We may summarize the historical results reached in the present chapter as follows:—
1. There is no certain instance of a New Testament writer who knew of the Virgin Birth tradition, and yet repudiated it.[pg 021] It is more than doubtful if an exception can be found even in the case of the Fourth Gospel, though the Evangelist makes no doctrinal use of the tradition. If the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews knew of the doctrine, the same is probably true of that writer also.
2. The doctrine had no place in the subject-matter of Apostolic preaching. This view is supported by all the available evidence. The silence of the Pauline Epistles, of the Acts, and of the Second Gospel can be explained in no other way.
3. The tradition was not a matter of public knowledge during the period covered in common by the Pauline Epistles, the Second Gospel, and Q.
4. It is also probable that the same conclusion should be extended to the period covered by the Second Gospel alone, if this Book is dated later than St. Paul's lifetime, as it usually is.
Until we have examined the Virgin Birth tradition reflected in the First and Third Gospels, it would not be right to discuss these results further, except to say that an historical argument against the Virgin Birth based on these conclusions alone would be precarious. The chief importance of the results reached is the help they furnish in deciding when belief in the Virgin Birth first became current.
[pg 022]
The question to be discussed in this chapter needs careful definition. What we wish to discover, if possible, is whether the Virgin Birth is an original element in the Third Gospel. This question is not without a certain ambiguity. It is sometimes taken as if it were equivalent to the further question, Did St. Luke teach the Virgin Birth? It is clear that these questions are closely connected; nevertheless, they are distinct, and should be kept distinct. The difference is at once apparent if, for purposes of argument, we assume that the doctrine really does belong to a later stratum in the Gospel. In this case, all the references to the tradition must have been inserted, either (i) by an unknown reader, editor, or scribe, or (ii) by St. Luke himself. In either case, the Virgin Birth would be a later element in the Gospel; but the two senses in which this could be true are clearly very different.
Before one could say that St. Luke did not teach the Virgin Birth, it would be necessary to show that he did not write the passage Lk. i. 34 f.,28 and this is a point which cannot be determined by arguments derived from the context and subject-matter alone. Such arguments may, or may not, be able to prove that the doctrine is a later element, but they cannot show that it is a non-Lukan element. This is a second and distinct step, which is not justified until the textual and the linguistic facts have been examined. Then, and then only, can we say if St. Luke taught the Virgin Birth.
In the present chapter all questions of a linguistic character will be left aside. Lk. i. 34 f. is perfectly susceptible of the linguistic test, and this will be applied in its proper place. The only arguments we shall consider at present will be those which [pg 023] arise out of matters of context and subject-matter. In the light, then, of the principle laid down above, the question whether St. Luke taught the Virgin Birth, does not yet properly arise. The only question we have to consider at this stage is whether the Virgin Birth is an original element in the Third Gospel, interpreting that question in its strictest and barest sense.
The distinction we have drawn is perfectly obvious when it is pointed out. At the same time, one cannot read the literature which treats of the Third Gospel in relation to the Virgin Birth, without feeling how frequently the point has been neglected. The assumption, that, if the Virgin Birth is found to be a later element in the Gospel, we must straightway have recourse to the hypothesis of non-Lukan interpolation, runs through the writings of critics of all schools like a refrain. Its presence in the arguments of those who deny the Virgin Birth is often sufficiently clear. But the same assumption is also tacitly made by many critics on the other side. It would be ungenerous, and perhaps unwarranted, to suggest that this assumption has prevented many orthodox writers from doing justice to the objections which have been raised against the view that the doctrine was present in the Gospel from the very first. That its effects have been harmful in the interests of dispassionate investigation, is, however, hardly open to question. In the treatment which follows, an attempt will be made to avoid this fallacy, and to keep the discussion within the limits which are proper to itself.
The material to be examined is found for the most part in the first two chapters of the Gospel, and consists (1) of certain narratives and passages, which apparently are inconsistent with the view that the author wrote with a knowledge of the Virgin Birth, and (2) of the passage i. 34 f., which implies the doctrine, but is believed by many scholars to be a later insertion. Outside chaps. i and ii, the only passages which call for notice are iii. 22, iii. 23, and iv. 22.
We may say at once that we have few new arguments to bring forward. The contentions we have to examine are familiar to every one who studies the question of the Virgin Birth. They have been brilliantly stated in two well-known articles in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, one by P. W. Schmiedel (on “Mary”), and the other by Usener (“Nativity”). In a review (HJ., vol. i, [pg 024] no. 1, p. 164), Dr. Moffatt justly describes these articles as “competent and first-rate essays, which deserve alert recognition”. But both these articles not only deny that the Virgin Birth was an original element in the Third Gospel, but also that St. Luke, the companion of St. Paul, ever taught that doctrine—and this without any linguistic examination of the passage i. 34 f. They provide, in fact, a clear illustration of the point we have already discussed. Inasmuch, then, as our purpose is to consider the question, Was the Virgin Birth an original element in the Third Gospel?, interpreted in its strictest terms, we shall need to state and weigh the arguments afresh. This is the more desirable, because, in the form in which these scholars present their case, each argument is put forward with an assurance and a finality which individually it does not merit. It is the cumulative force of a number of arguments, each of which has strong presumptive value, which ultimately carries conviction; not a series of arguments each of which is conclusive in itself. We do not suppose, of course, that a writer like Schmiedel would deny anything so obvious as this. Nevertheless, very many English readers feel that his several arguments are stated too much in the light of the result. Moreover, they appear to be shaped by presuppositions which are themselves fatal to the Virgin Birth. In the present treatment of the question, an attempt will be made to assign to each argument its proper force, to observe its limitations as well as its cogency. The result sought is not a conclusion to which we can append a triumphant Q. E. D., but that hypothesis, whatever it be, which best explains the observed facts taken as a whole.
