It is not probable that a Genealogy of such an artificial character was constructed by St. Luke himself. He shows no predilection for symbolic numbers in his writings, and does not indeed appear to observe this feature in the list. (Cf. Sanday, op. cit., p. 202, and contrast Mt. i. 17.) Probably he found the Genealogy ready to hand. The fact that it traces the descent to Adam may have appealed to him, in view of his own bent of mind, and it may have been this feature in the list which led him to incorporate it in his Gospel. The words “the son of God” with which the list ends, may be due to St. Luke himself, “added for the sake of Gentile readers, to remind them of the Divine origin of the human race” (Plummer, ICC., St. Luke, p. 105)· It does not seem likely that the Genealogy in its original form, in the form, that is to say, in which St. Luke found it, contained the words which now stand in iii. 23, “_as was supposed_”. It is generally allowed at the present day that the Genealogies, both in the First Gospel and in the Third, trace the ancestry of Jesus through Joseph. But unlike the Matthaean Genealogy, that in Lk. gives us no reason to suppose that _legal_ descent only is traced in it. It is therefore difficult to believe that its author intended to construct a chain of descent in which the vital link should contain the words, “as was supposed”. These words more naturally give the impression of being a later insertion intended to adapt the Genealogy to a new situation. For our present purpose the important question is, Are these words the words of St. Luke?, and what is still more vital, At what point, if Lukan, were they inserted in the Genealogy,—when it was first incorporated in the Gospel, or at some subsequent time? If from the first they stood where they now stand, it is obvious that the Third Gospel taught the Virgin Birth from the beginning. If, on the other hand, they were added after the Gospel was written (or its earlier chapters), this supports the view that the doctrine is a later element.