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Christian literature of the first and second centuries CE contains few references to unborn children; where they are found, however, the unborn become an important rhetorical site for constructing relationships between competing religious groups. The Gospel of Matthew’s genealogy for the unborn Jesus provides him with a rich and contended heritage that displays his destiny as well as his origin. In the Gospel of Luke, the narrative of the joyful recognition of the unborn Jesus in Mary’s womb by the unborn John the Baptist establishes not only the relationship between Jesus and John as adults but also the place of John’s disciples within the Christian movement. The second-century Protevangelium of James tells of Mary’s perception of “two peoples” in her womb, one lamenting and the other rejoicing; these “peoples” signify divergent social and religious responses to Jesus. The practices of joy and lamentation as projected onto the unborn provide a means for negotiating religious differences and shaping a genealogy of religious origins.

This chapter flows from the proposition that critical history attempts to apply criteria of facticity to literary texts and that redaction criticism in particular looks for traces of editorial activity — redactional fingerprints — on the work. Two cases in point: the Gospels’ Infancy Narratives dealing with Jesus’ birth and early years and the parallel passages in Muhammad’s Life concerning the Prophet’s earliest years in Mecca. Both the supernatural elements and the tendentiousness in the texts indicate that in both instances the reader is in the presence of myth and legend rather than history.

The Latin of John 19.30 (tradidit) is used to introduce the question of how the Spirit continues its work through a developing tradition. This is then explored at length in some of the reasons behind changing ways in which the nativity have been related in story and depicted in art. The claim is made that so deeply ingrained are these changes that few readers are now aware of how very differently the evangelists intended their narratives, but these changes can be defended.

This chapter focuses on Luke’s infancy narrative, examining how Luke’s opening sets the stage for the discussion of Israel’s restoration in the rest of Luke-Acts. Luke’s soteriological vocabulary is analyzed in detail. Remarkably, Luke employs traditional Jewish terms to describe Israel’s future restoration. These terms conceive of Israel’s salvation in collective, national, political, and terrestrial terms.

The so-called Protevangelium of James is perhaps the most historically significant of all the non-canonical gospels. In prefacing its account of the birth of Jesus with an account of the birth and childhood of Mary, it has directly or indirectly shaped beliefs about the ‘holy family’ throughout Christian history. It is beyond doubt that the author is familiar with Matthew and Luke’s birth narratives and that he uses them extensively. Yet his use of source texts is seldom predictable, often creative, and almost always in the service of forging a compelling narrative that serves his idiosyncratic take on the tradition. The Protevangelium is a masterpiece of creative synthesis that reveres its source materials while being unafraid to plough its own furrow. This chapter investigates how the Protevangelium interprets and rewrites synoptic narratives, paying special attention to the author’s rewriting of the stories of the annunciation and the birth of Jesus.