Note 67 — Chapter III · ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS.—ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER.—VISIT OF MARY TO ELIZABETH.

Gabler, in a review of Paulus’s Commentary67 has fully exposed, with commensurate plainness of speech, the transaction which lies concealed under this explanation. It is impossible, says he, to imagine any other interpretation of Paulus’s view than that some one passed himself off for the angel Gabriel, and as the pretended Messenger of God remained with Mary in order that she might become the mother of the Messiah. What! asks Gabler, is Mary, at the very time she is betrothed, to become pregnant by another, and is this to be called an innocent holy action, pleasing to God and irreproachable? Mary is here pourtrayed as a pious visionary, and the pretended messenger of heaven as a deceiver, or he too is a gross fanatic. The reviewer most justly considers such an assertion as revolting, if contemplated from the christian point of view; if from the scientific, as at variance both with the principles of interpretation and of criticism.