Daniel Schwartz has an interesting example of how gLuke, or later scribes, used a meeting between the mother of John the Baptist and the mother of Jesus to indicate a transfer of importance. i.e. from a John the Baptist group to a Jesus group. A simple transfer of the Magnificat song from Elizabeth to Mary and John the Baptist and his movement is overtaken by the Jesus figure.
Of course, when writing a story, in this case an origin story, one is free to make light of any struggle the new movement experienced. What better way than have the old movement welcome the new movement with open arms..... Any conflict between the John and Jesus movements would get a whitewash by the winning side. Story wise, John the Baptizer is conveniently disposed off by a wicked Herodian.
Theology wise, the gospel story needs to have it's John the Baptist figure killed prior to the execution of it's Jesus figure (a reversal to how Josephus places these two figures in his own writing. ) The theology of the new movement being, for want of a better word, the end game. No latter day resurgence of a John the Baptizer figure, dead or alive, would be tolerated by the new theology. As someone once said - Christianity is the mother of heretics - and unfortunately also their inquisitor.
Daniel R. Schwartz: Reading the First Century: On Reading Josephus and Studying Jewish History of the First Century
2.3.3.4 Theologically motivated scribes? Who sang the Magnificat
(Luke 1:46–56)?
Sometimes, however, the lectio difficilior rule does seem to be easy to apply,
and may even point us in the direction of far-reaching results. Suppose that
we wish to study John the Baptist and his disciples – a first-century Jewish
movement that had something to do with the rise of Christianity. The way
the Gospels tell the story, John recognized Jesus as his master very early
on: Matthew (3:13–15) has him recognizing Jesus and accepting his primacy
when Jesus came to be baptized; Luke (1:39–45) even has the yet-unborn
John dancing in his mother’s womb, in a way that expressed Jesus’ superiority,
when the pregnant mother of Jesus came to visit; and John (1:15, 30),
in a more theological vein, has the Baptist recognizing Jesus, the first time
he sees him, as the one who preceded him despite the fact that he appeared
in the world after him. However, there is also New Testament evidence for
John himself being at the head of a movement that maintained itself separate
from that around Jesus, even after John’s death (e. g., Matt 11:2–3; Acts
18:24–19:4), even competing with it (Mark 2:18–20; Luke 11:1–2),102 just as
Josephus, who gives us several paragraphs about John (Ant. 18.116–119),
makes no attempt to connect him with Jesus. Wouldn’t it be nice if we
could discover some liturgy of John’s movement?
In this context, it seems to be significant that the witnesses to Luke 1:46,
which introduces the text of the song (the “Magnificat”) recited when the
two pregnant mothers met, offer three alternatives: most witnesses read
“and Mary said,” some have “and (she) said” (i.e., they do not name the
speaker), and a few have “and Elizabeth said.”
...................
Above we considered only the theological consideration – the preference for
Jesus over John, hence for Mary over Elizabeth, which would have led Christian
scribes to take the Magnificat from Elizabeth and assign it to Mary but not vice versa.
However, just as scribes familiar with the Bible would know that priests must be of the tribe
of Levi, so too would such scribes know that the Magnificat is similar to
Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 2 – a prayer of thanksgiving recited by an aging
wife, long childless, who had finally been blessed with a child. Anyone
who realizes this will also realize that Elizabeth too was such an aging first time
mother and the Magnificat, accordingly, fits her better than Mary..
.......
Suppose, that is, that the text originally went straight from vv. 24–25, where Elizabeth
becomes pregnant and is happy about it, to v. 46; we would read “and she
said” and have no problem with the pronoun for no other woman will have
been mentioned, and we would go on reading the Magnificat and appreciating
the parallel with Hannah.
.....................
Table summarizing apparent growth of Luke 1:
Stage 1: Birth of John the Baptist, no mention of Jesus; Elizabeth sings
Magnificat
Stage 2: Introduction of vv. 26–45, on Mary, her pregnancy, and her meeting
with Elizabeth
Stage 3: V. 46 changed to transfer Magnificat to Mary; v. 56 left unchanged.
Thus, from three different directions – the varying evidence for the text
of v. 46 analyzed according to the lectio difficilior rule; the biblical context
(the implied comparison of the singer of the Magnificat to Hannah); and
the local context, namely, the implication of the formulation of v. 56 – we
have concluded that the Magnificat was originally understood to be sung
by the mother of John the Baptist, not by the mother of Jesus. Moreover,
we got to this conclusion by building on other evidence for the original
independence of John’s movement, evidence that encouraged us to look
for evidence that Mary was not, in fact, part of the original text of what is
now Luke 1 – a quest that bore fruit in our recognition of the anomalous
formulation of v. 56. Accordingly, if to begin with we set out to find liturgy
of John’s movement, we have probably found some of that but also evidence
for the process by which that movement, and its materials, were incorporated into
Christianity. Not a bad harvest for a quest that began only with
some badly outnumbered variant readings (“she” or “Elizabeth”) in Luke
1:46.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reading-Firs ... 81&sr=8-4
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats
