How to Write an Infancy Narrative

A Seven-Step Guide to Ancient Birth Stories

How were the births of ancient heroes told?

Unlike most biographies today, which begin at birth, many ‘lives’ – as biographies were called in classical antiquity – don’t tell us anything about their subject’s young life. Like the Gospel of Mark, they skip straight to their adulthood.¹

From time to time, however, an ancient life does outline a child’s origins. For instance, Xenophon writes on the education and early life of the Persian King, Cyrus. Plutarch narrates the births of Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome. And Suetonius describes the birth of Augustus, who lived just a century before.

In my doctoral research on ancient biography, I found that such birth stories from Graeco-Roman lives share much in common with the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ birth. To understand how Matthew and Luke selected and composed their narratives, there is much we can glean from similar stories around the same time.

Just before we look at some of their common features, we might question whether this comparative exercise is legitimate. Some scholars insist that the Gospel writers would not have drawn upon pagan models to narrate the life of a Jewish figure. They contend that the Gospels are unique, and that to draw parallels with Graeco-Roman tales can lead to ‘parallelomania’; seeing parallels where there are none.²

I do not find these arguments persuasive. Such arguments isolate ‘Jewishness’ from all things pagan, as though the evangelists were not writing in Greek and engaging the literary conventions of the Greek world. Indeed, the very genre which they composed – biography – finds no precedent in the Jewish Scriptures.³ The genre was Greek.

As for the idea that the Gospel stories are unique, this is trivially true. All infancy narratives are unique, and no two pagan stories are identical. So it is no surprise that the infancy narratives in the Gospels reflect the evangelist’s distinctive theological and cultural backgrounds. This is no slight on the notion that they also include common cultural tropes about birth stories. The proof is simply in the reading.

A detailed analysis of the ancient birth stories must be left to others.⁴ Yet I believe that the tropes of ancient lives were recurrent enough to sketch a blueprint here. To illustrate this point, I want to offer you a seven-step guide on how to write an ancient birth story. Along the way, we shall see how the Gospels compare.

Step One: Include a genealogy (going back to a king or god…)

The first step in composing an infancy narrative is to establish your subject’s pedigree – their eugeneia, or noble birth. Most biographies do this by mentioning the subject’s father in passing – a strategy taught in educational handbooks of the time.⁵ In longer lives of kings, however, it was sometimes desirable to provide a more robust account of the subject’s lineage. This is where genealogy proper came into play.

Genealogies often traced a king’s family history back to the gods. This rubber-stamped their ‘natural’ authority to rule.⁶ Thus, Plutarch reports a tradition that Alexander the Great was descended patrilineally from Heracles (Alex. 2.1), and Suetonius traces the Roman Emperor Galba’s ancestry back to Jupiter (known to Romans as Zeus) (2.1). In ancient genealogies, it was common to find this overlap of history with myth.

Matthew and Luke follow other biographies in narrating their hero’s genealogy. Like other lives, Matthew’ emphasises Jesus’ royal lineage, tracing it back to David, who is God’s son (Psalm 2:7). While Luke interestingly takes us all the way back to Adam, ‘Son of God’ (3:38). Such accounts fit the genealogical conventions of the time.

Of course, genealogies were not always accurate. We are not to imagine that the Spartan kings actually descended from Heracles, or that Julius Caesar’s great ancestor was King Ancus Marcius. Indeed, given the importance of genealogies to the ancient mindset, it is not surprising that we find some keen to inflate their credentials.

In the case of the Gospels too, several problems persist. While one very early tradition describes Jesus as ‘the seed of David’ (Romans 1:3), the details of this descent are positively shadowy. According to Luke, there were forty-one generations between David and Jesus. But for Matthew, only twenty six. And when it comes to the set of names offered in that same time-frame, only two of them are shared.⁷

Some modern readers might be shaken by the incongruities in the Matthean and Lukan accounts. Yet the function of genealogies may offer some relief. The aim of genealogies was to legitimate the one in whom you should place your faith or allegiance (pistis). In that sense, then, the genealogy’s accuracy is secondary to the overall effect they are designed to create: to place your allegiance to the figure.

The genealogies in Matthew and Luke are designed for this same effect. They are saying: this is the person to whom you owe your allegiance. More specifically, that Jesus is the fulfilment of sacred history; he is the awaited messiah, Son of David and the Son of God. For readers of the Bible today, who recognise that the genealogies are literally at odds with each other, the overall message of the genealogies can still be heard.

Step Two: Give your Child a Supernatural Conception

The second step is to provide your child with a supernatural conception.

In the Jewish tradition, miraculous conceptions were not uncommon. There are a number of women, like Sarah, who receive children in their old age, or after facing difficulty getting pregnant. In these scenarios, the couple supernaturally conceives.

In birth stories in the Graeco-Roman world, however, conceptions were believed to take place without the involvement of a human father. The child’s father was literally a god, and the child was son of a god. There are several examples of such conceptions in ancient lives; Plutarch tells the story of how Alexander’s mother was impregnated by a serpent (Alex, 2.1), while Suetonius narrates a similar tale in his Life of Augustus (94).

The Gospels also follow this later pattern, found in the Graeco-Roman world. It was not merely the case that Jesus’ mother was conceived miraculously, as Sarah in the Hebrew Bible. She conceived without the involvement of the father. This would signal to ancient readers that Jesus was, in a very literal sense, the Son of God.

Sometimes, it is said that the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth represent a striking departure from the Graeco-Roman tradition. For while the pagan gods were thought to have impregnated various maidens, the Gospels describe Jesus’ birth as the result of the Holy Spirit. In the case of the Gospels, no sexual intercourse was involved.

Yet this is a misconception of divine conception. While at a popular level it was certainly believed that the gods came down and had sex with women – as we find, for example, in Homer – intellectuals were often careful to stress that they did not take such accounts literally. It was not the case that gods physically impregnated women.

How then was a supernatural conception possible? In search for a mechanism other than intercourse, the biographer Plutarch explains that it is the god’s dynamis and pneuma – power and breath/spirit – which causes conception.⁸ These are the exact terms Luke uses in his infancy narrative to describe Mary’s conception (1:35). The Gospels’ notion of a sexless conception fits snugly within ancient norms.

Step Three: Abstinence Before and After Conception

Third, the groom may decide to be abstinent around the child’s conception.

In Plutarch’s Alexander, we are told that Philip had a dream in which a ‘signet impression’ – that is, a seal – is placed on his wife’s womb on their wedding night. Then, after she conceives, we are told that ‘he did not often have sexual relations as he lay with her’, for fear of his wife’s magic, or because of his inferiority to the god (2.1).

This trope is also found in Plutarch’s Table Talk. He describes a dream of Plato’s father, Ariston, instructing him not to have intercourse for ten months. In the same dialogue, Plutarch reminds us of the tradition that Philip did not have intercourse with his wife, Olympias, for some time before and after she conceived (8.1.717e).

The story of Mary and Joseph in Matthew also contains the trope of an abstinent fiance and groom. Like Philip, Joseph has a dream in which his fiancé is going to conceive supernaturally. As a result, he takes Mary as his wife. But we are told that he ‘had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus’ (1:25). In both accounts, this motif emphasise the subject’s supernatural conception.

Step Four: Include Prophecy and Portents

Having explained the child’s (purely) divine conception, you will wish to accompany his birth with signs which will foretell the child’s destined greatness.⁹

The emphasis on Jesus’ greatness is found in an angelic appearance to Mary, which announces that her son ‘will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High’ (Lk. 1:31-32). This destined greatness is also found in pagan stories. For instance, Pythagoras’ father, Mnesarchus, had a visit from Apollo, assuring him that his wife ‘would bring forth a son surpassing all who previously lived in beauty and wisdom and who would be the greatest benefit to the human race’ (Iamblichus, Pythagorean Way, 5).

Sometimes, a prophecy will be made by an authoritative outsider. For instance, in Suetonius’ Life of Augustus, Augustus’ greatness is foretold by Nigidius, a politician and diviner described by Cicero as ‘[the] most learned and most holy of men’ (Against Vatinius, 14). According to Suetonius, upon learning of Augustus’ birth, Nigidius exclaimed in front of the whole senate: ‘the ruler of the world has been born!’ (94.5).

This episode reminds us of Luke’s story of Simeon.¹⁰ After Jesus has been born, his parents present him in the Temple, and the elderly Simeon offers a prophecy about the child: ‘my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel’ (Lk. 2:29-32). As David Litwa points out, not only does Simeon fit the type of an “elderly prophetic sage,” but Jesus is announced as the salvation of the whole world.¹¹

In Matthew, Jesus’ glory is heralded by a different set of portent: instead of shepherds and Simeon, we find Magi following a star. What are the Magi – magicians or seers in Eastern royal courts – doing in Matthew’s account? As it turns out, in Greek historiography, Magi are often present at the birth of rulers. For, as diviners, they were the perfect candidates to discern the greatness of the future king.

Herodotus, the father of history, tells the story of the birth of Cyrus, which is accompanied by a similar set of events to Matthew: Magi report to the King that a child will soon replace him; the king tries to kill the child to prevent this from happening; but the child is delivered from the death of other infants.¹² Magi also appear at the birth of Alexander in Plutarch’s life, signalling his future success.¹³ By including Magi, Matthew’s story guarantees the worldwide kingship of Jesus.

Step Five: Explain the Hero’s Name

Fifth, you may want to say something about the meaning of your hero’s name.

Names were often important in antiquity as disclosing something important about the subject’s life.¹⁴ In his infancy narrative, Plutarch tells us that Romulus and Remus’ names may come from Ruma, the latin word for nipple (Rom. 6.2). This hints at their origins, suckling on wolves. Similarly, he unpacks the name Theseus, which in Greek is a wordplay on two moments in his early life: hiding and acknowledgement (Thes. 4.)

Suetonius provides detail on how Augustus enquired his name. While it was initially suggested that he take the name ‘Romulus’, as a second founder of Rome, ‘Augustus’ was seen as more sacred. For, as Suetonius explains, ‘those in which anything is consecrated by augural rites are called "august" (augusta), from the increase (auctus) in dignity, or front movements or feeding of the birds (avium gestus gustuve)’ (7.2).

In his life of Plato, Diogenes Laertius lists two possible traditions of how Aristocles (as he was born) acquired his name. Πλάτων (platõn) means something wide, but what exactly was ‘wide’ about Plato was disputed.¹⁵ Some say his wrestling-tutor named him Plato ‘on account of his broad figure’, while others that he ‘got the name… from the breadth of his style, or from the breadth of his forehead' (Vit. Phil. 3.5).

This onomastic fascination may also explain Matthew’s two-fold naming of Jesus: ‘She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins’ (1:21). Yeshua (ישוע), a common boys’ name in antiquity, means that the Lord saves or delivers. Matthew also states that this was to fulfil Isaiah’s prophecy that the virgin shall conceive a child called ‘Emmanuel’, which Matthew parses for the reading as ‘God with us’ (1:23). Like the meaning of names unpacked in other ancient lives, Jesus’ names in Matthew are linked to the purpose and plot of Jesus’ life.

Step Six: Try to Kill the Child

After the birth of the child, it is important to let readers know that he overcame some early adversity. This is a trope shared in Jewish and Greek literature.

In the Exodus story, we are informed of a plot by Pharaoh to kill all of the children of the Hebrews. Yet baby Moses is preserved in a basket. This trope of the child who overcomes an early attempt on their life is also found in texts around the time of the Gospels. In Suetonius’ Life of Augustus, we are told of an attempt on Augustus’ life:

… a few months before Augustus was born a portent was generally observed at Rome, which gave warning that nature was pregnant with a king for the Roman people; thereupon the senate in consternation decreed that no male child born that year should be reared; but those whose wives were with child saw to it that the decree was not filed in the treasury, since each one appropriated the prediction to his own family’ (94).

In Matthew, too, we find this familiar plot. Having heard from the Magi that they have come to find the new King of Israel, Herod the Great massacres all infants in Bethlehem (2:16–18). In this instance, we find the beginning of a Mosaic typology which will run throughout the Gospel; having escaped Herod’s plot, Jesus goes to and from Egypt and faces trials in the wilderness, before his public ministry.¹⁶

Step Seven: Tell us of the Child’s Development

Finally, once the child has made it through the precarious early moments of life, you may wish to tell us something about his ongoing mental or physical development.

We find this motif from one of the earliest prototypes of biography, Isocrates’ Evagoras. The biographical oration states that ‘[when] Evagoras was a boy he possessed beauty, bodily strength, and modesty, the very qualities that are most becoming to that age… So surpassing was his excellence of both body and mind, that when the kings of that time looked upon him they were terrified and feared for their throne…’ (22-24).

Closer to the time of the Gospels, Philo wrote a Greek biography of Moses. At the beginning of the work, he similarly tells us that ‘the child from his birth had an appearance of more than ordinary goodliness’ (Mos. 1.9). Moses’ beauty then serves as the reason why Moses is taken in to Pharoah’s household. Rather than being moved by compassion, Philo explains that Pharaoh’s daughter took him in after ‘surveying him from head to foot’ and approving of his  ‘beauty and fine condition’ (1.15).¹⁷

In the Gospels, we find no positive description of Jesus’ appearance – a puzzle to which my doctoral work was devoted. However, Luke does offer us an update on Jesus’ progress. After providing a story of the precocious twelve-year in the Temple – an episode which also finds parallels in ancient biography – he tells us ‘Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in human and divine favour’ (2.52).¹⁸ This notice of ‘normal’ or healthy development rounds off Luke’s infancy narrative.

Conceiving the Parallels’ Significance

So there we have it: a blueprint to write your own birth story, complete with supernatural conceptions, dreams, prophecies, onomastic descriptions, adversity overcome, and a sign that your child is growing up to be healthy and wise. In my view, the parallels between Jesus’ birth and other divine birth stories are astounding.

But why is this ‘blueprint’ so obvious? And why did Matthew and Luke draw upon common literary conventions to narrate the birth of Jesus? Andrew Lincoln explains:

‘Since most subjects only came to public attention as a result of their later careers, there was frequently very little authentic tradition for the early part of their lives and so the composition was particularly legendary as it attempted to show that the future life and career of subjects were already anticipated from the earliest days.'¹⁹

According to Lincoln, the fact that the birth stories of Jesus seem particularly conventionalised is no surprise, given what we know about ancient lives. If Matthew and Luke were filling the gaps with the kind of story which they deemed plausible of Jesus – the Son of God – this is the way they would have done it.

Why, then, are these stories so often dismissed by those who focus on the stories’ (expected) cultural differences, or deny that the Gospels would draw on such pagan tropes? I suspect that some are anxious that parallels would throw the virginal conception – a credal point in both the Nicene and Apostles’ creed – into doubt.

But do the parallels demand that the Christian deny the truth of virgin birth? Although it is a little bit out of my lane as a biblical scholar to comment, I am not convinced. There seem to be at least three options available to the Christian.

First, they can maintain that the Gospels’ events are the historical fulfilment of other ancient myths; they are, as C.S. Lewis described them, the ‘myth became fact.’ The explanation for the commonalities between the stories is that they actually took place on the stage of history.²⁰ The task for advocates of this view is to explain why this is not some kind of special pleading, afforded to Jesus but not to others.

Second, they can claim that while parts of the accounts are solely literary, their central claim – that Jesus was born of a virgin – is historically true. They may point out that despite their manifold differences, Matthew and Luke agree that Jesus was born supernaturally. For those who see Matthew and Luke as independent of one another, it is suggested that this central claim is an earlier tradition, predating either text.

Finally, they can suggest that the accounts are largely unhistorical, but the meaning/truth of the story is unaffected. For what does it mean for Jesus to be virgin-born? It surely means that Jesus is the Son of God. But this is a truth which one believe without believing in the literal miracle of the virgin birth. That is to say, one can believe in the Incarnation without believing in the virginal conception.²¹

For those take this third view, the meaning of the virgin birth is affirmed without holding to the miracle itself. The virgin birth is simply the first-century narrative expression of the truth that Jesus is the Son of God. Unlike modern biblical literalists, these theologians do not see the historicity of the virgin birth as a fundamental of the faith. If it was, we might wonder why so much of the New Testament ignores it.

Further Reading

Litwa, M. David. How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths. London: Yale University Press, 2019.

Lincoln, Andrew T. Born of a Virgin?: Reconceiving Jesus in the Bible, Tradition, and Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013.

Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives, new edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

1. Mark begins with what Lucian of Somasata describes as a ‘virtual preface’ (δυνάμει τινὰ προοίμιά), a preface in function but not in form. See Lucian, How to Write History, 23. Unless otherwise stated, translations are taken from the Loeb Classical Library.

2. E.g., Craig Evans asserts that ‘[it] is not likely, however, that early Jewish Christians, including the evangelist Matthew, would present Jesus in pagan garb. Jewish teachers were highly critical of pagan morals and myths. The idea of gods and goddesses having sexual relations with mortals was repugnant.” See Craig A Evans, Matthew, NCBC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 41-42 (41), On the term parallelomania, see Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” JBL, 81 n.1 (1962): 1-13.

3. Joseph Geiger, “Jewish Biography,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Biography, ed. Koen De Temmerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 60.

4. Two comprehensive treatments of the Gospel birth stories within the context of ancient divine births are Robert J. Miller, Born Divine: The Births of Jesus & Other Sons of God (California: Polebridge, 2003); Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. ABRL (London: 1993).

5. See Michael W. Martin, “Progymastic Topic Lists: A Compositional Template for Luke and Other Bioi?” NTS 54 (2008): 18-41.

6. See David M. Litwa, How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths. (London: Yale University Press, 2019), 77-85.

7. See Litwa, History, 81.

8. See Plutarch, Plutarch, Numa 4.4; Plutarch, Table Talk 8.1.718a and the commentary by Litwa, History, 90.

9. So conventionalised was this trope that Suetonius comments, ‘Having reached this point, it will not be out of place to add an account of the omens which occurred before he was born, on the very day of his birth, and afterwards, from which it was possible to anticipate and perceive his future greatness and uninterrupted good fortune’ (Aug. 94).

10. Litwa, History, 99-100.

11. Litwa, History, 99-100.

12. See Litwa, History, 107.

13. Plutarch, Alex. 3.4; cf. Quintus Curtius, History of Alexander 5.19–22.

14. On naming in ancient lives, see Andrew T. Lincoln, Born of a Virgin?: Reconceiving Jesus in the Bible, Tradition, and Theology. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), 62.

15. See James A. Notopoulos, “The Name of Plato,” Classical Philology 34 n.2 (1939): 135-145.

16. See Dale C. Allison, The New Moses: A Matthean Typology, republished ed. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013).

17. On Moses’ beauty, see Louis H. Feldman, Philo’s Portrayal of Moses in the Context of Ancient Judaism (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 2007), 63-64.

18. This may be the closest we come to a physical description of Jesus in the Gospels, since the word ‘stature’ is used elsewhere in Luke of physical height (cf. 19:3).

19. Lincoln, Born of a Virgin?, 60.

20. C.S. Lewis distrusted ‘liberal’ positions on the NT. See his reply to a person who wrote to him expressing her doubts on the stories, “Your starting point about this doctrine will not, I think, be to collect the opinion of individual clergymen, but to read Matthew Chapter I and Luke I and II.” See Lewis, letter to Genia Goelz, June 13, 1959, Collected Letters, 3:127.

21. For a rigorous defence of this position, see Andrew T. Lincoln, Born of a Virgin?.