Was the Birth of Jesus According to Scripture?

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Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Quotations marked KJV are from the Authorized Version of the Bible (The King James Bible), the rights in which are vested in the Crown, and are reproduced by permission of the Crown’s Patentee, Cambridge University Press.

Quotations marked NIV are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, a member of the Hachette UK Group. All rights reserved. NIV is a registered trademark of International Bible Society.

Quotations marked RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education on the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Abbreviations

KJV King James Version

LXX Septuagint

NETS New English Translation of the Septuagint

NIV New International Version

NJB New Jerusalem Bible

NRSV New Revised Standard Version

RSV Revised Standard Version

Introduction

Each Christmas, churches throughout the world celebrate the birth of Jesus through readings, carols, and nativity plays. A major feature of these events is that they are said to be fulfillments of Scripture. Thus according to Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus’ conception ( 1 : 23 ), place of birth ( 2 : 5–6 ), persecution by Herod ( 2 : 10 ), escape and return from Egypt ( 2 : 15 ), and settling in Nazareth ( 2 : 23 ) were all predicted by Israel’s prophets (Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Hosea). More generally, Matthew claims that Jesus was the son of David, the son of Abraham ( 1 : 1 ) by including a genealogy that traces his ancestry back to these two great Jewish figures. When Matthew introduces the quotation from Isa 7 : 14 with the words, All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet ( 1 : 22 ), he is effectively summarizing the rest of his gospel.

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Luke’s Gospel begins with the claim that what he is about to narrate concerns the events that have been fulfilled among us (1:1). Included in these events are the angelic announcements of the births of John the Baptist (1:5–25) and Jesus (1:26–38), usually known as the annunciations. There is the Magnificat or song of Mary (1:46–55) and the Benedictus or song of Zechariah (1:68–79). And there is the witness of two elderly prophets, Simeon (2:29–35) and Anna (2:36–38). These stories are then followed by a genealogy that not only traces Jesus’ ancestry back to David and Abraham but all the way back to Adam (3:23–38). Although Luke’s Gospel has less formal quotations than Matthew,² it ends with Jesus telling his disciples everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled (24:44).

However, these claims raise a number of questions today. Firstly, if we look up the texts quoted by Matthew, some of them do not appear to be prophecies at all. Hosea 11:1 (out of Egypt I called my son) and Jer 31:15 (A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping) are references to Israel’s exodus and exile respectively, and do not contain any future promises. The text that is said to support Jesus’ settling in Nazareth in Matt 2:23 (He will be called a Nazorean) cannot be found in any biblical manuscript known to us, and the wording of many of the quotations differs significantly from the original texts. For example, the NRSV renders the first part of Isa 7:14 as, Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, but Matt 1:23 reads, "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son." If Matthew’s quotations differ from the original texts, can we really speak about fulfillment?

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Second, Matthew and Luke are often our only sources for the events that they narrate. If we ask whether Herod really did murder all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under (Matt 2:16), then it has to be acknowledged that there is no reference to it in any other document of the period, including the rest of the New Testament. Some would argue that if such a catastrophic event really happened, it would surely have been recorded by someone. Indeed, we rely on historians such as Josephus for many of the details of Herod’s reign, but he makes no mention of this. Perhaps Matthew invented the story in order to support the claim that the birth of Jesus was according to Scripture? On the other hand, it has been estimated that the population of Bethlehem was only about a thousand at the time and so the number of children under two might have been no more than twenty or thirty. Their deaths would of course be tragic but not necessarily newsworthy, given the level of atrocities in those days. Thus care must be taken when using such arguments from silence, but it remains true that Matthew and Luke are often our only sources for the events being narrated, and their historical accuracy cannot be assumed.

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Third, there are differences between Matthew and Luke, both in detail and in overall approach. In terms of detail, one only has to compare the two genealogies to see a number of differences. For example, Matthew divides his genealogy into three groups of fourteen (1:17) and says that Joseph’s father—Jesus’ grandfather—was called Jacob (1:16). Luke has many more names in his genealogy and says that Joseph’s father was called Heli (3:23). Various attempts have been made to explain this, as we shall see in due course, but it shows that our study cannot simply be a weaving together of the material in Matthew and Luke. The two gospels offer very different accounts of Jesus’ birth and this is true of their overall approaches. The only texts that Luke actually quotes are to confirm that Mary and Joseph followed the precepts of the law by offering a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons (2:24) for the birth of their child (Lev 12:8). Luke’s approach to fulfillment is either by allusion, as when Mary says, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior (1:46–47)⁵ or by telling the stories in such a way that they evoke well-known stories from Scripture. For example, the story of God granting a child to the righteous but barren woman Elizabeth (1:7) clearly echoes the stories of Sarah (Gen 17:17) and Hannah (1 Sam 1:2).

Indeed, there is material like this in Matthew also. The story of Herod murdering the young children of Bethlehem (often known as the slaughter of the innocents) is clearly intended as a parallel to the story of Pharaoh murdering the Hebrew children in Exod 1:22 (Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile). The parallel continues with Jesus’ sojourn in Egypt and then his departure, which Matthew explicitly claims to be a fulfillment of Hos 11:1 (out of Egypt I called my son). Such parallels are generally known as typology, from the Greek word typos, meaning pattern or example. An explicit example occurs in John 3:14–15, where Jesus says: "And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. The major debate is whether such parallels or correspondences can in any sense be classed as fulfillment. There is nothing in the stories of Pharaoh seeking to kill the Hebrew children or the barren Hannah becoming pregnant that predict" future events. But is prediction a necessary requirement for the concept of fulfillment?

Some would say Yes, arguing that Matthew and Luke have simply chosen to narrate the stories of Jesus in ways that imitate key figures and events in Scripture. This is clearly important for the way that readers understand the stories but has no bearing on whether Jesus’ birth was a fulfillment of Scripture or not. Others, however, are prepared to accept that a later event might be said to fulfill an earlier one if there is a sense of fullness or completion to it. For example, if it is true that Jesus came to deliver people from their sins, as Matt 1:21 claims, this could be seen as the fulfillment of the original exodus, where people were delivered from their physical bondage. Of course, this is a circular argument. For those who do not believe that Jesus can deliver people from their sins, the parallel is artificial and hence irrelevant to the question. But for those who accept this belief, it is a possible line of reasoning. Crossan and Borg, for example, are prepared to speak of the birth stories as fulfillment because Jesus decisively reveals and incarnates the passion of God as disclosed in the Law and the Prophets—the promise and hope for a very different kind of world from the world of Pharaoh and Caesar, the world of domination and empire.⁶ They do not, however, regard any of Matthew’s five quotations as predicting the actual events of Jesus’ birth.

How then shall we proceed? We could work our way through Matthew’s infancy narratives and evaluate any claims (explicit or implicit) that are made, and then do the same for Luke. However, this sort of material can be found in the larger commentaries and is also the approach of Raymond Brown’s famous work, The Birth of the Messiah.⁷ Now in a second updated edition, Brown devotes over 700 pages to discussing the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke and is the point of departure for studies written since that time. It is also the approach of the Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, edited by Greg Beale and Don Carson,⁸ and we will be drawing on the chapter on Matthew (Craig Blomberg). Our approach, however, will be different. Rather than commenting on each of the quotations and allusions as they arise, we will take a more thematic approach, looking at the claims that Jesus was preceded by a forerunner (chapter 1) and was not only a descendant of David (like Joseph and many others) but was the promised son of David (chapter 2). We will then look at the question of whether Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, flight and return from Egypt, and settling in Nazareth are credible as historical events and whether they can be understood as fulfillments of Scripture (chapters 3–4). Also in these chapters we will consider the visit of the magi and their three gifts (tradition speaks of the three wise men but the text does not say that they were wise or that there were three of them), the guiding star, and the slaughter of the innocents. In chapter 5, we tackle the question that has dominated discussion down the centuries: the claim that Jesus was born of a virgin and that this fulfills the prophecy of Isa 7:14.

It will soon become clear that however objective we try to be, questions like whether Jesus was the promised son of David or born of a virgin are inevitably influenced by one’s overall assessment of his significance. If one thinks of him as a well-meaning but ultimately misguided teacher or prophet, it is unlikely that one will conclude that he is the ruler promised in Mic 5:2, whatever Matthew says. And if one thinks that scientific laws are immutable, clearly one will not accept the notion of a guiding star or a conception without a human father. However, it is important to note that the alternative does not necessarily involve taking everything in Matthew and Luke literally. For example, it was already obvious to John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople in the fourth century, that a star is far too high in the sky to point to a particular house in Bethlehem. Most commentators today believe that Matthew is talking about a supernatural guidance that was real to the magi (if they existed) but did not consist of planets leaving their orbits or stars changing their trajectories. It is possible that other events, such as the slaughter of the innocents or the virginal conception of Jesus might be similarly understood, as Crossan and Borg argue.

Before we begin, it is worth situating the infancy narratives between two other sets of writings, one just before the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written (thought to be around 75–85 C.E.) and one a half a century or so later. The first consists of the letters of Paul, written between about 49–64 C.E., and the Gospel of Mark, written shortly before or after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E.⁹ These writings show no interest in the circumstances of Jesus’ birth and the few comments made about his family or lineage appear to assume that it was quite normal. For example, Paul says in Gal 4:4–5:

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. (Gal

4

:

4–5

).

Later Christian doctrine will understand the phrase, God sent his Son, as a reference to the incarnation but Paul’s point is that Christ had to be born under the law in order to redeem those under the law. Although he says nothing about the actual conception of Jesus, it is hard to imagine him pursuing such an argument if he thought that it was fundamentally different from everyone else. Indeed, earlier in his letter, he can speak of James as the Lord’s brother (1:19) without any need for qualification.

The same can be said for Mark’s references to Jesus’ family. In the incident of Mark 3:31–35, the crowd say to Jesus: Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you (3:32). Jesus then makes the point that his family is not governed by physical connection but embraces all who do the will of God (3:35). The contrast would make little sense if there was not in fact a physical connection between Jesus and the brothers and sisters who are waiting outside. The point is even clearer in the so-called rejection in Nazareth story:

On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. (Mark

6

:

2–3

).

Although it may be significant that Joseph