[7] Cadman, in the work already referred to, page 37, "harmonizes" these two variant accounts of the angelic announcements by giving Matthew's version in his text, and simply referring to Luke's account in a note.
[8] From Luke's narrative it does not appear that Joseph had any doubts as to Jesus being his child, or, if he did, how these doubts were removed.
[9] The story of the miraculous conception of Jesus would be thrown out of any impartial court upon the evidence of the four Gospels alone.
(a) The two narratives of Matthew and Luke contradict each other on several important details, as is shown above. This discredits each of them as a reliable, accurate authority on this point.
(b) This story is entirely omitted from the narratives of our two first-hand authorities—Mark and John.
Now, it is unthinkable that the authors of these two Gospels, if they knew of this story and believed it to be true, would not have recorded so important a fact in the life of Jesus.
Consequently, they either did not know of the story or, knowing it, did not believe it to be true.
Either hypothesis is equally fatal to the credit of the story.
If they, writing shortly after Jesus' death and, presumably, investigating all sources of information about His prophetic career—probably personally interviewing those persons then living who had seen, heard and known Jesus most intimately—had heard nothing of this story, then it must have been such an obscure legend, buried in the inner consciousness of so few people, as to be unworthy of serious consideration as a fact of history.
If, on the other hand, these writers knew of the story, but, after investigation of the abundant sources of information at their command, rejected it as untrue, what warrant have subsequent historians, not possessing their special means of information, to claim that their decision was wrong?