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

T N THE preceding chapters we have dealt with one of the two ways in which the Christian belief in the virgin birth has been explained; we have examined the hypothesis that the belief was founded on fact. The attestation, it has been argued, is as early and as strong as it could naturally be expected to have been if the virgin birth actually took place; and although there is an enormous initial presumption against the occurrence of such a miracle, that presumption can be overcome if the investigator bears in mind the uniqueness of Jesus’ person and the total phenomenon of the origin of the Christian religion. Thus there is good ground, we think, to hold that the reason why the Christian Church came to believe in the birth of Jesus without human father was simply that He was as a matter of fact so born.

This conclusion is very widely rejected at the present day even within the confines of the Church. But when it is rejected, the question arises what is to be put into its place. The historian has by no means completed his task when he has decided to reject the New Testament attestation of the virgin birth of Christ; for the initial problem still demands solution. How was it that the Christian Church ever came to believe in the virgin birth? Whatever may be thought of the content of the belief, the belief itself is a fact of history which no one can possibly deny. It is a fact that for some nineteen hundred years a large part of the human race has believed that Jesus of Nazareth, a person living in the full light of history, was born without human father, being conceived in the womb of the virgin by the immediate exercise of the power of God. How did that strange belief ever arise? This question is of course answered at once if the belief was founded upon fact; if Jesus really was born of a virgin, it is not difficult to understand how the Church came to believe that He was so born. But if this obvious answer be rejected, the question to which it is an attempted answer still remains. If Jesus of Nazareth was not really born of a virgin, how did the Church come to believe that He was born in that way? The question does seem to be a fair question for all who reject the testimony to the fact of the virgin birth. An important part of all discussions of our subject is to be found, therefore, in the discussion of alternative theories as to the way in which the idea of the virgin birth is to be explained if the fact of the virgin birth is denied.

At this point, Vincent Taylor, the author of the latest important monograph on the subject, dissents from the usual view. The importance of the question about “alternative theories,” he thinks, has been greatly exaggerated; apologists have made a great mistake in attempting to argue the historic character of the virgin birth tradition “by dwelling upon the incongruities and contradictions of alternative theories”; men may agree in rejecting a tradition or belief and yet be at variance about the origin of it, and that they “agree upon the one point is more significant than that they differ upon the other.”?*

But surely this objection runs counter to sound common sense. In appraising any kind of testimony, one instinctively asks the question how the witness came to testify thus. If (supposing the testimony to be false) the motive of the false witness is clear, or if the way can be detected in which even an honest witness could have fallen into error in the particular case in question, then the testimony is discredited to a degree that would not otherwise be ~ the case. Instinctively, therefore, in a court of law or in the ordinary affairs of life, one does ask the question regarding a witness: “How did he come to say this or that if it is not true?”

Until that question is answered, the testimony is often felt not to be finally disposed of; but when it is answered, the mind of the hearer is set at rest with regard to that particular testimony, and the question will be decided altogether on the basis of other evidence..

So it is also in historical investigations. It is not enough to deny the truthfulness of a tradition; one must also try to exhibit the manner in which the tradition arose. Until that is done, one cannot altogether put out of the way the possibility that the tradition, supposing it to possess any claims to credibility at all, may be true.

This principle is indeed not of universal application; for we do constantly reject stories without at all explaining how they arose. The world is full of tales that no one believes, yet the origin of which no one can explain; if we endeavored to account for all of them, we should have no time for the serious business of life. So much may readily be granted to Vincent Taylor

But the Christian tradition about the virgin birth belongs in a very different category. In the case of many stories the reason why the origin of the stories has not been discovered is simply that the investigation is not worth while. The evidence in support of the stories is so very slight, or the stories deal with matters of such little importance, that no one takes the trouble to

"Vincent Taylor, The Historical Evidence for the Virgin Birth, 1920, pp. 124-127.

ask how the stories came into being. Very different is the situation with regard to the story of the virgin birth. That story has formed the subject of scholarly investigation for many years; the best efforts of modern scholarship have been devoted to the question how the story arose. Under such circumstances, surely it is not altogether without significance that so far these efforts have resulted in failure, and that no unanimity has been attained on the question how, if the virgin birth is not a fact, the Christian Church came to believe in it.?

It must be admitted, indeed, that this argument from the failure of alternative theories cannot possibly stand alone. Certainly we cannot arrive at the truth of the New Testament testimony merely by a process of elimination; we cannot simply say that since no other satisfactory explanation has yet been discovered for the origin of the idea of the virgin birth, therefore, whatever the strength or weakness of the positive testimony may be, the idea must be founded on fact and the New Testament at this point must be true. Such a method of reasoning would be precarious in the extreme. It is perfectly conceivable that the origin of a myth may be obscure; and so it is perfectly conceivable that a belief like that in the virgin birth of Christ may have originated in some manner beyond the reach of modern research.

But this consideration does not do away with the value of the argument with which we now have to deal. That argument is inconclusive when it stands alone; but when taken in connection with the positive attestation of the virgin birth it may be very powerful indeed. What the historian has to do is not to consider the theories of mythical origin of the virgin birth tradition by themselves, but to balance these theories over against the theory that the tradition is true. The less satisfactory the alternative theories are in detail, and the greater is their disagreement with one another, the more favorably disposed the historian will be toward the simple hypothesis that the idea of the virgin birth arose because the virgin birth was a fact.

The cogency of this method of reasoning is tacitly recognized by opponents of the New Testament testimony. No argument against the virgin birth, perhaps, is used with more confidence or more effectiveness by popular preachers than the argument drawn from the supposed ease with which the virgin birth tradition could have been produced in the first century of our era. “In those

2Compare H. R. Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, New York, 1916, p. 529: “For history the really strong argument in favour of the virgin-birth is the difficulty of accounting for the story otherwise than on the assumption of its truth.” This sentence, it must be admitted, does seem to involve an exaggeration of the value of the argument from the failure of alternative theories, as compared with other evidence. The argument from the failure of alternative theories, we hold, though exceedingly important, is yet only subsidiary to the direct evidence for the truth of the New Testament story. Compare the review of our book by the same writer, in British Weekly, for July 17, 1930.

days,” it is said in effect, “many great men were thought to be virgin-born; so when the early Christians came to think Jesus supremely great it was only natural that they should regard Him too as having been born in that way.” This argument is, as we shall see, extremely crude; scholarly investigators, even those who oppose the virgin birth, are usually not inclined to think the matter quite so simple as that. Nevertheless, the preachers who use the argument display a sound methodological instinct; they at least tacitly recognize the fact that the idea of the virgin birth is a fact of history which requires explanation, and that those who deny the factual basis of the idea must endeavor to account for the idea in some other way.

In opposition to Vincent Taylor’s protest, therefore, we must insist upon the relevance of the discussion upon which we shall now try to enter. The historical question about the virgin birth will finally be determined by a comparison of the hypothesis that the idea of the virgin birth was founded upon fact with the most plausible form of the hypothesis that it was founded upon some kind of error. The former member of this comparison has been con-. sidered in the preceding chapters: the positive attestation of the virgin birth, we have endeavored to show, is by no means contemptible, and when it is taken in connection with the total phenomenon of the life of Christ and the beginnings of Christianity, there is no insuperable objection against regarding it as true. But how is it with the other alternative? If, despite the arguments that we have adduced in defence of the tradition, the virgin birth is not a fact, how shall we explain the origin of the idea? This question must now be considered with some care.

One method of explanation may be dismissed rather quickly—namely, the rationalizing method which was popular one hundred years ago. It is now for the most part admitted that unless the virgin birth actually occurred it is vain to seek any considerable factual basis for the story as it appears in Matthew and Luke. At first sight, indeed, the search for such a factual basis might have seemed to offer some likelihood of success. It is perfectly true that a false supernaturalistic interpretation has sometimes been put, even by the observers themselves, to say nothing of later narrators, upon events that were in point of fact purely natural. So the effort of Paulus and the other rationalizers of the early part of the nineteenth century to reconstruct a natural course of events in connection with the birth and childhood of Jesus as the basis for the supernaturalistic account given in Matthew and Luke was only to be expected when once the actuality of miracles was given up. But it is now generally admitted that the effort was a failure. The New Testament birth narratives do not lend themselves at all to such treatment; for in them the miracles are not mere excrescences, but represent the element for which all the rest exists, and the natural happenings which are supposed to have been the basis for the stories are quite trivial and incapable of giving rise to the narratives as they stand. Thus the rationalizing method of treating the narratives, which was considerably in vogue a century ago, has now for the most part been abandoned, at least among scholars. But since there are just now interesting signs that it may be revived, even in scholarly discussion, and since it has always flourished in an underground realm of popular attack upon Christianity, we may do well to consider briefly the application of it to the specific question of the virgin birth.

The essence of the rationalizing method is to discover a natural happening, preferably unusual, which, when interpreted supernaturalistically, could give rise to the narratives as they stand. But what natural happening could have been distorted into the view that Jesus was born without human father by the power of the Holy Ghost? What was there so unusual in the birth of Jesus that this strange story could have seemed necessary to explain it? Only one plausible answer can be given; it can only be said that Jesus was not the son of Mary’s husband, Joseph, and that, therefore, to avoid the shameful implications of such a fact, the early Christians came to believe in the supernatural conception in the virgin’s womb.

Some of the early rationalizers did not shrink from the full implication of such a view; Jesus, they said, was born out of wedlock, His mother having been deceived, perhaps, by a man who passed himself off as a messenger of God.? In essentially the same category with these rationalizing reconstructions is to be put the ancient Jewish “Panthera” story, which, as we have seen,* is attested by Origen and the Talmud and culminates in the medieval Tol’doth Jéshi; the ancient Jewish slander, like the more modern romances, was intended as a naturalistic explanation of the Christian story of the virgin birth. But such solutions of the problem, despite sporadic revivals in modern times,° have been rejected by practically all serious scholars.* The entire attitude of

5 As, for example, by the biologist Haeckel. See “The New Testament Account of the Birth of Jesus,” second article, in Princeton Theological Review, iv, 1906, p. 37, with the literature there cited. See also above, p. II.

6 No doubt there is an underground literature in which the ancient slander, in one form or another, is still exploited. Schweitzer (Geschichte der Leben- Jesu-Forschung, 2te Aufl. des Werkes “Von Reimarus zu Wrede”, 1913, p. 48) said that Venturini’s romance was still appearing almost yearly in new editions, and that the type which it created was followed directly or indirectly by all romance-like lives of Christ. The book, he said, is copied as is no other life of Christ, though

Jesus’ contemporaries, particularly the character of the polemic against Him, is inexplicable if there was such a stain upon His birth. It is perfectly clear that, however the idea of the virgin birth is to be explained, it cannot be explained by a prior knowledge, on the part of the early Christians, of something abnormal in the way in which Jesus was born.

Yet it is very interesting to observe that certain scholars who repudiate the thought of anything shameful in the manner of Jesus’ birth have been unwilling to relinquish altogether the rationalizing method. Thus Paulus held that Joseph did not beget Jesus,” and that what gave Mary confidence that she was to be the mother of the Messiah was “something external.” *® What that something was is left quite vague, and Paulus assures us that in any case Mary was innocent; ® but such assurances give very little comfort when the whole tendency of Paulus’ view leads straight to some such revolting (and quite improbable) story as that which is to be found in Venturini and in the underground literature that has not altogether been eliminated since his day. Even vaguer than Paulus is Schleiermacher; and yet even Schleiermacher, if the implications of his vagueness be examined, may be found to have taken the first step in the downward path. A veil is left over the birth of Jesus, says Schleiermacher in effect;?° nothing sinful could have entered into the origin of the life of Christ; and the Panthera story is false**: yet the basis in tradition for the poetical New Testament narrative is that before the birth of Jesus Mary did become aware, in an extraordinary manner, that she was to bear the Son of God.’? What does Schleiermacher mean by his curiously vague language? Does he mean nothing more than that Joseph and Mary became convinced that the child which was to be the fruit of their marriage was to be the Messiah? If so, it is difficult to see how such an expectation on the part of Joseph and Mary could possibly have had any part whatever in producing the story of the virgin birth. On the whole, the criticism which Neander * directed against Schleiermacher must be pronounced just. If, when the miracle is rejected, a factual basis is sought for the story of the virgin birth, that factual basis must in the nature of the case be something of a repulsive (and thoroughly improbable) kind.

Yet one of the most distinguished scholars of the present day, A. von Harnack, of Berlin, a scholar who may perhaps be regarded as the ablest living representative of the “Liberal” or Ritschlian view of the New Testament and the beginnings of the Christian Church, has recently ventured to take a first step on this same dangerous, rationalizing path. Possibly, Harnack says in effect, there may have been a slight factual basis for the New Testament account of the virgin birth after all; possibly there may have been this much that was extraordinary in the way in which Jesus came into the world, that He was begotten by Joseph after the “betrothal” but before the marriage. “Betrothal” among the Jews, Harnack points out, was not at all what we mean by this word, but was equivalent to marriage. Even before Joseph took Mary into his house, she was his wife; so that there is nothing at all derogatory to Mary, Harnack insists, in the possibility which he suggests. The form of the narrative in Matthew may be partly explained, Harnack thinks, if the author is admitting, over against Jewish slanders, that Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary before she was actually brought into Joseph’s house.'*

Harnack does not, indeed, exploit this suggestion as a means of explaining how the belief in the virgin birth arose. He holds, no doubt, still to his theory of a mythical origin of that belief. Nevertheless, the suggestion does indicate a certain tendency to return to the old rationalizing treatment of the narratives which was prevalent one hundred years ago. It is possible that under the influence of the “return to tradition,” which is found here and there in recent literary criticism of the Gospels, the revival of the rationalizing method of treatment may soon go to much greater lengths.

If such a revival does take place, it will certainly be strangely perverse. And the present suggestion of Harnack, as has already been pointed out,!® is faced by objections of the most serious kind. It does not really preserve the mother of Jesus from blame; for even if during “betrothal” she was really Joseph’s wife, still the kind of conduct which Harnack is inclined to attribute to her would have subjected her at least to suspicion. And the existence of such suspicion is inconsistent with all that we know of the later life of Jesus and of the attitude of His contemporaries toward Him.

An objection may, indeed, be raised against our reasoning at this point. Are we not, it may be said, proving too much? If a premature birth of Jesus would necessarily have given rise to suspicion, and if that would have been inconsistent with what we know of the attitude of Jesus’ contemporaries toward Him, is not the story of the virgin birth, as we have it in Matthew and Luke, itself stamped as unhistorical? According to that story, just as much as according to the hypothesis of Harnack, the birth of Jesus was, to any ordinary observer, premature; and if either a really or an apparently premature birth is inconsistent with the attitude of Jesus’ contemporaries, have we not, in condemning the hypothesis of Harnack, really condemned also our own view that the narratives in Matthew and Luke are true?

This objection is by no means insuperable. The point of our present argument against the hypothesis of premature birth as a basis for the virgin birth story is not that premature birth might have given rise to suspicion among the inhabitants of Nazareth, but that it must actually have done so if it is to be made the basis of the story of the virgin birth in Matthew and Luke. If the fact that the birth was premature was concealed from neighbors and friends and enemies, then how could it ever have given rise to suspicion; and _ if it gave no rise to suspicion, if, in other words, it never became something which to the early Christians required explanation, then how could the story of the virgin birth ever have arisen as an explanation of it? Or are we to suppose that after concealing the premature birth all through the time of Jesus’ youth and of His public ministry Mary revealed the fact at some time after the beginning of the apostolic preaching, and that then suspicion arose and the story of the virgin birth was evolved as a means of allaying it? Surely such conduct on Mary’s part is unnatural in the extreme.

If, on the other hand, the virgin birth was a fact, the situation becomes very different. In this case, the apparently premature time of the birth may never have become known to the inhabitants of Nazareth, for the reasons that have already been set forth in another connection; ** there is no reason to suppose that suspicion would have arisen during the public ministry. But after the resurrection, there was in this case abundant reason why the secret of Jesus’ birth should be revealed. It was not in this case a trivial (if not shameful) thing, but was a glorious manifestation of God’s power; about it Mary could no longer keep silent. On the hypothesis of a virgin birth, therefore, the initial absence of suspicion and the final disclosure of the secret are both explained; whereas on the hypothesis of an ordinary premature birth an initial presence of suspicion is needed to explain the final emergence of the virgin birth story, and that initial presence of suspicion is clearly excluded by all that we know of the attitude of Jesus’ contemporaries during His public ministry.

The attitude of Jesus’ contemporaries, therefore, does provide an argument against Harnack’s hypothesis of a premature birth, and yet does not provide an argument against the story of the supernatural conception as it appears in Matthew and Luke. But perhaps an even stronger argument against the hypothesis of a premature birth is to be found in somewhat more intangible and yet very powerful considerations regarding the character of Joseph and Mary. Are we to suppose that they would lightly have exposed Mary to the suspicion to which, even on Harnack’s view of Jewish betrothal, a premature entrance upon the marriage relationship might well have subjected her? The suggestion is, after all, derogatory to their character; and such a defect in them does seem to be contrary to all that we should naturally expect to be the case. It does seem that the whole phenomenon of Jesus’ life is better explained (especially on naturalistic principles, but also when He is regarded as truly the Son of God) if He grew up in what from the human point of view was a blameless home. And the attitude of His contemporaries both toward Him and toward the household in which He had lived does seem to be more natural if the conduct of Joseph and Mary was of a really, and not merely apparently, worthy kind.

At any rate, we have at this point the support of the vast majority of modern investigators of all shades of opinion. Most modern scholars who reject the virgin birth are agreed, for whatever reason, in rejecting the thought of anything unusual or suspicious in connection with the birth of Jesus. Indeed, the chief interest of Harnack’s suggestion is to be found not in any inherent merit in it, but in the fact that Harnack has been led to make it. If, after nearly one hundred years’ dominance of the purely mythical theory of the birth narratives, so distinguished a leader of the modern Church and so accomplished a scholar feels compelled to return, to some extent at least, to the old rationalizing method of treatment, we may find there an indication that when the fact of the virgin birth is given up it may not be quite so easy as was formerly supposed to account for the New Testament narratives as they stand. Harnack’s suggestion may be important, in other words, as indicating the defects of the dominant mythical view.

It is of course quite without warrant when popular defenders of the virgin birth alarm their hearers by presenting the hypothesis of illegitimate birth as being the only alternative to acceptance of the miracle; for probably ninetynine out of a hundred among those who deny the virgin birth (at least among the educated classes of society) do so without thought of any such thing, and on the contrary believe that Jesus was simply the son of Joseph and Mary. Yet on that view that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary the origin of the belief in the virgin birth does become more difficult to explain than would be the case if there were actually something unusual in the manner of His birth. We are indeed precluded from this latter solution of the problem by historical considerations of the most compelling kind, and thus are forced back, if we still reject the historicity of the miracle, to the purely mythical view; but the difficulties of that view, as we shall see, are so serious that now and then there will always probably be some men who, like Harnack, will be led to have some recourse again to the rejected rationalizing method and will try to find some sort of factual basis which would help account for the extraordinary narratives in Matthew and Luke.

Nevertheless, such help is altogether rejected by the overwhelming majority of those who reject the fact of the virgin birth. It is almost universally admitted that if Jesus was not born of a virgin, He was the son of Joseph and Mary, born in wedlock and without anything which could give rise to question or suspicion with regard to the manner of His birth. The conditions of. the problem, then, are in the minds of most scholars quite definitely fixed. How is it to be explained that one of the sons in a Jewish family, about whose birth there was really nothing extraordinary, came to be regarded as having been conceived in the womb of a virgin by a supernatural act of God? The story of the virgin birth, it is admitted, is not a distortion of actual happenings. What then is it; how did it arise?

The answer to this question that has been dominant since the days of Strauss is that the New Testament story of the virgin birth is a myth—that is, it is the expression, in supposedly historical form, of a religious idea. About the question what particular religious idea it is that the story expresses there have been some differences of opinion, but those differences are not so important as they might possibly have been expected to be. Bruno Bauer, it is true, supposed. that the story expresses the idea of the divine initiative in the establishment of the unity between the Christian community and God. The Christian community, he supposed, was conscious of the unity of the divine and the human; this unity could not come from sinful man, but from God; the community, therefore, regarded itself as something produced by God without human help; and finally this thought was transferred from the community to the person of the Founder.” But such highly specialized accounts of the idea that is supposed to be expressed by the myth are at best isolated; and in general the advocates of the mythical theory content themselves with pointing simply to the Christian conviction regarding the greatness of Jesus’ person (especially His divine sonship) or regarding the overpowering debt which believers owe to Him, as being the thought which the myth expressed. One so great as Jesus, it is said, could not, in the circles in which this myth arose, be regarded as born in the ordinary human way, but had to be thought of as owing even His conception in His mother’s womb to an act of God.

But of course this general exhibition of the thought that was expressed by the myth does not suffice to explain the myth itself. Why was the greatness of Jesus celebrated in just this particular way? At this point opinions begin to diverge.

I T HAS been observed in the preceding chapter that in the opinion of the great majority of those who reject the historicity of the virgin birth story, the story is to be regarded as a myth. It is, in other words, to be regarded as the expression in narrative form of a religious conviction—the Christian conviction regarding the greatness of Jesus Christ. But whence did this particular myth come; how, specifically, did the idea of the virgin birth of Christ arise?

The most obvious suggestion unquestionably is that the idea arose on Jewish Christian ground. The narratives that contain the idea are, as we have © seen, strikingly Jewish and Palestinian in character; what is more natural, therefore, than to suppose that the idea was formed on the basis of Jewish elements of thought? It is not surprising to discover that the Jewish Christian origin of the doctrine of the virgin birth has been defended by noteworthy scholars such as Keim, Réville, Lobstein and Harnack.

But what are the Jewish elements out of which the idea of the virgin birth of Christ is thought to have been formed?

In the first place, there are the Old Testament stories regarding heroes like Isaac and Samson and Samuel who were born of aged parents or at least of mothers who had previously been barren. In the case of such births, the course of nature was broken through; Sarah, for example, had given up all expectation of having children of her own; yet in a wonderful way God’s power was manifested, and she conceived a son in her old age. Thus in the case of Isaac God’s power, and not the ordinary course of nature, was the determinative thing. Was it not, then, an easy step to exclude the human father altogether and to hold that one greater than Isaac was conceived in the womb of a virgin by an immediate exercise of the power of God?

Such considerations might seem to be confirmed by the juxtaposition of the birth of Jesus with the birth of John in the infancy narrative in Luke. John the Baptist, like Isaac, was born of aged parents, and it is the intention of the narrative to present Jesus as greater than John. But if the superior greatness of Jesus is to be reflected in the manner of His birth, and if John was born of aged parents by an extraordinary manifestation of divine grace, what is there more natural than that in the case of Jesus the human father should be excluded altogether and that the child should be represented as conceived in the womb by the power of God? If John was to be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb,! what is there more natural than that in the case of the one greater than John, the Holy Spirit in the womb of the mother should bring about the very existence of the child?

This parallelism between the wonder in connection with the birth of John the Baptist and the greater wonder in connection with the birth of Jesus would seem to be plainly indicated by the angel’s words in Lk. i.36 £., where, in confirmation of the promise of the supernatural conception, Mary has pointed out to her the experience that her kinswoman Elisabeth has passed through: “And behold, thy kinswoman Elisabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For no word from God shall fail of power.” Was it not, then, for persons who were impressed by the supreme greatness of Jesus, an easy step from a conception brought about in the womb of an aged woman by a special dispensation of God to a conception brought about in the womb of a virgin by an immediate exercise of God’s creative power?

Despite the plausibility of such considerations, we answer that it was not an easy step at all—certainly not to a Jew. An essential point in the story of Isaac’s birth was the paternity of Abraham; and the paternity of Zacharias is emphasized to the full in the case of John the Baptist. It is to Zacharias, the father of John, that the announcement of the approaching birth is made; and although the divine favor shown to Elisabeth does appear also in the narrative, in Lk. i.13, 24 f., 43 f., yet in general it may be said that Zacharias is the prominent figure. Evidently the narrators both in the Old Testament books and in the first chapter of Luke regard it as quite an essential part of the divine favor that the husband should actually beget a son who should be his very own.

This attitude of these particular narrators is quite in accord with the general Jewish attitude toward the begetting of children. All through the Old Testament, the possession of a large family is regarded as a signal mark of divine favor, and there is no trace of an ascetic attitude toward the marriage relationship. Moreover, there can be little question but that the attitude of the Old Testament at this point was also the prevailing attitude of later Judaism. Josephus does mention, indeed, as one of the three Jewish sects the ascetic order of the Essenes, and there have been efforts here and there to bring the life of Jesus and particularly the story of the birth into some sort of connection with them; but in general such efforts have sprung only from dilettantism and have been rejected by the main trend of modern scholarship. The whole picture of the Judaism in which Jesus lived during his public ministry is just as remote as possible from the Essenism that Josephus describes. When we read the Gospels, with their lifelike descriptions of Pharisees and Sadducees, we feel that those strange Essenic companies with their asceticism, their curious observances, and their monastic life, belong altogether to a different world. Not only are the Essenes not mentioned in the Gospels, but evidently they are not at all in view. In the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke the possibility of Essenic influence becomes particularly remote; the whole spirit of the narratives is contrary to any such thing. Certainly it is improbable in the extreme that Essenic asceticism should have exerted the slightest influence upon the circles from which these narratives came; those circles plainly belonged to a type of Jewish life that drew its inspiration from the Old Testament Scriptures. And part of the Old Testament tradition was the attitude | toward the marriage relationship and the begetting of children which we have characterized above. Indeed, that attitude was no doubt shared, among the Jews, by friends of early Christianity and foes alike.

At that point, then, is to be found one barrier against the exclusion of the human fatherhood in the case of Jesus. Another barrier is to be found in the Jewish attitude toward God. To a Jew nothing could be more abhorrent than anything which would seem to bring God into degrading contact with the world. Indeed, it has often been remarked that the transcendence of God, which is fundamental even in the Old Testament, was exaggerated in later Judaism until it even seemed to forbid the mention of God’s name. Particularly abhorrent would have been the notion that God could take the place of a human father and beget children after the manner of the divinities of the pagan world. No such notion as that appears, indeed, in Lk. i-ii, Mt. i-ii. But even the story of the virgin birth which does appear there might well have seemed to a Jew to move in somewhat the same direction—the direction of a breaking down of the full transcendence of God. Pre-Christian Judaism did, indeed, have some idea of a fatherhood of God; for such an idea is found in the Old Testament. “Thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee,” says Jehovah to the Messianic king, according to the Second Psalm.? But this verse plainly refers not to the birth of the Messianic king, but to His induction into office; and it is as far as possible removed from excluding the human paternity. The fatherhood of God according to the Old Testament Scriptures (at least as they were understood by later Judaism), whether it refers to God’s relationship to the nation or to God’s relation to the king, is a relationship into which God enters by a gracious act; to set it over against the paternity of a human father is to have recourse to an entirely different circle of ideas. And to a Jew it might well seem to be derogatory to the transcendence of God as over against the world.

A word of caution must, indeed, be interjected at this point. We are insisting upon the incongruity between the Jewish doctrine of the transcendence of God and the story of the virgin birth. Does not that incongruity militate against the New Testament birth narratives themselves as much as against the view of their origin which we are now criticizing? Do we mean to say that the doctrine of the supernatural conception in Matthew and Luke is really contrary to the doctrine of the transcendence of God, which is certainly taught in the Old Testament as well as in later Judaism? And if it is not contrary to that doctrine, then why may not the Jewish Christians, in perfect loyalty to the Old Testament idea of God, have come to believe in the virgin birth of Christ?

In reply, we point out simply that there is a vast difference between acceptance of an idea when it is presented in some imperative way and evolution of that idea without such compulsion. There is no doubt a certain antinomy between the transcendence of God and the virgin birth of Christ; it is no doubt a supreme wonder that not some lesser one, but the eternal Son of God, He through whom the world was made, should not despise the virgin’s womb, but should consent to be born as a man and dwell among us; it is no doubt a wonder, too, that the manner in which He should come should be found in a creative act of God’s Spirit in Mary’s womb. These stupendous antinomies do not, indeed, amount to contradiction; and in the wonderful narratives of Matthew and Luke they are so presented that neither member of the antinomy is sacrificed at all. It is not by some lower conception of God that God is thought of as excluding the human father when our Saviour entered into the world; it is not a god of Greek mythology, begetting children after the manner of men, but the Holy Spirit Himself, in His creative activity, who brought about the beginning of the human life of Jesus in the virgin’s womb. There is an antinomy here; but is it not at bottom merely the antinomy which is involved of necessity in the incarnation of the Son of God? “So the All-Great were the All-Loving too”—what wonder could be greater than that? Yet it is a wonder in which the Christian can rest.

Thus the antinomy in the Gospel narratives is not only created, but transcended, by the stupendous fact. The lofty Old Testament conception of God is preserved to the full; and yet that God, by His creative power, has formed in the virgin’s womb the body of Him who was to be both God and man. The antimony has truly been overcome here—overcome by a mighty act of God.

Could it have been overcome in any other way? We think not; and because we think not we have rejected the Jewish Christian derivation of the supposed myth of the virgin birth. It is one thing to say that when Jesus was actually conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin Mary, that fact could be harmonized by divine revelation with the awful transcendence of God; and it is quite a different thing to say that a Jew, beginning with the transcendence of God, would ever have been able, without compulsion of fact, without the enlightenment of revelation, to arrive at the wonderful representation that appears in Matthew and Luke. All that we know of Judaism is contrary to such a possibility as that. A. Jew could accept the virgin birth when it actually occurred, but that is very different from evolving the notion of it from existing ideas. Very hostile to such an evolution of the | notion was the whole tendency of the Jews’ thought about God.

A subsidiary obstacle to the Jewish Christian derivation of the virgin birth story is to be found in the fact that the word for “spirit” in Hebrew is feminine. Would it have been natural, in view of this fact, for a Jew with an Qld Testament background to evolve the notion that a supernatural conception was accomplished by the Holy Spirit? Would a feminine noun naturally be used to designate the divine power that took the place of the male factor in the birth of Jesus? Against such a supposition has often been urged especially the fact that in the Jewish Christian Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Holy Spirit is actually represented not as the father but as the mother of Jesus.

This argument should undoubtedly be used only with caution. In the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, the Spirit is not represented as taking the place of the male factor in any anthropomorphic way, but as entering upon a creative activity. And we found reason to believe that the Gospel according to the Hebrews, despite its strange designation of the Holy Spirit as the mother of Jesus, did contain an account of the virgin birth—presumably, though of course not certainly, in much the same form as that which appears in the canonical Gospels. If, then, in the Gospel according to the Hebrews the feminine gender of the word for “spirit,” and even the exploitation of that gender by the designation of the Spirit as Jesus’ mother, did not prevent the inclusion of the story of the supernatural conception by that same Spirit, would the feminine gender of the noun have prevented the formation of the story in the first place?

Such considerations do not altogether destroy the argument against which they are directed. It is perfectly true that the feminine gender of the word for “spirit” in Hebrew would not necessarily prevent the acceptance by men of Semitic background of the story of the supernatural conception if that story came to them already formed. We have already pointed out that the lofty representation in Matthew and Luke does not at all imply the discharge of human functions by the Holy Spirit, but has reference to the Spirit’s creative work. If that representation was rightly understood, therefore, it could easily be accepted by men of Jewish race despite the feminine gender of the Hebrew word. But if the story was to be evolved without basis in fact, on the basis of the kind of reflection regarding the presence or absence of the human father which is attributed to the Jewish Christian originators of the story by advocates of the theory with which we are now concerned, then we think that the feminine gender of the word might be a great obstacle indeed. Rightly understood, the story (when it is taken as true) is fully harmonious with the feminine gender of the word for “spirit”; but the theory of Jewish Christian mythical derivation supposes that the story at the beginning was understood in a very different way. Thus the gender of the Hebrew word does provide a valid, though undoubtedly subsidiary, argument against the theory of a Jewish Christian derivation of the supposed myth.

A far more important argument is to be found in the Jewish expectation of the Davidic descent of the Messiah. Surely that expectation would constitute a powerful barrier against any evolution of the idea of the virgin birth on Jewish Christizn ground. If the story of the virgin birth stands in antinomy with the transcendence of God as it appears in the Old Testament and as it appears in one-sided and exaggerated form, perhaps, in later Judaism, even more obviously does it stand in antimony with the promise of the king that was to come from David’s line. In the narratives of Matthew and Luke, as we have seen, the Davidic descent is traced through Joseph, and not, in accordance with the most probable interpretation, through Mary. How then, except under the compulsion of fact, could Jewish Christians like the authors of these narratives, Jewish Christians who laid such stress upon the Davidic descent of Jesus, ever have evolved the notion that Jesus was not the son of Joseph, after all, but was born without human father, being conceived by the Holy Ghost?

Here again the antinomy is not incapable of being resolved in a higher unity. We have argued in another connection that when Jesus was born in Joseph’s house—not in a physical sense his son but conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary by a stupendous act of God, and yet born when Mary was already Joseph’s wife—He was, in accordance with the promises, truly the heir of David. Even mere adoption, we argued, meant more to the Jews than it does to us; and the relation of Jesus to Joseph, if the story of the virgin birth be true, is more than mere adoption as it exists ordinarily among men. Thus Jesus, though virgin-born and not in the ordinary sense Joseph’s son, was yet Joseph’s heir, and heir to the promises of God concerning the Messianic king. According to the New Testament narratives, then, Jesus belonged truly to the house of David; only, He was a gift of God to the house of David in a far more wonderful way than if He had been in a physical sense Joseph’s son. But if the antinomy may be resolved so readily in this way, if the promises were really fulfilled by the birth of Jesus as it is narrated in Matthew and Luke, and fulfilled in accordance with the ‘ideas of those to whom they were made, have we then, after all, any basis for an argument against the Jewish Christian derivation of the myth of the virgin birth? However it may seem to us, would the story of the virgin birth have seemed to @ Jew to stand in - any antinomy at all with the Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph? Here again, as in the case of the Jewish doctrine of God, we answer that it is one thing to be able to resolve an antinomy when once it is created by the compulsion of facts and quite a different thing to create the antinomy in the first place without impelling cause. No doubt the Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph can be harmonized with the story of the virgin birth; no doubt when that latter story was once heard, any student of the Old Testament, and especially a Jew, could see that the virgin-born Messiah, born in Joseph’s house, not only belonged truly to the house of David, but belonged to the house of David in an even more wonderful way than if He had been descended from David by ordinary generation. No doubt God’s promises could be seen to have been fulfilled even more fully and even more gloriously than if they had been fulfilled merely as they were originally understood. All that is perfectly true, when once the story of the virgin birth was received. But until that story was received, would the story ever have been evolved by those whose thought concerning the Messiah centred in the promise that He should be descended from David’s line? Surely this supposition is unlikely. Unless all indications fail, the expectations of the Jews regarding the Messiah, especially such Jews as the original authors of the narratives in Mt. i-ii, Lk. i-ii may be conceived to have been, were running in a direction quite remote from the thought of any even apparent break in the Davidic descent of the Messiah, like that which is involved in the story of the virgin birth. We insist, therefore, that the representation of the birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke does stand in an antinomy with the Jewish doctrine of the Davidic descent as well as with the Jewish doctrine of the transcendence of God—an antinomy which militates strongly against a Jewish Christian origin of the supposed myth of the virgin birth. By what impulsion could such obstacles in the Jewish mind to the story of the virgin birth be overcome?

They could be overcome, of course, by the impulsion of fact. If the virgin birth really occurred, then it is not difficult to see how it might have been accepted even by men of Jewish race. But if that explanation be rejected, as it is of course rejected by the advocates of the theory now under consideration, what may be put in its place? Was there any other impulsion— other than the impulsion of fact—which could have led the Jewish Christians, despite their inherited view of the awful transcendence of God and despite the stress that they laid upon the Davidic descent of the Messiah, to accept, or rather themselves to evolve, the story of the virgin birth?

Only one answer to this question can possibly be suggested. Might not the impulsion to the notion of the virgin birth of Jesus have been found in the prophecy in Is. vii14?* When the Jewish Christians read in the Scriptures the words, “Behold the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel,” what was there more natural, it may be said, than that they should interpret these words, with their mention of a virgin mother, as being a prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah; and since prophecy, according to their view, must be fulfilled, what more natural than that they should suppose that zhis prophecy had actually been fulfilled in the case of the true Messiah, Jesus, who therefore must have been born of a virgin as is narrated in the story that has been preserved for us in Matthew and Luke? Thus, according to this hypothesis, the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus was evolved in order to show fulfilment of a prophecy contained, or supposed to be contained, in one verse in the seventh chapter of Isaiah. The hypothesis is thought to be strongly supported by the actual quotation of Is. vii.1q in Mt. i.22 f. There we have, it is supposed, an indication by the author of the First Gospel himself of the way in which the doctrine of the virgin birth was evolved; in the search for Messianic proof-texts the Jewish Christians hit upon the Immanuel prophecy in Isaiah, and the Immanuel prophecy produced the story of its supposed fulfilment.

In our consideration of this suggestion, it is necessary to distinguish sharply between the question how the passage in Isaiah ought really to be interpreted

3 Certainly the impulsion could not have been found in any other passage. The use of Ps. ii.7 (“Thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee”) by Strauss in this connection (Strauss, Leben Jesu, 1835, i, p. 177) has remained quite sporadic, and was apparently abandoned by Strauss himself in his later work, Das Leben Jesu fur das deutsche Volk bearbeitet (3te Aufl., 1874).

and the question how it actually was interpreted by men of Jewish race in the first century after Christ.

With regard to the former question, we hold very strongly that the author of the First Gospel is entirely correct in taking the Immanuel passage as a true and very precious prophecy of the virgin birth of our Lord. Against this view has been urged, indeed, the fact that the word translated “virgin” * in the Septuagint means in Hebrew not “virgin” but simply “young woman of marriageable age”; it is not bethulah but ‘almah. This objection is at least as old as the middle of the second century; for Justin Martyr, writing at that time, represents his Jewish opponent, Trypho, as insisting, against the Christian doctrine of the virgin birth of the Messiah, that the Septuagint translation at Is. vii.14 is wrong, and that ‘almah should have been translated by the Greek word for “young woman” and not by the Greek word for “virgin.”* Then the second-century Jewish versions of the Old Testament by Theodotion, Aquila, and Symmachus actually have the former translation, apparently in conscious opposition to the Christian use of the Septuagint at this point; and in the opinion of many modern scholars these versions are right. Thus if the second-century Jews and their modern supporters are correct about the interpretation of Is. vii.14, the doctrine of the virgin birth, on the hypothesis of Jewish Christian origin, would seem to have been evolved from a mistranslation of a Hebrew word, which the Septuagint happened to have made at Is. vii.14. In the Hebrew original, it is said, there is nothing whatever in this passage about a virgin birth of the Messiah.

But is this ancient Jewish, and modern critical, interpretation of the Isaiah passage really correct, or is the First Gospel correct in taking that passage as a prophecy of the virgin birth? The question, we think, cannot be settled merely by a consideration of the meaning of the Hebrew word ‘almah.

It has been urged, indeed, on the one hand that the Hebrew language has a perfectly unmistakable word for “virgin,” bethulah, and that if “virgin” had been meant that word would have been used. But as a matter of fact there is no place among the seven occurrences of ‘almah in the Old Testament where the word is clearly used of a woman who was not a virgin.® It may readily be admitted that ‘almah does not actually indicate virginity, as does bethulah; it means rather “a young woman of marriageable age.” But on the other hand one may well doubt, in view of the usage, whether it was a natural word to use of anyone who was not in point of fact a virgin.

6 Prov. XXX.19 and Cant. vi.8, which have been appealed to for an opposite view, seem not really to constitute exceptions.

C. F. Burney aptly compares our English use of “‘maiden’ and ‘damsel,’ terms which do not in themselves connote virginity, yet would scarcely be used of any but an unmarried woman.”” If a married woman were referred to in Is. vii.14, it does seem as though some other word than ‘almah would naturally be used.®

But even if that conclusion were incorrect, even if the word were in itself quite neutral as to whether a young married woman or a virgin in the strict sense were in view, still we think that the context would point strongly in the latter direction. According to the immediately preceding verses, Ahaz, the king of Judah, has been told by the prophet (by direct command of Jehovah) to ask for a “sign,” to ask it “either in the depth, or in the height above.” Ahaz declines to do so, and then comes the passage with which we are concerned:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: behold, a virgin® shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, when he knoweth to refuse the evil, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken. Jehovah will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father’s house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—even the king of Assyria.’°

What does the first verse in this passage mean? Who is the “almah whose child-bearing constitutes the “sign” that Jehovah gives?

Various answers to this question have been given in the long history of the exegesis of this famous passage. A very ancient answer is that the ‘almah, or “young woman,” who is meant is the prophet’s wife. A few verses below, at the beginning of the eighth chapter, it is said that the prophet’s wife bore a son, whose name, Maher-shalal-hash-baz, is significant of impending polit-

8 See especially for the use of ‘almah, bethulah, etc., and the translations of these words in the versions, R. D. Wilson, “The Meaning of ‘Alma (A. V. ‘Virgin’) in Isaiah vii. 14,” in Princeton Theological Review, xxiv, 1926, pp. 308-316. For a different view see John H. Raven (“The Sign Immanuel,” in Biblical Review, il, 1917, pp. 213-240), who holds that Is. vii.14 is not really, and was not taken by Matthew as being, a prophecy specifically of the virgin birth, the point of the (true) prophecy being found not in the manner of the birth, but in the child Himself and in His significant name.

9 It should be observed that in the original Hebrew, as well as in the Greek translation (both in the quotation in Mt. i.23 and in the Septuagint), the important word in the passage has the article; it is the ‘almah, not an ‘almah. According to some scholars, it is true, the article is not to be pressed, and the translation should be “a virgin” (or “young woman”). But the translation by the English definite article is, from the linguistic point of view, equally allowable, to say the least, and the context clearly favors it. The margin of the American Revised Version, which substitutes “the” for “a,” is therefore clearly to be preferred to the translation in the text.

10 Js, vii.14-17, according to the American Revised Version (with omission of the alternative renderings and marginal notes).

ical events. May not another son have been given the still more significant name, Immanuel, to signalize the discomfiture of the two kings, Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king of Israel, who had come up against Ahaz to battle? But why should the prophet’s wife, who is designated in the later passage, very naturally, as “the prophetess,” be designated here as “the young woman of marriageable age,” even supposing that the word ‘almah means no more than that? Surely the designation is rather strange.

Another interpretation finds in the ‘almah the wife of Ahaz the king, so that the promised child is Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah. This interpretation, which is attested in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho as being the one favored by the non-Christian Jews in the second century, was refuted by Jerome some centuries later,’ who pointed out that since Hezekiah must have been born before Ahaz came to the throne his birth could not have been referred to within the reign of Ahaz as lying still in the future. Moreover, the reference to Hezekiah is not favored by anything in the context, to say nothing of the fact that, as on the first interpretation, the choice of the word seems very strange.

A third interpretation abandons all such identifications of the ‘almah and holds that any young woman is meant. “Let us suppose,” the prophet, according to this third interpretation, would say, “that a young woman, at this moment when I speak, is conceiving; then before the child whom she shall bear shall come to years of discretion the land whose two kings have threatened the land of Judah shall be forsaken, and because of that deliverance that is to take place before the child shall grow up, the child might appropriately be called, ‘God with us.’” Thus the prophecy would merely indicate, in a pictorial sort of way, the shortness of the time within which deliverance was to come to Judah. A little reflection, we think, will reveal the inadequacy of this view. After all, the attention of the readers, as of the original hearers of the prophet, is directed to the young woman and her child-bearing in a way that seems very strange if she is introduced merely as a sort of measure of the time that must elapse before the danger to the kingdom will be averted; and the reference to Immanuel in Is. viii.8, when taken in connection with our passage, clearly shows that a definite person is meant.

The truth is that all these interpretations which find in the child-bearing of the ‘almah only an ordinary birth are opposed by the way in which the promise is introduced. Why should an ordinary birth be regarded as a “sign”? That word naturally leads us to think of some event like the turning back of the sun on Hezekiah’s dial, or the phenomena in connection with Gideon’s fleece. But it is not merely the use of this one word which would lead us to expect something miraculous in that which the prophet proceeds to announce. Equally suggestive is the elaborate way in which the “sign” is introduced. The whole passage is couched in such terms as to induce in the reader or hearer a sense of profound mystery as he contemplates the young woman and her child.??

At this point, as at other points in connection with the Old Testament, we receive, in the field of exegesis, an unexpected ally in the ultra-modern school of comparative religion. That school, as represented, for example, by Gressmann, is inclined to return to the traditional exegesis of our passage by finding in the Immanuel prophecy at least no mere trivial reference to events in the immediate vicinity of the prophet, but a presentation of a stupendous divine personage, whose birth transcends the ordinary human sphere.!® We cannot agree with Gressmann as to the source from which this presentation comes; for he finds the source in a widespread oriental myth of a divine redeemer, while we find it in genuine revelation from the one living and true God. But at least there is a certain agreement in the exegetical sphere. The modern school of comparative religion at least agrees with devout readers of the Old Testament in rejecting the minimizing interpretation of the Old Testament prophecies which has been in vogue in the dominant critical school. No doubt a sound exegetical instinct is here at work. It is certainly clear that something more than the Israelitish people is meant by the figure of the “Servant of Jehovah” in the latter part of Isaiah; and it is certainly clear that something more is meant by “Immanuel” in our passage than the child of the prophet or of Ahaz or of any ordinary young woman of that time. A really sympathetic and intelligent reader can hardly, we think, doubt but that in

12 This argument is as old as Justin Martyr, who in the Dialogue with Trypho, at the middle of the second century, writes as follows (dial., 84): “For if this one was to be born of the union between the sexes, as all the other first-born sons are born, why did God say that He would produce a sign, which is not common to all first-born? But anticipating through the Holy Spirit that which is truly a sign and was destined, to be sure, for the race of men—that is, that the first-born of all created things should by incarnation through a virgin’s womb truly become a child—He'proclaimed it aforehand in one and another fashion (as I have set forth to you), in order that when it happened it might appear to have happened by the power and purpose of the maker of all things.” No doubt this argument may have to be supplemented in the light of subsequent investigation, but whether it has really been invalidated may be seriously doubted. Conceivably, indeed, the term “sign” may be used in different ways; conceivably it may, for example, denote an event in itself natural which becomes a sign only because of its harmony with what has been supernaturally predicted. But when one takes the Isaiah passage as a whole, such an interpretation is here seen to be clearly inadequate, the “Immanuel” of the seventh and eighth chapters of Isaiah, in the “child” of the ninth chapter, whose name shall be called “Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” in the “branch” of the eleventh chapter, one mighty divine personage is meant. The common minimizing interpretations may seem plausible in detail; but they disappear before the majestic sweep of the passages when they are taken as a whole.

At this point, however, an objection lies ready to hand. If the passage in the seventh chapter of Isaiah constitutes a real prophecy of Christ, what shall be done with the plain reference in the sixteenth verse to events belonging to the prophet’s own time?** How can the coming of Christ to years of discretion some seven centuries later be made to fix the time for the forsaking of the land of Israel and Syria? Surely some more immediate birth of a child must be in view.

In reply, either one of two things may be said.’® In the first place, it may be held that the prophet has before him in vision the birth of the child. Immanuel, and that irrespective of the ultimate fulfilment the vision itself is present. “I see a wonderful child,” the prophet on this interpretation would say, “a wonderful child whose birth shall bring salvation to his people; and before such a period of time shall elapse as would lie between the conception of the child in his mother’s womb and his coming to years of discretion, the land of Israel and of Syria shall be forsaken.” This interpretation, we think, is by no means impossible. It is difficult, indeed, to set it forth adequately in our bald modern speech; but the objections to it largely fall away when one reads the exalted language of the prophet as the language of prophetic vision ought really to be read.

In the second place, one may hold that in the passage some immediate birth of a child is in view, but that that event is to be taken as the foreshadowing of the greater event that was to come. Does an immediate reference to a child of the prophet’s own day really exclude the remoter and grander reference that determines the quotation in the first chapter of Matthew? Certainly it does so in accordance with the prevailing view of the Old Testament prophets, the view which rejects altogether the typology in which the Church of all the ages has found so much of beauty and so much of the grace of God. But has that prevailing view really penetrated to the full meaning of these Old Testament books? We think not; and because we think not (or else because we adopt the other of the two possible interpreta-

“For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken.”

1 They are well distinguished and expounded by J. A. Alexander, in The Prophecies of Isaiah, 1865, i, pp. 169-172.

tions that have just been set forth) we are able to accept still the use which the First Evangelist makes of the prophecy in the seventh chapter of Isaiah. That does not mean that we desire to return at all to the allegorical interpretation which in Philo and in Origen had such a baleful influence upon the readers of the Old Testament Scriptures. On the contrary, we adhere with full conviction to the method of grammatico-historical exegesis. But grammatico-historical exegesis does not demand the exclusion of all allegory from ancient books; it only demands that allegory shall not be discovered where no allegory was meant. So also grammatico-historical exegesis does not demand the exclusion of all typology from the exalted language of the Old Testament prophets; the question whether all typology is to be excluded is a question which should be settled, not by the mechanical application of modern exegetical methodology, but only by patient and sympathetic research. And when such patient and sympathetic research is applied to the Old Testament, the result, we think, will be that in the dealings of God with His covenant people will be found a profound and supernatural promise of greater things to come. So, in our passage, the prophet, when he placed before the rebellious Ahaz that strange picture of the mother and the child, was not merely promising deliverance to Judah in the period before a child then born should know how to refuse the evil and choose the good, but also, moved by the Spirit of God, was looking forward, as in a dim and mysterious vision, to the day when the true Immanuel, the mighty God and Prince of Peace, should lie as a little babe in a virgin’s arms.

But such a reading of prophecy will not be induced, in those who have abandoned it, by any considerations that we can now bring forth; indeed, it will come only when there is a mighty revulsion from the shallowness of our present religious life, and when men are again ready to listen to the voice of the living God. Certainly for us now to attempt any defence of it would lead us far away from our present subject. For what is now relevant to our argument is not at all that Is. vii14 really is a prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah. Upon that point we have touched merely in passing, lest there should be any misunderstanding of the position that we hold with regard to the Evangelist’s use of a prophecy that we think was given truly by inspiration of God. What is really relevant to our present argument is quite a different thing; it is the fact that, whatever the true interpretation of Is. vii.14 may have been, the actual interpretation of that prophecy which was prevalent among the Jews in the first century after Christ was, unless all indications fail, as far as possible from finding in the prophecy any prediction of the virgin birth of the Messiah.

It may perhaps at first sight seem strange that if Is. vii.r4 is really a prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah, the later Jews should have so completely failed to interpret it in that way. But a parallel case is found in Is. liii. If there is any one passage in the Old Testament which seems to the Christian heart to be a prophecy of the redeeming work of Christ, it is that matchless fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. We read it today, often even in preference to New Testament passages, as setting forth the atonement which our Lord made for the sins of others upon the cross. Never, says the simple Christian, was there a prophecy more gloriously plain. Yet the historian must admit that as a matter of fact the later Jews did not interpret the prophecy in any such way. Nothing seems to have been more foreign to later Judaism than the thought of the vicarious sufferings and death of the Messiah. The profound meaning of the Old Testament had at this point been missed; Jewish thought about the Messiah was moving along entirely different lines. So also it may have been, and with vastly better excuse, in the case of the mysterious prophecy. in Is. vii.14. That was really a prophecy of the virgin birth; but it was couched in such terms as to be fully intelligible only after the event. At any rate, whatever may have been the reason, it seems perfectly clear that the later Jews did not interpret Is. vii.14 as referring to the virgin birth of the Messiah.

One indication of that fact is to be found in the attitude of the Jew Trypho, who in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho is the exponent of Jewish polemic against the Christian faith, What Trypho urges against the Christian doctrine of the virgin birth is not at all that, although prophecy requires the Messiah to be born of a virgin, Jesus of Nazareth was as a matter of fact not so born and so could not be the one to whom prophecy looked. On the contrary, Trypho’s argument is that the Old Testament never predicted the virgin birth of the Messiah at all, and particularly did not do so at Is. vii.r4. Neither Justin Martyr nor his Jewish opponent displays the slightest acquaintance with any non-Christian Jews who expected the Messiah to be born of a virgin or who interpreted Is. vii14 in accordance with any expectation of that -sort. This fact is worthy of careful consideration; for there can be little doubt but that the Dialogue with Trypho does represent faithfully the state of Jewish opinion in the second century after Christ. It makes very little difference whether Trypho is a real or an imaginary figure; for even if he is an imaginary figure the arguments which Justin puts into his mouth are plainly arguments which the Christians actually had to meet in the conflicts of that day. Evidently Justin is not engaged in knocking down a man of straw; the Jewish attack upon Christianity which he attributes to Trypho is not an attack which might be made, but an attack which actually was made. Thus the Dialogue does provide extremely valuable information about the Judaism of that day. The fact is not unimportant, therefore, that the Dialogue displays no knowl-. edge whatever of any Jewish doctrine of the virgin birth of the Messiah, or any corresponding Jewish interpretation of Is. vii.14. But if the doctrine of the virgin birth and the Matthzan interpretation of Is. vii.1g were thus so contrary to Jewish opinion, what starting-point would Jewish Christians have for the evolution of the virgin birth story that is recorded for us in Matthew and Luke?

An objection to this argument is, indeed, ready to hand. Justin Martyr, it will be said, may be admitted to give us information about the Judaism of the second century; but what right have we to suppose that the Judaism of the second century was the same as the Judaism of the preceding period, in which the Christian story of the virgin birth arose? In opposition to Christianity, it will be said, and especially after the calamities to the Jewish state, Judaism would eliminate those elements of thought which would tend to support Christian contentions, and in particular would oppose to the Christian view of the supernatural Christ a purely humanitarian view of the Messiah as a king of David’s line. Might not this process of elimination have been applied to the special question of the Messiah’s entrance into the world? What right have we, therefore, to conclude that because second-century Judaism held to a purely natural birth of the Messiah, first-century Judaism may not have had on the contrary a doctrine of the virgin birth?

Unquestionably this objection possesses considerable force. It is no doubt true that a process of impoverishment did go on in Jewish thought about the Messiah after the founding of the Christian Church. Trypho, for example, is represented by Justin as denying the preéxistence of the Messiah. But we know from certain “apocalypses,” such as the Ethiopic book of Enoch, that in the pre-Christian period there were some Jewish circles in which the Messiah was believed to have existed in heaven before his appearance upon the earth. At that point, then, the Dialogue with Trypho does fail to represent the full richness and variety of earlier Jewish thought. Why may not the case be similar with reference to the virgin birth? May there not have been, despite the contrary opinion of Trypho, some Jewish circles in the earlier period that expected the Messiah to be virgin-born?

But although this objection does correct an undue reliance upon Justin’s testimony for our purpose, it does not destroy the value of that testimony altogether. Even with regard to the preéxistence of the Messiah and His superhuman character, the Dialogue with Trypho does unite with other indications to show that these elements in Jewish Messianic expectation probably did not belong, even in the pre-Christian period, to the main current of Jewish thought, and that the prevailing view probably was that the Messiah was to be an earthly king of David’s line. So the polemic of Trypho against the virgin birth, though it cannot of itself prove the complete absence of a virgin birth doctrine in the Jewish Messianic expectation of the preceding period, yet does tend strongly in that direction, and may be valuable in confirming other evidence to the same effect.

Such other evidence is in this case easily to be adduced. It is to be found in the complete silence, in all our sources of information, about any Jewish belief in the virgin birth of the Messiah, coupled with the marked antinomy in which, as we have already shown, that belief would stand over against the whole current of Jewish thought. Let it not be said that we have here a mere instance of the argument from silence to which we ourselves have objected strongly in other connections. The point is that the burden of proof in this case rests upon our opponents in the debate. They have asserted that the. myth of the virgin birth of Jesus arose on the basis of Jewish ideas. Surely it is fair to ask them positively to point out what those ideas were and to adduce the evidence of their existence. Their contention would be greatly strengthened if they could show that the belief in the virgin birth of the Messiah did not need to be evolved de novo by Jewish Christianity, but had already existed in pre-Christian Judaism. So far the proof has not been forthcoming. We have considerable information about pre-Christian Jewish thought regarding the Messiah; yet in that information a virgin birth of the Messiah has no place; the silence of our sources of information is complete.’”

At one point, indeed, that silence has been thought by several recent scholars to have been broken; the virgin birth of the Messiah, they maintain, is implied by the Septuagint translation of Is. vii.14. The Septuagint introduction of the word “virgin” in that passage is, according to these scholars, quite unwarranted; but just because it is unwarranted some reason must be sought for such an extraordinary mistake. What reason could there be except. that when the Septuagint translation was made there had already arisen a doctrine of the virgin birth of the Messiah and that this doctrine had already been read into Is. vii.14 or was now read into that passage by the Septuagint translators themselves?

But surely the making of this suggestion only reveals the dearth of real evidence for that which is to be proved. The Septuagint translates the word

17Tt is generally admitted that the Rabbinical passages which have been adduced in this connection are altogether without value. See Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, i, 1922, pp. 49 f.

‘almak in one other place in the Old Testament *® by the Greek word for “virgin.” Since in that place no profound calculation underlies the translation, why should such mysteries be read into the same translation at Is. vii14? It is true that in that other passage the word ‘almah designates an unmarried woman, so that it may be argued that the translation “virgin” was natural enough in that passage, whereas in Is. vii.14, where conception and child-bearing are mentioned, some special cause was needed to determine the choice of the word. But a little consideration will reveal the weakness of this argument. The use of the Greek word for “virgin” to translate the Hebrew word ‘almah in a clearly non-Messianic passage does seem to show that in the minds of translators like the translators of the different parts of the Septuagint there was an affinity between these two words. It shows at least that when ‘almah was translated by “virgin” at Is. vii.14, that was no such crass offence against linguistic usage as would necessarily need to be explained in some special way. The same Greek word for “virgin,” moreover, is used in several other places in the Septuagint to translate a Hebrew word (other than ‘almah) which means simply “young woman” or “maiden.”*® On the whole, it seems evident that the Septuagint is inclined to use the Greek word for “virgin” in rather a loose way, or in places where no special emphasis upon virginity appears. The word, therefore, might well have crept into the translation at Is. vii.14 without any special cause, or certainly without influence from any Jewish doctrine of a virgin birth of the Messiah. It must be remembered that such a doctrine is entirely without attestation elsewhere. To find it merely in the Septuagint translation of ‘almah by “virgin,” a translation that appears in another passage where there is no suspicion of any doctrinal significance, and that is paralleled by the occasional use of the same Greek word to translate a simple Hebrew word for young woman, is surely venturesome in the extreme. There is not the slightest direct evidence, therefore, in support of the view that there was in the pre-Christian Judaism of the time subsequent to the Old Testament any expectation of a virgin birth of the Messiah.

At this point, however, it becomes necessary to refer to the indirect support which has sometimes been found for such a view in the writings of Philo, the Jewish Alexandrian philosopher, who was a contemporary of our Lord.

8 Gen. xxiv.43, where Abraham’s servant is represented as praying that the maiden (‘almah) who should come to the fountain and give to drink to him and to his camels, should be the wife destined for Isaac. See Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, s. v. wapOévos. Wade (New Testament History, first published in 1922, p. 362, footnote 1) points out that rapGevos is in one place used by the Septuagint of a young woman who was not a virgin (Gen. xxxiv.3). The Hebrew original there has na‘arah.

Philo does not, indeed, attest anything like a virgin birth of the Messiah; such a thing stands entirely aside from the whole scope and method of his thought. So much, of course, must be admitted. But although he does not attest a virgin birth of the Messiah, he does speak of a virgin birth, or at least of a divine begetting, of certain Old Testament characters; and if these Old Testament characters could thus be spoken of by a Jew, Philo, as born without human father, might there not have been Jews who could also think of the greater One to come as being so born?

The Philonic passages which may be appealed to in this connection are fairly numerous.”” The most important and most extensive one of them is that which is found in the “De Cherubim.” Since serious misunderstanding may arise, and actually has arisen, from a consideration of Philv’s references to divine begetting apart from their context, it becomes advisable to quote the passage, or at least the most important part of it, in full. This passage, then, is as follows: 7!

“And Adam knew his wife; and she conceived and brought forth Cain, and said, ‘T have gotten a man by the instrumentality of God.’ And again she bore his brother Abel.” Those men whose virtue the lawgiver has attested he does not introduce as knowing women—namely Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and any others of like zeal. For inasmuch as we regard “woman” in our symbolic interpretation as representing “sense-perception,” 3? and inasmuch as knowledge exists by estrangement from senseperception and from the body,?8 he will represent the lovers of wisdom as rejecting sense-perception rather than choosing it. And is that not natural? For those who dwell with these lovers of wisdom are in name 24 “women” but actually 25 virtues— Sarah ruling and sovereign virtue, Rebekah patience in things that are good, Leah rejected and laboring in the continuity of discipline 2° (which every foolish person denies and shuns and turns away from), and Zipporah, the wife of Moses, hastening up from earth unto heaven and considering the divine and blessed creatures 27 that are there (she is called “little bird”). But that we may tell of the conceiving and travailing of the virtues, let superstitious persons shut their ears or else depart; for

2° See the passages cited by Leisegang, Pneuma Hagion, 1922, pp. 43 (Anm. 2), 45 (Anm. 1), 49 (Anm. 1), 52. See also the extensive collection of passages (many of which, it is true, are hardly relevant in the present connection) by Carman, “ Philo’s Doctrine of the Divine Father and the Virgin Mother,” in American Journal of Theology, ix, 1905, pp. 491-518.

a AGTH. ee % sovy. ¥ a6 Or ‘fainting and weary at the long continuance of exertion.” So Yonge. Cohn translates, rs Lea die verschmahte und bei bestandiger Tugendiibung sich abmithende.” Colson translates, rejected and faint’ through the unbroken discipline.” Text and interpretation are difficult

*7 dices. Colson translates, “the nature of things divine and blessed,”:

we teach divine mystic rites*® to the initiates who are worthy of the most sacred mysteries, and these are the men who practise without arrogance the true and really existing unadorned godliness; but to those other men we will not be hierophants—namely, to those who are bound by an incurable evil, by arrogance in words and greediness for names and claptraps in manners, and who measure by nothing else that which is pure and holy.

Here then must the initiation be begun. A man in accordance with nature comes together with a woman, a male of the human race with a female, to enter upon those embraces that lead to the generation of children; but in the case of virtues, which bring forth numerous and perfect offspring, it is not lawful for a mortal man to possess them. Yet they will never of themselves alone, without receiving seed from any other, bring forth offspring. Who then is the one who sows in them the things that are good unless it be the Father of existing things, the uncreated God who Himself begets all things? This God, then, sows, indeed, the seed, but on the other hand bestows as a gift His own offspring which He has sown; for God begets nothing for Himself, because He has need of nothing, but He begets all things for him who needs to receive them. I will adduce as sufficient surety of the things that I am saying the most holy Moses; for he introduces Sarah as being then with child when God visited her after she had been left solitary, but as being with child not to Him who made the visitation, but to him who desired to attain wisdom— and this latter is called Abraham. And in the case of Leah he teaches that more plainly, saying that God indeed opened her womb—and to open the womb is the function of a husband—but that she, when she conceived, brought forth not to God—for God is competent in Himself and self-sufficient—but to Jacob, who endures toil for the sake of the good, so that virtue received from the First Cause *? the divine seeds, but brought forth the child unto whichever one of her lovers should be preferred to all the other suitors. Again, when the all-wise Isaac entreated God, Rebekah, who is perseverance, became pregnant from Him who was entreated. And without entreaty and prayer Moses, taking winged and lofty virtue, Zipporah, finds her with child from no one °° mortal at all.31 These things, O initiates with purified ears, receive ye as indeed holy mysteries in your own souls, and divulge them to no uninitiated person, but storing them up in your own keeping guard them as a treasure—not a treasure in which gold and silver, perishable substances, are kept, but one in which is kept the most beautiful of true possessions, the knowledge of the First Cause and of virtue and of that third thing which is the offspring of both. And if ye chance upon any one of the initiated persons, embrace him with gentle insistence, that he hide not from you any new mystery which he may know, until ye be taught it clearly. For I also, though I had been initiated into the great mysteries under the guidance of Moses beloved of God, nevertheless when I saw Jeremiah the prophet and perceived that he was not only an initiate but also a competent hierophant, did not delay having recourse to him; but he, as one who often was possessed

28 rederas yap avadiddoxnopuev Oclas.

by the divine frenzy, uttered a certain oracle in the name of God, saying this to most peaceful virtue: “Hast thou not called me as a house and father and husband of thy virginity?”—clearly showing that God is both a house, an immaterial dwelling-place of immaterial ideas, and the father of all things, as having begotten them, and the husband of wisdom sowing the seed of blessedness for the mortal race into good and virgin soil. For it is fitting for God to hold convers: with a nature undefiled and untouched and pure, the nature truly virgin, in a manner different from our manner; for in the case of men the union for the begetting of children makes virgins to become women, but whenever God begins to converse with a soul, even if the soul was a woman before, he makes it again a virgin, since, destroying and putting’ out of the way the low-born and unmanly lusts, by which the soul had been made effeminate, He introduces instead of them genuine and undefiled virtues. With Sarah, therefore, He will not hold converse until she has ceased from all the ways of women and has returned to the rank of a pure virgin. But it is possible, perhaps, for even a virgin soul to be polluted by undisciplined passions and put to shame; wherefore the oracle is careful to say, not that God was the husband of @ virgin— for a virgin is changeable and mortal—but that He is the husband of virginity—that is, of the idea which always remains the same.3? For while things that are of this sort or that are subject by nature to beginning and to decay, the powers that have given the imprint to the individual things have received an immortal inheritance. Wherefore it is fitting that the uncreated’ and unchangeable God should sow the ideas of immortal and virgin virtues into virginity, which never changes into the form of a woman. Why then,/O soul, it being required of thee to live as a virgin in the house of God and to cling to knowledge, dost thou leave these things and give thy greetings to sense-perception, which makes thee effeminate and corrupt? For this cause thou shalt bring forth as thy utterly hybrid and utterly ruined offspring that Cain who murdered his brother and was accursed—a possession that is not worthy to be possessed (for “Cain” means “possession”).

At first sight, this passage, and other similar passages in Philo, might seem to provide a rather close parallel to the New Testament account of the birth of Jesus. In both cases there is begetting by divine agency; in both cases the human paternity seems to be excluded; and in both cases emphasis is laid upon the virginity of the mother.

This similarity should not, indeed, be overestimated. The form which the divine agency takes is different in Philo from that which appears in Matthew and Luke; for Philo says nothing about an activity of the Holy Spirit in the birth of Isaac and of the others about whom he speaks. It is God, not specifically the Spirit of God, who causes the conception of the child in the womb of Sarah and of the other three women.

F. C. Conybeare, indeed, has tried to bridge this gap between the two by tis del KaTd Ta abra Kal doabrws éxobons ideas. Cohn translates: “der sich stets gleich bleibenden Idee.” Compare Colson: “of virginity, the idea which is unchangeable and eternal.”

representations.** In another passage ** in Philo, he points out, the Alexandrian philosopher speaks of the individual man as being “compounded of earthly substance and of divine Spirit” ** and of his soul as arising “out of nothing created whatsoever, but from the Father and Controller of all things.” ** Here there is a verbal similarity to our passage in the “De Cherubim”; the phrase, “from nothing [or “no one”] created at all,”*" corresponds with the phrase “from nothing [or “no one”] mortal at all.” ** But if there is such similarity in the way in which the human element is excluded in the two passages, must there not also be a connection in Philo’s mind—so the argument might run— between what the two passages designate as the divine element? Thus the activity of God in the begetting of Isaac according to the “De Cherubim” passage would be identified with the activity of “the divine Spirit” mentioned in the passage in the “De Opificio Mundi.” Accordingly, we should have in Philo, after all, the idea of a begetting by the Spirit of God; and the parallel with Matthew and Luke would become even closer than at first sight it seems to be.

This reasoning is, however, very precarious. The passage in the “De Opificio Mundi” does not say that the soul of man came not from anything mortal, but from the divine Spirit; it says rather that the soul of man came not from anything mortal, but from the Father and Ruler of all things. What it does say about “spirit” is that the individual man is compounded of earthly substance and divine spirit. Here the divine spirit appears not as the power which begat the soul, but as the substance of which the soul is compounded. In exposition of Gen. ii.7, where the Scripture says that God breathed into man’s nostrils (Greek, “face”) the breath of life, Philo identifies the soul, as distinguished from the body, with the breath or spirit 38 of God:

For that which he breathed in was nothing else than the divine. spirit sent as a colonist from that blessed and happy nature for the aid of our race, in order that even if the race is mortal in its visible part yet at least in its invisible part it may be made immortal.*°

8% Conybeare, “The Newly Found Sinaitic Codex of the Gospels,” in Academy, xlvi, 1894,

3 ray d& Puxw dm’ obderds yevnrod 7d wapdmay, GAN’ ek rod warpds Kal wyyeudvos Tay amrdyvrwy.

37 dr’ obdevds yernTod TO wapamrap.

8 The Septuagint uses xvon; Philo in his exposition mvedua. The two words are closely related. It is noteworthy that G. H. Whitaker (in Colson and Whitaker, op. cit., 1, 1929, p. 107) translates ave0ua Geto in the passage in the De opificio mundi not by “Divine Spirit,” but by

Very different is the representation in Mt. i.18-25; Lk. i.35. In the New Testament passages the Holy Spirit certainly does not appear as a substance which is breathed by God into the virgin Mary for the formation of the soul, as distinguished from the body, of the child. On the contrary, the Spirit is here the source or agent of the act of begetting by which the body of the child was formed in the womb.

Moreover, that passage in the “De Opificio Mundi” is not really relevant to the present discussion. There what is in view is something that belongs to empirical “man” as such. But what we are seeking if we are to obtain a parallel for the New Testament narrative of the virgin birth of Christ is something that is attributed only to specially exalted men—something, therefore, that might conceivably be designated as belonging especially to the Messiah. It is noteworthy that in the passages where Philo lays stress upon the absence of the human paternity in the case of certain special Old Testament personages he does not speak at all of the “divine spirit,” but says only - that those personages were begotten by “God.” We are not denying that the thought of the “De Opificio Mundi” passage is connected with the thought that appears in the “De Cherubim.” In both cases Philo is thinking of facts regarding the human soul. The individual characters mentioned in the “De Cherubim” do not appear, as we shall see, at all for their own sakes, but solely for what they represent in Philo’s allegorical exegesis. But our point is that it is not the underlying meaning of the “De Cherubim” passage which might conceivably be regarded as affording a basis for the New Testament virgin birth doctrine, but only the external form of expression with its reference to Isaac and the rest. The “De Opificio Mundi” passage in itself affords not the slightest parallel to the New Testament narrative. Only such passages as the one in the “De Cherubim” can by any chance be cited in that connection. It is, therefore, quite unjustifiable to import the phrase “the divine spirit” from that former passage into the latter, in order by this means to make more complete the parallel with Matthew and Luke. It does remain true, therefore, that the divine agency is not designated in the same way in the really relevant Philonic passages as in the New Testament account of the virgin birth of Christ.

But even with this limitation there seems at first sight to be similarity enough. Both Philo and the New Testament seem to exclude the human agency in the act of begetting, and they both emphasize the virginity of the mother. Moreover, one of the Old Testament characters to whom Philo refers is Isaac, who according to the Old Testament was born of aged parents, as was John the Baptist, whose birth is in the Lucan infancy narrative brought into such close parallel with that of Jesus. Have we not here a clear indication of the path by which the idea of the virgin birth of the Messiah could enter into Jewish or Jewish Christian belief? First the Old Testament spoke of the birth of Isaac as being in some sort supernatural, since his parents were past age; then this supernatural element in the birth of Isaac was in some Jewish circles actually held to involve exclusion of the human father in the case of Isaac himself (Philo), while in other Jewish (or else in Jewish Christian) circles it could lead to the notion that if not Isaac himself at least one greater than Isaac, the Messiah, was born without human father.

The argument is plausible at first sight; but upon closer examination it breaks down. Here as elsewhere verbal parallels beween Philo and the New Testament are found to mask a wide divergence of thought.

Did Philo really believe that Isaac and the other Old Testament characters in question were actually born without human father by the direct agency of God? So far as we are aware, no one today holds that to be the case; no present-day scholar, so far as we know, maintains that the Alexandrian philosopher actually believed that historical personages such as Isaac were virgin-born. To maintain such a view would be to misunderstand the whole nature of Philo’s allegorical exegesis. As soon as one attains the slightest insight into the allegorical method of using the Old Testament, one sees clearly that when Philo speaks of a virgin birth or a divine begetting in the passages which are now in view, he is thinking of a divine begetting of the soul of man, or a divine begetting of certain virtues in the soul of man, and not at all of a divine begetting of human beings of flesh and blood who actually lived upon this earth.

Suppose we came to Philo, after our perusal of the passage in the “De Cherubim,” with the question what he actually thought the manner of birth of the historic personage, Isaac, to have been—in particular with the question whether he did or did not think that Abraham was in a physical sense the father of this son. In the first place, it is perfectly evident that by the very asking of such a question we should, in the judgment of our philosopher, have completely forfeited our right to be taken seriously; we should have forfeited our right to become candidates for initiation into the “great mysteries.” In the presence of the Alexandrian teacher we moderns with our boasted grammatico-historical exegesis, with our interest in the question what actually happened long ago, would have seemed to be very profane persons indeed; it is very doubtful whether Philo would have wasted much time with questioners like us. But if he had answered our question, no doubt it would have been to the effect that his teaching at this point was not intended for children, and that if we wanted to hear about historical personages as historical personages, we should turn either to other teachers or to his own simpler works, but as for reading the “De Cherubim,” or the “De Opificio Mundi,” that could only confuse our minds to no profit at all. No, there is not the slightest probability that Philo ever believed in, or even for one moment thought of, an actual virgin birth of a man of flesh and blood.

At first sight, indeed, it might seem to an uninitiated reader as though he did hold such a belief. Certain sentences in his writings seem to be perfectly explicit; and apparently he uses certain utterances of the Old Testament to construct a veritable argument against the view that Isaac and the others were begotten by the human beings who were the husbands of their mothers. Moses, Philo says, speaks of God as opening the womb of Leah; but to open the womb is the function of the husband; therefore—so Philo’s argument seems to run—God it was, and not Jacob, who begat Leah’s child. Or else it is an argument from the silence of Scripture which leads Philo to the same conclusion; Scripture does not speak of Abraham and certain others as knowing their wives; therefore they cannot be regarded as having begotten the children whom their wives brought forth.

At this point F. P. Badham departs in a curious way from the ordinary interpretation.*? Philo’s real meaning, he says, is that although Isaac was actually born of the seed of Abraham, yet by the divine agency that seed was conveyed to the mother in a way other than by the ordinary intercourse of the sexes. Thus, according to this interpretation, the mother could be a virgin, although the child was Abraham’s child. This same interpretation is applied by Badham to the New Testament narratives: the real meaning of Matthew and Luke, he holds, is that although Mary was a virgin, yet Joseph was actually in a physical sense the father of Jesus; God caused the act of begetting to be accomplished without any intercourse between husband and wife.*?

It is scarcely necessary to point out that this view does justice neither to Philo nor to the New Testament. In the case of Philo, Badham lays stress upon the fact that the “De Cherubim” passage says that the children, though begotten by an act of God, were born to Abraham and the other human beings regarded as their fathers. But does this really mean that God caused Abraham to be in a physical sense the father of Isaac, and Jacob the father of Leah’s -child, though in some more wonderful way than by the intercourse between husband and wife? Surely such an interpretation is impossible. The real