Abstract

The phenomena of dreams and the star of Bethlehem in Matthew’s birth narrative have intrigued scholars through the ages. Scholarship in this regard went through the stages of identifying the origin of the material and of arguing the historicity of these events. Currently scholarship is moving into a new stage of investigating the meaning of these narratives. Without engaging the arguments developed by the first two stages mentioned, I investigate the significance of these unusual forms of revelation in this article.

Highlights

  • Scholarship on the infancy narrative in Matthew has passed through two stages

  • It is commonly assumed that the birth narrative represent a mosaic of parts, all combining to celebrate the birth of the Messiah

  • 2.1 Matthew’s dream reports Of all the New Testament writers, Matthew especially deals with revelation through dreams

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Scholarship on the infancy narrative in Matthew has passed through two stages. The first stage was in recognizing that the birth material probably had a different origin than that of Jesus’ ministry and passion. The concept of dreams as portrayed in Matthew’s narrative does not correlate with the modern view of dreams Another complicating factor is that reportedly startling events such as a moving star in a totally irregular way left no astronomical record (Brown 1975:575). This has lead some scholars to believe that the story of the dreams and the star of Bethlehem were fiction invented by the author Such an option is opted for especially by those engaged in the so-called Quests for the Historical Jesus.[1] But scholarship has entered a third, more positive, stage by investigating the meaning and significance of this. Matthew apparently links up with such Old Testament forms of revelation, and transcends to the revelation in Jesus

DREAMS
Scholars delineate dream reports according to form-critical elements
Matthew’s report of the Star of Bethlehem
Traditional exegesis
Stars in antiquity
CONCLUSION

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