The Written Sources Behind The Opening Of Luke's Gospel

Two of the biggest misconceptions people have about Christmas issues are that there wasn't much interest in Jesus' childhood in the earliest decades of church history and that whatever information circulated on the subject prior to the gospels of Matthew and Luke was only disseminated orally. An effective way of addressing both of those misconceptions simultaneously is to focus on the sources Luke cites in the first few verses of his gospel.

Since Luke compares his gospel to those earlier sources, it's likely that those sources were at least mostly written ones. And see here for a discussion of the evidence that the earliest Christians probably wrote much more than modern critics often suggest.

What immediately follows Luke's comments on those earlier sources? A lengthy discussion of Jesus' childhood. While it's possible that none of those earlier sources discussed such issues, continuity is more likely than discontinuity. It's unlikely that the "many" sources Luke refers to showed little or no interest in Jesus' childhood, then Luke departed from them to such a large extent by writing so much about the subject. It's not just that the interests of the early Christians are unlikely to have changed so much so rapidly. It's also that the close proximity between Luke 1:1-4 and what follows from verse 5 onward makes driving a wedge between the two less reasonable.

Consider some of the written sources relevant to Jesus' childhood that are known to have existed or have significant potential to have existed prior to the gospels. As I've noted before, there are parallels between Luke's census material in Luke 2 and what we know of ancient census records. And, as I've also discussed before, a long series of sources from the second century onward reported that a census record mentioning Jesus was extant in their day. Concerning how accessible census records were, see here. I've also noted, such as here, that the Slaughter of the Innocents seems to be partially corroborated by a description of Herod found in the Assumption Of Moses (an early Jewish source whose material on Herod probably was written during Jesus' lifetime). And my post on Jesus' relatives earlier this Christmas season discussed some parallels between Luke's genealogy of Jesus and material found in Jude. It seems likely that Luke derived his genealogy at least in part from the brothers of Jesus, especially James, for reasons explained in the post just linked. That sort of genealogical information makes more sense coming from a written source than it does coming from an oral one. That's true not just because of the length and complexity of genealogies, but also for other reasons. Recall, for example, my citation of Ezra 2:59-62 and Nehemiah 7:61-64 in my post about the relatives of Jesus linked above. Those passages refer to people searching genealogical records, which makes more sense if there were written sources involved. Nehemiah 7:5 refers to "the book of the genealogy". Given how widely ancient Jewish sources kept genealogical records and the widespread interest in Jesus' ancestry reflected in references to aspects of his genealogy in the earliest Christian writings we have (e.g., Romans 1:3, Matthew 1:1-17, Luke 3:23-38), it seems more likely than not that there would have been a genealogy of Jesus in writing before the time of the gospels. When Saul of Tarsus carried letters authorizing his persecution of Christians just after the time of Jesus' death (Acts 9:1-2), there's a good chance that the documents referred to Jesus' background to some extent. A Jewish source Justin Martyr cites in the second century, a source that seems to date back to the first century, refers to Jesus' Galilean background, and we know that Jesus and his followers were widely referred to by their enemies as Nazarenes and Galileans. (See here for documentation and further discussion of the relevant sources.) Even if Saul's letters referred to in Acts 9 didn't contain such information, those letters illustrate how easily written sources addressing Jesus' childhood could have existed. That should caution us against the common skeptical assumption that the early Christian and non-Christian sources were relying entirely or almost entirely on oral information when addressing Jesus' childhood.

The large amount of writing Paul was involved in, including documents no longer extant, the writings of others he refers to, and the reference to "many" accounts of Jesus' life in Luke 1:1 should prevent us from concluding that writing as much as we have in the New Testament documents was a significant departure from what was occurring in the decades just before then. The people who lived in those earlier decades probably wrote a substantial amount as well. And the examples I've provided above illustrate how likely it is that Jesus' childhood was part of what was addressed in those earlier writings.