2025 Conference at the University of Manchester

This lecture argues that Luke’s birth narrative (Luke 1-2) was inspired by the ambiguity in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ conception, which left open the possibility that Jesus was illegitimate and was perhaps already inspiring the kind of slanders recounted by Celsus in his True Word. The author of Luke’s Gospel stressed Mary’s virginity through an angelic annunciation, replaced Matthew’s dubious or parochial stories with a set that better prepared for the Lukan Jesus, and developed a synkrisis with John the Baptist already in embryo form in Mark’s opening verses (Mark 1.7-8). The new opening, it will be argued, was added to a second edition of the gospel.

This paper explores the Matthean Lord’s Prayer as an ethical response to the material realities of debt and hunger in the ancient world. Rather than treating “daily bread” and “forgiveness of debts” through abstract, non-literal, or eschatological frameworks, it argues that these petitions reflect lived experiences of precarity and exposure. Special attention is given to the prayer’s inversion—“forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”—which places human mercy at the center of divine response. Drawing on 4QInstruction, an early Jewish wisdom text, the paper situates the Lord’s Prayer within a sapiential tradition in which forgiveness and provision are formative acts of justice. Prayer here is not passive but performative: a communal ritual that disrupts cycles of obligation and models a divine economy of mercy. By reading these texts together, the paper shows how prayer becomes not merely petition but a communal practice of compassion, equity, and ethical formation.