THE LATEST APOLOGIA
It is interesting to compare Milman's treatment of the Virgin Birth story with that of one of the few modern theologians who believe in it. Dr. Gore ("Belief in God," pp. 274-282, published in 1921) admits that the Virgin Birth has been the subject of "a flood of controversy." The Bishop, like the Dean, avoids any detailed discussion of the contradictions in the two stories; but the Bishop, unlike the Dean, finds himself compelled to make a semblance of dealing with the principal ones. So very briefly he proceeds to do so.
The reasons for the generally accepted theory, that the early chapters of Luke were written by another author than he who wrote the rest of the Gospel, he deals with thus:-
"It is obvious that when you pass from Luke's preface to his narrative you pass from very good literary Greek to a Greek which is Greek only in the words used. The spirit and method is quite Aramaic. St. Luke, then, is quoting an Aramaic document or story."
So, the Bishop concludes, the story must have been a very old one. But why should Luke quote this particular story from an Aramaic source, and not from the same sources whence he obtained the rest of his Gospel, unless it was unknown to those from whom he learnt the rest of it? And why should he forget his Greek because he is translating from an Aramaic story? And why should the remainder of his Gospel exhibit signs of being written by one who had never heard the story told in its first and second chapters?
It is generally admitted-in fact, it cannot be denied-that the Matthew and Luke stories are contradictory. The Bishop prefers the expression "utterly independent," and states that "this independence of course emphasizes their point of agreement-viz., that Jesus was born at Bethlehem of a virgin mother."
So the very disagreements are said to be a valuable sign of the truth of both stories. If one witness testified that he had seen a murder committed in Piccadilly at midday on January 1, and another that he had seen the same man murdered at Battersea at midnight in June, would the Bishop, on the evidence of those witnesses alone, find an accused person guilty? Would he say that their utter independence emphasized their point of agreement?
As regards the pedigrees of Joseph, the Bishop writes:-
"That two discrepant genealogies should have bean admitted into the Gospels (which was felt as a grave difficulty from the earliest times) is an amazingly clear sign that the Church was not at all given to manipulate documents in order to produce harmony."
So, "without seeking explanations of the discrepancy" (and, incidentally, without discussing, or even mentioning, the incongruity of any genealogy of Joseph and a Virgin Birth story), he thinks "we may be quite content . . . . to recognize that the Jewish families of pure descent were given to constructing genealogies." In other words, the discrepancies being inexplicable and the genealogies themselves irreconcilable with the story which the Bishop would have us believe, he bids us thinly no more about the evidence and the witnesses, but believe the doctrine in spite of their unreliability and their detected misstatements. For contradictions are only worthy of notice as evidence of the church's neglect to edit its documents!
The Dean, in his generation, had the easier task. He did not find it necessary to attempt an apologia.
THE END