Luke 1 - John The Baptist's Birth

John The Baptist's Birth

Friends and neighbors come to circumcise him and try to name him after his father, but his mother protests and then his father writes down that his name will be John, and is suddenly allowed to speak again. He becomes "...filled with the Holy Spirit...", as his wife before him. He sings a song, the Canticle of Zechariah, praising God. Luke then only states that John grew up and went into the desert. This is the only near contemporary account of John's family found anywhere. Brown saw this as echos of the births of Samson in Judges 13:24-25 and Samuel in 1 Samuel 2:21. (Brown 233) Karris sees relating the circumcision, as Luke also does for Jesus in Luke 2, as Luke's way of linking John and Jesus, and therefore Christianity, to a fulfillment of Israel. (Brown et al. 682)

The first part of Zechariah's song praises the still unborn Jesus in verses 68-75. He says "He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David...", with a horn representing strength, such as in Psalm 89:17 and 92:10. (Miller 120) There is then a praising and foretelling of John in verses 76-77, then the song switches back to Jesus in 78-79. Raymond E. Brown thought these sections might have been Jewish Christian hymns linked together by Luke. (Brown et al. 682) It is a common thesis that the Magnificat, the Canticle, and the two songs in chapter 2, the Gloria in Excelsis Deo and the Nunc dimittis, were added by Luke to his original composition from a collection of hymns written in Greek. A minority of scholars think the Magnificat and Canticle might be Jewish hymns taken by the Christians, but Jewish hymns of the period reflect a future hope of God's help whereas these refer to it already having been fulfilled. Another group of scholars, also a minority, argue these were originally composed in Aramaic or Hebrew and so might come from original testimony and so usually argue for these songs' historicity. Scholars often see these as primitive as so probably composed before other songs in the New Testament, such as Philippians 2:6-11. (Brown 232) David is mentioned in the first section, once again linking Jesus to fulfillment of Israel's past. The song ends with a note of peace, a common Lukan theme. Peace is the first thing he says to all the gathered Apostles in Luke 24.

Luke's source for this information is unknown and frequently debated. Even if the Q hypothesis is correct, these stories of John's and Jesus's birth were not in it, nor are they in Mark. Luke does not list anything about an Angel visiting Joseph, which suggests that either Matthew and Luke received their information on this subject from different sources, or Luke has access to both stories, knows Matthew is already circulating, and is filling in the story told in Matthew. If Luke is right, Jesus and John were cousins of some sort.