Note 111 — Chapter III · ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS.—ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER.—VISIT OF MARY TO ELIZABETH.

These are farther examples of the uncritical proceeding which pretends to disengage the mythical and poetical from the narrative, by plucking away a few twigs and blossoms of that growth, whilst it leaves the very root of the mythus undisturbed as purely historical. In our narrative the principal mythical feature (the remainder forms only its adjuncts) is precisely that which the above-mentioned authors, in their pretended mythical explanations, retain as historical: namely, the visit of Mary to the pregnant Elizabeth. For, as we have already seen, the main tendency of the first chapter of Luke is to magnify Jesus by connecting the Baptist with him from the earliest possible point in a relation of inferiority. Now this object could not be better attained than by bringing about a meeting, not in the first instance of the sons, but of the mothers in reference to their sons, during their pregnancy, at which meeting some occurrence which should prefigure the future relative positions of these two men should take place. Now the more apparent the existence of a dogmatical motive as the origin of this visit, the less probability is there that it had an historical foundation. With this principal feature the other details are connected in the following order:—The visit of the two women must be represented as possible and probable by the feature of family relationship between Mary and Elizabeth (v. 36), which would also give a greater suitability to the subsequent connexion of the sons. Further, a visit, so full of import, made precisely at that time, must have taken place by special divine appointment; therefore it is an angel who refers Mary to her cousin. At the visit the subservient position of the Baptist to Jesus is to be particularly exhibited;—this could have been effected by the mother, as indeed it is, in her address to Mary, but it were better if possible that the future Baptist himself should give a sign. The mutual relation of Esau and Jacob had been prefigured by their struggles and position in their mother’s womb (Gen. xxv. 22 ff.). But, without too violent an offence against the laws of probability, an ominous movement would not be attributed to the child prior to that period of her pregnancy at which the motion of the fœtus is felt; hence the necessity that Elizabeth should be in the sixth month of her pregnancy when Mary, in consequence of the communication of the angel, set out to visit her cousin (v. 36). Thus, as Schleiermacher remarks,111 the whole arrangement of times had reference to the particular circumstance the author desired to contrive—the joyous responsive movement of the child in his mother’s womb at the moment of Mary’s entrance. To this end only must Mary’s visit be delayed till after the fifth month; and the angel not appear to her before that period.