'At the Age of 12': The Boy Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:41-52), The Emperor Augustus, and the Social Setting of the Third Gospel

The story of the boy Jesus at the age of 12 in the temple (Luke2:41–52) is often read and understood in relation to itsinherently Jewish narrative setting. The probable recipientsof Luke–Acts were, however, almost certainly Gentilesliving in the cities of Asia Minor in the late first centuryCE, removed by at least a generation from the Jewish originsof Christianity. The social setting of the recipients is, then,shaped not by the rituals and symbols of late Second TempleJudaism, but those of imperial Rome and, in particular, thelegacy and cult of the first of the imperial princeps, thatof Augustus. Writing in this milieu, Luke seeks to present Jesusas a significant figure in history in accordance with the conventionsof contemporary Greco-Roman biography, and to transmit throughhis infancy narrative those traditions about Jesus which assistin presenting him as the ultimate superior and successor tothe deified Augustus. The episode in the temple is includedby Luke in his infancy narrative because it is consistent with,and contributes to, this broader purpose.