“Luke adds another narrative in which he makes the birth of John the Baptist serve as a foil (so to speak) to the birth of Christ. John, like Christ, was born as a child of promise, after a vision of an angel. But there the likeness ceases. The vision is to the father, not to the mother. The father disbelieves and is punished by dumbness. Elizabeth, the mother, was not a virgin. She, like the wife of Abraham, was barren up to old age. There is no vision to Elizabeth, and no mention of divine generation. If a Jew, Philo for example, were to say to Luke, ‘Your Messiah may have been a son of God and yet son of Joseph (as Isaac was son of Abraham)’ Luke might reply, ‘Read my book, and you will see that it was not so. John the Baptist might be called son of God after this fashion, but Jesus was
