Shivering Babe, Glorious Lord: The Nativity Stories in Christian Tradition

By Douglas Wirth

The Nativity Stories from Matthew and Lukes gospels have endured through the centuries, but the way Christmas is celebrated has been dramatically reshaped. In the modern era the story of Christs birth has been overshadowed by fanciful tales of Santa, Frosty, and Rudolph. Holiday customs designed to enhance the enjoyment of Christmas have often come to obscure the message of the Saviors birth. The Christmas season now exists primarily to foster the urge to shop rather than a desire to pause and reflect on the good news of Christs coming. Today the Nativity Stories are seldom considered as a whole, and the theological riches of these sacred texts have regrettably been reduced to The Christmas Story. The biblical narratives that have inspired poets and artists for centuries warrant more careful study.

Shivering Babe, Glorious Lord surveys the Nativity Stories through twenty centuries of Christian tradition: their composition by Matthew and Luke; their relationship to the larger biblical narrative; their profound influence on theology and worship; their modern decline and the reemergence of Christmas in a secular guise in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Readers yearning for a more Christ-centered Christmas will find helpful resources here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: May 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512738711

Douglas Wirth

Doug Wirth has previously authored Christ the Suffering Servant: A Lenten Study of the Atonement, and Shivering Babe, Glorious Lord: The Nativity Stories in Christian Tradition. His writing focuses on recovering the ancient Christian heritage of Easter and Christmas.

Book preview

Part 1

THE COMPOSITION OF THE NATIVITY STORIES

THE CHRISTOLOGICAL AIMS OF MATTHEW AND LUKE

CHAPTER 1

THE CHRIST OF BETHLEHEM AND JESUS OF NAZARETH

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The Different Sources for the Nativity Stories and Jesus’s Public Ministry

The stories of the annunciation, birth, and infancy of Jesus in Matthew 1–2 and of both John the Baptist and Jesus in Luke 1–2 make up only four of the eighty-nine chapters of the New Testament. Yet these stories have influenced Christian theology, liturgy, and art far beyond the brief accounts given by the two gospel writers. Aside from the unforgettable drama and wonder of these narratives, part of the reason for their outsized importance is that everything we know about Jesus and John’s origins is condensed into these four chapters. The Nativity Stories (hereafter also called the birth narratives or BNs) are appended to Matthew and Luke in such a way that if these two gospels began at Matthew 3:1 and Luke 3:1, the reader would scarcely suspect the existence of stories about Jesus or John’s origins. Very little of the vital information related in these four chapters reappears in the accounts of Jesus or John’s adult lives.¹

The discontinuity between the narratives of Jesus’s birth and his adult ministry can be explained in part by the separate sources Matthew and Luke used to write about these two different periods of Jesus’s life. For the public ministry, these sources were the apostles and other eyewitnesses who accompanied Jesus (Lk 1:2). But thirty years separated his birth from the start of his ministry (Lk 3:23), so none of his disciples or other followers would have witnessed the extraordinary events surrounding his (or John’s) birth. Conversely, many of the older dramatis personae of the birth narratives, such as Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, and Joseph, had presumably passed away long before Matthew or Luke composed their gospels. The sources for the Nativity Stories of Jesus have traditionally been thought to be the memories of Joseph (for Matthew) and Mary (for Luke) preserved through family tradition. As we shall see, the issue of the sources for the birth narratives is far more complex than this conventional viewpoint.²

Ignorance about the Circumstances of Jesus’s Birth in the Gospel Accounts

In the gospel stories of Jesus’s itinerant ministry, those who encounter the prophet from Galilee are not well informed about his origin, and curiously, the evangelists do nothing to clear up the uncertainty for their readers. This can be illustrated from the parallel scenes in which Jesus returns to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth (Mt 13:53–58; Mk 6:1–6; Lk 4:14–30). The townspeople seem vaguely to recall Jesus, whom they describe as the son of Mary (Mk 6:3) or Joseph (Lk 4:22). They are even able to name many of his siblings (Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3). Remarkably, though, the residents of Nazareth show no awareness of the unusual circumstances of his birth.³ Readers of these accounts of Jesus’s visit to his hometown may wonder why knowledge of the supernatural events that attended his birth in Bethlehem of Judea did not follow the young family’s move to Nazareth in Galilee.⁴ Because of the polemic that arose later over the legitimacy of Jesus’s birth, one might expect that Matthew and Luke would try to explain to their readers this ignorance about Jesus’s origin. The earliest of the four gospels, Mark, tells us nothing about Jesus’s birth. Nevertheless, it seems surprising that Matthew and Luke allow Jesus’s miraculous origin, narrated in the beginnings of their gospels, now to be shrouded in obscurity.

John’s gospel was the last to be written. He omits a birth narrative in order to emphasize the preexistence of Jesus as the Word of God. This may explain why this evangelist seems to relish drawing attention to misconceptions about Jesus’s earthly origin. People’s general confusion about the emergence of the Jewish Messiah and specifically about Jesus’s lineage and birthplace are skillfully explored in John 7:14–43, a passage full of John’s characteristic use of irony. As Jesus speaks in the temple courts during the Feast of Tabernacles, some in the crowd voice their disbelief that Jesus could be the Christ because we know where this man is from; when the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from (Jn 7:27). Both statements expressed by the crowd are conundrums with multiple layers of meaning. The people know that the adult Jesus came out of Galilee, yet they do not realize his birth occurred in Bethlehem of Judea. The notion that no one will know where the Christ is from is not strictly true since the one speaking before them now, whose origin in Galilee they know about, is in fact the Christ. Yet in a deeper sense the statement is true because no one understands that Jesus came down from heaven as the Word made flesh.⁵ Others in the crowd then ask, How can the Christ come from Galilee? Does not the Scripture say that the Christ will come from David’s family and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived? (Jn 7:41–42). Though these questioners are aware of the prophecy that the Messiah will come from Bethlehem, they seem unaware that Jesus was born there.⁶

In the Bread of Life discourse (Jn 6:25–59), some of his Jewish listeners take issue with Jesus’s statement that he is the bread of life that came down from heaven (v. 41). They said, ‘Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?’ (v. 42). The crowd assumes that Joseph is the father of Jesus, contrary to what the Nativity Stories reveal. This same misconception is displayed in the first chapter of John, in which after Jesus has invited Phillip to follow him, Phillip finds Nathaniel and excitedly reports, We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law … Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph (Jn 1:45). All these references from the synoptic accounts of the return to Nazareth and from John’s gospel reveal people’s unfamiliarity with the details related in the Nativity Stories. Even though Jesus grew up in Nazareth of Galilee, the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke reveal that Jesus was in fact from David’s family and from Bethlehem, contrary to the assumptions of the crowd in John 7:42. The most glaring lack of knowledge about the birth of Jesus, however, is the assumption that Joseph is the biological father of Jesus.

It is evident that during Jesus’s public ministry, everyone assumed Joseph was his biological father and that none of the evangelists corrects this misunderstanding for their readers. Even more remarkably, Luke himself describes Joseph and Mary as the child’s father and mother (Lk 2:33) and as his parents (Lk 2:48a). Luke also quotes Mary chiding her twelve-year-old son, Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you (Lk 2:48b).

What are we to make of the lack of any imprint Jesus’s virginal conception has left on the accounts of his public ministry? The simplest explanation is to take Luke 3:23 as the key that unravels this enigma. Luke begins his genealogy of Jesus by stating, "He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph (emphasis added). As a child growing up in Nazareth and later in his public ministry, people thought Joseph was the biological father of Jesus. As John 1:45 shows, it is not clear that even the Twelve were aware of the virginal conception of Jesus. It is doubtful Mary had revealed even to Jesus’s own siblings the story of his origin. This would help explain his brothers’ skepticism in John 7:1–5, summarized by the statement, For even his own brothers did not believe in him."

As we shall see from Matthew’s birth narrative, the holy family’s narrow escape from Herod’s rampage may have been enough to convince Mary that her son’s supernatural origin was best kept silent. (In Matthew 2:13–14, after the angel’s warning that, Herod is going to search for the child to kill him, Joseph and his family flee that very night.) During the period of Jesus’s adult ministry recounted in the four gospels, people’s ignorance of his virginal conception does not necessarily imply a pact of secrecy between Mary and Jesus. It is more likely no one ever assumed that Joseph was not the father of Jesus. Why should they? No one expected the Jewish Messiah to be born of a virgin. There is no evidence anyone before Matthew connected Isaiah 7:14 (The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son) to the birth of the Messiah.

The Absence of the Virginal Conception outside the Nativity Stories

Of the many remarkable features of the Nativity Stories the one that dwarfs all others is the virginal conception of Jesus. Yet here again there is no trace of its imprint on the apostolic preaching in Acts or in any of the New Testament (NT) epistles. Some have thought Paul makes an implicit reference to the virginal conception in Galatians 4:4, one of the few passages in any of the epistles that refers to the birth of Jesus. But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law. Even though no mention is made of a human father, scholars are agreed Paul’s point is not to bear witness to how Christ was conceived but to stress only that he was born a fully human being. Paul’s wording is applicable to anyone of woman born; it throws no light on the question whether he knew of Jesus’ virginal conception or not.⁷

There is no clear evidence any of the NT writers except Matthew and Luke were aware of how Jesus was conceived. The NT figure most likely to have known the circumstances of Jesus’s conception was James, the Lord’s brother. But there is no indication from any of his statements or writings that James was familiar with the story of Jesus’s origin. This silence concerning the virginal conception outside the birth narratives does not prove no other NT writers were acquainted with Jesus’s supernatural conception. But what it seems to indicate is the relatively late introduction of the story into the developing stream of the church’s understanding of the identity of Jesus and his role in the divine plan. The absence of references to the virginal conception apart from the Nativity Stories prompts Raymond Brown, author of the authoritative The Birth of the Messiah, to conclude,

I would say that it is perfectly proper to speak of the silence of the rest of the NT about the virginal conception because not a single one of the implicit references has any compelling force. On the other hand, one would misinterpret this silence if one concluded from it that no other author of the NT (outside Matthew and Luke) knew of the virginal conception, or that the historicity of the virginal conception is thus disproved.⁸

While the church possessed the story of Jesus’s ministry, death and resurrection from the very beginning (around AD 30), it would take forty to fifty more years for the stories of Jesus’s beginning to be revealed through the publication of the Nativity Stories in Matthew and Luke’s gospels in the AD 70s or 80s. We must ask, therefore, why the knowledge of Jesus’s virginal conception arrived only after so much of the NT canon had been fixed. The traditional theory has been that the story of Jesus’s unique conception was passed down from the memories of Joseph (for Matthew) and Mary (for Luke). This issue will be addressed at a number of points throughout our study, but here it should be noted that the thesis of family tradition faces many difficulties. For example, if Joseph and Mary were the chief sources for the Nativity Stories, how are we to account for the many differences in the narratives? Chief among these obstacles is the disparity between the two annunciations of Jesus’s birth. In Luke, the annunciation is given to Mary before she conceives. In Matthew, the annunciation comes to Joseph (who knows nothing about the prior annunciation to Mary) only after the discovery of Mary’s pregnancy. Assuming Joseph and Mary as the sources for the two annunciations requires us to believe Mary conceived, stayed three months with her cousin Elizabeth, and then returned home without ever communicating the annunciation or her pregnancy to Joseph. If we assume Joseph dies before Jesus becomes an adult, another difficulty with the notion of transmission through Mary is the late appearance of the virginal conception in the NT record. Mary attached herself to the apostles at the time of Christ’s crucifixion (Jn 19:26–27). She was present in the upper room with the disciples before Pentecost (Ac 1:14). Yet she apparently communicates nothing to the apostles about her son’s birth, because the early proclamation of the church emphasizes that Jesus is the Son of God through his resurrection, not his supernatural conception (Ac 2:34–36; cf. Ro 1:3–4).

We have seen that the vulnerability Mary must have felt in fleeing from Herod’s wrath would have been sufficient to ensure her silence about her son’s conception to those in Nazareth. During Jesus’s adult ministry, there would have been compelling reasons for Mary’s discretion concerning her son’s origin. The heralding of the circumstances of Jesus’s birth would have exposed both Jesus and his mother to a storm of unneeded and distracting controversy. In addition, it is unlikely Jesus’s preaching and the apostolic teaching would have been substantially altered even if knowledge of the virginal conception had been common at the time. Brown observes,

It is doubtful that if there had been no infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke (and thus there were no mention in the NT of the virginal conception), Christian faith in Jesus as God’s Son would have been really different. The idea of divine sonship is substantiated in the Synoptic accounts of the baptism and the transfiguration, and in Pauline and Johannine christology; it is not dependent upon the infancy narratives.⁹

The Back-Formation of Christology in the Early Church

The late introduction of the Nativity Stories reflects the process through which the gospels likely came to be composed. There is general agreement that the oldest parts of the four gospels are the stories of the last week of Jesus’s life, what are now called the Passion narratives (PN). Among the reasons given for the antiquity of the four PNs are their abundant details of time, places, and characters; the internal coherence of the narratives; and their substantial correspondence to one another.¹⁰ Thus the stories of Jesus’s arrest, trial, and crucifixion formed the core of the gospel narratives. The accounts of Jesus’s ministry in Galilee and Judea filled out the portrayals that we have in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. When the earliest gospel, Mark, was composed, it seemed sufficient to begin the story with Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan by John. Matthew and Luke, written later, took the story back to Jesus’s conception and birth. John took the process even further, reaching back to the preexistence of Christ. This process reflects the peculiar development of the church’s understanding of the person and nature of Jesus Christ, what is now termed christology. Jesus’s full identity was revealed gradually to the church in roughly the reverse direction from the chronology of his life. Beginning with the undeniable facts of his death and resurrection, this awareness of his messianic identity/divine nature then moved backward through his ministry, baptism, birth, and conception. From its very beginning, the church knew that even in his shameful death on the cross and certainly by his triumph over the grave, Jesus was both Lord and Christ. Eventually, the early church came to realize Jesus was the Messiah at his baptism before he had performed any of the miracles that authenticated his messianic credentials. But then was he not also Christ and Lord as a shivering babe in the manger? Yes, and also by his miraculous conception though the power of the Holy Spirit. In The Gospel According to Luke, Joseph Fitzmyer summarizes the role of Luke’s birth narrative of Jesus (and by extension to Matthew’s BN also) in the development of the early church’s christology.

Whereas in the Pauline and probably pre-Pauline use of the formulation, the resurrection of Jesus was the moment when the title Son of God became attached to him, Luke pushes the christological affirmation back to the conception of Jesus. What is involved here is the growing understanding of the early church about the identity of Jesus. Though at first such titles as Son of God were attached to him primarily as of the resurrection, the time came when early Christians began to realize that he had to have been such even earlier in his career, even though it had not been recognized. It is not so much that the christological moment was pushed back as that there was a growth in awareness as time passed among early Christians that what Jesus was recognized to be after the resurrection he must have been still earlier. Luke, in affirming that Jesus was Son of God, not only at his conception, but through his conception, is representative of early Christians among whom such an awareness was achieved.¹¹

It is surely a sign of divine wisdom that the full understanding of Christ’s divine/human nature was only gradually revealed to the church in the decades after his death and resurrection. During the three years Jesus was with the Twelve, it was a slow, sometimes painful process for these followers to come to grips with his messianic identity and mission, even without their knowledge of his virginal conception. It was all they and certainly the public at large could handle at the time. If his disciples had known and divulged the supernatural details of his birth, Jesus would likely have been put to death as a madman or demon long before he could have completed his public ministry. Christ’s supernatural beginning, as narrated in the Nativity Stories, was one of the last pieces of the puzzle of christology to be revealed to the church and the world.

CHAPTER 2

JESUS IS SON OF DAVID AND SON OF GOD AT HIS BIRTH

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Two of the most important christological titles used of Jesus throughout the gospels are Son of David and Son of God. Here we will show that by incorporating each of these terms into their Nativity Stories, Matthew and Luke clarify and even transform Mark’s somewhat ambiguous usage of this terminology.

Son of David

Son of David terminology occurs in the synoptic gospels (i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke, from Greek synoptikos, meaning taking the same viewpoint) but is not found in the gospel of John. Beginning with Mark, the earliest of the gospels, there are three instances in which Son of David language is used, namely by blind Bartimaeus in seeking Jesus’s help (Mk 10:47, 48), by the crowd shouting hosannas at the triumphal procession (Mk 11:10), and in the dispute in the temple courts over the Davidic lineage of the Messiah (Mk 12:35–37).

Matthew and Luke both include these incidents and the same wording in their gospels. Where they expand the Son of David terminology is in its inclusion in their genealogies and birth narratives. Matthew begins his genealogy (and his entire gospel) with the superscription, A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David (Mt 1:1). This genealogy traces the lineage of Jesus’s legal father Joseph through King David’s son Solomon (Mt 1:6), ending with Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ (Mt 1:16). When the angel announces Mary’s conception to Joseph, he addresses him as Joseph, son of David (Mt 1:20).

In Luke’s birth narrative, Mary is described as a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David (Lk 1:27). The angel Gabriel tells Mary that God will give to her son the throne of his father David (Lk 1:32). Luke reiterates Jesus’s Davidic lineage in the scene in which Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem to register for the census. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David (Lk 2:4).

One of the intentions of Matthew and Luke in composing their Nativity Stories is to establish Joseph’s lineage through King David. The difficulty is that Joseph is not Jesus’s biological father. The delicate task of the evangelists is to demonstrate how Jesus is the Son of David through his legal father, Joseph. This subtlety is often lost on readers.¹² In Matthew, this occurs when Joseph, knowing the unusual circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy, still agrees to take her as his wife (Mt 1:20, 24). In Judaism, in order to establish paternity, it was not sufficient to ask the mother, because she might lie about the father so as not to be accused of adultery. Rather a man had to give testimony, since most men would be reluctant to acknowledge a child unless it was their own.¹³ In Luke, Joseph’s legal paternity is demonstrated by both parents’ naming of the child (Lk 2:21) and by their presentation of the child to the Lord in the temple (Lk 2:22). By these two actions, Joseph shows his willingness to be considered the child’s father. Sometimes Joseph has been referred to as Jesus’s adoptive father, but the term legal father is more in line with Jewish customs of the time and the intentions of Matthew and Luke. Joseph could now expect to be perceived by others, to all intents and purposes, as Jesus’s father.¹⁴

Son of God

In the gospel of Mark, references to the Sonship of Jesus can be traced backward through the christological moments of his death, trial, transfiguration, Peter’s confession, and Jesus’s baptism. It must be noted that Mark never explains the origin of this title (nor of the title Son of David). Thus, after reading Mark’s gospel, one could be left with the mistaken impression that this title is conferred upon Jesus at the beginning or in the course of his ministry or that Jesus somehow became the Son of God through his death on the cross. Matthew and Luke feared that Mark’s account might imply that God did not recognize Jesus as his son until John’s baptism. Even worse, some believers might see a causal relationship between the baptism and the divine recognition.¹⁵

Matthew and Luke incorporate the theme of Jesus’s divine Sonship into their birth narratives so as to correct this potential misunderstanding.¹⁶ The two evangelists also add substantially to the meaning of Son of God by the few usages of the title in their Nativity Stories. Matthew and Luke both relate Mary’s miraculous conception through the power of the Holy Spirit (Mt 1:18; Lk 1:31, 35). In Matthew, the angel informs Joseph that because of Jesus’s unique conception, he is to be called Immanuel … God with us (Mt 1:23). In Luke, Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary is more explicit. The holy one to be born will be called the Son of God (Lk 1:35b).

Thus, Matthew and Luke expand the christological portrait of Jesus by demonstrating that he is both Son of David and Son of God from birth. Indeed, precisely because of his unique birth, Jesus is Son of David through Joseph’s legal claim, and he is Son of God through Mary’s miraculous conception.

The term Son of David never occurs in John’s gospel. The term Son of God, however, comes to full flowering in this gospel. John traces Jesus’s Sonship back to his preexistence (Jn 1:1–3, 14). Jesus himself affirms his preexistence (Jn 8:56–58; 17:5, 24). The very purpose of the gospel of John is that the reader may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (Jn 20:31).

CHAPTER 3

THE COSTARRING ROLE OF JOHN THE BAPTIST IN LUKE’S BIRTH NARRATIVES

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The Parallel Birth Narratives of John and Jesus

The first two chapters of Luke’s gospel contain parallel birth narratives for John the Baptist and Jesus. Many modern studies of the nativity of Christ skip over John’s BN altogether. Yet the way Luke arranges the two birth narratives alternately shows he considers the two accounts to be interrelated.¹⁷ There are five main divisions in Luke 1–2¹⁸ arranged symmetrically around Mary’s visit to Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea, including the following:

• the annunciation of John’s birth (1:5–25),

• the annunciation of Jesus’s birth (1:26–38),

• the visitation of Mary and Elizabeth (1:39–56),

• the birth of John (1:57–80), and

• the birth of Jesus (2:1–40).

The visitation scene serves as a link between the stories of John and Jesus since it brings together a character from each of the two birth accounts.

It is fitting that Luke place the BNs of John and Jesus side by side because the lives and careers of these two men run roughly in tandem. Their extraordinary births occur only six months apart. They are related (perhaps as cousins) through their mothers. They spend their childhoods in obscurity. As adults, they both begin their ministries by gathering disciples and preaching repentance. Their preaching arouses violent opposition. They are both executed in their early thirties.

John’s role in the gospel accounts of Jesus’s public ministry is simply to be a forerunner. For a brief period of time, John announces the arrival of the greater one, Jesus, before being imprisoned and executed. Since as an adult John serves only this subordinate role in all four gospels, why is he given such prominence in Luke’s parallel birth narratives? A verse count from each BN shows Luke devotes forty-three verses to John and fifty-two to Jesus. In contrast to his strictly supporting role as an adult, John is given virtually equal billing in Luke’s BNs. Here we will explore reasons Luke may have felt it necessary to include such a detailed account of John’s origin.

A Picture of John’s Ministry in the Four Gospels

Virtually all of John’s words and deeds anticipate the arrival of the Christ. John performs no miracles, and his ministry consists primarily of a single action, specifically baptizing repentant sinners in water for the forgiveness of sins (Mk 1:4; cf. Lk 3:3). But this baptism in water is only preparatory for the greater baptism in the Holy Spirit that will be brought about by the Christ (Mt 3:11a; Mk 1:8a; Lk 3:16a). At an early stage in John’s ministry, all four evangelists record his statement differentiating himself from Jesus. After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie (Mt 3:11b; Mk 1:7; Lk 3:16b; Jn 1:26–27). John uses self-deprecating hyperbole to emphasize his lesser stature: he is not even worthy to be the servant of the Christ.

There is a passage in the gospel of John that is likely intended to clear up a possible ambiguity about the Baptist’s status in relation to Jesus. The fourth gospel recounts an incident from a period of time in which John and Jesus are both baptizing people in the Judean countryside (Jn 3:22–36). Because of the similar nature of these two ministries, inquirers come to John because they are confused about which one, John or Jesus, is the Christ. John replies emphatically, I am not the Christ, but am sent ahead of him (Jn 3:28). It is noteworthy that the Baptist makes such a powerful impact and his preaching is so similar to Jesus’s early ministry that John must deny he is the Christ. Because the Baptist makes a name for himself before the arrival of Jesus, John’s fame at first overshadows that of Jesus. But like the best man at a wedding who allows the bridegroom to be in the spotlight, John is happy to retire from the scene. He [Jesus] must become greater; I must become less (Jn 3:30).

John’s Portrayal in Josephus

In all of these instances, the evangelists are concerned to show that initially John anticipates the coming of the Christ and then gladly stands aside once Jesus comes on the scene. John’s significant but minor role as the forerunner of Jesus seems mismatched with his major role in Luke’s birth narratives. If the only record we had of John’s impact on first century Judaism came from his appearance in the stories of Jesus’s public ministry, it would be hard to account for his starring role in Luke’s BN. But there is another source for John’s influence in Judea at the time he and Jesus were both preaching. In The Antiquities of the Jews, written shortly after Luke composed his gospel and Acts, the Jewish historian Josephus devotes more space to the career of John the Baptist than he does to Jesus.¹⁹ Josephus writes glowingly of John, a good man, who commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness toward one another, and piety toward God. John’s death at the hands of Herod Antipas is remembered as being widely condemned by the Jewish populace, and the defeat of Herod’s army shortly after John’s execution is seen as punishment of what he did against John.²⁰

This characterization of John by Josephus is all the more remarkable when compared to the historian’s judgment of many other preachers in John’s time and in the generation following John. Josephus was writing in the aftermath of the disastrous Jewish War against Rome (AD 66–70) that ended in the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the crippling of Judaism itself. The historian blames the misguided rebellion against Rome on the popular leaders in the period AD 30–60 who disturbed the peace and provoked the wrath of the Roman occupiers. Josephus seems to regard John as an exception to the rule of hotheaded Jewish rebels.

But the most striking difference between the treatment of John in Antiquities and his portrayal in the New Testament is that Josephus makes no connection between the Baptist and Jesus or between John and the Christian message. To put it bluntly, Josephus does not see John as a ‘figure in the Christian tradition.’ The Baptist is not connected with early Christianity in any way. On the contrary, Josephus presents him as a famous Jewish preacher with a message and a following of his own, neither of which is related to Jesus.²¹

Reconciling the Portraits of John from Josephus and the New Testament

The depiction of John the Baptist in Josephus is quite different from the role John is given in the four gospels, and it suggests John was well known even apart from his association with Jesus. Keeping Josephus’s account of the character and impact of John’s ministry in mind, it is instructive to look at three further passages in the New Testament that deal with the Baptist. These passages have been labeled unassimilated tradition²² since they cast John in a somewhat different role than being simply the close associate and forerunner of Jesus.

Disciples of John, not Jesus

(Ac 19:1–7)

On one of Paul’s journeys through Asia Minor, he arrives in Ephesus, where he encounters a group of disciples. Surprisingly, though, Paul discovers they are John’s disciples, having received only John’s baptism. They have never even heard of Jesus! Paul must inform them about the one foretold by John, namely Jesus. This incident shows that, decades after the death of John and far outside Israel, there were still groups of independent followers of John the Baptist.²³

John’s doubts about the Christ

(Mt 11:2–6; Lk 7:18–23)

During the time John was languishing in prison, news of Jesus’s miracles spreads throughout Judea, and reports of these wonders reach the Baptist. John sends his disciples to inquire of Jesus, Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else? (Lk 7:19). John’s question seems curious since he previously appeared to understand that Jesus was the greater one who would come. At Jesus’s baptism, John presumably heard the heavenly voice declare, You are my Son, whom I love (Lk 3:22). The conventional view of this incident, recounted in both Matthew and Luke is that John is now experiencing doubts about the messianic identity of Jesus. But by itself, John’s question seems to convey his awakening interest in Jesus, the excitement of his initial discovery of the Messiah. This interpretation calls into question John’s initial certainty that Jesus is the Christ.

I myself did not know him

(Jn 1:29–34)

A final passage that has long puzzled biblical scholars is found in the first chapter of the gospel of John. Here, as in the other gospels, the Baptist seems to have an established ministry of preaching and baptizing before Jesus appears. The first words John speaks in this gospel are, He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me (Jn 1:15). This declaration fits the traditional image of John’s heralding the coming of the Christ. The next day when Jesus first appears, John identifies him as the one he has just prophesied about (Jn 1:30). But then strangely, John says, I myself did not know him (Jn 1:31). John repeats this statement, I would not have known him, except for God’s revealing to John the messianic identity of Jesus (Jn 1:33). In Luke’s birth narrative, when Mary, who has just conceived, greets Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John, the child in Elizabeth’s womb leaps in recognition of the recently conceived Messiah. How is it that the two men who have been so inextricably linked even before birth can now be depicted as strangers to each other?

These three unassimilated passages seem to call into question the depiction of John’s early association and subordinate role in the ministry of Jesus.

John’s Role in the Birth Narratives of Luke

As has been shown, there is evidence from Josephus and from a few passages from the New Testament that John may have had a strong and lasting influence on first century Judaism even apart from his association with Jesus. The emphasis of the evangelists, however, is to convey John’s supporting role as the herald of Jesus. What we find in the New Testament is an attempt to claim John for the Christian cause. This entails a rather full recognition of the importance of the Baptist so that the testimony about ‘the Coming One’ may be given its full weight.²⁴

The Baptist’s birth narrative in the first chapter of Luke’s gospel shows evidence of the evangelist’s effort to keep in balance John’s importance on the one hand and his strictly supporting role on the other. Without disparaging the eschatological significance of John’s ministry, then, Luke communicates in this imbalanced set of parallels the superiority of Jesus. ²⁵ Luke skillfully dramatizes these twin themes using a technique Joseph Fitzmyer calls step-parallelism. This is a parallelism of one-upsmanship. The Jesus side always comes off better.²⁶ Following are five examples of this step-parallelism:

1. John’s parents are upright in the sight of the Lord (1:6). Jesus’s mother is highly favored by the Lord (1:28).

2. Elizabeth’s conception will be extraordinary since she has been barren and is past the age of childbearing (1:7). Mary’s conception will be miraculous since she is a virgin who will conceive by the power of the Most High (1:35).

3. John’s commission shows he will be great in the sight of the Lord (1:15). Jesus’s commission shows that he will be called the Son of the Most High (1:32) and that his kingdom will never end (1:33).

4. Zechariah questions Gabriel’s announcement of John’s conception (1:18) and is struck dumb (1:20). Mary questions the angel’s announcement of Jesus’s conception (1:34) and is graciously reassured (1:35).

5. The birth/circumcision/naming of John (1:57–66) are notable because none of his ancestors has his name, and the awestruck neighbors wonder aloud about this exceptional child. Jesus’s birth is announced by a company of angels (2:13–14), and on the day the child is dedicated in the temple, two elderly prophets perceive his identity and prophesy his destiny (2:28–35, 38).

In parallel episodes of Jesus’s public ministry in Matthew and Luke, once John’s mission is finished (by his being imprisoned), Jesus reflects on John’s legacy in unstinting terms. Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist (Mt 11:11). For a man like John who preached such a short time and who performed no miracles to be thought greater than Moses or Elijah is high praise indeed. Jesus also locates John’s place in the ongoing story of Israel’s salvation history. For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John (Mt 11:13). Thus, John ends the Old Testament era. Yet because he announces the arrival of the Messiah and his kingdom, John also belongs to the new Christian age. He is thus a pivotal figure between the Old and New Testament periods. John’s parents are both descendants of Aaron (Lk 1:5). Zechariah is a Jewish priest serving in the Jerusalem temple (Lk 1:8). Zechariah and Elizabeth are depicted in the mold of Old Testament figures such as Abraham and Sarah. The conclusion of the angel’s description of John’s commission captures the Baptist’s pivotal role in acting as an Old Testament prophet that ushers in the messianic age. And he will go before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah … to make ready a people prepared for the Lord (Lk 1:17).

CHAPTER 4

A BRIDGE BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW

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The Nativity Stories of both John and Jesus serve as transitions from the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament to the gospel story proper. These birth narratives recall figures and themes from Israel’s past, and they anticipate the acceptance by some and rejection by others of the gospel message Jesus will preach. Since the ways Matthew and Luke use Scripture are quite different, I will consider separately the Old Testament themes/scenes each evangelist draws upon in composing his narrative.

Matthew’s Use of the Old Testament

One of the most striking features of Matthew’s narrative is his explicit use of five Old Testament quotations to demonstrate how Jesus’s coming fulfills prophecy. These quotations are sometimes referred to as formula citations since they are each preceded by a formulaic phrase such as And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet. R. T. France captures the effect these citations have on those who read Matthew’s account. The wording has a rather formal, even archaic, sound which evokes in the reader a sense of awe at the outworking of the agelong purposes of God revealed long ago by divine declaration.²⁷ Four of the five quotations seem appended to the existing narrative rather than being well integrated into the story line.²⁸ For this reason it is likely these citations have been supplied by Matthew himself rather than taken over from the tradition he received.²⁹

The early church fathers believed the gospel of Matthew was intended for a Hebrew audience. Matthew’s purpose for including these formula citations in his birth narrative seems to be to instruct his Jewish-Christian readers in the Old Testament background of their faith. Matthew’s BN can be seen as consisting of five scenes with a formula citation (FC) included for each scene.

1. 1:18–25: The annunciation to Joseph of Mary’s virginal conception

[FC] 1:22–23: "All this took place to fulfill