MetaCatholic

James McGrath has dared to take Mark Goodacre on over Q. First, he posted about why Q should be deduced from the overlap between Matthew and Mark. Mark Goodacre responded pointing out that one shouldn’t make too much of these differences.

We have an idea of the degree of verbatim agreement that they [Matt and Luke] exhibit when they share a written source, in the triple tradition material, and it is not as high as the degree of agreement we see between them in double tradition material. The link between Matthew and Luke is a direct one.

One of the interesting features of this ongoing debate between Mark Goodacre and a good many Q-theorists is that Mark continues to refine and strengthen his arguments. I look forward to the future post he mentions. Undaunted, James comes back with a post specifically on the infancy narratives. He argues that they are so different that one cannot imagine either Matthew or Luke having had the other’s gospel available to them while they write.

Although I look forward to Mark’s rebuttal of this, I do want to offer a few observations, since it seems to me that this doesn’t make a particularly strong argument.

Firstly, the infancy narratives are themselves somewhat different material to the bulk of the gospel. Not least, the creative writing of infancy narratives as a prelude seeking to characterise the subject of the life of the hero seems to be part of the literary genre. It is unclear that either Matthew or Luke are seeking to convey history in these introductions, but rather introduce their respective and different stories.

Then it is worth noting the similarities in the narratives. Jesus is born in Bethlehem. His birth is announced by an angel. Mary is a virgin, Jesus is her first born, and his conception occurs without male intervention. It is spoken of in both as the work of the Holy Spirit. Complete outsiders come to witness his birth, which is conveyed to them by miraculous portents. I could add, but leave out of this list, things that might have been deduced, such as Jesus’ birth taking place in the reign of Herod, or things known elsewhere in the gospel tradition, such as Jesus coming from Nazareth, or his parents’ names being Joseph and Mary.

How is this commonality to be accounted for? There is more here than complete independence from one another can easily account for. But if we postulate a common oral (or written) tradition that both know, it must have contained rather more than these bare facts which scarcely make up a sufficient story to have been narrated. In that case this tradition must have looked either more like Matthew or more like Luke, but we can say no more, except that for some reason, one or the other, or both, developed this tradition in various quite incompatible ways. Or we can say that Luke, with Matthew’s exemplar before him, felt he could write a much better story that served his purposes in introducing the hero of his Life. History would seem to agree: apart from Herod, the magi, and the massacre, it is Luke’s story that dominates the Christmas narrative, despite the fact that Matthew was always the most popular gospel.

So can we envisage why Luke might have altered Matthew’s story. Let’s see.

• It begins with a genealogy, which needs to go elsewhere if the educated reader is to be enticed into the narrative.
• It needs a literary tie in with the style and content of the Bible, provided by Luke’s Septuagintal language and the poetry given to Zechariah and Mary.
• It needs to emphasise the faithfulness of the Holy Family. They do all that the Law requires. They are also obedient citizens of empire, and the census is no occasion of rebellion.
• It needs to get rid of those Magi. Luke, as the story of Simon Magus reveals, does not think highly of them.
• While it is shadowed with the hint of what is to come towards its close in the Presentation, it is essentially marked with joy, from the jubilation of Mary and Elizabeth together, through the wonder of the shepherds, to the rejoicing of Simeon and Anna.
• It needs to emphasise the place of the poor and unfavoured: childless Elizabeth and lowly Mary are in a complementary situation, and an age-based antithesis. The shepherds are among the (semi-)outcast poor.
• It needs to prepare the way for the significant place of women as disciples in the rest of the gospel.
• It needs to put Jesus’ birth on the world stage through a global census (accompanied by an ironic use of Augustan roles of Saviour and the bringer of peace) and not confine him to an outpost of civilisation under Herod.

There may be more, but this short list shows both literary and theological reasons why Luke might have wished to completely rework Matthew’s narrative, while retaining that essential core of ideas. In short, the differences between the infancy narratives in no way provide an argument for the independence of Matthew and Luke. In fact, under the vast differences, there is a surprising commonality of some key points which have to point either to a heavily redacted common tradition, or to literary dependence.