I] 2. fod δὲ ᾿Ιησοῦ γεννηθέντος ἐν Βηθλεὲμ τῆς
ο
marital intercourse, the sole purpose of the hastened marriage being to legitimise the child.—tws: not till then, and after- wards? Herecomes in a questio vexata of theology. Patristic and catholic authors say: not till then and never at all, guarding the sacredness of the virgin’s womb. ἕως does not settle the question. It is easy to cite instances of its use as fixing a limit up to which a specified event did not occur, when as a matter of fact it did not occur at all. E.g., Gen. viii. 7; the raven returned not till the waters were dried up; in fact, never re- turned (Schanz). But the presumption is all the other way in the case before us. Subsequent intercourse was the natural, if not the necessary, course of things. If the evangelist had felt as the Catholics do, he would have taken pains to prevent misunderstanding.—vidy: the extended reading (T. R.) is imported from Luke ii. 7, where there are πο variants. πρωτότοκον is not a stumbling-block to the champions of the perpetual virginity, because the jirst may be the only. Euthymius quotzs in proof Isaiah xliv, 6: 6. Τ am the first, and I am the last, and be- side Me there is πο God.”—xal ἐκάλεσεν, he (not she) called the child Jesus, the statement referring back to the command of the angel to Joseph. Winsche says that before the Exile the mother, after the Exile the father, gave the name to the child at circumcision (Neue Beitraige zur Erlduterung der Evangelien, p. 11). ΟΗΑΡΤΕΚ II. History OF THE IN- FANCY CONTINUED. The leading aim of the evangelist in this chapter is not to give biographic details as to the time and place of Christ’s birth. These are disposed of in an introductory subordinate clause with a genitive absolute construc- tion: ‘Jesus being born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the King”: that is all. The main purpose
is to show the reception given by the.
world to the new-born Messianic King. Homage from afar, hostility at home; foreshadowing the fortunes of the new faith: acceptance by the Gentiles, re- jection by the Jews; such is the lesson of this new section. It is history, but not of the prosaic sort: history with a religious bias, and wearing a halo of poetry. The story forms a natural sequel to the preceding account. The