In the Gospel of Mark we do not find an Infancy Narrative like we do in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Why? I don’t know that we can find a definite answer, but this is a collection of possibilities. Some are not exclusive of the others.
(1) Mark didn’t know about the virgin conception. It may be that for one reason or another he was unaware of this story. It is hard to include something you don’t know!
(2) The virgin conception had not been ‘created’ before the composition of Mark’s Gospel. If Matthew was the originator of the story this would make sense. Mark cannot know what Matthew created. If Matthew did create it we must explain Luke’s knowledge of it. This would demand Luke’s knowledge of Matthew or a tradition derived from Matthew.
(3) Mark rejected the virgin conception. If he was aware of it he may have not affirmed it. This would put him at odds with Matthew and Luke, though maybe not John.
(4) Mark may have sought to avoid controversy regarding the birth of Jesus. It is apparent that some felt that Jesus was the result of Mary’s sexual immorality. This seemed hinted at by the Gospel of John 8.41 where Jesus’ opponents state, “We were not born of fornication.” Did they mean to insinuate that Jesus was? Whether this was true or not it could have been sufficient reason for Mark to avoid any discussion of Jesus’ birth or childhood lest it distract his audience, especially if he knew his audience was aware of these accusations.
(5) The virgin conception was irrelevant to the theme(s) of Mark’s Gospel. In Mark 1.1 we read “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” In 1.2 he moves straight into the proclamations of John the Baptist. Mark ends abruptly with a resurrection narrative. It could be that Mark’s main concern was the “ministry” of Jesus from the preaching of the Baptist to the resurrection. Somehow, for Mark, this is “the gospel” and Jesus’ birth is foreign to “the gospel”.
(6) The virgin conception is assumed. If the title ‘Son of God’ had obtained a high Christology by the time Mark wrote his Gospel then maybe calling Jesus Christ the ‘Son of God’ rather than the ‘son of Joseph’ was enough of an introduction. Of course, this depends on whether one thinks ‘Son of God’ was original with Mark’s Gospel in 1.1. The same could be said of John’s Gospel with its logos Christology. There may not have been any reason to discuss a virgin conception when you are claiming that God’s Word became flesh and tabernacled among humans (1.14).
(7) Matthean Priority is accurate. If Mark knew Matthew’s Gospel was in circulation and he was seeking to create a shorter, catechism of a Gospel then he may not have felt like rehearsing what was already declared in a longer, earlier Gospel. This could pair with possibility #3.
Did I miss any of the possible explanations?
the archives near Emmaus 
This confirms that you are a heretic – to even consider Matthean priority makes you deserving of hell fire
Ha! And here I thought it would be the possibility of Mark’s denial of a virgin conception that would get me in trouble.
In recent years I’ve been interested in the idea that Mark’s Gospel is a ‘missionary Gospel’. It’s short, easily memorized and easily recited within a short amount of time. The constant use of “καὶ εὐθὺς” makes the story fast-paced and interesting. Jesus is a man of action from the very first and I think this plays nicely into St. Mark’s Gospel being for missionaries/catechists. This isn’t a hill upon which I’m ready to die, but I at least like it as a theory.
Another view is that Mark was written in a codex form (as we know most early New Testament manuscripts were preserved in), and that early on the first section of binding was lost so the prologue and conclusion is missing. Hence why Mark has no infancy narrative and no post-resurrection appearances of Christ. There is no theological reason, its just because of the vagaries of 1st century book production…
@Josh: Yes, that would be another good one that kind of goes with #5 and #7.
@Erlend: That is a possibility as well. Do we know of anyone who has argued for this? It seems weak due to lack of textual evidence, though I have heard several propose that Mark originally had a longer ending.
It is doubtful that any part of Mark was really lost.
Brian, I don’t care if you doubt the literal virgin birth or however you want to phrase it, but to doubt Marka priority is to utterly destroy Scriptural Authority.
@Joel: Ha! True, true.
One more that I’d suggest, building off of option #5 above. Given that silence is a key theme of Mark’s gospel (Christ seems consistently obsessed in the book with shutting up demons, people he’s healed, and generally any one who knows his “secret” identity), I see the conception/nativity story as outside Mark’s narrative strategy.
The virgin conception and nativity stories are tough to envision without major proclamation regarding Christ’s messianic role. I think they’re intentionally omitted to height the aura of suspense and tension that a careful reader feels navigating the book. Nowhere in Mark are we fully allowed to join a character in shouting who Christ is.
Mark pushes the reader to confront his or her own relationship to speech and silence regarding Jesus. Including the origin story would have derailed that intention.
@Paul: That is a great observation as well.
So, Mark… writing to announce that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and doing so from the very beginning, is trying to keep a secret?
No offense, but I think the secret motif died with the idea of Mosaic authorship of the Torah
@Joel: You don’t think Mark has a reoccurring motif wherein Jesus doesn’t want his identity known?
I think that covers the main possibilities. For me the intriguing thing is to explain how the idea was in both Matthew and Luke if you adopt 2DH. Was there a hint in a Q saying? Did Matthew and Luke have access to other overlapping tradition, despite the fact that very little else in the birth narratives is shared (only Bethlehem and even then very differently)? Are you going to make some suggestions on this?
@veryrarely: What if Luke had access to Matthew and he altered what he wanted to alter?
@Brian, No. I think the gospel, written to expressly propel Jesus as the Messiah, complete with the incipit which declares who Jesus, along with miracles and the Mt. of Transfiguration refutes the idea of a secret motif. As someone recently said – what secret exactly where they trying to hide?
@VRS, I think that given Matthew’s overall narrative viewpoint, Matthew chose things from the OT to align the story of Jesus with, although that doesn’t really do my view justice. How about this? Jesus embodied, as Mark shows time and time again, Israel’s national narrative. Matthew went a step further, because his skill was clearly in rabbinical exegesis.
@Joel: That is a good observation. The reader does seem to be informed in a way that the characters are not.
I think Luke had access to Matthew, Mark, and maybe another source, L, from which he combined all.
@Joel: I lean that direction as well. I blame Mark Goodacre for my Q-skepticism.
And, since Mark wasn’t writing to the characters, but giving a performance to fellow believers….
I think that one of the sources not usually looked at for the gospels is the Book of Wisdom (of Solomon). Prof. Humphrey during the Markan Literary sources seminar showed pretty well that Mark was making use of Wisdom. Further, I think that Luke’s declaration of Jesus as ‘righteous’ supports the examination of Wisdom as a source for the Gospels, especially given that the earliest NT book, James, is Wisdom Lit.
I do think that Mark was working with some original traditions, but they are arranged and told in such a way as to use preexisting structures, such as Wisdom or the current historical situation, so as to not present something so totally new, so that it was easily acceptable.
@Joel: Did she (Edith?) suggest Mark used Wisdom first and that this impacted Matthew and Luke or does she think Matthew and Luke used Wisdom in uniques ways as well.
No, Hugh. I believe he argued for Markan Priority would do and didn’t really talk about Matthew or Luke (I mean, why would you when you have Mark?), but Peter Doble does http://amzn.to/vsKD0k
@Joel: Thanks for the clarification. I’ll have to browse Doble’s argument.
Away for 30 mins, and it has moved on so much!
@Brian. Indeed! With Farrer-Goulder-Goodacre hypothesis there seems, at first sight, less of a problem.
But wait a minute, I’m not so sure this really follows through. Because if Luke knew Matthew, then in the birth narrative he really went to town in changing things in a way that he didn’t seem to do with other material. Yes, elsewhere Luke makes changes, some of them quite significant, but generally not in this wholesale manner.
It actually seems easier to me to propose that both Matthew and Luke had access to two common traditions in the form of snippets: 1) virginal conception and 2) Bethlehem origin. They then constructed almost totally different accounts around these snippets.
Can’t tell for sure, of course. Other possibilities might be more probable. Goodacre tries to pick off aspects in Matthew’s story that Luke wouldn’t have liked, e.g. magi = magicians, Acts doesn’t like magicians -> Luke rejects Matthew’s magi. Well, okay in so far as it goes, but there’s a whole lot of work to do to explain why Luke rips out practically everything in Matthew’s birth narrative; can one really proceed piecemeal like this and come up with Luke’s account?
My current thinking is that neither 2DH nor Farrer-Goulder-Goodacre fit the birth narratives very well. A plague on both their houses (!) so I won’t find a sympathetic reception with either adherents. But I certainly won’t go for the heretical option of Matthean priority, hell fire or no!
@veryrarely: It would seem that Luke butchered Matthew a bit. I find his genealogy quite interesting. It is almost as if he was about to move along without it, realized this, and stuck it in at the last minute! This can be accounted for by Luke using Matthew or another source, so like you I don’t see one view as being terribly obvious. I guess my problem with Q is non-existence. Luke’s cut-and-paste approach to Matthew is troublesome too.
@veryrarely: I like to give both Matthew and Luke the benefit of the doubt as to their sincerity – in which case I hold their role as redactors or editors spinning cloth from snippets to be quite secondary to the fact that they are primarily ‘guys holding material alleged to be authentic but not covered by Mark’ who feel that the quantity and quality of the material justifies their issuing new gospels.
I follow Farrer-Goodacre in insisting that Luke knows the gospel called Matthew, and so the difference in birth narratives is a problem, as you point out. But my current solution is not ‘snippets’ nor that Luke is ‘butchering Matthew’ (Brian). Rather I think it looks more like a case where Luke has Matthew in hand, but he is so convinced of the authority of his own sources that he must judge the differences in Matthew’s version as unworthy of repetition (oddly, except for the virginity thing!). This is not to say that Matthew’s material on the birth is unworthy, only that Luke by his mid-80s date can no longer verify or falsify the differences by external evidence and so must go with the cards he has in his own hand.
Regarding the option in which Mark rejects the virgin conception, something occurred to me: Mark’s gospel doesn’t appear to have included any of the post-resurrection appearances, the Great Commission, or Jesus’ ascent to heaven. It’s unlikely that he rejected those things as truthful (especially if the apostle Peter was the source of his gospel’s material), so why would he look upon the birth narratives with suspicion?
@Justin: That would seem to fit under #5. You’re suggesting that rather than a rejection of the virgin conception it didn’t fit the intention of Mark’s Gospel.
@Justin: I don’t see Mark being in possession of anything like Luke’s infancy narrative. And the actual circumstances of his own birth need not have been part of Jesus’ actual teaching. In which case the real knowledge was his mother’s provenance, whose date of passing is unknown but likely pre-Markan (i.e. did anyone think of asking her before she died?).
Now look at the narrative in Matthew: clearly not written with any input from Mary – the writer has no knowledge of Mary’s side of the story but only Joseph’s side. Here Mary ‘was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit’ and then Joseph gets help from dreams. This vagueness would play right into Brian’s thought that Mark (or Peter), had they heard of these traditions might see no reason to encourage whatever slanders were already going around among non-believers about the circumstances of Jesus’ birth. Cut to the chase, as they say.
Now Luke is another matter. There we see he has determined to get to the bottom of things and might well have uncovered fairly accurate traditions from Mary’s side of the family in the process – to say nothing of the geat deal of material he reports from the Baptist’s family. But in my opinion this was a late result of his own inspired research, which Mark could not have known about.
@John: This is a good observation. Mary is most prominent in the early chapters of Luke’s Gospel.
Hi, the idea I was raised on (so its very old), was that each Gospel has a distinct emphasis, visible from their birth narratives. In Matthew, Jesus is the Messiah, and he is traced back to Abraham (and he is seen from a Jewish perspective, the fulfilment of prophecy etc), in Luke, he is the Son of man, and is traced back to Adam (and is shown with women, gentiles, etc), in John he is the Son of God, and starts with the Word being with God, and in Mark, he is the suffering servant, so no genealogy is given – a servant is judged by his acts (which Mark gives, rather than his teaching), not his parentage.
Does this view still hold merit?
God bless,
Colin
veryrarelystable suggested that if Luke knew Matthew, then in the birth narrative he really went to town in changing things in a way that he didn’t seem to do with other material.
Before we come to any conclusion from this, it’s worth pointing out a problem with the argument. There may be other parallel passages which Luke changed considerably, but they are not deemed to be parallel *precisely because they have been changed so much*. An example is the pair of pericopes concerning a man who had two sons, Mt 21:28-32 // Lk 15:11-32. Another is the pair which deal with managing debts, Mt 18:23-35 // Lk 16:1-13. It is quite possible, if not probable, that in these cases the Lukan version was broadly based on the Matthean version. If so, we may now have at least three cases (including the birth narratives) where Luke made considerable changes when adapting the text of Matthew.
I recall being taught a similar way of thinking to my namesake (so not too old!). 4 Gospel recorders means 4 perspectives. A case of “both and” however you spply that to 4 ways of looking at the single great truth of Jesus.
And Mark especially is a very punchy action driven account. So no surprise that some of the deeper questions do not receive the same level of attention.
@Colin: I think it does hold merit. Whether or not the authorial intent of the Evangelist solely explains why some include a virgin conception and others do not is debatable, but it is a coherent suggestion.
@Ron Price. I guess there’s a judgement to be made on just how far pericopes can be allowed to be different before you write off dependency.
The first contra-example you give is a good illustration of this, because oddly enough I’d claim that these don’t clearly show dependency on each other; but slightly more possible is that Luke shows dependency on a different source of inspiration – not Q, but the story of Cain and Abel. Beyond there being 2 sons, we have a farming theme including fattened meat (Gen 4:4), jealousy between the sons (or, more strictly, from one to the other), the remonstration between Yahweh and Cain versus father and stay-at-home son. There’s just the slightest possibility that Matthew’s pericope is also influenced by Cain and Abel, but I feel this is much less probable.
Of course you could come back with Luke has “gone to town” on changing Cain and Abel; but my response would be that this is “historicising of scripture” rather than “redacting a source”, i.e. I don’t see Luke treating Matthew this way. In any case, “two sons” seems to me too much of a recurrent Hebrew Bible theme to interpret too much into the appearance of pericopes which share only this feature.
When someone claims Markan priority they reject all historical evidence. Mark was a transcription of an oral sermon giving to a certain group in Rome . The speaker was Peter who probably had access to the Hebrew Matthew and what we call Luke plus was an eye witness to the life,death and resurrection of Yahshua of which neither writing had birth naratives . It is very hard for Peter to preach something that was added to Matthew and Luke almost 100 years after the death of Yahshua. There is no prophesy what so ever of a virgin birth . Isaiah 7 was a mistranslation in the greek OT and if it was correct would require Yahshua being the 2nd born of a virgin. The virgin birth myth was borrowed from the pagans and incorporated into the gospels by a pagan convert name Justin and his contemporaries . There was 2 things these men hated . First and foremost was their hate of the Jews and wanted to show that Yahshua was the son of The Elohim by birth in Mary and was not a real jew as the son of Joseph when in truth he was the son of Joseph ,son of David and was the King of Israel and was adopted as the son of the Elohim at his baptism and was Reborn as the Fisrt begotten of the dead to become the literal Son and second most hated was the doctrine of Marcion who claimed the Elohim of the OT was the source of evil but the real Elyon was revealed by Yahshua who was pure good.
These mens hatred was the beginning of the replacement doctrine which required Yahshua to not be a jew literally and required the Elohim of the OT to be the one that promised Abraham. After these men finished redacting the original 3 gospels they created a 4th. these men probably also making Acts by separating it from Luke. It has taken me a long time to uncover the truth out of the NT but The Elohim has perserved the means if one wants to take the time