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Mat_1:18. Τοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ] provided with the article, and placed first with reference to Mat_1:16. “The origin of Jesus Christ, however, was as follows.”
μνηστευθείσης ] On the construction, see Buttmann, neut. Gram. p. 270 f. [E. T. 315]. On the betrothal, after which the bride still remained in the house of her parents without any closer intercourse with the bridegroom until she was brought home, see Maimonides, Tract. àÄéùÑåÉú ; Saalschütz, M. R. p. 728 ff.; Keil, Archaeol. § 109.
γάρ ] explicative, namely, see Klotz, ad Devar. p. 234 ff.; Baeumlein, Partik. p. 86 ff.
πρὶν ἤ ] belongs as much as the simple πρίν to the Ionic, and to the middle age of the Attic dialect; see Elmsley, ad Eur. Med. 179; Reisig, ad Soph. Oed. Colm. 36; it is, however, already found alone in Xenophon (Kühner, ad Anab. iv. 5. 1), as also in Thucydides, v. 61. 1, according to our texts (see, however, Krüger in loc.), but is foreign to the Attic poets. With the aorist infinitive, it denotes that the act is fully accomplished. Klotz, ad Devar. p. 726. Comp. Act_2:20; Act_7:2; Mar_14:30; Joh_4:49; Tob_14:15.
συνελθεῖν ] Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Erasmus, Maldonatus, Jansen, Bengel, Elsner, Loesner, and others understand it of cohabitation in marriage. The usage of the language is not opposed to this. See the passages of Philo in Loesner, Obss. p. 2; Joseph. Antt. vii. 9. 5; Diodorus Siculus, iii. 57, Test. XII. Patr. pp. 600, 701. Just as correct, however, in a linguistic point of view (Kypke, Obss. p. 1 f.), and at the same time more appropriate to the reference to Mat_1:20; Mat_1:24, is the explanation of others (Luther, Beza, Er. Schmid, Lightfoot, Grotius, Kypke, Kuinoel, Fritzsche, de Wette, Arnoldi, Bleek) of the bringing home and of domestic intercourse. Others (Calvin, Wetstein, Rosenmüller, Olshausen) combine both explanations. But the author in the present case did not conceive the cohabitation in marriage to be connected with the bringing home, see Mat_1:25.
εὑρέθη ] Euth. Zigabenus (comp. Chrysostom and Theophylact) appropriately renders it: ἐφάνη . Εὑρέθη δὲ εἶπε διὰ τὸ ἀπροσδόκῃτον . Εὑρεθῆναι is nowhere equivalent to εἶναι . See Winer, p. 572 [E. T. 769].
ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχειν or φέρειν , to be pregnant, very often in the LXX., also in Greek writers, Herodotus, iii. 32, Vit. Hom. ii.; Plato, Legg. vii. p. 792 E.
ἐκ πν . ἁγ .] without the article, see Winer, p. 116 [E. T. 151]. øåÌäÇ éÀäÉåÈä or øåÌçÇ ÷ÉøÆùÑ éÀäÉåÈä , πνεῦμα , πν . ἅγιον , πν . τοῦ Θεοῦ , is the personal divine principle of the higher, religious-moral, and eternal life, which works effectually for the true reign of God, and especially for Christianity, which rules in believers, and sanctifies them for the Messiah’s kingdom, and which, in reference to the intellect, is the knowledge of divine truth, revelation, prophecy, etc., in reference to morals is the consecration of holiness and power in the moral life of the new birth with its virtues and world-subduing dispositions, bringing about, in particular, the truth and fervour of prayer, the pledge of everlasting life. Here the πνεῦμα ἅγιον is that which produces the human existence of Christ, through whose action—which so appeared only in this, the single case of its kind—the origin of the embryo in the womb of Mary was causally produced ( ἐκ ) in opposition to human generation, so that the latter is thereby excluded. It is not, however, that divine power of the Spirit (Luk_1:35), which only concurs in the action of human generation and makes it effectual, as in the generation of Isaac and of the Baptist, and, as the idea is expressed in the Sohar Gen. (comp. Schmidt in the Bibl. f. Krit. v. Exeg. d. N. T. I. p. 101): “Omnes illi, qui, sciunt se sanctificare in hoc mundo, ut par est (ubi generant), attrahunt super id Spiritum sanctitatis et exeuntes ab eo illi vocantur filii Jehovae.” Theodore of Mopsuestia (apud Fred. Fritzsche, Theodori Mops, in N. T. Commentar. p. 2): ὥσπερ γὰρ ( τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον ) κοινωνόν ἐστι πατρί τε καὶ υἱῷ εἰς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς δημιουργίαν , οὕτω καὶ τὸ ἐκ τῆς παρθένου τοῦ σωτῆρος σῶμα κατεσκεύασε .
ἐκ πνεύμ . ἅγ ., moreover, is added, not as an object to εὑρέθη , but from the historical standpoint, to secure at once a correct judgment upon the ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα ( ἐθεράπευσε τὸν λόγον , Euth. Zigabenus).
REMARK.
As regards the conception of Jesus by a virgin, we have to notice the following points in their exegetical bearing:—(1) Mary was either a daughter of David (the common view), or she was not. See on Mat_1:17, Remark 2. In the first case, Jesus, whose divine generation is assumed, was, as Matthew and Luke relate, a descendant of David, although not through an unbroken line of male succession, but in such a way that His mother alone conveyed to Him the Davidic descent. But if Mary were not a daughter of David, then, by the divine conception, the possibility of Jesus being a descendant of David is simply excluded; because, on that view, the Davidite Joseph remains out of consideration, and this would be in contradiction not only with the statements of prophecy, but also with the unanimous testimony of the N. T. (2) As it is nowhere said or hinted in the N. T. that Mary was a descendant of David, we must assume that this is tacitly presupposed in the narratives of Matthew and Luke. But as a consequence of this supposition, the genealogical trees would lose all their importance, in so far as they are said to prove that Jesus was υἱὸς Δαυείδ (Mat_1:1). Joseph’s descent from David, upon which in reality nothing would turn, would be particularly pointed out; while Mary’s similar descent, upon which everything would depend, would remain unmentioned as being a matter of course, and would not be, even once, incidentally alluded to in what follows, say by θυγάτηρ Δαυείδ , as Joseph is at once addressed in Mat_1:20 as υἱὸς Δαυείδ . (3) Paul and Peter (Rom_1:3-4; Act_2:30 : ἐκ σπέρματος , ἐκ καρποῦ τῆς ὀσφύος ; comp. 2Ti_2:8) designate the descent of Jesus from David in such a way, that without calling in the histories of the birth in the first and third Gospels, there is no occasion for deriving the Davidic descent from the mother, to the interruption of the male line of succession, for which Gal_4:4[358] also affords neither cause nor justification. Nowhere, moreover, where Paul speaks of the sending of the Son of God, and of His human yet sinless nature (2Co_5:21; Rom_8:3; Php_2:6 f.), does he betray any indication that he presupposes that divine conception.[359] (4) Just as little does John, whose expression ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο , although he was so intimate with Jesus and His mother, leaves the question as to the how of this ἐγένετο without a direct answer, indeed; but also, where Jesus is definitely designated by others as Joseph’s son, contributes no word of correction (Joh_1:46, Joh_6:42; comp. Joh_7:27),—nay, relates the self-designation “Son of a man” from Jesus’ own mouth (see on Joh_5:27), where the context does not allow us to refer ἀνθρώπου to His mother. (5) It is certain, further, that neither in Nazareth (Mat_13:55; Mar_6:3; Luk_4:22), nor in Capernaum (Joh_6:42), nor elsewhere in the neighbourhood (Joh_1:46), do we meet with such expressions, in which a knowledge of anything extraordinary in the descent of Jesus might be recognised; and in keeping with this also is the unbelief of His own brethren (Joh_7:3),—nay, even the behaviour and bearing of Mary (Mar_3:21; Mar_3:31; comp. on Mat_12:46-50; see also Luk_2:50 f.). (6) We have still to observe, that what is related in Mat_1:18 would obviously have greatly helped to support the suspicion and reproach of illegitimate birth, and yet nowhere throughout the N. T. is there found the slightest whisper of so hostile a report.[360] If, moreover, in the narratives of the first and third evangelists, angelic appearances occur, which, according to the connection of the history, mutually exclude each other (Strauss, I. p. 165 ff.; Keim, Gesch. Jesu, I. p. 362 ff.),—namely, in Matthew, after the conception, in order to give an explanation to Joseph; in Luke, before the conception, to make a disclosure to Mary,—nevertheless that divine conception itself might remain, and in and of itself be consistent therewith, if it were elsewhere certainly attested in the N. T., or if it could be demonstrated as being an undoubted presupposition, belonging to the conception of Christ as the Son of God.
[358] Certainly, in Rom_1:4, Paul expressly refers Christ’s relation to God as His Son to His πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης , not to His σάρξ . See on Rom_1:3. The supernatural generation is not a logical consequence of his system, as Weiss, bibl. Theol. p. 315, thinks. If Paul had conceived the propagation of sin as taking place by means of generation (which is probable, although he has not declared himself upon the point), he cannot, in so thinking,—after the history of the fall (2Co_11:3), and after Psa_51:7,—have regarded the woman’s share as a matter of indifference.
[359] We should all the more have expected this origin to have been stated by Paul, that he, on the one side, everywhere ascribes to Christ true and perfect humanity (Rom_5:15; 1Co_15:21, al.), and, on the other, so often gives prominence to His elevation above sinful humanity; for which reason he also designates the σάρξ of Christ—which was human, and yet was not, as in other men, the seat of sin—as ὁμοίωμα σαρκὸς ἁμαρτίας (Rom_8:3), with which Heb_2:14; Heb_2:17 also agrees.
[360] The generation (nay, according to Luk_2:5, the birth also) before the marriage was concluded is necessarily connected with faith in the divine generation. The reproach of illegitimate birth was not raised by the Jews until a later time (Origen, c. Celsum, 1:28), as a hostile and base inference from the narratives of Matthew and Luke. Thilo, ad Cod. Apocr. I. p. 526 f. They called Jesus a Mamser [i.e. one born in incest]. See Eisenmenger, Entdeckt. Judenth. I p. 105 ff.
Taking into account all that precedes, it is clear, in the first place, that the doctrine which became dominant in the church, in opposition to all Ebionitism, of the birth of Jesus Christ from a virgin, is indeed fully justified on exegetical grounds by the preliminary history in Matthew and Luke; but that, secondly, apart from the preliminary history, no glimpse of this doctrine appears anywhere in the N. T.,—nay, that elsewhere in the N. T. it has to encounter considerable difficulties of an exegetical kind, without, however, breaking down before physiological or theological impossibilities (in answer to Strauss). Exegetically, therefore, the proposition of faith, that in Jesus the only-begotten Son of God entered as man into humanity, cannot be made to depend upon the conception, which is recorded only in Matthew and Luke,[361] but must also, irrespective of the latter, remain fast and immutable in its full and real meaning of the incarnation of the divine Logos, which took place, and takes place, in no other; so that that belief cannot be made to depend on the manner in which Jesus was conceived, and in which the Spirit of God acted at the very commencement of His human existence. And this not merely for exegetical, but also for dogmatical reasons, since the incarnation of the Son of God is by no means to be subjected to the rule of universal sinful origin (Joh_3:6) in fallen humanity (by which His whole redemptive work would be reduced to nothing); and which indeed must also—considering the supernatural conception—be conceived as exempted on the mother’s side from this rule of traducianism.[362]
[361] The comparison with heathen παρθενογενεῖς , called παρθένιοι in Homer, such as Buddha, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Plato, Romulus (see the literature in Hase, Leb. Jesu, § 27 a), should have been here left entirely out of consideration,—partly because they belong, for the most part, to an entirely foreign sphere of life, have no analogies in the N. T., and amount to apotheoses ex eventu (Origen, c. Celsum, 1:37); partly because so many of the παρθένιοι are only the fruits of the lust of the gods (see Homer, Ilias, 16:180 ff.). Far too much weight has been attached to them, and far too much has been transferred to them from the Christian idea of the Son of God, when the thought is found expressed in them that nothing can come forth by the way of natural generation which would correspond to the ideal of the human mind, Olshausen, Neander, Krabbe, Schmid, bibl. Theol. I. p. 43; Döllinger, Heidenth. u. Judenth. p. 256.
[362] Comp. Schleiermacher, Christl. Glaube, § 97, p. 64 ff., and Leben Jesu, p. 60 ff. Too much is asserted, when (see also Gess, Pers. Christ. p. 218 f.) the limitation is imposed upon the divine counsel and will, that the freedom of Jesus from original sin must necessarily presuppose the divine conception in the womb of the Virgin. The incarnation of the Logos is, once for all, a mystery of a peculiar kind; the fact is as certain and clear of itself as the manner in which it took place by way of human birth is veiled in mystery, and is in no way determinable à priori. This is also in answer to Philippi’s assertion (Dogmatik, IV. 1, p. 153, ed. 2), that the idea of the God-man stands or falls with that of the birth from a virgin,—a dangerous but erroneous dilemma. Dangerous, because Mary was not free from original sin; erroneous, because God could also have brought about the incarnation of the Logos without original sin in some other way than by a birth from a virgin.