Jesus’ birth, abiding in a manger due to an inn being full, Luke presents a scene involving shepherds tending to their flocks and an angel (a messenger and a translator) appearing to them with an announcement. Luke, the writer, does not have the authority himself to make such a claim – the reason an angel, with access to God and his message, becomes necessary in the narrative. Luke depends on an angel since he cannot grant himself the authority of being directly related to God much less have the authority to proclaim his message. The angel appears to the shepherds who are, understandably, afraid, and makes several announcements, first about Jesus’ purpose in the world, to bring good news and that he will be called a “Savior,” (soter) (2:11) a word the shepherds understood to be deeply personal, someone who takes care of life and rescues from threats and danger and death. Luke must sense, or know, that there are now two different and perhaps incompatible, certainly ambiguous aspects to the account of the birth of Jesus. Caesar Augustus may be the emperor of Rome and the de jure leader of Judaea and Galilee, with his proxy Herod, but the arrival of Jesus as someone whose individuality will affect the future will have much more lasting ←43 | 44→consequences, most especially in his influence upon “all people.” He cannot be understood as being limited by an identity he necessarily inherits (though does not adopt – as we will see) because of a soon to be evident self-understanding. As a new-born infant, he can in no way determine the traditions of his father and mother. He cannot, for example, comment on his circumcision, on his mother’s situation and the time for their “purification according to the law of Moses,” (2:22) or on the mandatory visit to Jerusalem to offer the appropriate sacrifices after the birth of a child. The observances are traditional and, for his family, a duty to respect and fulfill. Jesus, as a new-born infant, cannot determine any observances, as he will so adamantly do during his ministry. The man will act to restore to the child (and all children) a freedom to determine themselves for his teaching rather than tradition. The world Jesus is born into may claim and raise him but no history or culture, however binding, can determine his existence.
As Luke struggles to represent Jesus after the episode of the virgin birth, he frames his extensive genealogy with a curious beginning – “being (as was thought) the son of Joseph” (Luke 3:23) – a genealogy following his baptism and before his forty-day sojourn in the wilderness. The three episodes, as narrative, are an attempt by Luke to provide the reader with three inter-related accounts of his beginning following the virgin birth; by doing so, he has over-stretched himself; or rather, divided Jesus’ beginning. On the one hand, he has a virgin birth (and without a father, he can have no genealogy) and on the other he is first reduced back into a genealogy extending down through history. Noticeably, the word genealogia nowhere appears in Luke – or, for that matter, in Matthew. Paul and his community will be unequivocal about Jesus’ genealogy.
Two New Testament letters in particular that, of course, precede both Matthew and Luke, must be read in light of both nativity stories – for they are the only two references to genealogia, as a word, as a concept. First, in a letter to his most important co-worker, Paul (or for those who consider it deutero-Pauline, by someone in the community) advises everyone reading the letter to “neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies” (1 Tim. 1:4). The writer of the letter dissuades the reader from consulting genealogies, as if they themselves were “fables” no longer believable; worse, they are detrimental to a thought now looking forward to a future to be determined by Jesus’ enduring presence. Even more remarkable, another letter advises to “avoid foolish questions, and genealogies,” (Titus 3:9) a statement of incomparable importance since it introduces, for the first time, the lexicon of “regeneration.” In other words, in the very document equating the sacrament of baptism with “regeneration” (the palingenesis of Titus 3:5) – a regeneration John will understand in relation to Jesus making possible a ←44 | 45→new birth through the sacrament of baptism– we also have a repudiation of the genealogies that insist on portraying Jesus as tied to a line of succession.
The idea of regeneration is antithetical to genealogies.
The regeneration made possible by baptism is precisely the ability of being free from the past, from what has already occurred, in forgiveness, in forgetting; unless regeneration, another genesis, is conceived as the opening of a new future and the ability to relinquish the past, then its efficacy is limited. Regeneration and genealogies are incommensurable; the regeneration inherent in baptism makes it possible to become a renewed and different human being – no longer burdened with all the accumulated experiences of the past and their painful repercussions much less the continuing burdens of the sins of prior generations. Baptism nullifies the past – completely, not simply the past of one’s individuality, but a freedom from the way the past continues to influence the present and anticipate (and thereby limit) the future. The genealogies in both Luke and Matthew become superfluous; there are more serious, more urgent events around the virgin birth whose meanings will be necessary for the time to come for all of Jesus’ followers.
In the gospel of Matthew, the virgin birth initiates a series of inter-related events that, together and comprehensively, provide extended meanings for Jesus’ life, with one inadvertent consequence of his coming into the world that will remind him of another beginning, a moment to perpetually remember, a trauma persistent in its effects, long lasting in consequence, and present for Jesus until his crucifixion prior to the beginning of Passover. If Mark and John open their biographies with “in the beginning,” Matthew in part emulates them by presenting “an account of the genealogy” (biblos geneseos) of Jesus, (1:1), making him “the son of David” and then “the son of Abraham” (noticeably, inverting the chronology and genealogy) and extending his lineage to Joseph. Matthew opens with an extensive and, for him, precise genealogy: he relates Jesus to foundational traditions – patriarchal and monarchical, though Joseph does not have the definition of father. Barclay writes that Matthew’s “dominating idea is that of Jesus as king. He writes to demonstrate the royalty of Jesus.”93 Harrington adds: “the function of Matthew’s genealogy is to trace Jesus’ descent back to David and Abraham.”94 While Matthew does present Jesus’ genealogy and its relationship ←45 | 46→to the Davidic line, one event after his birth will make any relationship to being a monarchical succession difficult to maintain. Not once in the entirety of the gospels does Jesus ever refer to himself as a king – from the beginning of his ministry to the moment when Pilate asks, as an accusation, if he claims to be the King of the Jews. That Jesus does not answer (only affirms what Pilate called him, “you say so”) testifies to the belief he has of himself. Jesus disassociates himself from any genealogical succession, and most of all the inheritance of kings. Jesus can in no way be considered monarchical, royal, or dynastic.
The announcement of the birth of Jesus from a woman who has had no sexual relations is only the first of the many remarkable events that will require the appearance of an angel in a dream, allusions to prophetic fulfillments, the arrival of “wise men” (magoi) from the East, a frantic escape from Bethlehem to avoid Herod’s murderous intent, and an extended stay in Egypt before returning to Nazareth, once more Matthew telling us that “there he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, He will be called a Nazorean” (2:23). Matthew’ story makes Jesus both central but dependent, emerging from a scriptural tradition; as in Luke, there soon appears an apparent resistance to the events as relational. The tension between two versions cannot be avoided. Despite Matthew’s insistence, the ambiguity remains.
The first appearance of an angel, in a dream, begins to influence human decisions and events. Angels intervene; they appear for different reasons, to provide guidance, knowledge, or in the case of Joseph, some reassurance. The angel appears to Joseph in a dream so as to relieve him of an understandable apprehension. Joseph is engaged to be married to Mary; sometime prior to their wedding day, she has informed him of her pregnancy. Despite vowing that she is still a virgin, Mary is expecting a child – a son that will not be his. His reaction must have been emotional and incredulous. The future husband is anxious about his future-wife’s possible promiscuity, though his
