The Whole Christmas Package: Jesus’s Infancy Stories

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Among many much-beloved stories of Jesus, none enjoys more affection than the stories of Jesus’s birth. At Christmas, Christians throughout the world represent these stories with various images in their homes, churches, front yards, and sometimes in public parks. Although the wonder associated with the birth of Jesus evokes the miracle of the birth of any child, for Christians, Christmas is the celebration of God’s human incarnation—the Emmanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:14). What is largely ignored is that when the stories in Matthew and Luke are read closely, they not only significantly differ, but also are mutually exclusive.

We have no idea where these infancy narratives came from. Joseph is a main character in Matthew’s account, but he is an unlikely source. Joseph never appears in any story of Jesus’s adult ministry. There is a long-standing tradition that he had already died before Jesus’s public ministry.

It is not altogether impossible that Mary was the source for Luke’s account, but it seems unlikely. She doesn’t appear to have any relationship to Jesus’s ministry in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), although she is part of the post-resurrection community in Acts.¹

The noncanonical Protoevangelium of James, a second-century pseudonymous work of imaginative fiction, has had more influence on Christian ideas than most recognize. That story 059graphically reports that Mary’s hymen was not broken giving birth (v. 20); from this, Christians have come to speak of the Virgin Birth rather than the Virginal Conception. In addition, on November 21, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches celebrate the memory of the Presentation of Mary in the Temple as described in that document. We now know that young girls were never presented, let alone raised from age 3 to 12 years old, in the Jerusalem Temple as described in verses 7–8 of the Protoevangelium.

The infancy stories have no influence on the accounts of Jesus’s ministry, passion, death, and resurrection. Apart from Jesus’s name, his origin in Nazareth, and the names of his mother, Mary, and her husband, Joseph, a descendant of David, nothing in any Gospel refers back to an infancy account. Furthermore, what is said about Jesus’s mother in the accounts of her son’s ministry suggests that Mary doesn’t remember anything from either account (Matthew 12:46-47; Luke 8:19-20).

These Gospel stories were designed to convey understandings of Jesus—Christological insights. Yet while many details differ between the stories in Matthew and Luke, both accounts have some important points in common. Before considering the conflicting details, it is important to recognize the significant agreements:

1) The human parents are Mary and Joseph (Matthew 1:18; Luke 1:27).

2) Mary and Joseph are in the initial stage of a first-century C.E. Jewish marriage and are not living together (Matthew 1:18; Luke 1:26).

3) Joseph is a descendant of David (Matthew 1:16; Luke 1:27).

4) An angel announces the forthcoming birth (Matthew 1:20-23; Luke 1:30-35).²

5) The conception of Mary’s child is not through intercourse with Joseph (Matthew 1:24-25; Luke 1:34).

6) The conception is through the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18, Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:35).

7) The angel declares that the child is to be named Jesus, which is the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew name Joshua, meaning “Yahweh saves” (Matthew 1:21; Luke 1:31).

8) The angel asserts that Jesus is to be a Savior (Matthew 1:21-23; Luke 2:11).

9) The birth takes place after Mary and Joseph have come to live together (Matthew 1:24-25; Luke 2:5-6).

10) The birth takes place in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1; Luke 2:2-6).

11) The birth is chronologically related to the reign of Herod the Great (37–4 B.C.E.; Matthew 2:1; Luke 1:5).

12) The child is reared in Nazareth (Matthew 2:23; Luke 2:39).

Now let’s consider the differences. The Gospel of Matthew presents Jesus as the New Moses. Matthew’s infancy account is deliberately patterned on the story of Moses in Exodus:

1) Matthew’s dreaming Joseph (Matthew 1:20-23; Matthew 2:13, Matthew 2:19-20)calls to mind Joseph the dreaming patriarch, who was taken to Egypt (Genesis 37:5-9, Genesis 37:28). This begins the narrative of the Hebrews’ journey to Egypt and, later, their deliverance by Moses.

2) In Matthew, Joseph is the son of Jacob (Matthew 1:16), just as Joseph in Genesis is the son of Jacob (Genesis 37:1-3).

3) Matthew reports that Herod the Great orders the boy children of Bethlehem killed (Matthew 2:16), just as the pharaoh of Egypt orders the killing of the male Hebrew babies before the Exodus (Exodus 1:15-16).

4) In Matthew, Joseph takes his family to Egypt to save the child Jesus (Matthew 2:13-14), much as Joseph sends for his family to come to the land of Goshen to survive a famine and to set the stage for their eventual deliverance (Genesis 45:9-13).

5) Jesus returns from Egypt to live in Nazareth (Matthew 2:19-23), just as Moses leads the Hebrew people, delivered out of bondage in Egypt, to the brink of the land God promised to Abraham and his descendants (Exodus 14–Deuteronomy 34; Genesis 17:8).

Matthew’s infancy narrative contains five episodes punctuated by five fulfillment citations (Matthew 1:22-23; Matthew 2:5-6; Matthew 2:15; Matthew 2:17-18; Matthew 2:23^a). One of the fulfillment citations, Matthew 1:23, cites Isaiah 7:14 in the Septuagint’s Greek translation: “Behold, a virgin [parthenos] shall conceive.” However, in the original Hebrew text, it reads “Behold, the young woman [‘alma] is with child.” The Hebrew word for virgin is bethula, not ‘alma. There was no prophecy of a virginal conception 060in the Hebrew text of Isaiah. Matthew knew the Greek translation and cited it in Matthew 1:23; it is impossible to know if he also knew the Hebrew text.

Although it is believed that most members of the community for whom Matthew’s Gospel was written were Jewish Christians, his infancy narrative was designed to show that Jesus had significance for both Gentiles and Jews. Matthew recounts that some foreign astrologers (Greek: magi)—often called wise men—follow a star and bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to one whom they are convinced is a newborn king of the Jews (Matthew 2:1-11). The tradition of three kings is founded on these three gifts. With this story, Matthew indicates that Jesus, while king of the Jews, has significance for all peoples. Matthew’s Jesus confirms this insight when, after his resurrection, he instructs his disciples to “go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).

Matthew assumes that Mary and Joseph lived in Bethlehem, a town in Judea. His account goes on to report that after Jesus was born, the astrologers following a star go to Jerusalem to ask Herod the Great, the current ruler of the Jews, where they might find the newborn king of the Jews. When the religious authorities inform them this should be in Bethlehem, Herod asks his visitors to return to tell him where he might find the child. However, the astrologers sense it better not to return and rather go home by another road. An angel directs Joseph in a dream to take his family to Egypt to protect the child from Herod, who—in his search for the child—kills all the young boys in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:13-18).

Joseph is instructed in another dream to return to Israel. He then settles his family in Nazareth because he is afraid of Herod Archelaus, a son of Herod the Great appointed by Rome to rule Judea after his father’s death (Matthew 2:19-23).

Luke’s infancy narrative is very different. It is a verbal diptych (two related portraits) that joins Jesus and John the Baptist as cousins to underscore that their messages were related: John is the herald to Jesus (Luke 1:76-77). There is a precise correspondence between the two stories (see “Call Patterns in Luke 1-2,” at bottom). Both use the “call pattern” (divine call, human objection, divine overruling, and a sign) found throughout the Old Testament, such as the call of Moses (Exodus 3:7-4:17) and the call of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:4-10).

Luke indicates that Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth, a town in Galilee (Luke 1:26-27). However, Luke also knew the tradition that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Aware that Quirinius ordered a census around that time, Luke used the census as a way to get the family to Bethlehem for Jesus’s birth (Luke 2:1-5). Today we are aware that Quirinius’s census of Judea took place after the death of Herod the Great in 4 B.C.E. and did not include Galilee. Although neither the time nor place of Quirinius’s census corresponds to the time of Jesus’s birth, this is irrelevant to Luke’s narrative.

After Jesus’s birth, Luke’s account describes an angel appearing to shepherds and disclosing to them the good news of the birth of a savior to be found in a manger (Luke 2:8-12). Suddenly angels sing “Glory to God” in what might be called heaven’s jubilation (Luke 2:13-14). 061Throughout the Gospel of Luke, Jesus has a special concern for the poor. When shepherds are the first to be told of the birth of the Messiah, Luke underscores his emphasis by reporting that the shepherds visit the family and go to tell others of their experience (Luke 2:16-18). These shepherds are Luke’s first evangelists.

Although Matthew’s story brings the family to Egypt to escape Herod the Great’s massacre of the boy children in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16), in Luke’s story the family goes to Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, Jesus is presented at the Temple and recognized by Simeon, to whom the Holy Spirit revealed the child would be “a light for the Gentiles and glory for Israel” (Luke 2:29-32), as well as by Anna a prophet, who “gave thanks to God and spoke of the child to all awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38).

Luke continues with the only canonical account of Jesus’s childhood.³ At the age of 12, Jesus fails to return with his parents from their annual Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Piety generally overlooks that here Jesus exhibits a conventional adolescent’s growing sense of independence. Predictably, his parents, upon discovering their child is missing, frantically return to Jerusalem. When they find him, three days later, in the Temple conversing with the teachers, Jesus responds, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49). On the one hand, his response typifies an adolescent dismissing parental anxiety, and yet on the other, it identifies his uniqueness. Jesus’s first words in Luke speak of his relationship with God.

The infancy narratives are precious gems in the Gospels. We bring them together, harmonize them in our heads, and attach stars and angels, ox and donkey, wise men and shepherds, all around and about and above the Christmas crèche—the complete Christmas package.⁴ Even though mutually conflicting in details, both portraits agree that Jesus was the incarnate Son of God from the moment of his conception and no less the much beloved child of his human parents.

Among many much-beloved stories of Jesus, none enjoys more affection than the stories of Jesus’s birth. At Christmas, Christians throughout the world represent these stories with various images in their homes, churches, front yards, and sometimes in public parks. Although the wonder associated with the birth of Jesus evokes the miracle of the birth of any child, for Christians, Christmas is the celebration of God’s human incarnation—the Emmanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:14). What is largely ignored is that when the stories in Matthew and Luke are read closely, they not only significantly differ, but also are mutually exclusive. […]