The physiological difficulties amount to this, that such a conception would be a most remarkable deviation from all natural laws. However obscure the physiology of the fact, it is proved by an exceptionless experience that only by the concurrence of the two sexes is a new human being generated; on which account Plutarch’s remark, “παιδίον οὐδεμία ποτὲ γυνὴ λέγεται ποιῆσαι δίχα κοινωνίας ἀνδρὸς,”[32] and Cerinthus’s “impossible” become applicable.[33] It is [[131]]only among the lowest species of the animal kingdom that generation takes place without the union of sexes;[34] so that, regarding the matter purely physiologically, what Origen says, in the supranaturalistic sense, would indeed be true of a man of the like origin; namely, that the words in [Psalm xxii. 7], I am a worm and no man is a prophecy of Jesus in the above respect.[35] But to the merely physical consideration a theological one is subjoined by the angel ([Luke i. 37]), when he appeals to the divine omnipotence to which nothing is impossible. But since the divine omnipotence, by virtue of its unity with divine wisdom, is never exerted in the absence of an adequate motive, the existence of such, in the present instance, must be demonstrated. But nothing less than an object worthy of the Deity, and at the same time necessarily unattainable except by a deviation from the ordinary course of nature, could constitute a sufficient cause for the suspension by God of a natural law which he had established. Only here, it is said, the end, the redemption of mankind, required impeccability on the part of Jesus; and in order to render him exempt from sin, a divinely wrought conception, which excluded the participation of a sinful father, and severed Jesus from all connexion with original sin, was necessary.[36] To which it has been answered by others,[37] (and Schleiermacher has recently most decisively argued this side of the question,[38]) that the exclusion of the paternal participation is insufficient, unless, indeed, the inheritance of original sin, on the maternal side, be obviated by the adoption of the Valentinian assertion, that Jesus only passed through the body of Mary. But that the gospel histories represent an actual maternal participation is undeniable; consequently a divine intervention which should sanctify the participation of the sinful human mother in the conception of Jesus must be supposed in order to maintain his assumed necessary impeccability. But if God determined on such a purification of the maternal participation, it had been easier to do the same with respect to that of the father, than by his total exclusion, to violate the natural law in so unprecedented a manner; and consequently, a fatherless conception cannot be insisted upon as the necessary means of compassing the impeccability of Jesus.
Even he who thinks to escape the difficulties already specified, by enveloping himself in a supranaturalism, inaccessible to arguments based on reason or the laws of nature, must nevertheless admit the force of the exegetical-historical difficulties meeting him upon his own ground, which likewise beset the view of the supernatural conception of Jesus. Nowhere in the New Testament is such an origin ascribed to Jesus, or even distinctly alluded to, except in these two accounts of his infancy in Matthew and in Luke.[39] The history of the conception is omitted not only by Mark, but also by John, the supposed author of the fourth Gospel and an alleged inmate with the mother of Jesus subsequent to his death, who therefore would have been the most accurately informed concerning these occurrences. It is said that John sought rather to record the heavenly than the earthly origin of Jesus; but the question arises, whether the doctrine which he sets forth in his prologue, of a divine [[132]]hypostasis actually becoming flesh and remaining immanent in Jesus, is reconcilable with the view given in the passages before us, of a simple divine operation determining the conception of Jesus; whether therefore John could have presupposed the history of the conception contained in Matthew and Luke? This objection, however, loses its conclusive force if in the progress of our investigation the apostolic origin of the fourth Gospel is not established. The most important consideration therefore is, that no retrospective allusion to this mode of conception occurs throughout the four Gospels; not only neither in John nor in Mark, but also neither in Matthew nor in Luke. Not only does Mary herself designate Joseph simply as the father of Jesus ([Luke ii. 48]), and the Evangelist speak of both as his parents, γονεῖς ([Luke ii. 41]),—an appellation which could only have been used in an ulterior sense by one who had just related the miraculous conception,—but all his contemporaries in general, according to our Evangelists, regarded him as a son of Joseph, a fact which was not unfrequently alluded to contemptuously and by way of reproach in his presence ([Matt. xiii. 55]; [Luke iv. 22]; [John vi. 42]), thus affording him an opportunity of making a decisive appeal to his miraculous conception, of which, however, he says not a single word. Should it be answered, that he did not desire to convince respecting the divinity of his person by this external evidence, and that he could have no hope of making an impression by such means on those who were in heart his opponents,—it must also be remembered, that, according to the testimony of the fourth Gospel, his own disciples, though they admitted him to be the son of God, still regarded him as the actual son of Joseph. Philip introduces Jesus to Nathanael as the son of Joseph, Ἰησοῦν τὸν υἱὸν Ἰωσὴφ ([John i. 46]), manifestly in the same sense of real paternity which the Jews attached to the designation; and nowhere is this represented as an erroneous or imperfect notion which these Apostles had subsequently to relinquish; much rather does the whole sense of the narrative, which is not to be mistaken, exhibit the Apostles as having a right belief on this point. The enigmatical presupposition, with which, at the marriage in Cana, Mary addressed herself to Jesus,[40] is far too vague to prove a recollection of his miraculous conception on the part of the mother; at all events this feature is counterbalanced by the opposing one that the family of Jesus, and, as appears from [Matt. xii. 46 ff.] compared with [Mark iii. 21 ff.], his mother also were, at a later time, in error respecting his aims; which is scarcely explicable, even of his brothers, supposing them to have had such recollections.
Just as little as in the Gospels, is anything in confirmation of the view of the supernatural conception of Jesus, to be found in the remaining New Testament writings. For when the Apostle Paul speaks of Jesus as made of a woman, γενόμενον ἐκ γυναικὸς ([Gal. iv. 4]), this expression is not to be understood as an exclusion of paternal participation; since the addition made under the law, γενόμενον ὑπὸ νόμον, clearly shows that he would here indicate (in the form which is frequent in the Old and New Testament, for example [Job xiv. 1]; [Matt. xi. 11]) human nature with all its conditions. When Paul ([Rom. i. 3], [4] compared with [ix. 5]) makes Christ according to the flesh, κατὰ σάρκα, descend from David, but declares him to be the son of God according to the Spirit of Holiness, κατὰ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης; no one will here identify the antithesis flesh and spirit with the maternal human participation, and the divine energy superseding the paternal participation in the conception of Jesus. Finally when in the Epistle to the Hebrews ([vii. 3]) Melchisedec is compared with the son of God, υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, because without father, ἀπάτωρ, the application of the literally interpreted ἀπάτωρ to Jesus, as he [[133]]appeared upon earth, is forbidden by the addition without mother, ἀμήτωρ, which agrees as little with him as the immediately following without descent, ἀγενεαλόγητος.
§ 27.
RETROSPECT OF THE GENEALOGIES.
The most conclusive exegetical ground of decision against the supernatural conception of Jesus, which bears more closely on the point than all the hitherto adduced passages, is found in the two genealogies previously considered. Even the Manichæan Faustus asserted that it is impossible without contradiction to trace the descent of Jesus from David through Joseph, as is done by our two genealogists, and yet assume that Joseph was not the father of Jesus; and Augustine had nothing convincing to answer when he remarked that it was necessary, on account of the superior dignity of the masculine gender, to carry the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, who was Mary’s husband if not by a natural by a spiritual alliance.[41] In modern times also the construction of the genealogical tables in Matthew and in Luke has led many theologians to observe, that these authors considered Jesus as the actual son of Joseph.[42] The very design of these tables is to prove Jesus to be of the lineage of David through Joseph; but what do they prove, if indeed Joseph was not the father of Jesus? The assertion that Jesus was the son of David, ὑὸς Δαβὶδ, which in Matthew ([i. 1]) prefaces the genealogy and announces its object, is altogether annulled by the subsequent denial of his conception by means of the Davidical Joseph. It is impossible, therefore, to think it probable that the genealogy and the history of the birth of Jesus emanate from the same author[43]; and we must concur with the theologians previously cited, that the genealogies are taken from a different source. Scarcely could it satisfy to oppose the remark, that as Joseph doubtlessly adopted Jesus, the genealogical table of the former became fully valid for the latter. For adoption might indeed suffice to secure to the adopted son the reversion of certain external family rights and inheritances; but such a relationship could in no wise lend a claim to the Messianic dignity, which was attached to the true blood and lineage of David. He, therefore, who had regarded Joseph as nothing more than the adopted father of Jesus, would hardly have given himself the trouble to seek out the Davidical descent of Joseph; but if indeed, besides the established belief that Jesus was the son of God, it still remained important to represent him as the son of David, the pedigree of Mary would have been preferred for this purpose; for, however contrary to custom, the maternal genealogy must have been admitted in a case where a human father did not exist. Least of all is it to be believed, that several authors would have engaged in the compilation of a genealogical table for Jesus which traced his descent through Joseph, so that two different genealogies of this kind are still preserved to us, if a closer relationship between Jesus and Joseph had not been admitted at the time of their composition.
Consequently, the decision of the learned theologians who agree that these genealogies were composed in the belief that Jesus was the actual son of Joseph and Mary, can hardly be disputed; but the authors or compilers of our Gospels, notwithstanding their own conviction of the divine origin of [[134]]Jesus, received them among their materials; only that Matthew ([i. 16]) changed the original Joseph begat Jesus of Mary—Ἰωσὴφ δὲ ἐγέννησε τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐκ της Μαρίας (comp. [verses 3]. [5]. [6]) according to his own view; and so likewise Luke ([iii. 23]) instead of commencing his genealogy simply with, Jesus—the son of Joseph—Ἰησοῦς υἱὸς Ἰωσὴφ, inserts being as was supposed, ὢν, ὡς ἐνομίζετο κ.τ.λ.
Let it not be objected that the view for which we contend, namely, that the genealogies could not have been composed under the notion that Joseph was not the father of Jesus, leaves no conceivable motive for incorporating them into our present Gospels. The original construction of a genealogy of Jesus, even though in the case before us it consisted simply in the adapting of foreign already existing genealogical tables to Jesus, required a powerful and direct inducement; this was the hope thereby to gain—the corporeal descent of Jesus from Joseph being presupposed—a main support to the belief in his Messiahship; whilst, on the other hand, a less powerful inducement was sufficient to incite to the admission of the previously constructed genealogies: the expectation that, notwithstanding the non-existence of any real relationship between Joseph and Jesus, they might nevertheless serve to link Jesus to David. Thus we find, that in the histories of the birth both in Matthew and in Luke, though they each decidedly exclude Joseph from the conception, great stress is laid upon the Davidical descent of Joseph ([Matt. i. 20], [Luke i. 27], [ii. 4]); that which in fact had no real significance, except in connexion with the earlier opinion, is retained even after the point of view is changed.
Since, in this way, we discover both the genealogies to be memorials belonging to the time and circle of the primitive church, in which Jesus was still regarded as a naturally begotten man, the sect of the Ebionites cannot fail to occur to us; as we are told concerning them, that they held this view of the person of Christ at this early period.[44] We should therefore have expected, more especially, to have found these genealogies in the old Ebionitish Gospels, of which we have still knowledge, and are not a little surprised to learn that precisely in these Gospels the genealogies were wanting. It is true Epiphanius states that the Gospel of the Ebionites commenced with the public appearance of the Baptist[45]; accordingly, by the genealogies, γενεαλογίαις, which they are said to have cut away, might have been meant, those histories of the birth and infancy comprised in the [two first chapters of Matthew]; which they could not have adopted in their present form, since they contained the fatherless conception of Jesus, which was denied by the Ebionites: and it might also have been conjectured that this section which was in opposition to their system had alone perhaps been wanting in their Gospel; and that the genealogy which was in harmony with their view might nevertheless have been somewhere inserted. But this supposition vanishes as soon as we find that Epiphanius, in reference to the Nazarenes, defines the genealogies, (of which he is ignorant whether they possessed them or not,) as reaching from Abraham to Christ, τὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀβραὰμ ἕως Χριστοῦ[46]; consequently, by the genealogies which were wanting to some heretics, he evidently understood the genealogical tables, though, in relation to the Ebionites, he might likewise have included under this expression the history of the birth.