A second passage is Mk. vi. 4, where Jesus declares that a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. The phrase “_among his own kin_”, which both Mt. (xiii. 57) and Lk. (iv. 24) omit, is said to point in the same direction as Mk. iii. 21, 31‐5.(14) A third incident adduced is that recorded in Mk. xii. 35‐7 (Mt. xxii. 41‐6; Lk. xx. 41‐4), where Jesus raises the question, how the Messiah can be at once David’s Son and David’s Lord. “Here again”, writes Mr. Thompson, “Jesus assumes the reality of that human parentage on which His Davidic descent relies.... Thus it appears that on three separate occasions (and there are no others) when Jesus, according to the earliest Gospel, spoke about His birth, He used language naturally compatible with human parentage, and not naturally compatible with anything else” (op. cit., p. 138). It will be seen that these passages raise more than the question whether St. Mark knew of the Virgin Birth. They raise the question of the knowledge of Jesus, and indeed the whole question of the historical character of the Miraculous Conception. Clearly, the question of the knowledge of Jesus is a determinative consideration. Few indeed will care to argue for the Virgin Birth tradition, if it can be proved that Jesus knew nothing of it, but believed Himself to be the son of Joseph. Just for this very reason we ought to be scrupulously careful in treating the question. A scientific inquiry will hesitate to draw an inference which makes further research superfluous. And in the present case hesitation is amply justified. We cannot share Mr. Thompson’s conviction that the words of Jesus acknowledge a natural parentage. (1) Such exegesis must suffer an obvious discount if we find that the _Evangelist_ knew nothing of the Virgin Birth. (2) We cannot be certain that Mary shared the fears and intentions of her children. (3) We do not know the tone in which Jesus spoke, nor can we be sure that He intended to repudiate His family. It may be so; but our opinion on these matters must rest upon what we believe about the Virgin Birth; the evidence is too uncertain to reverse the process. As regards the Evangelist, we may say at once that we could account much more easily for the passages cited, if St. Mark did not know of the doctrine. But it is doubtful if we can say more, so long as we confine ourselves to what St. Mark has actually written. There is little difficulty in the third passage (Mk. xii. 35‐7), since both Mt. and Lk. repeat it without material variation. Nor is there the force claimed in the phrase “among his own kin” (Mk. vi. 4). In any case Mt. has the words “in his own house”, and probably the omission of the former phrase is sufficiently explained by the writer’s tendency to remove redundant expressions in Mk.(15) While in the case of St. Luke, we have to remember that abbreviation is a common feature in his use of Markan material.