THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
were in process of formation in any important section of the Church, Paul must have heard of it. For the same difficulty arises concerning his ignorance of the birth-story as a fact. A mystery of a similar kind concerns the origination and extension of the baptismal formula in Matt. xxviii. 19-20. That Paul and Luke, and apparently Peter, never heard of this is demonstrable; and yet it takes its place in Matthew‘s Gospel as authoritative, having its alleged source in Jesus’ last words. If authentic it must have been preserved, and if not authentic it must have arisen, in some group of disciples removed from the great centers of Christian tradition. In any event, the particular place where the nativity story enters the consciousness of the Christian community, whether true or legendary, is inevitably a matter of conjecture. Among Christians at least, whether Jewish or gentile, the virgin birth, once it was announced, never became a subject of doubt or inner apologetic, but only of more convincing faith in their Redeemer. Matthew’s account appears to have an apologetic interest; but among Christians, it was in the highest degree honoring to Mary as blessed among women; Joseph was singled out for his devout faith, unquestioning obedience, and tender care for Mary; and it gave to Jesus a beginning which corresponded with his earthly glory and his exaltation to the right hand of God.
(2) In the stories of classical antiquity parallels are sought which religious faith has only to paraphrase in reference to Christ. In an early narrative of the Buddha we read: ‘ the knowledge of his
birth was made known by rejoicing
23. Argu- deities to a hermit named Asita, who ments from thereon repaired to Suddhana’s pal-
Classical ace, saw the child in his glory sur-
Antiquity. rounded by deities, etc., and announced
to the Sakyans that the child was to be a Buddha ”’ (Coppleston, Buddhism, p. 34, London, 1892). The journey of the Armenian king, Tiridates, accompanied by Magi, to Rome to initiate Nero into the mysteries of the Mithras-meal, with bended knee and lifted hands calling him Lord and worshiping him even as Mithras, finds its parallel in the Matthew story (cf. Pliny, Hist. nat., xxx. 6; Dio Cassius, xxxii. 1 sqq., xlit. 1-2, 5, 7). The birth of Amenophis III. of Egypt is described on the walls of the temple of Luxor as from a virgin and the god of Thebes, i.e., Ammon-Ra (cf. A. H. Sayce, Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, p. 45, Edinburgh, 1902). Asshurbanipal is described as one whom the gods Asshur and Sin formed in the midst of his mother (cf. Records of the Past, 1st series, i. 57; cf. Nebuchadrezzar: ‘“‘ When the god of gods made me, Marduk, he prepared well my birth in the mother,’ i.e., mother’s womb, ib. v. 113; see Cheyne, Bible Problems, pp. 235-236, London, 1904). The story of King Sargon of Agade, about 2,800 s.c., relates of himself that he was of a vestal mother (Cheyne, ut sup., p. 86; Griitzmacher, ut sup., pp. 57-58). Among the Greeks Speusippus related how Plato owed his birth to a union of his mother Perictione and the phantasm of Apollo (ef. Diogenes Laertius, De Vitis Philosophorum; also Jerome, Adv. Jovinianum, i. 42). Alexander
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Virgin Birth
was desirous that he be known, not as the natural son of Philip, but as the son of Zeus, as announced in the temple of Jupiter-Ammon, begotten by a serpent cohabiting with his mother Olympias (Soltau, ut sup., p. 46; Jane EK. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 2d ed., Cambridge, 1908). Pythagoras is reported as a son of Apollo; Apollonius of Tyana as a son of Zeus (Usener, ut sup., i. 70 sqq.). Others who were alleged to have been born in this way were Alsculapius, Dionysus, Hercules, and Hermes; while one may also refer to the fabled Antiope, Auge, Danae, and Melanippe. These births are assigned to intercourse with a god who assumed various forms—an ox, a bird, a serpent, a lover, or a god who appeared in a shower of gold (Tertullian, Apol., xxi.). The Church Fathers were not unwilling to use these legends in their apologetic, and even found them of value in recommending strange and miraculous things to their hearers (cf. Justin Martyr, Dialogus, Ixvii., Ixx.; Avpol., i. 21, 22, 54, 64; Origen, Contra Celsum, i. 37; Tertullian, Apol., xii. 15). Turning to Roman antiquity, there is found the tradition of Romulus and Remus descended from a vestal virgin, having the god Mars for their father. The Emperor Augustus gave out that he was the son of Apollo, since his mother, Atia, having fallen asleep in the temple of Apollo, was visited by the god in the form of a serpent, and her son, born in the tenth month, was held to be son of Apollo (Suetonius, Augustus, xciv.). A similar story appears concerning Scipio Africanus (Gellius, Noct. Att., vi.). In respect to these instances it is to be noted that the mother is not always claimed as a virgin; in some cases she is already a mother of other children for whom no supernatural conception is alleged. Yet it is equally to be noted (a) that a divine paternity is affirmed—a god has taken the place of the human father; and (b) the generative act on the part of the god was always physical, sometimes the fabled deed of an animal, often phantastic, and always impossible. The wide-spread belief of divine paternity is, however, more significant than even the form of the conception.
(3) The legendary theory of the virgin birth seeks in ancient, international redemptive ideas a source of the Christian belief. Harnack has declared that Christian tradition is “free from heathen myths, so far as these had not already been received by wide circles of Jews”’ (cf. Dogma, i. 100, note) ; and he holds that this does not apply to the virgin birth. The theory in question believes that this
statement is true, and, in opposition
24. Argu- to Harnack, claims that it does not ments from apply to the virgin birth. It assumes
Ancient a primitive mythological tradition of
Messianic a world-wide Redeemer, which had
Longings. become international, to be traced
ultimately to a Babylonian source. It assumes among the Jews an intense Messianism long before the Christian era, which was far more absorbing and definite than is ordinarily supposed, of which Dan. vii. 13 sqq. is a symptom, itself the outcome of development. It also assumes that certain Jewish Christians had borrowed this story,
which had thus originated outside of Judaism, but |
had become current in Jewish-Christian circles, and, transforming it in the interest of Judzo-Christian Messianism, had applied it to Christ’s virgin birth. The myth in question appears in its Judeo-Christian dress in Rev. xii. 1 sqq.—the woman arrayed with the sun, etc. Of its earlier form, in case there was such a myth, no clear trace has been found. H. Gunkel has investigated the passage and shown its dependence upon the Babylonian myth of Ishtar, the queen of heaven, and her son, the sun-god who conquered the monster Tiamat—primeval chaos (cf. his Schépfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit, pp. 379-398, Gottingen, 1895, and his Zum _ religionsgeschichtlichen Verstindnis des Neuen Testaments, ib., 1903), and T. K. Cheyne has arrived at the conclusion that the myth enshrined in the book of Revelation was the source of the birth story in Matthew. To the writers of Matthew i. 18-23, however, the woman became a humble Jewish maiden; the son no longer the destroyer of the chaos-monster, or ruling all nations with a rod of iron, but the Savior of his people; his capital not Babylon but Jerusalem; the dragon with devouring jaws, Herod plotting the death of innocent children; the mother’s flight changed from flight into the wilderness into the holy family’s flight into Egypt (ut sup., pp. 71 sqq.). Parallel to this story is the North Arabian myth of Dusares, ‘‘ the only begotten of the Lord,” worshiped at Petra and Elusa, his mother being the virgin. (parthenos)—one independent of the marriage tie (see NaBatmans, II., §3). It has affinity also with an Egyptian myth—Hathor or Isis, mother of the gods, and of the young sun-god, Horus; the dragon represented by Typhon. Other affinities are suggested: Persian or Zoroastrian, where Saoshyant, the Savior, is born of a virgin who had not had intercourse with a man (cf. Dinkart, VII., viii. 55 sqq., ix. 18 sqq., x. 15 sqq. [SBH, xlvii. 105 sqq.]). The Greek affinity is discovered in the myth of the pregnant Leto pursued by the dragon Pytho, to whom a prophecy had come that Leto’s son would destroy him; she, however, under the protection of favoring gods, gave birth to Apollo, who four days afterward slew the dragon (cf. Cheyne, ut sup., pp. 198- 205).
(4) The legendary theory seeks still deeper in folk-lore for the source of its suggestion, where one discovers a fusion of religious, social, and physiological elements. It is now recognized that ‘ stories of supernatural birth may be said to have a currency as wide as the world ” (E. 8. Hartland, Stories of Primitive Paternity, i. 1, London, 1909; ef. J. E. Carpenter, The Bible in the Nineteenth Century, p. 490, London, 1903). The heroes of all nations have had an extraordinary entrance upon earthly life,
from which masculine agency is essen-
25. Argu- tially excluded. Conception is attrib-
ments from uted to every cause but the actual one.
Folk-lore. It is referred to the forces of nature,
such as the sun, wind, rain, wells, fires; to contact with magical substances, such as amulets, images, vestments, and stones; to vegetable substances, such as mandrake, or to animal substances, such as absorption of a portion of a
Virgin Birth