Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/287

Letter 25] of the Fourth Gospel—consistently affirms that, whenever a child is mentioned in the Old Testament as having been born to be a deliverer in fulfilment of a divine promise, that child is "begotten of God." The words of Sarah, he says, indicate that, in reality, "The Lord begot Isaac." God is also spoken of as "the husband of Leah." Zipporah is described as being "pregnant by no mortal." Samuel, in words that contain an implied belief that only his maternal parentage was mortal, is declared to be "perhaps a man," and "born of a human mother." I have already quoted one passage about Isaac; but another asserts that he is to be considered "not the result of generation but the work of the unbegotten." Sometimes the language of Philo is so worded as to convey even to a careful reader the impression that he believed in a literally Miraculous Conception, as for example when he says that "Moses introduces Sarah as being pregnant when alone, and as being visited by God." Elsewhere, he removes the possibility of misunderstanding by saying that "the Scripture is cautious, and describes God as the husband, not of a virgin, but of virginity." None the less, you can easily see how expressions of this kind, current among Jewish philosophers a generation before the time of St. Paul, might be very easily interpreted literally by ordinary people unskilled in these metaphorical subtleties, and especially by Gentile converts asking for a plain answer to a plain question, "What was the parentage of this man whom you call the Son of God?"

In truth the preconceptions of the Gentile converts must have played no small part in preparing the way for the doctrine of the literal Miraculous Conception. The Greeks and Romans who worshipped or honoured Æsculapius son of Apollo, Romulus son of Mars, Hercules son of Jupiter, and a score of other demi-gods, would be quite familiar with the notion of a god or hero