3
†
The story of Jesus’ birth is narrated in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. These accounts differ in many respects and concur in only a few important details: Mary was a virgin at the time of Jesus’ conception and birth; the birth was in Bethlehem; Jesus was descended from David; the family lived in Nazareth after the birth. The differences are:
· MATTHEW 1–2: the story of the virgin conception is focused on Joseph, and it is he who sees an angel in a dream; the angel reassures him that he should marry Mary despite the irregularity of his not being the father of the baby; the family appear to live in Bethlehem already as there is no journey there; the visitors are magi who bring gifts; the family have to find refuge in Egypt for a time because of Herod’s massacre of the young children; they then move to Nazareth.
· LUKE 1–2: Mary is the central character of Luke’s version of the story; she receives a visit from the angel Gabriel to tell her about the coming birth which alarms her, because she is a virgin; when pregnant, she visits Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist and proclaims the Magnificat hymn (drawing on the precedent of Hannah the mother of Samuel); the family are poor (reminiscent of David’s humble origins); they move from Nazareth to Bethlehem because of a census and are forced to shelter among the animals; they are visited by shepherds; there is also detail about Jesus’ circumcision a week after his birth, his presentation in the Temple after forty days, and his return there aged twelve.
The Place and Time of the Birth of Jesus
Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem is one aspect of the story that the evangelists share. It was expected that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, as he was inheriting the mantle of David, the son of Jesse, a ‘Bethlehemite’ (1 Sam. 16.1). Bethlehem was the residence of David’s great-grandparents Boaz and Ruth (Ruth 4.11). Micah 5.2 therefore prophesies that the new Messiah is to come from Bethlehem (‘the house of bread’), also known as Ephrathah (‘fruitful’). Matthew refers to this Messianic prophecy, quoting what is actually an amalgamation of the Micah 5.2 prophecy and 2 Samuel 5.2, which refers to David as the shepherd of Israel:1
‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.’
(Matt. 2.5–6)
We can conclude either that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which would have strengthened his Messianic claim, or that he was not but the prophecy caused Christians to claim that he was. It is unlikely historically, however, that Joseph and Mary would have travelled to Bethlehem from Nazareth because of a census, as in Luke’s Gospel, as there is no ancient record that suggests the necessity of this.2 Matthew prefers to have them living in Bethlehem and only settling in Nazareth after the return from Egypt.
We do not know whether Jesus actually was a direct descendant of David, or whether this was a means of validating his right to be called the Messiah. It is more likely than the other details of the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke. There is the tradition that relatives of Jesus – notably Symeon the bishop of Jerusalem and the grandsons of Jude mentioned in Eusebius, Church History 3.20, 32 – claimed the Davidic inheritance some decades after Jesus’ life and were persecuted for it. It is also difficult to see how Jesus could have been proclaimed as Messiah by some people during his lifetime if he did not have a Davidic claim. Paul refers to Jesus being ‘descended from David according to the flesh’ in Romans 1.3, which shows that the belief pre-dates the writing of the gospels of Matthew and Luke by some decades. Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, calls Jesus ‘son of David’ in the earliest gospel, Mark (10.46–48).
John’s is the only gospel in which there is any doubt: some people, hearing that Jesus is claimed to be the Christ, ask: ‘Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he? Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?’ (7.41–42). This taunt is left unanswered in the gospel. If we only knew John’s Gospel, we might conclude that Jesus was neither descended from David nor born in Jerusalem. Yet John is clear at several points (for example, 20.31) that Jesus is the Messiah. What we can be reasonably sure of is that, at some point, the family of Jesus claimed the Davidic succession, and that was enough to convince people of the day.
Therefore, it may well be the case that Mary considered her son to be a descendant of David. It is notable that, despite Joseph not being considered to be Jesus’ natural father in the birth narratives, the Davidic lineage passes through him in the gospel genealogies and not through Mary. We might wonder whether she was supposed to have been descended from Aaron like her relative Elizabeth (Luke 1.5), although this is not substantiated elsewhere, and it might have served Luke’s purpose to suggest that Jesus was of the line of both David and Aaron, the archetypal king and priest of the Israelite heritage. The existence of a possible loophole in the Davidic claim of Jesus – because he was the son of Mary but not of Joseph, David’s descendant according to the gospels – might have encouraged the tradition, emerging at the end of the first century, after the gospel period, that Mary was also of the lineage of David like her husband. It is just a hint in Ignatius of Antioch’s Epistle to the Ephesians 18, but it is then expanded and established in tradition by the Protevangelium 10 and Tertullian’s On the Flesh of Christ 21.
Is it even true that Jesus’ birth occurred under Herod the Great? Matthew states this, although there is no historical record of Herod’s massacre of the infants of Judea. Another problem is that Luke’s census, under Quirinius as governor of Syria, occurred some ten years after the reign of Herod, who died in 4 BCE. Quirinius was not governor of Syria until 6 CE. But Luke also says that Elizabeth and Zechariah lived ‘in the days of King Herod of Judea’ (1.5). Perhaps he intended this to mean Herod’s son, Herod Archelaus? It is certainly not Archelaus in Matthew’s Gospel (see 2.22), but it is not clear in Luke. Yet Archelaus was deprived of his throne by the Romans at the same time as the census. We are left wondering whether the dates in these narratives might be rather loose. Certainly, the calculating of the years of what we now know as CE, the ‘Common Era’ (previously AD, the ‘year of the Lord’) is only approximate. The monk Dionysius Exiguus, in the fifth or sixth century, calculated this and ended up with a date that falls between the death of Herod and the census of Quirinius, satisfying none of the gospel descriptions. So perhaps, if we really want the Common Era to mark the length of time from the birth of Jesus, we should add a few extra to the number of our calendar years: 2000 becomes 2005, and so on!
Therefore, we cannot really be sure exactly when Jesus was born. If we assume that it is true that Jesus was Mary’s firstborn, then probably she would have been about fourteen years older than him according to the customs of marriage of the time. Were Jesus to have been born late in Herod the Great’s reign, this would suggest that her birthdate can be placed somewhere near 20 BCE.
Even Jesus’ background in Nazareth has been questioned. It is fairly indisputable that he grew up in Galilee, but some writers have posited that the name ‘Nazareth’ is derived from the word ‘Nazirite’, which was a Hebrew term meaning a man who had consecrated himself to God by not cutting his hair, avoiding alcohol and any contact with the dead. We read about the process in Numbers 6: the Nazirite practices could be temporary, as an initiation into a state of consecration, or permanent. Samson was the prototypical Nazirite, and the practice continued from pre-exilic Israel into the early years of Christianity. Eusebius the fourth-century Church historian says that James the brother of Jesus was a Nazirite, which might imply that Jesus was too. However, for Jesus to have been a Nazirite for life, he could not have been the person accused of being ‘a glutton and a drunkard’ that we read about in Matthew 11.19 and Luke 7.34.
There is also the possibility that there was another group, known as ‘Nazoreans’ or ‘Nazarenes’. Jesus is referred to as a Nazorean or Nazarene several times in the gospels, although this is usually translated ‘of Nazareth’, and Paul is called a Nazarene in Acts 24.5. The Hebrew verb nzr means ‘to set oneself apart or consecrate’, yielding the name Nazirite, and the similar ntsr is ‘to watch over or preserve’, suggesting a movement that regarded itself as guardians with the purpose of conserving Israel’s traditions, which could be behind the words Nazorean or Nazarene. There is also a noun connected with ntsr, meaning ‘branch’ as used in Isaiah 11.1 for the branch of Jesse, that is, the line of David, also applicable to Jesus.
This is a complex question, and it is impossible to settle the question as to whether the claim that Jesus came from Nazareth is a fiction intended to cover up the fact that he was a Nazirite or Nazorean. Of course, it is possible that Jesus grew up in Nazareth and was also a Nazirite or Nazorean! We will never know for sure.
So there remain many questions that have provoked research, speculation, and controversy. Although the gospels of Matthew and Luke present the conception and birth stories in very different ways, it is very likely that the features common to both gospels belong to traditions, possibly oral, handed down before these gospels were written. They belonged to the folk culture of early Christianity. This could include material that has some historical basis along with much more in the way of embellishment that occurred in the growth of traditions about the life of Jesus. It is very difficult to distinguish which is which, but here we might venture that the Davidic ancestry of Jesus, at least as a claim by the family, and that he came from Galilee, belong to the actual history, but that the belief that he was born in Bethlehem might be better ascribed to early Christian legend based on readings of the prophetic books of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The Birth and Infancy Narratives as Theology
The gospel narratives reflect the theological intentions of the evangelists, and this can be demonstrated for the birth and infancy stories. Matthew wants to present a Jesus who, while born in the Jewish tradition as a fulfilment of its prophecy, a new and greater Moses, is nevertheless presented as a Messiah to the whole world. Hence his magi come from afar; they are the wise ones of the world who recognize Jesus. Luke’s Jesus is a Messiah with a mission to the poor, and the idea that he was born in a stable and visited by shepherds, the outsiders of Jewish society, relate to this overall theme. It was important to both evangelists that readers familiar with the Jewish tradition should understand how the coming of Jesus fulfilled its prophecies and traditions, hence the many quotes and allusions to them.
The narratives of Jesus’ birth reflect the imaginative questions of those who accepted him as their Saviour: what would it have been like at the birth of Jesus? Again, the historical answer is that probably very little occurred apart from a family’s delight at the coming into being of a firstborn child but, in the light of later events, a Christian picturing the scene might have imagined angels singing, and shepherds and wise men visiting the newborn in awe-inspired adoration. They would also have imagined the reaction of tyrants like Herod if he had known what was occurring.
Most biblical scholars agree that the birth and infancy narratives are legends or myths.3 This does not mean that they are untruthful: far from it, as they present the story in a way that expresses theological truth (we will consider this in more detail in the next chapter). The original Greek word mythos meant a story that conveys truth. The birth and infancy narratives were never intended as history, and therefore they do not misrepresent the story. By the time of the writing of these gospels, the details of Jesus’ birth were lost to history. Even the genealogies in Matthew and Luke differ substantially. If there were miraculous events, and they were remembered in the early Church, then it is unlikely that the gospels would have diverged so substantially, and that two of the gospels, Mark and John, would have omitted the details entirely.
According to Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in The First Christmas, the writers of Matthew and Luke present the birth narratives as ‘preludes’ or ‘overtures’; they prepare the reader for the material later on in their gospel by summarizing it in a symbolic way, in the form of long parables. The word ‘parable’ refers to Jesus’ short, illustrative stories which are clearly meant to be allegorical and present a theological truth. Yet it can be extended to mean other passages which might at first sight describe historical events, but in fact are symbolic stories too. And so we learn from the conception, birth, and infancy narratives what is, from the point of view of the evangelists and their churches, theological truth. This is what they tell us:
· That Jesus is the Messiah prophesied throughout the Jewish Scriptures (and so these are referenced frequently in these texts);
· That God is intimately involved in the life of Jesus which has a very special divine and universally beneficial purpose;
· That the birth of Jesus occurred through the action of the Holy Spirit;
· That Jesus was born and raised in a believing and practising Jewish community.
With respect to Mary, both gospels state that she was the most important in the line of women who had furthered God’s purposes for Israel through history: Matthew’s genealogy and Luke’s story of Mary’s response to the angel both affirm this. Matthew’s story of Mary in the birth and infancy narratives does not develop her character, but it does describe her being challenged by two major crises: the suspicion of impropriety in the conception of Jesus which could have led to Joseph abandoning her, and the need to flee Israel to seek refuge in Egypt because of Herod.
Luke has much more material than Matthew that reveals his idea of the personality of Mary. She is a young woman who, despite her surprise at the turn of events, accepts the mission with which she has been entrusted and reflects on the way that this unfolds. She interacts with the angel, a divine messenger, as do many predecessors in the Hebrew Scriptures (the women among them include Hagar and the mother of Samson). She articulates her response to this experience with a hymn of praise, the Magnificat, reminiscent of the song of Hannah, the mother of Samuel. She seeks the company of a relative, Elizabeth, and is prepared to travel to do so. She carries out the ritual requirements of the Jewish tradition with respect to the birth and circumcision of her son.
In literary terms, both gospels present Mary as a biblical heroine. This is implied in Matthew because of the challenges that she has to face, but in Luke, it is explicit: Mary is a believer in God with a strong faith, sensitive and receptive to God’s presence. She cooperates with God’s plan and helps to bring it to fruition. She is also an unusual person in whom a great miracle takes place: at the very beginning of her story is the conception of Jesus while she is still a virgin. The implication is that she was divinely chosen for this; she is ‘blessed’, as Elizabeth exclaims (Luke 1.42). The question we need to ask as we go forward in this book is: how much can we learn about Mary as an actual person in history from the ideal type that Luke portrays, if anything at all? We will start by discussing what it means to accept that there is symbolism and metaphor in the apparently historical passages in the Bible.
Notes
1 There is the question as to whether the New Testament writers used the same version of the Greek Old Testament as the versions to which we have access now. This is explored by Margaret Barker in Christmas: The Original Story.
2 Among others, Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, discusses the historical problems arising from the birth narratives.
3 The words myth and legend can be distinguished as traditions about divine beings and human figures respectively, handed down in folk culture and/or written texts. In the gospels, the involvement of God in the stories of Jesus, Mary, and the disciples mean that the words myth and legend can be used as synonyms for New Testament stories that are not historical, but nevertheless express theological truth in symbolic forms.