Joan Taylor recently published a book about Jesus' childhood, Boy Jesus (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Academic, 2025). Taylor is a scholar who's specialized in the study of Judaism and Christianity in the ancient world. She isn't a conservative, but her book argues for conservative views on some significant issues related to Jesus' childhood (e.g., Jesus' Davidic ancestry, the credibility of his genealogies, his Bethlehem birthplace). So, the book is a good illustration of the fact that conservative conclusions are often supported by non-conservative scholarship.
But Taylor takes some positions I disagree with, and I want to link several of my posts addressing those issues. She cites Yigal Levin's work against the idea that Jesus could have been considered a son of Joseph by adoption. She doesn't interact with Caleb Friedeman's response to Levin, discussed in the second hyphenated section of my post here. See here for my argument against the notion that Luke's infancy narrative wasn't finalized into its canonical form until the time of Marcion. On objections to the historicity of Luke's census account, I've written many posts, such as here and here. (To Taylor's credit, though, she's more reasonable than many other critics of the census account, such as by acknowledging that the census wasn't ancestral and that Joseph had more than an ancestral relationship with Bethlehem. On the evidence for such conclusions, see here.) She thinks Jesus' family was more supportive of him than they likely were. On the unbelief of his family (faith mixed with unbelief in the cases of Joseph and Mary), see Eric Svendsen's Who Is My Mother? (Amityville, New York: Calvary Press, 2001). Taylor probably thinks the family's unbelief would be too problematic for the historicity of other parts of the New Testament (and whatever extrabiblical sources), but they're not too difficult to reconcile. See the section of the post here discussing Matthew 13:54-55, for example. I've also discussed the subject elsewhere, like here on the gospel of Mark in general. Since Taylor mentions some early sources who rejected the virgin birth and sometimes cites Andrew Lincoln's book against the virgin birth, go here and here for my discussion of how widely the virgin birth was accepted early on, in response to Lincoln, and here for my overall assessment of Lincoln's book. On the issues Taylor is right about, she often leaves out a lot of the evidence that could be mentioned. There's far too much of that to discuss all of it here, but see, for example, this post on Jesus' relatives for further evidence supporting Jesus' Davidic ancestry and the genealogies (e.g., Luke's use of James as a source, James' comments on Davidic ancestry in Acts 15). Or see here on the Bethlehem birthplace. Or here on how much Matthew and Luke agree about Jesus' childhood.
The book goes into a lot of depth about what we know of the context of Jesus' childhood from extrabiblical sources, like Josephus and archeology. A lot of ground is covered: the physical characteristics of Bethlehem and Nazareth, what Joseph and Jesus would have done in their work as builders, connections between Jesus' childhood and his public ministry (e.g., his parables and illustrations), etc. You'll probably disagree with much of the book, but also learn some significant things from it.
So does Taylor think that Luke's infancy narrative wasn't finalized until the time of Marcion? Or was that just the place in your post where you addressed the view that Jesus couldn't have been taken as Joseph's son by adoption? If she doesn't think he was taken as Joseph's son by adoption, how does she account for various verses (in Luke and John) where the people say that he's Joseph's son (Matt. 13:55, John 6:42)? Am I right in thinking that she doubts the historicity of the census?
ReplyDeleteHer comments on some topics are often or entirely uncommitted, and the dating of Luke's infancy narrative is one of those topics (e.g., "It may well be...there is a plausible suggestion", approximate Kindle location 2567). She argues that the author of Luke's infancy narrative wrote after the gospel of Matthew was published and wrote to address "questions [that] appear to arise from a later Christian milieu in a non-Jewish world." (2652) She refers to "the independence of the Lukan nativity and its inclusion only in the final redaction of the Gospel of Luke, as late as the early second century itself" (4868). The term "as late as" more naturally suggests the date when the infancy narrative was added, but she may have intended only to refer to the latest potential date within a range of possible dates. And different people use the term "early" differently. I think "mid" would better express the dating of a response to Marcion, but her "early" may include the closing years of the first half of the second century. At one point, she writes, "The stories of the Lukan nativity work well as an answer to people who distanced themselves from Judaism (such as Cerdo and Marcion), in continually emphasising the importance of Jewish Scripture, and Jewish customs, for the family of Jesus." (2823) She may just be citing Cerdo and Marcion as later examples of a type of person who could have existed earlier as well. Whatever date she assigns the infancy narrative to, if she's even arrived at a position on the subject, she at least treats the second-century dating, and seemingly a dating at the time of Marcion, with more favor than any other position. She gives that dating the most attention and cites a lot of the work done by advocates of that view. Much of her argumentation depends on the assumption of a late date. For example, "The notion that our canonical Luke was a final redaction of a prior gospel (with Acts), designed to answer Marcionite theological positions, prompts us to propose a solution to the relationship between the nativity stories of Luke and Matthew, viewing the Lukan nativity as a separate unit incorporated into this final redaction." (2644) Even there, you could take "Marcionite" as allowing for pre-Marcion sources who held views somewhat similar to Marcion's. It seems that Taylor leans in the direction of a second-century date for the finalization of Luke's infancy narrative, probably even dating it to the time after Marcion's apostasy, but her language is pretty ambiguous and uncommitted. And since the book is a few hundred pages long, I could easily be overlooking one or more relevant passages. She does better when addressing other topics, both in terms of correctness and clarity, but the dating of Luke's infancy narrative is handled poorly.
DeleteOn the relationship between Joseph and Jesus, there are similar problems with her being ambiguous and uncommitted. She often moves around, back and forth, sometimes discussing what certain scholars believe, sometimes addressing the view expressed by a particular Christian source, sometimes discussing a view she considers possible, sometimes discussing a view she considers probable. At times, it's unclear whether a view she's addressing is her own. She cites early sources who believed or may have believed that Jesus was conceived through normal intercourse between Joseph and Mary, but she also discusses the possibility of getting pregnant through abnormal sexual activity, cites a Jewish interpretation of Psalm 51 to that effect, and refers to the potential for a virgin birth involving the transference of material from Joseph to Mary (a view I hold). I don't recall any passage where she affirms or denies the virgin birth.
DeleteShe rejects the historicity of Luke's census account. For example, "The fifteenth year of Tiberius gives us the year from 19 August 28 CE. At this point, Jesus was ‘about thirty years of age’ (Luke 3:23). This by implication indicates that Jesus would have been born c.6–1 BCE, if we allow some vagueness about his age (i.e. he was between 28 and 33 years old). This fits with Jesus being born in the final years of the life of Herod (who probably died in 4 BCE), correlating well with what is stated in Matthew. The problem for the historicity of the Lukan nativity is that there simply was no census at this time." (2814) "However, as we saw in Chapter 5, it is likely that the Lukan census is a fusion: one component was one of the Augustan censuses of Roman citizens, likely that of 8 BCE, given that the census took place by order of ‘Caesar Augustus’ and was a directive that ‘all the world’ should be taxed (2:1); the other component was the census that took place when the region became a Roman province proper and no longer a client kingdom, when Quirinius was indeed legate of Syria, in 6 CE." (4238) But she's less critical of the census than many people are, such as in acknowledging that the author didn't intend to refer to the census as ancestral and that Joseph had more than an ancestral relationship with Bethlehem.