The Witness of St. Luke (Part 4)

Doctors today know all about conception and childbirth, and even in ancient times, a physician like St. Luke would have been well aware that under normal circumstances, a human being cannot be conceived without the contribution of a human father. The opening chapters of his gospel, therefore, were written to assure us that the coming of Jesus of Nazareth into the world was certainly not a normal circumstance!

The first thing to notice about Luke’s Nativity narrative is that his account of the conception of St. John the Baptist, and the virginal conception of Jesus Christ, follows immediately after the opening preface to his gospel, in which he writes (1:1-4):

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.

Experts on ancient literature tell us that St. Luke is here introducing his work in a way similar to that of Greco-Roman biographers. This makes it likely that at least the basic outline of the Nativity story that Luke relates was meant to be taken literally, as historical narrative, and not as a collection of mere myths or legendary “theologoumena” (that is, fictional tales intended to convey theological truth). Also, as previously discussed, it is fairly clear that St. Luke was relying upon an independent source for his Nativity account, and not on St. Matthew’s gospel. Given that Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles as a sequel to his own gospel, and that the second half of the book of Acts is a travel diary that breaks off suddenly at around 63 A.D.  — and that neither Luke’s gospel nor Acts shows any clear sign of awareness of the Roman siege of Jerusalem, and the actual destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D.— then it is very likely that Luke’s gospel was not written later than 65 A.D., and most likely before 63 A.D. (see the discussion of the dating and authorship of the gospels in my previous series on this website titled “In Search of Jesus”). Moreover, as we have seen, St. Luke stated in the preface to his gospel that he was writing to Theophilus concerning things about which the latter had already been informed; it follows that Luke’s sources for the his Nativity narrative likely can be traced back at least to the late 50’s A.D., and possibly earlier — that is, about as far back as the sources upon which St. Matthew relied. 

Some New Testament scholars argue that the Nativity account in St. Luke’s gospel preserves linguistic traces of an early Palestinian source. In Introducing the New Testament (2001) John Drane, for example, has written:

The whole of Luke 1-2 has a very primitive character by comparison with the rest of Luke’s writings …. Some scholars believe … he is here quoting or depending on an Aramaic source. If that is true, then he must have obtained these stories of Jesus’ birth from the very earliest group of Christians in Palestine itself, the only Christians ever to speak Aramaic. (p. 30-31)

Indeed, at two points in his Nativity story, St. Luke seems to hint at the identity of his source when he writes: “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19, 51). Father Laurentin offers a very careful defense of the tradition that Mary was one of Luke’s sources, pointing out that it is possible that St. Luke met her in Jerusalem when he (very likely) accompanied St. Paul there around 48 A.D. (Acts 11:27-28). If so, Mary would have been between 60 and 70 years old at the time. Laurentin concludes his detailed study as follows:

There is enough convergent testimony to establish Mary as the source for these chapters [in Luke], but not enough for us to determine in exactly what way she contributed to Luke’s gospel.” (p. 463)

In his book The Nativity (2006), Geza Vermes argues that “the most likely interpretation of the expression [in Lk 2:19, “Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart”] is that Mary was perplexed and was trying to puzzle out the significance of so many unexpected visitors” to her newborn child. The same meaning, he says, can be detected in the similar phrase appearing at the end of the episode of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple (Lk 2:51). There again, Mary is astounded by the words of her precociously wise son. Vermes concludes:

Such an understanding of the verse is to be preferred to the traditionalist claim that Luke’s report reflects the testimony of an eyewitness, namely that it derives ultimately from the Mother of Jesus. (p. 103)

This interpretation of the two passages in St. Luke about Mary “pondering” the events of the childhood of Jesus, however, hardly fits the first use of the expression — that is, Luke 2:19. Why would Mary be “perplexed” at what the Shepherds told her regarding the angelic declaration that her baby was to be “a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Lk 2:10-11)? Such a declaration fits very well with what the angel Gabriel had already told her about her child (1:31-33). Furthermore, if the expression “she kept all these things and pondered them in her heart” merely meant that Mary was “perplexed” in Luke 2:51, then why is Joseph not mentioned as doing the same “pondering”? After all, he was just as “perplexed” as she was by the words and deeds of their twelve-year-old son in the Temple at Jerusalem (Lk 2:48-50). The fact that Luke limits this statement to Mary alone implies that her “pondering” was especially fruitful, for some reason. The traditional interpretation at least gives us a plausible explanation: it was fruitful not only for her own spiritual growth, but also because she related all of these things to St. Luke, in due time.

Vermes is the instigator of another speculation: that St. Luke’s gospel does not actually teach that Jesus was born of a “virgin” in the normal understanding of that word:

Luke never expressly declares that between the annunciation and the birth of Jesus, Joseph abstained from “knowing” Mary. … Joseph could therefore be the father of Jesus, and the role of the Holy Spirit could consist in the special sanctification of Jesus, making him “holy,” “the Son of God.” (p.77)

Vermes points out that for ancient Israel there were actually three kinds of virginity: (1) the normal kind that terminates with sexual intercourse, (2) the kind of virginity that makes a young girl unable to conceive, because she has not yet reached the age of puberty, and (3) the kind to which a woman returns when she has passed through menopause. Vermes reasons:

If a girl past the legal majority of twelve years was married though still pre-pubescent, it was theoretically possible for her to conceive after her first ovulation, but before her first period. Thus, such a person could become … a virgin mother (a virgin as far as the menstrual blood was concerned) ….

In Luke’s account, Mary’s perplexity about the prospect of her imminent motherhood was alleviated by the angel assuring her that Heaven can cope with such minor matters, as is demonstrated by the case of Elizabeth (Lk 1:34-37). For God, it is no more difficult to enable a post-menopausal woman to bear a child than to allow a virgin, in the sense of an immature female, to conceive …. The logic of Gabriel’s argument dealing with the situation of Mary and Elizabeth makes best sense if we understand [that Mary was] a girl before reaching the age of puberty. (p. 80-81)

This ingenious theory, however, flies in the face of several relevant facts. 

First, Vermes does not cite a single early Christian (or even non-Christian writer) who interpreted Mary’s “virginity’ in the way that he does. It is hard to believe that in the first century or so after Christ, all of the Greek speaking Christians of Jewish background, and all of the Greek speaking anti-Christian Jewish polemical writers (familiar as most of them were with the nuances of Greek, and with ancient Jewish customs), failed to recognize that this was what St. Luke really meant to say. They all assume that when he wrote of Mary’s “virginity,” he meant it in the normal sense of the word.

Second, Vermes can give no convincing explanation of how his theory fits with the statement in Luke 3:23, which appears in all extant, ancient manuscripts of Luke’s gospel, that Jesus was the son “as was supposed” of Joseph. Vermes simply dismisses this verse as “a patent retouch” of Luke’s original work.

Third, in a similar way, the phrase in Greek describing Mary as “a virgin betrothed” in Lk 1:26, without further explanation or evidence from the text, must be held to mean “virgin” in the ordinary, Greek sense of the word parthenos.

Finally, Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel was not “How can this be, since I have not had my first period?” but “How can this be, since I have no husband?” In short, what Vermes has done here is a classic case of “eisegesis” (reading something into the biblical text) than “exegesis” (reading something out of it).

To sum up, we can say that St. Luke’s gospel provides us with a clear witness to the miraculous conception of Jesus in the womb of his virgin mother, a miracle story that he did not derive from St. Matthew’s gospel, and that goes back to the first generation of the Christian movement, quite likely to the Blessed Virgin Mary herself. It corroborates the claim St. Matthew made in his gospel, but from an entirely independent source.

Next Time: A Plausible Theory to Counter the Skeptics

Robert Stackpole, STD

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