Matthew’s opening genealogy of Jesus is now complete with the intriguing idea that the line which produced Jesus of Nazareth, traveled not only through the royal family of the …
It is difficult for most Christians to imagine that the story of Jesus’ virgin birth was a late developing tradition in the Christian faith, yet it appears to have …
Luke concludes his birth story with a series of episodes designed to point to the story of the adult Jesus. First, in Luke’s story, the shepherds depart, while …
The creators of the birth narratives, Matthew and Luke, used two motifs in interpreting the life of Jesus of Nazareth. First, each was historically aware that Jesus hailed from …
In order to understand the birth narratives found in Matthew and Luke, we need to embrace the fact that there is no way these stories were intended to be …
Somewhere six to ten years after the Gospel of Matthew was written, another gospel, the one we call Luke, makes its appearance. Both Matthew and Luke had Mark as …
The prologue to Mathew’s gospel, which also serves to introduce the story of Jesus’ miraculous birth, is now complete. Matthew writing as he does to the members of a …
The familiar stories of Jesus’ miraculous birth entered the Christian tradition in two different forms, separated by perhaps a decade. The original narrative was written by a man we …
The first gospel to be written, the one we call Mark, was composed in the early years of the 8th decade (70-72). It contains no story of and no …
Most of the portraits of the mother of Jesus that hang in the great museums of the world are dependent first on the biblical stories of Jesus’ birth and …