Note 26 — Chapter IV · BIRTH AND EARLIEST EVENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS.

The apocryphal gospels and the traditions of the Fathers still further embellished the birth of Jesus. According to the Protevangelium Jacobi,26 Joseph conducts Mary on an ass to Bethlehem to be taxed. As they approach the city she begins to make now mournful, now joyous gestures, and upon inquiry explains that—(as once in Rebecca’s womb the two hostile nations struggled, Gen. xxv. 23)—she sees two people before her, the one weeping, the other laughing: i.e. according to one explanation, the two portions of Israel, to one of whom the advent of Jesus was set (Luke ii. 34) εἰς πτῶσιν, for the fall, to the other εἰς ἀνάστασιν, for the rising again. According to another interpretation, the two people were the Jews who should reject Jesus, and the heathens who should accept him.27 Soon, however, whilst still without the city—as appears from the context and the reading of several MSS.—Mary is seized with the pains of child-bearing, and Joseph brings her into a cave situated by the road side, where, veiled by a cloud of light, all nature pausing in celebration of the event, she brings her child into the world, and after her delivery is found, by women called to her assistance, still a virgin.28 The legend of the birth of Jesus in a cave was known to Justin29 and to Origen,30 who, in order to reconcile it with the account in Luke that he was laid in a manger, suppose a manger situated within the cave. Many modern commentators agree with them31; whilst others prefer to consider the cave itself as φάτνη, in the sense of foddering-stall.32 For the birth of Jesus in a cave, Justin appeals to the prophecy in Isaiah xxviii. 16: οὗτος (the righteous) οἰκήσει ἐν ὑψηλῷ σπηλαίῳ πέτρας ἱσχυρᾶς. In like manner, for the statement that on the third day the child Jesus, when brought from the cave into the stable, was worshipped by the oxen and the asses, the Historia de Nativitate Mariae,33 etc. refers to Isaiah i. 3: cognovit bos possessorem suum, et asinus praesepe domini sui. In several apocryphas, between the Magi and the women who assist at the birth, the shepherds are forgotten; but they are mentioned in the Evangelium infantiae arabicum,34 where it says, that when they arrived at the cave, and had kindled a fire of rejoicing, the heavenly host appeared to them.