Luke 2 - Introduction

Luke 1:5 to Luke 2:52. Narratives of the Infancy of Jesus. This section has outstanding peculiarities of style and diction as compared with Luke 1:1, and the rest of the Gospel. It has therefore been surmised that the writer has here incorporated an Aramaic (possibly Greek) source-document, or that he consciously wrote in an archaic style imitative of the Septuagint. Either of these suggestions may be combined with a third, that the section is a subsequent insertion, due to some one other than the author of the rest of the book. Harnack favours the archaizing theory, but Moffatt prefers to regard the section as the translation of an early Palestinian Aramaic document in which Luke has inserted items like Luke 1:34 f. and Luke 2:1. Stanton takes an intermediate view: Luke has obtained part of his material, especially the hymns, from some source, and skilfully woven it into his narrative.