Nativity narratives
Once again Steuart Campbell relies on outdated New Testament scholarship to claim that the birth narratives of Jesus in Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels were inventions of the early church (Letters, 12 December). These two Evangelists obviously selected their material out of a large amount of available data for their particular purposes in addressing a specific primary audience as well as succeeding generations. The Gospels are of a distinct literary genre and not like modern biographies.
Although we do not expect them to follow the rules of modern historiography, this does not mean that their accounts were fiction al. Luke, a Gentile physician and an educated Greek speaker, tells us that he had carefully investigated the story of Jesus as rep or ted by eye -witnesses and was writing an orderly account so that his readers may know “the certainty of the things you have been taught” (Luke 1:1-4). Probably Luke’s main source for the birth narrative was Mar y, the mother of Jesus, as it is told from her perspective. Luke included the account of the shepherds as part of his stress throughout on Jesus appealing particularly to the religious outsiders– shepherds were considered uncle an by the religious authorities.
Matthew, a highly educated Jew primarily writing for a Jewish Christian community, seems to concentrate on Joseph’ s experience and selected his material accordingly. He includes the visit of the Magi as part of his emphasis on Jesus coming not just for Jewish people but for the whole world. The accounts may be seen as complementary rather than contradictory.
Mark, the author of probably the earliest Gospel, and John, the author of the last of the canonical Gospels to be written towards the end of the first century, also selected their material for their particular purposes. Just because they didn’t include a birth narrative doesn’t prove it was unknown to them. If the early church had got together to fabricate a story, surely they would have ironed out seeming contradictions and inconsistencies. The absence of any evidence for such collaboration supports rather than disproves the historicity of the birth narratives. DONALD M MACDONALD Blackford Avenue, Edinburgh