Chapter VI. The Historical Question: Its Limits And Bearings
Our purpose in the final chapter is to co-ordinate the results we have reached, and to discuss their bearing upon the historical question of the Virgin Birth. We have also to determine how far strictly historical considerations can take us; to ask, that is to say, within what limits the problem is historical at all. It will be well first to summarize the conclusions to which we have already come.
(1) The Virgin Birth was not the subject of Apostolic preaching, and apparently was unknown to St. Paul and St. Mark.
(2) St. Luke became acquainted with the tradition for the first time, either when he was in process of writing his Gospel, or immediately afterwards.
(3) The First Gospel presupposes the Virgin Birth tradition, which had probably been known to its readers for some time, sufficiently long for problems to be started and for difficulties to be raised.
(4) No satisfactory proof is forthcoming to show that the Fourth Evangelist definitely rejected the tradition. The most we can say is that his doctrinal sympathies lay in another direction.
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. We have [pg 116] therefore, to recognize that, whether we accept or reject the Virgin Birth, we must do this in full acknowledgement of the fact that among early witnesses to the belief are two outstanding New Testament Writings.
Can we go further than this? To do so we must consider the First and Third Gospels, in respect of their mutual relations and of what they conjointly imply.