The Christian Infancy Narratives

This Sunday at Farmville Baptist Church, I’m pinch-hitting in Sunday School. Appropriately enough, the lesson text is Luke 2:1-14. It’s interesting to compare the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. They have important elements in common, but many differences, especially in tone. Matthew’s account is cloak-and-dagger. He gives us the star, the Magi*, the Massacre of the Innocents, and a clandestine flight to Egypt. Luke’s account inspires O Holy Night, with angelic hymns, shepherds, and the manger.

*A Christmas trivia question: Magi is plural. What is the singular? (The answer is at the end of the article.)

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For Matthew, the infancy narrative proper begins at 1:18: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” (Note: Scripture quotations are from the NRSV.) The major events in his narrative are as follows:

(1) Mary is “found to be with child from the Holy Spirit” (v. 18). An angel appears to Joseph and instructs him to take Mary as his wife, explaining that the child was conceived through the Holy Spirit. Matthew stresses Mary’s virginity.

(2) Jesus is born in Bethlehem in the days of King Herod. Herod’s reign lasted from 37 B.C. to 4 B.C., but it is apparent that Jesus’ birth occurs sometime in the final years of this period. Magi from the east, probably astrologers, visit Jesus to pay homage after seeing his “star.” The Magi return home without informing Herod of Jesus’ identity or location, having been warned in a dream not to do so.

[What was the "star" the Magi saw, and on what basis did they connect it with the birth of the Jewish messiah? I have no answer for the second question, but I'll consider the first in a future article.]

(3) Joseph is warned by an angel that Herod will seek to murder Jesus. The holy family flees to Egypt, remaining in exile until Herod’s death (in 4 B.C.).

(4) Herod is enraged by the Magi’s deception. He orders the murder of all infant males in Bethlehem aged two and under, having approximated Jesus’ age from his conversation with the Magi.

(5) When Herod dies, an angel appears to Joseph and tells him to return to Israel. Joseph decides to avoid Judea because Herod’s son Archelaus is in power, and he receives another warning in a dream. The holy family settles in Galilee, in Nazareth.

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Luke’s account of the birth begins at 2:1. (The announcement of it is given to Mary at 1:26-38.) The major events are as follows:

(1) A census of the entire Roman world is ordered by Caesar Augustus, and Joseph travels with Mary, already pregnant, to Bethlehem to register, since he descends from David. While in Bethlehem, Mary gives birth. She wraps the infant in “bands of cloth” (v. 7) and lays him in the manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

(2) An angel appears to shepherds tending flock in the region, and announces the birth of the Messiah. The angel explains how the shepherds can recognize him (”wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger” [v. 12]). An angelic host then appears and praises God, declaring an era of peace.

(3) The shepherds travel to Bethlehem, presumably that same night, and find the child as the angel had described. They relate what the angels said to them, to the amazement of all who hear it. Mary contemplates their message.

(4) After eight days, Jesus is circumscribed and formally named.

(5) After at least forty days (cf. Leviticus 12:2-8), Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the Temple for his dedication. They sacrifice two turtledoves to consecrate Jesus, their firstborn, to God. While in Jerusalem, they meet Simeon, to whom it was promised he would not die before seeing the Messiah. Simeon blesses Jesus, and utters a prescient summary of his destiny. Anna, an elderly prophetess who apparently lives in the Temple, comes forward at that moment to give thanks for the child. She speaks to everyone she meets about him.

(6) Having completed their obligations to the law, Mary and Joseph return to their home in Nazareth. Jesus grows up, with God’s favor upon him.

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A comparison of the infancy narratives raises several interesting questions. For example, where did Joseph and Mary live? It appears from Matthew’s account that Joseph and Mary made their home in Bethlehem until the flight to Egypt. They settle in Nazareth upon returning to Israel. But Luke places their home in Nazareth prior to Jesus’ birth–Joseph travels to Bethlehem to register for the census.

Why is there such an extreme difference in tone? Matthew’s tale includes murdered infants and warnings in dreams. One perceives a high level of stress for Joseph at least. But Luke’s account is peaceful, serene. Why does Herod’s massacre of the infants in Bethlehem escape Luke’s attention?

For that matter, why is this event not mentioned by Jewish historian Josephus? At the Catholic Encyclopedia, it’s suggested the number of infants murdered was less than twenty–as opposed to the thousands attested to by various traditions. The author writes,

“This cruel deed of Herod is not mentioned by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, although he relates quite a number of atrocities committed by the king during the last years of his reign. The number of these children was so small that this crime appeared insignificant amongst the other misdeeds of Herod.”

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Much attention has been given to Luke’s census: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.” (vv. 1-2.) The Romans conducted censuses in 28 B.C., 8 B.C., and A.D. 14, but these would have affected only Roman citizens, not Joseph. According to a footnote in the St. Joseph Edition of the New American Bible, Quirinius becomes governor of Syria in A.D. 6, and conducts a census of non-Roman citizens in Judea. But Matthew’s account places Jesus’ birth prior to the death of Herod, which Josephus dates to 4 B.C. This ten-year gap is impossible to explain if both gospels are correctly dating Jesus’ birth.

Governors in Syria between 10 B.C. and 4 B.C. are known, and Quirinius is not on the list. If Luke has an earlier Quirinius administration in mind, it’s too early. But it’s been suggested that Quirinius held some type of high-ranking military position in Syria around 4 B.C., and that Luke’s reference to him as “governor” is somewhat generic.

I have no explanation, and feel no strong compulsion to come up with one. For what it’s worth, here are two possibilities:

One of the footnotes in the St. Joseph edition of the New American Bible reads,

“Luke may simply be combining Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem with his vague recollection of a census under Quirinius to underline the significance of this birth for the whole Roman world: through this child born in Bethlehem peace and salvation came to the empire.”

In the online edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, we find this explanation:

“According to Matthew, Jesus was born near the end of the reign of Herod the Great, thus before 4 BC. In Luke, chapter 2, verses 1 to 2, Jesus is said to have been born at the time of a census when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Such a census did occur, but in AD 6–7. Because this was after Herod’s death and not in agreement with a possible date of Jesus’ baptism, this late date is unlikely. There may have been an earlier census under another governor; an inscription in the Lateran Museum records an unnamed governor who twice ruled Syria, and the suggestion has been made that this was, indeed, Quirinius and that in an earlier time a reported census according to Roman calculation might have been carried out c. 8 BC, one of a series of such. With such speculation and the combined evidence of Matthew and Luke, an approximate year of birth might be 7–6 BC.” (Retrieved December 21, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.)

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The differences between the infancy narratives have inspired the effort to harmonize the texts. I find this problematic. Matthew and Luke write from different perspectives, addressing different audiences with different needs. Although both provide historical landmarks in an effort to date Jesus’ birth, a journalistic account of historical events is not their primary concern. The effort to harmonize the accounts risks missing the main points made in each.

The accounts are fundamentally different, if not contradictory. Perhaps this fact disturbs fundamentalists, but the effort to recover a “literal” account of the events surrounding Jesus’ birth devalues the text, by replacing our two authoritative narratives with a conflation that exists nowhere in Holy Scripture. At Mystical Seeker, we find an insightful analysis of the self-defeating nature of harmonization inspired by the “inerrancy” approach to Scripture:

“The desperation to salvage the literal truth of fundamentally different Gospel narratives forces conservatives to concoct scenarios that are not mentioned in either, just in order to link the disparate narratives together. The glue that they use to join these scenarios together is not found in either narrative. Thus we have the irony that those who claim that the Bible alone is the literally true foundation of their theology are forced to rely on invented scenarios in order to bring together those disparate elements. It’s an inherently self-contradictory posture. In order to preserve the literal truth of the Bible, one is forced to do what one ostensibly opposes–going outside of what was spelled out in the narrative itself (in this case, by engaging in a process of creative imagining of what must have taken place but what wasn’t specified.) We see this same phenomenon, of course, when conservative Christians try to meld together the two creation stories in Genesis.” (Emphasis in the original.)

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According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the singular of Magi is Magus.