The Origin of Paul's Religion; What Is Faith?; The Virgin Birth of Christ

And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.

Verses 13-17 But the angel said unto him, Fear not,

And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee.

And she was troubled at the saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this might be.

Verses 30-33 And the angel said unto her, Fear not,

Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and Mary: for thou hast found favour with insight as over against every form of the interpolation theory. Far from being an excrescence in the narrative, the virgin birth is really the thing for which all the rest exists. And that holds good no matter whether the narrative is mythical, as Weisse thought, or whether it is historical. If it is mythical, then the virgin birth explains the invention of the other elements; if it is historical, then the virgin birth explains the choice of the facts which are singled out for the narrative and also explains the way in which the narration is carried through. A return to Weisse would certainly, from the literary point of view, be desirable. And there is a sense in which that return, so far as the interpolation theory is concerned, is actually being effected in the most recent criticism of the infancy narratives.

49 The parallelism was clearly recognized so early as 1841 by Gelpke (Die Jugendgeschichte des Herrn, pp. 41-51, 167-169) and was exhibited by him by at least a rudimentary use of parallel columns. Compare Iso Sc hleiermacher, Das Leben Jesu (printed from reports of lectures delivered in 1832), 1864, pp. 53 f.

50 The language of the following translation is for the most part that of the Authorized Version, corrected to conform to a better Greek text.

thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink: and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this?

for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.

Verses 19-20 And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings.

And behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believedst not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season,

God. And behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.

He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end,

Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be;

Verses 35-38 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God.

And behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible.

And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

It may be remarked in passing that even this exhibition does not fully set forth the connection between the two accounts. It does not show, for example, that in both cases the name of the angel is Gabriel, that the description of Mary in verse 27 is very similar in form to that of the parents of John in verse 5, that the Holy Spirit is mentioned in connection with the beginning of the earthly life both of John and of Jesus, and that the two accounts are specifically linked together by the words, “in the sixth month”, in Lk. i.26. But even in itself the parallelism, when the two accounts are set forth as above in parallel columns, is so striking as to render almost inconceivable the hypothesis that it came by chance. No one who really attends to the structure of both sections should doubt but that they came from the same hand. In both cases the narrative is cast in the same mould.

But if verses 34 and 35 were removed, this parallelism would be marred at the most important point. What, then, does the interpolation hypothesis involve? It involves something that is certainly unlikely in the extreme— namely, the supposition that an interpolator, desiring to insert an idea utterly foreign to the original narrative, has succeeded in inserting that idea in such a way as not only to refrain from marring the existent parallelism—even that would have been difficult enough—but actually to fill up in the most beautiful fashion a parallelism which otherwise would have been incomplete! We should have to suppose that the original narrator, though he did not include the virgin birth, left a gap exactly suited to its inclusion. And then we should have to suppose the appearance of an interpolator gifted with such marvellous literary skill as to be able, in the first. place, to construct an interpolation that in spirit and style should conform perfectly to the body of the narrative, and then, in the second place, to insert that interpolation in just the place necessary to complete a parallelism which, when it is thus completed, makes upon the attentive reader the impression of being an essential element in the original framework of the narrative.

Surely this entire complex of suppositions is very improbable. How, then, can we possibly avoid the simple conclusion that the parallelism between the two accounts, including the part of it which appears in Lk. i.34f., was due to the original narrator?

At this point, however, there may be an objection. May it not be said that the very perfection of the parallelism that appears if verses 34, 35 are included constitutes an argument not for, but against, the originality of those verses? Have we not, in other words, in the inclusion of verses 34 f., something in the nature of a “harmonistic corruption”? May not an interpolator, observing the large measure of parallelism between the accounts of the annunciations, have decided to make that parallelism a little more complete than it actually was?

A little reflection, we think, will show that these questions must be answered with an emphatic negative. The analogy with what is called a “harmonistic corruption” in textual criticism would not hold in this case at all. To show that it would not hold, we need only to glance at the harmonistic corruptions that actually appear in the text of the Synoptic Gospels. What is the nature of these corruptions? An example will make the matter plain. The verse Mt. xvii21, “Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting,” in the account of the healing of the demoniac boy after the descent from the mount of the transfiguration, is omitted by the so-called “Neutral” type of text as attested by the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. It is universally recognized as a gloss. But if it were genuine it would not add anything to our knowledge of the incident; for in Mk. ix.29 very similar words are certainly genuine. It is perfectly evident that the text of Matthew has been made to conform to that of Mark. We have here, therefore, a typical example of a “harmonistic corruption.” But how totally different is this case from the case of Lk. i.34f., if these latter verses are really an addition to the original narrative! In the case of Mt. xvii21, a sentence is taken over in a mechanical way from a parallel account; in the case of Lk. i.34 f., all that would be derived from the parallel account would be the sequence of question, grounding of the question, and answer: and the content of the interpolation would be of a highly original kind. Such originality would be quite unheard of among “harmonistic corruptions.” What we should have here would be no mere obvious filling out of a narrative by the mechanical importation of details from a parallel account, but the addition of a highly original idea—by hypothesis foreign to the original narrative—and the expression of that idea in a way profoundly congruous, indeed, with the inner spirit of the narrative, but at the same time quite free from any merely literary dependence upon what has gone before or upon what follows. It is doubtful whether any parallel could be cited for such a phenomenon in the entire history of textual corruptions.

It appears, therefore—if we may use for the moment the language of textual criticism—that “intrinsic probability” and “transcriptional probability” are here in admirable agreement. On the one hand, the verses Lk. i.34 and 35 are really in the closest harmony with the rest of the narrative; but, on the other hand, that harmony is not of the obvious, superficial kind that would appeal to an interpolator. Indeed, the very difficulty that we found in the interpretation of Mary’s question in verse 34 may be turned into an argument not for, but against, the interpolation theory. The difficulty is of a superficial kind that would probably have been avoided by an interpolator; the underlying harmony is of a kind worthy only of such a writer as the original composer of Lk. i-ii. Shall we attribute to an interpolator the delicate touch that is really to be found in Mary’s question? Is not the question rather—we mean not the invention of the question but the preservation of it—to be attributed to the writer who has given us the rest of this matchless narrative?

In what has just been said, we have been using the language of textual criticism; we have been speaking of “intrinsic probability” and of “transcriptional probability” as though this were an ordinary question of the text. Such language would, of course, apply in fullest measure to that form of the interpolation hypothesis which finds in Lk. i.34 f. an interpolation into the completed Gospel; for in that case we should actually be dealing with scribal transmission in the strictest sense. But the language could really apply in some measure also to the other forms in which the interpolation hypothesis has been held. In any case, we have in Lk. i.34 f. an element that on one hand is in underlying harmony with the rest of the infancy narrative and yet, on the other hand, cannot be understood as being due to the effort of a later writer—whether the author of Luke-Acts or some one else—to produce that harmony by an insertion into this Palestinian narrative. Real harmony with the rest of the narrative, and superficial diffculty—these are the recognized marks of genuineness in any passage of an ancient work. And both these characteristics appear in Lk. i.34 and 35.

At any rate, whatever may be thought of our use of the terminology of textual criticism, the parallelism with the account of the annunciation to Zacharias stamps Lk. i.34f. unmistakably as being an original part of the account of the annunciation to Mary. The argument comes as near to being actual demonstration as any argument that could possibly appear in the field of literary criticism. It is very clear that the two verses in question were part of the original structure of the narrative.

But before this phase of the subject is finally left, it will be necessary to consider the alternative view as to the extent of the interpolation, which was suggested by Kattenbusch and has been advocated by Weinel and others. According to these scholars, not the whole of Lk. i.34f. constitutes the addition to the narrative, but only the four words translated “seeing I know not a man”! in verse 34.°” If these four words are removed, it may be argued,

51 ted Gvdpa ob ywwoKw. % Kattenbusch himself (Das Apostolische Symbol, ii, 1900, pp. 621 f.) did not insist upon the hypothesis of an actual interpolation of the words érel &vdpa ob yweoxw into an underlying document, but contented himself with arguing that without those four words the narrative would there is in Mary’s question no reference to the manner in which her child is to be born; she is puzzled merely by the greatness of her promised son, and asks therefore, “How shall this be?” "*, without at all thinking of anything other than the son that she was to have in her approaching marriage with Joseph. In reply—so the hypothesis may be held to run—the angel in verse 35 points to an activity of the Holy Spirit securing the greatness and holiness of the son, without at all excluding the human agency in His conception in the womb: the child will be in a physical sense the son of Joseph and Mary; but just as the son of Zacharias was to be filled with the Holy Spirit at the very beginning of his life,°* so the son of Joseph will be fitted by the same Spirit for a far higher function.

In comment upon this hypothesis, it may be said, in the first place, that the hypothesis hardly accomplishes what it undertakes to accomplish; it hardly succeeds in removing the supernatural conception from Lk. i.34, 35. Surely the minimizing interpretation which Weinel advocates for verse 35 is unnatural in the extreme. When Mary is told by the angel, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God,” it seems very improbable that no more is meant than a sanctifying action of the Spirit upon a child conceived by another agency in the womb. Why should it be said, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee,” if the activity of the Spirit terminates upon the child in the womb rather than upon Mary? Why should not some expression like that in Lk. i.t5—“He shall be filled with the not necessarily involve the virgin birth, and that the emphasis in the narrative is not upon the virgin birth, but upon what he regarded as an independent idea—the activity of the Spirit in connection with the birth of the Messiah. Weinel (“Die Auslegung des Apostolischen Bekenntnisses von F. Kattenbusch und die neutestamentliche Forschung,” in Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, ii, 1901, pp. 37-39) made the suggestion of Kattenbusch definitely fruitful for the interpolation hypothesis. J. M. Thompson (Miracles in the New Testament, 1911, pp. 147- 150) and Merx (Die vier kanonischen Evangelien, II. ii, 1905, pp. 179-181) advocate the same view. Compare the citation of the literature in Moffatt, Introduction, 1918 (1925), p. 269. This form of the interpolation hypothesis proceeds somewhat in the line of a remark which was made so early as 1817 by Schleiermacher. The reference to a supernatural conception, Schleiermacher said, becomes perfectly definite in the Lucan account of the annunciation to Mary only by means of Mary’s question in Lk. i.34, which, moreover, interrupts the words of the angel in rather an unnatural manner—perhaps merely in order to prevent the angel from speaking too long. See Schleiermacher, Ueber die Schriften des Lukas, 1817, pp. 26 f. (English translation, 4 Critical Essay on the Gospel of St. Luke, 1825, p. 28). This remark of Schleiermacher’s was opposed by Strauss (Leben Jesu, i, 1835, p. 167). Kattenbusch has recently (in Theologische Studien und Kritiken, cii, 1930, pp. 457 £., 462-474) defended essentially the same view of Lk. 1.34b as that which he suggested in 1900. See above, pp. viii f.

63 Merx (op. cit., II. ii, p. 196, footnote 1) lays stress upon the insertion of yorin Mary’s question by certain manuscripts. Mary’s modest question, “How shall this be to me?”, becomes, Merx thinks, when the ‘‘to me” is omitted, a curious or astonished question concerning the physiological process. As a matter of fact, “to me” is plainly a gloss of the most harmless kind.

Holy Ghost”—be used if the work of the Spirit in both cases is essentially the same? Perhaps, indeed, the advocates of the hypothesis will maintain that in accordance with their view the work of the Spirit is not the same in both cases; perhaps they will say that in the case of John merely a sanctifying influence is meant, whereas in the case of Jesus, the Spirit, though working indeed with the human factor, becomes constitutive of the very being of the child. But when that is said we are getting back very close indeed to the view that the Spirit’s action excludes the human father altogether. The truth is that in verse 35 the human father is quite out of sight; only two factors are in view—the mother, Mary, and the Spirit of God. “Conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary” is really a correct summary of that verse. Even without the disputed words in verse 34, therefore, the following verse, verse 35, still presupposes the virgin birth. But if so, all ground for suspecting the words, “seeing I know not a man”, disappears.

A second objection to Weinel’s hypothesis is found in the parallelism with the annunciation to Zacharias to which attention has already been called.. Weinel himself performed a very useful service by urging that parallelism as an objection to the ordinary form of the interpolation theory, which would remove all of verses 34 and 35. But he did not seem to observe that it tells also against his own view. If the words, “seeing I know not a man,” are removed from verse 34, then there is nothing to correspond to the grounding of Zacharias’ question in verse 18. Let it not be said that we are expecting too perfect a similarity between the two parallel accounts. On the contrary, we recognize to the full the freshness and originality of verses 28-38 as over against verses 11-20; there are many details in one account that are not also in the other; the parallelism is by no means mechanical. But the point is that if Mary’s grounding of her question be removed from verse 34, it is not merely one detail that is subtracted, but an essential element in the structural symmetry of the passage. It is really essential to the author’s manner of narrating the annunciation to Zacharias that Zacharias’ question should not merely indicate bewilderment in general, but should point the way for the explanation that was to follow. It seems evident that a similar plan is being followed in the case of the annunciation to Mary. But that plan is broken up if the words, “seeing I know not a man,” are not original in verse 34. Weinel’s hypothesis would force us to suppose that the original narrator left a gap in the structure of one of his parallel accounts, and a gap so exceedingly convenient that when by the insertion of four words an interpolator introduced into the narrative a momentous new idea, the most beautiful symmetry of form was the result. Surely such a supposition is very unlikely. It is perfectly evident, on the contrary, that the symmetry that results when Mary’s grounding of her question is retained is due not to mere chance or to what would be a truly extraordinary coincidence between a defect in the fundamental structure and an interpolator’s desires, but to the original intention of the author.

In the third place, Mary’s question in verse 34, in the shortened form to which Weinel’s hypothesis reduces it, seems unnatural and abrupt even apart from any comparison with the parallel account. According to Weinel, Mary said merely, in reply to the angel’s promise, “How shall this be?”. In that form the question seems to have no point; it is a meaningless interruption of the angel’s speech.5> And it does not seem to prepare in any intelligible way for what follows in verse 35. No doubt there are narrators to whom such clumsiness could be attributed; but certainly the author of Lk. i-ii was not one of them. In this narrative such banality would be singularly out of place. It is perfectly evident that in verse 34 the author is preparing for verse 35 in some far more definite and intelligible way than by the meaningless words, “How shall this be?”; Mary’s question is plainly intended to point the way to the special explanation that is given in the following verse. Thus on Weinel’s hypothesis the original narrator would at this point have suddenly descended to banality; and the beautiful naturalness and symmetry which now appear in the passage would be due not to the author, but to an interpolator. Who can believe that such a supposition is correct?

Such objections would be decisive in themselves. But there is another objection that is perhaps even more serious still. It is found in the extraordinary restraint which Weinel’s hypothesis is obliged to attribute to the supposed interpolator. An interpolator, we are asked to believe, desired to introduce into a Jewish Christian narrative of the birth of Jesus a momentous idea—the idea of the virgin birth—which by hypothesis was foreign to that narrative. How does he go to work? Does he insert any express narration of the event that he regarded as so important? Does he even mention it plainly? Not at all. What he does is simply to insert four words, which will cause the context into which they are inserted to appear in a new light, so that now that context will be taken as implying the virgin birth.

Where was there ever found such extraordinary restraint, either in an ordinary interpolator who tampered with the manuscripts of a completed book, or in an author like the author of Luke-Acts who desired to introduce a new idea into one of his sources? Is it not abundantly plain that if an interpolator

85 If the question were in this short form, the remark which Schleiermacher (see above p. 157, footnote 52) wrongly made about it in its complete form might seem to apply; the question would actually seem to be a mere interruption, perhaps introduced merely in order to prevent the angel’s speech from being too long.

desired to introduce the virgin birth into the narrative of Lk. i-ii he would have done so in far less restrained and far more obvious manner than Weinel’s hypothesis requires us to suppose? On the ordinary form of the interpolation hypothesis, which includes in the supposed insertion all of verses 34 and 35, we were called upon to admire the extraordinary literary skill of the interpolator, which enabled him to construct a rather extensive addition that should be highly original in content and yet conform so perfectly to the innermost spirit of the rest of the narrative. On Weinel’s hypothesis, on the other hand, it is the extraordinary restraint of the interpolator which affords ground for wonder. The surprising thing is that if the interpolator was going to insert anything—in the interests of the virgin birth—he did not insert far more.°

We have enumerated four special objections to the hypothesis of Weinel. With the exception of the one based on the parallelism with Lk. i.t1-20, they apply only to this hypothesis and not also to the more usual view as to the extent of the interpolation. That more usual view is in turn faced by some special objections that the view of Weinel avoids. But it must be remembered that some of the weightiest objections apply to both hypotheses alike. All that we have said regarding the plain implication of the virgin birth in Lk. i27 and iis, and regarding the subtler implication of it at other points in the narrative, tells against any effort to find in the original form of Lk. i-ii a narrative that presented Jesus as being by ordinary generation the son of Joseph and Mary.

What needs finally to be emphasized is that in holding the virgin birth of Christ to be an integral part of the representation in Lk. i-ii we are not dependent merely upon details. At least equally convincing is a consideration of the narrative as a whole. With regard to the results of such a general consideration, it may be well now to say a final word.

In what precedes, we have laid special stress upon the parallelism between the account of the annunciation to Mary and that of the annunciation to Zacharias. That parallelism, we observed, establishes Lk. i.34, 35 in the clearest possible way as belonging to the basic structure of the narrative; the (evidently intentional) symmetry of form between the two accounts is hopelessly marred if these verses, either as a whole or in part, are removed.

But what now needs to be observed is that the difference between the two accounts is at least as significant, in establishing the original place of the virgin

56 Compare Vincent Taylor, The Historical Evidence for the Virgin Birth, 1920, p. 70: “To expand a narrative in the direction of the sense which it already bears is a conceivable suggestion. To transform it totally by merely adding four words is a theory which does not carry conviction. Was ever an interpolator so ingenious as this?”

birth in Lk. i-ii, as is the similarity. In fact, the very similarity finds its true meaning in the emphasis which it places upon the difference.

One obvious difference, of course, is that the annunciation of the birth of John comes to the father of the child, while the annunciation of the birth of Jesus comes to the mother. What is the reason for this difference? Is the difference due merely to chance? Is it due merely to the way in which the tradition in the two cases happened to be handed down—merely to the fact that, as Harnack thinks," the stories regarding Jesus were preserved by a circle that held Mary in special veneration and had been affected in some way by the impression that she had made? If this latter suggestion is adopted, we have a significant concession to the traditional opinion, which has always been inclined to attribute the Lucan infancy narrative, mediately or immediately, to the mother of the Lord. Such an admission will probably not be made by many of those who reject, as Harnack does, the historicity of the narrative. And for those who will not make the admission, who will not admit any special connection of the narrative with Mary or with her circle, the central place of Mary instead of Joseph in the annunciation scene remains a serious problem. But even if we accept the Marianic origin of the narrative—and do so even in a way far more definite than that which Harnack favors—still the unique place of Mary in the narrative requires an explanation. The point is not merely that Mary receives special attention—that her inmost thoughts are mentioned and the like—but that she is given an actual prominence that would seem unnatural if the child belonged equally to Joseph and to her.*

The fact is that we find ourselves here impaled upon the horns of a dilemma. If, on the one hand, the narrative is quite unhistorical, and not based upon any tradition connected with the actual Mary, then we do not see how the narrative, or the legend lying back of it, ever came—since in this case it had full freedom of invention—to attribute such importance to the mother unless she was regarded as a parent of the child in some sense that did not apply to Joseph. Certainly the narrative displays no general predilection in favor of women as over against men; for in the case of John the Baptist the annunciation is represented as being made to Zacharias, not to Elisabeth. If, therefore, it regards the relation of Joseph to Jesus as being similar to that of Zacharias to John, why does it not make him, like Zacharias, the recipient of the angelic promise? So much may be said for one horn of the dilemma.

88 The prominence of Mary as over against Joseph runs all through the narrative in Lk, i.5- ii.s2, and it appears in the final scene. As Farrar (Life of Christ, i, 1874, p. 77) has observed, it is Mary, not Joseph, who addresses the boy Jesus in the Temple according to Lk. 1.48.

But if the other horn be chosen—if the narrator be regarded as being bound by historical tradition actually coming from Mary—still the prominence of Mary in the narrative remains significant. Are we to suppose that Mary attributed that prominence to herself without special reason? This supposition, in view of Mary’s character, as it appears in the narrative itself, is unlikely in the extreme.

Thus, whatever view we take of the ultimate origin of the narrative, the prominence in it of Mary as compared with Joseph, which is so strikingly contrasted with the prominence of Zacharias as compared with Elisabeth, clearly points to something particularly significant in her relation to the promised child, something which Joseph did not share. In other words, it points to the supernatural conception, which is so plainly attested in Lk. i.34, 35. The removal of these verses by the advocates of the interpolation theory has really deprived us of the key that unlocks the meaning of the narrative from beginning to end.

There is, moreover, another way also in which the relation between the two accounts of annunciations presupposes the virgin birth. What sympathetic reader can fail to see that the relation between the two accounts is a relation of climax? It is clearly the intention of the narrator to exhibit the greatness of Jesus in comparison with His forerunner, John. But in the annunciation of the birth of John the manner of the birth is given special prominence. The child, it is said, is to be born of aged parents; and around this ceature a large part of the narrative revolves. The unbelief of Zacharias and the punishment of that unbelief are occasioned not by the prediction of later events in the life of the promised child, but by the prediction of the wonderful manner of his birth. Are we to suppose that in the parallel account there was nothing to correspond to this central feature of the annunciation to Zacharias? Are we to suppose that after laying such special stress upon the unusual manner of the promised birth of John the narrator proceeded to narrate a promise of a perfectly ordinary birth of Jesus; are we to suppose that it is the intention of the narrator that while John was born of aged parents by a special dispensation of divine grace, Jesus was simply the child of Joseph and Mary? No supposition, we think, would more completely miss the point of the narrative. Verses 36 and 37 surely provide the true key to the relation between the two accounts; the angel there points to the coming birth of John the Baptist from an aged mother as an example of that omnipotence of God which is to be manifested in yet plainer fashion in the birth of Jesus. In the light of this utterance, the whole meaning of the parallelism between the two accounts of annunciations becomes plain. The very similarities between the two cases are intended to set off in all the greater plainness the stupendous difference; and the difference concerns not merely the relative greatness of the two children that are to be born, but also the manner of their conception in the womb. A wonderful, if not plainly supernatural, conception in the case of John followed by a merely natural conception in the case of Jesus, which the interpolation theory requires us to find, would have seemed to the composer of the narrative to involve a lamentable anticlimax. The entire structure of the narrative protests eloquently against any such thing.

At this point, however, an objection may possibly be raised. It is not an objection against our argument in itself, but an argumentum ad hominem against our use of it. We have insisted that there is a conscious parallelism between the account of the annunciation to Zacharias and that of the annunciation to Mary, and that the author evidently intends to exhibit the superiority, even in the manner of birth, that Jesus possesses over against John. But— so the objection might run—does not such a view of the author’s intentions involve denial of the historicity of the narrative? If the author was ordering his material with such freedom as to exhibit the parallelism that we have discovered, and if he was deliberately setting about to show the superiority of Jesus over John, must he not, in order to pursue these ends, have been quite free from the restraint which would have been imposed upon him by information concerning what actually happened to Zacharias and to Mary? In other words, does not the artistic symmetry which we have discovered in the narrative militate against any acceptance of its historical trustworthiness? And since we are intending to defend its historical trustworthiness, have we, as distinguished from those who deny its trustworthiness, any right to that particular argument against the interpolation theory which we have just used?

In reply, it may be said simply that our argument has not depended upon any particular view as to the way in which the symmetry, upon which we have been insisting, came into being. It would hold just as well if the author merely reproduced a symmetry which he observed to be inherent in the divine ordering of the facts, as it would if he himself constructed the symmetry by free invention. In either case, the symmetry would be intentional in his narrative. Moreover, even in a thoroughly accurate narrative there is some possibility of such a selection and ordering of the material as shall bring certain features especially into view. A portrait, with its selection of details, is sometimes not less truthful but more truthful than a photograph. So in this case, the author, we think, was not doing violence to the facts when he presented the annunciation to Mary as in parallel with the annunciation to Zacharias. That parallelism, we think, was inherent in the facts; and the writer showed himself to be not merely an artist, but a true historian, when he refrained from marring it.

But the point is that, although the argument for the integrity of the passage which we have based upon the parallelism holds on the view that the narrative is historical, it holds equally well on the hypothesis that it is the product of free invention. In either case—however the parallelism came to be there— it certainly as a matter of fact ts there; and an interpolation theory which holds that it was originally defective at the decisive point is faced by the strongest kind of objections that literary criticism can ever afford.

Our conclusion, then, is that the entire narrative in Lk. i-ii finds both its climax and its centre in the virgin birth of Christ. A superficial reading may lead to a contrary conclusion; but when one enters sympathetically into the inner spirit of the narrative one sees that the virgin birth is everywhere presupposed. The account of the lesser wonder in the case of the forerunner, the delicate and yet significant way in which Mary is put forward instead of Joseph, the lofty key in which the whole narrative is pitched—all this is in- - comprehensible without the supreme miracle of the supernatural conception in the virgin’s womb. The interpolation hypothesis, therefore, not merely fails of proof, but (so fully as can reasonably be expected in literary criticism) is positively disproved.

Another attack upon the integrity of the Lucan narrative deserves separate consideration because it stands somewhat aside from the ordinary forms of the interpolation hypothesis. We refer to the theory of Daniel Volter, whose monograph appeared in 1911, but was based upon earlier studies.®® Vélter holds that there is embedded in Lk. i-ii, in addition to the Christian elements, a narrative that came from the sect of the disciples of John the Baptist. This narrative contained, of course, the account of the annunciation to Zacharias in Lk. i5-25. But after that account it contained also—and here we come to the distinctive feature of the theory—an account of an annunciation by the angel Gabriel to Elisabeth, for which a Christian writer has substituted the episodes of the annunciation to Mary and of Mary’s visit to Elisabeth. Why should “the sixth month” of Elisabeth’s pregnancy be mentioned in Lk. i26?, Volter asks. That way of fixing the time, he says, is natural only in an episode that concerns Elisabeth; yet in the narrative as it now stands the episode concerns not Elisabeth, but Mary. This incongruity, Vélter argues, is evidently due to a redactor, and originally the annunciation in Lk. i26-39 was an annunciation to Elisabeth. The real significance of the “sixth month” appears, Volter continues, in Lk. i41; the sixth month marked the point of

Volter, Die evangelischen Erzahlungen von der Geburt und Kindheit Jesu, 1911.

time when the babe in Elisabeth’s womb gave a sign of life. Originally, therefore, there came first an annunciation to Zacharias, the father, and then an annunciation by the same angel to Elisabeth, the mother. Then the babe leaped in the womb, and Elisabeth responded with the hymn of thanksgiving, the Magnificat, which now appears out of its original place and wrongly attributed (in nearly all manuscripts) to Mary. Thus, according to Vélter, there stood in the original John-the-Baptist narrative, after the account of the annunciation of the birth of John to Zacharias, the following words:

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to the hill-country, to Bethlehem Judah. And he entered into the house of Zacharias and greeted Elisabeth and said: “Hail, thou favored one, the Lord is with thee.” And behold thou shalt bear a son and shalt call his name John. And it came to pass, when Elisabeth heard the greeting of the angel, the child leaped in her womb, and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost and cried in exultation and said:...

Then followed the Magnificat, then the account of the birth and naming of John, and then a short form of the Benedictus without what Véolter thinks are Christian interpolations that appear in the present form.

This account of the birth of John the Baptist which circulated originally among the (non-Christian) disciples of John was, Volter thinks, taken up by the Evangelist and incorporated, at first largely unchanged, in the Gospel; but the Evangelist put it at once in what he regarded as the proper light by placing an account of the birth of Jesus (Chapter ii of the Gospel) by its side. Then a later redactor gave the two chapters their present canonical form by substituting an annunciation to Mary and a visit of Mary to Elisabeth for the annunciation to Elisabeth, and by making other redactional changes. It was by this redactor that the idea of the virgin birth was first introduced into the narrative.

This theory® has recently been adopted in essentials by Eduard Norden in his important monograph which we shall discuss in Chapter XIV, and has won some additional support.”

In the criticism of the theory,®* we may point, in the first place, to the

60 In 1902 J. R. Wilkinson (4 Johannine Document in the First Chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel), working independently of Vélter, some of whose studies had already appeared, propounded a theory which, although it is similar to Volter’s in some respects, also presents differences. See especially pp. 34-40 of Wilkinson’s booklet, and the discussion by the present writer in the article, “The First Two Chapters of Luke,” in Princeton Theological Review, x, 1912, pp. 274 f.

Evangelist himself; but this difference does not affect the characteristic features of the theory. 6 Compare the article just cited from Princeton Theological Review, x, 1912, pp. 272-275.

remarkable unity of style and spirit between the supposedly Johannine and the supposedly Christian parts of Lk. i-ii. Vélter denies that unity, but despite his denial it is certainly present in striking measure. It is, indeed, true that Christian, as distinguished from pre-Christian, ideas are absent from the Johannine parts of the narrative, but so are they from the “Christian” parts—except of course what is involved in the fact that the child Jesus is represented as the virgin-born Messiah. In the second place, we may point to the weakness of Vélter’s detailed arguments—particularly the argument derived from the mention of the “sixth month” in Lk. i26. As Bultmann® has pointed out, it is not true that that note of time is important only for Elisabeth and not for Mary; for it marks the time when the sign to which the angel pointed in the annunciation to Mary ® could be observed by the leaping of the child in the womb.® The narrative as it stands really hangs together, and there is not the slightest reason to reverse the impression of unity which is undoubtedly made upon the unprejudiced reader by the style and spirit of the whole section. In general, it may be said that Vdélter’s theory serves only to demonstrate anew the uncertainty of the ordinary forms of the interpolation hypothesis. “The verses, Lk. i34 f.,” Volter correctly says,°° “cannot be separated from their context, They are presupposed not only in verses 36 f., but in the whole of verses 26-33; without them the whole annunciation to Mary loses its point.” Indeed, the whole of the passage, Lk. i.26-41 (or 42a), Volter says, is due to one hand. Thus this latest denial of the integrity of Lk. i-ii holds that what previous critics regarded as loose joints in the narrative are really organic connections. It is not possible to remove verses 34-35 alone, nor verses 34-37. Volter has correctly observed that much. But it cannot be said that his own very venturesome theory is unworthy of the rejection which it has so generally received.

One solid observation underlies the theory of Volter regarding the first chapter of Luke—the observation that specifically Christian ideas are absent from Lk. i.5-25 and from other parts of the narrative that relate to John the Baptist. Harnack ® has used this same observation, not indeed to propound an elaborate documentary analysis like that of Volter, but to commend the view that these Johannine parts of the narrative do come from a tradition preserved among John’s disciples. The narrative in Lk. i, he thinks, is derived

‘And behold, Elisabeth, thy kinswoman, she also has conceived a son in her old age” (Lk. 1.36).

67 For what follows, see the article cited from Princeton Theological Review, x, 1912, pp. 275- not merely from two chief sources, but even ultimately from two religious camps; for the narrative of the birth of John the Baptist,°® which still shows that it was not originally composed as an introduction to the story of Jesus, but had independent value, must have arisen in the circle of John’s disciples, where also Lk. iii. ff. (in so far as it goes beyond Mark and Q), including the great chronological note, evidently originated. The passage, Lk. i.39- 45, 56 (so Harnack’s hypothesis continues), unites the two birth narratives, which were originally quite distinct. The former of these narratives originally celebrated the Baptist not as forerunner of Jesus the Messiah, but as preparing the way for the coming of Jehovah in redemption.” The birth narrative of John is accordingly very old, and presents the tradition of John’s disciples in Lucan spirit and style.”

This hypothesis of Harnack is not altogether devoid of plausibility. But it can be established, if at all, only if Lk. i is unhistorical. For if Mary was really related to Elisabeth, as is asserted in Lk. 1.36, and if the two mothers really came into contact in the way described in Lk. i.39 ff., then a family history of the birth of Jesus could hardly have been composed without including also the events connected with the birth of the forerunner. In Lk. i.5-25 John appears, indeed, as the forerunner not specifically of the Messiah, but of Jehovah. That fact might be explicable if the narrative were composed by a non-Christian disciple of John. But it is equally explicable if the description of the work of John in Lk. i.15-17 is not a vaticinium ex eventu, but a genuine prophecy. For in prophecy definiteness is not to be demanded. The Old Testament, according to one element of its teaching, connected the future redemption with a coming of Jehovah. In just what way Jehovah was to come had not yet been revealed with perfect definiteness, either in Old Testament times or at the time just preceding the birth of Jesus. The non-Christian character of Lk. i5-25, therefore, may establish not its origin in a non-

10See Harnack, Neue Untersuchungen zur Apostelgeschichte, 1911, PP. 108 f. (compare the English translation, The Date of the Acts and of the Synoptic Gospels, 1911, Pp- 153 f.). In a footnote (ibid.) Harnack says: “It is not improbable that Luke, before he united himself with the Christian community, belonged to the disciples of John the Baptist [Anhanger der Tauferbewegung gewesen ist] and had already pursued historical investigations which he afterwards used for his Gospel. The attitude which he assumes in the Gospel (and also in Acts) toward the

Johannine movement [Tauferbewegung] and toward the ‘Spirit’ tends to support this hypothesis. Furthermore, in Lk. iii.15, ‘And as the people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not’ [we have given the English translation here instead of the Greek original which Harnack quotes], Luke has probably given expression to experiences of his own, which, after the narrative in Lk. i, seem altogether natural. This narrative can only have originated in the circle of the Baptist’s disciples and could have been placed at the beginmng of the history of Jesus only by one who was connected with that circle.”

Christian sect, but merely its historicity. It could not have been composed by a Christian writer, but must have been composed by a Johannine writer— unless the Christian writer was telling the truth.

At any rate, this hypothesis of Harnack, as to Johannine tradition in Lk. i, must be sharply distinguished from a documentary theory like that of Vélter and Norden. Harnack’s theory might be held in a form compatible with the historicity of the narrative; for there is no reason why a circle of John’s disciples (if indeed such a circle existed) might not have preserved genuine historical information about the birth of the one to whom the sect appealed, and why a Christian writer might not have connected that historical information about John with equally historical information about Jesus, so as to produce the narrative that we now have in Lk. i-ii. Very different in its implications is the theory of Vélter, which represents those parts of Lk. i that concern Jesus (including the mention of the virgin birth) as secondary elements in a process of literary manipulation. It is this theory which we are really concerned to refute. And it can be refuted, as we have observed, in no uncertain _ way. There is no reason, then, for us to reverse the conclusion at which we arrived after considering the ordinary forms of the interpolation hypothesis. All the attacks upon the integrity of Lk. i-ii which would represent the mention of the virgin birth as a secondary element in the narrative have signally