The Life of Jesus in Four Accounts 7 min read Lesson 2 of 12

Matthew’s account through Joseph, Luke’s through Mary, the two Mark and John do not give, and the one thing all four agree on

The Birth, Told Twice

Only two of the four Gospels tell the birth, and they tell it from opposite sides of the family. Matthew stands with Joseph, dreams, magi and a flight into Egypt; Luke stands with Mary, a census, shepherds and a manger. The Christmas story most people know is the two stitched together. Read apart, they are two very different books beginning.

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Lesson 2 of 12 · Bethlehem

Two Gospels tell the birth, and they do not tell the same scenes. Matthew’s is Joseph’s story: an angel in a dream, a name given before the birth, magi from the east, Herod, a flight to Egypt, and a prophet quoted at every turn. Luke’s is Mary’s: Gabriel at Nazareth, a visit to Elizabeth, a census, a manger, shepherds, and two old people in the temple. The two share only the essentials: Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, a child conceived by the Spirit and named Jesus. Mark begins with the baptism, as though the birth were not his subject. John begins before the world, and says that the Word became flesh, which is the birth told from the other end. The name is the thread through all of it: Jesus, Yeshua, Yahweh saves, given in Matthew with its meaning attached.

Joseph’s story

Matthew tells the birth in five scenes, and Joseph is awake in none of the decisive ones: he is told in dreams.

She shall give birth to a son. You shall name him Jesus, for it is he who shall save his people from their sins.” — Matthew 1:21 · WEB

Read the comment on They Shall Call His Name Immanuel

She shall give birth to a son. You shall name him Jesus, for it is he who shall save his people from their sins. The angel gives the name and the reason in one sentence, and the reason is a pun that works in Hebrew: Yeshua, the name, is built on the verb to save. Matthew then quotes Isaiah, and the quoting is his method throughout the book: five prophets in two chapters, each introduced with "that it might be fulfilled." His readers know the Old Testament, and he shows them the birth through it.

Ἰησοῦς Iēsoûs G2424

of Hebrew origin (יְהוֹשׁוּעַ); Jesus (i.e. Jehoshua), the name of our Lord and two (three) other Israelites:--Jesus.

The Greek form of the Hebrew Yehoshua, Joshua, shortened to Yeshua by the first century: Yahweh saves, or Yahweh is salvation. It was a common name; Josephus knows a dozen men who bore it. Matthew 1:21 is the only place in the New Testament where its meaning is explained, and the explanation ties the child to the name of the Old Testament’s God: the one who saves is Yahweh, and this child will do the saving. Readers of the third series of these guides will recognize the claim. A Gospel that opens by naming the child after the divine name is not being casual.

Mary’s story

Luke tells the same birth from inside the house, and the people in it are poor.

The angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be to all the people. For there is born to you today, in David’s city, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. — Luke 2:10–11 · WEB

Read the comment on Shepherds in the Fields

Don’t be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be to all the people. For there is born to you today, in David’s city, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. The announcement goes to shepherds on a night shift, not to magi with gifts; the good news, the word of the first lesson, is spoken by an angel to men who could not have read it. Luke’s account is full of people the other Gospels barely notice: Elizabeth, Anna, Simeon, the shepherds, Mary herself singing that the mighty have been put down and the hungry filled. Where Matthew’s birth is watched by a king, Luke’s is watched by the people the king does not see.

“Mary said, “Behold, the servant of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.” Luke 1:38 · WEB
Behold, the servant of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word: Mary’s consent, which Luke records and Matthew does not — his Mary never speaks.
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, being small among the clans of Judah, out of you one will come out to me who is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings out are from of old, from ancient times.” Micah 5:2 · WEB
Out of you, Bethlehem, will come one who is to be ruler in Israel: the prophecy Matthew has the scribes quote to Herod, and the reason both accounts need Bethlehem.
“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14 · WEB
The virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel: Matthew’s first quotation, with the translation attached, God with us.
“and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”” Matthew 2:15 · WEB
Out of Egypt I called my son: Hosea’s line about Israel, read by Matthew of the child, so that the flight from Herod becomes a second exodus.

Two genealogies

Both Gospels give Jesus a family tree, and the two trees do not match; the reader should know this rather than discover it.

Matthew’s runs forward from Abraham to Joseph through David’s son Solomon and the kings of Judah, in three sets of fourteen. Luke’s runs backward from Joseph to Adam through David’s son Nathan, and the names between David and Joseph are almost entirely different. Explanations have been offered since the third century: that one is Joseph’s line and the other Mary’s, that one is legal descent and the other biological, that levirate marriage doubled the names. None is stated in the text. What the text states is what both lists are for: both reach David, and both end with a careful phrase, Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus (Matthew 1:16), the son, as was supposed, of Joseph (Luke 3:23). The two writers agree on the point, that Joseph is not the father and David is the ancestor, and they built two different lists to say it.

The beginning John gives instead

Mark skips the birth. John replaces it.

The Word became flesh and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the only born Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. — John 1:14 · WEB

Read the comment on The Word Became Flesh

The Word became flesh and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the only born Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. No manger, no angels, no Bethlehem; John has begun with the Word that was with God and was God, and this is the sentence where that Word enters the story the other Gospels tell. It is the birth stated as a claim rather than shown as a scene, and it is the sentence the church’s later doctrine of the incarnation is built on. Matthew says the child is Immanuel, God with us. John says how.

What the birth asks

It asks a reader to hold two accounts without forcing a third. The nativity scene with magi and shepherds at one manger is a harmony nobody wrote; Matthew’s magi arrive at a house, perhaps two years on, and Luke never mentions them. Read Matthew’s birth and you are shown a king the prophets expected and a rival king who wants him dead. Read Luke’s and you are shown a poor family and the people who came to see. Both are the same birth. Neither is the whole of it, and each writer knew that when he chose.