Christmas in Jewish Context, Part 1

Genealogies and OT Texts

(avg. read time: 6–11 mins.)

This year and the next, I would like to look in more depth at the Christmas stories in the NT. What is fascinating about them, for our purposes, is how they serve as bridge stories. As it is now, they are told in the context of a Christian narrative with the hindsight of the larger gospel narrative and the new age thereby inaugurated. But the stories originally emerged in a Jewish context that gave meaning to their various elements, as it was in this context that the stories were first told and to which they were first directed. This four-part series will involve examining the various layers of the Jewish context of the Christmas stories as told in Matthew and Luke, as these are the versions of the stories that most clearly illustrate the Jewish context.

One influence of the Jewish context to consider is the genealogies. Among their other functions, genealogies established connections and told a story about a person’s identity. The genealogies, in their own ways, align Jesus to the story of Israel. Luke’s genealogy explicitly incorporates the story of Israel into the universal history of humanity as he traces Jesus’s ancestry all the way to Adam. As we will see further later, Luke connects the climax of the story involving Israel to the salvation of the Gentiles. Matthew’s genealogy is more directly focused on Jesus as the climax of the story of Israel. He is truly of Israelite descent, through the royal line, and thus is the heir of Abrahamic and Davidic promises. But, in light of how Matthew lays out the scheme of this genealogy, Jesus is also at the beginning of the crucial chapter for Israel. The genealogy begins with Abraham (at the roots of Israel’s covenantal story), then proceeds fourteen generations to David (at this time considered the climactic king of Israel’s history to which Israel constantly looked back and used as a basis for future hopes), then proceeds fourteen generations to the exile (the nadir of Israel’s history from which it had not fully recovered), and finally proceeds fourteen generations to Jesus (the juncture at which it would make sense for the solution to the problem of the exile to arrive).

Another layer of Jewish context, which will occupy the rest of this part, is the context of the OT, specifically in terms of the OT texts cited in Matthew’s story. This context is more manifest in Matthew, but it is present more subtly (and perhaps even more extensively) in Luke. In Matthew alone there are direct references to Isa 7; Mic 5; Jer 31; and Hos 11 (in addition to an allusion to Num 24:17 in 2:2). In Matthew and especially Luke there are also many resonances with the OT beyond the direct quotations, but for this post I limit my focus to the latter.

These references to the texts are about more than the directly quoted material. It is easy to imagine a simple understanding of textual/prophetic fulfillment—as is common even today—in which the quoted text is supposed to speak of a future event that has not happened until the event in question fulfills the wording in a precise fashion. While there are debates about prophetic viewpoints in Israel and Second Temple Judaism, it seems clear enough that when it comes to people’s claims about “fulfillment” this particular view does not suffice as a more or less comprehensive description. Intertextual echoes were also essential. Allusion, typology, recapitulation of narratives, and so on can also be ways of referring to fulfillment, not only or always of precise details as written, but also of essential narrative patterns of action, promise, and character, which can happen through contrast or through emulation/recapitulation. One can also think of such kinds of fulfillment as more like fulfillment of covenantal or relational expectations based on past performance and history (i.e., expectations based on the impression, “that is the kind of person he is”).

What have been referred to as intertextual echoes, which can work in tandem with direct quotes, can have their effect in the unstated connections as much as—if not more than—in the stated connections. There is, of course, a risk of proceeding on thin ice because claims about intertextual echoes can emerge from any kind of connection and one can easily make overzealous claims on the basis of meager evidence. The only way to test for the validity of these claims of intertextual meaning—particularly in terms of fulfillment—is, as Richard Hays notes in his seminal study (though it concerns Paul rather than Matthew), to demonstrate credibly that “they are in some sense properties of the text’s own rhetorical or literary structure” (Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, 26). That there are intended connections beyond the stated ones should not prima facie be surprising because Second Temple Judaism—as was also often the case before and after this period—breathed the language and story of Scripture. Add in the facts that it was a generally honorable trait to have extensive knowledge and adeptness in use of traditions/history/mythos of one’s group and that it was a specifically honorable trait to have such in a Jewish context (especially for a group of Jews claiming that the Messiah has come and that the Scriptures have pointed specifically to him), and it becomes even more probable, prima facie, that there would be more to the Scripture connections as fulfillment texts than the quotations in and of themselves. The quotations function as gateways to larger statements Matthew makes concerning Jesus. It is now necessary to provide snapshots of how each text functions in this regard, although much more can be said than what I provide here.

In the case of the Isa 7 quotation (also see Isa 8:8, 10), Matthew is arguably attaching more significance to the events of Christmas than a basic reference to the extraordinary character of Jesus’s birth. If one looks back at the context of the prophecy in Isa 7:1–17, one finds a promise given to Ahaz, king of Judah, that his kingdom will be delivered from the attacks of Israel and Aram, the sign of which will be the son of some indicated virgin (or young maiden), who will not even mature before God brings deliverance. Matthew seems to understand this situation as a type for Jesus’s birth (in line with Matt 1:20–21). Jesus, as anti-type, goes beyond the original type. He is not only the sign of God’s deliverance/salvation; he is also the agent of God’s salvation. He has not come to save the people from Roman oppression by military overthrow, but he has come to save Israel and others from their greatest enemy: sin. Furthermore, Matthew now seems to understand Immanuel most literally, that Jesus was truly God with us, the one who has come to act as Redeemer and Deliverer.

Micah 5 looks forward to the coming of a new Davidic figure through reference to David’s hometown and one whose origin is “from of old.” The full return from exile and rest for Israel comes through this king who draws Israel to himself and provides for Israel by the strength of the Lord. This Davidic king thus serves the function of a person who unites Israel and delivers it from foreign enemies, some of David’s chief accomplishments. In the context of Matthew, this portrait fits Jesus, with some modification. Jesus is not the kind of Messiah who is interested in military conquest of foreign enemies—much to the chagrin of some of Jesus’s contemporaries—but actually draws foreign representatives to himself as people coming to pay honor (cf. Ps 72:10–11, 15; Isa 60:6). Thus, he is still the one to whom the ends of the earth ultimately submit, and these magi are prototypes of his subjects. Another difference is that Jesus is actually a bigger threat to a domestic king: Herod. Notice that the magi come to Herod, a client king of Rome over the Jews, the man who should bear every clear mark of being king of the Jews, the one who went about rebuilding the temple—perhaps to convey precisely this idea (e.g., Ps 132; Hag 2:20–23; Zech 4:1–10; 6:9–15)—and ask him, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” Herod is afraid at this point and inquires of the Jewish experts to know more about what is apparently occurring. This claim of kingship conflicts with his own and if the one who has been born is indeed king of the Jews and brings with him the kingdom of God, it poses a threat to Herod himself (not because of military prowess, but because of the character of the kingdom). Still, the kingdom of God would not come through military conquest on behalf of Israel, but through a more holistic way of deliverance through Jesus that incorporates Israel in the process. In fact, Jesus not only draws Israel to himself, but he also redefines the people of God around himself so that unexpected people enter the kingdom while expected people are on the outside looking in with weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt 8:10–12; 9:9–13; 11:18–19; 21:28–32; 22:1–14). He provides for Israel in terms of miracles, teaching, and reconciliation, as well as the coming of the kingdom through his death and resurrection. The direct reference and the surrounding context thus provide one of several important paradigms and interpretive keys for the Gospel as a whole.

The quote from Jer 31 sets up an echo of the experience of the exiles, which in turn was a reverse exodus (this latter aspect of the resonance also comports with the Mosaic echoes of the firstborn dying). The quoted v. 15 encapsulates the mournful experience of the exiles in death and displacement as well as in terms of desecration and dehumanization. But the surrounding passage is about turning this sorrow into joy with return and restoration. The return from exile story amounts to a new exodus with a new covenant, a covenant more faithful to God in which its law is inscribed on the hearts of its keepers. These resonances from the context comport with the larger context of Jesus’s life and thus anticipate what Jesus will begin accomplishing with his inauguration of the new covenant through his teaching, death, and resurrection. With that new covenant arise the deeper return and restoration within the overarching new exodus through him. Whereas previous generations of Israelites placed the exodus at the center of their faith as God’s paradigmatic action and the keystone of their remembrance and hope (and thus identity), the people of God reconstituted under the new covenant in Jesus take the life of Christ—with the climax in the death, resurrection, and exaltation—as the new paradigmatic event that functions as the keystone of remembrance and hope (and thus identity). Jesus does not immediately fulfill the vision of Jer 31, but he inaugurates its fulfillment, especially in terms of inaugurating the new covenant and providing the new way of declaring who is among God’s people (i.e., the new exodus).

The final quote I want to reference is Hos 11 (the “Nazorean” quote is not a direct quote of any specific text, and its reference and meaning are even more disputable, so I leave it to the side for now). Hosea 11 functions as a statement of the relationship between God and Israel as that between father and child, a relationship ultimately demonstrated and established here in the exodus (not that the Abrahamic covenant and so on would be unimportant, but the exodus was the central event in the faith of Israel). God called Israel out of Egypt because he considered Israel his son, but also so that Israel could be his son (i.e., so that the Israelites could live into that identity which they already possessed in the eyes of God). But the subsequent history of Israel demonstrated two overarching facts. One, Israel had often not acted like the son/child of God that it was supposed to be. Two, God had continued to act as the Father in relation to Israel in wrath and in refrain from wrath, even when Israel failed to act like the son/child of God. There is thus an expectation of God acting as the Father in bringing about Israel’s return as in the exodus that ultimately demonstrated that relationship (v. 11). In the case of Jesus, he is the ultimate Son of God representing Israel who fulfills the role of Son in the way Israel never did. He is the one through whom the new exodus comes, which he foreshadows when God calls his family out of Egypt. But because he bears that new exodus in himself, he is also the foundation of the identity and relationship with the true people of God, consisting of Israel and the Gentiles (though, once again, there are only hints of such here to receive development later). As in the story of the genealogy, he is the reversal of the nadir of Israel’s history in the exile, the consummate expression thus far of divine wrath. Thus, he embodies divine compassion for the salvation of the people (though there is an implication of wrath also for the ones who do not respond appropriately developed later and only foreshadowed here in the portrayal of Herod as being like the Pharaoh of Egypt in Moses’s day).