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Luke’s Infancy Narrative as Oral History in Scriptural Form
Richard Bauckham
Is there any reliable history in the first two chapters of Luke’s Gospel? Raymond
Brown’s landmark commentary on the two infancy narratives found hardly
anything more than the few points that Matthew and Luke have in common: the
names of Jesus’ parents, the connexion with Nazareth and so forth – but none of
the events Luke recounts.1 Many other scholars would agree.2 Luke has created
these narratives out of Old Testament models and for christological purposes. It
is, of course, indubitable that in these chapters Luke is constantly looking back to
the Old Testament and forward to the rest of his Gospel, forging connexions in
both directions, engendering rich and complex christological meaning. That most
commentators now focus on those dimensions and avoid the very difficult issues
of historicity is understandable. I might do so myself in a different context.3 But
older scholarship did not regard the history and the theology as mutually
exclusive, and there are some genuine reasons, as I shall explain, why the
historical questions have not gone away, much as some scholars wish they
would.4 In order to pick them up again, tentatively as is appropriate in the era
after Brown, a good place to begin is the issue of genre.
The question of genre
Any attempt to identify history in Luke’s infancy narrative must begin with the
issue of literary genre, since this would strongly affect the extent to which
readers would expect to find some kind of history in this part of Luke’s Gospel. I
agree with those scholars, now perhaps a majority, who place the canonical
Gospels broadly within the ancient genre of biography, the life of a famous
person.5 In addition, I have argued elsewhere that, as biographies written within
living memory of their subject or at least close to living memory, they would
have been expected to embody the testimony of eyewitnesses, as good
contemporary history and biography did.6 Luke, uniquely among the Gospels,
includes a historiographical prologue,7 in which he at least professes to employ
best historical practice, in particular dependence on eyewitnesses. In my view,
most scholars have been too cautious in envisaging what this claim implies. I
think it is likely to mean that Luke was in direct contact with some eyewitnesses,
perhaps in second-hand contact with others, and that some of his research for
his Gospel (together with Acts) would have involved interviewing such people,
as historians and authors of the more historiographical sort of biography did.
When he used literary sources, it was because he was assured that these sources
were themselves based in eyewitness testimony.
I should say at once that when Luke’s preface refers to ‘those who from
the beginning were eyewitnesses’ he does not, as has sometimes been claimed,
mean ‘from the very beginning of his story (including the infancy narrative),’8
because parallels in his own work make it clear that the beginning is that of
Jesus’ public career, at his baptism, and these eyewitnesses were disciples who
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accompanied Jesus from that time onwards. 9 This particularly important
category of eyewitness is the one highlighted in his prologue, but it does not
exclude Luke’s dependence also on other eyewitnesses. Of course, in the case of
his infancy narrative, readers would not expect Luke to have had direct contact
with eyewitnesses. That he was lucky enough to meet Mary before her death is
unlikely, even if not completely impossible. We should also note that the infancy
narrative does not actually read like other parts of Luke’s Gospel. It has very
distinctive features that legitimate the question: would readers have expected it
to be the same kind of history or, indeed, history at all?
Greco-Roman biographies often, though not always, begin with some
account of the origins and youth of their subjects.10 Standard elements include
(1) family background and ancestry, (2) birth, (3) portents and prophecies of
future destiny, dating from around the time of birth, (4) appearance, (5)
character as already manifest in childhood, (6) education, and (7) childhood
anecdotes, which often show characteristics or abilities of the adult man already
present prodigiously in the child. Of these, probably the first element (family) is
the most commonly found, no doubt because it was considered very important
and some information about it was usually available. None of the other elements
is always present and some of them occur only rarely. The birth, for example,
often goes unmentioned, no doubt because there was nothing to be said. The
biographers supplied material in these categories only when they had sources,
written or oral, from which to do so. Of course, this doesn’t mean such material is
necessarily reliable. Some of it is probably among the least reliable material in
these biographies, but the biographers whose work we know did not usually
make it up.11 It is worth making this point especially about the reports of
supernatural or remarkable forms of conception or birth (which are very few)12
and the portents and prophecies of future destiny (which are somewhat more
common).13 As is sometimes quite explicit in Plutarch14 and Suetonius,15 for
example, such stories had long been in oral circulation, if not in writing, when the
biographer recorded them.16 Sometimes the biographers are careful not to
commit themselves to the truth of such stories when they record them.17 They do
not abandon their critical faculties when they recount such material, and if they
seem to us more credulous here than elsewhere, we should remember that most
people had no doubt that portents and prophecies do occur.
Luke’s narrative of Jesus’ birth and infancy obviously ticks several of
these standard boxes: (1) family background and ancestry (especially if we
include the genealogy from chapter 3, but prominent even in chapters 1-2), (2)
birth, (3) prophecies of future destiny (made by angels and prophets), (7) a
childhood anecdote that anticipates key features of the adult Jesus. To that extent
Luke’s infancy narrative conforms to the Greco-Roman biographical model.
Other features, however, do not: for example, the fact that Luke tells a
continuous chronological narrative and the fact that the canticles are a major
feature (albeit a means of prophesying the child’s destiny). Add to that the
biblical style and the frequent biblical allusions, especially to biblical prophecy,
and we can see that, while Luke’s infancy narrative does fill the place of the
preliminary material in a Greco-Roman biography, Luke has chosen here to write
a specifically Jewish kind of historiography, no doubt both because this was
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appropriate to Jesus’ actual origins and because Luke’s overriding purpose is to
depict Jesus as the fulfilment of Israel’s messianic hopes.18
The canticles are a prime example of a Jewish historiographical
convention,19 which can be seen in the Hebrew Bible (the songs of Moses,
Miriam, Deborah, Hannah and David), in the books of Judith and Tobit, and in the
Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo, an important example because it dates from
around the same time as Luke’s Gospel.20 They are a means of commenting on
the significance of the events in the narrative, and, and unlike most scholars
(including even Brown) I see no reason to doubt that Luke himself composed the
songs in his infancy narrative, as doubtless Pseudo-Philo did those in his work.
We should also see Luke’s creative hand in the speeches and dialogues, which
along with the canticles convey much of the rich christological meaning of the
infancy narrative. Given Luke’s skill and versatility as a writer, I do not think it
likely that he had literary sources for his infancy narrative, and we certainly have
no hope of reconstructing them. However, when everything appropriate is said
about Luke’s biblical inspiration and creative composition in this section of his
Gospel, I do not think we should forget his profession of historiographical
practice in his prologue. After all, by synchronizing his narrative with broader
history (in the references to Herod the king, the emperor Augustus and Quirinius
the governor) Luke not only makes an ideological point about the significance of
his narrative but also shows that he thinks he is writing some kind of history.
It seems to me likely, therefore, that Luke researched this part of his
Gospel in the way that historians did: by interviewing people who could tell him
stories about Jesus’ birth and early life (as well as those of John the Baptist). The
main outlines of his narrative could be called oral history in this sense,21 and in
my title I have therefore called the infancy narrative “oral history in scriptural
form,” to acknowledge the way that biblical precedent and biblical prophecy
have thoroughly informed the way he has told the story. That his oral sources
already included some reflection on the significance of the events in the light of
Scripture is likely, but difficult to verify.
The question of sources
A historian’s work is no better than his sources and we cannot assume
that, if Luke had sources, they were reliable ones. Since the story is a family
history, any reliable material would have to come ultimately from inside the
family, presumably from Mary herself. Many scholars in the past, of course, have
argued precisely that Mary is Luke’s ultimate source in these chapters.22 The
popularity of such a view has declined in parallel with a general loss of
confidence in the historical value of the infancy narrative. Few commentators
now read Luke’s repeated statement that ‘Mary treasured all these things in her
heart’23 as an indication of his eyewitness source, a view that used to be
common.24 However, in my view there are two reasons at least for thinking that
Luke may after all have based his narrative on traditions he learned from the
family of Jesus. Both are controversial. The first depends on the view, which I
hold, that the ‘we’ passages in Acts indicate the presence of Luke, the author, at
the events.25 In that case, Luke himself tells us that he met James the Lord’s
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brother when he accompanied Paul on Paul’s last visit to Jerusalem.26 In the
succeeding period he would have had ample opportunity to speak with James
and quite plausibly also with other relatives of Jesus.
That argument is not new.27 My second reason for thinking Luke may
have depended on what he learned from the family of Jesus is more distinctive. It
requires me to mention briefly an argument I have made elsewhere in detail.28
Julius Africanus, who evidently had access to Palestinian Jewish Christian
traditions about the relatives of Jesus, tells us that they used the family
genealogy in their evangelistic preaching. No doubt, they used it to demonstrate
Jesus’ status as the Davidic Messiah. I have argued that Luke’s genealogy, which
he inserts into his narrative in chapter 3, looks very much like just such a
genealogy as the relatives of Jesus would have used. Like many an ancient
genealogy, it both preserves a traditional line of descent and has been
manipulated for symbolic, especially numerical, purposes, of which Luke himself
shows no awareness. It cannot be adequately explained without both factors, and
therefore much the most plausible source from which Luke could have got it is
the family of Jesus themselves.29 If he did, then clearly he was also in a position
to learn other family traditions too.
However, against the hypothesis that Luke’s infancy narrative has sources
that included good historical information, many scholars argue that it is
discredited by its clear historical mistakes and implausible accounts. There are
two passages in particular that have been frequently judged to lack historical
plausibility: the account of the census (2:1-5) and the narrative of the
presentation of Jesus in the Temple (2:22-24). Unlike the virginal conception,
where issues beyond the ordinarily historical are at stake, these two accounts
raise only quite ordinary questions for historical assessment. Moreover, these
two accounts really need to be judged at least basically historical if it is to be
credible that Luke had any reliable information about events connected with
Jesus’ birth.
The census in fact continues to be vigorously debated, with new evidence
and new theories being advanced.30 The case against a historical basis for the
connexion Luke makes between a census and the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem has
certainly not yet proved conclusive. But in the case of the presentation in the
Temple, the apparently devastating critique of the historical plausibility of Luke’s
account, made by a series of prominent scholars, has not been effectively
challenged. Since Brown’s and Fitzmyer’s commentaries there has been hardly
any substantial discussion of the historical issues. So I shall devote what time I
have left to this issue.31
The presentation in the Temple (2:22-24)
In 2:22-24 Luke describes how Joseph and Mary carried out two
requirements of Torah: (1) the purification of a woman after childbirth and (2)
the presentation and redemption of a firstborn son. Many scholars think that
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Luke has misunderstood and muddled these Jewish customs and constructed a
purely fictional event. Raymond Brown says that Luke ‘has created a setting [for
the meeting with Simeon and Anna] from an inaccurate reading of Old Testament
laws.’32 The charges against Luke’s accuracy are these: (1) Luke has confused the
two distinct customs and seems to think the sacrifice of two birds was required
for the presentation of the firstborn son, rather than for the purification of Mary,
while he says nothing about what actually had to be done for the child: the
payment of five silver shekels.
(2) Luke evidently thinks the Torah required the firstborn son to be presented in
the Temple in Jerusalem, whereas in fact the redemption price could be paid to
any priest in any location.33
(3) There is a chronological difficulty in conflating the two customs, because the
Torah requires the child to be redeemed at the age of one month, while the
mother’s purification is not completed until forty days after the birth.34
(4) Luke refers to ‘their purification,’ whereas in fact only the mother required
purification.35
More than one scholar concludes that Mary could not have been a source of
information for Luke, since she surely would have got these matters right.36
I shall take the four charges in turn:
(1) The charge that Luke has confused the two customs has been effectively
answered by those who have pointed out that the account has a chiastic
structure (as shown on your handouts).37 Reference to the purification at the
beginning and the end of the passage (A and A1) frame the reference to the
presentation of the child to the Lord (B and B1), which is thereby highlighted as
the most important topic.38 Once we have answered the charge of confusion we
can see that Luke does refer to the payment of the redemption price in v 27,
when he says that they did ‘for the child what was customary under the law.’
Since Luke’s interest is in the dedication of the child to the Lord, he does not
make explicit that money was paid to buy the child back, but shows he knew this
is what happened.39 There is no other custom to which the phrase in v 27 could
refer.
(2) The claim that the law of the firstborn did not require the child to be taken to
the Temple is often stated very dogmatically. For example, Joseph Fitzmyer says
that presentation of the child in the Temple ‘is a custom about which nothing is
said in either the Old Testament or the Mishna. Such a custom for a firstborn son
is simply unknown in Jewish tradition.’40 In the face of such an emphatic
assertion, it is remarkable how unambiguous is the evidence to the contrary.41
In Numbers 18 there is a catalogue of the offerings that the people are to
bring to the Tabernacle (later the Temple) and that will belong to Aaron and his
sons the priests. It includes this: ‘The first issue of the womb of all creatures,
human and animal, which they offer to the LORD, shall be yours, but the firstborn
of human beings you shall redeem.’ The phrase ‘to offer to the LORD’ (Hiphil of
qārab + YHWH) occurs 43 times in the Hebrew Bible, mostly in Leviticus and
Numbers, and it invariably refers to the offering of sacrifices in the Tabernacle or
the Temple.42 There can be no doubt that the Torah here requires the firstborn
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son to be presented to the Lord in the Temple.43 But, lest anyone be still in any
doubt, the text is interpreted for us in Nehemiah 10:35-36,44 where the people
pledge themselves to obey the commandments of Numbers 18: ‘We obligate
ourselves … to bring to the house of our God, to the priests who minister in the
house of our God, the firstborn of our sons and of our livestock, as it is written in
the law …’ Nehemiah 10 is a significant passage, the earliest example of halakah
outside the Torah itself interpreting the laws of the Torah.45 Moreover, it is
undoubtedly priestly halakah, a better guide to the way the Temple authorities in
the time of Jesus would have interpreted the law than anything we might find in
the rabbis.46 We might also note that in these passages, as elsewhere in the
Torah, the offering of the child is the primary concern, whereas the redemption,
though assumed, need not even be mentioned. Luke, it turns out, knew the
requirements of Torah a good deal better than his modern critics.47
(3) In the light of that clear requirement of Torah, it appears that, in the case of a
firstborn son, the parents are to present the child in the Temple when it is a
month old and then, just ten days later, the mother, at least, must travel to the
Temple again for her purification. Since few mothers would leave their monthold child at home, and few fathers would let their wife and baby travel alone to
Jerusalem, we are looking at two journeys by both parents, with the child, a mere
ten days apart. Few people, unless they lived in Jerusalem, are likely to have
done this. It is reasonable to suppose that the presentation of the child would
often be postponed until the time of the purification of the mother. The rule that
the child should be one month old could well have been interpreted as putting
only a lower, not an upper limit, on the time at which he could be presented.
(4) What is probably the best textual reading in v 22 refers to ‘their purification,’
meaning, most likely, Mary’s and Joseph’s purification.48 If this is simply an error
on Luke’s part, it is extremely difficult to see how he could have made such a
mistake. He certainly read the only passage in the Torah that deals with
purification after childbirth (Lev 12:1-8), since he quotes it, and the passage
makes no reference at all to the father. It is easier to think that Luke uses a
popular, not strictly accurate, way of referring to the purification of the mother,
who would usually have been attended by her husband. A more precise
explanation of a popular usage of this kind may be possible if we remember that
impurity is often communicable to others.49 Here the matter becomes rather
technical. The Torah describes the purification of the mother in two stages. For
the first seven days she has a status equivalent to that of a menstruating woman.
For the remaining thirty-three days she has a lesser degree of impurity that
prevents her entering the Temple. But could she, in this second stage, still
communicate impurity to other people? According to the Mishna, the two
Pharisaic houses of Hillel and Shammai disagreed. Hillel said she could not, but
the Shammai, stereotypically always the more strict, held that she could.50 In that
case, Joseph, assuming he was in close contact with Mary, would himself have
been impure for more or less all of her forty days of purification. His would be a
lesser degree of impurity, quickly and easily removed without attending the
Temple, but since her purification would in effect remove the source of his
impurity, it could have been considered ‘their purification.’ We do not know
whether Joseph and Mary would have followed what the authors of the Mishna
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describe as the Shammaite interpretation of this law. As is often the case, we do
not know which was the most prevalent interpretation of this law at this time or
which was adopted by the Temple authorities. Luke deserves the benefit of the
doubt.
I conclude that there is nothing historically implausible in this narrative. That
does not prove that it is historical, but it does remove one objection, of which
some scholars have made most, to the hypothesis that traditions from the family
of Jesus form the core of Luke’s infancy narrative.
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1
For an account of scholarship on the infancy narratives since Brown, see
Wansbrough in New Perspectives on the Nativity (2009)
3 E.g. in my ‘Elizabeth and Mary’ (Gospel Women) I ignore issues of historicity.
4 Scholars who continue to find substantial historical value in the infancy
narratives include Puig I Tarrrech (2010) …
5 The recent broad agreement on this is due, to quite a large extent, to Burridge’s
detailed argument in What Are the Gospels? For a recent survey of scholarship
on Gospels genre, see Diehl (2011)
6 Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
7 For a recent defence of this position, see Aune in Wedderburn FS.
2
8
See Jesus and the Eyewitnesses …
Burridge… On Plutarch, see Duff 2008.
11 So the term ‘creative historiography’ (used by Lincoln 2013) is not really
appropriate for such material in most of the biographies.
12 See Talbert, ‘Prophecies,’ 135; McHugh 288-289. Stories from the Greek myths
should not be included here. The Life of Apollonius by Philostratus seems to have
been written deliberately to rival the Gospels.
13 But Talbert, ‘Prophecies,’ stretches this category, in a way not helpful for
comparison with Luke’s infancy narrative, by including predictions made at the
outset of a character’s adult life or public career, long after birth.
14 E.g. Cicero 2.
15 E.g. Augustus … Tiberius (?)
16 In the case of biographies of writers, about whom the biographers often had
little real information, such matters could be deduced by means of highly
ingenious readings of the subject’s writings.
17 For a strongly skeptical view of a popular rumour, see Livy on Scipio Africanus,
quoted McHugh 289 n. 12.
18 Other features found in the birth narratives of Scripture and Pseudo-Philo, but
not in Greco-Roman biography, are the naming of the child by an angel before
birth (Bible: Isaac; Ps-Philo: Samson, cf.. Samuel), and the birth of a child to a
barren or elderly woman.
19 Weizman, Song and Story
20 Bogaert argues that Luke knew Pseudo-Philo’s work. (Note on the birth
narratives in Ps-Philo…)
21 For Luke’s infancy narrative as oral history, cf. Laurentin… For the analogy
between modern ‘oral history’ and ancient historiographical practice, see
Byrskog
9
10
22
Luke 2:19, 51.
(List commentators)
25 `For a good defence of this view, see Fitzmyer (essays)
26 Acts 21:18.
23
24
27
28
Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives
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My view of the genealogy has recently been endorsed in a study of the
tradition in Julius Africanus by Christophe Guignard (in Clivaz ed.)
30 Good survey in Porter (2002 in Wedderburn FS). See now also Di Segni (2005),
Puig I Tarrech (2010), Rhoads (2011), Dabrowa (2011), Di Segni (2013),
Dabrowa (2013).
31 This discussion is limited to 2:22-24 and so does not consider the figures of
Simeon and Anna and their prophecies. For an argument that Anna is a
historically credible figure, see Bauckham, ‘Anna of the Tribe of Asher’ (Gospel
Women).
32 Brown 448; Meier vol 1, 210
33 Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition, 299; Evans 213; Marshall
117; Meier vol 1, 210; Brown 447. According to Easton 27, there was no
obligation to go to Jerusalem, but ‘the use of the temple for this rite by those
living near Jerusalem must have been common.’
34 Fitzmyer 420-421. See Num 18:16; Lev 12:2-4.
35 Evans 212: ‘Either [Joseph + Mary or Mary + Jesus] would be nonsensical and
betray ignorance of Jewish custom… [The pronoun their] is most likely a clumsy
device of Luke to bring the child into the proceedings.’ Cf. Brown 448; Fitzmyer
424
36 Fitzmyer 424; Meier 210.
37 For Luke’s use of chiastic patterns in the infancy narrative, see Bauckham,
Gospel Women, 49-51
38 Nolland 118; Carroll 75
39 Marshall, 117, seems to think that Jesus, exceptionally, was not redeemed, but
this is scarcely credible. There is no way he could be exempt from the law in the
eyes of the Temple authorities.
40 Fitzmyer 425. Cf. Bovon 99: ‘the redemption of the firstborn was not
connected to the temple.’
41 Statements of this sort take no account of the fact that elsewhere Luke shows
considerable familiarity (not derived from the Old Testament) of Temple
procedures: Luke 1:5-10; Acts 3:1-2. Acts 21:23-24, 26, is a disputed example.
42 In Num 18:15 and often elsewhere, LXX uses προσφέρειν κυρἰῳ. Luke’s
παραστῆσαι τῷ κυρἰῳ is a good equivalent, since παριστάναι can be used of
offering in sacrifice (e.g. Rom 12:1).
43 Lagrange 81, quotes Num 18:15, but comments: ‘Il n’était prescript nulle part
clairement que l’enfact dût conduit au Temple.’ Maybe this misleading comment
discouraged later commentators from taking the evidence of Num 18:15
seriously.
44 Nolland 117, rightly refers to Neh 10:35-36 as evidence of the custom of
presenting the child in the Temple, but not to the source of that passage in Num
18:15.
45 Clines, ‘Nehemiah 10 …’
46 The confidence of scholars such as Brown and Fitzmyer (who cite no evidence)
that the redemption price could be paid to any priest anywhere is evidently
based on Strack-Billerbeck (vol. 2, 120) who cite two identical passages in the
Mekilta de R. Ishmael: ‘Just as in the case of the firstling born to man, one gives
the child to the priest in any location that one chooses, so in the case of the
firstling of a beast, one hands it over to the priest in any place that one chooses’
29
10
(16:1 = 76:3, translation from Neusner 96, 221). S-B give no context, but in the
context this statement seems to relate to the situation when ‘one lives in a
distant place,’ i.e. distant from ‘the chosen house’ (the Temple). Probably it
represents a concession based on the analogy of the law in Deut 14:22-26 (note
the reference to firstlings in v 23). It not an alternative to the rule that the
firstborn should be presented in the Temple, but provides for exceptions to the
rule. In any case, these passages (which refer to no named rabbis) are hardly
good evidence for the practice of the late Second Temple period, though it is
plausible that in that period people living far from the Temple were permitted to
present their child to a priest locally.
47 Most commentators think Luke has drawn the motif of the presentation of the
child in the Temple from the story of Samuel in 1 Sam 1, but Samuel was two
years old and stayed in the Temple as Eli’s assistant. A proper understanding of
the law of the firstborn makes reference to Samuel redundant.
48 Some scholars think the reference is to Mary and Jesus (e.g. Lagrange 82;
Bovon 96, 99), but this is not probable.
49 Plummer 63, observes: ‘Contact with an unclean person involved uncleanness.’
But this is too generalized a point to prove anything in this instance.
50 m. Nid. 10:6: ‘The School of Shammai say: Even as one that suffered
uncleanness from a corpse,’ i.e. she is a source of impurity. See the comment on
this passage in Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, 757.