[710] So in almost innumerable Rabbinic passages.
[711] Nedar. 38 a.
[712] This is answer to the objection, so pertinaciously urged, of inconsistency with the narrative in St. Matt. i. 19 &c. It is clear, that Mary went with haste' to her kinswoman, and that any communication to Joseph could only have taken place after that, and after the Angelic prediction was in all its parts confirmed by her visit to Elisabeth. Jeremy Taylor (u. s. p. 64) has already arranged the narrative as in the text.
[713] According to Jewish tradition, the yet unborn infants in their mother's wombs responded by an Amen to the hymn of praise at the Red Sea. This is supposed to be indicated by the words {hebrew}(Ps. lxviii. 27; see also the Targum on that verse). Comp. Keth. 7 b and Sotah 30 b (last line) and 31 a, though the coarse legendary explanation of R. Tanchuma mars the poetic beauty of the whole.
[714] The poetic grandeur and the Old Testament cast of the Virgin's hymn (comp. the Song of Hannah, 1 Sam. ii. 1-10), need scarcely be pointed out. Perhaps it would read fullest and best by trying to recall what must have been its Hebrew original.
[715] 1st stanza vv. 46-49.
[716] 2nd stanza, vv. 50-53.
[717] 3rd stanza, vv. 54-55.
[718] Weiss, while denying the historical accuracy of much in the Gospel-narrative of it, unhesitatingly accepts the fact of the supernatural birth of Jesus.
[719] Keim elaborately discusses the origin of what he calls the legend of Christ's supernatural conception. He arrives at the conclusion that it was a Jewish-Christian legend - as if a Jewish invention of such a legend' were not the most unlikely of all possible hypotheses! But negative criticism is at least bound to furnish some historical basis for the origination of such an unlikely legend. Whence was the idea of it first derived? How did it find such ready acceptance in the Church? Weiss has, at considerable length, and very fully, shown the impossibility of its origin either in Jewish or heathen legend.
[720] I have thus paraphrased the verb paradeigmatzo rendered in Heb. vi. 6 put to an open shame.' Comp. also LXX. Num. xxv. 4; Jer. xiii. 22; Ezek. xxviii. 17 (see Grimm, Clavis N.T. p. 333 b) Archdeacon Farrar adopts the reading deigmatsai.
[721] For example, if he had not sufficient witnesses, or if their testimony could be invalidated by any of those provisions in favour of the accused, of which traditionalism had not a few. Thus, as indicated in the text, Joseph might have privately divorced Mary leaving it open to doubt on what ground he had so acted.
[722] Keth. 74 b 75 a.
[723] Keth. 97 b.
[724] See a former note.
[725] Thus we read in (Shocher Tobh) the Midrash on Prov. xix. 21 (closing part; ed. Lemberg. p. 16 b) of eight names given to the Messiah, viz. Yinnon (Ps. xxii. 17, His name shall sprout [bear sprouts] before the Sun;' comp. also Pirqé de R. El. c. 2); Jehovah; Our Righteousness; Tsemach (the Branch, Zech. iii. 8); Menachem (the Comforter, Is. li. 3); David (Ps. xviii. 50); Shiloh (Gen. xlix. 10); Elijah (Mal. iv. 5). The Messiah is also called Anani (He that cometh in the clouds, Dan. vii. 13; see Tanch. Par. Toledoth 14); Chaninah, with reference to Jer. xvi. 13; the Leprous, with reference to Is. liii. 4 (Sanh. 96 b). It is a curious instance of the Jewish mode of explaining a meaning by gimatreya, or numerical calculation, that they prove Tsemach (Branch) and Menachem (Comforter) to be the same, because the numerical equivalents of the one word are equal to those of the other: {hebrew} = 40, {hebrew} =50, {hebrew}=8, {hebrew} = 40, = 138; {hebrew} = 90, {hebrew} = 40, {hebrew} = 8, =138.
[726] Professor Wünsche (Erlauter. d. Evang. p. 10) proposes to strike out the words from their sins' as an un-Jewish interpolation. In answer, it would suffice to point him to the passages on this very subject which he has collated in a previous work: Die Leiden des Messias, pp. 63-108. To these I will only add a comment in the Midrash on Cant. i. 14 (ed. Warshau, p. 11 a and b), where the reference is undoubtedly to the Messiah (in the words of R. Berakhyah, line 8 from bottom; and again in the words of R. Levi, 11 b, line 5 from top, &c.). The expression {hebrew} is there explained as meaning He Who makes expiation for the sins of Israel,' and it is distinctly added that this expiation bears reference to the transgressions and evil deeds of the children of Abraham, for which God provides this Man as the Atonement.