For most of us, it just wouldn't be Christmas without reading Luke's eloquent words foretelling Jesus' birth. Tampa's James A. Harnish says that the difference between Luke's account of the Christmas story and Matthew's account is the difference between a Norman Rockwell painting in Saturday Evening Post and a tax collector's report. "If Luke reads like the Saturday Evening Post," Harnish writes, "then Matthew reads like the Wall Street Journal."

In Luke's account, all the facets of this expertly crafted scene combine to emphasize Luke's most important point that Jesus' birth was the result of an intentional divine intervention into human history. While Luke's words reflect his unique mastery of language, the particulars discussed in 1:26-31 actually follow a standard style of "birth annou…