was demanded by two causes.
_First_, there was the desire of depriving the Christians of the proof,
which they derived from the birth at Bethlehem, for the proposition
that He who had appeared was also He who was promised. And, _secondly_,
there was the difficulty of any longer deriving from Bethlehem the
descent of Christ, after, by an ordinance of Hadrian (compare _Reland_,
S. 647), all the Jews had been expelled from Bethlehem and its
neighbourhood. This difficulty was strongly urged against them by
Christian controversialists; compare _Tertullian cont. Jud._ c. xiii.,
"How then can the Ruler be descended from Judah, and how can He come
forth from Bethlehem, as, in the present day, there is not one of
Israel left there, of whose family Christ may be born?" The actual
history furnishes facts and details which only confirm and enlarge
what, in its essential features, we have sketched _a priori_.

1. The reference to the Messiah was, at all times, not the private
opinion of a few scholars, but was publicly received, and acknowledged
with perfect unanimity. As respects the time of Christ, this is obvious
from Matt. ii. 5. According to that passage, the whole Sanhedrim, when
officially interrogated as to the birth-place of the Messiah, supposed
this explanation to be the only correct one. But if this proof required
a corroboration, it might be derived from John vii. 41, 42. In that
passage, several who erroneously supposed Christ to be a native of
Galilee, objected to His being the Messiah on the ground that Scripture
says: [Greek: hoti ek tou spermatos Dabid kai apo Bethleem tes komes,
hopou en Dabid, ho Christos erchetai.] But even after Christ had
appeared, the interest in depriving the Christians at once of the
arguments which, in their controversies, they derived from this
passage, was not sufficiently strong to blind the Jews to the evident
indications contained in this passage, or to induce them to deprive
themselves of the sweet hope which it afforded. This, it is true, would
be the case nevertheless, if we were to rely upon, and believe in the
assertion of _Chrysostom_ (_Hom._ 7, [Pg 492] in Matt. c. 2, in _Nov.
Test._, t. i. p. 80, ed. Frcf.): "Some of them, in their impudence,
assert that this prophecy has a reference to Zerubbabel;" of
_Theodoret_ (on this passage): "The Jews have tried to refer this to
Zerubbabel, which evidently fights against the truth;" of _Theophylact_
(on Matt. ii.); and of _Euthymius Zi