RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Virgin Birth
Joseph (Matt. i. 20, ii. 18, 19), to Zachariah (Luke i. 11 sqq)., to Mary (Luke i. 26 sqq.), and to the shepherds (Luke ii. 8 sqq.) are here in point. There is, indeed, an absence of the crass supernaturalism of the Apocryphal Gospels of the Infancy; there is
the same reserve in respect to the
9- The miraculous which characterizes the Angelic Ap- highest moments of the Old-Testament
pearances. prophetic idealism. But the refer-
ence to Gabriel (Luke i. 26) shows that the writer has drawn upon Jewish angelology for the intermediaries between God and the chief actors. To those who believe in angels and in the possibility of their appearance to human beings these accounts present no difficulties. The authors of the Gospels accepted without question the belief of the period, that messengers from God in the guise of angels actually appeared to men and conversed with them in the language with which they were familiar, as one person talks with another. It may, however, without disturbing the credibility of the story as a whole, be possible to interpret these experiences as real divine communications of a purely inward character, yet by the imagination translated into outward form according to subjective notions of the period (cf. Gore, ut sup., pp. 21 sqq.). This view is at bottom only a particular application of Briggs’ suggestion given above. The inward reflection, due to divine revelation, is the essential thing; its outer form is a matter of comparative indifference. This, however, is free modern interpretation, not ancient belief.
With reference to the Magi and Herod’s slaughter of children in Bethlehem, there is no improbability in the historical supposition of these, irrespective of other records, as containing a basis of fact. Astrologers of the East, whether from Arabia, Persia, Babylonia, or even Egypt, in their reading of the stars may have believed that they saw signs which pointed to the coming of a Jewish Messiah, and may have journeyed to Jerusalem to verify their prognostications. The Jewish Scriptures were widely circulated among cultivated Jews everywhere, and in the ferment of theosophical speculation, of political unrest, and of religious mysteries and dreams of a world-deliverer, symptoms of deep,
unsatisfied longing, the spirit of truest to. The sincerity and of most brilliant hope,
Magi and centered in the prophetic promise of
Herod. the Jewish people. This spirit had widely penetrated and powerfully
moved many inquiring minds, and the Magi may have been among those thus influenced. But, allowing for a basis of fact here, has this basis been built upon by legend? Since the first century, this has certainly been the case. According to Ignatius (Eph. x.; about 110 a.p.), the star gives light to sun, moon, and stars, which circle around it as a choir. The Magi (in reliance upon Ps. Ixviii. 31- 32, Ixxii. 10; Isa. xlix. 7, Ix. 1 sqq.) have been designated as kings, limited to three, on account of their threefold gifts, and even their names have been given as Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. The presents also have had to do service: gold as to a king; frankincense as to a God. Several features of the story may have been suggested by the Old
Testament. Num. xxiv. 17 shows that the Jews believed in a Star of the Messiah. In the East stars were everywhere associated with the birth of great men—Mithridates, Cesar, Augustus (cf. Suetonius, Augustus, xciv. sqq.; W. Soltau, The Birth of Jesus Christ, p. 38, London, 1903). It was a universal custom to come into the presence of princes with presents (Gen. xliii. 11; I Kings x. 2), and the Jews expected that the greatest of those outside of Israel would offer both themselves and their gifts to the Messiah (Isa. xlix. 7, lx. 1-10; Rev. xxi. 24). What part these and other familiar and intensely active religious ideas played in the final form of the narrative it is impossible to say. Soltau believes that he has come upon the real source of the story in the journey of Tiridates, a Parthian king, in the year 66 a.D., accompanied by Magi to offer homage to Nero (ut sup., pp. 89-41, 72-73). As to Herod’s part in the story, the indiscriminate slaughter of twenty children would be quite in accord with his known character and deeds. It is, however, significant that Josephus, who reports other acts of cruelty, does not mention this (cf. Ant., xv. 7-8, xvi. 11, xvii. 2); and it is hard to understand why one with the distrustful, jealous, and bloodthirsty spirit of Herod should risk defeat either by suffering strangers to ascertain for him a fact which he deemed to be the most serious menace to his ambition, or by delaying to put into execution an effective plan for thwarting Jewish expectation (see INNo- CENTS, Fnast or THE Hoty). The journey into Egypt, which in Matthew is indissolubly bound up with this event, is simply unhistorical, if Luke’s narrative is trustworthy: Jesus had long since arrived in Nazareth when the visit of the Magi to Bethlehem and the slaughter of the infants are alleged to have taken place (ef. Luke ii. 39). In the story of the Magi and Herod some ideal truths are clearly evident: the world-wide significance of the Messiah as the satisfaction of the desire of all nations, typified also in John xii. 20 sqq.; the inevitable conflict between the Messiah and Jewish and other wicked powers of the world; the safety of the Christian cause; and the ultimate confusion and defeat of hostile forces.
If the theory of legend were altogether excluded from the nativity stories, one would have to accept the contradictory supposition, that the narratives are wholly historical. A third hypothesis is conceivable, that a husk of legend contains a kernel of
fact. In this latter case, the legendary
11. Fact aspect may be assigned to Greek and
Contained other foreign influences or to the Jew-
in Legend. ish spirit. If it is a mark of legend that events occurred, not in the way
they are described, but with other accompaniments than those which time has associated with them, then there is no reasonable doubt that the nativity stories contain legendary accretions. This legendary material has been found, not in Greek or other outside influences, but in the circle of Jewish ideas. In addition to considerations already proposed in this paragraph, attention may be directed to the birthstories of great men in the Old Testament, as Isaac (Gen. xvii. 15 sqq., xviii. 9 sqq.), Samson (Judges xili.), and Samuel (I Sam. i.). The point is not that
Virgin Birth
the women involved were virgins, but, in the case of the first, the utter natural impossibility alleged, and in the case of the last two the improbability that they should give birth to a child. The New Testament contains a story like that of Samuel in the birth of John (Luke i. 5-25). In none of these instances is the conception wholly miraculous, in the sense that natural fatherhood is excluded. Yet it is miraculous in this, that it took place contrary to the customary course of nature; second causes are not excluded, but are simply ignored as efficient, and the power and word of God are alone accounted mighty. Associated with the providence and power of God, and, indeed, as due to this, are the singular prerogative, virtue, holiness, and mission of the ** child of promise.’’ Lobstein, who furnishes this line of suggestion, sees in the birth of Jesus a further instance of the same kind as those just referred to, only the unique greatness of Jesus involves that he be even physically an immediate creation of divine power (cf. Lobstein, ut sup., pp. 66 sqq.).
The relation of Isa. vii. 14 to the question of the virgin birth has given rise to two exactly opposite conclusions: On the one hand, it is claimed that the belief that Jesus was born of a virgin sprang from this passage (cf. K. T. Keim, History of Jesus of Nazara, i. 82 sqq., London, 1873; Harnack, Dogma, i. 100; Lobstein, ut sup., pp. 73 sqq.). On the other
hand, Orr holds that Matthew already
12. Relation knew of Jesus’ birth from a virgin, and of Isa. rightly discovered in this passage its vii. 14. Messianic import (J. Orr, ut sup., pp. 131 sqq.; cf. W. J. Beecher, Prophets
and Promise, p. 334, note, New York, 1905; L. M. Sweet, The Birth and Infancy of Christ, p. 70, Philadelphia, 1906). The crucial word in the verse under consideration is ‘almah, which by both parties is accepted as meaning “a young woman of marriageable age.” There is another Hebrew word, bethula, which signifies “ virgin” in the strict sense. The first question, then, is whether ‘almah (LXX., parthenos) is to be translated “‘ virgin,” as in the R. V., or, according to the margin, ‘‘ maiden.” In the other passages where the word occurs, the R. V. renders the word in Gen. xxiv. 43; Ex. ii. 8; Prov. xxx. 19 by “ maid” or ‘‘ maidens”; Ps. lxviii. 25 by “ damsels”’; Cant. i. 3 and vi. 8 by “ virgins ”’ (marg., ‘‘ maidens”). The primary idea of the word is only that the young woman has reached a marriageable age—she may or may not be a virgo intacta (ef. Cant. vi. 8). In Isa. vii. 14 the meaning of the prophet is perfectly clear. Ahaz, king of Judah, had demanded a sign from the prophet as to the outcome of the attacks of Israel and Syria, and had received this as an answer: ‘“‘ The Lord shall give you a sign; behold a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name ‘God with us!’”’ The point of the prophetic words lies, not in their emphasis upon virginity nor in the foretelling of a miraculous birth from a virgin, but in the nearness of a definite event which would synchronize with delivery from danger by God’s power and presence, symbolized by the name of the coming child. Moreover, in the whole scope of Jewish literature outside of the Scriptures, whether apocryphal or apocalyptic, there is no trace of an