narratives themselves destroy any belief in their trustworthiness.
sympathetic women or near friends, she may have been led to breathe things too sacred and mysterious to be spoken to mortal ears before. These things were, of course, not reported at once to the official governors of the little Church, like the progress of the daily collections. Still less were they included in missionary sermons, where the great effort was to adduce facts which could be testified to by all, and where the humble woman's mystery would have brought forth nothing but scorn and slander. And so, perhaps supplemented by a long-hidden family register, the marvelous tale of the Mother of the Lord found its way gradually into the Gospel tradition and Creeds of the Church, and into the inmost hearts of Christians of all centuries.35
Like Beyschlag (with regard to his own very different theory), we do not say that it was thus; we only say that so it might have been. If the infancy narratives were true, the silence about them in the Gospels and in the Acts does not involve any psychological impossibility. The silence of the other books has already been explained.
3. Lastly, it has been suggested that inconsistencies in the birth narratives themselves destroy any belief in their trustworthiness.
We shall examine for a moment, first, the alleged inconsistencies between the two accounts. We may safely pass over without much discussion such objections as those of Usener, that "the divinity[?] of Christ is attested in Luke by the angel's words to the shepherds and the song of the heavenly host, in Matthew by the appearance of the star in the East; the new-born Messiah receives his first adoration in Luke from the shepherds, in Matthew from the Magi."36 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, /pg. 665/ after the word "first" (for which there is no warrant in the accounts) has been removed, a similar answer might be made. It is objected with more show of reason that "Joseph's home in Matthew is Bethlehem, in Luke Nazareth." But it should be noticed that Matthew does not expressly say that Joseph's home was Bethlehem before the birth of
Jesus; indeed, the mention of Bethlehem in 2:1 rather than in 1:18 might possibly suggest that the facts were otherwise. Very likely, however, it suggests nothing at all. For the story about the Magi (Matt. 2), the place (Judæa) and the time (while Herod was alive) were of vital importance. Hence what look like local and chronological data about the birth of Christ (Matt. 2:1) are probably only incidents in the narrative of the wise men. Not very serious is the objection of Beyschlag that if Mary had had such a revelation as is recorded in Luke 1:30ff. she would have repeated it to Joseph; so that he would not have been ignorant of the true cause of Mary's pregnancy, as is implied in Matt. 1:19. On any adequate view of the character of Mary, she might be expected to do anything rather than speak of the mystery to her betrothed husband.
Most formidable, perhaps, is the objection that, according to Luke, the family returned to Nazareth forty days after the birth (Luke 2:39); whereas in Matthew they are represented as still in Bethlehem a considerable time (perhaps two years) after the birth, and as then obliged to flee into Egypt. In answer we first suggest the order of events which seems to do most justice to the narratives, and then ask whether the narratives cannot be harmonized on the basis of such an order. The order we suggest is (1) Birth, (2) Adoration of the shepherds, (3) Presentation, Circumcision, etc., (4) [Return to Bethlehem], (5) Adoration of the Magi, (6) Flight to Egypt, (7) Return to Nazareth. Now it is perfectly evident that neither one of our evangelists or of their sources know of such an order of events (Luke 2:39, Matt. 2:23). One explanation is, that each writer had only limited material at his command, being left ignorant of much that the other relates and of still more of which we have no record at all. Are the narratives such as to preclude the view that each author used his sources faithfully in the main, though, here and there, in working up the narrative, he may have used terms of expression which he would not have if he had known more? We believe that they are not. For example, suppose the author of the chapters in Luke had in his sources the account of the birth, the shepherds, the presentation, etc., and then in addition merely the notice of the life
in Nazareth. In working this material up into a narrative, what more natural than that /pg. 666/ he should join two parts together by the use of the sentence in 2:39? Even in a modern work, unless, perhaps, of the most strictly scientific character, such a mere copula would hardly be objected to as going beyond the established data. Similarly, suppose Matthew did not have any note that the former life of Joseph and Mary had been in Nazareth, but only the account of Joseph's suspicions, etc., without mention of the place, and then the notice of the place of birth. Under such circumstances, Nazareth in 2:23 would be new to the reader, and so would naturally be mentioned merely as "a city." As for the cause assigned in Matthew for withdrawing to Galilee, the supposition that Joseph and Mary had settled in Bethlehem after the birth is by no means worthy of the contempt with which it is treated. Of course, it is only a suggestion, to show that perhaps some of the difficulties may be due to our lack of knowledge.
We conclude, then, that the alleged contradictions between the two accounts, being really only contradictions between the statement of one account and the silence of the other, destroy a belief in the trustworthiness of the accounts only if you maintain that in order to be trustworthy the accounts must form a complete and orderly life of Christ. Such a copula as Luke 2:39, even if many events came in between, is quite in accord with the methods of arrangement prevalent all through the Gospels.
Now if this is a correct view of the matter, we have not only answered objections but also adduced positive evidence for the trustworthiness of the narratives. For we have clearly shown that the accounts, though not seriously contradictory, are absolutely independent of each other, so that they furnish a double witness for those things (and they are not unimportant) which are common to both.37 It has even been argued with a good deal of plausibility that in various little ways the narratives actually explain and supplement each other. For example, on the basis of Luke's narrative alone, it is difficult to see how Mary could accompany Joseph to Bethlehem when she was only
betrothed to him; so that ¦:<0FJ,L:X<®, the correct reading in Luke 2:5, is explained by Matt. 1:24–25. It may, however, be objected that if, as we have suggested, the accounts in Matthew and Luke go back to eye-witnesses, the eye-witnesses could only have been members of the same family, so that the very difference in the things chosen for narration (to say nothing of actual contradictions) is proof of the untrustworthiness of the /pg. 667/ accounts.38 To this we reply that the difference may have arisen not so much from the source as from the destination and purpose of the stories. The family of Jesus may well have been led, for example, to tell the things relating to the early persecution to one set of hearers who happened to be interested in that, and the things of a more private character to another set. And perhaps the matter was a little more complicated in the course of a brief line of transmission.
We come now to the alleged inconsistencies within each narrative taken separately. It is urged, in the first place, that Mary could not have failed to understand the adoration of the shepherds (Luke 2:19), or of Symeon (Luke 2:33, 2"L:V.@<J,H ¦BÂ J@4$H 8,8@L:X<@4H B,DÂ "ÛJ@L$), or the answer of the boy Jesus (Luke 2:50), if she had already received the revelation recorded in Luke 1:30ff. and undergone the experience there prophesied. Here we reiterate what we have already said about the character of Mary. It is preposterous to argue that Mary may have found nothing puzzling and mysterious about the events in the life of her remarkable child; about the strange words of the shepherds and of Symeon, and about the yet stranger answer of the quietly obedient child. A modern scientific mind might have had the whole thing reasoned out beforehand on the basis of the data already given; but the people of those days were not scientific. If we are going to enter into the realm of psychology at all (and we do so only to repel objections), all we can say is that it is perfectly in accord with the mental habits of the time, and especially with a quiet, incommunicative, simple character such as Mary's is represented to be, that she should keep "all these sayings, pondering them in her heart"; that she should marvel at "the things which were
spoken concerning him"; and that she should not understand "the saying which he spake unto them."
A much more important objection is that Jesus is, in the infancy narrative of Luke itself, as well as elsewhere (see Acts 2:30), regarded as the son of Joseph (e.g., (@<,4$H, 2:27, 2:41; B"JZD, 2:33).39 These expressions are, indeed, perfectly natural as indicating merely the adoptive relation, especially as Jesus was actually born in Joseph's house and was at once acknowledged as his son. But more serious is the consideration that in Luke 1:27 and in the genealogies (cf. Luke 1:32) the Davidic descent of Jesus seems to be traced through Joseph. This has been denied, so far as the Lukan genealogy /pg. 668/ and Luke 1:27 and Luke 1:33 are concerned, by B. Weiss, but his view is maintained only by a very questionable exegesis of Luke 1:27 as well as of the genealogy. It may be held as a private and pious opinion that Mary was also of the house of David (such an opinion is not excluded by the fact that she was a kinswoman of the Levite Elizabeth, Luke 1:36), and for this a good deal may be adduced, but it can never be proved from the narratives themselves. We see, then, two propositions lying side by side in the accounts of the birth: (1) Jesus is heir of the Davidic promises because He was son of Joseph, (2) Jesus was not begotten by Joseph but of the Holy Ghost. It is hardly to be doubted that in the early Church these two propositions were both held by the same persons, viz., by the authors or redactors of the genealogies, who wrote Matt. 1:16 and Luke 3:23 in their present form. Unless, therefore, the infancy narratives have suffered interpolation (which requires special proof), the most natural supposition is that the writers of those narratives, like the writers or redactors of the genealogies, held to both propositions—the supernatural conception and the Davidic descent through Joseph. Now if it be discovered that the two propositions are in point of fact contradictory, though the authors did not see it, then, of course, one or the other must be false, so that the narratives are not, as they stand, trustworthy. But if the two propositions are not actually contradictory, but only very difficult to harmonize (and the testimony of the writers themselves is very
valuable in favor of this view of the matter, since they were better acquainted than we with ancient conditions), then the fact that the writers have made no attempt to harmonize, but have simply set down the two sides of the truth as they were handed down to them, is the best possible indication of their trustworthiness. Are the two propositions absolutely contradictory? In attempting to answer this question, we do not for a moment try to slur over the difficulty. Indeed, we freely acknowledge that just at this point we lay our finger upon the really fundamental objection to the virgin birth, for it must be admitted that according to modern ideas, if Jesus was not the actual son of Joseph and if Mary was not of Davidic descent, then Jesus did not fulfil the conditions of the Messiah. Be it remembered, however, that the promises were made not to modern persons, but to Jews, and the promise is fulfilled if the fulfilment corresponds to the expectations of those to whom the promise was made. So in the first place, it ought be noticed that, according to Jewish ideas, the line of descent had to be traced through the male side; this would explain why, even /pg. 669/ if Mary had been of the house of David, still the Davidic origin of Joseph would, to Jews, have been of vital interest. Furthermore, there is evidence that among the Jews "ideas of genealogy were," as Gore expresses it, "largely putative," as is shown, for example, by Levirate marriage. Jesus, born of Mary and acknowledged by Joseph her husband, was Joseph's heir, and hence heir to the throne of David. But I venture to think we can go still further. E. P. Badham40 has advanced the theory that the apparent contradictions in the birth narratives are explicable only on the view that the writers supposed Jesus to have been actually begotten of Joseph, but without his conscious instrumentality and in a supernatural way by the divine agency (¦6 J@L$ B<,b:"J@H ,(\@L). We, of course, concur in the general rejection of this bizarre theory, yet we venture to believe that there is an element of truth in it which has been often neglected. Too often the conception from the Holy Ghost has been treated exactly like an ordinary conception, so that it is at once assumed that the relation between Joseph and Jesus was adoptive pure and simple. Rather ought we to consider that the conception of the Holy Ghost lifts the whole matter into the realm of
the extraordinary and miraculous and mysterious, where rash affirmations should be avoided. I am not at all sure that we can say with certainty that Jesus was not, by the miraculous power of God, the son of Joseph and of David in some sense far more profound than at first appears. At any rate, we must remember that the relation of Jesus to Joseph was in any case far closer than that of an ordinary adopted child, in that Joseph was more truly an earthly father of Jesus than any other human being. We have been answering objections. Let us now, before we leave this part of the discussion, pause for a moment to emphasize one or two of the positive considerations which make for the trustworthiness of the narratives. In the first place, the restraint of the narratives is very remarkable, in contrast, for example, with the apocryphal gospels where fancy had free play. In the second place, the character of Mary would have been exceedingly difficult to invent and, in general, the picture of the circle of pious BJTP@\ whom the events take place is finely suited to the later development, in exhibiting a starting-point for Christ's work.41 In the third place, the delicate personal touches, pointing to Mary as the source of Luke's account and perhaps to Joseph in Matthew's account, could never have been produced artificially.42 Finally, /pg. 670/ the purely Old Testament character of the whole narrative could never have been invented in the later period. Especially would no later writer ever have invented prophecies like the prophecies of the Messianic King, Luke 1:30ff., which did not seem to have been fulfilled, or at any rate were not fulfilled in the sense originally understood.43 And then the very difficulties of the account, especially those connected with such expressions as (@<,4$H and B"JZD in view of the virgin birth, are an evidence that the author has followed fixed sources rather than allowed his invention free play, for in the latter case he could have smoothed out the rough places.
We have now arrived at the close of the first part of our discussion, namely, the examination of the hypothesis that the narratives are a true record of fact. Of course, we have not here demanded absolute verbal accuracy in the narratives, but rather have classed under this
first head all opinions which explain the chief ideas in the accounts— notably the virgin birth—as due, not to myth or to invention, but to fact. If we keep in mind the strong external evidence and are unprejudiced with regard to the miraculous, we shall conclude that the objections against the trustworthiness of the accounts are not unanswerable. But it is, after all, useless to deny that there are difficulties, and grave difficulties. What we shall next have to consider, therefore, is the question whether there are not still graver difficulties against any view which explains the chief ideas in the narratives in some other way than as produced by the facts. Explanation there must be of one sort or the other.
APPENDIX II
The New Testament Account of the Birth of Jesus
Second Article*
HAVING discussed the hypothesis that the New Testament narratives of the birth of Jesus are to be explained as dependent upon facts, we turn now to the alternative hypothesis that the narratives arose in some other way.
Let us begin by mentioning two theories which may be distinguished from the others as being predominantly legendary rather than predominantly mythical.
Haeckel1 has recently revived, with apparent seriousness, the second-century Jewish Pandera story as calling forth, in defense of the Christians, the story of the virgin birth. Haeckel's defense of his view is an even better refutation of it than the refutations by Loofs2 and Hilgenfeld.3 We need pause only to observe that the universal
rejection of the Pandera story in modern times is due not to its revolting nature, but to the overwhelming mass of historical evidence which is arrayed against it.
Beyschlag4 deserves somewhat more careful attention. According to him, at the time when Matthew wrote or Luke gathered his sources, any free invention of the birth story would, on Palestinian ground, have met with contradiction from the family of Jesus. Rather should we suppose that the idea, legend-like, wound itself around the fastdisappearing tradition, as an ivy about a crumbling wall, yet not so completely as to prevent our being able to discern here and there bits of the real facts. Such credible elements are the name Jesus, the stall, the census (as a cause for the crowded house, though not for the journey), the birth in Bethlehem, Symeon and Anna, the Davidic descent, the membership of Joseph and Mary in the circle of humble and pious Israelites. The course of events may have been somewhat as follows: Joseph, being a descendant of /pg. 38/ David, and Mary, his bride, belonging also to those who were waiting quietly for the consolation of Israel, had high hopes that they themselves might be blessed with the son who should rule Israel. They therefore moved their home to Bethlehem in order that the prophecy of Micah might be literally fulfilled, but on account of some Jewish census could find no shelter except in the stable. The pious hopes for the expected child were not concealed from sympathetic pious Israelites; hence the shepherds at the manger, who had interpreted their inward joy as the song of a heavenly host. The joyful news spread to the pious in the neighboring capital; hence the greetings of Symeon and Anna. Indeed, even heathen astrologers at Herod's court heard of the child and the hopes clustering around him, and interpreted Kepler's constellation as announcing the coming of the expected Jewish world-ruler. Hence the rage of Herod and his command to kill the male infants in Bethlehem of David's race. The story of Elisabeth and John the Baptist grew up out of a carrying back of the later intimate relation between Jesus and His forerunner. The belief in the virgin birth arose solely on Jewish-Christian ground from the belief in Christ as a fresh start in humanity, determined as to form by the
tradition of such children of promise as Isaac and John, and assisted by the Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7:14.
This derivation of the doctrine of the miraculous conception is by no means peculiar to Beyschlag, and will be more conveniently considered further on; but Beyschlag's proposed account of the real events of the birth is all his own. It will hardly be necessary, I think, to refute the theory in detail, beyond merely calling attention to its artificiality—a defect which is concealed only by the ingenuity of the conception and the real beauty of the language in which it is clothed. To take only the most striking point of the whole account of Beyschlag—the reason for the journey to Bethlehem—we can at once point out its unnaturalness. For, if Joseph and Mary belonged to that circle of humble faithful folk which Beyschlag so charmingly describes, it would have been a psychological impossibility for them to hope that out of their lowly home was actually to spring the ruler of Israel. And if, as Beyschlag argues, a stable would never have been represented by the Church as the birthplace of Christ, still less would it have been the centre of Messianic hopes of Jews, whose ideas of the Messianic kingdom must, after all, have been far more external than those of Christians. Beyschlag has done a great service in pointing out the reasons why a number of the elements in the birth narratives can only be historical, /pg. 39/ but he has not succeeded in showing how the other elements could have been evolved from these. Until at least some conceivable account of that evolution has been afforded us—Beyschlag himself does not maintain that his account is in detail necessarily the correct one—we may well be skeptical as to the legendary explanation of the narratives.
Perhaps we shall find more satisfaction in a more thorough-going theory. Such a theory we certainly have in the work of Conrady.5 According to him, the source of the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke was the so-called Protevangelium of James, an heretical but important writing which was the first to enter the field of the early life of Jesus. Matthew performed the double function, on the one hand, of preserving and defending, and, on the other hand, of
epitomizing and implicitly correcting this Protevangelium. Since this first attempt at using the source did not prove sufficient, Luke undertook by more radical measures so to work over the Protevangelium (especially in the interests of anti-docetism as against the docetism of the source), as to make subservient to the dogmatic interests of the Church a field previously fertile only for heresy. The Protevangelium, according to Conrady, was originally written in Hebrew, but breathes a heathen spirit, and is a poetical composition adapted from the Egyptian Osiris-Isis myth. These three writings—the Protevangelium and the two derivative narratives of Matthew and Luke—were the only sources current in the Church for the infancy of Jesus.
In this theory we have an extreme instance of the difficulty connected with all arguments from literary dependence. It is usually easy to discover that there is a connection between the works in question; but this connection almost always admits of reversal. It would seem, however, that in the present instance we have a case where the order is perfectly plain, though it is the reverse order from the one advocated by Conrady. No one who reads the Protevangelium can avoid the almost irresistible impression that the judgment of all scholars, except Conrady, is correct when they declare the Protevangelium to be based upon Matthew and Luke rather than vice versa. Everything points to a more advanced stage in the development, notably the carrying back of the miraculous element to the birth of Mary. Indeed, in the Protevangelium the miraculous begins to run riot, as in the later apocryphal gospels. Compare, for instance, the simple, grave account of the birth in Luke with the morbid and sensational details of the Protevangelium. /pg. 40/ It would have required a wonderful genius to invent the account of Luke; it would have required absolutely superhuman genius to evolve it out of the Protevangelium. Nor is our impression of the matter much weakened by Conrady's argument6 for the original character of the Protevangelium. The Protevangelium is thought to possess a marked unity, and yet to exhibit such a lordly disregard for little contradictions and difficulties as is quite in accord with the
freshness and freedom of an original production. But those difficulties, notably the unexplained dumbness of the priest,7 look too unmistakably like bits taken from Matthew or Luke. As for the derivation of the ideas of the Protevangelium from Egypt, we may well refrain from going so far afield until we have proved the simpler derivation through Matthew and Luke to be impossible. Conrady's whole complicated theory requires labored proof at every point (e.g., as to the possibility that a purely Gentile writing would be written in Hebrew), and practically every point depends upon Conrady's conclusion about what has gone before; so that the chances that the final result is correct are very slight. It is not likely that Conrady will ever change what he confesses is the universal opinion of scholars.8 Somewhat related to the theory of Conrady is that of Reitzenstein,9 who, like Conrady, supposes that there was a common source at the basis of our two narratives and, like Conrady, looks to Egypt for important elements in his scheme. Reitzenstein's theory is founded largely upon a poorly preserved Egyptian fragment of about the sixth century, which contains in the 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, whereas Luke's narrative is in itself incomprehensible and clearly secondary. Rather the fragment was derived from a gospel other than the one we now possess. A notable difference from Luke is the omission of FL88Z:R® ¦< ("FJD\ in the promise of the angel. These words being omitted, Mary would naturally, in accordance with ancient usage, understand 6,P"D4JT:X<0, ,ß$D,H PVD4< B"D( Jå$ 2,å$ /pg. 41/ and JX>® LÊ`< to mean that she was already pregnant. Her question, therefore (appearing in the form B`2,< :@4 J@L$J@ (,[<ZF,J"4, ¦B, –<*D" @Û (4<fF6T],) becomes perfectly natural, whereas in the narrative of Luke, where the conception is put in the indefinite future, the question is meaningless.10 This representation that the narrative of the annunciation is itself a narrative of the conception—a representation which appears in Origen, in those early Christian documents which speak of a conception from the Logos, and notably in a prayer discovered at
Gizeh11—Reitzenstein brings into connection with that contemporary religious idea according to which one God produces another through his speech.12 Starting with this religious idea, Reitzenstein says, the writer of the gospel from which the 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, to bring it 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,13 and our canonical Gospels certainly cannot be put so late. Nor does the fragment, as interpreted by Reitzenstein, bear such indisputable internal evidence of its primary character as Reitzenstein seems to attribute to it. For example, Mary 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.14 In general, we must say that entirely too much is built upon a meagre foundation for the theory ever to attain the solidity of proved fact. 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 /pg. 42/ most fundamental thing of all is that the fragment does not contain the words FL880:R® ¦< ("FJD\; yet there is a gap at the proper place. The gap is thought not to be large enough—very probably it is not large enough. But the fact remains that, even in such a fundamental point, we are not dealing with definite certainty. Or suppose (as indeed seems probable) that the words FL88Z:R®, etc., were omitted. Even then, it is by no means even certain that the author had any different view of the annunciation from that of Luke, for the omission might well have
arisen merely from loose quoting. Indeed FL88Z:R® in connection with JX>® may have almost seemed like unnecessary fulness of expression, so that one of the phrases may easily have been omitted. If we find reasons for doubt at the very basis, how much more in the remoter conclusions—for example, that Matthew as well as Luke represents a weakening of the original account. However interesting Reitzenstein's fragment may be, it has accomplished nothing toward solving the vexed problem of the sources of our canonical infancy narratives. From this it follows that it has accomplished nothing toward explaining the origin of those narratives. For they in themselves contain no hint of that religious idea of creation by the Word; therefore we have no reason to regard them as attempts to embody that idea in narrative form. We have mentioned first the theories of Beyschlag, Conrady, and Reitzenstein, because they are, after all, sporadic and peculiar, and may best be put aside before we begin to investigate more widely accepted theories which may be said to constitute the general trend of recent investigation. To this more serious task we now address ourselves. We have attempted to show that the accounts whose mythical or legendary origin is to be explained are, so far as external evidence can show, parts of two very early Christian writings, the first and third Gospels. Now, since this fact, by making more probable an early date for the infancy narratives, greatly increases the difficulty of explaining the evolution of their ideas, it is natural to expect that recent criticism should here, as elsewhere, have recourse to divisive hypotheses, in order to weaken the force of the external evidence. Nor is the expectation without fulfilment. To the development of these divisive hypotheses several logical motives have contributed.
In the first place, as we have just hinted, if the virgin birth cannot be a fact, then the origin of a belief in it can be better explained if we put the first witness of such a belief at a late date. But against /pg. 43/ such a late date is the external testimony to the Gospels. The mythical explanation is therefore much easier if it can be shown that the account of the virgin birth was no part of the original Gospels.
In the second place, as we have already seen, one of the chief arguments against the virgin birth is that it is contradicted by the rest of the New Testament, which traces the Davidic descent through Joseph. But the remarkable fact is that this supposed contradiction appears every whit as strong within the first and third Gospels themselves, as between those Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. So if those Gospels were each written throughout by the same men, then plainly these authors, at least, did not regard the thing as a contradiction at all; so that we cannot say that by emphasizing the Davidic sonship or calling Joseph the father of Jesus those other writers meant to exclude the virgin birth, any more than Matthew and Luke meant to exclude it by doing the selfsame thing. So if the "contradiction" is to be used as an argument against the virgin birth, it is very desirable to show that the writers of those portions of the first and third Gospels which recount the virgin birth were not the same as the writers who trace the Davidic descent through Joseph and call Joseph the father of Jesus. In the third place, the task of those scholars who deny the fact of the virgin birth is not merely to show that the belief may have arisen somewhere or other in the world of those days, but specifically to show that it could have been accepted by the particular authors who actually record it, or by their sources. If therefore, it is desired, for example, to regard the belief as of Gentile origin, though it is actually recorded in distinctly Jewish narratives, the easiest way out of the difficulty would be to show that the record of it is no original part of those narratives, but is an interpolation.
It is also very advantageous, in the fourth place, for those who deny the fact of the virgin birth to show that its attestation is not really twofold, as it seems to be. But in view of the manifest independence of the infancy narratives, this can be done only by showing that the notice about the virgin birth is, in at least one of the narratives, an interpolation.
These four considerations, we believe, represent the four chief logical motives for the rise of recent theories of interpolation with regard to