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| Hint: there are no shepherds in Matthew, and no star in Luke. |
Inspired by the adult Sunday school
topic from last week at First Congregational Church, I decided to
write about the infancy narratives. (I know, I haven't even caught up on the summer pictures. But in order to remain timely from a holiday perspective . . .) Following is the first of
hopefully three on the separate narratives. Yesterday we received a
Christmas card in the mail that had the Shepherds observing the “star
of Bethlehem.” The card's mishmash of the various narrative threads
confirmed my prior opinion that we have reduced the narratives with
our holiday sentimentality to be mere props for a different
narrative, which is alien to the scriptural accounts. The intent of
these posts is to read the various accounts as individual narratives
with unique plots, purposes and motifs. What follows is a brief
exegetical project followed by an even briefer meditation.
The Gospel by Matthew begins with a
genealogical record of Jesus (an English translation of the Greek
equivalent for what we now translate into English as Joshua/Yeshua).
It starts with Abraham, follows the “begats” through to David
(with a nice round number of 14 generations—or 2 x 7), from David
to the Babylonian Exile (when the southern Kingdom was defeated,
another 14 generations), and from the Exile to Jesus (again, another
14 generations). Thus, the first chapter comprises the equivalent of
6 groups of 7 generations to trace Jesus' ancestry from the time Yhwh
covenanted with Abraham to be his and his descendant's god (and to
inherit the land, etc.), to the time the covenant was
extrapolated to promise that, though the Israelites were
transitioning to a monarchial form of government, Yhwh would maintain
the special relationship and one day restore the glory days King
David in one of his descendants, to the point where the land vomited
them away in Exile being unfaithful to the covenant by following
other gods and thwarting justice in the land, to the time of Jesus .
. . The emphasis there is on the ellipsis: Israel's history has
brought them to this point, back in their own land but ruled over by
pagans who have instituted what many, if not most, of the Jews
thought of as an illegitimate king (Herod). The equivalent of six
groups of seven generations alludes to the sabbatical week and gives
the impression that in the story of Jesus to follow, Jewish history
has in some sense been completed (or fulfilled—more on that later).
The arbitrary divisions from Abraham to David to Exile highlight some
of Matthew's themes.
There are, of course, many instances in
ancient mythology of virgin (or at least miraculous) births of
important historical or mythological figures
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous_births).
When Matthew attributes Jesus' birth to the “fulfillment” of
Isaiah's prophecy, this isn't meant to be the kind of “fulfillment”
that most modern readers assume. Isaiah prophesied to King Ahaz that
a sign indicating Yhwh would be “with them” in the war with Aram
and Ephraim (the Northern Kingdom) would be that a young maiden would
give birth and should name the son Immanuel (Immanuel means El
(God)-with-us). The Hebrew for “young maiden” is most
definitely not the Hebrew word for “virgin” and there doesn't
seem to be anything extraordinary about this birth, except its use as
a symbol/sign, a common device in prophetic literature. In Isaiah,
Yhwh promises to give Judah, the “house of David,” the victory
over an apostate Northern Kingdom allied with the pagans. Matthew's
point is not this is what Isaiah really meant, happening now in
Jesus through a literal virgin birth.
Rather, as in many places in his gospel, he is retelling Israel's
story and casting Jesus as the true Jew, the one who sums up the long
history of calling, election, exodus, temptation in the wilderness,
kingdom, exile and eventual vindication. (So, I believe, he wasn't
“taking prophecies out of context” to prove something about Jesus
from Jewish scriptures; that objection only works with the narrow
understanding of what “fulfills” means.) Jesus' conception by the
Holy Spirit, then, is a sign that Yhwh
is once again with his people to give them victory over another
instance of apostate Israel allied with the pagans.
Indeed, instead of naming him Immanuel,
which would be the obvious choice for a name if the narrow meaning of
“fulfilled” is in view here, he is named Yeshua/Joshua/Jesus,
which translates He Saves, presumably because he is not just the
sign, but the means by which Yhwh
will “save his people from their sins” as Ahaz defeated his own
enemies. Contextually, it appears Matthew is indicating Yhwh
through Jesus would deliver Israel from her current state of
subjugation to Rome and corrupted Israel, a result of “their sins”
that got them in this predicament in the first place. He certainly
does not have in view a universal salvation myth, regardless of how
we read that 2000 years later.
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| I'm not sure Matthew thought through that light from distant objects doesn't work like that. You know, the whole issue of parallax. |
When
the Zoroastrian astrologers (magi,
everywhere else in the Bible translated magicians,
not kings) observe
(what we can assume to be) a special astrological phenomenon, they
understand a new and significant king has been born in Israel. They
naturally seek out Herod, the king of the Jews, as he would have it,
to congratulate him on his new heir. Whoops, Herod must not have any
recent sons. Herod and “all Jerusalem” were pretty upset to hear
of a threat to the current political arrangement. Bethlehem, David's
City, was identified by the scholars as the expected birthplace of
the anticipated god-appointed King who would “shepherd” Israel at
a time of national crisis (i.e.,
for Micah, when the Assyrians came to destroy them). Artistic
embellishment on Matthew's part aside (the light stopped over the
place Jesus was staying), the “star” reappears and leads the Magi
to the child Jesus. Herod, however, is threatened and the slaughter
of the innocents follows. Warned
by an angel, Jesus' family escapes to Egypt until Herod dies. For
Matthew, this another device to use to depict Jesus as re-enacting in
his life the long history of Israel, who escaped famine in Egypt and
were then led out in the Exodus by Moses, who had escaped a similar
slaughter of the innocents
at the hand of Pharaoh.
Matthew
presents his readers with Jesus,
born as a result of Yhwh's
promise to deliver his people post-Exile. Although they had returned
to the land, Israel's enemies again posed a threat to the future of
God's people. The enemies in Matthew are at least three-fold. First,
the birth of Jesus marked by an astrological phenomenon indicates
that, probably in the back of his mind, Matthew considers Rome,
headed by Augustus, to be a sort of parody of Jesus, the coming world
ruler. Second, and more obvious, Herod (and the ruling elite) has
become the new Pharaoh. Lastly, Israel's sins had put her in this
place of servitude, despite covenantal promises that she should be
the head and not the tail, a blessing to the nations rather than a
byword in a backward and often rebellious part of the Empire. Jesus
is the new Moses, born in a time of chaos, to save Israel. He is
Israel, taking Israel's own history of miraculous beginnings to exile
into his own life.
Meditation
Stripped
of the sentimental accretions, Matthew's infancy narrative leaves us
with a complex historical narrative re-enacted in his central
character. It's an introduction to a larger story, and causes us to
anticipate victory, a replay of the Exodus by Moses, or of they
heyday of the monarchy under King David. How will Jesus save Israel
from Jerusalem's rulers? What will he do about the emperor? How will
Israel survive almost certain destruction if yet another, more
widespread, rebellion against Rome arises? What will the new Promised
Land look like, or, rather, what will the Israel inheriting this land
look like? In Matthew, the point is not about abstract and
universalizing incarnation
or salvation. It is
about the historical question of how Jesus would save Israel. The
rest of the gospel shows us how, of course: by calling a people
around himself, to be, with him, true and faithful Israel, the
community embodying the beatitudes, who are aware of an imminent
regime change and who find that Jesus really is a threat to the
political status quo, predicting its destruction within a generation.
He is the one who takes Israel's exile, her sin, onto himself as a
means forward for the community through the coming crisis that is
already being foreshadowed in these opening lines of Matthew.
