We must next briefly consider the question of the historical value of the Synoptic Gospels, so far as it bears upon our immediate problem. It is right to urge that our first aim must be to examine the Virgin Birth tradition without bias or presuppositions of any kind. But it is no less true to say that our estimate of the credibility of the Gospels as a whole must react upon that task in the end. Whether the Synoptic Gospels are but a tissue of legends, or whether they fulfil a good standard of historical value, are questions which cannot be ignored.
For those who claim infallibility, as well as inspiration, for the Evangelists, the problem is at an end: Lk. and Mt. teach the Virgin Birth; the doctrine is therefore true! But for most people to-day that short and easy path is impossible. The Gospels do not claim infallibility, and their contents do not bespeak it. There can be no question that a trained observer of to-day would have described many incidents in the life of Jesus very differently. There are parables which have been unconsciously hardened into miracles, sayings of Jesus which have been misunderstood, stories which have grown amidst the exigencies of controversy and in the process of evangelization. These things are no more than we might expect. They were inevitable; [pg 123] unless we credit the Evangelists with a mechanical preservation from error which finds no justification beyond our own preconceived notions of what a Gospel ought to be. Nor do such admissions rob the Gospels of real worth. On the contrary, they throw their historical value into strong relief. For to perceive that the natural infirmities of the human mind have left their trace upon the Evangelic Records is only to prepare the way for us to recognize how close in the main the Evangelists have kept to the real facts of history. The significant fact is not that they have made mistakes, but that they have made so few that are of real importance. We have only to compare their work with the Apocryphal Gospels to see, in the case of the Evangelists, what restraint the solid facts of history exercised upon the natural tendencies of their minds. Jülicher, who does not hesitate to say that what the Evangelists relate is “a mixture of truth and poetry” (INT., Eng. Tr., p. 368), nevertheless declares that “the Synoptic Gospels are of priceless value, not only as books of religious edification, but also as authorities for the history of Jesus” (ib., p. 371). “The true merit of the Synoptists”, he says, “is that, in spite of the poetic touches they employ, they did not repaint, but only handed on, the Christ of history”'
What bearing has such an estimate of the Gospels upon the historic truth of the Virgin Birth tradition? Obviously, it does not save us from the trouble of testing the tradition by such tests as we can apply. That the tradition has found a place in the New Testament is not in itself a certificate of truth. The Evangelists certainly believed the tradition; they were intellectually honest; but they may have been mistaken. The ultimate question is the truth of the authorities upon which they rested and of the belief they reflect. Their importance as writers is that they countersign the tradition with the high authority they possess. But, however high their authority, it is not that of infallibility. The truth of the Gospels is the truth of their sources. As regards the Virgin Birth tradition, the sources cannot be traced back to Mk. and Q, the two primary Synoptic documents, but to the later tradition of the Christian Church, at the time when Mt. and Lk. were written. The First and Third Evangelists have endorsed that tradition; the problem of the Virgin Birth is whether they were right. Nothing that we have [pg 124] said in this section must be construed to prejudge that question. That the Evangelists have accepted the tradition, for us unquestionably gives it a higher value; but it is not a determinative value. The main result is to make yet clearer the final issue, which is, we repeat, whether the story which the Evangelists endorse can be traced back to an authoritative source. Has it the sanction of Mary or of those who may be supposed to have known her mind?
IV. The Question of Alternative Theories
In many discussions of the Virgin Birth, the question of Alternative Theories occupies a prominent place. Our purpose in the present section is to ask what place it may legitimately be given. Has it the importance which is often claimed?
Attention has frequently been called to the inability of those who reject the Virgin Birth to agree upon an alternative theory. The failure is patent. Harnack and Lobstein, on the one side, plead for a Jewish-Christian origin for the doctrine, in which the influence of Isa. vii. 14 played a decisive part; on the other side, Soltau, Schmiedel, Usener, and others, trace the tradition to the effect of non-Christian myths. Not only so; the advocates of each theory specifically reject the other. Lobstein, for example, thinks that “it would be rash to see direct imitations or positive influences” in the analogies “between the Biblical myth and legends of Greek or Eastern origin”. While there was mutual action between the worship or doctrine of paganism and advancing Christianity, “nothing warrants historical criticism in considering the tradition of the miraculous birth of Christ as merely the outcome of elements foreign to the religion of Biblical revelation” (The Virgin Birth of Christ, p. 76). Schmiedel, on the other hand, rejects the Jewish-Christian origin of the tradition, “Nor would Isa. vii. 14 have been sufficient to account for the origin of such a doctrine unless the doctrine had commended itself on its own merits. The passage was adduced only as an afterthought, in confirmation.... Thus the origin of the idea of a virgin birth is to be sought in Gentile-Christian circles” (EB., col. 2963 f.).[106]
It is not strange, perhaps, that some writers have pressed these [pg 125] contradictions into the service of Apologetics. Thus, for example, Dr. Orr does not scruple to say: “As in the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrim, ‘neither so did their witness agree together’ ” (op. cit., p. 152). He even presents the remarkable argument that Dr. Cheyne's theory “gives the death-stroke to all the theories that have gone before it”, and yet is itself “absolutely baseless” (ib., p. 178). Sweet's argument is more cautiously introduced. He recognizes that the contention has its limits. He instances Bossuet's argument against the Reformation drawn from the Variations of Protestantism and G. H. Lewes's inference from the History of Philosophy that philosophy is impossible (op. cit., p. 299). But, having said this, Sweet argues that the critics agree in nothing “save dislike and depreciation of the documents”, and that “their theories are mutually destructive”.
It appears to us that this line of argument is open to serious objection; it is unfair, and it is unwise.
It is unfair, because it is neither uncommon nor unreasonable to find men agreed in rejecting a tradition or belief, and yet at variance in respect of theories of origin. It is one thing to say that a belief is untrue; quite another thing to account for its existence. That men agree upon the one point is more significant than that they differ upon the other. The view we have mentioned is unwise, because its triumph may be short-lived. There is always room for the emergence of a better alternative theory, which shall combine the excellences, and avoid the weaknesses, of pioneer attempts.