As we saw in White’s careful examination of Luke’s birth narrative, Luke has a very clear purpose in weaving the lives of John the Baptist and Jesus. By calling Elizabeth (Johns mother) and Mary (Jesus birth mother) cousins he connects John and Jesus in by making them directly related. Luke symbolically makes it a point to address the annunciation and the birth narrative of John prior to discussing the annunciation and birth of Jesus. This allows him to foreshadow John’s role in the coming of Jesus in the structure of the narrative. Luke actually tells two stories at the same time with John’s story always coming prior to Jesus. By constructing the passages this way, it really helps the audience understand the significance of John the Baptist.
However, Luke adds a number of passages to distinguish Jesus as a more powerful or divine figure. For example in Mary’s visitation to Elizabeth (Luke 1:40-41), we see that John, in his womb, jumped as Mary entered the room carrying the future savior. This passage is tremendously significant in the narrative because it establishes the authority of Jesus over John. Prior to this scene the figure John may seem to be an equal to Jesus because of the way the narrative is set up because clearly John and Jesus both came from a miraculous birth account. In both stories, the angel tells each of the families about the greatness of the child they will bear as we see in Luke 1:15 and Luke 1:32. Thus, this passage is critical in establishing the authority of Jesus over John. By having John jump in the womb in the presence of Jesus, Luke begins to distinguish or foreshadow the roles of each of the characters.
The stories incorporate key traditions of Hebrew Scriptures about special births. In the case of Johns birth, his parents Zechariah and Elizabeth were not considered at an age fit for child bearing, which alludes to the story of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18:12-15. Both Elizabeth and Sarah were considered unable to become pregnant, and the Luke 1:54-55 actually even makes reference to Abraham. Further, we see a very similar prayer in the story of Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1-2) after hearing the news that she will bear a son that seems to almost directly parallel Mary’s prayer in Luke 1:46-49. Thus, we see that Luke has carefully constructed these passages to make an important connection to Davidic narratives. As White has pointed out previously, this is a very common theme in the gospels to shape stories and narratives based on Jewish scripture because it enhances the story. However, he also prefaced the character of John in a way that establishes Jesus’s authority. We see now that Luke has created this backdrop with a clear purpose to allow the story of Jesus to unfold in a fashion that the readers will understand.
As I previously discussed, the Lukan birth narrative of Jesus is prefaced with that of John the Baptist. This really helps the reader understand John’s prophetic role as the man who prepared the way for Jesus (Luke 3:4) by literally having his story come before Jesus. There is a lot of significance in the timing of the narrative and the specific placement of his story. In every account John comes before Jesus and even begins his ministry before Jesus. Thus, his role as a prophet and disciple of Jesus is brought to light by the background information Luke gives. Luke fills in a lot of the holes that the gospels of Mark and Matthew have because they lack in information on John the Baptist. More importantly, he brings to light the godlike nature of Jesus compared to John by telling the birth annunciations. While John does have a miraculous birth accounts and fits the characteristics of a divine figure of the time, we see that the angel describes John as someone who, “…will be great in the sight of the Lord” while the angel proclaims Jesus as the son of God.
Luke’s background information in the birth story really set up the interaction between Jesus and John the Baptist in the baptism scene. As mentioned earlier, Luke has clearly distinguished the divine status of Jesus in his birth narrative, thus the reader wouldn’t be confused at this point about the authority of Jesus. It also really prepares us for the culminating line in Luke 3:22 when a voice from heaven tells the audience that Jesus is God’s son. However, after reading the Lukan birth story this information wouldn’t seem irrational because he has set himself up for this culminating event. The gospels of Mark and Matthew both struggle to fill in the gaps because of the lack of background or no background at all in the case of Mark. Luke even prefaces Jesus’s growing power in Luke 2:40 prior to the baptism scene, so the audience has been given signs throughout Luke’s narrative. He has intricately set the stage for Jesus to grow into his role as savior by establishing his authority and background.