The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke
in Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library
Pages
752
Publisher
Yale University Press
Published
5/18/1999
ISBN-13
9780300140088
Over his illustrious career, Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Ph.D., was internationally regarded as a dean of New Testament scholars. He was Auburn Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, received over thirty honorary degrees from Catholic and Protestant universities worldwide, and was elected a (Corresponding) Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition to serving as president of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic Biblical Association, and the Society of New Testament Studies, two popes appointed Father Brown as the sole American on the Pontifical Biblical Commission. Some of the best known of his more than thirty-five books on the Bible are three volumes in the Anchor Bible series on the Gospel and Epistles of John, as well as the Anchor Bible Reference Library volumes The Birth of the Messiah, The Death of the Messiah, and An Introduction to the New Testament, winner of the 1998 Catholic Press Association Award for Biblical Studies. Father Brown’s untimely death on August 8, 1998, saddened all who knew him.
Collections
This book appears in the following featured collections.
- New Testament Commentaries & Monographs by Princeton Theological Seminary
Reviews
DavidH
August 12, 2026
August 12, 2026
Similar to Matthew 1-2, this is also one of the most important supplementary works for Luke 1–2. Brown combines unusually detailed historical, textual and source-critical investigation with sensitive literary and theological interpretation, particularly in his analysis of Luke’s John/Jesus parallels, annunciation patterns, Christology and portrayal of Mary. He is commendably willing both to explore imaginative proposals and to reject them when the textual evidence is inadequate. Conservative readers will disagree with some of his historical conclusions, especially concerning the census and the compositional history of Luke 1–2, but Brown normally lays out the evidence sufficiently fully for readers to reach their own conclusions. For these two chapters, few works offer a comparable combination of originality, comprehensiveness and exegetical stimulation.
DavidH
August 11, 2026
August 11, 2026
For Matthew 1–2, Brown’s Birth of the Messiah remains one of the indispensable specialist resources. The commentary combines extraordinarily detailed treatment of textual, historical and source-critical questions with sustained interpretation of the finished Matthean narrative, and Brown commendably distinguishes his interpretation of Matthew’s theological message from the more conjectural reconstruction of pre-Matthean traditions. His discussions of the genealogy, fulfillment quotations, virgin conception, Magi, Balaam, Isaiah 60, Egypt, Moses typology and the internal architecture of the infancy narrative remain foundational. Conservative readers will disagree with a number of his historical conclusions, but even where Brown is unpersuasive he normally identifies the evidence and alternatives with exceptional thoroughness. For serious work on Matthew’s infancy narrative, it deserves 5/5 as a specialist commentary.