There are two persons, and two only, from whom we could reasonably
expect to hear the truth about the mystery of the miraculous
Conception--Mary and Joseph; and when we open the Gospels we have,
as everybody knows, two narratives of the Nativity--St. Luke's
and St. Matthew's.

(I) St. Luke, in describing the Nativity, is using an Aramaic
document. There is a great difference in style between the preface,
which is his own, and that of the narrative which follows. It was
an Aramaic document (as Godet, Weiss, and Dr. Sanday agree); but
more than this, as Bishop Gore has pointed out: "It breathes the
spirit of the Messianic hope, before it had received the rude and
crushing blow involved in the rejection of the Messiah."* The
Christology of the passage is pre-Christian: "He shall be great,
and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall
give unto Him the throne of His father David: and He shall reign
over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there
shall be no end."+

--
* Gore, Dissertations, p. 16.
+ St. Luke i. 32, 33.
--
"How can all this," Dr. Chase asks, "be the invention of a believer
in the Messiahship of Jesus when the Jews had rejected Him, and
when the Resurrection and Ascension had raised the conception
of His Messiahship to the height of a spiritual and universal
sovereignty? The Christology of these passages is a striking proof
of their primitive character."# It is indeed difficult to see how
men can read the Benedictus or Magnificat without realizing this.