Luke 1:26-38 is Jewish Literature to be Understood in that Interpretive Context

The Saturday Reading, on Sunday

We’ve been in John for the past few weeks, and a John narrative is the selected gospel text for Sunday, March 26, but I wanted to amplify the Saturday reading this week. The Revised Common Lectionary offers daily readings for the Christian season of Lent—a time of somber reflection, as Christian communities prepare for the time of Jesus’s state sanctioned execution. In the words of the Lectionary, “These readings complement the Sunday and festival readings: Thursday through Saturday readings help prepare the reader for the Sunday ahead.”

I had so much fun with the Luke text from Saturday (March 25, 2023)—not to mention that this is a perfect example of thoroughly Jewish thought and literature preserved in the New Testament—that I wanted to focus on that reading for this week’s Sunday Post.

To ground the approach here, nothing new for regular readers, we are examining Christian texts through a Jewish lens to focus on the sophisticated construction and rhetorical purposes of the human authors behind the text. Our project here is distinct from a confessional reading, but should you hold a confessional view, I’ve encouraged open-mindedness about allowing this source critical approach to challenge, support, or supplement your personal interpretation.

The Text: Luke Chapter 1

We start with the text before applying interpretive frameworks.

Luke 1:26-38; NRSVUE:

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you [Blessed are you among women].” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin [I do not know a man]?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born [of you] will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

First, pause, what is this assigned reading communicating? What questions do you have about the text? How many different questions can you ask about the text? What is familiar to you, if anything, about this story? What detail sparks your curiosity? Read these verses two or three more times, then think about your questions again. What is the most pressing question?

Twelve Verses, Ten Questions

After I read this except three more times, the following ten questions come to mind:

1. This lectionary reading begins, “In the sixth month…” In the sixth month of what?

2. What do we know about “the angel Gabriel”?

3. Jesus from Nazareth is a tradition that is preserved and transmitted to us; why Nazareth?

4. What is the “house of David”? Does that, or how does that, detail matter?

5. Virgin birth, this tradition is preserved and transmitted to us; is a virgin birth to display God’s power? Could something else be going on?

6. What is “perplexing” to Mary about the greeting from Gabriel?

7. When I read closely, I notice that Gabriel’s message, as translated from the ancient material, notes that Mary is a virgin, then says, “you will conceive in your womb,” does that construction, “you will” (my emphasis) suggest that conception hasn’t yet happened?

8. Son of the Most High, that means God, right?

9. What is the House of Jacob? And is this only what the to-be son reigns over?

10. Mary’s relative, Elizabeth, is also pregnant? “In her old age”? Why are we meeting Elizabeth and learning that she’s also pregnant? Why does the author tell us that Elizabeth is “barren”?

Questions and (Tentative) Responses

To suggest a few tentative responses to these questions, I’m guided by JANT, JPS, The Bible with and without Jesus, and The First Christmas. I’ll defer to the experts, but you’ll see I’ve inserted my perspective, and I try to be cognizant when doing so, with respect to scholarly consensus.

I pause to emphasize that we look to many references within the Biblical literature—from the Torah (the law), the prophets, and the writings! Allow that note to take root in your understanding: In twelve verses, following commentaries, we find (at least) 18 additional scriptural references, from nods to Abraham and Sarah, Elijah, and Aaron and the Levites just to name drop a few. I want this point to really influence your engagement with this material: There are more references than their are verses!

Now, I realize the disaggregation of this text into verses is a later development, but the point I am driving home is that this particular narrative construction is rich with Hebrew tradition, punctuated with references that may strike us modern readers as esoteric, but to the ancient audience, the significance of the references would be familiar. The Torah was read in the synagogues; the Dead Sea community created Biblical commentary, called a pesher, that engaged similar material to that of the gospel writers. In short, this is Jewish literature that would have deep meaning for Jewish audiences.

Understanding this ancient Lukan account as Jewish literature reminds us that there is no such thing as Christianity in the first century Jesus movement. In the centuries following the material we’ve studied, Christianity will blossom, but Christianity develops into its own tradition that is worthy of recognition for its own viewpoint and rituals that are unique to Christian communities. But that appreciation for later developments must not replace or disguise our understanding that to call Luke Christian is anachronistic.

In the Lukan context, you aren’t reading Christian literature, you are reading Jewish literature that formed a core of later Christianity. Making that distinction is essential to understanding Jesus and that movement within a first century Jewish context.

The Son of the Most High is Jewish, not Christian—at least here, for now, in the tradition of Lukan authorship.

“In the sixth month”

The preceding verses describe the annunciation of John, who some call “the baptist.” He would be born to Elizabeth, who Mary visits when pregnant with Jesus. Here the narrator tells us that this is in the sixth month after John’s conception. The Hebrew tradition holds that Elijah, the prophet, will announce the coming anointed one, and the Lukan author reports John’s annunciation this way, in the mouth of the angel Gabriel, “With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:17).

I don’t want to get off track, but we shared some notes about that construction of turning hearts toward/away from children/parents in a recent post. Regardless, here we see the author connecting John to Elijah as preparing the way for Jesus, the Christ, according to the Lukan author.

Gabriel, the Angel

In the Lukan narrative, we’ve just met Gabriel. Gabriel appears to Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband, to proclaim that Elizabeth would conceive of a child—yep, John, and in Luke 1:19, The angel tells Zechariah, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.”

Now what’s interesting about Gabriel’s visit and proclamation is not only that it mirrors the annunciation to Mary, and not only the further point that the author is connecting John’s role with that of Elijah’s, but we learn yet even further details.

To understand these further details, we need a little more history: There is drama between the priestly classes in ancient Israel. Unlike a vocation in modern institutions of religion, ancient priests of Israel were deemed priests by their ancestral line. The family, or tribe, of Levi, the Levites, were designated at the priestly line, and within the Levites, the descendants of Aaron (Moses’s brother; though, brother may mean only of the same Levite tribe), were deemed to have special cultic responsibilities.

Richard Elliot Friedman is one scholar who suggests the prominence of Aaronid priesthood, pace other priestly families descended from Levi, may have a foundation in different source documents in the Torah—that one source was pro-Aaron and another, pro-Moses/broad Levite lineage, but we can set that to one side and recognize here only that priests descended from Aaron were especially commissioned.

We learn in this story of annunciation of John to Zechariah that Elizabeth is descended from Aaron, and Elizabeth is related to Mary, and so the Lukan author has it that both Elizabeth and Mary may be descended from the highest priestly class, and yet, this is not what the Lukan author decides to emphasize in Jesus’s genealogy, as we will soon see. If being of Aaronid lineage is a big deal, an even bigger deal is being descended from David.

Nazareth

Luke has Jesus born in Bethlehem, but the journey for the birth narrative in Luke has the holy family traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem and back to Nazareth. This is an agrarian community in the Galilee, north of Jerusalem. In fact, those from Galilee had a distinct dialect that may have given Peter away in the narrative where he is identified as being a member of the disciples following Jesus’s death.

This post isn’t about the birth narrative, but it’s worth saying that Matthew and Luke have distinct birth narratives, and the earliest preserved material from the Jesus movement—Pauline epistles that predate the gospels by at least two decades—doesn’t show any concern with a birth narrative an makes no mention of it, leading scholars to suggest that the birth narratives were later constructions in the gospel accounts. That’s to say, what you’re reading here is literature with a rhetorical aim.

Also, for a quick chuckle, John’s author has this: “Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’”

What dialects and preconceived notions do we have about rural areas, with people living in poverty, speaking a different dialect than that which is spoken in the big city, where we may say, “What good could come from there?” Remember, the gospel authors are intentionally constructing their narratives to make claims about the one they suggest the audience should follow, Jesus the Christ, against competing communities.

House of David

Hebrew tradition held that the messiah, the anointed one, would be descended from the legendary figure, David, see, for example, from the prophetic tradition, Jeremiah 23:5-8:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

In the writings we also see this theme, 2 Samuel 7:12, speaking to David: “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.”

2 Samuel continues, “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever.”

The Lukan author is connecting Jesus to David and the eternal covenant between God and the throne of David.

Virgin Birth

Luke emphasizes the term, Greek parthenos, a virgin, but the reference here doesn’t suggest a virgin unless that is read into the text. This is drawing from Isaiah, 7:14, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel” (my emphasis). The Hebrew word young woman, almah, is translated to the Greek, parthenos, meaning virgin and used as a messianic prophecy, but consensus agrees that “almah” means a young woman of childbearing age rather than a virgin. Of course, this is a controversial reading in Christian communities; hence, why we’re doing the work in this newsletter!

Perplexing Greeting

Remember when Gabriel visits Zechariah? In Luke 1:10-12 we learn, “Now at the time of the incense offering [see, a priestly duty and the Temple], the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. Then there appeared to him [Zechariah] an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified, and fear overwhelmed him. The words used here connect Zechariah’s terror with Mary’s.

We also see a Hebrew literary trope with Gabriel’s greeting, “the Lord is with you.”

From the writings, 2 Samuel 7:3, “Nathan said to the king, ‘Go, do all that you have in mind, for the Lord is with you.’” And Judges 6:12: “The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior.’” And 2 Chronicles 15:2: “He went out to meet Asa and said to him, ‘Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin: The Lord is with you while you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you abandon him, he will abandon you.’”

You Will Conceive

AJ Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler offer a provocative claim in the book I referenced above, The Bible with and without Jesus (p. 259), while Luke follows Matthew that Mary’s pregnancy results from the activity of the Holy Spirit, Luke doesn’t explicitly state that there is a virginal conception.

Son of the Most High

Following are a handful of references to the Most High as description of honorific for the God of Israel. I do not raise these necessarily to interpret the texts, rather, to enumerate the significance and use of this title in the Hebrew literature. The honorific would be deeply familiar to Jewish audiences.

Daniel 7:25

He shall speak words against the Most High, shall wear out the holy ones of the Most High, and shall attempt to change the ritual calendar and the law, and they shall be given into his power for a time, two times, and half a time.

Genesis 14:18-22

And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High. He blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!”

And Abram gave him one-tenth of everything. Then the king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the persons, but take the goods for yourself.” But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have sworn to God Most High, maker of heaven and earth”

From Psalm 78:35, “They remembered that God was their rock, the Most High God their redeemer.”

We don’t have the time or space to dive into this topic further in this post, but the idea ancient Israelites were monotheists is questioned by scholars. Rather, they argue, an idea like monolatry is more appropriate: the God of Israel was the most high god in a court of many gods. This issue is fascinating, and includes several theories that Biblical authors co-opted and appropriated features of other gods and gave them to the god of Israel, but this quickly gets above my pay grade!

House of Jacob

House of Jacob, oh yeah, plenty of precedent there, too: Exodus 19:3: Moses is instructed to speak to the house of Jacob and the Israelites. Isaiah says, “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from your birth, carried from the womb.”

Elizabeth

We’ve already said a lot about Elizabeth, but note one further connection to the Hebrew literature. The emphasis on Elizabeth’s age and fertility recalls Abraham and Sarah, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son” (Genesis 18:14).

Let’s Read it Again

I want to comment on the meaning-making that is available to readers through these multiple constructions from the Hebrew tradition. It is possible that giving evidence to the idea that the Biblical literature is human-authored leads to questioning its divinity, hence, undermining a confessional or apologetic stance. I suggest this is only a risk if we find the meaning of the Bible to be contingent on its divine status. In other words, is the Bible valuable only if it is divine?

What I am left with is this: In the first century of the common era, under a violent and militarized occupation, a people, a Jewish people, without self-determination or sovereignty, recognized a leader in their midst who confronted the notion of a mighty messiah to lay waste to enemies and instead called for adherence to the law, a commitment to justice and nonviolence, with the promise of a holy realm that could, and would, be manifested in the near term, through doing mitzvot and engaging in relational transformation. And in the waning years of the first century, after so much destruction and loss, Jewish authors constructed narratives about this revolutionary, now dead, imbued with Hebrew tradition—that was their tradition, to navigate a new way for the Hebrew people.

Some Jewish people followed this new covenant, but as the Jesus community from Jerusalem sought gentiles to join them, while Paul was doing the same thing from his context, Jesus became a new figure for nations outside of Judaism, and Christianity was born. That historical story need not depend on characterizing Jesus as either messianic or divine to still have meaning and value. And neither does that historical story require that Jews accept Jesus or that gentiles become Jews.

Judaism and Christianity are different, and we recognize them for their differences, and nothing I write here need affect anyone’s personal apologetics, but that the New Testament begins with Jewish literature about a Jewish anointed one cannot be dismissed.