Where is he who is born King of the Jews?

Where is he who is born King of the Jews? Infancy narratives, Matthew 1—2

Mark begins with ‘the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ’, but Matthew picks another key word – genesis: ‘the book of the generation (biblos geneseos) of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham’ (1.1). Immediately we have a phrase used repeatedly in the book called ‘Genesis’ (see Gen. 2.4; 5.1); no one could miss the allusion, implying a recreation of the creation in the arrival of Jesus. Furthermore, while Mark’s Jesus bounds on to the stage fully grown, Matthew makes his account more like ancient biographies by providing some information about Jesus’ ancestry, origin and birth. Ancient lives often included these topics, before jumping ahead to the subject’s arrival on the public scene, although this was usually done briefly, rather than the full treatment we expect in modern biography…