udah, while
"Luke" more cautiously has recourse to an assumed younger branch.
Superposed upon this primitive mythologic stratum, we find, in the same
narratives, the account of the descent of the pneuma at the time of
the baptism; and crowning the whole, there are the two accounts of the
nativity which, though conflicting in nearly all their details, agree
in representing the divine pneuma as the father of Jesus. Of these three
stages of Christology, the last becomes entirely irreconcilable with the
first; and nothing can better illustrate the uncritical character of the
synoptists than the fact that the assumed descent of Jesus from David
through his father Joseph is allowed to stand side by side with the
account of the miraculous conception which completely negatives it.
Of this difficulty "Matthew" is quite unconscious, and "Luke," while
vaguely noticing it (iii. 23), proposes no solution, and appears
undisturbed by the contradiction.

Thus far the Christology with which we have been dealing is
predominantly Jewish, though to some extent influenced by Hellenic
conceptions. None of the successive doctrines presented in Paul,
"Matthew," and "Luke" assert or imply the pre-existence of Jesus.
At this early period he was regarded as a human being raised to
participation in certain attributes of divinity; and this was as far as
the dogma could be carried by the Jewish metaphysics. But soon after the
date of our third gospel, a Hellenic system of Christology arose into
prominence, in which the problem was reversed, and Jesus was regarded
as a semi-divine being temporarily lowered to participation in certain
attributes of humanity. For such a doctrine Jewish mythology supplied no
precedents; but the Indo-European mind was familiar with the conception
of deity incarnate in human form, as in the avatars of Vishnu, or
even suffering III the interests of humanity, as in the noble myth of
Prometheus. The elements of Christology pre-existing in the religious
conceptions of Greece, India, and Persia, are too rich and numerous to
be discussed here. A very full account of them is given in Mr. R. W.
Mackay's acute and learned treatise on the "Religious Development of the
Greeks and Hebrews{.}"

It was in Alexandria, where Jewish theology first came into contact with
Hellenic and Oriental ideas, that the way was prepared for the dogma
of Christ's pre-existence. The attempt to rationalize the conception of
deity as embodied in the Jeh