Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: A thread or two ago, I applied Alter’s notion of a ‘betrothal type-scene’ to John’s ‘woman at the well’ narrative (cf. academia.edu/40181445/).

Here, I formulate a type-scene not discussed by Alter--viz. an ‘extraordinary birth’ type-scene--,

in light of which I analyse three OT narratives (the births of Isaac, Samson, and Samuel) and two NT narratives (the births of John and Jesus).

The results strike me as potentially very fruitful.

Here goes:

The OT contains a number of extraordinary birth scenes.

The key components of these scenes are as follows:

an angel appears to (a member of) a barren couple;

the angel is greeted (gen. with joy) and offered a meal of some kind (often a flour-based cake);

the angel announces its news--viz. that the woman will shortly conceive--,

which is typically met with unbelief;

and, finally, before the angel departs, it provides one or more of three additional details: a] what the child is to be called, b] what the children’s mission will be, and/or c] what conditions the parents and/or child should observe

(typically abstinence from drink).

As I’ve noted elsewhere, not all of these components need to be--or are--explicitly present in each individual instance of our type-scene.

On the contrary, components are routinely omitted/reworked in order to suit each author’s purposes.

What is important to observe, therefore, is not so much the nature of the generic ‘template’, but each scene’s specific twists, i.e., its point(s) of departure from the norm.

With the above background in mind, then, let’s consider some of the OT’s extraordinary births.

The first is found in Gen. 18, i.e., the birth of Isaac.

Gen. 18’s narrative contains most of the key components of our type-scene:

* Sarah is too old to bear children (and Abraham is no spring chicken);

* an angel (in fact, angels) appears to Abraham;

* flour-cakes are prepared for the angel (as is a calf);

* and the birth of a child (Isaac) is announced, which is met with unbelief.

Gen. 18’s narrative also, however, includes two specific twists, i.e., two specific variations on our generic type-scene.

First, no mention is made of what the child’s name or role will be.

Why? Because both of these things have already been revealed to Abraham (cp. Gen. 17.19-22).

As such, the angel’s announcement (of a child to be born) is not a bolt out of the blue (as it is elsewhere),

but the long-awaited fulfilment of a historic promise.

Second, Abraham’s visitor fails to require anything of him and/or Sarah. That is to say, neither parent-to-be is required to abstain from drink (or from anything else), and nor is their child.

The child is even to be named after Sarah’s laughter (יצחק comes from צחק = ‘to laugh’: 18.12 w. 21.6 cp. 17.17), which is a symptom of Sarah’s unbelief.

As such, our text emphasises the initiative and sovereignty of God in the fulfilment of his promise.

The book of Genesis opens with a command for man to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ (פרו ורבו), which is marred and hindered by man’s fall. (It is not Eve’s said which is first said to multiply, but her ‘pain’: cp. רבה in 3.16.)

Consequently, the relevant verbs (רבה and פרה) are converted into causative stems.

God is made their subject, and Abraham their object (cp. 17.2, 6).

Abraham’s line will hence succeed where Adam’s has failed, and its success will be grounded in the ‘I will’ of God

rather than the faithfulness (or otherwise) of Adam.

Scripture’s next extraordinary birth scene is found in Judg. 13.

Here, all of our key components are present:

a barren woman, an angelic appearance, a promise, a condition to be met (abstinence from wine), a flour-cake,

and a statement of the child’s name and mission.

Also apparent is the sense in which the birth (of Samson) marks the genesis of a new move of the Spirit.

In numerical terms, Samson is said to be more Spirit-filled than any other OT character (e.g., 13.25, 14.6, 19, etc.),

and Samson is heralded as a man who will ‘begin’ a new move in history (13.5).

But Samson’s birth scene also includes important twists/variations.

First, Samson’s mission is described only in rather brief and cryptic terms.

‘(Samson) will begin to deliver Israel...’,

the angel declares.

But why only begin? What will hinder him?

Manoah therefore asks the angel exactly what Samson’s mission will consist of (cp. מַה־יִּהְיֶה...מַעֲשֵׂהוּ in 13.12),

but his question is not answered.

As such, Samson’s mission is shrouded in ambiguity from its outset, which is significant, since Samson is one of the most ambiguous figures in OT history.

Samson’s life not only *involves* riddles; it *is* a riddle.

We frequently cannot be sure of Samson’s motives (cp. 14.4),

or of whether he breaks his Nazirite vow (e.g., 14.5, 14.8),

which makes it hard to know what to make of Samson’s life, especially given its apparent lack of impact.

Second, the angel’s status/identity is not appreciated, which reflects the compromised religious environment into which Samson is born (13.1).

Israel have failed to recognise their God, and, in much the same way, Manoah and his wife fail to recognise God’s representative.

Third, the angel appears only to Manoah’s wife. (Manoah attempts to involve himself in the narrative, but is largely unsuccessful.) That fact corresponds to the major role played by women in Samson’s life (and death).

Indeed, Samson’s life can legitimately be said to revolve around a whole series of different women, which is reflected in our text’s careful employment of the word אִשָּׁה = ‘woman’.

The first woman in Samson’s life is his mother,

who would/could have exerted a positive influence on him (14.1-3),

but Samson spurns the advice of his mother (who disappears from the text soon afterwards),

at which point his life begins to spiral out of control. And, as it does so,

our text’s heptads of occurrences of אִשָּׁה include progressively more women within their referents.

The first 14 occurrences of אִשָּׁה refer to Samson’s mother,

the next 7 to Samson’s wife,

and the final 7 to an array of women, included among whom is Delilah.

Our next birth scene is found in 1 Sam. 1, i.e., Samuel’s birth narrative.

I won’t cover it here for the sake of space. (Even I have my limits.)

For those who are interested, I’ll include a link to a pdf later.

As can be seen from even just the two examples above though, our Alter-inspired type-scene approach to the OT’s most obvious examples of ‘extraordinary birth’ scenes seems able to shed helpful light on their nature and purpose.

And the same approach, I submit, can be equally helpful in the case of a NT birth narrative, namely Luke 1.5-66, where the births of John the Baptist and Jesus are described.

First up, then, John.

That John’s birth narrative is cut from the same cloth as our OT-generated type-scenes is plain to see.

Most if not all of the key components are present:

* Elizabeth is barren;

* her husband (Zechariah) is visited by an angel, who tells him Elizabeth will soon bear a child

(who is to be named John and is to abstain from wine);

* and the angel’s news is met with unbelief.

John’s narrative is also connected to its OT counterparts by more specific contact-points:

Like Gen. 18, Luke’s birth narrative concerns two residents of the Judean hillside (cp. 18.1), both of whom are ‘advanced in days’ (cp. Gen. 18.11 בָּאִים בַּיָּמִים w. Luke 1.7’s προβεβηκότες ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις).

Like Judg. 13, Luke’s birth narrative is associated with a fresh move of God’s spirit in Israel (cp. Judg. 13.24, Luke 1.15, 80), though tinged with fear (due to the presence of the angel).

And, like 1 Sam. 1, Luke’s birth narrative involves two godly Levites (1 Sam. 1.7, 1 Chr. 6.33ff., Luke 1.5) who live under the shadow of ungodly leadership in Israel (in Samuel’s case, Hophni and Phinehas; in Luke’s, Herod).

Luke’s narrative clearly, therefore, resonates with both the generic and particular birth scenes discussed above in many important ways. But, just as importantly, it embodies its own distinctive twists.

The first involves the experiences of Zechariah.

Due to his failure to believe the angel’s news, Zechariah is rendered unable to speak. As such, Zechariah becomes a picture of Israel’s spiritual condition, which is highly relevant to the wider narrative of Luke 1-2.

Just as Israel have endured a long period of prophetic silence (viz. the inter-testamental years) about to be broken by the emergence of John the Baptist,

so too Zechariah undergoes a period of silence; and then, as John the Baptist is born, Zechariah regains his voice

and immediately begins to prophesy (1.67ff.).

As such, the text of 1.22 may hint at more than it lets on:

Zechariah does not merely ‘make signs and remain mute’ (1.22);

by virtue of his muteness, Zechariah *becomes* a sign.

Like Ezekiel’s, his silence is a message for all Judah to hear and consider (cp. Ezekiel’s sign-act in Ezek. 3.26 w. 4.3).

Second, whereas Isaac’s birth narrative is framed against the backdrop of Sodom and Egypt’s infertility, the opposite is true of Luke’s birth narrative.

Consider the flow of Gen. 18-21’s events.

Isaac’s birth narrative makes us wait for its conclusion, since, before we are told about Isaac’s birth (in ch. 21), we are told about:

a] the experiences of Lot in Sodom, where men engage in acts which cannot result in reproduction (Gen. 19), and

b] the experiences of Abraham and Sarah in Egypt (cp. Gen. 18b-20), where God ‘closes the wombs’ of the royal household (Gen. 20).

As such, Isaac’s birth is framed against a backdrop of infertility, which serves to depict Isaac as a lone tributary in a barren land.

John’s birth narrative employs a similar device.

Before we are told about John’s birth, we are told about the experiences of Mary (cp. 1.26-56 w. 36).

But, of course, an important difference distinguishes the experiences of Abraham’s kinsman (Lot) from Elizabeth’s kinswoman (Mary).

Unlike Lot, Mary is associated with fruitfulness and fertility. John is not, therefore, portrayed as a lone tributary, but one of ‘two golden lamps’ = ‘anointed ones’, who jointly begin a new move of the Spirit in Judah (cp. Zech. 4).

Meanwhile, in contrast to the couplets described in Hannah’s story (cp. Peninnah and Hannah w. Saul and David), John and Jesus work in harmony and tandem.

Finally, then, we come to Jesus’ birth scene.

Again, we find most of our type-scene’s key components present:

a woman unable to reproduce, an angelic messenger who brings good news, a name for the child to be born, and a condition to be met on Mary’s behalf (abstinence from sexual relations: Matt. 1.25).

We can also identify more specific contact-points with our scene’s OT counterparts.

For instance: like 1 Sam. 1, Luke’s birth narrative involves two godly parents who travel up to the Tabernacle/Temple on a yearly basis, and Mary’s song of praise is reminiscent of Hannah’s (cp. 1.46ff. w. 1 Sam. 2: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord,...for he’s looked on the humble’).

When Jesus is presented in the Temple, we even encounter a woman named Anna (the Greek form of ‘Hannah’), who (like Samuel) is permanently attached to the Temple, where she ‘fasts and prays’ (2.36-37).

But, of course, we also have two important twists to consider in Jesus’ case.

First, Mary is unable to reproduce not because she is barren, but because she is a virgin, which (needless to say) is a whole different category. As such, Jesus’ is the ultimate in extraordinary births, which is informative in terms of what it tells us about Jesus’ mission.

For Abraham and Sarah to bring forth a son in their old age--and hence continue Abraham’s line--is said to be ‘difficult’ (Gen. 18.14), but for a virgin to bring forth a son is not merely ‘difficult’, but ‘impossible’ (ἀδυνατέω: Luke 1.37),

just as it is for man to bring about his own salvation (Job 14.4).

As such, the nature of Jesus’ birth matches the nature of his mission.

That Jesus’ is the most extraordinary of births also gives us reason to view him as the culmination of our OT scenes:

as the ultimate seed of Abraham in whom the nations of the earth will be blessed (Gen. 22.18 cp. Gal. 3),

the one who will not merely ‘begin’ to deliver his people, but will finish the job (cp. Judg. 13.5),

and the one who can truly be said to dwell in the presence of YHWH eternally (cp. עד–עולם in 1 Sam. 1.22).

Second, unlike the mission statements found in our other birth narratives, Luke’s statements about Jesus’ mission are tinged with sorrow and pain.

Jesus is associated with ‘the fall and rise’ of many in Israel (not least himself), a sign which is rejected, and a ‘sword’ which will ‘pierce (Mary’s) heart’ (2.34-35). And, soon afterwards, Jesus is lost for three days at the time of the Passover (2.43ff.),

which foreshadows a future Passover when Jesus will again vanish for three days.

As such, what is said of Jesus at the time of his birth foreshadows the distinctives of his Messianic mission:

he will be rejected; he will inexplicably fall, which will result in pain

both to himself and to others; and yet, ultimately, he will rise in such a way as to lay bare the thoughts of men before God (Luke 2.35).

FINAL REFLECTIONS:

The analysis of different types/narratives is not a science, and can therefore be difficult to carry out and assess. That said, the method of analysis employed above strikes me as helpful since:

a] it provides us with a systematic means to analyse a group of similar narratives (and yet respect their differences), and

b] its results strike me as impressive.

Each instance of our ‘extraordinary birth’ type-scene has its own specific twist,

and each specific twist reflects the distinctives of its immediate context.

Isaac’s birth narrative makes no mention of Isaac’s name/mission since, unlike its counterparts, it is the (long-awaited) fulfilment of a prior promise.

Meanwhile, no requirements are placed on Abraham and Sarah, since the fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham is peculiarly grounded in the ‘I will’ of Abraham’s God.

Samson’s birth narrative is shrouded in ambiguity, which reflects the ambiguity present in his entire life;

it also places special emphasis on the role of an unnamed woman, which reflects the unique extent to which Samson’s life is influenced by women (all apart from one of whom are unnamed).

John’s birth narrative results in the silence of Zechariah

and is bound up with the birth of Jesus, since John’s ministry is set against the backdrop of Israel’s silent years and is inextricably bound up with the ministry of Jesus.

And Jesus’ birth narrative is notable for its extraordinary nature and ominous undertones,

since Jesus’ mission will be the most extraordinary of all its predecessors and will culminate in the very fall and rise described by Simeon.

As such, a type-scene-based analysis of the four narratives outlined above strikes me as highly fruitful,

which is not an insignificant fact, since it testifies to the fundamental unity and indivisibility of Scripture.

The birth narratives outlined above are illuminated not only by what they explicitly say, but by what they leave unsaid,

which can be determined only by a holistic study of all of Scripture. As Jesus himself said, ‘Scripture cannot be broken up (λυθῆναι)’.

THE END.

P.S. academia.edu/40215035/