Bauckham on the Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony

Matthew's Genealogy

I'm currently doing some work on Matthew's gospel, and have briefly looked at his genesis narrative (1:1-2:23). This is a fascinating account. For more, see the entries by Goodacre, Bird, articles here, virgin birth here, and history in the infancy narrative here.

Matthew writes the next great Act in Israel’s developing story. The opening genealogy immediately recalls Israel’s sacred writings, as Matthew tells “the story of the genesis of Jesus the Messiah, son of David, son of Abraham.” In connecting the story of Jesus with the story of two of Israel’s greatest heroes, the founder Abraham, and the great king David, Matthew appropriately opens the New Testament Scriptures by immediately connecting them to the story of God and his people, Israel. Given Matthew’s concern for including the Gentiles, it is likely he sees Jesus as the means by which YHWH will fulfil his promise to Abraham to make him a great nation, and through him to bless all the families of the earth (Gen 12:1-3). By connecting Jesus to David in the beginning and throughout the narrative (cf. 9:27; 12:23; 15:22; 20:30–31; 21:9, 15; cf. 22:42), Matthew shows us Jesus’ Davidic decent which was a necessary aspect of God’s Messiah (22:42), and thus Jesus is seen as an heir to the Davidic throne. Tom Wright is at this point very helpful where he notes the following:

[[Matthew presupposes a telling of the Jewish story according to which Israel has failed, has ended in exile, and needs a new exodus; and he undertakes to show that this new exodus was accomplished in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He does this at a multiplicity of levels: the often-remarked ‘fulfilment’ passages (‘All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet…’) are simply the tip of a very large iceberg. Matthew’s plot and structure presupposed the entire Jewish story-line to date. They claim to be bringing about that of which Moses spoke in Deuteronomy 30. They are not simply a collection of types, historical precedents arbitrarily repeated. They claim to be the continuation and proper completion of the whole history itself. Jesus, for Matthew, is both the new David and the new Moses, but also something more. Moses had promised that

YHWH your God himself will cross over before you. He will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua also will cross over before you, as YHWH promised… Be strong and bold; have no fear or dread of them, because it is YHWH your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you (Dt. 31:3-6).

For Matthew, Jesus is the fulfilment of both parts of this prophecy. He is Emmanuel, Israel’s god in person, coming to be with his people as they emerge from their long exile, remaining with them still as they go on to possess the land (1:23; 28:20). And the land they now possess is the whole world; as the wise men from the east came to pay homage to Jesus, as the centurion demonstrated a faith which Jesus ‘had not found in Israel’, and as the Canaanite women had ‘great faith’, so the ministry of Jesus, which at the time was only to the ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel’, will result in salvation for ‘all nations’.]]

[N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, pg. 388-89]

I am increasingly persuaded that rather than a waste of time, Matthew's opening chapters, including the genealogy, provide the necessary context for understanding Matthew's entire gospel. Just as the Sermon on the Mount cannot be isolated from the gospel of Matthew, so too, it is unwise to isolate Matthew's gospel from it's own genesis narratives. As Dale Allison instructively notes: The broader context must always be kept in mind. Likening the First Gospel to a sentence, the Sermon is only one word: and who could determine the meaning of a word while ignoring the sentence in which it occurs? [Allison, The Sermon on the Mount, pg. 10]

The Twelve?

So, I'm still wrestling with the issue of "The Twelve", in ACTS especially. James Darlack provides some useful thinking, but then Scot McKnight went and confused me senseless with his Paper on Jesus and the Twelve, where he argues:

Jesus’ sending out the Twelve shows little parallel with the expectation of the reunification of the twelve tribes. Instead, the connotations of his choice and sending out of the Twelve show more significant parallels with Qumran leadership, T. Judah 25:1–2, and T. Benj. 10:7, and covenant reestablishment as found in Joshua 4. His expectation of the reunification of the twelve tribes in the land does emerge in the Q tradition (Luke 22:30 par. Matt 19:28; Luke 13:28–30 par. Matt 8:11–12), and his Twelve were to function in a leadership rule in that Kingdom. There is significant evidence for us to think that Jesus had in mind a restored Israel—twelve new leaders, the land under control, a pure Temple, and a radically obedient Israel. The two themes of covenant and eschatology that swirl around the number “twelve” form a combined witness to the centrality of Jesus’ vision for Israel: salvation-historical fulfillment—that is, covenant reestablishment—in his mission’s inauguration of the Kingdom and the embodiment of leadership in his twelve special leaders, who will rule and liberate the twelve tribes of Israel in the Kingdom.

Perhaps The Twelve only made sense amongst Jewish Christians (hence James?), and in the increasing Gentile mission, such symbolic significance was lost? Far more thinking is required on this topic....

Virgin Birth?

Chris Tilling discusses the Virgin Birth and poses a difficult question. I have discussed the Infancy narratives and the issues of history. But the theological question is quite hard. I must confess that I follow Wright wholeheartedly on this one. His essay, God's Way of Acting is the best treatment of it that I have read.

No one can prove, historically, that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived. No one can prove, historically, that she wasn't. Science studies the repeatable; history bumps its nose against the unrepeatable. If the first two chapters of Matthew and the first two of Luke had never existed, I do not suppose that my own Christian faith, or that of the church to which I belong, would have been very different. But since they do, and since for quite other reasons I have come to believe that the God of Israel, the world's creator, was personally and fully revealed in and as Jesus of Nazareth, I hold open my historical judgment and say: If that's what God deemed appropriate, who am I to object?

Thus, I find it hard to really object to it...

Infancy Narratives

Beliefnet offers these short articles by various scholars on the Infancy Narratives.

• "You've Ruined the Christmas Story!" In exploring what scholars have to say about the historical Jesus, I find my faith not threatened, but deepened. By Susan Candea
• Is the Christmas Story All About Caesar? John Dominic Crossan on the characters in Jesus' birth story--the Magi, shepherds, angels--as anti-Roman protesters.
• A Message From Matthew What was the gospel writer trying to tell us about Jesus in his opening chapters? By John Dominic Crossan
• The Other Christmas MiracleThe miraculous story of Elizabeth and Zechariah sets the stage for Jesus' birth. By Ben Witherington III.

I particularly enjoyed the article by Crossan on Caesar and the CHRISTmas story. Very helpful. Witherington's piece was insightful as per usual.

History in the Infancy Narratives

Primary Data

(1) Luke 1:26-38 (2) Matt 1:18-25 (3) GHeb 1 (4a) IgnEph 7:2 (4b) IgnEph 18:2a (4c) IgnEph 19:1 (4d) IgnSmyr 1:1b (5a) John 6:42 (5b) John 7:40-44 (5c) John 8:39-41 (5d) John 8:56-58 (6) Luke 2:27,33,41,48. [Material in John is highly questionable, cf Brown's volumes on John, as well as Keener's.] For a recent Bibliography see Nolland, The Gospel of Matt, pg. 89-90.

Meier [Marginal Jew I, 220-22] discusses the virginal conception as part of his larger chapter on Jesus' origins. He earlier notes that both infancy narratives "seem to be largely the product of Christian reflection on the salvific meaning of Jesus Christ in the light of OT prophecies (p. 213). At the end of his examination, Meier concludes:

The ends result of this survey must remain meagre and disappointing to both defenders and opponents of the doctrine of the virginal conception. Taken by itself, historical-critical research simply does not have the sources and tools available to reach a final decision on the historicity of the virginal conception as narrated by Matthew and Luke. One's acceptance or rejection of the doctrine will be largely influenced by one's own philosophical and theological presuppositions, as well as the weight one gives to Church teaching.

Lüdemann [Jesus After 2000 years, 122-24] concludes that we can extract as a historical fact behind Matt 1.18-25 the existence of a hostile rumour about the illegitimacy of Jesus. Lüdemann suggests that rape by an unnamed man, possibly even a Roman soldier, is the most likely explanation.

According to Crossan’s analysis what we have here are strata 1 traditions that are multiply attested. If we are to be consistent with that, merely asserting these traditions have their genesis in dogmatic imaginations doesn’t persuade. Raymond Brown notes where these traditions agree:

They agree on these points: Chap. 1 deals with the prebirth situation; chap. 2 with the birth or postbirth situation. The parents of Jesus are Mary and Joseph, who are legally engaged or married but have not yet come to live together or have sexual relations. Joseph is of Davidic descent. There is an angelic announcement of the forthcoming birth of the child. The conception of the child by Mary is not through intercourse with her husband but through the Holy Spirit. There is a directive from the angel that the child is to be named Jesus. The roles of Saviour (Matt 1:21; Luke 2:11) and Son of God (Matt 2:15; Luke 1:35) are given to Jesus. The birth of the child takes place at Bethlehem after the parents have come to live together. The birth is chronologically related to the reign of Herod the Great (Matt 2:1; Luke 1:5). Eventually, the child is reared at Nazareth.

Brown elaborates further on this question by noting that:

Such a general judgment need not imply that there are not some historical elements in either or both accounts. The mutual agreement have an importance, for they probably represent points that were in a tradition antedating both Matthew and Luke. For instance, an intelligent case can be made that Jesus was truly descended from David and born at Bethlehem in the reign of Herod the Great. Arguments to the contrary are far from probative (Brown 1977: 505–16). In particular, the virginal conception (popularly but confusingly called the Virgin Birth) should be evaluated cautiously. Despite extremely limited attestation and inherent difficulties, no satisfactory nonhistorical explanation which could dispense with the virginal conception has been brought forward. The frequent approach to the virginal conception as a theologoumenon, whereby the common “Son of God” title of Jesus would have been translated into a (fictional) narrative in which he had no human father, could acquire plausibility only if there were a good antecedent or parallel for the idea of virginal conception. There is no good antecedent or parallel. While there were Greco-Roman and other examples of male gods impregnating earth women to produce a divine child, the NT contains no hint of such a sexual union. Within Judaism there was no expectation that the messiah would be born of a virgin. (The MT of Isa 7:14 does not clearly refer to a virgin, and even the LXX need mean no more than that one who is now a virgin will conceive through future intercourse. Matthew has not derived Jesus’ conception from Isa 7:14, but interpreted the OT passage through Christian data.) A claimed Hellenistic-Jewish tradition that the patriarchal wives conceived from God without male intervention (Philonic allegory; Gal 4:23, 29) is far from certain. (On all this, see Boslooper 1962; Brown 1977: 517–33). In terms of historical catalysts behind the concept of a virginal conception, those worth noting are: (a) the agreement of Luke (implicit) and Matthew that Jesus was conceived before Joseph and Mary came to live together and hence that the birth might be noticeably early after cohabitation; (2) the 2nd-century Jewish charge that Jesus was illegitimate (Or. Cels 1.28, 32, 69), possibly reflected earlier in John 8:41.

[Brown, Infancy Narratives, ABD.]

We are left with more questions than answers. But clearly, there are historical elements which have been reworked through a scripture framework [“History Scripturized” cf. Goodacre] so as to relay the significance or theology of these historical peculiarities. But clearly, the overlapping of agreements, despite the divergences, constrain our conclusions in such a way as to exclude a genesis in pure authorial imagination. As Nolland concludes, Despite all critical reserve the traditional view continues to have much to commend it [See Nolland, Luke, 1:42-48].