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What did Jesus’ neighbors say regarding his paternity?
Matthew: They said, “Is not this the carpenter’s [Joseph’s] son?” ([xiii, 55].)
Luke: “They said, Is not this Joseph’s son?” ([iv, 22].)
John: “They said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph?” ([vi, 42].)
The Rev. Dr. Crapsey, of the Episcopal church, in his work on “Religion and Politics” (p. 289), makes this significant admission regarding the divine origin of Jesus: “The fact of his miraculous birth was unknown to himself, unknown to his mother, and unknown to the whole Christian community of the first generations.”
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, wrote: “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter” (Jefferson Works, vol. iv, p. 365, Randolph’s ed.).