While writing about the birth narrative, it seemed evident that Luke wove together the lives of John the Baptist and Jesus. White describes Luke’s doing this as “a parallel narrative” Luke’s version of the birth narrative is much more dramatic and involves many more elements. The author of Luke has woven together, and the Jewish scriptures reflect this idea by the way in which the birth narratives are constructed. It starts with the lives of John the Baptist and Jesus by making Jesus and John cousins, then both of their mothers being descendants of Aaron and not of the Davidic descent. Both John and Jesus are woven together because the same details about John, such as his birth, circumcision, how both mother’s pregnancy was unexpected and the occasion for prophetic revelations. The Jewish scriptures help to shape these sections of the narrative because they are parallel from one anther. It seems that the author of Luke constructed the story in this fashion for tow main reasons. One reason being the visit of the pregnant Mary to John’s mother, Elizabeth and the other being the visit of Jesus to John at his baptism. White describes this as “the double birth narrative reflects two distinct source traditions that have been woven together”. Luke’s background information on John in the first two panels helped the reader understand his prophetic role in the third panel because the author of Luke is very descriptive in what is being said and it really sets up the importance that the prophetic role has on the birth narrative as a whole and how it is all paralleled with Jesus.

When considering Mark 1:1-11 it has been improved on in Luke 1:1-38 because the author of Luke has gone into much greater detail about everything than the author of Mark has. It is noteworthy that in Luke there are many more details about the background of the family and where they are descended from, which can be important when wanting to consider the context or background knowledge of a narrative. Having more details in Luke than Mark is also beneficial because it helps reveal what is going on more elaborately thus the reader is more aware of what is going on. By adding more of these key details, this is how Luke has “improved” its characteristics from Mark.