of the name of the expected child, and the giving him a full detail of the reasons why he should be so called (Mat. i. 21), would have been wholly superfluous had the angel (according to Luke i. 31) already indicated this name to Mary.  Still more incomprehensible is the conduct of the betrothed parties, according to this arrangement of events.  Had Mary been visited by an angel, who had made known to her an approaching supernatural pregnancy, would not the first impulse of a delicate woman have been to hasten to impart to her betrothed the import of the divine message, and by this means to anticipate the humiliating discovery of her situation, and an injurious suspicion on the part of her affianced husband?  But exactly this discovery Mary allows Joseph to make from others, and thus excites suspicion; for it is evident that the expression [Greek:  heurethae en gastri echousa] (Mat. i. 18) signifies a discovery made independent of any communication on Mary’s part, and it is equally clear that in this manner only does Joseph obtain the knowledge of her situation, since his conduct is represented as the result of that discovery [Greek:  (euriskesthai)]” ("Life of Jesus,” v. i., pp. 146, 147).

Strauss gives a curious list, showing the gradual growth of the myth relating to the birth of Jesus (we may remark No. 3 is distinctly out of place when referred to Olshausen:  it should be referred to the early Fathers, from whom Olshausen derived it):—­

“1.  Contemporaries of Jesus and composers of the genealogies:  Joseph and Mary man and wife—­Jesus the offspring of their marriage.

“2.  The age and authors of our histories of the birth of Jesus:  Mary and Joseph betrothed only; Joseph having no participation in the conception of the child, and, previous to his birth, no conjugal connection with Mary.

“3.  Olshausen and others:  subsequent to the birth of Jesus, Joseph, though then the husband of Mary, relinquishes his matrimonial rights.

“4.  Epiphanius, Protevangelium, Jacobi, and others:  Joseph a decrepit old man, no longer to be thought of as a husband; the children attributed to him are of a former marriage.  More especially it is not as a bride and wife that he receives Mary; he takes her merely under his guardianship.

“5.  Protevang., Chrysostom, and others:  Mary’s virginity was not only not destroyed by any subsequent births of children by Joseph, it was not in the slightest degree impaired by the birth of Jesus.

“6.  Jerome:  Not Mary only, but Joseph also, observed an absolute virginity, and the pretended brothers of Jesus were not his sons, hut merely cousins to Jesus” ("Life of Jesus,” vol. i., p. 188).

Thus we see how a myth gradually forms itself, bit after bit being added to it, until the story is complete.