The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Historical Evidence for the Virgin Birth by Vincent Taylor

Dr. Orr (The Virgin Birth of Christ, 1907, 3rd ed., 1914) says that in every Pauline reference to the origin of Christ there is “some peculiarity of expression” (pp. 117 ff., 196). He instances γενόμενος in Gal. iv. 4, Rom. i. 3, Phil. ii. 7, and speaks of γεννητός as the word properly denoting “born”. But St. Paul never uses γεννητός, and Mt. xi. 11 and Lk. vii. 28 are the only instances in the NT. Moreover, the papyri show that γίνομαι and γενόμενος were in common use in the sense of “to come into being”, “be born” (cf. Moulton and Milligan, VGT., 1915, p. 126 a). Canon Box also speaks of St. Paul's use of “the out-of-the-way γενόμενον” (The Virgin Birth of Jesus, 1916). “This would harmonise”, he says, “with the feeling that there was something extraordinary and supernatural about the birth, which led to its being spoken of in unusual terms” (p. 149 n.). Not to speak of the papyri, what would these writers make of Jn. viii. 58, “Before Abraham was (πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι) I am”? Was there “something extraordinary” in Abraham's birth too? For a view similar to that of Orr and Box see Sweet, The Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ, p. 237 f.

Compare verse 12, “as through one man”, with verse 15, “the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ”. Cf. also Rom. ix. 5 (and 1 Tim. ii. 5).

Cf. H. R. Mackintosh, The Person of Jesus Christ, p. 69: “... the passage [1 Cor. xv. 44-9] is throughout concerned not in the least with the pre-existent but with the exalted Christ. It was only in virtue of resurrection that He became the archetype and head of a new race.” Mackintosh says that the Virgin Birth is “not present” in Gal. iv. 4, “not even hinted at” (p. 528).

“The flesh of Christ is ‘like’ ours inasmuch as it is flesh; ‘like’, and only ‘like’, because it is not sinful: ostendit nos quidem habere carnem peccati, Filium vero Dei similitudinem habuisse carnis peccati, non carnem peccati (Orig.-lat.)” (SH., ICC., Rom., p. 193).

For these and other details see Moffatt, INT., pp. 194-206; also Harnack, The Sayings of Jesus, pp. 229-52.

Cf. Mt. xi. 2 f. = Lk. vii. 18 f.

Cf. Mackintosh, Person of Jesus Christ, p. 528.

Mr. Thompson thinks that in Q “we are dealing with an age that has not yet begun to think of the Virgin Birth” (ib., p. 140). This may be true, but it is not a legitimate inference to draw from Q alone.

Cf. Plummer, ICC., St. Lk., p. 125.

Mt. xiii. 55: “Is not this the carpenter's son?...” Lk. iv. 22: “Is not this Joseph's son?”

So Wendland and Bacon (Moffatt, INT., p. 227 f.); Stanton, GHD., ii. 142. Mt. xiii. 55 reads: “Is not this the carpenter's son?”, and Lk. iv. 22: “Is not this Joseph's son?” The argument is that it is very difficult to think that the later Evangelists can have read what is now Mk. vi. 3 in the Markan Source.

“Mt. has substituted ‘the Son of the Carpenter’ for ‘the Carpenter’ from a feeling that the latter was hardly a phrase of due reverence” (Allen, op. cit., p. 155).

Both Schmiedel (EB., 2954 f.) and Usener (EB., 3345) hold that the incident excludes the Virgin Birth. In reference to the words of Jesus, J. M. Thompson says: “The force of His aphorism about spiritual kinship depends on the reality of the human kinship which He at once acknowledges and rejects” (op. cit., p. 137).

So Schmiedel (op. cit., col. 2955). Thompson thinks that the story of Mk. vi. 1-6 “could not possibly have been told as it has been, if the narrator had known anything about the Virgin Birth” (op. cit., p. 138).

Cf. Allen, ICC., St. Mt., p. xxiv (c) (i), where fifty examples of this tendency are given.

“The speeches in the earlier part may represent not untrustworthily the primitive Jewish-Christian preaching of the period” (Moffatt, INT., p. 305). Cf. Mackintosh, op. cit., p. 39.

Mackintosh, ib., p. 40 f. “What absorbs the preacher is Jesus' deliverance from the grave and entry into glory”, p. 41.

Mackintosh, ib., p. 41.

For the opposite view see Thompson, op. cit., p. 142.

It is true different verbs and tenses are used of the children and of the Son. The tense of μετέσχεν is explained by the fact that the Son assumed flesh and blood at a definite time now past. The change of verb—so far as it is not explained on stylistic grounds—is due to the fact that κεκοινώνηκεν (of the children) expresses the universal fact of human frailty which men share one with another, and μετέσχεν the individual entering upon this state. The latter word does not imply a participation of a peculiar and distinct kind.

“In point of time, the Epistle to the Hebrews is the first systematic sketch of Christian theology” (Mackintosh, Person of Jesus Christ, p. 78). “It is not so much an epistle as an elaborate treatise” (Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology, p. 320).

“Few would say, with Westcott, that virgin-birth is implied though not explicitly asserted in Jn. i. 14....” (Mackintosh, ib., p. 528).

The view that i. 13 should be read “Who was born, &c.”, is that of Resch, Blass, and Th. Zahn. The reading appears in Tertullian, Irenaeus, Justin, but the weight of textual authority is against it. Nor is the reading, as representing what the Evangelist wrote, intrinsically probable. It would rule out the maternity of Mary as well as the paternity of Joseph. The birth would not only be not “of the will of man”; it would not even be “of blood”. There would be nothing human about it; from first to last it would be “of God”. In short, the reading leads directly to that docetic view of the Person of Christ, against which the Johannine Writings so earnestly contend. The same objection may be urged against the view that, in the accepted text of Jn. i. 13, the Virgin Birth is present to the writer's mind “as a kind of pattern or model of the birth of the children of God” (W. C. Allen, Interpreter, Oct., 1905. Cf. Orr, op. cit., p. 111 f.; Box, op. cit., p. 145). Would not the Fourth Evangelist have regarded such a comparison as almost a denial that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh? Harnack has recently contended for the singular and for a reference to the Virgin Birth. He thinks that the verse was added in the margin, as a comment on i. 14, at a very early time and in the Johannine circle (Peake, Commentary on the Bible, p. 747 a).

Cf. Sanday, op. cit., pp. 71, 143-55; Moffatt, INT., pp. 533 ff.; E. F. Scott, The Fourth Gospel, Its Purpose and Theology, pp. 32 ff.; Jülicher, INT., p. 396 f.

iv. 44 (“For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country”), unless it is a gloss, probably refers to Judaea, not Galilee. Cf. Moffatt, INT., p. 553. Mr. Thompson argues that it refers to Galilee (op. cit., p. 158).

“In order to explain his silence, we must remember his strict exclusion of all that might imply a passivity in the divine Logos. It was by His own free act that the Son of God entered the world as man. The evangelist shrank from any theory of His origin that might impair the central idea of full activity, from the beginning of His work to the end” (Scott, ib., p. 187).

According to Cheyne (Bible Problems, pp. 76 ff.), the chapter contains a Jewish Messianic legend of Babylonian origin, which was the source of the Virgin Birth tradition.

The passage which begins with the words: “And Mary said unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?”

Or was taken from Q. See Harnack's Sayings, p. 314; Oxford Studies in Synoptic Problem, p. 187.

EB., col. 2955 n. Cf. Plummer, ICC., St. Lk., p. 63.

In this connexion it should be observed that the same note of wonder appears in ii. 18 in the case of all those who hear the shepherds' words. But according to the terms of ii. 17, what they are told is the angelic message of ii. 10-12, in which the Virgin Birth is not mentioned. The presumption is that ii. 33 stands upon the same plane.

So among others Schmiedel, Usener, Häcker, and Blass, who writes (op. cit., p. 171 n.): “ ‘The espoused wife’ of the ordinary text is a very clear corruption, due to an assimilation to i. 27 (where the case is quite different) and to dogmatic prejudices ...” “That we have here a case of real contamination is seen very plainly in the old Freising MS., in which the ancient variants τῇ γυναικὶ αὐτοῦ and τῇ ἐμνηστευμένῃ αὐτῷ still stand together in immediate juxtaposition” (Usener, EB., col. 3350).

On the agreement of the Old Syriac and Old Latin against the great uncials, cf. Kirsopp Lake (The Text of the NT., p. 90 f.), “Perhaps the general result is to make it probable that W. H. (largely from lack of evidence) underestimated the possibility that a consensus of the Old Latin and Old Syriac may give us a really primitive text even when opposed to the great uncials”. To similar effect Burkitt writes, “It is, however, in the direction here indicated—viz., the preservation of the true text in a considerable number of cases by ‘Western’ documents alone—that criticism may ultimately be able to advance beyond the point reached by Hort” (EB., col. 4990 f.). “I am unable to assume that the edition of Westcott and Hort gives us a final text in either Gospel [Mt. and Mk.]. In particular, I am inclined to believe that the second century readings, attested by the ecclesiastical writers of that century, and by the Syriac and Latin versions, are often deserving of preference” (W. C. Allen, ICC., St Mt., p. lxxxvii).

“And Joseph ... took unto him his wife.”

While we are unable to acquiesce in Schmiedel's view that “Mary takes the words of the angel as referring to a fulfilment in the way of nature”, we may fairly say that, if the passage Lk. i. 30-8 is a unity, Mary ought to have been represented as taking the angel's words in this way, and that this would be the plain natural sense in which to take them.

The claim, therefore, that the suggested translation is supported by the words “with haste” in verse 39 (Box) cannot be sustained. Moreover, these words are easily satisfied on the usual view of a promised conception. See further an article by the present writer in the Expository Times (May, 1919), Is the Lukan Narrative of the Birth of Christ a Prophecy? In l. 16 in the second column read: “It could not be anything else”.

E.g. Cheyne, Conybeare, Grill, Harnack, Hillmann, Holtzmann, Loisy, Montefiore, Pfleiderer, N. Schmidt, Schmiedel, Usener, Völter, J. Weiss. On the other side are Hilgenfeld, Clemen, Gunkel, Chase, Stanton, Orr, Box, Knowling.

But see W. C. Allen, ICC., St. Mt., p. 10 and p. 19.

Some scholars, including Häcker, Spitta, and Montefiore, bring verses 36, 37 within the interpolation. Schmiedel's presentation of the argument stated above is as follows: “Moreover, the case of Elizabeth to which the angel points in v. 36 is no evidence of the possibility of a supernatural conception; it has evidential value only if what has happened to Elizabeth is more wonderful than what is being promised to Mary—namely that she, in the way of nature, is to become the mother of the Messiah” (EB., col. 2957).

Schmiedel, op. cit., col. 2957. To the same effect J. Estlin Carpenter (op. cit., p. 487 f.). Compare Lk. i. 45 where Mary is praised for her faith, and see Moffatt, INT., p. 268 f.

Cf. Lobstein, The Virgin Birth of Christ, p. 67.

Cf. Moffatt (INT., p. 268 n.): “The substitution ... is too slender a basis, and may have been accidental, whilst the alleged omission of 34-5 from the Protevangelium Iacobi breaks down upon examination” (cf. Headlam's discussion with Conybeare in the Guardian for March-April 1903).

The New Testament Documents, their Origin and early History (Croall Lectures, 1911-12). 1913.

Cf. also Burkitt (GHT., p. 11): “... the text of the Gospels, the actual wording, and even to some extent the contents, were not treated during the second century with particular scrupulosity by the Christians who preserved and canonized them. There is nothing in the way which Christians treated the books of the New Testament during the first four centuries that corresponds with the care bestowed by the Jews upon the Hebrew Scriptures from the time of Aquiba onwards.” See also Blass, Philology of the Gospels, p. 72 f.

Cf. Sanday (Inspiration, 2nd Ed., pp. 295-8): “Possessors of copies did not hesitate to add little items of tradition, often oral, and in some cases perhaps written, which reached them” (295). See also J. H. Moulton (From Egyptian Rubbish Heaps, pp. 97 ff.), and an article in the Classical Review for March 1915 on “The Primitive Text of the Gospels and Acts”; J. A. Robinson, Study of the Gospels, p. 24 f.

Cf. also Hawkins (HS., 2nd Ed., pp. 152 and 197), who instances “additions of various kinds which may be regarded as probably editorial” (p. 197) in the Second and Third Gospels. See also Moffatt (INT.), under heading “Glosses in NT. text”, p. 641, where references are given to cases treated in the body of the work.

It may, however, have been accidentally lost. See Moffatt, INT., pp. 238 ff, where the question is discussed.

In this connexion it is important to remember that even early orthographic peculiarities have been accurately preserved. “I have been much struck by the number of cases in which the old uncials preserve spellings which can be proved current in the time of the autographs, but obsolete long before the fourth century. Faithful in minutiae, they might reasonably be expected to be faithful also in greater matters” (J. H. Moulton, in an article in the Classical Review, March, 1915, reprinted in The Christian Religion in the Study and the Street, 1919, p. 153). See also the Prolegomena, pp. 42-56.

The italics are ours.

Plummer, ICC., St. Lk., pp. xlviii ff.; Harnack, Luke the Physician, p. 104 f.; Moffatt, INT., p. 278 f.; Hawkins, HS., 2nd Ed., pp. 15 ff.

There is a well-known difficulty of punctuation in verse 35. Ought we to put a comma, with WH., after κληθήσεται? If we do so, the subj. is τό γεννώμενον, and ἅγιον is part of the predicate. If we omit the comma, the whole phrase τὸ γεν. ἅγιον is the subj., and the pred. is κληθ. υἱὸς θ. (cf. RV. marg.). Most critical editors of the Greek text omit the comma. It is probable, as the WH. type shows, that Dr. Hort was influenced by his belief that ἅγιον κληθ. went together as a quotation or reminiscence of the OT., and, if the passage comes from St. Luke, this is a strong argument. On the other hand, it can be argued that if the words are a Greek rendering of an Aramaic phrase it is improbable, if not impossible, that the participle should stand alone as the subj. It is not possible, of course, to settle the question by appealing to manuscript authority, as the early MSS. were practically devoid of punctuation marks. In our own case, we are unable to use either of the arguments cited, since each rests upon the assumption of the Lukan origin of Lk. i. 34 f., which is the very point we are discussing. While then we follow the WH. text we have to leave the question of punctuation an open one. If the comma should be omitted we lose the difficulty of τό γεννώμενον noted on p. 61, and we lose also the argument from its construction, sketched on p. 64.

As, in the end, we claim that Lk. i. 34 f. comes from the hand of St. Luke, we may perhaps be permitted to express a personal preference for the WH. punctuation. St. Luke's admitted fondness for OT. phraseology points strongly in this direction, while the theory of an original Aramaic document gains no increased support, but rather the contrary, as time goes by. On the one hand, Harnack has convincingly shown how much the Greek of Lk. i, ii owes to St. Luke's craftsmanship (cf. Luke the Phys., pp. 102 ff.), and, on the other hand, the argument from “Semiticisms” becomes less cogent the more we know of the papyri (cf. Moulton, Proleg., pp. 13-18. See also Gr. ii. 12-20). Aramaic oral tradition may underlie cc. i, ii, but the probability is that the Greek of these chapters owes its OT. flavour to the more or less deliberate attempt of St. Luke to create an appropriate archaic atmosphere.

The various computations are drawn from the Concordance to the Greek Testament by Dr. W. F. Moulton and Dr. A. S. Geden. In the case of St. Luke's Gospel words occurring in i. 34 f. are omitted. If these verses are Lukan, this underestimates the Lukan evidence. It would, however, be begging the question to include these verses in the present examination. Quotations and doubtful cases (except where mentioned) are also omitted.

But cf. Dalman, Words of Jesus, p. 24, quoted by Moulton, Proleg., p. 131.

Cf. The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, by Moulton and Milligan, p. 65 a. See also the note at the foot of p. 131 in the Prolegomena: “This phrase ... occurs in the Semitic atmosphere alone....”

εἶπεν πρός and εἷπεν δέ (see later) are both strongly characteristic of St. Luke's style, but εἶπεν with the dative is also very frequent. Taking the two works together, εἶπεν πρός and εἶπεν with the dat. are almost equally common (εἶπ. w. dat. having the greater number of instances). In the G. the proportion of εἶπεν with the dat. to εἶπεν πρίς is 5 : 4. In Acts it is 4 : 5.

The italics are his.

Cf. Moulton and Milligan, p. 127 a.

Cf. Harnack's Luke the Physician, p. 104; Moulton, Proleg., p. 18.

So Thayer-Grimm, p. 117, where it is pointed out that the same idiom appears in the Latin, in cognoscere, Ovid, Met. iv. 596.

v. Moulton and Milligan, op. cit., p. 127 a.

So L. T. WH. In both cases WH. give ἐπεί δέ in the margin.

There are “261 words which occur in the New Testament only in the gospel of St. Luke” (Harnack, Date of Acts, p. 2). Plummer (ICC., St. Lk., lii) speaks of 312 such words, but says that 52 are doubtful and 11 occur in quotations. Including Acts, according to Plummer, the number is 750 or (including doubtful cases) 851.

P. 59.

As in all these enumerations. See note on p. 58.

Cf. Th-Gr., p. 152 a, and for papyri, &c., Moulton and Milligan, op. cit., p. 163 b.

Sir John C. Hawkins's record of πρός (used of speaking to) is as follows (HS., 2nd Ed., p. 21): Mt. 0, Mk. 5, Lk. 99, Ac. 52, Paul 2, Jn. 19, rest of NT. 4. Thus for the Lukan writings the percentage is 83.4.

Moffatt's remark (“The style of 34-5 is fairly Lucan, though διό occurs only once in the third gospel and ἐπεί never”, INT., 269) is surely an understatement. As we have seen διό occurs eight times in Acts.

See, however, p. 57 n.

A good illustration of this point is found in the spurious ending to St. Mark's Gospel. As Prof. E. P. Gould shows (ICC., St. Mk., pp. 301-4) out of 163 words 19 (or more than 11 per cent.) are not found elsewhere in the Gospel. They include such words as ἐκεῖνος (5 times), πορεύομαι (3 times), θεάομαι (twice). There are also two unfamiliar expressions: τοῖς μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ γενομένοις (verse 10) and μετα (δὲ) ταῦτα.

If we could accept the view that “seeing I know not a man” in verse 34 is St. Luke's only insertion, and that he wrote verse 35 from the first without thought of the Virgin Birth, his point of view would then be somewhat different. On this theory his thought would be that while born of Joseph and Mary the promised child was none the less supernaturally conceived. See p. 69 f.

See later pp. 78-84.

Cf. V. H. Stanton (GHD., ii, p. 226 f.).

As regards the remaining details of Zimmermann's hypothesis, none of them is really necessary to our theory. We believe that what St. Luke actually wrote in ii. 5 was “with Mary his wife” (see pp. 32 ff.). But his new information did not compel him to alter this to “with Mary who was betrothed to him”, though later readers thought the change was necessary. Nor was it required to alter i. 27. Even in the original narrative (i.e. on our theory, before i. 34 f. was added) the passage may have read as we have it now, the prophecy being regarded as uttered previous to marriage. There is no real need to regard “to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph” as an interpolation in the interests of the Virgin Birth, either (with Harnack) on the part of a redactor, or (with Zimmermann) on the part of St. Luke himself.

Cf. Ox. Studies in the Syn. Prob., pp. 417, 420, where the Rev. N. P. Williams, M.A., suggests that certain passages in Mk. may be later insertions, made “possibly by St. Mark himself”.

In Acts xvi. 19, 20 it is said that the owners of the demented girl “seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the agora before the magistrates”. The words which immediately follow are: “and bringing them to the presence of the praetors, they said....” Ramsay's comment is: “The expression halts between the Greek form and the Latin ... as if the author had not quite made up his mind which he should employ.... It is hardly possible that a writer, whose expression is so concise, should have intended to leave in his text two clauses which say exactly the same thing” (St. Paul, p. 217 f.). In reference to Acts xx. 4, 5, Ramsay writes: “In verse 4 we have probably a case like xvi. 19 f., in which the authority hesitated between two constructions, and left an unfinished sentence containing elements of two forms” (ib., p. 289). He adds that the sentence “perhaps never received the author's final revision”.

Cf. Loofs, What is the Truth about Jesus Christ?, p. 122.

Speaking of the late appearance of the Virgin Birth tradition G. H. Box writes (op. cit., p. 137): “Its comparatively late appearance and primitive character can only be reconciled by the explanation that it is based upon facts which were for long treasured within a narrow circle in close contact with our Lord, and which were only gradually divulged to the Church.” Cf. also Sanday, Outlines, pp. 193, 196.

Cf. Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission, pp. 260, 274 f.

Cf. Burkitt (Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe, ii. 260); Moffatt (INT., 250); Box (The Virgin Birth of Jesus, p. 12); Sanday (Outlines, p. 201).

So among others Westcott, Burkitt, Box, Allen, Barnard, A. J. Maclean, Moffatt.

Evan. Da-Meph., ii, p. 260. Cf. also Allen (ICC., St. Mt., p. 5); Box (ib., p. 14); Moffatt (ib., p. 251).

“It is merely an embodiment, in genealogical form—a form specially calculated to appeal to Jewish readers—of the idea that Jesus belonged, through His relation to Joseph, to the royal family of David” (Box, ib., p. 15).

See Appendix to present chapter.

The N. T. Documents, their Origin and early History, p. 148. W. C. Allen (op. cit., p. lxxxv f.) seems to emphasize the more negative aspects of the writer's style, but calls attention to phrases and constructions which are said to be “strikingly characteristic of the Gospel”. Cf. Moulton, Gk. Gr., ii, p. 29.

Cf. Burkitt (GHT., p. 184 f.)

Sir J. C. Hawkins points out (HS., 2nd Ed., p. 9) that the “characteristic” words and phrases of Mt. are “used considerably more freely in these two chapters than in the rest of the book”.

ἀκριβόω, ἀκριβώς, ἀναιρέω, ἀνακάμπτω, βασιλεύω, βίβλος, γένεσις, γινώσκω (in sense used), δειγματίζω, δεκατέσσαρες, διετής, ἐπάν, θνήσκω, θυμόομαι, κατωτέρω, λάθρᾳ, λίβανος, μάγοι, μεθερμηνεύομαι, μετοικεσία, μνηστεύομαι, πυνθάνομαι, σμύρνα, συνέρχομαι, τελευτῄ, τίκτω, ὕπνος, χρηματίζω.

i. 22 f., ii. 5 f., ii. 15, ii. 17 f., ii. 23, iii. 3, iv. 14 ff., viii. 17, xii. 17-21, xiii. 35, xxi. 4 f., xxvii. 9. Of these iii. 3 differs somewhat from the rest, and ii. 23 cannot be identified with any single OT. passage.

See especially Stanton (GHD., ii, p. 343); also Allen (op. cit., p. lxii) and Burkitt (GHT., pp. 124 ff.).

Cf. Burkitt, op. cit., ii. p. 259; Box, op. cit., pp. 11, 19 ff.; Moffatt, INT., p. 259; Lake, The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, pp. 178 ff.

For the reference to Epiphanius see an article by F. C. Conybeare, HJ., i, p. 96. Conybeare's main argument is drawn from the edition of the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, published by himself (1898). He thinks that the Dialogue “reflects an age when [Mt. i. 18-25] had already been introduced, but was not present in all the copies” (p. 100). If we accept the view advocated by F. C. Burkitt (Evan. Da-Meph., ii. 265) this inference is not necessary. See Appendix to present chapter, p. 106.

Γινώσκω (in sense used, but the phrase in which it occurs is probably an insertion, Burkitt, ib., ii, p. 261), δειγματίζω, μεθερμηνεύομαι, μνηστεύομαι, συνέρχομαι, ὕπνος.

Ὄναρ, παραλαμβάνειν, πληροῦσθαι, ῥηθέν, φαίνεσθαι.

“I cannot believe that any document underlies it. On the contrary, I believe it is the composition of the Evangelist himself” (Burkitt, Evan. Da-Meph., ii, p. 260). Cf. also Allen (ICC., St. Mt., p. 5).

Sanday (Outlines, p. 196) writes: “In regard to the Matthaean document we are in the dark. The curious gravitation of statement towards Joseph has a reason; but beyond this there is not much that we can say. It would not follow that the immediate source of the narrative was very near his person.”

“In the historical judgement of the Gospels this distinction between facts and reflections has frequently to be remembered” (E. P. Gould, ICC., St. Mk., p. 37).

See The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, by Professor Kirsopp Lake.

Unless otherwise stated further references to these writers are to the works cited above.

Cf. also Moffatt, p. 251; Sanday (Outlines, p. 197); W. C. Allen, p. 8.

“The reading of S itself I have come to regard as nothing more than a paraphrase of the reading of the ‘Ferrar Group’, the Syriac translator taking ᾡ to refer to ἐγέννησεν as well as to μνηστευθεῖσα” (p. 263).

The foregoing three alternatives are those noted by Dr. Sanday (Outlines, p. 199 f.), between which, he says, “the data do not allow us to decide absolutely”.

Referring to the Evangelist the Jew objects: “He says begat out of Mary” (cf. Conybeare, HJ., vol. i, no. 1, p. 100).

We ought to add that Allen leaves open the possibility that the parenthesis may be a later addition, and that the original text may have been “And Joseph begat Jesus”. “It seems probable ... that the text underlying S1 is the nearest approach now extant to the original Greek, and it must remain possible that even here the relative clause is an insertion” (p. 8).

Cf. Jülicher, INT. (Eng. Tr.), p. 367: “In my opinion, both took up their pens more or less simultaneously, each unaware of the other's work, and both actuated essentially by the same motive, i.e. that of bestowing a Gospel upon the Church which should be at once complete, and well adapted both to refute unjust accusations from outside and to edify the believers themselves.”

This appears in the fact that the First Gospel implies, as we have seen, that the doctrine had already been known to its readers for some time.

Cf. Usener to the same effect, EB., col. 3351.

Cf. Loofs, What is the Truth about Jesus Christ?, p. 92 f.: “Legends arise much more quickly than is assumed by liberal theology since Strauss”.

So Prof. Percy Gardner, quoted in Faith and Freedom, p. 168.

Footnotes