There are, of course, differences between this narrative and the one in Lk. ii.1-20; but these differences, Gressmann insists, are merely due to changes in the setting which became necessary when the legend was transplanted from one country to another. In the Theban landscape, which was dominated by the Nile, it had of course to be a drawer of water who fished the foundling child from the river, while in pastoral Judza shepherds were of course the natural persons to perform a corresponding function; the swaddling-clothes, in which the child was wrapped according to the Lucan narrative, also are due in all probability to the peculiarity of Palestinian custom.
But, says Gressmann, how great, as over against these differences, are the similarities! In both cases the birth of the child is immediately announced by a divine voice; the divinity is watching over the child and summons the necessary rescuer; in both cases the child is designated as “Lord” (Kyrios),.and the title “benefactor” in the Egyptian story is closely related to the title “Saviour” in Luke; in both cases the divine announcement is passed on, in the Egyptian story by express command, in the Lucan story without it; in both cases the recipients of the divine announcement are laymen, belonging to the lower classes of the people. But more important than such similarities in detail is, according to Gressmann, the similarity in the entire structure of the two stories. That similarity does not appear, indeed, in the present form of the Lucan story; but in the original form of the story it is clear: the Christ-child
® Plutarch, De Iside et Ostride, xii.; The Greek has cuvexrecetv. Gressmann, following Norden, supplies “from on high” or
“from heaven.” 9 “Zeus,” says Gressmann, is the Egyptian Amon, the chief divinity of Thebes.
*% Cronus, according to Gressmann, is the Egyptian Geb, the father of Osiris.
is born in wonderful fashion; it is without human parents (being a divine child that sprang from divine parents); suddenly it lies far from men, helpless and wrapped in swaddling-clothes, in a manger; but meanwhile the shepherds, who happen to be in the field, are made aware of the event and are sent to the manger; and since they know that the foundling is of divine origin and is destined for great things, they spread abroad the angelic announcement and take the foundling under their protection, giving him milk to drink, and bringing him up.
Accordingly, we find here, Gressmann concludes, essentially the same story attested by Plutarch and by Luke; there is clearly a relation of definite dependence between the Egyptian and the Jewish form in which the story appears. But there can be no doubt, Gressmann thinks, but that the dependence is on the side of the Jewish form. In the first place, the loose joints and breaks in the Lucan story show that that story has passed through a long history, whereas such breaks are lacking in the Osiris legend; ®° in the second place, the fact that the foundling is a king is in the Christ legend merely implied, while in the Osiris legend it is plainly stated; in the third place (what is most important), the fact that the royal child has at the same time divine rank, as is indicated in the Lucan narrative by the angelic announcement, is as completely out of accord with native Jewish ideas as it is completely in accord with the Egyptian deification of the monarch, which was prevalent in Egypt from the earliest times.
The localization of the birth legend in a cave near Bethlehem requires, according to Gressmann, a word of special explanation. That the legend should be connected with Bethlehem is of course natural so soon as it was applied to the Messiah; but why should it be connected particularly with this particular cave? It would be tempting, Gressmann says, simply to regard the Adonis-Tammuz worship in the cave of the nativity, which is attested for post-Christian times by Jerome,”* with a pre-Christian worship of Osiris (who was merged with Adonis on Egyptian ground) in that same cave; but this connection is not proved, he says, and on the whole is improbable. All that we can say, therefore, is, according to Gressmann, that a peculiar sanctity attached for some obscure reason to the Bethlehem cave, so that it became natural to localize in that cave the birth legend which was imported by pre- Christian Judaism from Egypt and was attached to the Messiah.
Finally, Gressmann confirms his Egyptian derivation of the narrative by
© At this point Gressmann might seem to have forgotten that he has previously attributed the breaks in the Lucan narrative not to the original Jewish legend, which he is comparing with the Osiris story, but to the trouble caused by the introduction of the Christian elements.
comparison with the legends of other countries. The foundling motif, of course, is common, and so are stories of the births of gods; but nowhere except in Egypt, says Gressmann, have we the peculiar combination of the foundling motif with the notion of the king as a god, which appears in the legend underlying Lk. ii.1-20. Egypt, moreover, is par excellence the land where the notion of the divine child (for example, “Horus, the Child”) engrosses the thoughts and sentiments of the people. To Egypt, therefore, and to Egypt alone, must we look for the origin of the “Christmas gospel” in the second chapter of Luke.
It will not be necessary for us to criticize this theory in detail; for it lies somewhat aside from the specific subject with which our discussion is concerned. The virgin birth, Gressmann holds, does not appear in Lk. ii.1-20 or in the Egyptian-Jewish legend underlying that section; so that perhaps we might have spared our readers the rather detailed exposition of Gressmann’s analysis which we have just brought to a close. Nevertheless, we believe that that exposition has by no means been without value for the understanding of the modern method of dealing with the subject of the virgin birth. Gressmann’s comparison of Lk. ii.1-20 with the Plutarch passage from the “De Iside et Osiride” is so perfect an example of the method followed by modern students of comparative religion that it becomes highly instructive when we come to evaluate the treatment, by Gressmann himself and by others, of the closely related subject with which specifically the present volume is concerned.
That modern method proceeds first by inference from the extant form of a narrative to an original form existing prior to literary fixation. Then the narrative so reconstructed is brought into comparison with some other narrative which, like the former narrative, is not actually given in the extant sources, but is derived from those sources by a process of elaboration or subtraction. In the application of this method, Gressmann begins with the Lucan narrative. That narrative says nothing whatever about a foundling child; but the foundling child is put into it by an hypothesis which may or may not be correct. Then it is the turn of the narrative in Plutarch. That narrative also says nothing very plainly about a foundling child; at least it says nothing about the fishing up of that child from the Nile. Again these elements are introduced into it by inferences which may or may not be correct. Then the two narratives thus reconstructed are treated as though they were actually attested and are compared with each other with a gratifyingly positive result. Grave questions certainly arise with regard to the whole procedure; it may well be questioned whether a cautious historian will not have to adhere more closely to the sources as they actually are.
But it is time now to turn to the treatment by the same author of the subject of the virgin birth. It will soon be observed that our author’s conclusions about this latter subject are very similar, even in detail, to his conclusions with regard to the story in the second chapter of Luke.
In treating the New Testament motif of the supernatural conception, it is important, Gressmann says, to find the particular passage where that motsf has its original seat. But this passage is not the first chapter of Matthew, which is plainly secondary, but rather verses 26-38 in the first chapter of Luke. It is true that even in this passage the virgin birth is not narrated, but merely presupposed; yet at least it does form the subject of the annunciation which was made by the angel Gabriel to Mary the mother of Jesus. Here, then, we have to start, Gressmann says, in our effort to discover the origin of the myth.
As in the story of the birth, in Lk. ii.1-20, so here in the story of the annunciation, Gressmann detects loose ends and contradictions in the narrative as it stands. One of these loose ends, he says, of course stares us in the face in Mary’s question in Lk. i.34. Mary was betrothed to Joseph, the descendant of David; why, then, did she not interpret the angel’s promise as referring to her coming marriage with Joseph; why did she ask, instead: “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” The truth is, says Gressmann, that the entire representation of the Davidic descent of Jesus as son of Joseph is quite contrary to the virginity of Mary which appears plainly in Lk. i.27 and is implied in the following verses. Yet Gressmann rejects emphatically the interpolation hypothesis regarding Lk. i.34f. The Semitic form of these verses, he says, shows clearly that they were an original part of the narrative, as does also their agreement with the emphasis on the virginity of Mary in verse 27 and with the surprise which Mary felt at the angel’s greeting. How, then, is the contradiction in the narrative really to be explained?
Gressmann has a very definite answer to this question. The contradiction arose, he thinks, from the introduction of Joseph and Mary, as parents of the child, into a legend in which originally they had no place. Originally the legend had to do merely with a virgin mother, a divine father, and a divinehuman child destined to be a king. That legend was in pre-Christian Judaism applied to the Messiah. Then it was seized upon by Jewish Christians to do honor to the one whom they regarded as the Messiah, namely Jesus. But the parents of Jesus, Joseph and Mary, were well known; they had to be brought somehow into the story; and the confusion which we find in the Lucan narrative was the inevitable result.
Thus Gressmann rejects the view that the idea of the virgin birth of Christ originated in Gentile Christian circles. The Semitic character of the narratives containing that idea protests strongly, he observes, against any such view. But, on the other hand, Jewish Christians who already believed in Jesus were not the originators of the idea; for then the contradictions in Lk. i26-38 could not be explained. The only possible conclusion, Gressmann thinks, is that the legend was already applied to the Messiah in the Judaism of pre-Christian times.
Ultimately, however, Gressmann continues, the legend could not have been of Jewish origin; for with its crass mythology it is contrary to the very heart and core of Jewish monotheism. In Luke, the mythological notion is perfectly clear; the “Holy Ghost” is parallel to “the power of the Most High,” so that God Himself is regarded as having performed the act of physical begetting. In Matthew, on the other hand, Gressmann thinks, there is a greater degree of concession to Jewish feeling, since the “Holy Ghost” of the Matthzan narrative is regarded as a male being subordinate to God. But it is a mistake, Gressmann continues, to regard the introduction of the Holy Spirit as a Jewish Christian modification of some grosser pagan representation; for the pagans had not only the notion of begetting by a god, but also the notion of begetting by the divine Spirit.” Thus even the form in which the divine activity in begetting appears in the New Testament narratives has, according to Gressmann, its counterpart in pagan belief.
From what particular pagan source, then, did this pre-Christian Jewish notion of divine begetting ultimately come? In answering this question, as in answering the question regarding the ultimate source of Lk. ii.1-20, Gressmann turns with some confidence to Egypt. What we are seeking, he says, is not a story of birth from a divine mother, but a story of birth from a human mother after begetting by a divine father. That consideration narrows somewhat the range of our search. The range is, indeed, according to Gressmann, still fairly broad; for there are many stories in which a human mother is represented as having brought forth a divinely begotten child. But one further feature of the New Testament story enables us to fix a particular one of the parallels and to eliminate the others—the feature, namely, that according to the New Testament narrative the divine-human child is to be a great king. If we give due weight to this feature and at the same time confine our attention to those countries that came into contact with Palestine, we are led inevitably, Gressmann says, to Egypt. In Egypt, both in ancient times and during the period of the Ptolemaic dynasty, it was the current belief that every new king sprang from a human mother and from the highest god, Amon-Ra, who appeared to
*7 Plutarch, vita Numae, iv. 4: xalroc Soxobow obk drBdvus Alybrriot diaipety ds yuvaurl wav otk &Sbvarov xvedua wAnotdoat Geo Kal reas evrexeiy dpxas yevéicews, x.7.d., “And yet it seems to be not unbelievable when the Egyptians assert it to be possible for the spirit [or breath] of God to approach a woman and engender certain beginnings of generation.”
the young queen in his divine form, had intercourse with her, and then promised her that she should bring forth a son who should be king over Egypt. The similarity of this legend to that which is found in the New Testament is, Gressmann thinks, striking; it appears both in the structure of the whole and in details. The “power of the Most High” in Luke answers to the “highest god,” Amon-R&, in the Egyptian legend; the Egyptians, as we know from Plutarch, believed that the “divine spirit” could have intercourse with a woman and thus beget a child, so that the “divine spirit” is in Egypt a substitute for Amon-Ra, as it is among the Jews for Jehovah; in the Egyptian legend as in the Gospels there is closely connected with the conception of the child in the womb the promise that the child should possess the kingdom. These similarities, Gressmann thinks, can only be explained by the dependence of the Jewish story upon the Egyptian story of the birth of the king.
Gressmann admits, indeed, that the Egyptian legend contains no mention of the virginity of the mother. His explanation is that no one in Egypt doubted the intercourse of the god with the queen; whereas when the legend was transferred to other persons, whose intercourse with divinity was not a matter of course, there needed to be emphasis upon the mother’s virginity and purity.°* Such emphasis appears, for example, says Gressmann, in the case of the birth legend of Plato, which may well be connected in some way with the Egyptian legend; and it appears also in the story in Matthew and Luke.
Surely this explanation, it may be remarked in passing, is quite inadequate; and the absence of any notion of the virginity of the mother in the Egyptian story does constitute a very important difference, in addition to other still more important differences closely connected with it, between the Egyptian belief as to the divine origin of the king and the New Testament narrative of the supernatural conception of Jesus in the womb of the virgin Mary.
Before we proceed to criticize this hypothesis of Egyptian origin of the virgin birth story, it will be necessary to notice the form in which the hypothesis has appeared in the learned monograph by Eduard Norden, on “The Birth of the Child.” ®® Norden’s book is devoted primarily to a study of the Fourth Eclogue, the so-called “Messianic eclogue” of Virgil. In that eclogue, Norden insists, we have no mere celebration of some noble Roman child contemporary with the poet, but a poetic treatment of an ancient myth. The original home of that myth, certainly the place from which Virgil’s form of it came, was Egypt; a man of genius has here given poetic expression to an ancient theologoumenon which with various changes had been scattered abroad from its
% For the alternative explanation proposed by Norden, see below, pp. 359 f. * Norden, Die Geburt des Kindes, 1924.
Egyptian home into various lands and among various peoples. The myth or theologoumenon in question was the myth of the Divine Child.
In ancient Egyptian sources, that myth appears in the story of the begetting of the heir to the kingdom by the god Amon-Ra. The god is represented. as taking the form of the reigning monarch and as thus having intercourse with the queen. The result of this union is the conception and then the birth of the new monarch. In this story the various scenes are depicted with much detail on the monuments: various gods and goddesses are represented as taking part in the different functions connected with the birth and the suckling of the child..
According to Moret,’ this notion of divine begetting was connected with every king (not merely with kings whose right to the throne was for some reason in doubt), and it persisted down into very late times. A late product of it is found in the story in Pseudo-Callisthenes in the third century after Christ. According to that story, Alexander the Great was begotten by Nectanebes, the last of the Pharaohs, who gained access to Olympias, wife of Philip of Macedon, under the pretence that he was the god Amon. From the Alexander story there have come many expressions of the same motf. In a few of them, as in the incident of Paulina and Mundus,’” an actual event underlies the story; unscrupulous men used the ancient story about the deceit of Nectanebes as a suggestion of the way in which they could gratify their own lust. But most of the stories in which the Nectanebes motif appears are pure fiction, as in Boccaccio and in most of the other examples which Weinreich has adduced.’
The ancient Egyptian belief in divine begetting is attested, according to Norden, by Plutarch and by Philo. But there are two important differences, Norden says, between these two attestations. In the first place, Philo says nothing about the “spirit” in this connection, while Plutarch says that according to the Egyptians “it is not impossible for the spirit of God to approach a woman and engender certain beginnings of generation.” ** In the second place, Plutarch says nothing about virginity, which is strongly emphasized by Philo. These differences, Norden says, are to be explained by the difference between the Egyptian and the Hellenistic forms of the theologoumenon: the notion of the “spirit,” or life-giving breath, of the god is Egyptian; while the notion of virginity is Greek. A union of these two factors, Norden concludes, took place in the Graco-Egyptian religion of the Ptolemaic period; and so was produced the form of the myth which underlies the passages in the first chapters of Matthew and Luke—“God begets a son in pneumatic union with a virgin.”
Of course, when that myth was transplanted to Jewish soil, it must be admitted that certain changes became necessary in order to adapt it to the Jewish idea of God. Thus instead of the appearance of the god himself to perform the act of begetting we have in the Gospels the appearance of a messenger merely to announce it; and instead of the exultation of the mother in the joy of her union with the god we have merely the words addressed to the messenger: “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” Nevertheless, Norden insists, the original myth still shines through from beneath its Jewish Christian dress. It appears even in the detail that the mother in the Jewish Christian story is a married woman at the time when the conception takes place. That detail introduces an element of unexplained contradiction, Norden says, into the Jewish Christian story, whereas in the original Egyptian story of the divine begetting of the king it had a logical and necessary place. And in general, Norden thinks, the story in the Gospels gives clear evidence of its secondary character, clear evidence of being an adaptation to monotheistic requirements of the ancient Egyptian myth of the theogamy of Amon-R4 with the reigning queen.
Our criticism of this hypothesis may well find its starting-point in the word “theogamy” which Norden himself uses. The Egyptian story is indeed the story of a theogamy; and being the story of a theogamy it has nothing to do with the New Testament story of the virgin birth of Christ. In Egypt the carnal union of the god with the queen is no mere detail which could be removed without destroying the essential character of the myth; on the contrary, the sources linger upon it with great insistence, and it appears as quite central in all the many later stories to which the ancient myth has given rise.
Norden himself gives us a hint as to the weakness of his own hypothesis when he writes as follows:
The motif of a supernatural birth is found—though without the Greco-Egyptian and Judzo-Christian peculiarities, which form a closed circle of their own—in many peoples of quite diverse forms of culture. Wherever trustworthy tradition is extant, the mystery is without exception clothed in the form that the god himself appears to the mortal woman with whom he desires to enter into the marital relationship. “I will descend into thy bosom”—thus or in some similar way he speaks
to her, and she gives herself willingly to him. The Gospel narrative exhibits by its peculiarity a conscious departure from a type.!°¢
This passage is not altogether clear; we do not quite understand what Norden means by saying that the Graco-Egyptian and Judzo-Christian peculiarities “form a closed circle of their own.” Does he mean that the Greco-Egyptian peculiarities form one closed circle and the Judzo-Christian peculiarities another, or that they both form one closed circle when they are taken together? If, as seems probable, he means the latter, then we fail to see the exact relevance of the words that follow. For surely the actual appearance of the god to the woman with which he will have union is a characteristic of the Egyptian story just as much as it is of the many other stories to which Norden alludes. Indeed, it is found in the Egyptian story in an especially crass and detailed form. Yet in the Judzo-Christian story it appears not at all. Surely, then, it is misleading to say that the closed circle embraces the Greco-Egyptian and the Judeo-Christian peculiarities in distinction from other myths of divine begetting. In reality there are two circles: one embraces the many pagan stories of the carnal union of a mortal woman with a god; the other contains only the New Testament story of the supernatural conception of our Lord. And the two circles are entirely distinct.
This distinctness is made clear by Norden, as though against his will, in the following revealing passage, which appears almost immediately before the passage that we have just quoted above:
How touching, through their expression of submission, are those words of the » woman to whom an incomprehensible experience has been announced: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” 1° We would not do without them, although we now, I think, recognize that they are a substitute for the proud and exultant words which a woman rejoicing in her love-union with the god addresses to the god himself. Perhaps, indeed, many religious souls will even think that the majesty of the divine in the Gospel narrative, which leaves the divine in mysterious unapproachableness, is loftier than in the basic story in which the god approaches the marriage bed in the form of the king and lays his heart upon that of the woman, who now in his arms, pervaded in all her members by his magic life-giving power, becomes a goddess. The Egyptian theologoumenon breathes still the sturdy, grand style of a myth; while the Gospel narrative is surrounded by the entrancing fragrance of a delicate legend, which is only quite from afar still touched by a shadow from an ancient time.
Does not this passage show more clearly than could be done by any argument of ours the abysmal difference between the Egyptian story and the one that is
106 Norden, op. cit., p. 91. ‘; 107 We have here translated the quotation from Lk. 1.38, which Norden quotes in Greek.
found in Matthew and Luke? Between the words of Mary to the messenger of the Most High God and the exultant words of the queen in her carnal union with an anthropomorphic god, what a gulf is fixed! Norden himself admits that the New Testament narrative is unique. In all the other stories of supernatural birth, the god himself appears to the woman with whom he will have union; here only nothing of the sort appears. Is the difference to be explained merely by the adaptation of the pagan story to monotheistic conditions? Such an explanation is quite inadequate. The trouble is that the supposed “adaptation” would really mean the removal of the very heart and core of the pagan myth; for the heart and core of the pagan myth is found in the carnal union of the god with the woman of his choice. Can that be adaptation which really produces the very opposite of the thing from which the adaptation is supposed to have taken place? Is it not perfectly clear, on the contrary, that in the Egyptian myth, on the one hand, and the New Testament narrative of the virgin birth of our Lord, on the other, we have phenomena which spring from two separate and distinct roots?
If anyone desires to confirm this conclusion, if anyone desires to detect with a new clearness the difference between the New Testament account of the virgin birth of Christ and the pagan myth, let him read the learned book by Weinreich to which allusion has already been made; 7° let him trace the history of these stories that really do have a common root. Let him observe how, though in many varying forms, there always appear both the content and the spirit of the same lascivious tale. And then let him turn to the lofty monotheism of the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke. Let him compare these narratives with the ancient Egyptian myth. If he then still thinks there is dependence, it can only be because, despite Weinreich’s services, he has not yet learned what real dependence is.
This distinctness of the New Testament doctrine, it is true, is not perceived with equal clearness by all men. But perhaps that is because all men have not equal organs of perception, We may perhaps appeal in this connection to Norden himself. The prologue of the Fourth Gospel, says Norden, is a test of a man’s power of forming judgments in the sphere of comparative religion; he who does not find in that prologue an echo of Heraclitus shows merely that his ear is not sufficiently sharp to hear these ancient tones. We confess that our ear is not sufficiently sharp for that. But we may perhaps venture upon a retort. We may perhaps say that he who does not see that there is something radically wrong when Norden gravely debates the question whether Mary’s pure words of submission are or are not higher from the religious point of view than the exultant words of the Egyptian queen in her amorous embraces with the god; he who does not see that the lofty monotheism of the New Testament narrative is removed by an infinity of difference from the Egyptian tale; he who does not see that the conception of the holy child Jesus by the creative power of God is the very opposite of the theogamy of Amon-Ra with a mortal woman—he who does not see these things shows thereby that his eye has never been sharpened by any really sympathetic contemplation of the religion of Israel or of the wonderful narratives in the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke. For a true comparison between the New Testament, on the one hand, and pagan religions on the other, something more than a knowledge of pagan religions is required. One must also try to enter into the inner spirit of the New Testament books. And when one does that, one sees clearly that the hypothesis of Gressmann and Norden altogether breaks down.’
Perhaps the most elaborate effort that has ever been made to explain the genesis of the New Testament idea of the virgin birth, supposing the idea not to be based on fact, is the effort of Hans Leisegang in his monograph on the passages in the Synoptic Gospels which deal with the Holy Spirit."° This monograph appeared two years before the work of Eduard Norden, which has just been discussed; but we have reserved consideration of it to the last because its elaborate character makes it in some sort the culmination of the entire treatment by modern naturalism of the New Testament story of the birth of Christ.
Previous treatments of the subject, Leisegang says, have erred in ignoring, or giving insufficient attention to, the positive side of the New Testament representation; the investigators have attended to the fact that in that representation the human father is excluded, but they have not considered sufficiently that which is substituted for the human father—namely, the activity of the Holy Spirit. It is this positive side of the New Testament representation, just as much as the negative side, which the student of comparative religion is called upon to explain.
109 This conclusion is not invalidated by the Plutarch passage (see above, p. 357) where the “spirit of God” is given a part in the begetting of a child. At first sight it might seem as though this were a close parallel with the New Testament account of conception by the Holy Ghost. But the plausibility of such a suggestion disappears when we observe that what Plutarch means by the “spirit” or “breath” of God is no doubt something of a material kind, in accordance with the usual meaning of the term in Greek pagan thought. See Burton, Spirit, Soul, and Flesh, 1918, especially pp. 134 f. Norden himself seems to give us a hint that “spirit” in Plutarch is to be taken in a material sense; for he says that Philo avoids the term just because of its usage to designate something material (Norden, of. cit., p. 80).
10 Leisegang, Pneuma Hagion, Der Ursprung des Geistbegriffs der synoptischen Evangelien aus
Now the New Testament representation appears, according to Leisegang, in two distinct forms: one in Matthew, the other in Luke. If we began with the one in Matthew, he says further, the explanation might at first sight seem to be very simple; at first sight it might seem to be discoverable on purely Jewish ground. The words, “from the Holy Spirit,” in the sentence, “she was found with child from the Holy Spirit,’*"* clearly designate the “Holy Spirit” as performing the act of begetting. But in the original Greek the expression “Holy Spirit” has no article with it; the meaning, therefore, may be not “the Holy Spirit,” but “a holy spirit”; and what would be designated would be not the Spirit of God, but a subordinate being, a “holy spirit,” different, indeed, in moral quality from the unclean spirits frequently mentioned in the Gospels, but not essentially different from them in his place in the scale of being. But if this be the meaning, if the Gospel of Matthew attributes the act of begetting to a personal being, a “spirit,” subordinate to God, then, says Leisegang, we can find striking parallels on Semitic ground. The parallels | do not, indeed, appear in literary sources from ancient times; but popular beliefs in certain remote districts in Bible lands are known to be conservative, so that even modern sources in those countries may give correct information about ancient beliefs. The particular beliefs to which Leisegang refers are the beliefs in carnal union between a woman and certain spirits or “welis”; barren women are said to have recourse to certain places which such spirits haunt. So the conception of Jesus by “a holy spirit” in Mary’s womb might conceivably be nothing more than one particular instance of this sort. “One cannot get rid of the thought,” says Leisegang, “that the angel of the Lord, who announces the conception, and the holy spirit, that carries it out, are originally in the popular belief one and the same person, an atch-weli who undertakes the act of begetting in place of God.” 1? In this way the Semitic opposition to making God Himself the physical father of a child would come to its rights, while yet the notion of supernatural birth would be preserved.
Despite what he regards as the attractiveness of this theory, Leisegang is not inclined to find in it the ultimate explanation of the New Testament representation of the virgin birth of Christ. It was only in the lower circles of Judaism, he says, that notions about the fatherhood of subordinate spirits could subsist; and although these lower circles, with their crude superstition, were much more influential in the formation of New Testament legends than is popularly supposed, still we can hardly hold that so crude a belief, vigorously opposed by official Judaism, attained the high place in early Christian thought that was actually attained by the virgin birth idea. For the ultimate origin of that idea, therefore, we must look farther afield. And inevitably we are led away from Judaism out into the Hellenistic world.
This wider search into which we are thus led can only be begun, Leisegang says, through the assistance of the narrative in Luke. In the Third Gospel, as is not the case in the First, the activity of the Spirit in the begetting of Jesus is connected with a whole circle of other activities in which also the Spirit has the central place. These other activities are concerned with prophecy; the Spirit in the Lucan narrative appears specifically as the source of prophetic inspiration. Thus the angel announces to Zacharias that the prophet John will be “filled with the Spirit from his mother’s womb,” and that he will go before the Lord “in the Spirit and power of Elias.” It is in close parallel with this annunciation to Zacharias that the same angel says to Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon thee and the power of the Most High will overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which is begotten shall be called Son of God.” Whoever comes into contact with Mary while she is bearing the child in her womb, or comes into contact afterwards with the child Himself, experiences the activity of the Holy Spirit. When Mary greets Elisabeth, the child leaps in Elisabeth’s womb, and Elisabeth herself is filled with the Holy Spirit and breaks forth into prophetic words.** To Simeon, upon whom the Holy Spirit is said to have rested, it is announced by the same Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Messiah. “In the Spirit” he comes into the Temple, takes the child Jesus into his arms, and breaks forth into prophetic words of praise. Finally we hear of the boy Jesus in the Temple and of his extraordinary spiritual gifts. Also in the parallel history of John the Baptist the motif of the Holy Spirit is not forgotten: Zacharias became full of the Holy Spirit and prophesied; and the child himself “grew and waxed strong in the Spirit.”
The conclusion from these observations, which, themselves also, we have just reproduced almost in exact translation of Leisegang’s own words, is as follows:
We observe: the two passages which here speak of an activity of a “Holy Spirit” (1) during the pregnancy of Elisabeth *** and (2) in connection with the conception in Mary’s womb 125 are by Luke intertwined and interwoven with a wealth of expressions in which the “Holy Spirit” is quite clearly to be understood as the
13 Originally, says Leisegang, the Magnificat was attributed to Elisabeth. This representation (on p. 24 of Leisegang’s book) seems at first sight to be in rather strange contradiction with a passage on the very next page where stress is laid on the fact that Mary, not Elisabeth, speaks the prophetic verses of this psalm. But see below, pp. 376.;
US xyebparos dylou wAnoPhoerat Eru Ex Kordlas unrpds abrod, Lk. i.15.
US zyedua Eyrov éwedcboerat ext oé, Lk. i.35.
gift of the prophetic Spirit, the vehicle of inspiration. At the same time there is lacking here any occasion for regarding the Spirit as a person. The drastic representation of a conception by a holy. spirit,11® in which the “spirit” takes the place of a male being who carries out the act of begetting, is here, in contrast with the representation in Matthew, carefully avoided. Instead of that, we have here in the description of the act of begetting (in addition to the thrice appearing expression, “to be filled with the Holy Spirit”) the words, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee.” But the expressions, “to be filled with the Holy Spirit” and “the Holy Spirit to come upon someone,” suggest inevitably the expressions (known also in the Greek literary language), “full of God,” and “to breathe upon,” 117 “a breathing upon,” 148 which in turn ‘ lead us into the sphere of Dionysiac orgiasm—to be specific, into the sphere of enthusiastic manticism, a well-known form of Greek prophetism. And as a matter of fact the same “Holy Spirit,” which accomplishes the conception of the child by Mary, makes Mary at the same time, according to the Lucan composition, a prophetess, who breaks forth into the enthusiastic verses of a psalm. It is at the same time the “prophetic Spirit” that broods over the persons active in the two birth narratives and is powerful in them.!!9
We are led in the same direction, Leisegang continues, by a consideration of the expression, “The power of the Most High shall overshadow thee.” Whence comes the figure of speech involved in the word “overshadow”? It comes, according to Leisegang, from Hellenistic mysticism as attested by Philo. In certain passages **° Philo connects the coming of the divine Logos for the inspiration of man with a darkening of the human understanding; only when the sun of human reason has set can the divine light shine upon the soul. The word “overshadow” is not indeed used in these passages; but it occurs in a passage where the inspiration that takes place when the human reason is darkened is an inspiration not by God, but by evil angels.1?4 These passages, coupled with certain other indications, show, according to Leisegang, that the figure underlying the word “overshadow” in Lk. i.35 is the figure of a spiritual winged being that overshadows with his wings the human recipient of inspiration. “From this conception,” says Leisegang, “there was developed first the general use of the word ‘overshadow’ to designate the approach of any spiritual being and then (in mystical circles) the special use to designate the darkening of the human understanding in the interests of the divine
U6 Leisegang here uses the Greek words, éx rvebuaros dylov, as he also uses the Greek word in other similar cases in this passage.
influence. Just by the choice of this word, therefore, the description of the pneumatic conception by Mary is very closely connected with the Greek notions of the communion of human beings, especially of women, with the world of spirits.” 1?
But how, then, was it possible that the “Holy Spirit,” regarded as a gift of inspiration, as “prophetic Spirit,” became at the same time the cause of Mary’s pregnancy? To answer this question we must search, according to Leisegang, in the sphere toward which the expressions used by Luke or by his source have already pointed us—namely, in the sphere of Greek prophetism.
In that sphere, it is no obscure phenomenon which first arrests our attention, but the well-known figure of the prophetess at Delphi, the Pythia. When that prophetess, a virgin, is represented as sitting on a tripod over the cavern from which the prophetic “spirit” came, it is perfectly plain, Leisegang thinks, from the attitude of the prophetess, from the expressions that are used by Greek writers, from the scornful words of Christian writers, that the prophetic spirit is represented in drastic fashion as being received into the womb. But it is not only from this secret of Greek manticism that the Christian apologists remove the veil; they also disclose, Leisegang says, the notion of pagan antiquity that a bearer of the divine spirit, a prophet, can by a carnal union transfer this gift to a woman, whereby the woman in turn becomes a prophetess. So Irenzus relates concerning the Gnostic prophet Marcus.’** What Marcus is here represented as practising is nothing else than the transference into practice of the Greek speculation about the mystic union of the human soul with its heavenly bridegroom—in other words, the Greek speculation about the “sacred marriage.” But it is well-known, says Leisegang, that this speculation had its origin in the religion of Dionysus and particularly in the mysteries.
Thus it is established to Leisegang’s satisfaction “that between the prophetic spirit and the impregnation of a woman there is a fixed connection in thought; the divine ‘spirit’ is regarded as being capable of transmission, by means of a carnal union (either directly by the divinity himself or by a prophet who possesses the spirit), toa woman who thereby becomes herself a prophetess.” *”
But there still remains, Leisegang admits, a considerable gulf between the New Testament story of the supernatural conception by the Holy Spirit and these pagan notions as they have so far been set forth. The difference is that what Mary brings forth by her reception of the Spirit is an actual child, while what the pagan prophets or prophetesses bring forth are only prophetic words.
Thus ventriloquists in antiquity were regarded as those who spoke “from out of the belly”; 12° the words were forced out of them by a cramp-like impulse coming from the under part of the body; and that impulse was regarded as due to prophetic inspiration. The effect of divine or demoniac entrance into the belly or the womb was therefore the utterance of prophetic words, not the birth of a divine or demoniac child. Apparently, therefore, we have here something quite different from the New Testament representation.
It is in the effort to bridge this gulf that Leisegang develops the most distinctive part of his theory.
He points in a preliminary way, first, to the myth of the prophet-god Dionysus. Semele has union with Zeus; thereby she enters into an enthusiastic condition; all who touch her body are full of the god. And then she brings her divine child to the birth—her divine child who is himself a prophet and a dispenser of the divine spirit. In this myth Leisegang finds a special similarity to the Lucan narrative in that in both cases the mother during her pregnancy is represented as being herself in an enthusiastic condition and as transferring this condition to others who come into contact with her.’?6
The same moztf appears also, Leisegang says, though in slightly different form, in the myth of Branchus, the founder of the Branchidic oracle. But it is not in the references to either of these myths that we find the real heart of Leisegang’s theory. That is found, rather, in the use which Leisegang makes of certain passages in Philo, including the passage in the “De Cherubim” which we have quoted at length above.’ In these passages, we have the notion of divine begetting coupled with the notion of virginity; only with a virgin soul, or rather with the archetypal idea of virginity, can God, according to Philo, have union for the bringing forth of that which is good. It is a great mistake, Leisegang says, to seek the origin of these ideas in any precedent Jewish belief regarding a virgin birth of the patriarchs; 18 rather is Philo led to his exegesis of the Old Testament passages by his desire to find Scriptural warrant for the Hellenistic notion of what a prophet should be. “Not because in a precedent tradition (indeed, that lacks all attestation) the Jewish patriarchs are virgin-born, do they become to Philo men of God and
26 Very unconvincing is Leisegang’s reference in this connection to a passage in Eusebius (demonstr. ev., VII. 1. 96; ed. Heikel, in “Eusebius Werke”, vi, 1913, p. 316, in Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller), in which, according to Leisegang, Eusebius in his treatment of the famous passage in Is. vii.14 “thinks it necessary” to call attention to the fact that the “virgin” in Isaiah is a“ prophetess.” Surely the use of the term “prophetess” is due simply to the fact cs Eusebius is making capital of Is. viii.3, where that weed is vsed of the prophet Isaiah’s wife.
prophets. Rather because Moses and the patriarchs, especially Isaac, are to be made to correspond with the Hellenistic prophets and hierophants, there is interwoven with the story of their lives, by means of allegorical exegesis, the motif of divine begetting and virgin birth.”’* So clearly were the ideas of divine begetting and virgin birth connected with each other in the Hellenistic belief upon which Philo was dependent that he felt obliged to preserve their connection in his allegorical interpretation, no matter what violence was thereby done to the Old Testament narrative.
But still we have not yet penetrated, according to Leisegang, to the real root of this whole aspect of Philo’s teaching. The real root of the whole complex of ideas was not found, Leisegang thinks, in anything that Philo had received from books, or that he had gleaned from a learned examination of pagan religion or philosophy. But it was found in a mystic experience through which Philo himself had passed—a mystic experience which was determinative of the whole character of his most important writing. Philo was no mere student of mysticism, but was himself a mystic—that conviction Leisegang shares with what seems to be the main trend of modern Philonic studies. In great sections of his works, indeed, the Alexandrian teacher writes in a vein very different from mysticism; he engages in a pedantic kind of argumentation that suggests the study-chamber rather than the place of religious exaltation. But from such sections of his works, Leisegang thinks, there are clearly to be distinguished the passages where mystical illumination is allowed free course. Philo was conscious of moments when suddenly there descended upon him a divine power which took him out of himself, placed his ordinary reasoning faculties in abeyance, and made of him a prophet and a seer. And to describe such experiences—to describe what, properly speaking, was indescribable—he had recourse to the well-known language about theogamy, divine begetting and virgin birth. In certain moments of his life he felt his soul to be suddenly fructified, quite without his own volition, by a stream of divine influence that caused him to bring forth ideas of which he would otherwise have been quite incapable.
Leisegang quotes in this connection the following passage where Philo describes such mystic experiences: **°
For the things with which the soul is in travail of its own motion are for the most part abortions and untimely born; but as many things as God waters with snows from above are born perfect and whole and best of all things. I am not ashamed to tell of my own experience which I am conscious of having had many,
many times.!8! There have been times when, wishing to proceed according to the way of writing customary for philosophical doctrines, and knowing well what needed to be set down, I have yet found my mind impotent and barren 1%? and so have desisted without accomplishing my purpose. Then I have blamed my mind for its false pretensions, but have wondered at the might of God,1%8 in whose power lies the opening and shutting of the womb of the soul. But also there have been times when, coming empty to my task, I have suddenly become full by means of the thoughts that have mysteriously come down upon me like snow or like seed from above, so that in a divine possession 184 I have been filled with Corybantic frenzy and have lost awareness of everything—of the place, of my companions, of myself, of the things that were being said, of the things that were being written.
There we have, says Leisegang, the warm description, by a true mystic, of a personal experience of inspiration. The example of his own experience presses itself upon this writer’s attention when he comes to speak of a fructification of the soul by God.
But how was the transition effected from the figure of divine begetting, © which Philo uses to describe such mystical experiences, to the actual fact of a begetting of a human child by divine seed? The answer is found, Leisegang thinks, in a consideration of the pagan mysteries. In the mysteries—in the Dionysus religion with its Mznads, in the Delphic prophetess who brought forth mysterious words from her body without knowing what she was saying, in the liturgic pictures of the theogamy of the soul, in the cultic actions that suggested or even drastically set forth the union of God with a human being— in these things Philo discovered what he needed for the description of his own mystic experiences. Thus we have “everywhere the same thing: a sexual union between God and man—but in the greatest possible variety between the extreme of concrete sensuous action and spiritualized symbolism almost sublimated away into a mere rhetorical figure of speech.” **°
So, according to Leisegang, the importance of Philo lies in the insight that he gives us into the structure of Hellenistic mystical religion. At bottom, Leisegang says, what Philo has in mind is the personal experience of a stream of new power, supposedly supernatural, suddenly descending into the human soul. To describe this experience he makes use of the figures of divine begetting that appeared in the mysteries; and sometimes, says Leisegang, we can almost hear in his rhythmic words the chant of the initiates who in ecstasy, with lifted hands, pray for pneumatic conception and virgin birth.’*° This same figure he applies to the Old Testament narrative by means of allegorical exegesis; and thus are to be explained the passages where he speaks of the divine begetting of Isaac and of other Old Testament characters.
But Philo applies the same idea of divine begetting in another sphere also— namely, in the sphere of abstract speculation. Not only does he speak of a divine begetting of Isaac and other Old Testament characters, representing states of the human soul, but also he speaks of a divine begetting of the Logos, which represents the sensible world: from the impregnation of the mother, Wisdom, by the Father, God, the Logos comes forth as the first-born son. Here we have, according to Leisegang, nothing else than the projection of the mystic experience of a union of the human soul with God out into the region of the hypostases that exist outside of the sensible world—in other words (if we may use Platonic language for what is not really in accord with Plato’s teaching), into the region of “ideas.”
Thus we have in Philo the idea of divine begetting and virgin birth in two parallel spheres—in the sphere of the human soul and in the sphere of supersensible hypostases. In both spheres the variety in which the idea appears is bewildering, as can be observed in the tabulation which Leisegang provides.'%7 Everywhere there is (1) a male principle, (2) a female principle, and (3) the thing that is begotten; but the terms in which these three factors are set forth are so diverse that at first sight the whole complex of ideas might seem to be simply a mass of arbitrarily chosen fragments from various systems. But such an estimate would, according to Leisegang, be altogether unjust. We ought never to forget, he says, that Philo was a mystic, and that some of his writing was done in an ecstatic condition of the writer’s soul. The bewildering variety of his utterances about divine begetting is to be explained, therefore, as the effort of a true mystic to express what is really inexpressible. Back of all such utterances is the mystic experience by which the soul, with its own faculties in abeyance, is suddenly fructified by an irresistible stream of divine power.
We are now in a position, says Leisegang, to trace the whole progress of the development of which the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke form a part.’°° Back of the whole development, Leisegang says, there lies “the mystic experience of an immediate and sudden union of the human soul with the Divine, the disappearance of the human consciousness in the presence of a power conceived of as supernatural—a power entering into the human soul from the outside and bringing forth religious enthusiasm, joy in the Spirit, and the gift of ecstatic speech.” **° In ancient Greece, in the early period, this mystic experience was prevalent especially among women, whose addiction to the wild, orgiastic religion of Dionysus is well known. Not unnaturally, therefore, the entrance of the divine power could be conceived of in such circles as the entrance of a demon who penetrated into a woman’s body and performed with her the sacred act of begetting; and ancient popular belief would be favorable to such a view.
From the Dionysus cult, Leisegang continues, the motif of divine begetting - entered into the sphere of enthusiastic manticism and of the mysteries. The priestess of the Pythian oracle is a typical example of a prophetess who as a result of pneumatic conception comes into an ecstatic condition and predicts the future. In the mysteries, the same experience was at least suggested, even if not always drastically set forth. In the myths also, as well as in the cults, we find the same belief; the birth of a prophet is preceded by an act of begetting on the part of a prophet-god, and thus is united the notion of prophetic speech as the result of a conception by a “spirit” with the notion of the birth of a divine child who possesses the prophetic gift. Thus the woman who bears the child becomes both herself a prophetess and also a prophet’s mother.
Against this primitive popular belief, indeed, the poets and philosophers uttered emphatic protests:
They condemned the mysteries; they sought other explanations for enthusiastic manticism; they interpreted the myths by allegorical methods. But wherever even in philosophical circles mysticism came to life and sought for means of describing the mystic-religious experience, recourse was had to the ancient representation’, and use was made of them as of welcome figures of speech. When that was done, the distinction between man and woman fell away: the soul is now the female principle, the Divine the male principle, the spirit is the seed that proceeds as mystic power from God.14°
188 Before proceeding to this summary of the development, Leisegang enters upon a treatment of the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel and of the Protevangelium of James, the consideration of which would here lead us too far afield.
Through the growing spiritualizing of the idea of God under the influence of Platonic teaching, the act of begetting is more and more removed from the ordinary world and placed in the super-sensible world of hypostases or ideas.
God in the region of the Beyond begets with the idea of virginity (which appears as wisdom, as virtue, as science, as everything beautiful and good) the worldcreating power, the Logos. At this point there offer themselves rich possibilities of combination, which are the more exploited the richer and more varied are the myths and the figures of the sacred stories that are to be allegorically interpreted and thereby lifted into the region of mystic speculation. So there is a begetting and fructifying without end: God begets in Wisdom; He Himself, the Logos and all other heavenly powers beget in the human soul. Where the philosophic speculation is not understood and there is on the other hand a close relation to the popular belief still living in the lower classes of society—the popular belief from which the abstract figurative language of the philosophers originally came—a hopeless confusion runs riot. A man like Philo who is acquainted with the doctrine of hypostases would never put in the place of Wisdom or of the divine-human soul a bodily virgin living on this earth, and would never put in place of the Logos a human child of flesh and blood.... But to the layman who ventured into this field, who was equipped only with his subjective conviction of the truth-content of his own [mystic] experience that he found reflected both in the belief of the people and in the teachings of the philosophers—to him [or in his hands] all this must have come to be a hopeless tangle.1*1
As such laymen, says Leisegang, we must regard both Luke and the authors of the First and Fourth Gospels. The only difference is that the degree of their naiveté?#? in the things of Greek religion was not the same. Upon the lowest plane there stands the compiler of the birth-narrative in Matthew; for he simply seizes material that came to him from the Hellenistic world, understands it in accordance with popular Semitic belief, and inserts it as best he can into his narrative. Luke, on the other hand, displays a detailed acquaintance with the Greek beliefs of the lower classes and also with the prophetism that was developed from that belief. The few words with which he sets forth the pneumatic conception by Mary are the vehicle of his treatment of the mystic process which, often by only slight improvements and additions, he has imported into the infancy narrative. Over and in all the persons that appear in the narrative he causes the breath of the Spirit and its activities to blow. The Spirit for him, as in Greek manticism, is especially the prophetic Spirit. Its double activity—in ecstatic speech and in the birth of a divine child who Himself is distinguished by the gift of prophecy—is inserted into the narrative by subtle touches. Just as is the case with personages in the Greek myths, Mary is in Luke both a prophetess and the mother of a prophet. But of an acquaintance with philosophic speculation there is no trace.
Such is the theory of Leisegang. It constitutes certainly an imposing effort at solution of a problem which naturalistic historians have hitherto found unsoluble. But is it really any more successful than the theories that preceded it? That question must be answered in the negative.
There are, in the first place, various weaknesses in detail, which can hardly fail to appear to the careful reader. Particularly glaring is the weakness in the treatment of the Matthzan narrative. When Leisegang interprets pneuma hagion in Matthew as meaning “a holy spirit” and as referring to a personal being subordinate to God, surely he is departing from all sound principles of interpretation.'4* Where can he find a parallel for such a usage of the phrase either in the Biblical books or in related writings? The parallel passage in Luke gives him no help; for he admits that in that passage pneuma hagion has a very different meaning from the meaning that he attributes to it in Matthew. Surely a sound method would interpret the less definite passage by the help of the more definite,’** since after all the two passages are closely parallel, and since not the slightest parallel can be found in related sources for the other interpretation of the Matthzan phrase. The Gospels do, indeed, speak of certain subordinate beings as “spirits”; but of the application of the word “holy” to any of these subordinate beings no trace can be found.
Leisegang thinks, indeed, that he can find parallels on Semitic ground for the notion of the birth of a child as the fruit of a union between a woman and a subordinate “spirit.” But the Biblical passages which he cites in this connection—the passage in Gen. vi.1,2 where the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men” are spoken of, and the passage in I Cor. xi.10 regarding the angels— are obscure; and the illustrations upon which apparently he places chief reliance are found not in ancient, but in modern times. This latter circumstance might at first sight seem to be disconcerting; it might at first sight seem to be an objection to Leisegang’s argument that the facts upon which it relies— the facts about fructification of women by “arch-welis” and the like—are attested not in ancient records, but in a description by S. I. Curtiss of modern conditions.*° The truly advanced student of comparative religion, it is true, makes short shrift of such objections; he seldom allows the flow of his thought to be troubled by questions of date. But questions of date will persist in
144 Supposing, for the sake of the argument, that Matthew really is less definite than Luke.
arising in the minds of those who do not belong to the innermost circle of the comparative-religion school; and when they are allowed to arise at all they will place serious obstacles in the way of Leisegang’s argument at this point.
Another objection to Leisegang’s theory is found in the transition, in his treatment of Greek prophetism, from the notion of the bringing forth of inspired words to the notion of the bearing of an actual child. Leisegang himself is apparently aware of the difficulty that besets his theory at this point. “The Pythias,” he says,!4¢ “the Sibyls, the Gnostic prophetesses, the participants in the mysteries receive the Spirit likewise in their body, come thereby into an enthusiastic condition, and bring forth—well, certainly not a child.” After this correct observation, Leisegang proceeds to a five-page treatment of that which the Greek prophetesses and ventriloquists do bring forth—namely, prophetic words. Then he returns to the point at which he has left off, and seeks to bridge the gap between. these prophetic or enthusiastic words and the actual bearing of a child. But it cannot be said that the evidence that he adduces is very abundant or very convincing.“ He points, indeed, to the birth of the prophet-god Dionysus: Semele has union with Zeus, comes thereby into an enthusiastic condition, and brings forth a child who is both a prophet and the bestower of the divine spirit upon others. But is it really clear in this myth that the enthusiastic condition of Semele was due to her union with Zeus as such; may it not have been due rather to the fact that the particular child whom she was to bear was a prophet-god? After all, it is natural that the mother of a prophet-god should herself, during her pregnancy, have been possessed of the prophetic gift. We still do not see any very close connection here between the bringing forth of a child and that bringing forth of prophetic words which Leisegang has treated at such length. Even less convincing is the reference to Eusebius’ comment on Is. vii.14, which has been dealt with above.!48 And with regard to the birth of Branchus, which Leisegang cites next, an observation may be made somewhat similar to that which has just been made with regard to the birth of Dionysus: Branchus was a prophet, and it was natural that he should be begotten by the prophet-god Apollo. The gift of prophecy, to put the thing in prosaic language, could be inherited like any other gift; but what does not seem to be clear is that there was any necessary connection between the bringing forth of prophetic words through divine inspiration and the bringing forth of an actual child.
Another detail in which Leisegang’s exposition is open to criticism is his treatment of the word “overshadow” in Lk. i.35. The interpretation of this word by reference to a special mystical usage, in which it designates the darkening of the human understanding in the presence of divine inspiration, and ultimately by reference to the notion of a winged spiritual being who overshadows a man or woman with his wings, is certainly, to say the least, not clearly established. In the Philonic passages to which appeal is made, the actual word “overshadow” is not used of divine inspiration; but appears only in one passage, where the light of reason is said to be “overshadowed” so that the inhabitants of darkness can come into the soul and beget a baleful offspring by union with the passions. Surely we need not look to such a passage as this for an explanation of the Lucan word.'*
But it is not such faults in detail that constitute the really central objection to Leisegang’s theory. That central objection is found, rather, in the treatment of the Lucan narrative itself. Leisegang’s whole construction depends on the connection which he detects in the first two chapters of Luke between. prophetic inspiration and the conception of the child in Mary’s womb. This connection does not exist; and hence the whole theory falls to the ground.**°
According to Leisegang’s theory, the child who is the product of the Spirit’s activity in Mary’s womb ought to be designated above all things as a prophet, and Mary herself ought to be represented as being filled with the Spirit whenever she speaks. But as a matter of fact these are just the things which do not appear. Nowhere in this narrative is Jesus designated as being “filled with the Spirit” or as being destined to speak by the Spirit when He should grow up. A similar observation may be made regarding Mary; in her case, as in the case of Jesus, the narrative says nothing about inspiration by the Holy Spirit. She is represented, indeed, as speaking the Magnificat, which may no doubt plausibly be regarded as an inspired song; but even at this point the narrator does not call attention to her being filled with the Spirit.
The attitude of Leisegang toward the Magnificat is not altogether clear. At first he says that Elisabeth, not Mary, was originally represented as the speaker of it; and yet on the following page he lays stress on the fact that
49 Compare Bultmann, review of Norden, Die Geburt des Kindes, 1924, in Theologische Literaturzeitung, xlix, 1924, col. 322: “The derivation of érundtew (Lk. i.35) from mystical religion [Norden and Leisegang hold similar views about this] appears to me to fall down not only because the word in the only place where so far as I know it appears in Philo in a mystical sense is differently construed from the way in which it is construed in Lk. i.35, but especially because if this derivation were correct the expression would have to be supposed to have forced its way out of the realm of mystical religion, in which it is comprehensible, into the realm ot mythology, in which it would not be comprehensible.” Compare also Heinemann, op. cit., Ixvii, 1923, Pp. 33, footnote 2; von Baer, of. cit., pp. 127-129; W. K. Lowther Clarke, New Testament
Mary breaks forth, in the Magnificat, into an enthusiastic psalm and that thus she, as well as Elisabeth, is represented as being possessed of the prophetic gift.*? At first sight, it looks like a mere contradiction, due to careless use of the Magnificat in a double way; but apparently Leisegang’s meaning is that while the Magnificat was attributed to Elisabeth in the underlying narrative it was transferred to Mary by the Evangelist-redactor who also apparently gave it its present form."* This transfer of the Magnificat to Mary seems to be represented as part of the redactional activity by which the Evangelist inserted reference to the mystical process into the infancy narrative.’°* We confess, however, that the matter is still not “quite clear. It still looks a little as though Leisegang were using the Magnificat in one place to prove that Elisabeth, and in another place to prove that Mary, is represented in the narrative as a prophetess. Surely such a double use of the psalm is quite without warrant.
At any rate, what is plain is that even in the completed narrative, with the introduction of the “mystical process” all finished, still Mary is not represented as the possessor of prophetic inspiration when she spoke her word of praise. It is not sufficient to say that such a psalm must no doubt be regarded by the narrator as being spoken under the influence of the Spirit; our point is that according to Leisegang the purpose of the Evangelist was to connect the conception of the child in the womb with the prophetic Spirit which the mother possessed, and if that is so we should certainly expect the connection to be explicit and not merely implicit. If the final author was dominated by the idea that the Spirit in Mary was both the source of prophetic inspiration and also the source of her conception of her child in the womb, it does seem strange that he has so carefully avoided saying that that was the case. Why should what Leisegang regards as the central thought of the narrator be so carefully concealed in the narrative as it stands?
It may of course freely be admitted that in the Lucan infancy narrative as a whole the presence of the prophetic Spirit is noted in the case of a number of the personages—John the Baptist,’** Elisabeth, Zacharias, Simeon. But, in the first place, as Bultmann has remarked, these passages do not go beyond the Old Testament-Jewish doctrine of the Spirit,°° and therefore do not re-
182 Elisabeth, according to Leisegang (of. cit., pp. 23 f.), “speaks prophetic words, which have been moulded by Luke into the form of a psalm.”
164 Quite unwarranted, it is true, is Leisegang’s use, in this connection, of Lk. i.80: for when it is said that John “waxed strong in spirit,” surely “spirit” is simply in contrast with “body,” or the like, and does not refer to the Spirit of God.
1565 Bultmann, in his review of Leisegang’s book in Theologische Literaturzeitung, xlvii, 1922, quire us to have recourse, for their elucidation, to the Hellenistic mystical notions which Leisegang sets forth in such an extensive and such an interesting way; and, in the second place, there is no real trace in the Lucan narrative of any connection between these manifestations of the Holy Spirit in prophecy and the special act of the same Holy Spirit in bringing about the conception of the child in Mary’s womb. It is this latter fact which is most obviously decisive against Leisegang’s theory. We may, indeed, read Leisegang’s book with interest; we may learn much from him about the history of Greek mystical religion; but, after all, the bearing of the whole complex of facts upon our subject depends upon the exegetical question whether in the Lucan narrative there is any special connection between prophetic inspiration and the supernatural conception in the virgin’s womb. That question must be answered in the negative, and therefore the foundation of Leisegang’s whole theory as to the origin of the virgin birth idea is destroyed.
That this estimate of Leisegang’s theory néed not be attributed merely to apologetic zeal on our part may perhaps be shown by a quotation from one of the most distinguished contemporary New Testament scholars—namely, from Rudolf Bultmann, who certainly cannot be accused of any apologetic bias. In a review of Leisegang’s book Bultmann says: 15
The crucial point in the argumentation [of Leisegang] is, however, the question whether in Lk. i there is really to be found a connection between the Spirit as “prophetic Spirit” 157 and as power of fructification. This is in my judgment not the case. That which in Lk. i (aside from verses 34-37) is said concerning the Spirit does not seem to go beyond Old Testament-Jewish ideas; moreover, neither is Mary represented as a pneumatic prophetess (even if verses 46 ff. belong in her mouth), nor is Jesus, the miraculously conceived child, represented as a prophet, as ought to be the case according to the analogies. Above all, however, the verses 34°37 (or 34-35), which contain the motif of the miraculous conception, are probably an insertion into the source, so that the connection which Leisegang maintains does not exist at all. In my opinion the motif of the supernatural conception in Luke as well as in Matthew comes from a very much more primitive sphere than that of Hellenistic mysticism; and it seems to me to be a very artificial proceeding to explain Mt. i:18-21 from crassly misunderstood Greek pneuma-speculation adapted to Semitic popular beliefs.
In general Bultmann holds Leisegang’s book, despite its instructiveness in detail, to be mistaken.158
187 We have here translated the words which Bultmann quotes in Greek,
Certain questions arise in our mind as we read these words of Bultmann’s— notably the question whether Leisegang’s theory as to the composition of the narrative is as different as the reviewer seems to think it is from the interpolation theory which the reviewer himself holds. We have already observed that Leisegang seems to find back of Lk. i an underlying narrative which was subtly transformed by the Evangelist through the addition of various touches, until it became the vehicle of the notion about the Spirit which Leisegang supposes the present form of the narrative to teach. But it is far from clear in Leisegang’s exposition how much is to be attributed to the source and how much to the Evangelist; and in particular it is far from clear whether, according to Leisegang, the source, as distinguished from the completed Gospel, presented or did not present a doctrine of prophetic inspiration similar to that which Leisegang sets forth. We have mentioned above one particular instance of this lack of clearness—namely, the treatment of the Magnificat. But the fault may be found to be more far-reaching than that. As Bultmann seems correctly to observe, Leisegang’s explanation of the virgin birth idea by reference to other elements in the first chapter of Luke apparently requires acceptance of the integrity of the narrative; yet it is a grave question how far Leisegang himself accepts that integrity. We may well ask, in other words, whether Leisegang, in view of his distinction between the parts due to the source and the parts due to the Evangelist, really has any right to use the whole of the narrative as casting light upon Lk. 1.34,35.
At any rate, the rejection of Leisegang’s theory by Bultmann is not without interest. It shows us anew that those who deny the historicity of the virgin birth have never been able to agree upon any one theory as to the origin of the virgin birth idea. Very imposing is Leisegang’s construction; but there is not the slightest reason to think that it is destined to win any more general acceptance, among those who share its author’s naturalistic presuppositions, than has been won by the constructions that preceded it. The problem of the virgin birth idea has not been solved by this most elaborate of all attempts, any more than it was solved by the many previous theories that have succeeded one another in the long history of modern naturalistic criticism. The conclusion to which we are obliged to come after examination of the whole subject of “alternative theories” is that if the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ did not originate in fact, modern critical investigation has at any rate not yet succeeded in showing how it did originate.