December 31st, 2022

This Sunday could be called the first Sunday after Christmas, but because Christmas was last Sunday, this Sunday is also a holiday, although a much less familiar one. On this Sunday the Christian Church celebrates the day of the circumcision and naming of Jesus. It happened to him on the eighth day, the age of a young infant, and that number eight is an important one in the Old Testament, but it is also important in the New Testament.

The Gospel text for the Circumcision and Name of Jesus could not be any shorter. It is one verse from Luke 2[:21]. It simply tells of the circumcision and the naming of Jesus, as would be expected, and, as also would be expected, it relates the event in the past tense. After all, it happened a while ago, in our case, over two thousand years ago.

One could say that the above verse in the past tense is in significant contrast to a particular verb in the next text that comes up as we continue our walk through the Gospel according to Matthew. As was mentioned last week, your feedback is invited. But, if no feedback is given, we will continue with Matthew, the second chapter [verses 13-19], and what follows is a somewhat-literal translation:

So, they [the magi], having departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appears according to a dream to Joseph, saying, ‘Rising, take the child and the mother of him, and flee into Egypt, and be there until I say to you; for Herod is about to seek the child to destroy him.

So, he, rising, took the child and the mother of him, of night, and they departed into Egypt, and he was there until the end of Herod, in order that the thing spoken by the Lord might be fulfilled through the prophet saying, ‘Out of Egypt I called the son of me.’
Then Herod, seeing that he was mocked by the magi, was very angered, and sending, killed all the boy-children in Bethlehem and in all the regions of it from two years and under, according to the time which he inquired from the magi. Then was fulfilled the thing spoken through Jeremiah the prophet saying, ‘A voice in Rama was heard, weeping and mourning much; Rachel weeping for the children of her, and she would not be comforted, because they are not.’

So, Herod, having died, behold, an angel of the Lord appears according to a dream to Joseph in Egypt….

Hopefully the two verses in the present tense were noticed. It is, frankly, quite obvious. When there are a number of events in the past tense, and then, suddenly, a verse in the present when one would expect the past, that makes a difference. And that special difference has been called the historical present.

The similarities with a part of the previous section are incredible. In the above text, an angel of the Lord appears according to a dream, and that happens two times, one at the beginning and one at the end. But in the previous section that was the focus two weeks ago, the text is similar, but it is without the historical present [1:20-21]:

And these things him thinking on, behold, an angel of the Lord by a dream appeared to him saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary, the wife of you, for the thing in her is begotten from the Holy Spirit. And she will bear a son, and you shall call the name of him Jesus, for he himself will save the people of him from the sins of them.’

Why is the verb in the past the first time it appears, and in the present the next two? Typically, ‘Why’ questions have complicated answers. And since we cannot interview the writer, we are usually left with a myriad of possibilities. And there can sometimes be a myriad of answers.

Perhaps the best answer would be to say that the past tense in the first text is important in that it does not distract the reader or listener from the important points of the name of Jesus at the beginning, middle, and end of the text. And the present tense in the next two texts is important in that a similar structure will occur in the following chapters.
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One may look ahead with the New American Standard Bible and see the asterisks. Or, eventually, this writer will get to that section. Patience is a virtue.