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1 The Infancy Narrative The first part of the infancy narrative is a presentation of Jesus’ “family tree.” Then at 1:18 the genealogy becomes narrative as Matthew describes Jesus’ miraculous birth. Chapter 2 tells of the “troubled” Herod and the visit of the magi, followed by an angel’s advice in a dream to Joseph that the family take flight into Egypt. A second such dream, again to Joseph, takes them back to Judea, where Herod’s son Archelaus is ruling; and a third warns them to go to Nazareth in Galilee, where Jesus will spend his youth and young manhood, of which nothing is reported. Tell all the truth but tell it slant. —Emily Dickinson The Christian Bible begins with Matthew’s version of Genesis, as if he were commencing a new version of Scripture and a new era in human history. Like Luke, he includes a genealogy and an infancy narrative, and although the two evangelists differ in their choice of forebears and events (they do seem to agree on the dual sonship of Jesus and his virgin birth), they both want to satisfy converts’ understandable curiosity regarding Jesus’ background, both personal and familial. They also want to demonstrate that his status as the long-awaited Messiah—and, indeed, as the Son of God—was assured at and before his birth, not conferred at some point in his ministry or acquired after his death (since Paul’s Epistles might give the impression that it was his death, crucifixion , resurrection, and ascension that alone confirmed Jesus’ divinity). Matthew’s genealogy cannot be harmonized with Luke’s, and for those rationalists , ancient and modern, who regarded contradiction as the unforgivable sin, the Gospels lost their credibility in the first lines of Matthew. Today they are generally accepted as theological constructs, with some characterizing Matthew’s genealogy as “royal” (mentioning Solomon) and Luke’s as “priestly” (mentioning Levi). What other information the first Christians had on the early Jesus and his forebears was undoubtedly fragmented and anecdotal, read back into his obscure beginnings from the known events of his later ministry and buttressed by “predictive” testimonies from the Old Testament. All of this Matthew uses, with the result that his gospel acquires a structural symmetry, not only balancing Jesus’ birth and death but also employing certain motifs —even words—associated with the nativity that will recur during his passion, as at both points of his life Jesus must confront the local Jewish and Roman leaders. There are difficulties in assessing the sources and the historical validity of these two infancy stories, since there could have been few eyewitnesses to their events, and certainly not the gospel composers or the apostles before them. There was a Christian tradition that made Joseph the source for Matthew, Mary for Luke; and there were precedents in antiquity for ascribing wondrous qualities to the births and childhood activities of great figures. So all is not lost, and the Bible’s readers should remember that only significant events generate legends and that legendary traditions, particularly those as moving as the Christmas stories, can often provide as much material for theological and spiritual reflection as the spare facts of history. Thus, Matthew prefaces his infancy narrative (most of which the KJV translators took directly from Tyndale ) with a genealogical outline of Israel’s legendary history. Unlike Luke, he begins with “begats”—thirty-nine of them. By commencing Jesus’ lineage with Abraham and David, father and king, Matthew emphasizes his historical position , Jewish identity, and royal descent, even though the bloodline comes through Joseph, who was not really Jesus’ father (hence the switch to Mary at v. 16). Since an orderly and prestigious lineage mattered deeply to the inherited monarchies of medieval rulers, Matthew’s “Tree of Jesse,” David’s father, was reproduced in illuminated manuscripts and in the stained glass “Jesse” windows of Gothic cathedrals, notably the great western front window of Chartres (1145). The proof text was Isaiah 11:1: “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots,” recalled in the fourth stanza of the popular Christmas carol “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel !” Illustrations generally showed a tree growing out of Jesse’s loins, with Matthew’s figures pictured among its branches and Christ at its crown. It helped too that the Latin Vulgate’s word for “rod,” virga, so closely resembled virgo, “virgin,” though Protestants have preferred to see the “rod...

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