Guide to the works of J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937). Scholar. Preacher. Founder of Westminster Theological Seminary. Leader in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
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 de- pendent 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 distin- guished from the others as being predominantly legendary rather than predominantly mythical. Haeckel* 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 Loofs† and Hilgenfeld‡. 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. Beyschlag§ deserves somewhat more careful attention. Accord- ing to him, at the time when Matthew wrote or Luke gathered his sources, any free invention of the birtn 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 fast-disappearing 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
David, and Mary, his bride, belonging also to those who were waiting quietly for the consolation of Israel, had high hopes that they them- selves 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 carry- ing back of the later intimate relation between Jesus and His fore- runner. The belief in the virgin birth arose solely on Jewish-Chris- tian ground from the belief in Christ as a fresh start in human- ity, determined as to form by the tradition of such children of promise as Isaac and John, and assisted by the Septuagint trans- lation of Isaiah vii. 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 atten- tion 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 Bethle- hem—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 psycholo- gical 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 his-
torical, but he has not succeeded in showing how the other ele- ments could have been evolved from these. Until at least some conceivable account of that evolution has been afforded us—Bey- schlag himself does not maintain that his account is in detail neces- sarily 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.* 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 Prot- evangelium (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 compo- sition 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 re- verse 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 miracu- lous 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.
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 argument* 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 difficul- ties, notably the unexplained dumbness of the priest,† look too un- mistakably 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 sim- pler 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 univer- sal opinion of scholars.‡ Somewhat related to the theory of Conrady is that of Reitzen- stein,§ 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 συλλήμψῃ ἐν γαστρί in the promise of the angel. These words being omitted, Mary would naturally, in accordance with ancient usage, understand κεχαριτωμένη, εὗρες χάριν παρὰ τῷ θεῷ
and τέξη υἱόν to mean that she was already pregnant. Her ques- tion, therefore (appearing in the form πόθεν μοι τοῦτο γενήσεται, ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω],) becomes perfectly natural, whereas in the narra- tive of Luke, where the conception is put in the indefinite future, the question is meaningless.* This representation that the narra- tive 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 Gizeh†—Reitzenstein brings into connec- tion with that contemporary religious idea according to which one God produces another through his speech.‡ 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 indis- soluble 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 Reitzen- stein’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,§ 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 under- stands 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 narra- tive the steps are by no means clearly marked.‖ 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 frag- ment 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 is that the fragment does not contain the words συλλημψῃ ἐν γαστρί; 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 funda- mental point, we are not dealing with definite certainty. Or sup- pose (as indeed seems probable) that the words συλλήμψη, 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 συλλόμψη in connection with 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 exam- ple, 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 gen- eral 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 con- tributed. 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
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 birtlı 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 argu- ment 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 specifi- cally 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 inde- pendence 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 the birth narratives. But we do not for a moment mean to imply that these are the chief or the only grounds by which those theories have been supported. True, some recent writers have taken liberties with the text merely on the ground of preconceived views about the whole course of mythical development. But
others, more cautious, have attempted to ground their theories in arguments which, while devoid of external support, are yet ostensi- bly, at least, definitely based upon a fair and minute examination of the text itself. It is this latter kind of argument which we should first examine. In the Gospel of Luke, i. 5-ii. 52 seems to form a section in itself, and is prefixed to the account of Christ’s public ininistry, which begins in Luke as in the other Synoptists with the baptism. It is therefore not surprising that critics have seized upon this whole section as a later addition to the Gospel. In this case, however, no argument for regarding the section as an interpolation can be drawn from the account of the virgin birth in itself, as contradicting the rest of the Gospel, which traces the Davidic descent through Joseph. For that contradiction, if it be a contradiction, appears in some respects in an even more striking form within the birth narrative itself than between the birth narrative and the rest of the Gospel.* But certain other arguments have been offered:
search out all that could be learned; and such a spirit of investiga- tion would never be satisfied with beginning the narrative abruptly at Jesus’ thirtieth year, if there were any who could tell from personal experience or through eye-witnesses what had gone before. It seems to me that this is rather confirmed than otherwise by the words οἱ ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς αὐτόπται καὶ ὑπηρέται γενόμενοι τοῦ λόγου. It seems to have been the author’s fixed purpose to obtain his informa- tion not merely from eye-witnesses, but from eye-witnesses whose testimony extended as far back as possible. 2. Hilgenfeld’s argument that the chronological data in i. 5, ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις Ἡρῴδου βασιλέως, and in iii. 1, 23 are contradictory shatters upon the little word ὡσεί in iii. 23. If Jesus was about thirty years old, He may well have been a year or so older than that round number indicates.* 3. Hilgenfeld arguest that John the Baptist is introduced in Luke iii. 2 as if for the first time (cf. Luke v. 10), because he is defined by the name of his father. The reader of Luke i, says Hil- genfeld, would have no need to be told which John was meant. If anything, the argument may be turned around, for it would be just the reader of Luke i, who would be interested in the name of the father, and to whom just that detail rather than the baptizing ac- tivity of John (Matthew, Mark) could be assumed as known; and it would be just the writer of Luke i, who would be able to supply the father’s name. Furthermore, the fact that John was in the desert is introduced incidentally, in a way which seems to imply acquaint- ance with Luke i. 80.‡ 4. According to Corssen,§ the Logos in Luke’s prologue is the personal Logos, and his appearance upon the earth (the “beginning” of the Word) was the baptism, when God said to His Son, “This day have I begotten thee.” With this agrees the absolute ἀρχόμενος in iii. 23 and Acts i. 21, 22. Ὡσεί (ⅰ. 23) is to be taken in a strictly comparative sense: the Logos appeared in the form of a man of thirty years. The difficulties connected with this view are of course apparent. In the first place, it rests upon the more than doubtful reading of the Western text in iii. 22, “This day have I begotten thee.” In the second place, to interpret ὡσεί as comparative is here impossible, because it comes in close conjunction with a numeral, where no one would think of any other meaning than the common meaning,
“about.” The ἀρχύμενος (iii. 23) indicates “the beginning of the Word” only if we allow Corssen’s reading in iii. 22 and his interpre- tation of the baptism. If we interpret the baptism as the begin- ning of Jesus’ Messianic work, rather than as the beginning of His divine Sonship, then the ἀρχόμενος evidently refers to the same thing. So ἀρχόμενος proves nothing in itself. Nor does Acts i. 21, 22, give it any added force, for there it is a question merely of the con- ditions necessary for apostleship. To be an apostle a man had to have been a disciple of Jesus only from the baptism, because before that Jesus had had no disciples. Nor does the elaborate attempt (Luke iii. 1) to fix the date of the baptism necessarily prove (even in comparison with the method of Thucydides) that that was what Luke desired to fix as the “begin- ning” mentioned in the prologue. Perhaps the reason he did not so elaborately fix the date of what is recorded in i. 5ff. is that he did not there happen to possess such complete information. In any case, the baptism, even if not the beginning of the whole history, was surely an event important enough to lead a historian like Luke, writing for Gentiles and Romans, to give as complete chronological details as his sources would permit. 5. In Acts i. 1, the Gospel of Luke is described as a treatise con- cerning all that Jesus began to do and to teach until He was taken up. In this ποιεῖν τε καὶ διδάσκειν, says Hilgenfeld, the narrative of Luke i. 5-ii. 52 cannot be included; therefore those first two chap- ters were no part of the “former treatise.” But we must remember that Luke is at the beginning of Acts characterizing his former treatise as a whole and as contrasted (μέν) with the history to follow. From such a point of view, it might well be described in general terms as an account of Jesus' earthly activity, even though it contained some introductory matter necessary to explain that earthly life. In a modern biog- raphy, we do not think it strange to find at the beginning a descrip- tion of the state of affairs at the birth of its subject, or an account of family-relations for some generations back. Furthermore, as Zim- mermann points out, we cannot, even on Hilgenfeld’s theory, inter- pret the ποτεῖν τε καὶ διδάσκειν too strictly, for even the main part of the Gospel contains an account of events where Jesus was not the agent—e.g., the preaching of the Baptist. Finally, if Hilgenfeld’s view is correct, it is ratlier reinarkable that in Acts i. 1 we do not find the baptism mentioned as the terminus a quo as in Acts i. 22.*
Thus far we have not mentioned what at first sight seems to be the most striking indication that i. 5-ii. 52 was no part of the origi- nal Gospel—namely, the striking contrast in the style and diction of this section, both with the prologue on the one hand, and with what follows it on the other. It is one of the commonplaces of New Testament investigation that at Luke i. 4, 5, the most flowing Greek period and perhaps the most strongly Hebraistic section of the New Testament come together. Yet from this undoubted fact no conclusion can at once be drawn against the genuineness of the infancy section, for it is possible that in i. 5-ii. 52, Luke was so closely following a source that he refrained from changing its style and diction. This explanation is the more probable because the contrast between i. 5-ii. 52 and what follows is by no means so great as between that section and the prologue. It is an undoubted fact that in the admittedly original part of the Gospel, the author has allowed the style of the source to color the narrative. There- fore, he may well be carrying out the same method a little more fully in the infancy section. The difference would be one of degree, not of kind. But this is not all. Harnack* has argued that the Magnificat and the sections ii. 15-20, 41-52 (the latter two being chosen because of the difference of the subject-matter from the rest of the Gospel and Acts) exhibit specifically Lukan characteristics of style; and Harnack’s investigation has been completed for the rest of the infancy section by Zimmermann,† with a similar result. Now with reference to the Magnificat, Spitta‡ has undoubtedly pointed out a serious defect in Harnack’s method. Harnack has picked out the Old Testament passages upon which he supposes the Magnificat to rest, and has then extracted from the song the fourteen words which were not given by these passages. These words, he argues, are Lukan. Spitta’s general criticism is that we cannot be certain enough that just Harnack’s Old Testament pass- ages and no others were consciously or unconsciously in the mind of the author of the song. So that if we find that Harnack’s fourteen words are common in the Septuagint, we can scarcely draw any sure conclusion as to the Lukan authorship. But even if we allow to this objection its full weight, it does not vitiate the whole argument of Harnack and Zimmermann; for the method objected to is not carried through the other passages examined, or at any rate is not
fundamental there. Indeed, the cumulative evidence adduced for the linguistic affinity of the birth narrative with the other Lukan writings must, I think, be pronounced very convincing—far too convincing to allow us to stop short with the hypothesis of a com- mon redactor merely. It seems highly probable that the writer of the Gospel and of Acts impressed his style upon the infancy narrative, although not so as to destroy the strongly Semitic charac- ter of the language of that section. Of course there are several possible ways of explaining these facts. In the first place, we might say with Harnack that the Se- mitic coloring and Old Testament spirit of i. 5-ii. 52 are due largely to the conscious art of the writer, rather than to a close adherence to Semitic sources.* But I do not think we should by any means go so far as to suppose that Luke, in possession, on the one hand, of a certain unadorned tradition, and acquainted, on the other hand, in a general way with Jewish modes of expression, went deliberately to work artificially to mould that tradition into the language best suited to the time and place described. For example, it is highly improbable that Luke actually composed the Magnificat, as Harnack maintains. Rather should we say that in the first two chapters of the Gospel the author must be closely reproducing Palestinian tradition. It is not certain that that tradition was given to him in anything more than oral form; for it does not seem too much to expect that Luke should have had literary discernment enough to catch the charm of the beautiful Jewish stories and literary ability enough not to spoil that charm in the writing. But in view of the strongly Semitic character of the language, and the still more Se- mitic and strictly Jewish character of the thought, it is an impossi- bility to suppose that Luke is the actual composer of the stories, as Pfleiderer has contended. That would attribute to him too much historical sense and dramatic art for any historian of any time; much more for a historian possessing the characteristics of Luke and living at the time when he lived. Indeed, after all, the general effect of the section will probably always be suchas to suggest to most minds that the author is using a written source, and a source which could have arisen only on Palestinian ground, and in circles where the ancient Jewish traditions and aspirations were preserved in their purest form. The linguistic data collected by Zimmermann point very strongly to the use of an Aramaic document, for how else but upon the theory of translation can we explain the distinctly Lukan character of the superficial coloring as against the yet more dis-
tinctly Jewish character of the warp and woof? This, however, we must leave undecided. The special arguments for the theory of translation as given by Zimmermann* do not prove the matter, though they may show that that theory explains very satisfactorily at least some of the facts.† However, we may regard it as proved that Luke i. 5-ii. 52 follows closely a Jewish Christian source, which, if not written in Aramaic, was yet thoroughly Palestinian in char- acter. But the linguistic characteristics of the section rather favor than oppose the view that the source was used by the author of the rest of the Gospel. One other argument against the genuineness of our section re- mains to be considered—namely, the argument of Hilgenfeld that in the first two sections certain un-Pauline ideas are emphasized, such as the obligation of the law (ii. 22, 23, 39), righteousness of works (i. 6, 15, 75, ii. 25), the throne of David and the eternal king- dom over the house of Jacob (i. 32, 33); things which could never have been added to the Gospel by the Paulinist Luke. But, in the first place, Hilgenfeld’s objection rules out of court on purely à priori grounds the view that the author in writing his narrative may have consulted the facts or the sources as well as his own dog- matic prepossessions. It is not impossible that a Paulinist should have written i. 5-ii. 52, unless it is impossible that a Paulinist should have desired to tell the truth—and the latter proposition is not so self-evident as Hilgenfeld and others of his school seem to suppose. In the second place, Hilgenfeld supposes that the redactor who added the two songs (with certain Pauline alterations, i. 55b, 73a, 76-79), and joined the whole narrative to the Gospel, was himself a Paulinist. It is not clear why, if the second Paulinist could do that, the first one, or the writer of the Gospel, could not have done it just as well. So Hilgenfeld’s theory, aside from its other defects, is hardly consistent. The first question, then, we may regard as settled. There are no good solid reasons for regarding i. 5-ii. 52 as an interpolation. Fur- thermore, in settling this question, we have incidentally established the fact that the narrative in i. 5-ii. 52 is of distinctly Jewish-Chris- tian origin‡—a fact which we shall find to be of great importance. The attempts to separate Luke i, from Luke ii, or to separate their sources,§ may be at once dismissed as devoid of evidence.
Holtzmann* argues that Nazareth, Joseph and Mary are mentioned in ii. 4 ff. as though these names were not already known from i. 26, 27; but really the manner of repetition is perfectly natural as taking up the narrative where it had been dropped. So Luke ii. 4, 5, seems, if anything, rather to presuppose a previous mention of Joseph and Mary. Joseph’s Davidic descent is introduced again in order to explain the journey. Moreover, the view in question is directly contradicted by ii. 21b (“which was so called by the angel before he was conceived in the womb”), where i. 31 is referred to. So Schmiedel is obliged to regard this clause (ii. 21b) as added when the two chapters were put together—a purely artificial expedient to bolster up a baseless theory. The two chapters are closely con- nected so far as style and diction are concerned, and have other things in common. For example, the same character is attributed in both chapters to Mary, and in both she is given a peculiarly prominent position in the narrative. Far more serious is the attempt to exhibit i. 34, 35, as an interpo- lation; indeed it is against these two verses that the chief attack of all has been directed. Among those who have argued against the original presence of the two verses in the context where they now stand may be mentioned Hillmann,† Usener, J. Weiss (with a little hesitation), Harnack, Zimmermann, Schmiedel, Pfleiderer and Conybeare, to say nothing of others who less deserve mention, because they make little attempt to ground their objections to the verses upon anything more definite than their general theories of mythical or legendary development. The integrity of the passage has been defended by Hilgenfeld and Clemen, as well as by “con- servative” scholars. First, we must remind ourselves that there is no external evidence whatever for regarding vers. 34, 35, as an interpolation. Cony- beare, it is true, emphasizes the reading in MS. b which substitutes ver. 38 for ver. 34 and omits ver 38 (εἶπεν τὸ ῥῆμα) from its proper place: but that may have been a mere blunder in transcrip- tion, especially as the two verses begin alike, “dixit autem Maria” (Headlam). Or perhaps the change might have been made by the scribe to save Mary from the appearance of unbelief. The testimony of John of Damascus to the omission of the phrase “seeing I know
not a man” in some Greek codices is too late to be of great im- portance. Conybeare* claims the authority of Tischendorf (Stlı ed.) for the omission of vers. 34, 35, in the Protevangelium of James. But the facts are that the Protevangelium, though it omits ver. 34 in this context, substitutes what is rather an elabo- ration of that verse (Εἰ ἐγὼ συλλήμψομαι ὡς πᾶσα γυνὴ γεννᾷ), and ac- tually contains the greater part of ver. 35.† That Conybeare can claim Tischendorf for his view about the Protevangelium seems to be due, as Headlam has pointed out, to a surprising misunderstanding of Tischendorf’s notes, which arose from not looking under ver. 31 as well as under ver. 34.‡ The evidence for the interpolation theory must therefore be purely internal evidence. In the first place, we must at once dismiss the arguments that since the fatherhood of the Spirit of God [?] would suit very badly a purely Jewish Christian source (רוח being feminine, and the Jewish conception of God being transcendental), and since the basis of Luke i, ii, was such a source, therefore vers. 34, 35, could not have stood originally in their present place. This argument proves that a conception from the Holy Spirit, or a birth described in such terms as even to suggest the personal Holy Spirit as Father, would never have been invented on Jewish ground; but it does not prove that it may not have been recorded in a Jewish-Christian narrative if it were a fact. What we are just now trying to do is simply to lay the basis for future investigation by estimating the narrower and more solid grounds for supposing the whole or portions of the birth narratives to be interpolations—grounds which will hold firın upon any general theory of early Christian history. There are many who suppose the doctrine of the virgin birth, assuming it to be untrue, to have arisen on Jewish-Christian ground, and they may appeal, among other things, to the strongly Jewish character of the records. Against such scholars it is begging the question to say that since the doctrine of the virgin birth must be of Gentile origin, therefore it must be an interpolation where it finds a place in Jewish narratives. It is further urged that i. 34, 35, is not merely without corrobora- tion from the rest of the infancy narrative, but is even contradicted by it; for the whole of the first two chapters except our two verses
proceeds upon the supposition that Jesus was the son of Joseph and traces his Davidic descent through him. We freely admit (though in contradiction to B. Weiss) that in i. 27 οἶκου Δαυείδ must almost certainly be taken with Ἰωσήφ rather than with παρθένον, for on any other interpretation the manner of addition of τῆς παρθένου is very hard to explain. So that when the angel (ver. 32) calls David father of the coming child, it seems most natural that his words should be understood of a descent through Joseph. The emphasis on Joseph’s Davidic descent rather than on that of Mary in ii. 4, however, proves nothing, for it was the man only who would be considered as deter- mining the place of enrolment. But if the Davidic descent of Mary is presupposed, surprisingly little emphasis is placed upon it, for, as has been observed, in the only place where anything is clearly said about her family relations (i. 36) she is called kinswoman of the Levite Elisabeth. The repeated occurrence of such words as γονεῖς, applied to Joseph and Mary; and πατήρ, applied to Joseph, has already been noticed; but these two terms do not necessarily imply anything more than that there was really an adoptive relation between Joseph and Jesus, and that Jesus before the world was regarded as an actual son. The failure to refer to i. 35 in ii. 21 proves absolutely nothing,* for any such reference would have made the sentence extremely clumsy. Nor is the phrase “their cleans- ing” in ii. 22 very convincing. It is quite in line with a good many things connected with the life of Christ, e.g., the baptism of a sinless man. As to the failure of Mary to understand, or her astonishment at what was said about the child by Symeon and Anna and by the boy Jesus Himself, even Zimmermann admits that this has little bearing upon the question of the original presence of i. 34, 35, in the narrative. The astonishment of the parents was due to the fact that Symeon and Anna and the boy Jesus were found to be possessed of the secret of the Messiahship. Only thus, according to Zimmermann, can the passages be explained, whether the par- ents knew about the supernatural conception or only about the Messiahship of their son. In general, we can say that it is unreasonable to expect that the account of the supernatural conception should be repeated again and again. In a narrative it is enough that it should be given once, whatever might be true of a dogmatic treatise. Yet, after all, we do not desire to depreciate the force of the argument against the two verses, derived from the silence or seeming contradiction of the rest of the story; for although that argument may not prove the
verses to be an interpolation, it will do much to render us hospitable to other proofs. If we really find that in the rest of the first two chapters there is not the slightest hint that might point to the virgin birth, or that there is a good deal that seems almost directly to deny it, we shall be very much disposed to look with suspicion upon the only two verses that tell of such a remarkable event. As a matter of fact, however, this is not the case. In the first place, i. 27 deserves the most careful attention. We there read in the clearest terms that Mary was a virgin when the announcement was made to her by the angel. Now, since there is no subsequent mention of a marriage to Joseph, the natural conclu- sion is that in i. 27 we have a preparation for i. 34, 35.* To avoid this conclusion two expedients have been adopted. In the first place, Usener suggests that the redactor has left out a statement (which originally came after ver. 38) that Joseph took Mary to wife and that she conceived by him. But that is a mere supposition. In the second place, Harnack supposes that the word παρθένος in i. 27 is an interpolation made by the same redactor who added vers. 34, 35. For, he says, the word ἐμνηστευμένη in ii. 5 can only mean “wife,” so that the same author could never have written a few verses back παρθένον ἐμνηστευμένην. One of the words must be removed, and the most natural one to remove is, of course, παρθένον. But this really begs the question. For ἐμνηστευμένῃ in ii. 5 means simply “wife” only on the supposition that i. 34, 35, are to be deleted—which is exactly the thing to be proved. Nor is the removal of the mention of the virginity of Mary from i. 27 at all an easy task, for the word παρθένος occurs twice (παρθένον, παρθένου), and is indissolubly connected with the very structure of the sen- tence.† Whatever may be said about the ease with which the two verses, i. 34, 35, taken by themselves, may be removed; if the re- moval of those verses necessarily requires another deletion, which, far from being equally easy, is so harsh as to be practi- cally impossible, then the former deletion must be seriously re- considered. Harnack’s argument has led us to the second chief reference to the two verses in question. In ii. 5 we find the phrase τῇ ἐμνηστευμένη αὐτῷ οὔσῃ ἐνκύῳ—a phrase absolutely inexplicable unless i. 34, 35, is referred to. For, after all, if the author had meant “wife,” he would certainly have said “wife”—at any rate, he certainly would
not have used ἐμνηστευμένῃ in conjunction with ἐντύῳ.* So evident is this that most of those scholars who regard i. 34, 35, as an interpola- tion can overcome the difficulty only by choosing the reading γυναικι instead of εμνηστευμενη in ii. 5. The external testimony is briefly as follows: γυναικı is omitted altogether by אB C* D L Ξ, 1, 131, e, f, q**. sax. sah. copt. syr.sch arm. γυναιzı is added after αυτω by AC 1, 1, q*, vg. goth. syr. aeth. γυνα:z: is read without a pre- ceding εμνηστευμενη or corresponding word by the Latin manuscripts a, b, c, ff, and by syrsin. The reading with both εμνηστευμενη and γυναικε is evidently to be dismissed at once as a mixed reading. Now of course this leaves the overwhelming manuscript authority in favor of εμνηστ without γυναικι, and this authority has been followed by Tischendorf (8th ed.), WH, Baljon, etc. Some scholars, however, have argued that γυναικι represents the original reading, on the ground that γυναικι might easily have been changed into εμνηστ for dogmatic reasons, whereas there would have been no ground for an Ebionitic alteration of εμνηστ. † But it is not necessary to think of an Ebionitic alteration, since εμνηστ might easily have given offense on account of the difficulty of conceiving of Mary as only betrothed when she made the journey with Joseph, as well as on account of Matt. i. 24, where it is said that Joseph took Mary to wife. Also Matt. i. 20 may have had an influence.‡ Therefore, in view of the preponderance of the external testimony for the omission of γυναικι, it is almost as violent a change to insert it as it is to delete the words παρθένον and παρθένου in i. 27. The important point to observe is that i. 27 and ii. 5 (to say noth- ing of passages which seem to attribute a peculiar importance to Mary rather than Joseph, and to say nothing of i. 41 where Elisa- beth seems to greet Mary as already mother of the Lord) rest as dead weights upon any theory which separates i. 34, 35, from the context. The theory must have exceedingly strong indepen- dent support if it is not to break down under the strain. We now examine that independent support. Harnacks has enumerated as many as ten arguments for regard-
ing i. 34, 35, as an interpolation. Let us briefly examine them to see whether they are as formidable in quality as they are in quan- tity.*
did not feel the contradiction, perhaps the original author did not. After all, the thing is largely a question of taste. Perhaps Hilgen- feld, who sees a well-conceived progress in the whole passage, is as well entitled to his opinion as is Harnack, who sees in it only a pair of clumsily joined doublets. Wernle* (with a different purpose) argues along the same lines as Hilgenfeld, pointing to Ignatius and to the readings of Syrsin in Matt. i as showing that a part of the ancient Christians could think of “from the seed of David” and “from the Holy Ghost” together without offense. So perhaps the double interpretation of divine sonship would not be regarded as contra- diction but as climax. It is therefore by no means necessary to follow B. Weiss in regarding ver. 35 (διὸ καὶ . . . υἱὸς θεοῦ) as sup- plied by the Evangelist. Probably the meaning of υἱὸς θεοῦ in con- nection with what precedes should not be pressed too far. On any view, however, ver. 35 would make Jesus υἱὸς θεοῦ, even though He might also have been called that on less definite grounds. 4. The words in vers. 36, 37 (pointing to the example of Elisa- beth), obtain a good sense only if no mention of a conception by the working of the Holy Spirit has gone before; for if the most wonder- ful thing of all has already been promised, then it is weak and not con- vincing to point in support to Elisabeth’s conception in her old age. This, so far from being a support for Harnack’s position, is really an argument against it. There could, in the nature of the case, be no parallel for the unique miracle. But what the angel could do was to point to a miracle which was at least sufficient to illus- trate the general principle that οὐκ ἀδυνατήσει παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ πᾶν ῥῆμα.† And it is almost necessarily required for the logic of the passage that the greater event in which the belief was solicited, should be in the same sphere with the example used. If merely vers. 31-33 had gone before, then we should expect that the angel would point rather to the promised career of John than to something miraculous in his birth, to which miracle there was to be no counterpart in the case of Jesus. Zimmermann admits the weakness of the argument drawn from vers. 36, 37, against the integrity of the passage; but I must go still further. To me it will always be a mystery how the argument ever came to be formulated from vers. 36, 37, against the integrity of the passage rather than in favor of it.‡
(2) It is highly improbable that vers. 34, 35, are an addition made by the Evangelist to a Palestinian source that elsewhere he follows closely. On that view it is difficult to explain the peculiarly marked Semitic style and spirit which prevails in the two verses, so precisely in harmony with the rest of the narrative. (Against Zimmermann.) (3) It is less improbable (but still far from likely) that in i. 34, 35, Luke is departing from a Palestinian source which he does not here follow closely but employs in so loose a way that we can seldom (as here) separate the source from the finished composition.* Against this view of the matter, Wernle himself notices the objec- tion that it fails to account for the apparent contradictions and roughness caused by the insertion, but he supposes that that con- tradiction was not apparent to Luke in the same way as to us. So Wernle holds that the birth narrative is the work throughout (even through i. 31-35) of one author, and is as closely knit as we can expect in a time of lively productiveness and variegated religious syncretism. But how, then, can we be confident of sepa- rating between author and source in i. 31ff.? Wernle would per- haps be more consistent if he were more skeptical about this point. Perhaps, too, the same line of reasoning as that of Wernle will allow us to attribute the whole to some writer other and earlier than the writer of the Gospel. At any rate, grave objections may be raised, for example, from style and diction, against the large place which Wernle attributes to the Evangelist in the composition of chapters i, ii.† Before passing on, we must notice a remarkable modification of the interpolation theory we have just been considering—a modifica- tion which has recently (1900) been suggested by Kattenbusch‡ and defended by Weinel.§ According to Kattenbusch, the birth from the Holy Ghost was originally thought of independently of the birth from a virgin, and it is to the former conception that Luke’s narrative attaches the chief importance. Indeed, even i. 35, taken by itself, does not mean anything more than that the Spirit of God so overshadowed the mother that not merely was the child filled with the Spirit from the moment of birth, as in the case of John, but that which was begotten (γεννώμενον) partook from the very first of the nature of the Spirit. That verse excludes the
human father only when it is taken in connection with the last clause of ver. 34 (ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω). So that in order to remove the virgin birth from Luke’s narrative and thus secure unity of representation, it is not necessary to delete the whole of vers. 34, 35, with Hillmann, but merely to remove the four words ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω. The special grounds that speak in favor of this new suggestion (as they are to be gleaned partly from Kattenbusch, but particu- larly from Weinel, who is more confident about the literary and critical question) seem to be derived largely from the comparison with the annunciation to Zacharias. As we there find no sugges- tion of the agency of Zacharias, because that was regarded as a matter of course, so the agency of Joseph is in this second annuncia- tion similarly regarded as a matter of course. In the second place, the statement of ver. 35 about the πνεῦμα ἅγιον cannot exclude the coöperation of the human father, because it is expressly correlated with the conception by Elisabeth (ver. 36). In the third place, the very giving of a sign (ver. 36) requires that a surprised or doubting question should have preceded. But this requirement is not satis- fied by Hillmann’s theory. And in the fourth place, the parallelism of structure between the accounts of the two annunciations, which is destroyed by Hillmann, is preserved by this new suggestion. As to this last argument, we observe that the parallelism is not preserved by Weinel’s suggestion so well as by the maintenance of the integrity of the passage. For in ver. 18 Zacharias gives the reason for his doubt, to which reason there is nothing corresponding in the case of Mary unless the words ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω are retained. Therefore this very argument of Weinel speaks very strongly against his own theory, as it does against the theory of Hillmann. The most attractive thing about the new theory is that it removes one difficulty about Mary’s question, in that it makes her surprise centre about the greatness of her son, rather than about a hitherto unmentioned peculiarity in the manner of His birth.* Further- more, by retaining ver. 35, it procures the great advantage over the theory of Hillmann of not obliging us to attribute to a redac- tor such a marvelous genius in imitating the spirit and style of the original writing. Indeed, we are almost tempted to admit that the new theory is preferable to the old; at any rate, we gladly admit that the old has received a new wound froin the fresh arguments of Weinel, especially the literary argument from the parallelism with i. 11ff. But these arguments oppose the older interpolation theory
as much in the interests of the integrity of the whole passage as in the interests of the new theory. On the other hand, many of the arguments of Harnack, and arguments upon which the champions of the old theory were accustomed to stake their cause to no mean extent, fall to the ground if ver. 35 is retained. Furthermore, although Kattenbusch is correct in saying that ver. 35 does not require the virgin birth, yet it naturally suggests something of the kind, so that it is better in place if the clause ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω has preceded. And then one great objection to the new theory (an objection which Weinel has not altogether ignored) is the extreme cleverness of the redactor. According to the new theory the redac- tor is too clever, as according to the old theory he displayed too much literary genius. On the whole, the two theories are about equally improbable; for, after all, the really fundamental objec- tions apply to both alike, while the peculiar difficulties are about equally divided. In Matthew, Hillmann supposes the first two chapters to have been no part of the original Gospel, while Hilgenfeld regards i. 18-ii. 23 as an interpolation. It is argued that the ἐν ταύταις ταῖς ἡμέραις of iii. 1 would not be natural if the third chapter was originally joined to what now goes before. According to Hillmann, probably some chronological note similar to that in Luke iii. 1 was left off by the redactor who added chaps. i, ii; for the redactor was so far from the time described that he would take no offense at applying the phrase ἐν ταύταις ταῖς ἡμέραις to what really happened after an interval of thirty years. But this is a mere supposition. Perhaps the author of the Gospel would himself have been looking back over a long enough interval not to have objected to the phrase, espe- cially in view of the loose way in which the incidents are coupled all through the Gospel. Nowhere is the chronological succession very clear. Hilgenfeld supposes that the ἐν ταύταις ταῖς ἡμέραις refers to the close of the genealogy, for it would be perfectly natural to mean by the phrase merely “in the time of Jesus,” if it is taken in connection with the many generations indicated in i. 1-16. But this seems rather unlikely, for the genealogy is the expression of one idea, and has no chronological purpose. It would, therefore, be very un- natural to separate i. 16 from the rest by applying to it the phrase ἐν ταύταις τ. ἡμ. That phrase requires that something in the nature of narrative should have gone before, and this requirement is not satis- fied by the genealogy. Meyer argues further that iv. 13 manifestly refers to ii. 23.
As to the content of the section, Hilgenfeld* enumerates as marks of the redactor (1) the Old Testament pragmatism, (2) the friendly attitude toward the heathen, (3) the view of Christ as born Son of God. But the Old Testament pragmatism is rather a mark 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 (Gen- tiles) is essentially true, for in the mere form of the story there is no evidence of a desire to magnify the Gentiles at the expense of the Jews. And it is not at all self-evident that the author of the rest of the Gospel should not himself have felt the contrast between the acceptance of the gospel by the Gentiles and its rejection by the Jews. Finally, why may not the idea that Christ was born Son of God have been the view of the author of the Gospel? Some one—i.e., the redactor at least—held to both the Davidic sonship and the virgin birth. Why may not the author have done so? One piece of supposed external evidence must be mentioned, even though we consider it to be of little value. Conybearet and Hilgen- feld attribute considerable weight to a Syriac tract, extant in a sixth-century manuscript (British Museum, Add. 17,142), and pub- lished, with a translation, by Wright in the Journal of Sacred Litera- ture, 1866, Vols. IX and X. The tract is attributed to Eusebius and purports to be an account of the Star and the Magi, the history having been written down in 119 A.D. According to Conybeare, “the Syriac author of this tract . . . had in his hands a pre- canonical Greek source of 119 or 120,” to which belonged the colo- phon that gives the date. Conybeare’s conclusion is that the date 119 or 120 is the terminus a quo of the introduction of Matt. ii. 1-15 into the canonical text. The document is interesting, but the con- clusions drawn from it seem to be best described as “problematical” —a word which J. Weiss aptly applies to Conybeare’s Ephraem passage about Luke. And in view of the undisputed unity of style and diction between i. 18-ii. 23 and the rest of the Gospel—a unity far too perfect to be explained as due merely to a common redactor —we may safely agree finally with J. Weiss when he declares that there never were forms of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke without the infancy narratives.‡ As to the sources of the infancy section in Matthew, nothing very definite can be said. It is mere speculation, for example, when
Sclımiedel makes i. 18-25 an addition later than chap. ii. Indeed, for all we can see, the two chapters might go back to the same source, for the failure to mention the place Bethlehem in i. 18 instead of in ii. 1 proves very little;* but, after all, the theory of merely oral sources can never be disproved. The ultimate home of the sources is far more likely to have been Palestinian than Gentile, for the section shows acquaintance with Jewish customs, and with the Hebrew text of the Old Testament; and perhaps is combatting Jewish slanders.† The story of the Magi does not oppose this view of the matter, for the Gentile coloring, so far as it exists, might be due to the Gentile subject;‡ and perhaps it is even a positive evi- dence for the Jewish character of the narrative, for it may represent the Jewish Messianic conception of a gathering of the heathen for worship to Mount Sion. If Matthew’s Gospel is in general destined for Jews, then it is not necessary to suppose that i. 18-ii. 23 is a foreign element; or rather it is not necessary to do so until we have proved that the idea of the supernatural birth could not possibly have arisen on Jewish ground.§ As to the genealogy of Matthew, the attempt of Charles‖ to prove that it is a later addition to the Gospel (about A.D. 170) is interesting only in showing how more usual critical theories can be reversed. Conybeare†† has shown 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 Badham has argued with some weight against separating i. 1-17 and i. 18-ii at all. At any rate, there can be no doubt whatever that the genealogy was part of the original Gospel, or, to sum up our results, that the whole of chaps. i, ii, is genuine. The discovery of Syrsin in 1892 has made Matt. i. 16, from a textual point of view, one of the most extensively discussed verses in the New Testament, and has acted as a lively stimulus to the investigation of the genealogies in general. The bewildering mazes of the textual question** must here, for obvious reasons, remain
unexplored; nor do we need to explore them for our purpose. For after the first shock of discovery has passed away, the general con- sensus of scholarship seems to be leaning to the opinion that the readings of the new manuscript do not tell us as much as was at first supposed. As has been remarked, the reading at i. 16 merely intensi- fies difficulties already present; at any rate, it cannot prove that i. 18ff. was not a part of the original Gospel. Either one of two lines of solution seems to me to be possible. In the first place, we may say with J. Weiss* that the original form of the genealogy was “Joseph begat Jesus,” though this was, of course, never the reading in the Gospel; the problem then being how to account for the variants after the change had once been made. This problem J. Weiss dis- misses as insoluble. Wilkinson,† in one of the most convincing papers which I have seen upon the subject, attempts something of a solution. He decides (and correctly) that our present Greek text is the original text of the Gospel. For the narrator of i. 18ff. had two motives: (1) to assert the miraculous conception, (2) to assert that the birth took place while Mary was Joseph’s wife. The latter was the narrator’s way of effecting a “compromise”[?] between the virgin birth and the Davidic Messiahship. Now i. 16 in our critical text is in exact accord with this purpose, as the reading of Syrsin is not, while Conybeare’s reading from the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila is manifestly conflate. The other readings, Wilkinson con- tinues, were due to two causes: correction due to dogmatic sensi- tiveness, and corruption from the original sources (i.e., from the reading of the original genealogy, “Joseph begat Jesus”). There are many attractive features about such a construction of the history of the variations, but I am not quite convinced that “Joseph begat Jesus” was the reading of the original genealogy—if there was a genealogy of this peculiar type—before the author of the Gospel made use of it. For, in the first place, the compiler who inserted the names of women throughout the genealogy would have been likely to mention the mother of Jesus; indeed, it is not impossible that he inserted the women expressly in view of the fact that there was something remarkable about Mary—i.e., the virgin birth.‡ We must simply refrain from trying to make a decision. In the case of Luke, perhaps there was an original genealogy
which made Joseph the father of Jesus without indication of any- thing peculiar in the relationship. At any rate, the ὡς ἐνομίζετο was added at least as early as the reception of the genealogy into the Gospel, and probably earlier. Indeed, I think we should not be too certain that the words of ver. 23 were ever without the ὡς ἐνομίζετο, for it is not even so evident as is sometimes supposed that no one would have gone to work to compile a genealogy who was expecting to remove (apparently, at least) the very point of it by these words. For, to emphasize what we have mentioned many times, we know that there were some who were interested to prove both Davidic descent and virgin birth. Why may not the compiler of the gene- alogy have been one of these? And suppose the genealogy was not first compiled at all in order to show the Davidic descent of Jesus, but was a long-prized family record which was continued from the generation to generation. If it was to be continued at all after Joseph, it could be continued only in the form in which we now have it—that is, in case the virgin birth was a fact. So there would be no question of going to work to construct a genealogy of Jesus; the genealogy already existed as a genealogy of Joseph. It must be remembered that our discussion of divisive theories about the infancy narratives, long and tedious as it has been, is merely a means to an end. The great problem for those who deny the historicity of the birth stories is to show how the idea of the virgin birth could have arisen in such a way and at such a time and in such a place as to find a lodgment in those stories. This problem would be much simplified if certain things about the character and date of the account of the virgin birth could be established by clear internal evidence. Now the result of our examination of the sup- posed internal evidence, we believe, has been to show that the propositions—which we enumerated as the four logical motives for divisive theories—have not been established. In the first place, the infancy narratives are not interpolations in the Gospels; so all the evidence for the early date of the Gospels is also evidence for the early date of the infancy narratives. In the second place, those portions of the infancy narratives which tell of the virgin birth cannot so be separated from the rest as to allow us to suppose that the Davidic descent could not in the early days be maintained by the same writer that also believed in the virgin birth. So if the other New Testament writers emphasize the Davidic descent, it is no proof that they did not also believe in the virgin birth. In the third place, one of the narratives of the virgin birth— that of Luke—is pronouncedly Jewish-Christian and even Pales-
tinian in origin; while the narrative of Matthew also bears marks of Jewish-Christian origin, and at any rate is contained in a Gospel probably destined for Jews. Finally, since the account of the virgin birth is part of the fundamental structure of both narratives, and since the narratives are inanifestly independent of each other, it follows that our two testimonies to the virgin birth cannot be reduced to one. The narratives being of such a character, the prob- lem now is to show how the virgin birth, unless it were a fact, ever could have found a place in them. We must not merely show how the idea of the virgin birth might have been developed during the first century; we inust further show and this is often neglected— how this idea was ever taken up by just those narratives in which we now find it.* Since the narratives of the virgin birth are Jewish in character, it is most natural to suppose that the basis of the idea is to be found on Jewish-Christian ground.† Within the limits of Judaisın itself, two starting-points have been suggested for the development of the idea of the virgin birth. In the first place, certain great heroes of old—such as Isaac—being born by a peculiar exercise of the power of God, were regarded as begotten not κατά σάρκα, but κατὰ πνεῦμα (cf. Gal. iv. 29); and Luke even gives an account of such a birth in the case of John the Baptist. So since Jesus was considered greater than these spiritual children, it was only a short step to exclude the human factor altogether by making the Holy Spirit, in this case, not only an important factor, but the sole factor in His conception in His mother’s womb (cf. the case of John, Luke i. 15). Not only was this “greater than the prophets” to be filled with the Spirit “from his mother’s womb,” but the Holy Spirit was to be the very con- stituting element of His personality. To this short step in advance the virgin prophecy of Isa. vii. 14 would afford the necessary impetus. Of course, as Beyschlag says, all this is merely the formal factor of the representation of the virgin birth; the material factor was the belief in Jesus Christ as a new beginning in humanity, as the one who caine down from above. The course of development has been fully described by Lobstein:‡ The disciples began with a profound impression of the uniqueness of Jesus’ personality. This impression they interpreted at first along merely Jewish lines—they interpreted the title “Son of God” as applied to Jesus inerely in a
Messianic or theocratic sense. But as Christian thought began to seek for the underlying causes of what it had at first accepted with- out deep reflection, the simple explanation of the unique personality of Christ as rooted in His Messiahship was no longer able to suffice. Thus arose the Pauline doctrine of preëxistence, and finally, under the influence of Alexandrian philosophy, the more highly developed Logos Christology of the fourth Gospel. To the theocratic sonship was added the metaphysical sonship. But parallel with this theo- logical development, or preceding it, a more popular development had been going on. To the popular mind—assisted by the stories of spiritual children such as Isaac, and by the prophecy of Isa. vii. 14—the inost natural explanation of the unique personality of Christ was that He was not born like other men, but begotten di- rectly by God. So we have not only the theocratic and the meta- physical sonship, but also (inferior to the latter) the physical sonship. Such a theory has an advantage over some that we shall presently consider, in that it does not call in elements which could not possibly have been included in Jewish-Christian narratives. Even here, however, we might with some reason object that the stage of mythi- cal development required by Lobstein’s theory is too advanced to be represented in a narrative reflecting so purely as that of Luke the spirit of the Old Testament and of Palestinian thought. But we waive this point, in order to emphasize even more serious objections. In the first place, Harnack is basing his theory upon a very unsteady foundation when he makes the passage Isa. vii. 14 not only a neces- sary element in the development, but apparently the only deter- mining cause for the peculiar form which the myth has assumed.* For the word used in the Hebrewהעלמה would give no impulse whatever to the idea of a virgin birth; while there is no evidence that the Septuagint translation (παρθένος) had ever as a matter of fact given rise to the inference that the Messiah was to be born of a virgin—certainly not within the limits of pure Judaism.† In general, modern criticism has learned to be much more skeptical than formerly about the omnipotence of Old Testament prophecy in creating stories simply in order to fit the predictions. There must be something to support before Old Testament prophecy can
be dragged in to support it, even though the form of the prophecy may have some effect in altering details. * Nor is it true that par- thenogenesis was “in the air” at the time of Christ. It is not true that, as has been said, “To the narrator the miracle is simply a more impressive instance of what God wrought in the case of Elisabeth, Rebekah and Sarah, without affecting the paternity of John the Baptist, Jacob or Isaac."† It is not true that Jewish-Christians, on account of the examples of Isaac, Samson and Samuel, etc., would already be expecting something like a virgin birth, so that the Septuagint translation of Isaiah, even though not very convincing, would still be able to supply a strong enough impulse to lead to the definite formulation of the doctrine as we find it in Matt. i. and Luke i. For the step from a birth by promise, such as that of Isaac, to a birth without human father, such as that of Jesus, is by no means an “easy step,” as is often asserted, but involves practically the whole of the mystery. The conception by means of an extraordinary power given to men is quite in accord with the workings of God in Providence—though it may exceed them in degree—whereas it is just the exclusion of the human agency that gives the miracle of the virgin birth that peculiar character which is so difficult to explain. Such cases as Isaac and Samson do not really go very far in explain- ing the origin of the unique idea as reflected in the narratives of Matthew and Luke. To bridge the gap is especially hard upon Jewish ground. For, in the first place, the noun רום is feminine, so that it is hard to see how the idea could among Jews ever have found expression in just the form in which it appears in both our narratives (begotten “of the Holy Spirit”). Of course, it may be said that we should not take the phrase “Holy Spirit” as personal here, but merely as expressing the general idea of the power of God (cf. Luke’s conjunction of πνεῦμα and δύναμις). Still the form of statement would naturally have been different—e.g., ἐκ τοῦ λόγου σου, a phrase which actually occurs in this connection in early Christian literature. That the representation of the present narratives of Luke and Matthew would hardly have originated on Jewish ground is shown by the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which made the Holy Spirit the mother of Jesus. Furthermore, attention has often been called to the fact that the idea of the direct action of God in the way described in Matthew and Luke is not at all in harmony with the strict Jewish monotheism of that day, with its sharp sepa-
ration of the Divine Being from the world of sense.* In order to avoid these difficulties, or rather in order to demonstrate the existence of a force capable of overcoming them, recourse has been had to that peculiar development of Judaism, the sect of the Essenes, or to the ascetic tendency prevalent in the Christian Church and observable in ascending degree in Paul and in the writer of the Apocalypse (so Hilgenfeld). But aside from all questions as to the date of our narratives, and as to the possible influence of the Essenes upon the writers of the narratives if those writers were ordinary Jews, this theory of an ascetic impulse to the doctrine of the virgin birth receives its deathblow from the entire absence of an ascetic tendency in the birth narratives themselves. (Cf. the ex- pressions “father and mother” and “parents” in Luke.) In gen- eral, it may be mentioned as a remarkable fact—if the origin of the myth was Jewish—that it was just from Jewish-Christians (the Ebionites) that the conspicuous denial of the virgin birth in the early Church proceeded.† It seems, therefore, reasonable to conclude that if the idea of the conception from the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin were to be received by the Jewish mind, there must have been some over- powering impulse to overcome the prepossessions of the current theology. The such impulse that has been discovered is the impulse that would have been in evidence had the virgin birth been a fact; so if we are to deny the fact, we must go farther afield for the origin of the idea. It is not at all surprising, therefore, that very many recent scholars who deny the fact of the virgin birth are obliged to admit the inadequacy of the purely Jewish-Christian explanation of the origin of the myth. The next step to take is that from primitive Jewish Christianity to Gentile Christianity, and this step was taken by Pfleiderer.‡ He sup- posed that the ideas wlrich lie at the basis of the birth narratives came specifically from the theology of Paul, and only the details front the Old Testament. The Pauline dogma of “Christ Jesus declared to be the Son of God according to the spirit of holiness” led to Luke’s poetical narrative of the virgin birth, while the accompanying dogma “born of the seed of David according to the flesh” led to the narrative of the journey to Bethlehem. Against this derivation of the birth stories from Pauline ideas might be urged, in the first place, the absence of any trace in Pauline writings
of the beginnings of such a development of dogmatic interest in the mode of Christ’s entrance into the world.* In the second place, as we have remarked in another connection, Pfleiderer’s theory necessarily attributes to the Gentile Luke an historical imagination and a dramatic power—a power of making purely imaginary cir- cumstances appear to be real—which is utterly foreign to the literary habits of those days (especially to dogmatically motived narratives), and which would be worthy of a Defoe. Pfleiderer’s theory therefore runs directly counter to what we have established as to the genuinely Jewish spirit of the narrative in the third Gospel.† Being defeated on purely Jewish and Christian ground, those who deny the fact of the virgin birth betake themselves next to Alexandria, and seek to derive the idea from that mixture of Greek philosophy and Old Testament religion which we find best exempli- fied in the writings of Philo. So Conybeare and Völter. The latter develops his theory in connection with the narrative of Luke. He begins with the observation that it is remarkable that in a Christian writing so much space should be occupied with John, who was regarded as a mere forerunner. So the first chapter embodies a tradition about John which was not Christian, but purely Jewish, and regarded John as of independent importance. The Christian compiler was not able to do away with this tradition entirely, but used it by making John subordinate to Christ. This he did simply by inserting the middle portion (vers. 26-56) of the first chapter of Luke (in which middle portion, however, some ele- ments of the original tradition can still be observed), without troub- ling the text of his Jewish source in the other portions. But this did not suffice for the second redactor, who transcended the narrow Jewish standpoint of his predecessor. So the second redactor inter- preted i. 27 as referring to Mary rather than to Joseph, put Elisa- beth’s song into the mouth of Mary, inserted i. 34, 35, and made some changes in the song of Zacharias. The second chapter was written by Redactor I of the first chapter, and was altered at ii. 5
and ii. 32 by Redactor II, who was probably identical with the redactor of the third Gospel. Both the original writer of the first chapter and Redactor I were Jews pure and simple, and wrote in Aramaic (or Hebrew). Redactor II interpreted Isa. vii. 14 accord- ing to the Septuagint and in other ways transcended the narrow Jewish standpoint, and therefore was no Palestinian Jew; but, on the other hand, he must have understood Aramaic in order to translate the writings of his predecessors, and so could not have been a mere Gentile. So he must have been a Hellenist. This conclusion is confirmed by his dogmatic position. For on account of the gender of the word רוח, and the current Jewish conception of God, the belief in the virgin birth could scarcely have arisen on Jewish ground. But influenced by the heathen notions of “chil- dren of God,” some such conception had entered into the thought of the Hellenistic Judaism of the Dispersion, as we can show from the writings of Philo. Of course, Völter’s elaborate theory of redactors is interesting only as a curious example to show how easily theories of interpola- tion may run mad. Every one of the main steps in the argument is based almost entirely upon subjective reasoning, and lacks even such show of support as is possessed by arguments such as that of Harnack for regarding i. 34, 35, as an interpolation. If we have refuted even these latter arguments, then it will hardly be worth while to mention the numberless difficulties that spring up on every hand against Völter.* One criticism only may be mentioned here as being particularly in point at the present stage of our discussion. Völter mentions two grounds for supposing that the narrator of the virgin birth in Luke was a Hellenist: (1) He transcends the narrow Jewish point of view and, for example, holds to the non- Jewish conception of the virgin birth; so he can be no Jew. This argument, at least so far as it refers to the virgin birth, we gladly allow (always supposing the virgin birth not to be a fact). (2) Не was able to translate an Aramaic document, and was therefore no mere Gentile. But was the document really written in Aramaic? And if so, had it not already been translated? These are ques- tions which need much more careful examination than Völter seems to have given them. We may safely conclude that, whether or no the original spring of the doctrine of the virgin birth was, as a matter of fact, Hellenistic Judaism, Völter’s reason- ing has not proved it. His attempt to show by literary criticism the actual course of development going on before our eyes in the
text itself has after all been a failure. If we look to Alexandria we must be led to do so by more general considerations—for exam- ple, by some striking similarity of thought between Alexandrian philosophy and our canonical birth narratives. Such an argument has been most fully developed by Conybeare.* According to Conybeare, such of the followers of Jesus as were Aramaic-speaking Jews recognized Jesus as the Messiah, while those followers who were Greek Jews and proselytes recognized in Him the Divine Logos. “But viewed as the Logos in human form, how should his birth be represented except as from a virgin?” For these followers among the Greek Jews lived in much the same intellectual atmosphere as Philo. And Philo regarded the Logos as born of Sophia, an “ever-virgin, gifted with an incontaminate and unstainable nature.” In the second place, these same Hellenist disciples “believed that many of their holiest men had been born of the Holy Spirit, when God visited from on high their mothers in their solitude.” “Thirdly, there was in that age a general belief that superhuman personages and great religious leaders were born of virgin mothers through divine agency."† “Fourthly, in Philo we have not a few indications of how those who held the belief that Jesus was the incarnate word would be likely to formulate the other belief which inevitably went therewith—namely, that he was born of a virgin.” As to the first of these points, Charles has shown how little weight can be attributed to it, for that Logos which was born of Sophia is not in Philo a personal conception. There are also insuperable ob- jections of a literary and historical character against supposing that the account of the virgin birth came into the first and third Gospels only through the conception of Christ as the Logos. Conybeare’s second point is not very clear, but seems to mean that, as he says in another place, “the Jews in the time of Christ deemed it possible for a child to be conceived of the Holy Spirit, and yet at the same time to be begotten in the ordinary way.” “The one process gave his soul or reason, which was a gift of the Divine Spirit; the other process gave him flesh, blood and the faculties of sense.” In Matthew, vers. 19, 20 of the first chapter represent a too literal in-
terpretation of such a philosophy. Afterward, Conybeare, corrected by Badham, seems to substitute for this argument the more positive one that an actual virgin birth is to be found spoken of in Philo, so that the writer in Matthew did not even have to renmove the idea to a lower sphere. Conybeare’s really important argument is under his fourth head. Here he brings forward Philo’s treatment of Sarah, Rebeka, Leah, Zipporah. E.g., Philo says—to quote Cony- beare’s reproduction of his words—“Moses having taken his wife findeth her with child of nothing mortal (= of the Divine Spirit).” Conybeare maintains at any rate at first—that Philo’s own idea of the marriage of virgin souls with God was wholly mystical and allegorical, but that he issued a warning against those who degraded his allegory “into the gross and fleshly meaning which it has as- sumed in Matt. i. 19.” If this interpretation of Philo is right, then we have not found any direct parallel for Matthew. For there seems to be no evidence from the mere fact that he “warns the supersti- tious from the mystery he is propounding” that he is referring to those who held to a view like that of Matthew. And when Badham maintains that the correspondence between Philo’s examples (Sarah, Zipporah, etc.) and Matthew’s narrative is still closer than Cony- beare at first believed, it is perhaps due to Badham’s impossible exegesis of Matthew’s account.* Furthermore, against the whole argument may be opposed the great gulf fixed between the strict Palestinian Judaism and the Judaism of Alexandria†—a gulf which Conybeare has not really succeeded in bridging over. Again, we ought to consider the oppo- sition of the whole spirit of the New Testament accounts to the speculations of Philo. It is impossible to see how the two things can have sprung up out of the same intellectual atmosphere, for the difference seems almost infinite; and Conybeare does not help his position by pointing out Alexandrian elements, like the concep- tion through the ear and by rays of light, which later affected the form of the Christian narrative. The remarkable fact is that those elements do not appear in our canonical narratives, as we should expect they would if the Christian idea of the virgin birth arose out of Hellenistic ground. The sobriety of the canonical narratives, the absence of grotesque details, is a strong proof of their independ- ence of Alexandrian speculations. If Luke i. 34, 35, is, as we think we have proved, no interpolation, so that Luke’s narrative as well as that of Matthew comprises the virgin birth, then the argu-
ment which we have just derived from the general spirit of our New Testament account becomes absolutely invincible. For Luke’s narrative, at least, whatever may be said of Matthew, represents about as perfect an antithesis to Philo as could possibly be imagined. The insufficiency of theories which would derive the idea of the virgin birth from Judaism is strikingly attested by the fact that so imany recent critics feel obliged to have recourse to the heathen world.* But just at this point we must register a decided protest. In the first place, as Harnack has stoutly maintained against Usener, we cannot lightly break through the barrier that separates the early Church from the heathen world. “Over against all this [i.e., the connections which Usener finds between heathen customs, etc., and Christian traditions],” says Harnack, “I remind the reader of the fact that the oldest Christianity strictly refrained from everything polytheistic and heathen, and that therefore every hypothesis that will explain from heathendom a piece of the original Church tradi- tion is subject to the greatest difficulties, and demands the most careful examination. The unreasonable method of collecting from the mythology of all peoples parallels for original Church traditions, whether historical reports or legends, is valueless."† In another connection Harnack is even more explicit: “The Greek or Oriental mythology I should leave entirely out of account; for there is no occasion to suppose that the Gentile congregations in the time up to the middle of the second century adopted, in despite of their fixed principle, popular mythical representations.” In the second place, if it is thus unlikely that heathen elements could up to 150 have been received even into the Gentile Church, it is even more unlikely that they could have been received into strongly Jewish Christian narratives, such as we have proved our canonical infancy narratives to be. It is therefore evident that every theory of the virgin birth which calls in heathen elements is absolutely dependent upon the doubtful view that Luke i. 34, 35 (or the essential part of those verses) is an interpolation.‡ And even if that should be granted, the weighty objection of Harnack must still be reckoned with. It is therefore not altogether unreasonable to say that when we consent to entertain any suggestion as to the heathen origin of elements in the myth of the virgin birth, we do so merely for the sake of the argument. However, since Harnack’s view of the course of early Christian history and our view of the integrity of
Matthew and Luke have both been questioned (though, we think, altogether without good cause in the latter case), it will be well to examine as fairly as possible the supposed points of contact between heathen mythology and our birth narratives. Are these points of contact so evident and so important as to break down the objections that we have mentioned against any historical connection between the two fields of thought? It will be well to outline briefly one or two of the main theories of developinent, in order that we may the better judge of the likeli- hood that in the matter of the virgin birth heathen ideas had their place. One of the most thorough-going representations is that of Usener.* Usener supposes that when Jesus came to be regarded as the Messiah, it followed by logical necessity that all the Old Testa- ment attributes of the Messiah should be applied to Him. In the first place, He had to be descended from David—hence the gene- alogies. In the second place, he had to be born in the city of David, Bethlehem (Micah v. 1. Cf. John vii. 40, Matt. ii. 6)—hence the infancy narratives transplant the parents thither, more or less at the risk of running counter to the firmly fixed Nazareth tradition. In the third place, Jesus, as the Messiah, and hence the chosen one of God, had to be brought into closer relations with God—hence the narrative of the great event at the baptism. This narrative appears in two forms: in Matthew, Jesus merely receives divine attestation; in Luke, He is divinely generated. (Usener retains the words, “This day have I begotten thee.”) But as time went on, it was felt to be impossible to postpone this consecration or adoption to the thirtieth year. Rather He “must have been God’s chosen instrument from his very birth.” Hence the story of the nativity. This story appears in two forms, each carrying back one of the two forms of the baptism narrative. In Luke we have divine attesta- tion (Usener regards i. 34, 35, as a later addition); in Matthew we have divine begetting. But we have also in Matthew something entirely new, the virgin birth. “Here we unquestionably enter the circle of paganideas,” for “the idea is quite foreign to Judaism.’† “The embroidery comes from the same source as the warp and woof,” for the star is paralleled by the heathen ideas of the stars
that appeared at the birth of heroes, while the story of the Magi perhaps originated “in the journey of homage made by the Parthian king Tiridates to Nero in Rome.” Perhaps, also, Herod is a picture of Nero. Soltau* gives the following account. If Jesus was to be the Mes- siah, the first conclusion would be that his real home must have been Bethlehem. Hence the original form of the special history of Jesus’ childhood is given in Luke ii. 1-7, 21-40, where Joseph always appears as the father of Jesus, but where the place of birth is changed froın Nazareth to Bethlehem. In Matthew we have “a further-developed Jewish-Christian version of the story,” to the effect that Bethlehem was the real native place of Jesus, so that the difficulty is not to explain why His parents journeyed from Nazareth to Bethlehem, but why they journeyed from Bethlehem to Nazareth. Then this Jewish-Christian tradition was altered by three additions: (1) the generation of Jesus through the Holy Spirit (in Luke, and in Matthew in a different form from that in Luke), (2) the angels' song of praise (Luke), (3) the journey of the Magi (Matthew). These three ideas were probably of purely heathen origin, though the form they have taken may have been due to Jewish-Christians. The angels’ song of praise is the adaptation of rejoicings at the birth of Augustus, who was hailed as the saviour of the whole human race. In the story of the Magi, perhaps the presentation of gifts may be traced back to the Old Testament. The other details are all based on heathen mythology—the star, upon the stars seen at the birth of great men; the journey of the Magi, upon the journey of the Parthian king Tiridates to pay homage to Nero. The Christians transferred spontaneously to their Prince of Peace the homage paid “to the earthly prince of peace, Augustus”; to their Messiah, the act of adoration paid to the Antichrist Nero. The story of the virgin birth may be viewed in three aspects: (1) “As regards form, the whole narrative is simply a deliberate recast of the older Jewish fable about Simon and John.” (2) “As regards matter, on the other hand, it is to be explained as a transformation of Biblical con- ceptions due to misconception.” In Paul and John we have the dual- istic theory that Christ is not only born of the seed of David but also Son of God. When this dualism, “having been translated into popu- lar language, penetrated to the lower classes of the people, it was almost bound to lead to the view becoming common among Chris- tians untrained in philosophy that Christ, in calling God His
Father, did not merely call Him so in the sense in which all are children of God, but that he was even bodily of higher derivation, of divine origin.” (3) “At the same time, those elements drawn from heathen mythology can be detected, which promoted the trans- formation of Christian ideas and the development of a wrong con- ception.” Especially Augustus himself was said to bave been begotten of a serpent (representing Apollo). So all the three inser- tions into the original story—song of praise, virgin birth and journey of the Magi—“referred to what had been handed down and proclaimed in honour of the Roman Emperor, especially of Augustus, to the true Saviour of the world.” Usener and Soltau have thus made two attempts to trace more or less definitely the actual course of development through which our present narratives have been produced; but in this attempt, at any rate, they can hardly be said to have attained success. For they have been obliged to rely upon hypotheses to support hypothe- ses. To take merely one example, Usener can establish his parallelism between the two separate forms of the baptism story (divine attestation and divine generation) and the two forms of the birth narrative (Luke and Matthew) only by choosing a doubtful reading in Luke’s account of the baptism in order to differentiate that account from Matthew, and by removing i. 34, 35, from Luke’s account of the infancy so that it suits that representation.* Of course, these are merely details; but one problem for those who would see in our narratives the outcome of a course of mythical or legendary development is to show how that outcome came to be represented in just the way it is expressed in Matthew and Luke. Therefore, we have accomplished something when we have recog– nized that it is not possible to see the details of the course of devel- opment actually crystallized in our narratives. Perhaps, however, we can yet discern the main outlines of such a course of development. In such a more cautious way the matter is discussed by Holtzmann.† He despises none of the supposed starting-points which have been suggested by various writers for the idea of the virgin birth. He even begins with ascetic tendencies in Judaism (e.g., among the Essenes), and then uses all the other arguments for the Jewish origin of the idea, as well as for the origin
from the dogmas of the Pauline theology. But, he continues, the idea could never on Jewish ground have ripened into its present form; for on Jewish ground the abstract-transcendent notion of God and the Jewish doctrine of the Spirit stood effectually in the way. But when the report of the “Son of God” was spread abroad in the Gentile world,* it found an atmosphere friendly in the highest degree to the development of such a story as we have in Matthew and Luke. For in the heathen world there were many “children of God,” as Justin insists. Among them may be mentioned Hermes, Esculapius, Dionysius, Hercules, etc., as well as Pythagoras, Plato, Alexander, Augustus.† These heathen representations “of the coming of the great from above needed only to strip off their coarsely sensuous forms in order to be transferred to the world-conquering Son of God from the East.” We answer that, after all, at least in the case of the mythological examples like Hercules, etc., when you have stripped off the coarsely sensuous form of the heathen representations you have changed their very essence. It is perfectly natural that the Greek gods should beget children, because they are simply enlarged men. It could not be said that the birth of demigods was regarded as a miracle; it was in the same sphere as an ordinary human birth. But there can be little doubt that in Matthew and Luke we have the narration of a miracle—and a miracle because the Hebrew notion of God is not lowered in the slightest degree. In the case of such heroes as Augustus and Alexander this objection is not quite so strong, because there it is hard to see how the human father could be definitely excluded. After all, however, the same merely anthropomorphic view of God prevails there too; so that the comparison with Matthew and Luke seems almost grotesque. At any rate, the parallel is certainly not so close as to overcome the grave objections which we mentioned against any theory of heathen influence. We have thus far examined the theories that account for the origin of the idea of the virgin birth by means of Jewish, of Hel- lenistic, and of heathen elements. One possibility remains, namely, that the idea is Jewish, but that the Jews themselves received it from heathen nations. Such is the theory advocated recently by Cheyne.‡ Cheyne supposes that by means of his Babylonian, Egyptian and Persian parallels (cf. Rev. xii), lhe can show that “the
passage in the prelude to the first gospel is a Jewish Christian trans- formation of a primitive story, derived ultiınately, in all probability, from Babylonia, and analogous to the Jewish transformation of the Babylonian cosmogony in the opening section of Genesis.” Rev. xii is derived ultimately from the same sources, and in Matthew we have certain parallels with that chapter (e.g., Herod=the dragon; the flight to Egypt=the flight into the desert). Into Cheyne’s learned discussions of Dusares, Tammuz, etc., we cannot now enter; but we can point out one general line of criticism. Cheyne appar- ently admits that by a study of the undoubtedly and narrowly Jewish writings approximately of the time of Christ, we can find no suffi- cient basis for the idea of the virgin birth. But there is a basis, says Cheyne, for that idea in the mythology of other Eastern peoples, and we know that the Old Testament has, as a matter of fact, been in various ways influenced by those mythologies. Therefore, con- cludes Cheyne, the influence inay well have extended to the present case. But is not that argument rather indirect and unconvincing? Cheyne would probably not maintain that absolutely everything in the Babylonian mythology had an influence on Hebrew thought; for he recognizes the fact that the Hebrews gave a new meaning even to that which they did actually accept. So how can we be at all sure that the Babylonian παρθένος idea in particular had such an influ- ence? We find no such proof of this idea in the Old Testament, as we find even of the other Babylonian ideas which Cheyne thinks were imported into Israel. It is therefore a rather doubtful pro- ceeding to determine the content of Judaism by writings not of the Jews but of other nations.* Of course, if we do not share Cheyne’s confidence that Babylonian ideas were in general easily carried into Hebrew thought, we shall be still less likely to accept his theory in the present case. In concluding our discussion of mythical theories of the virgin birth, we call attention to the fact that such theories have by no means attained their end when they have shown that there was a logical motive leading the early Christians to look for something miraculous about Jesus’ entrance into the world. If Jesus’ was believed to be divine, then we freely admit that it was perfectly natural to conclude that He came into the world by a miracle. Furthermore, the conclusion is just as natural to-day as it was in A.D. 100, and it always will be natural, as long as sound reasoning
continues. So—to borrow the thought of a recent writer*—the heathen myths that we have been considering, so far from involving in suspicion anything at all similar to them, even illustrate a truth necessary to our argument. If Alexander was divine, then probably his birth was marvelous. The argument is sound, but the premise is false. If Jesus was divine, then probably His birth was marvelous. Here, too, the argument is sound, the only question being whether in this case the premise is true. Lobstein is correct in supposing that there might well have been a natural impulse in the early Church to invest Jesus’ birth with the miraculous. But neither he nor any one else has shown how that impulse could have mani- fested itself in just the particular form in which it is now crystal- lized, unless in dependence upon fact. If Jesus was really divine, then we can say that probably there was something miraculous about His birth. Starting from that position, the most probable conclusion is that the canonical infancy narratives correctly inforın us as to what that “something” was. For, otherwise, it is hard to see how they could have been evolved. It is time to sum up our result. We examined, first, the hypothesis that the New Testament narratives of the birth of Jesus are to be explained as based upon facts. We showed that the narratives have very early attestation, and themselves give clear evidence that they are not pure inventions, but are based upon earlier sources. We then showed that the events narrated are not impossible unless all miracles are impossible; and that the supposed contradictions with the rest of the New Testament, and within the limits of the narratives themselves, have not been firmly established. We then examined the alternative hypothesis that the narratives are to be explained in other ways than as based upon facts. We showed that such an explanation cannot be assisted by any con- vincing independent proof that the narratives are composite in character; and that many theories about the origin of the idea of the virgin birth depend almost necessarily upon such unfounded interpolation theories. Finally we passed in review the various attempts to explain the origin of the account in Matt. i. 18ff., and Luke i. 34, 35, and found that the Jewish explanations fail on psychological grounds, whereas the heathen explanations must in addition face the gravest literary difficulties. So we have found that there are grave objections both to the historical and to the mythical explanations of our narratives. What decision ought we to make? To this question we believe that
there is but one just answer, namely that on the basis of a narrowly historical and critical examination of this one account, we can make no decision at all. The decision depends upon our point of view with regard to the miraculous in general. If, after an examination of all the other evidence, we are convinced that no miracle has occurred, then the New Testament account of the birth of Jesus can produce no sufficient reason for altering our opinion; but, if we believe that Jesus rose from the dead, then we shall avoid the greater difficulties if we accept the miracles in the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke. For there are two almost insurmountable difficulties connected with the mythical theory. In the first place, it is hard to see how the idea of the virgin birth arose unless based upon fact, and in the second place it is hard to see how the narra- tives could have attained such an appearance of trustworthiness unless substantially historical. The virgin birth is not one of the evidences of Christianity like the resurrection; but neither is it a stumbling-block. If Christ rose from the dead, then there is no t reason to doubt that He was born of a virgin. Such, in brief, is the result of our examination. Ultimately, the decision lies in a field even more remote—namely, in the field of ethics. If we be- lieve that there is nothing worse than imperfection in the world, then we shall be content with the ethical Christ of Lobstein or Harnack; but if we believe that there is such a thing as guilt, then we shall be predisposed to accept the miraculous Christ, who, among other things, was “conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.” Princeton. J. GRESHAM MACHEN.
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