Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§11.1 Beginning from the Baptism of John
On this point Luke is more straightforward. Jesus as 'son of David' is not a
major theme for Luke's Gospel, which makes the prominence given to the theme
in Luke's birth narrative all the more striking. As in Matthew, Joseph's descent
from David is explicitly brought out in the run-up to the crucial announcement
(1.27), as also that David is Jesus' royal father (1.32; also 1.69). Joseph's and
Mary's move to Bethlehem is also testimony of Joseph's Davidic descent (2.4,
11). But the key factor is that Jesus is 'the Son of the Most High', 'the Son of
God' (1.32, 35), because the Holy Spirit 'came upon' Mary and the power of the
Most High 'overshadowed' her (1.35).
One of Brown's main points is that this assertion is not dependent on the
language or 'conceptuality' of Isa. 7.14, which only Matthew cites. 22 The core
tradition as such seems to be simply the double affirmation of Davidic and divine
sonship. This conclusion integrates well with our earlier findings about tradition
and the traditioning process. Here we have, in effect, a core tradition (Jesus
is both son of David and son of God) which we find embedded in two much
elaborated and diversely elaborated stories. 23 We can recognize quite a number
of the distinctive emphases which both Matthew and Luke have put into their
own performances of these stories. But the core of the diverse traditions seems
to be constant and probably indicates the conviction and theme which was elaborated
in and by the birth narratives. 24 In other words, so far as the tradition itself
is concerned (the birth narratives), the earliest we can trace them (the tradition
itself) is probably to that conviction — that is, the conviction that Jesus was
not only David's son but also God's son. Here again, therefore, we are driven
back to a starting point for the tradition as tradition to a conviction which probably
took shape in these terms only after Easter. Of course, we are concerned to
uncover how that conviction emerged and to what extent it was rooted in Jesus'
own mission (see below, chapters 15 and 16). But so far as the tradition itself is
concerned, at least as we have it in Matthew and Luke, it must be judged unlikely
that the conviction emerged from the episodes recounted in Matthew 1-2
and Luke 1-2. The birth narratives seem to be the outworking of the conviction
rather than vice-versa.
d. Are there, then, no historical facts concerning Jesus' birth to be gleaned
from the birth narratives? The prospects are not good.
Matthew's moving star does not evoke a strong impression of historical
22. 'At most, reflection on Isa. 7.14 colored the expression of an already existing Christian
belief in the virginal conception of Jesus' (Brown, Birth 149; also 523-24).
23. I regard it as unnecessary to counter in any detail the suggestion that Matthew or
Luke derived his account from the other; on the usual arguments for literary dependence, such a
suggestion is a non-starter. Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2 are much better explained as exotic examples
of the oral paradigm (see chapter 8 above).
24. On Luke cf. particularly Fitzmyer, Luke 305-12, 340.
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