[407] Dr. Thorburn (Mythical Interpretation, p. 34) sees fit to argue that the Christian phatnê was a "totally different thing" from the pagan liknon (that is, if he argues anything at all). He carefully ignores the sculptures which show them to be the same. (C.M. 192, 307.) [408] Cp. Soltau on the appeal made by the story (Birth of Jesus Christ, Eng. tr. p. 4). "What is there," he asks, "that can be compared with this in the religious literature of any other people?" The critic should compare the literature of Krishnaism. [409] Ludwig Conrady argues (Die Quelle der kanonischen Kindheitsgeschichte Jesus', 1900, p. 272 sq.) that the stories of the Infancy in the Apocryphal Gospels, which appear to be at that point the sources for Matthew and Luke, probably derive from Egypt, where the hieratic ideals of virginity were high. This may be, but the evidence is very imperfect. [410] The precedents of the divine paternity of Alexander and Augustus, stressed by Soltau, would surely be inadequate. Heathen emperors would hardly be "types" for early Christians. [411] The Rev. Dr. Thorburn idly argues (Mythical Interpretation, pp. 38-39) that such stories do not affirm parthenogenesis where a Goddess or a woman is described as married. As if Mary were not in effect so described! But in Greek mythology we have the special case of the spouse-goddess Hêrê, who is repeatedly represented as conceiving without congress. (C.M. 295.) [412] P.C. 166, note 3. [413] C.M. 99; P.C. 165. [414] C.M. 191 sq., 306 sq. [415] Encyc. Bib. art. Moses, col. 3206. [416] C.M. 298. [417] Id. 167 sq. [418] C.M. 168-9. Cp. Dr. G. Contenau, La déesse nue Babylonienne, 1914, pp. 7, 15, 16, 57, 78, 80, 101, 129, 131. [419] C.M. 180-205. [420] Soltau argues not only that the belief in the Virgin Birth "could not have originated in Palestine; anyhow, it could never have taken its rise in Jewish circles," but that "the idea that the Holy Spirit begat Jesus can have no other than a Hellenic origin" (Birth of Jesus Christ, Eng. trans, pp. 47-48). He forgets the "sons of God" in Genesis vi, 2. The stories of the births of Isaac and Samson inferribly had an original form less decorous than the Biblical. [421] It is doubly edifying to remember that the writer who pretends to find in avowed analogies of divine names, functions, and epithets a theory of a philological "equation," himself insists on finding in every New Testament naming of a Jesus, and every pagan allusion to a "Chrestus" or "Christus," a biographical allusion to Jesus of Nazareth. For Dr. Conybeare, the Jesus of the Apocalypse and the "Chrestus" of Suetonius are testimonies to the existence of Jesus the son of Mary and Joseph. The very absurdity he seeks to find in the myth-theory is inherent in his own method. [422] C.M. 301-2 and refs.