Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§11.1 Beginning from the Baptism of John
to say that Matthew created all these motifs, though the fulfilment quotations are
usually regarded as evidence of his own hand. Moreover, he clearly intends the
theme of good news for Gentiles to bracket the whole Gospel (28.19), 8 and he
has certainly developed the parallels between Moses and Jesus to his own purposes.
9 But, of course, he may well have been drawing on already well developed
tradition. 10 My point here is simply that the tradition of Matthew's birth narrative
is certainly developed tradition; by whom and how soon before (if not by) Matthew
is less relevant.
With Luke the evidence is more difficult to evaluate. Above all we would
like to know from where Luke derived the various songs/canticles which are
such a feature of his account and which became such a staple element in Christian
liturgy from the early Christian centuries. 11 It is hardly likely that they were
sung at the time and were somehow recorded or remembered by Mary; 12 the
births of those whose greatness is later recognized have always inspired poets
and bards after the fact. But when did the songs emerge and where and in what
circumstances? Their use if not their creation implies a recognition among those
singing the songs of the significance already attributed to the events or people
celebrated in the songs: John as fulfilling the prophecy of Elijah's return (1.17;
Mai. 4.5), the emergence of a Davidic Messiah bringing salvation (1.69, 71, 77),
and the opening of salvation to the Gentiles (2.30-32; echoing Isa. 42.6 and
49.6). In other words, the singing of these songs presupposes beliefs which did
not begin to emerge till Jesus' mission and later. 13 Add to this the strong Lukan
motifs evident in Luke 1-2 — the Spirit infilling, 14 the prominence given to
in consequence of the uprising which followed the death of Herod in 4 BCE, as a possible contributory
factor to the Matthean episode (above chapter 9 n. 253).
8. 'Matthew is echoing the history of his own times, with the conversion of the Gentiles
and persecutions before synagogues and sanhedrins and kings' (Brown, Birth 183).
9. Reference is usually made also to the fact that Matthew has grouped Jesus' teaching
into five discourses, parallel in some degree to the Pentateuch. Further detail in Davies and
Allison, Matthew 3.743 (Index 'Moses'); and further D. C. Allison, The New Moses: A
Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993) ch. 4.
10. See particularly Brown, Birth 104-19 and passim.
11. The Magnificat (Luke 1.46-55), Benedictus (1.68-79), Gloria in excelsis (2.14), and
Nunc dimittis (2.29-32).
12. Pace particularly J. G. Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ (London: Clarke, 1930)
ch. 4.
13. Brown attributes them to a Jewish Christian community, composed possibly in Hebrew
or Aramaic (Birth 346-55). But in the light of Fitzmyer's strong questioning of a Semitic
Vorlage (Luke 312, 359), Brown has qualified the opinion in his revised edition to talk only of
canticles existing in semitized Greek (Birth 643-45).
14. The intensity of Spirit references in Luke 1-2, including talk of being 'filled with the
Holy Spirit' (1.15, 41, 67; note also 1.17, 35, 47, 80; 2.25-27), is matched in the NT only by
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