Demolishing Triablogue: that material in Luke is NOT against his interest

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer entitled

Material Against Luke's Interest In Luke 1-2Posted by Jason Engwer at 4:32 AM 

Some examples of how Luke's material on Jesus' childhood is different than we'd expect under skeptical scenarios: 

- Even though so much space is given to discussing John the Baptist, there's no anticipation of his work as a baptizer. Francois Bovon remarks that "The lack of any preliminary announcement of John's baptizing [in Luke 1:13-17] is surprising…

No it isn't.  Not every omission of useful information constitutes a conservative's argument.  But Luke's willingness to try to convince his readers on the basis of some story about angelic vision is sufficient to justify skepticism of his reliability.  If it weren't, Christians would have argued that the revelatory Jesus of Revelation is just as strong of a proof of the resurrected Jesus as the gospels and Paul's writings were.

The Benedictus surprisingly conceals John's primary activity, his baptizing." (Luke 1 [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2002], 37, 75)

Inerrantist R. H. Stein explains "Luke’s readers already knew of John the Baptist and his role in salvation history..." (2001, c1992). Vol. 24: Luke (electronic ed.).  New American Commentary (Page 75).

Bovon goes on to say (75) that there's probably an allusion to baptism in the reference to forgiveness of sins in Luke 1:77, though he acknowledges that baptism doesn't "grant forgiveness" in Luke's writings. It's doubtful that Luke is alluding to baptism. Even somebody who thinks he is alluding to it, though, like Bovon, finds it "surprising" that baptism isn't referred to explicitly anywhere in Luke's material on Jesus' childhood.

Sorry, I'm not seeing why you think a skeptical view of Luke would expect Luke to pay any certain degree of attention to John the Baptist.  Luke's fanciful tale about the conception and birth of John the Baptist is quite sufficient to justify skepticism toward his honesty.

- Not just with regard to baptism, but more broadly as well, Bovon notes that "the Christian traces are minimal in the birth legend of the Baptist" (ibid., 30).

Nobody said a forger has to stuff his narrative to bursting at the seams with Christianity-biased information.  The fact that Luke doesn't tie Jesus into John the baptist at this point is hardly noteworthy.  You don't explain how skeptics are put at a loss to explain this phenomena in Luke.

- The premarital timing of Mary's pregnancy is unnecessary,

The timing of Danae's pregnancy in Pindar's Pythian Ode # 12 was also "unnecessary".  Not enough about Luke's audience can be known to explain why Luke thought having God impregnate a single girl was better than God impregnating a married girl.

a departure from the precedent of Old Testament accounts of supernatural births,

Agreed,  nobody said 1st century Christians were incapable of putting new twists on old motifs.

and highly susceptible to moral objections.

but not in the context of the blindly trusting believers Luke most likely wrote for.  If you include skeptics in Luke's originally intended audience, you turn Luke into an unspeakably stupid historian.

As Raymond Brown wrote, if Luke or his source made up the account, "one must deem it a great religious blunder; for it gave rise to the charge of illegitimacy against Jesus that was the mainstay of anti-Christian polemic for many centuries."(The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999], n. 28 on 143)

Not a blunder, early Christians misunderstood Isaiah 7:14 to be speaking of Mary, and were thus required to conjure up circumstances of the messiah's birth that would "fulfill" the prediction that a "virgin" would get pregnant.  Having Jesus' mother be a virgin was required, and the girl most likely to be a virgin is the unmarried girl.

 Bovon refers to the premarital timing of the pregnancy as "shocking" (Luke 1 [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2002], 85).

Not shocking in the least.  Luke needed Jesus' mother to be a virgin because he and other early Christians misinterpreted Isaiah 7:14 to be God giving a sign to Ahaz that wouldn't materialize until 700 years after Ahaz died, and since they falsely thought the sign was the virgnity of the pregnant girl, their story of Jesus' birth had to tell about a literal virgin becoming pregnant, and literal virginity is mostly found in girls before marriage.  Having married get pregnant before marriage was required, not "shocking".

- The Messianic hopes of figures like Mary and Zechariah seem more nationalistic, political, and militaristic than what Jesus' ministry and his movement in general would turn out to be later in Luke's gospel and Acts.

That's correct.  But sometimes Jews and Gentiles can get caught up in stupid fanciful "spirituality" in which all empirical problems melt away in visions and hallucinations.

Bovon goes as far as to contrast the highly nationalistic views of Luke's infancy material with how "at the end of his two volumes, Luke has little hope left for the people of Israel" (ibid., 103).

We also don't know how early Luke wrote, and yet to what degree Christians of his period were already indoctrinated into the subtleties of how the predicted OT physical ruler could be an invisible spirit, cannot be known, but Paul's stupid spiritualistic bullshit might give us a clue as to how esoteric Luke's originally intended audience was.

- The portrayal of Jesus' parents and their relationship with him at the close of Luke 2 is unusually negative.

No, even supposing Luke was telling the truth, they were right to be offended at their allegedly divine son simply disappearing among the people and not telling them where he was.

2:44 says they supposed him to have been traveling with others in the group, and make it seem like they were conmfortable with that assumption, which is unbelievable if we are to accept that they both "knew" on the basis of rather memorable assurances from angels and other matters that Jesus was the promised Messiah.

James Edwards makes a lot of good points on the subject in his recent commentary on Luke (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2015). For example:
 "In the male-dominated temple one would expect Joseph rather than Mary to address Jesus [in Luke 2:48]

Perhaps Luke is telling the truth about Mary confronting Jesus in the temple?  How would that import credibility to the miracle-portions of Luke's story?  Skeptics do not generally hold that where there's a miracle story, the entire matter is 100% fictional.

….She addresses him not as pais (v. 43, 'boy, young man'), but with a more juvenile and subservient term, teknon (v. 48; 'child,' NIV 'Son')…. Her reproach expresses less concern for Jesus than for what he has done to them….

Perhaps she was really pissed at him, which would suggest the prior story about her knowing the boy was conceieved by power of the Holy Spirit, is bullshit.

Mary's distress is a first fulfillment of Simeon's prophecy that a 'sword will pierce her soul' (v. 35)." (94-95)

unspeakably weak argument.

Additionally, Jesus rebukes them in verse 49, and Luke comments on their lack of understanding in verse 50.

So v. 50 gives you Luke's literary reason for having Jesus' parents act in such ways.  No skeptic would require otherwise.

Brown comments that Mary's reproach of Jesus in verse 48 is "all the more startling since Luke tends to avoid reproaches to Jesus by the disciples during the ministry….For instance, in 9:21-22 in reporting Jesus' reaction to Peter's confession, Luke drops the reproach by Peter found in Mark 8:32. The Lucan disciples are more reverential to Jesus." (The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999], 489 and n. 35 on 489)

Where exactly an ancient historian has fudged the facts is often hard to tell, especially where, as with Luke, there's only his version of the story of how Mary responds to Jesus in a reproachful way.

- John the Baptist is referred to as having had an unusual upbringing in the wilderness (Luke 1:80), reminiscent of Moses' upbringing in the house of Pharaoh and Samuel's upbringing in a sanctuary setting with Eli, for example. But Jesus just grows up in an ordinary home with his parents (Luke 2:51).

Probably because Luke writes for Gentiles, and thinks pitching Jesus to them will be more successful the less Jewish Jesus is.

Luke gives Jesus a less auspicious upbringing than John and makes no attempt to parallel Jesus with individuals like Moses and Samuel, even though we're so often told that the infancy narratives are unhistorical efforts to parallel Jesus to such Old Testament figures.

I'd disagree with any such skeptics.  The infancy narratives are unhistorical for reasons far outweighing any theory that they are trying to make Jesus parallel to OT figures.