Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §11.1
women, 15 the 'option for the poor', 16 and the opening of the gospel to the
Gentiles 17 — and it becomes difficult to avoid the conclusion that both content
and form were heavily shaped in the early Christian communities, and thus are
not independent of the impact which Jesus' mission had already made.
In short, we appear to be looking at traditions which stem from a period
when Jesus' significance had already been recognized and which were intended
in part to answer the question, How may we best acknowledge and celebrate his
significance?
c. Can we be more precise? Raymond Brown's magisterial commentary on
the infancy narratives observed that for all their differences, the two accounts
(Matthew and Luke) agree on a common core: that Jesus was both son of David
and son of God. Or to be more precise: the annunciation of Jesus as Davidic Messiah,
but also (and more important) his begetting as God's son through the Holy
Spirit. 18 Thus Matthew, for whom Jesus' Davidic sonship is central, 19 goes out of
his way to affirm Jesus' legal descent from David through Joseph (1.1-17). In the
crucial announcement, Joseph is addressed as 'son of David' (1.20): the child has
been conceived 'from the Spirit' (ek pneumatos); in fulfilment of the Isaiah
prophecy (Isa. 7.14), '"his name shall be called Emmanuel" . . . God with us'
(1.23), another key Matthean motif. 20 That this Jesus is thus also God's son is
held back till 2.15 — 'Out of Egypt have I called my son' (Hos. 11.1) — where it
can also serve Matthew's purpose in presenting Jesus as the re-run of Israel's exodus
and wilderness experience (Matt. 4.1-11). 21
Luke's account of the earliest churches (Acts 2.4; 4.8, 31; 9.17; 13.9; note also 1.5, 8; 2.17-18,
38; etc.).
15. Elizabeth (Luke 1.5-13, 24-25, 40-45, 57-60), Mary (1.26-56; 2.5-7, 16-19, 34-35,
48-51), Anna (2.36-38). Elsewhere in Luke: the widow of Nain (7.11-17), the sinful woman
(7.36-50), Galilean women followers (8.2-3), Martha and Mary (10.38-42), the crippled
woman (13.10-17), the parable of the lost coin (15.8-10), the parable of the importunate widow
(18.1-8), the widow's farthing (21.1-4), the daughters of Jerusalem (23.27-31).
16. The note struck in the Magnificat (Luke 1.51-53) is echoed in the prominence given
to 'the poor' later in the Gospel (4.18; 6.20; 7.22; 14.13, 21; 16.19-31; 18.22; 21.1-4); the fact
that Joseph and Mary's offering (2.24) was that permitted to the poor (Lev. 12.8) is often noted.
See further Fitzmyer, Luke 247-51.
17. Foreshadowed in Luke's second mission of the seventy (Luke 10.1), probably indicating
the second stage of mission in Acts, pioneered by Peter and the Hellenists (Acts 10.1—
11.18; 11.19-26) and implemented most fully by Paul (9.15; 13.46-48; 18.6; etc.), as implied
also by the two-stage 'mission' in Luke 14.21-22, 23-24.
18. Brown, Birth 158-63; also 133-38, 244-47 and n. 41, 307-16.
19. Matt. 9.27; 12.23; 15.22; 20.30-31; 21.9, 15; all but 20.30-31 are distinctive to Matthew.
20. See particularly D. D. Kupp, Matthew's Emmanuel: Divine Presence and God's
People in the First Gospel (SNTSMS 90; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1996).
21. See also below, n. 193.
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