In social life and as a member of the Jewish nation, Jesus, during His earthly life, would neces- sarily be regarded as Joseph's son. As Dalman has pointed out, ' If no other fatherhood was alleged, then the child must have been regarded as be- stowed by God upon the liouse of Joseph'; and while Joseph was alive, Mary and her son were undoubtedly under his legal protection. This con- sideration will help to explain the fact that both genealogies trace the Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph (not through Mary). On any view Jesus belonged to the family of Joseph ; and if any formal and official birth-register ever had any independent existence in the Temple or elsewhere, Jesus would naturally appear therein as Joseph's son.
The genealogy in Mt 1 in anything like its present form can hardly have formed part of such a document. Special didactic features are too pronounced in it.t Regarding the text of Mt 116 see esp. Sanday, art. 'Jesus Christ' in Hastings' DB (ii. 644 f.). On the other hand, the genealogy in the Third Gospel (Lk 323-38) has a greater appearance of independence, and may have been incorporated by the Evangelist from a written source (cf. Sanday, op. cit. 645).
It would be strange, indeed, if the writer of the Fourth Gospel possessed no knowledge of the tradition of the virgin birth of Jesus as embodied in Mt 1-2 and Lk 1-2. Silence in this case would presumably imply not ignorance, but tacit accept- ance. Unless the tradition were contradicted either explicitly or tacitly, tlie presumption in such a case is that it was accepted. It is certainly signi- ficant that the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel, whicli occupies a similar place to that of the gene-
* Once ' his father and hia mother ' (2''*'').
t Cf. for this point a discussion in ZNTW by the present writer (1905, Heft 1, p. 85).
alogy in the First Gospel, traces the origin of the Logos, which became incarnate in Christ, to the inner life of God. What the genealogies attempted to do partially is here carried out fundamentally and finally. The question arises. Is the Prologue intended to be a tacit correction of the Mattha^an and Lukan Nativity traditions ? Or are these — at any rate as regards their central feature — the virgin birth — silently accepted and supplemented by the statement of fuller and deeper truth ? The latter alternative accords with the characteristic manner and method of the Fourth Evangelist. So far from excluding the possibility of the virgin birth, it may be argued that the Prologue presup- poses it. In view of the fact that the tradition of the virgin birth must already have been current in certain Christian circles, and can hardly have been unknown to the writer of the Johannine Pro- logue, this conclusion becomes at least highly pro- bable. If the writer had conceived of the method of the Incarnation of the pre-existent Logos as being otherwise, we should at least have expected to find some hint or suggestion to that effect. In the only verse, however, in the Prologue where any allusion to birth occurs (Jn P^), the refer- ence is certainly not incompatible with the tradi- tion of the virgin birth, but may be regarded as lending it, if anything, some presumptive support.
This conclusion is reinforced if the contention of Carr (ExpT xviii. [1907] 522) is accepted, that /xovoyivod; (Jn li*), ' from its position in the Prologue, and from its form as a composite of ytyncrSxi, must refer not to the eternal generation of the Son of God, but to the human birth of the Son of Man ' (cf. also Allen, Interpreter, Oct. 1905, p. 52 f.). There is also the remark- able reading, known to Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and perhaps Hippolytus, according to which v.is directly refers to Christ's supernatural birth : 'who (sing.) was born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.' Here natural generation by a human father is denied and excluded in the most categorical manner. Even if this reading be not accepted, it is a pertinent question to ask : ' Why the elabora- tion of the theme, above all why the Ht>.r,f/.xTo; xvipis, unless he [the writer of the Prologue] has in mind the supernatural birth of the Logos as a kind of pattern or model of the birth of the children of God? As He was born into the world by super- natural conception, not through the process of human genera- tion, so they were born out of the world into the higher life by a spiritual process, symbolized indeed by generation, but transcending it ' (W. C. Allen, ib. p. 57 f. ; see, further, the whole of his admirable discussion).
With regard to the alleged silence of St. Paul, it is by no means clear that silence in this case any more than in that of the Johannine writings is to be taken as implying ignorance. Nor is it certain that indirect allusions to the virgin birth are entirely absent in the Pauline Epistles (cf. Gal 4^ ' born of a woman,' 1 Ti 2iS). The most that can be urged is that in the Pauline Christologj' no emphasis was laid on the dogma of the virgin birth.