From a somewhat dift'erent point of view these Jewish conceptions are noteworthy. In Lk P- we read : ' He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David : and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever ; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.' Here again we have language closely resembling tliat of the Psalms of Solomon, e.g. IV' *• -', full of Jewish thought and expectation, expressing the hopes of the times at which it purj^orts to be written, but scarcely such as would have been in- vented by a Christian composer.* But we are asked to believe that into the midst of this Jewish language .some Christian writer wished to intro- duce a statement of our Lord's virgin birth, and that he did so by the interpolation of the next two verses, Lk l^^- ss. As a matter of fact, there is no valid ground for regarding these two verses as interpolated. They are retained by the most dis- tinguished editors of the NT both in England and Germany, e.g. WH, Blass, Nestle ; even Uunkel can see no reason for (heir I'Xfision (Zum rdigiom- geschichtUchen \',r^f,nnl,ii^<J,\sXT, 1903, p.' 66).
There are one- <.i 1\m. p.. mis connected with this alleged interpululi..ii «lii(li we may notice with- out encroaching upon the art. VlRoiN Birth.
(a) We are struck witli the extraordinary reserve and brevity of the statement, a reserve which characterizes the whole story in Lk I. 2. These two verses (\^--«>) contain, we are told, the only reference to the virgin birth. Let us suppose for a moment that this is so ; and if so we cannot but contrast the language with that of the Protevan- geliuni Jacobi, witli its fantastic and prurient details, or even with that portion of the Ascension of Isaiah, viz. the Vision of Isaiah, which carries us back, according to Charles, within the lines of the first Christian century {Ascen. Is. p. xxiiff.).
(b) Let us suppose that these two verses are no longer to find a place in the story, what then? It has been urged with truth that the whole of St. Luke's narrative is impregnated with the under- lying idea that when Christ was born His mother was a virgin, and that it is impossible to omit this element without destroying the whole (Church Quarterly Beview, July 1904, p. 383).
' of the
"The Christian hehet,' writes Professor V. Rose of Fribnurg-, ' is manifest from the whole trend of.tlie Gosjiel of the Infancv. Mary it is who, contrary to all Hebrew nse, ai)pears alone npon the scene. While Zacharias receives the celestial promise of the birth of a son, while he himself hymns the opeiiin;^ of the Messianic era and the destiny of John, Joseph plays not the smallest part in the mystery of Jesus. Mary is entirely in the foreground : to her the angel addresses himself ; the prophecy of Zechariah has to do with her ; she speaks to the child found in the Temple ; Joseph says nothing ; he keeps in the back- ground. His position in the family is that of guardian, the supporter of Mary, the protector of Jesus' (Studies in the Gospels, 1903, p. 72).
(e) If the interpolator of these two verses in question had done his work so ' clearly and effec- tively' as Schmiedel maintains, it is surely sur- prising that he should have allowed any of those passages in the original document to stand which could refer in any way to Joseph's parentage. These references, e.g. 2-'-^^- ■"• ■"■ ■"*, would have seriously impaired both the clearness and effective- ness of his work. But suppose, on the other hand, that the whole story comes to us from one who was well acquainted with all the facts of the case, we can then understand why he could allow the passages about Joseph to stand ; in common esti- mation our Lord passed for the son of Joseph ; IJrobably in the register of births He was thus de- scribed ; and from a social point of view it was necessary, as we shall see, that this should be so.
3. Probable sources of St. Luke's information. — St. Luke's account gives us not only a picture of Jewish home life, but it also reveals the workings of a Jewish mother's heart ; it gives us with un- mistakable clearness, and yet with the utmost delicacy and reserve, information which could scarcely have come from any one in the first in- stance but a woman (this is admirably shown by Ramsay in the second chapter of Was Christ born a.t Bethlehem ?). Whether this information reached St. Luke through a written document or whether it came to him orally, we cannot say, and from the present point of view it does not matter. For the impression which is derived from his account is twofold, — not only that it is of Palestinian origin, but also that it is derived from JNlary the mother of the Lord, or from those who were closely ac- quainted with her.*
It has been lately suggested, with much force and learning, that the information derived in the first place from the Virgin herself may have reached St. Luke through Joanna (Sanday, Critical (Jurstions, p. iri7). Evidently St. Luke had some special source ol information comiected with the court of the Herods, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, appears no fewer than four times upon the stage of the Gospel history. She accompanies our Lord amongst the other women in Galilee ; she was one of the group of women who had witnessed the Crucifixion, and who afterwards went to the grave on the morning of the first Easter Day ; and it may be safely inferred that she was one of the women in the upper room after the Ascension. We can scarcely doubt that she and the Virgin Mother were often in each other's company. It may, of course, be alleged that St. Luke's news about the Herods may have reached him through other channels, and that there is no proof that he was personally acquainted with Joanna.