Birth

• Harmonisation: We’ve analysed how Matthew and Luke’s Gospels differ and there are discrepancies that can’t be explained or the two accounts can sit side by side.
• Redaction criticism: It is the study of how the author (Evangelist) shapes their material to present a particular view of Jesus, depending on their context (their sitz im leben).
• Source criticism: It examines where the authors of the Gospel may have taken the narratives of Jesus from.
• Q source hypothesis: It posits that there was a source called Q which was used by Matthew and Luke.
• David Catchpole, a key English scholar, argues that the Q source hypothesis makes the best sense of the material.
• E.P Sanders, another key New Testament scholar from Exeter, also argues that the Q source hypothesis makes the best sense of the material.
• If you accept the 2 source (Mark and Q) or 4 source (Mark, Q, M and L) hypothesis, Matthew and Luke’s birth narratives reflect that they have used different sources.
• E.P Sanders in his book Studying the Synoptic Gospels identifies some elements of the birth narratives that are in common between Luke and Matthew: Jesus’ mother was not married, but only betrothed at the time of his birth, Jesus’ conception was miraculous, he was born in Bethlehem, and he grew up in Nazareth.
• The story about John the Baptist in Luke – his conception, his parents and their relationship to Mary, the story about the shepherds, the story about the Magi (Wise Men), the flight to Egypt, and the presentation of Jesus in the Temple are in Luke but not in Matthew.
• Sanders suggests that there are 2 points in particular where the accounts seem to contradict each other: the genealogies which trace the ancestry of Jesus and the moves between Nazareth and Bethlehem.