As regards the passages which connect Jesus with Nazareth and Galilee, it is not necessary to infer that the writer looked upon the town as the birthplace of our Lord. His silence regarding Bethlehem is strange, but it does not compel us to conclude that he is rejecting the tradition bound up with Mt. i, ii, as Mr. Thompson thinks (op. cit., p. 158).(25) The more important fact is that the Evangelist does not name _any town_, not even Nazareth, as the birthplace of the Eternal Word.
The view that the Fourth Evangelist tacitly rejects the Virgin Birth fails to justify itself on internal grounds. It is also opposed by considerations of an _external_ character. It is from the locality in which probably the Fourth Gospel arose, that we have the earliest references to the Virgin Birth outside the New Testament. Ignatius, according to Dr. Moffatt (INT., p. 211), seems “to fuse the Johannine idea of the incarnation with the synoptic birth‐stories”. If this is so, the fact does not compel us to suppose that the Fourth Evangelist would have done the same; but it raises a strong presumption against the view that he explicitly rejected the tradition.
Must we then suppose that the Evangelist’s silence means “tacit acceptance” of the doctrine? Obviously, the failure to prove “tacit rejection” tells so far in the opposite direction. But, as we have seen, “tacit acceptance” is a very elastic term; it calls, therefore, for closer consideration.
It can scarcely be shown that the Fourth Evangelist accepts the Virgin Birth in the same way in which it is held in Mt. i, ii. There is no sufficient answer to this assertion in the plea that the story had been already told, and that the Evangelist’s purpose was to supplement the Synoptic narratives. This is a view of the Fourth Gospel which cannot be carried through. It is better to suppose that the Evangelist’s omission of the Virgin Birth tradition has a more definite meaning, even though we reject the view that its significance is silent repudiation of the doctrine. We have also to find a place in our solution of the problem for the difficulties left over in i. 45 and vi. 42, and in the Evangelist’s failure to name the birthplace of Jesus. In other words, arguments insufficient to prove “tacit rejection” cannot on that account be ignored. They must rather be held to condition the sense in which we speak of “tacit acceptance”.