104/ Harnack's more recent work he has carried the examination through part of the sections that Zimmermann had already covered.5
These recent investigators were anticipated one hundred years ago by Gersdorf,6 who defended the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke, as original parts of the First and Third Gospels, by an elaborate linguistic argument. The chapters in question were explored very much after the method that has been adopted by Harnack and Zimmermann. Lk. 1–2, for example, was traversed from beginning to end in order to exhibit those linguistic features which connect it with the rest of Luke-Acts as the work of the same writer. In thoroughness, Gersdorf was not one whit inferior to the more recent investigators. It is remarkable how very seldom Harnack or Zimmermann has detected a Lucan characteristic which Gersdorf had not already observed; and in a number of cases Gersdorf observed what his successors have overlooked. Gersdorf labored with insufficient textual materials and was too much inclined to emend the text in order to secure absolute uniformity of style; but such faults do not affect the permanent usefulness of his work. The neglect with which he has been treated, in recent years, even by scholars who have been over exactly the same ground,7 is undeserved. Harnack and Zimmermann agree in excluding a Greek written source for Lk. 1:5–2:52. The style of the passage, they maintain, is found, after due
allowance is made for peculiarity of the subject-matter and for imitation of the Septuagint, to be so totally Lucan that Luke must have been something more than the mere editor; he must have been the first to treat the material in a Greek narrative. If he had used a Greek source, they maintain, the style of the source would necessarily appear in the use of a non-Lucan vocabulary and phraseology. So far, Harnack and Zimmermann agree. But they differ in what they substitute for the rejected hypothesis of a Greek source. Zimmermann supposes that Luke used an Aramaic source which he translated himself; Harnack, /pg. 105/ while admitting the possibility of an Aramaic source, apparently thinks it more probable that Luke depended merely upon oral tradition.
Harnack began his investigation with the Magnificat and the Benedictus, in the case of which, as we have already observed, he excluded the possibility, which he admits for the rest of the narrative, that Luke translated an Aramaic source. The language of the hymns, he maintained, is, after subtraction of the Septuagint element, so totally Lucan as to show unmistakably that the hymns are free compositions of the author of the whole double work. This contention has been refuted in the last chapter. Far from showing that the hymns were free compositions of Luke, Harnack has not even succeeded in showing that the hand of Luke has been at work on them at all; so far as the linguistic phenomena go, it is possible, though not obligatory, to hold that the hymns came to Luke in a Greek form and that he incorporated them in his work without change.
But if the arguments of Harnack are unconvincing with regard to the hymns, they are far from being without force for the rest of the narrative. In 1911 the present writer engaged in a rather detailed examination of the whole infancy narrative, in order to determine how many of the Lucan characteristics detected by Gersdorf, Harnack, Zimmermann and others, might more properly be regarded simply as characteristics of the Septuagint.8 The result showed, indeed, that Harnack had not proved his point; many of the words
and phrases which Harnack had listed as Lucan may equally well be placed in a different category. The phenomena are not such as definitely to exclude the use of a Greek written source in Lk. 1–2. Nevertheless, after all such deductions have been made, enough remains to show plainly that the hand of the author of the whole book has been at work in this section. That much, at least, has been demonstrated by Harnack. We do not, indeed, think that the Lucan characteristics, after the necessary deductions have been made, are sufficient to show that Luke was the first to put the narrative in a Greek form and sufficient to exclude the hypothesis that he used a Greek written source; but they are simply sufficient to show at least that if he did use a Greek written source he used it with freedom and made it conform in important particulars to the style of the rest of his great double work.
For one thing, the objection which Harnack raised to our method of examining his argument,9 applies with very much more force to the whole narrative than it does to the hymns. Harnack had said, in effect, that when /pg. 106/ the Septuagint element is removed, what remains is so characteristically Lucan that Luke must have been in the full sense the author, and not merely the editor, of the narrative. Our investigation showed, by a detailed use of the Hatch-Redpath concordance to the Septuagint, that the Septuagint element in the language of the narrative is very much greater than Harnack supposed, so that many of Harnack's Lucan characteristics are really just characteristics of the Septuagint, likely to be used by anyone who was influenced by the Septuagint style. In reply Harnack insisted, in effect, that even if the characteristics to which he points are also found in the Septuagint, that does not necessarily destroy their evidential value, since a choice of just the same usages from the rich store of Septuagint phraseology might indicate unity of authorship as well as it would be indicated by coincidence in other respects.
This reply, which had been anticipated by Ladeuze and to some extent by the present writer,10 is by no means without weight. And yet we think it does not quite go the whole way. When it is observed
that similarity in language between the Lucan writings in general, on the one hand, and the Septuagint, on the other, is far greater than that between the Septuagint and the other New Testament writers, then some, at least, of the coincidences in language between Lk. 1–2 and the rest of Luke become less significant. Where else in the New Testament can a section be found which approximates so closely as does Lk. 1–2 to the narrative of the Old Testament? Part of the exceptionally close affinity of Lk. 3-Acts 28 to Lk. 1–2 may be due simply to an exceptionally close affinity to the Septuagint in general. Other New Testament writers may be found to diverge more than Luke does from Lk. 1–2 simply because they diverge more from the Septuagint. Thus Harnack's reply, although unquestionably it deserves to be borne carefully in mind, does not altogether destroy the damage to his extreme conclusion which comes from the discovery in the Septuagint of a large number of those words and phrases which he designated as specifically Lucan. The Lucan residuum being smaller, after subtraction of the Septuagint element, than he supposed, perhaps he ought to be content with the hypothesis of Lucan employment of a previously existing source, instead of insisting that Luke must have been the first to put the narrative in a Greek written form. A second caution, moreover, needs to be borne in mind before Harnack's conclusion can be accepted in its entirety. May not some of the parallels between Lk. 1–2 and the rest of Luke-Acts be explained as due probably to dependence of Luke upon various sources of a common type? With what part of Luke-Acts is Lk. 1–2 to be compared in order to exhibit its completely Lucan character? /pg. 107/ Obviously the comparison would best be made, if possible, with parts where Luke's own style appears in its purity. But this requirement is not certainly satisfied, for example, in the former part of Acts, especially in the speeches which are there attributed to Jewish Christians. Very probably Luke is there using sources, and sources of a Jewish Christian kind very much like the source that has been posited for Lk. 1–2. Therefore the affinity of Lk. 1–2 with these early chapters in Acts does not necessarily prove full Lucan authorship. It may conceivably prove nothing more than authorship by a Jewish Christian, whose
linguistic and religious environment was the same as that of the author or authors who produced the sources of Luke's account, in Acts, of the primitive Jerusalem Church.
Finally, even if Lk. 1–2 is found to coincide in a certain usage with elements in Luke-Acts which may be admitted to be actually due to Luke himself, that still does not necessarily prove dependence of Lk. 1–2 upon the Lucan usage in question. For the dependence may be the other way around. This possibility has indeed usually been neglected in the discussion of the subject. But such neglect is quite unjustifiable.
That Luke's style has been colored by at least one phrase in the Benedictus (regarded as a previously existing hymn) has already been shown to be possible,11 and there is no good reason why the dependence may not have extended also to other parts of the infancy narrative. One case of such possible dependence deserves special consideration. It is possible dependence upon the angelic doxology in Lk. 2:14. With that verse, which reads according to the correct text, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of [His] good pleasure,"12 Gersdorf compared the latter part of Lk. 19:38, where the words of the multitude at the triumphal entry read, "In heaven peace, and glory in the highest."13 These words are not in the other Gospels, but take the place in Luke of the "Hosanna in the highest"14 of Matthew and Mark. But what is the relation between this Lucan addition and the angelic song in Lk. 2:14? The two have two things in common; the "glory in the highest" and the conjunction of this with "peace in…." With regard to the former point, Ryle and James can cite an interesting parallel in the Psalms of Solomon: "glorious, dwelling in the highest."15 This suggests /pg. 108/ the possibility that the "glory in the highest" of Lk. 2:14 and of Lk. 19:38 may be quite independent. The idea was a natural one, and also the expression of it. The writer who first put the angelic song into Greek (supposing it to have existed first in Aramaic or Hebrew) may have written independently of the one who performed a similar service for whatever Semitic original there may have been for the words
attributed to the multitude in Lk. 19:38. In the latter passage the "in the highest," at any rate, was already given, in the tradition lying back of the "Hosanna in the highest" of Matthew and Mark. The conjunction of "peace" with "glory in the highest" might also be explained as due to mere coincidence, especially since the order is reversed and since "peace" goes with "in heaven" in the first place and with "on earth" and "among men of [His] good pleasure" in the other. However, in view of the rather striking parallel between the two passages, other solutions of the problem call for careful consideration. Wellhausen16 is quite confident that Lk. 2:14 is dependent upon Lk. 19:38. This hypothesis, however, is apparently connected with the untenable17 view that Lk. 1–2 is an addition to the completed Gospel. The reverse hypothesis, that Lk. 19:38 is dependent upon Lk. 2:14, is favored by Holtzmann,18 B. Weiss,19 J. Weiss,20 and Bruce.21 In Lk. 19:38, Holtzmann supposes, the wording of the triumphant cry was exchanged for a reminiscence of the Gloria (Lk. 2:14), which had already become a hymn of the Christian congregation. There is nothing inherently impossible in this hypothesis, though if a correct view be held with regard to the date of the Gospel, the Gloria must have become a hymn of the Church long before Holtzmann would suppose to have been the case. If there is dependence, may it not be—rather than the reverse— dependence of the author of the Gospel, either upon the Gloria existing in separate form or else upon the Gloria already inserted in a source underlying Lk. 1–2?
Such dependence would not be irreconcilable with the trustworthiness of Luke as a historian. The cry of the multitude at the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem was not recorded, perhaps, with verbal exactness. Indeed, it was perhaps not stereotyped when it was first uttered. There were many persons who accompanied Jesus as He descended from the Mount of Olives; some, no doubt, said one thing, others another.22 It is not surprising, therefore, that /pg. 109/ the tradition of what was said is not exactly uniform. The characteristic cry of the multitude—what was heard again and again during the descent into the city—might
have impressed itself upon a hearer with greater or less fullness. The translation into Greek, moreover, necessarily brought divergence from the exact words that were spoken by any one person among the multitude. One Aramaic word, "Hosanna," has been preserved by three of the Evangelists. Luke, for the benefit of his Greek readers, may have substituted Greek words for it. His words, "in heaven peace, and glory in the highest," reproduce perhaps the general meaning of the "Hosanna in the highest" which has been preserved by Matthew and Mark. That latter phrase is not altogether clear to modern readers, as a glance at the commentaries will show; and possibly it may not have been clear to the first readers whom Luke had in view. In order to bring out the meaning of the original cry— that is, its real significance in the feeling of the original speakers— possibly literal translation was insufficient. There are cases where a certain amplification is the truest translation. We are far, indeed, from affirming that this is the true way of explaining the divergence of Luke at this point from the other two Synoptic Gospels. To those who have not accepted without modification the current view of Luke's dependence solely upon Mark, it will seem more probable that Lk. 19:38b is no mere amplification of "Hosanna in the highest," but rather a reproduction of independent tradition.
But the decision with regard to that question does not affect essentially the problem involved in the parallel with Lk. 2:14. For the tradition was not in the first place fixed in a Greek form; if it came to Luke in Greek, it came in a translation, which might be modified with more freedom than would have been permissible in the case of the wording in the original language. In any case, therefore, Luke may have made use of the words of the angelic doxology in determining the form, though not the content, of the triumphal cry as it was to appear in his Gospel. He may have done so consciously or unconsciously, more probably the latter. The song of the angels, as recorded in the infancy narrative, was, it may be held, familiar to him; the wording of it would then come naturally from his pen when he was putting the similar praise of the multitude into a form which
would be both intelligible and impressive to himself and to his Greek readers.
Such a solution of the problem would be a compromise between two hypotheses; the hypothesis that Lk. 2:14 and Lk. 19:38 are completely independent of each other, and the hypothesis that the latter is dependent upon the former. The present form of Lk. 19:38, so the compromise hypothesis would hold, is partly due to a real coincidence in the praises originally rendered to God in the /pg. 110/ two cases, and partly to Luke's familiarity with the wording of the angelic hymn.
At any rate, the reverse hypothesis, that Luke received Lk. 19:38 in its present form, and then conformed the wording of the angelic hymn to it, is less probable. In view of what has just been said, Luke must be pronounced less likely to have conformed to something else the wording of the angelic hymn than the wording of the cry of the multitude; for in the former case the various special considerations that we have just adduced would not apply. At any rate, the view that Luke conformed Lk. 2:14 to the wording of Lk. 19:38 is very unlikely unless he was himself the first translator of the angelic song or of the whole narrative in which it is contained. In that case he may conceivably have allowed himself such freedom. Against the view that he actually composed the angelic hymn himself various objections present themselves. For instance, the very bold Hebraism, "men of good pleasure,"23 would be difficult to explain.
Enough, then, has been said to show that the similarity between Lk. 2:14 and Lk. 19:38 does not prove that Luke was the actual composer of the former. The most that could be held is that he was the first to put the angels' song into Greek. That would perhaps help to explain his familiarity with its wording and his natural employment of it in Lk. 19:38 without artificial imitation. But such an hypothesis is not necessary.
This instance may serve to show, not, indeed, that dependence of the rest of Luke-Acts upon a source underlying Lk. 1–2 is certain, but that it is at least possible; so that for this reason, as for other reasons, even striking similarities of style between the infancy narrative and the rest of the work do not by any means indubitably prove that the author of the whole work composed that narrative without the use of sources. Some of those similarities may be due to dependence of the author in the rest of his work upon the language of the source that he used at the beginning.
It is true, the example which we have just discussed at some length is taken from a hymn—the angelic doxology—which may conceivably have existed in separate form; so that dependence upon that hymn would not necessarily prove dependence upon the infancy narrative as a whole. But who can say that this latter possibility must necessarily be ruled out of court? There is no real reason why the dependence of Luke should not be extended even to the narrative portions of Lk. 1–2, if he was really using a written source in that section of his Gospel. He was attracted, not unnaturally, by the simple grandeur and poetic dignity of the "Bible style," and followed, therefore, the Old Testament model, /pg. 111/ as we have seen, in his own sacred narrative. But why should such linguistic influence have been exerted by the Old Testament alone? If Lk. 1–2 is what at first sight it would seem to be, a poetic narrative produced on the very native soil of the Old Testament, at a time when the Old Testament type of language was still a living thing, and if this narrative fell into the hands of Luke, what would be more natural than that it, as well as the Old Testament, should impress itself permanently upon his mind and heart? Surely it is hardly inferior in beauty to the best of what the Old Testament can offer; and it is concerned with the events most stimulating to the Christian imagination. It may well have taken a place side by side with the Old Testament in moulding the literary gifts of the Greek historian for a sacred use.24
However, after all deductions have been made, the Lucan residuum in the style of Lk. 1–2 remains amply sufficient to prove that the
author of Luke-Acts certainly had a part in the production of the present form of the infancy narrative. Nothing that we have just been saying should be allowed to obscure that very important fact. Some of the "Lucan characteristics" discovered by Harnack were shown by our investigation of the Septuagint usage not to be also characteristic of the Septuagint. Many of them are to be found, moreover, not only in the former part of Acts, but also in the latter, and presumably more purely Lucan, part. Finally, some of them can be shown not to have been taken by Luke from Lk. 1–2, because they belong not to Semitizing Greek or even to popular Greek, but rather to the literary form of the Koiné. Hence Luke was certainly at least the editor of Lk. 1–2. That fact was established by Gersdorf one hundred years ago. It has been confirmed and not disproved by recent investigations— confirmed not only by Harnack, but also, we think, by our criticism of Harnack.
Thus the first (and perhaps the most important) result of the detailed examination to which in 1911 we tried to subject the argument which Harnack and Zimmermann had developed for detecting Lucan style in Lk. 1–2 was a clear confirmation of that argument. In the birth narrative, we found, the hand of Luke has certainly been at work. Some of the supposed indications of Lucan style were eliminated; but the severity of the test exhibited only all the more clearly the cogency of the proof that remained. /pg. 112/
On the other hand, however, the investigation resulted in a deepened impression of the affinity of Lk. 1–2 for the Septuagint. Many of the supposed Lucan characteristics were shown to be merely characteristics of the Septuagint. Of course Harnack himself admitted the presence of a large Septuagint element in the language and style of Lk. 1–2. But our investigation showed that element to be much larger than Harnack supposed.
This remarkable affinity of Lk. 1–2 with the language of the Old Testament points clearly to a Jewish Christian origin of the narrative. We are not forgetting that from the very beginning the Old
Testament Scriptures were accepted as authoritative by the Gentile Christian Church as well as by the Jewish Christian Church. But an examination of patristic literature will show that despite the fact that the Old Testament was universally accepted as authoritative, and despite the fact that it is quoted at great length by the patristic writers, yet the style of the Gentile Christian writers remained their own and was by no means so suffused with Septuagint usages as is the case in Lk. 1–2. The close similarity of the language of Lk. 1–2 to the language of the Old Testament does, therefore, still require some special explanation.
Moreover, our detailed examination only served to exhibit anew the Palestinian character of the narrative. That Palestinian character does not appear merely in those words and phrases that are also found in the Septuagint, but runs through the whole section. It appears, moreover, as we have seen,25 not merely in the language but also in the thought. Recent researches have not in the slightest served to modify the first impression made upon an unprejudiced reader that we have in this section a genuinely Jewish and Palestinian narrative. Even Harnack does not altogether deny the correctness of that impression; for although he holds that the narrative was composed by the Gentile Christian, Luke, he admits at the same time that in composing it Luke made use of Palestinian tradition. It must be remembered that according to Harnack the author of Luke-Acts was actually Luke the physician, a man who was demonstrably in Palestine at the beginning and end of the two years that Paul spent in prison at Cæsarea, and who, because of personal associations, would have had abundant opportunity to acquaint himself both then and at other times with what Palestinian disciples were saying. Harnack holds that the stories about John the Baptist which appear in the Lucan infancy narrative must have originated in a circle of John's disciples; and that the stories about Jesus must have come to Luke with the claim of having been derived from Mary, and therefore must certainly have come from Palestine.26 /pg. 113/
What, then, is our conclusion regarding the hypothesis that Lk. 1–2 was composed by the author of Luke-Acts himself without the use of written sources? That hypothesis, as we have already seen, must emphatically be rejected so far as the hymns are concerned. But with regard to the bulk of the narrative, the answer is not so simple. One form in which the hypothesis might be held must indeed certainly be excluded. Luke certainly did not compose the narrative simply by artificial imitation of the Septuagint and artificial adaptation of the details to Palestinian conditions of which he had no firsthand knowledge. Such a refinement of art is almost inconceivable in an ancient writer. If, therefore, the author of Luke-Acts actually composed the birth narrative himself, he must have been himself in close touch with Palestinian conditions. This supposition is by no means unnatural. Harnack27 can even suggest that before he united himself with the Christian community the author of Luke-Acts had belonged to the disciples of John the Baptist and had already pursued investigations which he afterwards used for his Gospel. However that may be, he certainly—supposing him to be the person who speaks of himself in the first person in the we-sections of the Book of Acts—came to Palestine at the time of Paul's last visit to Jerusalem. At that time, or on previous occasions of which nothing definite is known, he may have acquainted himself intimately with Palestinian conditions. And certainly he may have come into possession of definite Palestinian tradition with regard to the birth of John and Jesus. If so—if he had himself been in Palestine, if he had come into possession of Palestinian oral tradition—and if, moreover, he put that tradition into written form without any long delay, then conceivably he might have composed the birth narrative without the aid of written sources. In this form, the hypothesis is perfectly possible. It was by no means rejected categorically when we examined the narrative in detail. All that was maintained is that the hypothesis has not been proved; all that we maintained (at this point) against Harnack is that the non-Semitic Lucan element in Lk. 1–2 is insufficient to exclude the possibility, at least, of written sources.
The important thing to observe is that if Luke was the first to put the Lucan birth narrative into written form, even then the genuinely primitive Palestinian character of Lk. 1–2 cannot be denied. If Harnack is right, if the linguistic phenomena show that Luke was the original author of Lk. 1–2, that proves not that Lk. 1–2 is late, but that the whole of Luke-Acts is early. If it can be proved that this section was composed by the author of Luke-Acts, then we have simply one more weighty argument in favor of the Lucan authorship and early date of the entire work. The hypothesis that Luke composed /pg. 114/ Lk. 1–2 on the basis of primitive Palestinian oral tradition, aided by first-hand acquaintance with Palestinian conditions, is very attractive. It explains admirably many of the facts. It may well be correct. But it has not been proved.
A second hypothesis to be considered is that for Lk. 1–2 Luke himself translated an Aramaic written source.28 This hypothesis would explain on the one hand the thoroughly Palestinian character of the content of Lk. 1–2 and on the other hand the undeniable Lucan elements in the style. That Luke should have known sufficient Aramaic to translate an Aramaic document can hardly be pronounced impossible. Thus Harnack, who himself is inclined to reject the hypothesis of an Aramaic source for Lk. 1–2, supposes that Luke may have translated an Aramaic document in the early part of Acts, and adds that knowledge of Aramaic sufficient to translate a simple Aramaic text may well be attributed to a native of Antioch (as Harnack thinks Luke to have been) and a companion of Paul.29 This hypothesis is possible. But like the first hypothesis it cannot be proved.30
The third hypothesis is that Luke employed a Greek written source. Our examination of the linguistic phenomena showed that this hypothesis, like the two others, is possible. After deducting from the language of Lk. 1–2 what is characteristic of the Septuagint and what is natural in a Jewish Christian document, the Lucan element that remains is insufficient to prove anything more than Lucan revision of a previously existing document, though on the other hand it is
sufficient to render actual Lucan composition—with the qualifications that we have noted above—also possible. The hypothesis of a Greek written source, like the other two hypotheses, is possible, but not certain.
If Luke was using in Lk. 1–2 a Greek written source, then the source may have been composed originally in Greek, or the Greek form in which Luke used it may have been produced by previous translation from Hebrew or Aramaic. /pg. 115/
According to Resch,31 Gunkel,32 and C. C. Torrey,33 the source was originally composed in Hebrew. That view would no doubt explain admirably the linguistic phenomena; for in the opinion of an expert like Dalman34 a number of the Semitisms in Lk. 1–2—for example, the familiar narrative use of the phrase, "it came to pass"—are Hebraisms, not Aramaisms. But is it likely that such a narrative should have been composed in Hebrew in the first century after Christ? At that time Hebrew seems to have long ceased to be the ordinary language of Palestine.35 Yet it also seems to have remained in use as the language of certain kinds of literature.36 Perhaps we may say that if Lk. 1–2 was originally written in Hebrew, then it was probably intended from the first to be in some sort a sacred narrative, for which the sacred language would be the fittest vehicle. In view of the lofty, poetical tone of the narrative, comparable to the best parts of the Old Testament, such a supposition is by no means impossible. The necessary knowledge of Hebrew would not have been lacking; for, despite linguistic changes among the people, the Old Testament continued to be read and studied in its original language. It is true, however, that the earliest Christian community, despite the presence of many priests,37 was probably composed chiefly of persons who, in the sense that was true of the apostles,38 were "unlearned and ignorant men." And in such a community the employment of the ordinary language of the country for such a work as the source of Lk. 1–2 may perhaps be regarded as more natural than the employment of Hebrew.
The Hebraisms (as distinguished from Aramaisms) of Lk. 1–2 have not always been regarded as overbalancing these a priori considerations. Indeed, they have sometimes been regarded as furnishing an argument not for, but positively against any Semitic original for the narrative. For, it is said, Hebraisms are not Aramaisms; they might establish a Hebrew original, but certainly not an Aramaic original. But if a Hebrew original, it is argued, is impossible in view of the linguistic conditions prevailing in Palestine in the first century after /pg. 116/ Christ, then the Hebraisms still require explanation. According to Dalman, they can be explained only as due to the Septuagint; in other words, they are not really Hebraisms, but "Septuagint Græcisms" or "Greek Biblicisms."39 Of course the Hebraisms might conceivably be explained as due to an influence exerted upon the Aramaic of the source by the Hebrew Old Testament. The apparent Hebraisms would then be Aramaic Biblicisms. Thus, although the familiar Hebraistic phrase, "it came to pass," has no equivalent in the living Aramaic, yet in the (Aramaic) Targums the Hebrew usage is imitated.40 It might have been imitated also in the Aramaic source of Lk. 1–2. But this Dalman regards as improbable, because (he evidently thinks) the imitation of a Targum is hardly to be attributed to Christian writers.41 In general, says Dalman,42 "the Jewish Aramaic, as it lived among the people, displayed even less tendency to adopt Hebrew expressions than did the Greek of the Synoptic Gospels." Hence Dalman can even enunciate the principle for the literary criticism of the New Testament: "the more Hebraisms, so much the more activity of Hellenistic redactors."43 The Hebraisms in Lk. 1–2 are thus made to afford merely another support for the view of Dalman that the narrative was originally composed in Greek.
Such questions certainly cannot be settled without first-hand knowledge of the dialects of Palestine. But even if one accepts most of what Dalman says with regard to these dialects, the possibility of an Aramaic source44 does not seem to be altogether excluded. In the first place, it might be maintained (against Dalman) that the Aramaic source imitated the Hebrew of the Old Testament. That supposition,
which certainly does not seem altogether unlikely, would explain some or all of the non-Aramaic Hebraisms of Lk. 1–2. Or else, in the second place, these non-Aramaic Hebraisms might be explained by imitation of the Septuagint on the part of the Greek translator.45
At any rate, if Lk. 1–2 was composed originally in Greek, it was composed by some one thoroughly familiar with Palestinian conditions and in all probability /pg. 117/ in the very early days of the Jerusalem Church.46 So much has been established by what has been said above about the Palestinian character both of the form and of the content of the narrative. That such a primitive Jewish Christian narrative should have been written in Greek is by no means impossible. The earliest Christian community at Jerusalem, which is described in the first chapters of Acts, was composed, to a very considerable extent, of Greek-speaking Jews.47 Some scholars have attempted to establish a Semitic original for Lk. 1–2 by pointing out mistakes in translation in the extant Greek narrative. Gunkel48 regards "Christ the Lord"49 in Lk. 2:11 as the clearest indication of a Hebrew original. It looks, he thinks, like a mistranslation of "the Lord's anointed,"50 which is certainly mistranslated thus in the Septuagint of La. 4:20. "Christ the Lord"—so no doubt Gunkel reasons, is an unprecedented phrase on Semitic ground; whereas a Christian translator, to whom the title "Lord" seemed natural as applied to Christ, would very naturally take the Hebrew phrase in this way. But the phrase, "Christ the Lord," in Greek occurs also in the Psalms of Solomon, xvii. 36. It is true, some scholars have regarded it there also as a mistranslation. Nevertheless, every additional occurrence of the phrase makes the theory of mistranslation less likely.51 Dalman,52 who has been followed by Loisy,53 supposes that "the Lord" was added by the Evangelist to explain "Christ," which is used here for the first time in the Gospel. The matter is problematical at best. "Christ the Lord" may well be a correct translation of the source. That the tense of the verb in the clause, "seeing I know not a man,"54 in Lk. 1:34 is due to a mistransiation has also not been proved. That passage will be discussed in the next chapter.
Our general conclusion is that many questions with regard to Lk. 1–2 must be left undecided. It is uncertain whether the narrative was composed by Luke himself merely on the basis of Aramaic oral tradition (though we think that less likely), or whether he himself translated a Semitic document, or whether /pg. 118/ he used a Greek written source. It is also uncertain whether the source, if it came into Luke's hands in a Greek form, was composed originally in Greek, or in Hebrew, or in Aramaic. But in the midst of so much uncertainty, two facts stand out clear. In the first place, the birth narrative formed an original part of the Third Gospel; and in the second place, it is genuinely primitive and Palestinian. These two facts are quite independent of the disputed questions. And they are the really important facts.
CHAPTER VI:
THE INTEGRITY OF THE LUCAN
NARRATIVE
It has been shown in the last three chapters that the Lucan narrative of the birth and infancy of Jesus in Lk. 1:5–2:52 is strikingly Jewish and Palestinian both in form and in content. That narrative attests the virgin birth of Christ. But if so, a serious difficulty emerges for those who deny the historicity of the virgin birth. It will be observed in Chapter XIV of our discussion that when the fact of the virgin birth is rejected, the idea of the virgin birth is usually thought to have been derived from pagan sources. The question then becomes acute how such a pagan idea could have found a place just in the most strikingly Jewish and Palestinian narrative in the whole New Testament.
This question has been answered by many modern scholars by a theory of interpolation. It is perfectly true, they say, that Lk. 1:5–2:52 is of Palestinian origin; and it is perfectly true that an attestation of the virgin birth now stands in that narrative; but, they say, that attestation of the virgin birth formed no original part of the narrative, but came into it by interpolation. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of this question; indeed, we may fairly say that if the interpolation theory is incorrect the most prominent modern reconstruction proposed in opposition to the historicity of the virgin birth falls to the ground. The view as to the origin of the idea of the virgin birth which has been most widely held by those modern historians who deny the fact of the virgin birth stands or falls with the interpolation theory. The interpolation theory2 has been held in various forms. A classification of these various forms is possible from two points of view.
The first point of view concerns the sense in which the supposed interpolation is to be called an interpolation. A threefold division is here possible. In the first place, the interpolation may be regarded as an interpolation into the completed Gospel, a gloss introduced into the Third Gospel at some point /pg. 120/ in the manuscript transmission. In the second place, the interpolation may be regarded as an interpolation made by the author of the Gospel himself into a Jewish Christian source which elsewhere he is following closely. In this case the words attesting the virgin birth would be an original part of the Gospel, but would not belong to the underlying Jewish Christian narrative. In the third place, the interpolation may be regarded as an interpolation made by the author himself, not into a source, but into the completed Gospel—that is, the author first finished the Gospel without including the virgin birth, and then inserted the virgin birth as an afterthought. This third possibility has been suggested—for the first time so far as we know—by Vincent Taylor, the author of the latest important monograph on the subject.3
The second point of view from which a classification is possible concerns the extent of the supposed interpolation. Whether the interpolation is to be regarded as an interpolation into the completed Gospel by a scribe, or into the source by the author of the Gospel, or into the completed Gospel by the author of the Gospel, how much is to be regarded as interpolated?
With regard to this latter question, there have been various opinions. The earliest and probably still the commonest view is that the interpolation embraces verses 34 and 35 of the first chapter. That view received its first systematic grounding from Hillmann in 1891.4 It has since then been advocated by Usener, Harnack, Zimmermann, Schmiedel, Pfleiderer, Conybeare, Loisy, and others. A second view was suggested by Kattenbusch5 and defended by Weinel.6 It is to the effect that only the words, "seeing I know not a man,"7 in Lk. 1:34, are to be eliminated. A third view includes verses 36 and 37 with verses 34 and 35 in the supposed interpolation.8
With regard to the former classification—that is, the classification according to the sense in which the supposed interpolation is to be taken as an interpolation—it may be noticed at the start that the first view, which regards the interpolation as an interpolation made by a scribe into the completed Gospel, is opposed by the weight of manuscript attestation. There is really no external evidence worthy the name for the view that Lk. 1:34, 35, or any part of it, is an interpolation. Manuscript b of the Old Latin Version, it is true, does substitute /pg. 121/ for verse 34 the words of verse 38: "And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word," and then omits these words in verse 38; while manuscript c, also of the Old Latin Version, though it retains verse 34, agrees with b in the omission at verse 38.9 But the omission of verse 34 by b is entirely isolated among the manuscripts of the New Testament; and never was a reading more clearly secondary.10 As for the omission of the clause, "seeing I know not a man," in a quotation of the passage by John of Damascus in the eighth century, it is exceedingly doubtful whether the omission really represents anything that stood in manuscripts used by this writer; and in any case the testimony is too late to be of importance.11
Thus the unanimity of manuscript evidence for the inclusion of Lk. 1:34, 35 is practically unbroken. And, in view of the many widely divergent lines of transmission in which the text of the Gospel has come down to us, it is difficult to see how such unanimity could have arisen if the verses were interpolated in the course of the transmission.
This argument, of course, applies only to that form of the interpolation hypothesis which regards the supposed insertion as having been made into the completed Gospel. It does not apply to the view that the author of the Gospel himself made the insertion into the narrative derived from his source or into the Gospel which he had already written but had not published. But possibly these forms of the hypothesis may be found to be faced by special difficulties of their own.
At any rate, what we shall now do is to examine these three forms of the interpolation hypothesis so far as possible together—noting, of course, as we go along, the cases where any particular argument applies only to one or to two of the three forms rather than to all. /pg. 122/
The first consideration which we may notice as having been adduced in favor of the interpolation theory is of a general character. The rest of the narrative, it is said, outside of Lk. 1:34, 35, is perfectly compatible with a birth of Jesus simply as the son of Joseph and Mary, indeed it is even contradictory to the notion of a virgin birth; if, therefore, we accomplish the simple deletion of these two verses, all inconsistency is removed and the story becomes perfectly smooth and easy.
With regard to this argument, it should be noticed, in the first place, that the simple deletion of Lk. 1:34, 35 will not remove the virgin birth from the Third Gospel in general, or from the infancy narrative in particular; for the virgin birth is clearly implied in several other places.
The first of these places is found at Lk. 1:26f., where it is said: "And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee whose name was Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the name of the virgin was Mary." Here Mary is twice called a virgin, and in what follows nothing whatever is said about her marriage to Joseph. This phenomenon is perfectly natural if the virgin birth was in the mind of the narrator, but it is very unnatural if the reverse is the case. Advocates of the interpolation theory are therefore compelled to offer some explanation of the language in Lk. 1:27.
Two explanations are open to them. In the first place, it may be said that verse 27 has been tampered with by the same interpolator who inserted verses 34, 35, and that originally Mary was not here called a virgin. But against this explanation may be urged the fact that the
word "virgin" occurs twice in the verse, and that if that word was not originally there the whole structure of the verse must have been different. The second possible explanation is that although the form of verse 27 which we now have is the original form—that is, although Mary was really designated there as a virgin—yet the mention of her marriage to Joseph has been omitted, by the interpolator of Lk. 1:34, 35, from the subsequent narrative. But it may be doubted whether this explanation quite accomplishes the purpose for which it is proposed. Even if the writer of Lk. 1:27 were intending to introduce later on a mention of Mary's marriage to Joseph, his designation of her as a virgin would seem to be unnatural. In the Old Testament narratives of heavenly annunciations, the annunciations are represented as being made to married women; and if the narrator of Lk. 1–2 intended the promised son to be regarded as having a human father as well as a human mother, as in those Old Testament narratives, why did he not, as is done there, represent the annunciation as being made to a married woman? /pg. 123/ Why does he insist so particularly, by a repetition of the word, that it was made to Mary when she was a "virgin"? It must be remembered that according to all, or nearly all, of the advocates of the interpolation theory, the narrative is quite unhistorical; so that the narrator, according to their view, was not hampered by any historical consideration from placing the annunciation either before or after the marriage, exactly as he pleased. Why then does he insist so particularly that it took place before the marriage, or while Mary was still a "virgin," instead of representing it as taking place after the marriage? Surely this latter representation would have been far more natural, as well as more in accord with Old Testament analogy, if the narrator really intended the promised son to be regarded as being, in a physical sense, the son of Joseph.
A possible answer to this argument of ours might be based upon Lk. 2:7, where it is said that Jesus was the "firstborn son" of Mary, and upon Lk. 2:23, where there is recorded compliance in the case of Jesus with the Old Testament provisions about the firstborn. Perhaps, the advocates of the interpolation hypothesis might say, the
emphasis in Lk. 1:27 upon the virginity of Mary at the time when the annunciation was made to her, is due only to the desire of the narrator to show that she had not previously had children. But we do not think that this answer is satisfactory. Isaac was the firstborn son of his mother Sarah, in accordance with the Old Testament narrative; and yet the annunciation of his birth is represented as having come to his mother when she was already married. Similar is the case also with the birth of Samson and of Samuel. Why could not these models have been followed by the narrator of the birth of Jesus? Surely he could have represented Jesus as the firstborn son without placing the annunciation, in so unnatural and unprecedented a way, before instead of after His mother's marriage.
At any rate, whether we are correct or not in regarding this second explanation of Lk. 1:27 as inadequate, it should be noticed that both explanations result in an overloading of the interpolation hypothesis. Whether it be held that Lk. 1:27 has been tampered with, or that something has been removed by the interpolator at a later point in the narrative, in either case the activities of the interpolator must be regarded as having extended further than was at first maintained. What becomes, then, of the initial argument that a simple removal of Lk. 1:34, 35 will suffice to make the narrative all perfectly smooth and easy as a narrative representing Jesus as being in a physical sense the son of Joseph?
Moreover, Lk. 1:27 is not the only verse which requires explanation if Lk. 1:34, 35 be removed. What shall be done with Lk. 2:5, which reads: /pg. 124/ "to be enrolled with Mary who was betrothed to him, being great with child"? How could Mary be said to be only betrothed to Joseph, when she was already great with child? Certainly this form of expression, coming from a narrator who of course intended to record nothing derogatory to the honor of Mary, implies the virgin birth in the clearest possible way.
It is true, the matter is complicated in this case, as it was not in the case of Lk. 1:27, by variants in the extant manuscript transmission.
The reading, "who was betrothed to him," appears, indeed, in the best Greek uncials, including the typical representatives of the "Neutral" type of text, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. It also appears in the Codex Bezæ, which is a representative of the "Western" type of text, and in a number of the versions. But certain manuscripts of the Old Latin Version and the "Sinaitic Syriac" manuscript of the Old Syriac Version read "his wife"; and a number of the later uncials with the mass of the cursive manuscripts, representing what Westcott and Hort called the "Syrian revision," read "his betrothed wife."
This last reading is generally rejected as being a "conflate reading"; evidently, it is held, some scribe combined the reading "betrothed" with the reading "wife" to make the reading "betrothed wife." But what decision shall be reached as between the other two readings? The external evidence certainly seems to favor the reading "betrothed," which appears in the great early uncials, representative of the "Neutral" type of text, whereas the reading "wife" appears in no Greek manuscript at all, but is attested only in Latin and in Syriac. Despite all that has been said in criticism of Westcott and Hort's high estimate of the Neutral text, recent investigation has not really succeeded in invalidating that estimate. Nevertheless, the combination of important Old Latin manuscripts with the Sinaitic Syriac in favor of the reading "wife" shows that that reading was in existence at a rather early time. It must, therefore, at least be given consideration.12
At first sight, transcriptional probability might seem to be in favor of it. If Mary at this point was in the original text spoken of as Joseph's "wife," it is possible to conceive of some scribe, who was eager to protect the virginity of Mary from any possible misunderstanding, as being offended by the word "wife" and so as substituting the word "betrothed" for it. /pg. 125/
But it is possible also to look at the matter in a different light. If the word "betrothed" is read in this verse, then at least a verbal
contradiction arises as over against the Gospel of Matthew; for without doubt Matthew lays great stress upon the fact that when Jesus was born Mary was in a legal sense not merely betrothed to Joseph, but actually his wife. The contradiction need not indeed be anything more than formal; for there is no reason why Luke may not be using a terminology different from that of Matthew, so that by the word "betrothed" he is designating the extraordinary relationship which according to Matthew prevailed after Joseph had obeyed the instructions of the angel—that is, the relationship in which Mary was legally the wife of Joseph but in which he "knew her not until she had borne a son."13 But although the contradiction may not actually be more than formal, it might well have seemed serious to a devout scribe. The change from "betrothed" to "wife" may therefore fall into the category of "harmonistic corruptions."
This hypothesis, we think, is more probable than the alternative hypothesis, that "wife" was changed to "betrothed" for doctrinal reasons. Transcriptional considerations are thus not opposed to the reading of the Neutral text, and that reading should in all probability be regarded as correct.14
But if the reading "betrothed" at Lk. 2:5 is thus part of the earliest transmitted text, we have another overloading of the interpolation hypothesis with regard to Lk. 1:34, 35: the advocates of that hypothesis must suppose that the interpolator tampered with Lk. 2:5 as well as with Lk. 1:27 or with a supposed subsequent passage mentioning the marriage of Mary to Joseph. Obviously the removal of all mention of the virgin birth from Lk. 1–2 is by no means so simple a matter as was at first supposed.
There is, of course, still another place in the Third Gospel where the virgin birth is clearly alluded to—namely, Lk. 3:23. The words, "as was supposed," in that verse—"being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph"—clearly imply that /pg. 126/ Jesus was only "supposed" to be the son (in the full sense) of Joseph, and that really his relationship to Joseph was of a different kind.
In this case there is no manuscript evidence for the omission of the words; the words appear in all the extant witnesses to the text, the variants (of order and the like) being unimportant for the matter now under discussion. The verse, therefore, constitutes an additional weight upon at least one form of the interpolation theory regarding Lk. 1:34, 35; it constitutes a weight upon the hypothesis that those verses are an interpolation into the completed Gospel. For if Lk. 1:34, 35 is an interpolation, the words, "as was supposed," in Lk. 3:23 must also be an interpolation; and the more numerous such interpolations are thought to be, the more difficult does it become to explain the disappearance from the many lines of documentary attestation of all traces of the original, uninterpolated text. Of course, this verse, Lk. 3:23, has no bearing against the other principal form of the interpolation hypothesis, which supposes that the interpolation of Lk. 1:34, 35 was made by the author of the Gospel himself into his source; for Lk. 3:23 does not stand within the infancy narrative. But even that form of the hypothesis is faced, as we have seen, by the difficulties presented by Lk. 1:27 and 2:5. Thus it is not correct to say that if the one passage, Lk. 1:34, 35, were deleted, the attestation of the virgin birth would be removed from the Lucan infancy narrative. If that passage is an interpolation, then at least one and probably two other passages must also be regarded as having been tampered with. But obviously every addition of such ancillary suppositions renders the original hypothesis less plausible. Nevertheless, the advocates of the interpolation hypothesis may still insist that, although one or two verses in the infancy narrative outside of Lk. 1:34, 35 do imply the virgin birth, yet the bulk of the narrative proceeds upon the opposite assumption that Jesus was the son of Joseph by ordinary generation. The arguments in favor of this contention may perhaps be classified under three heads. In the first place, it is said, the narrative traces the Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph, not through Mary, so that it must regard Joseph as His father. In the second place, Joseph is actually spoken of in several places as the "father" of Jesus, and Joseph and Mary are spoken of as His "parents." In the third place, there is attributed to Mary in certain places a lack of comprehension, which, it is said,
would be unnatural if she knew her son to have been conceived by the Holy Ghost.
The fact upon which the first of these arguments is based should probably be admitted; it is probably true that the Lucan infancy narrative traces the Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph. Whether it does so depends to a /pg. 127/ considerable extent upon the interpretation of Lk. 1:27.15 Do the words, "of the house of David," in that verse refer to Joseph or to Mary?16 It seems more natural to regard them as referring to Joseph. This is so for two reasons. In the first place, the words come immediately after the name of Joseph: and, in the second place, repetition of the noun, "the virgin," would not have been necessary at the end of the verse if Mary had just been referred to in the preceding clause; if "of the house of David" referred to Mary, the wording would be simply, "to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and her name was Mary."
Some modern Roman Catholic scholars have indeed argued with considerable force against this conclusion.17 The repetition of the word "virgin" instead of the use of the simple pronoun "her," they argue, is to be explained by the desire of the narrator not merely to mention, but to emphasize, the virginity of Mary; and since Mary is evidently the chief person in the narrative, it is natural, they say, to take the three phrases: (1) "betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph," (2) "of the house of David," and (3) "the name of the virgin was Mary," as being all of them descriptive of Mary. These arguments are certainly worthy of consideration—more consideration than they have actually received. And yet they are hardly sufficient to overthrow the prima facie evidence. It does seem more natural, after all, to refer the words, "of the house of David," to Joseph.
If so, the Davidic descent of Mary is not mentioned in the narrative. There is indeed nothing in the narrative to prevent us from holding, if we care to do so, that Mary was descended from David. Certainly
her kinship with Elisabeth18 does not preclude such an opinion; for intermarriage between the tribe of Levi, to which Elisabeth belonged, and the other tribes was perfectly permissible under the law. No positive objection, therefore, can be raised to the view, which is held even by some scholars who reject the reference of the words, "of the house of David," in Lk. 1:27 to Mary, that the narrator means to imply in his account of the annunciation to the virgin that Mary as well as Joseph was descended from David. But certainly the Davidic descent of Mary, even /pg. 128/ though it be held to be implied (which we for our part think very doubtful), is at any rate not definitely stated.19
If so, it looks as though the Davidic descent of Jesus were traced by the narrator through Joseph. But how could that be done if the narrator regarded the line as broken by the fact that Joseph was not really the father of Jesus?
In reply, it may be said that some persons in the early Church certainly did regard the two things—(1) the Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph and (2) the virgin birth of Jesus—as being compatible. Such persons, for example, were the author of the first chapter of Matthew and the man who produced the present form of the first chapter of Luke, even though this latter person be thought to have been merely an interpolator. But if these persons thought that the two things were compatible, why may not the original author of the narrative in Lk. 1–2 have done so.? And if the original author did so, then the fact that he traces the Davidic descent through Joseph does not prove that he did not also believe in the virgin birth; so that the tracing of the Davidic descent through Joseph ceases to afford any support to the interpolation theory.
It is another question, of course, whether the virgin birth is really compatible with the Davidic descent through Joseph. All that we need to show for the present purpose is that it may well have been thought to be compatible by the author of the infancy narrative. However, it would be a mistake to leave the question, even at the
present point in our argument, in so unsatisfactory a condition. As a matter of fact, there is, we think, a real, and not merely a primitively assumed, compatibility between the Davidic descent through Joseph and the virgin birth; the author of the first chapter of Matthew and also (if we are right in rejecting the interpolation theory) the author of the first two chapters of Luke had a perfect right to regard Jesus as the heir of the promises made to the house of David even though He was not descended from David by ordinary generation.
We reject, indeed, the view of Badham that, according to the New Testament birth narratives, although Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born, yet in some supernatural way, and not by the ordinary intercourse of husband and /pg. 129/ wife, Joseph became even in a physical sense the father of Jesus.20 This suggestion fails to do justice, no doubt, to the meaning of the narratives. In the first chapter of Matthew, and also really in the first chapter of Luke, the physical paternity of Joseph is clearly excluded.
Yet it ought to be observed, in the first place, that the Jews looked upon adoptive fatherhood in a much more realistic way than we look upon it. In this connection we can point, for example, to the institution of Levirate marriage. According to the Old Testament law, when a man died without issue, his brother could take the wife of the dead man and raise up an heir for his brother. Evidently the son was regarded as belonging to the dead man to a degree which is foreign to our ideas. Because of this Semitic way of thinking, very realistic terms could be used on Semitic ground to express a relationship other than that of physical paternity. Thus so eminent an expert as F. C. Burkitt, who certainly cannot be accused of apologetic motives, maintains that the word "begat" in the Matthæan genealogy does not indicate physical paternity, but only the transmission of legal heirship, so that even if the genealogy had ended with the words, "Joseph begat Jesus," that would not have afforded the slightest indication that the author did not believe in the virgin birth.21 Certainly, according to Jewish usage, a child born to a man's wife, and acknowledged by him, was to all intents and purposes his son.
The truth is that in the New Testament Jesus is presented in the narratives of the virgin birth as belonging to the house of David just as truly as if he were in a physical sense the son of Joseph. He was a gift of God to the Davidic house, not less truly, but on the contrary in a more wonderful way, than if he had been descended from David by ordinary generation.22 Who can say that this New Testament representation is invalid? The promises to David were truly fulfilled if they were fulfilled in accordance with the views of those to whom they were originally given.
In the second place, the relation in which Jesus stood to Joseph, on the assumption that the story of the virgin birth is true, was much closer than is the case with ordinary adoption. By the virgin birth the whole situation was raised beyond ordinary analogies. In an ordinary instance of adoption there is /pg. 130/ another human being—the actual father—who disputes with the father by adoption the paternal relation to the child. Such was not the case with Joseph in his relationship to Jesus, according to the New Testament narratives. He alone and no other human being could assume the rights and the duties of a father with respect to this child. And the child Jesus could be regarded as Joseph's son and heir with a completeness of propriety which no ordinary adoptive relationship would involve.
Thus the fact that in the Lucan infancy narrative Jesus is presented as the descendant of David through Joseph does not at all show that the narrative in its original form contained no mention of the virgin birth.
Moreover, in refuting the first supposed proof of contradiction between the verses that attest the virgin birth and the rest of the narrative, we have really already refuted the second supposed proof. The second argument, as we observed, is based upon the application, in the second chapter of Luke, of the term "father" to Joseph and of the term "parents" to Joseph and Mary.23 Of the instances where this phenomenon occurs, Lk. 2:48 clearly belongs in a special category; for there the term "father" is not used by the narrator in his
own name, but is attributed by the narrator to Mary. Evidently, whatever may be the narrator's own view of the relationship of Joseph to Jesus, it is unnatural that even if the virgin birth was a fact, Mary should have mentioned the special nature of that relationship in the presence of her son. Thus in attributing the term "father" to Mary, in her conversation with Jesus, the narrator, if he did know of the virgin birth, is merely keeping within the limits of historical probability in a way which would not be the case if he had endeavored to make the virgin birth explicit at this point. But even the other occurrences of the term "father" or "parents" are thoroughly natural even if the narrator knew and accepted the story of the virgin birth. For, as we have just observed in connection with the matter of the Davidic descent, such terms could well be used on Semitic ground to describe even an ordinary adoptive relationship— to say nothing of the altogether unique relationship in which, according to the story of the virgin birth, Joseph stood to the child Jesus. Thus those manuscripts of the Old Latin Version which substitute in these passages the name "Joseph" for the term "father" and the phrase "Joseph and his mother" for the term "parents" are adopting an apologetic device which is altogether unnecessary. The absence of any such meticulous safeguarding of the virgin birth in the original text of Lk. 2 shows not at all that the virgin birth was /pg. 131/ unknown to the author of that chapter, but only that the chapter was composed at an early time when naively direct narration had not yet given place to apologetic reflection.
The third supposed contradiction between Lk. 1:34, 35 and the rest of the narrative, that has been detected by advocates of the interpolation theory, is found in those places where Mary is represented as being puzzled by evidences of the high position of her son. How could she have been surprised by such things, it is asked, if from the beginning she knew that the child had been conceived by the Holy Ghost?
With regard to this argument, it may be said, in the first place, that the argument proves too much. If the wonder, or lack of
comprehension, which Mary is represented as displaying at various points of the narrative shows that she could not have been regarded by the narrator as having passed through the experience predicted in Lk. 1:34, 35, it also shows that she could not have been the recipient even of the other angelic words. If Mary had had promised to her a son who was to be called a Son of the Most High24 and of whose kingdom there was to be no end,25 why should she have been surprised by the prophecies of the aged Simeon or have failed to understand the emergence in the boy Jesus of a unique filial consciousness toward God?26 Surely the angel's words, even without mention of the virgin birth, might have provided the key to unlock all these subsequent mysteries. Logically, therefore, the argument with which we are now dealing would require excision, not merely of Lk. 1:34, 35, but of the whole annunciation scene. But such excision is of course quite impossible, since the annunciation is plainly presupposed in the rest of the narrative and since the section Lk. 1:26–38 is composed in exactly the same style as the rest. Evidently the argument with which we are now dealing proves too much.
But that argument faces an even greater objection. Indeed, it betokens, on the part of those who advance it, a woeful lack of appreciation of what is one of the most beautiful literary touches in the narrative and at the same time an important indication of essential historical trustworthiness. We refer to the delicate depiction of the character of Mary. These modern advocates of mechanical consistency seem to suppose that Mary must have been, or rather must have been regarded by the original narrator as being, a person of a coldly scientific frame of mind, who, when she had passed through the wonderful experience of the supernatural conception, proceeded to draw out the logical consequences /pg. 132/ of that experience in all their minutest ramifications, so that thereafter nothing in heaven or on earth could affect her with the slightest perplexity or surprise. How different, and how much more in accord with historical probability, is the picture of the mother of Jesus in this wonderful narrative! According to this narrative, Mary was possessed of a simple and meditative—we do not say dull or
rustic—soul. She meets the strange salutation of the angel with fear and with a perplexed question; but then, when mysteries beyond all human experience are promised her, says simply: "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." Then she journeys far to seek the sympathetic ear of a woman whom she can trust; and when she is saluted in lofty words, she responds with a hymn of praise which is full of exultation, but also full of reserve. Then when the child is born, and the shepherds come with their tale of the angelic host, others marvel, but Mary "kept all these words, pondering them in her heart." But when Simeon uttered his prophecy about the light which was to shine forth to the Gentiles, Mary, with Joseph, marvelled at the things which were spoken about her child. No doubt, if she had been a modern superman, she would have been far beyond so lowly an emotion as wonder; no doubt, since her son had been born without human father, she would never have been surprised by so comparatively trifling a phenomenon as an angelic host that appeared to simple shepherds and sang to them a hymn of praise. But then it must be remembered that according to this narrative Mary was not a modern superman, but a Jewish maiden of the first century, nurtured in the promises of God—the recipient, indeed, of a wonderful experience, but despite that experience still possessed of some capacity for wonder in her devout and meditative soul. And surely in the Palestine of the first century such a Jewish maiden is a more natural figure than the scientific monstrosity which some modern scholars seem to demand that she should be.
Finally, when she saw her twelve-year-old son in the Temple, in the company of the doctors of the law, she was astonished, and when her son said, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business," she actually failed to understand. Truly that was unpardonable dullness—so we are told—on the part of one who knew that the child had been conceived by the Holy Ghost.
We can only say that if it really was dullness, that dullness has been shared from that day to this by the greatest minds in Christendom.
Has the utterance of the youthful Jesus ever fully been understood— understood, we mean, even by those who have been just as fully convinced of the fact of the supernatural conception as Mary was convinced if the experience actually was hers? There are depths in this utterance which have never been fathomed even by the framers of the Nicene and Chalcedonian creeds. It will be a sad day, indeed, /pg. 133/ if the Church comes to suppose that nothing in this word of the boy Jesus can be understood; but it will also be a sad day if it supposes that all can be understood. Mary can surely be pardoned for her wonder, and for her failure to understand.
She had indeed passed through a unique experience; her son had been conceived in the womb without human father as none other had been conceived during all the history of the human race. But then when He had been born, with the mother's very human pangs, He was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger; and then He grew up like other boys, in the Nazareth home. No doubt from the point of view with which we are now dealing His lowly birth and childhood ought to have caused no questioning or wonder in Mary's heart; no doubt she ought to have deduced from these things, when they were taken in connection with the miracle of His conception, the full Chalcedonian doctrine of the two natures in one person of the Lord; no doubt she ought to have been expecting the emergence, in the human consciousness of her child, of just such a sense of vocation and divine sonship as that which appeared when she found Him with the doctors in the Temple; no doubt she ought to have been far beyond all capacity for perplexity or surprise. But then we must reflect, from our modern vantage-ground, that Mary was just a Jewish woman of the first century. It is perhaps too much to expect that she should be a representative of the "modern mind." Perhaps she may even have retained the now obsolete habit of meditation and of quiet communion with her God; perhaps, despite her great experience, she may never have grasped the modern truth that God exists for the sake of man and not man for the sake of God; perhaps God's mercies had to her not yet come to seem a common thing. Perhaps, therefore, despite the miracle of the virgin birth, she may
still have retained the sense of wonder; and when angels uttered songs of praise, and aged prophets told of the light that was to lighten the Gentiles, or when her child disclosed a consciousness of vocation that suddenly seemed to place a gulf between her and Him, she may, instead of proclaiming these things to unsympathetic ears, have preferred to keep them and ponder them in her heart.
So understood, the picture of Mary in these chapters is profoundly congruous with the verses that narrate the virgin birth. By the contrary argument modern scholars show merely that even for the prosecution of literary criticism something more is needed than acuteness in the analysis of word and phrase; one must also have some sympathy for the spirit of the narrative with which one deals. And if one approaches this narrative with sympathy, one sees that the supernatural conception is not only not contradictory to what is said about the thoughts of Mary's heart, but profoundly congruous with it. The words /pg. 134/ that recur like a refrain—"Mary kept all these words and pondered them in her heart," "Mary kept all these words in her heart"—place Mary before the readers in a way that is comprehensible only if she alone and not Joseph is the centre of interest in the narrative. And what made her the centre of interest save the stupendous wonder of the virgin birth? How delicate and how self-consistent is this picture of the mother of the Lord! Others might pass lightly over the strange events that occurred in connection with the childhood of her son; others might forget the angels' song; others might be satisfied with easy solutions of the problem presented by the consciousness of divine vocation which the youthful Jesus attested in the answer which He rendered in the Temple to His earthly parents. But not for Mary was such superficiality sufficient, not for the one who had been chosen of God to be the mother of the Lord. Others might be satisfied with easy answers to questions too deep for human utterance, but not so the one who had been overshadowed by the Holy Ghost. No, whatever others might do or say, Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.
We are, indeed, as far as anyone from accepting the Roman Catholic picture of the Blessed Virgin. But we also think that Protestants, in their reaction against that picture, have sometimes failed to do justice to the mother of our Lord. Few and simple, indeed, are the touches with which the Evangelist draws the picture; fleeting only are the glimpses which he allows us into the virgin's heart. And yet how lifelike is the figure there depicted; how profound are the mysteries in that pure and meditative soul! In the narrative of the Third Gospel the virgin Mary is no lifeless automaton, but a person who lives and moves—a person who from that day to this has had power to touch all simple and childlike hearts. Whence comes such a figure into the pages of the world's literature? Whence comes this lifelike beauty; whence comes this delicacy of reserve? Such questions will never be asked by those historians who reconstruct past ages by rule of thumb; they will never be asked by those who know the documents without knowing the human heart. But to historians fully worthy of that name the picture of Mary in the Third Gospel may seem to possess a self-evidencing power. Was such a picture the product of myth-making fancy, an example of the legendary elaboration which surrounds the childhood of great men? Very different, at least, were certain other products of such fancy in the early Church. Or is this picture drawn from the life; is the veil here gently pulled aside, that we may look for a moment into the depths of the virgin's soul; is the person here depicted truly the mother of our Lord? /pg. 135/
Whatever answers may be given to these questions, whether the picture of Mary in these chapters is fiction or truth, one thing is clear —an integral part of that picture is found in the mention of the supernatural conception in the virgin's womb. Without that supreme wonder, everything that is here said of Mary is comparatively meaningless and jejune. The bewilderment in Mary's heart, her meditation upon the great things that happened to her son—all this, far from being contradictory to the virgin birth, really presupposes that supreme manifestation of God's power. That supreme miracle it
was which rendered worth while the glimpses which the narrator grants us into Mary's soul.
Thus general considerations will certainly not prove Lk. 1:34, 35 to be an interpolation; no contradiction, but rather the profoundest harmony, is to be found between these verses and the rest of the narrative. The Davidic descent could clearly be traced through Joseph, and was elsewhere traced through Joseph, even if Jesus was not regarded as being by ordinary generation Joseph's son; the term "father" as applied to Joseph does not necessarily imply physical paternity; the wonder in Mary's heart at various things that happened during the childhood of her son does not exclude the greater miracle of His concepdon in the womb, but on the contrary contributes to the picture of which that greater miracle is an integral part. It certainly cannot be said upon general principles, therefore, that the writer of the rest of the narrative could not have written Lk. 1:34, 35.
But if such general considerations—such considerations based upon the central content of the verses—will not establish the interpolation theory, what shall be said of the two verses considered in detail and in the immediate context in which they appear? Is it possible to discern elements of style in these verses which designate them as foreign to the narrative in which they now appear; or else is it possible to exhibit between them and their present context imperfect joints which would disclose an interpolator's hand?
The former of these questions must certainly be answered in the negative. Harnack, it is true, discovers in the use of two conjunctions in the verses evidences of a hand other than that of Luke. One of these conjunctions,27 he says, occurs, indeed, a number of times in Acts, but nowhere in the rest of the Third Gospel (unless it is genuine in Lk. 7:7);28 and the other,29 according /pg. 136/ to the best text of Lk. 7:1 (where it is probably not genuine), occurs nowhere else in the Lucan writings.30
But surely the facts with regard to the former of these two words are rather in favor of Lucan authorship than against it; the word, on Harnack's own showing, does occur a number of times in Luke's double work. And with regard to the other word, it may simply be remembered that an author's choice of such words is seldom completely uniform. Bardenhewer31 gives a list of other particles besides this one that occur only once in the Lucan writings. In general, it is significant that Zimmermann32 and, more recently, Vincent Taylor33 can point to the Lucan character of the diction in these verses positively in support of their view that Luke himself, and not some scribe, was the interpolator.
The truth is that the arguments of Zimmermann and Vincent Taylor, on the one hand, and of Harnack on the other, at this point simply cancel each other: the language of the two verses displays exactly the same combination of Jewish character with Lucan diction which appears everywhere else in the narrative. It is quite impossible to prove by stylistic considerations either that the verses are a Lucan interpolation into the source (or as Vincent Taylor would say into the original form of the Gospel) or a non-Lucan interpolation by a scribe. Nothing could be smoother, from a stylistic point of view, than the way in which these verses harmonize with the rest of the infancy narrative.
If, then, no support for the interpolation theory can be obtained from stylistic considerations, what shall be said of the way in which the thought of the two verses fits into the immediate context? May any loose joints be detected by which the verses have been inserted, or does the whole section appear to be of a piece?
In this connection, some of the arguments which have been advanced by advocates of the interpolation theory are certainly very weak. Thus when Harnack says34 that the question and answer in Lk. 1:34, 35 unduly separate the words, "Behold thou shalt conceive," in verse 31, from the corresponding words, "Behold, Elisabeth thy kinswoman has conceived, she also," in verse 36, surely he is
demanding a perfect regularity or obviousness of structure which is not at all required in prose style. Even if verses 34, 35 are removed, still the two phrases that Harnack places in parallel are separated by the important /pg. 137/ words of verses 32f. As a matter of fact, it is by no means clear that the parallelism is conscious at all. But what is truly surprising is that Harnack can regard the content of this reference to Elisabeth as an argument in favor of the interpolation theory instead of regarding it as an argument against it. The words in verses 36f., Harnack argues, obtain a good sense only if no mention of Mary's conception by the Holy Spirit has gone before; for if the most wonderful thing of all has already been promised, then it is weak and unconvincing, he thinks, to point, in support of this wonder, to the lesser wonder of Elisabeth's conception in her old age.35
Surely this argument should be exactly reversed. The fact that in verses 36f. the angel points, not to the career of Elisabeth's son as the forerunner of Mary's greater son, but to something extraordinary in the manner of his birth, shows plainly that this example is adduced in illustration of the greater miracle involved in the conception of Jesus, entirely without human father, in the virgin's womb. If all that had been mentioned before was the greatness of a son whom Mary was to bear simply as the fruit of her coming marriage with Joseph, then nothing could be more pointless than a reference to the manner in which John was born. As a matter of fact, the plain intention is to illustrate the greater miracle (birth without human father) by a reference to the lesser miracle (birth from aged parents). It is perfectly true, of course, that there could be in the nature of the case no full parallel for the unique miracle of the virgin birth. But what the angel could do was to point to a happening that was at least sufficient to illustrate the general principle that "with God nothing shall be impossible."36
It is not surprising, therefore, that Hilgenfeld37 apparently makes the reference to Elisabeth an argument, not against, but in favor of, the integrity of the passage and that Spitta38 and others make it an
argument for including verses 36f. in the supposed interpolation. /pg. 138/
interpolation with the remainder of the narrative tells with crushing force. That argument was strong even if only verses 34f. were regarded as interpolated. But in that case it might conceivably (though even then not plausibly) be said that the interpolation is too brief to disclose the stylistic variations from the rest of the narrative which in a longer interpolation might be expected to reveal the interpolator's hand. But if the interpolator inserted so long a passage as verses 34–37, then it is truly a most extraordinary thing that he should have been able to catch the spirit of the infancy narrative so perfectly that nowhere in the whole course of his long insertion has he struck a single discordant note. Interpolators are not apt to be possessed of such wonderfully delicate skill. Moreover, it may turn out that there are still other special difficulties in the way of this modified form of the interpolation hypothesis. But unlikely though this modification of the interpolation hypothesis is, it does at least show a salutary feeling for the weakness of the more usual view. Certainly verses 36f. are connected with 34f. in the most indissoluble way; it is inconceivable that the reference to Elisabeth's conception in her old age should be separated from the reference to Mary's conception by the Holy Ghost. What we have here is a rather clear instance of the fate that frequently besets interpolation theories. The critic starts hopefully to remove something from a literary production. At first he thinks it is an easy matter. But then he discovers, to his consternation, that great shreds of the rest of the book are coming up along with the thing that he is trying to remove; the book proves to be not an agglomeration but an organism. So it is with Lk. 1:34, 35. At first it seems to be an easy matter just to remove these verses and so get rid of the disconcerting attestation of the virgin birth in a Palestinian narrative. But the thing proves to be not so easy as it seemed. For one thing, as we observed above, something has to be done with Lk. 1:27 and probably with Lk. 2:5 and 3:23. And then here in the immediate context it is quite evident that if Lk. 1:34f. is to go, verses 36f. must go, too. We may, before we have finished,
discover connections with still other parts of the context. At any rate, it should certainly be disconcerting to the advocates of the interpolation theory that what Harnack regards as a loose joint, showing verses 34f. to be no original part of their present context, is regarded by equally acute observers as being so very close a connection that if what appears on one side of the connection is interpolated, what appears on the other side must also go. If the interpolation theory were correct, we might naturally expect some sort of /pg. 139/ agreement among the advocates of it as to the place where the joints between the interpolation and the rest of the narrative are to be put.
Not much stronger, perhaps, though no doubt more widely advocated, than the arguments mentioned so far is the argument to the effect that verses 34f. constitute a "doublet" with verses 31–33, and so could not originally have stood side by side with those former verses. In verses 31–33, it is said, Jesus is called Son of David and Son of the Most High; in verse 35 he is called Son of God because of the manner of his birth. If—so the argument runs—the writer had had in his mind the "Son of God" of verse 35, he would not have written the "Son of the Most High" and the "David His father" of verses 31–33.
With respect to this argument, it should be remarked in the first place that there is clearly no contradiction between the representation in verses 31–33 and that in verses 34f. Offence has, indeed, been taken at the grounding of divine sonship in verse 35 upon the physical fact of divine paternity—"therefore also that holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God." How different, it is said in effect, is the Messianic conception of divine sonship in verses 31–33!
But the question may well be asked whether the divine sonship of the child in verse 35 is grounded so clearly upon a physical fact of divine paternity as the objection seems to suppose. It is perfectly possible to take the word "holy" in that verse not as the subject but as part of the
predicate. In that case, the words should be translated, "therefore also that which is begotten shall be called holy, Son of God." On this interpretation it is not particularly the divine sonship but the holiness of the child which is established by the physical fact of the supernatural conception, and the divine sonship becomes merely epexegetical of the holiness. The decision between the two ways of construing the word "holy" is difficult. But even if the word is regarded not as predicate but as subject, still we do not think that there is the slightest antinomy as over against verses 31–33. Even if the meaning is, "therefore also that holy thing that is begotten shall be called Son of God," we still do not see how such a grounding of the fact of divine sonship is contradictory to that which appears in the preceding verses. Certainly this verse does not intend to present the only way in which the divine sonship of the child is manifested. The verse says (in the construction that we are now discussing) that because of the supernatural conception the child shall be called Son of God; but it does not say that because of the supernatural conception the child shall be Son of God. We do not indeed lay particular stress upon this distinction. No doubt the distinction between "to be" and "to be called" is often not to be pressed; no doubt the passive of the verb "to call" in the New Testament sometimes implies not merely that /pg. 140/ a thing is designated as this or that, but that it is rightly so designated. So here, "shall be called Son of God" may be taken as meaning by implication, "shall be rightly called Son of God," and the emphasis may be upon the fact that justifies the calling rather than the calling itself. But whatever stress may be laid or may not be laid upon the distinction between "to be called" and "to be," it is certainly incorrect to take this sentence in an exclusive sense, as though it meant that the fact of the supernatural conception is the only reason why the child should "be called" or should "be" the Son of God. All that is meant is that the activity of the Holy Spirit at the conception of Jesus is intimately connected with that aspect of His being which causes Him to be called Son of God. One who was conceived in the womb by such a miracle must necessarily be the Son of God; a child who was conceived by the Holy Ghost could not be just an ordinary man. But
clearly the verse does not mean that the supernatural conception was an isolated fact, and that it was the only thing that grounds the divine sonship of Jesus.
Certainly the modern, exclusive way of interpreting such an utterance is quite foreign to the Semitic mind, which could place side by side various aspects of the Messiah's person even before they were united in a systematic scheme. And at this point we are bound to think that the Semitic mind is preferable to the "modern mind." Nothing could be more consistent than the passage, verses 31–36, as it stands. First, the greatness of the promised child is celebrated in general terms; then, in response to Mary's question, the particular manner of His birth is mentioned, and mentioned in a way thoroughly congruous with the generally supernatural character which has been attributed to Him before. How the divine sonship which appears in verses 31–33 can be regarded as incongruous with the virgin birth, or as rendering superfluous the mention of it, is more than we can understand. Verses 34f. are not a disturbing or unnecessary doublet as over against verses 31–33; but render more specific one point which is included in that more general assertion.
At any rate, it is quite incorrect to regard verse 35 as connecting the divine sonship of Jesus with the supernatural conception in any anthropomorphic way. It is the creative activity of the Holy Spirit, and not any assumption of human functions of fatherhood, which is in view. The chaste language of verse 35 is profoundly congruous with verses 31–33, and in general with the lofty monotheism of the Old Testament; and it is profoundly incongruous with the crassly anthropomorphic interpretation which has sometimes been forced on it by modern scholars.
The arguments for the interpolation theory that have been mentioned so far are, we think, very easily refuted. Much more worthy of consideration is /pg. 141/ the argument with which we now come to deal. It is not, indeed, cogent as a support of the interpolation hypothesis; but at least it does call attention to a
genuine exegetical difficulty which must be examined with some care.
We refer to the argument based upon Mary's question in verse 34, "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" This question has been regarded as being inconsistent with the context for two reasons. In the first place, why did not Mary simply assume that the child who has just been promised was to be the fruit of her coming marriage with Joseph? Since she was betrothed to Joseph, the fact that she was not yet living with him constituted no objection to the promise that she should have a child. In the second place, why is it that Mary should be commended, in the sequel, for her faith, if she had uttered this doubting question, which is very similar to the question for which Zacharias was so severely punished?
Of these two objections it is the former which most deserves attention. The latter objection, despite the great stress that has been laid upon it by many advocates of the interpolation hypothesis, can surely be dismissed rather easily. It is true, indeed, that in the narrative Zacharias is represented as punished for his question,39 whereas Mary, despite her question, is praised.40 But are the two questions the same?
In form, it must be admitted, there is a certain similarity. Both Zacharias and Mary, instead of accepting the lofty promises of the angel without remark, ask a question betokening at least bewilderment; and both of them ground their bewilderment in an explanatory clause. But there the similarity ceases. Zacharias' question reads, "According to what shall I know this?" That question cannot be interpreted as anything else than a definite request for a sign; the wonder that is promised must be able to exhibit an analogy with something else before Zacharias will consent to "know" it. Mary, on the other hand, says simply, "How shall this be?" She does not express any doubt but that it shall be, but merely inquires as to the manner in which it is to be brought to pass. Certainly she does not
demand a sign before she will consent to "know" that what the angel has told her will be a fact.
To the modern reader, indeed, Mary's question may seem to indicate doubt. In our modern parlance, the words, "I do not see how that can be," or the like, may often mean that we do not think that it will be. Politeness, at the present time, is often a very irritating thing. But we have no right to attribute such politeness to Mary or to the writer who reports her words. And her question, /pg. 142/ as it stands, attests not a refusal to believe without further proof, but only perplexity as to what is involved in the angel's words.
Even in its wording, then, Mary's question is different from that of Zacharias. But still greater is the difference in the situation which the two questions, respectively, have in view. Zacharias has been promised a son whom he had long desired, a son whose birth would bring him not misunderstanding and slander (as Mary's son might bring to her), but rather a removal of the reproach to which, by his childlessness, he had been subjected. Moreover, the birth of such a son, even in the old age of his parents, would be in accordance with the Old Testament analogies which Zacharias knew very well. What except sinful unbelief could lead, under such circumstances, to the request for a sign? Mary, on the other hand, when the angel, prior to her marriage, spoke of a son, was promised something which seemed at first sight to run counter to her maidenly consciousness. Old Testament analogies, moreover, could not give her, as they could give Zacharias, any help. Where in the Old Testament was it recorded that a son had been promised to a maid? Surely it is small cause for wonder that in such bewilderment she should have asked the angel for light.
Even, therefore, if the wording of the two questions were more similar than it actually is, the underlying mind of the two speakers may still have been quite different. Zacharias was promised that which was quite in accord with Old Testament analogies and would mean the fulfilment of hopes that he had cherished for many a year;
Mary was promised a strange, unheard of, thing, which might subject her to all manner of reproach. And yet finally (and despite the strange explanation from the angel, which rendered the danger of that reproach only the more imminent) she said, in simple submission to the will of God, "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word." It is surely no wonder that Zacharias was punished and Mary praised.
Much more worthy of consideration, we think, is the other one of the two objections to which Mary's question has given rise. Indeed, the former objection, as has just become evident in the last paragraph, receives what weight it may have only from this objection with which we shall now have to deal. We have argued that if the angel's promise to Mary seemed inconsistent with her maidenly consciousness, her question, unlike that of Zacharias, was devoid of blame. But, it will be objected, why should the promise have been interpreted by her in any such way; why should it have seemed inconsistent with her maidenly consciousness at all? The angel in the preceding verses has said nothing about anything peculiar in the birth of her son; why then did she not /pg. 143/ understand the promise as referring simply to her approaching marriage? If she was going to ask any question, surely it ought to have been—thus the objection runs—a question about the greatness of her son rather than about the manner of His birth; the thing which ought to have caused surprise in view of the preceding words is not the mere fact that she was to have a son (for in view of her approaching marriage that was to be expected), but that she was to have such a son—that the son of a humble maiden at Nazareth was to assume the throne of David, that He was to be called the Son of the Most High and that of His Kingdom there was to be no end. Her question, in other words, ought, in view of the context, to have been, "How shall this be, seeing I am a humble woman?," instead of, "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" As it is, verse 34, we are told, reveals clearly an interpolator's hand; it is entirely unnatural in view of the context, and merely constitutes a clumsy device for the introduction of an idea (the virgin birth) that was quite foreign to the original story.
To this argument Roman Catholic scholars have a ready answer.41 The question of Mary in verse 34, they say, is to be explained by the fact that she had already either made a vow, or at least formed a fixed resolve, never to have intercourse with a man; the present tense, "I know," in the clause, "seeing I know not a man," is to be taken in a future sense, or rather as designating what was already a permanent principle of Mary's life. Thus the meaning of the verse is, "How shall this be, since as a matter of principle I have determined not to know a man?"42
This solution certainly removes in the fullest possible way the difficulty with which we now have to do. And no objection to it can be raised from a linguistic point of view; there seems to be no reason why the present indicative, "I know," could not be taken as designating a fixed principle of Mary's life that would apply to the future as well as to the present. But the question is whether in avoiding one difficulty this Roman Catholic solution does not become involved in other difficulties that are greater still. In the first place, this solution runs counter to the prima facie evidence regarding the brothers and sisters of Jesus, who are mentioned in a number of places in the New Testament. Despite the alternative views—that these "brethren of the Lord" were children of Joseph by a former marriage or that they were merely cousins /pg. 144/ of Jesus, the word "brother" being used in a loose sense—it still seems most probable that they were simply children of Joseph and Mary. This conclusion is in accord with Lk. 2:7, where Mary is said to have "brought forth her firstborn son"; for the word "firstborn" may naturally be held to imply that afterwards she had other children. The implication here is, indeed, by no means certain; for under the Jewish law the word "firstborn" was a technical term, which could be applied even to an only child, and in the sequel of this narrative stress is actually laid upon the fact that the legal provisions regarding the "firstborn" were fulfilled in the case of Jesus. Still, despite such considerations, the phrase does seem slightly more natural if Mary was regarded by the narrator as having other children. Such an interpretation would agree, moreover, with Mt. 1:25, where it is said
that "Joseph knew her not until she had borne a son." Here again the natural implication of the words can conceivably be avoided; it may be insisted that the author does not say that Joseph knew her after she had borne a son, but only that he did not know her before she had borne a son. And yet it does seem strange that if the narrator supposed that Joseph never lived with Mary as with a wife he should not have said that in simple words.
In rejecting the Roman Catholic solution of our difficulty, we are not merely influenced by the positive historical evidence for the existence of other sons of Mary. Equally cogent is the negative consideration that if the narrator in the first chapter of Luke had meant that Mary had formed a resolve of perpetual virginity, he would naturally have indicated the fact in a very much clearer way. Such a resolve in a Jewish maiden of the first century would have been an unheard-of thing. Asceticism, with the later prejudice against marriage and the begetting of children, was quite foreign to the Jewish circles that are depicted in Lk. 1–2 in such a vivid manner. If, therefore, the narrator were intending to attribute so extraordinary a resolve to Mary, he would naturally have taken pains to make his meaning perfectly clear; he might, for example, have been expected to tell of the special divine guidance which alone could have led a Jewish maiden to depart in such an unheard-of way from all the customs and all the ingrained sentiments of her people. As a matter of fact, the narrator has done nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he has simply told us that Mary was betrothed to Joseph; and he has not hinted in any way whatsoever that the approaching marriage was to be a marriage in name only. Such a marriage is indeed set forth with great clearness in the apocryphal Protevangelium of James; but there is not the slightest hint of any such thing in our Third Gospel. /pg. 145/
If, then, the Roman Catholic solution is to be rejected, what shall be put in its place? If when Mary said, "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?", she was not giving expression to a resolve of perpetual virginity with which a child in her approaching marriage with Joseph would seem inconsistent, how shall her question be understood?
Why did she not simply assume that the son whom the angel had promised would be the fruit of her approaching union with her betrothed?
Some modern scholars find an answer in the hypothesis of a mistranslation, in our Greek Gospel, of a Hebrew or Aramaic original of the angel's words. If the future, "thou shalt conceive," in verse 31, it is said, only were a present instead of a future, all would be plain; in that case the conception in Mary's womb would be represented by the angel as taking place at once, so that Mary could not understand it as referring to a marriage which still lay in the future, and so her bewildered question would easily be explained. Now, although in our Greek text, it is said, the word translated, "thou shalt conceive," is unequivocally future, the original of it in Hebrew or Aramaic would be a participle; and the participle might be meant to refer to the present as well as to the future—the decision in every individual case being determined only by the context. In the present passage, it is said, the participle was intended, in the Semitic source, to refer to the present; and the whole difficulty has come from the fact that the Greek translator, who gave us our present form of Lk. 1–2, wrongly took it as referring to the future. If, then, the Semitic original is here restored, Mary's question—since she could not explain a present conception in her womb by her future union with Joseph—becomes thoroughly suited to the context, so that there is no longer any indication of an interpolator's clumsy hand.
This solution, of course, assumes the existence of a Semitic original for the first chapter of Luke. That assumption is by no means improbable. But the question might arise how the Greek translator came to make the mistake. Would a translator be likely—for no particular reason, since the participle in the source might be translated by a present, even though it might also be translated by a future—would a translator be likely to introduce such serious confusion into the narrative in its Greek form? Obviously it would be more satisfactory, if possible, to find an interpretation which would suit the Greek narrative as it stands. Such an interpretation, we
believe, is actually forthcoming, though it appears in a number of slightly different forms, between which we may not be able to decide. This true interpretation of the Greek text is not without affinity with the hypothesis of mistranslation which has just been discussed; /pg. 146/ indeed, what it actually proposes is to find in the Greek words a meaning rather similar to that which the advocates of the theory of mistranslation have found in the Hebrew or Aramaic original. The Greek word, "thou shalt conceive," is indeed future: but would it necessarily be referred by Mary to the time of her marriage with Joseph; might it not rather be referred by her to an immediate future? The latter alternative, we think, is correct. Annunciations, as they were known to Mary from the Old Testament, were made to married women; and when such an annunciation came to her, an unmarried maiden, it is not unnatural that she should have been surprised. No doubt the influence upon her of the Old Testament narratives was not conscious; in the bewilderment caused by the angel's greeting it is not likely that she reviewed consciously in her mind the story of Hannah or of the wife of Manoah. But the unconscious effect of these stories may have been very great; they may well have served to create in her subconscious mind a close connection between angelic annunciations and the condition of a married woman as distinguished from that of a maid. Hence to her maidenly consciousness the promise of a son may well have occasioned her the utmost surprise.
If, indeed, she had looked at the matter from the point of view of cold logic, her surprise might possibly have been overcome. She could have reflected that, after all, she was betrothed, and that the annunciation could in her case, as was not so in the Old Testament examples, be taken as referring to a married state that was still to come. But would such reflection have been natural; is it not psychologically more probable that she should have given expression, in such words as those in Lk. 1:34, to her first instinctive surprise? We have, then, in the current objection to Mary's question another instance of that failure to understand the character of Mary, of that attempt to attribute to her, as she is depicted in this narrative,
the coldly scientific quality of the "modern mind," which has already been noticed in another connection. Suppose it be granted that in her question to the angel Mary was not strictly logical; is that any objection either to the ultimate authenticity of the question as a question of Mary, or to its presence in the narrative in Lk. 1–2? We might almost be tempted to say that a certain lack of logic in Mary's words is a positive indication of their authenticity and of their original presence in this narrative. This absence of an easy, reasoned solution of all difficulties, instinctive expression of a pure, maidenly consciousness, is profoundly in accord with the delicate delineation, all through this narrative, of the mother of the Lord. /pg. 147/
But was maidenly instinct here really at fault; was Mary wrong in not simply referring the angel's promise to her approaching marriage? Was she wrong in thinking that an immediate conception in her womb was naturally implied in the angel's words? We are by no means certain that this is the case. On the contrary, the very appearance of the angel and his extraordinary greeting would seem clearly to indicate some far more immediate significance in that moment than could be found merely in a promise concerning the indefinite future. After all, it was really strange in itself, as well as an offence to the consciousness of the virgin, if a child to be born in the approaching union with Joseph should be promised before instead of after the marriage. The future tense, "thou shalt conceive," therefore, though not actually equivalent to a present, does refer most naturally to an immediate future. Thus the interpretation of the angel's previous words which is implied in verse 34 is a very natural interpretation, and cannot possibly stamp verses 34f. as an interpolation.
This view avoids one difficulty that faces that theory of mistranslation which we have rejected. If the Hebrew or Aramaic participle of which the Greek, "thou shalt conceive," is a translation were intended in a strictly present sense, there would seem to be a contradiction with Lk. 2:21, where the name Jesus is said to have been given by the angel before the child had been conceived in the
womb. If the conception were represented as taking place at the very moment when the word translated "thou shalt conceive" was uttered, then the name was given not before, but at the very moment of, the conception. On our view, on the other hand, it is possible to take Lk. 2:21 in the strictest way, and yet find no contradiction with Lk. 1:31. The conception was represented by the angel as taking place in the immediate future, but not at the very moment when the word, "thou shalt conceive," was spoken. It is impossible to say just when the conception is to be put. Many have thought of the moment when Mary said, "Be it unto me in accordance with thy word";43 and this view has sometimes been connected with speculations about the necessity, for the accomplishment of the incarnation, of Mary's act of submission. The salvation of the world, it has sometimes been held, depended upon Mary's decision to submit herself to God's plan; here as elsewhere, it has been held, God had respect to human free will. Such a way of thinking is contrary to ours. Of course our rejection of it does not by any means involve rejection of the view that puts the moment of the conception at the time when Mary uttered her final words. Yet on the whole we think it better to treat the question as it is treated by the narrator—with a cautious reserve. All that /pg. 148/ is involved in our view is that the "thou shalt conceive" in verse 31 refers to the near future, and would not naturally be taken by Mary as referring to her approaching marriage. It is quite possible that at this point we have claimed too much; it is quite possible that Mary's question in verse 34 is not strictly logical; it is quite possible that she might well have taken the angel's promise as referring to her approaching marriage. But that admission would not at all seriously affect our argument. Even if Mary's question was not strictly logical, it was at least very natural; it was natural as expressing her bewilderment; like Peter at the transfiguration, she knew not what she said. She was terrified at the angel's greeting, and as a pure maiden she had not expected then the promise of a son. What wonder is it that her maidenly consciousness found expression in words that calm reflection might have changed? We are almost tempted to say that the less expressive of calm reasoning are Mary's words in verse 34, so much the less likely are they to be due to an
interpolator's calculating mind, and so much the more likely are they to be due to Mary herself or to have been an original part of a narrative which everywhere depicts her character in such a delicate way.
So far, we have been considering the arguments that have been advanced in favor of the interpolation theory. It is now time to consider a little more specifically the positive arguments that may be advanced against it. What positive indications, as distinguished from the mere burden of proof against the interpolation theory, may be advanced in favor of the view that Lk. 1:34f. was an original part of the narrative in which it now stands?
The strongest indication of all, perhaps, is found in the total impression that the narrative makes. We have been accustomed to read Lk. 1–2 with appreciation of its unity and of its beauty only because the virgin birth is in our mind. But if we could divest ourselves of that thought, if we could imagine ourselves as reading this narrative for the first time and reading it without Lk. 1:34f., it would seem disorganized and overwrought almost from beginning to end. The truth is that the child whose birth was prophesied by an angel and was greeted, when it came, by a choir of the heavenly host, is inconceivable as a mere child of earthly parents. No, what we really have here in this Christmas narrative is the miraculous appearance upon the earth of a heavenly Being—a human child, indeed, but a child like none other that ever was born. Not merely this detail or that, but the entire inner spirit of the narrative, involves the virgin birth.
Only partially can this total impression be analyzed. Yet such analysis is not without its value. It may serve to remove doubts, and so may allow free /pg. 149/ scope at the last for a new and more sympathetic reading of the narrative as a whole.
Some of the details in Lk. 1–2 which presuppose the virgin birth are of a subsidiary kind. But their cumulative effect is very great. Thus it
has been well observed that Mary's words of submission in Lk. 1:38 are without point if there has been no prophecy of the virgin birth in what precedes. If all that the angel has said is a prophecy that in her coming marriage Mary is to be the mother of the Messiah, why should there be this parade of submission on her part? These words are natural only if what has been promised involves possible shame as well as honor; then only do they acquire the pathos which has been found in them by Christian feeling throughout all the centuries and which the narrator evidently intended them to have. It is such considerations, perhaps, which have led a few advocates of the interpolation theory to suggest that verse 38, as well as verses 36f., may be regarded as part of the interpolation. But this suggestion only heaps difficulty upon difficulty. Without Mary's final words of submission, the whole annunciation scene is left hanging in the air. Let the reader just imagine that verse 39 originally followed upon verse 33, and then let him see what effect is made by such an account of the scene. It will be evident enough that an artistic whole has been subjected to mutilation. What point is there, moreover, in the praise of Mary's faith in verse 45—"Blessed is she who has believed; for there shall be fulfilment of the things that have been spoken to her from the Lord"—if Mary has not in what precedes given any expression to her faith? Evidently verse 45 refers to verse 38 in the clearest possible way. But verse 45 presupposes far more than verse 38; it also presupposes the stupendous miracle the promise of which Mary had believed. How comparatively insignificant would Mary's faith have been if all that had been promised her was that her son in her coming marriage was to be the Messiah! Is it not perfectly evident that the faith for which Mary is praised is something far more than that; is the reference not plainly to her acceptance of an experience that involved possible shame for her among men and that was quite unique in the history of the human race? We have here a phenomenon that appears in the narrative from beginning to end. The truth is that this account of the birth and infancy of Jesus is all pitched in too high a key to suit a child born by ordinary generation from earthly parents. The exuberant praise of Mary's faith, like many other features of the narrative, and indeed like the spirit of this
narrative from beginning to end, seems empty and jejune unless the reader has in his mind the miracle which really forms the centre of the whole.
But this is not the only point at which the account of Mary's visit to /pg. 150/ Elisabeth presupposes the virgin birth. Certainly the account of the visit constitutes a clear refutation at least of that form of the interpolation theory which includes in the interpolation verses 36 and 37. When the angel is represented in those verses as pointing to the example of Elisabeth, evidently the motive is being given for the journey that Mary immediately undertakes. "And Mary arose in those days and went with haste into the hill country into a city of Judah." Why did she go at all, and especially why did she go in haste? Is it not perfectly clear that it was because of the angel's words? Without verses 36f. the whole account of the visit to Elisabeth is left hanging in the air.
Verses 36f., therefore, were clearly in the original narrative. But, as we have already pointed out, verses 36f. presuppose verses 34f. in the clearest possible way. As it stands, the narrative hangs together; but when the supposed interpolation is removed all is thrown into confusion. Hilgenfeld44 has pointed out still another way in which the account of Mary's visit to Elisabeth presupposes Lk. 1:34, 35. Evidently at the time of the visit the conception is regarded as already having taken place. When Elisabeth says to Mary: "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?",45 her words seem overwrought if the conception is still to come. But if the conception has already taken place at the time of Mary's journey, how is the journey to be explained? Surely it cannot be explained if Mary is regarded as already married to Joseph. In that case, as Hilgenfeld has well intimated, what would have been in place for Mary, if there was to be any journey at all, would have been a bridal tour with her husband, not a hasty journey far away from her husband to the home of a kinswoman.46 Is it not perfectly clear that the whole account of Mary's visit to Elisabeth presupposes the
supernatural conception? If Mary has passed through the wonderful experience promised in Lk. 1:34, 35, then everything falls into its proper place; then it is the most natural thing in the world for the angel to suggest, and for Mary to carry out, a journey to visit her kinswoman, who /pg. 151/ also has passed through a wonderful, though of course far inferior, experience of God's grace. But if Lk. 1:34f. is omitted, everything is at loose ends.
Even at the very end of the infancy narrative, the virgin birth seems to presupposed. When it is said in Lk. 2:51 that Jesus "went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them," the sentence seems perhaps to be without point if Jesus was born of Joseph and Mary by ordinary generation. Why should it be thought a thing so remarkable that a child of earthly parents, even if the child was the Messiah, should be subject to its parents? The very way in which the submission of the boy Jesus to His earthly parents is introduced in the narrative suggests that His relationship to them was such as to make the submission an extraordinary and noteworthy thing.
We should not, indeed, be inclined to lay particular stress upon this point if it were taken by itself. Perhaps one might say that if there was in the boy Jesus so extraordinary a consciousness of sonship toward God as is attested by His answer in the Temple, it was remarkable that He should subject Himself to earthly parents even if He were descended from them by ordinary generation. But that only pushes the difficulty in the way of an acceptance of the interpolation theory a step farther back. Is it likely that a son born of earthly parents by ordinary generation should have had such a stupendous consciousness of unique sonship toward God at all?47 We are really led back again and again, wherever we start, to one central observation. That central observation is that only a superficial reading of Lk. 1–2 can find in this narrative an account of a merely human child; when the reader puts himself really into touch with the inner spirit of the narrative, he sees that everywhere a supernatural child is in view. There is, therefore, a certain element of truth in the
view advanced by the school of comparative religion to the effect that the child depicted in this narrative is a Gotteskind. That view is certainly wrong in detecting a polytheistic and mythological background for the stories of Lk. 1–2; but at least it is quite correct in observing that what the narrator has in view is no ordinary, merely human child. The whole atmosphere that here surrounds the child Jesus is an atmosphere proper only to one who has been conceived by the Holy Ghost.48 /pg. 152/
But it is time to turn from such general considerations to an argument of a much more specific kind. The argument to which we refer is found in the remarkable parallelism that prevails between the account of the annunciation to Mary and that of the annunciation to Zacharias.49 This parallelism shows in the clearest possible way that the verses Lk. 1:34, 35 belong to the very innermost structure of the narrative. In both accounts we find (1) an appearance of the angel Gabriel, (2) fear on the part of the person to whom the annunciation is to be made, (3) reassurance by the angel and pronouncement of a promise, (4) a perplexed question by the recipient of the promise, (5) a grounding of the question in a causal clause, (6) reiteration of the promise with reference to something which in both cases is in the nature of a sign. The facts may best be indicated if we place the two sections in parallel columns:50 Lk. 1:11–20 Lk. 1:28–38 11 Verse 11 Verse 28 And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee. 22 Verse 12 Verse 29 And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. And she was troubled at the saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this might be. 33 Verses 13–17 Verses 30–33 But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and /pg. 153/ thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth.
And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and
bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink: and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. 44 Verse 18a Verse 34a And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be; 55 Verse 18b Verse 34b for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years. seeing I know not a man? 66 Verses 19–20 Verse 35–38 And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings.
And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God.
And behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believedst not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season. And behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. /pg. 154/
It may be remarked in passing that even this exhibition does not fully set forth the connection between the two accounts. It does not show,
for example, that in both cases the name of the angel is Gabriel, that the description of Mary in verse 27 is very similar in form to that of the parents of John in verse 5, that the Holy Spirit is mentioned in connection with the beginning of the earthly life both of John and of Jesus, and that the two accounts are specifically linked together by the words, "in the sixth month," in Lk. 1:26. But even in itself the parallelism, when the two accounts are set forth as above in parallel columns, is so striking as to render almost inconceivable the hypothesis that it came by chance. No one who really attends to the structure of both sections should doubt but that they came from the same hand. In both cases the narrative is cast in the same mould.
But if verses 34 and 35 were removed, this parallelism would be marred at the most important point. What, then, does the interpolation hypothesis involve? It involves something that is certainly unlikely in the extreme—namely, the supposition that an interpolator, desiring to insert an idea utterly foreign to the original narrative, has succeeded in inserting that idea in such a way as not only to refrain from marring the existent parallelism—even that would have been difficult enough—but actually to fill up in the most beautiful fashion a parallelism which otherwise would have been incomplete! We should have to suppose that the original narrator, though he did not include the virgin birth, left a gap exactly suited to its inclusion. And then we should have to suppose the appearance of an interpolator gifted with such marvellous literary skill as to be able, in the first place, to construct an interpolation that in spirit and style should conform perfectly to the body of the narrative, and then, in the second place, to insert that interpolation in just the place necessary to complete a parallelism which, when it is thus completed, makes upon the attentive reader the impression of being an essential element in the original framework of the narrative.
Surely this entire complex of suppositions is very improbable. How, then, can we possibly avoid the simple conclusion that the parallelism between the two accounts, including the part of it which appears in Lk. 1:34f., was due to the original narrator?
At this point, however, there may be an objection. May it not be said that the very perfection of the parallelism that appears if verses 34, 35 are included constitutes an argument not for, but against, the originality of those verses? Have we not, in other words, in the inclusion of verses 34f., something in the nature of a "harmonistic corruption"? May not an interpolator, observing the large measure of parallelism between the accounts of the annunciations, /pg. 155/ have decided to make that parallelism a little more complete than it actually was?
A little reflection, we think, will show that these questions must be answered with an emphatic negative. The analogy with what is called a "harmonistic corruption" in textual criticism would not hold in this case at all. To show that it would not hold, we need only to glance at the harmonistic corruptions that actually appear in the text of the Synoptic Gospels. What is the nature of these corruptions? An example will make the matter plain. The verse Mt. 17:21, "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting," in the account of the healing of the demoniac boy after the descent from the mount of the transfiguration, is omitted by the so-called "Neutral" type of text as attested by the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. It is universally recognized as a gloss. But if it were genuine it would not add anything to our knowledge of the incident; for in Mk. 9:29 very similar words are certainly genuine. It is perfectly evident that the text of Matthew has been made to conform to that of Mark. We have here, therefore, a typical example of a "harmonistic corruption." But how totally different is this case from the case of Lk. 1:34f., if these latter verses are really an addition to the original narrative! In the case of Mt. 17:21, a sentence is taken over in a mechanical way from a parallel account; in the case of Lk. 1:34f., all that would be derived from the parallel account would be the sequence of question, grounding of the question, and answer: and the content of the interpolation would be of a highly original kind. Such originality would be quite unheard of among "harmonistic corruptions." What we should have here would be no mere obvious filling out of a narrative by the mechanical importation of details from a parallel
account, but the addition of a highly original idea—by hypothesis foreign to the original narrative—and the expression of that idea in a way profoundly congruous, indeed, with the inner spirit of the narrative, but at the same time quite free from any merely literary dependence upon what has gone before or upon what follows. It is doubtful whether any parallel could be cited for such a phenomenon in the entire history of textual corruptions.
It appears, therefore—if we may use for the moment the language of textual criticism—that "intrinsic probability" and "transcriptional probability" are here in admirable agreement. On the one hand, the verses Lk. 1:34 and 35 are really in the closest harmony with the rest of the narrative; but, on the other hand, that harmony is not of the obvious, superficial kind that would appeal to an interpolator. Indeed, the very difficulty that we found in the interpretation of Mary's question in verse 34 may be turned into an argument not for, /pg. 156/ but against, the interpolation theory. The difficulty is of a superficial kind that would probably have been avoided by an interpolator; the underlying harmony is of a kind worthy only of such a writer as the original composer of Lk. 1–2. Shall we attribute to an interpolator the delicate touch that is really to be found in Mary's question? Is not the question rather—we mean not the invention of the question but the preservation of it—to be attributed to the writer who as given us the rest of his matchless narrative?
In what has just been said, we have been using the language of textual criticism; we have been speaking of "intrinsic probability" and of "transcriptional probability" as though this were an ordinary question of the text. Such language would, of course, apply in fullest measure to that form of the interpolation hypothesis which finds in Lk. 1:34f. an interpolation into the completed Gospel; for in that case we should actually be dealing with scribal transmission in the strictest sense. But the language could really apply in some measure also to the other forms in which the interpolation hypothesis has been held. In any case, we have in Lk. 1:34f. an element that on one hand is in underlying harmony with the rest of the infancy narrative
and yet, on the other hand, cannot be understood as being due to the effort of a later writer—whether the author of Luke-Acts or some one else—to produce that harmony by an insertion into this Palestinian narrative. Real harmony with the rest of the narrative, and superficial difficulty—these are the recognized marks of genuineness in any passage of an ancient work. And both these characteristics appear in Lk. 1:34 and 35. At any rate, whatever may be thought of our use of the terminology of textual criticism, the parallelism with the account of the annunciation to Zacharias stamps Lk. 1:34f. unmistakably as being an original part of the account of the annunciation to Mary. The argument comes as near to being actual demonstration as any argument that could possibly appear in the field of literary criticism. It is very clear that the two verses in question were part of the original structure of the narrative.
But before this phase of the subject is finally left, it will be necessary to consider the alternative view as to the extent of the interpolation, which was suggested by Kattenbusch and has been advocated by Weinel and others. According to these scholars, not the whole of Lk. 1:34f. constitutes the addition to the narrative, but only the four words translated "seeing I know not a man"51 in verse 34.52 If these four words are removed, it may be argued, /pg. 157/ there is in Mary's question no reference to the manner in which her child is to be born; she is puzzled merely by the greatness of her promised son, and asks therefore, "How shall this be?"53, without at all thinking of anything other than the son that she was to have in her approaching marriage with Joseph. In reply—so the hypothesis may be held to run —the angel in verse 35 points to an activity of the Holy Spirit securing the greatness and holiness of the son, without at all excluding the human agency in His conception in the womb: the child will be in a physical sense the son of Joseph and Mary; but just as the son of Zacharias was to be filled with the Holy Spirit at the very beginning of his life,54 so the son of Joseph will be fitted by the same Spirit for a far higher function.
In comment upon this hypothesis, it may be said, in the first place, that the hypothesis hardly accomplishes what it undertakes to accomplish; it hardly succeeds in removing the supernatural conception from Lk. 1:34, 35. Surely the minimizing interpretation which Weinel advocates for verse 35 is unnatural in the extreme. When Mary is told by the angel, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God," it seems very improbable that no more is meant than a sanctifying action of the Spirit upon a child conceived by another agency in the womb. Why should it be said, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee," if the activity of the Spirit terminates upon the child in the womb rather than upon Mary? Why should not some expression like that in Lk. 1:15—"He shall be filled with the /pg. 158/ Holy Ghost"— be used if the work of the Spirit in both cases is essentially the same? Perhaps, indeed, the advocates of the hypothesis will maintain that in accordance with their view the work of the Spirit is not the same in both cases; perhaps they will say that in the case of John merely a sanctifying influence is meant, whereas in the case of Jesus, the Spirit, though working indeed with the human factor, becomes constitutive of the very being of the child. But when that is said we are getting back very close indeed to the view that the Spirit's action excludes the human father altogether. The truth is that in verse 35 the human father is quite out of sight; only two factors are in view— the mother, Mary, and the Spirit of God. "Conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary" is really a correct summary of that verse. Even without the disputed words in verse 34, therefore, the following verse, verse 35, still presupposes the virgin birth. But if so, all ground for suspecting the words, "seeing I know not a man," disappears.
A second objection to Weinel's hypothesis is found in the parallelism with the annunciation to Zacharias to which attention has already been called. Weinel himself performed a very useful service by urging that parallelism as an objection to the ordinary form of the interpolation theory, which would remove all of verses 34 and 35.
But he did not seem to observe that it tells also against his own view. If the words, "seeing I know not a man," are removed from verse 34, then there is nothing to correspond to the grounding of Zacharias' question in verse 18. Let it not be said that we are expecting too perfect a similarity between the two parallel accounts. On the contrary, we recognize to the full the freshness and originality of verses 28–38 as over against verses 11–20; there are many details in one account that are not also in the other; the parallelism is by no means mechanical. But the point is that if Mary's grounding of her question be removed from verse 34, it is not merely one detail that is subtracted, but an essential element in the structural symmetry of the passage. It is really essential to the author's manner of narrating the annunciation to Zacharias that Zacharias' question should not merely indicate bewilderment in general, but should point the way for the explanation that was to follow. It seems evident that a similar plan is being followed in the case of the annunciation to Mary. But that plan is broken up if the words, "seeing I know not a man," are not original in verse 34. Weinel's hypothesis would force us to suppose that the original narrator left a gap in the structure of one of his parallel accounts, and a gap so exceedingly convenient that when by the insertion of four words an interpolator introduced into the narrative a momentous new idea, the most beautiful symmetry of form was the result. Surely such a supposition is very unlikely. It is perfectly evident, on the contrary, /pg. 159/ that the symmetry that results when Mary's grounding of her question is retained is due not to mere chance or to what would be a truly extraordinary coincidence between a defect in the fundamental structure and an interpolator's desires, but to the original intention of the author.
In the third place, Mary's question in verse 34, in the shortened form to which Weinel's hypothesis reduces it, seems unnatural and abrupt even apart from any comparison with the parallel account. According to Weinel, Mary said merely, in reply to the angel's promise, "How shall this be?". In that form the question seems to have no point; it is a meaningless interruption of the angel's speech.55 And it does not seem to prepare in any intelligible way for what follows in verse 35.
No doubt there are narrators to whom such clumsiness could be attributed; but certainly the author of Lk. 1–2 was not one of them. In this narrative such banality would be singularly out of place. It is perfectly evident that in verse 34 the author is preparing for verse 35 in some far more definite and intelligible way than by the meaningless words, "How shall this be?"; Mary's question is plainly intended to point the way to the special explanation that is given in the following verse. Thus on Weinel's hypothesis the original narrator would at this point have suddenly descended to banality; and the beautiful naturalness and symmetry which now appear in the passage would be due not to the author, but to an interpolator. Who can believe that such a supposition is correct?
Such objections would be decisive in themselves. But there is another objection that is perhaps even more serious still. It is found in the extraordinary restraint which Weinel's hypothesis is obliged to attribute to the supposed interpolator. An interpolator, we are asked to believe, desired to introduce into a Jewish Christian narrative of the birth of Jesus a momentous idea—the idea of the virgin birth— which by hypothesis was foreign to that narrative. How does he go to work? Does he insert any express narration of the event that he regarded as so important? Does he even mention it plainly? Not at all. What he does is simply to insert four words, which will cause the context into which they are inserted to appear in a new light, so that now that context will be taken as implying the virgin birth.
Where was there ever found such extraordinary restraint, either in an ordinary interpolator who tampered with the manuscripts of a completed book, or in an author like the author of Luke-Acts who desired to introduce a new idea into one of his sources? Is it not abundantly plain that if an interpolator /pg. 160/ desired to introduce the virgin birth into the narrative of Lk. 1–2 he would have done so in far less restrained and far more obvious manner than Weinel's hypothesis requires us to suppose? On the ordinary form of the interpolation hypothesis, which includes in the supposed insertion all of verses 34 and 35, we were called upon to admire the
extraordinary literary skill of the interpolator, which enabled him to construct a rather extensive addition that should be highly original in content and yet conform so perfectly to the innermost spirit of the rest of the narrative. On Weinel's hypothesis, on the other hand, it is the extraordinary restraint of the interpolator which affords ground for wonder. The surprising thing is that if the interpolator was going to insert anything—in the interests of the virgin birth—he did not insert far more.56
We have enumerated four special objections to the hypothesis of Weinel. With the exception of the one based on the parallelism with Lk. 1:11–20, they apply only to this hypothesis and not also to the more usual view as to the extent of the interpolation. That more usual view is in turn faced by some special objections that the view of Weinel avoids. But it must be remembered that some of the weightiest objections apply to both hypotheses alike. All that we have said regarding the plain implication of the virgin birth in Lk. 1:27 and 2:5, and regarding the subtler implication of it at other points in the narrative, tells against any effort to find in the original form of Lk. 1– 2 a narrative that presented Jesus as being by ordinary generation the son of Joseph and Mary.
What needs finally to be emphasized is that in holding the virgin birth of Christ to be an integral part of the representation in Lk. 1–2 we are not dependent merely upon details. At least equally convincing is a consideration of the narrative as a whole. With regard to the results of such a general consideration, it may be well now to say a final word. In what precedes, we have laid special stress upon the parallelism between the account of the annunciation to Mary and that of the annunciation to Zacharias. That parallelism, we observed, establishes Lk. 1:34, 35 in the clearest possible way as belonging to the basic structure of the narrative; the (evidently intentional) symmetry of form between the two accounts is hopelessly marred if these verses, either as a whole or in part, are removed. But what now needs to be observed is that the difference between the two accounts is at least as significant, in establishing the original place of the
virgin /pg. 161/ birth in Lk. 1–2, as is the similarity. In fact, the very similarity finds its true meaning in the emphasis which it places upon the difference.
One obvious difference, of course, is that the annunciation of the birth of John comes to the father of the child, while the annunciation of the birth of Jesus comes to the mother. What is the reason for this difference? Is the difference due merely to chance? Is it due merely to the way in which the tradition in the two cases happened to be handed down—merely to the fact that, as Harnack thinks,57 the stories regarding Jesus were preserved by a circle that held Mary in special veneration and had been affected in some way by the impression that she had made? If this latter suggestion is adopted, we have a significant concession to the traditional opinion, which has always been inclined to attribute the Lucan infancy narrative, mediately or immediately, to the mother of the Lord. Such an admission will probably not be made by many of those who reject, as Harnack does, the historicity of the narrative. And for those who will not make the admission, who will not admit any special connection of the narrative with Mary or with her circle, the central place of Mary instead of Joseph in the annunciation scene remains a serious problem. But even if we accept the Marianic origin of the narrative— and do so even in a way far more definite than that which Harnack favors—still the unique place of Mary in the narrative requires an explanation. The point is not merely that Mary receives special attention—that her inmost thoughts are mentioned and the like—but that she is given an actual prominence that would seem unnatural if the child belonged equally to Joseph and to her.58
The fact is that we find ourselves here impaled upon the horns of a dilemma. If, on the one hand, the narrative is quite unhistorical, and not based upon any tradition connected with the actual Mary, then we do not see how the narrative, or the legend lying back of it, ever came—since in this case it had full freedom of invention—to attribute such importance to the mother unless she was regarded as a parent of the child in some sense that did not apply to Joseph. Certainly the
narrative displays no general predilection in favor of women as over against men; for in the case of John the Baptist the annunciation is represented as being made to Zacharias not to Elisabeth. If, therefore, it regards the relation of Joseph to Jesus as being similar to that of Zacharias to John, why does it not make him, like Zacharias, the recipient of the angelic promise? So much may be said for one horn of the dilemma. /pg. 162/ But if the other horn be chosen—if the narrator be regarded as being bound by historical tradition actually coming from Mary—still the prominence of Mary in the narrative remains significant. Are we to suppose that Mary attributed that prominence to herself without special reason? This supposition, in view of Mary's character, as it appears in the narrative itself, is unlikely in the extreme.
Thus, whatever view we take of the ultimate origin of the narrative, the prominence in it of Mary as compared with Joseph, which is so strikingly contrasted with the prominence of Zacharias as compared with Elisabeth, clearly points to something particularly significant in her relation to the promised child, something which Joseph did not share. In other words, it points to the supernatural conception, which is so plainly attested in Lk. 1:34, 35. The removal of these verses by the advocates of the interpolation theory has really deprived us of the key that unlocks the meaning of the narrative from beginning to end.
There is, moreover, another way also in which the relation between the two accounts of annunciations presupposes the virgin birth. What sympathetic reader can fail to see that the relation between the two accounts is a relation of climax? It is clearly the intention of the narrator to exhibit the greatness of Jesus in comparison with His forerunner, John. But in the annunciation of the birth of John the manner of the birth is given special prominence. The child, it is said, is to be born of aged parents; and around this feature a large art of the narrative revolves. The unbelief of Zacharias and the punishment of that unbelief are occasioned not by the prediction of later events in the life of the promised child, but by the prediction of the wonderful
manner of his birth. Are we to suppose that in the parallel account there was nothing to correspond to this central feature of the annunciation to Zacharias? Are we to suppose that after laying such special stress upon the unusual manner of the promised birth of John the narrator proceeded to narrate a promise of a perfectly ordinary birth of Jesus; are we to suppose that it is the intention of the narrator that while John was born of aged parents by a special dispensation of divine grace, Jesus was simply the child of Joseph and Mary? No supposition, we think, would more completely miss the point of the narrative. Verses 36 and 37 surely provide the true key to the relation between the two accounts; the angel there points to the coming birth of John the Baptist from an aged mother as an example of that omnipotence of God which is to be manifested in yet plainer fashion in the birth of Jesus. In the light of this utterance, the whole meaning of the parallelism between the two accounts of annunciations becomes plain. The very similarities between the two cases are intended to set off in all the greater plainness the stupendous difference; and the difference /pg. 163/ concerns not merely the relative greatness of the two children that are to be born, but also the manner of their conception in the womb. A wonderful, if not plainly supernatural, conception in the case of John followed by a merely natural conception in the case of Jesus, which the interpolation theory requires us to find, would have seemed to the composer of the narrative to involve a lamentable anticlimax. The entire structure of the narrative protests eloquently against any such thing.
At this point, however, an objection may possibly be raised. It is not an objection against our argument in itself, but an argumentum ad hominem against our use of it. We have insisted that there is a conscious parallelism between the account of the annunciation to Zacharias and that of the annunciation to Mary, and that the author evidently intends to exhibit the superiority, even in the manner of birth, that Jesus possesses over against John. But—so the objection might run—does not such a view of the author's intentions involve denial of the historicity of the narrative? If the author was ordering
his material with such freedom as to exhibit the parallelism that we have discovered, and if he was deliberately setting about to show the superiority of Jesus over John, must he not, in order to pursue these ends, have been quite free from the restraint which would have been imposed upon him by information concerning what actually happened to Zacharias and to Mary? In other words, does not the artistic symmetry which we have discovered in the narrative militate against any acceptance of its historical trustworthiness? And since we are intending to defend its historical trustworthiness, have we, as distinguished from those who deny its trustworthiness, any right to that particular argument against the interpolation theory which we have just used? In reply, it may be said simply that our argument has not depended upon any particular view as to the way in which the symmetry, upon which we have been insisting, came into being. It would hold just as well if the author merely reproduced a symmetry which he observed to be inherent in the divine ordering of the facts, as it would if he himself constructed the symmetry by free invention. In either case, the symmetry would be intentional in his narrative. Moreover, even in a thoroughly accurate narrative there is some possibility of such a selection and ordering of the material as shall bring certain features especially into view. A portrait, with its selection of details, is sometimes not less truthful but more truthful than a photograph. So in this case, the author, we think, was not doing violence to the facts when he presented the annunciation to Mary as in parallel with the annunciation to Zacharias. That parallelism, we think, was inherent in the facts; and the writer /pg. 164/ showed himself to be not merely an artist, but a true historian, when he refrained from marring it.
But the point is that, although the argument for the integrity of the passage which we have based upon the parallelism holds on the view that the narrative is historical, it holds equally well on the hypothesis that it is the product of free invention. In either case—however the parallelism came to be there—it certainly as a matter of fact is there; and an interpolation theory which holds that it was originally
defective at the decisive point is faced by the strongest kind of objections that literary criticism can ever afford.
Our conclusion, then, is that the entire narrative in Lk. 1–2 finds both its climax and its centre in the virgin birth of Christ. A superficial reading may lead to a contrary conclusion; but when one enters sympathetically into the inner spirit of the narrative one sees that the virgin birth is everywhere presupposed. The account of the lesser wonder in the case of the forerunner, the delicate and yet significant way in which Mary is put forward instead of Joseph, the lofty key in which the whole narrative is pitched—all this is incomprehensible without the supreme miracle of the supernatural conception in the virgin's womb. The interpolation hypothesis, therefore, not merely fails of proof, but (so fully as can reasonably be expected in literary criticism) is positively disproved.
Another attack upon the integrity of the Lucan narrative deserves separate consideration because it stands somewhat aside from the ordinary forms of the interpolation hypothesis. We refer to the theory of Daniel Völter, whose monograph appeared in 1911, but was based upon earlier studies.59 Völter holds that there is embedded in Lk. 1–2, in addition to the Christian elements, a narrative that came from the sect of the disciples of John the Baptist. This narrative contained, of course, the account of the annunciation to Zacharias in Lk. 1:5–25. But after that account it contained also—and here we come to the distinctive feature of the theory—an account of an annunciation by the angel Gabriel to Elisabeth, for which a Christian writer has substituted the episodes of the annunciation to Mary and of Mary's visit to Elisabeth. Why should "the sixth month" of Elisabeth's pregnancy be mentioned in Lk. 1:26?, Völter asks. That way of fixing the time, he says, is natural only in an episode that concerns Elisabeth; yet in the narrative as it now stands the episode concerns not Elisabeth, but Mary. This incongruity, Völter argues, is evidently due to a redactor, and originally the annunciation in Lk. 1:26–39 was an annunciation to Elisabeth. The real significance of the "sixth month" appears, Völter continues, in Lk. 1:41; the sixth
month marked the point of /pg. 165/ time when the babe in Elisabeth's womb gave a sign of life. Originally, therefore, there came first an annunciation to Zacharias, the father, and then an annunciation by the same angel to Elisabeth, the mother. Then the babe leaped in the womb, and Elisabeth responded with the hymn of thanksgiving, the Magnificat, which now appears out of its original place and wrongly attributed (in nearly all manuscripts) to Mary. Thus, according to Völter, there stood in the original John-theBaptist narrative, after the account of the annunciation of the birth of John to Zacharias, the following words:
And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to the hillcountry, to Bethlehem Judah. And he entered into the house of Zacharias and greeted Elisabeth and said: "Hail, thou favored one, the Lord is with thee." And behold thou shalt bear a son and shalt call his name John. And it came to pass, when Elisabeth heard the greeting of the angel, the child leaped in her womb, and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost and cried in exultation and said: …
Then followed the Magnificat, then the account of the birth and naming of John, and then a short form of the Benedictus without what Völter thinks are Christian interpolations that appear in the present form.
This account of the birth of John the Baptist which circulated originally among the (nonChristian) disciples of John was, Völter thinks, taken up by the Evangelist and incorporated, at first largely unchanged, in the Gospel; but the Evangelist put it at once in what he regarded as the proper light by placing an account of the birth of Jesus (Chapter 2 of the Gospel) by its side. Then a later redactor gave the two chapters their present canonical form by substituting an annunciation to Mary and a visit of Mary to Elisabeth for the annunciation to Elisabeth, and by making other redactional changes. It was by this redactor that the idea of the virgin birth was first introduced into the narrative.
This theory60 has recently been adopted in essentials by Eduard Norden in his important monograph which we shall discuss in Chapter XIV, and has won some additional support.61 In the criticism of the theory,62 we may point, in the first place, to the /pg. 166/ remarkable unity of style and spirit between the supposedly Johannine and the supposedly Christian parts of Lk. 1–2. Völter denies that unity, but despite his denial it is certainly present in striking measure. It is, indeed, true that Christian, as distinguished from pre-Christian, ideas are absent from the Johannine parts of the narrative, but so are they from the "Christian" parts—except of course what is involved in the fact that the child Jesus is represented as the virgin-born Messiah. In the second place, we may point to the weakness of Völter's detailed arguments—particularly the argument derived from the mention of the "sixth month" in Lk. 1:26. As Bultmann63 has pointed out, it is not true that that note of time is important only for Elisabeth and not for Mary; for it marks the time when the sign to which the angel pointed in the annunciation to Mary64 could be observed by the leaping of the child in the womb.65 The narrative as it stands really hangs together, and there is not the slightest reason to reverse the impression of unity which is undoubtedly made upon the unprejudiced reader by the style and spirit of the whole section. In general, it may be said that Völter's theory serves only to demonstrate anew the uncertainty of the ordinary forms of the interpolation hypothesis. "The verses, Lk. 1:34f.," Völter correctly says,66 "cannot be separated from their context. They are presupposed not only in verses 36f., but in the whole of verses 26–33; without them the whole annunciation to Mary loses its point." Indeed, the whole of the passage, Lk. 1:26–41 (or 42a), Völter says, is due to one hand. Thus this latest denial of the integrity of Lk. 1–2 holds that what previous critics regarded as loose joints in the narrative are really organic connections. It is not possible to remove verses 34–35 alone, nor verses 34–37. Völter has correctly observed that much. But it cannot be said that his own very venturesome theory is unworthy of the rejection which it has so generally received.
One solid observation underlies the theory of Völter regarding the first chapter of Luke—the observation that specifically Christian ideas are absent from Lk. 1:5–25 and from other parts of the narrative that relate to John the Baptist. Harnack67 has used this same observation, not indeed to propound an elaborate documentary analysis like that of Völter, but to commend the view that these Johannine parts of the narrative do come from a tradition preserved among John's disciples. The narrative in Lk. 1, he thinks, is derived /pg. 167/ not merely from two chief sources, but even ultimately from two religious camps; for the narrative of the birth of John the Baptist,68 which still shows that it was not originally composed as an introduction to the story of Jesus, but had independent value, must have arisen in the circle of John's disciples, where also Lk. 3:1ff. (in so far as it goes beyond Mark and Q), including the great chronological note, evidently originated. The passage, Lk. 1:39–45, 56 (so Harnack's hypothesis continues), unites the two birth narratives, which were originally quite distinct. The former of these narratives originally celebrated the Baptist not as forerunner of Jesus the Messiah, but as preparing the way for the coming of Jehovah in redemption.69 The birth narrative of John is accordingly very old, and presents the tradition of John's disciples in Lucan spirit and style.70
This hypothesis of Harnack is not altogether devoid of plausibility. But it can be established, if at all, only if Lk. 1 is unhistorical. For if Mary was really related to Elisabeth, as is asserted in Lk. 1:36, and if the two mothers really came into contact in the way described in Lk. 1:39ff., then a family history of the birth of Jesus could hardly have been composed without including also the events connected with the birth of the forerunner. In Lk. 1:5–25 John appears, indeed, as the forerunner not specifically of the Messiah, but of Jehovah. That fact might be explicable if the narrative were composed by a nonChristian disciple of John. But it is equally explicable if the description of the work of John in Lk. 1:15–17 is not a vaticinium ex eventu, but a genuine prophecy. For in prophecy definiteness is not to be demanded. The Old Testament, according to one element of its
teaching, connected the future redemption with a coming of Jehovah. In just what way Jehovah was to come had not yet been revealed with perfect definiteness, either in Old Testament times or at the time just preceding the birth of Jesus. The non-Christian character of Lk. 1:5–25, therefore, may establish not its origin in a non-Christian /pg. 168/ sect, but merely its historicity. It could not have been composed by a Christian writer, but must have been composed by a Johannine writer—unless the Christian writer was telling the truth.
At any rate, this hypothesis of Harnack, as to Johannine tradition in Lk. 1, must be sharply distinguished from a documentary theory like that of Völter and Norden. Harnack's theory might be held in a form compatible with the historicity of the narrative; for there is no reason why a circle of John's disciples (if indeed such a circle existed) might not have preserved genuine historical information about the birth of the one to whom the sect appealed, and why a Christian writer might not have connected that historical information about John with equally historical information about Jesus, so as to produce the narrative that we now have in Lk. 1–2. Very different in its implications is the theory of Völter, which represents those parts of Lk. 1 that concern Jesus (including the mention of the virgin birth) as secondary elements in a process of literary manipulation. It is this theory which we are really concerned to refute. And it can be refuted, as we have observed, in no uncertain way. There is no reason, then, for us to reverse the conclusion at which we arrived after considering the ordinary forms of the interpolation hypothesis. All the attacks upon the integrity of Lk. 1–2 which would represent the mention of the virgin birth as a secondary element in the narrative have signally faded.
CHAPTER VII:
THE NARRATIVE IN MATTHEW
In the five preceding chapters we have been dealing with the Gospel according to Luke. It is now time to turn to the other of the two Gospels that attest the virgin birth of Christ—namely, the Gospel according to Matthew.
This Gospel, unlike the one with which we have just dealt, keeps the personality of the author entirely in the background. In Luke-Acts, the author, although he does not mention his name, does introduce himself personally in his two prologues and does (at least according to the only natural interpretation of his words) indicate by the use of the first person plural the places where he was an eye-witness of the events that he narrates. In the First Gospel, on the other hand, no such phenomena are to be observed. On the contrary, it would be hard to find a book where the personality of the author is kept more completely out of view. It may be possible to detect significance in the way in which the call of Matthew (or Levi) is narrated in this Gospel as compared with the others, if one has already accepted the traditional view of the authorship; but certainly these peculiarities would never in themselves establish that view unless it had already been suggested by other considerations. The decision about the authorship of this Gospel, therefore, depends not upon any specific indications of authorship in the book itself—for there are none—but upon our estimate of early Christian tradition on the subject, when taken in connection with the character of the material which the book contains.
Nevertheless, although the First Gospel keeps the personality of its author in the background, it does indicate, by the character of its contents, something of the destination which the author had in mind when he wrote. It is widely held that this Gospel is addressed particularly to the Jews. Its Jewish destination appears, for example,
in the peculiar prominence which it assigns to the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy in the events of the life of Jesus, and also, perhaps, in certain answers which it seems to give to specific Jewish attacks.
Exaggerations, indeed, should be avoided at this point. On the one hand, all of the Gospels—not merely this Gospel—are interested in the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy; and on the other hand, this Gospel is certainly not /pg. 170/ Jewish in the sense that it stands in any disagreement with the principles of the Gentile mission in the early Church or in the sense that it obtrudes into the history in any disturbing way its answers to Jewish attacks. But despite such qualifications, the essentially Jewish character of the Gospel does seem to stand firm. The differences from the other Gospels in this respect are, indeed, not at all sharp; they are subtle differences of emphasis, rather than clear-cut differences of treatment. Possibly the Gospel from the beginning was intended for Gentiles as well as for Jews; and certainly it was admirably suited to the needs of both. But a certain special Jewish reference cannot be denied.
In this Gospel, as in the Gospel according to Luke, the account of the birth and infancy of Jesus is found in the first two chapters. There can be no doubt but that these chapters formed an original part of the book. Abortive efforts have, indeed, been made in the course of modern criticism to establish a contrary conclusion; but the evidence against them is overwhelming. Hilgenfeld,1 for example, argues that Mt. 3:1 would not be natural if the third chapter was originally joined to what now goes before; the public appearance of John the Baptist, he says in effect, took place many years after the settlement of Joseph and Mary at Nazareth, which is narrated at the close of the second chapter; so that the phrase, "in those days," as fixing the time of John's appearance, could hardly have been intended to refer back to that event. Accordingly, Hilgenfeld supposes, the phrase referred originally to the close of the genealogy, Mt. 1:18–2:23 being a later addition. In comparison with the long period of time covered by the genealogy, he thinks, it would be perfectly natural to mean by the
phrase, "in those days", merely "in the time of Jesus" as distinguished from the many previous generations. But, surely, it may be said in reply, this reference of Mt. 3:1 to the genealogy seems rather unlikely; for the genealogy is the expression of one idea, and attention is not fixed, at the end of it, upon one period of time as distinguished from preceding periods. Rather does the phrase, "in those days," require that something in the nature of a narrative should have gone before, and this requirement is not satisfied by the genealogy. Surely it is much more natural to suppose that the period to which "in those days" refers is the period of residence at Nazareth following upon the settlement of Joseph and Mary there, /pg. 171/ which is narrated in Mt. 2:23. According to Hillmann,2 indeed, who supposes the whole of the first two chapters and not merely Mt. 1:18–2:23 constitutes the later addition, some chronological note similar to that in Lk. 3:1 was left off at Mt. 3:1 by the redactor who added chapters 1 and 2: the redactor was so far from the time described that he would take no offence applying the phrase, "in those days," to what really happened after an interval of thirty years. But in reply it may be said that possibly the author of the Gospel would himself, when he wrote his book, have been looking back over a long enough interval not to have objected to the phrase, especially in view of the loose way (so far as chronology is concerned) in which the incidents are coupled together all through this Gospel. In reality, Mt. 2:23, though it directly relates only an event that took place long before the event narrated in Mt 3:1, really implies a long period of residence at Nazareth following upon that event. It is that period which is in view in the phrase, "in those days." Meyer,3 moreover calls attention to the fact that Mt. 4:13 (where, in distinction from the other Gospels, Nazareth is mentioned) clearly presupposes the settlement of the holy family at Nazareth in Mt. 2:23.
Thus the way in which the third chapter begins does not at all stamp the first two chapters as an addition to the Gospel. Equally unconvincing are the arguments which have been based upon the contents of the section itself. Hilgenfeld4 enumerates, as indications that Mt. 1:18–2:23 is the work of some one other than the author of
the Gospel, (1) the Old Testament pragmatism, (2) the friendly attitude toward the heathen, (3) the view of Christ as being born Son of God. But the "Old Testament pragmatism" rather reveals the hand of the author of the whole Gospel, who is interested throughout in showing the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. The friendly attitude toward the Gentiles proves nothing if the story of the magi is essentially true; for in the mere form of the story, as distinguished from its content, there is no evidence of a desire to magnify the Gentile visitors at the expense of the Jews. Moreover, why may not the author of the whole book himself have felt the contrast between the rejection of the gospel by the Jews and its acceptance by the Gentiles? Finally, with regard to Hilgenfeld's third point, it may simply be said that the author of the Gospel, as well as a redactor, may have held the view that Christ was born Son of God. Some one— that is, the redactor at least—held to both the Davidic sonship and the virgin birth. Why, then, may not the author have done so? /pg. 172/
Against all such hypotheses of later insertion regarding Mt. 1–2 may be urged in the first place the unanimity of documentary attestation, and in the second place the striking similarity of language and style that prevails between this section and the main body of the Gospel. The unanimity of documentary attestation has been questioned by Conybeare5 and Hilgenfeld,6 who find in a certain Syriac tract, extant in a sixth-century manuscript,7 evidence to the effect that A.D. 119 or 120 was the earliest date when Mt. 2:1–13 could have been inserted into the text of the Gospel. The tract is attributed to Eusebius and purports to be an account of the Star and the Magi, the history being said to have been written down at a time which can be identified as A.D. 119. According to Conybeare, "the Syriac author of this tract…had in his hands a precanonical Greek source of 119 or 120," to which belonged the colophon that gives the date. No doubt the document is interesting, but the conclusions drawn from it are, to say the least, problematical and seem to have won no noteworthy acceptance among modern scholars.8 We may therefore fairly insist that the documentary attestation of Mt. 1–2 as a part of the First
Gospel is for all practical purposes unanimous. If there was ever a form of the Gospel without these chapters, it has left no trace in any of the widely divergent lines of transmission in which the text has come down to us.
This weight of external evidence is amply confirmed by the stylistic characteristics of the section, which display a marked affinity with the rest of the First Gospel. This affinity was pointed out one hundred years ago by Gersdorf, in the book to which reference has already been made;9 and subsequent investigation has not served at all to overthrow his conclusion. One peculiarly Matthæan characteristic which will be noticed even by the casual reader is the formula of Old Testament citation, "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet," which occurs several times in Mt. 1–2. Hilgenfeld is able to avoid the cogency of this link between the infancy section and the rest of the Gospel only by supposing that the occurrences /pg. 173/ of the formula in the body of the Gospel are due to a redactor. In this supposition he has not, so far as we know, been followed by any later investigators. In view of the conjunction of external and internal evidence it is not surprising that few, if any, contemporary scholars of note are inclined to follow Hillmann,10 Hilgenfeld, and Merx11 in regarding Mt. 1:18–2:23 or the whole of the first two chapters as a later addition. There is today no doubt general agreement with the view which J. Weiss expressed12 in 1903 to the effect that there never were forms of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke without the infancy sections.
As for the attempt of Charles13 to prove that the genealogy, as distinguished from the narrative of the birth and infancy, is an addition to the Gospel made at about A.D.. 170, that is interesting only as a curious example of the way in which more usual critical theories are sometimes reversed. Conybeare14 has shown in reply how impossible it would have been for the genealogy to have been added at that late date, when interests other than the interest in the Davidic descent were predominant; and Badham15 has argued with some weight against separating Mt. 1:1–17 from Mt. 1:18–2:23 at all.
Certainly there can be no doubt whatever but that the genealogy was part of the original Gospel, and (when this conclusion is taken in connection with what has been said above) that the whole of Mt. 1–2 is genuine.
The Matthæan account of the birth and infancy is not possessed of quite so marked literary characteristics as those which appear in the corresponding narrative in Luke. In particular we miss here any such striking contrast as that which exists between the Lucan prologue and the narrative that immediately follows. That contrast served to set off the Semitic character of Lk. 1:5–2:52 with special clearness. Even apart from the absence of such contrast, moreover, the style of Mt. 1–2 is perhaps less markedly Semitic than that of the Lucan section. Here, as elsewhere, the First Gospel preserves, linguistically, a sort of middle course; in the infancy section, as elsewhere, it lacks the roughness of Mark, the Greek literary touches that appear at various places in Luke-Acts, and the Old Testament poetic beauty of the Lucan infancy narrative. /pg. 174/
Nevertheless, the essentially Jewish and Palestinian character of Mt. 1–2 is scarcely less plain than that of Lk. 1–2. Here, as in the Lucan narrative, we find as great simplicity of sentence-structure as might be expected even in a direct translation from a Semitic source. The parataxis is, indeed, less strongly marked than in Lk. 1–2; there are fewer definite Hebraisms or Aramaisms, perhaps none in the strict sense at all: but on the other hand there is nothing in the style of this section that would seem unnatural for a Jew who knew both Aramaic and Greek. The content of the narrative, moreover, is even more clearly Jewish than the form. There is here, as in Lk. 1–2, a complete understanding of Jewish feeling, and a complete absence of anything that would seem natural only in a Gentile environment or only in a late period in the history of the apostolic Church. Familiarity with Jewish custom is seen especially in the way in which betrothal is treated as being in so far equivalent to marriage as that it could be broken off only by a formal divorce. In that respect the Jewish law was not only totally unlike our modern institutions, but also totally
unlike the prevailing institutions in the Græco-Roman world. What is at this point presented as a matter of course in Mt. 1:18–25 would have seemed very strange to a Gentile writer of the first century.16 Old Testament prophecy is cited in Mt. 1:18–2:23 no less than five times, despite the brevity of the section; and the genealogy is presented in a way thoroughly consonant with Jewish ideas. But such observations in detail are only supplementary to the more subtle, but even more convincing, evidence of a Jewish origin that is to be found in the entire spirit and outlook of the narrative. One recent writer, Box, has endeavored to characterize a little more precisely the Jewish form of this section; he sees in the first two chapters of Matthew, as in the corresponding section in Luke, a typical Jewish Midrashic narrative, in which certain fundamental historical information (notably that concerning the virgin birth) is elaborated in a legendary way.17 One may perhaps employ the observations of Box as to the Jewish character of the narrative without relinquishing, as he does, the historicity of the secondary features. Why may not the form of Jewish narration have been preserved even if in this case there was genuine historical information to cover not merely the central events but also those things which formed their setting? Box has certainly performed a useful service in showing by independent observation that the Matthæan narrative of the birth and infancy is of a genuinely Jewish character. /pg. 175/
In the case of Matthew, we are not called upon, as we were in connection with Luke, to face any serious denial of the integrity of the section. Efforts have indeed been made to show that the second chapter possesses a certain independence as over against the first. Bethlehem, it has been said, for example, is first mentioned at Mt. 2:1, instead of at the beginning of the narrative in Mt. 1:18, as might be expected if the section were all of one piece.18 But this objection depends upon the view—which we think erroneous—that the birth narrative in Matthew represents Bethlehem rather than Nazareth as the original home of Joseph and Mary. If the narrator was not engaging in free invention, but was bound by the facts, and if the facts at this point were what they are represented as being in the
parallel narrative in Luke, then Bethlehem could not have been mentioned at Mt. 1:18, for the simple reason that it was not as a matter of fact the place at which most of the events recorded in Mt. 1:18–25 took place. There is nothing surprising, therefore, in finding the first mention of Bethlehem in Mt. 2:1. Indeed, even if the narrator supposed Bethlehem and not Nazareth to have been the original home of Joseph and Mary, and even if he were not bound, in Mt. 1:18–25, by a source of information that took account of the opposite view, still we do not think that the failure to mention Bethlehem before Mt. 2:1 would be at all surprising. After all, it was as the place of the birth and not as the place of preceding events that Bethlehem was important to the narrator; for it was to the birth that the Old Testament prophecy, as used by the narrator, referred. Moreover, Bethlehem needed to be mentioned at the beginning of the story of the magi because the geographical facts were important for the understanding of the story that follows. From every point of view, therefore, and even aside from the question whether Nazareth was or was not recognized in the narrative as the place of the preceding events, Mt. 2:1 and not Mt. 1:18 is the place where the first mention of Bethlehem was naturally to be expected.
A positive connection between Mt. 2 and Mt. 1:18–25 is perhaps to be found in the way in which throughout the story of the magi Joseph and Mary and Jesus are designated. Joseph is never designated as the father of Jesus, though Mary is designated as His mother; Jesus is never designated as Joseph's son; and Mary is never designated as Joseph's wife. Instead, Joseph is told by the angel to take "the young child and His mother," and the same phraseology is used in connection with the carrying out of the commands. Why are the terms "son" and "wife" so carefully avoided? The latter term occurs, indeed, a number of times in the preceding chapter;19 and, no doubt, if it had occurred /pg. 176/ in Mt. 2, it would not at all have involved a denial of the supernatural conception. Yet we cannot help feeling that its non-occurrence is significant. The manner in which the relationship of Joseph to Mary and the child is treated throughout the story of the magi is natural only if there was
something unique in that relationship; Joseph is represented as the guardian of the mother and the child, but by various subtle touches is set over against them in a way which would perhaps be strange if he were regarded as being in a physical sense the father of Jesus. The most natural conclusion is that Mt. 2 presupposes the virgin birth as it is narrated in Mt. 1:18–25. Finally, the two passages are bound together by the most striking similarity of style and spirit. The unprejudiced reader receives an overpowering impression that the whole infancy section is of a piece. We have here a strikingly Jewish and clearly unitary narrative of the birth and infancy of Jesus.
That narrative certainly contains an account of the virgin birth. There can be no thought of removing the supernatural conception from this narrative by an interpolation hypothesis, as was attempted in the case of Luke. The entire section, Mt. 1:18–25, is intended to set the virgin birth clearly over against a birth by ordinary generation from Joseph and Mary. Nevertheless, although the virgin birth obviously cannot be removed from this narrative by any mere deletion of a few verses, an attempt has been made to discover in Mt. 1:16 a witness to the contrary view that would make Jesus in a physical sense a son of Joseph. This attempt has been based upon a peculiar reading of the so-called "Sinaitic Syriac," an individual manuscript of the Old Syriac version of the Gospels, which was discovered in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai in 1892. The reading has been translated by F. C. Burkitt20 as follows:
Jacob begat Joseph; Joseph, to whom was betrothed Mary the Virgin, begat Jesus called the Messiah.
There, it has been said, is an important testimony against the supernatural conception of Jesus; the Sinaitic Syriac contains the momentous words, "Joseph…begat Jesus." Subsequent discussion has altogther failed to confirm the importance which was formerly, and no doubt to some extent is still, attributed to this reading by popular opponents of the doctrine of the virgin birth. But
undoubtedly the reading is interesting, and deserves to be examined with some care.21 /pg. 177/
The Sinaitic Syriac manuscript,22 in which the reading is found, is a "palimpsest"; the vellum was used a second time after the original writing had been partly obliterated. The upper writing, which treats of the lives of certain Syrian saints, was produced in the eighth century; the under writing, with which alone we are concerned, constitutes an ancient copy of the Gospels in the Syriac language. The under writing was probably produced about the beginning of the fifth century or possibly a little earlier. It is not true, therefore, as has sometimes been popularly supposed, that the Sinaitic Syriac is our earliest copy of the Gospels; for two of the Greek manuscripts, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, are to be dated earlier still. Nevertheless, it is very ancient and deserves the most careful attention.
The Sinaitic Syriac displays a marked similarity to another Syriac manuscript of the Gospels, the so-called "Curetonian Syriac," which was probably produced a little later. The widespread agreement of these two manuscripts is due, no doubt, to the fact that they are copies of the same translation of the Greek Gospels into Syriac, the Curetonian being a much less faithful copy than the Sinaitic. This translation, which is called the "Old Syriac," to distinguish it from the "Peshitta," the well-known Syriac translation of the early part of the fifth century, was probably made as early as A.D. 200. Another early form of the Gospels in Syriac was the Syriac form of the "Diatessaron" of Tatian. The Diatessaron, however, was not a translation of the four Gospels complete, but was a kind of Gospel harmony, the material of the four Gospels being pieced together in such a way as to form one continuous life of Christ. Unfortunately, the original text of the Diatessaron can be reconstructed only in a very imperfect manner. It seems clear that there is some direct relation between the Diatessaron and the Old Syriac, but it is not clear whether the Diatessaron used the Old Syriac, or the Old Syriac the Diatessaron. If the Diatessaron used the Old Syriac—that is, if the
Old Syriac was produced first—then the production of the Old Syriac translation must be placed near the middle rather than at the close of the second century. The reverse relation, however, seems to be somewhat more probable.
In the light of what has just been said, it will be observed that in order for peculiar reading of the Sinaitic Syriac to be regarded as preserving the original text of a passage in the Gospels, the following assumptions, normally at least, must be made: (1) In the first place, the Sinaitic Syriac must be supposed to reproduce accurately, at the point in question, the original Old Syriac translation. Of /pg. 178/ course this assumption is sometimes not in accord with the facts; we do not know how many copyings of the Old Syriac intervened before the production of our Sinaitic manuscript; probably there were many opportunities for mistakes to be made.
(2) In the second place, supposing that the Sinaitic Syriac does represent accurately the original Old Syriac translation, it must further be assumed that the Old Syriac translation is a literal and accurate translation, at the point in question, of the Greek manuscript from which it was made. Unless it is a literal and accurate translation, a re-translation of it into Greek will not allow us to draw any inference as to the underlying Greek text, and it is just that underlying Greek text with which we are concerned. (3) In the third place, supposing that the Sinaitic Syriac does represent accurately the original Old Syriac translation, and supposing that that Old Syriac translation does represent accurately the underlying Greek text, it must further be assumed that the underlying Greek text, at the point in question, has reproduced accurately the autograph of the New Testament book. The underlying Greek text from which the Old Syriac translation was made was a text of about A.D. 150 to 200; we do not know how many copyings had intervened bctween the New Testament autographs and the manuscripts of that time; undoubtedly within the interval there was abundant opportunity for error to creep in.
Such, in general terms, is the character of the witness which the Sinaitic Syriac bears to the original Greek text of the Gospels. It remains to consider the particular problem of Mt. 1:16. This verse appears in the witnesses to the text of the New Testament in the following three forms, of which the second and third are, formally at least, very much alike: I. And Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ.
This reading is attested by almost all of the many hundreds of Greek manuscripts (including the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, and other representatives of the socalled "Neutral" type of text), and by all the translations except the Old Latin and the Old Syriac.23 Such a consensus of testimony would show clearly that the reading is at least as early as the second century, and a quotation by Tertullian confirms that conclusion. II. And Jacob begat Joseph, to whom having been betrothed the Virgin Mary bare Jesus who is called Christ. /pg. 179/
This reading is attested by the so-called "Ferrar Group," consisting of a number of Greek cursive manuscripts, and, in essentials, by the manuscripts of the Old Latin translation, which was made probably in the latter part of the second century in North Africa. The reading of the Curetonian Syriac is also very similar; Burkitt translates that reading as follows: "Jacoh begat Joseph, him to whom was betrothed Mary the Virgin, she who bare Jesus the Messiah." III. Jacob begat Joseph; Joseph, to whom was betrothed Mary the Virgin, begat Jesus called the Messiah.24
This reading is attested by the Sinaitic Syriac, and by it alone. Other evidence for a text containing the words, "Joseph…begat Jesus," has proved to be illusory.25 It should be observed that even the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac clearly implies the virgin birth of Christ (because it speaks of Mary the virgin), though it also contains an apparent contradiction of it. If we had to choose between I and II, the choice would certainly fall upon I. In the first place, although both readings are ancient, the attestation of I is far stronger. The high
estimate which Westcott and Hort placed upon the so-called "Neutral" type of text, relatively to the other types, has at the very most been somewhat modified by subsequent investigation; it has certainly not been overthrown.
In the second place, the first reading looks in itself far more as though it were correct than does the second. If the author of the Gospel had written II, it is hard to see how any scribe would have been led to substitute I for it; whereas if I was genuine, it is easy to explain the substitution of II. It will be observed that I does not definitely refer to the virgin birth. Of course, when it is contrasted with the rest of the genealogy, and especially when it is taken in connection with Mt. 1:18–25, it implies the virgin birth in the clearest possible way; but the words themselves do not actually exclude the view that Jesus was in a physical sense the son of Joseph; indeed Joseph is called without explanation the "husband" of Mary. Now some later readers of the Gospels were inclined to look askance upon any such even merely apparent ambiguity; they were inclined to avoid the word "husband" in referring to Joseph; they were inclined to emphasize the virginity of Mary at every point, leaving nothing to the intelligence of the reader. To copyists of this way of thinking, /pg. 180/ Mt. 1:16, in the form to which we are accustomed, would have given difficulty. Most copyists, indeed, fortunately did not allow their own reflections to interfere with their duties as scribes; they simply copied the text faithfully, without asking questions. But evidently some one scribe in the second century proceeded in a different way; he apparently jumped to the conclusion that Matthew could not have written what stands in reading I, and therefore thought that he was correcting some previous copyist's error when he substituted reading II. To us, this seems to be a very remarkable procedure, but it did not seem so to a certain class of ancient scribes; it is analogous to what may be observed elsewhere in the history of the New Testament text. From the faulty copy thus produced by a second-century scribe the extant witnesses to reading II have descended; from the correct copies have come the great mass of our manuscripts. Thus the first of the three readings will explain
the origin of the second, but the second will not explain the origin of the first; the second, but not the first, can be explained as due to the mistake of a scribe. But if the first reading cannot be explained as due to the mistake of a scribe, it can be explained only as due to the author—in other words, as part of the original text. There is no difficulty whatever about such an explanation; for the first reading is admirably in accord with the context. Some unintelligent copyist took offence because this reading represented Joseph, without explanation, as the "husband" of Mary. But in reality, such a representation is exactly in accord with the author's purpose. In the whole of the first chapter, the author is interested, not only in showing that Jesus was not in a physical sense the son of Joseph, but also (and just as earnestly) in showing that Jesus was the legal heir of David and Abraham through Joseph. In order that this second point might be proved, it was necessary to show clearly that Joseph was Mary's husband at the time when Jesus was born. The second reading, therefore, is not only, in its extreme clumsiness of sentenceconstruction, out of harmony with Matthew's style; it also obscures the main point of the genealogy. Thus from every point of view the first of our three readings is vastly more likely to be correct than the second. The first looks unmistakably like the work of the original author, and the second looks unmistakably like the error of a scribe.
But how is it with the third reading, the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac? The answer is really very plain. The third reading is nothing in the world but a variety of the second reading, and therefore shares in the condemnation which that second reading has just received. If the third reading were part of the original text of the Gospel, the origin of the second reading might be /pg. 181/ explained; but the origin of the first reading, for the reasons that have just been set forth, would at least be very puzzling. A scribe who, out of zeal for the virgin birth, set about changing the reading, "Joseph…begat Jesus," would not have been likely to remove the word "virgin," which already stood in that reading, and insert instead, without explanation, the word "husband." On the other hand, if the first reading was part of the original text, both the other readings may be
explained as due to the mistakes of scribes. The second reading was derived from the first in the way which has been explained above; and as for the derivation of the third from the second, that may have happened in any one of a number of ways.
Possibly, for example, the third reading may have been derived from the second by a mere careless blunder, of the kind called "dittography." There is a striking monotony in the wording of the genealogy—"Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat…" The mistake of the scribe of the Sinaitic Syriac (or of some ancestor of it) may have consisted simply in letting this monotony run away with him—simply in carrying it one step too far. It will be observed that every name in the genealogy up to Joseph is written twice in succession.26 What, then, was more natural than for a careless scribe to write this name twice also, and thus to be led to produce the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac? If the mistake had appeared in a Greek manuscript, or if it could be regarded with any plausibility as having been originally produced in the course of the Greek transmission, we should be rather positive in advocating this first explanation; in Greek, the word used for "bare" (referring to the mother) in the reading of the Ferrar Group (II) is exactly the same as the word for "begat"; thus the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac in Greek would be derived from the reading of the Ferrar Group by little more than the mere insertion of the words "And Joseph."27 In Syriac, the difference seems to be somewhat greater; but if a scribe had once made the initial mistake of repeating the word "Joseph," he might naturally, and half unconsciously, proceed to any slight further changes that might be involved.
Another explanation—that of Burkitt—is that the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac was produced by a mistranslation in the original Old Syriac translation of about A.D. 200; and still other explanations have been proposed. Clearly, at /pg. 182/ any rate, the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac, in one way or another, may be understood as a mere mistake in the transmission of the text. And if it may be so understood, surely it must be. It must always be remembered that
the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac does not compete for our favor on anything like equal terms with the other readings. Both the other readings are widely attested; both of them must have originated at least as early as the second century. The reading of the Sinaitic Syriac, on the other hand, is not found at all in the original language of the New Testament; and it is entirely isolated, being found only in one manuscript. Such isolated readings must always be viewed with great suspicion; they may be due to the mere careless, uncorrected blunder of the scribe of the individual manuscript in question. If the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac had strong and early attestation, it might be a debatable question whether it was not part of the original text, and the other two readings pious emendations made by orthodox scribes; but since, as a matter of fact, its attestation is not strong and early, and since it can be accounted for plausibly as arising merely by an ordinary blunder in the course of the transmission, this latter explanation of its origin is certainly to be accepted.
The view, therefore, that the Sinaitic Syriac at Mt. 1:16 represents the original text of the Gospel can be maintained only by textual criticism of the most adventurous and unscientific mind. The reading of the Sinaitic Syriac cannot with certainty be traced back of A.D. 400, while the common reading is clearly attested at the beginning of the third century, and certainly was present considerably before that time; the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac looks as though it may well be the mere mistake of a scribe or translator, while the common reading looks unmistakably like the work of the author of the Gospel, and defies any other explanation of its origin.28
Thus if we have to choose between the attested readings at Mt. 1:16, it is clear that the familiar reading of the "Neutral" type of text deserves acceptance. But at this point an objection may be raised. Why, it may be asked, do we have to choose merely between the attested readings? Why may we not posit as original a reading which, even though it does not appear in any of our witnesses to the text, will account for the origin of all of the readings that do so appear?
Such a reading, it may be said, could be found in the words, "Joseph begat Jesus." If in the original text of the Gospel those words appeared /pg. 183/ without explanation, they would naturally give offence to orthodox scribes; there was, therefore, a strong motive for the introduction of some sort of explanatory gloss. As a matter of fact —so the hypothesis runs—two lines of emendation appeared in the course of transmission. One is found in the words, "to whom was betrothed the virgin Mary," which seemed to safeguard the virgin birth. At first these words were allowed to stand as a modifier of the word "Joseph" in the sentence, "Joseph begat Jesus"; thus we have the reading of the Sinaltic Syriac, "Joseph, to whom was betrothed Mary the Virgin, begat Jesus called the Messiah." But then it came to be observed that this text involves a contradiction: how could it have been said that "Joseph begat Jesus," if Joseph was only "betrothed" to Mary and if Mary was a "virgin"? As a result of such reflections, the word "Joseph," as subject of the verb translated "begat," was omitted; and "Mary," not "Joseph," was made the subject of that verb. The verb would then have, of course, to be translated, in English, "bare" instead of "begat." Thus we have the reading of the Ferrar group, of certain manuscripts of the Old Latin version, and of the Curetonian Syriac. But parallel with this whole line of emendation—so the hypothesis continues—another line was chosen by the ancestor of our earliest Greek manuscripts—another method of bringing the original text, "Joseph begat Jesus," into conformity with the doctrine of the virgin birth. This method was the omission of the words, "Joseph begat Jesus," and the substitution for them of the words, "the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus."
Thus, it is said, a reading, "Joseph begat Jesus," will account admirably for the origin of all the extant variants, and so must be regarded as original. Such, in essentials, is the hypothesis of Merx, in his work on the "earliest known text" of the Gospels.29 In reply, it may be said, in the first place, that the method of conjectural emendation, which is here followed, can be applied only with the greatest caution to a work which has so extraordinarily rich a documentary attestation as has the Gospel according to Matthew. In
the case of many classical authors, where we have only one or two late and obviously very imperfect manuscripts, an editor is often justified in rejecting the transmitted text of a passage and in substituting for it a reading which shall best account for the obviously incorrect wording of those manuscripts that happen to be extant. But in the case of the Gospels, the extant documentary attestation is so very abundant, and the various lines of transmission began to diverge at such an /pg. 184/ early time, that one has difficulty in understanding how the original text could have been so completely obliterated as to leave no trace. There may indeed be such instances, where all of our extant witnesses to the text have been corrupted; but surely they are very few. Thus although conjectural emendation cannot be excluded in principle from the textual criticism of the New Testament, it should certainly be employed there in the most sparing possible way. The employment of it in any passage should be regarded as a counsel of desperation, to be resorted to only when all ordinary methods fail. If it is possible to regard any one of the extant variants as original, that alternative should be chosen; and the critic should not undertake to reproduce by conjecture a text which has actually left no trace.
In the case of Mt. 1:16, if there is any truth in what has been said above, we are by no means reduced to such desperate expedients. It is perfectly possible to understand the reading attested by our earliest Greek manuscripts as belonging to the original text of the Gospel, and both the variants as having been produced from that reading in the course of the transmission by well-known causes of textual corruption. But if such a solution of the problem is possible, it is surely—in view of the wealth of documentary attestation— decidedly preferable. What need is there of going so far afield to solve a problem for which a satisfactory solution lies near at hand?
There is, however, another objection to Merx's theory as to Mt. 1:16. It is found in the contents of the section, Mt. 1:18–25, which immediately follows. That section is not in harmony with the proposed reading, "Joseph begat Jesus," at Mt. 1:16. We do not mean
that the disharmony is an altogether irreconcilable one. The words, "Joseph begat Jesus," could, as we shall see, be understood in a sense congruous with the account of the virgin birth that follows. But, after all, the reader may naturally suppose that an author who had the contents of the following section in mind would have prepared for that section at the point where the birth of Jesus is first mentioned— namely, at the close of the genealogy in Mt. 1:16. Thus it is the reading of our earliest Greek manuscripts, and not the conjectural reading proposed by Merx, which really suits the context.
Merx is able to overcome this objection only by supposing that Mt. 1:18–25—indeed, the whole of Mt. 1:18–2:23—formed no original part of the Gospel. Thus the change in Mt. 1:16 would in accordance with his view be only one manifestation of a serious interpolating activity which reversed the entire representation of the birth of Jesus with which the Gospel begins. We have already noticed the insuperable objections to any such hypothesis; Mt. 1:18–2:23, we observed, is united to the rest of the Gospel in the most unmistakable way. /pg. 185/ Thus Merx's view with regard to Mt. 1:16 depends upon a quite untenable view with regard to the entire infancy section; and for that reason, in addition to other reasons, must certainly be rejected. There is really not the slightest ground for departing from the bestattested text at Mt. 1:16.
We have not yet, however, quite finished our discussion of this verse. We have shown that the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac was not part of the original text of the Gospel; but even if so much should be granted —even if it should be granted that the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac is due, not to the author, but to a copyist—it might still be maintained that that reading is historically valuable. How did a copyist come to introduce the startling sentence, "Joseph…begat Jesus"? Only, it has sometimes been said, because there was lying back of the genealogy in the first chapter of Matthew a written source, or at any rate an oral tradition, which represented Jesus as being in a physical sense the son of Joseph; the scribe who produced the reading, "Joseph…begat Jesus," has caused the original representation of the birth of Jesus to
shine through even in a Gospel which has itself striven to obliterate that representation. But surely the evidence for such a view is exceedingly slender. The reading of the Sinaitic Syriac can be explained as due to the ordinary processes of textual corruption; what need is there, therefore, of resorting to so far-reaching an hypothesis? Indeed, the action of the hypothetical scribe who allowed himself to be influenced by the supposed tradition of the physical paternity of Joseph is quite inconceivable. That scribe himself was surely convinced of the opposite view of the birth of Jesus; otherwise he would not have retained Mt. 1:18–25 in its present form:30 why, then, did he gratuitously introduce contradiction? It is unscientific to resort to a difficult and complicated explanation of a textual error when a perfectly simple explanation lies ready to hand.
Evidently, therefore, the common reading at Mt. 1:16 represents correctly the original text of the Gospel, and the variants are to be explained as due to the ordinary processes of corruption. It should now be observed, finally, that this textual question is not by any means so important as has sometimes been maintained. Suppose we were quite wrong with regard to it, suppose that Mt. 1:16 originally contained the words attested by the Sinaitic Syriac, suppose even that the original text had simply "Joseph begat Jesus" without qualification (a reading which as a matter of fact is found in no manuscript), even then no conclusion derogatory to the attestation of the virgin birth would necessarily follow. The word "begat" in the genealogy in Matthew clearly is /pg. 186/ not to be taken in the physical sense. As Burkitt pertinently remarks, "the contemporaries of the Evangelist knew their Bible at least as well as we do"; "they knew that there were more than fourteen generations between David and the Captivity, that Joram did not beget Uzziah, and that Josiah did not beget Jeconiah." The word "begat" in the genealogy means simply "had as a legal heir." At any rate, it certainly had that meaning to the Evangelist, if he did write "Joseph begat Jesus"; for certainly Mt. 1:18–25, the passage that immediately follows, excludes the physical paternity of Joseph in the clearest possible terms. Of course,
the case would be different if Mt. 1:18–25 were no original part of the Gospel of Matthew; but for such a view there is not a jot of manuscript evidence, and the passage in question exhibits in a very striking way the characteristics of the Gospel. Evidently, therefore, if the author of the Gospel wrote "Joseph begat Jesus," he meant nothing derogatory to the virgin birth, but used the word "begat" in a broad sense. Such a use of the word would have been far more natural among the Jews of the first century than it would be in the Western world of today; an adoptive relationship, as we have seen, meant more to them than it does to us; to the Jewish mind a son born of Joseph's wife, and acknowledged by him as his heir, was to all intents and purposes his son.
The reading of the Sinaitic Syriac at Mt. 1:16 is accordingly without bearing upon the question of the historicity of the virgin birth; even if the author wrote "Joseph begat Jesus," he did not mean to assert the physical paternity of Jesus.31 But this whole latter part of our discussion has been merely for the sake of the argument. As a matter of fact, the author did not write "Joseph begat Jesus," or any such thing, but he wrote exactly what we find in our Bibles. He was, indeed, very much interested in showing that Jesus was heir of David through Joseph. But he was just as much interested in showing that Jesus was not son of Joseph by ordinary generation. Jesus belonged, indeed, to the house of David; in Him the promises were fulfilled. But He belonged to that house in a more wonderful way than could easily have been foreseen; He was a gift granted to the house of David by a mysterious act of God."32 /pg. 187/ A number of peculiar readings occur in the Sinaitic Syriac in Mt. 1:18–25. Thus in verse 21 this manuscript reads, "she shall bear to thee a son"; and in verse 25 it omits the words, "knew her not until," and reads simply, "And she bore to him a son." In these readings, when they are taken in conjunction with the reading, "Joseph…begat Jesus," in verse 16, some scholars have detected an "Ebionite" tendency, which, they think, exalts Joseph's place with reference to the child Jesus and perhaps preserves traces of an original representation that made Joseph actually the father. But closer examination renders the
matter to say the least very doubtful. The addition of the words "to thee" and "to him" is quite consonant with the supernatural conception; Joseph was the heir of David, and the child, though born without his agency, was born in a real sense "to him." A scribe may well have allowed the familiar words "to thee" and "to him"33 to creep in, without observing that their omission in Matthew was significant.
As for the omission by the Sinaitic Syriac of the words, "knew her not until," in Mt. 1:25, that has, if anything, exactly the opposite significance to the significance which has been attributed to it. It rather looks as though an orthodox scribe had been offended by the implication which might seem to lie in the words, "knew her not until," to the effect that after Mary had brought forth her son Joseph did live with her as with his wife, so that she had other children.34 This implication would be removed by the omission of the words, as in the Sinaitic Syriac. Thus the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac may conceivably be explained as a doctrinal correction, intended to safeguard the perpetual virginity of Mary. At any rate, it certainly cannot be explained with any plausibility as an Ebionite correction or as preserving any original tradition of a physical paternity of Joseph.
CHAPTER VIII:
THE RELATION BETWEEN THE
NARRATIVES
In the preceding chapters we have adduced evidence in support of the following three propositions: (1) the infancy narratives both in Matthew and in Luke are no later additions, but original parts of the
First and Third Gospels; (2) they are both (and particularly the one in Luke) strikingly Jewish Christian and Palestinian in form and in content; (3) they really contain in their original form an account of the virgin birth.
The question now arises whether any literary relationship can be established between them. And that question must clearly be answered in the negative.
It is evident, in the first place, that neither narrative is dependent upon the other; for if there had been such dependence, the difficulties which now face an attempt to fit the two narratives together would never have been permitted to arise. Those difficulties are not indeed, as we shall see, sufficient to establish actual contradiction; but they do suffice to show independence. In fact, one of the chief arguments which have been relied upon to exhibit the mutual independence of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke has been found in the obvious independence of the sections with which these Gospels begin. There can be no reasonable doubt but that the author of the infancy narrative in Matthew was writing in complete independence of the infancy narrative in Luke, and vice versa. It is significant that Pfleiderer, who at one time maintained a contrary view, was led later to abandon his theory.1 Equally unlikely is the view that the two infancy narratives were derived from a common written source. The efforts which have been made by Resch, /pg. 189/ Conrady, and Reitzenstein2 to establish such a common source have received little or no support from other scholars. Resch3 attempted to reconstruct a Hebrew "Book of the Generations of Jesus Christ," from which both infancy narratives were derived and upon which the prologue of the Fourth Gospel constitutes a theological reflection; but although the wealth of material which he collected in support of his thesis possesses real and permanent value in helping to establish the Semitic character of the two narratives, his thesis itself no doubt deserves the universal rejection that it has received. Even more obviously wrong was the thesis of Conrady,4 who actually found in the apocryphal Protevangelium of James the source of both
canonical narratives. There can be not the slightest doubt but that the universal judgment of other scholars is correct when they insist against Conrady that far from our canonical narratives being derived from the Protevangelium, the Protevangelium is derived from them. The theory of Reitzenstein5 differs from that of Conrady in that it represents the supposed common source of the two infancy narratives as being for the most part lost; and it differs from that of Resch in that it makes no effort to reconstruct the lost source in detail.
Reitzenstein's hypothesis is based largely upon a poorly preserved Egyptian fragment of about the sixth century, which contains in its first part the dialogue between the angel and Mary in a different form from the one given by Luke. The Egyptian fragment, Reitzenstein argues, cannot be derived from the narrative of Luke; for on that theory the differences cannot well be explained, and Luke's narrative is in itself incomprehensible and clearly secondary. Rather, he continues, the fragment was derived from a Gospel older than any that we now possess. A notable difference from Luke is the omission of the words, "thou shalt conceive in the womb," in the promise of the angel. These words being omitted, Reitzenstein says, Mary would naturally, in accordance with ancient usage, understand the angel's greeting, "Hail, highly favored one; thou hast found favor with God," and the words, "thou shalt bear a son," to mean that she was already pregnant. Her question, therefore, which appears in the form, "Whence shall this happen to me, seeing I know not a man?"6, becomes perfectly natural, whereas (Reitzenstein insists) in the narrative of Luke, where the conception /pg. 190/ is put in the indefinite future, the question is meaningless.7 This representation that the narrative of the annunciation is itself a narrative of the conception—a representation which, according to Reitzenstein, appears in Origen, in those early Christian documents which speak of a conception from the Logos, and notably in a certain prayer discovered at Gizeh8—is brought by Reitzenstein into connection with a contemporary religious idea according to which one god produces another through his speech.9 Starting with this religious
idea—so the hypothesis runs—the writer of the Gospel from which this fragment is derived constructed the first account of the conception; his account, however, was often misunderstood, and two examples of such misunderstanding appear in our canonical narratives. In Matthew the miracle is announced only after it has happened, whereas in the original account it was in indissoluble connection with the annunciation itself. In Luke the miracle is announced beforehand, in order that it may be brought into parallel with the case of John the Baptist. In both cases the original significance of the annunciation is lost.
To this theory one obvious objection is the late date of Reitzenstein's fragment as compared with our canonical Gospels. Even Reitzenstein himself seems to be unable to trace back the Gospel upon which the fragment is based to a date earlier than the last part of the second century;10 and our canonical Gospels certainly cannot be put so late as that. Moreover, the fragment, as interpreted by Reitzenstein, certainly does not contain such internal evidence of its primary character as Reitzenstein seems to attribute to it. For example, Mary, according to Reitzenstein's interpretation, understands the words of the angel to mean that she is already pregnant; yet the angel takes care to inform her that the wonder is dependent upon her consent— in which rather intricate progress of the narrative the steps are by no means clearly marked.11 In general, we must say that entirely too much is built upon an extremely meagre foundation for the theory to become in the slightest degree plausible. The fragment in question is itself very badly preserved, so that even from the outset much has to be left to conjecture. For example, the most fundamental thing of all for Reitzenstein's theory is that the fragment should not contain the words, "thou shalt conceive in the womb"; yet there is a gap at the proper place. The gap is thought not to be large enough; very possibly it is not large enough. But the fact remains that even with regard to such a fundamental point we are not dealing with definite certainty. Or suppose (as indeed seems /pg. 191/ probable) that Reitzenstein is right in thinking that the words, "thou shalt conceive in the womb," were absent. Even then it is by no means certain that
the author had any different view of the annunciation from that of Luke; for the omission may have arisen merely from loose quoting of our Third Gospel. Indeed, "thou shalt conceive," in connection with "thou shalt bring forth," may have seemed almost like unnecessary fullness of expression, so that one of the phrases may easily have been omitted.
Moreover, if we thus find reasons for doubt in connection with the very basis of the hypothesis, how much more is that the case with the remoter conclusions—for example, the conclusion that Matthew as well as Luke represents a weakening of the original account. In general, it is abundantly clear that Reitzenstein's fragment has contributed nothing whatever toward solving the vexed problem of the sources of our canonical infancy narratives. And that means, we may remark in passing, that the fragment has also contributed nothing toward explaining the origin of the ideas that our narratives contain. In themselves the narratives contain no hint whatever of the religious idea of creation by the Word; if, therefore, their connection with the source that is supposed to contain that idea breaks down, we have no reason whatever to regard them as based on an attempt to embody that idea in narrative form. The fact is that every attempt to exhibit a common written source for Mt. 1–2 and Lk. 1–2 must result in failure. The two narratives, though they agree with regard to certain central facts such as the virgin birth and the birth in Bethlehem, are quite different for the most part both in style and in content. Thus their witness to those facts about which they do agree is a double witness; the two narratives cannot be reduced to one.
But if that be so, the question naturally arises whether the independence of the narratives amounts to contradiction. At this point we begin to leave the sphere of literary criticism, and enter at last into that sphere of historical criticism to which everything that we have said so far has been leading up. If the narratives are contradictory, then their witness—even their witness to those things about which they are agreed—will be greatly weakened. The question of harmony between the two narratives must, therefore, be
considered with some care. In the minds of many modern scholars this question seems almost to be settled in advance. What right have we, they say, to insist that two ancient narratives must be so interpreted as that they shall agree; why should we not interpret each of them by itself, according to the interpretation that is inherently most probable, and entirely without reference to the other; is not this whole business of harmonization a mere unscientific apologetic expedient? /pg. 192/
But surely such a method of approach begs the question in a very unscientific way. In countless cases, where we hear two independent and perfectly trustworthy witnesses, A and B, testify to the facts regarding the same event, there are questions that arise in our mind. We say to A: "How is that? I do not understand; you say one thing, and B says another, and I do not see how your testimony agrees with that of B." And then in countless cases a few words of explanation will clear the whole matter up, and our difficulty results only in a clearer and more complete account of the course of events. In such cases the harmonizing method is not unscientific at all. What is true, moreover, with regard to contemporary testimony is also true with regard to ancient documents. If we have two historical documents, for whose trustworthiness there is any evidence at all, it is not unscientific, but on the contrary in accordance with sound common sense, to favor, other things being equal, that interpretation of each of them which will permit us to regard both of them as true. We may well ask, with Andrews,12 "Is there any consistent history which is not the result of harmonistic expedients?" Surely, then, we should approach without unfavorable prejudice the question of the harmony between the infancy narratives in Matthew and in Luke.
Some of the contradictions that have been discovered between the two narratives disappear at once upon a little examination. Thus we may safely pass over without much discussion such objections as those of Usener, to the effect that "the divinity of Christ is attested in Lk. by the angel's words to the shepherds and the song of the heavenly host, in Mt. by the appearance of the star in the East; the
new-born Messiah receives his first adoration in Lk. from the shepherds, in Mt. from the magi."13 The obvious answer in the former case is that there might be more than one attestation of the divinity of Christ. In the latter case, after the word "first" (for which there is no warrant) has been removed, a similar answer might be made; the new-born Messiah might have received adoration both from the shepherds and from the magi, and the narrative in Matthew does not say or imply that the particular act of adoration which it relates was the first.
It is objected with more insistence, and with more show of reason, that "Joseph's home in Mt. is Bethlehem, in Lk. Nazareth."14 But, after all, the contradiction which is here detected is not a contradiction between an assertion of one narrative and an assertion of the other, but a contradiction between an assertion of one narrative and the silence of the other. Such contradictions in /pg. 193/ countless cases are apparent rather than real. Matthew does not say that Joseph's home was Bethlehem before the birth of Jesus. Indeed, the mention of Bethlehem at Mt. 2:1 rather than at 1:18 might possibly suggest the contrary; for if the events of Mt. 1:18–25 took place at Bethlehem (that is, at the ancestral home of the Davidic house) why was that significant fact not mentioned in connection with those events? We are indeed far from desiring to lay stress upon this particular consideration. Quite possibly the reason why the place of the events was not mentioned before Mt. 2:1 is that only at that point is the place directly important for the details of the narrative. In order to understand the journeyings of the magi, the inquiry at Jerusalem, the reference to Old Testament prophecy by the Sanhedrin, it is necessary to know that Jesus was born at Bethlehem; hence it is in connection with Mt. 2 that the place of the birth is mentioned. Moreover, it was the localizing of the birth at Bethlehem, and not that of previous events, which was important as a fulfilment of prophecy. At any rate, the absence of geographical information in Mt. 1:18–25 is no proof that all the events there narrated are regarded as having happened at the place which is mentioned at the
beginning of the following section. It is not until 2:1 that Matthew displays any geographical interest at all.
No doubt the objector will point in triumph to Mt. 2:22f., where it is intimated that after the return from Egypt Joseph and Mary were intending to dwell in Judæa, were prevented from doing so only by the fear of Archelaus, and thus were forced to enter into Galilee and dwell "in a city called Nazareth." If Nazareth had been their original home, would they not have returned there without seeking to enter into Judæa at all? And would Nazareth have been referred to simply as "a city called Nazareth," if it had been regarded as the scene of the events already narrated in Mt. 1:18–25?
The objection is by no means so formidable as might at first sight appear. The intention of Joseph and Mary to live in Judæa after the return from Egypt is quite comprehensible even if Nazareth had been their original home. Mary's child, Jesus, was, according to the narrative, the promised king of David's line; and that fact was known to Mary and to Joseph. What could be more natural than that they should desire to bring the child up in His ancestral home until the time when His kingship should publicly appear? Residence at Bethlehem or at Jerusalem would seem altogether fitting to those who were the earthly parents of the Messiah. So much lies upon the surface of the narrative. There is also of course ample room for surmise. It has often been held, for example, that Joseph may have possessed property in Bethlehem. The suggestion is perfectly possible; and it helps to explain the intention to dwell in Judæa. But it is not necessary. One may well understand /pg. 194/ the situation without it. At any rate, Matthew certainly does not say that the original home of Joseph and Mary was not Nazareth but Bethlehem. Whether the Evangelist (or the one who gave the narrative in Mt. 1–2 essentially its present form) was aware of the original residence at Nazareth it is perhaps impossible to say. But even if the narrator was not aware of it, his narrative is free of any contradiction with Luke on this point. Silence is a very different thing from contradiction. Another evidence of contradiction has often been detected in the fact
that according to Luke the annunciation is made to Mary, whereas according to Matthew it is made to Joseph. Of course, the obvious answer is that it might have been made to both.15 But, it will be said, if Mary had already been informed of the miracle of the supernatural conception, would she not have repeated to Joseph what the angel had said to her? In that case, could Joseph ever have formed the intention of putting her away? Would not the annunciation to Joseph, in other words, have been unnecessary if the annunciation to Mary had already taken place?
Here again the supposed contradiction disappears as soon as it is at all carefully examined. Suppose Mary had told Joseph what the angel had said to her. Would he have believed so wonderful a tale? And even if he had believed it, would he have proceeded to take Mary as his wife? She was to become the mother of the Messiah by a stupendous miracle. Was it then right that she should live with a husband as other women do?
We must not, indeed, lay too much stress upon these last considerations. Mary had been told that the child was to be the promised king of David's line. If the descent was traced through Joseph, it was essential that Joseph should be her husband when the child was born. Hence Joseph might have thought, even though he was not to be in a physical sense the father of the child, that it was God's will for him to take Mary as his wife. It is only fair, however, to notice that this reasoning is not quite conclusive. Must Mary have traced the Davidic descent through Joseph when she listened to the angel's words in Lk. 1:32f.? May she not—if, as is not impossible, she also was descended from David—have traced the Davidic descent through herself, so that her marriage with Joseph would no longer be necessary? And if her marriage was no longer necessary, may not Joseph have formed exactly the plan that is /pg. 195/ attributed to him in Mt. 1:19? The child was not his child; yet the mother was without blame. May he not have decided to break off the betrothal— which, under the Jewish law, could be done only by a formal divorce —yet in doing so to avoid putting the innocent virgin to shame?
As we have already said, this suggestion is conjectural. We mention it as a possibility and nothing more. Also possible is the view that Joseph did not believe Mary when she told him of the angel's words. But most likely of all, perhaps, is it to suppose that Mary never told him at all.16 What would the virgin be likely to do after she had passed through the wonderful experience that is narrated in Lk. 1:26–38? Would she tell Joseph of that experience? Perhaps she might have done so if she had been a woman of coarser mould. But if she was really the kind of person who is depicted with such wonderful verisimilitude in Lk. 1–2, any such action would be open to objections of a very serious kind. To tell Joseph of her experience would be to expose herself to disbelief. Her experience, after all, was entirely unique; nothing like it had been heard of in the whole history of the world. Even she herself, in the very presence of the angel, had failed to understand; even she, in her maidenly consciousness, had shrunk from what her own ears had heard. How then could she ever hope that Joseph would believe? What would she do under such circumstances? Surely it is obvious what she would do. She would wait for a vindication from God. The messenger who had spoken to her could speak also to her betrothed. It all depended upon God's will. Meanwhile she could bear patiently the burden which she had accepted when she said: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." She was content to wait for God's good time. Far from being in contradiction, therefore, the two narratives supplement each other in the most remarkable way. Neither is thoroughly comprehensible without the other. Mary's attitude is not explained in Matthew, and Joseph's attitude is not explained in Luke; but when the two narratives are put together the course of events in all essentials is fairly clear. When the wonderful promise came to her, Mary went not to Joseph, but to a sympathizing woman friend. But she did not go of her own motion; she went only because of the angel's express words. Elisabeth, too, the angel had said, had passed through a marvellous experience. In that quarter, therefore, and in that quarter only, could Mary hope to find credence; what she could tell Elisabeth would be confirmed by what Elisabeth herself had passed through. How wonderfully natural the
/pg. 196/ narrative is, how exactly in accordance with the meditative and sensitive nature attributed by the Lucan narrative to the mother of the Lord!
Then came the return to Nazareth and the hour of Mary's trial. But she was content to await God's time; she was content to bear the burden which God had asked her to bear. Her faith was not in vain. Joseph, too, was made the recipient of a divine message and took unto him his wife. God had provided a human protector for the maiden and her child. Here as elsewhere the seeming contradictions in these wonderful narratives lie only on the surface; the underlying harmony and the underlying verisimilitude are profound.17
Finally, it has been objected that the narrative in Luke leaves no place for the visit of the magi and the sojourn in Egypt. Forty days after the birth in Bethlehem, according to Luke, there was the presentation in the Temple. The visit of the magi could hardly have taken place during this forty-day interval; for it would have been impossible to take the child into the Temple when the wrath of the king was so aroused—that would have been to face the very jaws of death. Evidently, therefore, the flight into Egypt took place immediately after the magi had come; no visit to the Temple could have intervened. If, therefore, the two narratives are to be harmonized, we must suppose that when the presentation in the Temple had been completed, Joseph and Mary returned with the child to Bethlehem, received there the visit of the magi, and then fled into Egypt.
There is nothing at all unnatural in this suggestion. The only difficulty arises in connection with Lk. 2:39, where it is said: "And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth." These words seem at first sight to require an immediate return to Nazareth after the presentation in the Temple, and therefore seem to exclude a prior return to Bethlehem and a sojourn in Egypt.
But does not such a view involve an undue pressing of the Evangelist's words? The author of Lk. 2:39 is interested in pointing out the fact that the requirements of the law were satisfied in the case of the infant Jesus. He knew that the childhood of Jesus was passed for the most part at Nazareth. /pg. 197/ But what he is interested here in observing is that that well-known residence in Nazareth did not begin until after the requirements of the law had been satisfied in Bethlehem and in Jerusalem. In fact, he is not interested just at this point in anything else at all; he would not care, for the moment, how many events took place between the presentation in the Temple and the return to Nazareth, provided only the return to Nazareth did not take place before the accomplishment of the requirements of the law. The representation in Matthew, therefore, does not contradict the real point of Lk. 2:39. No doubt that verse gives eloquent testimony to the independence of Luke as over against Matthew; if the Third Evangelist had had the account of the flight to Egypt before him when he wrote, he would hardly have put the verse in its present form. But here again the silence of one narrative regarding events recorded in another is quite a different thing from actual contradiction.
Thus the supposed contradictions have succeeded only in demonstrating the complete independence of the two narratives. No doubt if one writer had had the work of the other before him, the task of fitting the narratives together would have been made much easier than it is. But such case of harmonizing would have diminished rather than increased the value of the testimony which these infancy narratives render to the central things that they both record. As it is, we have not only two witnesses to the virgin birth and the birth in Bethlehem, but two independent witnesses.
It is perfectly possible, moreover, despite superficial difficulties, to put the narratives together in such a way as to produce a natural account of the course of events. When that is done, we have the following order of events: (1) annunciation to Zacharias, (2) annunciation to Mary, (3) visit of Mary to Elisabeth, (4) return of
Mary to Nazareth, (5) discovery of her condition, (6) annunciation to Joseph, (7) marriage of Joseph and Mary, (8) journey to Bethlehem on account of the census, (9) birth of Jesus, (10) visit of the shepherds, (11) circumcision at Bethlehem eight days after birth, (12) presentation in the Temple at Jerusalem forty days after birth, (13) return to Bethlehem, (14) visit of the magi, (15) flight to Egypt, (16) return to Nazareth. No doubt this order of events is in a few particulars not altogether certain; but it is at least perfectly possible; and if other arrangements also are possible, that is not at all derogatory to the harmony between the two accounts.
But even though this much should be granted, even though it should be admitted that the two narratives are not actually contradictory, they are at least different; and their mere difference, as distinguished from contradiction, might conceivably be regarded as an argument against their historicity. The source of information about events concerning the birth of Jesus, it might be /pg. 198/ argued, was, in the very nature of the case, unitary; it could be found only in the testimony of Mary. How, then, could two such different accounts as those which are found in Matthew and in Luke ever have been produced? If the information all came from Mary, how could any narrative which was derived from her have been so incomplete, as each one of our two narratives, when it is taken by itself, certainly is?
Of course it may be answered that there was another possible source of information—namely, the testimony of Joseph. But in the first place, Joseph does not appear in the Gospels in connection with the public ministry of Jesus; and therefore it has been conjectured that he died at an early time. And in the second place, the testimony of Joseph, even if he lived long enough to give it to the disciples, could hardly have been so independent of the testimony of Mary as to produce an entirely distinct cycle of tradition. Mary and Joseph lived together; there must have been, after the birth of Jesus, the fullest possible exchange of testimony between them. Even, therefore, if the narrative in Matthew goes back to the testimony of Joseph, as distinguished from the testimony of Mary which appears in the
narrative in Luke, it still seems surprising that the Joseph-narrative does not contain more of Mary's experiences, and the Mary-narrative more of Joseph's. How did two such distinct cycles of tradition ever originate if the ultimate source of information was essentially one? This objection was put in a particularly striking way by E. F. Gelpke in 1841.18 Writing not long after the appearance of Strauss's "Life of Jesus," Gelpke sought to add to the merely negative criticism of Strauss some positive understanding of the infancy narratives as works of art. But this understanding, according to his view, was not favorable to the historicity of the accounts. On the contrary, he said, the very difference between the two narratives, the distinct artistic unity of each when it is taken by itself, would be impossible if the narrators were giving an account of facts. How could facts that were so closely connected in themselves be so completely separated in the tradition? The two narratives, Gelpke insisted, are written from two distinct points of view, and set forth two distinct pictures. "The narrative of Luke," says Gelpke, "presupposes, as it were, the notion that earth as well as heaven recognized the pure virgin, and found in her condition no reason for offence, but on the contrary, as was the case with Elisabeth, only an occasion for joy." Very different, on the other hand, is the narrative of Matthew. There we have, instead of the simple joy that prevails in Luke, the bitter hostility of the worldrulers; and instead of an intimate idyl of family life, a mighty drama in which enemies /pg. 199/ seek the life of the new-born king. No one, Gelpke insists, would want to take the incidents of one narrative and put them into the gaps left in the other. To do so would be to destroy the artistic beauty of each of the two stories. It would be like jumbling together a drama of world-history with an intimate picture of family life.19 In commenting upon this argument, we may freely admit that Gelpke does display a certain amount of true appreciation of the artistic beauty of the narratives. It may be freely admitted, within certain limits, that each narrative constitutes an artistic unity which might be spoiled by the addition of incidents taken from the other account. But what of it? What Gelpke has not observed—if we may use a figure of speech which Gelpke in his day could not have employed—is that although a portrait is different from a photograph
it may be just as faithful a representation of the person that it depicts. In many cases a portrait would be spoiled by the addition to it of the wealth of details that a photograph contains. Those details belong truly to the person whose portrait is being made; yet they would detract not merely from the artistic beauty of the picture, but also from the faithfulness of its representation. A portrait, in other words, as distinguished from a photograph, is selective; by omitting some details it enables the eye to grasp those details that remain; and thus it brings us into far closer and far truer spiritual contact with the person whom it sets forth.
So it may well be with the infancy narratives of Matthew and of Luke. Even if we admit that either of the narratives would be spoiled by the addition of the incidents narrated in the other, that does not mean that both of the narratives are the product of free invention; but it only means that they are portraits rather than photographs; they present two distinct aspects of the birth and infancy of Jesus, but each of the two aspects may well be in accordance with the facts. Thus we deny that the artistic distinctiveness of the narratives is at all incompatible with their historical truth.
With regard to the specific reasons for the divergence in the tradition, various views may be held. A process of artistic selection may, as has just been intimated, well be given a certain place. It is, indeed, improbable, as we pointed out at an earlier stage of our discussion, that the two infancy narratives are dependent upon a common written source. But even if there was no dependence upon a common written source, there may well have been dependence /pg. 200/ upon a common oral tradition; the author of each narrative may well have selected from a common fund of oral information those incidents that belonged to the particular aspect of the birth and infancy of Jesus which he was interested in setting forth. Such selection, we think, is not really inimical to historical trustworthiness; and in this case we have the advantage of being able to let one narrative supplement the other. We can be thankful, therefore, for the twofold account of these events. Each picture is
partial; even the combined picture formed when both are taken together is partial; but when we have first sunk ourselves in the sympathetic contemplation of each, and then have put our impressions together, we discover that the two accounts are not contradictory but supplementary, and that when we use both of them we learn just those things that we most need to know.
But the selective process that led to the distinctiveness of the two narratives was hardly of a merely literary kind. On the contrary, it probably began at a time prior to literary fixation. It is probably a true instinct that has led many readers to suppose that Joseph is the source of the narrative in Matthew and Mary the source of that in Luke. In the latter case, the indications seem to be particularly clear. In the Lucan infancy narrative, Mary's inmost thoughts are revealed —not, it is true, in an indelicate or verbose manner, but in a way quite consonant with the character that is here attributed to the mother of the Lord. And the whole narrative is presented from her point of view. Of course these facts might conceivably be explained by the inherent importance of Mary for the events that are here narrated, an importance which would appeal to some other narrator as well as to Mary herself. And yet such an explanation does not seem to go quite the whole way. There is such delicacy in the touches by which Mary's part in the events is set forth, and such intimacy in the glimpses which are granted into her inmost soul, that the sympathetic reader will hardly be able to rid himself of the conviction that this narrative is derived mediately or immediately from her. Even Harnack has not kept altogether free of this impression. His naturalistic principles will not, indeed, permit him to accept as historical the deeper elements in the narrative; and of course, therefore, he cannot believe that the story of the birth of Jesus, as we have it, comes really from the mother of Jesus. But at least he admits that Luke regarded it as coming from Mary, and that it presupposes an impression which Mary had made upon the circle from which it came.20 Evidently what we have here in Harnack's thinking is a struggle between his naturalistic principles, /pg. 201/ and his perfectly correct instinct in the sphere of literary criticism. If
we do not share his naturalistic principles—if, unlike him, we are ready to admit the entrance of the supernatural in the life of Jesus— then we shall have no difficulty in following the leading of the literary indications which at this point he so convincingly sets forth; and so we shall hold that this narrative is really derived from Mary, the mother of our Lord. Of course, even then the exact course of the transmission will still be in doubt. Did the author of the Gospel himself come into contact with the mother of Jesus? Even that view is perhaps not altogether impossible. Or was it an earlier writer of a Jewish Christian source who received the essentials of the story from Mary's lips? That view again is perfectly possible. Or was there a brief course of oral transmission between Mary and the one who first put the story into literary form? Some modern scholars have thought in this connection of Philip and his prophesying daughters, with whom the author of Luke-Acts (if he be indeed the same as the author of the we-sections) came into direct contact according to Acts 21:8f. To Philip's daughters would then be due, in part at least, the womanly touch which has been detected in the narrative. This view, again, is not impossible, but like the other views it is not certain. The womanly touch in the narrative is perhaps adequately explained by the supposition that the information came ultimately from Mary, whether or not it passed through other lips before it was finally put into literary form. What really stands firm is that the narrative is written from Mary's point of view, and therefore in some sort claims to come from her. We see no reason whatever to reject that claim.
In Matthew, on the other hand, everything is presented from the point of view of Joseph. His scruples it is that are silenced by the appearance of the angel; he is the one who receives heavenly guidance as to the movements of the mother and the child. Was he, then, the ultimate source of this narrative as Mary was the source of the narrative in Luke? The objection to this view, as has been intimated above, is that Joseph does not appear in connection with the public ministry of Jesus and therefore may be supposed to have died at an early time. Could he then have delivered his testimony before he died? There are perhaps difficulties in the way of an
affirmative answer. During the earthly life of Jesus, the virgin birth— even supposing it was a fact—would, as we shall see, naturally remain secret. To have spoken of it would have given rise only to slander and misunderstanding. If, then, Joseph died long before the resurrection of Jesus and the founding of the Church in Jerusalem, to whom could he have handed on his marvellous tale? Must he not have died before his secret had passed his lips? How then can we have in Mt. 1–2 a narrative of /pg. 202/ Joseph independent of that testimony of Mary which is preserved in the first two chapters of Luke?
The objection is perhaps not quite conclusive. In the first place, may not Joseph have committed the story to writing before he died? That is perhaps not quite beyond the bounds of possibility. In the second place, may he not have confided his testimony to some one who could be trusted not to make it known until the proper time? That the persons chosen for such confidence should have been the younger brethren of Jesus is indeed unlikely in itself, as well as out of accord with their attitude as it is recorded in the Gospels. But there may well have been others whom he might trust to the full, and in whom it might be fitting (as it was not in the case of Jesus' brothers) for him to confide.
Of course it remains possible that Mary is the source of both our infancy narratives. Even then the difference between the two accounts may conceivably be explained. Joseph no doubt confided in Mary; he told her of his experiences as they are recorded for us in Mt. 1–2: Mary would then include these experiences of Joseph in what she told to sympathetic ears when finally she broke the silence that she had previously preserved. But some of her hearers might be interested in some features of what she told, and some in others. Relatives of Joseph, for example, would be interested in those features that concerned Joseph and that were based ultimately upon his testimony; and thus it is those features, especially, which they would transmit. In this way an early divergence in the tradition might well come to pass. The difference of our two narratives from
each other is therefore probably to be explained, not exclusively by separateness in the ultimate sources of information, and not exclusively by a selective process either in the course of the transmission or at the time of the final literary fixation, but by both causes combined. The exact proportions in which the two causes were operative can never be determined; there is room for various perfectly possible conjectures. But if so, it cannot be said that the difference in the two narratives disproves the historicity of both. Not merely one explanation, but various perfectly reasonable explanations, can be given of the way in which the tradition came to diverge.
One of the most serious questions of harmony between the representations of the birth of Jesus in Matthew and in Luke has not been discussed so far, because it belongs in a somewhat different category from those questions with which we have just dealt. The difference is that this question, unlike those others, concerns not the relation between the two infancy sections, but the relation between one infancy section and a detail contained in a later chapter /pg. 203/ of the Gospel that contains the other. We refer to the matter of the two genealogies in Mt. 1:1–17, and Lk. 3:23–38.
At first sight, the genealogies may seem to be in hopeless contradiction. From Abraham to David they run alike; but the son of David through whom the line is traced is, according to Matthew, Solomon, and according to Luke, Nathan, and from that point on two divergent lists of names are given down to the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. How can the divergence of the two lines be explained? How, in particular, could the father of Joseph be Jacob (as Matthew says) and also Heli (as he is said to be by Luke)? The two genealogies seem to be directly contradictory even with regard to a point so near at hand as that. According to one solution of the difficulty, the genealogy in Luke is not really a genealogy of Joseph at all, but a genealogy of Mary. In that case, the difficulty regarding the divergence at the end of the genealogies disappears: Jacob was simply the father of Joseph and Heli the father of Mary.
But is this solution exegetically possible? The verses at the beginning of the Lucan genealogy read, according to the usual interpretation, when literally translated, as follows: And Jesus Himself was, when He began, about thirty years old, being the son, as was supposed, of Joseph, who was the son of Heli, who was the son of Matthat, etc.21
According to this rendering, Heli was the father of Joseph. But some scholars, who find in this genealogy a genealogy of Mary, remove the comma between "as was supposed" and "of Joseph," and translate somewhat as follows: "being the son (of Joseph as was supposed) of Heli, of Matthat, etc." That is, Jesus was supposed to be the son of Joseph, but was really the son of Heli, etc. Heli would then be the father of Mary, and the word "son" would be taken in the wider sense of "descendant," the name of the mother of Jesus being omitted because it was not customary for women to be included in a genealogy.22
Undoubtedly this interpretation would remove a difficulty in the comparison between the two genealogies; and it has won the support of noteworthy scholars, including, for example, Bernhard Weiss.23 But on the whole it seems rather unnatural. The strictly parenthetical interpretation of "as was supposed /pg. 204/ of Joseph" would hardly occur to a reader who had not the advantage of modern marks of punctuation. And instead of taking every name in the genealogy as depending directly upon the initial word "son" (in the sense of "descendant"), it surely seems more natural to take every name as depending upon the immediately preceding name.
A more natural way of interpreting the genealogy as a genealogy of Mary is to say that Joseph is here represented as having become "son" or heir of Heli by his marriage to Mary. If Mary was Heli's daughter, and if she had no brothers, then she would become an heiress in accordance with the provisions of Num. 27:1–11; 36:1–12. In the former passage, it seems to be provided that the "name" of a man who had daughters but no sons should be preserved. This could be accomplished if the husband of one of the daughters should
become identified with the family of his wife.24 Conceivably, therefore, Joseph may be designated in the Lucan genealogy as the son of Mary's father, Heli. This interpretation would at least have the advantage of avoiding the linguistically unnatural treatment of the words, "as was supposed of Joseph," which is involved in the view just mentioned; every link in the genealogy would now be joined naturally to that which precedes; Jesus would be represented as the "son" of
Joseph, Joseph as the "son" of Heli, Heli as the "son" of Matthat.
On the whole, however, it seems better to follow the usual view, in accordance with which the genealogy is the genealogy of Joseph. This view is in accordance with what we saw to be the more natural interpretation of Lk. 1:27. If in that verse the author of the Third Gospel calls attention to the Davidic descent of Joseph, and does not call attention to the Davidic descent of Mary, it is natural to find that the genealogy which he inserts at a later point in his book is a genealogy of Joseph and not of Mary.
But if the Lucan genealogy is a genealogy of Joseph, how shall we explain the apparent discrepancy with the genealogy in Matthew? How shall we explain the fact that according to Luke Joseph's father is Heli, and according to Matthew, Jacob?
The most probable answer is that Matthew gives the legal descendants of David—the men who would have been legally the heir to the Davidic throne if that throne had been continued—while Luke gives the descendants of David in that particular line to which, finally, Joseph, the husband of Mary, belonged. There is nothing at all inherently improbable in such a solution. When a kingly line becomes extinct, the living member of a collateral line inherits the throne. So it may well have been in the present case. /pg. 205/
The first objection to this view which might occur to a modern reader is found in the use of the word "begat" by Matthew. How could that
word be used if merely legal heirship and not physical descent were intended? But an examination of Semitic usage soon shows that this objection is entirely without force. Indeed, it is clear in the course of the genealogy itself that the word "begat" is used in a very broad sense. Thus any reader of the Old Testament would know that in the strict sense Joram did not "beget" Uzziah, but that three generations are here omitted between these two kings. As Burkitt has pointed out, it is probable that the author of the genealogy knew his Old Testament as well as we do. Evidently, therefore, he is using the word "begat" in a broader sense than that in which we employ the English word.25 Lord Hervey,26 who adopts this general solution of the problem of the harmony between the genealogies, cites a number of instances of double genealogies in the Old Testament—that is, a number of cases where a man was reckoned with the family of one who was not in a physical sense his father. This incorporation into another family was practised, he thinks, when a man came into possession of property which belonged to some one other than his own father.
It is not necessarily an objection to this view of the relation between the genealogies that they coincide, in the middle of the divergent sections, in two names, Shealtiel (Salathiel) and Zerubbabel; for we should only have to suppose either that Jeconiah, who is said to have "begotten" Shealtiel, had no son, or else that his son, because of the curse recorded in Jeremiah 22:30,27 could not be the heir to the Davidic throne, so that Shealtiel (the living representative of the collateral line recorded in Luke) had to be inserted next by Matthew in the kingly line. Then, at the death of Zerubbabel, or of Abiud (if he is the same person as the Joda of Luke), the line of descent of Joseph's ancestors began to diverge again from the line of legal heirs to the throne, because the (potentially) reigning line came to an end with Jacob, who is said to have "begotten" Joseph, so that Joseph, who was the son, not of Jacob but of Heli, became legally Jacob's heir.
Of course, we cannot say, on this view, how many times in the genealogy of Matthew, between Zerubbabel and Joseph, the line of descent was broken; /pg. 206/ for all that we can tell, there may be several places in Mt. 1:13–16 where a family came to an end and thus had to take a descendant of a collateral line into itself as its heir. But it would only be at the end that a representative of that particular line to which Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus, belonged became heir to the Davidic throne.
A difficulty, indeed, does arise at this point, when we examine the Old Testament records. In 1 Chron. 3:19, according to the Hebrew text, Zerubbabel is represented as the son of Pedaiah and as the nephew, not the son, of Shealtiel, so that when he is elsewhere in the Old Testament called Shealtiel's "son," the word "son" designates an adoptive, not a physical, relationship. How then, if Luke in his genealogy is giving the line of physical, rather than merely legal, descent of Joseph, could he have designated Zerubbabel as the son of Salathiel, as he does in Lk. 3:27?
Three answers are possible. In the first place, one may hold that the "Zorobabel" and the "Salathiel" of Lk. 3:27 are different persons from the "Zorobabel" and the "Salathiel" of Mt. 1:12 and from the "Zerubbabel" and the "Shealtiel" of the Old Testament. That opinion has actually been held, but in view of the juxtaposition of the two names it seems perhaps to be unlikely. In the second place, one may follow certain manuscripts of the Septuagint at 1 Chron. 3:18f., instead of following the Hebrew text. In that case, Pedaiah drops out as the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel may be regarded as the actual son of Shealtiel. But it is certainly far more likely that the Hebrew text is correct. Probably, therefore, the third of our three alternatives is to be chosen. By that third alternative, we shall simply have to modify our view of the Lucan genealogy. We shall have to say that there is at least one link in that genealogy in which something other than actual physical paternity is designated. This admission would not involve the total abandonment of our hypothesis; it would not involve the relinquishment of our distinction between the Lucan
and the Matthæan genealogy. We should still be able to say that, while the Matthæan genealogy traces the successive heirs to the throne of David from David to Joseph, the Lucan genealogy traces the ancestors of Joseph back to David. Suppose, as is quite possible, that Pedaiah "raised up seed" to his brother, Salathiel, in accordance with the legal provisions about Levirate marriage, which we shall speak of in a moment. The Lucan genealogy could then designate Pedaiah's son, Zerubbabel, as being the son of Salathiel, without at all becoming confused with the Matthæan genealogy, supposing that that genealogy involved breaks where the scion of a more or less widely separated collateral line had to be taken into the succession of the heirs to the throne. Luke's /pg. 207/ genealogy would not, indeed, in its successive links, always indicate actual physical paternity, but it would mean that every successive link did involve at least a very close adoptive relationship between the two persons named.
Thus the difficulty about Shealtiel and Zerubbabel requires a modification, rather than an abandonment, of our hypothesis. We shall still be able to say that the difference between the two genealogies, taken broadly, is due to the fact that for the most part— perhaps even in every link except one—the Lucan genealogy traces the actual physical ancestors of Joseph back to David, while the Matthæan genealogy enumerates the successive heirs to the Davidic throne. The Lucan genealogy, in other words, starts with the question, "Who was Joseph's 'father'?" The answer to that question is, "Heli." Then, in the course of the genealogy, we come to the question, "Who was Zerubbabel's 'father'?" The answer is, "Salathiel," even though the relationship of Salathiel to Zerubbabel was not that of physical paternity. And so on up to David. In the Matthæan genealogy, on the other hand, we start with the question, "Who was the heir to David's throne?" The answer is, "Solomon," and so on down to Joseph. When we consider the matter in this way, it becomes evident that our distinction between the two genealogies does not depend upon the assumption that actual physical descent is designated in the Lucan genealogy in every link, though no doubt it
is designated in the vast majority of the links. There may well have been two perfectly valid ways of exhibiting Joseph's Davidic descent, even though the general principle of one at least of these two ways— supposing that general principle was the exhibition of actual physical paternity—was not followed with complete uniformity throughout.
The correctness of this view of the purpose and meaning of each genealogy is confirmed by the fact that the genealogy in Luke begins at the end and works backward, whereas the genealogy in Matthew begins at the beginning. Where the point was to trace the actual descent of Joseph back to David, that could be done by recording the tradition of the family as to his actual father, Heli, and then the actual father of Heli, and so on up to Nathan the son of David. But where the point was to mention the successive heirs of the Davidic throne, it was natural to begin with David and work down.
The view which we have set forth above as to the latest links in the two genealogies is based upon the assumption that the Matthan of Mt. 1:15 is not the same person as the Matthat of Lk. 3:24. If these two names do refer to the same person, then a difficulty seems to arise. For if Jacob28 and Heli29 were both sons of the same person, why should not the elder of them have been /pg. 208/ the heir? And if Jacob was the elder, how could Joseph, the son of the younger, Heli, have been in the line of legal heirship?
This difficulty, however, is quite readily removed. We should need only to suppose that Jacob died without issue, so that his nephew, the son of his brother Heli, would become his heir. One could also think, at this point, of the institution of Levirate marriage, in accordance with which when a man died without issue his brother married the widow and "raised up seed" to the deceased. The question which the Sadducces addressed to Jesus about this matter shows that the custom was not forgotten, whether or not it was frequently practised, in the time of Christ. Possibly, therefore, Heli married Jacob's widow so that the children, while physically his own, belonged legally to his dead brother.30
If Matthan and Matthat are not the same person, then it is less natural to appeal to Levirate marriage; for if Heli was the brother of Jacob, how could he have had a different father (Matthat instead of Matthan)? The only answer, apparently, would be the ancient one that Jacob and Heli were half-brothers—that is, that they had the same mother but not the same father. But then the question might be raised whether Levirate marriage was practised in the case of halfbrothers, and in general the hypothesis would seem to be overloaded. If Matthat and Matthan are the same person, then the question how different persons could each be the father of the same man, which on the other view arises in connection with the father of Joseph, arises in the case of the father of Matthat (Matthan). And here again it would be unnatural to appeal to Levirate marriage; because that would assume that Levi, the father of Matthat (Matthan) according to Luke, and Eleazar, the father of the same man according to Matthew, were brothers—in which case their father ought to be the same. If, therefore, Matthat and Matthan are the same person, it seems best to explain the divergence regarding their father, not by Levirate marriage, but by the fact that the kingly line became extinct with Eleazar, who is said by Matthew to have "begotten" Matthan (Matthat), so that a scion of a widely divergent collateral line became his heir. Matthat (Matthan) would thus be the legal heir of Eleazar, but the actual son of Levi, who appears in the genealogy in Luke. Thus on the view that Matthat and Matthan are the same person, the custom of Levirate marriage may plausibly be cited to explain the divergence /pg. 209/ as to the father of Joseph (Heli in one genealogy, Jacob in the other), but not to explain the divergence as to the father of Matthat (Matthan). On the view that Matthat and Matthan are not the same person, Levirate marriage is probably not to be appealed to at all.31
We are not endeavoring to discuss the intricate question of the genealogies with even the slightest approach to completeness. But enough, we think, has been said to show that the differences between the two genealogies are not irreconcilable. Reconciliation might conceivably be effected in a number of different ways. But on the
whole we are inclined to think that the true key to a solution of the problem (however the solution may run in detail) is to be found in the fact that Matthew, in an intentionally incomplete way, gives a list of incumbents (actual or potential) of the kingly Davidic throne, while Luke traces the descent of Joseph, back through Nathan to David. Thus the genealogies cannot properly be used to exhibit contradiction between the Matthæan and the Lucan accounts of the birth and infancy of our Lord. Here, as in the other features of the two accounts, there is complete independence, but no contradiction.
CHAPTER IX:
THE INHERENT CREDIBILITY OF THE
NARRATIVES
Two important conclusions have been reached in the preceding chapter. The two New Testament accounts of the birth of Jesus, it has been shown, are on the one hand completely independent, but on the other hand not at all contradictory. So far as the relation between them could lead us to judge, they might be regarded as two independent and trustworthy accounts of the same event.
But now the question arises whether this favorable judgment is borne out by a separate examination of each of the two narratives. The relation between them does not prevent us from regarding both as trustworthy; but how is it when they are considered (1) in themselves and (2) in relation to secular history and to the rest of the New Testament? These questions must now be considered in order. We shall in the present chapter consider the narratives in themselves. Is the content of them such that they can plausibly be regarded as trustworthy? Then we shall consider them in comparison with secular history and with the rest of the New Testament.
When we examine the narratives in themselves, one fact, of course, stares us in the face. It is that the content of the narratives is strikingly supernatural; the New Testament accounts of the birth and infancy of Jesus are suffused with the miraculous.
This fact has often been held to settle the question at the start. If miracles have never happened and never can happen, or if, granting the abstract possibility of their happening, the presumption against their having happened in any particular case is so great that the
evidence could never be sufficient to establish them, then of course a narrative that contains miracles can hardly be historical.
Conceivably, indeed, such a narrative might be historical in part; it might be held to reproduce the facts except where the miraculous intrudes. In that case, all that would be necessary in order to arrive at the historical content would be to subtract the miracles and nothing else. This method of treatment was applied to the infancy narratives by the rationalizing treatment of one hundred years ago. The infancy narratives, it was held, contain accounts of real /pg. 211/ events; only these events were not really supernatural: the narrators, or even the witnesses upon whose testimony the narratives are ultimately based, have put a false, supernaturalistic construction upon purely natural happenings. Thus, according to the rationalizing treatment of Paulus,1 Zacharias really went into the Temple at the hour of incense, as he is said to have done in the first chapter of Luke; while he was there, the glow of the fire or something of that sort seemed to him to take the form of an angel; when he came out, he did not use his voice, because, thinking that dumbness was the punishment that had been imposed upon him for his unbelief, he did not even try to speak.
The most formidable criticism of this whole way of treating the narratives came not, perhaps, from conservative or orthodox scholars, but from David Friedrich Strauss in his famous "Life of Jesus."2 The polemic of Strauss was turned not merely against the supernaturalistic view, that the narratives are historical as they stand, but also (and with equal sharpness) against the rationalizing method of Paulus and others. If, Strauss said in effect, the miracles are rejected, it is useless to seek a factual basis for the details of the narratives; for in the narratives as they stand the miracles are really central, and the other details are brought in merely for their sake. Rather, said Strauss, the narratives must be regarded as the embodiment in narrative form of certain fundamental ideas. In other words, these stories of the birth and infancy of Jesus are not misunderstood accounts of real happenings, but they are "myths."
This "mythical" theory of Strauss has been dominant throughout the whole course of subsequent criticism, except so far, of course, as it has been rejected by the advocates of the supernaturalistic view. It was not, indeed, always applied, even with respect to the infancy narratives, so thoroughly as was done by Strauss himself; and here and there attempts were made3 to rescue many details in the narratives as historical even though the central miracle was given up. Nevertheless, it did seem as though the rationalizing method of Paulus had succumbed permanently to Strauss's vigorous attack. Instead of seeking any factual basis for the miracles narrated in the infancy narratives of Matthem and Luke, subsequent scholars applied themselves to the task of understanding historically the origin of the myths. Strauss, it was thought, had performed a necessary negative task: he had disposed of the view that the miracles really happened as they are said in the Gospels to have happened; and he had also /pg. 212/ shown how useless it is to look for a factual basis in the details of a narrative whose main point, for which the details exist, had already been rejected. He had, therefore, it was thought, been quite correct in regarding the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke as "myths"—that is, as the embodiment in historical form of certain religious ideas. But he had failed to show in sufficient detail just what these ideas were; he had failed to exhibit positively the full meaning of the myths. This positive task, therefore, it was held, needed to be undertaken by others.
The most impressive effort at such a positive understanding of the New Testament "myths"—the motives that led to their formation and their place in the history of thought—was the construction of F. C. Baur and his associates of the "Tübingen school." But the leaders of the Tübingen school for the most part devoted comparatively little attention to the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. In that field, the positive evaluation of the supposed myth was undertaken particularly by Ch. Hermann Weisse, in a book which in some respects deserves much more attention than it is receiving at the present time.4 Weisse observed that the virgin birth, far from being an excrescence in the infancy narrative of Luke, is at the very centre
of the whole, as of course it is also in the first chapter of Matthew; in the story of the virgin birth, he supposed, we have a poetic expression of a great idea—the idea of the incarnation of the Divine. But this central idea had to build around it its own mythical cycle. The details of the infancy narratives are, therefore, not to be explained by any dependence upon facts, but by their relationship to the central idea.
Exception may well be taken to the way in which this relationship is set forth in detail: Weisse saw in the details of the infancy narratives a wealth of symbolism which certainly goes far beyond what later scholars have for the most part been willing to detect. A profound symbolism, for example, underlies, according to Weisse, the genealogy in Matthew, especially Mt. 1:16: Judaism, as symbolized by Joseph, stands merely in the relation of stepfather to Christianity; it was not able actually to beget the divine Son, but was only able to foster the Son who had been immediately begotten by the Spirit.5 John the Baptist, Weisse says further, represents Jewish prophecy and the Jewish nation in general, which stand in connection, but also in contrast, with Christ and with Christianity;6 Zacharias and Elisabeth are represented in the narrative as aged, because new ideas come up only when the ideas from which they /pg. 213/ immediately sprang are old and powerless; Zacharias was dumb, because the priestly wisdom of the Israelites was made dumb in the time just before the coming of Christ on account of their failure to believe in the promises of the Lord; their tongue was loosed when the ancient prophecies began to be fulfilled.7 In the story of the magi, Weisse found the crown of all these mythical representations: the spirit of old-world priests and poets, he said, is here represented as bringing gifts of symbolic poetry and art to the new religion; the magi failed to return to Herod, because the worldly power was deserted by the religious substance, by the priestly wisdom, of ancient heathenism.8
In many of these details, Weisse has not been followed by more recent adherents of the mythical theory. But the mythical theory itself, as over against the rationalizing method of a Paulus or a
Venturini,9 has been dominant throughout the whole course of subsequent naturalistic criticism. It has seemed quite clear to most of those who deny the entrance of the supernatural in connection with the birth and infancy of our Lord that the supernatural elements are quite central in the narratives as we now have them, and that it is useless to seek for non-miraculous events as forming the basis upon which a false supernaturalistic construction was built up.
One objection to such a view would be found in an early date of the narratives; for the production of myths ordinarily requires a certain lapse of time. This objection was expressly urged by Paulus in 1828.10 We might, he said, be inclined to think that the Lucan infancy narrative is a mythical story; but such a view is excluded by the early date of the Third Gospel. The Book of Acts was written at the end of the two-year period in Rome with which the narrative of the book closes; and the "we" shows that Luke, the author, spent a considerable time in Palestine, where he would have had opportunity to gather material. Hence, Paulus concludes, the mythical interpretation must be given up; and the events narrated in the infancy section must be understood /pg. 214/ as actual, though nonmiraculous, happenings upon which the observers in good faith put a supernaturalistic interpretation.
This objection to the mythical view was in the subsequent period overcome by the general denial of the Lucan authorship and early date of the Third Gospel. The Tübingen school, in particular, adopted a very late dating for the Gospel of Luke, as also for others of the New Testament books. But it is very interesting to observe how the modern development of literary criticism has gradually led to a recession from this position, and even to a return, here and there at least, to a position regarding the date of the Third Gospel not unlike that of Paulus. A. von Harnack and C. C. Torrey, for example, have come to believe, as Paulus did one hundred years ago, that Luke-Acts was actually written by Luke, a companion of Paul, and that the second part, the Book of Acts, was written immediately after the point of time reached in the narrative itself. This conclusion about
Luke-Acts, moreover, is important also for Matthew; for Harnack holds that the First Gospel was written in the same general period as the Gospel of Luke.
The question then arises what these scholars do with the objection which caused Paulus in his day to reject the mythical theory regarding the narratives and to have recourse to the rationalizing method which has made his name almost an object of opprobrium and ridicule ever since. Now certainly we are as far as possible from accusing such a scholar as Harnack of anything like the prosaic baldness which makes the works of Paulus seem such curious reading to men of the present day. Nevertheless, when we find Harnack suggesting—after some eighty years' dominance of the mythical theory—that possibly the birth in Bethlehem and the journey to Egypt may be historical, that even the visit of the magi from the East is perfectly conceivable, and that possibly there may be a kernel of truth in the story of the massacre at Bethlehem,11 we cannot help having a feeling that naturalistic criticism is in danger of finding itself, like a man lost in a forest, back in the place where it started out. This feeling is deepened when we examine what Harnack says about the central feature of the Matthæan narrative, the virgin birth. He does not, indeed, abandon the mythical explanation of the story of the virgin birth, but holds to it in a form which will concern us at a later stage of our discussion. Nevertheless, his treatment does show, in some respects, a most interesting tendency to return to the method of Paulus and of the other rationalizers of one hundred years ago. The author of Mt. 1:18–25, Harnack says, admits, as over against the Jewish slander regarding an illegitimate birth of Jesus, that Jesus was born only /pg. 215/ a few months after Mary had gone to live in the house of Joseph. How did that admission come to be made? Conceivably it might have been made merely in the interests of the virgin birth; that is, the notion that Mt. 1:18–25 is polemic against Jewish attacks may be incorrect; and thus the "admission" would be no admission at all, but merely a thing that the writer insists upon to safeguard the truly miraculous character of the conception of Jesus in Mary's womb. But Harnack is inclined to be
dissatisfied with this explanation. How could the brothers and younger relatives of Jesus have been expected to accept such a narrative if, as a matter of fact, they knew that Jesus had not been born until Mary had lived for a long time in Joseph's house? Thus Harnack seems clearly to lean to the view that the conception took place by agency of Joseph before Mary had come to live in her husband's house. There would be nothing immoral, he insists, in such intercourse of Joseph and Mary; for betrothal was then equivalent to marriage, and gave, in principle, to the man who had entered into the relationship a husband's rights.
It may be doubted whether Harnack has quite succeeded in removing the opprobrium which would seem to rest upon Joseph and Mary through an acceptance of such a view. Indeed, he himself admits that a premature entrance into the marriage relationship—after betrothal, but before the reception of the bride into the husband's house— though it was perfectly moral, did nevertheless expose the wife more readily to slander; for in such a case it might be said that she had had an adulterous union with another man. Why should Mary have been willing to expose herself to such slander? For her to have done so does seem, despite all the difference between the Hebrew notion and ours (and quite irrespective of the question how far Harnack's view of the Hebrew notion is correct), to cast a certain stain upon her character.
Of course, the mere fact that Harnack's suggestion is repugnant to Christian feeling will not be held by modern historians to prove that it is not true. And yet, on second thought, it does seem to be a sound historical instinct which leads the vast majority of modern scholars to shrink from any such thing. The way in which Jesus came forward in later life, and his entire character, are better explained, just on naturalistic principles, if his parents were far above any such unseemly conduct as that which Harnack is inclined to attribute to them. At any rate, whatever may be thought of the probability of Harnack's suggestion, the making of it involves a return to a rationalizing treatment of the narratives that was generally thought
to be abandoned long ago. It may fairly be held that if David Friedrich Strauss could read Harnack's latest book on the Lucan writings, he would think that he had lived in vain. The /pg. 216/ gradual "return to tradition" in the sphere of literary criticism has led to a method of treating the miracles which Strauss thought that he had demolished nearly one hundred years ago. And as over against Harnack we cannot help feeling that Strauss would be right. It does seem clear that the narratives of the birth and infancy must be accepted as they stand, including the miraculous element, or else must be relegated as a whole to the realm of myth. If the miracles are rejected—that is, if we reject the thing for which the narratives exist —it is useless to look for any basis of the miracle-stories in misunderstood natural events. The rationalizing treatment of the narratives, as Strauss and his successors have observed, is radically wrong.
Very different from such a rationalizing treatment is the treatment which has been applied to the narratives by such a scholar as G. H. Box.12 Like the rationalizers, Box believes that the narratives are partly historical and partly not. But the difference is that the rationalizers reject the central thing, the miracle of the virgin birth, and retain only things which to the narrator himself would have seemed quite subordinate, whereas Box retains the central thing and rejects only subordinate features. Our narratives of the birth and infancy of Jesus, Box believes, are midrashic in character—that is, they are built up by fanciful elaboration of a few central facts. But without those central facts, he thinks, they cannot be explained. The central facts in question, the facts which Box regards as the historical basis upon which the midrashic narratives have been built up, include the miracle of the virgin birth. Without that fact the narratives would be left hanging in the air; a midrashic elaboration presupposes something around which the elaboration shall grow.
This separation between fact and fancy is, we think, unnecessary, since we see no valid reason to reject the historicity of the narratives as they stand. But the theory of Box is at any rate not to be confused
at all with the rationalizing treatment with which we have just been dealing. In order to understand the difference, it is only necessary to compare Box with Beyschlag, who (at a time long after the golden age of rationalism) carried out the rationalizing method in some detail. Beyschlag accepted the details of the narratives and rejected the main point; Box accepted the main point and rejected many details. That is the difference between the rationalizing treatment, on the one hand, and supernaturalism on the other—even an unduly concessive supernaturalism. As between the two, we certainly prefer the view of Box.
The alternative presented by Strauss in 1835, therefore, still, we think, holds good. Either accept the narratives as they stand, including their supernatural content; or else, without seeking a historical basis in detail, regard them /pg. 217/ as myths—that is, as the embodiment, in historical form, of certain fundamental religious ideas. We are not concerned here with the positive elaboration of the second of these two alternatives; we are not concerned with the question how the supposed myths came to be produced, or what are the particular ideas of which they are the embodiment. Those questions will be dealt with, to some extent at least, in the latter part of our discussion. Here we have been interested merely in showing that the supernatural element is quite at the centre of these narratives, and that if the supernatural element is rejected the direct historical value of the narratives is gone. If Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary by ordinary generation, then the New Testament account of His birth and infancy must be regarded, as Strauss regarded it, as a myth. But are we, as a matter of fact, shut up to such a conclusion? This question, we think, should be answered in the negative; but certainly it should not be lightly answered. It is perfectly evident that an enormous weight of presumption rests against our holding that at any designated point in history there has been an intrusion, into the order of nature, of the creative power of God. And we are quite unable to comfort ourselves by any lower definition of "miracle" or any lower understanding of the virgin birth of Christ. Efforts have sometimes been made to exhibit the
supernatural conception in Mary's womb as standing in some sort of analogy with what occurs in the realm of nature; apologists for the virgin birth have sometimes pointed to the "parthenogenesis" which is said to occur among some of the lower forms of life. But such apologetic efforts really defeat their own purpose. If the virgin birth is reduced to the level of a biological triviality, it becomes quite unbelievable; the weight of presumption against it is too powerful to be overcome. Parthenogenesis certainly does not occur in the higher forms of life, and there is no conceivable reason why such a curious natural phenomenon should have appeared in the case of Jesus. But if the virgin birth represents the beginning of a new era in the course of the universe, a true entrance of the creative power of God, in sharp distinction from the order of nature,13 then, we think, when it is taken in connection with the entire phenomenon of Jesus' life and particularly in connection with the evidence of His resurrection, it is no longer a meaningless freak, but becomes an organic part of a mighty redeeming work of God, the reality of which is supported by a weight of evidence adequate even to overcome the initial presumption against it. As a natural phenomenon the /pg. 218/ virgin birth is unbelievable; only as a miracle, only when its profound meaning is recognized, can it be accepted as a fact.14
We are well aware that such a definition of miracle, and such a belief in the actuality of miracle in this particular case, depend upon a certain definite type of philosophy. There is no greater mistake, we think, than to suppose that the Christian religion can get along with the most widely diverse types of philosophical theory. On the contrary, the Christian gospel has as its necessary presupposition that particular view of the world which is called, in the fullest sense, "theistic"; it presupposes not merely the existence of a personal Being, creator of all things that are, but also the existence of a real order of nature, an order of nature created, indeed, by God and forever dependent upon Him, yet at the same time possessed of a true regularity and unity of its own. Without the existence of a true order of nature, there can be no distinction between natural and supernatural; and if there be no distinction between natural and
supernatural, then an event like the virgin birth loses all significance, and losing all significance ceases to be believable as a fact. We do not mean, indeed, that although supernatural events are caused by God, natural events are not caused by Him; but we do mean that He has seen fit to create a true order of nature and to make use of it in the accomplishment of certain of His purposes. Back of that order of nature there lies a creative act of God; and even after that act of creation, God has never abandoned His freedom in the presence of the things that He has made. So, at His own good time, there did enter, we think, into the course of this world a creative work for the redemption of sinful man, a creative work which was begun by the stupendous miracle of the virgin birth. It is only as such a stupendous miracle, only as a part of such a work of redemption, that the virgin birth of Christ can ever be accepted as a fact by reasonable men.
But when it is so accepted, it is accepted, we must insist, as a fact of history. We are often told, indeed, that if the virgin birth is accepted, it can only be accepted as a matter of "faith," and that decision about it is beyond the range of historical science. But such a distinction between faith and history is, we think, very unfortunate. Underlying it, no doubt, there is a certain element of truth. It is certainly true that in order to believe in the virgin birth of Christ one needs to do more than merely examine the immediate documentary evidence; for one needs to take the documentary evidence in connection with a sound view of the world and with certain convictions as to /pg. 219/ the facts of the human soul. But the sharp separation between the documentary evidence on the one hand and these presuppositions about God and the soul on the other is far from being truly scientific. A science of history that shall exist by itself, independent of presuppositions, is an abstraction to which no reality corresponds. As a matter of fact, scientific history as well as other branches of science rests upon presuppositions; only, the important thing is that the presuppositions shall be true instead of false.
So it is an unwarranted narrowing of the sphere of history when history is made to deal only with those events which stand within the order of nature, as distinguished from events that proceed from an exercise of the immediate, or creative, power of God. The true sphere of history is the establishment of all facts, whatever they are, that concern human life—the establishment of these facts and the exhibition of the relations between them. So if the virgin birth is a fact at all, by whatever means it may be established, it is a fact of history. No doubt we may sometimes find it convenient to isolate certain particular methods of research and follow those methods for the moment without using others. But ultimately, if we are to be truly scientific, there must be a real synthesis of truth; there can scarcely be a greater error than that of keeping different kinds of truth in separate water-tight compartments in the mind; there can scarcely be a greater error than that of regarding "religious truth," for example, as in some way distinct in kind from "scientific truth." On the contrary, all such distinctions are at best merely provisional and temporary; all truth, ultimately, is one. And we must continue to insist, even in the face of widespread opposition, that if the virgin birth is a fact at all, it belongs truly to the realm of history.
We are not afraid, therefore, of admitting the miraculous or supernatural character of the event narrated in the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke. There is a presumption, indeed, against the supernatural; but that presumption, in the case of Jesus, has, we think, been gloriously overcome.15
But although the supernatural appears in these birth narratives, it does not appear in any excessive or unworthy form. In order to exhibit that fact it is necessary only to compare these narratives with those that appear in the apocryphal Gospels. When the child Jesus is represented, as in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, as striking His companions dead for slight offences, when He is represented as using His power in trivial or cruel fashion, we certainly find ourselves, as we read, in an entirely different atmosphere from that which prevails in the narratives of Matthew and Luke. Even in the
Protevangelium of James, which is the earliest and by far the most interesting /pg. 220/ of these apocryphal Gospels of the infancy, we miss the wonderful sobriety and beauty of the canonical narratives. A certain impressiveness does indeed appear in this Gospel here and there; as when, for example, all nature and all of human life are represented as standing still at the moment of the birth of the holy child. But that representation, despite its grandeur, does involve a certain excessiveness of the supernatural which is very different from the restraint of the New Testament accounts. And in other particulars—for example, in the evidence of the midwife concerning the birth of our Lord—the Protevangelium enters on a path which the New Testament entirely avoids. According to the New Testament, the birth of Jesus, as distinguished from the conception in the womb, may be regarded as a purely natural event; in the Protevangelium we have a heaping up of the miraculous in a way that endangers the true humanity of our Lord. Thus a comparison with the apocryphal Gospels serves to place in all the clearer light the sober and worthy form in which the supernatural appears in the narratives of Matthew and Luke. Here a wonderful simplicity prevails throughout. A stupendous event is represented as taking place; the Saviour has entered into the world by a creative act of God. But that event takes place not with flare of trumpets or crash of forces, but in the quietness of God. Such was the divine condescension of Him who was to save His people from their sins.16 In two particulars, indeed, this sobriety has sometimes been thought to be deserted; modern readers have objected especially first to the angels and second to the star of the magi. "When angels," says Gressmann at the beginning of his book on the "Christmas Gospel," "descend from heaven and appear to men, we have no historical narrative but a legend, whose historical background is painted over with the golden colors of fabulous imagination."17 This attitude unquestionably is shared by very many modern men. And yet we question very much whether it can stand the test of sober reflection. Why should it be thought a thing incredible that there should exist in the universe personal beings other than man? Why should it be thought incredible that these beings should hold intercourse /pg. 221/ with men? Especially
in an age when spiritualism is so much in vogue as it is at present, this skepticism about the angels may seem to be out of place. We do not, indeed, desire to underestimate the objection; and our reference to spiritualism is at best an argumentum ad hominem which may conceivably be turned back against us. We ourselves do not accept as actual the phenomena with which spiritualism deals; why then, it may be asked, should we believe that in the first century of our era angels descended from heaven and held converse with men?
The answer is that it is simply a question of the adequacy or inadequacy of the evidence in either case. The strong point of spiritualism is that it appeals to what is certainly an abstract possibility—namely, the communion of men with spirits who are in some state of existence different from ours. But we do not think— from all that we can learn—that this abstract possibility has been converted into actuality in the phenomena to which spiritualists appeal. For one thing, a certain triviality seems to affect the entire complex of supposed facts, a triviality which seems somehow to be inconsistent with what might reasonably be expected in a spirit world. But it is not our purpose here to discuss spiritualism; indeed, that discussion would be one in which we are singularly ill qualified to engage. What we are interested in observing is that in the case of the New Testament accounts concerning angels, the evidence is not limited, as it is in the case of modern spiritualistic claims, to the sheer, unrelated testimony about these particular facts, but embraces confirmatory evidence of a very convincing kind. The confirmatory evidence is found in the connection between the appearances of angels and the whole redemptive work of God culminating in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The angels appear in the New Testament, not in disconnected or trivial fashion, but as accompanying a mighty, supernatural, redemptive work. When once that work is accepted as a fact, then the appearance of heavenly messengers will no longer give offence. If Jesus was no mere man but the eternal Son of God, incarnate for our redemption, then it is altogether fitting that His birth should have been heralded by a song of the heavenly host.
When the angelic appearances are once considered in this light—as accompaniments of the redeeming work of God—certain detailed objections will seem scarcely worthy of notice. Thus the earlier opponents of miracles used to pour out the vials of their ridicule upon the name "Gabriel," which is applied in the Gospel of Luke to the angel of the annunciation. Is Hebrew, it was asked, the language of heaven; are the angels that stand around God's throne called by Hebrew names? This particular objection, we think, will hardly appeal very strongly to the men of the present day. It will hardly be thought /pg. 222/ necessary for us to repeat the obvious remark that the name Gabriel ("man of God" or "hero of God") is no mere appellation, but designates in human language the nature of the heavenly being.18
All such objections, surely, are trivial. The real objection is that angels do not appear to us today; why, then, should we suppose that they appeared to the people of Palestine nineteen hundred years ago? But to that objection the answer has already been given. The angels do not appear today—that is true. But neither does the incarnate Son of God. Once accept the incarnation, in any true, unique sense, and the angels will altogether cease to be a hindrance to faith. The real question is whether Jesus Christ was just a man like the rest of men, or a heavenly Being, the eternal Son of God, come voluntarily to earth for our redemption. Once admit the absolute uniqueness of Jesus, admit not merely that He was One who has not as a matter of fact been surpassed, but that He was One who can never by any possibility be surpassed, and you have taken the really decisive step. But if you take that step, you should have no difficulty in accepting the exultant supernaturalism of the New Testament narratives as they stand.
Mediating views with regard to this matter are really in a condition of unstable equilibrium. The Ritschlians, for example, tried to maintain the absolute, eternally normative uniqueness of Jesus in the moral sphere without accepting the miracles in the external world. But by an inexorable logic they are pushed in one direction or
the other. If they hold to Jesus' moral uniqueness, they will finally have no difficulty with the accompaniments of that moral uniqueness in the external world. Or else, if they insist on giving up the accompaniments of the moral uniqueness, they will soon find that the moral uniqueness itself will have to go. This latter step is being taken by the radicals of the present day. And unquestionably the radicals have the logic of the situation on their side. It is impossible to bring the supernatural in by a back door as the Ritschlians did. If it is to be brought in at all, it demands the central place.
We are not, indeed, without sympathy for those who, unlike the Ritschlians, accept the central miracle of the virgin birth, and yet have difficulty with the angelic accompaniments. Their view may be a useful stepping-stone to higher things; it is not theoretically impossible. Conceivably the New Testament narratives about angels may record inner experiences, objectified, after the manner of those days, by those who passed through them. But for our part we /pg. 223/ must discard such mediating views. If once we accept the stupendous miracle of the incarnation, the angelic appearances seem to us to be wonderfully and beautifully in place.
The other point at which the particular form of the miraculous in the birth narratives has given rise to objection is found in the star of the magi. How could a star in the heavens possibly go before men as they walked upon the earth; how could it possibly serve as their guide to point out a particular house? At this point, it is said, we have not merely what is miraculous, but what cannot even be conceived.
With regard to this objection, the first question that arises is an exegetical one. Has the objector interpreted correctly the Matthæan narrative about the star? Does the narrative really mean that the star literally went before men as they walked upon the earth; does it really mean that it pointed out to them the house in which Mary and the child were found? The answer is by no means so certain as is sometimes assumed.
It is perfectly clear, at any rate, that if the star ever served directly as a guide from one point to another, it did not do so continuously. When the magi arrived at Jerusalem, they were obliged to inquire their way; evidently they had no direct supernatural guidance to lead them to Bethlehem. As they started out on the last stage of their journey, Old Testament prophecy and not the star served as their guide.
But, it may be said, why should they ever have come to Jerusalem in the first place, unless they had been directly guided by the star? What except a moving star could ever have led them away from their own country, and particularly just to the country of the Jews? This objection is by no means so formidable as it seems. As has often been pointed out, the heavens were divided by ancient astrology into regions corresponding to regions on the earth's surface. A celestial phenomenon in one particular part of the heavens, therefore, might well have been connected by the magi with an earthly happening in the West. But even if that were so, how could they have come to think particularly of Judæa? The answer can plausibly be found in the wide spread of the Messianic expectation. Whatever may be thought of the positive testimony with regard to that, whatever view may be held of the famous assertion of Suetonius and Tacitus that there was throughout the East an expectation of world-rulers to come from Judæa,19 it may be regarded as inherently /pg. 224/ very probable that Hebrew prophecy should have been widely known throughout many regions of the Eastern world. Ever since the time of the exile, there had been Jews in Babylonia; and it may well have been from Babylonia that the magi came. But in the possession of a Jewish population Babylonia was by no means unique; almost everywhere a Jewish dispersion was to be found. It should never be forgotten, moreover, that in the first century of our era and in the preceding century Judaism was an active missionary religion; through the agency of its synagogues it was making converts in many parts of the world. But its influence was by no means limited to the winning of proselytes in the full sense. Also very important was the effect which it had upon those who were by no means ready to take the decisive
step of becoming Jews. The Book of Acts repeatedly mentions such persons—the "God-worshippers" or "God-fearers," who attended the Jewish synagogues and accepted some features of the Jews' religion without becoming circumcised or giving up their own national affiliations. But there is not the slightest reason to think that this Jewish influence was exerted always to the same degree or in the same way. An almost infinite variety, no doubt, characterized the effect which Judaism had upon the Gentile populations with which it came into contact in the Hellenistic age. So there is abundant room, in the life of that period, for Gentile astrologers who either directly, by a perusal of the Old Testament, or more probably indirectly, had heard of the Messianic hope, had on the basis of it come to expect the appearance of a world-ruler in Judæa, and thus were able to interpret a celestial phenomenon, astrologically connected with the West, as announcing the birth of the promised "king of the Jews."
So far, therefore, it is quite possible, in perfect loyalty to the meaning of the narrative, to regard the star of the magi as being merely a natural phenomenon, a conjunction or a comet or a new star, which the magi interpreted by the principles of their art as referring to the Messianic king. This interpretation is admirably in accord with the account of what happened in Jerusalem. The narrator seems at that point to have no thought that the star might have been a guide to the magi to direct them to the exact spot where the child was born. On the contrary, they had to inquire their way; and it was only on the basis of Messianic prophecy, interpreted by experts, that they started out for Bethlehem.
When they started out, they saw the star again; and, seeing it, they rejoiced. Then it "went before them until it came and stood over the place where the young child was."20 It is these words alone which really give any /pg. 225/ serious difficulty to the natural, as distinguished from the supernatural, way of interpreting what is said about the star. How could the star "go before" them, how could it stand over a particular place, if it was a natural phenomenon in the heavens? Do not these words clearly indicate that the narrator
conceives of the star as a phenomenon near to the earth, and thus (to use our modern terminology) as clearly supernatural?21
Plausible though such considerations are, we do not think that they are at all decisive. They fail to take account of the poetical, oriental way of describing events that we should describe in very different terms. Do Matthew's words mean anything more than that when the magi started out by night upon their journey to Bethlehem they were cheered on their way by the star which shone down upon them from the heavens? Does the narrator intend to do more than picture for us that last stage of the long journey and describe for us the joy that filled the magi's hearts? Or even if a fresh appearance of the star is meant, as distinguished from an appearance that had been taking place every night, might that not he explained by the reappearance of a phenomenon which had been invisible for some months? They had been in doubt whether they were really on the right way; the star had appeared in the East, but then had disappeared; and in Jerusalem they had been obliged in their perplexity to go about seeking advice. But now when they started out for Bethlehem, perhaps uncertain whether the information that had been given them was correct, the star which they had seen in the East was up there again in the heavens, lighting them on the way. It seemed to go before them while they journeyed, as celestial bodies do when one moves upon the earth; and at last, when they came to Bethlehem and had found by inquiry the house where there was a new-born babe, there stood the star in the heavens still, shining down upon them as they entered into the house.
No doubt, when we propose such an interpretation, we may be faced by a charge of inconsistency. We have been very severe, it may be said, upon the rationalizers, who regarded the narratives as historical but explained the /pg. 226/ miracles away; and now here we are ourselves proposing a natural interpretation which shall make the story of the magi more palatable to modern men!
In reply, we may say that we never denied the possibility of a wide range of figurative interpretation, especially in oriental books. What we objected to in Paulus and the rationalizers was something quite different. It was not by figurative interpretation that they endeavored to remove the supernatural from the New Testament books; on the contrary, so far as exegesis was concerned, they held a thoroughly supernaturalistic view. They held that the narrators for their part were quite convinced that the happenings were supernatural, but that this view which the narrators held was false. We, on the other hand, if we really decide to adopt the interpretation set forth above, are maintaining that the narrator himself intended to designate a star in the heavens rather than one that actually moved along with travellers upon the earth, and that if we interpret his expressions in a literal sense we are simply failing to get his meaning. It is rather strange that we defenders of the Bible should often be designated as "literalists," and still more strange that we should be said to favor "literalistic interpretation." As a matter of fact, in many cases it is those who deny the truthfulness of the Bible who are the real literalists; in many cases they insist upon a baldly literal interpretation which is really quite absurd. To indicate what we mean, it is only necessary to point to those popular opponents of Christianity who ridicule the representation of "the Lamb's wife" in order to discredit the Book of Revelation. But we might also point, perhaps, to more academically respectable examples of what we mean. Thus when Old Testament scholars interpret such an utterance as "I will have mercy and not sacrifice" as indicating opposition on the writer's part to the sacrificial system, we are bound to say that that seems to us to be an extreme literalism which is quite unjustified in the interpretation of an oriental book—and indeed for that matter in the interpretation of any book. The truth is that there can be no hard and fast rule for the decision between literal and figurative interpretation. What we must try to do in any individual case is to read the passage in question sympathetically, so as to enter into the mind of the writer. When we do so, we may perhaps be able to decide with perfect impartiality whether the passage was literally or figuratively meant.
So it is in the present case. We have suggested a figurative interpretation which would permit us to regard the star of the magi as a natural phenomenon. But we are not conscious, in doing so, of any apologetic bias. The reason why we are not conscious of any apologetic bias is that if the figurative interpretation should prove to be wrong and the literal interpretation right—that is, if the writer of the second chapter of Matthew regarded the "star," not as a conjunction /pg. 227/ or the like, but as something so near to the earth that it could actually go along with an observer as he walked from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and could actually stand still over a particular house—we should still have no objection of principle against regarding the narrative as true. When once we have accepted the entrance of the supernatural in connection with the appearance of Jesus in this world, we are no longer interested in setting exact limits to the extent to which the supernatural is to be found. Of course it would be different if in any particular the supernatural element in the narrative appeared in a form that could be regarded as unworthy of God. But that would not be the case with the star, even if it was supernatural in the fullest sense. If a sound exegesis of the Gospel of Matthew should show that the Evangelist regarded the star as having literally gone before the magi as the pillar of fire went before the Israelites in the desert, we should have no objection of principle against accepting that as a fact. But, as it is, we think that the matter is in doubt. The figurative interpretation is, on the one hand, by no means certain; but on the other hand it cannot be called impossible. If, unlike ourselves, any modern readers hold that the historicity of the narrative can be maintained only if the figurative interpretation is right, and if (as we think they ought to do) they find independent reasons for maintaining the historicity of the narrative, then we think they are perfectly justified in adopting the figurative interpretation. For ourselves, we cannot find, on the basis of either interpretation, anything in the narrative that is unworthy of God.
A moral objection is, indeed, sometimes raised against the story of the magi. If, it is said, the magi were guided aright by astrological calculations, if their conception of the relation between the
movements of the heavenly bodies and events upon the earth actually led them in this case to the feet of the new-born king, then the stamp of God's approval would be put upon a harmful pseudoscience; the magi and those who came into contact with them would be confirmed in their superstition. Such confirmation of what is false, it is said, would be unworthy of the God of truth.
This objection has had a great vogue all through the course of modern naturalistic criticism. But we are unable to regard it as very serious. Who can say how far God could or could not stoop to human weakness in his treatment of the wise men from the East? In countless cases, as we know, error has become the stepping-stone to truth; even astrology, as has often been observed, was the ancestor of true astronomical science. No, we are unable to regard it as unworthy of God when these strangers were led by their searching of the heavens to bring their gifts to the infant Saviour. It was not astrology, moreover, which played the decisive part; what really led the magi to the feet of /pg. 228/ Jesus was not astrological calculation, but the prophecies of God's Word—the prophecies which spread abroad throughout the East the expectation of a Messianic king.22
We shall not pause here to examine the various hypotheses which have been proposed regarding the star. Many attempts have been made to identify it with some known phenomenon of the heavens, and thus to fix the year of Jesus' birth. The most famous of such attempts was that of Kepler, who thought that a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of the Fish, which took place in the year 7 B.C., was the occasion of the magi's journey.23 This hypothesis has recently been defended as altogether possible, with abundant references to astrological speculation, by the Roman Catholic scholar, Steinmetzer.24 Certainly something is to be said for it; and the date which it fixes for Jesus' birth is not at all impossible.
We do not at all unite in the scorn which some modern scholars have expressed for such attempts to identify the star of the magi. But
certainty has at any rate not been attained by any one of them. And the present writer is quite without the expert knowledge which would be necessary in order that he might enter fruitfully into the discussion. Many views are possible with regard to this matter; but enough perhaps has been said to show that, whether the star be regarded as natural or as supernatural, there is no decisive reason why the appearance of it should not be regarded as historical.
Neither the miraculous character of the narratives in general, therefore, nor the account of the angels or the star in particular, is sufficient to cast discredit upon the New Testament accounts of the birth and infancy of our Lord. There is, indeed, a presumption against the supernatural; but that presumption has, in this case, we think, been overcome. The supernatural happenings recorded in the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke would no doubt be unbelievable if they stood alone; but it is different when they are taken in connection /pg. 229/ with the entire New Testament representation of the person of the Lord. But even if we have thus overcome the initial presumption against the supernatural, are there not independent objections against the historicity of these infancy narratives? Or do the narratives, irrespective of the supernatural, look as though they might be correct? Are they in accord with what might reasonably be expected? Is the information that they contain, even about what is not supernatural, of a kind that might have been founded in fact? Are the actions attributed to the characters in accordance with psychological probability? These questions were partly answered when we considered. for example, the integrity of Lk. 1–2 and the relation between that narrative and the narrative in the Gospel according to Matthew. But a few points still call for brief comment.
In the first place, what shall be thought of the genealogies? We have considered the relation between them, and have endeavored to show that they are not contradictory. But aside from the relation between them, are they inherently likely to be correct? Is it probable that genuine information should have been preserved about the lineage of
Joseph, and that such information has actually been recorded in the genealogies of Matthew and Luke? There is really no reason whatever for answering these questions in the negative. At first sight, indeed, it may perhaps seem strange that a person in such humble circumstances as was Joseph should have had preserved to him the record of his ancestors for many generations back. But such an objection ignores the remarkable tenacity of genealogical traditions in the East. Whatever may be thought of the assertion by Julius Africanus to the effect that Herod the Great had commanded the public genealogical records of the Jews to be destroyed, such a command would not affect private records.25 That there were genealogical records after the time of Herod is shown by the matterof-course way in which Josephus speaks of his own ancestry.26 Certainly it is not at all antecedently improbable that a tradition of Davidic descent could have been preserved in the family of Joseph, and that such a tradition would be correct.27
There is nothing improbable, moreover, in the actual genealogies as they /pg. 230/ stand in the Gospels. If, indeed, the genealogy in Matthew were intended as a complete record of actual physical descent, it would present serious difficulties; for the number of generations between the Exile and the time of Christ is much smaller than would be expected in view of the length of the time. But as a matter of fact that genealogy is not intended to be taken in any such way. In the genealogy in Luke, on the other hand, the number of generations is just about what might naturally be expected.
It has often been asked whether the genealogies existed separately before they were incorporated in the Gospels. And if they did exist separately, did they in their separate form contain any reference to the virgin birth or did they simply make Jesus the son of Joseph without hint of anything peculiar in that relationship? Did the Matthæan genealogy, for example, simply end with the words, "Joseph begat Jesus"?
Even if this question should be answered in the affirmative, we should not have any denial of the virgin birth; for, as has already been observed, the words, "Joseph begat Jesus," could be understood in the same putative or legal sense as that in which similar words are to be understood elsewhere in the genealogy. Moreover, even if the person who compiled this genealogy thought, when he included the words, "Joseph begat Jesus," that Jesus was in a physical sense the son of Joseph, that fact would not militate against the fact of the virgin birth; for there certainly was a time—during the earthly ministry of Jesus—when the virgin birth, even if it was a fact, was unknown among Jesus' disciples.
But we think that the question whether the genealogies existed in separate form prior to their incorporation in the Gospels is wrongly put when the separate genealogies are regarded as being necessarily genealogies of Jesus. Rather should it be said that the genealogies were genealogies of Joseph before they became genealogies of Jesus; they represented a family tradition which was added to from generation to generation.
A special question is raised by the mention of four women in the Matthæan genealogy; Thamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah. The view has often been held that these women are mentioned by way of answer to a Jewish slander regarding Mary the mother of Jesus;28 the Jews, it is said, had maintained, in caricature of the Christian story of the virgin birth, that Jesus was born out of wedlock; and now Matthew answers this slander by /pg. 231/ pointing to the irregularities which had already prevailed in the case of certain women in the kingly line; Thamar and Rahab and the wife of Uriah were connected with shameful stories and Ruth was a foreigner; hence there was no reason for the Jews to reject the Messiahship of Jesus even if they were right in supposing that there was something shameful about his birth. This hypothesis, if correct, would only increase, if anything, the weight of the Matthæan testimony to the virgin birth of Jesus; for it would show that belief in the virgin birth had had a considerable history before this infancy
narrative was written; it would show that the Jewish opponents of Christianity had already recognized the doctrine of the supernatural conception as one of the essential beliefs of the early Church against which they needed to direct their attack. Such a development—thesis, attack, answer to the attack—could not already have been completed if the belief of the disciples in the virgin birth was any new thing. As a matter of fact, however, we doubt very much whether the hypothesis, so far as it is based upon the names of the women in the genealogy, is correct. Would the compiler of the genealogy, or the author who inserted it at the present place, ever have consented, even for the moment and for the sake of the argument, to compare the mother of Jesus with women in whose lives any shameful thing could be found? Perhaps it might be said in reply that the reference would be one of contrast rather than of analogy: if even shameful relationships with women could be used by God in the transmission of the kingly line, the author might be intending to say, how much more the creative action of the Holy Spirit! But this reply would not be altogether satisfactory. After all, the writer would still be bringing Mary the mother of Jesus into a sort of connection with shameful things; and that he would probably have shrunk from doing. On the whole, therefore, it is at least very doubtful whether the mention of the women in the genealogy has any polemic reference against Jewish slander. It remains perfectly possible that the women were mentioned even before the last link of the genealogy was added, and that they were mentioned not because they were shameful, but merely because for one reason or another they were noteworthy. The problem presented by the mention of these women is as yet unsolved.29 /pg. 232/
Another minor problem is presented by the division of the Matthæan genealogy into three groups of fourteen generations each. We are not concerned here with the purpose of this division, but only with the fact that the last of the three groups seems at first sight to contain only thirteen generations instead of the specified fourteen. One solution of the problem is to say that Mary is counted as a "generation"—that is, as a link in the genealogy—between Joseph
and Jesus. There is really nothing preposterous about this suggestion, in view of the author's broad use of the term "generation" and of the related term translated "begat." On the whole, however, it seems better to adopt the solution which was favored by Edward Robinson, in his Harmony of the Gospels.30 According to that solution, David is counted both at the end of the first division and at the beginning of the second. The second division then ends with Josias, and the third division begins with Jechonias and, including Jesus, embraces the fourteen "generations," or members of the genealogy, that are sought. There is justification for this hypothesis in the language that is employed when the enumeration is made. The first division is said to include the generations from "Abraham to David"; the expression names both Abraham and David and thus indicates that both are to be counted. Similarly, David is named in the expression designating the second group, and so is to be counted there also. But what designates the end of the second group and the beginning of the third is not a person but an epoch—"the exile to Babylon"—and therefore "the persons who are reckoned as coeval with this epoch…are not reckoned before it. After the epoch the enumeration begins again with Jechoniah, and ends with Jesus."31
Certainly, therefore, when the true character and purpose of this genealogy are understood, there is no objection against supposing that the information that it contains is correct, as there is no objection to a similarly favorable estimate of the genealogy in Luke. /pg. 233/
But if the genealogies appended to the narratives contain nothing that may not well be true, what shall be said of the narratives themselves? Do they contain psychological or historical absurdities, or do they bear the marks of truth?
The latter estimate, we think, should be adopted. There are, of course, points in these narratives where some things are left unexplained; there are places where the motives of the characters are not perfectly clear. But such difficulties often constitute an argument
not against, but in favor of, the historicity of a narrative. A manufactured narrative tends to be perfectly plain: since it is the product of invention, one point in it naturally grows out of another. But a true narrative, on the other hand, often gives rise to many questions; the characters in it do not move in accordance with the logic of the narrator's mind, but in accordance with the infinite complexity of actual life, of which only a fraction can ever be recorded. Thus if in these infancy narratives there are some things that are not perfectly clear, that fact in itself does not show at all that the narratives are not true.
What are the points that have been thought to be unnatural? Some of them have already been considered in connection with our discussion of the integrity of the Lucan narrative. We showed in that connection that the attitude of Mary the mother of Jesus, though unnatural if Jesus was the son of Joseph, is perfectly natural on the basis of the virgin birth. Objection has, indeed, sometimes been raised to her going to Elisabeth as recorded in Lk. 1:39. How could a merely betrothed Jewish maiden make a long journey like that alone? Would such a journey have been in accord with the custom of those days? Because of such objections, some scholars have supposed that the events recorded in Mt. 1:18–25, including the marriage of Joseph and Mary, are to be put before instead of after Mary's visit to Elisabeth.32 But in that case are we to suppose that Joseph accompanied Mary to Elisabeth's home? He might have been expected to do so if the marriage had already taken place; but then it becomes strange that he is not mentioned in Lk. 1:39–56. This latter consideration is perhaps not altogether decisive; it is barely possible that in view of the subordinate place of Joseph in the whole narrative his presence on this occasion might be passed over without mention —just as even Zacharias is here out of view. On the whole, however, the hypothesis of a marriage prior to the visit of Mary to Elisabeth will be felt to raise more difficulty than it removes; the natural impression which the reader of Lk. 1:39 receives is that Mary visited Elisabeth at once after the annunciation and without waiting for any determination regarding her relations with Joseph. The events of Mt.
1:18–25 /pg. 234/ are in all probability to be put not before, but after, Mary's three months in Judæa.
But even if that be so, the journey of Mary does not become incredible. To say that a betrothed Jewish maiden of the first century could not under any circumstances make a journey unaccompanied by the man to whom she was betrothed is to claim a degree of familiarity with the customs of that day that far transcends our actual knowledge. And it must always be remembered that the circumstances of this case were very peculiar; Mary had just passed through a stupendous experience, and the heavenly messenger who had appeared to her had himself suggested by implication her visit to her relative in Judæa.
Even less important are the objections that have been raised against the story of the birth and circumcision of John.
If it is asked, for example, how Zacharias could have continued his ministrations at the Temple, in accordance with Lk. 1:23, if he was dumb and so could no longer satisfy the Mosaic requirements of physical perfection for the priests, we may simply say two things. In the first place, Lk. 1:23 does not necessarily mean that Zacharias continued active in the Temple ministry, but may mean only that he continued in Jerusalem during the week's period of service of his course; and, in the second place, it may well be doubted whether a lack of the power of speech which was unaccompanied by any obvious physical imperfections and which might be regarded as purely temporary, would unfit a priest even for active service. In connection with Lk. 1:60, it is quite trivial to ask how Elisabeth could know that the child's name was John, since Zacharias was dumb and so could not tell her of the directions given him by the angel. The context provides a sufficient answer. The answer simply is that the art of writing was not unknown in those days! Then it is asked why the bystanders should have had to make signs to Zacharias,33 since we have been told only that he was dumb and not that he was deaf. But surely that difficulty also is trivial. As has often been observed, it
is natural to use signs in communicating with one who can reply only with signs. Moreover, the signs in this case would be of the very simplest sort; it would only be necessary to turn to Zacharias with a gesture of interrogation. Such little touches as that tell in favor of the historicity of the narrative rather than against it: they are really very natural as describing an actual scene, but might have been avoided in a fictitious account.
In the second chapter of the Lucan narrative, objection has sometimes been /pg. 235/ raised against Mary's journey with Joseph to Bethlehem at the time of the enrolment. If the notion of the writer is that an enrolment of women was necessary, as well as of men, that, we are told, is contrary to all historical probability. And otherwise how could Mary have decided to make such a journey just before the birth of her child; would not her condition have made it natural for her to stay at home? An obvious answer to this question is that it was just her condition that made it natural for her not to stay at home, but to go with Joseph to Bethlehem. In the first place, she would desire not to be deprived of the protection of Joseph at such a time; in the second place, she expected her son to be the Messiah, and so might naturally desire that He should be born at Bethlehem. Her journey, moreover—whether this last point was in her mind or not— may actually have served the purpose of averting the slander which might have come upon her at Nazareth because of the apparently premature birth of her child. We are not saying that these are just the considerations that determined Mary's journey.34 But they are sufficient, at least, to show that various motives for the journey may be suggested; the representation in the narrative at this point, therefore, presents no psychological or historical improbabilities.
Such improbabilities, however, are often found especially in the story of the magi. We have already discussed those difficulties—real or supposed—in that story which concern the supernatural element; but now we must consider the difficulties that are found in the realm of psychology. Quite aside from the question of the supernatural, it is
said, the actions of the characters in the story, especially of Herod, are quite out of accord with all psychological probability.
In the first place, when the magi came to Jerusalem with their inquiry for a king of the Jews, would Herod have fanned the flames of Messianic hopes by calling a meeting of the "chief priests and scribes"35 to ask where the Messiah was to be born? And, indeed, before that, would the magi have been naïve enough to ask so politically dangerous a question in such a public way under the very eyes of a suspicious king? Then, after the scribes had pointed to Bethlehem, why did Herod use secrecy in calling the magi to him? The whole city, according to Mt. 2:3, had already been set in an uproar; what possible purpose, therefore, could secrecy now serve? And did Herod actually think the magi childlike enough to suppose that he would really want to worship /pg. 236/ a king of the Jews who would be a claimant to his own throne? Why did he not simply send spies after them, so that when they reached their destination he could put the child out of the way?
These difficulties are not so formidable as at first sight they may stem to be. They are all based upon the erroneous assumptions that the magi were animated by motives of worldly wisdom and that Herod in his declining years was as cool and calculating as a modern psychological expert. No doubt the magi were very incautious in making their inquiry in Jerusalem. If they had employed the intelligence service of whatever country it was from which they came, they might have learned enough about Herod to know that he would not look with favor upon inquiries about a king of the Jews. But then it must be remembered that the thoughts of those magi were centred upon the heavens and not upon political conditions on this earth. There were many impractical men in the strange, complex religious life of those days; in such an age, we may well find room for these children of the East with their disconcerting questions. Incautious, moreover, as their questions no doubt were, we have no right to assume that Herod would have thought it safe just to kill them out of hand. The Messianic hope, after all, was very widely held in those
days; and Herod knew that it could not possibly be put down by force. Harsh and cruel though he was, he never altogether relinquished the pose of being a Jewish, rather than a foreign, king. Who can say what trouble he may have had if he had stopped the mouths of the magi by a public act of violence? On the whole, there was something to be said for the cunning method that he actually adopted—a method, moreover, which is quite in accordance with his character as it appears in the pages of Josephus. He pretended to be devout in his attitude toward Old Testament prophecy, but meanwhile planned to make Old Testament prophecy harmless by secret measures of his own. As for the reason why he used secrecy in calling the magi to him, that is fairly obvious. He did not want to let the people know of his hypocritical words about worship of the newborn child; such words might deceive these strangers, but it would hardly deceive those who knew Herod well. And in general he did not want to give the matter any greater publicity than it already had. The meeting of the chief priests and scribes may have been necessary in order that he might show his devoutness as a Jew; and then it may also have been necessary because of his own superstitious fears. He really feared, perhaps, the rise of a Messianic king; and perhaps he really thought that the expert judgment of the scribes would help him to find that king in order that he might kill him when he was still a child. Hence the meeting may /pg. 237/ have seemed to him to be necessary for the accomplishment of his plan. But that meeting over, the less publicity that should be given to the magi the better it would be. But why did not Herod have the magi "shadowed" instead of trusting them so naïvely to bring back word to him after they had found the child? No doubt that other plan might have appealed to the modern police. But there may have been difficulties connected with it. If the magi had observed that they were being followed, might they not have been discouraged in their search, and so might not the chance of finding the dangerous child have been lost? Why, then, did not Herod send some one along with the magi under pretence of friendly assistance?36 That ruse also might have been detected. Something may perhaps be said, here again, for Herod's plan. Perhaps indeed he was unwise; but then was
Herod always wise in his mad closing years?37 Who can say, moreover, whether an attempt may not actually have been made to spy upon the magi as they went to the house where they found the child, and whether such an attempt may not have failed? If it failed, then Herod's purpose could be accomplished only by wholesale murder; and from such murder no one who knew Herod in that last period of his life could suppose that he would shrink.
There is no reason, therefore, for saying that this narrative contains psychological absurdities. The actions, no doubt, are not in all cases what modern men would have done, and in some cases, no doubt, they are very foolish or incautious; but as attributed to men of that time, and to those particular persons, they cannot be shown to be impossible.
CHAPTER X:
THE BIRTH NARRATIVES AND
SECULAR HISTORY
It has been shown in the preceding chapter that there is nothing in the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke which does not in itself look as though it could be historical. That conclusion will of course be denied by those who are opposed on principle to an acceptance of the supernatural, or else do not believe that the presumption which everywhere prevails against the acceptance of the supernatural has as a matter of fact been overcome in the case of the life of Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity. But if a man is once impressed with the evidence in favor of a supernatural origin of Christianity, he should find no special objection to those particular miracles that are
narrated in the infancy narratives of the First and Third Gospels; and the non-miraculous elements of the stories also are by no means devoid of psychological and historical probability.
But if these narratives are thus not condemned by their own inherent qualities, how is it when they are compared with secular history and with the rest of the New Testament? Under the former head— comparison with secular history—two points have been thought to offer difficulty. They are, first, the massacre of the infants at Bethlehem and, second, the census of Quirinius.
The former point can be dismissed very quickly. It is true that Josephus, our informant about Jewish history, says nothing about the massacre of the innocents; and it is also true that the passages in the works of historians that actually mention this event are so late and so likely to have been derived from the Gospel of Matthew as to possess little value. But the argument from silence is in this case altogether devoid of weight. No doubt, from our point of view, the massacre of young children would be a particularly atrocious form of murder, which would have to be mentioned in any detailed account of current events—even, perhaps, in Chicago! But in ancient times, when the exposure of infants was a common practice, which is alluded to, for example, in one of the non-literary papyri, in the most casual possible manner as an ordinary feature of the life of that day,1 the murder of children would /pg. 239/ probably not be regarded with any special horror. Moreover, we ought not to exaggerate the number of the infants who would be killed. If Bethlehem was a small village, as it probably was, then the number of male children in it under two years of age would not exceed perhaps twenty or thirty. In the orgies of blood and cruelty that marked the closing years of Herod's reign, the removal of a score of children in an obscure village might well escape the notice of our one historian. But even if Josephus knew of the incident, and even if he thought it in itself worthy of remark, there was in this case a special reason for his silence. The incident involved Jewish Messianic hopes; and without doubt Josephus purposely avoided the mention of such things in the
history that he wrote for Roman readers. There is no reason, therefore, for supposing that if the massacre of the innocents had really happened Josephus would necessarily have included it in his historical work.
But something more positive needs also to be said. Although the massacre of the innocents is not directly attested by secular history, it is exactly in accord with what we know of the character of Herod in his declining years. Herod the Great was an able monarch, but in the last years of his reign he entered upon a career of cruelty that reached the verge of madness. His actions in putting to death his own children and his beloved wife, and his plan (interrupted only by his death) of butchering all the leading citizens of Jerusalem in the theatre, possess just exactly that quality of wild and useless bloodthirstiness which appears in the massacre of the innocents at Bethlehem. Never was a story more completely in character than this. In general we may say that the difficulty which has been found in the silence of secular history about the bloody deed at Bethlehem amounts to nothing at all.
Far more important is the other of the two objections which have been drawn from secular history against the truthfulness of our narrative—namely, the difficulty regarding the census of Quirinius.2 At that point we have a problem which, despite a certain amount of light that has been shed upon it in recent years, has not yet quite been cleared up.
The account of the census to which exception has been taken is found in Lk. 2:1–5. In this account, verse 1 presents no real difficulty. When it is said that "in those days a decree went forth from Cæsar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled," that does not at all mean that a census was to be taken, in the modern fashion, in all parts of the Empire in the same manner and on the same day. On the contrary, the language of the verse is fully satisfied if we think only of the announcement by Augustus of a general /pg. 240/ policy of enrolment for the Empire. It is not at all necessary to suppose that
this policy was carried out in any uniform manner, or even that it was carried out in every one of the provinces and vassal kingdoms at all. In accordance with the wise Roman policy of adaptation to local circumstances, a large amount of liberty would naturally be allowed to the several administrators and vassal monarchs. In Egypt, where, because of the discovery of the non-literary papyri, our information is particularly abundant, we find a census being taken under a regular fourteenyear cycle; a census was also taken, we know, in Italy and in Gaul and other provinces; and the census in Judæa in A.D. 6 is mentioned not only by the New Testament but also by Josephus.3 In some provinces, indeed, modern historians have asserted that no census was taken. But it is quite unnecessary for our present purpose to discuss the question whether this assertion is correct: for Luke says only that the decree of Augustus was issued; he does not say that it was completely carried out. Certainly the issuance of such a decree is altogether in accord with Augustan policy; there is a great abundance of evidence to show that this emperor was greatly concerned with an inventory both of the material resources of the Empire and of its man power. The "decree" mentioned in Lk. 2:1, though not directly attested elsewhere, is quite in line with all that we know with regard to Augustus' reign. There is not the slightest reason to think that it is not historical.
The real difficulty in the passage is found in connection with verse 2. This verse is to be translated as follows: "This happened as a first enrolment when Quirinius was governing Syria," or "This became a first enrolment when Quirinius was governing Syria."4 The expression is certainly peculiar; and the linguistic difficulty in it has been reflected in changes introduced by copyists. It is no wonder that conjectural emendations of so difficult an expression have been attempted in ancient and modern times; and the possibility that some primitive corruption has crept in cannot altogether be excluded. But since the best-attested text is not absolutely impossible, that text must be made the basis of our discussion. The verse as it stands seems to distinguish the enrolment here referred to from one or more subsequent enrolments; it seems to mean that this
enrolment was either the first that was made in the Empire as a whole or else the first among two or more that were made during the rule of Quirinius over Syria. Since in Acts 5:37 the well-known enrolment under Quirinius in A.D. 6 is mentioned by this same writer, it is natural to think /pg. 241/ that he is in our passage distinguishing an earlier event from that. Thus he seems to mean that there was an earlier enrolment under Quirinius as distinguished from the enrolment in A.D. 6. That earlier enrolment must apparently have taken place during the reign of Herod the Great. Herod is mentioned in Lk. 1:5, and there is no evidence to show that he is regarded as having died in the interval between the time referred to in that passage and the time of the birth of Jesus. No doubt, therefore, Luke as well as Matthew regards the birth of Jesus as having taken place before the death of Herod in 4 B.C.; and since the birth of Jesus was connected with the census, the latter too must apparently have taken place at the same time. The problem, therefore, if the narrative is to be regarded as accurate at this point, is to find room for a census during the rule of Quirinius over Syria and yet prior to the death of Herod the Great.
Some progress toward the solution of this problem has been made by the patient researches of recent years. It has been rendered altogether probable, on the basis of information quite independent of the Third Gospel, that Quirinius was actually legate of Syria at a time prior to his well-known legateship that began in A.D. 6. This former legateship of
Quirinius is accepted by some scholars who are as far as possible removed from any desire of rescuing the trustworthiness of the Gospel according to Luke. But the difficulty is that the former legateship of Quirinius apparently cannot be put quite early enough. Saturninus, we know, was legate of Syria from 9 to 6 B.C.; and Varus was legate from 6 B.C. until after the death of Herod in 4 B.C. The former legateship of Quirinius, therefore, cannot be put earlier than about 3–2 B.C. How, then, can a census under Quirinius have taken
place, as the Lucan narrative seems to represent it as having taken place, in the days of Herod the Great?
With respect to this difficulty, two things may be said. In the first place, one may suppose that although the enrolment began during the reign of Herod, it was not brought to completion until after his death. In favor of this suggestion may perhaps be urged the very peculiar expression that is used by Luke. "This became a first enrolment," Luke says, according to one possible interpretation of his words, "when Quirinius was governing Syria"; or "This took place [that is, was brought to completion, was actually carried out] when Quirinius was governing Syria." Possibly the intention is to distinguish the earlier stages of the process of enrolment—during which earlier stages the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem took place—from the consummation or final carrying out of the decree, so far as Judæa was concerned, under the /pg. 242/ (earlier) legateship of Quirinius. This solution of the problem is perhaps not quite impossible.
More probable, however, is the other suggestion that has been made in this connection—the suggestion, namely, that the rule of Quirinius in Syria which is here referred to is not his legateship, but a special commission of a military kind which he held during the legateship of Saturninus or Varus. There are some slight indications that Quirinius did hold such a special commission; and there is at any rate nothing that absolutely forbids us to suppose that he did so. The special commission of Quirinius might include expressly the duty of taking a census. Hence it might be possible for the author of the Third Gospel to speak of a census taken in Palestine in the closing years of Herod the Great as being the former of two enrolments under Quirinius.5
Our conclusion, then, is that although the problem of the enrolment has not as yet been fully solved, there is no reason to think that it might not be solved if our knowledge should become more complete than it is at present. Certainly the example of other places in which the Lucan writings were formerly thought to be inaccurate about
matters of civil administration, but have now been vindicated in the most thoroughgoing way, should make the historian very cautious about asserting the presence of an error at this point. Objection has indeed sometimes been raised not merely to the mention of Quirinius, but also to the manner in which the census is represented as being taken. A method of enrolment by which every man, wherever he should be living at the time, should have to go to his ancient ancestral home would, it is said, be quite impractical; it would involve the necessity of "a regular migration."6
In reply to some such objections, Ramsay7 has appealed to an Egyptian papyrus document8 which directs that for the purposes of enrolment every person shall go from the place where he is residing at the moment to the place where his home is found. But of course the analogy is not quite complete. It is one thing for a man to go to the place where he owns a home and another thing for him to go, as is apparently meant in Lk. 2:4f., to the home of his remote ancestry. It has often been suggested, indeed, that Joseph owned property in Bethlehem; and if so, that fact would provide a more obvious /pg. 243/ official reason for this journey. We are by no means certain that the assumption of such an official reason is contrary to the language used by Luke. If the reason for the journey was Joseph's possession of property in Bethlehem, and the reason for his possession of property in Bethlehem was, in turn, his belonging to the family of David, then perhaps it was not inaccurate for the historian, omitting the immediate cause, to say simply that he went up to Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David.
On the whole, however, it seems better, rejecting the analogy of the Egyptian census, to regard this enrolment as taking place in accordance with a Jewish method by which family relationships determined the classification. There is no real absurdity in such a supposition; for it need not be assumed that all members of the Jewish people could trace their lineage so far back as could Joseph. In Joseph's family the tradition of Davidic descent was preserved from generation to generation; Bethlehem, therefore, retained its
position for that family as the ancestral home and as the place to which recourse needed to be had in any tribal census. But in the case of other families, where only the nearer ancestry could be given, no such journeyings would be required. A census conducted by the tribal method would therefore not require a "regular migration" as Keim supposed.9
That a census should have been required in the dominions of Herod by Roman decree is altogether in accord with what we know of the thoroughly subservient position of this vassal king; but that Herod should have been allowed to carry out the decree by a method which would respect the customs of his people is also in accord with the Roman policy of adaptation to local circumstances. When in A.D. 6 a census was carried out in Judæa by the distinctly Roman method, discontentment and disorder were the result; but the earlier census, since it was not so obviously a foreign measure, did not arouse the hostility of the people. Our treatment of the intricate question of the census has been of the most cursory kind. But enough, perhaps, has been said to show that if on the basis of a general examination we have come to have a high view of the trustworthiness of Luke-Acts, and particularly a high view of the trustworthiness of the infancy section, the difficulty about the census does not furnish any adequate reason why we should reverse that favorable estimate.
CHAPTER XI:
THE BIRTH NARRATIVES AND THE
REST OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
In the preceding chapter it has been argued that there is no contradiction between the two infancy narratives and secular history. But what shall be said about their relation to the rest of the New Testament? That question must now be examined with some care. It will be convenient to begin with what the Gospels permit us to learn regarding the attitude of Jesus' contemporaries—the attitude, that is, of those who came into contact with Him during His life upon earth. Was that attitude such as to exclude the historicity of the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke?
In this connection it may freely be admitted that according to the Gospels there was no general knowledge of the virgin birth of Christ among the people of Palestine during the period of the public ministry; the people of Nazareth, for example, are represented in Mt. 13:55 as saying with respect to Jesus, "Is not this the carpenter's son?", and are similarly represented in Lk. 4:22. Evidently Jesus was generally regarded simply as the son of Joseph. But what of it? Surely Joseph and Mary would not have spoken publicly about a thing which in the nature of the case could not be proved, and which, therefore, could, until Jesus' claims should be vindicated in some palpable way, only give rise to suspicion and slander. There is not the slightest evidence in Lk. 1–2 and Mt. 1–2 to show that the story of the supernatural conception was narrated by Joseph or Mary to the shepherds, to the magi, or to Simeon. We have, indeed, found it not improbable that Mary confided in her kinswoman Elisabeth; indeed, she must certainly be supposed to have done so if the greeting in Lk. 1:42–45 indicates knowledge on Elisabeth's part that the child was already conceived in Mary's womb, and if, as is probable, Elisabeth knew that the marriage, as distinguished from the betrothal, of Joseph and Mary had not yet taken place. But such confidence of Mary in Elisabeth, to whom she had by implication been directed by the angel, is very different from any general publication of her strange experience; and there is not the slightest reason to suppose that Elisabeth betrayed Mary's confidence by telling others /pg. 245/ of what Mary had told her. Moreover, Elisabeth and Zacharias were both of them aged at the time when John the Baptist was born; they
probably did not long continue to live. For many reasons, therefore, it is unlikely that the story of the virgin birth should by their agency have become known. As for Mary herself, the implication, of the Lucan narrative at least, is that she, in her quiet, meditative way, kept the wonderful secret locked in her heart. There was, therefore, no reason why, even if the virgin birth was a fact, the contemporaries of Jesus during the public ministry should have had any knowledge of it. Hence their ignorance, as attested by the Gospels, provides no argument at all against the historicity of the infancy narratives. A similar consideration is valid also in the case of the brothers of Jesus. In the Gospel of John we are told expressly that at a certain period, at least, in the public ministry, Jesus' brothers did not believe on Him; and this general representation of their attitude is on the whole confirmed by the scanty references to them in the Synoptic Gospels. Such an attitude on their part would perhaps hardly have been likely if they had known of the virgin birth, though conceivably it might be said that even if they had been told of it, they might have disbelieved the story. But is it likely that Joseph or Mary would have told them of the wonderful event? This question must certainly be answered in the negative. If there were any persons who would not be told, it was just the younger brothers of Jesus. Surely what Mary would do with her knowledge of the wonderful, unbelievable event would be to keep it as a secret until the time when the lofty destiny of her son should be made known by God in some unmistakable way.
The case would of course be different if Mary herself1 displayed ignorance of the virgin birth; for of course she at least could not be ignorant of it if it was a fact. Such ignorance on the part of Mary has been found by many scholars in Mk. 3:21, 31. In Mk. 3:21 it is said that Jesus' friends2 "went out to lay hold on him; for they said, He is beside himself." The expression rendered in the English Bible, "his friends," is really incapable of translation; it means "those who came from his home," "his people," "those who were connected with him." Now ten verses further on, in Mk. 3:31, it is said: "Then came his mother and his brethren and standing without sent to him, calling him." If the former passage is interpreted by the latter, then the
persons who, according to verse 21, thought that He was beside himself3 turn out to be His mother and His brothers. But how could His mother have thought that /pg. 246/ He was beside Himself if she knew that He had come into the world by a stupendous miracle? Thus this passage, it is said, shows clearly that Mary was unaware of the virgin birth; and that fact shows, of course, that the virgin birth had never taken place.4 Few arguments against the virgin birth of Christ have been more persistently used than this. And yet upon any careful examination the argument is seen to be extraordinarily weak. Almost every step in it is doubtful. In the first place, it is doubtful who are meant by "his people" or "his friends" in Mk. 3:21. The expression is of a rather general character; that it designates only those who lived under the same roof with Jesus is by no means clear. In the second place, it is very doubtful whether verse 21 is to be interpreted by verse 31—that is, whether "His mother and His brethren," who sought Him according to verse 31, are represented as being the same as the persons who, according to verse 21, supposed that He was beside Himself. A passage of considerable length has intervened between the two verses, a passage in which is discussed the attitude of a class of persons quite distinct both from those who are mentioned in verse 21 and from those who are mentioned in verse 31. What indication is there that after turning aside to discuss the attitude of the scribes who had come down from Jerusalem,5 the author intends to return in verse 31 to exactly the point at which he had left off in verse 21? There is really no clear indication to this effect at all.
Indeed, we might almost argue that there is an indication to the contrary; we might almost argue that if the author had been intending to return to the point at which he had left off he would have had to express himself differently, that he would have had to indicate in some way that Jesus' mother and brethren, introduced into the narrative as though for the first time in verse 31, are the same persons as "His people" or "His friends" mentioned in verse 21. If the same persons are meant, why is such different terminology used? Of course the terminology in verse 31 is fixed by the utterance
of Jesus that follows; but why could that same terminology not have been used in verse 21? Perhaps it may be said that the terminology in each case was fixed in the tradition at a time when the incidents were narrated separately, and that when the incidents were combined in the Gospel the original terminology was allowed to remain. That suggestion is possible enough. But what right have we, then, to interpret one incident by the other? Is there any evidence whatever that the Evangelist meant to identify the persons mentioned in one /pg. 247/ incident with the persons mentioned (with very different terminology) in the other? We do not think that any such evidence can he found.
Even, therefore, if the persons referred to in verse 21 are members of the household in which Jesus had lived, and not merely persons who were connected with Him in some broader sense, it is still not clear that verse 31 mentions just those and only those particular members of the household who were designated in that former verse. The persons who, according to verse 21, thought that Jesus was beside Himself may therefore have been His brothers without any inclusion of His mother.
It should be observed that in verses 31–35 there is not the slightest indication of any unsympathetic attitude on the part of Jesus' mother toward Him or of any unsympathetic attitude on His part toward her. His mother and His brethren are represented as seeking Him, but that this was done in a hostile way is certainly not said. And Jesus' utterance, "Behold my mother and my brethren," is seriously misinterpreted if it is regarded as derogatory to His relationship with the family circle in which He had lived. By placing the tie that united Him with the disciples on the same plane as that which united Him with His brethren and sisters and mother, our Lord was not debasing the latter relationship, but was gloriously exalting the former.
Finally, suppose it should even be admitted for the sake of the argument (as in point of fact we do not admit at all) that Mary was present with those who said that He was beside Himself, would that
fact exclude knowledge on her part of the miracle of the virgin birth? We are very doubtful whether it would. It must be remembered that Mary's faith had suffered severe trials; Jesus had not lived at all the life that might have been expected of one who had been conceived by the Holy Ghost and was destined to occupy the throne of David for ever. Long quiet years had passed without the expected burst of glory; and now was begun a kind of public ministry that seemed to involve naught but opposition and suffering. Who can wonder if Mary was troubled by what she saw? Her perplexity would be the greater just because of her knowledge of the miracle of Jesus' birth. How great was the contrast between what she had expected in those first glorious days and what the years had actually brought forth! It is indeed unlikely that she would actually lose faith; it is unlikely that she would actually agree with those who said of her son that He was beside Himself. But that she might have stood quietly with them when they sought to halt Jesus in what they considered to be a mad career is not altogether beyond the bounds of possibility. No doubt her thoughts, because of her knowledge of what they did not know, were widely different from theirs; but she, too, because of her perplexity, might hope that Jesus /pg. 248/ would be led into a different career. We must remember that despite the stupendous destiny of her son and the miracle of His birth, Mary had actually been in a position of authority over Him during the long years when, according to Lk. 2:51, He had been subject to His earthly parents. Was it God's will that all guidance on her part was now to cease? Perhaps the thing may not have been quite so clear to her as some modern scholars think that it should have been.
What we have just been saying, however, has been said merely for the sake of the argument. Even if Mary was in some sort associated, no doubt silently, with those who said that Jesus was beside Himself, that would not exclude knowledge, on her part, of the miracle of His birth. But as a matter of fact there is no evidence that she was associated with them at all. It is only by the most adventurous kind of reasoning, therefore, that the third chapter of Mark has been made to furnish an argument against the virgin birth of Christ. Rightly
interpreted, the passage is quite consistent with the historicity of the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke.
A similar remark might be made about all the other indications which the Gospels afford regarding the attitude of Jesus' contemporaries. John 1:31, it is true, where John the Baptist is represented as saying with respect to Jesus: "And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water," has often been thought inconsistent with the first chapter of Luke. How could John the Baptist have failed to know Jesus if he was actually a relative of His, as he is said to have been in Lk. 1, and if the two children were so closely linked together by a series of wonderful events? But the objection is by no means insuperable. Zacharias and Elisabeth are expressly declared in Lk. 1:7 to have been old at the time when John was born; it is not impossible that they died before their child came to years of discretion. Some thirty years had passed before Jesus came to the baptism; it is not necessary to suppose that John and Jesus had ever come into contact during that period. Moreover, it is not clear whether the verb "knew" in the sentence, "I knew him not," in John 1:31 is used of ordinary acquaintanceship. It may possibly be used of a profound understanding which might have been lacking even though John was acquainted personally with Jesus, and perhaps even though he knew Him to be the promised Messiah. The passage may possibly intend only to contrast John's lack of understanding of the full meaning of his own baptizing work with the true purpose of that work as it existed in the mind of God. At any rate, the verse will certainly not bear the weight that has been hung upon it. It is perfectly capable of being understood in a /pg. 249/ way that involves no contradiction with the relation between John and Jesus as it is set forth in the first chapter of Luke.
Still more clearly must a similar conclusion be reached with regard to John's question, "Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?", in Mt. 11:3; Lk. 7:19. It may seem surprising that John should have doubted the Messianic mission of Jesus if there had
occurred in his own family the event narrated in Lk. 1:39–56. But the difficulty is diminished by considerations similar to those that we have just adduced. How much of those wonderful events would have become known to John even if they had happened in the manner that is set forth in the first chapter of Luke? We cannot definitely say. At any rate, the argument from John's perplexed question militates against the account of the baptism of Jesus in Mt. 3:17 and John 1:32–34, as much as it does against the infancy narrative. If John the Baptist really saw the heavens opened at the baptism of Jesus, and heard the voice from heaven, his doubting question in Mt. 11:3; Lk. 7:19 might at first sight seem to be impossible. But a little reflection serves to diminish this objection. Just because John's expectations about Jesus were set so high (not only by what he may have learned regarding what is recorded in the first chapter of Luke, but also by the event at the baptism), he was perplexed at the strange and apparently indecisive character of Jesus' ministry. Who can say that in his perplexity he may not have sought light by the question recorded in Matthew and Luke?
One other point, however, deserves to be mentioned before we leave the present phase of our subject. It has perhaps not received from opponents of the virgin birth quite the amount of attention that it deserves relatively to their other arguments. The point to which we refer concerns the attitude of the people of Nazareth, and, reflecting their attitude, the attitude of Jesus' opponents generally, toward the legitimacy of His birth. That attitude, so far as we can judge, was one of complete acquiescence in the view that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary. We have already considered this acquiescence so far as any possible knowledge of the story of the virgin birth is concerned; it would have been quite unnatural for the contemporaries of Jesus to have been told the story of the virgin birth even if that story was true; hence their ignorance of the story does not show at all that it was false. But here we are considering the matter from a slightly different angle. Suppose the events concerning the birth of Jesus were as they are recorded in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. Our present point is not that those events
might have given rise to a general belief in the virgin birth, but on the contrary that they might have given rise to slander. If the conception in Mary's womb really took place three months before her marriage with Joseph, then the birth, /pg. 250/ from the point of view of ordinary observers, was premature; and if the birth was premature, would not slander have resulted; and if slander had resulted, would it not have been revived during the public ministry by the bitter enemies of Jesus; and if it had been revived by the enemies of Jesus, would it not have been recorded in the Gospels as were other attacks? But since as a matter of fact there is no hint in the Gospels that any slander was raised against the birth of Jesus, and since, on the contrary, the objection of unbelievers was merely to the obscurity of His birth as a child of the carpenter, Joseph, must we not suppose that all even apparent basis of such slander was absent, and therefore that the virgin birth of Jesus as narrated in Lk. 1–2 and Mt. 1–2, which must have given rise to slander, is unhistorical? In other words, does not the same consideration, absence of slander, which excludes a really illegitimate birth of Jesus also exclude an apparently illegitimate birth such as the birth of Jesus would have been if the story in the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke were true?
These considerations are not without their importance. But they are important not because they really cast discredit upon the story of the virgin birth, but rather because they give us a salutary sense of the limitations of our knowledge. Are we to suppose, on the basis of the first chapter of Luke, that the conception in Mary's womb took place before her journey to Elisabeth? The answer even to that question is perhaps not entirely certain. There are indeed several considerations which make an affirmative answer very probable. It seems more natural in itself, in view of the whole character of the annunciation, to suppose that the conception took place immediately after the annunciation was given; the greeting of Elisabeth to Mary in Lk. 1:42–45 looks rather as though the child were already in Mary's womb as her own child was in her womb; above all, the difficulties of Joseph are perhaps best explained if Mary's pregnancy had lasted for
some time before the marriage took place. The first two of these considerations would be satisfied if we should suppose the marriage to have occurred before and not after Mary's visit to Elisabeth. In that case, the conception might have taken place immediately after the annunciation and prior to Elisabeth's greeting, and yet not have caused an apparently premature birth. But the last of the three considerations does seem to make an apparently premature birth highly probable. The perplexity which Joseph experienced because of Mary's condition does seem to indicate that her pregnancy had continued some time before the marriage took place.
Even so, however, it is not clear that a birth only six months after the marriage must necessarily have given rise to slander. It must be remembered that according to the narrative in Luke the birth occurred at a place remote /pg. 251/ from Nazareth, where the mother would not be under the gaze of prying eyes. How long a time was occupied by the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem we do not know. It may, furthermore, have been some years after the birth before the family returned to Nazareth. Would the (apparently) premature time of the birth then be known? But what we need to remember above all is that Joseph acknowledged Jesus as his son. There is to be found the real barrier against slander. If Joseph was really a "just" man, as he is said to have been in Mt. 1:19, his character would be known and his acknowledgment of the child would prevent all likelihood of slander. In the early period, there would be no particular reason for occasion of slander to be sought; for Joseph and Mary had then, for all we know, the good will of the inhabitants of Nazareth. And in the later period, after thirty years' acceptance of the birth of Jesus as a child of Joseph and Mary, it would be too late for the basis of slander to be found.
We have indeed insisted, in another connection, that Joseph would not gratuitously have exposed Mary to even the possibility of slander by a premature union with his wife. But it is one thing to say that such a possibility of slander would naturally be avoided, so far as it could be avoided by seemly conduct on the part of Joseph and Mary,
and quite another thing to say that when possibility of slander arose by a mysterious act of God, the possibility must necessarily have been converted into actuality. Thus the most that can be admitted is that the virgin birth of Christ, if it was really a fact, involved the risk of slander. To say that it involved the certainty of slander is going far beyond the truth. But if it did not involve the certainty of slander, and still more clearly if it did not involve even the probability of slander, then the absence of slander does not at all prove that the virgin birth was not a fact. We may hold, then, without fear of successful contradiction, that the attitude of Jesus' contemporaries during the period of the public ministry, as that attitude is recorded in the Gospels, is congruous with the truth of the birth narratives. But how is it with the attitude of the authors themselves? Do the authors of the Gospels confirm or do they contradict the wonderful incidents that are recorded in the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke? In particular, do they confirm or contradict those assertions which place the birth at Bethlehem and attribute the conception in Mary's womb to the Holy Ghost?
In the case of the First and Third Gospels this question was already answered when we proved that the first two chapters of each of those Gospels really belonged to the original form of the book. If the authors really included Mt. 1–2, Lk. 1–2 in their books, then of course they held the contents of these chapters to be true. The most that might still be alleged is that in the body /pg. 252/ of their works they have carelessly retained elements found in their sources, which with regard to the birth in Bethlehem and the supernatural conception were hostile to the view that the final authors themselves held. But this allegation cannot be substantiated. It is true that Matthew and Luke do not refer to the virgin birth from the third chapter to the end of their books (except in the words, "as was supposed", in connection with the genealogy in Lk. 3:23). But this fact is altogether without significance. Why should they mention again and again a thing that had already been narrated plainly enough at the proper place? And when they leave without correction the utterance of the inhabitants of Nazareth, "Is not this the son of
Joseph?", or, "Is not this the carpenter's son?", their doing so merely shows the faithfulness with which they have reported the conditions that prevailed during the public ministry of Jesus; it does not at all show any ignorance, on their own part or on the part of their sources, of the fact of the virgin birth.
So much may be said with regard to Matthew and Luke. But how is it with regard to Mark and John?
Unlike the other two Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel according to Mark contains no account of the virgin birth of our Lord. Great capital has been made out of that fact by many modern scholars. But seldom has the argument from silence been more incautiously used. Certainly the Gospel according to Mark contains no account of the virgin birth; but then the fact is that it contains no account of the birth of Jesus at all, and for it to have contained such an account would have been to run counter to the purpose and plan of the book. This Gospel was not intended to provide intimate details about Jesus, but it was intended rather to produce an overpowering impression by the rehearsal of incidents which for the most part were matters of public observation. Typical of the contents of the book is the scene in the synagogue at Capernaum which is depicted with such vividness in the first chapter. The readers of the Second Gospel are not asked to sit quietly at the feet of Jesus and listen to extended discourses from Him, as in the Gospel according to Matthew, nor are they asked, for the most part, to hear things which in the nature of the case could be attested only by one or two persons; but they are asked to share the astonishment of those who first listened to the strange new teaching in the synagogue and beheld the works of power. We do not mean that this choice of material is carried out in any pedantically exclusive way. But still, when the Gospel is taken as a whole, Jesus does appear here primarily as the mighty One whose authoritative words and mighty deeds could make their impression upon all who were willing to hear and see. In such a Gospel the intimate story of the birth and childhood of our Lord certainly had no necessary place. /pg. 253/
That does not mean that the author of the Second Gospel regarded the virgin birth as less important than the events of the public ministry. The most important thing that needs to be told is not always the first thing; and Mark seems to be concerned especially with the first things: he desires in this book to implant in the minds of his readers a first impression of the majesty of Jesus' person, in order that then they may proceed to more intimate and no doubt equally important teaching.
Another reason also, in addition to the one that has just been set forth, has apparently determined the choice of material in the Second Gospel, and particularly the omission of the virgin birth. We refer to the desire of this author to set forth only or chiefly those things to which his informant could testify as an eyewitness. According to the information which Papias, in the former part of the second century, received from "the Presbyter,"6 the Gospel according to Mark contains the teaching of Peter. It is not unnatural, therefore, that this Gospel should contain almost exclusively those things to which Peter could testify on the basis of personal observation. To those things, of course, the events connected with the birth and infancy of Jesus did not belong.
At one point the Gospel according to Mark has often been thought actually to show knowledge of the virgin birth. At Mk. 6:3, namely, in a connection where Matthew has, "Is not this the carpenter's son?", and Luke has, "Is not this the son of Joseph?", Mark reads merely, "Is not this the carpenter?". Does the Second Gospel here purposely avoid calling Jesus the son of Joseph? It has often been supposed that he does. Matthew and Luke, it is said, could report the words of the people of Nazareth in a form that made Jesus the son of Joseph, because in their case all fear of misunderstanding was removed by the express narration of the virgin birth which they had placed at the beginning of their Gospels: but Mark had no such safeguard, since it had not been part of his plan to narrate the birth of Jesus; and therefore, in order to avoid the possibility that his readers might suppose Jesus to be really the son of Joseph, and in order also to
avoid the awkwardness of correcting in his own name the utterance of the people of Nazareth (a procedure which would be quite contrary to the style of all the Synoptic Gospels), he simply substitutes the words, "Is not this the carpenter?", for the offending words, "Is not this the son of the carpenter?".
This view would not necessarily imply any untruthfulness on the part of the author of the Second Gospel. No doubt the words of the people of Nazareth may have been put by the people themselves in a number of different forms; it is altogether natural that they would say, "Is not this the carpenter?", /pg. 254/ as well as, "Is not this the son of the carpenter?"; and quite possibly Peter, Mark's informant, may have heard them put the question in both forms. It would be quite allowable, therefore, for the author of the Gospel to choose for reporting in his account that one of the two forms which would not cause misunderstanding in the minds of his readers. But although we have no decisive objection to the view of Mk. 6:3 which has just been discussed—the view that regards as intentional the author's omission of any reference to Joseph—yet we are not inclined to lay any particular stress upon it. What is really clear, at any rate, is that the whole plan and purpose of the Second Gospel prevented any narration of the birth and infancy of Jesus; the silence of this Gospel about the virgin birth, therefore, does not afford the slightest argument against the truthfulness of the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke.
The Gospel according to John, like the Gospel according to Mark, has usually been held to contain no reference to the virgin birth of Christ. But here again the omission—supposing for the moment that it really exists is altogether without significance. The real key to the choice of material in the Fourth Gospel is found in the words, "we beheld his glory," in John 1:14. It is an altogether unwarranted sublimation of these words to take them in any merely "spiritual" or figurative sense; it is altogether out of accord with the thought of the writer to take them as referring merely to a spiritual apprehension of the Logos on the part of believers generally. On the contrary, the root
idea of this Gospel is that "the Word became flesh" and that because He became flesh He could actually be seen and heard and touched by the men who lived with Him upon earth, the original disciples of Jesus to whom the writer himself belonged. There is, indeed, a sense in which Clement of Alexandria was correct when he called this book "the spiritual Gospel";7 but the word "spiritual" must not be understood in any exclusive sense. The idea of the book is not the independence of the spiritual life as over against things that have happened in the world of sense, but, quite the contrary, it is the profound dependence of the spiritual life upon things that happened in the world of sense. There is no book in the New Testament which lays greater stress than this book does upon the plain testimony of the senses. The author claims to be an eyewitness of the incarnate Word, and upon that claim the whole book is based. "The Word became flesh and we beheld his glory"—that utterance is at the very heart of this wonderful Gospel, and the whole meaning of the Gospel is missed when the utterance is explained away.
But if that be so—if the purpose of the book was to record the direct personal testimony of the author regarding what was said and done by the incarnate /pg. 255/ Word—then it would have been quite out of place for the author to have included an account of the birth and infancy of the Lord. Of these events the author was not an eyewitness, and therefore a narration of these events did not belong in the book.
We are not forgetting the fact that the Fourth Gospel does include an account of some happenings at which the author himself was not present. One can think in this connection, for example, of the conversations of Jesus with Nicodemus and with the woman at the well. But it was one thing for the author to include such events— events that fell within at least the general purview of his own observations and that had repercussions which he himself immediately observed—and quite a different thing for him to include a whole complex of facts which was quite outside that period of Jesus' life with which his testimony could deal. Despite all cautions
and exceptions, therefore, we are brought back ever anew to our initial observation. The Fourth Gospel contains not everything that could be said about Jesus, but rather the testimony of an eyewitness to the things that he had seen and heard. He had had the inestimable privilege of seeing with his eyes and hearing with his ears the glory of the Word made flesh. That privilege he desires, by his testimony, to make available for others, in order that they too, like him, may believe. In such a book there was no place whatever for a narration of events that took place long before the author came into contact with Him whose visible glory he desires to set forth. Quite naturally the narrative of the book begins not with an account of the birth and infancy of Jesus, but with an account of the way in which the author ceased to follow John the Baptist and became, instead, an eyewitness of the incarnate Word.
The book does begin, it is true, with a prologue—a prologue which deals, not, indeed, in detail, but in summary fashion, with things that formed the necessary presupposition of that incarnate life of the eternal Son which the body of the book was to set forth. Is there any reference in this prologue to the peculiar manner in which the only begotten Son of God came into the world; is there any reference in the prologue, in other words, to the virgin birth of our Lord?
Such a reference is found by some modern scholars of widely differing types of opinion8 in John 1:13. In that verse the great mass of our witnesses to the text (including all the Greek manuscripts) read, "who [that is, those who have received the Logos] were begotten not of bloods, nor of the will /pg. 256/ of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."9 But in accordance with the express testimony of Tertullian there was at least as early as the second century another reading which had the singular instead of the plural —that is not "who were begotten" or "they were begotten," but "who was begotten" or "he was begotten." This reading, which is favored by Tertullian himself and may be traced also in other early patristic references, would involve nothing less than an express assertion of the virgin birth of Christ. When applied to believers (as is done in the
ordinary reading) the expressions of course refer to the spiritual new birth; but when applied to Christ they could not refer to any such thing, since of course this author did not suppose Christ to have experienced a new birth, which was necessary for other men only because of sin. Conceivably, indeed, the expressions might refer to an eternal, pre-incarnation begetting of the Son of God; but such an interpretation would be very unnatural. Why should an eternal begetting of the Son be set forth with such express and insistent exclusion of any human factor—"not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God"? It remains far more likely, indeed practically certain, that if this reading is correct the author is intending to deny any physical human paternity in the case of Jesus and to assert the virgin birth in the clearest possible way.
A plausible argument may perhaps be constructed in favor of this reading, on the basis of intrinsic probability. The plural reading, "who were begotten…" it is said, is unnatural because it involves a disturbing digression; it diverts attention from the presentation of the person of Christ, which forms the real subject of the prologue, to an elaborate distinction between the ordinary, physical birth of men and the new birth by which they become in a high sense children of God. What possible motive could the author have had for thus insisting just in this strange place upon such a distinction, which, moreover, is in itself so obvious as not to need any such elaborate exposition? If, however—so the argument runs—the singular is read instead of the plural, if the expressions are applied not to believers but to Christ, then all is plain. The subject in this verse would be the same as the subject of the whole prologue—namely, the Logos who appears in verse 1.
It cannot be said that this argument is altogether convincing. In the first place, the thought of verse 13, if the ordinary reading is correct, finds a rather close parallel in the answer of Jesus to Nicodemus' question in John 3:4. When Nicodemus asks: "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?", and when Jesus in the course of His answer
says: "That which is born of the /pg. 257/ flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit," we have something of the same explicit contrast between the natural, physical birth of all men and the spiritual new birth of believers which appears in our passage if the ordinary reading is adopted. That ordinary reading, therefore, is not altogether out of analogy with what appears elsewhere in the same book. It is also perhaps not altogether unnatural in its present context. In John 1:13 the two spheres—the heavenly and the earthly— are contrasted; and this leads the author to speak in verse 14a of the descent of the Logos from the heavenly to the earthly. Verse 14 describes, then, the connection formed between the two spheres, by means of which the new birth described in verse 13 is made possible.10 The other reading, moreover, would be by no means devoid of difficulty. It would involve a certain anticipation of the utterance in the next verse, "The Word became flesh," which does not seem to be altogether natural. It is true, the event of verse 14 has already, according to the most probable interpretation, been referred to in verse 11 and possibly even in the preceding verses. But verse 13, if the singular reading is right, would describe the event in detail, in a way which seems rather out of place before the summary statement in verse 14 has been made. Intrinsic probability, therefore, does not tell in any clear way against the ordinary text or in favor of the other reading.
As for transcriptional probability, one may of course hold that Tertullian was right when he accused the Gnostics of inventing the plural reading in the interests of their doctrine of a special class of "spiritual" persons.11 But, as has been pointed out with some force, the plural reading does not suit the Gnostic teaching very perfectly; for that reading would seem to imply that all believers are "spiritual" persons, whereas the Gnostics reserved that term for a special class as distinguished from ordinary Christians. It remains perfectly possible, moreover, that the reading of the singular was introduced by some scribe either in order to remove all possible support from the Gnostic doctrine of a class of spiritual persons or else simply in order to provide a testimony to the virgin birth of Christ. There
would be a certain tendency on the part of scribes to apply such language as is used in John 1:13 to Christ rather than merely to believers: the language would seem to a scribe to suit Him who was begotten without human agency by the power of the Holy Spirit; and so, perhaps in perfect good faith and without any consciousness of falsification, the singular instead of the plural may have been allowed to slip in. /pg. 258/
If the plural is to be read, we should probably not see in the verse any reference to the virgin birth of Christ. Such a reference was indeed found in it by Zahn (before he came to his present view that the singular is to be read) and also by Grützmacher.12 John meant to say in John 1:13f., Zahn argued, that what is true of the new birth of the children of God is true of the physical birth of Christ. But such an interpretation perhaps attributes to the Evangelist a confusion between the spiritual and the physical spheres, or rather an elaborate parallel between them, which, if intended, would probably have had to be more dearly marked. We are not inclined, therefore, to lay any great stress upon John 1:13 as a testimony to the virgin birth of Christ.13 But what we do affirm with some insistence is that the view of the Fourth Gospel with regard to the person of Christ and with regard to His entrance into the world is profoundly congruous with the story of the virgin birth and profoundly incongruous with the view that Jesus was in a physical sense the son of Joseph. Certainly there is not the slightest reason to suppose that this author rejected the representation which had already appeared in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. His silence is altogether without significance as a testimony against the virgin birth; for the narration in detail of the manner in which the Son of God entered into the world was quite outside the scope of his book.
One passage in the Fourth Gospel has, it is true, often been used as a testimony, not indeed against the virgin birth, but against the birth in Bethlehem. The passage to which we refer is found in John 7:41f., where a certain group in the Jerusalem crowd is represented as saying: "Does the Messiah come out of Galilee? Has not the Scripture
said that the Messiah comes of the seed of David and from the village where David was?" What we are concerned with here is not the attitude which this passage attributes to Jesus' contemporaries. It is not surprising that even if Jesus had been born at Bethlehem, the Jerusalem crowd, or a certain group in it, should have designated Him as having come from Galilee. After all, He had lived for many years at Nazareth; His birth in Bethlehem, if it was a fact, was not generally known, and could not easily be proved. If it had been proved, one might still have /pg. 259/ supposed it strange that the Messiah should have deserted His ancestral home and lived for long years in an obscure Galilean village. But what we are concerned with here is the attitude of the Evangelist. If he had accepted the story of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, would he have been obliged to correct the false opinion of the Jerusalem group and attest the true fact at this point in his narrative?
This question has often been answered in the affirmative. But to answer it so really involves a serious misunderstanding of the whole method and purpose of this Evangelist. It is not in accordance with the method of this writer to correct in his own name false views expressed in the narrative by the opponents of Christ. There was no need, moreover, for him to mention the birth in Bethlehem; for he was writing in supplement to the Synoptic Gospels and was presupposing their narrative as known. At the time when the Fourth Gospel was written, the birth of Christ in Bethlehem was a matter of course; and there was no reason for the author of this Gospel to inform his readers of what they already knew. In the Book of Acts, the few apologetic or missionary speeches of Peter and Paul that are inserted in the narrative contain no reference to the virgin birth. But that omission is of course quite without significance. Even if the virgin birth was a fact, it would be the most unnatural thing in the world for it to be referred to before hostile or uninstructed audiences; and the author of the book did not at all need to supplement these speeches by remarks of his own, especially since he had already narrated the virgin birth plainly at the beginning of his double work.
But how is it with Paul? Two passages in the Epistles have sometimes been supposed to have some special bearing upon his attitude to the virgin birth of Christ. These passages are Gal. 4:4f. and Rom. 1:3f.
In Gal. 4:4f. Paul says: "But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order that he might redeem those who were under the law, in order that we might receive the adoption of sons." This passage has sometimes been held to show that Paul did not believe in the virgin birth, and sometimes also has been held to show that he did do so. As a matter of fact, both opinions are probably wrong; the passage does not enable us to draw any conclusion with regard to Paul's belief in the matter one way or the other.
If Paul had accepted the virgin birth, would he have been obliged in this passage to say, "born of a virgin," or the like, instead of "born of a woman"? We do not think so at all. On the contrary, for him to use such an expression would have been to obscure the point of the passage. What the Apostle is /pg. 260/ speaking of here is the humiliation of Christ—the likeness to us men which He assumed for our redemption. Part of that likeness to us was His human birth. But the words, "born of a virgin," would have emphasized not the similarity of Christ's birth to ours, but, on the contrary, the difference between His birth and ours. Such a phrase, therefore, would have run directly counter to the whole thought that the Apostle here has in mind. Certainly the expression which is actually used does not at all contradict the story of the birth of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. It should never be forgotten that according to the New Testament representation, although the conception was supernatural, the birth itself was natural. Paul had a full right, therefore, even though he accepted the virgin birth as it is narrated for us in the early chapters of Matthew and Luke, to say that Christ was "born of a woman."
On the other hand, although we can find no evidence in this verse against a belief on Paul's part in the virgin birth of Christ, we can also
find no direct evidence in favor of it. If Paul had not believed in the virgin birth, would he have been obliged in this passage to mention the human father as well as, or instead of, the human mother? We are not inclined to think so. All that can be said is that as a matter of fact neither in this passage nor anywhere else in the Pauline Epistles does Paul mention the human father of Jesus. This silence about the human father may or may not be significant. But we are prepared to assert that it is just as likely to be significant as is the silence about the virgin birth. We are certainly not endeavoring on our part to use the argument from silence; but what we are prepared to say is that if it is to be used at all, it should not be used merely on one side.
The other Pauline passage which is often mentioned in the same connection is Rom. 1:3f., which reads as follows: "…concerning his Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead.…" In this passage, it is argued, Paul connects the higher nature of Jesus with the resurrection, not with the birth, as he would have been obliged to do if he had believed in the supernatural conception. But such reasoning is very vulnerable indeed. Let us suppose for a moment, just for the sake of the argument, that Paul accepted exactly the same view of the birth of Jesus as that which appears in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. What is there in Rom. 1:3f. that is inconsistent with such a view? We really cannot see that there is anything at all. It still remains true on the basis of Mt. 1–2, Lk. 1–2 that Jesus was "born of the seed of David according to the flesh"; the Davidic descent appears in those infancy narratives as well as in Paul, /pg. 261/ and we have already pointed out that it is not contradictory to the virgin birth which also appears in the same narratives. Moreover, it is particularly clear just in Paul, in accordance with his use of the word "flesh," that when he says "according to the flesh" he may well be referring to something other than unbroken physical continuity. The question, therefore, whether Mary as well as Joseph was a descendant of David does not need to be answered one way or the other by one who desires to defend both the Davidic descent (in the
Pauline, and generally New Testament, sense) and the virgin birth. Moreover, if it remains true on the basis of Lk. 1–2, Mt. 1–2 that Jesus was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, it also remains true that He was "declared to be the Son of God in power by the resurrection of the dead." Jesus was indeed Son of God, according to Lk. 1:35, prior to the resurrection and indeed from the very beginning of His earthly life, to say nothing of a life prior to His entrance into the world. But did Paul hold any other view? Does he mean to set forth any other view in this passage? Most emphatically he does not. Unquestionably Paul believed that Jesus was Son of God during His earthly life. What He became at the resurrection was Son of God in power. It does not make much difference whether we put the emphasis thus upon the words "in power" or upon the word which may be translated "declared to be" or "established as being."14 Whether the meaning of the passage is "established as being Son of God in power" (as distinguished from the sonship that He had had in His state of humiliation before the resurrection), or "declared to be Son of God," "vindicated as being Son of God" (as distinguished from a sonship that was concealed from men by the conditions of His earthly life), in either case there is not the slightest disharmony between this passage and the story of the virgin birth. The contrary view is based upon the same incorrect, exclusive way of regarding the activity of the Holy Spirit that we noticed in the case of a certain modern way of treating the baptism of Jesus.15 Why should it have seemed incredible to Paul, and why should it seem incredible to us, that the Holy Spirit should have been operative in connection with our Lord not in one way, but in many ways? Why should Paul not have believed that the Spirit was active both in the conception in Mary's womb and also in the mighty act of the resurrection? These questions are really unanswerable. There is not the slightest contradiction between the significance of the resurrection as it is set forth in this passage and the account of the virgin birth that is given in the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke.
These individual passages in the Pauline Epistles cannot rightly be appealed /pg. 262/ to either for or against the view that Paul
believed in the virgin birth. But how is it with the general fact of Paul's silence? If Paul had accepted the virgin birth, would he have been obliged to mention it in his Epistles?
We do not think that this is the case. It must always be remembered that in the Epistles Paul mentions very few events in the life of Jesus on earth. And yet the incidental way in which he does mention some things shows clearly that he knew many other things of which he finds no occasion to speak. The institution of the Lord's Supper, for example, would never have been narrated except for the appearance of certain abuses at Corinth; and if it had not been narrated, one may well shudder at the inferences which would have been drawn from Paul's silence. A similar remark may be made about the account which Paul gives in 1 Cor. 15:3ff. of the appearances of the risen Christ. If it had not been for that one passage, which was written only because of the emergence of certain errors in the church that is addressed, modern scholars would certainly have drawn from Paul's consciousness of independence as it is set forth in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians the inference that the resurrection of Christ was established in Paul's teaching on the basis of the Apostle's own testimony alone; and yet, as it is, the appeal to the testimony of Peter and others is seen to have been part of the "first things" that Paul gave to his churches. These examples should certainly make us extremely cautious about applying the argument from silence to our treatment of Paul's attitude toward the virgin birth. If things so very important to the Apostle as the institution of the Lord's Supper and the appearances of the risen Christ appear in the whole extent of the Epistles only once each—because of what from the human point of view was the mere chance of the emergence of certain errors—how can we draw from the non-appearance of other things the inference that Paul knew nothing about them? It does not follow at all, therefore, that because Paul says nothing about the virgin birth in his Epistles he knew nothing about it.
What is clear, at any rate, is that, although the virgin birth is not directly mentioned in the Epistles, it is profoundly congruous with
Paul's teaching about Christ. Paul clearly regarded Jesus Christ as no mere product of what had gone before Him, but as an entirely new beginning in humanity, the second Adam, the Founder of a new race. Could such a Person have been derived by ordinary generation from the men who had existed before Him upon the earth; could He, in the ordinary sense, have had a human father? One should of course be cautious about saying what might or might not have been. And yet to think of the Christ of the Pauline Epistles as the son of Joseph and Mary involves an incongruity from which the mind naturally /pg. 263/ shrinks. The virgin birth is not explicitly mentioned in the Epistles, but it does seem to be implied in the profoundest way in the entire view which Paul holds of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Conceivably, indeed, we might derive from this consideration an argument not for but against Paul's knowledge of the virgin birth. If, it might be said Paul's doctrine is so perfectly in accord with the virgin birth, why does he not mention a thing which fits in so well with his teaching; why does he not make use of so welcome a support for his views? This reasoning ignores one of the outstanding facts about the Pauline Epistles—the fact, namely, that Paul does not argue in the Epistles about his conception of the person of Christ. About other things there was debate, but, at least during the period of the earlier Epistles, there was no debate whatever about this; apparently Paul assumes that his own stupendous view of Jesus as a supernatural Person, come voluntarily into the world for our redemption, now risen from the grave and living in glory, was the view of everyone in the Church. Apparently even the Judaizers, the bitter opponents of Paul, raised no objection to the Apostle's teaching on this point. This extraordinary unanimity with regard to the person of Christ, this extraordinary absence of any struggle between the lofty Pauline view of Christ and any lower, merely human conception, may be puzzling to modern naturalistic historians—indeed it constitutes the great central problem that faces any naturalistic reconstruction of primitive Christianity—but however puzzling it may be, it must certainly be recognized as a fact. It is certainly true that Paul does not feel called upon to defend in his
Epistles that view of Christ which is the basis of all his thinking and all his life. But if so, why should he have been obliged to mention the virgin birth? He might have mentioned it if he had been living in the time of Irenæus, when it was subject to attack. He may actually have mentioned it when he was dealing with opponents of Christianity. But the extant Epistles, it should never be forgotten, were addressed not to opponents of Christianity, but to professing Christians; and in them are contained those things about which professing Christians needed to be set right. Thus the absence of the virgin birth from the Epistles, though it might conceivably mean that Paul did not believe in the virgin birth, may also mean that the fact was so universally accepted as to require no defence.
From the foregoing review of the evidence, it appears that the virgin birth was not known during the earthly life of Jesus and even after the resurrection probably did not form a part of the missionary preaching of the earliest apostolic Church. But these observations are not inconsistent with acceptance of the virgin birth as a fact. Let us suppose for a moment, for the sake of the /pg. 264/ argument, that Jesus was really born without a human father as He is said to have been born in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. On that supposition, what would the course of development naturally be? According to the infancy narratives there were only two persons who at first certainly knew of the virgin birth, namely, Joseph and Mary, nor is there any definite record that they confided in anyone else. That Mary confided in Elisabeth is indeed probable; but the very reason why she would naturally confide in Elisabeth was that she could not confide in others. The report of the shepherds and of Anna need not have reached a very wide circle, and, like the visit of the magi (in which case there were also special reasons for silence), took place in Judæa, far from Nazareth, the subsequent home of the family, and perhaps several years before their return. It has been further suggested by Ramsay that fear of Herod Antipas may have been a special reason for silence after their return.16 In any case, there is no evidence whatever that the shepherds or the magi or Simeon or Anna knew of the virgin birth. Probably Joseph died
before Jesus reached maturity, since he does not appear in the record of the public ministry; and Elisabeth is expressly said to have been old at the time of Mary's momentous visit in the Judæan home.17 Not improbably, therefore, Mary was left as the sole keeper of the secret of Jesus' birth. This "secret," it is true, is often regarded as an apologetic expedient; why should Mary not have told of the virgin birth if it had been a fact? But a little exercise of the historical imagination will show how inconclusive this reasoning is. One great fault of the modern treatment of the subject is that not enough sympathetic attention has been given to the personal equation. Would it have been in accord with the character of Mary, as it is depicted in such lifelike colors in the infancy narrative of Luke (the truth of which we are assuming just now for the sake of the argument), that after she had undergone experiences of the most mysterious kind and had submitted to a command which ran counter to every instinct of her soul, she should proceed to engage in idle gossip about the matter, thereby subjecting herself and her holy child to the basest slander? Some women might have acted so, but hardly the one who "kept all these sayings, pondering them in her heart." There is every reason to suppose, on the contrary, that she would keep the secret even from her younger sons—or rather, perhaps, most carefully of all from them. So the years went by; and He who was to rule over the house of Jacob forever continued to labor at a carpenter's bench until the time of His majority had come /pg. 265/ and gone. Must not the miraculous events of thirty years ago have come to Mary like a wonderful dream? We will not say, indeed, that her faith failed; but certainly it suffered trial. And then when her son did come before the nation, how different was His coming from that which she had pictured! How strange and perplexing were the ways of God! From every point of view, there was reason that her silence should not be broken. Perplexity leads some persons to ask questions of every passer-by, but others keep their bewilderment locked in their own souls. To this latter type belonged Mary the mother of the Lord. As in the early days, she kept all these things and pondered in her heart. But finally she learned, like the disciples, the true nature of Jesus' work. When Pentecost had come and gone, and the company
of disciples were praying together, comforted by the Spirit whom Jesus had sent she must have continued to ponder over all these things, but now in a different way. Now at last had come the time for her to speak; now the claims of Jesus had been vindicated; now she would be believed. So, within the circle of believing and sympathetic women or near friends, she may have been led to breathe things too sacred and mysterious to be spoken of to mortal ears before. These things, of course, were not repeated at once to the official governors of the Church, like the progress of daily collections. Still less were they included in missionary sermons, where the great effort was to adduce facts which could be attested directly by all, and where the humble woman's mystery would have brought nothing but slander and scorn. But when the story was finally told, there is no evidence that it aroused any opposition at all from those who were already disciples of Christ. And so, possibly supplemented by a record that Joseph had left, the marvellous tale of the mother of the Lord found its way into the Gospel tradition and creeds of the Church and into the inmost hearts of Christians of all the centuries.18 /pg. 266/
What we maintain, therefore, is not that the extant attestation of the virgin Birth of Christ is as early and as abundant as the attestation of certain other events, such as the resurrection, but only that it is as early and as abundant as the attestation of this particular event might with any certainty have been expected to be. In the very nature of the case this event could not be attested by many persons; and in the nature of the case the one person who could certainly attest it would have the strongest reason, in the early period, for silence. The limited extent of the attestation, therefore, is not inconsistent with the hypothesis that the virgin birth was a fact.
But at that point an objection may arise. In our effort to explain the silence of Jesus' contemporaries and of great sections of the New Testament, have we not involved ourselves in an apologetic peril that is far greater than the one which we have endeavored to avoid? We have pointed out that, even if the virgin birth was a fact, the attestation of it would not necessarily be any greater than that which
our New Testament contains. But in order to do so have we not been obliged to admit that the attestation of such an event must in the nature of the case be very small? And does not that mean that, in view of the miraculous character of the event, the attestation of it could never possibly be sufficient to convince a cautious mind? This objection might possibly be conclusive if the attestation of the virgin birth stood alone. Unquestionably there is an enormous initial presumption against the view that any human being was born without human father; and the direct testimony, being limited, in the very nature of the case, to one person, would hardly be sufficient in order that this initial presumption should be overcome. If the question were simply whether a man about whom otherwise we knew nothing was born without human father, no doubt that question would have to be answered in the negative. But as a matter of fact that is not the question at all. The question is not whether an ordinary man was born without human father, but whether Jesus was so born. And this question is quite different from the other. It is indeed highly improbable that any ordinary man came into this world in the supernatural manner which is set forth in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke; but then Jesus was like no other man that ever has lived. So unique a person, it might well be argued, may well have had an unique entrance into this world. Moreover, it is not merely the moral uniqueness of Jesus to which our argument appeals. There are in the life of Jesus as narrated in the Gospels plainly miraculous elements whose attestation is not at all subject to the limitations which we have found in the case of the virgin birth. Particularly is that true with regard to the /pg. 267/ supreme miracle of the resurrection. A mass of convergent testimony leads, we think, to the conviction that on the third day after the death of Jesus on the cross His tomb became empty by a supernatural act of God. But if the supernatural has been accepted at any one point in connection with Jesus, the presumption has been overcome against accepting it at other points. And in particular the presumption has been overcome against accepting it in connection with the birth. Having once come to the conclusion that Jesus was a supernatural person, that the miraculous element which is so abundant in the Gospel account of
Him cannot be explained as due to the myth-making fancy of the early Church, but truly represents a creative activity of God quite distinct from God's works through nature, we shall have no difficulty about supposing that He was supernaturally conceived in the virgin's womb. On the contrary, the story of the virgin birth is profoundly congruous with the whole New Testament account of Jesus. If Jesus was at all the sort of person that He is represented as being in the whole New Testament, then it is an altogether believable thing that He came into the world in the manner described in the early chapters of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke; and it is an exceedingly improbable thing that He was the son, by ordinary generation, of Joseph and Mary.We do not mean that the story of the virgin birth ever could have been constructed merely by inference from the facts in the later life of Jesus; indeed, in the following section of our discussion, we shall adduce reasons to show that such could not have been the case. The birth narratives retain a wonderful originality as over against all the fancies of that day; and they are of a character that in itself commands respect. What we do mean is not that the direct attestation of the virgin birth is unnecessary in order that we may accept the fact, but only that it is in itself perhaps insufficient. It becomes convincing only when it is taken in connection with the entire account which the New Testament gives of the person of Jesus Christ. But when it is actually taken in that connection, it becomes convincing indeed. These birth narratives bear many unmistakable indications of truth. Their wonderful restraint, their lofty moral tone, their delicacy of language, their primitive and Palestinian character, their lifelike depiction of the personalities involved, their mutual independence, and their agreement—these and many other characteristics create in the sympathetic reader an overpoweringly favorable impression. Such an impression might have to be resisted if these narratives stood alone. But when they are taken in connection with the whole majestic and self-evidencing portrait of Jesus Christ as it is contained in the /pg. 268/ New Testament, the necessity for resistance is gone. The reader can now abandon himself without sacrifice of his scientific conscience to the spell of these matchless chapters, and can believe that the marvellous things that
they narrate are sober truth. If Christ really rose from the dead, if He really was at all the kind of person that He is represented in the New Testament as being, then there is every reason to think that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary.
CHAPTER XII:
ALTERNATIVE THEORIES: PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
In the preceding chapters we have dealt with one of the two ways in which the Christian belief in the virgin birth has been explained; we have examined the hypothesis that the belief was founded on fact. The attestation, it has been argued, is as early and as strong as it could naturally be expected to have been if the virgin birth actually took place; and although there is an enormous initial presumption against the occurrence of such a miracle, that presumption can be overcome if the investigator bears in mind the uniqueness of Jesus' person and the total phenomenon of the origin of the Christian religion. Thus there is good ground, we think, to hold that the reason why the Christian Church came to believe in the birth of Jesus without human father was simply that He was as a matter of fact so born.
This conclusion is very widely rejected at the present day even within the confines of the Church. But when it is rejected, the question arises what is to be put into its place. The historian has by no means completed his task when he has decided to reject the New Testament attestation of the virgin birth of Christ; for the initial problem still demands solution. How was it that the Christian Church ever came
to believe in the virgin birth? Whatever may be thought of the content of the belief, the belief itself is a fact of history which no one can possibly deny. It is a fact that for some nineteen hundred years a large part of the human race has believed that Jesus of Nazareth, a person living in the full light of history, was born without human father, being conceived in the womb of the virgin by the immediate exercise of the power of God. How did that strange belief ever arise? This question is of course answered at once if the belief was founded upon fact; if Jesus really was born of a virgin, it is not difficult to understand how the Church came to believe that He was so born. But if this obvious answer be rejected, the question to which it is an attempted answer still remains. If Jesus of Nazareth was not really born of a virgin, how did the Church come to believe that He was born in that way? The question does seem to be a fair question for all who reject the testimony to the fact of the virgin birth. An important part of all discussions of our subject is to be found, therefore, in the discussion of /pg. 270/ alternative theories as to the way in which the idea of the virgin birth is to be explained if the fact of the virgin birth is denied.
At this point, Vincent Taylor, the author of the latest important monograph on the subject, dissents from the usual view. The importance of the question about "alternative theories," he thinks, has been greatly exaggerated; apologists have made a great mistake in attempting to argue the historic character of the virgin birth tradition "by dwelling upon the incongruities and contradictions of alternative theories"; men may agree in rejecting a tradition or belief and yet be at variance about the origin of it, and that they "agree upon the one point is more significant than that they differ upon the other."1
But surely this objection runs counter to sound common sense. In appraising any kind of testimony, one instinctively asks the question how the witness came to testify thus. If (supposing the testimony to be false) the motive of the false witness is clear, or if the way can be detected in which even an honest witness could have fallen into error
in the particular case in question, then the testimony is discredited to a degree that would not otherwise be the case. Instinctively, therefore, in a court of law or in the ordinary affairs of life, one does ask the question regarding a witness: "How did he come to say this or that if it is not true?" Until that question is answered, the testimony is often felt not to be finally disposed of; but when it is answered, the mind of the hearer is set at rest with regard to that particular testimony, and the question will be decided altogether on the basis of other evidence. So it is also in historical investigations. It is not enough to deny the truthfulness of a tradition; one must also try to exhibit the manner in which the tradition arose. Until that is done, one cannot altogether put out of the way the possibility that the tradition, supposing it to possess any claims to credibility at all, may be true.
This principle is indeed not of universal application; for we do constantly reject stories without at all explaining how they arose. The world is full of tales that no one believes, yet the origin of which no one can explain; if we endeavored to account for all of them, we should have no time for the serious business of life. So much may readily be granted to Vincent Taylor.
But the Christian tradition about the virgin birth belongs in a very different category. In the case of many stories the reason why the origin of the stories has not been discovered is simply that the investigation is not worth while. The evidence in support of the stories is so very slight, or the stories deal with matters of such little importance, that no one takes the trouble to /pg. 271/ ask how the stories came into being. Very different is the situation with regard to the story of the virgin birth. That story has formed the subject of scholarly investigation for many years; the best efforts of modern scholarship have been devoted to the question how the story arose. Under such circumstances, surely it is not altogether without significance that so far these efforts have resulted in failure, and that no unanimity has been attained on the question how, if the virgin birth is not a fact, the Christian Church came to believe in it.2
It must be admitted, indeed, that this argument from the failure of alternative theories cannot possibly stand alone. Certainly we cannot arrive at the truth of the New Testament testimony merely by a process of elimination; we cannot simply say that since no other satisfactory explanation has yet been discovered for the origin of the idea of the virgin birth, therefore, whatever the strength or weakness of the positive testimony may be, the idea must be founded on fact and the New Testament at this point must be true. Such a method of reasoning would be precarious in the extreme. It is perfectly conceivable that the origin of a myth may be obscure; and so it is perfectly conceivable that a belief like that in the virgin birth of Christ may have originated in some manner beyond the reach of modern research. But this consideration does not do away with the value of the argument with which we now have to deal. That argument is inconclusive when it stands alone; but when taken in connection with the positive attestation of the virgin birth it may be very powerful indeed. What the historian has to do is not to consider the theories of mythical origin of the virgin birth tradition by themselves, but to balance these theories over against the theory that the tradition is true. The less satisfactory the alternative theories are in detail, and the greater is their disagreement with one another, the more favorably disposed the historian will be toward the simple hypothesis that the idea of the virgin birth arose because the virgin birth was a fact. The cogency of this method of reasoning is tacitly recognized by opponents of the New Testament testimony. No argument against the virgin birth, perhaps, is used with more confidence or more effectiveness by popular preachers than the argument drawn from the supposed case with which the virgin birth tradition could have been produced in the first century of our era. "In those /pg. 272/ days," it is said in effect, "many great men were thought to be virgin-born; so when the early Christians came to think Jesus supremely great it was only natural that they should regard Him too as having been born in that way." This argument is, as we shall see, extremely crude; scholarly investigators, even those who oppose the virgin birth, are usually not inclined to think the matter quite so simple as that. Nevertheless, the preachers who use the
argument display a sound methodological instinct; they at least tacitly recognize the fact that the idea of the virgin birth is a fact of history which requires explanation, and that those who deny the factual basis of the idea must endeavor to account for the idea in some other way.
In opposition to Vincent Taylor's protest, therefore, we must insist upon the relevance of the discussion upon which we shall now try to enter. The historical question about the virgin birth will finally be determined by a comparison of the hypothesis that the idea of the virgin birth was founded upon fact with the most plausible form of the hypothesis that it was founded upon some kind of error. The former member of this comparison has been considered in the preceding chapters: the positive attestation of the virgin birth, we have endeavored to show, is by no means contemptible, and when it is taken in connection with the total phenomenon of the life of Christ and the beginnings of Christianity, there is no insuperable objection against regarding it as true. But how is it with the other alternative? If, despite the arguments that we have adduced in defence of the tradition, the virgin birth is not a fact, how shall we explain the origin of the idea? This question must now be considered with some care.
One method of explanation may be dismissed rather quickly— namely, the rationalizing method which was popular one hundred years ago. It is now for the most part admitted that unless the virgin birth actually occurred it is vain to seek any considerable factual basis for the story as it appears in Matthew and Luke. At first sight, indeed, the search for such a factual basis might have seemed to offer some likelihood of success. It is perfectly true that a false supernaturalistic interpretation has sometimes been put, even by the observers themselves, to say nothing of later narrators, upon events that were in point of fact purely natural. So the effort of Paulus and the other rationalizers of the early part of the nineteenth century to reconstruct a natural course of events in connection with the birth and childhood of Jesus as the basis for the supernaturalistic account
given in Matthew and Luke was only to be expected when once the actuality of miracles was given up. But it is now generally admitted that the effort was a failure. The New Testament birth narratives do not lend themselves at all to such treatment; for in them the /pg. 273/ miracles are not mere excrescences, but represent the element for which all the rest exists, and the natural happenings which are supposed to have been the basis for the stories are quite trivial and incapable of giving rise to the narratives as they stand. Thus the rationalizing method of treating the narratives, which was considerably in vogue a century ago, has now for the most part been abandoned, at least among scholars. But since there are just now interesting signs that it may be revived, even in scholarly discussion, and since it has always flourished in an underground realm of popular attack upon Christianity, we may do well to consider briefly the application of it to the specific question of the virgin birth.
The essence of the rationalizing method is to discover a natural happening, preferably unusual, which, when interpreted supernaturalistically, could give rise to the narratives as they stand. But what natural happening could have been distorted into the view that Jesus was born without human father by the power of the Holy Ghost? What was there so unusual in the birth of Jesus that this strange story could have seemed necessary to explain it? Only one plausible answer can be given; it can only be said that Jesus was not the son of Mary's husband, Joseph, and that, therefore, to avoid the shameful implications of such a fact, the early Christians came to believe in the supernatural conception in the virgin's womb. Some of the early rationalizers did not shrink from the full implication of such a view; Jesus, they said, was born out of wedlock, His mother having been deceived, perhaps, by a man who passed himself off as a messenger of God.3 In essentially the same category with these rationalizing reconstructions is to be put the ancient Jewish "Panthera" story, which, as we have seen,4 is attested by Origen and the Talmud and culminates in the mediæval TÇ lK dÇ th J' shã ; the ancient Jewish slander, like the more modern romances, was intended as a naturalistic explanation of the Christian story of the
virgin birth. But such solutions of the problem, despite sporadic revivals in modern times,5 have been rejected by practically all serious scholars.6 The entire attitude of /pg. 274/ Jesus' contemporaries, particularly the character of the polemic against Him, is inexplicable if there was such a stain upon His birth. It is perfectly clear that, however the idea of the virgin birth is to be explained, it cannot be explained by a prior knowledge, on the part of the early Christians, of something abnormal in the way in which Jesus was born.
Yet it is very interesting to observe that certain scholars who repudiate the thought of anything shameful in the manner of Jesus' birth have been unwilling to relinquish altogether the rationalizing method. Thus Paulus held that Joseph did not beget Jesus,7 and that what gave Mary confidence that she was to be the mother of the Messiah was "something external."8 What that something was is left quite vague, and Paulus assures us that in any case Mary was innocent;9 but such assurances give very little comfort when the whole tendency of Paulus' view leads straight to some such revolting (and quite improbable) story as that which is to be found in Venturini and in the underground literature that has not altogether been eliminated since his day. Even vaguer than Paulus is Schleiermacher; and yet even Schleiermacher, if the implications of his vagueness be examined, may be found to have taken the first step in the downward path. A veil is left over the birth of Jesus, says Schleiermacher in effect;10 nothing sinful could have entered into the origin of the life of Christ; and the Panthera story is false11: yet the basis in tradition for the poetical New Testament narrative is that before the birth of Jesus Mary did become aware, in an extraordinary manner, that she was to bear the Son of God.12 What does Schleiermacher mean by his curiously vague language? Does he mean nothing more than that Joseph and Mary became convinced that the child which was to be the fruit of their marriage was to be the Messiah? If so, it is difficult to see how such an expectation on the part of Joseph and Mary could possibly have had any part whatever in producing the story of the virgin birth. On the whole, the
criticism which Neander13 directed against Schleiermacher must be pronounced just. If, when the miracle is rejected, a factual basis is sought for the story of the virgin /pg. 275/ birth, that factual basis must in the nature of the case be something of a repulsive (and thoroughly improbable) kind.
Yet one of the most distinguished scholars of the present day, A. von Harnack, of Berlin, a scholar who may perhaps be regarded as the ablest living representative of the "Liberal" or Ritschlian view of the New Testament and the beginnings of the Christian Church, has recently ventured to take a first step on this same dangerous, rationalizing path. Possibly, Harnack says in effect, there may have been a slight factual basis for the New Testament account of the virgin birth after all; possibly there may have been this much that was extraordinary in the way in which Jesus came into the world, that He was begotten by Joseph after the "betrothal" but before the marriage. "Betrothal" among the Jews, Harnack points out, was not at all what we mean by this word, but was equivalent to marriage. Even before Joseph took Mary into his house, she was his wife; so that there is nothing at all derogatory to Mary, Harnack insists, in the possibility which he suggests. The form of the narrative in Matthew may be partly explained, Harnack thinks, if the author is admitting, over against Jewish slanders, that Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary before she was actually brought into Joseph's house.14
Harnack does not, indeed, exploit this suggestion as a means of explaining how the belief in the virgin birth arose. He holds, no doubt, still to his theory of a mythical origin of that belief. Nevertheless, the suggestion does indicate a certain tendency to return to the old rationalizing treatment of the narratives which was prevalent one hundred years ago. It is possible that under the influence of the "return to tradition," which is found here and there in recent literary criticism of the Gospels, the revival of the rationalizing method of treatment may soon go to much greater lengths.
If such a revival does take place, it will certainly be strangely perverse. And the present suggestion of Harnack, as has already been pointed out,15 is faced by objections of the most serious kind. It does not really preserve the mother of Jesus from blame; for even if during "betrothal" she was really Joseph's wife, still the kind of conduct which Harnack is inclined to attribute to her would have subjected her at least to suspicion. And the existence of such suspicion is inconsistent with all that we know of the later life of Jesus and of the attitude of His contemporaries toward Him.
An objection may, indeed, be raised against our reasoning at this point. Are we not, it may be said, proving too much? If a premature birth of Jesus would necessarily have given rise to suspicion, and if that would have been /pg. 276/ inconsistent with what we know of the attitude of Jesus' contemporaries toward Him, is not the story of the virgin birth, as we have it in Matthew and Luke, itself stamped as unhistorical? According to that story, just as much as according to the hypothesis of Harnack, the birth of Jesus was, to any ordinary observer, premature; and if either a really or an apparently premature birth is inconsistent with the attitude of Jesus' contemporaries, have we not, in condemning the hypothesis of Harnack, really condemned also our own view that the narratives in Matthew and Luke are true? This objection is by no means insuperable. The point of our present argument against the hypothesis of premature birth as a basis for the virgin birth story is not that premature birth might have given rise to suspicion among the inhabitants of Nazareth, but that it must actually have done so if it is to be made the basis of the story of the virgin birth in Matthew and Luke. If the fact that the birth was premature was concealed from neighbors and friends and enemies, then how could it ever have given rise to suspicion; and if it gave no rise to suspicion, if, in other words, it never became something which to the early Christians required explanation, then how could the story of the virgin birth ever have arisen as an explanation of it? Or are we to suppose that after concealing the premature birth all through the time of Jesus' youth and of His public ministry Mary revealed the fact at some time
after the beginning of the apostolic preaching, and that then suspicion arose and the story of the virgin birth was evolved as a means of allaying it? Surely such conduct on Mary's part is unnatural in the extreme.
If, on the other hand, the virgin birth was a fact, the situation becomes very different. In this case, the apparently premature time of the birth may never have become known to the inhabitants of Nazareth, for the reasons that have already been set forth in another connection;16 there is no reason to suppose that suspicion would have arisen during the public ministry. But after the resurrection, there was in this case abundant reason why the secret of Jesus' birth should be revealed. It was not in this case a trivial (if not shameful) thing, but was a glorious manifestation of God's power; about it Mary could no longer keep silent. On the hypothesis of a virgin birth, therefore, the initial absence of suspicion and the final disclosure of the secret are both explained; whereas on the hypothesis of an ordinary premature birth an initial presence of suspicion is needed to explain the final emergence of the virgin birth story, and that initial presence of suspicion is clearly excluded by all that we know of the attitude of Jesus' contemporaries during His public ministry. /pg. 277/
The attitude of Jesus' contemporaries, therefore, does provide an argument against Harnack's hypothesis of a premature birth, and yet does not provide argument against the story of the supernatural conception as it appears in Matthew and Luke. But perhaps an even stronger argument against the hypothesis of a premature birth is to be found in somewhat more intangible and yet very powerful considerations regarding the character of Joseph and Mary. Are we to suppose that they would lightly have exposed Mary to the suspicion to which, even on Harnack's view of Jewish betrothal, a premature entrance upon the marriage relationship might well have subjected her? The suggestion is, after all, derogatory to their character; and such a defect in them does seem to be contrary to all that we should naturally expect to be the case. It does seem that the
whole phenomenon of Jesus' life is better explained (especially on naturalistic principles, but also when He is regarded as truly the Son of God) if He grew up in what from the human point of view was a blameless home. And the attitude of His contemporaries both toward Him and toward the household in which He had lived does seem to be more natural if the conduct of Joseph and Mary was of a really, and not merely apparently, worthy kind.
At any rate, we have at this point the support of the vast majority of modern investigators of all shades of opinion. Most modern scholars who reject the virgin birth are agreed, for whatever reason, in rejecting the thought of anything unusual or suspicious in connection with the birth of Jesus. Indeed, chief interest of Harnack's suggestion is to be found not in any inherent merit in it, but in the fact that Harnack has been led to make it. If, after nearly one hundred years' dominance of the purely mythical theory of the birth narratives, so distinguished a leader of the modern Church and so accomplished a scholar feels compelled to return, to some extent at least, to the old rationalizing method of treatment, we may find there an indication that when the fact of the virgin birth is given up it may not be quite so easy as was formerly supposed to account for the New Testament narratives as they stand. Harnack's suggestion may be important, in other words, as indicating the defects of the dominant mythical view.
It is of course quite without warrant when popular defenders of the virgin birth alarm their hearers by presenting the hypothesis of illegitimate birth as being the only alternative to acceptance of the miracle; for probably ninety-nine out of a hundred among those who deny the virgin birth (at least among the educated classes of society) do so without thought of any such thing, and on the contrary believe that Jesus was simply the son of Joseph and Mary. Yet on that view that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary the origin of the /pg. 278/ belief in the virgin birth does become more difficult to explain than would be the case if there were actually something unusual in the manner of His birth. We are indeed precluded from this latter
solution of the problem by historical considerations of the most compelling kind, and thus are forced back, if we still reject the historicity of the miracle, to the purely mythical view; but the difficulties of that view, as we shall see, are so serious that now and then there will always probably be some men who, like Harnack, will be led to have some recourse again to the rejected rationalizing method and will try to find some sort of factual basis which would help account for the extraordinary narratives in Matthew and Luke.
Nevertheless, such help is altogether rejected by the overwhelming majority of those who reject the fact of the virgin birth. It is almost universally admitted that if Jesus was not born of a virgin, He was the son of Joseph and Mary, born in wedlock and without anything which could give rise to question or suspicion with regard to the manner of His birth. The conditions of the problem, then, are in the minds of most scholars quite definitely fixed. How is it to be explained that one of the sons in a Jewish family, about whose birth there was really nothing extraordinary, came to be regarded as having been conceived in the womb of a virgin by a supernatural act of God? The story of the virgin birth, it is admitted, is not a distortion of actual happenings. What then is it; how did it arise?
The answer to this question that has been dominant since the days of Strauss is that the New Testament story of the virgin birth is a myth —that is, it is the expression, in supposedly historical form, of a religious idea. About the question what particular religious idea it is that the story expresses there have been some differences of opinion, but those differences are not so important as they might possibly have been expected to be. Bruno Bauer, it is true, supposed that the story expresses the idea of the divine initiative in the establishment of the unity between the Christian community and God. The Christian community, he supposed, was conscious of the unity of the divine and the human; this unity could not come from sinful man, but from God; the community, therefore, regarded itself as something produced by God without human help; and finally this thought was transferred from the community to the person of the
Founder.17 But such highly specialized accounts of the idea that is supposed to be expressed by the myth are at best isolated; and in general the advocates of the mythical theory content themselves with pointing simply to the Christian conviction regarding the greatness of Jesus' person (especially His divine sonship) or regarding the overpowering debt which believers owe /pg. 279/ Him, as being the thought which the myth expressed. One so great as Jesus, it is said, could not, in the circles in which this myth arose, be regarded as born in the ordinary human way, but had to be thought of as owing even His conception in His mother's womb to an act of God.
But of course this general exhibition of the thought that was expressed by the myth does not suffice to explain the myth itself. Why was the greatness of Jesus celebrated in just this particular way? At this point opinions begin diverge.
CHAPTER XIII:
THE THEORY OF JEWISH DERIVATION
It has been observed in the preceding chapter that in the opinion of the great majority of those who reject the historicity of the virgin birth story, the story is to be regarded as a myth. It is, in other words, to be regarded as the expression in narrative form of a religious conviction—the Christian conviction regarding the greatness of Jesus Christ. But whence did this particular myth come; how, specifically, did the idea of the virgin birth of Christ arise? The most obvious suggestion unquestionably is that the idea arose on Jewish Christian ground. The narratives that contain the idea are, as we have seen, strikingly Jewish and Palestinian in character; what is more natural, therefore, than to suppose that the idea was formed on the basis of Jewish elements of thought? It is not surprising to discover that the Jewish Christian origin of the doctrine of the virgin birth has been defended by noteworthy scholars such as Keim, Réville, Lobstein and Harnack.
But what are the Jewish elements out of which the idea of the virgin birth of Christ is thought to have been formed?
In the first place, there are the Old Testament stories regarding heroes like Isaac and Samson and Samuel who were born of aged parents or at least of mothers who had previously been barren. In the case of such births, the course of nature was broken through; Sarah, for example, had given up all expectation of having children of her own; yet in a wonderful way God's power was manifested, and she conceived a son in her old age. Thus in the case of Isaac God's power, and not the ordinary course of nature, was the determinative thing. Was it not, then, an easy step to exclude the human father altogether and to hold that one greater than Isaac was conceived in the womb of a virgin by an immediate exercise of the power of God? Such
considerations might seem to be confirmed by the juxtaposition of the birth of Jesus with the birth of John in the infancy narrative in Luke. John the Baptist, like Isaac, was born of aged parents, and it is the intention of the narrative to present Jesus as greater than John. But if the superior greatness of Jesus is to be reflected in the manner of His birth, and if John was born of aged parents by an extraordinary manifestation of divine grace, /pg. 281/ what is there more natural than that in the case of Jesus the human father should be excluded altogether and that the child should be represented as conceived in the womb by the power of God? If John was to be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb,1 what is there more natural than that in the case of the one greater than John, the Holy Spirit in the womb of the mother should bring about the very existence of the child?
This parallelism between the wonder in connection with the birth of John the Baptist and the greater wonder in connection with the birth of Jesus would seem to be plainly indicated by the angel's words in Lk. 1:36f., where, in confirmation of the promise of the supernatural conception, Mary has pointed out to her the experience that her kinswoman Elisabeth has passed through: "And behold, thy kinswoman Elisabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For no word from God shall fail of power." Was it not, then, for persons who were impressed by the supreme greatness of Jesus, an easy step from a conception brought about in the womb of an aged woman by a special dispensation of God to a conception brought about in the womb of a virgin by an immediate exercise of God's creative power?
Despite the plausibility of such considerations, we answer that it was not an easy step at all—certainly not to a Jew. An essential point in the story of Isaac's birth was the paternity of Abraham; and the paternity of Zacharias is emphasized to the full in the case of John the Baptist. It is to Zacharias, the father of John, that the announcement of the approaching birth is made; and although the divine favor shown to Elisabeth does appear also in the narrative, in
Lk. 1:13, 24f., 43f., yet in general it may be said that Zacharias is the prominent figure. Evidently the narrators both in the Old Testament books and in the first chapter of Luke regard it as quite an essential part of the divine favor that the husband should actually beget a son who should be his very own.
This attitude of these particular narrators is quite in accord with the general Jewish attitude toward the begetting of children. All through the Old Testament, the possession of a large family is regarded as a signal mark of divine favor, and there is no trace of an ascetic attitude toward the marriage relationship. Moreover, there can be little question but that the attitude of the Old Testament at this point was also the prevailing attitude of later Judaism. Josephus does mention, indeed, as one of the three Jewish sects the ascetic order of the Essenes, and there have been efforts here and there to bring the life of Jesus and particularly the story of the birth into some sort of connection /pg. 282/ with them; but in general such efforts have sprung only from dilettantism and have been rejected by the main trend of modern scholarship. The whole picture of the Judaism in which Jesus lived during his public ministry is just as remote as possible from the Essenism that Josephus describes. When we read the Gospels, with their lifelike descriptions of Pharisees and Sadducees, we feel that those strange Essenic companies with their asceticism, their curious observances, and their monastic life, belong altogether to a different world. Not only are the Essenes not mentioned in the Gospels, but evidently they are not at all in view. In the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke the possibility of Essenic influence becomes particularly remote; the whole spirit of the narratives is contrary to any such thing. Certainly it is improbable in the extreme that Essenic asceticism should have exerted the slightest influence upon the circles from which these narratives came; those circles plainly belonged to a type of Jewish life that drew its inspiration from the Old Testament Scriptures. And part of the Old Testament tradition was the attitude toward the marriage relationship and the begetting of children which we have
characterized above. Indeed, that attitude was no doubt shared, among the Jews, by friends of early Christianity and foes alike.
At that point, then, is to be found one barrier against the exclusion of the human fatherhood in the case of Jesus. Another barrier is to be found in the Jewish attitude toward God. To a Jew nothing could be more abhorrent than anything which would seem to bring God into degrading contact with the world. Indeed, it has often been remarked that the transcendence of God, which is fundamental even in the Old Testament, was exaggerated in later Judaism until it even seemed to forbid the mention of God's name. Particularly abhorrent would have been the notion that God could take the place of a human father and beget children after the manner of the divinities of the pagan world. No such notion as that appears, indeed, in Lk. 1–2, Mt. 1–2. But even the story of the virgin birth which does appear there might well have seemed to a Jew to move in somewhat the same direction—the direction of a breaking down of the full transcendence of God. PreChristian Judaism did, indeed, have some idea of a fatherhood of God; for such an idea is found in the Old Testament. "Thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee," says Jehovah to the Messianic king, according to the Second Psalm.2 But this verse plainly refers not to the birth of the Messianic king, but to His induction into office; and it is as far as possible removed from excluding the human paternity. The fatherhood of God according to the Old Testament Scriptures (at least as they were understood by later Judaism), whether it refers to God's /pg. 283/ relationship to the nation or to God's relation to the king, is a relationship into which God enters by a gracious act; to set it over against the paternity of a human father is to have recourse to an entirely different circle of ideas. And to a Jew it might well seem to be derogatory to the transcendence of God as over against the world.
A word of caution must, indeed, be interjected at this point. We are insisting upon the incongruity between the Jewish doctrine of the transcendence of God and the story of the virgin birth. Does not that incongruity militate against the New Testament birth narratives
themselves as much as against the view of their origin which we are now criticizing? Do we mean to say that the doctrine of the supernatural conception in Matthew and Luke is really contrary to the doctrine of the transcendence of God, which is certainly taught in the Old Testament as well as in later Judaism? And if it is not contrary to that doctrine, then why may not the Jewish Christians, in perfect loyalty to the Old Testament idea of God, have come to believe in the virgin birth of Christ?
In reply, we point out simply that there is a vast difference between acceptance of an idea when it is presented in some imperative way and evolution of that idea without such compulsion. There is no doubt a certain antinomy between the transcendence of God and the virgin birth of Christ; it is no doubt a supreme wonder that not some lesser one, but the eternal Son of God, He through whom the world was made, should not despise the virgin's womb, but should consent to be born as a man and dwell among us; it is no doubt a wonder, too, that the manner in which He should come should be found in a creative act of God's Spirit in Mary's womb. These stupendous antinomies do not, indeed, amount to contradiction; and in the wonderful narratives of Matthew and Luke they are so presented that neither member of the antinomy is sacrificed at all. It is not by some lower conception of God that God is thought of as excluding the human father when our Saviour entered into the world; it is not a god of Greek mythology, begetting children after the manner of men, but the Holy Spirit Himself, in His creative activity, who brought about the beginning of the human life of Jesus in the virgin's womb. There is an antinomy here; but is it not at bottom merely the antinomy which is involved of necessity in the incarnation of the Son of God? "So the All-Great were the All-Loving too"—what wonder could be greater than that? Yet it is a wonder in which the Christian can rest.
Thus the antinomy in the Gospel narratives is not only created, but transcended, by the stupendous fact. The lofty Old Testament conception of God is preserved to the full; and yet that God, by His
creative power, has formed /pg. 284/ in the virgin's womb the body of Him who was to be both God and man. The antimony has truly been overcome here—overcome by a mighty act of God.
Could it have been overcome in any other way? We think not; and because we think not we have rejected the Jewish Christian derivation of the supposed myth of the virgin birth. It is one thing to say that when Jesus was actually conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin Mary, that fact could be harmonized by divine revelation with the awful transcendence of God; and it is quite a different thing to say that a Jew, beginning with the transcendence of God, would ever have been able, without compulsion of fact, without the enlightenment of revelation, to arrive at the wonderful representation that appears in Matthew and Luke. All that we know of Judaism is contrary to such a possibility as that. A Jew could accept the virgin birth when it actually occurred, but that is very different from evolving the notion of it from existing ideas. Very hostile to such an evolution of the notion was the whole tendency of the Jews' thought about God.
A subsidiary obstacle to the Jewish Christian derivation of the virgin birth story is to be found in the fact that the word for "spirit" in Hebrew is feminine. Would it have been natural, in view of this fact, for a Jew with an Old Testament background to evolve the notion that a supernatural conception was accomplished by the Holy Spirit? Would a feminine noun naturally be used to designate the divine power that took the place of the male factor in the birth of Jesus? Against such a supposition has often been urged especially the fact that in the Jewish Christian Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Holy Spirit is actually represented not as the father but as the mother of Jesus.
This argument should undoubtedly be used only with caution. In the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, the Spirit is not represented as taking the place of the male factor in any anthropomorphic way, but as entering upon a creative activity. And we found reason to
believe that the Gospel according to the Hebrews, despite its strange designation of the Holy Spirit as the mother of Jesus, did contain an account of the virgin birth—presumably, though of course not certainly, in much the same form as that which appears in the canonical Gospels. If, then, in the Gospel according to the Hebrews the feminine gender of the word for "spirit," and even the exploitation of that gender by the designation of the Spirit as Jesus' mother, did not prevent the inclusion of the story of the supernatural conception by that same Spirit, would the feminine gender of the noun have prevented the formation of the story in the first place? /pg. 285/
Such considerations do not altogether destroy the argument against which they are directed. It is perfectly true that the feminine gender of the word for "spirit" in Hebrew would not necessarily prevent the acceptance by men of Semitic background of the story of the supernatural conception if that story came to them already formed. We have already pointed out that the lofty representation in Matthew and Luke does not at all imply the discharge of human functions by the Holy Spirit, but has reference to the Spirit's creative work. If that representation was rightly understood, therefore, it could easily be accepted by men of Jewish race despite the feminine gender of the Hebrew Word. But if the story was to be evolved without basis in fact, on the basis of the kind of reflection regarding the presence or absence of the human father which is attributed to the Jewish Christian originators of the story by advocates of the theory with which we are now concerned, then we think that the feminine gender of the word might be a great obstacle indeed. Rightly understood, the story (when it is taken as true) is fully harmonious with the feminine gender of the word for "spirit"; but the theory of Jewish Christian mythical derivation supposes that the story at the beginning was understood in a very different way. Thus the gender of the Hebrew word does provide a valid, though undoubtedly subsidiary, argument against the theory of a Jewish Christian derivation of the supposed myth.
A far more important argument is to be found in the Jewish expectation of the Davidic descent of the Messiah. Surely that expectation would constitute a powerful barrier against any evolution of the idea of the virgin birth in Jewish Christian ground. If the story of the virgin birth stands in antinomy with the transcendence of God as it appears in the Old Testament and as it appears in one-sided and exaggerated form, perhaps, in later Judaism, even more obviously does it stand in antimony with the promise of the king that was to come from David's line. In the narratives of Matthew and Luke, as we have seen, the Davidic descent is traced through Joseph, and not, in accordance with the most probable interpretation, through Mary. How then, except under the compulsion of fact, could Jewish Christians like the authors of these narratives, Jewish Christians who laid such stress upon the Davidic descent of Jesus, ever have evolved the notion that Jesus was not the son of Joseph, after all, but was born without human father, being conceived by the Holy Ghost? Here again the antinomy is not incapable of being resolved in a higher unity. We have argued in another connection that when Jesus was born in Joseph's house—not in a physical sense his son but conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary by a stupendous act of God, and yet born when Mary was /pg. 286/ already Joseph's wife—He was, in accordance with the promises, truly the heir of David. Even mere adoption, we argued, meant more to the Jews than it does to us; and the relation of Jesus to Joseph, if the story of the virgin birth be true, is more than mere adoption as it exists ordinarily among men. Thus Jesus, though virgin-born and not in the ordinary sense Joseph's son, was yet Joseph's heir, and heir to the promises of God concerning the Messianic king. According to the New Testament narratives, then, Jesus belonged truly to the house of David; only, He was a gift of God to the house of David in a far more wonderful way than if He had been in a physical sense Joseph's son.
But if the antinomy may be resolved so readily in this way, if the promises were really fulfilled by the birth of Jesus as it is narrated in Matthew and Luke, and fulfilled in accordance with the ideas of
those to whom they were made, have we then, after all, any basis for an argument against the Jewish Christian derivation of the myth of the virgin birth? However it may seem to us, would the story of the virgin birth have seemed to a Jew to stand in any antinomy at all with the Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph?
Here again, as in the case of the Jewish doctrine of God, we answer that it is one thing to be able to resolve an antinomy when once it is created by the compulsion of facts and quite a different thing to create the antinomy in the first place without impelling cause. No doubt the Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph can be harmonized with the story of the virgin birth; no doubt when that latter story was once heard, any student of the Old Testament, and especially a Jew, could see that the virgin-born Messiah, born in Joseph's house, not only belonged truly to the house of David, but belonged to the house of David in an even more wonderful way than if He had been descended from David by ordinary generation. No doubt God's promises could be seen to have been fulfilled even more fully and even more gloriously than if they had been fulfilled merely as they were originally understood. All that is perfectly true, when once the story of the virgin birth was received. But until that story was received, would the story ever have been evolved by those whose thought concerning the Messiah centred in the promise that He should be descended from David's line? Surely this supposition is unlikely. Unless all indications fail, the expectations of the Jews regarding the Messiah, especially such Jews as the original authors of the narratives in Mt. 1–2, Lk. 1–2 may be conceived to have been, were running in a direction quite remote from the thought of any even apparent break in the Davidic descent of the Messiah, like that which is involved in the story of the virgin birth. We insist, therefore, that the representation of the birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke does stand in an antinomy with the Jewish doctrine of the Davidic descent /pg. 287/ as well as with the Jewish doctrine of the transcendence of God—an antinomy which militates strongly against a Jewish Christian origin of the supposed myth of the virgin birth. By
what impulsion could such obstacles in the Jewish mind to the story of the virgin birth be overcome?
They could be overcome, of course, by the impulsion of fact. If the virgin birth really occurred, then it is not difficult to see how it might have been accepted even by men of Jewish race. But if that explanation be rejected, as it is of course rejected by the advocates of the theory now under consideration, what may be put in its place? Was there any other impulsion—other than the impulsion of fact— which could have led the Jewish Christians, despite their inherited view of the awful transcendence of God and despite the stress that they laid upon the Davidic descent of the Messiah, to accept, or rather themselves to evolve, the story of the virgin birth?
Only one answer to this question can possibly be suggested. Might not the impulsion to the notion of the virgin birth of Jesus have been found in the prophecy in Is. 7:14?3 When the Jewish Christians read in the Scriptures the words, "Behold the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel," what was there more natural, it may be said, than that they should interpret these words, with their mention of a virgin mother, as being a prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah; and since prophecy, according to their view, must be fulfilled, what more natural than that they should suppose that this prophecy had actually been fulfilled in the case of the true Messiah, Jesus, who therefore must have been born of a virgin as is narrated in the story that has been preserved for us in Matthew and Luke? Thus, according to this hypothesis, the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus was evolved in order to show fulfilment of a prophecy contained, or supposed to be contained, in one verse in the seventh chapter of Isaiah. The hypothesis is thought to be strongly supported by the actual quotation of Is. 7:14 in Mt. 1:22f. There we have, it is supposed, an indication by the author of the First Gospel himself of the way in which the doctrine of the virgin birth was evolved; in the search for Messianic proof-texts the Jewish Christians hit upon the Immanuel prophecy in Isaiah, and the Immanuel prophecy produced the story of its supposed fulfilment. In
our consideration of this suggestion, it is necessary to distinguish sharply between the question how the passage in Isaiah ought really to be interpreted /pg. 288/ and the question how it actually was interpreted by men of Jewish race in the first century after Christ. With regard to the former question, we hold very strongly that the author of the First Gospel is entirely correct in taking the Immanuel passage as a true and very precious prophecy of the virgin birth of our Lord. Against this view has been urged, indeed, the fact that the word translated "virgin"4 in the Septuagint means in Hebrew not "virgin" but simply "young woman of marriageable age"; it is not bethulah but L almah. This objection is at least as old as the middle of the second century; for Justin Martyr, writing at that time represents his Jewish opponent, Trypho, as insisting, against the Christian doctrine of the virgin birth of the Messiah, that the Septuagint translation at Is. 7:14 is wrong, and that L almah should have been translated by the Greek word for "young woman" and not by the Greek word for "virgin."5 Then the second-century Jewish versions of the Old Testament by Theodotion, Aquila, and Symmachus actually have the former translation, apparently in conscious opposition to the Christian use of the Septuagint at this point; and in the opinion of many modern scholars these versions are right. Thus if the second-century Jews and their modern supporters are correct about the interpretation of Is. 7:14, the doctrine of the virgin birth, on the hypothesis of Jewish Christian origin, would seem to have been evolved from a mistranslation of a Hebrew word, which the Septuagint happened to have made at Is. 7:14. In the Hebrew original, it is said, there is nothing whatever in this passage about a virgin birth of the Messiah.
But is this ancient Jewish, and modern critical, interpretation of the Isaiah passage really correct, or is the First Gospel correct in taking that passage as a prophecy of the virgin birth? The question, we think, cannot be settled merely by a consideration of the meaning of the Hebrew word L almah.
It has been urged, indeed, on the one hand that the Hebrew language has a perfectly unmistakable word for "virgin," bethulah, and that if "virgin" had been meant that word would have been used. But as a matter of fact there is no place among the seven occurrences of L almah in the Old Testament where the word is clearly used of a woman who was not a virgin.6 It may readily be admitted that L almah does not actually indicate virginity, as does bethulah; it means rather "a young woman of marriageable age." But on the other hand one may well doubt, in view of the usage, whether it was a natural word to use of anyone who was not in point of fact a virgin. /pg. 289/ C. F. Burney aptly compares our English use of " 'maiden' and 'damsel,' terms which do not in themselves connote virginity, yet would scarcely be used of any but an unmarried woman."7 If a married woman were referred to in Is. 7:14, it does seem as though some other word than L almah would naturally be used.8 But even if that conclusion were incorrect, even if the word were in itself quite neutral as to whether a young married woman or a virgin in the strict sense were in view, still we think that the context would point strongly in the latter direction. According to the immediately preceding verses, Ahaz, the king of Judah, has been told by the prophet (by direct command of Jehovah) to ask for a "sign," to ask it "either in the depth, or in the height above." Ahaz declines to do so, and then comes the passage with which we are concerned: Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: behold, a virgin9 shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, when he knoweth to refuse the evil, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken. Jehovah will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—even the king of Assyria.10
What does the first verse in this passage mean? Who is the L almah whose child-bearing constitutes the "sign" that Jehovah gives?
Various answers to this question have been given in the long history of the exegesis of this famous passage. A very ancient answer is that the L almah, or "young woman," who is meant is the prophet's wife. A few verses below, at the beginning of the eighth chapter, it is said that the prophet's wife bore a son, whose name, Maher-shalal-hashbaz, is significant of impending political /pg. 290/ events. May not another son have been given the still more significant name, Immanuel, to signalize the discomfiture of the two kings, Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king of Israel, who had come up against Ahaz to battle? But why should the prophet's wife, who is designated in the later passage, very naturally, as "the prophetess," be designated here as "the young woman of marriageable age," even supposing that the word L almah means no more than that? Surely the designation is rather strange.
Another interpretation finds in the L almah the wife of Ahaz the king, so that the promised child is Ahaz's son, Hezekiah. This interpretation, which is attested in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho as being the one favored by the non-Christian Jews in the second century, was refuted by Jerome some centuries later,11 who pointed out that since Hezekiah must have been born before Ahaz came to the throne his birth could not have been referred to within the reign of Ahaz as lying still in the future. Moreover, the reference to Hezekiah is not favored by anything in the context, to say nothing of the fact that, as on the first interpretation, the choice of the word seems very strange.
A third interpretation abandons all such identifications of the L almah and holds that any young woman is meant. "Let us suppose," the prophet, according to this third interpretation, would say, "that a young woman, at this moment when I speak, is conceiving; then before the child whom she shall bear shall come to years of discretion the land whose two kings have threatened the land of Judah shall be forsaken, and because of that deliverance that is to take place before the child shall grow up, the child might appropriately be called, 'God with us.' " Thus the prophecy would merely indicate, in a pictorial
sort of way, the shortness of the time within which deliverance was to come to Judah. A little reflection, we think, will reveal the inadequacy of this view. After all, the attention of the readers, as of the original hearers of the prophet, is directed to the young woman and her child-bearing in a way that seems very strange if she is introduced merely as a sort of measure of the time that must elapse before the danger to the kingdom will be averted; and the reference to Immanuel in Is. 8:8, when taken in connection with our passage, clearly shows that a definite person is meant.
The truth is that all these interpretations which find in the childbearing of the L almah only an ordinary birth are opposed by the way in which the promise is introduced. Why should an ordinary birth be regarded as a "sign"? That word naturally leads us to think of some event like the turning back /pg. 291/ of the sun on Hezekiah's dial, or the phenomena in connection with Gideon's fleece. But it is not merely the use of this one word which would lead us to expect something miraculous in that which the prophet proceeds to announce. Equally suggestive is the elaborate way in which the "sign" is introduced. The whole passage is couched in such terms as to induce in the reader or hearer a sense of profound mystery as he contemplates the young woman and her child.12
At this point, as at other points in connection with the Old Testament, we receive, in the field of exegesis, an unexpected ally in the ultra-modern school of comparative religion. That school, as represented, for example, by Gressmann, is inclined to return to the traditional exegesis of our passage by finding in the Immanuel prophecy at least no mere trivial reference to events in the immediate vicinity of the prophet, but a presentation of a stupendous divine personage, whose birth transcends the ordinary human sphere.13 We cannot agree with Gressmann as to the source from which this presentation comes; for he finds the source in a widespread oriental myth of a divine redeemer, while we find it in genuine revelation from the one living and true God. But at least there is a certain agreement in the exegetical sphere. The modern
school of comparative religion at least agrees with devout readers of the Old Testament in rejecting the minimizing interpretation of the Old Testament prophecies which has been in vogue in the dominant critical school. No doubt a sound exegetical instinct is here at work. It is certainly clear that something more than the Israelitish people is meant by the figure of the "Servant of Jehovah" in the latter part of Isaiah; and it is certainly clear that something more is meant by "Immanuel" in our passage than the child of the prophet or of Ahaz or of any ordinary young woman of that time. A really sympathetic and intelligent reader can hardly, we think, doubt but that in /pg. 292/ the "Immanuel" of the seventh and eighth chapters of Isaiah, in the "Child" of the ninth chapter, whose name shall be called "Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace," in the "branch" of the eleventh chapter, one mighty divine personage is meant. The common minimizing interpretations may seem plausible in detail; but they disappear before the majestic sweep of the passages when they are taken as a whole.
At this point, however, an objection lies ready to hand. If the passage in the seventh chapter of Isaiah constitutes a real prophecy of Christ, what shall be done with the plain reference in the sixteenth verse to events belonging to the prophet's own time?14 How can the coming of Christ to years of discretion some seven centuries later be made to fix the time for the forsaking of the land of Israel and Syria? Surely some more immediate birth of a child must be in view.
In reply, either one of two things may be said.15 In the first place, it may be held that the prophet has before him in vision the birth of the child Immanuel, and that irrespective of the ultimate fulfilment the vision itself is present. "I see a wonderful child," the prophet on this interpretation would say, "a wonderful child whose birth shall bring salvation to his people; and before such a period of time shall elapse as would lie between the conception of the child in his mother's womb and his coming to years of discretion, the land of Israel and of Syria shall be forsaken." This interpretation, we think, is by no means impossible. It is difficult, indeed, to set it forth adequately in
our bald modern speech; but the objections to it largely fall away when one reads the exalted language of the prophet as the language of prophetic vision ought really to be read.
In the second place, one may hold that in the passage some immediate birth of a child is in view, but that that event is to be taken as the foreshadowing of the greater event that was to come. Does an immediate reference to a child of the prophet's own day really exclude the remoter and grander reference that determines the quotation in the first chapter of Matthew? Certainly it does so in accordance with the prevailing view of the Old Testament prophets, the view which rejects altogether the typology in which the Church of all the ages has found so much of beauty and so much of the grace of God. But has that prevailing view really penetrated to the full meaning of these Old Testament books? We think not; and because we think not (or else because we adopt the other of the two possible interpretations /pg. 293/ that have just been set forth) we are able to accept still the use which the First Evangelist makes of the prophecy in the seventh chapter of Isaiah. That does not mean that we desire to return at all to the allegorical interpretation which in Philo and in Origen had such a baleful influence upon the readers of the Old Testament Scriptures. On the contrary, we adhere with full conviction to the method of grammatico-historical exegesis. But grammatico-historical exegesis does not demand the exclusion of all allegory from ancient books; it only demands that allegory shall not be discovered where no allegory was meant. So also grammaticohistorical exegesis does not demand the exclusion of all typology from the exalted language of the Old Testament prophets; the question whether all typology is to be excluded is a question which should be settled, not by the mechanical application of modern exegetical methodology, but only by patient and sympathetic research. And when such patient and sympathetic research is applied to the Old Testament, the result, we think, will be that in the dealings of God with His covenant people will be found a profound and supernatural promise of greater things to come. So, in our passage, the prophet, when he placed before the rebellious Ahaz that strange
picture of the mother and the child, was not merely promising deliverance to Judah in the period before a child then born should know how to refuse the evil and choose the good, but also, moved by the Spirit of God, was looking forward, as in a dim and mysterious vision, to the day when the true Immanuel, the mighty God and Prince of Peace, should lie as a little babe in a virgin's arms.
But such a reading of prophecy will not be induced, in those who have abandoned it, by any considerations that we can now bring forth; indeed, it will come only when there is a mighty revulsion from the shallowness of our present religious life, and when men are again ready to listen to the voice of the living God. Certainly for us now to attempt any defence of it would lead us far away from our present subject. For what is now relevant to our argument is not at all that Is. 7:14 really is a prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah. Upon that point we have touched merely in passing, lest there should be any misunderstanding of the position that we hold with regard to the Evangelist's use of a prophecy that we think was given truly by inspiration of God. What is really relevant to our present argument is quite a different thing; it is the fact that, whatever the true interpretation of Is. 7:14 may have been, the actual interpretation of that prophecy which was prevalent among the Jews in the first century after Christ was, unless all indications fail, as far as possible from finding in the prophecy any prediction of the virgin birth of the Messiah. /pg. 294/
It may perhaps at first sight seem strange that if Is. 7:14 is really a prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah, the later Jews should have so completely failed to interpret it in that way. But a parallel case is found in Is. 53. If there is any one passage in the Old Testament which seems to the Christian heart to be a prophecy of the redeeming work of Christ, it is that matchless fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. We read it today, often even in preference to New Testament passages, as setting forth the atonement which our Lord made for the sins of others upon the cross. Never, says the simple Christian, was there a prophecy more gloriously plain. Yet the historian must admit
that as a matter of fact the later Jews did not interpret the prophecy in any such way. Nothing seems to have been more foreign to later Judaism than the thought of the vicarious sufferings and death of the Messiah. The profound meaning of the Old Testament had at this point been missed; Jewish thought about the Messiah was moving along entirely different lines. So also it may have been, and with vastly better excuse, in the case of the mysterious prophecy in Is. 7:14. That was really a prophecy of the virgin birth; but it was couched in such terms as to be fully intelligible only after the event. At any rate, whatever may have been the reason, it seems perfectly clear that the later Jews did not interpret Is. 7:14 as referring to the virgin birth of the Messiah.
One indication of that fact is to be found in the attitude of the Jew Trypho, who in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho is the exponent of Jewish polemic against the Christian faith. What Trypho urges against the Christian doctrine of the virgin birth is not at all that, although prophecy requires the Messiah to be born of a virgin, Jesus of Nazareth was as a matter of fact not so born and so could not be the one to whom prophecy looked. On the contrary, Trypho's argument is that the Old Testament never predicted the virgin birth of the Messiah at all, and particularly did not do so at Is. 7:14. Neither Justin Martyr nor his Jewish opponent displays the slightest acquaintance with any non-Christian Jews who expected the Messiah to be born of a virgin or who interpreted Is. 7:14 in accordance with any expectation of that sort. This fact is worthy of careful consideration; for there can be little doubt but that the Dialogue with Trypho does represent faithfully the state of Jewish opinion in the second century after Christ. It makes very little difference whether Trypho is a real or an imaginary figure; for even if he is an imaginary figure the arguments which Justin puts into his mouth are plainly arguments which the Christians actually had to meet in the conflicts of that day. Evidently Justin is not engaged in knocking down a man of straw; the Jewish attack upon Christianity which he attributes to Trypho is not an attack which might be made, but an attack which actually was made. Thus the Dialogue /pg. 295/ does provide
extremely valuable information about the Judaism of that day. The fact is not unimportant, therefore, that the Dialogue displays no knowledge whatever of any Jewish doctrine of the virgin birth of the Messiah, or any corresponding Jewish interpretation of Is. 7:14. But if the doctrine of the virgin birth and the Matthæan interpretation of Is. 7:14 were thus so contrary to Jewish opinion, what startingpoint would Jewish Christians have for the evolution of the virgin birth story that is recorded for us in Matthew and Luke? An objection to this argument is, indeed, ready to hand. Justin Martyr, it will be said, may be admitted to give us information about the Judaism of the second century; but what right have we to suppose that the Judaism of the second century was the same as the Judaism of the preceding period, in which the Christian story of the virgin birth arose? In opposition to Christianity, it will be said, and especially after the calamities to the Jewish state, Judaism would eliminate those elements of thought which would tend to support Christian contentions, and in particular would oppose to the Christian view of the supernatural Christ a purely humanitarian view of the Messiah as a king of David's line. Might not this process of elimination have been applied to the special question of the Messiah's entrance into the world?
What right have we, therefore, to conclude that because secondcentury Judaism held to a purely natural birth of the Messiah, firstcentury Judaism may not have had on the contrary a doctrine of the virgin birth? Unquestionably this objection possesses considerable force. It is no doubt true that a process of impoverishment did go on in Jewish thought about the Messiah after the founding of the Christian Church. Trypho, for example, is represented by Justin as denying the preëxistence of the Messiah. But we know from certain "apocalypses," such as the Ethiopic book of Enoch, that in the preChristian period there were some Jewish circles in which the Messiah was believed to have existed in heaven before his appearance upon the earth. At that point, then, the Dialogue with Trypho does fail to represent the full richness and variety of earlier Jewish thought. Why may not the case be similar with reference to
the virgin birth? May there not have been, despite the contrary opinion of Trypho, some Jewish circles in the earlier period that expected the Messiah to be virgin-born? But although this objection does correct an undue reliance upon Justin's testimony for our purpose, it does not destroy the value of that testimony altogether. Even with regard to the preëxistence of the Messiah and His superhuman character, the Dialogue with Trypho does unite with other indications to show that these elements in Jewish Messianic expectation probably did not /pg. 296/ belong, even in the preChristian period, to the main current of Jewish thought, and that the prevailing view probably was that the Messiah was to be an earthly king of David's line.16 So the polemic of Trypho against the virgin birth, though it cannot of itself prove the complete absence of a virgin birth doctrine in the Jewish Messianic expectation of the preceding period, yet does tend strongly in that direction, and may be valuable in confirming other evidence to the same effect. Such other evidence is in this case easily to be adduced. It is to be found in the complete silence, in all our sources of information, about any Jewish belief in the virgin birth of the Messiah, coupled with the marked antinomy in which, as we have already shown, that belief would stand over against the whole current of Jewish thought. Let it not be said that we have here a mere instance of the argument from silence to which we ourselves have objected strongly in other connections. The point is that the burden of proof in this case rests upon our opponents in the debate. They have asserted that the myth of the virgin birth of Jesus arose on the basis of Jewish ideas. Surely it is fair to ask them positively to point out what those ideas were and to adduce the evidence of their existence. Their contention would be greatly strengthened if they could show that the belief in the virgin birth of the Messiah did not need to be evolved de novo by Jewish Christianity, but had already existed in pre-Christian Judaism. So far the proof has not been forthcoming. We have considerable information about pre-Christian Jewish thought regarding the Messiah; yet in that information a virgin birth of the Messiah has no place; the silence of our sources of information is complete.17 At one point, indeed, that silence has been thought by several recent
scholars to have been broken; the virgin birth of the Messiah, they maintain, is implied by the Septuagint translation of Is. 7:14.
The Septuagint introduction of the word "virgin" in that passage is, according to these scholars, quite unwarranted; but just because it is unwarranted some reason must be sought for such an extraordinary mistake. What reason could there be except that when the Septuagint translation was made there had already arisen a doctrine of the virgin birth of the Messiah and that this doctrine had already been read into Is. 7:14 or was now read into that passage by the Septuagint translators themselves? But surely the making of this suggestion only reveals the dearth of real evidence for that which is to be proved. The Septuagint translates the word /pg. 297/ L almah in one other place in the Old Testament18 by the Greek word for "virgin." Since in that place no profound calculation underlies the translation, why should such mysteries be read into the same translation at Is. 7:14? It is true that in that other passage the word L almah designates an unmarried woman, so that it may be argued that the translation "virgin" was natural enough in that passage, whereas in Is. 7:14, where conception and child-bearing are mentioned, some special cause was needed to determine the choice of the word. But a little consideration will reveal the weakness of this argument. The use of the Greek word for "virgin" to translate the Hebrew word L almah in a clearly nonMessianic passage does seem to show that in the minds of translators like the translators of the different parts of the Septuagint there was an affinity between these two words. It shows at least that when L almah was translated by "virgin" at Is. 7:14, that was no such crass offence against linguistic usage as would necessarily need to be explained in some special way. The same Greek word for "virgin," moreover, is used in several other places in the Septuagint to translate a Hebrew word (other than L almah) which means simply "young woman" or "maiden."19 On the whole, it seems evident that the Septuagint is inclined to use the Greek word for "virgin" in rather a loose way, or in places where no special emphasis upon virginity appears. The word, therefore, might well have crept into the translation at Is. 7:14 without any special cause, or certainly without
influence from any Jewish doctrine of a virgin birth of the Messiah. It must be remembered that such a doctrine is entirely without attestation elsewhere. To find it merely in the Septuagint translation of L almah by "virgin," a translation that appears in another passage where there is no suspicion of any doctrinal significance, and that is paralleled by the occasional use of the same Greek word to translate a simple Hebrew word for young woman, is surely venturesome in the extreme. There is not the slightest direct evidence, therefore, in support of the view that there was in the pre-Christian Judaism of the time subsequent to the Old Testament any expectation of a virgin birth of the Messiah. At this point, however, it becomes necessary to refer to the indirect support which has sometimes been found for such a view in the writings of Philo, the Jewish Alexandrian philosopher, who was a contemporary of our Lord. /pg. 298/ Philo does not, indeed, attest anything like a virgin birth of the Messiah; such a thing stands entirely aside from the whole scope and method of his thought. So much, of course, must be admitted. But although he does not attest a virgin birth of the Messiah, he does speak of a virgin birth, or at least of a divine begetting, of certain Old Testament characters; and if these Old Testament characters could thus be spoken of by a Jew, Philo, as born without human father, might there not have been Jews who could also think of the greater One to come as being so born? The Philonic passages which may be appealed to in this connection are fairly numerous.20 The most important and most extensive one of them is that which is found in the "De Cherubim." Since serious misunderstanding may arise, and actually has arisen, from a consideration of Philo's references to divine begetting apart from their context, it becomes advisable to quote the passage, or at least the most important part of it, in full. This passage, then, is as follows:21 "And Adam knew his wife; and she conceived and brought forth Cain, and said, 'I have gotten a man by the instrumentality of God.' And again she bore his brother Abel."
Those men whose virtue the lawgiver has attested he does not introduce as knowing women—namely Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and any others of like zeal. For inasmuch as we regard
"woman" in our symbolic interpretation as representing "senseperception,"22 and inasmuch as knowledge exists by estrangement from sense-perception and from the body,23 he will represent the lovers of wisdom as rejecting sense-perception rather than choosing it. And is that not natural? For those who dwell with these lovers of wisdom are in name24 "women" but actually25 virtues—Sarah ruling and sovereign virtue, Rebekah patience in things that are good, Leah rejected and laboring in the continuity of discipline26 (which every foolish person denies and shuns and turns away from), and Zipporah, the wife of Moses, hastening up from earth unto heaven and considering the divine and blessed creatures27 that are there (she is called "little bird"). But that we may tell of the conceiving and travailing of the virtues, let superstitious persons shut their ears or else depart; for /pg. 299/ we teach divine mystic rites28 to the initiates who are worthy of the most sacred mysteries, and these are the men who practise without arrogance the true and really existing unadorned godliness; but to those other men we will not be hierophants—namely, to those who are bound by an incurable evil, by arrogance in words and greediness for names and claptraps in manners, and who measure by nothing else that which is pure and holy. Here then must the initiation be begun. A man in accordance with nature comes together with a woman, a male of the human race with a female, to enter upon those embraces that lead to the generation of children; but in the case of virtues, which bring forth numerous and perfect offspring, it is not lawful for a mortal man to possess them. Yet they will never of themselves alone, without receiving seed from any other, bring forth offspring. Who then is the one who sows in them the things that are good unless it be the Father of existing things, the uncreated God who Himself begets all things? This God, then, sows, indeed, the seed, but on the other hand bestows as a gift His own offspring which He has sown; for God begets nothing for Himself, because He has need of nothing, but He begets all things for him who needs to receive them. I will adduce as sufficient surety of the things that I am saying the most holy Moses; for he introduces Sarah as being then with child when God visited her after she had been left solitary, but as being with child not to
Him who made the visitation, but to him who desired to attain wisdom—and this latter is called Abraham. And in the case of Leah he teaches that more plainly, saying that God indeed opened her womb—and to open the womb is the function of a husband—but that she, when she conceived, brought forth not to God—for God is competent in Himself and self-sufficient—but to Jacob, who endures toil for the sake of the good, so that virtue received from the First Cause29 the divine seeds, but brought forth the child unto whichever one of her lovers should be preferred to all the other suitors. Again, when the all-wise Isaac entreated God, Rebekah, who is perseverance, became pregnant from Him who was entreated. And without entreaty and prayer Moses, taking winged and lofty virtue, Zipporah, finds her with child from no one30 mortal at all.31
These things, O initiates with purified ears, receive ye as indeed holy mysteries in your own souls, and divulge them to no uninitiated person, but storing them up in your own keeping guard them as a treasure—not a treasure in which gold and silver, perishable substances, are kept, but one in which is kept the most beautiful of true possessions, the knowledge of the First Cause and of virtue and of that third thing which is the offspring of both. And if ye chance upon any one of the initiated persons, embrace him with gentle insistence, that he hide not from you any new mystery which he may know, until ye be taught it clearly. For I also, though I had been initiated into the great mysteries under the guidance of Moses beloved of God, nevertheless when I saw Jeremiah the prophet and perceived that he was not only an initiate but also a competent hierophant, did not delay having recourse to him; but he, as one who often was possessed /pg. 300/ by the divine frenzy, uttered a certain oracle in the name of God, saying this to most peaceful virtue: "Hast thou not called me as a house and father and husband of thy virginity?"—clearly showing that God is both a house, an immaterial dwelling-place of immaterial ideas, and the father of all things, as having begotten them, and the husband of wisdom sowing the seed of blessedness for the mortal race into good and virgin soil. For it is fitting for God to hold converse with a nature undefiled and
untouched and pure, the nature truly virgin, in a manner different from our manner; for in the case of men the union for the begetting of children makes virgins to become women, but whenever God begins to converse with a soul, even if the soul was a woman before, he makes it again a virgin, since, destroying and putting out of the way the lowborn and unmanly lusts, by which the soul had been made effeminate, He introduces instead of them genuine and undefiled virtues. With Sarah, therefore, He will not hold converse until she has ceased from all the ways of women and has returned to the rank of a pure virgin. But it is possible, perhaps, for even a virgin soul to be polluted by undisciplined passions and put to shame; wherefore the oracle is careful to say, not that God was the husband of a virgin—for a virgin is changeable and mortal—but that He is the husband of virginity—that is, of the idea which always remains the same.32 For while things that are of this sort or that are subject by nature to beginning and to decay, the powers that have given the imprint to the individual things have received an immortal inheritance. Wherefore it is fitting that the uncreated and unchangeable God should sow the ideas of immortal and virgin virtues into virginity, which never changes into the form of a woman. Why then, O soul, it being required of thee to live as a virgin in the house of God and to cling to knowledge, dost thou leave these things and give thy greetings to senseperception, which makes thee effeminate and corrupt? For this cause thou shalt bring forth as thy utterly hybrid and utterly ruined offspring that Cain who murdered his brother and was accursed—a possession that is not worthy to be possessed (for "Cain" means "possession").
At first sight, this passage, and other similar passages in Philo, might seem to provide a rather close parallel to the New Testament account of the birth of Jesus. In both cases there is begetting by divine agency; in both cases the human paternity seems to be excluded; and in both cases emphasis is laid upon the virginity of the mother. This similarity should not, indeed, be overestimated. The form which the divine agency takes is different in Philo from that which appears in Matthew and Luke; for Philo says nothing about an activity of the
Holy Spirit in the birth of Isaac and of the others about whom he speaks. It is God, not specifically the Spirit of God, who causes the conception of the child in the womb of Sarah and of the other three women. F. C. Conybeare, indeed, has tried to bridge this gap between the two /pg. 301/ representations.33 In another passage34 in Philo, he points out, the Alexandrian philosopher speaks of the individual man as being "compounded of earthly substance and of divine Spirit"35 and of his soul as arising "out of nothing created whatsoever, but from the Father and Controller of all things."36 Here there is a verbal similarity to our passage in the "De Cherubim"; the phrase, "from nothing [or "no one"] created at all,"37 corresponds with the phrase "from nothing [or "no one"] mortal at all."38 But if there is such similarity in the way in which the human element is excluded in the two passages, must there not also be a connection in Phllo's mind—so the argument might run—between what the two passages designate as the divine element? Thus the activity of God in the begetting of Isaac according to the "De Cherubim" passage would be identified with the activity of "the divine Spirit" mentioned in the passage in the "De Opificio Mundi." Accordingly, we should have in Philo, after all, the idea of a begetting by the Spirit of God; and the parallel with Matthew and Luke would become even closer than at first sight it seems to be. This reasoning is, however, very precarious. The passage in the "De Opificio Mundi" does not say that the soul of man came not from anything mortal, but from the divine Spirit; it says rather that the soul of man came not from anything mortal, but from the Father and Ruler of all things. What it does say about "spirit" is that the individual man is compounded of earthly substance and divine spirit. Here the divine spirit appears not as the power which begat the soul, but as the substance of which the soul is compounded. In exposition of Gen. 2:7, where the Scripture says that God breathed into man's nostrils (Greek, "face") the breath of life, Philo identifies the soul, as distinguished from the body, with the breath or spirit39 of God: For that which he breathed in was nothing else than the divine spirit sent as a colonist from that blessed and happy nature for the aid of our race, in order that even if the race is mortal in its visible part yet at
least in its invisible part it may be made immortal.40 /pg. 302/ Very different is the representation in Mt. 1:18–25; Lk. 1:35. In the New Testament passages the Holy Spirit certainly does not appear as a substance which is breathed by God into the virgin Mary for the formation of the soul, as distinguished from the body, of the child. On the contrary, the Spirit is here the source or agent of the act of begetting by which the body of the child was formed in the womb. Moreover, that passage in the "De Opificio Mundi" is not really relevant to the present discussion.
There what is in view is something that belongs to empirical "man" as such. But what we are seeking if we are to obtain a parallel for the New Testament narrative of the virgin birth of Christ is something that is attributed only to specially exalted men—something, therefore, that might conceivably be designated as belonging especially to the Messiah. It is noteworthy that in the passages where Philo lays stress upon the absence of the human paternity in the case of certain special Old Testament personages he does not speak at all of the "divine spirit," but says only that those personages were begotten by "God." We are not denying that the thought of the "De Opificio Mundi" passage is connected with the thought that appears in the "De Cherubim." In both cases Philo is thinking of facts regarding the human soul. The individual characters mentioned in the "De Cherubim" do not appear, as we shall see, at all for their own sakes, but solely for what they represent in Philo's allegorical exegesis. But our point is that it is not the underlying meaning of the "De Cherubim" passage which might conceivably be regarded as affording a basis for the New Testament virgin birth doctrine, but only the external form of expression with its reference to Isaac and the rest. The "De Opificio Mundi" passage in itself affords not the slightest parallel to the New Testament narrative. Only such passages as the one in the "De Cherubim" can by any chance be cited in that connection. It is, therefore, quite unjustifiable to import the phrase "the divine spirit" from that former passage into the latter, in order by this means to make more complete the parallel with Matthew and Luke. It does remain true, therefore, that the divine agency is not
designated in the same way in the really relevant Philonic passages as in the New Testament account of the virgin birth of Christ. But even with this limitation there seems at first sight to be similarity enough. Both Philo and the New Testament seem to exclude the human agency in the act of begetting, and they both emphasize the virginity of the mother. Moreover, one of the Old Testament characters to whom Philo refers is Isaac, who according to the Old Testament was born of aged parents, as was John the Baptist, whose birth is in the Lucan infancy narrative brought /pg. 303/ into such close parallel with that of Jesus. Have we not here a clear indication of the path by which the idea of the virgin birth of the Messiah could enter into Jewish or Jewish Christian belief? First the Old Testament spoke of the birth of Isaac as being in some sort supernatural, since his parents were past age; then this supernatural element in the birth of Isaac was in some Jewish circles actually held to involve exclusion of the human father in the case of Isaac himself (Philo), while in other Jewish (or else in Jewish Christian) circles it could lead to the notion that if not Isaac himself at least one greater than Isaac, the Messiah, was born without human father. The argument is plausible at first sight; but upon closer examination it breaks down. Here as elsewhere verbal parallels beween Philo and the New Testament are found to mask a wide divergence of thought. Did Philo really believe that Isaac and the other Old Testament characters in question were actually born without human father by the direct agency of God? So far as we are aware, no one today holds that to be the case; no present-day scholar, so far as we know, maintains that the Alexandrian philosopher actually believed that historical personages such as Isaac were virgin-born. To maintain such a view would be to misunderstand the whole nature of Philo's allegorical exegesis. As soon as one attains the slightest insight into the allegorical method of using the Old Testament, one sees clearly that when Philo speaks of a virgin birth or a divine begetting in the passages which are now in view, he is thinking of a divine begetting of the soul of man, or a divine begetting of certain virtues in the soul of man, and not at all of a divine begetting of human beings of flesh and blood who actually lived upon this earth. Suppose we came to Philo, after our perusal of
the passage in the "De Cherubim," with the question what he actually thought the manner of birth of the historic personage, Isaac, to have been—in particular with the question whether he did or did not think that Abraham was in a physical sense the father of this son. In the first place, it is perfectly evident that by the very asking of such a question we should, in the judgment of our philosopher, have completely forfeited our right to be taken seriously; we should have forfeited our right to become candidates for initiation into the "great mysteries."
In the presence of the Alexandrian teacher we moderns with our boasted grammatico-historical exegesis, with our interest in the question what actually happened long ago, would have seemed to be very profane persons indeed; it is very doubtful whether Philo would have wasted much time with questioners like us. But if he had answered our question, no doubt it would have been to the effect that his teaching at this point was not intended /pg. 304/ for children, and that if we wanted to hear about historical personages as historical personages, we should turn either to other teachers or to his own simpler works, but as for reading the "De Cherubim," or the "De Opificio Mundi," that could only confuse our minds to no profit at all. No, there is not the slightest probability that Philo ever believed in, or even for one moment thought of, an actual virgin birth of a man of flesh and blood. At first sight, indeed, it might seem to an uninitiated reader as though he did hold such a belief. Certain sentences in his writings seem to be perfectly explicit; and apparently he uses certain utterances of the Old Testament to construct a veritable argument against the view that Isaac and the others were begotten by the human beings who were the husbands of their mothers. Moses, Philo says, speaks of God as opening the womb of Leah; but to open the womb is the function of the husband; therefore—so Philo's argument seems to run—God it was, and not Jacob, who begat Leah's child. Or else it is an argument from the silence of Scripture which leads Philo to the same conclusion; Scripture does not speak of Abraham and certain others as knowing their wives; therefore they cannot be regarded as having begotten the
children whom their wives brought forth. At this point F. P. Badham departs in a curious way from the ordinary interpretation.41 Philo's real meaning, he says, is that although Isaac was actually born of the seed of Abraham, yet by the divine agency that seed was conveyed to the mother in a way other than by the ordinary intercourse of the sexes. Thus, according to this interpretation, the mother could be a virgin, although the child was Abraham's child. This same interpretation is applied by Badham to the New Testament narratives: the real meaning of Matthew and Luke, he holds, is that although Mary was a virgin, yet Joseph was actually in a physical sense the father of Jesus; God caused the act of begetting to be accomplished without any intercourse between husband and wife.42 It is scarcely necessary to point out that this view does justice neither to Philo nor to the New Testament. In the case of Philo,
Badham lays stress upon the fact that the "De Cherubim" passage says that the children, though begotten by an act of God, were born to Abraham and the other human beings regarded as their fathers. But does this really mean that God caused Abraham to be in a physical sense the father of Isaac, and Jacob the father of Leah's child, though in some more wonderful way than by the intercourse between husband and wife? Surely such an interpretation is impossible. The real /pg. 305/ meaning plainly is that although God and God alone performed the act of begetting, yet the children were born in the house of Abraham and of Jacob and belonged to them as would be the case with other children. Equally impossible is Badham's interpretation of Matthew and Luke. It is true that the New Testament narratives lay stress upon the Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph; but, as we observed in an earlier chapter,43 the Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph does not at all require us to suppose that Jesus was in a physical sense Joseph's son. And the actual wording of Mt. 1:18–25 and Lk. 1:34, 35 makes Badham's interpretation very improbable. The meaning seems clearly to be not that the agency of Joseph was mediated in some unusual and miraculous fashion, but that that agency was altogether excluded. To return, then, to Philo, we must plainly insist against Badham that
what Philo is speaking of is an actual exclusion of the human paternity in the case of Isaac and of the other children of whom he speaks. But it is also perfectly clear that the exclusion of the human paternity belongs altogether to the allegorical sphere and is not intended at all to refer to the actual historical personages whose names are used. When Philo uses details of the Old Testament narrative to support his interpretation, that is quite in accord with the allegorical method. An isolated phrase, such as the phrase referring to the opening of Leah's womb, is seized upon quite apart from its context, and quite apart from the literal or historical sense of the passage, in order to afford a starting-point for the treatment of spiritual mysteries concerning the soul of man and the things of the unseen world. A sympathetic perusal of the passage in the "De Cherubim" and of other similar passages will show that when Philo speaks of virginity and of the divine begetting he is not really thinking at all of Sarah or Isaac or Leah or Zipporah, but of the facts concerning the soul of man and its relations to God.
The whole representation goes back to certain spiritual, or, as modern men might put it, psychological, facts. The soul clogged with representations coming from the senses is sterile; it must be freed from these things and thus become truly virgin before it can receive the true seed; and it can receive the true seed not from man, but from God. But when the virgin soul has thus received by inspiration the seed that comes from God it can bring forth virtue. Such are the things with which Philo is really dealing in these passages. There is indeed a bewildering variety in detail.44 At times it is the soul that is represented as the mother; at times it seems rather to be virtue— virtue that brings forth true /pg. 306/ blessedness. It is useless to seek in Philo any one scheme in which all of his representations will fit; the exuberance of his language defies any attempt at complete systematization of his teaching. But at any rate it is perfectly clear that when he speaks about children begotten of God he is not for one moment thinking of beings of flesh and blood. So much is admitted; it is generally admitted that Philo did not mean to say that Isaac or any of these other Old Testament personages was born of a virgin
mother by a divine act of begetting. We do not find in Philo's own thinking, therefore, any notion that would form a parallel for the story of the virgin birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. How then, if at all, may the Philonic passages be used in the search for such a parallel? A very definite answer to this question was given by F. C. Conybeare in the course of the correspondence to which reference has already repeatedly been made.45
Although Philo may not himself be referring to a physical as distinguished from a spiritual pregnancy,46 yet these passages "certainly imply among Philo's contemporaries a belief in actual parthenogenesis—i.e., in the possibility of virgins bearing children to earthly fathers, yet not by them conceived, but by the Divine Spirit."47 "Granted the existence among the Jews of the first century of such a belief," Conybeare goes on to say, "the rise and development in regard to Jesus of the entire story which we have in the first chapter of Matthew is seen to be a natural and almost a necessary outcome of his age." Thus, according to Conybeare, there were in the time of Philo Jews who actually believed in the virgin birth of certain patriarchs; however sublimated Philo's own view may have been, he is making use, in the passages to which we have referred, of a Jewish tradition as to actual virgin births. This Jewish tradition, Badham surmises,48 may well have been found in Palestine as well as elsewhere. If so, we find attested in the Philonic passages a pre-Christian Palestinian belief in the virgin birth of Isaac and other Old Testament characters, which may well have been the basis for the belief in the virgin birth of the Messiah that appears in Matthew and Luke. This hypothesis as to a Jewish tradition of parthenogenesis underlying the Philonic passages received the support of Carl Clemen in the first edition of his work on "Primitive Christianity and Its Non-Jewish Sources."49 But it /pg. 307/ seems to be dropped by Clemen in the second edition of his work.50 At any rate, it must surely be pronounced very improbable. It is perfectly clear that when Philo speaks of virgin births and divine begettings he is thinking of facts concerning the soul, not of events in Old Testament history.
His Scriptural attestation of his doctrine is found by an ingenious allegorical method of using certain Old Testament passages, for which it is quite idle to seek any support in Jewish tradition. Indeed, to seek such support is to show misunderstanding of Philo's whole attitude of mind. There is, then, no evidence in the Philonic passages to show that there ever were Jews in the pre-Christian period who believed in the virgin birth of any being of flesh and blood. But may not those passages at least afford a hint as to the way in which such a belief might conceivably have originated? We have seen that Philo's references to the birth of Abel and Isaac and the others, when isolated from their context and taken literally, look very much as though they meant that those men were actually virgin-born. May there not then have been some persons, either in pre-Christian Judaism or in the Jewish Christian Church, who, misunderstanding such allegorical exegesis in that literal way, derived from these passages or from passages like them in other allegorical writers the notion that there had been, or at least might be, men born without human father by a creative act of God? May not, in other words, allegorical exegesis like the exegesis which is preserved for us in Philo have given to literally-minded men of Jewish race the idea of a virgin birth, which could then easily be applied to the Messiah? This suggestion is opposed by the very great difference of atmosphere which separates Philo, on the one hand, from the New Testament infancy narratives, on the other. It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast. That contrast is no doubt rooted in the difference which prevailed in general between Alexandria and Palestine—a difference which was well insisted upon by R. H. Charles in his controversy with Conybeare.51
But it appears in a particularly acute form when we compare with Philo's writings and indeed with the other products of Alexandrian Judaism the Palestinian narratives that are contained in the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke. Are we to suppose that those narratives, with their simplicity and directness, have derived their most distinctive feature from a misunderstanding of an allegorical exegesis like that of Philo? The hypothesis certainly seems to be very
unlikely. /pg. 308/ To avoid this difficulty we might try to find the basis for the New Testament story, not in a misunderstood allegorical exegesis of the passages concerning Abel and Isaac, but in the general notion, attested by Philo, that a man's soul is derived from God, while his body comes by the ordinary intercourse of the sexes. Such apparently was Conybeare's first suggestion about the matter.52 The original purport of the story underlying the New Testament documents was, Conybeare supposed, "to represent Mary as owing the soul of the Messiah to the Holy Spirit, and His flesh to the natural human intercourse." Then there was foisted upon this original version of the story—so the hypothesis runs—the notion attested by Mt. 1:19f., that the activity of the Holy Spirit excludes the human fatherhood altogether.53 But surely this hypothesis hardly represents any improvement over that which we have just discussed. In the first place, it does not do justice to the New Testament narratives; for not merely the single passage, Mt. 1:19f., but the whole account of the annunciation and conception in Matthew and Luke really involves the exclusion of the human fatherhood.
A reflection like that in Philo's "De Opificio Mundi," that the soul of every man comes from God really leads away from, and not toward, the New Testament narratives; for the point of the New Testament narratives is that there was something different in the birth of Jesus from that which is found in the birth of other men. In the second place, the hypothesis does not do away with the argument drawn from the difference of atmosphere that prevails between Philo and the New Testament. Even the underlying notion about the source of the soul of man as distinguished from the body is not—at least in the form in which it could become fruitful for the hypothesis, as distinguished from the form in which it had a true Old Testament basis—such that we should naturally attribute it to Palestinian Jews. Conybeare himself says that according to his hypothesis Mt. 1:18–25 "must be explained by help of the Jewish theosophy current at the time."54 Is it natural to find the basis of such a Palestinian narrative in "Jewish theosophy"? The question must certainly be answered in the negative. If, on the other hand, we reduce the supposed
underlying notion about the source of the soul of man to such general terms that it could be found in the Old Testament and so on Palestinian soil, then the specific idea of the virgin birth is left altogether hanging in the air. We are therefore /pg. 309/ impaled upon the horns of a dilemma: either make the supposed underlying notion such that it could be derived from the Old Testament, in which case the origin of the idea of the virgin birth is left without explanation; or else put into the supposed underlying notion elements found in Philo's peculiar philosophic doctrines, in which case the presence of that underlying notion in Palestine and the influence of it in Matthew and Luke become improbable in the extreme. Thus it cannot be said that Philo's treatment of the divine begetting of the human soul affords any plausible explanation of the New Testament doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ. Before we turn away from Philo, however, it is necessary to consider for a moment another suggestion which Conybeare made. This suggestion concerned not the divine begetting of human souls, but the divine begetting of the Logos. According to Philo, says Conybeare, the Logos was begotten by God and born of Sophia, "Wisdom," who was an "ever-virgin, gifted with an incontaminate and unstainable nature."55 This birth of the Logos is spoken of, for example, in one passage as follows:56 Accordingly we shall immediately say with justice that the One who has wrought this universe is both Fashioner and Father of that which has come into being; and we shall say that the mother is the Knowledge57 of Him who has created it, with whom God having intercourse not after the manner of man sowed His creation.
But she having received the seed of God brought forth with final birth-pangs the only and beloved visible son, this world. In the light of such ideas, what could be more natural, says Conybeare, than that when Jesus was thought to be the Logos incarnate He, like the Logos, should be thought of as being born of a virgin mother? One obvious objection to this hypothesis is that there is no trace of a Logos doctrine in the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke. Whether the Alexandrian Logos doctrine influenced any part of the New
Testament is another question, with which we shall not now attempt to deal; but surely at any rate it did not influence the Palestinian narratives which mention the virgin birth of our Lord. Thus to derive the story of the virgin birth of Christ from speculations about the Logos is to relinquish all the advantages which belong to theories of Jewish origin as over against theories of pagan origin. We should at once have on our hands the question how such an obviously nonPalestinian notion came to be attested just in the most strikingly Palestinian /pg. 310/ narratives in the whole New Testament. Conybeare says in commendation of his hypothesis: In the year of Rome 743 was born Jesus of Nazareth, a man in whom, because of his moral and thaumaturgic pre-eminence, his followers, so far as they were Aramaic-speaking Jews, quickly recognised their promised Messiah; while such of them as were Greek Jews and proselytes acclaimed in him the Divine Word, which, many times before in their history, had come down from heaven and assumed human form.58 The trouble is that the story of the virgin birth appears in the New Testament, despite the final Greek form of the story as we have it, in an underlying Aramaic-speaking, not Greekspeaking, environment.59 But it is by no means merely a question of language. The whole spirit of Mt. 1–2, Lk. 1–2 is as far as possible removed from the spirit of Philo. To find any influence of an Alexandrian Logos doctrine in these narratives is to do violence to any sound canons of literary and historical criticism. This conclusion is amply confirmed when we examine the Philonic teaching in detail. Charles points out, in answer to Conybeare, that there are two representations of the Logos in Philo. According to one representation, which Charles calls Logos I, the Logos is the immanent reason of God; according to the other (Logos II), it is the material world. But it is only the Logos in the former sense that by any chance could be identified with the person, Jesus Christ; while it is only the Logos in the latter sense that is spoken of as having been begotten by God and born of the divine Wisdom.60
Conybeare's answer apparently is that it is by a comparison of Logos I with Logos II on the part of the Christian teachers that the
Christian Logos doctrine could come into being.61 But surely that answer does not altogether remove the objection. The fact remains that when Philo speaks of the Logos or the "beloved son" of God as having been born of the virgin Wisdom, he is thinking not of a person, but of the material universe. It would be difficult to imagine any complex of ideas more utterly remote from what we find in the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. In much of what has just been said about Philo and the virgin birth we have really been anticipating the discussion in our next chapter, where we shall deal with the hypothesis of pagan, as distinguished from Jewish, origin of the virgin birth idea. Conybeare, for example, does not for a moment believe that /pg. 311/ idea was originally Jewish: although he finds it attested in Jewish sources, he holds that ultimately it is a bit of "pagan folk-lore."62 Certainly if any use is to be made, in this connection, of what is characteristic in Philo's teaching, the extraJewish origin of the idea will stand firm; for Philo's teaching is essentially derived from pagan sources—from Greek philosophy, and, as recent scholars are inclined to believe, from the popular mystical religion of the Hellenistic world. We shall have to return to Philo, therefore, when we come to deal with the theory of pagan derivation of the virgin birth idea. We shall then have to discuss the question whether Philo does or does not help us to reconstruct a type of pagan religion from which the Christian idea of the virgin birth of Christ may ultimately have come. Here our interest in the great Alexandrian teacher has been of a more limited kind. Philo, after all, was a Jew; and when he speaks of the virgin birth of certain patriarchs or of the Logos, the question arises whether he attests the presence in pre-Christian Judaism of an idea which might have afforded the basis for our narratives in Matthew and Luke. The ultimate source of the idea is another question, with which we shall afterwards have to deal. Here we have considered merely the question whether, whatever its ultimate origin, the virgin birth idea is shown by the Philonic passages to have actually been found in Judaism, especially in Palestinian Judaism, at a time prior to that in which the New Testament story appeared. That question we have answered with an emphatic negative. In the first place, Philo does
not speak at all of a virgin birth of the Messiah, but only of a virgin birth of certain Old Testament characters. In the second place, when he speaks of a virgin birth of those
Old Testament characters, he is not dealing with them at all as historical personages, as men of flesh and blood, but only with what they represent in his allegorical exegesis. There is not the slightest likelihood that either Philo himself or any Jews of his day believed that Isaac or any of the others of whom he speaks in this connection were born without human father. In the third place, there is no evidence whatever, and it is most improbable, that any Jews ever obtained from Philo's philosophical teaching about the human soul or about the origin of the universe the notion that the Messiah or any other man had been born or would be born of a virgin. Thus Philo gives to those who derive the Christian story of the virgin birth of Christ from pre-Christian Jewish notions regarding the Messiah not the slightest real support. We are brought back to the main thread of our argument at exactly the point at which we left off. There is no indication in Philo, as there is no indication elsewhere, that in preChristian Judaism of the /pg. 312/ period subsequent to the Old Testament there was any thought of a virgin birth of the Messiah. To do justice to those who hold that the idea of the virgin birth was derived from really Jewish elements of thought, it should be remarked that they do not, so far as we have observed, often have recourse to the supposition that we have just been discussing: they do not usually seem to hold that the idea of the virgin birth had already existed in pre-Christian Judaism with reference to the Messiah; but they maintain rather that it was evolved with specific reference to Jesus by the Jewish Christian Church.63 The existence of a pre-Christian Jewish doctrine of the virgin birth of the Messiah has been argued for the most part not by those who believe that the doctrine of the virgin birth was derived from Jewish elements of thought, but by a certain group among those who hold the doctrine to be of pagan origin—the group, namely, that regards the idea of the virgin birth as a pagan idea which entered into the Christian Church by means of a previous assimilation in Judaism. This latter theory
will more conveniently be considered at a later point in our discussion.
But of course if it could be shown that the idea of the virgin birth, whether its ultimate origin was Jewish or pagan, was actually found in pre-Christian Judaism, that fact would militate in favor of any theory of Jewish Christian derivation of the belief in the virgin birth of Jesus, including the theory of Keim and Lobstein and Harnack with which this chapter has to do. It is very important, therefore, to observe even at the present point in the discussion that there is not the slightest reason to suppose that there was ever in pre-Christian Judaism any expectation of the virgin birth of the Messiah. If the idea of the virgin birth emerged in the Jewish Christian Church, it did not emerge as an inheritance from Judaism, but must have been evolved by the Jewish Christian Church itself with specific reference to Jesus. In particular, if Is. 7:14 was interpreted by the Jewish Christian Church as referring to the virgin birth, that interpretation, too, was an innovation over against pre-Christian Jewish exegesis. Is it likely that such an exegetical innovation should arise? Of course it could readily arise if Jesus was actually born of a virgin. But could it arise if that was not the case; and if it had arisen, could it have then produced the story of the virgin birth of Christ? Such an hypothesis is certainly faced by objections of the most serious kind. Certain general objections have already been indicated in the former /pg. 313/ part of the present chapter; the discovery of a virgin birth prophecy in Is. 7:14 would be faced, in Judaism, by the same obstacles as those which opposed the idea of a virgin birth in general. But there would also be special obstacles in the way of the supposed new interpretation of this verse. One obvious objection, for example, is found in the language presumably used by those who originated the new interpretation. That language, on the theory of a Jewish Christian derivation of the idea of the virgin birth, was no doubt Aramaic, not Greek; and on the part of Aramaic-speaking Christians a knowledge of the Hebrew Old Testament may probably be assumed. But in the Hebrew original the interpretation of Is. 7:14 as referring to the virgin birth of the Messiah is by no means so obvious
as it is in the Greek translation, where the word "virgin" is used. Few would be so bold as to maintain that the verse in the original ever could have given rise among Jewish Christians to the story of the virgin birth of Jesus. Certainly most advocates of the view with which we are now dealing cannot do so, since no doubt they share the common view that the Hebrew word L almah does not mean "virgin" at all. The theory, therefore, cannot possess even plausibility except on the basis of the Septuagint; it is the Greek translation alone which can be supposed to have led to the evolution of the virgin birth story as a fulfilment of the prophecy in Is. 7:14. But if that be true, what becomes of the Palestinian origin of the story, which seems to be demanded by the Palestinian character of the narratives in Lk. 1–2, Mt. 1–2?
The chief advantage possessed by the theory of Jewish Christian origin of the idea of the virgin birth, as compared with other theories with which we shall presently deal, is that it does justice to the Palestinian style and content of the narratives in which in the New Testament the virgin birth is attested. But now that advantage seems to be lost by the necessity of supposing that the idea could have originated only on the basis of the Greek translation, as distinguished from the Hebrew original, of Is. 7:14. Let it not be said that the origination of the idea of the virgin birth of Jesus might have been accomplished in Palestine and yet by Greek-speaking persons.64 No doubt there were many such persons in Palestine; but the trouble is that the linguistic character of Lk. 1–2, Mt. 1–2 seems to be strongly against the supposition that it was in those Greekspeaking circles that the idea of the virgin birth arose. Indeed, in Mt. 1:21, immediately before the introduction of the virgin-prophecy from Isaiah, we have an interpretation of the name /pg. 314/ "Jesus" which is intelligible only on the basis of Hebrew.65 But that detail only confirms the evidence of a Semitic background which is found in the whole character of the narratives. On the theory, then, that the virgin birth tradition arose out of a translation in the Septuagint at Is. 7:14, supposed to be contrary to the Hebrew original, we have upon our hands the immense difficulty of understanding how an idea
which would have arisen only among those who spoke Greek should be attested just by the most markedly Semitic parts of the New Testament. But even aside from this linguistic consideration, the whole notion that the doctrine of the virgin birth came from the desire to show a fulfilment of one Old Testament prophecy is very improbable. At this point we have the overwhelming support of recent investigators. If there is any one critical method that has fallen into disfavor in recent years, it is this method of deriving the supposed myths of the New Testament from Old Testament prophecy. That method was in full vogue in Strauss's first "Life of Jesus," which appeared in 1835. Even then, it is true, Strauss did not ignore the supposed pagan analogies for the virgin birth; but in addition to them he pointed with great insistence not only to Is. 7:14, but even to Ps. 2:7, and apparently found in those Old Testament passages the real propulsion toward the forming of the idea.66 In his later work there is a striking change.
The inadequacy of the prophetic passages in explaining the origin of the myth is now clearly recognized.67 Thus even the most famous advocate of the theory by which New Testament stories are supposed to have been produced through a desire to show fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies felt compelled to modify very seriously his original attitude. Even more striking has been the change in the general trend of scholarship. It is now very generally held that the Old Testament prophecies quoted in the New Testament did not for the most part produce the New Testament stories, but on the contrary were brought in as supposed Scriptural confirmation for stories that had arisen in an entirely different way. First came the myths, it is held, and then the searching of Scriptures for all sorts of fanciful support of them. So it is thought to be in the case of the virgin birth. Is. 7:14 never in the world, it is said, would have been taken as a prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah unless the story of the virgin birth, had been established already in the mind of the writer. The very fancifulness of Matthew's interpretation of the verse in /pg. 315/ Isaiah shows, it is said, that the Old Testament passage never could have been the source of the story of which it is
supposed to be a prophecy.68 Now for our part we do not think that Matthew's interpretation of Is. 7:14 is fanciful.
On the contrary, for reasons partly set forth above, we hold that it is profoundly true. But although it is true, it is certainly not obvious. Here, as in many other cases, prophecy was not intended to permit the hearers to map out the course of future events, but on the contrary became fully intelligible only after the fulfilment had come. We can agree, therefore, mutatis mutandis with the argument that has just been set forth, the argument that has led to the practically universal rejection of the view that Is. 7:14 is the principal germ out of which the myth of the virgin birth arose. With the rejection of that view about Is. 7:14 has gone the very general rejection of the whole Jewish Christian derivation of the idea of the virgin birth. It is admitted by the overwhelming majority of modern scholars that the myth of the virgin birth never arose in the Jewish Christian Church on the basis of purely Jewish ideas. The general opinion is voiced by Merx, when he says that the idea of the virgin birth is "as un-Jewish as possible."69 That general opinion, we are convinced, is correct so far as later Judaism is concerned. No doubt the Old Testament teaching is profoundly congruous with the virgin birth of Christ, but later Jewish thought was moving along entirely different lines. It is significant, as B. Weiss has remarked,70 that the denials of the virgin birth which are attested in the early Church came just from men of Jewish race. There are, of course, those who will tell us that those denials by the "Ebionites" were based upon genuine historical tradition, but another hypothesis is vastly more probable.
When one compares the negative attitude of the non-Christian Jews toward the preëxistence and virgin birth of the Messiah, as that attitude is attested by Justin Martyr's Dialogue, with the similar attitude of the Ebionites, one receives the irresistible impression that both the Ebionites and the non-Christian Jews are simply reflecting a profound antipathy of later Judaism to anything like the story that is found in Mt. 1–2, Lk. 1–2. No doubt, as in our first chapter we found reason to believe, many /pg. 316/ men of Jewish race overcame that
antipathy, and became not Ebionites, but in the full sense Christians. But that some should have stuck in the halfway position of the Ebionites does provide one more indication, in addition to many others, that the Judaism of the early Christian era was a soil in which myth of a virgin birth would be as unlikely as possible to spring up.
CHAPTER XIV:
THE THEORY OF PAGAN DERIVATION
It has been shown in the last chapter that the theory of Jewish derivation of the idea of the virgin birth has been rejected by the great majority of contemporary scholars and that such rejection is well grounded. If, therefore, the factual basis of the idea is still to be thought inadmissible, some other theory of origin is to be sought.
Before we examine the theory that is dominant at the present time, it will be advisable to consider briefly one possibility that has perhaps not received quite the amount of attention that it deserves. That possibility was suggested especially by Kattenbusch in 1900,1 after some anticipation by Pfleiderer in 1887.2 The idea of the virgin birth, Kattenbusch suggested, may have been developed within the early Church on the basis of Pauline teaching. Thus the idea would not be strictly Jewish Christian, and yet to account for it we should not have to have recourse to the pagan world. In the development of the account of Jesus' birth which we have in the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke, two stages, according to Kattenbusch, are to be distinguished. In the former stage came the idea of conception by the Holy Spirit; in the second stage the idea of the virgin birth. The former idea, which is the dominant one in the Lucan narrative,3 might well have been suggested, Kattenbusch thinks, by the Pauline
intimation that the Spirit was active in the entrance of Jesus into the flesh; the latter idea, the idea of the virgin birth, was fostered by Paul's doctrine of Christ as the second Adam, had its final form imparted to it by the prophecy in Is. 7:14, and then was important in making acceptable the Pauline doctrine of the preëxistence of Christ.
This theory is interesting in various ways. In the attention which it gives to the positive side of the New Testament representation of the birth of Jesus, at over against the negative side—that is, the activity of the Holy Spirit in the /pg. 318/ supernatural conception as over against the exclusion of the human father—it is anticipatory of the most recent elaborate theory as to the origin of the virgin birth tradition.4 In its insistence upon the connection that exists between Pauline teaching and the doctrine of the virgin birth it displays a genuine insight that contrasts very favorably with some modern treatments of the subject. Particularly refreshing is its rediscovery of the close connection between the doctrine of the virgin birth and the doctrine of the preëxistence of Christ. That connection unquestionably exists;5 and we have never been able to understand how the two doctrines ever could have come to be regarded, as they certainly are in much modern discussion, as standing in any relation of antinomy or contradiction. It is certainly true that if a man is convinced that Jesus of Nazareth existed before He came to this earth, he is facing a serious difficulty if he holds Jesus to have been by ordinary generation the child of Joseph and Mary. It is difficult to believe that a voluntary entrance of a heavenly being into this world could have been accomplished without a break in the ordinary process of the propagation of the human race. There is a profound connection also, as Kattenbusch observes between the Pauline doctrine of the second Adam and the story of the virgin birth. The doctrine of the second Adam represents Jesus as a new beginning in humanity, just as He is represented when He is said in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke to have been conceived by the Holy Ghost.
But here again it is one thing to recognize the connection between two ideas when both are given, and quite a different thing to evolve
one of them from the other. Could the story of the virgin birth ever have been evolved from the elements of Pauline teaching to which reference has just been made? That story is a very concrete thing; its details hardly look as though they were arrived at merely by reflection upon the activity of the Spirit in connection with the human life of Jesus or upon Christ as the second Adam. Indeed, it would be more plausible, if the choice had to be made, to suppose that the designation of Christ as the second Adam grew out of the fact of the virgin birth than that the story of the virgin birth grew out of that designation. Even to one who held the Pauline view of Christ, the evolution of so concrete a representation as that which appears in Matthew and Luke would be anything but a matter of course.
To support the theory at this point, therefore, Kattenbusch is obliged to call in the assistance of Is. 7:14. That verse, he supposes, provided for the /pg. 319/ early Church the solution of the problem which was presented by the Pauline teaching about Christ. Thus although Kattenbusch begins by saying that Is. 7:14 was not the source of the virgin birth story, he is obliged in the end to have recourse to that verse. Such recourse is forbidden by the considerations which we have already adduced.
The suggestion of Kattenbusch, interesting and suggestive though it is, has not, so far as we have observed, obtained any considerable support. It is time, therefore, to consider what has become the dominant theory as to the origin of the idea of the virgin birth. That theory is the theory of pagan derivation. The doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ, according to the overwhelming majority of those who today deny the factual basis of it, did not come from Jewish or purely Christian elements of thought, but it came from pagan ideas. This theory of pagan derivation has appeared in many forms. But before the individual forms are considered in detail, it should be observed that two objections would seem to face all of them alike. The first objection is found in the separation between the early Christian Church and the paganism that surrounded it in the Græco-Roman world. That separation was maintained by Gentile Christianity as
well as by Jewish Christianity. The converts from paganism, as Paul says in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, "turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God."6 Would those converts so readily have turned back again just to the most degrading features of that polytheism which their conversion caused them to detest? We say "the most degrading features" advisedly, since exactly so are to be characterized those elements in pagan mythology which modern scholars have brought into parallel with the virgin birth. Would the pagan converts have returned so readily to the pit from which they had been digged?
We are well aware of the fact that in the apostolic age a great battle had to be fought against the paganism which in subtle ways sought to merge the life of the first Gentile Christian churches with the life of the world. The First Epistle to the Corinthians, in particular, attests the seriousness of that battle. The Corinthian converts were tempted to fall back not merely into pagan habits of life, but also into pagan ways of thinking; they were tempted, for example, to sublimate the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body into the pagan doctrine of the immortality of the soul. At many points, the apostle Paul had a battle on his hands against the paganism which was seeking to obtain a foothold within the Church. /pg. 320/
Yet there are evidences that that battle was fought through to victory and that paganism was actually prevented from obtaining any firm foothold in the Church. Moreover, even when the battle was sorest, even when paganism threatened to engulf the little groups of converts that had recently turned to Christ, it does not seem to have been the polytheistic forms of paganism that exerted the really dangerous appeal. In Corinth, for example, the dangerous thing was the Greek pride of intellect and the subtle attraction of a philosophy falsely so called. So far as we can see, there was no tendency at all for the converts to return to the worship of many gods; polytheism did not at all constitute the serious menace against which the apostle Paul had to contend. There may have been differences of opinion as to what was demanded, in the complex life of that day, by the new
allegiance to the one Lord and the one God: could the converts conscientiously buy in the markets meat that had been technically offered to idols; could they accept meat when they were guests at the house of a friend; could they accept invitations to dinner when those invitations were technically in the house of some heathen god? No doubt serious dangers lurked beneath such questions; compromise of principle, or even of what is falsely regarded as principle, is always dangerous to the Christian life. But the dangers did not spring from any theoretical friendliness to polytheism. There might be differences of opinion as to the practical consequences of the opposition to polytheism; even Paul himself, it must be remembered, advised that when a Christian was a guest in an unbeliever's house he should eat the meat that was offered to him without asking whether it had been offered to idols or not. Certainly such problems were very perplexing indeed. But whatever differences of opinion there may have been about the practical consequences of opposition to polytheism, about the necessity of that opposition itself there was no doubt. Indeed, what was most obviously distinctive, perhaps, in the Gentile Christian Churches was the monotheism of the converts, which contrasted in the most striking way with the boundless syncretism and tolerance of the surrounding world.7
Could such churches have fallen so readily a prey to influences from just the most degrading features in polytheistic mythology, as we are required to believe by the theory of pagan origin of the idea of the virgin birth of Christ? And could this influence not merely have made itself felt here and there among the rank and file, but even have celebrated its triumph /pg. 321/ by inclusion in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and in the fourfold Gospel canon? Could it, at the time and in the manner which we know must have been the case, have attained universal acceptance in the early Catholic Church and inclusion in the Apostles' Creed? These questions are deserving of much more careful attention than they have usually received from advocates of the theory of pagan origin of the idea of the virgin birth of Christ. In a later period, when the Church had obtained possession of the throne of the Cæsars, no doubt pagan influences came in like a
flood; no doubt the saints became in many places the successors of the heathen gods. But against such influences in the early period, the opinion which Harnack, for example, enunciated in 18898 is still worthy of the most careful consideration.
Such considerations are, indeed, quite contrary to what has come to be the dominant trend in the treatment of the early history of the Christian Church by those who deny the historicity of miracles. That dominant trend is represented by the school of comparative religion, which regards Christianity as being from the beginning a syncretistic religion and finds pagan influences even at the very centre of the teaching of Paul. But because a contention is fashionable, it does not follow that it is true; and the contention of the school of comparative religion is faced by objections of the most serious kind. These objections cannot, of course, be set forth here.9 All that we can do now is to remark that the theory of pagan origin of the virgin birth story involves the entrance of just that particular kind of pagan influence which would be least likely to make itself felt; it involves the influence of pagan mythology in its most degrading features. Are we to suppose that despite the horror of polytheism, which was undoubtedly felt by the Church in the first century, the Church yet opened its doors, not merely to other pagan beliefs, but also to just the most crassly polytheistic elements in the myths of the heathen gods? We do not think that this question can be waved lightly aside. Thus one barrier which would be interposed against reception of pagan influences in the story of the birth of Jesus is found in the separation of the early Christian Church in general from the pagan world. Another barrier is found in the clearly Palestinian character of the New Testament narratives in which the story of the virgin birth is told. Whatever may be thought of the hospitality of the Gentile Church to pagan ideas, are we really to suppose that pagan ideas found a place just in the most clearly Jewish and /pg. 322/ Palestinian narratives in the whole New Testament? Are we to suppose that the authors of the narratives in Mt. 1–2, Lk. 1–2, with their high monotheism and their Old Testament piety, actually gave a place to an idea derived from the most degrading parts of pagan
mythology? Surely there is an immense incongruity between the whole atmosphere of these narratives and the pagan ideas which are supposed by the theory now under discussion to have formed the basis for the doctrine of the virgin birth. How can this incongruity be explained?
One effort to explain it is found, as we observed, in the interpolation theory with regard to Lk. 1:34, 35. The Lucan infancy narrative, it is said, is indeed Palestinian; but the pagan idea of the virgin birth got into it by interpolation. It is no wonder, according to this theory, that there is an incongruity between the pagan influence with regard to the virgin birth and the Jewish character of the rest of the narrative; for the verses in which the virgin birth is recorded were no part of the narrative as it was originally composed.
But this interpolation theory, as was set forth in Chapter VI, can be refuted in the most overwhelmingly decisive way; it can be shown clearly that the verses attesting the virgin birth in Lk. 1–2 are no later addition, but belong to the fundamental structure of the narrative. The initial problem, then, remains, not only with regard to Matthew but also with regard to Luke. How did a crassly pagan and polytheistic idea ever find a place, not merely in Gentile Christian documents but in the most strikingly Jewish and Palestinian narratives in the whole New Testament?
A new solution of this problem has been coming increasingly into vogue within recent years. The interpolation theory, it is usually admitted by the advocates of this new solution, must be abandoned;10 the verses attesting the virgin birth are an integral part of the Lucan narrative, to say nothing of the narrative in Matthew. How, then, could the pagan idea of the virgin birth have found a place in these distinctly Jewish narratives? The answer which these recent scholars propose is that the idea was already naturalized in pre-Christian Judaism and so could appear in Mt. 1–2 and Lk. 1–2 as a Jewish idea, although ultimately it was of pagan origin; back of the Jewish Christian belief in the virgin birth of Jesus
lies a pre-Christian Jewish expectation of a virgin birth of the Messiah.11 /pg. 323/
But what evidence is there of the existence of such a Jewish expectation? What evidence is there that pre-Christian Jews ever supposed that the Messiah would be born without human father? The Rabbinical passages sometimes supposed to attest such an expectation are, it is generally admitted, without value. If any preChristian attestation is to be found at all, it can only be found in the Septuagint translation of Is. 7:14. In translating L almah by "virgin," does not the Septuagint attest a Jewish belief that the "Immanuel" of the Isaiah passage was to be identified with the Messiah and that the mother of the Messiah was to be a virgin? We have already observed in the last chapter how extremely precarious such a view is, and how precarious also is the view that certain passages in Philo attest a Palestinian belief in the virgin birth of Old Testament characters such as Isaac. Certainly all that we know of preChristian Judaism is distinctly unfavorable to the view that it cherished an expectation of the virgin birth of the Messiah.
If, therefore, the existence of such an expectation is still to be established, that must be done not on the basis of positive evidence, but simply in the interests of a theory as to the pagan derivation of the Christian doctrine of the virgin birth. It is impossible to see how a pagan idea could have crept into Jewish Christian narratives unless it had already had a place in pre-Christian Judaism; therefore we must assume, despite the absence of direct evidence, that it had such a place—such is the reasoning. No doubt it may seem convincing to those who are already convinced that the idea of the virgin birth is a pagan idea; but by those who do not share that conviction the reasoning will be regarded as dubious in the extreme. Certainly the necessity of supposing without any positive evidence, and even in sharp contradiction to all the indications that we possess, that a belief in the virgin birth of the Messiah was present in pre-Christian Judaism hangs as a dead weight upon the most recent theories of pagan origin of the virgin birth doctrine as it appears in the New
Testament books. Yet that weight can be shaken off only by a return to the interpolation theory; and such a return is precluded by considerations of the most decisive kind. Thus the advocates of a pagan origin of the virgin birth idea are shut up to two equally unsatisfactory alternatives. In order to explain the presence, in the most strikingly Jewish Christian narrative in the New Testament, of what on their hypothesis is a pagan idea, they must suppose either (1) that the words attesting the pagan idea have crept into the Jewish Christian narrative by interpolation, or else (2) that the pagan idea was already so completely naturalized in pre-Christian Judaism that in the first century it could form an integral part even of a Palestinian narrative. The former /pg. 324/ of these two alternatives has been adopted particularly by those who look to Greek mythology for the source of the virgin birth doctrine; the latter, by those who look rather to the East. But both alternatives are faced by objections of the most serious kind. It would perhaps be fruitless to debate the question which of them is the least unlikely.
When, therefore, we consider the supposed pagan parallels, we do so only for the sake of the argument. Those parallels might be vastly closer than they actually are without at all justifying the view that in them the origin of the Christian doctrine of the virgin birth is to be found. There would still remain the powerful objection that, whatever may be said of the early Church in general, Jewish Christian narratives like Lk. 1–2 could hardly have given a place to a crassly pagan idea. Unless this objection is overcome, an immense burden of proof rests upon the theory of pagan derivation. Are the pagan parallels really so close that this burden of proof can be overcome? That is the question with which we must now undertake to deal. The simplest form in which the theory of pagan derivation has been held is that the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ was evolved on Gentile Christian ground under the influence of Greek stories of heroes who were begotten by the gods.12 In the earliest years of the Christian Church—so the theory runs—Jesus was called "Son of God." This title in the Jewish Christian Church was of course as far as possible from excluding a human father or involving a
special physical derivation from God; the Jewish Christians used the term, no doubt, in a sense analogrous to its Old Testament usage by which it could be a title of the Messiah, or they used it to designate that warm filial relationship of a moral kind in which Jesus felt Himself to stand toward God. But when the Gentile Christians, as distinguished from the Jewish Christians, heard this title applied to Jesus in the instruction that they received in their new faith, they would naurally interpret it in accordance with their previous habits of thought. Those previous habits of thought of the Gentile Christians attributed a very different sense to the title, "Son of God," from that which was attributed to it in Judaism; the Gentile Christians found implied in the title an actual physical sonship analogous to the relation of a man to his human father. Zeus, according to the previous beliefs of these Gentile converts, was father of gods and men; and both he and other gods are represented as begetting children by human mothers. Similar stories were current with regard to the birth of great men of historic times; Alexander, Plato, Augustus, and /pg. 325/ others were regarded as having been begotten by gods. These great men were "sons of gods." Could Jesus, in the mind of the Gentile converts, be less than they? And if they were sons of pagan gods, must not Jesus, in somewhat similar fashion, be the Son of the one true God in whom these converts had at their conversion come to believe?
In considering this hypothesis, it will hardly be necessary to examine the individual stories in any great detail; for they have often been collected and are well known. Some of the collections must indeed be sifted before they can be of use for the present purpose. Thus when Petersen13 includes in his list of sons of gods in Greek mythology heroes who were born of divine mothers as well as begotten by divine fathers, he is obviously going far afield. Obviously the only stories which by any chance can be brought into comparison with the virgin birth of Christ are the stories that tell of the union of a divine father with a human mother. But even such stories are not wanting. We may think, for example, of Perseus, whose mother Danaë was beloved of Zeus and conceived by means of a rain of gold which
descended upon her in her seclusion; or of Hercules, who also was the child of Zeus and of a mortal woman.
Much more stress is usually laid, however, upon the stories that relate not to demigods of mythical antiquity, but to historical personages. Most interesting of these, perhaps, is the one regarding Plato. This story is reported by Diogenes Laertius, who flourished probably in the third century after Christ, as follows:
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.14 The same story is mentioned by Origen15 and by certain other writers.16 A somewhat similar story is reported by Plutarch regarding Alexander the Great:17 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 /pg. 326/ bolt fell upon her womb, and that from the stroke 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 the 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 practised upon him, or because he avoided her on the ground that she belonged to one greater than he.18
There was also a report, Plutarch says, which attributed Philip's loss of one of his eyes to his having applied it to the crack of the door when the god was with his wife. Olympias, according to Eratosthenes (reported by Plutarch) told Alexander the secret of his birth when he was going forth to his campaign, and bade him show a spirit worthy of such an origin. But according to another report, Olympias rejected the story and said, "Will not Alexander cease slandering me to Hera?"19
The prevalence of such stories of the love of gods for mortal women is attested sometimes in indirect ways. Thus, after the adultery of Alcibiades with the wife of Agis king of Sparta, the king is said to have given credence to the report, because, having been frightened by an earthquake, he had rushed out of his wife's chamber and had avoided her for ten months, after which he declared that the child Leotychides was not his son.20 After citation of this story Usener21 calls attention to the poetic phrases in which a lover speaks of his beloved as worthy of the love of Jupiter, and also to the report of Seneca that in the days of Nero women sat in the Capitol at Rome, hoping to be loved by Jupiter, and were not even deterred by the fear of Juno's wrath.22 More specific is the scandalous story23 of Paulina, reported by Josephus.24 In the time of Tiberius, says Josephus, a noble Roman lady, Paulina, wife of Saturninus, was beloved by Decius Mundus. Being unable to secure his end by /pg. 327/ the ordinary processes of corruption, Mundus had recourse to the priests of Isis. They, induced by bribery, told Paulina that she was beloved by the god Anubis, who invited her to come to him. The credulous Paulina reported the story to her husband, who consented that she should share the god's "bed and board."25 The husband, in other words, knowing his wife's reputation for chastity, readily consented that she should spend a night in the temple. This she did; and there she was deceived by the lover, Mundus, who pretended to be the god. After the event, Paulina boasted openly of the favor which
the god had shown her, until she was undeceived by Mundus, who divulged to her the true fact.
Such a story, it is said, when taken with other indications, shows the wide credence which was given, even in the upper classes of society, to the stories of the union of mortal women with gods. May we not, then, have in such stories the origin of the Christian story of the virgin birth of Christ?
A favorable presumption in behalf of this hypothesis may at first sight seem to be created by the fact that the pagan stories are brought into connection with the New Testament stories by certain early Christian writers. Thus Justin Martyr, in the middle of the second century, commends the Christian story of the virgin birth of Christ to his pagan readers by pointing out the analogy in which it stands to the story of the birth of Perseus. "And if also we hold," Justin says, "that He was born through a virgin, let this also be something that He has in common with Perseus."26 In Justin's Dialogue with Trypho, the pagan stories are introduced in a somewhat different way. Trypho, the Jew, is represented as making their similarity to the Christian story of the virgin birth of Christ a ground of objection to the latter: And in the myths of those who are called Greeks it is said that Perseus was born of Danaë, who was a virgin, the one who is called among them Zeus having come upon her in a golden flood;27 and you, when you say the same things as they, ought to be ashamed, and ought rather to say that this Jesus was born as a man from men; and if you show from the Scriptures that he is the Christ, you ought to say that he was counted worthy of being chosen to be Christ because of his lawful and perfect life, instead of daring to tell stories of portents, in order that you may not be convicted of folly like that of the Greeks.28
To this attack Justin Martyr replies by developing the theory that the similarities which the heathen myths exhibit as over against the Old Testament prophecies about Christ are due to imitation of the prophecies induced in the /pg. 328/ authors of the myths by Satan
and the evil spirits. In a list of such imitations,29 Justin includes the birth of Dionysus from Zeus and Semele, and the birth of Hercules from Zeus and Alcmene; and finally, at the end of the passage, he refers to the birth of Perseus:
And whenever I hear, O Trypho, I said, that Perseus was born of a virgin, this also I understand to have been due to imitation on the part of the deceiving Serpent.
A similar treatment of the heathen myths appears in Origen's treatise against Celsus. There is no reason, Origen says, why the Greeks should regard the virgin birth of Christ as unbelievable; for something analogous appears even among the lower animals; and by the Greeks themselves not all men were regarded as having been born of both man and woman. The basic passage may well be quoted in full:
Furthermore, it should be said to the Greeks who disbelieve in the birth of Jesus from a virgin that the Creator, in the origin of the various kinds of animals, showed that it was possible for Him, if He desired, to do what He did in the case of one animal also in the case of the others and even in the case of men. For there are found certain female animals that do not have union with males, as writers on natural history say is the case with vultures; this animal preserves the continuity of its kind without the union of the sexes. What, then, is there strange, if when God wished to send a divine teacher to the race of men He caused Him to come into the world in another manner than that in which other men come, who are born by the union of men with women?30 And according to the Greeks themselves not all men are born of man and woman. For if the world had a beginning, as many of the Greeks have supposed, it follows of necessity that the first men were produced not by the union of the sexes but from the earth, their spermatic elements being found there31—which I think is harder to believe32 than the birth of Jesus which was half like that of other men. And there is nothing unreasonable about using Greek stories in arguing with Greeks, in
order that we may not be thought to be the only ones who narrate this strange story. For some have chosen, not in connection with stories of remote antiquity about the heroes, but in connection with things that have happened in our own times, to write (for example) that even Plato was born of Amphictione, Ariston being prevented from approaching her until she should bring forth the one who was begotten by Apollo. But these things are really myths; the authors of them were moved to invent some such thing concerning a man whom they supposed to have greater wisdom and power than the generality of mankind and so supposed to have received from greater /pg. 329/ and more divine seed the beginning of the formation of his body—this being thought fitting for those who surpassed human standards. But since Celsus has introduced his Jew arguing with Jesus, and bringing forth in the course of his attack upon what he regards as Jesus' merely pretended virgin birth the Greek myths concerning Danaë and Melanippe and Auge and Antiope, it should be said that these words are worthy of a buffoon and not of one who is writing in a serious tone.33
The last part of this passage is regarded by Usener as particularly instructive. The authors of the stories about Plato and others reasoned, according to Origen, that a man who stood above the generality of men must have had something more than a purely human birth. Quite so, says Usener in effect; and so it was also in the case of Jesus. Of course, Origen says that the Greek stories are merely myths whereas the story about Jesus is true. But those who believed the Greek stories and disbelieved the story about Jesus would, it is argued, reverse this judgment; and in reality the origin of the stories is in both cases, we are told, the same. Superhuman achievement or character demands as its explanation superhuman birth—there we have, according to the advocates of the theory now under discussion, the hidden impulse for the formation of the virgin birth story as it appears in Matthew and Luke. A flood of light is thought to be cast upon that hidden impulse by the naïve words of Origen in his effort to defend the Christian doctrine against pagan attack.
But are not all the passages that we have cited from Justin Martyr as well as from Origen similarly instructive in the present connection? Is it not highly significant that these early Christian writers, instead of pointing out dissimilarity between the virgin birth story and these pagan myths, insist upon the similarity and make use of it in their argument against pagan opponents? Is it not significant that when the argument is turned against them by Jewish, as distinguished from pagan, opponents—when the similarity to pagan myths is made the basis of Jewish attack—the Christian writers meet the attack by the desperate expedient of attributing the pagan myths to demoniac imitation of the Old Testament prophecies concerning the virgin birth of the Messiah? Can modern writers be blamed for detecting an analogy which was also detected by early Christian writers who stood in close contact with both sides of the comparison, Christian writers who on the one hand lived at a time not so very remote from the time when the story of the virgin birth of Christ first appeared and on the other hand were familiar with circles where the stories about Plato and other heroes were still narrated and where the current of thought that produced the stories was still alive? /pg. 330/
This argument may seem plausible at first sight. But it will not stand the test of a closer examination. We should never forget that the appeal of Justin Martyr and Origen to the pagan stories of divine begetting is an argumentum ad hominem. "You hold," Justin and Origen say in effect to their pagan opponents, "that the virgin birth of Christ is unbelievable; well, is it any more unbelievable than the stories that you yourselves believe?" Now we are perfectly ready to admit that the argumentum ad hominem is at times a very dangerous thing; we are perfectly ready in the present case, with regard to Origen's appeal to Plato—and to the vultures—to quote, as van Oosterzee34 does in a similar connection, the line: nec tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis.
But however dangerous it may be, the argumentum ad hominem of Justin and Origen was very natural under the circumstances, and is
far from justifying the consequences that have been deduced from it by modern writers.
In the first place, the closeness of Justin and Origen to the time when, at the latest, the story of the virgin birth of Christ must have arisen, should not be exaggerated. We have seen that that story was certainly, to say the least, in existence before the end of the first century, and by any sound process of literary criticism must be dated many decades before that time. Justin Martyr, on the other hand, lived in the middle of the second century, and Origen in the early half of the third.
But what is far more important than this merely temporal remoteness is the spiritual remoteness of these writers from the authors of the New Testament birth narrative. Between that narrative, indeed between the New Testament in general, on the one hand, and Justin Martyr on the other, a very important change has taken place. The period of origination has passed, and the period of conscious and systematic defence has set in.
At this point, indeed, we desire not to be misunderstood. There is certainly defence of Christianity in the New Testament; the New Testament gives no color of support to the feeble modern notion that preaching should be positive but never negative, or that the Christian preacher can dispense with an answer to the intellectual objections that arise against the Christian faith. The Epistles of Paul are certainly full of argument; and argument is also found in the teaching, and even the admittedly authentic teaching, of our Lord. "If God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how /pg. 331/ much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" These familiar passages, and others like them in the teaching of Jesus, consist of argument. Nor is there lacking argument of a distinctly polemic kind. "If Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then
his kingdom stand?" Here we have a truly argumentative way of meeting attack. Let not that fact seem to the simple Christian to be derogatory to the dignity of our Lord. It involves, no doubt, a marvellous condescension; He who was endued with all authority in heaven and on earth consents actually to reason with the children of men. But such condescension is no mark of weakness, but rather a supreme manifestation of glory. There can be without argument no clear, and no reasonable, presentation of a message. And the presentation of the Christian message in the whole New Testament is profoundly reasonable. We do not mean that the content of the message can be deduced by human reasoning from the observed facts in nature; at the centre the message is sheer revelation from God. But though the content of the revelation cannot be deduced by human reasoning, the credentials of the revelation become clear to a human reason that has been freed from the blinding effect of sin. And even the content of the revelation, though it cannot be deduced by reason, can be shown, and should be shown, not to be contrary to reason. So it is in the New Testament. From the very beginning, acceptance of the gospel was commended as a truly reasonable thing.
Thus the difference between the New Testament and Justin Martyr cannot be expressed by any such simple formula as that whereas Justin Martyr engages in argumentative defence of Christianity the New Testament does not. The New Testament as well as Justin defends the gospel against argumentative attack. But we must go further still. Not only does the New Testament engage in argument, but in the argument it seeks, here and there at least, a meetingground in the previous beliefs of those with whom the argument is being carried on. Thus in Paul's speech on Mars Hill, as reported in the seventeenth chapter of Acts, the Apostle appeals to the element of truth that was to be found in Stoic pantheism, and at the beginning of the speech he even uses, in a captatio benevolentiae, the unsatisfied longing attested by a polytheistic altar "to an unknown god." In the Epistles, as is to be expected in writings addressed not to the unconverted, but to Christians, such arguments do not, to any great extent at least, appear. But even in the Epistles there are not
altogether wanting references of an argumentative kind to the pagan world.
Thus, in contrasting Justin and Origen, on the one hand, with the New Testament, on the other, certain cautions need to be borne in mind. But even when such cautions receive their full due, the contrast is still striking enough. /pg. 332/ The New Testament does contain argument; it does set the true religion over against the false beliefs of the surrounding world. But in the New Testament this element is merely subordinate; it is completely overshadowed by a triumphant, positive presentation of the redeeming work of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. The New Testament writers present the truth over against the dark background of pagan error, but they do not pause to analyze that pagan darkness into its component parts. No New Testament writer, and no one of the apostles whose teaching is reported in the New Testament, would have thought of engaging in detailed and conscious study of pagan beliefs as a preparation for missionary work. But it is just such detailed and conscious study that underlies the works of Justin Martyr and of Origen. Here we have Christian scholars, who studied not merely the Old Testament, and not merely the words of our Lord and of the apostles, but also the religion and the philosophy of the pagan world. That is true to some extent of Justin Martyr; and it is true to a much greater extent of Origen. The great Alexandrian teacher was the foremost scholar of his time; he was as much, or almost as much, at home in Greek philosophy and in the history of pagan religion as he was in the teachings of the Old and New Testaments. And he seeks to commend Christianity by a detailed comparison with, and refutation of, the beliefs of the pagan world.
In other words, in coming from the New Testament to Justin Martyr and Origen, we leave the joyous outdoor air and enter into the studychamber. In formulating the transition in that way we must not be understood as passing any unfavorable judgment upon the studychamber. Manifold is the work of the Christian Church, and without the patient labors of the Christian scholar, whether in the
third century or in the twentieth century, the Christian cause is sure to suffer. There is a diversity of gifts, but the same Spirit. Sad would it be for the Church if she had only scholars and no evangelists; but sad would it also be if she had only evangelists and no scholars. For the work of the Christian scholar, moreover, there is ample justification even in the New Testament. Very foolish is the modern notion that Paul, for example, was a "practical Christian worker" in the shallow modern sense—a man who preached without previous meditation, or who presented a religion that was not based upon theology. Still, after all has been said, there remains a profound difference of emphasis and of atmosphere between all the New Testament writings, on the one hand, and those of an apologist like Justin Martyr or an Alexandrian scholar like Origen on the other. It does not follow, therefore, that because Justin or Origen, in their diligent and conscious search for analogies that would commend the new faith to the pagan world, can detect /pg. 333/ an analogy between the birth of Jesus and that of Perseus or of Plato, such an analogy must have produced the New Testament story of the birth of Jesus in the first place.
If anyone is tempted to draw such an inference, let him simply read the passages in Justin and in Origen in their wider context. He will then see that these writers were determined to find analogies whether they did or did not really exist. The theory of demoniac imitation of Old Testament prophecies had a baleful attraction for these Christian writers. It served to exhibit the venerable antiquity of the Old Testament books as over against the great names of pagan philosophy; it served to make all that was good in pagan thinking conducive to an acceptance of the Christian faith. So that theory is certainly overworked by these writers. Very fanciful, it will be admitted by anyone who will really look into the matter, are some of the analogies that are discovered in the interests of the theory. So it may well be in the case of the virgin birth. It is one thing to say that when the story of the virgin birth of Christ had once come to be believed, and when Christian apologists were once engaged in a learned search for elements in pagan religion that could show
analogies to elements in the Christian faith, such an analogy could be found between the New Testament story and the story of the birth of Perseus or Alexander or Plato; and it is quite a different thing to say that those analogies could have given rise in the first place to the naïve and beautiful narrative in Matthew and Luke. Have we not here, in other words, in this theory of the pagan origin of the virgin birth story, merely another example of the same error as that which appeared in the theory of Jewish derivation? The meaning of the Old Testament prophecy about the birth of the Messiah, we observed when we considered the latter theory, could well be detected after the story of the virgin birth was already known and believed; but it never could have produced that story; and indeed the pre-Christian interpretation of prophecy was moving in an entirely different direction. So it is also in the case of the pagan analogies to the virgin birth—with the difference that those pagan analogies were supposed analogies only, whereas the Old Testament prophecy was, according to our view, a real prophecy. Those pagan analogies might well be detected by men like Justin and Origen, who were on the search for analogies of all sorts; but could they, in the minds of first-century Christians who, as the hypothesis demands, knew only the tradition that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, ever have produced in the first place the strange belief that Jesus was not in a physical sense the son of Joseph, but was born without human father? Could simple Christians of the first century—not apologists, not Alexandrian scholars, not students /pg. 334/ of pagan antiquity, but men who had a wholesome horror of the degraded mythology of the pagan world—ever have derived from the story that Perseus owed his birth to the lust of Zeus for Danaë, or Plato owed his birth to the lust of Apollo for Perictione, the belief that Jesus was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Ghost? That it is which seems to us unlikely. The passages in Justin and Origen do not really justify any inference at all regarding the origination of the story of the virgin birth.
Finally, it should be observed that these early Christian writers are not really unaware of the profound difference between the pagan
stories of the births of gods and demigods and the Christian story of the birth of Jesus. They regard the pagan stories with horror not merely because they are demoniac imitations of prophecy, but also because of their content. Thus in a passage just before the one which we first cited above, Justin Martyr displays a true moral indignation against the view that the gods, who supposedly are worthy of imitation, should have become slaves of pleasure and should have entered into adulterous unions.35 Here Justin seizes upon the really important point: the analogies between the pagan stories on the one hand and the Christian story on the other, however useful they may be in an argumentum ad hominem, are superficial merely; and at bottom the two representations are different in kind. Still more significant is the following passage:
But lest certain men, not understanding the aforementioned prophecy,36 should bring the same objection against us that we brought against the poets when we said that Zeus approached women for the sake of carnal pleasure, we shall try to make the words clear. The words, "Behold the virgin shall conceive," signify that the virgin conceived without intercourse; for if she had had intercourse with anyone whatever, she would no longer be a virgin. But the power of God coming upon the virgin overshadowed her and caused her to conceive though she was a virgin.… Accordingly the Spirit and the power which was from God must be understood as nothing else than the Logos, who also is the firstborn of God, as Moses the aforementioned prophet declared; and this, coming upon the virgin and overshadowing her, caused her to be with child not by intercourse but by power.37
Here we find stated with all requisite clearness the real difference between the pagan myths of the births of demigods on the one hand and the New Testament story of the virgin birth of Christ on the other. Justin sees clearly /pg. 335/ that the pagan stories are not stories of virgin births at all, but have at the very heart of them the notion of the carnal lust of the gods for mortal women, and that the New Testament narrative is different in kind. It is perfectly evident,
therefore, that the argument from analogy with the pagan stories, which he uses elsewhere, is an argumentum ad hominem merely and does not touch the real centre of his conviction.38 Surely men like the one who wrote the passage just quoted would have been the last in the world to derive the Christian story of the virgin birth from the pagan stories which they regarded with such horror. When we examine this theory of derivation, therefore, we do so without any favorable presumption from the passages in Justin Martyr, but on the contrary with the feeling that the second-century apologist may prove to have refuted the theory in advance. With that understanding, we turn now to an examination of the pagan stories themselves.
At the very beginning of the examination, it can be noted, as we have just seen that Justin Martyr noted, that the pagan narratives do not contain any account of a virgin birth at all.39 That appears even in the form of the narratives; for in the pagan sources the word "virgin" does not seem to occur. It could not well occur in the story of Alexander; for according to that story the mother was already married when the conception occurred, and no stress, to say the least, seems to be laid upon the absence of previous intercourse between the mother and the human father before the divine begetting took place. In the case of Plato, the divine begetting does seem to be represented by Plutarch as taking place before any union of the human husband with his wife; and in the case of the mythical Danaë, it is an integral part of the story that Danaë was carefully guarded from male society until Zeus found access to her chamber by means of the rain of gold. But even in those stories the word to "virgin" does not appear. That word does appear, indeed, in references of the Christian writer, Justin, to the pagan sources. It appears in the passages cited above, where Justin says that the extraordinary birth of Jesus is something that He has in common with Perseus,40 and where he alludes to the report that "Perseus was born of a virgin."41 It appears also in the passage where Justin represents the Jew Trypho as alluding to the myth that "Perseus was born of Danaë who was a virgin."42 But the reason why it appears in
a Christian writer like Justin /pg. 336/ Martyr is not far to seek.43 The reason simply is that Justin is insisting upon the analogy of the pagan stories to the Christian story of the virgin birth, and in order the better to exhibit the analogy expresses the pagan representation in Christian terms. Let us not be too severe upon the second-century Apologist for such a procedure; he was doing only what is frequently being done by scientific students of comparative religion today. Even in the enlightened twentieth century, advocates of the theory of syncretistic origin of the Christian religion sometimes commend their theory by describing in Christian terms the pagan beliefs or practices that they are bringing into comparison. We are far from impugning the good faith of scholars either ancient or modern who err in that way. It is so very hard to distinguish sharply one's own interpretation of the sources from what the sources themselves actually say. But however the error may arise, an error it certainly is. There is every reason to believe that Justin Martyr has fallen into such an error; there is every reason to suppose that when Justin, or the Jew whom he is making the spokesman of Jewish polemic against Christianity, refers to the birth of Perseus as a birth from (or through) a virgin, he is going beyond what the pagan sources contained. There seems to be no clear evidence that pagan sources used the word "virgin" as referring to the mothers of heroes, mythical or historical, who were represented as being begotten by the gods.
It is not, however, upon this observation that we are inclined to lay the chief stress. Far more important than the terminology of the pagan stories is their content; and far more important than the question whether the mothers of the pagan heroes were represented as virgins before their union with the gods is the question whether, even if they were virgins before, they ceased to be virgins because of that event.
This latter question must be answered by an emphatic affirmative. The clear representation of the pagan stories is that the union of the gods with the women who bore children to them was closely analogous to the union between the sexes in human life. The stories
of the amours of Zeus and other gods were certainly of a crassly anthropomorphic kind. It was because the Olympic gods were regarded as exercising human functions and possessing human passions that they could be regarded as begetting children like Perseus or like Hercules. Nothing could be farther from the whole spirit of the stories than to represent the births of such children of the gods as being "virgin births." Exactly the same observation is to be made, moreover, regarding the stories /pg. 337/ that relate, not to demigods of mythical antiquity, but to historical personages such as Plato and Alexander. These latter stories are clearly formed on the basis of the mythological and anthropomorphic representations in the works of poets and dramatists. When the admirers of Alexander desired to represent him as a demigod like Hercules, they conceived of his mother as being beloved, as Hercules' mother was, by Zeus. Thus the entire background of these stories is anthropomorphic polytheism of the crassest possible kind.
It is true that the manner of the divine begetting may sometimes be represented as being different from that which prevails among men. Ordinarily, indeed, that difference does not appear. It certainly does not appear when the embraces of Ares and Aphrodite are represented as provoking the laughter of the Homeric gods. It certainly does not appear when Paulina, in the passage cited above from Josephus,44 after receiving the very human embraces of her lover Mundus, could suppose that those were the embraces of a god. But Zeus, it will be said, entered into Danaë's chamber not in human form, but in the form of a shower of gold; and a serpent, not a lover, was seen by Olympias' side. There is, moreover, an interesting passage in Plutarch where the part of the gods in such cases of divine begetting seems to be sublimated into the production of "certain beginnings of generation" in the mortal women from whom the herochildren were to be born.45 And with regard to the story of Paulina it may perhaps be said that although Paulina herself held a crassly anthropomorphic view of her divine lover, yet her husband must have held a different view, else he would not have been so willing that his wife should share the god's "bed and board."
In some such cases, it may perhaps be doubted how much is merely symbol or prophecy of the god's presence and how much is the god's presence itself. Thus when a serpent appeared by Olympias' side, does that mean that the act of begetting was actually accomplished by the serpent in her bosom, or does it mean that the vision of the serpent merely showed that the god had already been there, as the vision of the scaled womb which Philip saw indicated that the divinehuman child had already been conceived in the womb? The answer to such questions is not always quite clear.
Nevertheless, it does seem probable that in some cases of divine begetting in the Greek stories the act of begetting is regarded as having taken place in some way other than that which ordinarily prevails among men. These cases would then be brought into connection with the mass of instances which Hartland has gathered from the most diverse ages and the most diverse peoples, /pg. 338/ where the act of conception is represented as taking place in strange and unusual ways.46 There is conception by eating or drinking, conception by the touch, conception by a ray of light, conception by the breath, conception by bathing in water where the fructifying seed has long ago been placed, and so on in bewildering variety. But for our present purpose it will not be necessary to examine or to sift that mass of material; for certainly in the Greek stories with which we now have to deal the essential anthropomorphism of the stories is not affected by anything unusual or abnormal that there may be in the manner by which the act of begetting takes place. Zeus may have union with Danaë not in human form, but in a shower of gold, but all the same the union is a satisfaction of his lust for the human maid. Everywhere it is the love of the god for the mortal woman, and not merely the exclusion of a human father of the child, which stands in the forefront of interest.
But what a gulf that places between these pagan stories and the New Testament story of the virgin birth of our Lord! Could anything be more utterly remote from the representation in Matthew and Luke than these stories of the amours of Zeus? The true spirit of those
stories is found, even when they deal with historical personages, in the words attributed to Olympias in one of the accounts reported by Plutarch. "Will not Alexander cease slandering me to Hera?," the mother of Alexander is represented as saying when her son boasted of being a child of Zeus. There we have the true atmosphere in which those stories arose and from which they never really became free— the polytheistic and anthropomorphic atmosphere of an Olympus where the gods are naught but more powerful men, with human lusts, human jealousies, and human hates. Was it from such an atmosphere that the early disciples derived the story of the virgin birth of our Lord? Christian feeling answers, No. And Christian feeling is confirmed and not invalidated by patient research.
In the pagan stories of divine begetting, polytheism is not merely incidental; it is the centre and core of the whole complex of ideas. But in the New Testament story of the virgin birth of Christ, the lofty Old Testament monotheism is abated not a whit; the awful transcendence of God, the awful separateness of God from the world, is never lost from view. Where in the New Testament story is there found any hint of a love of God for the maid of Nazareth, which could be analogous to the love of a husband for his wife? The question can scarcely even be asked, by any man of literary taste—-to say nothing of any devout Christian—without a shudder. Yet it would have not only to be asked, but also to be answered in the affirmative, if the theory with which we are now dealing were correct. The love of the gods for mortal women is the very point /pg. 339/ of the pagan stories—the thing without which they could not possibly exist. To mention any such thing in connection with the narratives in Matthew and Luke is to do violence to the whole spirit of those narratives. The truth is that when we read these narratives we are in a totally different world from that which produced the pagan stories of the loves and hates of the gods.
Thus the most obvious form that has been taken by the theory of pagan derivation breaks down when the evidence is examined with a little care. The New Testament story of the virgin birth of Christ
certainly cannot be explained as a simple reflex, in Gentile Christian circles, of the Greek and Græco-Roman stories of the birth of heroes from human mothers and from gods. If we are to find the origin of the virgin birth story on the hypothesis that the story is untrue, we must at least go somewhat farther afield.
In recent years, a number of scholars have turned, in this connection as in other connections, to the religions of the East. In some of the Eastern religions parallels have been discovered which, it has been thought, may explain the origin of the Christian doctrine of the virgin birth.
Some of these parallels may be dismissed very quickly. That is the case, for example, with the parallel which was detected by Seydel47 and others in the Buddhist story of the birth of Gautama, the founder of the Buddhist religion. Gautama48 lived about five hundred years before Christ. Our earliest source of information about his life and teaching is found in the writings of the P~li canon, which, it is thought, was formed at the time of Asoka in the third century before Christ, though it did not attain its present written form until a later time. In the P~li canon, nothing is said about the birth of Gautama which could by any possibility be brought into comparison with our story of the virgin birth. But in the introduction to the J~taka book, which dates from the fifth century after Christ, we have the wellknown story of the white elephant that entered into the body of M~y~, Buddha's mother, at the time when her child was conceived; and the white-elephant story seems to be shown by inscriptional evidence to have been current as early as the reign of Asoka in the third century before Christ. In its earliest form, the story appears as the narration of a dream; M~y~ dreamed that a marvellous white elephant entered into her side. In this form of the story, obviously, there is no parallel to the virgin birth of Christ; for the white elephant represented merely the /pg. 340/ "gandhabba" whose presence was necessary for the birth of the child. According to Buddhist belief, three factors are regularly involved in the birth of a child—the father, the mother, and the gandhabba—the last-named
being that which came from the previous existences, whether animal or human, through which the child had passed.49 Edmunds, indeed, did attempt to bring this Buddhist doctrine of the gandhabba into connection with the "Holy Spirit" appearing in the narrative of Luke; but his attempt was half-hearted at best, and apparently has won not the slightest acceptance among subsequent scholars.50 As Oldenberg pertinently asks, what has the gandhabba, which is concerned in the birth of every child, to do with the Holy Spirit,51 whose activity in the case of Jesus marked Him as quite unique? It is of course needless to say that the Buddhist doctrine of the gandhabba, even in the form in which it appears in M~y~'s dream, does not at all exclude the part of the human father, Suddhodana, in the birth of Gautama.
In later Buddhist sources, what had originally been regarded as a dream of M~y~ came to be regarded as an actual happening.52 A white elephant, it came to be narrated, actually entered the body of the mother of Gautama. But even this form of the story does not of itself involve any exclusion of the human father; the coming of the gandhabba in the form of a white elephant could simply be regarded as waiting for the moment of a union between husband and wife. The way in which the exclusion of the human father seems to have grown up in Buddhist legend is rather through the development of the idea of M~y~'s purity and sanctity. At first the vow of chastity which she took is represented as taking place after the conception of her child, Gautama; but in the later story apparently it is represented as taking place before the conception. But, in the first place, this development appears only in late sources; so that if there were any relationship of dependence between the New Testament story and this Buddhist story, the dependence might well be dependence of the Buddhist story upon the New Testament rather than vice versa.53 And, in the second place, the Buddhist story is so totally unlike the New Testament story that it is quite unnecessary to posit any relationship between the two. As Louis de la Vallée Poussin remarks, M~y~ in Buddhist legend comes to be a /pg. 341/ virgin only when she ceases really to be the mother of the Buddha.54 In the riot of the miraculous which is found in the late Sanskrit tradition, it was thought to be
derogatory to Gautama for him to have had anything like a human birth at all. The heavenly being is represented as entering into M~y~'s womb in the form of the white elephant, then as seated there visibly as in a sort of transparent receptacle, then as emerging with the utmost pomp and circumstance. Anything like a human birth has really been lost from view; what we have is merely the appearance of a divine being upon earth with the profusion of marvels so characteristic of later Buddhist legend. It would be difficult to imagine anything more unlike the New Testament story of the virgin birth of Christ. No weight, therefore, is to be attached to the words of Jerome at the end of the fourth century, when he says that "among the Gymnosophists of India, as it were on the basis of this view [namely, the superiority of virginity to the marriage relationship],55 the authority of this tradition is handed down, that a virgin brought forth from her side Buddha, the originator of their teaching."56 We have seen how little place the "virginity" of M~y~ really occupies in Buddhist tradition. Evidently the fourth-century advocate of Christian monasticism, in his search for justification of the monastic ideal, has let his zeal run away with him and has, in referring to Buddha, used a terminology which the Buddhist sources themselves did not justify.
In view of the facts as they have just been outlined, it is not surprising that few recent scholars have been inclined to press the supposed Buddhist parallel as an explanation of the way in which the Christian story of the virgin birth arose. Even van den Bergh van Eysinga, despite his radical denial of the historicity of the Gospel picture of Jesus, was not inclined to lay stress upon the comparison with Buddhism at this particular point;57 and Edmunds also adopted a somewhat similar attitude. A comprehensive refutation of the theory of Buddhist influence was accomplished by E. Windisch in his monograph on Buddha's birth. Windisch's conclusion is that if we are going to speak of Buddhist parallels to the Gospel narrative, we must use the word "parallel" in its original sense, according to which "parallels are lines which do not touch or intersect each other." /pg. 342/
At this point, however, a word of caution needs to be uttered. Is Windisch correct when he goes on to explain the "parallels" (in the above sense) between the Buddhist and the Christian traditions by the observation that the thoughts of mankind are everywhere the same?58 Is it true that a similarity of development can be discovered in the Buddhist and in the Christian stories regarding the births, respectively, of Gautama and of Jesus? We think that in this connection a striking difference can be discovered, which is far more instructive than all the similarities which, rightly or wrongly, have been found.
The difference does not concern merely the content of the stories that finally appeared, though even in that respect the difference, as we have seen, is great enough. Just as striking is the difference in the time at which the stories appeared. The earliest information that we have about the life of Gautama is found in the P~li canon, which is thought to have been compiled in the time of Asoka, over two centuries after Buddha's death. A corresponding period in Christian history would be, roughly speaking, the time of Origen in the third century after Christ. But in the P~li canon no story of any strictly supernatural birth of Gautama seems to have appeared. The story of the supernatural birth—at least in anything like the form in which it could be appealed to in the connection in which we are now interested—cannot be traced back to a point earlier than (let us say) five to ten centuries after the time when Gautama lived. Many centuries seem to have been necessary in Buddhism for the story of supernatural birth to be formed.
In the Christian tradition, on the other hand, we are confronted by a totally different state of affairs. Even if we should accept the most unfavorable conclusions at which recent scholars have arrived with regard to the New Testament documents attesting the virgin birth of Christ, still those documents would have to be assigned to a time only seventy years or so after the death of Jesus. And as a matter of fact such a late dating of the documents is improbable in the extreme. The tradition of the virgin birth can easily be shown to have
been in existence only a few decades from the time when Jesus lived upon earth. In the case of Jesus, therefore, we find a story of supernatural birth appearing at a time when information concerning Jesus' life may be supposed still to have been abundant. Very striking is the difference as over against the late emergence of the Buddhist stories.
But this difference is only one particular illustration of a difference which concerns the entire representation in Buddhism and in Christianity of Gautama and of Christ. In the Buddhist tradition, the deification of the founder of the religion appears many centuries after the time when he lived upon earth; in /pg. 343/ the Christian tradition, the deification of the Founder (if deification indeed it be, and not recognition as divine of One who really was divine) appears with the utmost clearness in the very first generation in the Epistles of Paul, which, furthermore, presuppose the prevalence of essentially the same view among the intimate friends of Jesus Himself. That is a stupendous difference indeed. The deification of Gautama—quite aside from the fact, which for the moment we are leaving out of account, that it was quite different in kind from the Christian doctrine of the deity of Jesus—appears as a development which it took centuries to produce; the Christian view of Jesus as a divine Redeemer, who had come into the world for the salvation of men, pervades the primitive records from beginning to end, and all efforts to represent it as a development from an original account of a purely human Jesus have signally failed. Can we speak of a "parallel" between Buddhism and Christianity when the difference is so striking as that?
Apologists for Christianity have, indeed, never denied all significance to the deification of Gautama and perhaps of certain other founders of religions. On the contrary, that deification shows no doubt a deepseated longing in the human heart for contact, in human form, with a person who was more than man. But a comparison of the tardy and fantastic way in which the ascription of deity appears in the case of Gautama with the primitive and assured way in which it appears in
the case of Jesus raises the question whether what men had vainly longed for in many countries and in many religions has not in Jesus become sober fact. We do not think that that time-honored argument for the truth of Christianity has suffered at all from the modern study of religion. No doubt the form of the argument may have to be modified in detail; but at the basis of the argument there lies a profound truth. And that truth is illustrated in particular by a comparison of the Buddhist story of the birth of the Buddha with the Christian story of the birth of Christ.
Thus it is quite clear that wherever the origin of the virgin birth may be found, it cannot be found in Buddhist tradition. Equally negative is the result when the examination turns to the religion of Persia. Böklen, indeed, has pointed in this connection to the wonderful birth of the coming deliverer, Saoshyant;59 but the parallel, if parallel it can be called, is exceedingly remote. Saoshyant is to be born by means of the seed of Zoroaster. The seed is preserved in a wonderful manner; but the fatherhood of Zoroaster is plainly taught, and if a virgin birth there is not the slightest trace. So it is also with what is said about the birth of Zoroaster himself; there is no real thought in either case of /pg. 344/ anything like a virgin birth.60 As for the birth of Mithras from the rock, it is difficult to see how any parallel with the Christian story could possibly be found there.61
Babylonia does not really afford any better support than does Persia or India to the hypothesis with which we are now concerned. It is not surprising, indeed, that the enthusiastic pan-Babylonianism of a certain group of modern scholars should have been extended into the New Testament field and particularly into the discussion of the virgin birth; but the plain fact is that no real evidence of any belief in virgin births has been discovered in Babylonian sources. The ground has been well covered by Franckh62 and by Steinmetzer,63' and upon these writers we are mainly dependent in the brief sketch that follows.
Little stress, surely, can be laid upon the fact that the constellation of the "virgin" is said to rise on December 25th at midnight. A host of questions arise before any conclusions for our subject can be drawn from this fact. Was the constellation of the "virgin" ever connected by anyone in ancient times with the notion of a true virgin who brought forth a son? Was the birth of Jesus connected with the twenty-fifth of December at an early time or only (as is usually supposed) centuries after the New Testament story of the virgin birth arose? Evidently we are moving here in a sphere of the most uncertain combinations and inferences. And, as Franckh insists, Marduk, the Babylonian redeemer-king, is most emphatically not represented as virgin-born. The astrological theory is that events in the starry heavens correspond with events upon the earth. Hence it might be supposed that the constellation of the virgin would correspond with an earthly virgin who should bear a son. But Marduk, the god whose astral character ought to be clear, turns out not to be born of a virgin at all. The sources desert the seeker for parallels with the New Testament narrative just at the decisive point. It is true that great personages in Babylon are represented as standing in a filial relation to various female deities, who are more or less identified with, or go back to, Ishtar, the female deity par excellence. But is Ishtar represented as a virgin? That is emphatically not the case. She has no continuing male consort; but if the term "virgin" is applied to her, it is only in a vague sense /pg. 345/ which is as far as possible from what the New Testament means by the word.64 There is, indeed, in Babylonian sources the notion that certain great personages were children of unknown fathers; but that notion is compatible with illegitimate birth just as much as with virgin birth, and there is at any rate not the slightest evidence that it was ever connected with the latter.
Stress, indeed, is laid upon a passage in which Sargon, the founder of Babylon, is represented as saying: "My mother was enitu, my father unknown."65 But what is meant by enitu? It has sometimes been thought to mean "vestal-virgin," and so "virgin"; but opinions of the experts differ widely, and there is really no certainty about the matter. It would be a very unwarranted procedure to base far-
reaching conclusions on a word the meaning of which is so obscure. And even if the word did turn out to mean vestal-virgin, it might be used in such a broad sense as not at all to connote real virginity.
Equally without importance for our subject is the passage in which Gudea is represented as saying to the goddess Gatumdug: "I have no mother, thou art my mother; I have no father, thou art my father…in a holy [or "secret"] place thou hast brought me forth."66 The father of Gudea is mentioned immediately after these words;67 and no idea of a fatherless birth is really to be found in the passage. We have here merely a drastic expression of the peculiarly intimate relation in which these Babylonian personages stand to the mother-goddess. The real result of the examination is that no idea of a virgin birth is to be found in Babylonian sources and that the origin of the New Testament doctrine certainly cannot be found there. Thus the great religions of India, Persia, and Babylonia, with regard to which we have abundant sources of information, have signally failed to provide the desired parallels to the Christian story of the virgin birth of Christ.
It is not surprising, therefore, that at least one noteworthy modern scholar should have had recourse in this connection to a much more obscure cult. We refer to the use which has been made by Bousset of the cult of the Arabian god, Dusares.68 Bousset intimates, indeed, that the parallels to the Christian virgin birth tradition are really too numerous to mention;69 but we have already seen how little weight is to be attributed to such general intimations, and thus we are interested rather in the parallel with which Bousset specifically /pg. 346/ deals. Despite the wealth of parallels from which we might choose, says Bousset in effect, it is not impossible that we ought to find the immediate occasion for the development of the Christian virgin birth dogma in the legend of the virgin birth of DionysusDusares.
That legend is attested by the fourth-century Christian writer, Epiphanius. In the course of his refutation of heresies, Epiphanius
writes as follows:
For also, being compelled to confess a part of the truth, those who are ringleaders in idol-worship and deceivers, in order that they may lead astray the idolaters who obey them, practise in many places a great feast in the very night of Epiphany, to the end that they may put their hope in error and thus may not seek the truth. This is done, in the first place, in Alexandria in the socalled Coreium, which is a very great temple—that is, the sacred precinct of Core. For having passed all the night singing to the idol with certain songs accompanied by the flute, and having thus finished night-vigil, they come together after cockcrowing with torches into a certain underground shrine and carry up a certain wooden image lying naked on a litter, which image has a certain gilded seal or a cross upon its forehead and other two similar seals upon its two hands and other two on its two knees—in all five seals stamped with gold—and they carry the image about seven times, making the circuit of the innermost temple with flutes and drums and hymns, and after the festival they carry it down again into the underground place. And when asked what this mystery is, they answer and say that at this hour Core (that is the virgin) brought forth Aeon. And this takes place also in the city of Petra (the metropolis of Arabia, which is called Edom in the Scriptures) in the idoltemple which is there; and in the Arabian tongue they sing hymns to the virgin, calling her in the Arabian language Chaamou70 (that is, "maiden"71 or "virgin"72) and to "Dusares" (that is, "only-begotten of the master") who was born of her. And this takes place also in the city of Elusa on that night, as it does there in Petra and in Alexandria.73
The same cult is also referred to in somewhat similar terms by the eighth-century writer, Cosmas of Jerusalem, who says that the worshippers, when they came forth, cried: "The virgin has brought forth; the light increases."74
These passages are no doubt interesting, and the discussion of them might be instructive in many ways. But here we are concerned only
with the question whether they really attest anything like a preChristian belief in the virgin birth of Dusares, the Arabian god, or his Hellenized adaptations. And surely that question should be answered by an emphatic negative. /pg. 347/
The plain fact is that the only sources75 calling the mother of Dusares a "virgin" are two Christian sources, of which the earlier dates from the fourth century after Christ, and the later from the eighth century. What possible right have we to suppose that the title attested only in these late sources was applied to this goddess in preChristian times? We have already seen that the application of the term "virgin" to pagan mothers by Christian writers is in general to be viewed with suspicion, since there was a tendency on the part of these writers to seek parallels for Christian beliefs in pagan religion.76 This suspicion attaches in fullest measure to the use of the term by Epiphanius in the passage with which we are now concerned. Wellhausen may well be right in thinking that Epiphanius has been influenced in his choice of language by his desire to show a connection with Mary and Jesus.77
Indeed it has been suggested, with some show of reason, that the word "virgin" was introduced simply by a misunderstanding of an Arabic word which appears in Epiphanius as Chaamou, or as some scholars prefer to read Chaabou. So Wellhausen78 says that the assertion (of Epiphanius) that Chaabou means "maiden" is of no more value than the assertion (by the same writer) that "Dusares" means "the only-begotten of the Lord"; and suggests that the parthenogenesis from the Chaabou may simply go back to the fact that the inhabitants of Petra, perhaps under the influence of Mithraism, thought of Dusares as a god who was born of the sacred stone. Similarly, Dalman suggests that what we have is a wordplay between Arabic kaL b, "dice-shaped stone," and k~L ibe, "mature virgin," though it is not clear whether he means to derive the whole tradition of the virgin birth of Dusares from this word-play.79 At any rate, this latter step was apparently taken by Clemen in the first edition of his "Primitive Christianity and Its Non-Jewish Sources";80
and although Clemen has now abandoned it81 in deference to Bousset's objection,82 there is still perhaps something to be said in its favor.
What is really important to observe, however, is that even if this particular way of dealing with the Epiphanius testimony be rejected, it is still quite /pg. 348/ unjustifiable to use that testimony as establishing any pre-Christian belief in a real virgin birth of the Arabian god. The use of the term "virgin" by Christian writers, and particularly by Christian writers of such a late date, still remains open to the gravest suspicion; it is all too likely to be due simply to the well-established desire of such writers to find perverse imitations of Christian beliefs in pagan religion. We really have no valid evidence whatever to show that the term was actually used in the pagan worship of Dusares three centuries before the time when Epiphanius lived. Furthermore, even if the term was used in the preChristian worship of Dusares, that would not show at all that it was used in the sense in which we use it and in which it was used by Matthew and Luke. On the contrary, it would merely designate a mother-goddess like Ishtar, "unmarried, or rather choosing her temporary partners at will,"83 or like Tanith-Artemis, "the heavenly virgin, i.e., the unmarried goddess,"84 whose obscene rites Augustine mentions with such disgust,85 or like "the great mythic mother-goddess" who "was independent of the marriage-tie."86 In other words, the term "virgin," if it really was applied in preChristian times to the mother of Dusares, meant, no doubt, almost the exact opposite of what that term means in the New Testament account of the birth of our Lord.87
We may therefore venture to maintain that Bousset's appeal to Dusares-Dionysus is valuable chiefly as indicating the weakness of the more usual hypotheses. If so learned and able a scholar, in seeking pagan parallels to the virgin birth of Christ as narrated in the New Testament, is obliged to have recourse to a virgin birth story attested only in Christian writers many centuries later than the time when the New Testament story was produced, surely we have here an
eloquent testimony to the absence of real parallels. If modern research had really discovered any circle of ideas from which the virgin birth tradition, supposing it not to be true, could conceivably have come, we doubt whether it would have been necessary for Bousset to appeal to Dusares-Dionysus and to the exceedingly dubious testimony of a fourthcentury Christian writer.
At least two notable attempts have been made in recent years to find the source of the New Testament virgin birth story in Egypt; and it will perhaps be instructive to examine these two attempts in some detail. They have been /pg. 349/ made by Hugo Gressmann, the weflknown student of the Old Testament, and by Eduard Norden, who is one of the most distinguished philologians of the present day. The book of Gressmann,88 in which the theory concerning the virgin birth appears, is devoted primarily, not to the annunciation (as it is narrated in the first chapters of Matthew and Luke), but to the birth narrative in Lk. 2:1–20. That narrative, says Gressmann, must be treated by itself, in complete isolation from all the other stories about Jesus. The earliest units of legendary tradition, he insists, are detached legends, not legendary cycles; and for that reason, as well as in view of certain special evidences of original independence between Lk. 2:1–20 and its present context, we must treat this narrative as though it were the only story that we possessed concerning Jesus.
At this point, the reader may perhaps be permitted a slight pause to get his breath. Is it not making a considerable demand upon our docility to ask us to interpret this narrative as though it contained all that we knew about Jesus? Does not the word "Jesus" appear in the narrative as the name of a person who is assumed to be known to the hearers or readers, certainly as the name of a person known to the narrator? Is it right, therefore, to treat that name as though it were simply an x or a y? But if that name is the name of a person otherwise known both to the narrator and to his hearers, then surely we should interpret the narrative in the light of the further information about that person which we may suppose the first
narrator and the first hearers to have possessed. We find it difficult, therefore, to fulfil at the start the requirement of complete detachment of this narrative from other narratives dealing with the same person. The reason why that demand is important in Gressmann's book becomes, indeed, plain in the sequel; it is because he is going to show, or attempt to show, that originally the narrative had nothing to do with Jesus and that the references to Jesus have been imported into it at some later time. But surely it seems unwarranted to ask us to assume at the beginning what can be established, if at all, only by the whole course of the following argument. Surely it is quite conceivable that the first man to tell this story should have been a person who already had a fund of information about Jesus and presupposed such a fund of information in his readers or hearers. That possibility may turn out in the course of the investigation not to be actuality; but until it turns out not to be actuality, it should surely not be ignored. We do not think, therefore, that it is at all a matter of course that this narrative should be interpreted as though it were the only narrative that we possessed about Jesus, and certainly we do not think that the positive /pg. 350/ indications which Gressmann adduces for an original independence between this narrative and the narrative in the first chapter of Luke are at all decisive. Our dissent at this point is closely connected with another dissent. When we get back to the original form of the narrative, says Gressmann, we must assume that the narrative is a perfect work of art. "Every interpretation proceeds as a matter of course upon the assumption that the narrative with which it happens to be concerned is a perfect work of art, on which it is justified in making the highest demands." But why should any such assumption be made? Is every legend, in its original, preliterary form, a perfect work of art, whose elements hang together with complete artistic and logical necessity? If that is so, surely it is a most extraordinary fact, that runs directly counter to all considerations of antecedent probability. Yet apparently our author, far from proving his remarkable assertion, gives not the slightest hint as to the way in which proof of it could be found. Until such proof is forthcoming we may surely be doubtful about assuming the artistic
perfection of every narrative with which we have to do. Such an assumption, of course, almost excludes the possibility that the narrative possesses historical trustworthiness; for history seldom proceeds in perfect accord with considerations of artistic propriety. But even if the narrative be assumed to be purely legendary, so that the narrator would not have been hampered by any dependence upon the facts, still we do not see how it follows that the canons of artistic construction must have been followed with perfect consistency. Why must every popular story have been a perfect story? We suspect that real life may not always be found to follow the strict canons that modern literary critics seek to impose upon it. It is only with caution, therefore, that we proceed to examine Gressmann's analysis of the narrative in detail.
That analysis eliminates at the start any large share of the final author of the Gospel in giving the narrative its present form. Where this author's sources are known, says Gressmann, it is found that he merely retouches them here and there; and the Jewish Christian character of this particular narrative as it appears in the Gospel of Luke is so clear as to make it evident that the Gentile author has left the underlying Jewish Christian narrative for the most part unchanged. The author, therefore, Gressmann concludes, is here following closely a written or oral source; and in that source there stood not merely the narrative in Lk. 2:1–20, but the whole cycle in which that narrative now stands, the final author of the Gospel not even having taken the trouble to smooth out the contradictions among the (originally independent) legends composing the cycle.
With regard to the Jewish Christian character of these narratives in Lk. 1–2, /pg. 351/ and the part which the final author of the Gospel had in giving them their present form, the measure of our agreement has already been indicated in Chapters II–VI. More dubious is the further analysis by which Gressmann seeks to penetrate to the original form of the narrative in Lk. 2:1–20.
Evidently, he says, the census of Quirinius is a later addition; for the prose tone of this part of the story contrasts sharply with the poetic tone of the rest; and with the census the whole incident of a journey of the child's parents becomes open to suspicion. Even in the rest of the narrative, he continues, there are rough edges. When the shepherds go to see the child, why do they not bring him gifts, as, for example, the magi do in the second chapter of Matthew? As it is, their visit seems to be without purpose or meaning. Indeed, one does not see exactly why the shepherds should be brought in at all: they do not seem to perform any particular function with reference to the child. Yet in the narrative as it stands they, and not the parents of the child, are really the chief personages. Moreover, why should the mere fact that the child was lying in a manger be regarded as a "sign"? A "sign" obviously is a strange, if not necessarily a miraculous, occurrence; but for a child to lie in a manger hardly seems to be so very strange. What, moreover, became of the parents after they laid the child in the manger? Did they themselves remain in the inn, or did they change altogether the place of their abode? The narrative, Gressmann thinks, is curiously vague at this point. Why, moreover, is the manger so much emphasized in the narrative? We think of a manger as being in a stall for cattle; but the narrative says nothing about a stall. Finally we should naturally expect the manger to have something to do with the shepherds to whom announcement of the birth of the child is made; yet in the narrative as it stands the shepherds and the manger are far apart.
All of these defects in clearness, all of these loose ends, in the present narrative, lead, Gressmann supposes, to one conclusion—namely, that in the original form of the legend no parents of the child appeared. Without the parents, everything becomes perfectly clear. The child was a foundling child; hence the shepherds had the very necessary function of bringing it up: the manger was the particular manger that belonged to these particular shepherds. The whole trouble in the narrative as it stands is that the parents are dragged in so as to usurp the place belonging originally to the shepherds. But why were the parents dragged in? The answer, Gressmann thinks, is
obvious. They were dragged in only because the historical personage, Jesus, with whom the child of the original legend was now to be identified, had well-known parents who could not be ignored. But originally this was a foundling child, whose legend was connected with Bethlehem; and the contradictions in the present /pg. 352/ narrative are due to the fact that a pre-Christian Jewish legend, which originally had nothing to do with Jesus, was seized upon by Jewish Christians to do honor to Him who had become the object of their reverence.
In seeking, therefore, the ultimate origin of the story, we must seek, according to Gressmann, not the origin of a story specifically about Jesus, but the origin of a pre-Christian Jewish story about a foundling child. An interesting detail in this pre-Christian story, Gressmann thinks, is contributed by the extra-canonical mention of a cave as the place of Jesus' birth.89 It is impossible to suppose that the cave was derived either from the New Testament canonical narratives or from Old Testament prophecy: evidently, therefore, we have in the mention of the cave a remnant of the pre-Christian story; that story was connected not merely with Bethlehem, but with one particular cave near Bethlehem.
The child in the pre-Christian birth story was, according to Gressmann, clearly a royal child: in the first place, because foundling legends are for the most part stories about kings, a favorite point being the contrast between the destiny of the child and his lowly upbringing by humble folk; in the second place, because the story was connected with Bethlehem, the ancestral seat of the Davidic line from which the Messiah was to come; and, in the third place, because the terms "saviour," "gospel," and "peace," which occur in the narrative as it stands, are well-known elements in the "court style" used to do honor to the Roman Emperor, while the term "Christ" ("anointed"), which also occurs in the narrative, is the regular designation of the Messianic king. Plainly, therefore, Gressmann concludes, we have in the pre-Christian story a Jewish story
regarding the king who was to come of David's line and be the deliverer of His people.
Ultimately, however, according to Gressmann, this story was not of Jewish origin. It did not appear on Jewish ground before the Hellenistic age, Gressmann argues, since it is not found in the Old Testament; and in the Hellenistic age a Jewish origin of such a story is unnatural, while importation from outside of Judaism, with adaptation to Jewish conditions, becomes in that period easy to understand. What is decisive, however, for an extra-Jewish origin is, according to Gressmann, not merely such general considerations, but the presence at the very heart of the narrative of the technical terms, "saviour" and "gospel," which never could have originated on Jewish ground.90 /pg. 353/
From what source, then, was this originally non-Jewish narrative ultimately derived? Gressmann has a very definite answer to this question; the story was derived ultimately, he holds, from the Egyptian story of the exposure and lowly upbringing of Osiris, the wellknown Egyptian god. That story appears in Plutarch's treatise "Concerning Isis and Osiris" in two variants as follows:91
On the first day [that is, the first of the intercalary days at the close of the year] Osiris is said to have been born, and a voice is said to have fallen from on high92 to the effect that the Lord of all was coming forth into the light. Some, however, say that a certain Pamyles in Thebes, while he was drawing water, heard a voice from the temple of Zeus,93 commanding him to proclaim with a shout that a great king, the benefactor, Osiris, is born; and that for this cause Pamyles brought up Osiris, who had been entrusted to him by Cronus,94 and therefore the festival of the Pamylia was celebrated in his honor—a festival similar to phallic festivals.
There are, of course, differences between this narrative and the one in Lk. 2:1–20; but these differences, Gressmann insists, are merely due to changes in the setting which became necessary when the
legend was transplanted from one country to another. In the Theban landscape, which was dominated by the Nile, it had of course to be a drawer of water who fished the foundling child from the river, while in pastoral Judæa shepherds were of course the natural persons to perform a corresponding function; the swaddling-clothes, in which the child was wrapped according to the Lucan narrative, also are due in all probability to the peculiarity of Palestinian custom.
But, says Gressmann, how great, as over against these differences, are the similarities! In both cases the birth of the child is immediately announced by a divine voice; the divinity is watching over the child and summons the necessary rescuer; in both cases the child is designated as "Lord" (Kyrios), and the title "benefactor" in the Egyptian story is closely related to the title "Saviour" in Luke; in both cases the divine announcement is passed on, in the Egyptian story by express command, in the Lucan story without it; in both cases the recipients of the divine announcement are laymen, belonging to the lower classes of the people. But more important than such similarities in detail is, according to Gressmann, the similarity in the entire structure of the two stories. That similarity does not appear, indeed, in the present form of the Lucan story; but in the original form of the story it is clear: the Christchild /pg. 354/ is born in wonderful fashion; it is without human parents (being a divine child that sprang from divine parents); suddenly it lies far from men, helpless and wrapped in swaddling-clothes, in a manger; but meanwhile the shepherds, who happen to be in the field, are made aware of the event and are sent to the manger; and since they know that the foundling is of divine origin and is destined for great things, they spread abroad the angelic announcement and take the foundling under their protection, giving him milk to drink, and bringing him up.
Accordingly, we find here, Gressmann concludes, essentially the same story attested by Plutarch and by Luke; there is clearly a relation of definite dependence between the Egyptian and the Jewish form in which the story appears. But there can be no doubt,
Gressmann thinks, but that the dependence is on the side of the Jewish form. In the first place, the loose joints and breaks in the Lucan story show that that story has passed through a long history, whereas such breaks are lacking in the Osiris legend;95 in the second place, the fact that the foundling is a king is in the Christ legend merely implied, while in the Osiris legend it is plainly stated; in the third place (what is most important), the fact that the royal child has at the same time divine rank, as is indicated in the Lucan narrative by the angelic announcement, is as completely out of accord with native Jewish ideas as it is completely in accord with the Egyptian deification of the monarch, which was prevalent in Egypt from the earliest times. The localization of the birth legend in a cave near Bethlehem requires, according to Gressmann, a word of special explanation. That the legend should be connected with Bethlehem is of course natural so soon as it was applied to the Messiah; but why should it be connected particularly with this particular cave? It would be tempting, Gressmann says, simply to regard the AdonisTammuz worship in the cave of the nativity, which is attested for post-Christian times by Jerome,96 with a pre-Christian worship of Osiris (who was merged with Adonis on Egyptian ground) in that same cave; but this connection is not proved, he says, and on the whole is improbable. All that we can say, therefore, is, according to Gressmann, that a peculiar sanctity attached for some obscure reason to the Bethlehem cave, so that it became natural to localize in that cave the birth legend which was imported by preChristian Judaism from Egypt and was attached to the Messiah.
Finally, Gressmann confirms his Egyptian derivation of the narrative by /pg. 355/ comparison with the legends of other countries. The foundling motif, of course, is common, and so are stories of the births of gods; but nowhere except in Egypt, says Gressmann, have we the peculiar combination of the foundling motif with the notion of the king as a god, which appears in the legend underlying Lk. 2:1–20. Egypt, moreover, is par excellence the land where the notion of the divine child (for example, "Horus, the Child") engrosses the thoughts and sentiments of the people. To Egypt, therefore, and to Egypt
alone, must we look for the origin of the "Christmas gospel" in the second chapter of Luke.
It will not be necessary for us to criticize this theory in detail; for it lies somewhat aside from the specific subject with which our discussion is concerned. The virgin birth, Gressmann holds, does not appear in Lk. 2:1–20 or in the Egyptian-Jewish legend underlying that section; so that perhaps we might have spared our readers the rather detailed exposition of Gressmann's analysis which we have just brought to a close. Nevertheless, we believe that that exposition has by no means been without value for the understanding of the modern method of dealing with the subject of the virgin birth. Gressmann's comparison of Lk. 2:1–20 with the Plutarch passage from the "De Iside et Osiride" is so perfect an example of the method followed by modern students of comparative religion that it becomes highly instructive when we come to evaluate the treatment, by Gressmann himself and by others, of the closely related subject with which specifically the present volume is concerned. That modern method proceeds first by inference from the extant form of a narrative to an original form existing prior to literary fixation. Then the narrative so reconstructed is brought into comparison with some other narrative which, like the former narrative, is not actually given in the extant sources, but is derived from those sources by a process of elaboration or subtraction. In the application of this method, Gressmann begins with the Lucan narrative. That narrative says nothing whatever about a foundling child; but the foundling child is put into it by an hypothesis which may or may not be correct. Then it is the turn of the narrative in Plutarch. That narrative also says nothing very plainly about a foundling child; at least it says nothing about the fishing up of that child from the Nile. Again these elements are introduced into it by inferences which may or may not be correct. Then the two narratives thus reconstructed are treated as though they were actually attested and are compared with each other with a gratifyingly positive result. Grave questions certainly arise with regard to the whole procedure; it may well be questioned whether a
cautious historian will not have to adhere more closely to the sources as they actually are.
But it is time now to turn to the treatment by the same author of the subject /pg. 356/ of the virgin birth. It will soon be observed that our author's conclusions about this latter subject are very similar, even in detail, to his conclusions with regard to the story in the second chapter of Luke.
In treating the New Testament motif of the supernatural conception, it is important, Gressmann says, to find the particular passage where that motif has its original seat. But this passage is not the first chapter of Matthew, which is plainly secondary, but rather verses 26–38 in the first chapter of Luke. It is true that even in this passage the virgin birth is not narrated, but merely presupposed; yet at least it does form the subject of the annunciation which was made by the angel Gabriel to Mary the mother of Jesus. Here, then, we have to start, Gressmann says, in our effort to discover the origin of the myth.
As in the story of the birth, in Lk. 2:1–20, so here in the story of the annunciation, Gressmann detects loose ends and contradictions in the narrative as it stands. One of these loose ends, he says, of course stares us in the face in Mary's question in Lk. 1:34. Mary was betrothed to Joseph, the descendant of David; why, then, did she not interpret the angel's promise as referring to her coming marriage with Joseph; why did she ask, instead: "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" The truth is, says Gressmann, that the entire representation of the Davidic descent of Jesus as son of Joseph is quite contrary to the virginity of Mary which appears plainly in Lk. 1:27 and is implied in the following verses. Yet Gressmann rejects emphatically the interpolation hypothesis regarding Lk. 1:34f. The Semitic form of these verses, he says, shows clearly that they were an original part of the narrative, as does also their agreement with the emphasis on the virginity of Mary in verse 27 and with the surprise
which Mary felt at the angel's greeting. How, then, is the contradiction in the narrative really to be explained?
Gressmann has a very definite answer to this question. The contradiction arose, he thinks, from the introduction of Joseph and Mary, as parents of the child, into a legend in which originally they had no place. Originally the legend had to do merely with a virgin mother, a divine father, and a divine-human child destined to be a king. That legend was in preChristian Judaism applied to the Messiah. Then it was seized upon by Jewish Christians to do honor to the one whom they regarded as the Messiah, namely Jesus. But the parents of Jesus, Joseph and Mary, were well known; they had to be brought somehow into the story; and the confusion which we find in the Lucan narrative was the inevitable result.
Thus Gressmann rejects the view that the idea of the virgin birth of Christ originated in Gentile Christian circles. The Semitic character of the narratives containing that idea protests strongly, he observes, against any such view. But, /pg. 357/ on the other hand, Jewish Christians who already believed in Jesus were not the originators of the idea; for then the contradictions in Lk. 1:26–38 could not be explained. The only possible conclusion, Gressmann thinks, is that the legend was already applied to the Messiah in the Judaism of preChristian times.
Ultimately, however, Gressmann continues, the legend could not have been of Jewish origin; for with its crass mythology it is contrary to the very heart and core of Jewish monotheism. In Luke, the mythological notion is perfectly clear; the "Holy Ghost" is parallel to "the power of the Most High," so that God Himself is regarded as having performed the act of physical begetting. In Matthew, on the other hand, Gressmann thinks, there is a greater degree of concession to Jewish feeling, since the "Holy Ghost" of the Matthæan narrative is regarded as a male being subordinate to God. But it is a mistake, Gressmann continues, to regard the introduction of the Holy Spirit as a Jewish Christian modification of some grosser pagan
representation; for the pagans had not only the notion of begetting by a god, but also the notion of begetting by the divine Spirit.97 Thus even the form in which the divine activity in begetting appears in the New Testament narratives has, according to Gressmann, its counterpart in pagan belief.
From what particular pagan source, then, did this pre-Christian Jewish notion of divine begetting ultimately come? In answering this question, as in answering the question regarding the ultimate source of Lk. 2:1–20, Gressmann turns with some confidence to Egypt. What we are seeking, he says, is not a story of birth from a divine mother, but a story of birth from a human mother after begetting by a divine father. That consideration narrows somewhat the range of our search. The range is, indeed, according to Gressmann, still fairly broad; for there are many stories in which a human mother is represented as having brought forth a divinely begotten child. But one further feature of the New Testament story enables us to fix a particular one of the parallels and to eliminate the others—the feature, namely, that according to the New Testament narrative the divine-human child is to be a great king. If we give due weight to this feature and at the same time confine our attention to those countries that came into contact with Palestine, we are led inevitably, Gressmann says, to Egypt. In Egypt, both in ancient times and during the period of the Ptolemaic dynasty, it was the current belief that every new king sprang from a human mother and from the highest god, Amon-R~, who appeared to /pg. 358/ the young queen in his divine form, had intercourse with her, and then promised her that she should bring forth a son who should be king over Egypt. The similarity of this legend to that which is found in the New Testament is, Gressmann thinks, striking; it appears both in the structure of the whole and in details. The "power of the Most High" in Luke answers to the "highest god," Amon-R~, in the Egyptian legend; the Egyptians, as we know from Plutarch, believed that the "divine spirit" could have intercourse with a woman and thus beget a child, so that the "divine spirit" is in Egypt a substitute for Amon-R~, as it is among the Jews for Jehovah; in the Egyptian legend as in the
Gospels there is closely connected with the conception of the child in the womb the promise that the child should possess the kingdom. These similarities, Gressmann thinks, can only be explained by the dependence of the Jewish story upon the Egyptian story of the birth of the king.
Gressmann admits, indeed, that the Egyptian legend contains no mention of the virginity of the mother. His explanation is that no one in Egypt doubted the intercourse of the god with the queen; whereas when the legend was transferred to other persons, whose intercourse with divinity was not a matter of course, there needed to be emphasis upon the mother's virginity and purity.98 Such emphasis appears, for example, says Gressmann, in the case of the birth legend of Plato, which may well be connected in some way with the Egyptian legend; and it appears also in the story in Matthew and Luke.
Surely this explanation, it may be remarked in passing, is quite inadequate; and the absence of any notion of the virginity of the mother in the Egyptian story does constitute a very important difference, in addition to other still more important differences closely connected with it, between the Egyptian belief as to the divine origin of the king and the New Testament narrative of the supernatural conception of Jesus in the womb of the virgin Mary. Before we proceed to criticize this hypothesis of Egyptian origin of the virgin birth story, it will be necessary to notice the form in which the hypothesis has appeared in the learned monograph by Eduard Norden, on "The Birth of the Child."99 Norden's book is devoted primarily to a study of the Fourth Eclogue, the so-called "Messianic eclogue" of Virgil. In that eclogue, Norden insists, we have no mere celebration of some noble Roman child contemporary with the poet, but a poetic treatment of an ancient myth. The original home of that myth, certainly the place from which Virgil's form of it came, was Egypt; a man of genius has here given poetic expression to an ancient theologoumenon which with various changes had been scattered abroad from its /pg. 359/ Egyptian home into various lands and among various peoples. The myth or theologoumenon in question
was the myth of the Divine Child. In ancient Egyptian sources, that myth appears in the story of the begetting of the heir to the kingdom by the god Amon-R~. The god is represented as taking the form of the reigning monarch and as thus having intercourse with the queen. The result of this union is the conception and then the birth of the new monarch. In this story the various scenes are depicted with much detail on the monuments: various gods and goddesses are represented as taking part in the different functions connected with the birth and the suckling of the child.100 According to Moret,101 this notion of divine begetting was connected with every king (not merely with kings whose right to the throne was for some reason in doubt), and it persisted down into very late times. A late product of it is found in the story in Pseudo-Callisthenes in the third century after Christ. According to that story, Alexander the Great was begotten by Nectanebes, the last of the Pharaohs, who gained access to Olympias, wife of Philip of Macedon, under the pretence that he was the god Amon. From the Alexander story there have come many expressions of the same motif. In a few of them, as in the incident of Paulina and Mundus,102 an actual event underlies the story; unscrupulous men used the ancient story about the deceit of Nectanebes as a suggestion of the way in which they could gratify their own lust. But most of the stories in which the Nectanebes motif appears are pure fiction, as in Boccaccio and in most of the other examples which Weinreich has adduced.103 The ancient Egyptian belief in divine begetting is attested, according to Norden, by Plutarch and by Philo. But there are two important differences, Norden says, between these two attestations. In the first place, Philo says nothing about the "spirit" in this connection, while Plutarch says that according to the Egyptians "it is not impossible for the spirit of God to approach a woman and engender certain beginnings of generation."104 In the second place, Plutarch says nothing about virginity, which is strongly emphasized by Philo.105 These differences, Norden says, are to be explained by the difference between the Egyptian and the Hellenistic forms of the theologoumenon: the notion of the "spirit," or life-giving breath, of the god is Egyptian; while /pg. 360/ the notion of virginity is Greek. A union of these two factors, Norden concludes, took place in the
Græco-Egyptian religion of the Ptolemaic period; and so was produced the form of the myth which underlies the passages in the first chapters of Matthew and Luke—"God begets a son in pneumatic union with a virgin." Of course, when that myth was transplanted to Jewish soil, it must be admitted that certain changes became necessary in order to adapt it to the Jewish idea of God. Thus instead of the appearance of the god himself to perform the act of begetting we have in the Gospels the appearance of a messenger merely to announce it; and instead of the exultation of the mother in the joy of her union with the god we have merely the words addressed to the messenger: "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." Nevertheless, Norden insists, the original myth still shines through from beneath its Jewish Christian dress. It appears even in the detail that the mother in the Jewish Christian story is a married woman at the time when the conception takes place. That detail introduces an element of unexplained contradiction, Norden says, into the Jewish Christian story, whereas in the original Egyptian story of the divine begetting of the king it had a logical and necessary place. And in general, Norden thinks, the story in the Gospels gives clear evidence of its secondary character, clear evidence of being an adaptation to monotheistic requirements of the ancient Egyptian myth of the theogamy of Amon-R~ with the reigning queen. Our criticism of this hypothesis may well find its starting-point in the word "theogamy" which Norden himself uses. The Egyptian story is indeed the story of a theogamy; and being the story of a theogamy it has nothing to do with the New Testament story of the virgin birth of Christ. In Egypt the carnal union of the god with the queen is no mere detail which could be removed without destroying the essential character of the myth; on the contrary, the sources linger upon it with great insistence, and it appears as quite central in all the many later stories to which the ancient myth has given rise.
Norden himself gives us a hint as to the weakness of his own hypothesis when he writes as follows:
The motif of a supernatural birth is found—though without the GræcoEgyptian and Judæo-Christian peculiarities, which form a closed circle of their own—in many peoples of quite diverse forms of culture. Wherever trustworthy tradition is extant, the mystery is without exception clothed in the form that the god himself appears to the mortal woman with whom he desires to enter into the marital relationship. "I will descend into thy bosom"—thus or in some similar way he speaks /pg. 361/ to her, and she gives herself willingly to him. The Gospel narrative exhibits by its peculiarity a conscious departure from a type.106
This passage is not altogether clear; we do not quite understand what Norden means by saying that the Græco-Egyptian and JudæoChristian peculiarities "form a closed circle of their own." Does he mean that the Græco-Egyptian peculiarities form one closed circle and the Judæo-Christian peculiarities another, or that they both form one closed circle when they are taken together? If, as seems probable, he means the latter, then we fail to see the exact relevance of the words that follow. For surely the actual appearance of the god to the woman with which he will have union is a characteristic of the Egyptian story just as much as it is of the many other stories to which Norden alludes. Indeed, it is found in the Egyptian story in an especially crass and detailed form. Yet in the Judæo-Christian story it appears not at all. Surely, then, it is misleading to say that the closed circle embraces the Græco-Egyptian and the Judæo-Christian peculiarities in distinction from other myths of divine begetting. In reality there are two circles: one embraces the many pagan stories of the carnal union of a mortal woman with a god; the other contains only the New Testament story of the supernatural conception of our Lord. And the two circles are entirely distinct. This distinctness is made clear by Norden, as though against his will, in the following revealing passage, which appears almost immediately before the passage that we have just quoted above:
How touching, through their expression of submission, are those words of the woman to whom an incomprehensible experience has
been announced: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word."107 We would not do without them, although we now, I think, recognize that they are a substitute for the proud and exultant words which a woman rejoicing in her love-union with the god addresses to the god himself. Perhaps, indeed, many religious souls will even think that the majesty of the divine in the Gospel narrative, which leaves the divine in mysterious unapproachableness, is loftier than in the basic story in which the god approaches the marriage bed in the form of the king and lays his heart upon that of the woman, who now in his arms, pervaded in all her members by his magic life-giving power, becomes a goddess. The Egyptian theologoumenon breathes still the sturdy, grand style of a myth; while the Gospel narrative is surrounded by the entrancing fragrance of a delicate legend, which is only quite from afar still touched by a shadow from an ancient time.
Does not this passage show more clearly than could be done by any argument of ours the abysmal difference between the Egyptian story and the one that is /pg. 362/ found in Matthew and Luke? Between the words of Mary to the messenger of the Most High God and the exultant words of the queen in her carnal union with an anthropomorphic god, what a gulf is fixed! Norden himself admits that the New Testament narrative is unique. In all the other stories of supernatural birth, the god himself appears to the woman with whom he will have union; here only nothing of the sort appears. Is the difference to be explained merely by the adaptation of the pagan story to monotheistic conditions? Such an explanation is quite inadequate. The trouble is that the supposed "adaptation" would really mean the removal of the very heart and core of the pagan myth; for the heart and core of the pagan myth is found in the carnal union of the god with the woman of his choice. Can that be adaptation which really produces the very opposite of the thing from which the adaptation is supposed to have taken place? Is it not perfectly clear, on the contrary, that in the Egyptian myth, on the one hand, and the New Testament narrative of the virgin birth of our
Lord, on the other, we have phenomena which spring from two separate and distinct roots?
If anyone desires to confirm this conclusion, if anyone desires to detect with a new clearness the difference between the New Testament account of the virgin birth of Christ and the pagan myth, let him read the learned book by Weinreich to which allusion has already been made;108 let him trace the history of these stories that really do have a common root. Let him observe how, though in many varying forms, there always appear both the content and the spirit of the same lascivious tale. And then let him turn to the lofty monotheism of the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke. Let him compare these narratives with the ancient Egyptian myth. If he then still thinks there is dependence, it can only be because, despite Weinreich's services, he has not yet learned what real dependence is.
This distinctness of the New Testament doctrine, it is true, is not perceived with equal clearness by all men. But perhaps that is because all men have not equal organs of perception. We may perhaps appeal in this connection to Norden himself. The prologue of the Fourth Gospel, says Norden, is a test of a man's power of forming judgments in the sphere of comparative religion; he who does not find in that prologue an echo of Heraclitus shows merely that his ear is not sufficiently sharp to hear these ancient tones. We confess that our ear is not sufficiently sharp for that. But we may perhaps venture upon a retort. We may perhaps say that he who does not see that there is something radically wrong when Norden gravely debates the question whether Mary's pure words of submission are or are not higher from the /pg. 363/ religious point of view than the exultant words of the Egyptian queen in her amorous embraces with the god; he who does not see that the lofty monotheism of the New Testament narrative is removed by an infinity of difference from the Egyptian tale; he who does not see that the conception of the holy child Jesus by the creative power of God is the very opposite of the theogamy of Amon-R~ with a mortal woman—he who does not see these things shows thereby that his eye has never been sharpened by
any really sympathetic contemplation of the religion of Israel or of the wonderful narratives in the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke. For a true comparison between the New Testament, on the one hand, and pagan religions on the other, something more than a knowledge of pagan religions is required. One must also try to enter into the inner spirit of the New Testament books. And when one does that, one sees clearly that the hypothesis of Gressmann and Norden altogether breaks down.109
Perhaps the most elaborate effort that has ever been made to explain the genesis of the New Testament idea of the virgin birth, supposing the idea not to be based on fact, is the effort of Hans Leisegang in his monograph on the passages in the Synoptic Gospels which deal with the Holy Spirit.110 This monograph appeared two years before the work of Eduard Norden, which has just been discussed; but we have reserved consideration of it to the last because its elaborate character makes it in some sort the culmination of the entire treatment by modern naturalism of the New Testament story of the birth of Christ.
Previous treatments of the subject, Leisegang says, have erred in ignoring, or giving insufficient attention to, the positive side of the New Testament representation; the investigators have attended to the fact that in that representation the human father is excluded, but they have not considered sufficiently that which is substituted for the human father—namely, the activity of the Holy Spirit. It is this positive side of the New Testament representation, just as much as the negative side, which the student of comparative religion is called upon to explain. /pg. 364/
Now the New Testament representation appears, according to Leisegang, in two distinct forms: one in Matthew, the other in Luke. If we began with the one in Matthew, he says further, the explanation might at first sight seem to be very simple; at first sight it might seem to be discoverable on purely Jewish ground. The words, "from the Holy Spirit," in the sentence, "she was found with child from the Holy Spirit,"111 clearly designate the "Holy Spirit" as performing the
act of begetting. But in the original Greek the expression "Holy Spirit" has no article with it; the meaning, therefore, may be not "the Holy Spirit," but "a holy spirit"; and what would be designated would be not the Spirit of God, but a subordinate being, a "holy spirit," different, indeed, in moral quality from the unclean spirits frequently mentioned in the Gospels, but not essentially different from them in his place in the scale of being. But if this be the meaning, if the Gospel of Matthew attributes the act of begetting to a personal being, a "spirit," subordinate to God, then, says Leisegang, we can find striking parallels on Semitic ground. The parallels do not, indeed, appear in literary sources from ancient times; but popular beliefs in certain remote districts in Bible lands are known to be conservative, so that even modern sources in those countries may give correct information about ancient beliefs. The particular beliefs to which Leisegang refers are the beliefs in carnal union between a woman and certain spirits or "welis"; barren women are said to have recourse to certain places which such spirits haunt. So the conception of Jesus by "a holy spirit" in Mary's womb might conceivably be nothing more than one particular instance of this sort. "One cannot get rid of the thought," says Leisegang, "that the angel of the Lord, who announces the conception, and the holy spirit, that carries it out, are originally in the popular belief one and the same person, an arch-weli who undertakes the act of begetting in place of God."112 In this way the Semitic opposition to making God Himself the physical father of a child would come to its rights, while yet the notion of supernatural birth would be preserved. Despite what he regards as the attractiveness of this theory, Leisegang is not inclined to find in it the ultimate explanation of the New Testament representation of the virgin birth of Christ. It was only in the lower circles of Judaism, he says, that notions about the fatherhood of subordinate spirits could subsist; and although these lower circles, with their crude superstition, were much more influential in the formation of New Testament legends than is popularly supposed, still we can hardly hold that so crude a belief, vigorously opposed by official Judaism, attained the high place in early Christian /pg. 365/ thought that was actually attained by the virgin birth idea. For the
ultimate origin of that idea, therefore, we must look farther afield. And inevitably we are led away from Judaism out into the Hellenistic world. This wider search into which we are thus led can only be begun, Leisegang says, through the assistance of the narrative in Luke. In the Third Gospel, as is not the case in the First, the activity of the Spirit in the begetting of Jesus is connected with a whole circle of other activities in which also the Spirit has the central place. These other activities are concerned with prophecy; the Spirit in the Lucan narrative appears specifically as the source of prophetic inspiration. Thus the angel announces to Zacharias that the prophet John will be "filled with the Spirit from his mother's womb," and that he will go before the Lord "in the Spirit and power of Elias." It is in close parallel with this annunciation to Zacharias that the same angel says to Mary: "The Holy Spirit will come upon thee and the power of the Most High will overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which is begotten shall be called Son of God." Whoever comes into contact with Mary while she is bearing the child in her womb, or comes into contact afterwards with the child Himself, experiences the activity of the Holy Spirit. When Mary greets Elisabeth, the child leaps in Elisabeth's womb, and Elisabeth herself is filled with the Holy Spirit and breaks forth into prophetic words.113 To Simeon, upon whom the Holy Spirit is said to have rested, it is announced by the same Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Messiah. "In the Spirit" he comes into the Temple, takes the child Jesus into his arms, and breaks forth into prophetic words of praise. Finally we hear of the boy Jesus in the Temple and of his extraordinary spiritual gifts. Also in the parallel history of John the Baptist the motif of the Holy Spirit is not forgotten: Zacharias became full of the Holy Spirit and prophesied; and the child himself "grew and waxed strong in the Spirit." The conclusion from these observations, which, themselves also, we have just reproduced almost in exact translation of Leisegang's own words, is as follows:
We observe: the two passages which here speak of an activity of a "Holy Spirit" (1) during the pregnancy of Elisabeth114 and (2) in connection with the conception in Mary's womb115 are by Luke
intertwined and interwoven with a wealth of expressions in which the "Holy Spirit" is quite clearly to be understood as the /pg. 366/ gift of the prophetic Spirit, the vehicle of inspiration. At the same time there is lacking here any occasion for regarding the Spirit as a person. The drastic representation of a conception by a holy spirit,116 in which the "spirit" takes the place of a male being who carries out the act of begetting, is here, in contrast with the representation in Matthew, carefully avoided. Instead of that, we have here in the description of the act of begetting (in addition to the thrice appearing expression, "to be filled with the Holy Spirit") the words, "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee." But the expressions, "to be filled with the Holy Spirit" and "the Holy Spirit to come upon someone," suggest inevitably the expressions (known also in the Greek literary language), "full of God," and "to breathe upon,"117 "a breathing upon,"118 which in turn lead us into the sphere of Dionysiac orgiasm —to be specific, into the sphere of enthusiastic manticism, a wellknown form of Greek prophetism. And as a matter of fact the same "Holy Spirit," which accomplishes the conception of the child by Mary, makes Mary at the same time, according to the Lucan composition, a prophetess, who breaks forth into the enthusiastic verses of a psalm. It is at the same time the "prophetic Spirit" that broods over the persons active in the two birth narratives and is powerful in them.119
We are led in the same direction, Leisegang continues, by a consideration of the expression, "The power of the Most High shall overshadow thee." Whence comes the figure of speech involved in the word "overshadow"? It comes, according to Leisegang, from Hellenistic mysticism as attested by Philo. In certain passages120 Philo connects the coming of the divine Logos for the inspiration of man with a darkening of the human understanding; only when the sun of human reason has set can the divine light shine upon the soul. The word "overshadow" is not indeed used in these passages; but it occurs in a passage where the inspiration that takes place when the human reason is darkened is an inspiration not by God, but by evil
angels.121 These passages, coupled with certain other indications, show, according to Leisegang, that the figure underlying the word "overshadow" in Lk. 1:35 is the figure of a spiritual winged being that overshadows with his wings the human recipient of inspiration. "From this conception," says Leisegang, "there was developed first the general use of the word 'overshadow' to designate the approach of any spiritual being and then (in mystical circles) the special use to designate the darkening of the human understanding in the interests of the divine /pg. 367/ influence. Just by the choice of this word, therefore, the description of the pneumatic conception by Mary is very closely connected with the Greek notions of the communion of human beings, especially of women, with the world of spirits."122 But how, then, was it possible that the "Holy Spirit," regarded as a gift of inspiration, as "prophetic Spirit," became at the same time the cause of Mary's pregnancy? To answer this question we must search, according to Leisegang, in the sphere toward which the expressions used by Luke or by his source have already pointed us—namely, in the sphere of Greek prophetism.
In that sphere, it is no obscure phenomenon which first arrests our attention, but the wellknown figure of the prophetess at Delphi, the Pythia. When that prophetess, a virgin, is represented as sitting on a tripod over the cavern from which the prophetic "spirit" came, it is perfectly plain, Leisegang thinks, from the attitude of the prophetess, from the expressions that are used by Greek writers, from the scornful words of Christian writers, that the prophetic spirit is represented in drastic fashion as being received into the womb. But it is not only from this secret of Greek manticism that the Christian apologists remove the veil; they also disclose, Leisegang says, the notion of pagan antiquity that a bearer of the divine spirit, a prophet, can by a carnal union transfer this gift to a woman, whereby the woman in turn becomes a prophetess. So Irenæus relates concerning the Gnostic prophet Marcus.123 What Marcus is here represented as practising is nothing else than the transference into practice of the Greek speculation about the mystic union of the human soul with its heavenly bridegroom—in other words, the Greek speculation about
the "sacred marriage." But it is well-known, says Leisegang, that this speculation had its origin in the religion of Dionysus and particularly in the mysteries.
Thus it is established to Leisegang's satisfaction "that between the prophetic spirit and the impregnation of a woman there is a fixed connection in thought; the divine 'spirit' is regarded as being capable of transmission, by means of a carnal union (either directly by the divinity himself or by a prophet who possesses the spirit), to a woman who thereby becomes herself a prophetess."124
But there still remains, Leisegang admits, a considerable gulf between the New Testament story of the supernatural conception by the Holy Spirit and these pagan notions as they have so far been set forth. The difference is that what Mary brings forth by her reception of the Spirit is an actual child, while what the pagan prophets or prophetesses bring forth are only prophetic words. /pg. 368/ Thus ventriloquists in antiquity were regarded as those who spoke "from out of the belly";125 the words were forced out of them by a cramplike impulse coming from the under part of the body; and that impulse was regarded as due to prophetic inspiration. The effect of divine or demoniac entrance into the belly or the womb was therefore the utterance of prophetic words, not the birth of a divine or demoniac child. Apparently, therefore, we have here something quite different from the New Testament representation.
It is in the effort to bridge this gulf that Leisegang develops the most distinctive part of his theory. He points in a preliminary way, first, to the myth of the prophet-god Dionysus. Semele has union with Zeus; thereby she enters into an enthusiastic condition; all who touch her body are full of the god. And then she brings her divine child to the birth—her divine child who is himself a prophet and a dispenser of the divine spirit. In this myth Leisegang finds a special similarity to the Lucan narrative in that in both cases the mother during her pregnancy is represented as being herself in an enthusiastic condition and as transferring this condition to others who come into
contact with her.126 The same motif appears also, Leisegang says, though in slightly different form, in the myth of Branchus, the founder of the Branchidic oracle. But it is not in the references to either of these myths that we find the real heart of Leisegang's theory. That is found, rather, in the use which Leisegang makes of certain passages in Philo, including the passage in the "De Cherubim" which we have quoted at length above.127 In these passages, we have the notion of divine begetting coupled with the notion of virginity; only with a virgin soul, or rather with the archetypal idea of virginity, can God, according to Philo, have union for the bringing forth of that which is good. It is a great mistake, Leisegang says, to seek the origin of these ideas in any precedent Jewish belief regarding a virgin birth of the patriarchs;128 rather is Philo led to his exegesis of the Old Testament passages by his desire to find Scriptural warrant for the Hellenistic notion of what a prophet should be. "Not because in a precedent tradition (indeed, that lacks all attestation) the Jewish patriarchs are virgin-born, do they become to Philo men of God and /pg. 369/ prophets. Rather because Moses and the patriarchs, especially Isaac, are to be made to correspond with the Hellenistic prophets and hierophants, there is interwoven with the story of their lives, by means of allegorical exegesis, the motif of divine begetting and virgin birth."129 So clearly were the ideas of divine begetting and virgin birth connected with each other in the Hellenistic belief upon which Philo was dependent that he felt obliged to preserve their connection in his allegorical interpretation, no matter what violence was thereby done to the Old Testament narrative.
But still we have not yet penetrated, according to Leisegang, to the real root of this whole aspect of Philo's teaching. The real root of the whole complex of ideas was not found, Leisegang thinks, in anything that Philo had received from books, or that he had gleaned from a learned examination of pagan religion or philosophy. But it was found in a mystic experience through which Philo himself had passed —a mystic experience which was determinative of the whole character of his most important writing. Philo was no mere student
of mysticism, but was himself a mystic—that conviction Leisegang shares with what seems to be the main trend of modern Philonic studies. In great sections of his works, indeed, the Alexandrian teacher writes in a vein very different from mysticism; he engages in a pedantic kind of argumentation that suggests the study-chamber rather than the place of religious exaltation. But from such sections of his works, Leisegang thinks, there are clearly to be distinguished the passages where mystical illumination is allowed free course. Philo was conscious of moments when suddenly there descended upon him a divine power which took him out of himself, placed his ordinary reasoning faculties in abeyance, and made of him a prophet and a seer. And to describe such experiences—to describe what, properly speaking, was indescribable—he had recourse to the wellknown language about theogamy, divine begetting and virgin birth. In certain moments of his life he felt his soul to be suddenly fructified, quite without his own volition, by a stream of divine influence that caused him to bring forth ideas of which he would otherwise have been quite incapable. Leisegang quotes in this connection the following passage where Philo describes such mystic experiences:130
For the things with which the soul is in travail of its own motion are for the most part abortions and untimely born; but as many things as God waters with snows from above are born perfect and whole and best of all things. I am not ashamed to tell of my own experience which I am conscious of having had many, /pg. 370/ many times.131 There have been times when, wishing to proceed according to the way of writing customary for philosophical doctrines, and knowing well what needed to be set down, I have yet found my mind impotent and barren132 and so have desisted without accomplishing my purpose. Then I have blamed my mind for its false pretensions, but have wondered at the might of God,133 in whose power lies the opening and shutting of the womb of the soul. But also there have been times when, coming empty to my task, I have suddenly become full by means of the thoughts that have mysteriously come down upon me like snow or like seed from above, so that in a divine
possession134 I have been filled with Corybantic frenzy and have lost awareness of everything—of the place, of my companions, of myself, of the things that were being said, of the things that were being written.
There we have, says Leisegang, the warm description, by a true mystic, of a personal experience of inspiration. The example of his own experience presses itself upon this writer's attention when he comes to speak of a fructification of the soul by God.
But how was the transition effected from the figure of divine begetting, which Philo uses to describe such mystical experiences, to the actual fact of a begetting of a human child by divine seed? The answer is found, Leisegang thinks, in a consideration of the pagan mysteries. In the mysteries—in the Dionysus religion with its Mænads, in the Delphic prophetess who brought forth mysterious words from her body without knowing what she was saying, in the liturgic pictures of the theogamy of the soul, in the cultic actions that suggested or even drastically set forth the union of God with a human being—in these things Philo discovered what he needed for the description of his own mystic experiences. Thus we have "everywhere the same thing: a sexual union between God and man— but in the greatest possible variety between the extreme of concrete sensuous action and spiritualized symbolism almost sublimated away into a mere rhetorical figure of speech."135
So, according to Leisegang, the importance of Philo lies in the insight that he gives us into the structure of Hellenistic mystical religion. At bottom, Leisegang says, what Philo has in mind is the personal experience of a stream of new power, supposedly supernatural, suddenly descending into the human soul. To describe this experience he makes use of the figures of divine begetting that appeared in the mysteries; and sometimes, says Leisegang, we can almost hear in his rhythmic words the chant of the initiates who in ecstasy, /pg. 371/ with lifted hands, pray for pneumatic conception and virgin birth.136 This same figure he applies to the Old Testament
narrative by means of allegorical exegesis; and thus are to be explained the passages where he speaks of the divine begetting of Isaac and of other Old Testament characters.
But Philo applies the same idea of divine begetting in another sphere also—namely, in the sphere of abstract speculation. Not only does he speak of a divine begetting of Isaac and other Old Testament characters, representing states of the human soul, but also he speaks of a divine begetting of the Logos, which represents the sensible world: from the impregnation of the mother, Wisdom, by the Father, God, the Logos comes forth as the first-born son. Here we have, according to Leisegang, nothing else than the projection of the mystic experience of a union of the human soul with God out into the region of the hypostases that exist outside of the sensible world—in other words (if we may use Platonic language for what is not really in accord with Plato's teaching), into the region of "ideas."
Thus we have in Philo the idea of divine begetting and virgin birth in two parallel spheres—in the sphere of the human soul and in the sphere of supersensible hypostases. In both spheres the variety in which the idea appears is bewildering, as can be observed in the tabulation which Leisegang provides.137 Everywhere there is (1) a male principle, (2) a female principle, and (3) the thing that is begotten; but the terms in which these three factors are set forth are so diverse that at first sight the whole complex of ideas might seem to be simply a mass of arbitrarily chosen fragments from various systems. But such an estimate would, according to Leisegang, be altogether unjust. We ought never to forget, he says, that Philo was a mystic, and that some of his writing was done in an ecstatic condition of the writer's soul. The bewildering variety of his utterances about divine begetting is to be explained, therefore, as the effort of a true mystic to express what is really inexpressible. Back of all such utterances is the mystic experience by which the soul, with its own faculties in abeyance, is suddenly fructified by an irresistible stream of divine power. /pg. 372/
We are now in a position, says Leisegang, to trace the whole progress of the development of which the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke form a part.138 Back of the whole development, Leisegang says, there lies "the mystic experience of an immediate and sudden union of the human soul with the Divine, the disappearance of the human consciousness in the presence of a power conceived of as supernatural—a power entering into the human soul from the outside and bringing forth religious enthusiasm, joy in the Spirit, and the gift of ecstatic speech."139 In ancient Greece, in the early period, this mystic experience was prevalent especially among women, whose addiction to the wild, orgiastic religion of Dionysus is well known. Not unnaturally, therefore, the entrance of the divine power could be conceived of in such circles as the entrance of a demon who penetrated into a woman's body and performed with her the sacred act of begetting; and ancient popular belief would be favorable to such a view.
From the Dionysus cult, Leisegang continues, the motif of divine begetting entered into the sphere of enthusiastic manticism and of the mysteries. The priestess of the Pythian oracle is a typical example of a prophetess who as a result of pneumatic conception comes into an ecstatic condition and predicts the future. In the mysteries, the same experience was at least suggested, even if not always drastically set forth. In the myths also, as well as in the cults, we find the same belief; the birth of a prophet is preceded by an act of begetting on the part of a prophet-god, and thus is united the notion of prophetic speech as the result of a conception by a "spirit" with the notion of the birth of a divine child who possesses the prophetic gift. Thus the woman who bears the child becomes both herself a prophetess and also a prophet's mother.
Against this primitive popular belief, indeed, the poets and philosophers uttered emphatic protests:
They condemned the mysteries; they sought other explanations for enthusiastic manticism; they interpreted the myths by allegorical
methods. But wherever even in philosophical circles mysticism came to life and sought for means of describing the mystic-religious experience, recourse was had to the ancient representations, and use was made of them as of welcome figures of speech. When that was done, the distinction between man and woman fell away: the soul is now the female principle, the Divine the male principle, the spirit is the seed that proceeds as mystic power from God.140 /pg. 373/
Through the growing spiritualizing of the idea of God under the influence of Platonic teaching, the act of begetting is more and more removed from the ordinary world and placed in the super-sensible world of hypostases or ideas.
God in the region of the Beyond begets with the idea of virginity (which appears as wisdom, as virtue, as science, as everything beautiful and good) the world-creating power, the Logos. At this point there offer themselves rich possibilities of combination, which are the more exploited the richer and more varied are the myths and the figures of the sacred stories that are to be allegorically interpreted and thereby lifted into the region of mystic speculation. So there is a begetting and fructifying without end: God begets in Wisdom; He Himself, the Logos and all other heavenly powers beget in the human soul. Where the philosophic speculation is not understood and there is on the other hand a close relation to the popular belief still living in the lower classes of society—the popular belief from which the abstract figurative language of the philosophers originally came—a hopeless confusion runs riot. A man like Philo who is acquainted with the doctrine of hypostases would never put in the place of Wisdom or of the divine-human soul a bodily virgin living on this earth, and would never put in place of the Logos a human child of flesh and blood.… But to the layman who ventured into this field, who was equipped only with his subjective conviction of the truth-content of his own [mystic] experience that he found reflected both in the belief of the people and in the teachings of the philosophers—to him [or in his hands] all this must have come to be a hopeless tangle.141
As such laymen, says Leisegang, we must regard both Luke and the authors of the First and Fourth Gospels. The only difference is that the degree of their naïveté142 in the things of Greek religion was not the same. Upon the lowest plane there stands the compiler of the birth-narrative in Matthew; for he simply seizes material that came to him from the Hellenistic world, understands it in accordance with popular Semitic belief, and inserts it as best he can into his narrative. Luke, on the other hand, displays a detailed acquaintance with the Greek beliefs of the lower classes and also with the prophetism that was developed from that belief. The few words with which he sets forth the pneumatic conception by Mary are the vehicle of his treatment of the mystic process which, often by only slight improvements and additions he has imported into the infancy narrative. Over and in all the persons that appear in the narrative he causes the breath of the Spirit and its activities to blow. The Spirit for him, as in Greek manticism, is especially the prophetic Spirit. Its double activity—in ecstatic speech and in the birth of a divine child who Himself is distinguished by the gift of prophecy—is inserted into the /pg. 374/ narrative by subtle touches. Just as is the case with personages in the Greek myths, Mary is in Luke both a prophetess and the mother of a prophet. But of an acquaintance with philosophic speculation there is no trace.
Such is the theory of Leisegang. It constitutes certainly an imposing effort at solution of a problem which naturalistic historians have hitherto found unsoluble. But is it really any more successful than the theories that preceded it? That question must be answered in the negative. There are, in the first place, various weaknesses in detail, which can hardly fail to appear to the careful reader. Particularly glaring is the weakness in the treatment of the Matthæan narrative. When Leisegang interprets pneuma hagion in Matthew as meaning "a holy spirit" and as referring to a personal being subordinate to God, surely he is departing from all sound principles of interpretation.143 Where can he find a parallel for such a usage of the phrase either in the Biblical books or in related writings? The parallel passage in Luke gives him no help; for he admits that in that
passage pneuma hagion has a very different meaning from the meaning that he attributes to it in Matthew. Surely a sound method would interpret the less definite passage by the help of the more definite,144 since after all the two passages are closely parallel, and since not the slightest parallel can be found in related sources for the other interpretation of the Matthæan phrase. The Gospels do, indeed, speak of certain subordinate beings as "spirits"; but of the application of the word "holy" to any of these subordinate beings no trace can be found.
Leisegang thinks, indeed, that he can find parallels on Semitic ground for the notion of the birth of a child as the fruit of a union between a woman and a subordinate "spirit." But the Biblical passages which he cites in this connection—the passage in Gen. 6:1, 2 where the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" are spoken of, and the passage in 1 Cor. 11:10 regarding the angels—are obscure; and the illustrations upon which apparently he places chief reliance are found not in ancient, but in modern times. This latter circumstance might at first sight seem to be disconcerting; it might at first sight seem to be an objection to Leisegang's argument that the facts upon which it relies—the facts about fructification of women by "arch-welis" and the like—are attested not in ancient records, but in a description by S. I. Curtiss of modern conditions.145 The truly advanced student of comparative religion, it is true, makes short shrift of such objections; he seldom allows the flow of his thought to be troubled by questions of date. But questions of date will persist in /pg. 375/ arising in the minds of those who do not belong to the innermost circle of the comparative-religion school; and when they are allowed to arise at all they will place serious obstacles in the way of Leisegang's argument at this point.
Another objection to Leisegang's theory is found in the transition, in his treatment of Greek prophetism, from the notion of the bringing forth of inspired words to the notion of the bearing of an actual child. Leisegang himself is apparently aware of the difficulty that besets his theory at this point. "The Pythias," he says,146 "the Sibyls, the
Gnostic prophetesses, the participants in the mysteries receive the Spirit likewise in their body, come thereby into an enthusiastic condition, and bring forth—well, certainly not a child." After this correct observation, Leisegang proceeds to a five-page treatment of that which the Greek prophetesses and ventriloquists do bring forth —namely, prophetic words. Then he returns to the point at which he has left off; and seeks to bridge the gap between these prophetic or enthusiastic words and the actual bearing of a child. But it cannot be said that the evidence that he adduces is very abundant or very convincing.147 He points, indeed, to the birth of the prophet-god Dionysus: Semele has union with Zeus, comes thereby into an enthusiastic condition, and brings forth a child who is both a prophet and the bestower of the divine spirit upon others. But is it really clear in this myth that the enthusiastic condition of Semele was due to her union with Zeus as such; may it not have been due rather to the fact that the particular child whom she was to bear was a prophet-god? After all, it is natural that the mother of a prophet-god should herself, during her pregnancy, have been possessed of the prophetic gift. We still do not see any very close connection here between the bringing forth of a child and that bringing forth of prophetic words which Leisegang has treated at such length. Even less convincing is the reference to Eusebius' comment on Is. 7:14, which has been dealt with above.148 And with regard to the birth of Branchus, which Leisegang cites next, an observation may be made somewhat similar to that which has just been made with regard to the birth of Dionysus: Branchus was a prophet, and it was natural that he should be begotten by the prophet-god Apollo. The gift of prophecy, to put the thing in prosaic language, could be inherited like any other gift; but what does not seem to be clear is that there was any necessary connection between the bringing forth of prophetic words through divine inspiration and the bringing forth of an actual child.
Another detail in which Leisegang's exposition is open to criticism is his /pg. 376/ treatment of the word "overshadow" in Lk. 1:35. The interpretation of this word by reference to a special mystical usage, in which it designates the darkening of the human understanding in
the presence of divine inspiration, and ultimately by reference to the notion of a winged spiritual being who overshadows a man or woman with his wings, is certainly, to say the least, not clearly established. In the Philonic passages to which appeal is made, the actual word "overshadow" is not used of divine inspiration; but appears only in one passage, where the light of reason is said to be "overshadowed" so that the inhabitants of darkness can come into the soul and beget a baleful offspring by union with the passions. Surely we need not look to such a passage as this for an explanation of the Lucan word.149
But it is not such faults in detail that constitute the really central objection to Leisegang's theory. That central objection is found, rather, in the treatment of the Lucan narrative itself. Leisegang's whole construction depends on the connection which he detects in the first two chapters of Luke between prophetic inspiration and the conception of the child in Mary's womb. This connection does not exist; and hence the whole theory falls to the ground.150 According to Leisegang's theory, the child who is the product of the Spirit's activity in Mary's womb ought to be designated above all things as a prophet, and Mary herself ought to be represented as being filled with the Spirit whenever she speaks. But as a matter of fact these are just the things which do not appear. Nowhere in this narrative is Jesus designated as being "filled with the Spirit" or as being destined to speak by the Spirit when He should grow up. A similar observation may be made regarding Mary; in her case, as in the case of Jesus, the narrative says nothing about inspiration by the Holy Spirit. She is represented, indeed, as speaking the Magnificat, which may no doubt plausibly be regarded as an inspired song; but even at this point the narrator does not call attention to her being filled with the Spirit. The attitude of Leisegang toward the Magnificat is not altogether clear. At first he says that Elisabeth, not Mary, was originally represented as the speaker of it; and yet on the following page he lays stress on the fact that /pg. 377/ Mary breaks forth, in the Magnificat, into an enthusiastic psalm and that thus she, as well as Elisabeth, is represented as being possessed of the prophetic gift.151 At first sight,
it looks like a mere contradiction, due to careless use of the Magnificat in a double way; but apparently Leisegang's meaning is that while the Magnificat was attributed to Elisabeth in the underlying narrative it was transferred to Mary by the Evangelistredactor who also apparently gave it its present form.152 This transfer of the Magnificat to Mary seems to be represented as part of the redactional activity by which the Evangelist inserted reference to the mystical process into the infancy narrative.153 We confess, however, that the matter is still not quite clear. It still looks a little as though Leisegang were using the Magnificat in one place to prove that Elisabeth, and in another place to prove that Mary, is represented in the narrative as a prophetess. Surely such a double use of the psalm is quite without warrant.
At any rate, what is plain is that even in the completed narrative, with the introduction of the "mystical process" all finished, still Mary is not represented as the possessor of prophetic inspiration when she spoke her word of praise. It is not sufficient to say that such a psalm must no doubt be regarded by the narrator as being spoken under the influence of the Spirit; our point is that according to Leisegang the purpose of the Evangelist was to connect the conception of the child in the womb with the prophetic Spirit which the mother possessed, and if that is so we should certainly expect the connection to be explicit and not merely implicit. If the final author was dominated by the idea that the Spirit in Mary was both the source of prophetic inspiration and also the source of her conception of her child in the womb, it does seem strange that he has so carefully avoided saying that that was the case. Why should what Leisegang regards as the central thought of the narrator be so carefully concealed in the narrative as it stands?
It may of course freely be admitted that in the Lucan infancy narrative as a whole the presence of the prophetic Spirit is noted in the case of a number of the personages—John the Baptist,154 Elisabeth, Zacharias, Simeon. But, in the first place, as Bultmann has remarked, these passages do not go beyond the Old Testament-
Jewish doctrine of the Spirit,155 and therefore do not require /pg. 378/ us to have recourse, for their elucidation, to the Hellenistic mystical notions which Leisegang sets forth in such an extensive and such an interesting way; and, in the second place, there is no real trace in the Lucan narrative of any connection between these manifestations of the Holy Spirit in prophecy and the special act of the same Holy Spirit in bringing about the conception of the child in Mary's womb. It is this latter fact which is most obviously decisive against Leisegang's theory. We may, indeed, read Leisegang's book with interest; we may learn much from him about the history of Greek mystical religion; but, after all, the bearing of the whole complex of facts upon our subject depends upon the exegetical question whether in the Lucan narrative there is any special connection between prophetic inspiration and the supernatural conception in the virgin's womb. That question must be answered in the negative, and therefore the foundation of Leisegang's whole theory as to the origin of the virgin birth idea is destroyed.
That this estimate of Leisegang's theory need not be attributed merely to apologetic zeal on our part may perhaps be shown by a quotation from one of the most distinguished contemporary New Testament scholars—namely, from Rudolf Bultmann, who certainly cannot be accused of any apologetic bias. In a review of Leisegang's book Bultmann says:156 The crucial point in the argumentation [of Leisegang] is, however, the question whether in Lk. 1 there is really to be found a connection between the Spirit as "prophetic Spirit"157 and as power of fructification. This is in my judgment not the case. That which in Lk. 1 (aside from verses 34–37) is said concerning the Spirit does not seem to go beyond Old Testament-Jewish ideas; moreover, neither is Mary represented as a pneumatic prophetess (even if verses 46ff. belong in her mouth), nor is Jesus, the miraculously conceived child, represented as a prophet, as ought to be the case according to the analogies. Above all, however, the verses 34–37 (or 34–35), which contain the motif of the miraculous conception, are probably an insertion into the source, so that the connection which Leisegang maintains does not exist at all. In my
opinion the motif of the supernatural conception in Luke as well as in Matthew comes from a very much more primitive sphere than that of Hellenistic mysticism; and it seems to me to be a very artificial proceeding to explain Mt. 1:18–21 from crassly misunderstood Greek pneuma-speculation adapted to Semitic popular beliefs.
In general Bultmann holds Leisegang's book, despite its instructiveness in detail, to be mistaken. 158 /pg. 379/ Certain questions arise in our mind as we read these words of Bultmann's— notably the question whether Leisegang's theory as to the composition of the narrative is as different as the reviewer seems to think it is from the interpolation theory which the reviewer himself holds. We have already observed that Leisegang seems to find back of Lk. 1 an underlying narrative which was subtly transformed by the Evangelist through the addition of various touches, until it became the vehicle of the notion about the Spirit which Leisegang supposes the present form of the narrative to teach. But it is far from clear in Leisegang's exposition how much is to be attributed to the source and how much to the Evangelist; and in particular it is far from clear whether, according to Leisegang, the source, as distinguished from the completed Gospel, presented or did not present a doctrine of prophetic inspiration similar to that which Leisegang sets forth. We have mentioned above one particular instance of this lack of clearness—namely, the treatment of the Magnificat. But the fault may be found to be more far-reaching than that. As Bultmann seems correctly to observe, Leisegang's explanation of the virgin birth idea by reference to other elements in the first chapter of Luke apparently requires acceptance of the integrity of the narrative; yet it is a grave question how far Leisegang himself accepts that integrity. We may well ask, in other words, whether Leisegang, in view of his distinction between the parts due to the source and the parts due to the Evangelist, really has any right to use the whole of the narrative as casting light upon Lk. 1:34, 35.
At any rate, the rejection of Leisegang's theory by Bultmann is not without interest. It shows us anew that those who deny the
historicity of the virgin birth have never been able to agree upon any one theory as to the origin of the virgin birth idea. Very imposing is Leisegang's construction; but there is not the slightest reason to think that it is destined to win any more general acceptance, among those who share its author's naturalistic presuppositions, than has been won by the constructions that preceded it. The problem of the virgin birth idea has not been solved by this most elaborate of all attempts, any more than it was solved by the many previous theories that have succeeded one another in the long history of modern naturalistic criticism. The conclusion to which we are obliged to come after examination of the whole subject of "alternative theories" is that if the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ did not originate in fact, modern critical investigation has at any rate not yet succeeded in showing how it did originate.
CHAPTER XV:
CONCLUSION AND CONSEQUENCES
In the preceding discussion we have considered, first, the virgin birth tradition itself, and, second, the attempts which have been made to account for it, supposing it not to be true. We have shown, under the former head, that in the early patristic period no gradual formation of the tradition can be traced, but that the tradition appears just as firmly established at the beginning of the second century as at the close. We have shown that in the New Testament it does not appear as a late addition, but had an original place in the First and Third Gospels and was plainly attested in Palestinian sources, oral or written, underlying those Gospels. We have shown that the two infancy narratives containing it are independent but not contradictory. We have shown that it is not contradicted by the rest of the New Testament and that it is as strongly attested as we should expect it to be on the assumption that it is true.
Under the second head, we have shown that if the virgin birth tradition is not true the efforts at explaining the origin of it have so far resulted in failure. It did not originate on the basis of Jewish ideas or in order to show fulfilment of a misunderstood prophecy. It was no mere reflex among Gentile Christians of the pagan notions about children begotten by the gods. It was no ancient pagan idea already naturalized in the pre-Christian Jewish doctrine of the Messiah. The advocates of one of these theories are often the severest critics of the advocates of another; and none of the theories has obtained anything like general assent. What, then, shall be said about the central historical question: was Jesus of Nazareth born without human father or was He born as all other men are born? That question obviously cannot be answered when it is considered in isolation from everything else; it cannot be answered unless it is
taken in connection with what we know in general concerning Jesus Christ.
Even in isolation, indeed, the story of the virgin birth should give the thoughtful historian pause. There is a startling beauty and vividness and originality about the first chapters of Matthew and Luke. Only superficiality can detect a similarity here to the coarse and degrading stories which are found in the surrounding world. Whence came this supremely beautiful tale, /pg. 381/ so unlike the products of human fancy, so unlike the myths of all the peoples that have lived upon the earth? Whence came such a story not in later generations, but in close proximity to the time of the narrated events? Whence came the self-evidencing quality of this narrative, so simple yet so profound?
These questions, we think, are unanswerable. Even if the story of the virgin birth stood alone, it would at least present an insoluble problem to the man who would regard it as untrue. But it would be hard for this bewilderment to issue in belief. The story of the virgin birth is the story of a stupendous miracle, and against any such thing there is an enormous presumption drawn from the long experience of the race.
As it is, however, that presumption can be overcome; it can be overcome when the tradition of the virgin birth is removed from its isolation and taken in connection with the whole glorious picture of the One who in this tradition is said to be virgin-born. What shall we think of Jesus Christ? That is the question of all questions, and it can be answered aright only when the evidence is taken as a whole. It is a fact of history, which no serious historian can deny, that in the first century of our era there walked upon this earth One who was like none other among the children of men. Reduce the sources of information all you will, and still that mysterious figure remains, that figure who is attested in the Epistles of Paul, that figure who walks before us in lifelike, self-evidencing fashion in the Gospels, that figure upon whom the Christian Church was built. Many have been the efforts to explain Him in terms of what is common to mankind,
to explain Him as a product of forces elsewhere operative in the world. Those explanations may satisfy the man who treats the evidence, in pedantic fashion, bit by bit; but they will never satisfy the man who can view the whole. View Jesus in the light of God and against the dark background of sin, view Him as the satisfaction of man's deepest need, as the One who alone can lead into all glory and all truth, and you will come, despite all, to the stupendous conviction that the New Testament is true, that God walked here upon the earth, that the eternal Son, because He loved us, came into this world to die for our sins upon the cross.
When you have arrived at that conviction you will turn with very different eyes to the story of the virgin and her child. Wonders will no longer repel you. Rather will you say: "So and so only did it behoove this One, as distinguished from all others, to be born." At this point, indeed, a misunderstanding lies ready at hand. Are we not arguing that a man will accept the story of the supernatural conception in the virgin's womb only when he is already convinced, on other grounds, of the /pg. 382/ supernatural dignity of Him about whom that story is told? Do we then mean that the tradition of the virgin birth hangs as a dead weight upon the man who accepts in general the New Testament account of Jesus Christ; do we mean that a man can believe in the supernatural person of Christ merely despite, and not at all because of, the story of the virgin birth?
As a matter of fact, that is not our meaning at all. To our mind, the story of the virgin birth, far from being an obstacle to faith, is an aid to faith; it is an organic part of that majestic picture of Jesus which can be accepted most easily when it is taken as a whole. The story of the virgin birth will hardly, indeed, be accepted when it is taken apart from the rest; but when taken in connection with the rest it adds to, as well as receives from, the convincing quality of the other things about Jesus which the New Testament tells.1
At this point we are brought to the last question with which it is necessary for us to deal—the question, namely, as to the importance
of belief in the virgin birth to the Christian man. That question is being argued eagerly at the present day; there are many who tell us that, though they believe in the virgin birth themselves, they do not think that that belief is important for all men or essential even to the corporate witness of the Church. This attitude, we are convinced, is radically wrong, and with a brief grounding of this conviction regarding it our discussion may properly be brought to a close. What is the importance of the question of the virgin birth?
In the first place, the question is obviously important for the general question of the authority of the Bible. It is perfectly clear that the New Testament teaches the virgin birth of Christ; about that there can be no manner of doubt. There is no serious question as to the interpretation of the Bible at this point. Everyone admits that the Bible represents Jesus as having been conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary.2 The only question is whether in making that representation the Bible is true or false. /pg. 383/
If the latter alternative is chosen, if the Bible is regarded as being wrong in what it says about the birth of Christ, then obviously the authority of the Bible, in any high sense, is gone. It is true, men use that word "authority" in very loose senses today. Why may not the Bible be authoritative, they say, even though what it says about the birth of Jesus without human father is not true? Why may not the Bible be authoritative in the sphere of religion even though it is not authoritative in the sphere of history or of science? May not Jesus still be the Master of human hearts even though the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are wrong about the way in which He came into the world? May not even these stories of His birth, which we are obliged to reject as history, possess a profounder authority as expressions ot the homage due to Him who led men into communion with the Father God?
Such is the attitude of many modern men. Give the Bible its proper place, they say, as a book of religion and not of science, as a book of inspiration and not of external history, and its authority will be quite
independent of all that historical science can say. Thus the modern denial of the virgin birth, as of other elements in the Gospel account of Jesus, so disturbing at first to devout Christian feeling, may, it is thought, turn out to be a blessing in the end. By removing false notions of Bible authority it may establish a true authority which will stand forever firm.
What shall we say of such an attitude as that? Briefly we can say this of it—that if it is correct the Christian religion, as it has existed for some nineteen hundred years, must now at length be given up. It is not this or that element of the Christian religion that is here at stake, but all elements of it, or rather the Christian religion as an organic whole. What is this modern religion that is founded upon a Bible whose authority is altogether in the sphere of inspiration and not at all in the sphere of external fact? Is it not a religion whose fundamental tenet is the ability of man to save himself? Give us the moral and spiritual values of the Christian religion, it is said in effect, give us the inspiration of the teaching and example of Jesus, and we have all that is needed for our souls; not for us is there any need of dependence upon the question what happened or did not happen in the external world nineteen hundred years ago. Dependence upon those things belonged to the childhood stage of religion, but we, as distinguished from the men of past ages, find our God here and now in the depths of our own souls. What care we how Jesus entered into the world? However that may be, His teaching stirs our souls and leads us out into a larger life.
Such is the modern religion that is independent of events like the virgin birth. The adherents of it are, indeed, seldom quite consistent; for if they /pg. 384/ were consistent they could not depend upon the example of Jesus, as many of them do. The authority of the Bible, they say, lies altogether in the sphere of religion and ethics and not at all in the sphere of external history. But what is the logical result of a principle like that? Is it not to make the authority of the Bible and to make the Christian religion independent of the question whether such a person as Jesus ever lived upon this earth? That Jesus lived in
Palestine nineteen hundred years ago is surely an assertion in the sphere of external history; and if so the authority of the Bible and the truth of the Christian religion cannot, according to the principle with which we are now dealing, be staked upon it. Thus upon this principle we have logically what B. B. Warfield aptly called a "Christless Christianity";3 even the very existence of Jesus is unnecessary to this sublimated religion that is independent of events in the external world. There are some modern men, like D. C. Macintosh in America,4 who do not shrink from this logical result of their position; Christianity, they say, could conceivably exist in its inmost essence even if no such person as Jesus ever lived. But many men shrink from a logic that is so thoroughgoing as that. They say, on the one hand, that Christianity and the authority of the Bible are quite independent of events in the external world; and yet on the other hand they do make both of these depend upon certain external events, after all. We shall not endeavor to explain how otherwise intelligent persons can stick in a halfway position that is so utterly inconsistent and absurd; but stick in it they certainly do, and they must be reckoned with in any complete account of the modern religious world. They are indeed losing ground rapidly at the present time; a Christianity dependent upon the so-called "historical Jesus" is gradually giving place to a Christianity that is dependent upon no Jesus at all—a Christianity that is content to use the ethical and religious ideas contained in the Gospels without settling the question whether the person who is said to have enunciated these ideas ever really walked upon the earth. But such consistency, even though it is being attained among scholars, has not yet won any general acceptance among popular exponents of "Liberalism" in the Church; and such popular exponents of Liberalism, with disregard of all logic, go cheerfully on asserting that the authority of the Bible lies altogether in the sphere of ideals (or what they call "religion"), while all the time they do regard as essential to the Bible its attestation of the existence of Jesus and so its attestation of an external fact. At any rate, even such an attitude, though it shrinks from the full consequences /pg. 385/ of the radical principle with which it begins, is, itself also, quite contrary to the Christian religion. What is this
religion that is founded upon a historical Jesus, and yet is independent of events like the virgin birth? Is it not still a religion whose fundamental tenet is the ability of man to save himself? Jesus attained to sonship with God, say the adherents of this religion in effect, and we, if we will only follow Him, can attain to that sonship, too. Certainly men who think thus will not be much interested in the fact of the virgin birth. Indeed, if they are interested in it at all, they can be interested only in rejecting it. The fundamental notion of their religion is that Jesus showed us what man can do; but if so it is important for our encouragement that He should be thought to have begun where we too must begin. If He was born of a virgin He had an advantage which we do not possess; how, then, can we in that case be sure that we, who were not virgin-born, can do what He did? Carpocrates and the Ebionites of Epiphanius have here come to life again in the modern world. We can all be Christs if we will only follow Christ's example—that is the essence of this religion of the imitation of Jesus. Such a religion, both in ancient and modern times, will, if it be logical, have nothing to do with the story of the miracle in the virgin's womb.
It seems never to have occurred to the adherents of this religion that there is such a thing as sin, and that sin places an awful gulf between man and God. But those convictions, though they are unpopular at the present time, are certainly quite central in the Christian religion. From the beginning Christianity was the religion of the broken heart; it is based upon the conviction that there is an awful gulf between man and God which none but God can bridge. The Bible tells how that gulf was bridged; and that means that the Bible is a record of facts. Of what avail, without the redeeming acts of God, are all the lofty ideals of Psalmists and Prophets, all the teaching and example of Jesus? In themselves they can bring us nothing but despair. We Christians are interested not merely in what God commands, but also in what God did; the Christian religion is couched not merely in the imperative mood, but also in a triumphant indicative; our salvation depends squarely upon history; the Bible contains that
history, and unless that history is true the authority of the Bible is gone and we who have put our trust in the Bible are without hope.
Certainly, whatever we may think of it, that is the view of Bible authority which the Bible itself takes. The authors of books like the Gospels are not intending merely to give their readers inspiring poetry or an instructive philosophy of religion; they are intending to narrate facts. The prologue of the Third Gospel is really typical of the Bible; faith, according to the Bible, is founded upon an account of things that have happened in the external /pg. 386/ world, and it is the purpose of the Biblical writers to set forth those things in an orderly and trustworthy way. The Bible, in other words, does not merely tell us what God is, but it also tells us what God did; it contains not merely permanent truths of religion and ethics, but also a gospel or a piece of good news.
An integral part of that piece of news, to the authors of the First and Third Gospels, was the fact that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary. If that fact is rejected, then the witness of these writers—and hence the witness of the Bible—is in so far not true.
If, therefore, the virgin birth be rejected, let us cease talking about the "authority of the Bible" or the "infallibility of Scripture" or the like. Let us rather say plainly that that authority and that infallibility are gone. We may indeed hold that many things which the Bible says are true, even though this thing that it says is untrue. Many earnest souls—if we may for the moment speak in general terms and without reference to the virgin birth—adopt such a mediating position. They hold that, although the Bible is wrong in many particulars, although it displays no supernatural freedom from the errors that beset other books, yet it contains some things that are true, and upon those things we can ground our hope for time and for eternity. Far better is it to say that these men are right, to say that the Bible is not infallible but only partly true, than to say that the Bible is infallible in the sphere of religion and ethics, and that the external happenings that it
relates are matters of indifference to our souls. Many earnest Christians hold the former position; but a man who really holds the latter position cannot logically be a Christian at all. Christianity is founded upon the redeeming work of Christ which was accomplished in Palestine nineteen hundred years ago; to be indifferent to the record that sets forth that work is to reject the gospel in which Christ is offered as our Saviour from sin and wrath.
But even if the former position is taken, even if we do continue to rest for salvation upon part of the record of facts which the Bible contains, still, if we reject other parts, our belief in the authority of the Bible is gone. We may hold that many things which the Bible tells us are true, but we can no longer depend upon the Bible as such. We can no longer say, as many simple Christians say, "I believe this or that because God has told it to me in His book." We are not now arguing the question whether this attitude of simple "Bible Christians" is right or wrong; we are not arguing the question whether the infallibility of Scripture can really be maintained in the modern world. But what we are saying is that if the infallibility of Scripture is to be abandoned, /pg. 387/ there should be no concealment from simple Christians of the full seriousness of the step. Let us stop speaking of the "infallibility" of a book that we hold to be in considerable measure untrue. Really the issues are too momentous, and human souls are too deeply concerned, to permit of any such trifling as that. A man may hold what opinion he will about the doctrine of Biblical infallibility, he may denounce it all he pleases, as involving us in a slavish religion of a book; but the importance of the doctrine he cannot possibly deny. It is a thing to which countless souls cling today, for weal or for woe. If it is a bad thing, let it by all means be abandoned, but let it be abandoned at least in a perfectly straightforward and open way.
Certainly that doctrine of Biblical infallibility is involved in the question of the virgin birth. It seems strange that we should ever have been obliged to argue the matter at all, but there are scarcely any limits to the confusion of religious discussion at the present day.
The Bible teaches the virgin birth of Christ; a man who accepts the virgin birth may continue to hold to the full truthfulness of the Bible; a man who rejects it cannot possibly do so. That much at least should be perfectly plain.
In the second place, the question of the virgin birth is important as a test for a man to apply to himself or to others to determine whether one holds a naturalistic or a supernaturalistic view regarding Jesus Christ. There are two generically different views about Jesus, and they are rooted in two generically different views about God and the world. According to one view, God is immanent in the universe in the sense that the universe is the necessary unfolding of His life; and Jesus of Nazareth is a part of that unfolding, a supreme product of the same divine forces that are elsewhere operative in the world. According to the other view, God is the Creator of the universe, immanent in it but also eternally separate from it and free; and Jesus of Nazareth came into the universe from outside the universe, to do what nature could never do. The former view is the view of modern naturalism in many different forms; the latter view is the view of the Bible and of the Christian Church. How can it be determined which of these two views is held by any particular modern man? Obviously that question is best answered when it is made concrete, and it is best made concrete when it deals with the supernatural as it appears in the New Testament books. But at what point may the issue best be raised; what question may be asked to determine whether a man holds a naturalistic or a supernaturalistic view of Jesus Christ?
The matter is by no means so simple as at first sight it might appear. Perhaps the first question which might occur to the layman, as being the /pg. 388/ question to ask, is the question, "Do you believe in the deity of Christ?" But that question obviously will not do at all. It is difficult to imagine any assertion more utterly meaningless in the religious parlance of the present day than the assertion, "I believe in the deity of Christ," or the assertion, "I believe that Jesus is God." These assertions have meaning only when the terms that they
contain are defined; the assertion, "Jesus is God," depends for its significance altogether upon what is meant by "God."
But unfortunately that term, like the term "deity," is often defined today to mean something entirely different from what the simple Christian holds it to mean. The simple Christian, like Jesus of Nazareth, is a convinced theist; indeed, he is such a convinced theist that no other view of God save the theistic view ever comes into his mind. But many leaders of the modern Church and hosts of modern ministers, unlike the simple Christian and unlike Jesus of Nazareth, are not theists at all. They are either pantheists or positivists, and their pantheistic or positivistic opinions determine what they mean by "God." If they are pantheists, "God" means to them the mighty process of the world itself or else (if their pantheism is not quite consistent and complete) the spiritual purpose that pulsates through the world. On that view Jesus is God in a sense not essentially different from that in which all men are God. Efforts may be made to preserve for Him some sort of uniqueness; He may be regarded as the supreme manifestation of the divine life or the like; but, after all, according to such a view the presence of the divine life in Him is not essentially different from its presence in other men.
If positivism rather than pantheism is the way of thinking that is chosen, then the assertion, "Jesus is God," merely means that Jesus is the highest thing that we moderns know. We have given up the old notion, it is said in effect, that there is a personal Creator and Ruler of the world; such things belong, at any rate, merely to metaphysics, and not at all to religion, and upon such speculations little reliance can be placed. But the word "God" is a useful word; it releases certain worthy emotions of reverence and love which humanity cannot afford to do without; we shall therefore retain it to designate the highest thing that we know. But the highest thing that we moderns know is not a mysterious Creator and Ruler, or indeed anything else that is beyond the confines of the universe; for in such a Creator and Ruler we have ceased to believe, and beyond the confines of the universe we are no longer bold enough to look. So the highest thing
that we moderns know must be something that we can see and hear, something within the course of this world. But within such limits the highest thing that we know, the thing /pg. 389/ most worthy to evoke our reverence, is the moral life of Jesus of Nazareth. To that moral life of the man Jesus, therefore, we do honor by applying to Jesus the word "God."
It should be perfectly clear that the adherents of both of these ways of thinking are far more remote from the Christian faith than were the older Unitarians; for the older Unitarians, in something like a Christian sense, no doubt still believed in God. The man who says, "There is a God who is Creator and Ruler of the world, and Jesus is not that God," is far nearer to the Christian faith than the man who says, "There is no God who is Creator and Ruler of the world, but Jesus is 'God' in our modern sense." In countless cases the assertion, "Jesus is God," is not the most Christian, but almost the least Christian, thing that modern religious teachers say. Yet the plain man often goes away from his hearing of such utterances much impressed. When he goes away much impressed, we have the distinct feeling that he has been trifled with. About such serious matters there should be, above all, great plainness and openness of speech. At any rate it is perfectly clear that the question, "Do you believe in the deity of Christ?," or the question, "Do you believe that Jesus is God?," is in itself quite valueless today to determine whether a man holds a Christian or a non-Christian, a supernaturalistic or a naturalistic, view of Jesus Christ.
Evidently, therefore, if we want to discover anyone's position in the great religious issue of the present day, we must be more specific; we must single out some particular manifestation of the supernatural as the point at which the issue shall be raised. But where shall such a point be found; what particular miracle shall be singled out to find whether a man believes in the supernatural or not?
Our first impulse might be to single out the supreme miracle in the New Testament—namely, the resurrection of Christ. Surely, it might
be held, if a man is willing to say, "I believe in the resurrection of Christ," he has parted company with modern naturalism and has taken his stand squarely with the despised believers in the supernatural Person whom the New Testament presents.
But here again first appearances are deceptive, and an assertion that to the plain man seems to be very definite is in modern parlance not definite at all. The assertion, "I believe in the resurrection of Christ," has in itself today almost as little meaning as the assertion, "I believe that Jesus is God," so abysmal is the intellectual morass into which we have been flung by the modern business of "interpreting" perfectly plain language in a sense utterly different from the sense in which it has always hitherto been used. The truth /pg. 390/ is that the expression, "resurrection of Christ," is used in widely different senses today. Some men mean by it merely the continued influence of Jesus; others use it in a mystical sense to indicate the presence of "the living Christ" in human souls; others mean by it the continued personal existence of Jesus, or what might formerly have been called the immortality of His soul.We do not for one moment mean to say that these new interpretations of the expression are justifiable in the least. Surely we are bound, in our use of the word "resurrection" as applied to Jesus, by the meaning which the earliest sources attribute to the term. And about what that meaning is there can really be little doubt. Evidently the New Testament books do not mean by the resurrection of Jesus merely His continued personal existence. In that sense the disciples believed in His resurrection even during the sad three days when they were in such despair. They were certainly not Sadducees; they did not believe that Jesus' personal identity was lost, and no doubt they believed that He would rise from the dead as all other men would rise at the end of the age. But it never occurred to them to call that continued existence of Jesus "resurrection," and only when they became convinced of the real resurrection, the actual emergence of the Lord's body from the tomb, did they become the instruments in founding the Christian Church. To use the word "resurrection" in any other way than this way in which it is used by
the New Testament books is merely to confuse our discussion of this theme.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that such other uses of the word, however unjustifiable they may be, are very common at the present time; so that for a man to say that he believes in the "resurrection" of Christ means in itself, prior to careful definition, practically nothing at all.
But it is somewhat different when we come to deal with the virgin birth. If a man affirms that Jesus was born without human father, being conceived by the Holy Ghost in the virgin's womb, it is difficult to see how he can escape the plain meaning of such terms; and thus when he makes that affirmation, he has taken the momentous step of affirming the entrance of the supernatural into the course of this world. Misguided apologetics, we know, may sometimes have obscured the issue; defenders of the virgin birth have sometimes talked about "parthenogenesis" and thus have sought to bring the conception by the Holy Spirit in Mary's womb into some sort of analogy with what nature can produce. But such apologetic expedients, fortunately, are rare; and certainly they are contrary to sound sense. It still remains true in general that the question of the virgin birth brings us sharply before the question of the supernatural, and that a man who accepts the virgin birth has taken his stand squarely upon supernaturalistic ground. There is possibility /pg. 391/ of evasion even here, but it is much less serious than in the case of many other points at which the issue might be raised. We do not mean that a modern man who accepts the virgin birth has necessarily accepted all of Christianity. Certainly that is far from being the case; for sometimes acceptance of the virgin birth is an isolated Christian survival in a man's thinking, which goes along with a rather general rejection of the Christian view of Christ. At any rate, the importance of the virgin birth should never blind our eyes to the importance of other things; and we are in little agreement with those who make the Apostles' Creed, in which the virgin birth is contained, the be-all and the end-all of their Christian profession. Just as important is the
Christian doctrine of redemption—the Christian doctrine of sin and grace—about which the Apostles' Creed says scarcely a word.
But the two elements of Christian truth belong logically together; the supernatural Person of our Lord belongs logically with His redemptive work; the virgin birth belongs logically with the Cross. Where one aspect is given up, the other will not logically remain; and where one is accepted, the other will naturally be accepted, too. There may be halfway positions for a time, but they are in unstable equilibrium and will not long be maintained.
Certain it is that men who reject the virgin birth scarcely ever hold to a really Christian view of Christ. Conceivably, indeed, a man might reject this miracle and yet accept other miracles that the New Testament contains; conceivably a man might hold Jesus to be a supernatural Person and yet reject the Gospel story about the manner of His entrance into this world. But it would perhaps be difficult to find a single New Testament student of any prominence who holds to such a view today.5 In the overwhelming majority of cases those who reject the virgin birth reject the whole supernatural view of Christ. They often profess belief in the "incarnation"; but the word is apt to mean to them almost the exact opposite of what the New Testament means when it says that "the Word became flesh." To these modern men the incarnation means that God and man are one; to the New Testament it means rather that they are not one, but that the eternal Son of God became man, assumed our nature, by a stupendous miracle, to redeem us from sin. Seldom does any real belief in the incarnation go along with a rejection of the miracle of the virgin birth.
Thus we have held that the virgin birth is important, in the first place, because if it is rejected the authority of the Bible is denied, and, in the second place, because it brings before a man in particularly unambiguous fashion /pg. 392/ the great question of the supernatural in connection with the person of our Lord. But that is by no means all that needs to be said. It is not true that the virgin
birth is important only as a test of Bible authority or as a test case of the supernatural. On the contrary, it has an importance of its own, which the Christian man can ill afford to miss. Without the story of the virgin birth there would be something seriously lacking in the Christian view of Christ.6
It is important at this point to make clear exactly what we mean, since in recent discussion there has often been considerable confusion of thought. We do not mean, in the first place, merely that the virgin birth was important for God's plan; for that goes without saying if the virgin birth was a fact. If Jesus Christ was really born without human father, if that was really God's way for our Saviour to enter into the world, then it may certainly be assumed that it was the best way and that any other way would have been wrong. We are not concerned now to assert anything so self-evident as that. But what we do assert now is not only that the virgin birth was important as an event, but that it is important for us to know—that we could not have remained ignorant of it without loss.
In the second place, we do not mean merely that it is important for us to accept the story of the virgin birth now that it is presented to us in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. To assert that would be merely to repeat what has already been said. We have already argued that a man cannot reject the testimony of the New Testament at this point without serious peril to his soul. But what we are now proposing is to imagine the case of a man who had never heard of the virgin birth at all, and yet had accepted everything else that the New Testament contains. Would such a man be worse off or not worse off than the devout Christian who possesses and accepts our existing New Testament, including the first two chapters of Matthew and of Luke?
It can hardly be emphasized too strongly that such an hypothetical case is quite different from any case which can actually arise at the present day. Never to have heard of the virgin birth is an entirely different thing from rejecting it after one has heard it attested by the New Testament books. Yet these two entirely different cases are
frequently confused by those who today represent acceptance of the virgin birth as a matter of indifference to the Church. These persons frequently maintain that there was a time in the primitive days of Christianity when true disciples did not know of the virgin /pg. 393/ birth, and that if those primitive disciples got along without accepting the virgin birth we can do so today.
Of course, if the primitive time referred to in this argument is the time prior to the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord, then the argument at once falls to the ground for anyone who believes in our Lord's redeeming work. No one who believes that our Lord came into the world to redeem men by His death upon the cross and to complete His redeeming work by His glorious resurrection from the dead can possibly desire to return now to the preliminary, prePentecostal days when the disciples walked with Jesus on Galilean hills. The full meaning of redemption could be made clear only after the redeeming work was done. Thus the whole custom of appealing to the faith of those who met Jesus in Galilee as though it could be an example for faith today does despite to the thing that Jesus came into the world to do.
But even if the supposed primitive Christians who got along without knowledge of the virgin birth are to be put after the death and resurrection and not before, still their case was entirely different from the case of men who do not believe in the virgin birth today. They (supposing they ever really existed) had never heard of the virgin birth; but these modern men reject that of which they have heard full well. The real question at this point is not whether there were primitive Christians who had never heard the story of the virgin birth, but whether there were primitive Christians who rejected the story when once it was heard. It is this latter point which has not been proved. The Ebionite deniers of the virgin birth have never been traced back to primitive times, and it has never been shown that they were at heart Christians at all. Thus in considering the case of the man who has never heard of the virgin birth, as distinguished from the man who has heard of it and rejected it, we are considering a
purely hypothetical case which can hardly be actual in the modern world. Yet the consideration of that purely hypothetical case is not without value; for it will show whether our knowledge of the virgin birth possesses independent value or whether it is important merely because of its connection with the question of the authority of the Bible or with the question whether the supernatural has or has not entered into the course of the world in the person of Jesus Christ. Would our knowledge of our Saviour be essentially complete if the New Testament did not contain the passages which narrate the virgin birth?
That question, we think, should be answered with an emphatic negative; without the story of the virgin birth our knowledge of our Saviour would be impoverished in a very serious way. /pg. 394/
Exaggerations, indeed, should be avoided at this point. Even without the infancy narratives we should have much upon which to rest our faith. Christ would still be presented in the New Testament as both God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever; the significance of His Cross would still stand out in all its glorious clearness; He would still be offered to us in the gospel as our Saviour.
Yet there would be a serious gap in our knowledge of Him, and questions would arise which would be full of menace for the souls of men. How did this eternal Son of God enter into the world? Did the Son of God unite with the man Jesus at the baptism as the Gnostics supposed; was the man Jesus received up gradually into union with the eternal Son? Erroneous answers to such questions would, without the story of the virgin birth, be all too ready to hand. No doubt those erroneous answers would still be capable of refutation to a mind ideally logical and really filled with the convictions which all the Gospels and Epistles would provide. Yet they would be only too natural to the minds of men as they actually are. Without the story of the virgin birth we should be living constantly in a region of surmises like the errors of the heresiarchs in the ancient Church.
Such surmises would deprive us of the full doctrine of the incarnation upon which our souls can rest. To that doctrine it is essential that the Son of God should live a complete human life upon this earth. But the human life would not be complete unless it began in the mother's womb. At no later time, therefore, should the incarnation be put, but at that moment when the babe was conceived. There, then, should be found the stupendous event when the eternal Son of God assumed our nature, so that from then on He was both God and man. Our knowledge of the virgin birth, therefore, is important because it fixes for us the time of the incarnation. And what comfort that gives to our souls! Marcion, the second-century dualist, was very severe upon those who thought that the Son of God was born as a man; he poured out the vials of his scorn upon those who brought Christ into connection with the birth-pangs and the nine months' time. But we, unlike Marcion and his modern disciples, glory just in the story of those things. The eternal Son of God, He through whom the universe was made, did not despise the virgin's womb! What a wonder is there! It is not strange that it has always given offence to the natural man. But in that wonder we find God's redeeming love, and in that babe who lay in Mary's womb we find our Saviour who thus became man to die for our sins and bring us into peace with God. /pg. 395/
Moreover, the knowledge of the virgin birth is important because of its bearing upon our view of the solidarity of the race in the guilt and power of sin. If we hold a Pelagian view of sin, we shall be little interested in the virgin birth of our Lord; we shall have little difficulty in understanding how a sinless One could be born as other men are horn. But if we believe, as the Bible teaches, that all mankind are under an awful curse, then we shall rejoice in knowing that there entered into the sinful race from the outside One upon whom the curse did not rest save as He bore it for those whom He redeemed by His blood.
How, except by the virgin birth, could our Saviour have lived a complete human life from the mother's womb, and yet have been
from the very beginning no product of what had gone before, but a supernatural Person come into the world from the outside to redeem the sinful race? We may not, indeed, set limits to the power of God; we cannot say what God might or might not have done. Yet we can say at least that no other way can be conceived by us. Deny or give up the story of the virgin birth, and inevitably you are led to evade either the high Biblical doctrine of sin or else the full Biblical presentation of the supernatural Person of our Lord. A noble man in whom the divine life merely pulsated in greater power than in other men would have been born by ordinary generation from a human pair; the eternal Son of God, come by a voluntary act to redeem us from the guilt and power of sin, was conceived in the virgin's womb by the Holy Ghost.
What, then, is our conclusion? Is belief in the virgin birth necessary to every man if he is to be a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ? The question is wrongly put when it is put in that way. Who can tell exactly how much knowledge of the facts about Christ is necessary if a man is to have saving faith? None but God can tell. Some knowledge is certainly required, but exactly how much is required we cannot say. "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbellef," said a man in the Gospels who was saved. So today there are many men of little faith, many who are troubled by the voices that are heard on all sides. It is very hard to be a Christian in these times; and there is One who knows that it is hard. What right have we to say that full knowledge and full conviction are necessary before a man can put his trust in the crucified and risen Lord? What right have we to say that no man can be saved before he has come to full conviction regarding the stupendous miracle narrated in the first chapters of Matthew and Luke?
We desire, however, at this point not to be misunderstood. We do not mean by what we have just said that denial of the virgin birth is to be treated /pg. 396/ as a matter of indifference by the wise pastor of souls. The soul of man in its depths, indeed, is beyond our ken; our judgments regarding those depths are not the judgments of Him who
"needed not that any should testify of man," because "He knew what was in man." Yet if we are to help our fellow-men we must give counsel on the basis of the best knowledge that we in our weakness can obtain. And certainly even with that weakness we can say that perhaps not one man out of a hundred of those who deny the virgin birth today gives any really clear evidence of possessing saving faith. A man is not saved by good works, but by faith; and saving faith is acceptance of Jesus Christ "as He is offered to us in the gospel." Part of that gospel in which Jesus is offered to our souls is the blessed story of the miracle in the virgin's womb. One thing at least is clear: even if the belief in the virgin birth is not necessary to every
Christian, it is certainly necessary to Christianity. And it is necessary to the corporate witness of the Church. Sad is it when men who will not affirm this doctrine are sent out into the ministry to lead Christ's little ones astray. Such men are learners, it is said; they will grow in knowledge and in grace; let us deal patiently with them and all will be well. Now we have all sympathy with those who are immature in the faith, and we hope that by the blessing of God they may be led into clearer and stronger convictions as to the truth of His Word. But the place for such learning, so far as the basic things are concerned, is not the sacred office of the Christian ministry. Let these men learn first by themselves, let them struggle, let them meditate, with such help as we and others can give them; and then, if God leads them aright, let them aspire to the holy ministry of the Word. But to send them out before they have attained such convictions, as official representatives of a Church whose faith they do not share—that is simply to trifle with human souls.
Let it never be forgotten that the virgin birth is an integral part of the New Testament witness about Christ, and that that witness is strongest when it is taken as it stands. We are not averse, indeed, to a certain logical order of apologetics; and in that order the virgin birth certainly does not come first. Before the virgin birth come the things for which testimony in the very nature of the case can be more abundant than for this. To those things no doubt the inquirer should
be directed first, before he comes to consider this mystery which was first attested perhaps only by the mother of the Lord. But though that is true, though theoretically a man can believe in the resurrection, for example, without believing in the virgin birth, yet such a halfway /pg. 397/ conviction is not likely to endure. The New Testament presentation of Jesus is not an agglomeration, but an organism, and of that organism the virgin birth is an integral part. Remove the part, and the whole becomes harder and not easier to accept; the New Testament account of Jesus is most convincing when it is taken as a whole. Only one Jesus is presented in the Word of God; and that Jesus did not come into the world by ordinary generation, but was conceived in the womb of the virgin by the Holy Ghost.
APPENDIX
The New Testament Account of the Birth of Jesus
First Article*
EVERY narrative, of whatever kind, is itself a phenomenon of history, and as such in an age of science requires an explanation. In the case of a narrative which claims to be historical, either one of two general lines of explanation may be followed. In the first place, the narrative may be regarded as really based upon facts; so that the genesis of the narrative is to be explained chiefly through the facts. Or, in the second place, the narrative may be regarded as false; in which case the genesis of the false ideas must be explained. If the supposed facts are difficult of explanation, whereas it is easy to see how the false ideas could have been developed and embodied in the narrative, then we pronounce the narrative untrustworthy. But if, on the other hand, the facts are easy to explain, whereas it is difficult to see how the ideas, if false, ever could have been developed and embodied in the narrative, then we pronounce the narrative trustworthy. So in order to determine whether any particular historical narrative is trustworthy or untrustworthy, we must balance the difficulty of explaining the facts and their transmission against the difficulty of explaining the origin of the ideas if they were not determined by facts.
It is evident that the New Testament account of the birth of Jesus professes to be a narrative of fact. Nor is there, so far as means of transmission are concerned, any improbability in supposing that the claim is a just one. In the narrative of Luke, there are certain indications that point toward Mary as the channel of communication. She it is to whom special revelations are made, she it is whose inmost thoughts are described, and she it is who could have had the best possible knowledge of the events. She would also