So, too, of the stories of the Presentation in the Temple,[133:2] and of the child Jesus at Jerusalem,[133:3] _Joseph is called his father_. Jesus is repeatedly described as _the son of the carpenter_,[133:4] or the _son of Joseph_, without the least indication that the expression is not strictly in accordance with the fact.[133:5]
If his parents fail to understand him when he says, at twelve years old, that he must be about his Father's business;[133:6] if he afterwards declares that he finds no faith among his nearest relations;[133:7] if he exalts his faithful disciples above his _unbelieving mother_ and brothers;[133:8] above all, if Mary and her other sons put down his prophetic enthusiasm to _insanity_;[133:9]--then the untrustworthy nature of these stories of his birth is absolutely certain. If even a _little_ of what they tell us had been true, then _Mary at least_ would have believed in Jesus, and would not have failed so utterly to understand him.[133:10]
The Gospel of Mark--which, in this respect, at least, abides most faithfully by the old apostolic tradition--says not a word about Bethlehem or _the miraculous birth_. The congregation of Jerusalem to which Mary and the brothers of Jesus belonged,[133:11] and over which the eldest of them, James, presided,[133:12] can have known nothing of it; for the later Jewish-Christian communities, the so-called Ebionites, who were descended from the congregation at Jerusalem, called Jesus _the son of Joseph_. Nay, the story that the _Holy Spirit_ was the father of Jesus, must have risen among the _Greeks_, or elsewhere, and not among the first believers, who were Jews, for the Hebrew word for _spirit_ is of _the feminine gender_.[134:1]
The immediate successors of the "congregation at Jerusalem"--to which Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers belonged--were, as we have seen, the Ebionites. Eusebius, the first ecclesiastical historian (born A. D. 264), speaking of the _Ebionites_ (_i. e._ "poor men"), tell us that they believed Jesus to be "_a simple and common man_," born as other men, "_of Mary and her husband_."[134:2]
The views held by the Ebionites of Jesus were, it is said, derived from the Gospel of Matthew, _and what they learned direct from the Apostles_. Matthew had been a hearer of Jesus, a companion of the Apostles, and had seen and no doubt conversed with Mary. When he wrote his Gospel everything was fresh in his mind, and there could be no object, on his part, in writing the life of Jesus, to state falsehoods or omit important truths in order to deceive his countrymen. If what is stated in the _interpolated_ first two chapters, concerning the miraculous birth of Jesus, were true, Matthew would have known of it; and, knowing it, why should he omit it in giving an account of the life of Jesus?[134:3]