But in Joseph’s dream the angel also tells him something that the narrator had already conveyed to readers in 1.18, namely, that the child conceived in Mary is ‘from [or of] the holy spirit’.6 Most commentators simply assume, possibly under the influence of their view of Matthew’s later citation of Isaiah 7.14, that this is a reference to a virginal conception. But what would this phrase mean in a Jewish context? It should at the very least give pause for thought that elsewhere in Jewish literature the language of divine begetting does not entail a conception without a human father. Readers
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