bably it did not. In those writings of his which have come down to
us, he shows himself careless of metaphysical considerations. He is
mainly concerned with exhibiting the unsatisfactory character of Jewish
Christianity, and with inculcating a spiritual morality, to which the
doctrine of Christ's resurrection is made to supply a surpassingly
powerful sanction. But attempts to solve the problem were not long
in coming. According to a very early tradition, of which the obscured
traces remain in the synoptic gospels, Jesus received the pneuma at the
time of his baptism, when the Holy Spirit, or visible manifestation of
the essence of Jehovah, descended upon him and became incarnate in him.
This theory, however, was exposed to the objection that it implied
a sudden and entire transformation of an ordinary man into a person
inspired or possessed by the Deity. Though long maintained by the
Ebionites or primitive Christians, it was very soon rejected by the
great body of the Church, which asserted instead that Jesus had been
inspired by the Holy Spirit from the moment of his conception. From this
it was but a step to the theory that Jesus was actually begotten by or
of the Holy Spirit; a notion which the Hellenic mind, accustomed to
the myths of Leda, Anchises, and others, found no difficulty in
entertaining. According to the Gospel of the Hebrews, as cited by
Origen, the Holy Spirit was the mother of Jesus, and Joseph was his
father. But according to the prevailing opinion, as represented in the
first and third synoptists, the relationship was just the other way.
With greater apparent plausibility, the divine aeon was substituted
for the human father, and a myth sprang up, of which the materialistic
details furnished to the opponents of the new religion an opportunity
for making the most gross and exasperating insinuations. The dominance
of this theory marks the era at which our first and third synoptic
gospels were composed,--from sixty to ninety years after the death of
Jesus. In the luxuriant mythologic growth there exhibited, we may yet
trace the various successive phases of Christologic speculation but
imperfectly blended. In "Matthew" and "Luke" we find the original
Messianic theory exemplified in the genealogies of Jesus, in which,
contrary to historic probability (cf. Matt. xxii. 41-46), but in
accordance with a time-honoured tradition, his pedigree is traced back
to David; "Matthew" referring him to the royal line of J