[17] C.M. 168–9. Cp. Dr. G. Contenau, La déesse nue Babylonienne, 1914, pp. 7, 15, 16, 57, 78, 80, 101, 129, 131. [↑]
[19] Soltau argues not only that the belief in the Virgin Birth “could not have originated in Palestine; anyhow, it could never have taken its rise in Jewish circles,” but that “the idea that the Holy Spirit begat Jesus can have no other than a Hellenic origin” (Birth of Jesus Christ, Eng. trans, pp. 47–48). He forgets the “sons of God” in [Genesis vi, 2]. The stories of the births of Isaac and Samson inferribly had an original form less decorous than the Biblical. [↑]
[20] It is doubly edifying to remember that the writer who pretends to find in avowed analogies of divine names, functions, and epithets a theory of a philological “equation,” himself insists on finding in every New Testament naming of a Jesus, and every pagan allusion to a “Chrestus” or “Christus,” a biographical allusion to Jesus of Nazareth. For Dr. Conybeare, the Jesus of the Apocalypse and the “Chrestus” of Suetonius are testimonies to the existence of Jesus the son of Mary and Joseph. The very absurdity he seeks to find in the myth-theory is inherent in his own method. [↑]
[22] The Rev. Dr. Thorburn (Mythical Interpretation, p. 21) cites from the Encyc. Bib. as “the words of Dr. Cheyne” words which are not Cheyne’s at all, but those of Robertson Smith. Smith, so scientific in his anthropology, is always irrationalist in his theology. [↑]
[23] R.V. “enrolment.” Dr. Thorburn appears to argue (p. 39) that the “taxing” story in the Krishna-myth is derived from “ignorant copying” of the English Authorized Version! The “to be taxed” of the A.V. of course represents the traditional interpretation—that taxing was the object of the enrolment. [↑]