In an article in the February 1985 issue of Bible Review (“Different Ways of Looking at the Birth of Jesus,”BR 01:01), Kenneth Gros Louis discusses what he calls “narrative strategies in New Testament infancy narratives.” It seems to me that Gros Louis analyzes only minor tactics while completely ignoring the dominant strategy of the text—or at least the text of Matthew. (A similar case could be made for Luke but I shall leave that for another occasion.)
The dominant strategy of the infancy narrative in the Gospel of Matthew is parallelism with the story of Moses’ infancy, a parallelism that determines the underlying structure of Matthew’s entire account of Jesus’ infancy.
Matthew’s parallelism is based, however, not on the concise biblical account of Moses’ infancy contained in Exodus 1–2, but on the expanded, popular accounts of Moses’ infancy that were circulating at the time Matthew wrote and that are reflected in Midrashima and other Jewish sources of the time.
As we shall see, this parallelism determines not only the overall structure of Matthew’s 019infancy narrative, it also dictates and controls the general sequence and even the detailed elements of the Matthean text.
True, if one makes a simple comparison between the infancy narratives in Matthew 1–2 and the infancy narrative in Exodus 1–2, the differences are more striking than the similarities. Both have, to be sure, a massacre of male children (Exodus 1:16, 22 and Matthew 2:16). But in the Exodus account the purpose of the massacre is to kill the Israelites; Moses just happens to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Matthew’s infancy narrative, the massacre 020is decreed precisely to kill Jesus. The similarity between the gospel account and the biblical story in Exodus is only at the level of narrative element and not at the level of narrative function or narrative structure. The similarity could easily be dismissed as mere narrative coincidence. But the situation is quite different when we look at the developments in the story of Moses’ infancy that had occurred by the time Matthew wrote.
More than 30 years ago, Renée Bloch collected these expansions on Moses’ infancy, dating from the first century A.D. to the 12th century A.D.1 Some of the traditions, however, go back much further than the date of the sources and manuscripts that have 021survived. Unfortunately, critical studies of these sources have not yet provided us with definitive dates for the history of the various traditions.2
Two of the sources, however—Josephus and pseudo-Philo—indisputably go back to the first century A.D., so we can be certain that the material contained in them was circulating at the time Matthew wrote. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote his Antiquities of the Jews in 93–94 A.D.3 The man we know only as pseudo-Philo wrote shortly after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Philo himself wrote in about 45 A.D., but pseudo-Philo, who wrote in Philo’s name—a common practice at this time—wrote his Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum about 30 years later.4
Josephus contains an account of the king’s (or Pharaoh’s) plot, in which Moses is the cause of the massacre. Pseudo-Philo contains an account of Moses’ father’s action, which includes a general divorce by all Hebrews of their wives. My assumption is that these represent separate and selective abbreviations of a story already fully developed in structural outline by the first century. I also assume that minor narrative details added in a 12th-century A.D. manuscript contained in Bloch’s collection, the Sefer ha-Zikronot (The Book of Memory), record a narrative structure already present in the first century.
Now let us compare Jesus’ infancy narrative in Matthew with Moses’ infancy narrative in Exodus as expanded by these later Jewish sources.
Both in Matthew and in the rabbinic sources preserved in Josephus, pseudo-Philo and Sefer ha-Zikronot, we have a drama in three acts. As we shall see, each act is paralleled in the other.
Act I. The King’s Plot—Pharaoh and Herod.
In Exodus, the king’s plot to massacre the Hebrew male children is based on the following observation by pharaoh (Exodus 1:9–10): “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war befall us, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Pharaoh’s first solution to this problem was to work the Hebrews to death: “Therefore, they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens.” This solution, 022however, failed: “But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad” (Exodus 1:11–14).
So the king tried another solution, which proved no more successful: “Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ‘When you serve as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, she shall live.’ But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them but let the male children live” (Exodus 1:15–20). Then comes the final solution: “Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, ‘Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live’ ” (Exodus 1:22).
In that version of the story, Pharaoh makes no personal attack against Moses. Moses just happens to be born at the wrong time. He is born in the midst of a general extermination of male Hebrew children. His jeopardy is more an accidental effect than his existence a prime cause of the massacre. Some thoughtful readers of the biblical account might well find this “coincidence” somewhat disconcerting and even inappropriate. Shouldn’t Moses have a more central role in the extermination process? Wouldn’t it be a more effective story if the general extermination were intended precisely to eliminate Moses himself?
This is exactly what happens in Josephus’s account of the story. Josephus begins with the unsuccessful attempt by the Egyptians to work the Israelites to death and then continues as follows:5
“A further incident had the effect of stimulating the Egyptians yet more to exterminate our race. One of the sacred scribes—persons with considerable skill in accurately predicting the future—announced to the king that there would be born to the Israelites at that time one who would abase the sovereignty of the Egyptians and exalt the Israelites, were he reared to maturity, and would surpass all men in virtue and win everlasting renown. Alarmed thereat, the king, on this sage’s advice, ordered that every male child born to the Israelites should be destroyed by being cast into the river.”
Josephus smoothly integrates into the story a much more significant cause relating to Moses of the massacre of Hebrew male children, although the biblical narrative contains none. In the biblical narrative we see the threat to Moses’ life as effect. In Josephus, Moses is the cause of the threat.
Josephus records not only the earliest, but also the simplest, version of the transition from Moses as effect to Moses as cause of the massacre. Obviously, the tradition may have originated much earlier. A much later—and fuller—version of the story comes from the medieval Sefer ha-Zikronot.6 It is quite possible that this version contains details that are even earlier than Josephus; Josephus was quite as capable of abbreviation as expansion. Here is the account from the Sefer ha-Zikronot:
“In the 130th year after the descent of Israel into Egypt, Pharaoh dreamed that he was sitting on the throne of his kingdom. He looked up and saw an old man standing before him with a balance like those of a merchant in his hand. The old man grasped the scales and held them up before Pharaoh. Then he took all the elders of Egypt, her princes and her nobles and put them on one scale of the balance. After that he took a tender lamb and put it on the second scale and the lamb outweighed them all. Pharaoh wondered at this terrible vision, how the lamb outweighed them all and then Pharaoh awoke to find it was only a dream. Next morning, Pharaoh arose and when he had summoned all his courtiers and narrated his dream, they were extremely frightened. Then one of the royal princes answered, ‘This can only mean that a great evil shall come on Egypt at the end of days.’ ‘And what is that?’ the king asked the eunuch. So the eunuch replied to the king, ‘A child will be born in Israel who will destroy all the land of Egypt. If it pleases the king, let a royal statute be written here and promulgated throughout all the land of Egypt to kill every newborn male of the Hebrews so that the evil be averted from the land of Egypt.’ And the king did so and he sent to call the midwives of the Hebrews….” (Italics added).
The heart of this much fuller version is still, of course, a prophecy of Moses’ destiny which directly causes the massacre of the Israelite male children. But the story is now an act with four scenes: (1) A sign in the form of a dream, (2) Fear of Pharaoh and his courtiers, (3) Consultation with the courtiers, and (4) The decision to massacre the male Hebrew children.
Once the shift is made from Moses as effect to Moses as cause, the parallelism with the Jesus infancy narrative in Matthew is much closer. Moreover, all four scenes as recounted in the Sefer ha-Zikronot are paralleled in the Matthew account, with one significant exception—the magi are unique to Matthew’s account. But I shall return to this later; let us first look at the parallels:
Scene 1: A sign. In Matthew 2:1–2 we read, “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who 023has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him.’ ”
The sign in the infancy story of Moses is contained in Pharaoh’s dream rather than in a star.
Scene 2: Fear. The fear of Pharaoh and his courtiers is neatly paralleled in Matthew’s infancy narrative. In Matthew 2:3 we read, “When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.”
Scene 3: Consultation. This consultation is quite similar in both cases. Just as Pharaoh consulted his courtiers, in Matthew 2:4 we read that Herod “assembl[ed] all the chief priests and scribes of the people [and] he inquired of them where Christ was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea …’ ”
Scene 4: The decision to massacre. Herod first tries to trap the magi into betraying the child in Matthew 2:7–15 and only when that fails does he issue the decree of extermination for the male children in 2:16. The presence of the magi does introduce a difference in the two stories, just as it did in the first scene; but again I shall turn to this later.
Act II. The Father’s Action—Amram and Joseph:
In the Bible, Moses’ father is initially only an unnamed individual. A necessary prerequisite to any parallelism in Matthew is the elevation of Moses’ father to a named and important protagonist. That is exactly what happens in the later Jewish sources we have been examining.
In Exodus itself, Moses’ father is mentioned only in passing (Exodus 2:1–2a): “Now a man from the house of Levi went and took to wife a daughter of Levi. The woman conceived and bore a son.” Only later—in Exodus 6:20—is he given a name: Amram.
In the later traditions, the role of Moses’ father (and of Moses’ sister Miriam) becomes steadily more important. Behind this development, one can see the same careful and thoughtful reading of the biblical account that was evident in the growth of “The King’s Plot,” in which Moses became the cause of the massacre. Why, early readers no doubt asked 024themselves, did the Isralites go on having children if the Egyptians just condemned them to death?
“Amaram(es), a Hebrew of noble birth, fearing that the whole race would be extinguished through lack of the succeeding generation, and seriously anxious on his own account because his wife was with child, was in grievous perplexity. He accordingly had recourse to prayer to God … And God had compassion on him, and, moved by his supplication, appeared to him in his sleep, exhorted him not to despair of the future and told him … ‘This child, whose birth has filled the Egyptians with such dread that they have condemned to destruction all the offspring of the Israelites, shall indeed be thine; he shall escape those who are watching to destroy him and reared in marvellous wise, he shall deliver the Hebrew race from their bondage in Egypt, and be remembered, so long as the universe shall endure, not by Hebrews alone but even by alien nations; that favour do I bestow upon thee and upon thy posterity.’ ”
The role of Amram has considerably increased. This 025act has two scenes: (1) the Prayer of Amram, and (2) the Reassurance by God.
Pseudo-Philo reflects a further development in the role of Amram:8
“Then the elders of the people assembled the people with mourning and mourned and lamented saying … let us appoint us an ordinance, that no man come near his wife … for it is better to die childless, until we know what God will do.
“And Amram answered and said … I will not abide by that which ye ordain, but will go in and take my wife and beget sons, that we may be made many on the earth … Now therefore I will go and take my wife, neither will I consent to the commandment of the king….
“And the word which Amram had in his heart was pleasing to God … And Amram of the tribe of Levi went forth and took a wife of his tribe, and it was so when he took her, that the residue did after him and took their wives….
“And the spirit of God came upon Maria [Miriam] by night, and she saw a dream, and told her parents in the morning saying: I saw this night, and behold a man in a linen garment stood and said to me: Go and tell thy parents: behold, that which shall be born of you shall be cast into the water, for by him water shall be dried up, and by him will I do signs, and I will save my people, and he shall have the captaincy thereof alway….”
In pseudo-Philo we have three scenes instead of two as in Josephus: (1) The divorce whereby husbands are to refrain from relations with their wives (in Josephus, Amram prays that his son will survive. In pseudo-Philo, Amram’s prayer is barely mentioned; his prayer is overshadowed by the much larger theme of divorce, a general divorce decreed by the leaders of Israel but refused by Amram). (2) The remarriage, which reverses the divorce. (3) The reassurance by God (in Josephus, the reassurance is given by God to Amram directly in a dream; in pseudo-Philo the message is mediated indirectly through Miriam, but still in a dream).9
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Here is the account of the same events from the Sefer ha-Zikronot:10
“Then, when the Israelites heard the decree ordained by Pharaoh that their male children be thrown in the river, part of the people divorced their wives but the rest stayed married to them …
“And there was a man of Levi in the land of Egypt whose name was Amram, son of Qahat, son of Levi, son of Jacob, and the man married Jochebed, a daughter of Levi and his own aunt, and the woman conceived and bore a daughter and called her name Miriam….
“And then at the end of three years the Spirit of God descended on Miriam and she went and prophesied in the center of the house saying, ‘Behold, the son will be born to my father and my mother at this time who will save Israel from the power of Egypt.’ So when Amram had heard the words of the child he went and remarried his wife whom he had divorced after the decree of Pharaoh ordering the destruction of every male of the house of Jacob. And in the third year of the divorce he slept with her and she conceived by him. And at the end of six months from the time of conception she bore a son and the house was filled with brightness like that of the sun and moon at their rising.”
Again, there are three scenes: (1) The divorce, (2) The reassurance, and (3) The remarriage. But here even Amram is involved in the general divorce.
These same three scenes provide the structure of the story of “The Father’s Action” in Matthew’s account of the infancy of Jesus.
Scene 1. The divorce. Matthew 1:18–19 reads, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit; and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.”
Scene 2. The reassurance. This occurs in a dream just as in the Moses tradition the reassurance is given in a dream to Amram or Miriam. In Matthew 1:20–21 we read: “But as he [Joseph] considered this [divorce], behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ ” Notice the salvational role promised the child in Matthew just as in Josephus it is promised of Moses (“He shall deliver the Hebrew race”), in pseudo-Philo (“By him … I will save my people”), and in Sefer ha-Zikronot (“He … who will save Israel”).
Scene 3. The remarriage. Matthew 1:24 concludes, “When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son; and he called his name Jesus.”
Act III. The Child’s Deliverance—Moses and Jesus.
The basic story of Moses’ deliverance is the well-known story of the basket in the Nile bullrushes and his rescue by Pharaoh’s daughter, as recounted in Exodus 2:3–10. This story is quite fully developed in the Bible, so the popular or midrashic accounts had little need to add to it. The biblical account did not need much structural amplification, and those early readers had the good taste to recognize that fact.
On the surface, the story of Jesus’ deliverance in Matthew 2 is completely different from Moses’ deliverance in Exodus. Nevertheless, the parallelism that was so obvious and on the surface in the first two acts of the drama continues in this third act, but on a deeper and ironic, if not sardonic, level. It is now that we shall see what it means for Matthew to describe Jesus as a “new” Moses.
In the earlier article in BR to which I referred at the outset, Gros Louis correctly noted five prophecies that are fulfilled and five dreams that give warnings in the first two chapters of Matthew. The double five presumably points delicately towards Moses and the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses). Second, dreams are rare in the New Testament, in contrast to the Hebrew Bible. The Matthean emphasis on action being controlled by God through dreams links those dreams to the dreams of Pharaoh and of Amram or Miriam that controlled the Mosaic infancy narrative at crucial points. Third, and most important, is the fulfillment of Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:13–15. Hosea 11:1 reads: “When Israel was a child I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt.”
We see the fulfillment or repetition of this event in Matthew. Matthew 2:13–15 reads:
“Now when they [the magi] had departed, behold, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son.’ ”
Later, in Matthew 2:19–21, we read:
“But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.’ And he rose and took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.”
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One might well have expected that the fulfillment of Hosea 11:1 (leaving Egypt) should have been mentioned after Matthew 2:19–21 (leaving Egypt) rather than after 2:13–15a (entering Egypt), that is, it should have been mentioned when Jesus was coming out of Egypt rather than going down into it. Of course, this could be explained as a simple flash-forward, but I think there is something more subtle at work. Matthew wants us to think simultaneously of Jesus fleeing for refuge from Israel to Egypt and of Moses fleeing for refuge from Egypt to Israel. The supreme irony is that the “new” Moses is going in the opposite direction, not from but towards the gentiles. The parallelism here is no longer between the infant Jesus and the infant Moses but between the infant Jesus and the grown Moses who, as had been foretold, would save Israel from Egypt. For Matthew, Jesus is the Moses of the gentiles, and his destiny is to “save his people from their sins” as foretold in Matthew 1:21. In retrospect, this explains the sharp contrast between the gentile wise men (magi) who came from the east to worship Jesus, and the fact that “when Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him” (Matthew 2:1–3). Once again for Matthew, Jesus is the “new” Moses, the Moses of the gentiles, saving them not from Egypt, but from sin.
Matthew’s infancy story of course contains given, traditional material concerning Jesus. The most important of this material can be seen in those very few places where Matthew’s narrative coincides with that of Luke 1–2. Two key elements are the virginal conception of Jesus in Matthew 1:23 and Luke 1:31–35, in fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14, and the Bethlehem birth of Jesus in Matthew 2:1 and Luke 2:4, 11, presumably in fulfillment of Micah 5:2, “Truly, He will leave them [helpless] until she who is to bear has borne; then the rest of his countrymen shall return to the children of Israel.”
The major strategy of Jesus’ infancy story in Matthew is dictated, however, by Mosaic parallelism. This accounts for the close structural similarity between Matthew and the extra-biblical versions of Moses’ infancy for the first two acts, “The King’s Plot” and “The Father’s Action.” But in the third act, “The Child’s Deliverance,” the parallelism becomes ironic or even satiric. Jesus is the “new” Moses who is accepted by the wise men of the gentiles (the magi); Jesus flees for safety not from, but to the gentiles (in Egypt). And he saves his people from spiritual, rather than physical bondage. This is the message that lies embedded in the structure of the Matthew infancy narrative.
After such an outline, no one should be surprised to find that Matthew, and only Matthew, has Jesus deliver his inaugural sermon “on the mountain” (Matthew 5:1). Luke, who has no such concern for Mosaic parallelism, has Jesus deliver this sermon, not on the mountain, but after “he came down with them [the disciples] and stood on a level place” (Luke 6:17). Furthermore, it is in Matthew, but not in Luke, that the Mosaic parallelism continues into the six antitheses in which Jesus refers to the Sinai commandments with, “You have heard that it was said to the men of old,” but then counteracts them with his own quite absolute and apodictic, “But I say to you” (Matthew 5:21, 27, 31, 33, 38, 43). This is the new Moses speaking from the new mountain with new commandments.
In an article in the February 1985 issue of Bible Review (“Different Ways of Looking at the Birth of Jesus,” BR 01:01), Kenneth Gros Louis discusses what he calls “narrative strategies in New Testament infancy narratives.” It seems to me that Gros Louis analyzes only minor tactics while completely ignoring the dominant strategy of the text—or at least the text of Matthew. (A similar case could be made for Luke but I shall leave that for another occasion.) The dominant strategy of the infancy narrative in the Gospel of Matthew is parallelism with the story of Moses’ infancy, a […]
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Midrash (plural, midrashim) refers to a non-literal elaboration of a biblical text, often for homiletic purposes; Midrash is a genre of rabbinic literature.
Endnotes
1.
Renée Bloch, “Quelques Aspects de la Figure de Moïse dans la Tradition Rabbinique.” Cahiers Sioniens 8 (1954), pp. 210–285; reprinted in Moïse, l’Homme de l’Alliance (Paris, 1955), pp. 53–167; and also “Note Méthodoligique pour l’Étude de la Littérature Rabbinique,” Recherches de Science Religieuse 43 (1955), pp. 194–225. That latter article has been translated by William Scott Green and William J. Sullivan as “Methodological Note for the Study of Rabbinic Literature,” in Approaches to Ancient Judaism. Vol. 1. Theory and Practice, ed. Green Brown Judaic Studies 1 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1978), pp. 51–75.
2.
Bloch made two major proposals for dealing with the series. First, she suggested a relative sequence for them based on a somewhat mechanical principle of “longer is later.” Although this may often be correct, it is just as likely that a given author may abbreviate as well as expand a source. Accordingly, her sequence may have to be held in some doubt pending further, more detailed analysis. Second, she noted that the basic story of Moses’ infancy in those rabbinic writings is known from Josephus and from pseudo-Philo (see next note), both of which can be dated with security to the end of the first century A.D. Thus, we must imagine a trajectory for the extra-biblical infancy story of Moses from at least the second half of the first century and on into those rabbinic texts still awaiting critical analysis for both manuscripts and contents.
3.
Josephus. Loeb Classical Library. 10 vols. Trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, Ralph Marcus, Allen Wikgren, Louis H. Feldman. The Antiquities, which tell the story of Israel from the dawn of creation to the eve of the first war with Rome, are contained in Vols. 4–10, and I cite by volume and page. For general background Harold W. Attridge, “Josephus and His Works,” in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, ed., Michael E. Stone. Compendia Rerum ludaicarum ad Novum Testamentum 2.2 (Assen: Van Gorcum and Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), pp. 185–232.
4.
This retells, with deletions, summaries, expansions and additions, the biblical story from Adam to the death of Saul. It is extant only in a Latin version, usually considered a translation from a Greek version of the Hebrew original. See Guido Kisch, Pseudo-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum. Publications in Medieval Studies X (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University, 1949). I cite from Montague Rhodes James, Biblical Antiquities of Philo (London: SPCK, 1917). For general background see George W. E. Nickelsburg, “The Bible Rewritten and Expanded,” in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, pp. 89–156 (esp. pp. 107–110, 153).
5.
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 4.252–253.
6.
The only available copy of this text is an unedited manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Ms.Heb.d.11; Cat. No. 2797). It is composed of 388 parchment folios and contains a collection of various writings brought together by Eleazer ben Asher. There are clearly two different hands at work; compare, for example, folio 37b with 38a. One is more ancient, using a different script on older parchment and marginally annotated by the redactor. This includes folios 38a–46b and it is with these that I am interested here. The second hand is in later German rabbinical script and includes all of the work except those folios just mentioned. See also Bloch, “Methodological Note,” p. 73, note 38. See also Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, rev. and ed. Geza Vermés, Fergus Millar and Matthew Black. 3 vols. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1973-) Vol. 1, p. 117.
7.
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 4.254–259.
8.
Pseudo-Philo, Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, 9:2–10, pp. 99–102.
9.
Even though pseudo-Philo’s account is more developed than Josephus’, it is just as likely that the latter abbreviates than that the former expands these scenes. In any case, pseudo-Philo shows that the divorce and remarriage elements were already in the story by the last quarter of the first century A.D.
