Why is there no nativity account in Mark's Gospel or John's Gospel?

Answer 1

The earliest gospel, the Gospel According to St Mark, did not contain any material about the birth of Jesus. Either its author knew nothing about the birth of Jesus, or he believed it to be irrelevant to the gospel.

In the following decades, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written, using Mark's Gospel as their main source for material about the life of Jesus. However, there was an apparent desire to know more about his early life; a need that both Matthew and Luke filled with somewhat contradictory stories about the nativity. There seems to have been no great need for information about the childhood and early adulthood of Jesus, although Luke provides an account of Jesus debating in the Temple when he was 12 years old.

Answer 2

First it is useful to look at why the Gospels of Matthew and Luke did include nativity stories. Scholars tell us that both gospels were based on Mark's Gospel, with additional sayings material from the hypothetical 'Q' document and some material unique to Matthew and Luke respectively.

The author of Matthew set out to tell his readers about the birth of Jesus and portray him as the son of God from his conception. The story of the magi, who were priests of the Zoroastrian religion, allowed the author to suggest that Jesus was the Saoshyant whom the followers of the god Ahura Mazda had long awaited, perhaps demonstrating that this gospel was written closer to modern Iraq or Iran. The author of Matthew made great use of the Old Testament to prefigure the life of Jesus and here set out to draw a parallel between Jesus and Moses. In his genealogy, Jacob is the father of Joseph, just as Jacob is the father of Joseph in the Old Testament. Joseph took his family to Egypt, as in the Old Testament, and Jesus returned to Palestine to save his people, just as Moses returned to Palestine to save his people. The evil king ordered the slaughter of all the infants under two years old, just as the Egyptian pharaoh ordered the slaughter of all the infants under two years old.

The author of Luke also sought to portray Jesus as the son of God from the moment of his conception. Further, at a time when some scholars think of John the Baptist as not really being one who prophesied the coming of Jesus, but rather the leader of another, quite influential first-century sect, Luke'saccount of the birth of John the Baptist made a clear point that John was not an opponent or competitor, but one who already looked up to Jesus, his cousin and inspiration. Forty days after the birth, the young couple took Jesus to be presented in the Temple in Jerusalem, providing the personal touch and showing Mary and Joseph to be pious people. The passage in which Simeon blessed the baby Jesus and prophesied great things was an opportunity to prove that Jesus was indeed the son of God. The author of Luke often used repetition to ensure certainty among his readers, so the story of Simeon was immediately followed by the story of Anna the prophetess.

Mark's Gospel provided a basic framework of the mission of Jesus but provided very little information about the personal side of Jesus; he came across as a remote and impersonal founder of Christianity. The author had portrayed Jesus as human, adopted by God as his son at the time of his baptism, and so had no real need for a nativity account for any of the reasons that eithe Matthew or Luke did.

John's Gospel, the last of the New Testament gospels to be written, goes further than Matthew and Luke, portraying Jesus as divine and pre-existing from the time of creation. Although John is seen as inspired by Luke, its author would have found Gabriel's promise in Luke 1:35, that the Holy Spirit would cause her to conceive, a difficult proposition. The author does not deny that Jesus was born on earth, but can not describe the conception and birth in the terms Luke uses. He seems to suggest that Jesus was not even born in Bethlehem, for example when he has the men say, "Nothing good comes out of Galilee."