return for which he is
to be exalted even above the archangels. A similar view is taken in
"Hebrews"; and it is probable that to the growing favour with which
these doctrines were received, we owe the omission of the miraculous
conception from the gospel of "Mark,"--a circumstance which has misled
some critics into assigning to that gospel an earlier date than
to "Matthew" and "Luke." Yet the fact that in this gospel Jesus is
implicitly ranked above the angels (Mark xiii. 32), reveals a later
stage of Christologic doctrine than that reached by the first and third
synoptists; and it is altogether probable that, in accordance with the
noticeable conciliatory disposition of this evangelist, the supernatural
conception is omitted out of deference to the Gnosticizing theories of
"Colossians" and "Philippians," in which this materialistic doctrine
seems to have had no assignable place. In "Philippians" especially, many
expressions seem to verge upon Docetism, the extreme form of Gnosticism,
according to which the human body of Jesus was only a phantom.
Valentinus, who was contemporary with the Pauline writers of the second
century, maintained that Jesus was not born of Mary by any process
of conception, but merely passed through her, as light traverses a
translucent substance. And finally Marcion (A. D. 140) carried the
theory to its extreme limits by declaring that Jesus was the pure Pneuma
or Spirit, who contained nothing in common with carnal humanity.

The pseudo-Pauline writers steered clear of this extravagant doctrine,
which erred by breaking entirely with historic tradition, and was
consequently soon condemned as heretical. Their language, though
unmistakably Gnostic, was sufficiently neutral and indefinite to allow
of their combination with earlier and later expositions of dogma, and
they were therefore eventually received into the canon, where they
exhibit a stage of opinion midway between that of Paul and that of the
fourth gospel.

For the construction of a durable system of Christology, still further
elaboration was necessary. The pre-existence of Jesus, as an emanation
from God, in whom were summed up the attributes of the pleroma or full
scale of Gnostic aeons, was now generally conceded. But the relation of
this pleroqma to the Godhead of which it was the visible manifestation,
needed to be more accurately defined. And here recourse was had to
the conception of the "Logos,"--a notion which Philo had borrowed