Joseph is told by the angel that the boy will be called Jesus because ‘he will save his people from their sins’. We expect the Christmas story to have universal relevance, good news for all mankind, but the message here is only that Jesus will be Israel’s saviour: he will save his people. The reference to Israel’s ‘sins’ should also be understood in a quite specific eschatological sense. These are the sins that have placed the nation under judgment, the outcome of which will be political destruction if the nation qua nation does not repent. We should hear in the background passages such as Micah 3:8-12, not least because Micah has the prophecy about a ruler who will come from Bethlehem….

The Christmas stories have to do more with Jesus as Messiah than with the incarnation. There is no suggestion that only in this way could he be sinless, etc.; it is not taken as an argument for Jesus’ divinity. Rather the virgin birth is a ‘sign’ to Joseph (the reference to the prophecy occurs in the middle of the account of Joseph’s dream) of God’s involvement, just as the birth of the child in Is.7:14 is a sign to Ahaz of God’s presence with Israel.

This passage has traditionally been understood to describe an end-of-history coming of Jesus to take the church to heaven to be with God. It needs to be read, however, with a strong awareness of the historical setting, on the one hand, and of the nature of the prophetic language, on the other. If we take these two contextual elements into account, we hear Paul constructing a powerful and urgent narrative of hope for a community facing deadly opposition from the powers of Greek-Roman paganism.

1. Paul’s argument in 1 Cor. 11:2-16 has nothing to do with submission - that is simply not what he is talking about. The word exousian occurs in verse 10 but what he says here is that a woman ‘ought to have authority over (exousian echein epi) her head’, which I take to mean that in his view it is ultimately for the woman to decide whether or not she covers her head. The argument I put forward in Speaking of Women: Interpreting Paul is that the problem Paul is dealing with is not that women were agitating for greater freedom of expression but that men in the community were putting pressure on women to uncover their heads in worship as a sign of their new freedom in Christ. Paul defends the right of the woman to remain covered in the interests of modesty and the honour of her husband. It is an excellent example of how to resolve a clash between culture and theology.

Simeon is a righteous and devout man who has been looking for the ‘consolation’ or ‘comforting’ (paraklēsis) of Israel. The phrase is an unmistakable reference to the theme of the ‘comforting’ of Israel and Zion that is found widely in Isaiah 40-66. The most interesting passage is Isaiah 52:7-10:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” The voice of your watchmen - they lift up their voice; together they sing for joy; for eye to eye they see the return of the LORD to Zion. Break forth together into singing, you waste places of Jerusalem, for the LORD has comforted his people; he has redeemed Jerusalem. The LORD has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

The theme of a restricted, national salvation is evidenced in the angelic announcement to the shepherds. The child is born for their benefit (‘unto you’), because the renewal of Israel would begin at the margins, amongst the poor, disreputable, and even the villainous. The news will be a source of great joy not to the whole world but to ‘all the people’ of Israel - the same ‘people’ (laos) to which Zechariah refers when he prophesies about the redemption of Israel (1:68, 77).

The Benedictus of Zechariah corresponds to Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) and echoes its central theme, which is that YHWH has acted to redeem Israel from its state of oppression for the sake of the promise to Abraham to preserve an authentic humanity, a renewed creation, in the midst of the nations of the earth. The passage is dense with allusions to the Old Testament, bringing into view a background narrative that must be allowed to guide and delimit our reading of the prophecy.