ACCORDING to a universal belief of the historic Christian Church, Jesus of Nazareth, a man who lived in Palestine nineteen hundred years ago, did not come into the world as other men do; but was born without human father, being conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary.

How is it that so many millions of the human race have come to believe so strange a thing as that?

Two answers to that question are conceivable. In the first place, it may be held that the Church came to believe in the virgin birth for the simple reason that the virgin birth was a fact. In the second place, it may be held that the belief in the virgin birth was based upon some kind of error—that, although Jesus was really born by ordinary generation, the Church for some reason came falsely to believe that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost.

Which of these two answers is correct? Is the Christian belief in the virgin birth derived from fact or from some kind of error?

In favor of the former alternative may be urged, primarily, the direct attestation of the virgin birth which is found in the New Testament. That direct attestation appears in the First and Third Gospels.

The Third Gospel

The Third Gospel is said by an early Christian tradition to have been written by a certain Luke, who is mentioned in three passages in the Pauline Epistles and there appears as a physician, as a Gentile, and as a trusted companion of Paul.

This tradition is supported in a peculiarly convincing way by the book itself; for admittedly the Third Gospel was written by the same man who also wrote the Book of Acts, and the Book of Acts contains striking evidence as to its authorship.

The evidence is found in the so called “we-sections” in the book, where the author says “we” instead of “they” in narrating certain parts of the missionary journeys of Paul and thus introduces himself as an eyewitness of the events there narrated. So, at least, the plain man regards the matter; and the opinion of the plain man at this point is not contradicted, but strikingly confirmed, by a careful examination of the relation between the “we-sections” and the rest of the great double work.

But if the author of the whole of Luke-Acts was thus the man who said “we” in his own name in the “we-sections,” his movements can be traced by an examination of the places where the “we” occurs. One of the “we-sections” brings the “we” right into the presence of the Jerusalem Church and of James the brother of the Lord (Acts 21:18). That passage refers to a time which may with some probability be about A.D. 58. The “we” appears again two years later at Caesarea, at the beginning of Paul’s “shipwreck journey” to Rome. Thus the author was in Palestine at the beginning of that two-year period which Paul spent in prison at Caesarea, and he was also in Palestine at the end of it; so that it is natural to surmise that he was in Palestine during the interval. If so, he would have had abundant opportunity at that time to gather information about events in Palestine, and particularly about the events that concern the birth and infancy of our Lord. Since the author of Luke-Acts was in Palestine and actually saw the brother of Jesus, a favorable presumption arises with regard to what he tells us in Luke 1:5–2:52.

That section, Luke 1:5–2:52, is plainly an original part of the Gospel of Luke. Not only is the manuscript evidence unbroken, but careful research has detected in the language of the section plain marks of the hand of the author of the whole book.

Although, however, the birth narrative is clearly an integral part of the Third Gospel, not a later addition, it is a very peculiar part. In marked contrast with the elaborate Greek sentence which constitutes the prologue of the Gospel (Luke 1:1–4), the following section (Luke 1:5–2:52) is a strikingly Jewish narrative which breathes the atmosphere of Palestine and is like the most beautiful narrative portions of the Old Testament.

The Palestinian character of the section is shown, in the first place, by the style, which reflects in a very striking way the characteristics of the Hebrew (or the Aramaic) language. But it is also shown in the contents. The narrative exhibits the most intimate knowledge of Palestinian conditions at every turn; and in particular the Messianic hope appears here in a clearly primitive and Palestinian form, as unlike as possible to what a Gentile writer would have imagined if he had been composing the narrative in the light of later conditions in the life of Jesus and of the Christian Church.

Thus the attestation of the virgin birth appears in the Gospel of Luke in a narrative which is deeply rooted in Palestinian soil and gives every evidence of having come to the author of the Gospel in a form that was produced at an exceedingly early time. Such a narrative is exactly the kind of narrative in which correct information about the birth and infancy of Jesus might be expected to be preserved.

But is the virgin birth really attested by this Palestinian narrative? A really prodigious effort has been made by certain scholars to show that it is not—to show that the Palestinian narrative underlying Luke 1:5–2:52 did not in its original form contain any reference to the virgin birth, and that the verses attesting the virgin birth have come into the narrative by interpolation.

This effort, however, has resulted in failure. It may be shown in the most decisive possible way not only that the arguments in favor of the interpolation theory are insufficient, but that that theory may positively be refuted. The whole of the narrative really finds its climax and its point in the super-natural conception of our Lord in the womb of the virgin Mary. Thus it remains clearly a fact that the virgin birth is attested in the Gospel of Luke in a strikingly Palestinian narrative.

The First Gospel

The other narrative attesting the virgin birth (Matt. 1–2) is also Jewish and Palestinian in character, as indeed the whole Gospel of Matthew is generally regarded as being intended primarily for Jews. This narrative is not really contradictory to the narrative in Luke, but the two are clearly independent of each other. Matthew is not dependent upon Luke, nor is Luke dependent upon Matthew. We have, therefore, a double attestation of the virgin birth of our Lord.

But, it is said, the rest of the New Testament is silent about the virgin birth, and this silence shows that the virgin birth was no part of the original tradition of the apostolic Church.

With regard to this objection, it may be admitted at the start that according to the four Gospels the contemporaries of Jesus during His public ministry in all probability knew nothing about the virgin birth. But what of it? Even if the virgin birth was a fact, the last thing in the world that Mary would do would be to tell about it and thus expose herself and her child to unjust suspicions.

As for the Evangelists themselves, as distinguished from the men and women depicted in their narratives, it may simply be said that two of them. narrate the virgin birth plainly at the beginning of their Gospels and that any narration of the birth of Jesus lay outside the scope and plan of the Gospels of the other two. Mark depicts Jesus as He made a public impression, and so begins naturally with the public ministry; John is giving his own testimony as an eyewitness, and so begin at the point where he, with several other disciples of John the Baptist, began to follow Jesus.

The virgin birth finds no place in the brief account which the Book of Acts gives of the first preaching of Peter and the other apostles in the early days of the Jerusalem Church. But who could possibly expect that it would have such place even if it be a fact? Public proclamation of such a mystery, before the hearers had come to believe even in the resurrection of the Lord, would lead te nothing but reproach.

Moreover, supposing the virgin birth to be a fact, when shall we suppose that Mary made it known? The Gospel of Luke describes her as being of a quiet and meditative disposition, and therefore as being very unlikely to talk lightly about a holy mystery which naturally would meet with unbelief. Only after the resurrection, we may suppose, would Mary speak of this mystery and then perhaps only to the sympathetic ears of woman friends. It is no wonder that the story came only gradually—if it did come only gradually—into the public preaching of the Church.

Paul’s Silence

But how is it with Paul? Does not his silence, at least, show that the virgin birth is a very late accretion to the early account of Jesus?

With regard to this objection, it may be said that there are few writers in whose case the “argument from silence,” usually precarious, needs to be employed with greater caution than in the case of the Apostle Paul. Paul mentions only once in his Epistles the appearances of the risen Christ to Peter and to others in the Jerusalem Church, and then only because of errors that had “happened”—using the word from the worldly point of view—to have arisen at Corinth. If those errors had not arisen and Paul had not reproduced that tradition of the Jerusalem Church, we almost shudder to think of the far-reaching conclusion which would have been drawn from his silence by modern scholars. Yet plainly that account of the appearances of the risen Christ was everywhere fundamental in the teaching that Paul gave to his churches. Does not that example indicate, among other examples, that there are many, many things which Paul regarded as quite fundamental about Jesus, but which yet he did not find occasion to mention in his Epistles? Moreover, the teaching of Paul, like the teaching of John, is profoundly congruous with the virgin birth and profoundly incongruous with the view that Jesus was the child of Joseph and Mary by ordinary generation.

What we can say, then, is that the “silence” of the rest of the New Testament does not refute the plain testimony of Matthew and Luke. The testimony to the virgin birth of our Lord, though of course far less abundant, at least so far as direct testimony is concerned, than the testimony to an event like the resurrection, to which in the nature of the case there would be many witnesses; is at least as abundant as we could reasonably demand on the assumption that the virgin birth is a fact.

But if this attestation be rejected, if it be held that the belief of the Church in the virgin birth originated not in fact but in error, the question arises how the error was produced.

The most natural suggestion is that it was produced on Jewish Christian ground, since we have seen that the narratives attesting the virgin birth, particularly the one in the Third Gospel, are of a strikingly Jewish and Palestinian character. So some of those who have denied the fact of the virgin birth have held that the belief in the virgin birth grew out of Jewish ideas and particularly out of a desire to show fulfilment of the prophecy, “Behold the virgin shall conceive,” in Isaiah 7:14. With regard to this latter point, it must be said that although Isaiah 7:14 is really a true and very precious prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah, there is no real evidence to show that the Jews interpreted it in that way. Indeed, in general, the whole current of late Judaism, so far as all our information leads us to judge, was quite hostile to an idea like that of the virgin birth.

At this point we meet with agreement on the part of most modern scholars. The overwhelming majority of those who today deny the fact of the virgin birth admit that the idea of the virgin birth did not arise on Jewish or Jewish Christian ground and on the basis of Jewish or Jewish Christian ideas.

The idea must, then, from the point of view of such scholars, have been originally a pagan idea.

At this point, two preliminary questions arise. In the first place, how did this supposedly pagan idea—particularly since it came, in accordance with this hypothesis, as we shall see, from just the most degrading parts of pagan mythology—ever get into the. early Church at all, even into the Gentile part of the Church? In the second place, supposing it did get into the Gentile part of the Church, how is it that it found a place in Jewish Christian narratives like the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, and particularly in Luke 1:5–2:52, which is perhaps the most strikingly Palestinian narrative in the whole New Testament?

It is as an attempt to answer this latter question that the “interpolation hypothesis,” which we mentioned above, has attained its chief importance. The verses attesting the virgin birth, it is said by the advocates of this hypothesis, do not really belong to the Palestinian narrative underlying Luke 1:5–2:52, but are a Gentile Christian addition to that narrative. But this hypothesis, as we have already observed, can be refuted in the most decisive way. As a matter of fact, the virgin birth is no mere later addition to Luke 1:5–2:52, but belongs to the inmost structure of that narrative. The question then remains, and remains with crushing force against the whole theory of pagan derivation of the idea of the virgin birth: “How did a pagan idea, such as the virgin birth is thought to be, ever come to be attested by this strikingly Palestinian narrative?”

In answer to this question, some recent scholars have suggested that the supposed pagan idea had become so thoroughly naturalized in pre-Christian Judaism that in the first century after Christ it was no longer felt to be a pagan idea and so could appear in a Palestinian narrative like Luke 1:5–2:52. Back of the Jewish Christian belief in the virgin birth of Jesus, these scholars suggest, there was a pre-Christian Jewish belief in the virgin birth of the coming Messiah, which belief came ultimately from pagan notions.

But the trouble is that there is no real evidence for the existence of such a belief in pre-Christian Judaism; indeed it runs counter to all that we know of pre-Christian Jewish thought.

Thus it is only with a very serious hostile presumption that we examine the supposed pagan parallels to the virgin birth of Christ; for even if those parallels were far closer than they actually are, we should still have difficulty in understanding how the supposed pagan idea could have entered into the early Church and particularly into such strikingly Jewish narratives as Matthew 1–2, Luke 1:5–2:52.

As a matter of fact, the supposed “parallels” are not close at all; indeed an examination of them serves only to reveal with new clearness how utterly unique is the New Testament account of the virgin birth of our Lord. In the present writer’s book on The Virgin Birth of Christ the pagan “parallels” have been passed in review in detail. Here it may suffice to say that the pagan stories in question are not stories of virgin births at all, but very degrading stories of carnal unions between gods and womankind. When one comes from such stories, with their low conception of the gods as simply more powerful men, possessing human passions and human lusts, to the lofty monotheism that runs through the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke and to the story of the virgin and her Child, one is entering into an entirely different world.

Thus we have observed, first, that the attestation of the virgin birth is rooted deep in that Palestinian soil in which we should expect it to appear on the assumption that it is true, and that it is as abundant as we have any right to demand; and we have observed, second, that if the virgin birth is not a fact the attempts to explain the origin of the belief in it in the Church have so far resulted in failure, advocates of one theory of derivation being often the severest critics of the advocates of another.

What, then, is our conclusion? Is the belief of the Church in the virgin birth based on fact or on some kind of error? Was Jesus conceived by the Holy Ghost, or was He by ordinary generation a child of Joseph and Mary?

In answering this question, it is supremely important to observe that what we are discussing is not the virgin birth of some person of whom otherwise we know nothing, but the virgin birth of Jesus. There is an enormous presumption against the virgin birth of any ordinary man, but a great weight of evidence shows that Jesus was such an One as that in His case the presumption is overcome, and as that a virgin birth is in profound accord with all that we know of Him.

That does not mean at all that the virgin birth hangs as a dead weight upon the other evidence for the supernatural character of Jesus’ person; it does not mean that if we have already been convinced on other grounds that Jesus is a supernatural Person, we may perhaps reluctantly admit that He was born of a virgin: but it means that the positive testimony to the virgin birth contributes its quota to a grand sum of convergent evidence to show that Jesus of Nazareth was in very truth no mere product of the human race but a supernatural Redeemer come into the world to save mankind from the guilt and power of sin.

Endnote

[1] Revelation, vol. 1, no. 12 (December 1931): 399–400, 426, 428. Revelation was a monthly magazine edited by Donald Grey Barnhouse and published by the American Bible Conference Association, Inc., based in Philadelphia.

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