Some Observations on the Language in the Birth and Infancy Stories of the Third Gospel

Abstract

The close affinity in diction and style, and also in the association of ideas, between the first two chapters of the Gospel according to Luke and the great mass of ancient Hebrew literature—even occasionally actual verbal agreements with passages from the thirteenth chapter of Judges or from the story of Samuel's birth—might indicate, yet does not incontrovertibly prove, that the Greek record of Luke i, ii is ultimately derived from a Hebrew literary source. There is nothing inherently impossible in the idea that a Greek writer, thoroughly familiar with the literary character of the O.T. translation and desirous of proceeding with his own narration of the Birth and Boyhood of Jesus, could have intentionally and successfully imitated the style of the Greek Old Testament. He might have adopted Septuagintal mannerisms of phraseology in the belief that a Hebraizing style would be the appropriate means to evoke a congenial atmosphere for the setting of his story. We know from literary competitions in our own time that Englishmen of the twentieth century are capable of imitating convincingly the styles of Ronsard or Rabelais. What is possible for them today would not have been impossible, in his day, for the editor of Luke, who was a man of great literary accomplishment.