Block 3 - The Birth of Jesus

The Birth Narratives in Matthew and Luke have always been under suspicion since the inception of the historical critical method. This is for at least two reasons: first, suspicions of the miraculous elements in these stories and also secondly, how much of the stories include private dialogue, which has always been held under suspicion by historical critical scholars. Thus, they are widely held to be legendary material by such scholars. This would include the idea that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The general conclusion is that this location for Jesus' birth was not based on the memory of people who knew Jesus, but rather was suggested to early Christians by the reference to Bethlehem in Micah 5:2 as early Christians searched the Jewish scriptures for clues about Jesus as they tried to piece together his earthly life. Bottom line is: most historical critical scholars believe Jesus' followers only became interested in his early life long after he became the revered savior of his followers.

The traditional opinion has always been that there was continuity between Jesus and the early Christians in Jerusalem by way of the recollections of his disciples and family members who joined up with the church after his resurrection, including at least one brother and his mother. Following this line of thought, the variations in what we find in the two versions of his birth is due to the fact that Matthew presents Joseph's point of view, while Luke tells Mary's side of the story. Obviously, many modern scholars do not find this a credible explanation for the source of these birth narratives.

Borg discusses the birth narratives on pages 61-69. He sees the differences between the two versions as discrepancies which mar their credibility as historical records. The reference to the birth of Caesar Augustus is to show that before the time of Jesus that there was already a practice to tell the story of a famous person's birth by including elements of the miraculous and divine intervention to demonstrate both the divine favor on such an individual and even a divine origin for such a person. Borg's point is that both the Roman government and the early Christians found it useful to invent such stories to promote the divine origin and divine approval of their leader. The other part of Borg's analysis is that there are obvious theological elements in these stories, not because God wanted it to happen that way, but because the Gospel writers used these stories to demonstrate that the birth of Jesus heralded the beginning of a new chapter in the relationship between God and his people.

Ehrman does not say much about the birth narratives except to use them as an example of how obvious it is (to Ehrman anyway) that the Gospels as narrated cannot be trusted as historical sources (pages 39-40). Other scholars point out the aspects of the stories that simply seem far-fetched in terms of how things were done in a Roman occupied province like Palestine, especially the tax census in Luke.

Early in the 20th century, scholars were interested in attempting to find sources behind these stories. But in the second half of the 20th century, the focus shifted to the theological motivation of the Gospel writers. Indeed, there are many scholars who are convinced that both Matthew and Luke each created their birth stories to make a theological point, or even to set the theological tone for the entire gospel, by introducing themes that recur throughout each gospel. For Matthew, there is obviously a parallel between Jesus and Moses, with Jesus presented as being greater than Moses. Even conservative scholars will acknowledge this, but say that's because that's the way it happened. In both gospels the birth stories introduce Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God who was sent by God as the savior of not just the people Israel but the savior of the entire world, as marked by the arrival of the Magi in Matthew 2:1-12, and Simeon's allusion to Isaiah 42:6 in Luke 2:32 ("a light to the Gentiles").

In discussing the birth stories, Fredriksen concentrates on the theological motivation of the Gospel authors, believing this is the more reasonable explanation for the shape of these stories, and finds it very unlikely that any events from the memories of Jesus' followers contributed to the formation of these stories. Therefore, Fredriksen sides with those who find no historical value in the birth stories. It seems to me that even though the birth accounts in Matthew and Luke (most likely) do not have a literary common source, that they do have in common the elements of the virginal conception and the birth in Bethlehem. This would say to me that there is some common tradition behind these stories about the circumstances of Jesus' conception and birth that were current among his early followers.

The definitive study on the birth narratives is The Birth of Messiah by Raymond Brown. In this book Brown painstakingly attempts to separate what is tradition that the gospel writers received about the birth of Jesus, and how they reworked and modified that traditional material in the process of incorporating the stories in their gospels. Such an adventure in reconstructing the history of the text is of little interest to most historical critical scholars today. Since (according to the conclusions of historical critical inquiry) none of the material in the birth narratives is historically credible, even the pre-Gospel stories of Jesus' birth are purely legendary, therefore these narratives are of no interest to historical Jesus scholars. On the other hand, there are scholars who are only interested in the final form of the gospels and they are more interested in the literary technique and theological themes employed by the gospel writer, so anything that happened with the gospel traditions (sayings and stories) before they reached the authors who put them in their final gospel form is of no interest to them either.

Conclusion: The Birth Narratives are of no account to most modern Jesus scholars for the reasons mentioned above.