Chapter III · St. Luke and the Virgin Birth

While, in the preceding chapter, we concluded that the Virgin Birth is a later stratum in the Third Gospel, we were unable to say to whose hand its presence is due. There was nothing to show that St. Luke could never at any time have known of the doctrine, but only that he could not have known of it at the time when he first drafted and wrote his Gospel. We are free, then, to make a new beginning, and to ask: Did St. Luke teach the Virgin Birth?

The question is most conveniently treated by discussing the authorship of Lk. i. 34 f. As we have seen, this is the crucial passage. If we can believe St. Luke himself to have written these verses, we must also attribute to his pen the words, “as was supposed” in iii. 23; in a word, we must conclude that he taught the Virgin Birth of Jesus, and we must leave the question, how this result is to be co-ordinated with those reached in the previous chapter, to be considered later.

That St. Luke and no other did write these verses, is the considered view of the present writer. There are two lines of argument which converge in this direction. The first argument is textual, but it is more than a matter of weighing documents; the second is linguistic and stylistic. Neither is completely conclusive in itself, and, when taken together, they do not admit of a result so stringent as rigid demonstration. They are complementary each to the other. Either would be weakened in force in the absence of the other, but their agreement is sufficient to establish a result for which a very high degree of probability can justly be claimed.