The distinction we have drawn is perfectly obvious when it is pointed out. At the same time, one cannot read the literature which treats of the Third Gospel in relation to the Virgin Birth, without feeling how frequently the point has been neglected. The assumption, that, if the Virgin Birth is found to be a later element in the Gospel, we must straightway have recourse to the hypothesis of non‐Lukan interpolation, runs through the writings of critics of all schools like a refrain. Its presence in the arguments of those who deny the Virgin Birth is often sufficiently clear. But the same assumption is also tacitly made by many critics on the other side. It would be ungenerous, and perhaps unwarranted, to suggest that this assumption has prevented many orthodox writers from doing justice to the objections which have been raised against the view that the doctrine was present in the Gospel from the very first. That its effects have been harmful in the interests of dispassionate investigation, is, however, hardly open to question. In the treatment which follows, an attempt will be made to avoid this fallacy, and to keep the discussion within the limits which are proper to itself. The material to be examined is found for the most part in the first two chapters of the Gospel, and consists (1) of certain narratives and passages, which apparently are inconsistent with the view that the author wrote with a knowledge of the Virgin Birth, and (2) of the passage i. 34 f., which implies the doctrine, but is believed by many scholars to be a later insertion. Outside chaps. i and ii, the only passages which call for notice are iii. 22, iii. 23, and iv. 22.