This year in Come Follow Me (the scripture study program for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) we are studying the New Testament. I enjoyed this week listening to podcasts about the intertestamental period, i.e. the time between Malachi and Matthew. I especially enjoyed hearing about the Maccabees. Jared Halverson's podcast on "Unshaken" as especially good on this topic.
We also covered Matthew 1 and Luke 1. Matthew 1 starts with Joseph's genealogy. One of Matthew's main purposes is to show the Jews that Jesus is the Christ by connecting Jesus' life to prophecies from the Old Testament. Matthew shows that Joseph was descended from both Abraham and King David. He also states that there were 14 generations between Abraham and David, and from David to the Captivity and from the Captivity to Joseph. Scholars don't have to study too hard to discover that this is very unlikely. They believe that Matthew uses the number 14 because the numbers associated with the letters in David's name in Hebrew דוד add up to 14.
6=ו
But why do we care about Joseph's genealogy? He wasn't Jesus' biological parent anyway. You have to remember that, in the Jewish culture, status as a Jew was established through the mother, but status as an heir to kingship comes through the male line. One podcaster mentioned that by taking Jesus to the temple for his Briss at 8 days old, Joseph was officially adopting Jesus. As Joseph's adopted son, Jesus took on Joseph's kingly lineage as a descendant and heir of King David.
In Luke 1, we get the story of Zacharias and Elisabeth. Here, clearly, the reader is supposed to draw comparisons between John's miraculous birth and the stories of other miraculous births from barren couples: Sarai and Abraham, Rachel and Jacob, Hannah and Elkanah for example. Clearly John is to be a great prophet by Jewish standards.
We also get the story of the annunciation and Mary's visit to Elizabeth. One thing I thought that was interesting in the podcasts is that they talked as if Mary really did say the Magnificat when talking with Elizabeth. I think that the chance the Mary actually said those exact words recorded in Matthew 1:46-56 in is pretty low. They are written in refined Greek poetry. How would Luke have even known what Mary said or did ? Would a young Galilean girl, talking with an older relative, suddenly start spouting Greek poetry?
Luke was a gentile who traveled with Paul and was a physician. He may have met Mary on a visit to Israel at some point, but it is unlikely. My guess is that he was raised as an educated Roman and that in the Greco-Roman world interactions related to divine occurrences happen in poetry. The Iliad and the Odyssey are written in poetry, as are all the Greek plays that deal with divine manifestations. Just as we might expect divine messengers to talk in Old English, with "thee's" and "thou's," Mark would have felt funny writing a dialog between these two women with divinely appointed pregnancies in anything less than poetry. He probably captured the main thoughts and feelings of Mary's encounter, but he probably composed the poetry himself. I am glad he did, because is is really lovely verse that has inspired women for generations.
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