Vincent Taylor

“ In an historical inquiry it is never safe to ascribe a tradition to an authority, unless we have solid grounds for so doing. Otherwise, we import a bias into the investigation, if indeed we do not beg the question. The mistake is one which has been made more than once in discussing the Virgin Birth. In the present case we have nothing whatever to guide us, and accordingly we have to acquiesce in the bare conclusion that St. Luke accepted the Virgin Birth tradition, but that we do not know anything about his authority, except that it satisfied his mind. ”

“ It appears to us that this line of argument is open to serious objection; it is unfair, and it is unwise.
It is unfair, because it is neither uncommon nor unreasonable to find men agreed in rejecting a tradition or belief, and yet at variance in respect of theories of origin. It is one thing to say that a belief is untrue; quite another thing to account for its existence. That men agree upon the one point is more significant than that they differ upon the other. The view we have mentioned is unwise, because its triumph may be short-lived. ”

“ Luke has recorded the language of the Nazarenes, can we suppose that he would have used the same language himself in the light of the Virgin Birth? It is not as if these modes of speech were indispensable. The words “Joseph and Mary” could easily have been employed, and in this way all danger of ambiguity removed. In the face of a fact so unique as a virgin birth, one would expect an effort to avoid ambiguity; all the more, in the case of a writer, with [pg 032] whose apt choice of words and delicacy of expression scholars like Ramsay and Harnack have made us familiar. ”

“ If, however, we have to answer the doctrinal questions in the negative, then the historical character of the tradition receives a fatal blow. The opinion, so frequently expressed, that, in any case, the Virgin Birth is not a doctrine of essential importance, is one that calls for scrutiny. If it means that a man may be a sincere follower of our Lord, whether he believes the doctrine or not, it is, of course, a truism. ”

“ Life is a complex thing, and there are few times when we need to remember it so much as when we are thinking of the production of an historical work.
Apart from other claims which can be made, our theory has [pg 076] one important, if general, advantage; it takes account of the elementary facts of human composition. Have we given sufficient thought to the fact that a writer like St. Luke may well have turned back to review, and even to alter, in the light of further information, what he had already written? Is not this what nearly every one does who writes or relates anything at all? ”

“ Clearly, the question of the knowledge of Jesus is a determinative consideration. Few indeed will care to argue for the Virgin Birth tradition, if it can be proved that Jesus knew nothing of it, but believed Himself to be the son of Joseph. Just for this very reason we ought to be scrupulously careful in treating the question. A scientific inquiry will hesitate to draw an inference which makes further research superfluous. ”

“ It is common knowledge that the implications of a new point of view are not always immediately recognized. For a time old and new live together. It is not by any means an easy task to introduce into a narrative, constructed under the guidance of alien presuppositions, a fact of an entirely new order. That St. Luke should have performed his task so well argues no little skill in literary craftsmanship. ”

“ In sketching the foregoing theory our purpose is not to assert its truth, but rather to illustrate its by no means inherent improbability. It could be true; or, at any rate, this judgement [pg 127] might any day have to be passed upon some alternative theory, superior to any that has yet been stated. The agreement of the Virgin Birth tradition with historic fact may be the true solution of the problem, but it is not the only solution that is possible, nor can its superiority be established by the comparative method alone. ”

“ The theory of a long-treasured secret has a logic of its own. On the other hand, by the conditions of the case, we are unable to interrogate the witnesses. We cannot ask them whence they derived what they tell us. We cannot demonstrate that the story they relate has the ultimate authority of Mary. All that we can reach is a primitive belief, generally accepted within New Testament times, which presumably implies an earlier private tradition. ”

“ Doubtless, in default of attestation, we can describe our results as no more than tentative. But we have no desire to claim more. As the problem stands at present, the test to be applied is, What reading, conjectured or attested, furnishes the best explanation of the facts at our disposal?, it being remembered that these facts include, not only the textual variants, but also the unique character of the Genealogy itself. It may be, as we have suggested, that new discoveries await us. ”

“ What is doctrinally irrelevant is not likely to be historically true.
It does not fall in with the scope of this work to enter fully [pg 130] into the theological question. Our purpose has been to examine the historical and critical questions and to show where the real problem lies. Criticism cannot solve that problem. Nevertheless, its contribution is not barren. It can discuss interpolation theories; it can treat of the literary form which the tradition has assumed in the Gospels. It can date—imperfectly it is true—the time when the belief became current. ”

“ On the positive side our most important result is that we can prove from the New Testament itself that belief in the Virgin Birth existed in influential Christian communities at the time when the First and Third Gospels were written. We have no further need, therefore, to consider theories which assign the belief to a later age, and which, by various interpolation-hypotheses, deprive the doctrine of New Testament support. Those who have stated such theories have rendered service in that they have explored an alternative path. On the view we have preferred this path proves to be a cul-de-sac. ”

“ Our theory makes room for the twofold fact, as it seems to us, (1) that the Virgin Birth is not an original element in the Third Gospel, and (2) that St. Luke wrote the one passage in the Gospel which asserts the doctrine; thus for us it is inevitable.
If, from another point of view, our hypothesis seems a bold venture, we may justly claim that the facts are such as to demand a bold treatment. Nor is it a sufficient objection to say that the theory is complex. ”

“ If we find it hard to understand how they could think of Him in this way, without the warrant of the fact, it may be that our difficulty is just the measure of our failure to grasp the wonder of their love. If, in the end, we must call poetry what they called fact, it will not be because we are strangers to their faith. ”

“ For those who claim infallibility, as well as inspiration, for the Evangelists, the problem is at an end: Lk. and Mt. teach the Virgin Birth; the doctrine is therefore true! But for most people to-day that short and easy path is impossible. The Gospels do not claim infallibility, and their contents do not bespeak it. There can be no question that a trained observer of to-day would have described many incidents in the life of Jesus very differently. ”

“ Luke shows a desire to produce a full and accurate record, and claims to have traced the course of all things from the first. Any new information bearing upon the Birth and the hidden years of the Infancy would be especially welcome to him. Any one, moreover, who has had anything to do with collecting memoirs knows that not infrequently new facts come to hand just when the task seems well-nigh completed, facts for which a place must be found, however great the difficulties may be. ”

“ We are not indeed left entirely to conjecture. We can examine St. Luke's treatment of the Markan record. The modifications which he introduces are manifest, and they arise in different ways. Many of them are stylistic, others are intended to clear up difficulties, while it is in every way probable that others again are corrections introduced as the result of new information. If, from such causes, St. Luke does not hesitate to modify the statements of St. Mark's Gospel, it is inconceivable that he would have refrained from altering his own narrative if occasion should arise. ”

“ Paul's Epistles were not public manifestoes, but private letters, written to Christian communities. Moreover, they are intensely self-revealing. They permit us to appreciate how much St. Paul knew of the words and deeds of Jesus, and of the events of His earthly life. That they reveal no knowledge of the Virgin Birth is hardly to be explained by a policy of silence. Unless, on other grounds, it can be shown that the tradition was known in Apostolic circles during St. Paul's lifetime, his silence must be interpreted to mean lack of knowledge concerning it. ”

“ It is generally allowed at the present day that the Genealogies, both in the First Gospel and in the Third, trace the ancestry of Jesus through Joseph. But unlike the Matthaean Genealogy, that in Lk. gives us no reason to suppose that legal descent only is traced in it. It is therefore difficult to believe that its author intended to construct a chain of descent in which the vital link should contain the words, “as was supposed”. These words more naturally give the impression of being a later insertion intended to adapt the Genealogy to a new situation. ”

“ No one can survey Christendom without seeing that everywhere denominational walls become less and less forbidding, and that every year it is more difficult to classify Christian thinkers under the prim labels of exclusive schools. Thought is unbound, but it is not chaotic. The thousand streams fall to the rivers which flow onward towards the sea that is never full. Those only may be pessimistic who cannot take long views. ”

“ Inference and imagination may have played upon a nucleus of historic fact. (iii) The narrative may be a story without historic foundation, which has grown up, as the result of inference and imagination, in answer to difficulties arising out of a belief in the Virgin Birth antecedently held.
So long as we confine ourselves to the Gospel, it is not possible to choose between these views, unless we are prepared to assume that early Christian tradition cannot have been mistaken—an assumption which cuts the knot instead of untying it. ”

“ On the whole it is best, even if only for purposes of argument, to admit the possibility that insertions unmarked by signs of textual variation exist, and to ask: Of what character may we suppose these insertions to be, and can we define any limits within which they are more probable than others? In particular, is Lk. i. 34 f. a likely or probable instance? It is obvious that hard and fast lines cannot be drawn in individual cases. Nevertheless, it ought to be possible to say whether or not a passage like the one we are considering is, or is not, the work of a redactor. ”

“ Luke's vocabulary increases the difficulty.62 Why, if he has used ἐπεί in i. 34, he should never employ it again, is a question which it is not easy to answer. If, in view of the evidence as a whole, the case for an interpolation fails, we shall have to content ourselves with the fact, however strange, that here and here only έπεί occurs in Lk. A writer indeed may use a word once and never again. Ἐπεί occurs but once in Mk. (xv. 42) , and it may be so here. Assuredly, in a linguistic argument room must always be left for the occurrence of ἅπαξ λεγόμενα in an individual writer. ”

“ The presumption that His Birth must have been remarkable would be strengthened by the Old Testament stories of the birth of Isaac, of Samson, and of Samuel, and especially by the tradition which already had gathered round the birth of John. It may also have been stimulated by the belief, found the whole world over, that the origin of great men is supernatural and miraculous. ”