The shepherds are literally outsiders when the
angels come to them with the good news. Their marginal location out in the
fields near Bethlehem, rather than at the heart of the town, would naturally
mean that they are the last to hear what’s going on. Now they are the first to
receive and then spread the good news of the Saviour’s birth.
If we think about the birth narratives as a
whole, Luke’s local Jewish shepherds of relatively low status naturally form a
contrast with Matthew’s (Gentile?) Magi from (far away?) in the East. The
shepherds have a relatively short and easy journey, whereas the Magi’s journey
presumably required means and leisure. Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, educated
and uneducated are all invited!
The shepherds might be seen as the humble of Luke
1:52 who are lifted up or as the poor who have the good news preached to them
according to 7:22 (Robert H. Stein, The New American Commentary, B&H
1992, p108).
In An Even Better Christmas (Good Book
Company, 2018), Matt Chandler claims:
“In first-century Judea, shepherds were considered outsiders,
on the edges of normal society. They were so mistrusted that their testimony
was inadmissible evidence in a court of law. First-century Jews believed that
God didn’t like shepherds—and they didn’t like them, either. The most pious of
Jews would not buy milk, lambs or wool from shepherds; they assumed it was
stolen. The religious elite of that day saw them as unclean, filthy,
unwanted and outside of God’s favor. A philosopher in Alexandria, one of
the centers of the intellectual world at the time, went so far as to say,
“There is no more disreputable an occupation than that of a shepherd.”” [I’m
not sure where this quotation is from. One online source cites Midrash Ps.
23.2, ed. Buber, Vilna 1891, 99b.12, cited by Jeremias, Jerusalem,
p. 311, fn. 42. The next (different) quotation in the online text is from Philo
of Alexandria. - https://www.jesuswalk.com/luke/apx1f-shepherds.htm#_ftnref1332]
https://www.thevillagechurch.net/resources/articles/who-did-god-come-for
- the online excerpt at least gives no footnotes
Stein claims that “in general shepherds were
regarded as dishonest” citing the Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 25b, which was
initially compiled around 500AD. Sanhedrin 25b rejects the validity of the
testimony of shepherds and seems to base this view on the idea that shepherds
deliberately and routinely allowed their animals to graze in the fields of
others. Stein adds that shepherds were “unclean according to the standards of
the law. They represent the outcasts and sinners for whom Jesus came. Such
outcasts were the first recipients of the good news.”
Kenneth Bailey (Jesus Through Middle
Eastern Eyes, IVP 2008, p35-36) says that shepherds at the time of Jesus
were poor, lowly, near the bottom of the social scale and rejected. He cites
Joachim Jeremais, “Despised Trades and Jewish Slaves” in Jerusalem in the Time
of Jesus (Fortress, 1969) pp304-12 to show that rabbinic sources regarded
shepherds as unclean. Bailey says: “Five lists of “proscribed trades” are
recorded in rabbinic literature and shepherds appear in three out of the five.
These lists hail from post-New Testament but could reflect developing ideas
alive in the time of Jesus. In any case, they were lowly, uneducated types.” (p35)
Bailey imagines that the shepherds would fear that if they tried to visit the
Messiah, his parents would send them away.
Leon Morris (Tyndale, IVP, 1974) similarly
thinks that the nature of the shepherds’ calling kept them from observing the
ceremonial law (p93). He assumes the shepherds to be “devout men… from a
despised class.” (p93)
Bock BECNT 1994 on Luke 2:8 sees the shepherds
as “an everyday group” (p214):
“The shepherds are often characterized as
representing the “downtrodden and despised” of society, so that the first
proclamation of the gospel is said to have come to sinners (Hendriksen 1978:
149; Godet 1875: 1.130;
R. Brown 1977: 420 n. 38). The evidence for this view draws on
material from rabbinic Judaism (SB 2:113–14; b. Sanh. 25b;
Midr. Ps. 23.2 on
23:1 [= Braude 1959: 1.327]). But there are two problems with reading the
shepherds as symbols of the hated. First, the rabbinic evidence is late, coming
from the fifth century. More importantly, shepherd motifs in the Bible are
mostly positive. The NT (Luke
15:4; Mark
6:34; Matt.
18:12; John
10; 1
Pet. 2:25; Heb.
13:20; Eph.
4:11) portrays shepherds in a favorable light,
even describing church leaders with this figure. In the OT, Abraham, Moses, and David were
all shepherds at some point in their lives.4 Thus, the presence of the
shepherds is not a negative point. Rather, they picture the lowly and
humble who respond to God’s message (1:38, 52; 4:16–18; Fitzmyer 1981: 408).” (p213)
Jesus will of course call himself the good shepherds and pastors are the be under-shepherds.
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