Word: gospels
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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This line of thought, with its possible implication that the Gospel writers imagined the Holy Spirit and Mary engaged in the kind of physical divine-human intercourse that vividly marked many Greek and Roman myths, is one of the most rancorous areas of the new scholarship. Brown found no merit in it. "Every line of Matthew's infancy narrative echoes Old Testament themes," he argued. "Are we to think that he accepted all that background but then violated horrendously the stern Old Testament [rule] that God was not a male who mated with women?" Other scholars claim that Luke especially...
...among scholars. Traditionalists promote theories meshing Matthew's and Luke's versions. Says Paul L. Maier, a professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University: "Radical New Testament critics say it's a hopeless jumble. I myself do not think it's impossible to harmonize them." Others champion one Gospel writer while discounting the other. A growing majority, however, conclude that there is simply not enough textual agreement to declare Bethlehem a historical given...
...potent precedent of divinely sanctioned kingship. Binding Jesus to him by family (through Joseph) and birthplace consolidated that definition, which then matured into Christianity's far grander messiahship. Says White: "No Bethlehem, no David. No David, no messianic prototype. Matthew and Luke both understood that." The way each Gospel writer got the Holy Family there, by contrast, reflected his particular preoccupations...
...most famous escapee (via those bulrushes) was Moses, who eventually received the Law from God at Sinai. Through the echoing narrative, Matthew was arguing for Jesus as Moses' successor. Says The Birth of Christianity's Crossan: "One of the things Matthew's going to do later in his Gospel is have Jesus up on a new mountain giving a new law. We call it the Sermon on the Mount...
...Magi rather than Jews who followed the star to Jerusalem and innocently alerted Herod. In a dire foreshadowing of Christ's Passion, Matthew reports that rather than being helpful, the half-Jewish King and his Jewish "chief priests and scribes" conspired to kill the Christ Child. The Gospel has the Magi briefly co-opted into his scheme as advance scouts. But on finally locating Jesus, Matthew says, they "fell down and worshipped him." "They responded well, and the insiders didn't," says Fr. Donald Senior, president of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Indeed, the Magi are sometimes used simply...