Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts, for the most part, are like two separate jigsaw puzzles: each gives a consistent theological portrait of Jesus, and we can learn from looking at both of them, but if we simply mix and match pieces from two different puzzles we do not thereby make one bigger puzzle that incorporates both. Rather, as a rule, mixing two puzzles just makes it that much harder to put either of them together and see what either of them is supposed to be a picture of!
One notices from the outset that Matthew and Luke record irreconcilable genealogies for Jesus, and this is one evidence that the two Gospel authors did not use each others’ writings. There are additional historical difficulties in trying to read the infancy narratives as sources of historical information (some of which we have already noted, but which will be mentioned briefly below simply to refresh the reader’s memory). Both narratives are, for the most part, self-consistent. It is only when we put them alongside one another and ask ‘What really happened?’ that suddenly we face serious difficulties. While we do not wish to be distracted from our focus on understanding Matthew’s Gospel, which was presumably not intended to be read in conjunction with Luke’s account, we must at least mention some of the difficulties. Unfortunately, there are many commentators who, in a desire to preserve their view of Biblical inerrancy, will take the odd step of saying that either Luke, or Matthew, or both did not express themselves in a clear and correct way in Greek. But to argue that Luke meant something other than what he wrote is to declare the text (and its author) mistaken, which defeats the purpose of the fundamentalist exercise! And so it seems better to acknowledge that the infancy narratives are not straightforward historical accounts of the events they purport to describe.
Be that as it may, one point on which the two stories diverge is on the question of where Jesus’ home was to be found: Bethlehem or Nazareth? We are so used to reading the two accounts together, that we often can fail to notice the differences between them. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ parents are from Nazareth, and they are only forced to go up to Bethlehem temporarily by the requirements of a census. In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph and Mary live in Bethlehem, and Matthew must explain why, after Herod’s death, they cannot return to their home in Bethlehem, and therefore are forced to go elsewhere and end up in Nazareth in Galilee. We may presume that both Matthew and Luke knew traditions concerning Jesus having been born in Bethlehem and nonetheless being ‘from’ Nazareth, and the rest of the narrative they presumably constructed around this core of information.
The two Gospels also appear to disagree concerning the date of Jesus’ birth: Was it during Herod’s reign, or during Quirinius’ census? Unfortunately, it is difficult to see how it could be both, as we have already seen, but it will be good to refresh your memory here. During the reign of Herod the Great, the Romans were involved in affairs in Palestine, but Herod was still king and thus a Roman census would have been a highly controversial event, and would therefore almost certainly have left some record. The famous, well-known census associated with Quirinius took place after Herod’s death, in connection with the incorporation of Judaea as a Roman province rather than as a ‘vassal kingdom’ as it had been during the reign of Herod. It caused quite a stir. (See Josephus’ Antiquities, 18:1-4). Thus we face another difficulty here: Herod died in 4 BCE, whereas the only census known from any historical source that took place while Quirinius was legate happened in 6 CE. The dates are a problem, just as is the question of where Joseph’s ‘home’ was. In fact, the two are connected. While historians often note that Galilee was not included in this census, it is not entirely impossible that Joseph had property in Bethlehem and wanted to register lest he forfeit it. But if this were the case, then we would face another difficulty, namely why Joseph and Mary would need to rely on the hospitality of others in a place where he had property, as their traveling there for census purposes suggests he did. This tension is not just between Luke and Matthew, but is internal to Luke’s Gospel, since he mentions that the events he is describing happened ‘in the days of king Herod’ (Luke 1:5). And so in the infancy narratives we are faced with real difficulties if we read the narratives as historical documents. [For further historians’ readings of the evidence on these points, see E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, New York: Penguin, 1993, pp.84-89; Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version, New York: Penguin, 1991, pp.27-33; Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, Doubleday, 1993, Appendix VII. For Evangelical perspectives regarding Luke 2:2 and Quirinius’ census, see the following links: http://www.bible.org/docs/soapbox/luke2-2.htm and http://www.ibri.org/04census.htm.]
However, it is entirely possible that the birth and infancy narratives in the Gospels were never intended to be read in this way. We have already seen that, in terms of their literary genre, the Gospels resemble ancient biographies rather than modern ones. On what basis, then, can we assume that the only appropriate way to read the Gospel narratives is as though they were modern biographies? It is not for us to decide the type of literature through which the truth of the Gospel narratives is presented, and to begin with the presupposition that truth about God can only be conveyed through historical narratives is to ignore the amount of time Jesus spent telling fictional stories – the parables – in order to teach people about God. This is not to say that the Gospel narratives are fictions, but simply that they did not have access to comprehensive archaeological, chronological and other relevant historical information, and thus to get caught up in matters of date and detail may in fact be to concern ourselves with matters other than the primary concern of the Gospel authors themselves. There would be a sad irony were we to seek to preserve at all costs the historical accuracy of the Gospel narratives understood in modern terms, and yet in the very process to miss the points the authors of these works were trying to make. For this reason, I suggest we return from historical questions to the text of the Bible, and seek to read it on its own terms, and see what we find.
[For a further discussion of these points from an Evangelical perspective, see Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church Under Persecution (2nd ed), Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994, pp. xix-xx. Particularly important is his observation slightly later that within the Jewish literature of this time, the filling in of gaps in Biblical narratives in a creative way in order to make theological points was a common practice, as one can see in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, Pseudo-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, the Targums, and elsewhere. There was thus clearly a precedent for what Matthew was doing, if that was in fact what he was doing, and this is important, because it means that his contemporaries may have been more adept at understanding what type of literature he was writing than we are today. See further Gundry, ibid, pp.623-640. Among the helpful illustrations he gives is the way even today a preacher will often feel free to insert absent details from a Biblical text, to reconstruct a character’s motivations and thoughts in a particular narrative, and so on. Matthew’s homiletical use of his sources and other traditional material should be understood in a similar way: as part of an attempt to contextualize and expound the relevance of Jesus and his message for the setting in which Matthew himself was writing. However, his positing of a direct dependence by Matthew on the stories found in Luke 1-2 is unconvincing. For a discussion of the distinction between authentic material in the Bible (that is, accurately describing actual historical events) and authoritative material (which, for Evangelicals, would mean the whole canon of the Bible, regardless whether it is describing actual historical events or not), see chapter 8 of Robert Stein’s book, Gospels and Tradition, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991, pp.147-152. See also our discussion of the virgin birth below, which illustrates very well the limitations of a historical approach and of what one can realistically hope to prove using historical methodology].
What is the relationship between the way Matthew uses these passages and their original contexts? Take a look at the following snippets from Matthew, and then go back and look at the full passages from which the quotations Matthew uses are taken:
1:22-23
& Isaiah 7:1-8:18
2:15
& Hosea 11:1-7
2:17-18
& Jeremiah 31:15-17
2:23
& ?
What conclusions can we draw about the way Matthew is reading and interpreting these passages from the OT? Does he take texts out of context and make them ‘pretexts’? Or does he have presuppositions and some underlying logic so that his use of the OT would have made sense to him and his contemporaries and been recognized as intelligible and legitimate?
Isaiah 7 – This verse seems in its original context to refer to the birth of a son either to the prophet or to the king. Which of these is more likely is hard to say. At any rate, the LXX translated the Hebrew word that means ‘young woman’ with a Greek word that more clearly means ‘virgin’ in the strict sense. This opened the door for Matthew to regard the text as having to do with Jesus. But regardless of this point, the main point was that Jesus more than any other child born in history was a sign from God that he is with his people. There is no evidence that either in Isaiah’s time or in Jesus’ a particular child was given the name ‘Immanuel’. In both cases, the birth of a particular child is said to be a sign that God is with his people. Presuming that Matthew already knew stories about Jesus having been born through a supernatural conception, it was only natural that he, knowing the Septuagint (although he clearly also knew the Hebrew text – see Davies & Allison’s commentary, vol.1, pp.32-58), would have found in this translation’s “mistranslation” something that nonetheless pointed to Jesus, and which was fulfilled in a literal way only in him.
Hosea 11 – Perhaps in quoting this text, Matthew wanted to emphasize that in Jesus the history of the people of Israel is recapitulated. This is a theme that is clearly found in the temptation narrative, where Jesus (like Israel) goes into the wilderness. There he is confronted with the same temptations as the people of Israel in the wilderness, except that he obeys, giving the answers that the Book of Deuteronomy says Israel ought to have given. We shall return to this point later on, but for the moment, we can simply say that Matthew will have known very well that this verse is first and foremost about Israel. Its ‘fulfillment’ in the life of Jesus does not mean it was written to tell the story of Jesus in advance, hundreds of years beforehand. What it means is that Jesus, in his going to Egypt and returning, fulfilled a Biblical type connected with Israel, and thus the reader should see that even in small details of his life Jesus was recapitulating and reliving the story of Israel in significant ways.
Jeremiah
31 – Here too
Jesus’ recapitulation of Israel’s history might be what made this passage
seem applicable to Jesus. The Ramah where this verse and 1 Samuel 10:2 say
Rachel was buried was about 5 miles north of Jerusalem. But according to Genesis
35:16-19 and 48:7, Rachel was buried “on the way to Ephraph (that is,
Bethlehem)”, and so the link between Rachel and Bethlehem would have made this
passage seem even more relevant. The presupposition that the people of Israel
are still in exile may also have played a role. Jesus participates in Israel’s
exilic situation and their suffering, but he is at the same time the sign that
their time in exile is coming to an end and that God will bring comfort to his
people. In Jeremiah 40:1, we are told that the captives were gathered at Ramah
for deportation to Babylon, and so this too will have contributed to the link
between Ramah, Rachel, and her descendents who were being exiled. That exilic
situation has continued up to the present time with its manipulative rulers and
tragic slaughters of innocent victims, but the birth of the Messiah, while the
unfortunate trigger to some of those tragic events, also signals reason to hope
for better things to come.
‘He will be called a Nazorean’ – These exact words are not found anywhere in the Jewish Scriptures. What did Matthew think he was quoting? We can never know with certainty. The most likely explanation is that Matthew was making a play on words in one (or both) of the following two ways:
- Netser: In Isaiah 11:1, the prediction is made of a ‘branch’ of David, and branch in Hebrew is netser. This word was used in Judaism to refer to the Messiah, and so Matthew may have wished to draw attention to the similarity between this messianic designation and Jesus’ home town.
- Nazarite = Holy: Brown, Davies, and Allison suggest that Matthew had in mind Isaiah 4:3, which reads ‘He shall be called holy’. ‘Holy’ and ‘Nazarite’ were to a certain degree interchangeable terms, as we can see by looking at the two different Septuagint traditions of translation of Judges 16:17. One has Samson say ‘I am a Nazarite’ and the other has him say ‘I am a holy one’. Of course, Jesus, who spent time drinking with sinners, was clearly not an ascetic Nazarite. Matthew is playing on the similarity between ‘Nazarite’ and ‘Nazorean’.
- Remnant = ntsyry: In Isaiah 49:6 the words “to restore the preserved of Israel” could be given different vowels and read as “a Nazarene to restore Israel”. The rabbis often changed the vowels of words (since there were no vowels in the text itself) in order to get different meanings from the text, so this would not have been at all unacceptable in his time.
In short, while Matthew’s use of the Jewish Scriptures may not seem very logical to us, we should give him the benefit of the doubt and not assume that he simply quoted verses out of context in a random fashion, desperately trying to find any Scriptural warrant for the beliefs he held, however unconvincing. Unlike many Christians who quote these verses as ‘proofs from Scripture’ today, Matthew would have expected his readers and any interested non-Christian Jews to know the Hebrew Bible well enough to understand what he was and was not doing. He was not treating the Jewish Scriptures simply as ‘the Gospel story of Jesus written in advance’. This is not to say that his interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures is straightforward, nor that we should reproduce his style of interpretation today. But it is clear that, in terms of the ways Scripture was interpreted in Judaism in that time, Matthew’s use of it would probably not have seemed inappropriate or far-fetched. [For other interesting examples from the Judaism of this period of the application of prophecies to a particular Jewish group, see the Pesher interpretations found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran].
Davies & Allison (vol.1, pp.192-3) assert that “The key to understanding Mt 1.18-2.23 is to be found in the haggadic traditions about Moses”, that is to say, in the developments and interpretations of the story of Moses that had been made within Jewish tradition and literature. Here are some of the examples they give:
1) Pharaoh set about killing the male Hebrew infants because sacred scribes had foretold him that a deliverer would be born for Israel. In Matthew, Herod learns of the birth of the ‘king of the Jews’ from the astrologers and from the scribes. [Josephus, Antiquities 2:205-9,234]
2) Amram, the father of Moses, was at a loss to know what to do regarding his pregnant wife, in light of Pharaoh’s edict. In both cases, the perplexed father is contacted by God in a dream and told not to despair [Pseudo-Philo, Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (= LAB) 9]. According to Josephus (Antiquities, 2:216), Amram is told that by Moses God will save his people; in Matthew, Joseph is told that Jesus will ‘save his people from their sins’.
3) There is a dramatically ironic contrast to Moses in Matthew. Moses was forced to flee from Egypt because his life was in danger. In Matthew, Jesus’ parents must escape to Egypt, running not from a Pharaoh who wants to kill Israel’s deliverer, but from someone who bears the title ‘king of the Jews’.
4) Matthew’s dependence on the narrative in the Hebrew Bible about Moses is seen most clearly in Matthew 2:19-20. There, a phrase is taken over from Exodus 4:19, and it is not completely modified to fit its new context, so that although it is only Herod who was a danger and had died, Matthew uses the plural that he found in Exodus.
In fact, we may lay out the overall parallels between Exodus and Matthew, following Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, p.113:
2:13-14 Herod was going to search for the 2:15 The Pharaoh sought to eliminate
child to destroy him, so Joseph took Moses, so Moses went away
the child & his mother & went away
2:16 Herod commanded that the boys of 1:22 Pharaoh commanded that all male
Bethlehem under age two be killed Hebrew infants be killed
2:19 Herod died 2:23 The king of Egypt died
2:19-20 The angel of the Lord says to 4:19 The Lord said to Moses in Midian,
Joseph in Egypt, “return to the land “return to Egypt, for all those who
of Israel, for those who were seeking were seeking your life are dead”
the child’s life are dead”
2:21 Joseph took the child & his mother 4:20 Moses took along his wife &
and returned to the land of Israel children & returned to Egypt
And so it seems both legitimate and reasonable to conclude that Matthew intends for his readers to recognize these allusions and to begin to think of Jesus in terms of a ‘new Moses’. This theme, hinted at here in an allusive rather than direct way, prepares the reader for the way Jesus is depicted in the chapters that follow, in particular in the Sermon on the Mount.
So let us now turn to the Biblical narrative and work through it in greater detail, now that we have seen a couple of the important themes that are found in it. Immediately after the genealogy, the narrative picks up the thread, or perhaps we should say the loose ends that were left after the reading of the genealogy. Jesus is not, apparently, Joseph’s actual physical descendent. Why then the genealogy? Is Jesus the son of David? The narrative goes on to address precisely these concerns of the reader, and to show how Jesus is essentially ‘adopted’ into the Davidic line. Mary, we are told, was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. What this might mean is not immediately obvious unless the reader already knows the story, and presumably most of Matthew’s readers would have heard some of the story, if not perhaps all the details, prior to the first time they came into contact with the written Gospel. Be that as it may, it is clear that Mary is expecting, that Joseph is not the father, and perhaps one reason why Matthew does not elaborate on the divine origin of Mary’s pregnancy yet in v18 is to leave the dramatic tension that is created for Joseph by this situation, so that the reader sympathizes with him. Being righteous or just is often thought of today in a way that contrasts with mercy, and so it is that some will at times claim that ‘God is righteous, and therefore he could not forgive unless the demands of the Law were fulfilled’. This is nothing more than a reading of modern English usage into an ancient narrative. In the Hebrew tradition, righteousness and mercy were not felt to be in tension, and we see this clearly here in Matthew’s narrative. Joseph is a just or righteous man, and therefore he seeks not to stone her as the Law required, but to divorce her in such a way as to not ruin Mary’s life and her reputation. Since betrothal (something more than ‘engagement’) was considered binding in an ancient Jewish context in a way that is not the case in America today, the reader may be perplexed by the narrative, which treats the couple as though they were for all intents and purposes married. According to rabbinic legislation in later times, betrothal required a certificate of divorce to be broken, and if one of the fiancées died the other was considered a widow or widower. It is probably best to think of the betrothal as essentially a marriage, even though the young virgin (often around 12-13 years old) usually lived at home for another year after this. So what was left was the ‘transferal’, when the husband took his bride into his home and assumed responsibility for her. That this was all that remained to be done in Joseph and Mary’s case is suggested in two phrases: ‘before they began to live together’ (1:18) and ‘he took his wife into his home’ (1:24).
Joseph’s mind, we are told, is put at rest when an angel appears to him in a dream. He is not to have reservations about taking Mary as his wife, because she is pregnant through a miracle rather than through some impropriety, and she will give birth to a son who will ‘save his people from their sins’. For this reason, he is to give him the name ‘Jesus’ (that is, in Hebrew, Yeshua or Joshua) which means ‘God saves’. Presumably the intended audience of the Gospel has enough knowledge of Hebrew, or at least of the Hebrew Bible, to know what the name of the great hero Joshua meant.
We have already looked at the use of the quotation from Isaiah 7:14 here. As also in Matthew 21:2-7, here too we find the author seeing a literal fulfillment of the exact wording of a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, understood in an extremely literal way. The verse in its original context presumably referred to either the prophet’s wife, or perhaps to the birth of a son to the Davidic king. The former seems to be implied in the immediate context in Isaiah, although the fact that she had already given birth to a son of Isaiah’s makes a reference to her as ‘the young woman’ seem slightly less appropriate; the latter option would also make it easier to see why Matthew thought the verse could be applied to Jesus. Be that as it may, the main point is that, as in the past, so too now in the present God is giving a sign through the birth of a child, a sign that he is with his people. That this is the significance of the quotation can be seen in both Isaiah and Matthew: In Isaiah, the birth of a child ‘Immanuel’ is predicted, and we are then told of the birth of a child named ‘Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz’. In Matthew, the fulfillment of the prophecy concerning the birth of a child ‘Immanuel’ is announced, and we are told instead of the birth of a child named ‘Jesus’. In both instances, ‘Immanuel’ indicates not the actual name given, but the symbolic significance of the birth as a sign that God is with his people.
In 1:24-2:1, we are told that Joseph took Mary into his home, and she
gave birth to a son. There is nothing to indicate that, when the Magi arrive in
Bethlehem around 2 years later, Matthew expected the reader to understand
anything other than that they were living in Joseph’s house. Matthew, again,
gives no indication that he knew Luke’s narrative, and makes no attempt to
harmonize his story with Luke’s. Probably neither should we, left we be
distracted from the theological points that Matthew is seeking to emphasize
about Jesus through his narrative.
We will not attempt to provide any kind of discussion of the virgin birth in this context, for one simple reason: it is not an event accessible to historical study. Modern-day forensics have only recently reached the point where they can definitely settle paternity issues or decide rape cases based on DNA evidence. No one in their right mind in the 20th century could ever hope to say they could prove beyond reasonable doubt who a young woman in first century Palestine did or did not sleep with. It is not that historical study disproves the virgin birth; it is simply the case that it is an event that can never be proven, since it is a unique event, and nothing short of a DNA test would settle it for a historian today.
But this issue illustrates an aspect of the relationship between historical study and faith. If one could do a DNA test on Jesus, what do you think it would find? Presumably Jesus, being a human being, had both an X and a Y chromosome, and so even if he didn’t get the Y chromosome from Joseph, are we to suppose that he could have got it from Mary? If you believe Jesus was ‘in every way like us’, then he would not have had some sort of super-human DNA, nor would he have half human, half divine DNA (since I presume you would agree that God does not have DNA!!!) So you can see how attempting to speculate on the relationship between such modern questions and the Biblical text produces little that is genuinely helpful. But what if Jesus was found to have Joseph’s DNA? Would you then say that the virgin birth is not literally true? Or would you say that God used the DNA of Joseph to produce Jesus by miraculous conception? Presumably there were easier ways to make a baby using Joseph and Mary’s DNA! But be that as it may, at this stage belief in the virgin birth has become unfalisfiable, that is to say, if even a DNA test, no matter what the result, could not convince you that the virgin birth didn’t occur, then it is no longer a belief that depends on evidence. And if this is the case for you, then you will probably agree with me that there is no real point in attempting to ask historical questions about it! J [Those who are interested may consult, in addition to Brown, Birth of the Messiah and other commentaries, the fair discussion of all aspects of the virgin birth (i.e. doctrinal and scientific as well as historical) by Hugh Montefiore, The Womb and the Tomb, London: Fount/Harper Collins, 1992. See too on this and other historical questions relating to Jesus’ birth the first volume of John P. Meier’s study, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, New York: Doubleday, 1991, pp.205-230].
The traditions that there were ‘three’ visitors, with names like Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthasar, and that they were in fact kings, are details not found in Matthew’s Gospel. The translation ‘wise men’, while not inappropriate, hides an important fact: the individuals referred to were pagan astrologers. This is an important point in the context of Matthew’s Gospel. Matthew presumably wishes the reader to understand that, while the Jewish leaders are unprepared for and blissfully unaware of Jesus’ birth, non-Jewish astrologers who do not have the benefit of the Scriptures manage to find him. Once again, the irony is intentional. One thinks of the exclamation made by Jesus later in the Gospel: “I have not found such faith even in all of Israel!” Gentile acceptance in contrast with Jewish rejection of Jesus is an important theme in Matthew’s Gospel, and it is first introduced here in chapter 2.
So the ‘wise men’ were astrologers. Astrology reflects the belief (with its roots primarily in ancient Babylon, but which was widely accepted in the Greco-Roman world in the first century of our era) that the stars are heavenly powers and they influence if not control our fate. These astrologers, by watching the stars, are said to have been led to come worship the newly born king of the Jews. This would probably not have seemed as antithetical to Christian belief to Matthew as it does to us. Judaism had a great deal of interest in astrology in this period: it was practiced at Qumran, and the constellations were stitched into the fabric of the temple in Jerusalem and painted onto the floor of synagogues like the one at Dura-Europos. It was not too hard to find in the 12 signs of the zodiac an indication that the choice of the 12 tribes of Israel was in accordance with the nature of the world and of creation, as the rabbis later argued. In Colossians, Paul argues that in Christ we have been seated above every heavenly power, but he does not deny that they exist, nor does Revelation, when it assumes that until we are told otherwise, Satan and his malevolent forces dwell in the heavens. So our skepticism about such things is a result not of clear Biblical teaching, but of our scientific worldview. And science is presumably right on this point, it must be said. But our rejection (hopefully) of such things as astrology as unfounded should not be read back into this first century book. Through studying ‘natural revelation’, these astrologers are led to Jesus, whereas those who had ‘special revelation’ (i.e. Scripture) were not. This is the only point Matthew wants to make here. The magi are thus not in any way negative characters, except that as pagan astrologers they are not characters to whom the readers would be sympathetic, and thus Matthew uses them to drive home his emphatic ‘Shame on you’ addressed to his own people, the Jews. He wishes to say here only ‘you ought to have responded as they did’, and to make his point through irony: “If even pagan astrologers could recognize the Messiah without the aid of Scripture, how much more should you [speaking to his Jewish contemporaries] recognize and accept him?”. There is perhaps also a contrast with the Moses story: there, the magicians (Philo calls them ‘magi’ in Life of Moses, 1.16.92) aid Pharaoh against Moses, whereas here they do not aid Herod the king of the Jews who is out to destroy the ‘new Moses’. Matthew clearly does not intend to make any other points about astrology or astrologers in general, nor should we seek to derive such from his use of the magi as characters in this chapter.
The magi arrive in Jerusalem seeking the one who had been born king of the Jews. We are to understand from the mention of the time of the star’s appearing, and of the slaughter of all male children in Bethlehem age two and under, that Jesus had been born a year or two prior to this incident occurring. So the story of the magi is not technically a story about Jesus’ birth, and so when the magi are made to come to the crèche and worship Jesus lying in straw among the animals, this has no basis in Matthew’s narrative. At any rate, their arrival in Jerusalem causes quite a commotion. One thing that Herod the Great was famous for was his paranoia and his willingness to kill even his own sons if he thought they were after his throne. So it is not surprising that Matthew speaks of not only Herod, but also the whole city being put on edge by this discussion of the birth of a king of the Jews, one who was clearly not Herod’s!
The magi say that they saw his star “when it arose” (en tē anatolē). To translate this phrase as ‘in the East’ faces a number of difficulties, not least of which is the statement later on that the star was still visible, and led the magi to the spot where Jesus was to be found, and then proceeded to stop overhead. There has been a great deal of speculation as to what the star might have been. A popular suggestion is Halley’s comet, although it appeared in 12-11 BCE, probably too early if Luke is right to put Jesus’ age at ‘around 30’ in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar. [For some interesting suggestions that would tie in with certain clues in John’s Gospel, see Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version, pp.34-35]. It is unlikely that Matthew’s account of a star which moves and then stops overhead can be equated with a known astronomical phenomenon (which makes it, technically, an ‘unidentified flying object’, and so it is perhaps not surprising that Chris De Burgh found inspiration for his song “A Spaceman Came Traveling” in it! J). But once again, we are in danger of letting historical concerns distract us from the logic of Matthew’s narrative. Jesus is presented here, as the son of David, as the object of worship of foreign dignitaries, perhaps thought of as fulfilling such passages as Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:10-11. The star will probably have recalled Numbers 24:7-17. To spend time investigating the appearance of Halley’s comet may be interesting, but in order to grasp the meaning of Matthew’s narrative, we do not need to look beyond the text itself and its echoes of the Jewish Scriptures.
We have already looked at the quotations from the Jewish Scriptures in these chapters, and so we do not need to go into them again, but Matthew clearly sees Jesus’ life following a pattern, that of the story of Israel.
Having looked at Matthew’s narrative of the birth and early years of Jesus’ life from a literary and theological perspective, the meaning of the text becomes clear. Yet for a historian, next to nothing in the details of the narrative is subject to confirmation, and so a historian faces the very real possibility that most or all of what Matthew wrote never actually happened. Could Jesus’ life have paralleled that of Moses in a number of respects? Certainly. But it is equally possible that Matthew intentionally portrayed Jesus in this way, not having any actual historical information about Jesus’ birth. Matthew would not have been the first to turn prophecy into history by looking to the Jewish Scriptures or ‘Old Testament’ to fill in the gaps when he did not have any other source of information. Did Jesus’ parents take him to Egypt? From a historian’s perspective, one cannot be certain whether Matthew referred Hosea 11:1 to Jesus because he had heard that Jesus had lived in Egypt as a child, or whether he wrote that Jesus had been taken to Egypt on the basis of Hosea 11:1. And so it is crucial to recognize at this juncture that the historian is not primarily an interpreter of sacred texts. A literary-theological approach looks at the level of the text and seeks to understand what the author of the text is trying to communicate. A historian, on the other hand, looks through the text and behind it. In this case, there is little in Matthew’s Gospel that a historian would safely consider reliable information.
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