The last passage (ii. 48) differs from the rest, and should not be pressed. It is reasonable to urge that, in addressing the boy Jesus, Mary would naturally speak in this way, even if the Virgin Birth is historically true; and that it is conceivable that St. Luke, while himself holding the doctrine, should have been so far faithful to his sources as to preserve Mary’s words in this form. In this respect the four passages which remain are quite different, _in that they are expressions which St. Luke himself employs_. This gives them a distinctive character which has often been overlooked. It has been too frequently assumed that these passages are of like character to those which belong to the story of Jesus at the synagogue at Nazareth. In this incident the Jews speak of Jesus as “the carpenter’s son” (Mt. xiii. 55. Cf. Mk. vi. 3, “the carpenter, the son of Mary”). St. Luke, who records the same incident, but perhaps follows a special source of his own (Lk. iv. 16 ff.), gives the question in the form, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” With regard to these passages, it is open to any one to urge that in them we have instances of the accuracy with which the Gospels record contemporary beliefs, which were natural but erroneous. The language of the Jews, it may be said, is justified by ignorance of the true facts, and its retention by Evangelists who teach the Virgin Birth is evidence of their fidelity to detail. This is a reasonable argument, and it cannot be gainsaid, until the whole question has been faced (again, as in the case of ii. 48). But the four passages in Lk. ii stand upon an entirely different footing. In these passages it is not a question of what is justified by ignorance, but of what is possible in the light of knowledge. Assuming that we have to do with a writer who believes Jesus to be the son of Mary by the direct operation of the Holy Ghost, we have to ask whether, believing this, and having (on this assumption) just stated this very thing, that writer would be at all likely to speak of “the parents”, “his parents”, and, indeed, to use an expression so definite as “his father and his mother”. In short, granting that St. Luke has recorded the language of the Nazarenes, can we suppose that he would have used the same language himself in the light of the Virgin Birth? It is not as if these modes of speech were indispensable. The words “Joseph and Mary” could easily have been employed, and in this way all danger of ambiguity removed. In the face of a fact so unique as a virgin birth, one would expect an effort to avoid ambiguity; all the more, in the case of a writer, with whose apt choice of words and delicacy of expression scholars like Ramsay and Harnack have made us familiar.