John 7:27

Howbeit we know whence this man is: but when the Christ cometh, no one knoweth whence he is.

The evil rulers made many arguments against the Messianic claims of Jesus: (1) Here they argued that the Messiah would have some mysterious origin; and, of course, they pretended to know all about the origin of Christ, although they did not. (2) They insisted that no prophet could come out of Galilee, because none ever had come from Galilee; but, in their arrogance, they were wrong on both counts, Jonah having come from Gath-Hepher, only three and one-half miles from Nazareth (2 Kings 14:25), and the Christ himself hailing from there! (3) They insisted that Elijah must first come; but they ignored John the Baptist's being the fulfillment of that prophecy.

No one knoweth whence he is ... This notion was a spin-off from the casuistry of the Pharisees and deserves a little more attention. As Adam Clarke said:

The generality of the people knew that Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem ... But from Isaiah 53:8, "Who shall declare his generation?" they thought that there should be something so peculiarly mysterious in his birth, or in the manner of his appearing, that no person could fully understand. Had they considered his miraculous conception, they would have felt their minds relieved on that point.[7]

The Pharisees had evidently talked with Joseph and Mary; but, if so, it is certain that those devout souls would have told those nosey representatives of the ruling class nothing whatever of the visit of the angel Gabriel, nor of the miraculous birth of our Lord. Whatever investigation the Pharisees had conducted, it failed to reveal either (1) the fact of Jesus' birth at Bethlehem, or (2) the miraculous conception. Their arrogance in pretending to know all about Jesus, and then daring to make their presumed "knowledge" the basis of rejecting him as the Messiah is an example of human self-deception and conceit unsurpassed in the history of the world.