Chapter III CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LUCAN NARRATIVE
je HAS just been shown that the Lucan birth narrative was certainly an original part of the Third Gospel. That very important fact being established, we may now proceed to examine the narrative more in detail. Such examination will show that although this section plainly bears the marks of the Evangelist’s hand, and is congruous in style and spirit with the rest of the book, yet also it possesses very marked characteristics of its own.
Those characteristics may be summed up in the fact to which attention has already been called, the fact that Lk. i.5-ii.52 is a strikingly Jewish and indeed ° Palestinian narrative.
That fact may be observed even in a translation into English or into any other modern language. Even in a translation, it becomes evident that we have here a style very similar to the style of the Old Testament historical books, and very dissimilar to the ordinary style of the Gentile author, as it is found, for example, in the prologue to the book. But in the original Greek the thing becomes even far more abundantly clear.
What strikes the reader most forcibly at the very beginning is the thoroughgoing “parataxis” that prevails throughout this narrative. Instead of long complex sentences, like that in the prologue with its wealth of subordinate clauses, we have here for the most part a series of short independent sentences, connected with one another by the conjunction “and.” “There was a priest, by name Zacharias, and his wife from among the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth”—so runs (if in order to exhibit the structure we may omit the simple qualifying phrases) the beginning of the narrative; and the beginning is typical of the whole.
Equally striking in the narrative is that thoroughgoing use of parallelism which is so marked a characteristic of Hebrew style. This feature appears with. special prominence, as might be expected, in the poetical portions of the section —for example, the hymns of Mary and Zacharias; but it.is evident also even in the prose narrative. Such parallelism is basic in Hebrew poetry, and its presence in our narrative contributes largely to the production of that Semitic flavor which connects the section so closely with the spirit of the Old Testament.
But the Semitic character of the narrative appears not only in the sentencestructure and in the style. It is equally evident in the vocabulary and in the details of the phraseology. One does not need to read very far in this narrative to discover the influence of Hebrew or Aramaic. Whatever subtractions may be made from any list of individual Hebraisms or Aramaisms,’ the frequency of usages which, whether or not they occur also here and there in Greek literature or in papyri, are strikingly similar to Semitic usages, remains no doubt convincing enough. More convincing still, however, is the impression to be derived from reading the narrative through. That impression cannot adequately be expressed in any detailed analysis. The outstanding fact is that in this narrative we find ourselves in the indefinable but not the less unmistakable atmosphere of Palestine.
It is, moreover, not merely in language and style that the Semitic character of the narrative is revealed. Even more impressive are the indications to be found in the thought, as distinguished from the language, of the section. In the entire narrative there is no hint of any ideas derived from Gentile Christianity; indeed, there is no hint of any knowledge of anything that happened or that became known during or after the public ministry of Jesus. Tt may really be said, if the words are understood aright, that the narrative, with the hymns inserted in it, is not Christian, but pre-Christian throughout. What we really have here, in thought and spirit, as well as in language, is a bit of the Old Testament embedded in the midst of the New Testament.
Proof of this assertion may be found on the surface of the narrative from beginning to end. Thus the parents of John the Baptist are described in thoroughly Old Testament terms; the course of Abia is mentioned as though familiarity with priestly conditions were the most natural thing in the world; and the piety of Zacharias and Elisabeth is characterized in a way quite typical of the Old Testament and of Jewish feeling. The two, it is said, “walked in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.” There is certainly here no hint of any sharp Pauline distinction between rightcousness under the law and the righteousness that comes through faith.
Faith, it is true, is highly exalted in this narrative; but such exaltation of faith does not transcend the teaching of the Old Testament. The Old Testament in its deepest import presents not a religion of merit, but a religion of grace; it really offers salvation as a gift of God. “Enter not into judgment with thy servant; for in thy sight shall no man living be justified”—these are words that really lie at the heart of the religion of Israel. And in the Old Testament,
1In the first edition, we cited the phrase “advanced in their days” (Lk. i.7) as a Hebraism. But compare the review by E. K. Simpson in Bible League Quarterly, for Jan.—March, 1931, p. 2- as well as in the New Testament, confidence in the gracious promises of God is treated as the very basis of any true religious life.
Thus in the exaltation of faith in our narrative no Pauline or Gentile Christian influence need be detected. And the clear Pauline presentation of the contrast between the law and grace is conspicuous by its absence.. The entire attitude of this narrative toward the law is just that which was found under the old dispensation; the religion of grace is there, but it is still implicit rather than explicit, or at any rate it is not yet in any sharp contrast to a righteousness to be obtained through the law.
In the verse which comes immediately after the characterization of Zacharias and Elisabeth, there is to be found, in conjunction especially with verse 25, one of the many little touches that indicate Jewish feeling. Elisabeth, it is said, was barren, and both she and Zacharias were “advanced in their days.”? This barrenness was regarded as bringing upon Elisabeth “shame” or reproach.’ Here we have the characteristic Jewish attitude toward child-bearing. It is to be doubted very much whether such an attitude could be paralleled in the Gentile world of that day, where exposure of infants was quite a common practice, and where at least the passionate Jewish desire for children and the feeling of shame when they were absent would have seemed to be rather a strange and foreign thing. Certainly our narrative has caught in a very delicate way at this point the finer shades of Jewish feeling.
In the words of the angel to Zacharias in Lk. i.13-20 there appears what is one of the most striking features of the narrative as a whole, namely, the complete absence of any specifically Christian, as distinguished from pre-Christian, features in the presentation of the Messianic hope. The angel says of the promised child that he will go before God to prepare His people; but there is no mention of a Messiah. Later on in the section the Messiah of course appears; but the promises concerning Him are couched in terms that display no knowledge of later events such as the resurrection, the beginning of the Gentile mission, or the destruction of Jerusalem. The Messianic hope appears essentially in Old Testament form,
We do not mean to say that the stupendous words of the angel in Lk. i.30-37 add nothing to the Old Testament presentation of the coming Messiah. On the contrary, they do render definite and plain the manner of the Messiah’s entrance into the world, which had been prophesied indeed in Is. vii.14, but in mysterious terms that the Jews did not understand. They do, moreover, make explicit the superhuman nature of the Messiah, in a way that transcends in definiteness even the majestic descriptions of the ninth chapter of Isaiah. Such an increase in plainness and definiteness is only to be expected if the appearance of the coming one was no longer in the dim and distant future, but was immediately at hand. Yet even so there is a complete absence of any detailed descriptions such as would have been natural only after the event. Even here the limits of true prophecy are preserved.
Even here, moreover, the kingdom of the promised Messiah is described in distinctly Old Testament terms. “The Lord God,” it is said, “will give to Him the throne of David His father, and He will rule over the house of Jacob forever.” There is a true, high sense in which that prophecy has been, and is being, gloriously fulfilled. But is it not unnatural that a Gentile Christian writer, after the destruction of Jerusalem or even after the beginning of the war that led to the destruction, would ever have spoken of the kingdom of Christ as a kingdom over the “house of Jacob”?
The same characteristic runs through the whole section. Thus in the song of Mary, called the Magnificat,* there is a complete absence of any definite allusions to events in the life of the coming Deliverer: indeed, the Deliverer is not mentioned at all; and the deliverance which God has brought or is to bring is described as help rendered to “Israel His servant” and as a fulfilment of His promise “to Abraham and to his seed.”
Similar is the representation in the song of Zacharias, the so-called Benedictus.® There, it is true, the immediate occasion of the song becomes a little more definite than is the case in the Magnificat; the child of Zacharias is directly addressed by the words, “and thou, child, shalt be called a prophet of the Most High.” But the specific events in the life of the child are not mentioned, and his mission as a prophet is described only in the most general terms. Indeed, there is in this hymn no clear allusion to the Messiah at all; the child is to go before Jehovah to prepare His people for Him, but in what particular way Jehovah is to appear is not said. And throughout the whole hymn the connection of the coming salvation with Israel is set forth in terms which would be very unnatural in a composition written with knowledge of the later events. Could a Gentile Christian writer, especially if he wrote after aw. 70, ever have described the Messianic salvation as consisting in such a rescue of the Jewish people from the hands of its enemies that the people might have liberty to worship God without fear? It is true that the salvation which Israel, according to this hymn, is to receive is by no means purely political; by the agency of the forerunner who has just been born, the people is to be prepared morally for the coming of Jehovah; the liberty which it is to receive is to be used for a worship of God in holiness and righteousness, and the salvation is to involve “the remission of sins.” But this ethical element in the Messianic salvation does not at all transcend what is found in the Old Testament; it is presented in the most insistent fashion by the Old Testament prophets. There is, therefore, no indication whatever in the Benedictus which could stamp the hymn as a prophecy after the event; but on the contrary, there is every indication that the hymn was written before the calamity to the Jewish state which occurred in A.D. 70.
Similar is the impression which is made in the second chapter. Could anything be more unnatural to a Gentile Christian, writing after aD. 70, or after the rejection of the Gospel by the mass of the Jewish people, than the description of Simeon as one who was awaiting the “consolation of Israel,” or of the circle of pious folk to whom Anna spoke as those who were awaiting “the redemption of Jerusalem”? Such expressions are very natural in a Palestinian ~ writer, living at a very early time; but they are as dissimilar as possible to what would be expected in the free composition of a later Gentile Christian. Everywhere in this chapter the Messianic hope is set forth in Old Testament terms.
It is true, indeed, that Lk. i-ii does contain expressions of a genuine universalism: the coming salvation is to be in the presence of all the peoples; it is to involve “light for a revelation to the Gentiles.” ® But such universalism does not at all transcend what is found in the Old Testament prophets. There could be nothing more uncritical than to regard every reference to a Gentile mission as an indication of a date subsequent to the founding of the Gentile Church at Antioch or to the Apostolic Council of Acts xv. It should never be forgotten that Judaism in the first Christian century, and in the immediately preceding period, was an active missionary religion; even the Pharisees, Jesus said, compassed sea and land to make one proselyte, and the Jewish synagogues throughout the world were attended by large numbers of Gentiles as well as by Jews. There was nothing revolutionary in the belief that the light of the true religion was to shine out from Israel to all the nations of the earth. What was really revolutionary in the Pauline mission, from the Jewish point of view, was found not in the fact that Gentiles were received, but in the terms on which they were received, All the discussion which the Gentile mission provoked was due to the fact that the Gentiles were received without being required to keep the law, and without being required to renounce their own nationality and become Jews.
Of that revolutionary form of universalism there is no trace in Lk. i-ii; in these chapters there is no hint that the prerogatives of Israel are to be broken down. On the contrary, just in the place where universalism appears most plainly, these prerogatives of Israel are preserved with special clearness; the light that shines upon the Gentiles is to be a glory to “thy people Israel”; the Jews are in a special sense God’s people, and it is from them that light is to shine forth; Jerusalem is still conceived of as being the centre of the whole world.’
Such universalism is found, of course, in fullest measure in the great prophecies of the Old Testament. In our chapters, moreover, universalism may almost be said to be incidental; it is here the people of Israel that is everywhere primarily in view. Even in the words of the angels to the shepherds, this special reference to Israel is preserved; the “great joy” which is announced by the angels is to be not “to all people” (as the Authorized Version translates) but to “all the people,” ® and the immediate reference is to “the people” in the Israelitish sense, or the covenant people of God. It would probably be a mistake, indeed, to take the words, “peace among men of good pleasure,” ® in the angels’ song, in a specifically particularistic way; it would probably be a mistake to identify the men of God’s good pleasure with the people of Israel as such. But if particularism is here not explicit, neither is universalism; it is not said in any clear fashion that the men of God’s good pleasure are to be found in the Gentile world as well as in Israel. Indeed, even if the reference is to men generally, to the whole human race, still the race as the recipient of God’s favor might be conceived of as represented by the people whom God had chosen. God has given peace to men by the birth of the babe at Bethlehem; but it is not said which men are the recipients of that peace or of the “good pleasure” of God which is its ground.’®
It is true, of course, that the salvation which is celebrated in our section 5 suited to all men and not merely to Jews. The good news that is connected here with the babe of Bethlehem is no doubt of such a character that ultimately it must be for the benefit of the whole human race. But this profound universalism, which inheres in the very essence of the gospel, hardly becomes any more explicit here than it does in certain passages of the Old Testament. The atmosphere of Lk. i-ii is the atmosphere of the old covenant. The gleams of
10 Compare, tor example, Ps. viii.4: ‘What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thor: visitest him?” See also Volter, Die evangelischem Erzahlungen son der Geburt und Kindheit Jesu, 1911, pp. 56 f.
a more glorious day, which are seen even in Old Testament prophecy, have become brighter; there is an expectancy in the air like the expectancy with which the earth awaits the coming of a new day; but still the sun has not yet risen fully above the horizon; prophecy has not yet ripened into complete fulfilment.
Thus the kind of universalism that appears in this narrative does not at all point to a date after the beginning of the Gentile mission in the Christian Church; there is no departure in this matter from the restraints proper to true prophecy.
But if so much be granted—if the universalism of the section be admitted Not to constitute a vaticinium ex eventu—one specific point still requires consideration. It concerns the words in Lk. ii.34, 35, where the aged Simeon is represented as saying: “Behold, this child is set for the falling and rising of many in Israel; and for a sign that is spoken against—and through thine own soul shall pass a sword—in order that thoughts may be revealed out of many hearts.” These words, it is said, are written in view of the conflicts in the life of Jesus and particularly in view of the Cross; they constitute, therefore, a vaticinium ex eventu.
With regard to this objection, it may be remarked, in the first place, that even if the objection were well founded it would not at all overthrow our argument for the Palestinian origin of this narrative: even if the words attributed to Simeon were not actually spoken by him, but were composed after the crucifixion of Jesus, that might conceivably have been done in Palestine in the early days of the Jerusalem Church as well as at some subsequent time; there would be no reason why the composition of the supposed vaticinium ex eventu should be attributed to a Gentile Christian, as distinguished from a Jewish Christian, author.
But, in the second place, we do not think that in point of fact the passage looks at all like a vaticinium ex eventu. It is true that the words, “And through thine own soul shall pass a sword,” recall to our minds the scene of the stabat mater dolorosa iuxta crucem lachrymosa; inevitably we think of Mary as she stood at the foot of the cross. But because that scene is admirably characterized in its inner meaning by Simeon’s words, it does not follow at all that it was definitely in mind when the words were first spoken or written. The whole prophecy is couched in very general terms: it declares that the child whom Simeon holds in his arms will make necessary a great decision, that the hidden thoughts of men’s hearts will be revealed by their attitude toward Him, that there will be opposition, and that grief will pierce the mother’s soul. The central thought in these words was not altogether unknown in pre-Christian times: for the prophets had spoken of the necessity of a great decision and of the suffering of God’s righteous Servant; and John the Baptist, before the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus, spoke of a time of sifting, the separation of the wheat from the chaff, that was soon to come.
We do not, indeed, at all mean to deny the profound originality of Simeon’s words. Without doubt, the thought of a suffering Messiah, though it is truly found in the Old Testament, had dropped out of sight in later Judaism. And although the expectation of a time of sifting might have come to a pious Israelite even without any supernatural revelation, yet the connection of such a time of sifting with a particular child whom Simeon held in his arms introduces an element that is quite fresh and new. No doubt, if these words were spoken before Jesus grew to manhood and entered upon His public ministry, they cannot be explained as due to merely natural insight, but constitute a true prophecy; and the attitude of the critic toward them will be determined by his attitude toward the possibility of supernatural revelation in general. But our point is that the words do not exceed the restraint which we find elsewhere observed in what we think to be genuine prophecy; such restraint is exceedingly difficult to explain as being exercised by a later writer who was freely composing speeches and prophecies to put into the mouths of his characters. The poetic, mysterious form in which Simeon’s prophecy is couched —the wonderful characterization of the inner significance of the later conflict, coupled with a complete absence of the details that a Christian writer would know—creates an impression of great primitiveness.'* The ultimate decision as to whether we have here genuine prophecy inspired by the Spirit of God depends upon considerations that lie beyond the sphere of merely literary, as distinguished from historical, criticism; but at least we can say that if ever a passage bore the internal marks of genuine prophecy and did not bear the marks of a vaticinium ex eventu, it is this prophecy attributed by the Third Gospel to the aged saint who had been “waiting for the consolation of Israel.”
At any rate, however that may be, the passage certainly does not afford the slightest argument against the primitive Jewish and Palestinian character which we have found in the narrative as a whole.
This Palestinian character of the narrative, it may finally be observed, appears not only at the centre, but also at the circumference; it is found not only in the way in which the Messianic salvation is conceived, but also in the treatment of the details of life in Palestine. Evidently the narrator was inti-
11 Compare Sweet, The Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ, 1906, p. 76.
mately acquainted with the Temple ritual, with the arrangements for the service of the priests, and in general with the conditions of Jewish life.
That does not mean that all the details are definitely confirmed by independent sources of information. Thus it seems not to be known except from our narrative that an actual ceremony of presentation in the Temple was carried out for a first-born son in addition to the payment of the redemption-money, which payment could be made at the place of residence of the parents as well as at Jerusalem. But that such a ceremony of presentation should be carried out whert circumstances permitted, and especially in view of the special hopes centring in the child Jesus, is altogether natural; there is not the slightest reason why we should not allow Lk. ii.22 to supplement at this point our other sources of information. Thus also it has been remarked that Lk. i.59 and ii.21 constitute the best extant attestation to the fact that the naming of a child was connected with the rite of circumcision.’* But although such connection is not so well attested elsewhere, it is certainly the most natural and probable thing that could be imagined.
It must be remembered that our sources of information about Jewish life in Palestine in the first century are by no means so abundant as is often supposed. When we were at Sunday school in our youth, many of us had the impression that that mysterious company of persons known as “scholars” possessed vast stores of information about such matters—vast stores of information inaccessible to ordinary mortals. Such an impression was by no means altogether correct. We do not, indeed, desire at all to depreciate the researches of Wettstein, of Edersheim, of Schiirer, and (more recently) of Strack-Billerbeck, as shedding light upon the environment of the life of Jesus; but, after all, the Rabbinical sources of information are late, and cannot be used without great caution for the earlier period; Josephus enters into little detail in describing the sacerdotal system; and in very many particulars, therefore, the New Testament is our best source of information about the Judaism of the first century. Certainly the points at which the allusions to Palestinian life in Lk. i-ii are confirmed either by the Old Testament or by later independent sources are so numerous as to raise a very favorable presumption with regard to the points at which such confirmation has not been found.
At one point, indeed, the accuracy of this section with regard to Jewish life has sometimes been impugned—namely, in the words, “their cleansing,” in Lk. ii.22. The offering prescribed by the law for the conclusion of the period of ritual uncleanness or seclusion after childbirth is indeed quite correctly said
12 Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, ii, 1924, p. 107.
in this passage to consist of a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons; 8 and a distinctly favorable impression has always been produced by the fact that the alternative offering prescribed for less well-to-do persons is here represented, entirely without explanation, as having been made in the case of the mother of Jesus. But, it is objected, the ritual uncleanness after childbirth belonged, according to the law, to the mother alone; how, then, can the plural be correct in the phrase, “their cleansing”?
It may be remarked in passing that the transmission of the text is at this point not altogether uniform. A few witnesses read “her cleansing”; while the uncial Codex Bezz, certain manuscripts of the Old Latin translation, and the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript of the Old Syriac translation, read “Ais cleansing.” In the former reading, of course, all difficulty disappears; the cleansing according to that reading is attributed to the mother, exactly as would be expected according to the law. If the reading, “Ais cleansing” (or “its cleansing,” since the masculine and the neuter are the same in Greek), be correct, no doubt the pronoun refers to the child, who is the only member of the holy family that is spoken of in the preceding verse. In that case the cleansing would be connected with the child because the child is the chief personage of the narrative; in connection with the circumcision and the giving of the name in the preceding verse, He alone is mentioned; Joseph and Mary are merely alluded to by the passive voice of the verb. So the cleansing, though the occasion of it was the ritual uncleanness, not of the child, but of the mother, might be spoken of as “his cleansing” because it was one of the successive events recorded about His life.
There is, however, no reason to depart from what is by far the best attested reading—namely, the reading, “their cleansing.” That reading is commended by transcriptional probability, on the well-known principle that the more difhcult reading is to be preferred to the easier; since both the other two readings may be accounted for as due to natural changes made by scribes. The reading, “her cleansing,” may have been due simply to the influence of Leviticus, where in the basic passage, Lev. xii.6, the phrase runs, “When the days of her purifying are fulfilled.’ A scribe, in other words, may have felt the difficulty with which we are now dealing, and may also have yielded to the natural tendency to complete the verbal similarity to the closely parallel Old Testament passage by the simple change of “their” to “her.” It is perhaps a little more difficult to explain the reading, “his cleansing”: but possibly a scribe may have taken offence at the inclusion of Mary in the act of cleansing which is involved in the reading, “their cleansing.” Such inclusion might have seemed to be contrary to the notion of the perpetual virginity of Mary, especially to the notion that the birth of Jesus took place clauso utero, which became prevalent in the Church. Thus the introduction of the singular masculine pronoun may possibly be explained as a dogmatic correction.
If “her cleansing” were in the original text, a similar consideration might, indeed, perhaps be used to explain the introduction of the reading, “their cleansing”; a scribe may have been shocked by the direct attribution of cleansing specifically and solely to Mary, and so may have introduced the plural pronoun in order to cause the phrase to be taken in some more general sense. But the reading, “her cleansing,” is very weakly attested; and on the whole there seems to be no reason to depart from the reading, “their cleansing,” which has an overwhelming preponderance of attestation in its favor.
But if that reading is to be regarded as correct, to what persons does the plural pronoun refer? It might conceivably refer to Mary and the child, and so it was taken, apparently, by Origen.’* Something may perhaps be said in favor of such an interpretation. Joseph, it may be observed, is somewhat in the background throughout this whole narrative, and he is not mentioned in the preceding verse. It is true that Mary also is not mentioned in that verse; but she is alluded to by the mention of the naming of the child—“before He was conceived in the womb”—which refers, of course, to the scene described in Lk. i.26-38. Certainly Mary and the babe are the chief figures in this narrative; and it might be regarded as not altogether impossible that they should be linked together, to the exclusion of Joseph, in the use of the pronoun their.”
Nevertheless, this interpretation, despite all that can be said in favor of it, must be pronounced unnatural in the extreme. The only reference which any unsophisticated reader could give to the pronoun “their” surely would be provided by the subject of the verb in the same sentence. In the sentence, “When the days of their cleansing were fulfilled, according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem,” surely the “their” refers to the same persons as the “they.”
It must be admitted, therefore, that “their cleansing” means the cleansing of Joseph and Mary. But if so, how is the difficulty to be overcome? Does not the phrase attest the erroneous notion on the part of the narrator that the ritual cleansing after childbirth belonged to the father as well as to the mother? And could so erroneous a notion ever have been held by a Palestinian narrator?
Is not, therefore, the whole argument for the Palestinian provenience of the narrative very much weakened by the occurrence of this phrase?
In reply, it may be said that a very great weight is here being hung upon one phrase. The narrative elsewhere affords evidence of intimate acquaintance with the Jewish law and with Palestinian conditions. Is it not, therefore, only fair to approach the question with a certain favorable presumption; must not the passage be interpreted, if it is at all possible to do so, in a way that avoids ascription of a serious blunder to a narrator who elsewhere deals with these matters in so accurate a way? These questions, we think, should be answered in the affirmative. To do so does not involve any substitution of “apologetics” for scientific history; for it is not scientific, but highly unscientific, to accord to a witness who has already been shown to be generally reliable no more credence than would be accorded to a witness who is either demonstrably unreliable or else unknown.
If, therefore, the phrase, “their cleansing,” may with any reasonableness be interpreted in a way that accords with the general accuracy with which the narrative deals with Palestinian conditions, surely such an interpretation must be adopted. And as a matter of fact such an interpretation does offer itself. The point of it is that the pronoun “their” does not refer to the impurity, but to the “purification.” The impurity no doubt belonged to Mary alone: but the act of purification belonged also to Joseph; indeed, it was he who presumably bore the expense of the offering.
In other words, it is not clear that the genitive “their” in the phrase “their purification” is an objective, rather than a subjective, genitive: it is not clear that the phrase designates an “act by which they were cleansed”; for it may also designate an “act of cleansing which they carried out.” And in the latter case there is no disharmony between this phrase and the terms of the Old Testament law.
On this interpretation—if we may anticipate a later phase of our discussion—there is no disharmony between this verse and the supernatural conception of Jesus, which is attested in Lk. i.34, 35. Whether physically the father of Jesus or not, Joseph could, in the sense just indicated, have a part in the offering by which the ceremonial impurity of the mother was removed. Indeed, for that matter, there would probably be no contradiction with Lk. i.34, 35 even if our interpretation of “their cleansing” were wrong, even if the phrase meant that the narrator did (erroneously) attribute the ceremonial impurity to Joseph as father as well as to Mary as mother. If the Mosaic law in the view of the narrator regarded the father as well as the mother as ceremonially unclean after the birth of a child, then since Joseph was publicly regarded as the father of this child it was natural that he should fulfil the legal requirements of purification, even though he was not actually the father. As Jesus later took part, according to all three Synoptic Gospels, in a baptism that was regarded as a baptism for the remission of sins, although in the view of all the Evangelists he certainly was guilty of no sin and so needed no remission, so here Joseph could be represented as fulfilling the legal duties of a father despite the mystery of the supernatural conception. That would in the mind of the narrator be merely another way in which (to use the phrase reported by Matthew) “all righteousness” was fulfilled. It is very rash indeed, therefore, to argue, on either interpretation of Lk. ii22, that this verse contradicts the account of the supernatural conception that is given in Lk. 1:34,| 353
But such considerations really belong to a later phase of our subject. What we are here interested in observing is that Lk. ii.22 need not at all be held to display such ignorance of the Mosaic law as would have been impossible in a Palestinian writer. No valid argument can be derived from this verse against the genuinely Palestinian character of the narrative, which is everywhere else: so clear.