06 - Lecture 06
LECTURE VI mythical theories of origin" of narratives of the virgin" birth-alleged heathen analogies
I have said that it is not enough for the objector to deny the historical character of the narratives of the Virgin Birth. He must find some method of explaining how the narratives come to be there. It will be my task in this lecture to consider the rival explanations of these narratives offered by those who reject the historical fact.
It is plain that, if the Virgin Birth is not a reality, the story of it can only be myth, legend, or invention— a myth somehow hit upon independently by two of the Evangelists. There are two ways open to us, accordingly, of establishing the Lord’s birth from the Virgin —first, by exhibiting the direct evidence for the fact, which is what I have been trying to do; and, second, by showing the untenableness of the rival explanations, which is what I am about to attempt. My task is not an easy one, if only from the number of the theories, and the fact that they are, for the most part, irreconcilably at variance with each other; though there is the compensating advantage that one has seldom to travel further for the confutation of any one of these theories than simply the objections urged against it by the rest. This is a point in our favour. The Church, at least, it can fairly be pleaded, has always had one consistent story to tell on the Lord’s birth. The theories that oppose the Virgin Birth are legion, and in entire disagreement with each other. As in the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrim, " neither so did their witness agree together." 1.
There are certain considerations which may be urged against the class of mythical theories generally, as: (1) that the time is wanting for the myth to grow up—for we have never to forget that the Gospels we are dealing with had their origin at latest by 70 or 80 a.d. ; (2) that most of the theories can be shown to be inherently impossible, or impossible in the circumstances—as when, e.g., parallels are sought in Buddhism; and (3) not least, even assuming it possible for the myth to originate, there is the difficulty of showing how it could ever have got access to Jewish minds, and obtained general acceptance. I mention these things here only that you may keep their application before your minds in the subsequent discussion.
There are, as we have already seen, two main groups of theories on this subject—one which seeks the origin of the alleged myth on Jewish soil, and excludes Gentile influences; the other, now the more prevalent, which _______________________________________________________
1 Mark 14:59. seeks to explain the rise of the myth from Gentile sources, and either excludes Jewish influences altogether, or assigns to them a quite subordinate role. The conflict of these two classes of theories affords a preliminary illustration of what I have above said about radical disagreement. I may give one or two samples. Harnack, like Lobstein, insists quite positively that " the belief that Jesus was born of a Virgin sprang from Isaiah 7:14." " It is in point of method," he says, " not permissible to stray so far [as in the Gentile theories], when we have near at hand such a complete explanation as Isaiah 7:14." 1 Now hear the other side. " This at any rate," says Soltau, " is clear: the belief in the Virgin Birth of Jesus could not have originated in Palestine ; anyhow, it could never have taken its rise in Jewish circles. . . . The idea that the Holy Spirit begat Jesus can have no other than a Hellenic origin. . . . The Virgin Birth, in particular, was certainly not first inferred from the words of the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 7:14." 2 In the same strain writes Dr. Cheyne: " It has been too much overlooked that the mistranslation of ha-’almdh in the LXX is so far from accounting for the belief in the Virgin Birth of Christ that it requires to be explained itself," 3 and he finds the explanation, as he does that of the Virgin Birth, in Babylonian influence.
_________________________________________________ 1. Hist, of Dogma, I, p. 100.
2 Geburtsgeschichte, pp. 23-5 (E. T., pp. 47, 48, 51).
3 Bible Problems, p. 193.
Schmiedel, Usener, and others, express themselves, as we shall see later, with like decision. But now the advocates of the Gentile origin have the heavy guns of Har-nack and his friends turned upon them. " The conjecture of Usener," says Harnack, "that the idea of the birth from a Virgin is a heathen myth which was received by the Christians, contradicts the entire earliest development of Christian tradition, which is free from heathen myths, so far as these had not already been received by wide circles of Jews (above all certain Babylonian and Persian myths), which in the case of that idea is not demonstrable." 1 We shall hear more of this also as we proceed. The two groups of views are thus in direct opposition. One confutes the other. Under each head are numerous sub-theories—all equally irreconcilable with each other.
I have already sought to show the difficulties which attach to the theory of an origin of the idea of the Virgin Birth on Jewish soil, or from Isaiah 7:14. Lob-stein thinks, indeed, that nothing was easier than to pass from the case of children promised by God—e. g., Isaac —to the idea of birth from a Virgin. 2 But it is precisely the taking of this remarkable step which is so difficult to explain. The severely monotheistic Jewish idea of God tended to separate Him from the world as heathen conceptions of God did not; and it was the un- _____________________________________________ 1 Hist, of Dogma, I, p. 100. Cf. Lobstein, pp. 76, 128.
2 Op. cit., p. 71. likeliest thing to enter a Jewish mind that God’s direct agency would be employed in causing a Jewish maiden to become a mother. Some, I know, have seen in the story the influence of an ascetic motive, such as, e. g., had made itself felt among the Essenes. 1 Lobstein, however, rightly rejects the idea that any ascetic motive was active here, and points out that there is not the slightest trace of such in the narrative, or in the life of Jesus. 2 It is to be remembered that the one sect which did reject the Virgin Birth was a Jewish one — the Ebionites. It is not on soil of this description, therefore, that we can look for the development of a myth of the Virgin Birth.
Without further dwelling on considerations which have been sufficiently emphasised, I shall now endeavour to illustrate the difficulties which arise in seeking to carry through a theory of the Jewish origin of this supposed myth by looking at some of the special forms which the theory assumes. The general conception in these theories is something like this. At the basis of the whole is the powerful impression made by Jesus on His disciples, which led them to accept Him as Son of God and Messiah. This being given, the need was soon felt of explaining the origin and the secret of the spiritual power of One so remark- ___________________________________________ 1 Thus Keim, Jesus of Nazara, II, p. 59.
2 Op. cit., p. 130. able. Hence the rise of different modes of explanation. 1. The first and simplest was that suggested by the narrative of the Baptism. The descent of the Spirit on Jesus at His baptism constituted Him the " Son of God " in the theocratic sense. For our present purpose this may be set aside. 2. A second and more realistic explanation was the naive one of an actual paternity of God—a physical filiation—such as is alleged to be given the narratives of the supernatural birth in Matthew and Luke. This is supposed to have had its germ in a misunderstanding of Isaiah 7:14. 3. The third and highest form of explanation was that of a metaphysical pre-existence, and descent into humanity, such as we find in Paul and John. Lobstein gives the stages a little differently: 1. The theocratic conception—Jesus the Messiah; 2. The metaphysical; and 3. The miraculous birth. 1. So far everything seems plain, though, of course, the vital element of proof is wanting that the narrative of the Virgin Birth is myth, at all. But, waiving meanwhile other objections, I would fix attention on one crucial question: At what point in the development of early Christianity is this myth of the Virgin Birth supposed to come in ?
1. Looking to the narratives themselves, the first and _______________________________________________
1 Op. cit., pp. 59$. Cf. Keim, and Godet’s criticism in his Com. on Luke, I, pp. 157/7. Bornemann gives yet another form: 1. Supernatural birth; 2. Pre-existence theory (Paul); 3. Incarnation of Logos (John), (Unterricht, p. 92). most natural thing to say would be that the myth must come in early. The narratives, as we saw, are extremely primitive and naive in idea and structure. They betray not the slightest trace of the influence of Paul or John. The language and style of Luke, who is taken to be the later of the two writers, carry us back into Jewish-Christian circles of the most primitive type. The myth, therefore, it would seem, represents the earliest stage in the formation of a Christology. It must be prior to Paul’s Christological doctrine—so early at least as to be absolutely uninfluenced by the latter. This, I say, is the simplest and most natural form of the theory, but you must see at once the immense difficulty in which it lands us. The difficulty is the manifest impossibility of explaining the rise and acceptance of such a myth within so short an interval as, say, 25 or 30 years after the death of Christ. During the greater part of this time the Apostles, or most of them, were still at Jerusalem. In any case, if such a myth was in process of formation, and was taking root in the convictions of any important section of the Church, it is impossible that Paul and other early preachers of the Gospel should not have heard of it. But it is a leading point in the case of the opponents that Paul and the other Apostles and teachers of that period did not know of it. To the general difficulty of explaining how such a myth should arise on Jewish soil at all, there is added, in this form of the theory, an insuperable difficulty of time.
2. This first form of the theory, therefore, which puts the origin of the myth of the Virgin Birth in the primitive period, before the preaching of Paul, has to be abandoned. Lobstein does abandon it, and, driven by the difficulty I have mentioned, takes the origin of this myth to be, not even the second stage—the " theocratic " being the first—but the third stage in the development, after the " metaphysical." The idea of the Virgin Birth comes in, in his view, between Paul and John. " Between the primitive outlook of popular Messianic belief/’ he says, " and the point reached by speculative thought in the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel, we may place the tradition which has been preserved in the double narrative of the Protevangel." 1 Lobstein, indeed, is not entirely consistent in this view, for in another place he says: " It is by no means proved that the origin of the latter solution [the Virgin Birth] is subsequent to the elaboration of the theory of the pre-exist-ence, for Matthew and Luke only received and set down in writing far older traditions." 2 But then, if this is so, we are back to a date of origin for this story in its twofold form earlier than the Epistles of Paul, i. e., within less than 20 years from the Crucifixion—a form of theory we have just seen to be inadmissible. If " far _____________________________________________ 1 Op. cit., p. 65.
2 p. 78; cf. p. 26. This, of course, if accepted, would dispose of Lobstein’s other assertion (see above, p. 149), that the Church Fathers of the 2d century must have drawn all their knowledge from our Gospels. older traditions " of the Virgin Birth existed, how explain their origin, or the alleged ignorance of the Apostles about them ? But now take the other view, that the myth of the Virgin Birth originated not earlier than, but concurrently withy or possibly subsequent to, the Pauline " metaphysical" theory, as, in Lobstein’s words, " a more concrete and realistic " solution of " the Christological problem," 1 are we free from difficulties ? I fear not. The difficulties only thicken.
(1) To begin with, the question has to be asked: Do myths arise as the solution of " Christological," or of any kind of problems? If they do, I can only say I have never heard of them. Prof. Lobstein really cannot have it both ways. He cannot both have this myth growing up before Paul’s teaching, and at the same time growing up along with it, or after it; and he cannot both have it as " a fruit of popular imagination/’ 2 " the fruit of religious feeling, the echo of Christian experience, the poetic and popular expression of an affirmation of faith," 3 a " pastoral epic of Christianity," 4 which are some of his ways of describing it, and, at the same time, a somewhat advanced " explanatory formula, an attempt to solve the Christological problem," 5 which is his other account of it Poetry is one thing; explanatory formulas, reflective attempts at the solution _____________________________________________
1 pp. 66, 72.
2 p. 72.
3 p. 96.
4 p. 77.
5 p. 72. of " problems," are another kind of thing altogether. The theory is here incoherent. If this, which Lobstein calls " the tradition consecrated by our Gospels, the myth with which faith in the divine Sonship of Jesus is poetically invested," 1 is something consciously framed for " explanatory " purposes, then it is no poetic myth at all: it is a fruit, not of imagination, but of invention. If, on the other hand, Lobstein’s meaning is that the narratives in Matthew and Luke are simply given forth as " poetry," expressions of ideas poetically conceived, not as reality, they are still, in that case, neither " myths " nor " explanatory formulas ": moreover, such an explanation conflicts in the clearest way with the nature of the narratives, for these, unquestionably, are given forth, not as poetic fictions, but as facts to be seriously believed. 2.
(2) Lobstein, however, has other difficulties to face, if he adheres to his contention that his poetic-explanatory " myth" originated concurrently with Paul’s " metaphysical" theory, and ran its course independently of it. It is assumed by Lobstein, as it was by Keim, that the idea of the supernatural birth, and Paul’s pre-existence doctrine, are conceptions which exclude each other. This, of course, is not the case; but whether they are, or are not, compatible, how are we to explain ________________________________________________
1 p. 75. Cf. p. 77: "The dogma or myth inspired by religious faith, created by popular imagination." " Dogma" or "myth"!
2 Cf. the remarks on this point in Sweet’s Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ, pp. 104-5. their development side by side without mutual contact or influence ? It is too often forgotten that Paul’s doctrine was not a private speculation of the Apostle’s, but, as his Epistles show, the common doctrine of the Church. The Strassburg theologian Reuss may be quoted on this point. " We may here observe," he says, " that the writings of Paul, which carry us back, so to speak, into the very cradle of the Church, contain nothing to indicate that their Christological doctrine, so different from that of common Ebionitism, was regarded as an innovation, or gave rise to any disputations at the time of its first appearance." 1 This doctrine, then, could not but have been known to the originators of the myth of the supernatural birth. On the other hand, the growing myth must already by Paul’s time have assumed a tolerably developed form. It rested, Lobstein has told us, on "far older tradition," and was accessible to Paul’s companion Luke, who thought so much of it, and was so little conscious of contradiction to Paul’s doctrine in it, that he put it in the forefront of his Gospel. It could not, therefore, be kept wholly from the knowledge of Paul. This paradox is so glaring that even Lobstein does not attempt to defend it. He allows that perhaps Paul did know of the story, but it had no interest for him: " he did not feel the need of seeking any subsidiary solution." 2 This, however, is a large, and, as ______________________________________________ 1 Hist. of Christ. Theol, I, p. 397 (E. T.).
2 Op. cit., p. 65. we shall see, untenable assumption; and really gives up the assertion, on which so much is based, that Paul was wholly ignorant of the Virgin Birth.
(3) But even yet Lobstein is not at the end of his troubles. The time difficulty comes back, and the critics are not slow to point out that, even with the extension of the period for the formation of the myth to Paul’s time, we are still barely 30 years from the origin of the Church, and that a myth so fully formed and complex could not grow up and find acceptance in that brief space—least of all in a Church in which Apostles and disciples of the first generation, including relatives of Christ Himself (e. g., James the Lord’s brother) were yet present. Is it conceivable that myths so baseless, and, if myths, so compromising to Mary’s honour, should find admission into such communities? There is but one escape from the difficulty. We must push down the formation of the myth later still—must put it, as Keim did, earlier,1 as Pfleiderer, Soltau, Usener, and many others do now, after Paul, and even after John, with his Logos doctrine. I only remark here that the rock on which this form of hypothesis infallibly splits is the date of the Gospels. It can only be defended by the help of theories of the late origin and wholesale interpolation of the records which no sound criticism can justify. The theory of a purely Jewish origin of the myth ______________________________________________________ 1 Jesus of Nazara, II, p. 45. must, therefore, with consent of the newer scholars, be definitely surrendered. If this is given up, it is unnecessary to delay on theories of a more mixed kind—theories, e. g., like Mr. P. C. Conybeare’s, that the germ of the idea of the Virgin Birth is to be found in the allegorisings of Philo. 1 He will be a skilful person who can discern any trace of Philonic influence in the narratives of either Matthew or Luke.
I turn, then, as a next step, to theories of a purely Gentile origin for the alleged myth of the Virgin Birth. Let me, at the risk of repetition, give you one or two further examples of the grounds on which this new method is adopted, that we may have the whole case clearly before us. " Here," says Usener, in his article " Nativity " in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, " we unquestionably enter the circle of pagan ideas." " However freely the Old Testament may speak of sons of God in the figurative sense," says Schmiedel, in his article " Mary " in the same work, " the loftiness of the Old Testament conception of God precludes the supposition of physical Sonship. . . . Nor would Isaiah 7:14 have been sufficient to account for the origin of such a doctrine unless the doctrine had commended itself on its own merits. The passage was adduced only as an afterthought, in confirmation. . . . Thus the origin of the ________________________________________________________ 1 See Machen, Princeton Theol. Rev., Jan., 1906, p. 72. Cf. Gore, Dissertations, p. 61. idea of a Virgin Birth is to be sought for in Gentile Christian circles." " It has long been seen," says Gunkel, " that the representation [in Luke] is quite foreign to pure Judaism: the Judaism which comes from the Old Testament, it is rightly said, knows of a miraculous creation (Erschaffung) of the child, but not of a miraculous begetting through a divine factor." 1 He instances Gen. vi. as showing the horror at the idea of a mingling of the sons of God with men. You observe how decisively, in all these writers, the idea of a Jewish origin is set aside.
It is to be owned that, in this new type of theory, we seem, at first sight, to be on more hopeful ground. On heathen soil the line between gods and men is ever a wavering one: there is a freer mingling of the two orders. In heathenism, accordingly, there is a tendency, which the Jews, with their loftier monotheism, did not so strongly share, to seek a godlike origin for godlike or distinguished men. The greatness of a hero is explained by the presence of a divine element in him; then a cause is sought for this in some theory of origin, or incarnation, or indwelling of a divine genius. As forms of this tendency, you have such things in heathenism as the raising of kings and heroes to divine rank—apotheosis —as in the deification of the Roman emperors, which, however, has nothing to do with origin; or you have incarnations of the gods in beasts, as in the Apis-bulls ____________________________________________ 1 Op. cit., p. 66. of Egypt—a form of the animal worship of that country —but sometimes also incarnations in men, as in some of the Avatars of Vishnu, or the incarnations of Buddha; or, lastly, you have the coarser idea of the gods begetting men, as in the ordinary pagan mythology. It would be easy to show, and I shall have occasion to refer to it again, how far the so-called " incarnations" of heathenism differ in idea, in spirit, in their total meaning, from the Christian conception. 1 But I confine myself at present to the alleged analogies to the idea of the Virgin Birth on the soil of paganism. And here the question I propose to ask is the very pertinent one: Do we as a matter of fact find, or where do we find, the idea of a divine origin of heroes or great men taking the form of a virgin birth, analogous to what we have in the Gospels ? I shall seek to answer this question by showing, first, that nowhere in heathenism do we find this idea; and next, that, even supposing the idea to be there (as I affirm it is not), no channels can be pointed out by which it could find entrance into the minds of the writers of the Gospels, or into the circles in which they moved, with any hope of acceptance. Impure fables we shall find in abundance, but no clear instance of a pure birth from a Virgin. On this general question of pagan mythology, let me only premise two things:—
1. I would remark that we need not wholly reject the ________________________________________________________________________ 1 See below, pp. 216-17. idea underlying even these heathen myths. Vile as many of them are, they have a value as showing the natural workings of men’s minds—the universality of the instinct which connects superhuman greatness with a divine origin 1—and may be construed in our favour as leading us to expect that, if there is a real incarnation, it will be accompanied by a miraculous origin. Thus far the argument of some of the Church Fathers was justified, when they pleaded that the heathen were the last who should object to the Virgin Birth, since their own mythology was full of stories of births from gods and goddesses. 2 The argument was a double-edged one, and its other edge is seen in the attempts now made to show that the Christian story is a product of the same myth-forming tendency which gave rise to the heathen fables; but it was a very natural one for the Fathers in their situation to use, and they never failed, at the same time, to denounce these pagan myths as vile tales and wholly fabulous. 3.
2. The other point I would remark upon is the utter absence of the historical element in these heathen myths, in which the contrast between them and the Gospel narratives is so obvious. The Gospels refer to events which happened in the immediate past—within a generation ______________________________________________________________ 1 Cf. Gore, Dissertations, pp. 57, 59-60.
2 Justin, I Apol., 21, 22, 54, 64; Dial, 70; Origen, Against Celsus, 1:37.
3 Justin, I Apol, 21, 64; Tert., Apol, 12, 15, 21; Origen, i, 37, etc. See below, p. 169. or two of the time when the accounts of them were published. They relate to an historical Person, and are given, as we saw, in a historical setting, with circumstantial details of name, place, date, etc. The myths with which they are brought into comparison^—Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Persian—show nothing of this kind. They are on the face of them quite unhistorical —vague, formless, timeless; their origin lies far back in the dawn of time, mostly in the poetical personification of natural phenomena. 1 It is surely plain the comparison of things so different can only mislead. Parallels and analogies sought between them can only breed confusion. With respect now to my main contention, it must strike you, I know, as strange to hear that the heathen world has no proper doctrine of a Virgin Birth—so continually are you told that pagan mythology is full of parallels of this kind; that " parthenogenesis was ’ in the air ’ "; 2 that, as Mr. Conybeare declares, " there was in that age a general belief that superhuman personages and great religious teachers were born of virgin mothers through divine agency." 3 I am confident, however, that __________________________________________________
1 Speaking of Mithraism, Prof. Dill says: "One great weakness of Mithraism lay precisely here — that, in place of the narrative of a divine life, instinct with human sympathy, it had only to offer the cold symbolism of a cosmic legend" (Nero to Mar. Aurelius, p. 622).
2 Cf. Machen, Princeton Theol. Review, Jan., 1906, p. 72.
3 ibid.
I can make good my case, and only ask you not unthinkingly to accept these assertions, but to inquire with me where the proof is to be found of them.
Let us look in order at the main heads of the supposed analogy.
1. The nearest source which suggests itself for the idea of the Virgin Birth is the popular mythological conceptions of the Greeks and Romans. It is these chiefly—the fables of Hermes, of Dionysus, of AEsculapius, of Hercules, and the like — which the Church fathers had in view, and it is to these that writers of the standing of Holtzmann,1 Schmiedel, and Usener bid us look. But surely to urge these coarse fables as analogies to the story of the Gospels is to show a strange blindness to the facts of the case. It is the fact that not one of these tales has to do with a Virgin Birth in the sense in which alone we are here concerned with it. The gods of whom these impure scandals are narrated are conceived of as beings like in form, parts, and passions, to mortal men. If they beget children, it is after a carnal manner. A god, inflamed by lust—Zeus is a chief sinner—surprises a maiden, and has a child by her, but it is by natural generation. There is nothing here analogous to the Virgin Birth of the Gospels. The stories ____________________________________________________
1 Aachen quotes Holtzmann: "These heathen representations of the coming of the great from above needed only to strip off their coarsely sensuous forms in order to be transferred to the world-conquering Son of God in the East" (as above). themselves are incredibly vile. 1 The better-minded in Greece and Rome were ashamed of them. Plato would have them banished from his Republic. They were, as Tertullian tells us, the subjects of public ridicule. 2 It is a strange imagination that can suppose that these foul tales could be taken over by the Church, and, in the short space before the composition of our Gospels, become the inspiration of the beautiful and chaste narratives of Matthew and Luke!
Let me only give you two short quotations to show how the early Church writers, who had to do with this sort of argument, dealt with it, and how sensible they were of the contrast. " God’s own Son," says Tertullian, " was born,—but not so born as to make Him ashamed of the name of Son or of His paternal origin. It was not His lot to have as His father, by incest with a sister, or by violation of a daughter, or another’s wife, a god in the shape of a serpent, or ox, or bird, or lover, for his vile ends transforming himself into the gold of Danaus. These are your divinities upon whom these base deeds of Jupiter were done."3 Origen says: " Since Celsus has introduced the Jew disputing with Jesus, and tearing in pieces, as he imagines, the fiction of His birth from a Virgin, comparing the Greek fables about Danae, and Melanippe, and Auge, and Antiope, ____________________________________________ 1 The stories cannot be reproduced here, but may be seen in any good classical dictionary.
2 Apol., 15.
3 Ibid., 21. our answer is that such language becomes a buffoon and not one who is writing in a serious tone." 1.
2. Take, next, the fables set afloat about a philosopher like Plato, or rulers like Alexander or Augustus, to which we are sometimes referred. In point of fact, the fathers and mothers of these personages were perfectly well known, and the flattery which ascribed to them a divine parentage deceived nobody. But even so, there is no real analogy with the Virgin Birth of the Gospels. A quite worthless fable made Plato a son of Apollo. But this was not connected with the idea of his mother being a Virgin. As Dr. Gore remarks: " None of the pagan writers cited refers to Plato as born of a Virgin." 2 Alexander, Soltau tells us, was given out by the priests to be a son of Zeus, and he himself spread abroad the anecdote " that he was not the bodily son of Philip, but "—think of it—" was begotten by a serpent cohabiting with his mother." 3 But even in this ridiculous story there is no suggestion that his mother was a Virgin. Similarly, the same authority informs us, Augustus "was careful that the fable should be widely diffused to the effect that his mother was once, while asleep in the temple of Apollo, visited by the god in the form of a serpent, and that in the tenth month afterwards he himself was born." The emperor, we are further told, " did everything in his power to promote the __________________________________________________________ 1 Against Celsus, 1:37.
2 Dissertations, p. 291.
3 Op. cit., p. 23 (E. T., p. 46). belief that Apollo was his father." 1 Here, again, there is no question of a Virgin Birth. Observe the contrast between these fables, unblushingly spread abroad by the persons immediately concerned, and by interested flatterers, and the stories in the Gospels. Where are the priests here to invent the story ? Who will accuse Jesus or His disciples of acting as Alexander and Augustus are reported to have done ?
3. A direct borrowing of this idea from contemporary heathenism is now accordingly largely given up, even by extreme writers like Dr. Cheyne and Gunkel, though its rejection disposes of at least three-fourths of the popular analogies. Shall we, then, look further afield—say to the legend of Buddha ? Now, if anything in this region is certain at all, it is that Buddhism was not known, and its influence was not felt, in Christian circles, in the first century of our era. If it were necessary, I might ’ show that the birth stories of Buddha are not found in the oldest books of the Buddhists themselves, are at least two or three centuries later than Buddha’s own time, and in written form are much later still. 2 But supposing the stories to be older, and much more reliable than they are, I come back to my point that they are still not stories of birth from a Virgin. What real analogy, one may well ask, is there between the self-re- ________________________________________________ 1 Ibid. (E. T., pp. 47, 77).
2 Cf. the discussions in Kellogg’s The Light of Asia and the Light of the World, pp. 37’ff. strained narratives of the Gospels and the extravaganza —for such it is—which relates how, when Buddha’s mother (a married woman) was asleep, she dreamed that a white, six-tusked elephant entered her side, and how, ten months later, a child was born ?1 It is certain, as I have said, that the Gospel writers never heard of Buddha, nor were the stories about him afloat in their circles; but, if they had been, can you conceive of our Evangelists appropriating and using them ?
4. Foiled in these directions, shall we look to Egypt ? The Pharaohs were spoken of as Sons of Ha—without, however, any necessary implication of peculiarity in their birth. In one instance, however—that of Ameno-phis III, of the 18th dynasty—it is alleged that there is a parallel. The story seems really to have been an expedient for legitimising the birth of the Pharaoh, whose mother was an Asiatic, but unfortunately, like the rest, it breaks down at the crucial point The form which the fable—we cannot call it a myth—took was that the god Amon-Ea " incarnated himself in the royal person of the husband [Thothmes IV] " of this queen, and visited her on her couch, in order, as it is said, " that he might be a father through her." 2 This evidently— to say no more about it—is in no way a story of a Virgin __________________________________________________
1 Cf. Gore, Dissertations, pp. 58-9; Kellogg, op. cit, p. 69. Buddhism, it is to be remembered knows nothing of a God or of a Holy Spirit.
2 Cf. Sayce, Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, p. 249; Sweet, op. cit., pp. 170-3.
Birth. But again, even if it were, what probability is there of the tale ever reaching or influencing Matthew or Luke?
There remains still ancient Babylonia as a possible source of origin for this supposed myth. Before, however, looking at the newer speculations on this subject, let me glance at a class of theories which, assigning a very late date to the rise of the idea of the Virgin Birth, are compelled, in the teeth, as we saw, of all textual authority, to assume extensive interpolation of the Gospel narratives, and a gradual building up of the Gospel story by successive additions. This is the general character of the theories of Schmiedel, Usener, Soltau, Volker, and others; but it will be sufficient to take that of Soltau as a type of the whole. It is a theory put forth with much assurance, yet will probably be regarded by sober judges as a species of reductio ad absurdum of this entire method of theorising.
According to Soltau, the idea of the conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit did not arise till towards the end of the first century,1 that is, till fully a quarter of a century after the Gospels containing the birth-narratives were, according to our best knowledge, already circulating in the Church! 2 The conception by the Holy Ghost, however, is not the commencement, but in reality the end of a long development, the beginning of which, _____________________________________________ 1 Op. cU. (E. T., p. 48).
2 See above, pp. 58ff. in the transference of the place of birth of Jesus from Nazareth to Bethlehem, is curiously enough likewise dated by this author at the close of the first century. 1 It was pointed out before that Usener sees in John 7:42 a hint of " the hidden path " by which the idea of the birth at Bethlehem entered. 2 On this foundation, once laid, the rest of the story was gradually built up— the census, as a means of bringing Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, the visit of the shepherds, the adoration of the Magi, etc. As yet, it is to be noted, there is nothing of a Virgin Birth in the story. Where did these other incidents come from ? Here we arrive at Soltau’s original contribution to the theory. Inscriptions, it appears, relating to the birthday of Augustus, have been found in Asia Minor, in which Augustus is hailed as a " god," and " saviour," his birthday is said to be a beginning of " glad tidings," his reign brings " peace " and " harmony." 3 What can be clearer than that here we have the real sources of the message and song of the angels in Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus? As if there was the least probability that Luke ever heard of these inscriptions, or as if he needed to go to them for such terms as " Saviour," or " glad tidings," or such ideas as " peace on earth," as the result of Messiah’s reign! Terms and ideas which stared him in the _____________________________________________________ 1 Op. cit. (E. T., p. 25). Sweet remarks that he brings the beginning and the end of the development together (p. 90).
2 See above, p. 113.
3 The inscriptions are given in the appendix to his book. face in the pages of his Greek Bible! On the same principle nearly all the writers in the New Testament might be shown to have been diligent students of the inscriptions of Halicarnassus, for the same ideas and words occur in them! So the story of the Magi is decomposed into three elements: (1) The star is suggested by what Suetonius relates of wonderful signs at the birth of Augustus. (2) The Magi are introduced to interpret the star. (3) The journey and the adoration of the Magi are borrowed from the visit of the Parthian king. Tiridates, and his Magians to the court of Nero in 66 a.d. This journey, we are gravely informed, " could only be explained if their act of adoration might be transferred from the Antichrist Nero to the Messiah "!1 Pinally, as the copestone of the structure, there is introduced the idea of the Virgin Birth from pagan mythology, as formerly described, with perhaps suggestions from the births of sons of promise in the Old Testament. 2 If, really, any one supposes that narratives so beautiful, poetic, and closely connected, could originate in this fragmentary, haphazard fashion, he is wellnigh past reasoning with. But the whole theory falls like a house of cards once it is realised that the completed Gospels were already there decades before Soltau allows the process of development to begin!
I have already said that one thing fatal to the whole ___________________________________________________________ 1 Op. cit., p. 40; cf. pp. 49, 50.
2 Op. cit., pp. 41ff, 49, etc. group of theories we have been considering is the intense repugnance known to have been felt by the early Christians to everything connected with heathen idolatry. Harnack, as against Usener, reminds us " that the oldest Christianity strictly refrained from everything polytheistic and heathen/’ and on that account declares that " the unreasonable method of collecting from the mythology of all peoples parallels for original Church traditions, whether historical reports or legends, is valueless." " The Greek or Oriental mythology," he says, " I should leave entirely out of account; for there is no occasion to suppose that the Gentile congregations in the time up to the middle of the second century adopted, despite of their fixed principle, popular mythical representations." 1. This difficulty is so obvious that writers like Gunkel and Cheyne now give up altogether the idea of a late borrowing of the myths from heathenism, and strike out a new line of theory, which, as it is the latest in order of appearance, is the last I shall trouble you with. The view advocated by Gunkel, Cheyne, Farnell, and others is, that the idea of the Virgin Birth was not a late borrowing from contemporary paganism, but came down by a long process of transmission from Babylonian, Arabian, and Persian—ultimately from Babylonian— sources, and had, by the time of Christ, assumed a definite shape among the Jews in a sketch of the person and _______________________________________ 1 Quoted by Machen, Princeton Theol. Rev., Jan., 1906, p. 74. attributes of the Messiah, which the early Christians had no difficulty in taking over in its entirety upon Jesus. As Gunkel says of the story of the Virgin Birth in Luke: " We see here, therefore, that a characteristically heathenish representation is taken over upon Jesus in Jewish Christianity." 1 This may be said almost to be the theory of Strauss revived, only that, instead of Old Testament prophecy furnishing the sketch of the Messiah which is applied to Jesus, it is heathen, specially Babylonian mythology, that is called upon to yield it. An extract or two from Dr. Cheyne’s book, Bible Problems, will show how the theory is worked out. On the basis of Arabian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian parallels, Dr. Cheyne seeks to make plain how beliefs like those of the Virgin Birth of Jesus, His descent into Hades, His resurrection and ascension, arose. He remarks: " On the ground of facts supplied by archaeology, it is plausible to hold that all these arose out of a pre-Christian sketch of the life, death, and exaltation of the expected Messiah, itself ultimately derived from a widely current mythic tradition respecting a solar deity." 2 Paul’s statement " that Christ died and that He rose again ’ according to the Scriptures/ in reality , points," he thinks, " to a pre-Christian sketch of the life of Christ—partly, as we have seen—derived from widely spread, non-Jewish myths, and embodied in Jew- ________________________________________________ 1 Op. cit., p. 68.
2 Bible Problems, p. 128. ish writings." 1 A recent believing scholar, Jeremias, adopts substantially the same view, but sees in the heathen myths a case of real heathen prophecy (providentially ordained), to which the actual facts of Christ’s life and death corresponded. 2.
You have now before you the very newest of these theories of the mythical origin of the idea of the Virgin Birth—a theory which, like its predecessors, lacks but one thing—bottom. You will perceive at once about this theory:—
1. It gives the death-stroke to all the theories that have gone before it—to the theory of a purely Jewish origin of the myth; to the theory of a late origin of the myth; to the theory of a borrowing of the myth from contemporary heathenism; to the theory of a wholesale interpolation of the documents containing it.
2. It cuts the ground from all the arguments derived from the supposed silence of Mark, Paul, John, and other New Testament writers. For this " pre-Christian sketch," including as one of its features the Virgin Birth, is supposed to be familiar to them all; Paul, in particular, is alleged to use it, if not actually to quote it as Scripture!
3. But lastly—that the new theory itself is absolutely baseless. Who ever saw, or heard of, or came on any trace of, this purely imaginary " pre-Christian sketch,"
________________________________________ 1 Ibid., p. 113.
2 In his book, Das Babylonisches im N. T. based on Babylonian or other myths, which is first thought of as " plausible," then is converted into a certainty, and reasoned from as a fact! Jewish or Christian literature furnishes not a scrap of evidence for its existence. It is, what these writers would have the Virgin Birth to be, purely a fiction—a creation of the brain. The upshot, therefore, is, that this new theory, having destroyed all the others, itself shares in their downfall, and leaves the field clear for the only remaining hypothesis, which is the simplest and most satisfactory of any—that the thing actually happened. This theory professes to derive the myth of the Virgin Birth from the ancient East, but I have now further to remark on it, as I did on the others, that no real case of a Virgin Birth is found in the instances brought forward. Dr. Cheyne himself will be our witness here. The term " virgin " in these old myths meant anything but what we now mean by it—meant, in fact, as he tells us, that the goddess-mother was " independent of the marriage tie," and could live a life of what we call " free love." 1 Out of this abyss of licentiousness he asks us to believe that such a representation as that of the Virgin-mother of the Gospels originated!
One proof, indeed, is brought forward by Gunkel, Cheyne, and others of these writers in support of the existence of this " pre-Christian sketch," and of their general theory of Babylonian influence. It is the repre- ________________________________________________ 1 Bible Problems, p. 75. sentation in the Apocalypse of the woman clothed with the sun, who, with the man-child to which she gives birth, is persecuted by the dragon (ch. xii.). Ingenious parallels are worked out between this vision and the narratives of the Infancy. The woman clothed with the sun corresponds with Mary in the story of the Gospels; the dragon, who seeks to destroy the seed of the woman, corresponds with Herod, etc. Gunkel himself makes the significant admission that he cannot find exactly such a myth in any Babylonian records yet brought to light. 1 Bousset, who combats the Babylonian theory, thinks that the conception has an Egyptian origin. Without, however, troubling ourselves about either Babylonian or Egyptian elements in the imagery, we may safely take the ground that, if a relation of dependence is to be assumed at all, it is immensely more probable that the dependence is on the side of the Apocalypse, and not on the side of the Gospels. One can understand how the Virgin and her divine Son could suggest the imagery of the Apocalypse — the woman symbolising really the Jewish Church—but not how the grandeur of the symbolic picture could suggest the lowly Mary. Herod’s attempt on the life of Jesus might suggest the dragon, but hardly the dragon, Herod. Taken in this light, the Apocalyptic passage is another witness to the fact in the Gospels. The theories of mythical origin have thus, one after ____________________________________________________________________ 1 Op. cit., p. 196. the other, been tried and found wanting. The Jewish theories confute the Gentile; the Gentile theories confute the Jewish; the new Babylonian theory destroys both, and itself perishes with them. The one thing that does not crumble beneath us is the historical fact.