d from heaven; but the author is far from endeavouring to
work out this recognition from cosmological, philosophical
considerations. According to the Evangelist, Jesus proves himself to be
the Messiah, the Son of God, in virtue of his self-testimony, and
because he has brought a full knowledge of God and of life--purely
supernatural divine blessings (Cf. besides, and partly in opposition,
Holtzmann, i.d. Ztschr. f. wissensch. Theol. 1893). The author's
peculiar world of theological ideas, is not, however, so entirely
isolated in the early Christian literature as appears on the first
impression. If, as is probable, the Ignatian Epistles are independent of
the Gospel of John, further, the Supper prayer in the Didache, finally,
certain mystic theological phrases in the Epistle of Barnabas, in the
second epistle of Clement, and in Hermas, a complex of Theologoumena may
be put together, which reaches back to the primitive period of the
Church, and may be conceived as the general ground for the theology of
John. This complex has on its side a close connection with the final
development of the Jewish Hagiographic literature under Greek
influence.]

[Footnote 93: The Jewish religion, especially since the (relative) close
of the canon, had become more and more a religion of the Book.]

[Footnote 94: Examples of both in the New Testament are numerous. See,
above all, Matt. I. 11. Even the belief that Jesus was born of a Virgin
sprang from Isaiah VII. 14. It cannot, however, be proved to be in the
writings of Paul (the two genealogies in Matt. and Luke directly exclude
it: according to Dillmann, Jahrb. f. protest. Theol. p. 192 ff. Luke I.
34, 35 would be the addition of a redactor); but it must have arisen
very early, as the Gentile Christians of the second century would seem
to have unanimously confessed it (see the Romish Symbol, Ignatius,
Aristides, Justin, etc.) For the rest, it was long before theologians
recognised in the Virgin birth of Jesus more than fulfilment of a
prophecy, viz., a fact of salvation. The conjecture of Usener, that the
idea of the birth from a Virgin is a heathen myth which was received by
the Christians, contradicts the entire earliest development of Christian
tradition which is free from heathen myths, so far as these had not
already been received by wide circles of Jews, (above all, certain
Babylonian and Persian Myths), which in the case of that idea is not
demonstrable. Besides, it is in point of