Apologies for the loss of paragraphing on my post. I am away with my PC and my internet comes from tethering to my phone. It did not like like the length of the post, it seems and said the link was unstable. Copying through an intermediary app seems to have removed formatting.
Matthew tells us in his preceding genealogy that the forbears of Jesus included five women (the very inclusion of women differed from contemporary genealogies) who had suspect morals, and this did not prevent God blessing David's line.
Matthew says Jesus' birth to Mary is in this way. (Note that the verses and paragraphing in English translations are not found in the Greek text.)
Important people in the tradition of Israel often have births involving God's intervention, including some or all of the following (the list of persons is not exhaustive):
A barren woman or couple longs to have a child. (Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth, Samson's mother)
An angel announces the birth of a promised one. (Zechariah, Samson)
The birth is accompanied by the supernatural or extraordinary. (Sarah, Moses)
Hostile forces come against the newborn baby. (Moses)
God protects the child, allowing him/her to grow to maturity. (Moses)
The child, once grown, becomes a hero or deliverer. (Moses, Samson, John the Baptiser)
(I find the scholarly information/analysis illuminates how sacred texts can be understood.
The translation "criticism" of the German "kritischen" seems to me to add negative baggage to the term for many people, so I prefer to use the term "analysis)
Matthew present Jesus as a new Moses, and the killing of those whom we call the Holy Innocents, similarly to how Pharaoh ordered the killing of male Hebrew babies, is part of his drawing of parallels between the two.
What I’m objecting to here is the false dichotomy being assumed: Either the writer of Matthew is recording things as they happened (or as he understood them to have happened), or the writer is presenting stories that are solely intended to make a theological point, not to reflect in any way what the author understood to have happened. I don’t see any valid reason to exclude other possibilities, including the possibility that the writer interpreted and presented what he understood to have happened in ways that made the theological point(s) he wanted to make, which could extend to making choices about what to include and what not to include in the narrative.
Matthew is proclaiming his (and his audience's) understanding of who Jesus is through the great stories of God and Israel.
Luke does something similar for his own audience, but the literal details of Luke and Matthew cannot be reconciled as though they were historical events. Our nativity scenes have brought in further references, e.g to animals in the stable, and our nativity plays may well have the characters having conversations to bring an understanding of what God has done, and there is no need to introduce the notion of a dichotomy about this.
But when Matthew starts his account of the birth narrative with “ “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way,” then I have trouble accepting that he intended what followed as only parabolic, with no tether to what he thought actually happened.
How about if someone starts a story "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho . . . "? Is there a tether there to what "actually happened"? If we found out that the man was actually going up from Jericho to Jerusalem, does that change the story? Or if the man didn't exist in any factual sense?
Matthew is proclaiming his (and his audience's) understanding of who Jesus is through the great stories of God and Israel.
Luke does something similar for his own audience, but the literal details of Luke and Matthew cannot be reconciled as though they were historical events. Our nativity scenes have brought in further references, e.g to animals in the stable, and our nativity plays may well have the characters having conversations to bring an understanding of what God has done, and there is no need to introduce the notion of a dichotomy about this.
I think it’s Borg and Crossan, at least as you have described them, that introduce the false dichotomy.
I agree completely that “Matthew is proclaiming his (and his audience’s) understanding of who Jesus is through the great stories of God and Israel.” And I agree completely that “Luke does something similar for his own audience.” And I agree that there are apparent, potential discrepancies in what Matthew and Luke record about the birth of Jesus. (I word it that way because not everyone would agree that there actually are discrepancies to be reconciled, but I’ll readily admit apparent, potential discrepancies.)
But even assuming Matthew’s account and Luke’s account indeed cannot be reconciled, I cannot accept that means we can say neither of them had any intent to actually describe what happened, and their accounts should be viewed only through a parabolic lens. After being a trial attorney for 30+ years, I’ve encountered way too many witnesses who witnessed the same event differently and remembered the details differently to think otherwise. And that’s before you get to consideration that the writers of Matthew and Luke were not eye witnesses, but were relying on what others had told them.
But when Matthew starts his account of the birth narrative with “ “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way,” then I have trouble accepting that he intended what followed as only parabolic, with no tether to what he thought actually happened.
How about if someone starts a story "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho . . . "? Is there a tether there to what "actually happened"? If we found out that the man was actually going up from Jericho to Jerusalem, does that change the story? Or if the man didn't exist in any factual sense?
I’d say you’re comparing dissimilar things. I’d say the context of the parable of the Good Samaritan, including the way the story starts, pretty clearly indicates it is to be heard as a rabbinic story, not as telling something that actually happens. Or, at the least, whether it actually happened holds little if any relevance. (And my mother would have said one always travels down from and up to a capital city, regardless of elevation changes.)
But the opening to the parable of the Good Samaritan differs from how Matthew begins his birth narrative, it seems to me. In the latter instance, he says “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” In order to claim that Matthew intended his audience to read/hear his birth narrative only as parabolic, that he didn’t think he was passing along an actual account of what happened (as he had heard and understood it), one has to say that Matthew was also being dishonest or inconsistent when he specifically said he was recounting how the birth of Jesus happened.
I think reading the text on its own terms requires that we accept the writer’s statement that he is recounting how Jesus was born. Doing so in no way excludes that he was also framing what he recounted, and probably choosing what he recounted, so as to convey the points he wanted to convey about who Jesus was in the overall context of God’s history with Israel.
{Removed duplication of post content with permission - jayemee }
Borg and Crossan are the ones that say that going down the dichotomy path is missing the point that Matthew is making.
That I could agree with. That’s not what I got from your post or the quote it contained, but I’ll readily admit the fault there could be mine.
FWIW, that “fractious and fruitless ‘fact or fable’ conflict” is not something that’s ever been present in my 60+ years of American mainline Protestant church experience. I know it is present some corners of Christianity, but it’s not a ubiquitous thing.
But when Matthew starts his account of the birth narrative with “ “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way,” then I have trouble accepting that he intended what followed as only parabolic, with no tether to what he thought actually happened.
How about if someone starts a story "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho . . . "? Is there a tether there to what "actually happened"? If we found out that the man was actually going up from Jericho to Jerusalem, does that change the story? Or if the man didn't exist in any factual sense?
The good Samaritan is embedded (via Jesus Said ...), which allows more of a genre change (or in most cases an unreliable narrator in relation to the external context). Whereas the infancy is tied to the whole of the gospel a lot more.
It leaves me thinking what proportion of sermon stories are suitably prefaced. There is one preacher who has a habit of unintroduced 1st person versions of gospel narratives, and there's definitely a few urban legends, but I think the majority probably are reasonably well behaved (there is some selection bias, though)
On algorithm-Facebook it's amazing how many bot-people experienced the same story different "yesterdays". So people do do weird stuff.
(While posting, Nick there's some of your earlier post that has been duplicated, do you want me to cut it down?)
Borg and Crossan are the ones that say that going down the dichotomy path is missing the point that Matthew is making.
That I could agree with. That’s not what I got from your post or the quote it contained, but I’ll readily admit the fault there could be mine.
FWIW, that “fractious and fruitless ‘fact or fable’ conflict” is not something that’s ever been present in my 60+ years of American mainline Protestant church experience. I know it is present some corners of Christianity, but it’s not a ubiquitous thing.
I think where it exists it exists as a proxy to a question about Biblical authority and what it means to be authoritative. It's a bit like Creationism. While fundamentalists do draw some theological conclusions from the Creation story which flounder somewhat if it's not literally true (death coming into the world through historical human action for example), their main problem is the idea that if the Bible isn't literally true on this point, how can it be trusted on the other stuff it teaches? Similarly, one might argue that if Matthew or Luke's accounts aren't literally and historically true, then similarly Jesus' teaching might have been put in his mouth by later writers.
Of course, pathetic faithless liberal that I am, I suspect that a great deal of it was. I think there's a lot of Sayings of Jesus that become reported speech "Jesus said that", which then got turned back into reported speech in the gospels. How much was changed, inserted and of course at John's own admission, omitted, in that process, remains an impossible question.
But the opening to the parable of the Good Samaritan differs from how Matthew begins his birth narrative, it seems to me. In the latter instance, he says “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” In order to claim that Matthew intended his audience to read/hear his birth narrative only as parabolic, that he didn’t think he was passing along an actual account of what happened (as he had heard and understood it), one has to say that Matthew was also being dishonest or inconsistent when he specifically said he was recounting how the birth of Jesus happened.
Does the opening of the parable of the Good Samaritan differ that much from the opening of Matthew's nativity? They're both a general "here's what happened" statement, establishing context for the rest of the story. We may infer different intents or genres from the context, but the opening statements are pretty similar.
I guess my question is the extent to which the nativity narratives of Matthew and Luke are meant to be taken "seriously but not literally", to borrow a modern phrase.
But the opening to the parable of the Good Samaritan differs from how Matthew begins his birth narrative, it seems to me. In the latter instance, he says “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” In order to claim that Matthew intended his audience to read/hear his birth narrative only as parabolic, that he didn’t think he was passing along an actual account of what happened (as he had heard and understood it), one has to say that Matthew was also being dishonest or inconsistent when he specifically said he was recounting how the birth of Jesus happened.
Does the opening of the parable of the Good Samaritan differ that much from the opening of Matthew's nativity?
Yes.
They're both a general "here's what happened" statement, establishing context for the rest of the story.
No, they’re not. The birth narrative begins with a specific “here’s how it happened” statement. The Good Samaritan contains no “here’s what happened” or “here’s how it happened” statement, but rather jumps straight into the story as a response to a question.
To put it another way, Luke says nothing, and records Jesus as saying nothing, that would be inconsistent with the story being presented only as parabolic fiction. Nor for that matter does Luke say anything, or record Jesus as saying anything, that would be inconsistent with the story being presented as a telling something that actually happened. Context may lead us one way or the other, and may also lead us to the conclusion that whether the story actually happened is irrelevant from Luke’s perspective.
Matthew, by contrast, does say something that is inconsistent with idea he is presenting his account of the birth narrative only as parabolic. He says “This is how it happened.” I think almost all readers or listeners would take that to mean Matthew is attempting to describe what actually happened. If what follows isn’t actually describing “how it happened,” as Matthew understood it, then it simply makes no sense for him to have said “this is how it happened” in the first place. I don’t see any way to read the entire text other than as Matthew recounting what he understood, from whatever sources, to be actual events connected to the birth of Jesus, and doing so through a particular interpretive lens.
Being pedantic, I understand that Christian Century posts articles from a variety of authors, so this is Roger Nelson's view that Christian Century thinks its readership would be interested in.
But the opening to the parable of the Good Samaritan differs from how Matthew begins his birth narrative, it seems to me. In the latter instance, he says “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” In order to claim that Matthew intended his audience to read/hear his birth narrative only as parabolic, that he didn’t think he was passing along an actual account of what happened (as he had heard and understood it), one has to say that Matthew was also being dishonest or inconsistent when he specifically said he was recounting how the birth of Jesus happened.
Does the opening of the parable of the Good Samaritan differ that much from the opening of Matthew's nativity?
Yes.
They're both a general "here's what happened" statement, establishing context for the rest of the story.
No, they’re not. The birth narrative begins with a specific “here’s how it happened” statement. The Good Samaritan contains no “here’s what happened” or “here’s how it happened” statement, but rather jumps straight into the story as a response to a question.
You take "in this way" (as in the NRSV translation) to mean "here's what happened".
It seems quite in order to understand "in this way" as "once upon a time".
However, for me, "in this way" links the passage of Jesus birth to Mary, to the genealogy, which is remarkable for the inclusion of four other women who had marital abnormalities.
“According to Raymond Brown in his The Birth of the Messiah, it is “the combination of the scandalous or irregular union and of divine intervention through the women that explains best Matthew’s choice in the genealogy.”
"God became flesh not in the world of nativity snow globes, shiny happy people, and naive spirituality but in the world where tyrants kill babies and parents can’t be consoled. If the incarnation has any meaning at all, then God came into the darkest realities of this world."
would serve well as the inspiration for someone looking for what to preach on next Sunday.
But the opening to the parable of the Good Samaritan differs from how Matthew begins his birth narrative, it seems to me. In the latter instance, he says “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” In order to claim that Matthew intended his audience to read/hear his birth narrative only as parabolic, that he didn’t think he was passing along an actual account of what happened (as he had heard and understood it), one has to say that Matthew was also being dishonest or inconsistent when he specifically said he was recounting how the birth of Jesus happened.
Does the opening of the parable of the Good Samaritan differ that much from the opening of Matthew's nativity?
Yes.
They're both a general "here's what happened" statement, establishing context for the rest of the story.
No, they’re not. The birth narrative begins with a specific “here’s how it happened” statement. The Good Samaritan contains no “here’s what happened” or “here’s how it happened” statement, but rather jumps straight into the story as a response to a question.
You take "in this way" (as in the NRSV translation) to mean "here's what happened".
No, I take “happened” to mean “happened.” The Greek is houtōs ēn, which resources suggest means “came about this way” or “was thus.”
It seems quite in order to understand "in this way" as "once upon a time".
I’m afraid that doesn’t seem reasonable to me at all. If there are sources that indicate “happened in this way” was a cultural, idiomatic expression similar to “once upon a time,” then I’d see it differently. But I’m not aware of anything like that, and absent some indication that houtōs ēn functioned in Matthew’s culture like “once upon a time,” understanding it that way seems forced to me.
Comments
What I’m objecting to here is the false dichotomy being assumed: Either the writer of Matthew is recording things as they happened (or as he understood them to have happened), or the writer is presenting stories that are solely intended to make a theological point, not to reflect in any way what the author understood to have happened. I don’t see any valid reason to exclude other possibilities, including the possibility that the writer interpreted and presented what he understood to have happened in ways that made the theological point(s) he wanted to make, which could extend to making choices about what to include and what not to include in the narrative.
Matthew is proclaiming his (and his audience's) understanding of who Jesus is through the great stories of God and Israel.
Luke does something similar for his own audience, but the literal details of Luke and Matthew cannot be reconciled as though they were historical events. Our nativity scenes have brought in further references, e.g to animals in the stable, and our nativity plays may well have the characters having conversations to bring an understanding of what God has done, and there is no need to introduce the notion of a dichotomy about this.
How about if someone starts a story "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho . . . "? Is there a tether there to what "actually happened"? If we found out that the man was actually going up from Jericho to Jerusalem, does that change the story? Or if the man didn't exist in any factual sense?
I agree completely that “Matthew is proclaiming his (and his audience’s) understanding of who Jesus is through the great stories of God and Israel.” And I agree completely that “Luke does something similar for his own audience.” And I agree that there are apparent, potential discrepancies in what Matthew and Luke record about the birth of Jesus. (I word it that way because not everyone would agree that there actually are discrepancies to be reconciled, but I’ll readily admit apparent, potential discrepancies.)
But even assuming Matthew’s account and Luke’s account indeed cannot be reconciled, I cannot accept that means we can say neither of them had any intent to actually describe what happened, and their accounts should be viewed only through a parabolic lens. After being a trial attorney for 30+ years, I’ve encountered way too many witnesses who witnessed the same event differently and remembered the details differently to think otherwise. And that’s before you get to consideration that the writers of Matthew and Luke were not eye witnesses, but were relying on what others had told them.
I’d say you’re comparing dissimilar things. I’d say the context of the parable of the Good Samaritan, including the way the story starts, pretty clearly indicates it is to be heard as a rabbinic story, not as telling something that actually happens. Or, at the least, whether it actually happened holds little if any relevance. (And my mother would have said one always travels down from and up to a capital city, regardless of elevation changes.)
But the opening to the parable of the Good Samaritan differs from how Matthew begins his birth narrative, it seems to me. In the latter instance, he says “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” In order to claim that Matthew intended his audience to read/hear his birth narrative only as parabolic, that he didn’t think he was passing along an actual account of what happened (as he had heard and understood it), one has to say that Matthew was also being dishonest or inconsistent when he specifically said he was recounting how the birth of Jesus happened.
I think reading the text on its own terms requires that we accept the writer’s statement that he is recounting how Jesus was born. Doing so in no way excludes that he was also framing what he recounted, and probably choosing what he recounted, so as to convey the points he wanted to convey about who Jesus was in the overall context of God’s history with Israel.
{Removed duplication of post content with permission - jayemee }
FWIW, that “fractious and fruitless ‘fact or fable’ conflict” is not something that’s ever been present in my 60+ years of American mainline Protestant church experience. I know it is present some corners of Christianity, but it’s not a ubiquitous thing.
The good Samaritan is embedded (via Jesus Said ...), which allows more of a genre change (or in most cases an unreliable narrator in relation to the external context). Whereas the infancy is tied to the whole of the gospel a lot more.
It leaves me thinking what proportion of sermon stories are suitably prefaced. There is one preacher who has a habit of unintroduced 1st person versions of gospel narratives, and there's definitely a few urban legends, but I think the majority probably are reasonably well behaved (there is some selection bias, though)
On algorithm-Facebook it's amazing how many bot-people experienced the same story different "yesterdays". So people do do weird stuff.
(While posting, Nick there's some of your earlier post that has been duplicated, do you want me to cut it down?)
I think where it exists it exists as a proxy to a question about Biblical authority and what it means to be authoritative. It's a bit like Creationism. While fundamentalists do draw some theological conclusions from the Creation story which flounder somewhat if it's not literally true (death coming into the world through historical human action for example), their main problem is the idea that if the Bible isn't literally true on this point, how can it be trusted on the other stuff it teaches? Similarly, one might argue that if Matthew or Luke's accounts aren't literally and historically true, then similarly Jesus' teaching might have been put in his mouth by later writers.
Of course, pathetic faithless liberal that I am, I suspect that a great deal of it was. I think there's a lot of Sayings of Jesus that become reported speech "Jesus said that", which then got turned back into reported speech in the gospels. How much was changed, inserted and of course at John's own admission, omitted, in that process, remains an impossible question.
Does the opening of the parable of the Good Samaritan differ that much from the opening of Matthew's nativity? They're both a general "here's what happened" statement, establishing context for the rest of the story. We may infer different intents or genres from the context, but the opening statements are pretty similar.
I guess my question is the extent to which the nativity narratives of Matthew and Luke are meant to be taken "seriously but not literally", to borrow a modern phrase.
No, they’re not. The birth narrative begins with a specific “here’s how it happened” statement. The Good Samaritan contains no “here’s what happened” or “here’s how it happened” statement, but rather jumps straight into the story as a response to a question.
To put it another way, Luke says nothing, and records Jesus as saying nothing, that would be inconsistent with the story being presented only as parabolic fiction. Nor for that matter does Luke say anything, or record Jesus as saying anything, that would be inconsistent with the story being presented as a telling something that actually happened. Context may lead us one way or the other, and may also lead us to the conclusion that whether the story actually happened is irrelevant from Luke’s perspective.
Matthew, by contrast, does say something that is inconsistent with idea he is presenting his account of the birth narrative only as parabolic. He says “This is how it happened.” I think almost all readers or listeners would take that to mean Matthew is attempting to describe what actually happened. If what follows isn’t actually describing “how it happened,” as Matthew understood it, then it simply makes no sense for him to have said “this is how it happened” in the first place. I don’t see any way to read the entire text other than as Matthew recounting what he understood, from whatever sources, to be actual events connected to the birth of Jesus, and doing so through a particular interpretive lens.
Being pedantic, I understand that Christian Century posts articles from a variety of authors, so this is Roger Nelson's view that Christian Century thinks its readership would be interested in.
It seems quite in order to understand "in this way" as "once upon a time".
However, for me, "in this way" links the passage of Jesus birth to Mary, to the genealogy, which is remarkable for the inclusion of four other women who had marital abnormalities.
I’m afraid that doesn’t seem reasonable to me at all. If there are sources that indicate “happened in this way” was a cultural, idiomatic expression similar to “once upon a time,” then I’d see it differently. But I’m not aware of anything like that, and absent some indication that houtōs ēn functioned in Matthew’s culture like “once upon a time,” understanding it that way seems forced to me.