W. C. Allen has suggested that St. Paul’s silence may have been due to reasons of prudence. He may have thought that the tradition would prove “a great stumbling‐block to the progress of Christianity, and a continual source of wounded feeling for the reverence of Christians for the Person of their Master” (ICC., St. Mt., p. 20). It is possible that this argument might go some way to explain the absence of direct allusions to the Virgin Birth in St. Paul’s writings. It might cover his failure to employ the tradition as “an argument for Christianity in his preaching to the Gentiles”. But, assuredly, the theory is stretched to breaking‐point, if it is made to cover the absence of the slightest indication that the doctrine was present to St. Paul’s mind. For the most part, St. Paul’s Epistles were not public manifestoes, but private letters, written to Christian communities. Moreover, they are intensely self‐revealing. They permit us to appreciate how much St. Paul knew of the words and deeds of Jesus, and of the events of His earthly life. That they reveal no knowledge of the Virgin Birth is hardly to be explained by a policy of silence. Unless, on other grounds, it can be shown that the tradition was known in Apostolic circles during St. Paul’s lifetime, his silence must be interpreted to mean lack of knowledge concerning it. This conclusion, if established, would not, of course, be fatal to the historical value of the Virgin Birth tradition. Special reasons might be forthcoming to account for the later spread of the belief. The importance of St. Paul’s silence is that it furnishes help in deciding when the belief became current. A further inference, of considerable theological importance, is that the Apostle could build up a mature and consistent Christology, without any reference to, and apparently, thought of the Miraculous Conception. II. Q Q (Quelle, “source”) is the symbol used to denote the main documentary source, upon which the First and Third Evangelists drew, in addition to St. Mark’s Gospel. As regards its character, there is difference of opinion. Some scholars identify it with the Matthaean Logia of which Papias speaks; others regard the latter as an independent collection of Messianic proof‐texts. By some it is thought to have been a Gospel; by others it is looked upon as a collection of the Sayings of Jesus, with a certain element of narrative. Wellhausen dates it later than Mk., but most scholars think that it is earlier, and date it from the sixties and in some cases from the fifties.(5)