THE QUESTION:

What were the sources for the Bible’s accounts of Jesus’ birth?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

If it’s Christmastime, we expect the media will look around for material to deconstruct cherished church traditions. One 2019 example is a series of December articles about Jesus’ Nativity on this very interfaith site — www.patheos.com/blogs/messyinspirations — from a Catholic “channel” contributor who for some reason wants anonymity and calls himself “fellow dying inmate.”

The “inmate” is correct to debunk some sentimental Christmas folkways. Typical cradle scenes to the contrary, the shepherds and wise men did not worship the baby Jesus together but appear in separate incidents told in Luke and Matthew respectively. With the wise men, we’re not told there were three, only that whatever their number they presented three gifts. Nor were they “kings” as that carol claims.

The series highlights the intriguing reality that among the four gospels only Matthew and Luke say anything about Jesus’ birth. How come?

Mark begins with John the Baptist in the wilderness, preparing the way as cousin Jesus appears. John starts by echoing the Book of Genesis with the cosmic concept of Jesus as the “Word” who was with God “in the beginning,” then turns to John the Baptist.

The articles dive into the many differences between Matthew and Luke. A familiar example is their contrasting family trees for Jesus, Matthew 1:1-17 from Abraham forward to Mary, and Luke 3:23-38 from Joseph back to Adam. There’s a classic historical problem in what looks like the wrong timing for Quirinius’s census in Luke. The “inmate” believes many “irreconcilable contradictions” undercut the gospels’ accounts as reliable history. Conservatives offer answers point by point as sifted across the centuries, and contend that having two independent Nativity accounts undergirds credibility.

Among the many issues, we’ll focus on thinking about the sources for the birth passages, the kind of thing we journalists specialize in. The “inmate” relies especially on interpretations by Bruce Malina of the Jesuits’ Creighton University and Richard Rohrbaugh of Lewis and Clark College.

First, who were the gospel authors? We cannot be certain, and neither gospel names an author. However, since the 2nd Century unbroken church tradition has identified them as Matthew, one of the original apostles chosen by Jesus, and Luke, the Gentile companion on Paul’s missionary journeys. No other candidates have ever been proposed. But the “inmate” spurns the ancient view and thinks the writer of Luke was some “anonymous spinmeister”

The online articles say the birth stories are about “truth,” that is the importance of Jesus as the messiah, while pooh-poohing the idea that they simultaneously offer “facts.” The “inmate” says “modern western culture is unique in that it identifies truth with factuality,” whereas “the Gospels are theological portraits, and not modern Western histories or biographies,” although they do include “some scant historical data.” But it’s “arrogant superiority” for anyone to think the stories are factual.

That opinion is widely taught in secular universities. Meanwhile, traditionalists cite Luke’s opening verses that say “many” prior authors had produced written accounts of Jesus’ life using material “handed on to us” by “eyewitnesses,” and that Luke did the same “after investigating everything carefully from the very first.” Was this spin?

Joseph goes unmentioned early on so it’s assumed he died before Jesus’ adult career and wouldn’t have been a source for birth stories. What about Mary, then? A potentially revealing verse is Luke 2:51, which says that when Jesus was 12 “his mother treasured all these things in her heart.” So does virtually every woman who has given birth and raised children.

What were the odds that Mary passed along “all these things” that she “treasured’? Though the “inmate” doubts it, a journalist would find that plausible if not absolutely proven. Another clue is Acts 21:18, in a book experts agree was written by the same author as Luke. We learn that “we” met in Jerusalem with Jesus’ brother James. It’s certainly possible, if not certain, that at that meeting James might share family reminiscences about Jesus’ birth with Luke and others.

This was very early on when there’s have been numerous eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life. We are also told in Acts 1:14 that Jesus’ brothers and the middle-aged Mary were part of the founding Christian community. But, the “inmate” demands, if the Nativity accounts originate with the family then “why do they differ so?” He quotes Catholic expert Father Raymond Brown, who quipped that “evidently Mary and Joseph never spoke to one another!”

So — did the gospel writers simply make up most of it? That’s the implication of the “inmate,” but not quite a flat assertion. The conservative I. Howard Marshall of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, doubts that was the case and figures it’s “most probable” that Luke’s birth section relied upon Jewish Christians having “links with the family of Jesus. . . . Beyond this, it is difficult to go.”

The “inmate” underscores the obvious reality that Matthew in particular shaped the narrative as fulfillment of Old Testament scriptures.

Continue reading “What were the sources for the Bible’s accounts of Jesus’ birth?”, by Richard Ostling.