There is a striking gradation in the different representations of the conception and birth of Jesus given in the canonical and in the apocryphal Gospels. They exhibit the various steps, from a simple statement of a natural occurrence, to a minute and miraculously embellished history, in which the event is traced back to its very earliest date. Mark and John presuppose the fact of the birth of Jesus, and content themselves with the incidental mention of Mary as the mother ^{P.105} (Mark vi. 3), and of Joseph as the father of Jesus (John i.46).

Matthew and Luke go further back, since they state the particular circumstances attending the conception as well as the birth of the Messiah. But of these two evangelists Luke mounts a step higher than Matthew. According to the latter when Mary, the betrothed of Joseph, is found with child, Joseph is offended and determines to put her away; but the angel of the Lord visits him in a dream, and assures him of the divine origin and exalted destiny of Mary's offspring; the result of which is that Joseph takes his wife to himself: but knows her not till she has brought forth her first-born son. (Matt. i. 18-25.) Here the pregnancy is discovered in the first place, and then afterwards justified by the angel; but in Luke the pregnancy is prefaced and announced by a celestial apparition. The same Gabriel, who had predicted the birth of John to Zechariah, appears to Mary, the betrothed of Joseph, and tells her that she shall conceive by the power of the Holy Ghost: whereupon the destined mother of the Messiah pays a visit full of holy import to the already pregnant mother of his forerunner; upon which occasion both Mary and Elizabeth pour forth their emotions to one another in the form of a hymn, (Luke i. 26-56). Matthew and Luke are content to presuppose the connection between Mary and Joseph; but the apocryphal Gospels, the Protevangelium Jacobi, and the Evangelium de Nativitate Mariae (books with the contents of which the Fathers partially agree), seek to represent the origin of this connection; indeed they go back to the birth of Mary, and describe it to have been preceded, equally with that of the Messiah and the Baptist, by a divine annunciation. As the description of the birth of John in Luke is principally borrowed from the Old Testament accounts of Samuel and of Samson, so this history of the birth of Mary is an imitation of the story in Luke, and of the Old Testament histories.

Joachim, so says the apocryphal narrative, and Anna (the name of Samuel's mother) are unhappy on account of their long childless marriage (as were the parents of the Baptist); when an angel appears to them both (so in the story of Samson) at different places, and promises them a child, who shall be the mother of God, and commands that this child shall live the life of a Nazirite (like the Baptist). In early childhood Mary is brought by her parents to the temple (like Samuel); where she continues till her twelfth year, visited and fed by angels and honoured by divine visions.

Arrived at womanhood she has to quit the temple, her future provision and destiny being revealed by the oracle to the high priest. In conformity with the prophecy of Isaiah, xi. 1 f. "a shoot shall spring from the root of Jesse" this oracle commanded, according to one apocryphal gospel, that all the unmarried men of the house of David, according to the other, that all the widowers among the people, should bring their rods and that he on whose rod a sign should appear (like the rod of Aaron, Numb. xvii), namely the sign predicted in the prophecy, should take Mary to himself. This sign was manifested upon Joseph's rod; for, in exact accordance with the oracle, it put forth a blossom and a dove lighted upon it. The apocryphal Gospels and the fathers agree in representing Joseph as an old man; but the narrative is somewhat differently told in the two apocryphal Gospels. According to the Evang. de nativ. Mariae, notwithstanding Mary's alleged vow of chastity, and the refusal of Joseph on account of his great age, betrothment took place at the command of the priest, and subsequently a marriage (which marriage, however, the author evidently means to represent also as chaste). According to the Protevang. Jacobi, on the contrary, neither betrothment nor marriage are mentioned, but Joseph is regarded merely as the chosen protector of the young virgin; and Joseph on the journey to Bethlehem doubts whether he shall describe Mary as his wife or as his daughter; fearing to bring ridicule upon himself, on account of his age, if he called her his wife. Again, where in Matthew Mary is called h( gunh of Joseph, the apocryphal gospel carefully designates her merely as h( paij, and even avoids using the term paralabein or substitutes diafulaxai, with which many of the Fathers concur. In the Proteuangelion it is further related that Mary, having been received into Joseph's house, was charged, together with other young women, with the fabrication of the veil for the temple, and that it fell to her lot to spin the true purple. But. while Joseph was absent on business Mary was visited by an angel, and Joseph on his return found her with child and called her to account, not as a husband, but as the guardian of her honour. Mary, however, had forgotten the words of the angel and protested her ignorance of the cause of her pregnancy. Joseph was perplexed and determined to remove her secretly from under his protection; but an angel appeared to him in a dream and reassured hiin by his explanation. The matter was then brought before the priest, and both Joseph and Mary being charged with incontinence were condemned to drink the "bitter water," but as they remained uninjured by it, they were declared innocent. Then follows the account of the taxing and of the birth of Jesus. ^{P.107}

Since these apocryphal narratives were for a long period held as historical by the Church, and were explained, equally with those of the canonical accounts, from the supernaturalistic point of view as miraculous, they were entitled in modern times to share with the New Testament histories the benefit of the natural explanation. If, on the one hand, the belief in the marvellous was so superabundantly strong in the ancient Church, that it reached beyond the limits of the New Testament even to the embracing of the apocryphal narratives, blinding the eye to the perception of their manifestly unhistorical character; so, on the other hand, the positive rationalism of some of the heralds of the modern modes of explanation was so overstrong that they believed it adequate to expound even the apocryphal miracles.

Of this we have an example in the author of the natural history of the great Prophet of Nazareth; who does not hesitate to include the stories of the lineage and early years of Mary within the circle of his representations, and to give them a natural explanation. If we in our day, with a perception of the fabulous character of such narratives, look down alike upon the Fathers of the Church and upon these naturalistic interpreters, we are certainly so far in the right, as it is only by gross ignorance that this character of the apocryphal accounts is here to be mistaken; more closely considered, however, the difference between the apocryphal and the canonical narratives concerning the early history of the Baptist and of Jesus, is seen to be merely a difference of form: they have sprung, as we shall hereafter find, from the same root, though the one is a fresh and healthy sprout, and the other an artificially nurtured and weak aftergrowth.

Still, the Fathers of the Church and these naturalistic interpreters had this superiority over most of the theologians of our own time; that they did not allow themselves to be deceived respecting the inherent similarity by the difference of form, but interpreted the kindred narratives by the same method; treating both as miraculous or both as natural; and not, as is now usual, the one as fiction and the other as history.

AFTER the foregoing general sketch, we now proceed to examine the external circumstances which, according to our Gospels, attended the first comniimication of the future birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph. Leaving out of sight, for the present, the special import of the annunciation, namely, that Jesus should be supernaturally begotten of the Holy Ghost, we shall, in the first place, consider merely the form of the announcement; by whom, when, and in what manner it was made.

As the birth of the Baptist was previously announced by an angel, so the conception of Jesus was, according to the gospel ^{P.108} histories, proclaimed after the same fashion. But while in the one case, we have but one history of the apparition, that of Luke; in the other we have two accounts, accounts however which do not correspond, and which we must now compare. Apart from the essential signification the two accounts exhibit the following differences.

1. The individual who appears is called in Matthew by the indefinite appellation, angel of t!ie Lord, in Luke by name, the angel Gabriel.
2. The person to whom the angel appears is, according to Matthew, Joseph, according to Luke, Mary.
3. In Matthew the apparition is seen in a dream, in Luke while awake.
4. There is a disagreement in relation to the time at which the apparition took place according to Matthew, Joseph receives the heavenly communication after Mary was already pregnant: according to Luke it is made to Mary prior to her pregnancy.
5. Lastly, both the purpose of the apparition and the effect produced are different; it was designed, according to Matthew, to comfort Joseph, who was troubledon account of the pregnancy of his betrothed: according to Luke to prevent, by a previous announcement, all possibility of offence.

Where the discrepancies are so great and so essential, it may, at first sight, appear altogether superfluous to inquire whether the two Evangelists record one and the same occurrence, though with considerable disagreement; or whether they record distinct occurrences, so that the two accounts can be blended together, and the one be made to amplify the other? The first supposition cannot be admitted without impeaching the historical validity of the narrative; for which reason most of our theologians, indeed all who see in the narrative a true history, whether miraculous or natural, have decided in favour of the second supposition. Maintaining, and justly, that the silence of one Evangelist concerning an event which is narrated by the other, is not a negation of the event, they blend the two accounts together in the following manner:
1, First, the angel makes known to Mary her approaching pregnancy (Luke);
2, she then journeys to Elizabeth (the same gospel);
3, after her return her situation being discovered, Joseph takes offence (Matthew); whereupon,
4, he likewise is visited by an angelic apparition.

But this arrangement of the incidents is, as Schleiermacher has already remarked, full of difficulty -; and it seems that what is related by one Evangelist is not only not presupposed, but excluded, by the other. For, in the first place, the conduct of the angel who appears to Joseph is not csisily explained, if the same or another angel had previously appeared to Mary. The angel (in Matthew) speaks altogether as if his communication were the first in this affair: he neither refers to the message previously received by Mary, nor reproaches Joseph because he had not believed it; but more ^{P.109} than all, the informing Joseph of the name of the expected child, and the giving him a full detail of the reasons why he should be so called, (Matt. i. 21.) would have been wholly superfluous had the angel (according to Luke i. 31.) already indicated this name to Mary.

Still more incomprehensible is the conduct of the betrothed parties according to this arrangement of events. Had Mary been visited by an angel, who had made known to her an approaching supernatural pregnancy, would not the first impulse of a delicate woman have been, to hasten to impart to her betrothed the import of the divine message, and by this means to anticipate the humiliating discovery of her situation, and an injurious suspicion on the part of her affianced husband. But exactly this discovery Mary allows Joseph to make from others, and thus excites suspicions; for it is evident that the expression "she was found to be with child" (Matth. i. 18.) signifies a discovery made independent of any communication on Mary's part, and it is equally clear that in this manner only does Joseph obtain the knowledge of her situation, since his conduct is represented as the result of that discovery (eu(reqh).

The apocryphal Protevangdmm Jacobi felt how enigmatical Mary's conduct must appear, and sought to solve the difficulty in a manner which, contemplated from the supernaturalistic point of view, is, perhaps the most consistent. Had Mary retained a recollection of the import of the heavenly message-upon this point the whole ingenious representation of the apocryphal gospel rests; she ought to have imparted it to Joseph; but since it is obvious from Joseph's demeanour that she did not acquaint him with it, the only remaining alternative is, to admit that the mysterious communication made to Mary had, owing to her excited state of mind, escaped her memory, and that she was herself ignorant of the true cause of her pregnancy. In fact, nothing is left to supernaturalists in the present case but to seek refuge in the miraculous and the incomprehensible.

The attempts which the modern theologians of this class have made to explain Mary's silence, and even to find in it an admirable trait in her character, are so many rash and abortive efforts to make a virtue of necessity. According to them, it must have cost Mary much self-denial to have concealed the communication of the angel from Joseph; and this reserve, in a matter known only to herself and to God, must be regarded as a proof of her firm trust in God.

Without doubt Mary communed thus with herself: "It is not without a purpose that this apparition has been made to me alone, had it been intended that Joseph should have participated in the communication, the angel would have appeared to him also (if each individual favoured with a divine revelation were of this opinion, how many special revelations would it not require?); besides it is an affair of ^{P.110} God alone, consequently it becomes me to leave it with him to convince Joseph" (the argument of indolence). Olshausen concurs, and adds his favourite general remark, that in relation to events so extraordinary the measure of the ordinary occurrences of the world is not applicable: a category under which, in this instance, the highly essential considerations of delicacy and propriety are included.

More in accordance with the views of the natural interpreters, the Evangelium de Nativitate Mariae and subsequently some later writers, for example, the author of the natural history of the great prophet of Nazareth, have sought to explain Mary's silence, by supposing Joseph to have been at a distance from the abode of his affianced bride at the time of the heavenly communication. According to them Mary was of Nazareth, Joseph of Bethlehem; to which latter place Joseph departed after the betrothing, and did not return to Mary until the expiration of three months; when he discovered the pregnancy which had taken place in the interim. But since the assumption that Mary and Joseph resided in different localities has no foundation, as will presently be seen, in the canonical Gospels, the whole explanation falls to the ground. Without such an assumption, Mary's silence towards Joseph might, perhaps, have been accounted for from the point of view of the naturalistic interpreters, By imagining her to have been held back through modesty from. confessing a situation so liable to excite suspicion. But one who, like Mary, was so fully convinced of the divine agency in the matter, and had shown so ready a comprehension of her mysterious destination (Luke i. 38.) could not possibly have been tongue-tied by petty considerations of false shame.

Consequently, in order to rescue Mary's character, without bringing reproach upon Joseph's, and at the same time to render his unbelief intelligible, interpreters have been compelled to assume that a communication, though a tardy one, was actually made by Mary, to Joseph. Like the last-named apocryphal gospel, they introduce a journey, not of Joseph, but of Mary, the visit to Elizabeth mentioned in Luke, to account, for the postponement of the communication. It is probable, says Paulus, that Mary did not open her heart to Joseph before this journey, because she wished first to consult with her older friend as to the mode of making the disclosure to him, and whether she, as the mother of the Messiah, ought to marry.

It was not till after her return, and then most likely through the medium of others, that she made Joseph acquainted with her situation, and with the promises she had received. But Joseph's mind was not properly attuned and prepared for such a disclosure; he became haunted by all kinds of thoughts; and vacillated between suspicion and hope till a length a dream decided him. But in the first place a motive is here given to Mary's journey which is foreign to the account in Luke. Mary sets off to Elizabeth, not ^{P.111} to take counsel of her, but to assure herself regarding the sign appointed by the angel. No uneasiness which the friend is to dissipate, but a proud joy, unalloyed by the smallest anxiety, is expressed in her salutation to the future mother of the Baptist. But besides, a confession so tardily made can in no way justify Mary.

What behaviour on the part of an affianced bride-after having received a divine communication, so nearly concerning her future husband, and in a matter so delicate, to travel miles away, to absent herself for three months, and then to permit her betrothed to learn through third persons that which could no longer be concealed!

Those, therefore, who do not impute to Mary a line of conduct which certainly our Evangelists do not impute to her, must allow that she imparted the message of the angel to her future husband as soon as it had been revealed to her; but that he did not believe her. But now let us see how Joseph's character is to be dealt with! Even less is of opinion that, since Joseph was acquainted with Mary, he had no cause to doubt her word, when she told him of the apparition she had had. this scepticism presupposes a mistrust of his betrothed which is incompatible with his character as a just man (Matt. i. 19.) and an incredulity respectino- the marvellous which is difficult to reconcile with a readiness on other occasions to believe in angelic apparitions; nor, in any case, would this want of faith have escaped the censure of the angel who subsequently appeared to himself.

Since then, to suppose that the two accounts are parallel, and complete one another, leads unavoidably to results inconsistent with the sense of the Gospels, in so far as they evidently meant to represent the characters of Joseph and Mary as free from blemish; the supposition cannot be admitted, but the accounts mutually exclude cadi other. An angel did not appear, first to Mary, and also afterwards to Joseph; he can only have appeared either to the one or to the other. Consequently, it is only the ore or the other relation which can be, regarded as historical. And here different considerations would conduct to opposite decisions. The story in Matthew might appear the more probable from the rationalist point of view, because it is more easy to interpret naturally an apparition in a dream; while that in Luke might be preferred by the supernaturalistic, because the manner in which the suspicion cast upon the holy virgin is refuted is more worthy of God. But in fact, a. nearer examination proves, that neither has any essential claim to be advanced before the other. Both contain an angelic apparition, and both are therefore encumbered with all the difficulties which, as was stated above in relation to the annunciation of the birth of the Baptist, oppose the belief in angels and apparitions. Again, in both narrations the import of the angelic message is, as we shall presently see, an impossibility.. Thus every criterion which might determine the adoption of the one, and the rejection of the other, dis- lation which can be, regarded as historical. ^{P.112} appears; and we find ourselves, in reference to both accounts, driven Tback by necessity to the mythical view.

From this point of view, all the various explanations, which the Rationalists have attempted to give of the two apparitions, vanish of them selves. Paulus explains the apparition in Matthew as a natural dream, occasioned Tby Mary's previous communication of the announcement which had been made to her; and with which Joseph must have been acquainted, because this alone can account for his having heard the same words in his dream, which the angel had beforehand addressed to Mary: but much rather, is it precisely this similarity in the language of the presumed second angel to that of the first, with the absence of all reference by the latter to the former, which proves that the words of the first angel were not presupposed by the second. Besides, the natural explanation is annihilated the moment the narratives are shown to be mythical. The same remark applies to the explanation, expressed guardedly indeed by Paulus, but openly by the author of the "Natural history of the great prophet of Nazareth," namely, that the angel who visited Mary (in Luke) was a human being; of which we must speak hereafter.

According to all that has been said, the following is the only judgment we can form of the origin of the two narratives of the angelic apparitions. The conception of Jesus through the power of the Holy Ghost ought not to be grounded upon a mere uncertain suspicion; it must have been clearly and positively asserted; and to this end a messenger from heaven was required, since theocratic decorum seemed to demand it far more in relation to the birth of the Messiah, than of a Samson or a John. Also the words which the angels use, correspond in part with the Old Testament annunciations of extraordinary children. The appearing of the angel in the one narrative beforehand to Mary, but in the other at a later period to Joseph, is to be regarded as a variation in the legend or in the composition, which finds an explanatory counterpart in the story of the annunciation of Isaac. the Lord (Gen. xvii. 15.) promises Abraham a son by Sarah, upon which the Patriarch cannot refrain from laughing; but he receives a repetition of the assurance; the Lord (Gen. xviii. 1, ff.) makes this promise under the Terebinth tree at Mamre, and Sarah laughs as if it were something altogether novel and unheard of by her; lastly, according to Gen. ^{P.113} xxi.5ff. it is first after Isaac's birth that Sarah mentions the laughing of the people, which is said to have been the occasion of his name; whereby it appears that this last history does not presuppose the existence of the two other accounts of the annunciation of the birth of Isaac. As in relation to the birth of Isaac, different; legends or poems were formed without reference to one another, some simpler, some more embellished: so we have two discordant narratives concerning the birth of Jesus. of these the narrative in Matthewf is the simpler and ruder style of composition, since it does not avoid, though it be but by a transient suspicion on the part of Joseph, the throwing a shade over the character of Mary which is only subsequently removed; that in Luke, on the contrary, is a more refined and artistical representation, exhibiting Mary from the first in the pure light of a bride of heaven.

ACCORDING to Luke, the angel who appears to Mary, in the first place informs her only that she shall become pregnant, without specifying after what manner: that she shall bring forth a son and call his name Jesus; he shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest (i'(oc vipia-ov): and God shall give to him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever. The subject, the Messiah, is here treated precisely in the language common to the Jews, and even the term Son of t!ie Highest, if nothing further followed, must be taken in the same sense; as according to 2 Sam. vii. 14. PS. ii. 7. an ordinary king of Israel might be so named; still more, therefore, the greatest of these kings, the Messiah, even considered merely as a man. This Jewish language reflects in addition a new light upon the question of the historic validity of the angelic apparition; for we must agree with Schleiermacher that the real angel Gabriel would hardly have proclaimed the advent of the Messiah in a phraseology so strictly Jewish: for which reason we are inclined to coincide with this theologian, and to ascribe this particular portion of the story, as also that which precedes and relates to the Baptist, to one and the same Jewish-christian author. It is not till Mary opposes the fact of her ^{P.114} virginity to the promises of a son, that the angel defines the nature of the conception: that it shall be by the Holy Ghost, by the power of the Highest; after which the appellation vioc; vli-i-ov receives a more precise metaphysical sense. As a confirmatory sign that a matter of this kind is no way impossible to God, Mary is referred to that which had occurred to her relative Elizabeth: whereupon, she resigns herself in faith to the divine determination respecting her.

In Matthew, where the main point is to dissipate Joseph's anxiety, the angel begins at once with the communication, that the child conceived by Mary is, (as the Evangelist had already stated of his own accord, chap. i. 18), of the Holy Ghost (rrvEvfia S,yiov; and hereupon the Messianic destination of Jesus is first pointed out by tire expression, he shall save his people from their sins. This language may seem to sound less Jewish than that by which the Messianic station of the child who should be born, is set forth in Luke; it is however to be observed, that under the term sins is comprehended the punishment of those sins, namely, the subjection of the people to a foreign yoke; so that here also the Jewish element is not wanting; as neither in Luke, on the other hand, is the higher destination of the Messiah left wholly out of sight, since under the term to reign basileuein, the rule over an obedient and regenerated people is included. Next is subjoined by the angel, or more probably by the narrator, an oracle from the Old Testament, introduced by the often recurring phrase, all this teas done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken, of the Lord by the prophet, (v. 22.). It is the prophecy from Isaiah, (chap. vii. 14.) which the conception of Jesus after this manner should accomplish: "namely, a virgin shall be with child, and shall briny forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmaniel-God-with-us."

The original sense of this passage in Isaiah is, according to modern research, this. The prophet is desirous of giving Ahaz, who, through fear of the kings of Syria and Israel, was disposed to make a treaty with Assyria, a lively assurance of the speedy destruction of his much dreaded enemies; and he therefore says to him: suppose that an unmarried woman now on the point of becoming a wifef shall conceive; or categorically: a certain young woman is, or is about to be with child; (perhaps the prophet's own wife); now, before this child is born, the political aspect of affairs shall be so much improved, that a name of good omen shall be given to the child; and before he shall be old enough to use his reason, the power of these enemies shall be completely annihilated. That is to say, prosaically expressed; before nine months shall have ^{P.115} passed awav, the condition of the kingdom shall be amended, and within about three years the danger shall have disappeared. Thus much, at all events, is demonstrated by modern criticism, that, under the circumstances stated by Isaiah in the introduction to the oracle, it is only a sign having reference to the actual moment and the near future, which could have any meaning. How ill chosen, according to Hengstenberg's interpretation, is the prophet's language: As certainly as the day shall arrive when, in fulfilment of the covenant, the Messiah shall be born, so impossible is it that the people among whom he shall arise, or the family from which he shall spring, shall pass away. How ill-judged, on the part of the prophet, to endeavour to make the improbability of a speedy deliverance appear less improbable, by an appeal to a yet greater improbability in the far distant future And then the given limit of a few years!

The overthrow of the two kingdoms, such is Hengstenberg's explanation, shall take place-not in the immediately succeeding years, before the child specified shall have acquired the use of his reason but-within such a space of time, as in the far future will elapse between the birth of the Messiah and the first development of his mental powers; therefore in about three years. What a monstrous confounding of times! A child is to be born in the distant future, and that which shall happen before this child shall know how to use his reason, is to take place in the nearest present time.

Thus Paulus and his party are decidedly right in opposing to Hengstenberg and his party, that the prophecy of Isaiah has relation, in its original local signification, to the then existing circumstances, and not to the future Messiah, still less to Jesus. Hengstenberg, on the other hand, is equally in the right, when in opposition to Paulus he maintains, that the passage from Isaiah is adopted by Matthew as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus of a virgin. While the orthodox commentators explain the often recurring "that it might be fulfilled" and similar expressions as signifying: this happened by divine arrangement, in order that the Old Testament prophecy, which in its very origin had reference to the New Testament occurrence, might be fulfilled the rationalist interpreters, on the contrary understand merely: this took place after such a manner, that it was so constituted, that the Old Testament words, which, originally indeed, had relation to something different, should admit of being so applied; and in such application alone, do they receive their full verification. In the first explanation, the relation between the Old Testament passage and the New Testament occurrence is objective, arranged by God himself: in the last it is only subjective, a relation perceived by the later author; according to the former it is a relationship at once precise and essential: according to the latter both inexact and adventitious. But opposed to this latter interpretation of New Testament passages, which point out an Old Testament prophecy as ^{P.116} fulfilled, is the language, and equally so the spirit of the New Testament writers. The language: for neither can plhrousqai signify in such connection any thing than ratum fieri, eventu comprobari, nor i(na opwj any thing than eo consilio ut, while the extensive adoption of i(na ekbatikon has arisen only from dogmatic perplexity.

But such an interpretation is altogether at variance with the Judaical spirit of the authors of the Gospels. Paulus maintains that the Orientalist does not seriously believe that the ancient prophecy was designedly spoken, or was accomplished by God, precisely in order that it should prefigure a modern event, and vice versa; but this is to carry over our sober European modes of thought into the imaginative life of the Orientals. When however Paulus adds; much rather did the coincidence of a later event with an earlier prophecy assume only the form of a designed coincidence in the mind of the Oriental: he thus, at once, annuls his previous assertion; for this is to admit, that, what in our view is mere coincidence, appeared to the oriental mind the result of design; and we must acknowledge this to be the meaning of an oriental representation, if we would interpret it according to its original signification. It is well known that the later Jews found prophecies, of the time being and of the future, everywhere in the Old Testament; and that they constructed a complete image of the future Messiah, out of various, and in part falsely interpreted, Old Testament passages. And the Jew believed he saw in the application he gave to the Scripture, however perverted it might be, an actual fulnlment of the prophecy. In the words of Olshausen: it is a mere dogmatic prejudice to attribute to this formula, which used by the New Testament writers, an altogether different sense from that which it habitually bears among their countrymen; and this solely with the view to acquit them of the sin of falsely interpreting the Scripture.

Many theologians of the present day are sufficiently impartial to admit, with regard to the Old Testament, in opposition to the ancient orthodox interpretation, that many of the prophecies originally referred to near events; but they are not sufficiently rash, with regard to the New Testament, to side with the rationalist commentators, and to deny the decidedly Messianic application which the New Testament writers make of these prophecies; they are still too prejudiced to allow, that here and there the New Testament hag falsely interpreted the Old. Consequently, they have recourse to the expedient of distinguishing a double sense in the prophecy; the one relating to a near and minor occurrence, the other to a future and more important event; and thus they neither offend against the plain grammatical and historical sense of the Old Testament passage on the one hand, nor distort or deny the signification of the New Testament passage on the other. Tims, in the prophecy of Isaiah under consideration, the spirit of prophecy, they contend, had a double intention: to announce a near occurrence, the delivery of the affianced bride of the prophet, and also a distinct event in the far distant future, namely the birth of the Messiah of a vira-in. But a double sense so monstrous owes its origin to dogmatic perplexity alone. It has been adopted, as Olshausen himself remarks, in order to avoid the offensive admission that the New Testament writers, and Jesus himself, did not interpret the Old Testament rightly, or, more properly speaking, according to modern principles of exegesis, but explained it after the manner of their own age, which was not the most correct. But so little does this offence exist for the unprejudiced, that the reverse would be the greater difficulty, that is, if. contrary to all the laws of historical and national development, the New Testament writers had elevated themselves completely above the modes of interpretation common to their ago and nation.

Consequently, with regard to the prophecies brought forward in the New Testament, we may admit, according to circumstances, without further argument, that they are frequently interpreted and applied by the evangelists, in a sense which is totally different from that they originally bore.

We have, here in fact a complete table of all the four possible views on this point: two extreme and two conciliatory; one false and'one, it is to be hoped, correct.

1. Orthodox view: Such Old Testament passages had in their very origin an exclusive prophetic reference to Christ, for the New Testament writers so understand them; and they must be in the right even should human reason be confounded.

2. Rationalist view (Paulus and others): The New Testament writers do not assign a strictly Messianic sense to the Old Testament prophecies, for this reference to Christ is foreign to the original signification of these prophecies viewed by the light of reason; and the New Testament writinn's must accord with reason, whatever ancient beliefs may say to the contrary.

3. Mystical conciliatory view (Olshausen and others): The Old Testament passages originally embody both the deeper signification ascribed to them by the New Testament writers, and that more proximate meaning which common sense obliges us to recognize: thus sound reason and the ancient faith are reconcileable.

4. Decision of criticism: Very many of the Old Testament prophecies had, originally, only an immediate reference to events belonging to the time: but they came to be regarded by the men oi' the New Testament as actual predictions of Jesus as the Messiah, .because the intelligence of these men was limited, by the manner of thinking of their nation, a fact recognized neither by Rationalism nor the ancient faith. ^{P.118}

Accordingly we shall not hesitate for a moment to allow, in relation to the prophecy in question, that the reference to Jesus is obtruded upon it by the Evangelists. Whether the actual birth of Jesus of a virgin gave rise to this application of the prophecy, or whether this prophecy, interpreted beforehand as referring to the Messiah, originated the belief that Jesus was born of a virgin, remains to be determined.

The statement of Matthew and of Luke concerning the mode of Jesus's conception has, in every age, received the following interpretation by the Church; that Jesus was conceived in Mary not by a human father, but by the Holy Ghost, And really the gospel expressions seem, at first sight, to justify this interpretation; since the words "with child by the Holy Spirit" (Matth. i. 18.) and "since I am a virgin" (Luke i. 34.) preclude the participation of Joseph or any other man in the conception of the child in question. Nevertheless the terms Pneuma a(gion do not represent the Holy Ghost in the sense of the Church, as the third person in the Godhead, but rather the Ruah Elohim as used in the Old Testament: God in his agency upon the world, and especially upon man. In short the words "found to be with child by the Holy Spirit" in Matthew, and "The Holy Spirit will come upon you" in Luke, express with sufficient clearness that the absence of human agency was supplied not physically after the manner of heathen representations but by the divine creative energy.

Though this seems to be the representation intended by the evangelists in the passages referred to concerning the origin of the life of Jesus, still it cannot be completed without considerable difficulties. We may separate what we may term the physico-theological from the historical-exegetical difficulties.

The physiological difficulties amount to this, that such a conception would be, a most remarkable deviation from all natural laws. However obscure the physiology of the fact, it is proved by an exceptionless experience that only by the concurrence of the two sexea is a new human being generated; on which account, Plutarch's remark, "a woman is never said to generate a child without congress with a man" ^{P.119} and Cerinthus's "impossibile" become applicable. It is only among the lowest species of the animal kingdom that generation takes place without the union of sexes: so that regarding the matter purely physiologically, what Origen says, in the supernaturalistic sense, would indeed be true of a man of the like origin; namely, that the words in Ps. xxii, 7, I am a worm and no man is a prophecy of Jesus in the above respect. But to the merely physical consideration a theological one is subjoined by the angel (Luke i. 37), when he appeals to the divine omnipotence to which nothing is impossible. But since the divine omnipotence, by virtue of its unity with divine wisdom, is never exerted in the absence of an adequate motive, the existence of such, in the present instance, must be demonstrated. But nothing less than an object worthy of the Deity, and at the same time necessarily unattainable except by a deviation from the ordinary course of nature, could constitute a sufficient cause for the suspension by God of a natural law which he had established. Only here, it is said, the end, the redemption of mankind required impeccability on the part of Jesus; and in order to render him exempt frcin sin, a divinely wrought conception, which excluded the participation of a sinful father, and severed Jesus from all connection with original sin, was necessary. To which it has been answered by others, (and Schleiermacher has recently most decisively argued this side of the question,) that the exclusion of the paternal participation is insufficient, unless, indeed, the inheritance of original sin, on the maternal side, be obviated by the adoption of the Valentinian assertion, that Jesus only passed through the body of Mary. But that the gospel histories represent an actual maternal participation is undeniable; consequently a divine intervention which should sanctify the participation of the sinful human mother in the conception of Jesus must be supposed in order to maintain his assumed necessary impeccability. But if God determined on such a purification of the maternal participation, it had been easier to do the same with respect to that of the father, than by his total exclusion, to violate the natural law in so unprecedented a manner; and consequently, a fatherless conception cannot be insisted upon as the necessary means of compassing the impeccability of Jesus.

But he who thinks to escape the difficulties already specified, by enveloping himself in a supernaturalism, inaccessible to arguments based on reason and the laws of nature, must nevertheless admit the force of the exegetical-historical difficulties meeting him upon his own ground, which likewise beset the view of the supernatural conception of Jesus. Nowhere in the New Testament is such an origin ^{P.120} ascribed to Jesus, or even distinctly alluded to, except in these two accounts of his infancy in Matthew and in Luke. The story of the conception is omitted not only by Mark, but also by John, the supposed author of the fourth gospel and an alleged inmate with the mother of Jesus subsequent to his death, who therefore would have been the most accurately informed concerning these occurences. It is said that John sought rather to record the heavenly than the earthly origin of Jesus; but the question arises, whether the doctrine which he sets forth in his prologue, of a divine hypostasis actually becoming flesh and remaining immanent in Jesus, is reconcileable with the view given in the passages before us, of a simple divine operation determining the conception of Jesus; whether therefore John could have presupposed the story of the conception contained in Matthew and Luke? This objection, however, loses its conclusive force, if in the progress of our investigation the apostolic origin of the fourth gospel is not established. The most important consideration therefore is, that no retrospective allusion to this mode of conception occurs throughout the four Gospels; not only neither in John nor in Mark, but also neither in Matthew nor in Luke. Not only does Mary herself designate Joseph simply as the father of Jesus (Luke ii. 48), and the Evangelist speak of both as his parents, goneij (Luke ii. 41), an appellation which could only have been used in a wider sense by one who had just related the miraculous conception, but all his contemporaries in general, according to our Evangelists, regarded him as a son of Joseph, a fact which was not unfrequently alluded to contemptuously and by way of reproach in his presence (Matt. xiii. 55; Luke iv. 22; John vi. 42), thus affording him an opportunity of making a decisive appeal to his miraculous conception, of which, however, he says not a single word. Should it, be answered, that he did not desire to convince respecting the divinity of his person by this external evidence, and that he could have no hopc of making an impression by such means on those who were in heart his opponents, it must also be remembered, that, according to the testimony of the fourth gospel, His own disciples, though they admitted him to be the son of God, still regarded him as the actual son of Joseph. Philip introduces Jesus to Nathaniel as the son of Joseph (John i. 46), manifestly in the same sense of real paternity which the Jews attached to the designation; and nowhere is this represented as an erroneous or imperfect notion which these Apostles had subsequently to relinquish; much rather does the whole sense of the narrative, which is not to be mistaken, exhibit the Apostles as having a right belief on this point. The enigmatical presupposition, with which, at the marriage in Cana, Mary ^{P.121} addressed herself to Jesus, is far too vague to prove a recollection of his miraculous conception on the part of the mother; at all events this feature is counterbalanced by the opposing one that the family of Jesus, and, as appears from Matt. xii.46ff. compared with Mark iii.21ff, his mother also were, at a later time, in error respecting Jlis aims; which is scarcely explicable, even of his brothers, supposing them to have had such recollections.

Just as little as in the Gospels, is any thing in confirmation of the view of the supernatural conception of Jesus, to be found in the remaining New Testament writings. For when the Apostle Paul speaks of Jesus as made of a woman (Gal. iv. 4), this expression is not to be understood as an. exclusion of parternal participation; since the addition made under the law, clearly allows that he would here indicate (in the form which is frequent in the Old and New Testament, for example Job xiv. 1; Matt. xi. 11.) human nature with all its conditions. When Paul (Rom. i. 3. 4. compared with ix. 5.) makes Christ according to the flesh, kata sarka, descend from David, but declares him to be the son of God according to the Spirit of Holiness, Kata pneumati a(giosunhj, no one will here identify the antithesis flesh and spirit with the maternal human participation, and the divine energy superseding the paternal participation in the conception of Jesus. Finally when in the Epistle to the Hebrews (vii. 3.) Melchidezek is compared with the son of God, ui(on qeou, because "without father," the application of the literally interpreted a)pathr to Jesus, as he appeared upon earth, is forbidden by the addition "without mother," which agrees as little with him as the immediately following "without descent."

The most conclusive exegetical ground of decision against the supernatural conception of Jesus, which bears more closely on the point than all the hitherto adduced passages, is found in the two genealogies previously considered. Even the Manlchaian Faustus asserted that it is impossible without contradiction to trace the descent of Jesus from David through Joseph, as is done by our two genealogists, and yet assume that Joseph was not the father of Jesus; and Augustine had nothing convincing to answer when he remarked that it was necessary, on account of the superior dignity of the masculine gender, to carry the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, who was Mary's husband if not by a natural by a spiritual alliance, In modern times also the construction of the genealogical tables in Matthew and in Luke has led many theologians to observe, that these authors considered Jesus as the actual son of Joseph, the ^{P.122} very design of these tables is to prove Jesus to be of the lineage of David through Joseph; but what do they prove, if indeed Joseph was not the lather of Jesus? The assertion that Jesus was the son of David, which in Matthew (i.1) prefaces the genealogy and announces its object, is altogether annulled by the subsequent denial of his conception by means of the Davidical Joseph. It is impossible, therefore, to think it probable that the genealogy and the story of the birth of Jesus emanate from the same author; and we must concur with the theologians previously cited, that the genealogies are taken from a different source. Scarcely could it satisfy to oppose the remark, that as Joseph doubtlessly adopted Jesus, the genealogical table of the former became fully valid for the latter.

For adoption might indeed suffice to secure to the adopted son the reversion of certain external family rights and inheritances; but such a relationship could in no way lend a claim to the Messianic dignity, which was attached to the true blood and lineage of David. He, therefore, who had regarded Joseph as nothing more than the adopted father of Jesus, would hardly have given himself the trouble to seek out the Davidical descent of Joseph; but if indeed, besides the established belief that Jesns was the son of God, it still remained important to represent him as the son of David, the pedigree of Mary would have been preferred for this purpose; for, however contrary to custom, the maternal genealogy must have been admitted in a case where a human father did not exist. Least of all is it to be believed, that several authors would have engaged in the compilation of a genealogical table for Jesus which traced his descent through Joseph, so that two different genealogies of this kind are still preserved to us, if a closer relationship between Jeshua and Joseph had not been admitted at the time of their composition.

Consequently, the decision of the learned theologians who agree that these genealogies were composed in the belief that Jesus was the actual son of Joseph and Mary, can hardly be disputed; but the authors or compilers of our Gospels, notwithstanding their own conviction of the divine origin of Jesus, received them among their materials; only that Matthew (i. 16.) changed the original "Joseph begat Jesus of Mary" (comp. verses 3. 5. 6) according to his own view; and so likewise Luke (iii. 23.) instead of commencing his genealogy simply with "Jesus the son of Joseph."

Let it not be objected that the view for which we contend, namely, that the genealogies could not have been composed under the notion that Joseph was not the father of Jesus, leaves no conceivable motive for incorporating them into our present Gospels. The original construction of a genealogy of Jesus, even though in the case before us is consisted simply in the adapting of foreign already ^{P.123} existing genealogical tables to Jesus, required a powerful and direct inducement: this was the hope thereby to gain the corporeal descent of Jesus from Joseph being presupposed a main support to the belief in his Messiahship; while, on the other hand, a less powerful inducement was sufficient to incite to the admission of the previously constructed genealogies: the expectation that, notwithstanding the non-existence of any real relationship between Joseph and Jesus, they might nevertheless serve to link Jesus to David. Thus we find, that in the histories of the birth both in Matthew and in Luke, though they cadi decidedly exclude Joseph from the conception, great stress is laid upon the Davidical descent of Joseph (Matt. i. 20, Luke i. 27, ii. 4); that which in fact had no real significance, except in connection with the earlier opinion, is retained even after the point of view is changed.

Since, in this way, we discover both the genealogies to be memorials belonging to the time and circle of the primitive Church, in which Jesus was still regarded as a naturally begotten man, the sect of the Ebionites cannot fail to occur to us; as we are told concerning them, that they held this view of the person of Christ at this early period We should therefore have expected, more especially, to have found these genealogies in the old Ebionie Gospels, of which we have still knowledge, and are not a little surprised to learn that precisely in these Gospels the genealogies were wanting. It is true Epiphanius states that the Gospel of the Ebionites commenced with the public appearance of the Baptist; accordingly, by the genealogies, which they are said to have cut away, might have been meant, those histories of the birth and infancy comprised in the two first chapters of Matthew; which they could not have adopted in their present form, since they contained the fatherless conception of Jesus, which was denied by the Ebionites: genealogies, might have and it might also have been conjectured that this section which was in opposition to their system had alone perhaps been wanting in their gospel; and that the genealogy which was in harmony with their view might nevertheless have been somewhere inserted. But this supposition vanishes as soon as we find that Epiphanius in reference to the Nazarcnes, defines the genealogies, (of which he is ignorant whether they possessed them or not, as reaching from Abraham to Christ; consequently by the genealogies which were wanting to some heretics, he evidently understood the genealogical tables, though, in relation to the Ebionites, he might likewise have included under this expression the story of the birth.

How is the strange phenomenon, that these genealogies are not found among that very sect of Christians who retained the particular opinion upon which they were constructed, to be explained? A modern investigator has advanced the supposition, that the ^{P.124} Jewish-Christians omitted the genealogical tables from prudential motives, in order not to facilitate or augment the persecution which, under Domitian, and perhaps even earlier, threatened the family of David.

But explanations, having no inherent connection with the subject, derived from circumstances in themselves of doubtful historical validity, are admissible only as a last refuge, when no possible solution of the questionable phenomenon is to be found in the thing itself, as here in the principles of the Ebionite system.

But in this case the matter is by no means so difficult. It is known that the Fathers speak of two classes of Ebionites, of which the one, besides strenuously maintaining the obligation of the Mosaic law, held Jesus to be the naturally begotten Son of Joseph and Mary; the other, from that time called also Nazarenes, admitted with the orthodox Church the conception by the Holy Ghost. But besides this distinction there existed yet another. The most ancient ecclesiastic writers, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus for example, are acquainted with those Ebionites only, who regarded Jesus as a naturally born man first endowed with divine powers at his baptism.

In Epiphanius and the Clementine Homilies, on the other hand, we meet with Ebionites who had imbibed an element of speculative Gnosticism. This tendency, which according to Epiphanius is to be dated from one Elxai, has been ascribed to Essene influence, and traces of the same have been discovered in the heresies referred to in the Epistle to the Colossians; whereas the first class of Ebionites evidently proceeded from Common Judaism. Which form of opinion was the earlier and which the later developed is not so easily determined; with reference to the last detailed difference, it might seem, since the speculative Ebionites are mentioned first by the Clementines and Epiphanius, while Ebionites holding a simpler view are spoken of by Justin and by Ireneus, that the latter were the earlier; nevertheless as Tertullian already notices in his time the Gnosticising tendency of the opinions of the Ebionites respecting Christ, and as the germ of such views existed among the Essenes in the time of Jesus, the more probable assumption is, that both opinions arose side by side about the same period. As little can it be proved with regard to the other difference, that the views concerning Christ held by the Nazarenes became first, at a later period, lowered to those of the Ebionites; since the notices, partly confused and partly of late date, of the ecclesiastical writers, may be naturally explained as arising out of what may be called an optical delusion of the Church, which, while she in fact made ^{P.125} continual advances in the glorification of Christ, but a part of the Jewish Christians remained stationary, made it appear to her as if she herself remained stationary, while the others fell back into heresy.

By thus distinguishing the simple and the speculative Ebionites, so much is gained, that the failure of the genealogies among the latter class, mentioned by Epiphanius, does not prove them to have been also wanting among the former. And the less if we should be able to make it appear probable, that the grounds of their aversion to the genealogical table, and the grounds of distinction between them and the other class of Ebionites, were identical. One of these grounds was evidently the unfavourable opinion, which the Ebionites of Epiphanius and of the Clementine Homilies had of David, from whom the genealogy traces the descent of Jesus. It is well known that they distinguished in the Old Testament a twofold prophecy, male and female, pure and impure, of which the former only promised things heavenly and true, the latter things earthly and delusive; that proceeding from Adam and Abel, this from Eve and Cain; and both constituted an under-current through the whole history of the revelation. It was only the pious men from Adam to Joshua whom they acknowledged as true prophets: the later prophets and men of God, among whom David and Solomon are named, were not only not recognized, but abhorred, We even find positive indications that David was an object of their particular aversion. There were many things which created in them a detestation of David (and Solomon). David was a bloody warrior; but to shed blood was, according to the doctrines of these Ebionites, one of the greatest of sins; David was known to have committed adultery, (Solomon to have been a voluptuary); and adultery was even more detested by this sect than murder. David was a performer on stringed instruments; this art, the invention of the Canaanites (Gen. iv. 21), was held by these Ebionites to be a sign of false prophecy; finally, the prophecies announced by David and those connected with him, (and Solomon,) had reference to the kingdoms of this world, of which the Gnosticising Ebionites desired to know nothing. Now the Ebionites who had sprung from common Judaism could not have shared this ground of aversion to the genealogies; since to the orthodox Jew David was an object of the highest veneration.

Concerning a second point the notices are not so lucid and accordant as they should be; namely, whether it was a further development of the general Ebionite doctrine concerning the person ^{P.126} of the Christ, which led these Ebionites to reject the genealogies.

According to Epiphanius, they fully recognizecl the Gnostic distinction between Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary, and the Christ who descended upon him;'" and consequently might have been withheld from referring the genealogy to Jesus only perhaps by their abhorrence of David. On the other hand, from the whole tenor of the Clementines, and from one passage in particular, it has recently been inferred, and not without apparent reason, that the author of these writings had himself abandoned the view of a natural conception, and even birth of Jesus; whereby it is yet more manifest that the ground of the rejection of the genealogies by this sect was peculiar to it, and not common to the other Ebionites.

Moreover positive indications, that the Ebionites who proceeded from Judaism possessed the genealogies, do not entirely fail. While the Ebionites of Epiphanius and of the Clementines called Jesus only Son of God, but rejected the appellation Son of David, as belonging to the common opinion of the Jews; other Ebionites were censured by the Fathers for recognizing Jesus only as the Son of David, to whom he is traced in the genealogies, and not likewise as the Son of Grod. Further, Epiphanius relates of the earliest Judaising Gnostics Cerinthus and Carpocrates, that they used a gospel the same in other respects indeed as the Ebionites, but that they adduced the genealogies, which they therefore read in the same, in attestation of the human conception of Jesus by Joseph.

Also the a)pomnhmoneumata cited by Justin, and which originated upon Judaeo-christian ground, appear to have contained a genealogy similar to that in our Matthew; since Justin as well as Matthew speaks, in relation to Jesus, of a genoj tou Dabid kai A)braam, of a sperma e)c I)akwb dia Iou)da, kai Farej kai I)essai kai Dabid katerxomenon; only that at the time, and in the circle of Justin, the opinion of a supernatural conception of Jesus had already suggested the reference of the genealogy to Mary, instead of to Joseph.

Hence it appears that we have in the genealogies a memorial, agreeing with indications from other sources, of the fact that in the very earliest Christian age, in Palestine, a body of Christians, numerous enough to establish upon distinct fundamental opinions two different Messianic tables of descent, considered Jesus to have been a naturally conceived human being. And no proof is furnished to us in the apostolic writings, that the Apostles would have declared ^{P.127} this doctrine to be unchristian: it appeared so first from the point of view adopted by the authors of the histories of the birth in the first and third Gospels: notwithstanding which however, it is treated with surprising lenity by the Fathers of the Church.

IF, as appears from the foregoing statements, so many weighty difficulties, philosophical as well as exegetical, beset the supernaturalistic explanation, it is worth examining whether it be not possible to give an interpretation of the gospel history which shall obviate these objections. Recourse has been had to the natural explanation, and the two narratives singly and coniointly have been successively subjected to the rationalist mode of interpretation.

In the first place, the account in Matthew seemed susceptible of such an interpretation. Numerous rabbinical passages were cited to demonstrate, that it was consonant with Jewish notions to consider a son of pious parents to be conceived by the divine co-operation, and that he should be called the son of the Holy Spirit, without its being ever imagined that paternal participation was thereby excluded. It was consequently contended, that the section in Matthew represented merely the intention of the angel to inform Joseph, not indeed that Mary had become pregnant in the absence of all human intercourse, but that notwithstanding her pregnancy she was to be regarded as pure, not as one fallen from virtue. It was maintained that the exclusion of paternal participation, which is an embellishment of the original representation, occurs first in Luke in the words a)ndra ou) ginwskw (i. 34.) When however this view was justly opposed by the remark, that the expression prin h) sunelqeinin Matthew (i. 18) decidedly excludes the participation of the only individual in question, namely Joseph; it was then thought possible to prove that even in Luke the paternal exclusion was not so positive: but truly this could be done only by an unexegetical subversion of the clear sense of the words, or else by uncritically throwing suspicion on a part of a well-connected narrative. The first expedient is to interpret Mary's inquiry of the angel i. 34, thus: "Can I who am already betrothed and married give birth to the Messiah, for as the mother of the Messiah I must have no husband?" whereupon the angel replies that God, through his power, could make something distinguished even of the child conceived of her and Joseph. The other proceeding is no less arbitrary. Mary's inquiry of the angel is explained as an unnatural interruption of his communication, which being abstracted, the ^{P.128} passage is found to contain no decided intimation of the supernatural conception.

Consequently, the difficulty of the natural explanation of the two accounts be equally great, still, with respect to both it must be alike attempted or rejected; and for the consistent Rationalist, a Paulus for example, the latter is the only course. This commentator considers the participation of Joseph indeed excluded by Matt. i. 18, but by no means that of every other man; neither can he find a supernatural divine intervention in the expression of Luke i. 35. The Holy Ghost pneuma a(gion is not with him objective, an external influence operating upon Mary, but her own pious imagination. The power of the Most High is not the immediate divine omnipotence, but everv natural power employed in a manner pleasing to God may be so called. Consequently, according to Paulus, the meaning of the angelic announcement is simply this: prior to her union with Joseph, Mary, under the influence of a pure enthusiasm in sacred things on the one hand, and by a human co-operation pleasing to God on the other, became the mother of a child who on account of this holy origin was to be called a son of God.

Let us examine rather more accurately the view which this representative of rationalist interpretation takes of the particulars of the conception of Jesus. He begins with Elizabeth, the patriotic and wise daughter of Aaron, as he styles her. She, having conceived the hope that she might give birth to one of God's prophets, naturally desired moreover that he might be the first of prophets, the forerunner of the Messiah; and that the latter also might speedily be born. Now there was among her own kinsfolk a person suited in every respect for the mother of the Messiah, Mary, a young virgin, a descendant of David; nothing more was needful than to inspire her likewise with such a special hope. While these intimations prepare us to anticipate a cleverly concerted plan on the part of Elizabeth in reference to her young relative, in which we hope to become initiated; Paulus here suddenly lets fall the curtain, and remarks, that the exact manner in which Mary was convinced that she should become the mother of the Messiah must be left historically undetermined; thus much only is certain, that Mary remained pure, for she could not with a clear conscience have stationed herself, as she afterwards did, under the Cross of her Son, had she felt that a reproach rested on her concerning the origin of the hopes she had entertained of him.

The following is the only hint subsequently given of the particular view held by Paulus. It is probable, he thinks, that the angelic messenger visited Mary in the evening or even at night; indeed according to the correct reading of Luke i. 28, which has not the word angel, the evangelist here speaks only of some one who had come in Paulus adds: that this visitant was the angel Gabriel was the subsequent suggestion of Mary's own mind, after she had heard of the vision of Zechariah.

Gabler in a review of Paulus's Commentary has fully exposed with commensurate plainness of speech, the transaction which lies concealed under this explanation. It is impossible, says he, to imagine any other interpretation of Paulus's view than that some one passed himself off for the angel Gabriel, and as the pretended Messenger of God remained with Mary in order that she might become the mother of the Messiah. "What!" asks Gabler, "Is Mary, at the very time she is betrothed, to become pregnant by another and is this to be called an innocent holy action, pleasing to God and irreprochable? Mary is here pourtrayed as a pious visionary, and the pretended messenger of heaven as a deceiver, or he too is a gross fanatic. The reviewer most justly considers such an assertion as revolting, if contemplated from the Christian point of view; if from the scientific, as at variance, both with the principles of interpretation and of criticism.

The author of the "Natural Plistory of the Great Prophet of Nazareth" is, in this instance, to be considered as the most worthy interpreter of Paulus; for though the former could not, in this part of his work, have made use of Paulus's Commentary, yet, in exactly the same spirit, he unreservedly avows what the latter carefully veils. He brings into comparison a story in Josephus, according to which, in the very time of Jesus, a Roman knight won the chaste wife of a Roman noble to his wishes, by causing her to be invited by a priest of Isis into the temple of the Goddess, under the pretext that the god Anubis desired to embrace her. In innocence and faith, the woman resigned herself, and would perhaps afterwards have believed she had given birth to the child of a god, had not the intriguer, with bitter scorn, soon after discovered to her the true state of the case. It is the opinion of the author that Mary, the betrothed bride of the aged Joseph, was in like manner deceived by some amorous and fanatic young man (in the sequel to the story he represents him to be Joseph of Arimathea), and that she on her part, in perfect innocence, continued to deceive others. It is evident that this interpretation does not differ from the ancient Jewish blasphemy, which we find in Celsus and in the Talmud; that Jesus falsely represented himself as born of a pure virgin, whereas, in fact, he was the offspring of the adultery of Mary with a certain Panthera.

This whole view, of which the culminating point is in the cal- ^{P.130} umny of the Jews, cannot be better judged than in the words of Origen. If, says this author, they wished to substitute something else in the place of the story of the supernatural conception of Jesus, they should at any rate have made it happen in a more probable manner; they ought not, as it were against their "will, to admit that Mary knew not Joseph, but they might have denied this feature, and yet have allowed Jesus to have been born of an ordinary human marriage: whereas, the forced and extravagant character of their hypothesis betrays its falsehood. Is not this as much as to say, that if once some particular features of a marvellous narrative are doubted, it is inconsequent to allow others to remain unquestioned? each part of such an account ought to be subjected to critical examination. The correct view of the narrative before us is to be found, that is indirectly, in Origen. For when at one time he places together, as of the same kind, the miraculous conception of Jesus and the story of Plato's conception by Apollo (though here, indeed, the meaning is that only ill-disposed persons could doubt such things, and when at another time he says of the story concerning Plato, that it belongs to those myths by which it was sought to exhibit the distinguished wisdom and power of great men (but here he does not include the narrative of Jesus's conception), he in fact states the two premises, namely, the similarity of the two narratives and the mythical character of the one; from which the inference of the merely mythical worth of the narrative of the conception of Jesus follows; a conclusion which can never indeed have occurred to his own mind.

IF, says Gabler in his review of the Commentary of Paulus, we must relinquish the supernatural origin of Jesus, in order to escape the ridicule of our contemporaries, and if, on the other hand, the natural explanation leads to conclusions not only extravagant, but revolting; the adoption of the myth, by which all these difficulties are obviated, is to be preferred. In the world of mythology many great men had extraordinary births, and were sons of the gods.

Jesus himself spoke of his heavenly origin, and called God his father; besides, his title as Messiah was-Son of God. From Matthew i. 22, it is further evident that the passage of Isaiah, vii. 14. was referred to Jesus by the early Christian Church. In conformity with this passage the belief prevailed that, Jesus, as the Messiah, should be born of a virgin by means of divine agency; it was therefore taken for granted that what was to be actually did occur; and thus originated a philosophical (dogmatical) myth concerning the birth of Jesus. But according to historical truth, Jesus was the offspring of an ordinary marriage, between Joseph and Mary; an ^{P.131} explanation which, it has been justly remarked, maintains at once the dignity of Jesus and the respect due to his mother."

The proneness of the ancient world to represent the great men and benefactors of their race as the sons of the gods, has therefore been referred to, in order to explain the origin of such a myth.

Our theologians have accumulated examples from the Greco-Roman mythology and history. They have cited Hercules, and the Dioscuri; Romulus, and Alexander; but above all Pythagoras, and Plato. of the latter philosopher Jerome speaks in a manner quite applicable to Jesus: "sapientia principem non aliter arbitrantur, nisi de partu virginis editum."

From these examples it migrht have been inferred that the narratives of the supernatural conception had possibly orglnated in a similar tendency, and had no foundation in history. Here Iiowevci the orthodox and the rationalists are unanimous in denying, though indeed upon different grounds, the validity of the analogy. Origen, from a perception of the identical character of the two classes of narratives, is not far from regarding the heathen legends of the sons of the gods as true supernatural histories. Paulus on his side is more decided, and is so logical as to explain both classes of narratives in the same manner, as natural, but still as true histories. At least he says of the narrative concerning Plato: it cannot be affirmed that the groundwork of the history was a subsequent creation; it is far more probable that his mother believed herself to be pregnant by one of her gods. The fact that her son became a Plato might indeed have served to confirm that belief, but not to have originated it.

Thol ck invites attention to the important distinction that the myths concerning Romulus and others were formed many centuries after the lifetime of these men: the myths concerning Jesus, on the contrary, must have existed shortly after his death. He cleverly fails to remember the narrative of Plato's birth, since he is well aware that precisely in that particular, it is a dangerous point. Others approach the subject with much pathos, and affirm that Plato's apotheosis as son of Apollo did not exist till several centuries after him, whereas in fact Plato's sister's son speaks of it as a prevailing legend in Athens. Olshausen, with whom Neander coincides, refuses to draw any detrimental inference from this analogy of the mythical sons of the gods; remarking that though these narratives are unhistorical, they evince a general anticipation and desire ^{P.132} of such a fact, and therefore guarantee its reality, at least in one historical manifestation. Certainly, a general anticipation and representation must have truth for its basis; Tout the truth does not consist in any one individual fact, presenting an accurate correspondence with that notion, but in an idea which realizes itself in a series of facts, which often bear no resemblance to the general notion.

The widely spread notion of a golden age does not prove the existence of a golden age: so the notion of divine conceptions does not prove that some one individual was thus produced. The truth which is the basis of this notion is something quite different.

A more essential objection to the analogy is, that the representations of the heathen world prove nothing with respect to the isolated Jews; and that the idea of sons of the gods, belonging to polytheism, could not have exerted an influence on the rigidly monotheistic notion of the Messiah. At all events such an inference must not be too hastily drawn from the expression "sons of God,'' found likewise among the Jews, which as applied in the Old Testament to magistrates, (Ps. Ixxxii. 6, or to theocratic kings, 2 8am. vii. 14, Ps. ii. 7), indicates only a theocratic, and not a physical or metaphysical relation. Still less is importance to be attached to the language of flattery used by a Roman, in Josephus, who calls beautiful children of the Jewish princes children of God. It was, however, a notion among the Jews, as was remarked in a former section, that the Holy Spirit co-operated in the conception of pious individuals; moreover, that God's choicest instruments were conceived by divine assistance of parents, who could not have had a cluld according to the natural course of things. And if, according to the believed representation, the extinct capability on both sides was renewed by divine intervention (Rom. iv. 19), it was only one step further to the belief that in the case of the conception of the most distinguished of all God's agents, the Messiah, the total absence of participation on the one side was compensated by a more complete super-added capability on the other. The latter is scarcely" a degree more marvellous than the former. And thus must it have appeared to the author of Luke i, since he dissipates Mary's doubts by the same reply with which the Lord repelled Sara's incredulity. Neither the Jewish reverence for marriage, nor the prevalent representation of the Messiah as a human being, could prevent the advance to this climax; to which, on the other hand, the ascetic estimation of celibacy, and the idea, derived from Daniel, of the Christ as a superhuman being, contributed. But decided impulse to the development of the representations embodied in our histories of the birth, consisted partly in the title, iSon of God, at one time usually given to the Messiah. For it is the nature of such originally figurative expressions, after a while to come to be interpreted according ^{P.133} to their more precise and literal signification; and it was a daily occurrence, especially among the later Jews, to attach a sensible, signification to that which originally had merely a spiritual or fifigurative meaning. this natural disposition to understand the Messianic title Son of God more and more literally, was fostered by the expression in the Psalms (ii. 7), interpreted of the Messiah: You are my son; this day have I begotten you: words which can scarcely fail to suggest a physical relation; it was also nurtured by the prophecy of Isaiah respecting the virgin who should be with child, which it appears was applied to the Messiah; as were so many other prophecies of which the immediate signification had become obscure. this application may be seen in the Greek word chosen by the Scptuagint, -naiOivw;, a pure unspotted virgin, whereas by Aquila and other Greek translators the word veavi(; is used.

Tims did the notions of a son of (rod and a son of a virgin complete one another, till at last the divine agency was substituted for human paternal participation. Wettstein indeed affirms that no Jew ever applied the prophecy of Isaiah to the Messiah; and it was with extreme labour that Schoetten collected traces of the notion that the Messiah should be the son of a virgin from the Rabbinical writings. this however, considering the paucity of records of the Mi'ssianic ideas of that age, proves nothing in opposition to the presumption that a notion then prevailed, of which we have the groundwork in the Old Testament, and an inference hardly to be mistaken in the New.

One objection yet remains, which I can no longer designate as peculiar to Olshausen, since other theologians have shown themselves solicitous of sharing the fame. The objection is, that the mythical interpretation of the gospel narrative is especially dangerous, it being only too well fitted to engender, obscurely indeed, false and blasphemous notions concerning the origin of Jesus; since it cannot fail to favour an opinion destructive of the belief in a Redeemer, namely, that Jesus came into being through unholy means; since, in fact, at the time of her pregnancy Mary was not married. In Olshausen's first edition of his work, he adds that he willingly allows that these interpreters know not what they do: it is therefore but just to give him the advantage of the same concession, since he certainly appears not to know what mythical interpretation means.

How otherwise would he say, that the mythical interpretation is fitted only to favour a blasphemous opinion; therefore that all who understand thenarrative mythically, are disposed to commit the absurdity with which Origen reproaches the Jewish calumniators; the retaining one solitary incident, namely, that Mary was not married, while the remainder of the narrative is held to be unhistorical; a particular incident which evidently serves only as a support ^{P.134} to the other, that Jesus was conceived without human paternal participation, and with it, therefore, stands or falls. No one among the interpreters who, in this narrative, recognise a myth in the full signification of that term, has been thus blind and inconsistent; all have supposed a legitimate marriage between Joseph and Mary; and Olshausen merely paints the mythical mode of interpretation in caricature, in order the more easily to set it aside; for he confesses that in relation to this portion of the gospel in particular, it has much that is dazzling.

OUR Gospels, in the true spirit of the ancient legend, find it unbecoming to allow the mother of Jesus, so long as she bore the heavenly germ, to be approached or profaned by an earthly husband. Consequently Luke (ii. 5.) represents the connection between Joseph and Mary, prior to the birth of Jesus, as a betrothment merely. And, as it is stated respecting the father of Plato, after his wife had become pregnant by Apollo: so likewise it is remarked of Joseph in Matthew (i. 25.) kai ou)k e)ginwsken au)thn e(wj ou( e)teke ton ui(on au)thj ton prwtotokon. In each of these kindred passages the Greek word ewj (till) must evidently receive the same. interpretation. Now in the first quotation the meaning is incontestably this: that till the time of Plato's birth his father abstained from intercourse with his wife, but subsequently assumed his conjugal rights, since we hear of Plato's brothers. In reference, therefore, to the parents of Jesus, the ewj cannot have a different signification; in any case it indicates precisely the same limitation. So again the expression prwtotokoj (firstborn) used in reference to Jesus in both Gospels (Matt. i. 25, Luke ii. 7.) supposes that Mary had other children, for as Lucian says: e)i men prwtoj, ou) monoj.ei) de monoj, ou) prwtoj. Even in the same Gospels (Matt. xiii. 55, Luke viii. 19.) mention is made of "brothers of Jesus." But this did not continue to satisfy the orthodox: as the veneration for Mary rose even higher, she who had once become fruitful by divine agency was not subsequently to be profaned by the common relations of life. The opinion that Mary after the birth of Jesus became the wife of Joseph, was early ranked among the heresies, and the orthodox Fathers sought every means to escape from it and to combat ^{P.135} it. They contended that according to the exegetical interpretation of e(wj ou(, it sometimes affirmed or denied a thing, not merely up to a certain limit, but beyond that limitation and for ever; and that the words of Matthew ou)k e)gnwken au)ton excluded a matrimonial connection between Joseph and Mary for all time.

In like manner it was asserted of the term e(wj prin that it did not necessarily include the subsequent birth of other children, but that it merely excluded' any previous birth. But in order to banish the thought of a matrimonial connection between Mary and Joseph, not only grammatically but physiologically, they represented Joseph as a very old man, under whom Mary was placed for control and protection only; and the brothers of Jesus mentioned in the New Testament they regarded as the children of Joseph by a former marriage, But this was not all; soon it was insisted not only that Mary never became the wife of Joseph, but that in giving birth to Jesus she did not lose her virginity. But even the conservation of Mary's virginity did not long continue to satisfy: perpetual virginity was likewise required on the part of Joseph. It was not enough that he had no connection with Mary; it was also necessary that His entire life should be one of celibacy. Accordingly, though Epiphanius allows that Joseph had sons by a former marriage, Jerome rejects the supposition as an impious and audacious invention; and from that time the brothers of Jesus were degraded to the rank of cousins.

Some modern theologians agree with the Fathers of the Church in maintaining that no matrimonial connection subsisted at any time between Joseph and Mary, and believe themselves able to explain the gospel expressions which appear to assert the contrary. In reference to the term first born, Olshausen contends that it signifies an only son: no less than the eldest of several. Paulus allows that here he is right, and Clemens and Fritzsche seek in vain to demonstrate the impossibility of this signification. For when it is said in Exod. xiii. 2, prwtotokon prwtogenej (LXX) it was not merely a firstborn followed by others subsequently born, who was sanctified to the Lord, but the fruit of the body of that mother of whom no other child had previously been born. Therefore the term prwtotokoj must bear also this signification. Truly however we must confess with Winer and others, on the other side, that if a narrator who was acquainted with the whole sequel of the story used that expression, we should be tempted to understand it in its primitive sense; since had the author intended to exclude other children, he would rather have ^{P.136} used the word monogenhj or would have connected it with prwtotokoj. If this be not quite decisive, the reasoning of Fritzsche in reference to the e(wj ou( etc., is more convincing. He rejects the citations adduced in support of the interpretation of the Fathers of the Church, proving that this expression according to its primitive signification affirms only to a given limit, and beyond that limit supposes the logical opposite of the affirmation to take place; a signification which it loses only when the context shows clearly that the opposite is impossible in the nature of things. For example, if it is said "he knew her not until she died," it is self-evident that the negation, during the time elapsed till death, cannot be transformed after death into an affirmation; but when it is said, as in Matthew, "he knew her not until she brought forth," the giving birth to the divine fruit opposes no impossibility to the establishment of the conjugal relations; on the contrary it renders it possible i.e. suitable for them now to take place.

Olshausen, impelled by the same doctrinal motives which influenced the Fathers, is led in this instance to contradict both the evidence of grammar and of logic. He thinks that Joseph, without wishing to impair the sanctity of marriage, must have concluded from his experience that his marriage with Mary had "another object than the production of children; besides it was but natural in the last descendant of the house of David, and of that particular branch from which the Messiah should come forth, to terminate her race in this last and eternal offshoot."

A curious ladder may be formed of these different beliefs and superstitions in relation to the connection between Mary and Joseph.

1. Contemporaries of Jesus and composers of the genealogies: Joseph and Mary man and wife Jesus the offspring of their marriage.

2. The age and authors of our histories of the birth of Jesus: Mary and Joseph betrothed only; Joseph having no participation in the conception of the child, and previous to its birth no conjugal connection with Mary.

3. Olshausen and others: subsequent to the birth of Jesus, Joseph, though then the husband of Mary, relinquishes his matrimonial rights.

4. Epiphanius, Protevangelium Jacobi and others: Joseph a decrepit, old man, no longer to be thought of as a husband; the children attributed to him are of a former marriage. More especially it is not as a bride and wife that he receives Mary; he takes her merely under his guardianship.

5. Protevang., Chrysostom and others: Mary's virginity was not only not destroyed by any subsequent births of children by Joseph but was not in the slightest degree impaired by the birth of Jesus.. . . . ''.

6. Jerome: not Mary only but Joseph also observed an absolute virginity, and the pretended brothers of Jesus were not his sons but merely cousins to Jesus. .

The opinion that the a)delfoi (brothers) and a)delfai (sisters of Jesus) mentioned in the New Testament, were merely half brothers or indeed cousins, appears in its origin, as shown above, together with the notion that no matrimonial connection ever subsisted between Joseph and Mary, as the mere invention of superstition, a circumstance highly prejudicial to such an opinion. It is however no less true that purely exegetical grounds exist, in virtue of which theologians who were free from prejudice have decided, that the opinion that Jesus actually had brothers is untenable.

Had we merely the following passages, Matth. xiii. 55, Mark vi. 3, where the people of Nazareth astonished at the wisdom of their countryman, in order to mark his well known origin, immediately after having spoken of tektwn (the carpenter) his father, and His mother Mary, mention by name his brothers: James, Joses, Simon, and Judas, together with his sisters whose names are not given; again Matth. xii. 4G, Luke viii. 19, when His mother and his brethren come to Jesus; John ii. 12, where Jesus journeys with his mother and his brethren to Capernaum; Acts i. 14, where they are mentioned in immediate connection with his mother if we had these passages only, we could not for a moment hesitate to recognize here real brothers of Jesus at least on the mother's side, children of Joseph and Mary; not only on account of the proper signification of the word a)delfoj, but also in consequence of its continual conjunction with Mary and Joseph. Even the passages in which it is remarked that his brethren did not believe on Jesus, John vii.5, and Mark iii. 21, compared with 31, where according to the most probable explanation, the brothers of Jesus with his mother went out to lay hold of him as one beside himself furnish no adequate grounds for relinquishing the proper signification of a)delfoj.

Many theologians have interpreted a)delfoi I)hsou. in the last cited passage half brothers, sons of Joseph by a former marriage, alleging that the real brothers of Jesus must have believed in him, but this is a mere assumption. The difficulty seems greater when we read in John xix. 26 f. that Jesus on the cross, enjoined John to be a son to his mother; an injunction it is not easy to regard as suitable,,under the supposition that Mary had other children, except indeed these were half brothers and unfriendly to Jesus. Nevertheless we can imagine the existence both of external circumstances and of individual feelings which might have influenced Jesus to confide his mother to John rather than to his brothers. That these brothers appeared in company with His Apostles after the ascension (Acts i. 14,) is no proof that they must have believed in Jesus at the time of his death.

The real perplexity in the matter, however, originates in this: that besides the James and Joses spoken of as the brothers of Jesus, two men of the same name are mentioned as the sons of another Mary (Mark xv. 40, 47, xvi. 1, Matt. xxvii. 56,) without doubt that Mary who is designated, John xix. 25, as the sister of the mother of Jesus, and the wife of Cleophas: so that we have a James and a Joses not only among the children of Mary the mother of Jesus, but again among her sister's children. We meet with several others among those immediately connected with Jesus, whose names are identical. In the lists of the Apostles (Matth. x.2ff, Luke vi. 14 ff.) we have two more of the name of James: that is four, the brother and cousin of Jesus included; two more of the name of Judas: that is three, the brother of Jesus included; two of the name of Simon, also making three with the brother of Jesus of the sime name. The question naturally arises, whether the same individual is not here taken as distinct persons? The suspicion is almost unavoidable in reference to James. As James the son of Alpheus is, in the list of the Apostles, introduced after the son of Zebedee, as the second, perhaps the younger; and as James the cousin of Jesus is called "the less" (Mark. xv. 40;) and since by comparing John xix. 25, we find that the latter is called the son of Cleophas, it is possible that the name Cleophas given to the husband of Mary's sister, and the name Alpheus given to the father of the apostle, may be only different forms of the Hebrew? Thus would the second James enumerated among the Apostles and the cousin of Jesus of that name be identical, and there would remain besides him only the son of Zebedee and the brother of Jesus. Now in the Acts (xv. 13) a James appears who takes a prominent part in the so-called apostolic council, and as, according to Acts xil. 2, the son of Zebedee had previously been put to death, and as in the foregoing portion of the book of the Acts no mention is made of any other James besides the son of Alpheus (i. 13) so this James, of whom (Acts xv. 13,) no more precise description is given, can be no other than the son of Alpheus. iiut Paul speaks of a James (Gal. i. 19) the .Lord's brother, whom he saw at Jerusalem, and it, is doubtless he of whom he speaks in connection with Cephas and John as the "pillars" of the Church-for this is precisely in character with the (Apostle) James as he appeared at the apostolic council-so that this James may be considered as identical with the Lord's brother, and the rather as the expression "but other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother." (Gal. i. 19,) makes it appear as if the Lord's brother were a recognised member of the Church. Also the ancient tradition ^{P.139} which represents James the Just, a brother of Jesus, as the first head of the Church at Jerusalem, agrees. But admitting the James of the Acts to be identical with the distinguished Apostle of that name, then is he the son of Alpheus, and not the son of Joseph; consequently if he be at the same time a)delfoj Kuriou, then a)delfoj cannot signify a brother. Now if Alpheus and Cleophas are admitted to be the same individual, the husband of the sister of Mary the mother of Jesus, it is obvious that a)delfoj, used to denote the relationship of his son to Jesus, must be taken in the signification, cousin. If, after this manner, James the Apostle the son of Alpheus be identified with the cousin, and the cousin be identified with the brother of Jesus of the same name, it is obvious that I)oudaj I)akwbou in the catalogue of the Apostles in Luke (Luke vi. 16, Acts i. 13,) must be translated brother of Joses (son of Alpheus); and this Apostle Jude must be held as identical with the Jude a)delfoj I)hsou, that is, with the cousin of the Lord and son of Mary Cleophas; (though the name of Jude is never mentioned in connection with this Mary.) If the Epistle of Jude in our canon be authentic, it is confirmatory of the above deduction, that the author (verse 1) designates himself as the a)delfoj (brother of James). Some moreover have identified the Apostle Simon with the Simon enumerated among the brothers of Jesus (Mark vi. 3,) and who according to a tradition of the Church succeeded James as head of the Church at Jerusalem; so that Joses alone appears without further designation or appellative.

If, accordingly, those spoken of as a)delfoi I)hsou were merely cousins, and three of these were Apostles, it must excite surprise that not only in the Acts, (i. 14,) after an enumeration of the Apostles, the brothers of Jesus are separately particularized, but that also (1 Cor. ix. 5.) they appear to be a class distinct from the Apostles.

Perhaps, also, the passage Gal. 1.19 ought to be understood as indicating that James, the Lord's brother, was not an Apostle. It therefore, the a)delfoi seem thus to be extruded from the number of the Apostles, it is yet more difficult to regard them merely as the cousins of Jesus, since they appear in so many places immediately associated with the mother of Jesus, and in two or three passages only are two men bearing the same names mentioned in connection with the other Mary, who accordingly would be their real mother. The Greek word a)delfoj, may indeed signify, in language which pretends not to precision, as well as the Hebrew ah a more distant relative; but as it is repeatedly used to express the relationship of these persons to Jesus, and is in no instance replaced by a)neyioj a word which is not foreign to the New Testament language when the relationship of cousin is to be denoted (Col. iv. 10.) it cannot well be taken in any other than its proper signification. Further, it need only be pointed out that the highest degree of un- ^{P.140} certainty exists respecting not only the identity of the names Alphaeus and Cleophas, upon which the identity of James the cousin of Jesus and of the Apostle James the Less rests, lint also regarding the translation of Ioudaj Iakwbou by the brother of James; and likewise respecting the assumed identity of the author of the last Catholic Epistle with the Apostle Jude.

Thus the web of this identification gives way at all points, and we are forced back to the position from which we set out; so that we have again real brothers of Jesus, also two cousins distinct from these brothers, though bearing the same names with two of them, besides some Apostles of the same names with both brothers and cousins.

To find two pairs of sons of the same names in a family is, indeed, not so uncommon as to become a source of objection. It is, however, remarkable that the same James who in the Epistle to the Galatians is designated a)delfoj Kuriou (the Lord's brother), must unquestionably, according to the Acts of the Apostles, be regarded as the son of Alplieus; which he could not be if this expression signified a brother. So that there is perplexity on every side, which can be solved only (and then, indeed, but negatively and without historical result) by admitting the existence of obscurity and error on this point in the New Testament writers, and even in the very earliest Christian traditions; error which, in matters of involved relationships and family names, is far more easily fallen into than avoided. We have consequently no ground for denying that the mother of Jesus bore her husband several other children besides Jesus, younger, and perhaps also older; the latter, because the representation in the New Testament that Jesus was the first-born may belong no less to the myth than the representation of the Fathers that he was an only son.

The angel who announced to Mary her own approaching pregnancy, at the same time informed her (Luke i. 36.) of that of her relative Elizabeth, with whom it was already the sixth month.

Hereupon Mary immediately set out on a journey to her cousin, a visit which was attended by extraordinary occurrences; for when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb for joy; she also became inspired, and in her exultation poured torth an address to Mary as the future mother of the Messiah, to which Mary responded by a hymn of praise (Luke i. 39-56).

The rationalist interpreter believes it to be an easy matter to give a natural explanation of this narrative of the Gospel of Luke. He is of opinion that the unknown individual who excited such peculiar anticipations in Mary, had at the same time acquainted her with the similar situation of her cousin Elizabeth. This it was ^{P.141} which impelled Mary the more strongly to confer on the subject with her older relative. Arrived at her cousin's dwelling, she first of all made known what had happened to herself; but upon this the narrator is silent, not wishing to repeat what he had just before described. And here, the Rationalist not only supposes the address of Elizabeth to have been preceded by some communication from Mary, but imagines Mary to have related her history piecemeal, so as to allow Elizabeth to throw in sentences during the intervals.

The excitement of Elizabeth such is the continuation of the rationalist explanation communicated itself, according to natural laws, to the child, who, as is usual with an embryo of six months, made a movement, which -was first regarded by the mother as significant, and as the consequence of the salutation, after Mary's further communications. Just as natural does it appear to the Rationalist that Mary should have given utterance to her Messianic expectations, confirmed as they were by Elizabeth, in a kind of psalmodic recitative, composed of reminiscences borrowed from various parts of the Old Testament.

But there is much in this explanation which positively contradicts the text. In the first place, that Elizabeth should have learned the heavenly message imparted to Mary from Mary herself. There is no trace in the narrative either of any communication preceding Elizabeth's address, or of interruptions occasioned by further explanations on the part of Mary. On the contrary, as it is a supernatural revelation, which acquaints Mary with the pregnancy of Elizabeth, so also it is to a revelation that Elizabeth's immediate recognition of Mary, as the chosen mother of the Messiah, is attributed. As little will the other feature of this narrative that the entrance of the mother of the Messiah occasioned a responsive movement in his mother's womb on the part of his forerunner-bear a natural explanation. In modern times indeed even orthodox interpreters have inclined to this explanation, but with the modification, that Elizabeth in the first place received a revelation, in which however the child, owing to the mother's excitement, a. matter to be physiologically explained, likewise took part. But the record does not represent the thing as if the excitement of the mother were the determining cause of the movement of the child; on the contrary (v. 41.) the emotion of the mother follows the movement of the child, and Elizabeth's own account states, that it was the salutation of Mary (v. 44. not indeed from its particular signification, but merely as the voice, of the mother of the Messiah, which produced the movement of the unborn babe: undeniably assuming something supernatural. But even herein the supernaturalistic view of this miracle is not free from objection, even on its own ground; and hence the anxiety of the above mentioned modern orthodox interpreters to evade it. It may be possible to conceive the human ^{P.142} mind immediately acted upon by the divine mind, to whinch it is related, but how solve the difficulty of an immediate communication of the divine mind to an uninteligent embryo? And if we inquire the object of so strange a miracle, none which is worthy presents itself. Should it be referred to the necessity that, the Baptist should receive the earliest possible intimation of the work to which he was destined; still we know not how such an impression could have been made upon an embryo. Should the purpose be supposed to centre in the other individuals, in Mary or Elizabeth; they had been the recipients of far higher revelations, and were consequently already possessed of an adequate measure of insight and faith.

No fewer difficulties oppose the rationalist than the supernaturalistic explanation of the hymn pronounced by Mary. For though it is not, like the Canticle of Zacharlas (v, G7.) and the address of Elizabeth (v. 41.) introduced by the formula "she was filled with the Holy Spirit", still the similarity of these utterances is so great, that the omission cannot be adduced as a proof that the narrator did not, intend to represent this, equally with the other two, as the operation of the Pneuma (spirit). But apart from the intention of the narrator, can it be thought natural that two friends visiting one another should, even in the midst of the most extraordinary occurrences, break forth into long hymns, and that their conversation should entirely lose the character of dialogue, the natural form on such occasions'? By a supernatural influence alone could the minds of the two friends be attuned to a state of elevation, so foreign to their every day life. But if indeed Mary's hymn is to be understood as the work of the Holy Spirit, it is surprisina: that a speech emanating immediately from the divine source of inspiration should not be, more striking for its originality, but should be so interlarded with reminiscences from the Old Testament, borrowed from the song of praise spoken by the mother of Samuel (1 Sam. ii.) under analogous circumstances. Accordingly we must admit that the compilation of this hymn, consisting of recollections from the Old Testament, was put together in a natural way; but allowing its composition toJiave been perfectly natural, it cannot be ascribed to the artless Mary, but to him who poetically wrought out the tradition in circulation respecting the scene in question.

Since then we find all the principal incidents of this visit inconceivable according to the supernatural interpretation; also that they will not bear a natural explanation; we are led to seek a mythical exposition of this as well as the preceding portions of the gospel history. this path has already been entered upon by others. The view of this narrative given by the anonymous E. F. in Henke's Magazine is, that it does not portray events as they actually did ^{P.143} occur, but as they might have occurred; that much which the sequel taught of the destiny of their sons was carried back into the speeches of these women, which were also enriched by other features gleaned from tradition; that a true fact however lies at the bottom, namely an actual visit of Mary to Elizabeth, a joyous conversation, and the expression of gratitude to God; all which might have happened. solely in virtue of the high importance attached by Orientals to the joys of maternity, even though the two mothers had been at that time ignorant of the destination of their children. This author is of opinion that Mary, when pondering over at a later period the remarkable life of her son, may often have related the happy meeting With her cousin and their mutual expressions of thankfulness to God, and that thus the story gained currency. Horst also, who has a just conception of the fictitious nature of this section in Luke, and ably refutes the natural mode of explanation, yet himself slides unawares half-way back into it. He thinks it not improbable that Mary during her pregnancy, which was in many respects a painful one, should have visited her older and more experienced cousin, and that Elizabeth should during this visit have felt the first movement of her child; ah occurrence which as it was afterwards regarded as ominous, was preserved by the oral tradition.

These are further examples of the uncritical proceeding which pretends to disengage the mythical and poetical from the narrative, by plucking away a few twigs and blossoms of that growth, while it leaves the very root of the myth undisturbed as purely historical. In our narrative the principal mythical feature (the remainder forms only its adjuncts) is precisely that which the above mentioned authors, in their pretended mythical explanations, retain as historical: namely the visit of Mary to the pregnant Elizabeth. For, as we have already seen, the main tendency of the first chapter of Luke is to magnify Jesus by connecting the Baptist with him from the earliest possible point in a relation of inferiority. Now this object could not be better attained than by brinc'ln"' about a meetin"," not in the first instance of the sons, but of the mothers in reference to their sons, during their pregnancy, at. which meeting some occurrence which should prefigure the future relative positions of these two men should take place. Now the more apparent the existence of a dogmatical motive as the origin of this visit, the less probability is there that it had an historical foundation. With this principal feature the other details are connected in the following order:

The visit of the two which must be represented as possible and probable by the feature of family relationship between Mary and Elizabeth (v. 36), which would also give a greater suitability to the subsequent connection of the sons. Further a visit, so full of import, made precisely at that time, must have taken place by special divine appointment; therefore, it is an angel who refers Mary to her cousin. At the visit the subservient position of the Baptist to Jesus ^{P.144} is to be particularly exhibited this could have been effected by the mother as indeed it is in her address to Mary, but it were better if possible that the future Baptist himself should give a sign. The mutual relation of Esau and Jacob had been prefigured by their struggles and position in their mother's womb. (Gen. xxv. 22. ff.)

But, without too violent an offence against the laws of probability an ominous movement would not be attributed to the child prior to that period of her pregnancy at which the motion of the foetus is felt; hence the necessity that Elizabeth should be in the sixth month of her pregnancy when Mary, in consequence of the communication of the angel, set out to visit her cousin (v. 36.). Thus as Schleiermacher remarks the whole arrangemept of times had reference to the particular circumstance the author desired to contrivethe jovous responsive movement of the child in his mother's womb at the moment of Mary's entrance. To this end only must Mary's visit be delayed till after the fifth month; and the angel not appear to her before that period.

Thus not only does the visit of Mary to Elizabeth with all the attendant circumstances disappear from the page of history, but the historical validity of the further details-that John was only half a year older than Jesus; that the two mothers were related; that an intimacy subsisted between the families cannot be affirmed on the testimony of Luke, unsupported by other authorities: indeed, the contrary rather will be found substantiated in the course of our critical investigations.