re is no evidence whatever in the Jewish history of the seven
hundred years between Isaiah and Jesus, that the Hebrews regarded
Isaiah's prophecy as relating to the expected Messiah, but on the
contrary it was thought to relate to a minor event in their history.
As a Jewish writer has truly said, "Throughout the wide extent of
Jewish literature there is not a single passage which can bear the
construction that the Messiah should be miraculously conceived." Other
writers along this line have stated the same thing, showing that the
idea of a Virgin Birth was foreign to the Jewish mind, the Hebrews
having always respected and highly honored married life and human
parentage, regarding their children as blessings and gifts from God.

Another writer in the Church has said, "Such a fable as the birth of
the Messiah from a _virgin_ could have arisen anywhere else easier
than among the Jews; their doctrine of the divine unity placed an
impassable gulf between God and the world; their high regard for the
marriage relation," etc., would have rendered the idea obnoxious.
Other authorities agree with this idea, and insist that the idea of
the Virgin Birth never originated in Hebrew prophecy, but was injected
into the Christian Doctrine from pagan sources, toward the end of the
first century, and received credence owing to the influx of converts
from the "heathen" peoples who found in the idea a correspondence with
their former beliefs. As Rev. R.J. Campbell, minister of the City
Temple, London, says in his "New Theology," "No New Testament passage
whatever is directly or indirectly a prophecy of the virgin birth of
Jesus. To insist upon this may seem to many like beating a man of
straw, but if so, the man of straw still retains a good deal of
vitality."

Let us now turn to the second account of the Virgin Birth, in the
Gospels--the only other place that it is mentioned, outside of the
story in Matthew, above considered. We find this second mention in
Luke 1:26-35, the verses having been quoted in the first part of this
lesson.

There has been much dispute regarding the real authorship of the
Gospel commonly accredited to Luke, but it is generally agreed upon by
Biblical scholars that it was the latest of the first three Gospels
(generally known as "the Synoptic Gospels"). It is also generally
agreed upon, by such scholars, that the author, whoever he may have
been, was not an eye witness of the events in the Life of Christ. Some