I see there are a lot of posts here, so I don’t imagine one more will make much difference. But I think the debate over the historicity of the Gospel nativity stories could be helped by considering whether Matthew and Luke (the only two to write such narratives) meant to write literal history or something else.
When you read Luke’s nativity narrative (beginning with the announcement to Zechariah through Jesus’ birth) it is evident that he is following some sort of formula rather than trying to tell a scientific history. For example, both Zechariah’s and Mary’s canticles (the Magnifcat in Mary’s case) are carefully structured poems that are unlikely to have been composed on the fly all at once on the spur of a moment. Luke is not trying to tell us that Mary came up with this great poem suddenly out of nothing. Rather, he is using the poem to put Jesus into the context of Israel’s history.
Similarly, in the story about the shepherds in the field, Luke is not trying to tell us about angels and what they did one night. Rather, he is using the angels appearing in the sky and singing to the shepherds as a literary device to help us understand what is really going on in Jesus’ birth. And so on.
Thus, it seems that Luke was not trying to give us a scientific history such as a 21st century historian might try to do. Rather, he seems to be telling the story of Jesus in a way that readers of his day would “get” so to speak. His readers of course would have been familiar with a Hellenistic style of biography that was common in that day and that routinely used such literary devices. People were used to these literary devices, and most of them knew that they were not meant to be taken literally.
More generally, there is also something apocalyptic about the way Luke and Matthew write. They are using images of angels and miracles to make visible otherwise hidden realities (which is what “apocalyptic” really means). In this they are following the Gospel of Mark. Although Mark did not write a nativity narrative, he wrote the same way.
What this means is this: Luke is not writing a scientific history. Rather, he is using angels, hymns, and miracles as literary devices to reveal to us who Jesus really is and what God is doing through him.
As a result, to get into debates about whether the narratives in Luke or Matthew are scientifically accurate historical accounts is to read and judge them inappropriately as if they were modern writings rather than what they really are – and so therefore to completely miss the point of what they are really saying.
Was Jesus really born of a Virgin? Well, the Church says he was, and for many people that is enough for them to believe it. But the case really cannot be built on Matthew or Luke because the historicity of the Virgin birth was not their point. Their point was who Jesus was, not how he was born.
