'At the Age of 12': The Boy Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:41-52), The Emperor Augustus, and the Social Setting of the Third Gospel

Abstract

The story of the boy Jesus at the age of 12 in the temple (Luke 2:41-52) is often read and understood in relation to its inherently Jewish narrative setting. The probable recipients of Luke-Acts were, however, almost certainly Gentiles living in the cities of Asia Minor in the late first century CE, removed by at least a generation from the Jewish origins of Christianity. The social setting of the recipients is, then, shaped not by the rituals and symbols of late Second Temple Judaism, but those of imperial Rome and, in particular, the legacy and cult of the first of the imperial princeps, that of Augustus. Writing in this milieu, Luke seeks to present Jesus as a significant figure in history in accordance with the conventions of contemporary Greco-Roman biography, and to transmit through his infancy narrative those traditions about Jesus which assist in presenting him as the ultimate superior and successor to the deified Augustus. The episode in the temple is included by Luke in his infancy narrative because it is consistent with, and contributes to, this broader purpose.