In the Lucan infancy narrative there are four canticles (hymns or psalms): in chapter 1, the Benedictus and the Magnificat, which are read in the Gospels of the last week of Advent; in chapter 2 the Gloria in Excelsis and the Nunc Dimittis, which are read in the Gospels of the Christmas season. Of course, the church’s liturgical use of these canticles is far wider since three of them are prominent in the daily Divine Office, and an expanded form of the Gloria is part of the Mass. For that reason let me comment in general on all four before I turn to the Benedictus. While I shall treat them together, the Gloria is so brief that only by analogy can we guess that its origin may be the same as that of the others. Let me note, however, the fact that the Gloria is spoken by angels while the others are spoken by human beings is not an important difference. The Gloria may have been structured antiphonally, with one set of lines now assigned to the angels:
“Glory in the highest heavens to God,
and on earth peace to those favored (by Him),”
while the other set of lines was assigned to the disciples as Jesus enters Jerusalem in Luke 19:38:
“Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heavens.”
THE ORIGIN OF THE LUCAN CANTICLES
Although in the infancy narrative Luke has various characters speak these canticles, modern scholarship has moved away from thinking that they were respectively the historical compositions of Mary, Zechariah, or Simeon (or, a fortiori, of angels). They have an overall common style and a poetic polish that militate against such individual, on-the-spot composition. Indeed, in several of the canticles there are individual lines that do not fit the situation of the putative spokesperson. For example, how has Mary’s conception “scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,” “filled the hungry with good things,” and “sent the rich away empty” (lines from the Magnificat)? How does the birth of the Baptist constitute “salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all those who hate us” (Benedictus)? Accordingly most scholars think that the canticles had a common origin and were adapted and inserted into the infancy narrative.
Some think that the evangelist himself composed them, but then one might have expected a greater uniformity among the canticles and a smoother fit into their present context. (If the Magnificat, Benedictus, and Nunc Dimittis [and the line that leads into each] were omitted from their present context, no one would even suspect that there was anything missing.1) More scholars, therefore, think that substantially the canticles came from a pre-Lucan source and were taken over by the evangelist and inserted into their present places. I say “substantially” because there are Lucan additions to make them fit their context. For instance, Luke may have added 1:48 to the Magnificat,
“Because He has regarded the low estate of His handmaid—for behold, henceforth all generations will call me fortunate.”
That verse echoes language that Luke has already used of Mary in 1:38, 42, and thus helps to make the canticle appropriate on her lips. Similarly in the Benedictus verses 76-77 may well be a Lucan addition to make the canticle appropriate to the birth of John the Baptist (cf. Luke 1:17; 3:4; 7:27):
“But you, child, will be prophet of the Most High,
for you will go before the Lord to make ready His ways,
to grant His people knowledge of salvation
in the forgiveness of their sins.”
What was the source from which Luke drew these canticles if he did not compose them himself? There is no doubt whatever that they represent Jewish hymnic style and thought of the general period from 200 B.C. to A.D. 100, as illustrated in 1 Maccabees, Judith, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, and the Dead Sea (Qumran) War Scroll and Thanksgiving Psalms. The dominant stylistic pattern is that of a cento or mosaic pattern where almost every phrase and line is taken from the earlier poetry of Israel, i.e., the Psalms, the Prophets, and hymns in the Pentateuch and the Historical Books. In my Birth of the Messiah (2d ed.; Garden City: Doubleday, 1993) I supplied whole pages of OT poetic background for each line of the Magnificat (355–65), the Benedictus (377–92), and the Nunc Dimittis (456–60). Let me give one illustration here from the opening of the Benedictus (Luke 1:68-69):
“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
because He has visited
and accomplished the redemption of His people,
and has raised up for us a horn of salvation
in the house of David His servant.”
In Psalm 41:14(13) and in other psalm passages we find: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel.” Psalm 111:9 says that God “sent redemption to His people,” while Judges 3:9 states, “The Lord raised up a Saviour for Israel.” Psalm 132:17 has God saying, “I shall make a horn to sprout for David,” a statement similar to the motif in Ezekiel 29:21: “On that day I shall make a horn sprout for all the house of Israel.” In a Jewish prayer contemporary with the Lucan Benedictus (the Fifteenth Benediction of the Shemoneh Esreh) we find a similar mosaic, “Let the shoot of David (Your servant) speedily spring up and raise his horn in Your salvation…. May you be blessed, O Lord, who lets the horn of salvation flourish.”
So Jewish are the Lucan canticles that some scholars have thought that the evangelist took them over from a collection that had nothing to do with Jesus Christ. There is, however, a particular tone of divine salvation accomplished and (in the Benedictus) an emphasis on the house of David that would not be readily explicable from the non-Christian Jewish history of this period. The non-Christian Jewish hymns that offer the best parallels to the Benedictus and the Magnificat are prayers yearning for salvation. True, the Maccabean victories of the second century B.C. might have prompted songs of deliverance, but that deliverance would not be described as Davidic, for the Maccabee leaders were levitical priests. Thus the probability is that we are dealing with Jewish Christian hymns celebrating the salvific action of God in Jesus, the Messiah.
Indeed, the tendency has been to speak of the hymns of a Jewish-Christian community; for, despite the overall similar style, there are enough differences among the canticles to make us posit different authors with the same background. The “we” of the Benedictus and the latter part of the Magnificat (“our fathers”) reflect the spokespersons of a collectivity. More particularly attempts have been made to derive the canticles from a group within Israel of Christian “Poor Ones” (Anawim): those who, in part, were physically poor but more widely would not trust their own strength and had to rely totally on God for deliverance—the lowly, the sick, the downtrodden. Their praises are sung in Psalm 149:4: “The Lord takes pleasure in His people; He adorns the Poor Ones with victory.” Certainly the Dead Sea Thanksgiving Hymns have this ambiance, “You, O Lord, have assisted the soul of the Poor Ones and the needy against one who is strong. You have redeemed my soul from the hand of the mighty.” The Magnificat, in particular, would fit such a background, with its lines, “He has exalted those of low degree; He has filled the hungry with good things.”
This proposed background has been made even more specific by those scholars who think of a community of Jewish Christian Poor Ones at Jerusalem. In Acts 2:43-47; 4:32-37, Luke pays particular attention to the first Jewish believers in Jesus in that city, describing them as people who sold their possessions and gave their wealth to be distributed to the needy. His description of these Poor Ones borders on nostalgia and may well be idealized, but Paul’s collection of money for the Jerusalem church, often mentioned in his letters (see also Gal 2:10), shows there was a historical basis for the picture Luke describes. Acts also stresses the Temple piety of the Jerusalem Jewish Christians: “They went to the Temple together every day” (2:46; 3:1). Certainly such a context is that of Simeon to whom the Nunc Dimittis is attributed and also that of Zechariah, the priestly spokesman of the Benedictus.2
To be exact, however, such specificities (Poor Ones, at Jerusalem, with Temple piety) are shrewd speculations about the origins of the canticles, and they cannot be proved. Sometimes they are tied in with another, even more unprovable, thesis that the canticles were translated into Greek from Hebrew or Aramaic, presumably the language of the first Christians. For our purposes it is better to be content with the simple probability that the canticles are (from a collection of?) the hymns of an early Jewish Christian group3 without being more specific. Thus the church’s frequent and sometimes daily use of them in the liturgy recovers their origin in the sense that we are reciting the words that our most ancient ancestors in the faith used as community praise of God.
Has Luke done violence if, as we theorize, he has taken over these canticles and placed them on the lips of infancy narrative figures like Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon? To the contrary, his insight is most appropriate: If these were the hymns of early Jewish Christians, they now appear in the Gospel on the lips of the first Jewish believers in the good news about John the Baptist and Jesus.4 Going beyond this general connaturality, Luke has skillfully made his canticles match the spokespersons, often following leads in the narrative. In 1:40 we are told that Mary greeted Elizabeth, but no words are reported; the insertion of the Magnificat (1:46-55) supplies her with words that (as we shall see) are most appropriate. In the narrative (1:64) we read that Zechariah began to speak in praise of God, but again no words are recorded; the insertion of the Benedictus in 1:68-79 supplies that praise of God. That the spokespersons are different is also respected. The beginning of the Magnificat echoes the opening of Hannah’s hymn in 1 Samuel 2:1-2 (Greek: “My heart is strengthened in the Lord; my horn is exalted in my God … I delight in Your salvation”). The appropriateness goes beyond the same gender of the speakers; Hannah’s canticle is in the context of having given birth to her firstborn son, while Mary has just conceived her firstborn. As we shall see, although the Magnificat is a mosaic of OT words and themes, some of the lines also anticipate Jesus’ Beatitudes in Luke’s account of the ministry. Such a reaching forward is appropriate on Mary’s lips because she is a Gospel-ministry figure who has been brought back to Luke’s “bridge” chapters of the infancy narrative. She encounters OT figures like Zechariah and Simeon whose canticles do not have such clear anticipations of Gospel wording.
After these general remarks on the origin and the placing of the canticles in Luke 1–2, let me turn more specifically to the canticle that greets the conception and birth of John the Baptist and thus constitutes the sequence to the preceding essay.
THE BENEDICTUS AND EARLY JEWISH CHRISTIAN CHRISTOLOGY
To accompany this discussion I have supplied a translation,5 incorporating the analysis and division I deem most plausible. (Other scholars favor a slightly different division, but the differences would not really affect our discussion here.) In the classification of hymns that was developed for analyzing the OT psalms, the Benedictus would most closely resemble a hymn of praise; and it does begin with the praise of the God of Israel. Clearly, the Jewish Christians who composed this canticle thought of themselves as continuing to belong to Israel. This same blessing of the God of Israel occurs at the end of three sections or “books” of the psalter, a work attributed to David (Pss 41:14 [13]; 72:18; 106:48), but also in 1 Kings 1:48 on the lips of David after Solomon’s enthronization. That is appropriate, for the Jewish Christian authors of the canticle are praising what God has done in the last anointed king of David’s lineage.
The original messianic reference of the canticle is retained even after Luke has placed it in the context of the Baptist’s birth. Although Zechariah is praising God for his child, the lines that Luke has inserted in reference to that child (1:76-77: the Lucan adaptation of the canticle) will make clear that the salvific action for Israel comes not from the Baptist but from the Lord before whom the Baptist only prepares the way.6 The subordination of the Baptist to the implicit main subject of the canticle, i.e., the messianic agent of God, is further indicated by where Luke places the inserted verses 76-77 pertinent to the Baptist. They do not stand at the end lest they appear to be the culmination of the praise; they stand before a final poetic description (78-79) of the “rising light from on high”7 who embodies “the heartfelt mercy of our God.” Always the proper sequence must be kept: the Baptist did not constitute an end in himself, for as John 1:8 will insist: “He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.” The Baptist is mentioned before Jesus, but Jesus is the one who guides out from darkness and death (Luke 1:79)—the work of the Messiah in the salvific action of God.
(Luke 1:68-79)
Introductory Praise
68a “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel:
First Strophe
68b Because He has visited
68c and accomplished the redemption of His people,
69a and has raised up for us a horn of salvation
69b in the house of David His servant,
70 as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old:
71a salvation from our enemies
71b and from the hand of all those who hate us,
Second Strophe
72a Showing mercy to our fathers
72b and remembering His holy covenant,
73 the oath which He swore to our father Abraham,
to grant us 74that, without fear,
delivered from the hands of our enemies,
we might serve Him 75in holiness and justice,
before Him all the days of our lives.
Lucan Insertion
76a But you, child, will be called prophet of the Most High;
76b for you will go before the Lord to make ready His ways,
77a to grant to His people knowledge of salvation
77b in the forgiveness of their sins.
Conclusion
78a Through the heartfelt mercy of our God
78b by which there has visited us a rising light from on high,
79a appearing to those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death,
79b guiding our feet into the way of peace.”
This salvific action, which supplies the motive for the praise of the God of Israel in the canticle, is described in the two strophes that constitute its body. These strophes are of approximately the same length and have similar structure. Each begins with what God has done by way of mercy and redemption for His people, “our fathers”; and each then proceeds to describe how this has been done for “us,” filling promises respectively to David and to Abraham. We recall that the Matthean genealogy spoke of “Jesus Christ, Son of David, Son of Abraham.” Matthew himself may have put together the elements of that genealogy, but he derived from Christian tradition the importance of those two ancestors who symbolized not only the special Jewish descent (David) of Jesus but also his wider reach (Paul uses Abraham to make the Gentiles sharers in the promises of God fulfilled in Jesus). Thus the Benedictus and the genealogy express in different ways an important common theme in the preparation for the coming of Jesus.
The first strophe indicates that the messianic inheritance from David was anticipated by the prophets (2 Samuel [chapter 7] was a prophetic book), while the second strophe connects Abraham with the covenant. The fulfillment of the Prophets and the Law is a motif that we have already seen in the Lucan infancy narrative. Notice that the salvific action is described in the two strophes in past (aorist) tenses,8 even though in the flow of the narrative Christ, the Lord, has not yet been born at Bethlehem. That is intelligible, for Jewish Christians composed the canticle after the resurrection when all this had already happened and the Messiah had come. In the infancy narrative context Zechariah is described as uttering a prophecy (1:67), and the past tenses show the surety of that prophetic view of what the Messiah would accomplish.
One may call the Benedictus a christological hymn since it concerns the Messiah, the “horn of salvation” (1:69; cf. Hannah’s canticle in 1 Sam 2:10: “the horn of His anointed” [ = Messiah, Christ]). Yet it is very different from the christological hymns we find in the Pauline and Johannine traditions, which spell out the human career of Jesus. For instance a hymn that Paul quotes in Philippians 2:6-11 speaks of Jesus’ origins, his humble life as a servant, his obedient death on the cross, and his exaltation. The Johannine Prologue hymn (John 1:1-18) speaks of his coming into the world, being rejected by his own, and manifesting his glory. The Benedictus, however, describes the messianic salvation entirely in OT terms without appealing to any event in Jesus’ life. One cannot explain that phenomenon simply from the fact that in the narrative context in which Luke has placed the canticle none of the events of Jesus’ life had yet taken place, for Luke did not hesitate to insert references to what the Baptist would do. Rather, in the Benedictus and in the other Lucan canticles (for the same phenomenon is true of them), we are hearing very early Christian christology that did not require and perhaps had not yet acquired a peculiarly Christian vocabulary—perhaps the oldest preserved Christian prayers of praise wherein Jewish believers expressed themselves entirely in the language of their ancestors. I have sometimes asked Jews of today who believe in the coming of a personal messiah whether, if someone whom they considered as worthy of that title were to come, they could recite the Benedictus (without the inserted Lucan verses 76-77). None of them found it alien language. Such an insight shows how appropriate is the use of the Benedictus as an Advent Gospel reading. This is the season where we relive the story of Israel and its expectations; we who believe that this story is encapsulated in Jesus and those expectations are fulfilled in him praise God in the language of Israel when we recite the Benedictus.
1 For instance, 1:56 reads very smoothly following 1:45; 1:80 smoothly following 1:66. Greater effort was made by the evangelist in incorporating the canticles of chapter 2 in the flow of the narrative.
2 Although Acts’ description does not say that the Jerusalem Christians sang hymns, 2:47 speaks of their praising God, and technically the canticles of the infancy narrative are to be categorized as hymns of praise.
3 “Early,” not only because they are pre-Lucan, but also because their christology is phrased entirely in OT language, unlike the developed hymns we find in post-50 Christian writing.
4 As I pointed out, the appropriateness is enhanced if the Jewish Christian authors were “Poor Ones” with lives of Temple piety: Mary is a Poor One, and Zechariah and Simeon are exemplary of Temple piety.
5 Taken from my Birth of the Messiah, 2d ed., 367–68.
6 Probably Luke’s use of “the Lord” is deliberately ambiguous: in his own lifetime the Baptist thought he was preparing for the direct intervention of the Lord God of Israel, but the one who came after the Baptist was Jesus, child of Mary, whom Elizabeth lauded in 1:43 as “the mother of my Lord.”
7 This is the Greek word anatolē which is used in Zechariah 3:8; 6:12 to translate the Hebrew references to the Davidic “branch” or “shoot.” It is the same word used in Matthew 2:2 in the description of “His star at its rising,” the star that signals the birth of the King of the Jews.
8 The manuscripts do not agree whether to read an aorist or a future form in the key verb of the conclusion, thus “visited” or “will visit” in 1:78. I prefer the aorist, thinking that the scribes have conformed this description of Jesus to the future tenses that precede in the inserted description of the Baptist (1:76-77).