Luke 1:5-38; Matthew 1:18-25
The stories about the birth of Jesus are placed in appendices because they are not at all essential to the message of salvation. There are a number of questions as to their authenticity. The remainder of the gospel accounts clearly are recollections of words spoken and actions taken by Jesus, though the writers were not always certain of where, when, or in what order, events occurred.
During Herod's reign as king of Judaea, there lived a certain priest named Zachariah, there was a priest named Zachariah, of the Abijah order; his wife Elizabeth was an offspring of the Aaronite priesthood. Both were righteous before God – blameless in their walk in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord.
But the elderly couple was childless, Elizabeth being infertile.
One day, when it was his order's turn to officiate before God, Zachariah was performing his priestly duty of lighting the incense inside the Lord's Temple while a crowd outside prayed. While going about his task (for which he had been chosen by lot), he saw an angel of the Lord1 standing on the right side of the incense altar.
He had been chosen by lot as the one who lit the incense inside the Lord's Temple. Outside a crowd was praying.
Shocked, Zachariah was filled with dread. But the angel said, "Don't worry, Zachariah. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, whom you are to name John. You will be very happy, and many people will be glad that he was born. In the Lord's eyes, he will be great. He will drink no wine or alcohol, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, right from the womb. He will turn many Jews to their God Jehovah.
"Your son will go before God like another Elijah, with that prophet's spirit and power, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to prepare a people focused on the Lord.
Because John was chosen as a prophet – indeed the last of the Hebrew prophets – he was to receive the Holy Spirit. He would be able to transmit God's word to the people. In the Old Dispensation, only a few people, generally prophets, could receive the Spirit. After the resurrection of Jesus, anyone who trusted Jesus would receive the Spirit – some more, some less.
Zachariah replied, "How can this be? I am an old man, and my wife is old too."
The angel answered, "I Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, am sent to speak to you, and to reveal this good news. But, because you would not believe me, you will be mute – unable to speak a word until what I have told you comes true at the proper times."
Gabriel means something like "God's strong man." The name is significant because the angel's appearance marks a fulfillment of a prophecy in Daniel.
In the first appearance of Gabriel, Daniel received a prophecy, part of which said,
Daniel 9: 25-26
That is, in this interpretation, the Jerusalem rebuilt by the returnees under the Persians would last for 483 years, after which it would be destroyed. Before that happens, the Messiah is to be cut off. Under that timeline, the dunking of Jesus would have taken place in a.d. 25 or 26. His death is generally put at a.d. 30 or 33. Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans about 40 years after the crucifixion, in a.d. 70.
We may suppose that the writer of Luke, who is thought to have been dwelling in Antioch not long after the destruction of Jerusalem, saw the prophecy in Daniel as meaningful.
In the first appearance of Gabriel, Daniel received a prophecy, part of which said,
Daniel 9: 25-26
25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.The seven and sixty-two-week "weeks," according to a WikiPedia article, are most frequently understood for the purpose of Christological interpretation as consecutive, making up a period of 69 weeks (483 years) beginning with the decree given to Ezra by Artaxerxes I in 458/7 b.c. and terminating with the baptism of Jesus.
26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
That is, in this interpretation, the Jerusalem rebuilt by the returnees under the Persians would last for 483 years, after which it would be destroyed. Before that happens, the Messiah is to be cut off. Under that timeline, the dunking of Jesus would have taken place in a.d. 25 or 26. His death is generally put at a.d. 30 or 33. Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans about 40 years after the crucifixion, in a.d. 70.
We may suppose that the writer of Luke, who is thought to have been dwelling in Antioch not long after the destruction of Jerusalem, saw the prophecy in Daniel as meaningful.
The people outside wondered what was taking Zachariah so long. When the priest finally did come out, gesturing because he could not speak, they discerned that he had seen a vision.
Upon completing his tour of duty at the Temple, the old priest returned home. Not long after, his wife conceived. The old woman hid herself from curious eyes for five months. She was delighted to be pregnant – at long last! "The Lord has looked after me and taken away my embarrassment, dealing kindly with me."
In those days, infertility was often seen as a sign of divine displeasure.
When Elizabeth was six months along, the angel Gabriel was sent to the Galilean town of Nazareth to visit Mary, a virgin engaged to Joseph, a descendant of King David.
"Hello, you who are greatly favored," the angel said. "Jehovah is with you; as a woman, you are indeed blessed."
Mary was troubled. "What kind of a greeting is that?!" she thought.
But the angel said, "Nothing to worry about, Mary. You have found favor with God. Behold: You will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son, whom you will name Jesus.
Jesus is a form of Joshua and means "Jehovah saves" or "Yahweh saves." Then, as now, Joshua/Jesus was a common name for Jewish boys. We may reflect that this name humbly reflects the union of human and divine.
"He will be great and be called the Son of the Highest; Jehovah God will give him the throne of his forefather David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom is infinite."
"What!?" exclaimed Mary. "But I am a virgin."
In Luke's story, Mary's bewilderment makes sense if Gabriel actually said something like, "You have conceived in your womb a son whom you will name Jesus." But the Greek text does not support that idea, scholars say. Still, we know that precision is not only easily lost in translation (from Aramaic to Greek), but as recollections are passed from one person to the next.
"The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Highest will overshadow you," said the angel. "For this reason, what is born of you will be known as the Son of God."4
He added, "Behold: In her old age, your relative Elizabeth has conceived a son. She who is now six months pregnant used to be termed barren. So you see, with God, nothing is impossible."
Mary gasped. "You are looking at God's servant girl! Whatever you say, let it be so."
The angel left.
Concerning the birth of Jesus:
While Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before the marriage was fulfilled,2 she was found to be with child. Joseph, being a kindly man, was unwilling to humiliate her by public exposure and was trying to think of a way to divorce her secretly. As he was puzzling about this problem, he had a dream in which one of Jehovah's angels appeared and told him: "Joseph, son of David, don't fret about taking Mary as your wife. What is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bring forth a son. And you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."xy1
The author of Matthew draws attention to the Scripture (Isaiah 7:14):
Look! The virgin will be with child and give birth to a son, and they will call his name Immanuel.3
The gospel writer notes that Immanuel is interpreted as meaning God with us, which is equivalent to Jehovah saves.
When Joseph woke up, he obeyed God's angel and took Mary for his wife, but he abstained from sex with her during her pregnancy. He gave the baby the name Jesus.
On the phrase son of God
Though the word christos is a Greek equivalent for the Jewish word messiah, it appears that the earliest Jewish Christians transmitted the idea of messiah to their Gentile hearers by settling on a descriptive term familiar to Gentiles: son of God. Both Augustus Caesar and Tiberius Caesar had assumed the title son of god. They left ambiguous from which god in the Greco-Roman pantheon they were descended.
But as Christians, Jewish and Gentile, reflected on who this Savior is, they came to realize that the term son of God fits Jesus perfectly. A son of God carries the connotations of someone who is sent. Thus, the word angel can be translated son of God or messenger. The term son of God can also connote a person directly created, not through the sex act, as are those sons of God known as angels.
In the Old Testament, the term Angel of Jehovah refers to God's visible presence among humans. The angel is in a manner of speaking like a projection from heaven. No one can see God, but we can see his angel. That is, the Angel of Jehovah in the Old Testament IS the particular, special Son of God. But he had yet to become human and take the name Jesus. The Son is not merely a projection however. He is the expression of God, the Father, in the human world. And, though he is one with the Father, he is also distinct from the Father. A human parallel is the ideal marriage, in which husband and wife become one unified soul with two distinct personalities.
As the Lucan writer was a Gentile, we can understand his interpretation of what the angel said, as obtained from tradition. Supposing the essential truthfulness of the account, it is possible that the angel said "he will be called son of God," which would be closer to "he will be called a son of God." In that period in Jewish Palestine, the phrase "sons of God" also connoted the concept of persons marked out to serve God. John the Dunker was, in this sense, a son of God.
In The Birth of the Messiah (Image/Doubleday 1979), Raymond E. Brown reports that there are a number of semiticisms in the Lucan birth story. In other words, the Greek text shows strong signs of translating Hebrew/Aramaic phrases and words, thus pointing to Luke's Gentile writer hearing the story from Jewish Christian emigres from Judaea.
The gospel of John, written a few decades after the other gospels, has a highly developed conception of a pre-existent Son of God, or Word, or Message, of God. Though the prologue does not specify the concept of the Trinity, in which son of God becomes God the son, that notion is certainly implied. (An early scribe apparently inserted the "Johannine comma" at John 5:7–8, which declares the Trinity point blank.) The Trinity idea is questionable for the Synoptic authors.
Interestingly, John contains numerous semiticisms and shows that the writer or his close consultant must have lived in Jerusalem before its destruction in a.d. 70.
All four gospels may well have been composed in Jewish diaspora communities outside Judaea. All seem to represent mixed Jewish and Gentile congregations, though attitudes vary among the authors. John seems to have been composed by one or more Jews who viewed "official" Judaism with strong skepticism.
In any case, the point is that, as John tends to indicate, the original Jewish witnesses for Jesus recognized the sublime truth in the son of God expression that they had adopted as one way of translating the word messiah.5
A major messianic prophecy was given to King David by the prophet Nathan. That prophecy shows why the Synoptic gospel writers were anxious to demonstrate that Jesus was a descendant of David. It also shows that the phrase son of God was associated with the expected messiah. But that phrase does not necessarily imply that the Messiah was to be the equivalent of God.
2 Samuel 12-17
And we see that the Davidic messiah is to be known as "son of God." Yet, the scripture does not require that the messiah be God the Son. Would God the Son commit iniquity? So it is probable that most Jews of the time took "son of God" to refer to a specially chosen man who would be granted divine strength. Yet, because Jesus committed no sin, it turned out – much to the shock of many people – that the son of God is also God the Son.
Though the word christos is a Greek equivalent for the Jewish word messiah, it appears that the earliest Jewish Christians transmitted the idea of messiah to their Gentile hearers by settling on a descriptive term familiar to Gentiles: son of God. Both Augustus Caesar and Tiberius Caesar had assumed the title son of god. They left ambiguous from which god in the Greco-Roman pantheon they were descended.
But as Christians, Jewish and Gentile, reflected on who this Savior is, they came to realize that the term son of God fits Jesus perfectly. A son of God carries the connotations of someone who is sent. Thus, the word angel can be translated son of God or messenger. The term son of God can also connote a person directly created, not through the sex act, as are those sons of God known as angels.
In the Old Testament, the term Angel of Jehovah refers to God's visible presence among humans. The angel is in a manner of speaking like a projection from heaven. No one can see God, but we can see his angel. That is, the Angel of Jehovah in the Old Testament IS the particular, special Son of God. But he had yet to become human and take the name Jesus. The Son is not merely a projection however. He is the expression of God, the Father, in the human world. And, though he is one with the Father, he is also distinct from the Father. A human parallel is the ideal marriage, in which husband and wife become one unified soul with two distinct personalities.
As the Lucan writer was a Gentile, we can understand his interpretation of what the angel said, as obtained from tradition. Supposing the essential truthfulness of the account, it is possible that the angel said "he will be called son of God," which would be closer to "he will be called a son of God." In that period in Jewish Palestine, the phrase "sons of God" also connoted the concept of persons marked out to serve God. John the Dunker was, in this sense, a son of God.
In The Birth of the Messiah (Image/Doubleday 1979), Raymond E. Brown reports that there are a number of semiticisms in the Lucan birth story. In other words, the Greek text shows strong signs of translating Hebrew/Aramaic phrases and words, thus pointing to Luke's Gentile writer hearing the story from Jewish Christian emigres from Judaea.
The gospel of John, written a few decades after the other gospels, has a highly developed conception of a pre-existent Son of God, or Word, or Message, of God. Though the prologue does not specify the concept of the Trinity, in which son of God becomes God the son, that notion is certainly implied. (An early scribe apparently inserted the "Johannine comma" at John 5:7–8, which declares the Trinity point blank.) The Trinity idea is questionable for the Synoptic authors.
Interestingly, John contains numerous semiticisms and shows that the writer or his close consultant must have lived in Jerusalem before its destruction in a.d. 70.
All four gospels may well have been composed in Jewish diaspora communities outside Judaea. All seem to represent mixed Jewish and Gentile congregations, though attitudes vary among the authors. John seems to have been composed by one or more Jews who viewed "official" Judaism with strong skepticism.
In any case, the point is that, as John tends to indicate, the original Jewish witnesses for Jesus recognized the sublime truth in the son of God expression that they had adopted as one way of translating the word messiah.5
A major messianic prophecy was given to King David by the prophet Nathan. That prophecy shows why the Synoptic gospel writers were anxious to demonstrate that Jesus was a descendant of David. It also shows that the phrase son of God was associated with the expected messiah. But that phrase does not necessarily imply that the Messiah was to be the equivalent of God.
2 Samuel 12-17
12 And when your days are fulfilled, and you sleep with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, which will proceed out of your loins, and I will establish his kingdom.We notice that Jesus, as this book will demonstrate, fulfilled this description – though he himself committed no iniquity.
13 He will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever.
14 I will be his father, and he will be my son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men:
15 But my mercy will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before you.
16 And your house and your kingdom will be established forever before you. Your throne will be established forever.
17 According to all these words, and according to all this vision, so did Nathan speak to David.
And we see that the Davidic messiah is to be known as "son of God." Yet, the scripture does not require that the messiah be God the Son. Would God the Son commit iniquity? So it is probable that most Jews of the time took "son of God" to refer to a specially chosen man who would be granted divine strength. Yet, because Jesus committed no sin, it turned out – much to the shock of many people – that the son of God is also God the Son.
1. Angelic appearances play an important role in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke but no role in the material stretching from the baptism of Jesus to the passion period. John, at 5:4, has an angel stirring water, but there is no indication that he or she was visible to anyone or made any announcements. Angels appear shortly after the Resurrection in Matthew, Luke and John, with Mark leaving us to assume that the "young man" could only have been an angel.
2. Raymond E. Brown notes that in those days Jewish marriage consisted of two steps: "a formal exchange of consent between witnesses (Mal 2:14) and the subsequent taking of the bride to the groom's family home (Matt 25:1-13)." Brown adds, "While the term marriage is sometimes used to designate the second step, in terms of legal implications it would more properly be applied to the first step." Brown's comment is found in The Birth of the Messiah – A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (Doubleday/Image 1979).
3. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint, the word parthenos was used by the Alexandrian Jewish translators. That Greek word is precisely equivalent to the strict sense of the word virgin in English. But some have objected that the Hebrew does not specify virgin but means only young woman. We may wonder what made the ancient Jewish scholars so sure of what Isaiah meant. But in any case, in ancient Israel virgin and young woman carried the same meaning. A young woman who was unmarried and pregnant was socially unthinkable. Such an unfortunate woman would have been referred to by some epithet, such as harlot.
But, would the prophet behind Isaiah have meant to focus on a young married woman? What's so unusual about a young married woman having a son? There is nothing incredible to behold. It happens every day. It was also not all that unusual for an unmarried woman to become pregnant. Plainly, the prophet was pointing to a supernatural event. Thus, I suggest that the author of Matthew interpreted Isaiah 7:14 correctly.
Isaiah 7 makes plain that the prophecy concerns an event in Isaiah's near future. But Matthew was inspired to see God's word fulfilled in the birth of Jesus. This is the way prophecy often works, just as Caiaphas inadvertently truthfully prophesied in John 11.
Brown calls the citation "felicitous" because Isaiah is, apparently, pointing to someone of the Davidic line being born of a virgin, thus further justifying the Matthean insistence that Jesus is a fully legitimate descendant of David, and thus entitled to be God's anointed savior king.
From Isaiah 7:
13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also?From John 11:
14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.
16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.
49 Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all!In addition, we can make a case for making the Septuagint the authoritative text of the Old Testament, rather than the Hebrew Masoretic (or other) text, based on the knowledge that the Septuagint was used by Jesus in his teachings. That proposal should not be taken to mean that the Masoretic text is of no value or that textual critics may not hone in on the "original" texts and offer useful commentary.
50 You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”
51 He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, 52 and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.
4. A discussion of the necessity for a virgin conception is found here:
Jesus' purity vs. original sin
https://zioncallingyou.blogspot.com/2020/06/appendix-d-jesus-purity-vs-original-sin.html
5. Raymond E. Brown (Birth of the Messiah Doubleday/Image 1979) disagrees with this thought, arguing that fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls mention the son of God and the son of the Most High. Yet there is scholarly dispute as to whether these phrases are speaking of a "literal" son or not. These and a few references in the Old Testament may be taken as ambiguous. Yet, in view of the strong Jewish monotheism of the First Century, a "literal" interpretation is unlikely. What is likely is that Jews accused Hellenistic Christians of blasphemy on account of that phrase. It did not take long, in fact, for Jewish Christians to realize that their messiah was "literally" the son of God, rather than a son of God.
xy1. The angelic revelations in Matthew to Joseph and in Luke to Mary come months apart, which brings up the question of why Joseph and Mary did not confide in each other during their betrothal. But it seems plausible that Mary was simply too timid at that point to announce to her fiance/husband that she was pregnant -- angel or no angel.
In any case, one comes away with the impression that Mary went to Elizabeth's house immediately after Gabriel spoke to her and did not return to her parents' home, where Joseph would have encountered her, until she was showing. That's when Joseph went into a mental tailspin.
Author's notes:
The following note discusses, in a non-Gnostic sense, how, in my estimate, God could have become a sinless man without having to have been born of a virgin.
The note below concerns knowledge of the virgin conception.
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