NATIVE IMPULSE:

Invocations of Political Power in the Synoptic Pre-Ministry Narratives

Rob Heaton [rob.heaton@du.edu]

RLGN 4105: Empire and the Rise of Christianity (Fall 2015)
Dr. Pamela Eisenbaum
November 19, 2015

The word of God comes to the gospel’s readers, as it always does, in cultural garb. There is no
language for [Matthew’s] gospel to employ other than the one that pervades and dominates its
world. The gospel attests, then, the power of the imperial paradigm, the deep level at which it has
been internalized, absorbed, and assumed by this gospel’s traditions.

—Warren Carter, “Resisting and Imitating the Empire”

Contra-cultures to some extent produce mirror images of their host culture: they reverse
the categories and values of what they reflect. Luke is holding up to Theophilus and his
circle inverse images of their pagan culture that reverse the categories and values of what
those images reflect.

—Allen Brent, The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order
I. Introduction

By the time Matthew and Luke sought to write gospels, the ending of Jesus of Nazareth’s

earthly life was set in stone. Dramatic retellings of the story struck a chord precisely because a

groundbreaking second act followed the demise of his body on a Roman cross in the Roman

province of Judaea. From the outset, no deviation was possible from the fact that this Jesus met

his “end” at the hands of political power.1 Paul, who claimed to be an apostle of Jesus Christ,

openly preached “Christ crucified” (1 Cor 1:23).2 Mark, imbuing the gospel with a chronology,

devoted much of his narrative to Jesus’s final week. In comparison, these earliest accounts did

not transmit in written form the beginnings of Jesus’s life.3 Paul’s only surviving nod toward the

origin of Jesus notes its conventional character: he was “born of a woman” (Gal 4:4). Mark

furnished the additional detail that this woman was named Μαρίας (Mk 6:3), but had nothing

else to say about the beginnings of Jesus. Beyond these scanty historical details,4 the early

Christian movement, when curiosity, apologetics, and a sense of proper biography combined to

necessitate a more complete narrative, started with an essentially blank slate. Why is it, then, that

figures of political power—King Herod in Matthew, and Caesar Augustus in Luke—should be

invoked in these stories, when nothing yet on record hinted at such intrigue?

This question stems from an essentially synoptic line of inquiry, but was fostered through

                                                                                                               
1
Our neat categories of “religious” and “political” do not, of course, have direct valence in antiquity as
separate entities, as indeed they (sometimes) do not at present. As Warren Carter has thoroughly stressed, “To speak
religiously in the ancient world was to speak politically, socially, economically, and culturally.” My adjectival use
of “political” here and throughout the essay intends to stress that the powers that appear in the pre-ministry
narratives are primarily heads of state, reigning over and ruling a particular territory, but I am also cognizant of the
other forms of power that they retained simultaneously. Warren Carter, “Resisting and Imitating the Empire:
Imperial Paradigms in Two Matthean Parables,” Interpretation 56.3 (July 2002): 261.
2
Unless noted otherwise, all biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). All
Greek New Testament words are reproduced from the Nestle-Aland 28th edition (NA28).
3
It is widely recognized that Jesus’s story was recounted in reverse, beginning with the passion narrative,
moving then to the events of his life, and finally, to circumstances surrounding his birth and early life. François
Bovon, Luke 1: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 1:1–9:50, trans. Christine M. Thomas, Hermeneia
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 29.
4
I concur with François Bovon: Of the pre-ministry narratives, “only the name of Jesus’ mother and the
family’s residence in Nazareth are historical for certain.” Bovon, 49.

  1
interaction with empire criticism. One difference in my approach compared to those commonly

taken by scholars is my conscious desegregation of Matthew and Luke: I am concerned to view

their work in the discrete pre-ministry narratives together, looking for greater implications

related to the earliest Christianity.5 While conscious of the overreach that is possible in this

sphere of inquiry,6 especially when one’s case is somewhat circumstantial, I am also aware that

Christian writers need not state something explicitly to conjure up certain connotations

associated with the powers that be.7 The analysis that follows seeks to demonstrate that the

integral roles played by figures of power in the Matthean and Lukan pre-ministry narratives are

overlooked and indispensable elements of their authors’ attempts to legitimize Jesus as Messiah

and Savior for their respective audiences. In spite of differing stories and diverging orientations,

the appearance of political power signifies and portends the evangelists’ ambitions not only to

strengthen the case for Jesus’s import in the world, but also to contest the power held by these

authorities. Both authors implicitly depict Jesus as an alternative ruler, effecting symbolic

transfers of power while redefining their audience’s realities. Thus, Matthew’s Jesus is the

legitimate king, and Luke’s Jesus is the true Savior, Lord, initiator of good news, and bringer of

peace. Both evangelists invoke political power at the outset of Jesus’s life in order to inscribe in

these narratives their high aspirations for his afterlife—their present lives.

This essay proceeds with a targeted examination of the pertinent portions of each

gospel—chiefly, Matthew 2:1-23 and Luke 2:1-14, along with their respective narrative

environs. I highlight from each pericope important details that signal the evangelists’

comparative ambitions, using scholarly appraisals and historical fiber to elucidate the relevant
                                                                                                               
5
A major exception to the norm is Raymond E. Brown’s The Birth of the Messiah, which probes both the
Matthean and Lukan pre-ministry narratives and has influenced me tremendously in this endeavor, but even he does
not take up the question I have posed herein.
6
Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica, Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not: Evaluating Empire in New
Testament Studies (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 17-21.
7
By this evidentiary standard—the existence of explicit and direct language—even the book of Revelation
could not be called anti-empire.

  2
context simmering just below the surface of the text. The resulting analysis demonstrates that the

evangelists subtly delegitimize the holder of political power they portray, supplanting him with

the alternative of Jesus and manipulating events to serve the divine plan. In the process, Matthew

and Luke interact with the unspoken imperial zeitgeist, imitating and reflecting empire within

their presentation of Jesus’s beginnings. I conclude with additional thoughts about the collective

work of the pre-ministry narratives, and offer up pertinent implications for future interpretation

of these texts and for the wider sphere of empire criticism.

Rather than allowing my assumptions about Matthew, Luke, and the pre-ministry

narratives to lurk unspoken in the background, they deserve a brief airing here. I regard the

gospel of Matthew as the output of a Jewish Christian situated in Syria in the 80s or 90s CE.8 On

the whole, the gospel is, as Ulrich Luz contends, “a response to the no of Israel’s majority to

Jesus.”9 The gospel of Luke constitutes the first half of two volumes composed by a Gentile

Christian from the coastal region around Asia Minor, likely in Ephesus.10 A dating of the gospel

of Luke in the 80s or 90s CE is possible, but, following Richard Pervo and the Acts Seminar’s

persuasive dating of Acts around 115 CE,11 it becomes likelier that the gospel too is a second-

century production. In contrast to Matthew, Luke reflects a wider historical and geographical

perspective on the gospel. Both were dissatisfied with major and minor elements of Mark’s

narrative, even though they were content to use and adapt its pericopae and general chronology

as the core of their own gospels. Matthew and Luke paid special attention to their respective pre-

ministry narratives, which, though mined perhaps since their creation for historical accuracy, are

                                                                                                               
8
Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, trans. John Bowden
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 30; Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch,
Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 46. I remain willing to call the evangelist Matthew in spite of the
gospel’s official anonymity and the historical improbability that the author was an actual disciple of Jesus.
9
Luz, 55; emphasis added.
10
Richard Pervo, Acts: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 5. I am willing to
call this author Luke despite the widespread recognition that this was no companion of Paul.
11
Ibid.

  3
better approached as narratives reflecting the needs and beliefs of late first-century and early

second-century Christians. I regard neither the Matthean nor the Lukan story as historical. The

two narratives strain coherence, are flatly irreconcilable,12 and fudge historical details in service

of theological goals. Lest Tertullian accuse me of stealing the wise men’s gifts from Jesus (Carn.

Chr. 1.2.1), it will be seen that I fall here in the mainstream of critical scholarship.13 Instead of

being consumed by these questions and issues, I am more concerned to evaluate the rhetorical

accomplishments of the evangelists’ pre-ministry narratives.

II. Political Power in the Matthean Pre-Ministry Narrative

Matthew ch. 2 narrates events shortly after the birth of Jesus. Details about the setting of

the birth are first given here: Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea ἐν ἡµέραις Ἡρῴδου τοῦ

βασιλέως (Mt 2:1). Herod is promptly visited by µάγοι from the East, who inquire about the

location of the child born βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων, which, of course, is the title actually held by

Herod himself. King Herod and “all Jerusalem with him” then learn from the religious

authorities that this birth—as was foretold of the Messiah—took place in Bethlehem, and Herod

sends the delegation of wise men away on a short fact-finding mission (Mt 2:8). Upon arriving,

the magi promptly “knelt down and paid [Jesus] homage” (Mt 2:11). Dreams then prompt the

magi to avoid Herod and Joseph to flee with Jesus and Mary to Egypt, and Herod responds to the

failure of his plan by having all the children under the age of two in Bethlehem killed.

Though Raymond E. Brown suggests that one can reconstruct, at least in rough terms, a

pre-Matthean core of this chapter based on resonances with Hebrew Bible stories about Joseph,

Moses, Balaam, and others, this view has fallen out of favor in recent decades.14 Matthew should

                                                                                                               
12
See Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the
Gospels of Matthew and Luke, rev. ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 189, for a brief overview of the difficulties
reconciling Matthew and Luke’s accounts.
13
Luz, for example, contends that Matthew 2 is “not interested in the laws of historical probability,” and
Brown asserts that the census theme propelling Luke 2 is “dubious on almost every score.” Luz, 105; Brown, 413.
14
Brown, 110-119.

  4
not lightly be denied the capability of weaving together disparate threads of tradition in this

tapestry, especially when it is otherwise recognized that the more obscure fulfillment citations he

uses would make little sense outside of the peculiar narrative he has fashioned.15 Furthermore,

overzealous attention paid to these supposed resonances distracted Brown and others from the

contrast Matthew wanted to draw between Herod and Jesus, perhaps most clearly seen in the way

in which the Gentile magi seek, and pay homage to, Jesus as king. They offered no such

obeisance to Herod, who after the magi’s act of worship is no longer afforded the title βασιλεὺς,

as he was three times previously (vv. 1, 3, and 9). Another striking feature of the chapter, in

contrast to ch. 1, is its preoccupation with location. While Matthew highlights Jerusalem, Egypt,

and Nazareth as relevant locales to Jesus’s story, readers learn now that his birth has taken place

in Bethlehem, and both the journey of the magi and Herod’s startling decree also terminate there.

That Matthew appeals directly to a mixed quotation of Micah 5:2 and 2 Samuel 5:2, from

David’s anointing as king, stresses the importance of Bethlehem as a royal Messianic signifier.

If, as Brown contends, Jews in Matthew’s circle were beginning to charge Jesus as illegitimate

due to his association with Nazareth and Galilee,16 a riposte that located his birth in Bethlehem

was requited. Beyond this, Matthew responded with an implicit counter-charge: it was not Jesus

who was illegitimate, but the well-known, long-reigning king it tolerated.

The conditions by which Herod came to power and maintained his reign would have been

well known to Matthew, and are therefore worth considering here. Herod was not selected by the

remnants of the tribes of Israel, anointed by a prophet, or foretold by an angel of God, but rather

installed by unanimous vote of the Roman Senate at the behest of Mark Antony (Ant. 14.385).

Herod proved so loyal to Roman power, and such a good fundraiser for his suzerain, that he
                                                                                                               
15
Brown, 102-104; Luz, 119. Brown in particular calls attention to the citation of Hosea 11:1, which
requires both a connection of God’s son to Egypt and a knowledge of the verse in something other than the
Septuagint, which, straying from MT, reads τὰ τέκνα αὐτοῦ. Matthew adjusts this to τὸν υἱόν µου (Mt 2:15).
16
Brown, 28, 180.

  5
remained in power even when Octavian defeated Antony nine years later. Josephus, marveling at

the heights to which a Jew could rise in the Roman consciousness, would later claim that “next to

Agrippa there was no one whom Caesar honored more than Herod” (Ant. 15.361).17 Herod, in

short, was selected as king by Rome and completely obedient to that reigning imperial power.

Still, client kings are not able to maintain their rule as long as Herod would—until his

gnarly death in the month of Nisan, 4 BCE—without some degree of consent from the

governed.18 Herod was not altogether evil,19 and developed a certain mythology to legitimize his

reign. Samuel Rocca’s recent account of Herod’s Judaea explains how Herod, though he lacked

a genealogical claim to Davidic ancestry, yet managed to portray himself as a Davidic king and

particularly as the legitimate successor to Solomon. Herod, he notes, restored the Temple Mount

to a sense of its original Solomonic glory, provided a sustained period of peace to Judaea, and

monumentalized the tombs of David and Solomon, giving Jews a proper site to remember their

golden age.20 Rocca also suggests, curiously, that the various ways in which Josephus portrays

Solomon reflects an importing of Herodian artifacts:

Various feats achieved by Josephus’ Solomon … were probably inspired by King

Herod, including the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls; Solomon’s sacrifice in Hebron
(which is not mentioned in the Bible), where Herod built a structure today known as
Haram el-Khalil ... We may posit that Josephus’ depiction of Solomon, inspired by
Herod, goes back to Herodian claims associating Herod with Solomon ... without
Josephus having been entirely aware of the fact.21

In spite of Herod’s attempts to endear himself to his subjects and legitimize himself, he was

widely loathed. Among other reasons, Herod was widely known for summarily disposing of his

                                                                                                               
17
John Gregory, trans., The Life of Herod: From the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus, Everyman Library
(London: J. M. Dent, 1998), 86.
18
Jan Willem van Henten, “Matthew 2:16 and Josephus’ Portrayals of Herod,” in Jesus, Paul, and Early
Christianity, ed. Rieuwerd Buitenwerf, Harm W. Hollander, Johannes Tromp (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 106.
19
Even in Josephus’s frequently hostile account of his rule, Herod is celebrated for providing for his
subjects during a threatening famine in 25 BCE (Ant. 15.299-316).
20
Samuel Rocca, Herod’s Judaea: A Mediterranean State in the Classical World (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2008), 22-27.
21
Ibid., 28; emphasis added.

  6
rivals. Josephus records that Herod murdered 45 loyalists to Antigonus, the last of the

Hasmonean kings of Judaea, and turned Antigonus himself over to Mark Antony for execution

(Ant. 15.5-10). A short time later, Herod ordered that Aristobulus, a young Hasmonean high

priest, be drowned (Ant. 15.53-56). To eliminate any chance that Octavian would depose him and

opt for a king of higher birth, Herod had the 81-year-old Hyrcanus executed (Ant. 15.177-182).

Perhaps most alarmingly, though, were Herod’s executions of his wife Mariamme (Ant. 15.234-

239) and two of his own sons to eliminate any threat they posed to his reign (Ant. 16.392-394).

Josephus eloquently concludes his account of Herod’s life with an ambivalent sort of epitaph:

“He was a man of indiscriminate cruelty, with an ungovernable temper and a contempt for

justice, yet fortune favored him as much as any man” (Ant. 17.191).22

I submit that Matthew pressed these various qualities of Herod—his subservience to

imperial rule, his murderous tendencies, and his likely self-substantiation as Solomonic king—

into service to supersede Herod with the example of Jesus. Matthew imported Herod into the

story of Jesus23 precisely because his reign was terrifyingly legendary, and the proper contrastive

device to demonstrate Jesus as the true king christened for Israel.24 Herod’s life was especially

ripe for Matthew’s co-option because it was, by this time, already standardized and recorded for

posterity. Compellingly, Jan Willem van Henten has discovered significant correspondences

between Josephus’s presentation of Herod in the Antiquities and Matthew’s portrayal of Herod.

For one, Herod in both accounts becomes disturbed upon learning about competitors to his reign,

even down to the linguistic level: both in Matthew 2:3, in response to Jesus, and Ant. 16.75, in

response to the sons he would soon have killed, a passive form of ταράσσω is accompanied by

                                                                                                               
22
Translation per Gregory, 173.
23
Though the gospel of Mark situates John the Baptist’s death at the hands of “Herod” (Mk 6:14ff.) and
features Jesus warning his disciples to “beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod” (Mk 8:15), the
Herod intended by these references is Herod Antipas, tetrarch over Galilee, and not Herod the Great.
24
van Henten, 119.

  7
ἀκούσας.25 Matthew’s Herod orders that the so-called “Murder of the Innocents” be carried out

in Bethlehem, aligning with the general murderous character that Josephus depicts when Herod

perceives a threat to his rule. By creating this tale, Matthew implicitly asserts that Herod

“opposes God’s plan for humanity,” a plan that includes an altogether different kind of king.26

David Bauer, finding that the overall orientation of ch. 2 is the theme of kingship and legitimate

rule, stresses that even Herod knew in this instance what was coming—not merely another

challenger to his reign, but the Messiah (Mt 2:4).27 Jesus, furthermore, will save people not from

their rivals or political enemies, but their sins.28 Though no more than a child, Jesus is the polar

opposite of Herod: whereas Herod will kill indiscriminately to preserve his power and save his

life, Jesus’s mission is to save people, even at the expense of sacrificing himself.

Conclusion

Matthew is concerned in this second chapter, as well as in the genealogy, conception and

birth stories that precede it, with demonstrating the legitimacy of Jesus as both Messiah and king.

To accomplish his goal, Matthew relies not only on passages from the Hebrew Bible that are

fulfilled in some way by the details of Jesus’s life, but on the foil of an illegitimate half-Idumean

king, who reigned in the consciousness of Jews long past his demise both for the cruelty

associated with his long stay in power and the monumental manifestations of it. Whereas Herod

wished to bill himself as the successor to Solomon, and therefore Davidic by analogy, Matthew’s

                                                                                                               
25
van Henten, 114-115; 120. Beyond this, Herod responds by convening assemblies (Mt 2:4) and is
overcome by “furious anger” when he senses that he has been humiliated (Mt 2:16). In spite of these lexical and
thematic correspondences he has identified, van Henten stops short of claiming that Matthew is directly dependent
upon Josephus, suggesting instead that Matthew could have known a common source used by Josephus. The
possibilities are especially intriguing after Pervo demonstrated convincingly that Luke knew and used Josephus
widely in his second volume. Pervo, 12. In the absence of deeper study, and the distinct lack of a second volume by
Matthew, I suppose van Henten’s hesitance is warranted. Whether or not Matthew knew of Josephus’s Antiquities,
however, it is clear that something about Herod was readily available to be manipulated when he wrote his gospel.
26
van Henten, 107.
27
David R. Bauer, “The Kingship of Jesus and the Matthean Infancy Narrative: A Literary Analysis,” The
Catholic Biblical Quarterly 57.2 (April 1995): 307-308.
28
Bauer, 310.

  8
king was, very plainly, the son of David by ancestry. Whereas Herod was declared King of the

Jews by the human rulers of a far-off empire, Matthew’s king was conceived, protected, and

anointed by the providence of God and God’s spirit, and indeed, recognizable by Gentiles at the

very first from the facts of nature.

Writing as he likely was in the last decades of the first century CE, Matthew’s invocation

of King Herod should properly be understood as a Jewish(-Christian) critique against other Jews.

Much as ch. 2 solves a basically Jewish dilemma by working a Bethlehem birth into the fiber of

Jesus’s story, the Herod story indicts “the chief priests and scribes of the people” (Mt 2:4) as

well as “all Jerusalem” (Mt 2:3) for kowtowing, if only by analogy, to a ruthless dictator when

God had sent a more legitimate king who was beginning to attract scores of Gentiles into his

fold. Herod’s murderous response to being out-tricked by God can stand on its own as further

evidence of the king’s illegitimacy, and sufficiently fits Josephus’s characterization of Herod’s

character as possessing “no trace of humanity” (Ant. 17.180).29

With Herodian rule a thing of the past, Matthew thumbing his nose at Herod was an

essentially safe method of contrasting Jesus with the powers that be and contesting their rule.

The option Luke takes, in comparison, would not be as innocuous.

III. Political Power in the Lukan Pre-Ministry Narrative

Luke opens his narrative not in Bethlehem, but at least implicitly, in Rome. In his

Septuagintizing style, Luke writes: “In those days a decree went out from Καίσαρος Αὐγούστου

that all the world should be registered” (Lk 2:1). That this is an official census is made clearer by

his use of the noun ἀπογραφὴ in the next verse, when Luke specifies that this census occurred

under Quirinius, governing the Roman province of Syria. Luke then notes, to the consternation

of scholarship, that the census required families to trek to their hometowns to register for this

                                                                                                               
29
Translation per Gregory, 172.

  9
census, thus necessitating Joseph and Mary’s journey from Nazareth, their home, to Bethlehem,

“because [Joseph] was descended from the house and family of David” (Lk 2:4). Mary gives

birth in Bethlehem, and the scene immediately shifts to nearby fields, where an angel of the Lord

proclaims to a group of shepherds, “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:

to you is born this day in the city of David a σωτὴρ, who is χριστὸς κύριος” (Lk 2:10-11). After

giving the shepherds a sign, a “heavenly host” appears to declare “Glory to God in the highest

heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” (Lk 2:13-14). The scene closes after

the shepherds make their way to Bethlehem, sharing their story and praising God.

Well into the last century, scholars tended to view Luke as a “historian of the first rank”

based, primarily, on the prologue that opens his gospel, and therefore went to great lengths to

demonstrate the historical accuracy of his accounts.30 This deferential view of Luke has been

slow to die out; within the last generation of scholarship, John Nolland could claim that “Luke

has investigated carefully everything from way back, even to the events surrounding the birth of

Jesus.”31 Brown, in an otherwise excellent commentary on the problems associated with the

census,32 characterizes it as a “Lucan device based on a confused memory.”33 Rather than

understanding Luke as mistaken in the matter of the dubious census, I submit that he has

intentionally used this device in an ahistorical manner to fulfill his greater goals. As virtually

every commentator notes, the particular census Luke imagines allows him to exploit Caesar

                                                                                                               
30
A. T. Robertson, Luke the Historian in the Light of Research (New York: Scribner Press, 1920), 107.
Robertson, 120, excused Luke’s contention that the entire world was to be covered in Caesar’s census as “harmless
hyperbole,” and condemned the use of it against Luke’s trustworthiness as mere “pettifogging criticism.”
31
John Nolland, Luke 1–9:20, vol. 35A of Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word Books, 1989), 12.
While Nolland conceded the multitude of problems inherent with the worldwide census, he regarded it as basically
true—as the actual impetus that took the pregnant Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem. “Each particular
census,” he suggested, “initiated by Augustus was an expression of a consistent empire-wide policy. Luke’s words
need mean no more than to express this setting in broader imperial policy.” Nolland, 111.
32
Given that this ground has been so thoroughly covered by recent scholars, I see no need to address the
multitude of problems associated with the supposed worldwide census under Quirinius. For a thorough background,
see especially Bovon, 84, and Brown, 547-556.
33
Brown, 413.

  10
Augustus as the agent who unwittingly enacts the prophetic expectation of a ruler born in

Bethlehem.34 Luke has selected a census from a litany of other events that could have taken the

family to Bethlehem35 precisely because he could construe it to affect the entire empire,

involving peoples of the world beyond Palestine.

Furthermore, the order for a worldwide census could only come from Augustus. We

know that Augustus issued edicts for registrations of the type that Luke intends to conjure, for

his Res Gestae tells of them. As Allen Brent aptly points out, there was in Rome a “religious

dimension” to the act of census-taking, particularly in the performance of a lustrum that marked

the conclusion of the census and signified a citizenry purified and ready to contribute financially

or militarily to the Roman cause.36 The post-registration lustrum, then, represented a symbolic

enactment of the pax Romana, made possible by the dutiful response of its people. Brent argues

that “the reformed cult in which Augustus as Pontifex Maximus achieved the pax deorum, now

almost equivalent to the saeculum aureum, requires a census.”37 While a religious aspect is

distinctly lacking from the modern conception of the census, Luke would not have been unaware

of its greater sphere of meaning in the Roman Empire.

Also present in the backdrop of Luke’s chapter is the cult that had formed around

Augustus, and which was particularly strong in the coastal cities of Asia Minor, the region from

which he composed his gospel. When Luke was active, despite the fact that as many as 10 or 11

emperors had come and gone over the better part of a century, “it was the figure of Augustus

who continued to cast a shadow over the cities of Asia Minor.”38 Augustus was heralded for his

                                                                                                               
34
Brown, 415; David L. Tiede, Luke, Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament (Minneapolis:
Augsburg Publishing House, 1988), 67; Bradly S. Billings, “‘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,” Journal of Theological Studies 60.1
(April 2009): 88; Allen Brent, The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 83.
35
Bovon, 81.
36
Brent, 84.
37
Brent, 85.
38
Billings, 83.

  11
accomplishments as princeps, and took on many of the titles that Luke ascribes to Jesus: savior,

lord, and son of god among them. In spite of Dean Pinter’s attempt to suggest that Luke could

have simply been “naïve” about the elements pointing toward the imperial cult, it is worthwhile

to consider the propaganda that permeated Luke’s culture.39

Even in his own lifetime, there developed around Augustus a certain Messianic, salvific

aura, in spite of his attempts to temper such overreach. In the era when Octavian was still a

triumvir, Virgil wrote in his Eclogues of a golden age yet to be delivered by a “divine child born

of a Virgin.”40 Though Virgil at this point did not ascribe an identity to the expected divine child,

he later would in the Aeneid, completed well into Augustus’s reign as princeps: “This man, this

is he whom you have often heard promised, Augustus Caesar, born of the god, he will bring the

golden age again to Latium, through the land reigned over by Saturn once upon a time” (Aen.

6.791-794).41 Augustus brags, furthermore, of the quality and longevity of the peace that he

delivered to the empire in the primary account of his accomplishments:

While I was the princeps, the Senate ordered that the door of Janus Quirinius, which
our ancestors wanted to be shut when peace was attained by victories through the
whole territory of the Roman people, on land and sea, be shut three times, though
before I was born it was only recorded to have been shut twice during all the time
since the foundation of the city.42 (Res. Gest. 13)

Inscriptional evidence, including the well-known Priene Inscription, further exemplifies the

propaganda surrounding Augustus. Part of the inscription refers to Augustus as “a savior who

has ended war, setting things right in peace,” echoing the claims made in his Res Gestae. Yet, it

was not only the accomplishments of Augustus’s reign that were celebrated; as the development

inherent in Virgil attests, his very birth was portrayed as “good news.” The inscription continues,

“Caesar when revealed surpassed the hopes of all who had anticipated the good news, not only
                                                                                                               
39
Dean Pinter, “The Gospel of Luke and the Roman Empire,” in McKnight and Modica, 110.
40
Brent, 54.
41
Mark Reasoner, Roman Imperial Texts: A Sourcebook (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 29.
42
Ibid., 18.

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going beyond the benefits of those who had preceded him, but rather leaving no hope of

surpassing him for those who will come, because of him the birthday of God began good news

for the world.”43 Though Luke may not have encountered each particular inscription or text

invoked here, these elements of the imperial ideology and of Augustus’s biography undoubtedly

constituted for Luke “a fact of daily life,” and he readily transposed them to his account of the

birth of Jesus.44 In so doing, Luke rejects the validity of claims made for Caesar, applying the

titles of σωτὴρ and κύριος to Jesus and furthermore asserting that the good news and peace on

earth are enabled by his birth. Luke depends entirely upon the logic and the mythology behind

the empire, but presents for his audience a replacement ruler. To suggest that Luke produced this

gospel, and particularly the parallels between Jesus and Augustus in ch. 2 while yet being

“naïve” about the imperial cult thriving in his midst, may well be the height of absurdity.

In spite of this imperial backdrop to his gospel, scholars, not without supporting narrative

evidence, typically contend Luke views the “good news” as rather amenable to Rome. Brown

suggests that the angelic proclamation in ch. 2 only constitutes “gentle counterpropaganda”

against Augustus, for example, and otherwise finds that Luke’s Jesus “was innocent of political

ambition and was not a promoter of revolt.”45 François Bovon and Seyoon Kim both regard

Luke’s conception of the gospel as “politically innocuous.”46 On the other hand, Bovon can

marvel over the unexpectedly explicit claims made about Jesus, including the everlasting nature

of his kingdom, in Luke 1:32-33, and Kim can otherwise attest that, in Luke’s mind, “the Empire

of Rome and the lordship of Caesar are to be replaced by the Kingdom of God and the Lordship

of Jesus Christ.”47 What might explain these seemingly contradictory statements? I believe it

                                                                                                               
43
Both quotations from the Priene Inscription via Reasoner, 32.
44
Billings, 77.
45
Brown, 424; 416.
46
Bovon, 9; Seyoon Kim, Christ and Caesar: The Gospel and the Roman Empire in the Writings of Paul
and Luke (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 77.
47
Bovon, 51; Kim, 191.

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may be a case of scholars internalizing and prioritizing a certain set of data about Luke—in

particular, how he goes out of his way to exculpate Roman authority when Christian figures

come into contact with them. However, in the face of certain other data, scholars can see more

clearly Luke’s radical intent to challenge and subvert power. Certainly, Luke never calls for open

revolt against the Roman Empire, but his pre-ministry narrative dismantles the ideology

supporting the cult of Augustus, rendering that which is actually Caesar’s within his narrative

environment instead to God and God’s son. Luke successfully blends themes present both in the

imperial cult and the Septuagint to emphasize Jesus and render Augustus inferior—and

practically invisible to audiences not steeped in its propaganda. Without directly criticizing the

emperor, Luke contested the ideological and religious space he inhabited, elevating Jesus as the

rightful owner of the titles and traditions supporting the celebration of his achievements.48

Conclusion

Luke’s “good news” is no less than a competing and, in his view, superior claim to the

“good news” of Augustus. He very purposefully locates the beginning of his pre-ministry

narratives in the supposed golden age of Augustus, for he is convinced that the gospel message

has bearing on a wider world, both geographically and ideologically. To accomplish his goals,

Luke marshaled the ubiquitous reality of the census, because “he needed to parallel for his

readers in Theophilus’ circle the birth of Jesus with the founder of the Imperial Cult, and thus to

compare the religious claims made by the former with his claims for the latter.”49 Luke has

broadened the gospel that he inherited to include, from the very outset, an explicit orientation

toward himself, his community, the most excellent Theophilus, and, by appeal to the mission

statement propelling his second volume, “the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

                                                                                                               
48
Billings, 88.
49
Brent, 87.

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 In spite of the narrative devices within Luke that suggest Jesus is a “politically

innocuous” character, nothing is more threatening to the holder of power than a movement that

seeks to usurp and replace one’s authority, and no amount of nuance regarding the precise

character of the replacement kingdom could possibly coax its acceptance. Luke, employing the

same sensibilities, themes, ambitions, and logic supporting the imperial cult, offers his readers a

replacement for the worship of Augustus and his successors. The shepherds of ch. 2 suggest his

expected response to the declaration of this replacement kingdom: immediate action, worship of

Jesus, and praise of God (Lk 2:15-20)—and not the veneration of Caesar.

IV. Implications and Conclusions

This analysis contends that it became necessary, as time passed on, to speak into the void

regarding Jesus’s origins, and especially to mold the story toward common elements that would

bolster the Messianic claim that Christians had been making for him for decades. In the face of

the unavoidable fact that Jesus was most closely associated with backwater villages in Galilee,

chief among these was the Bethlehem birth and, probably secondarily, a virgin conception—

elements that Matthew and Luke shared. Matthew scrupulously “discovered” other proofs of

Jesus’s Messianic identity. Luke, either piggybacking off of Matthew directly or sharing his

sensitivity toward certain expectations for Jesus, expanded the geographic and ideological scope

of his pre-ministry narrative to cover the entire world. He particularly stressed that the

fulfillment of expectations had been enabled by none other than the Roman emperor, for whom

the claims of salvation, peace on earth, and lordship had long been made. Luke wished, instead,

to appropriate these claims to Jesus. Neither author, in short, was especially interested in the

actual history of Jesus’s birth. Instead, their pre-ministry narratives contain particular theological

and ideological claims concealed in the wrappings of biography and of history.

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 Early Christians were very plainly competing for the same ideological space as Rome and

its client kings. It is true that Christians, as history would later prove, were not opposed to the

political reality of empire.50 But as these pre-ministry narratives demonstrate, they did have

problems with the supporting ideologies of the powers that be.51 The pre-ministry narratives,

furthermore, represent the purest possible test of positionality between Jesus and the imperial (or

client) rulers of his age. These are not confrontations of Jesus’s own choosing, but rather

narratives crafted independently of the previously available events of his life, and thus stand as

perhaps the clearest statements of the evangelists’ ambitions.52 Bereft of any degree of agency—

he is but an infant, or at the very most, a young child—Jesus in these pre-ministry narratives is

an eminently malleable character, on which Matthew and Luke can pin their highest aspirations

and express the unadulterated orientation of their gospels. Incredibly, though both evangelists

attest to brands of early Christianity that could not help but contest power, scholars have failed to

make this a cornerstone of their interpretation of these texts. For both Matthew and Luke, Jesus’s

existence is nothing less than a challenge to the powers that be. Recognizing this, I submit that

instead of being driven by the minutiae of the growing need to excuse of Roman authorities of

blame in the crucifixion of Jesus, these pre-ministry narratives, and the story they tell about

Jesus, Herod, and Augustus, should chart the course for understanding the evangelistic

orientation of earliest Christianity toward power. Therefore, to the commonly recognized

similarities of these disparate pre-ministry narratives—Bethlehem, the virgin Mary, and the Son

of God—we may add one more: Jesus had to be portrayed as a challenge to existing powers and

the ideology that supported them. This was early Christianity’s native impulse.

                                                                                                               
50
Joel Willetts, “Matthew,” in McKnight and Modica, 85.
51
As Mark Reasoner aptly reminds us, “Any resident of the Mediterranean who applied the phrase [the
“Son of God”] to someone else was speaking into a politically charged environment, and perhaps would be heard as
critiquing the reigning emperor.” Reasoner, 10.
52
This does not disregard the possibility that other events could be manipulated for a particular cause or
fabricated whole cloth, but merely recognizes the unique symbolic potential of the birth narratives.

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