Volume 15, Issue 1, February 2002

In conversation with feminist interpretations of pregnancy and birth this article offers a re-reading of Luke 2:1-20. The article sets out to read this passage with an eye to the representation and narrative function of the mother – especially the body of the mother – both before and after birth. The focus is on the transformation of the mother, Mary of Nazareth. The article considers ways in which the narrative represents three births: the birth of the child, a birth to or for the shepherds and the birth of the mother. These births suggest a logic of gestation, which finds its paradigm in the connective “keeping” (2:19, 51) activity of Mary. In Luke 2:1-20 the birth of the child is also the birth of the mother as a keeping woman.