He tackles the doctrine from two angles: the New Testament evidence and its dogmatic value. In regard to the former, he points out that the accounts in Matthew and in Luke ‘are never again referred to in the further course of the history of the Christ; nor does any apostolic passage appeal to them’. When he adds, ‘They conflict with the two genealogies, which go back to Joseph in a simple and straightforward way without taking any account of these stories’,54 this would need to be qualified.
