Well, it’s that time of year again. Regular church attendees are going to have to share their pews with people who have finally decided to make it out for their second service of the year. Their belief that Jesus bled and died so they can gain eternal salvation might be unshakable, but it apparently isn’t all that motivating, considering how little these believers seem to do in response. Nevertheless, they can at least be counted on to show up for a retelling of Jesus’s miraculous birth.
But what version will they hear? More than likely, they’ll hear a “Hollywood” version of the tale that incorporates the most exciting elements of the two versions that we read about in Matthew and Luke. A quick Google search turned up this one, which illustrates my point perfectly. But what if someone tried to tell the full version? A version that included every detail that both Matthew and Luke provide?
Honestly, it just can’t be done. I had wanted to attempt it here, but there’s just no practical way to do it. For example, the version I linked to above goes like this:
The Standard Tale
- Mary’s visited by an angel who tells her about the pregnancy (Luke)
- She and Joseph live in Nazareth of Galilee, but are forced to travel to Bethlehem in Judea for a census commanded by the Roman authorities (Luke)
- They’re unable to find normal accommodations and are forced to room in an area intended for livestock. Mary gives birth there and is visited by local shepherds (Luke)
- Wise men far to the east see a star that somehow signifies the birth of the Jewish Messiah (Matthew)
- They travel for an unspecified period until they reach Jerusalem, where they inquire about the child (Matthew)
- These inquiries reach Herod, the ruler of the region, and he asks the wise men to send back word to him once they find the child, so Herod himself can also pay his respects (Matthew)
- The wise men make their way to Bethlehem, find the family, bestow their gifts, and return home via a different route (Matthew)
- An angel tells Joseph to hightail it out of Bethlehem, because Herod’s sending a posse to wipe out all the children 2 years old and under in an effort to stamp out Jesus (Matthew)
- Joseph and his family flee to Egypt and remain there until an angel tells him it’s safe to return, because Herod has died (Matthew)
- Joseph intends to go back toward Bethlehem, but after finding out that Herod’s son is in charge, he takes the family to Nazareth in Galilee (Matthew)
So what’s wrong with this story? I mean, it’s very cohesive, and it makes for a compelling tale. What’s not to like? Its only real problem is that the very books of the Bible that provide its details, contradict its overall narrative.
Two Very Different Stories
Let’s go back to Luke’s version. After Jesus’s birth and the visit from the shepherds, we don’t read about wise men or Herod’s animosity. Instead, Luke 2:22 says that after the days of Mary’s purification were over, the family went to Jerusalem. The “days of purification” are referring to Leviticus 12:1-4, where the Law of Moses stated that a woman was to be considered “unclean” for 40 days after giving birth to a male child. So when Jesus was about 40 days old, Luke claims that they all traveled to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices as thanks for his birth. While there, two elderly people see Jesus and begin proclaiming praise and prophecies concerning Jesus. And there’s no indication that an effort was made to keep any of this quiet, which is very different in tone to what we read in Matthew. Finally, in Luke 2:39, we read “And when they had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.” We’ll come back to this point in a moment.
The synopsis we looked at earlier incorporated most of Matthew’s version of the story. As we just read, his story ends very differently from Luke’s. However, it’s also significant to note that Matthew gives no indication that Joseph and Mary are from Nazareth. Matt 1:18 through the end of the chapter talks about Mary’s pregnancy, even though she and Joseph had never slept together, but it never specifies where they’re living. Chapter 2 begins with the sentence “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?'” Of course, it’s possible that Matthew still knew they were originally from Nazareth and just doesn’t bother to tell us that or divulge how they got to Bethlehem in the first place. But there are three context clues that point against such a possibility. First of all, regardless of how far the wise men had to journey, it likely took them quite a while to make the trip. When Matthew says “the east” he certainly doesn’t mean “east Jersualem,” and travel being what it was back then, any journey would have taken considerable time. The second clue is that Herod supposedly kills all the male children of Bethlehem who are 2 and under. So it’s unlikely that we’re supposed to still be thinking of Jesus as a newborn. Finally, Matthew says that when the family was able to leave Egypt, Joseph wanted to go back to Judea (where Bethlehem is). But after finding out Herod’s son was ruling, he became afraid and “went and lived in a city called Nazareth” (Matt 2:23). This is a very strange way to refer to Nazareth, if it’s where Joseph and Mary were already living.
So Matthew gives no indication that Joseph and Mary were just visiting Bethlehem. He never mentions a manger; instead, he references a house that they were staying in. He never talks about the shepherds from the fields, but has wise men who visit the child. He includes a story about Herod slaughtering a town’s children, though no other historical or biblical source ever mentions this. He claims that the family flees to Egypt until Herod’s death, that they want to return to Bethlehem, but finally settle in “a city called Nazareth.”
Luke, on the other hand, says that Nazareth is their home town, and they’re only visiting Bethlehem. He has no story about wise men, but does talk about shepherds from the fields that visit the newborn Jesus. Instead of Herod attempting to hunt them down and a subsequent flight to Egypt, the family travels straight to Jerusalem, where Herod lives. And there’s no effort to keep Jesus’s identity secret while they’re there, as two elderly prophets begin proclaiming who he is. And after making their sacrifices, the family simply goes back home to Nazareth, far from Herod’s reach (not that Luke indicates Herod’s even interested).
Can These Stories Be Put Together?
The main sticking points between the stories are the flight to Egypt and the trip to Jerusalem. On the one hand, Luke is very clear about his timeline: Jesus was only about 40 days old when they went to Jerusalem and then went home to Nazareth. Matthew doesn’t give specifics on how old Jesus was when the family was forced to flee to Egypt, except that it must have occurred before he was 2 years old.
Could the trip to Egypt have happened before the trip to Jerusalem?
No. First of all, considering all the details Luke provides, why would he have left out such an important event? Secondly, this means Herod would have needed to die within the 40 day purification period, but Matthew tells us that this still wouldn’t have been good enough, because Joseph was determined to avoid all of Judea while Herod’s son was reigning. There’s simply no way he would have felt safe enough to travel directly into Jerusalem. That just makes no sense.
Could the trip to Egypt have happened after the trip to Jerusalem?
No. Luke 2:39 is clear that the family went straight back to Nazareth after their trip to Jerusalem. And considering Luke claimed that Nazareth was already their home, why would they have needed to go back to Bethlehem anyway?
In fact, Luke’s claim that the family was from Nazareth creates a lot of problems for Matthew’s account. Nazareth was far outside of Herod’s reach. So if Herod really had hunted Jesus in Bethlehem, the family could have simply gone back to Nazareth rather than flee to Egypt. But this isn’t a consideration in Matthew’s account, because for him, the family has never been to Nazareth until they simply can’t go back to Bethlehem anymore, even after Herod’s death (Matt 2:23).
Additional Problems
I don’t want to spend too much time here, but for completeness sake, I need to mention a couple of historical issues. Both Matthew and Luke say that Jesus is born during the reign of Herod the Great. Historians usually place his death in 4 BCE, which means Jesus would have been born sometime before that. However, Luke says that Mary and Joseph had traveled to Bethlehem, because Quirinius, the governor of Syria, had commanded a census. However, Quirinius didn’t become governor of Syria until 6 CE — 10 years after Herod’s death. You can find additional resources about these two issues here.
Finally, Luke’s claim is that this census required Joseph to travel back to his ancestral home of Bethlehem, since he was of King David’s lineage. But David would have lived some 1000 years before Joseph. It’s ludicrous to think that the Romans would have cared about such a thing, or that they would have wanted their empire to be so disrupted by having people move around like that for a census. It would have been an impossible feat and would have made for a highly inaccurate, and therefore useless, census.
What Do We Make of All This?
The easiest way to understand why these accounts have such major differences in detail is to understand why either writer bothered with a story about Jesus’s birth at all. You have to remember that the writers of Matthew and Luke didn’t know one another and didn’t know that they were both working on the same material. They certainly didn’t know that their books would one day show up in the same collection. Both of them were working with two basic facts: Micah 5:2 seemed to prophesy that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem; Jesus came from Nazareth (John 1:45-46).
Since those two facts were at odds with one another, it’s easy to see how both writers would have been compelled to explain how Jesus could be from Nazareth but still be from Bethlehem. Unfortunately for them, close comparison shows that both versions simply can’t be true.
How would people react if they showed up for church this weekend and were presented with the full details from both of these stories? I like to think it would spur many of them into deeper study. That it would possibly make them question some of the things they’ve been taking for granted. But 2016 has been pretty demoralizing when it comes to the number of people who seem concerned about what’s true, and I’m not sure how many of them would see this information as a call to action. I know there are people who can be changed by facts. Perhaps there aren’t as many of them as I once thought, but I know they’re out there. And with the way information spreads these days, I’m sure they’ll eventually find the facts they’re looking for.
Finding Truth 
Uh gary?
Strategy? Hello?
I know the Creator of the bone. Do you have the slightest clue as to how the bone attached itself to marrow, the heart, the brain……..apart from intelligence?
Of course you do not. The guesses of godlessness are laughable. If you call absolute truth .strategy, you are to be pitied.
The word of God is self proving because it condemns stupidity.
LikeLike
Uh ColorStorm,
You know there are bones, like rest of us, but you do not know the bone’s creator, you a know book in which men claim to speak for a God that created bones. It’s much more tenable to claim a personal relationship, and direct knowledge with Anne Frank than with the God of the Bible – she at least wrote her own book. No one questions here existence – and she’s not invisible, and therefore was much harder to label as imaginary.
But again, if you can show it was the God of the Bible who created bones and everything else, then please demonstrate it. Otherwise, your position and assertion is no more credible than giving the credit of creation to any other “invisible” God or gods or imaginary characters.
And thank you, every one else, for continually telling me that it’s a waste to comment to ColorStorm. I know he wont answer and I know he cannot and I also know that for most people that is obvious. But for him, and those potential silent believers who view it as him, I plan on reminding them that their efforts to refortify their ignorance simply by making unsupported claims, still has glaring and obvious flaws. And, maybe someone will have an good answer – i’d be happy to see it and think it over.
It’s no more a wasted effort than bickering over whether there was a guy names Jesus that the gospels and religion were based around.
LikeLike
“The word of God is self proving because it condemns stupidity.”
what is irony?
LikeLiked by 1 person
And yet, you live and breath among us?
Were you one of Jesus’s little fishies that slipped through the net?
LikeLike
The ‘irony’ bill, is the stupidity of godlessness.
And by the way, you, as well as every person who reads this, knows there is one God, and that the Creator is so self evident, it hardly needs addressed. Nature, arithmetic, the alphabet, scripture, ALL speak with the same resounding voice of truth. You cannot add two plus two without the aid of He who created the human brain.
But you, like the hyena, will laugh this to scorn. Doncha just love nature…………
It is simply a matter of suppression, which indeed this comment thread is enough proof as well.
‘He made the stars also………………………….’ Love that understated terseness.
LikeLike
Come on, John the Lionfart, take your medication and stop teasing William.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here ya go ark, no charge, a token of truth which no man in his own strength would admit:
‘The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things, who can know it?’
Ah yes, the criminal indictment of a heart left alone to its own devices; a heart that will molest a retarded woman; a heart that will embezzle penny candy or rob a bank; a heart that will steal film from the darkroom, a heart that will kill a puppy, a heart that will boast there is no God………..
Indeed, the word of God condemns foolishness of every stripe. It wouldn’t kill you to admit your part in the deceitful deeds of men. That would be a good start.
Oh how God’s word slays the so-called evolution of intellectual progress.
LikeLike
ColorStorm,
you’re not making sense.
Why is one God self evident? Why? How?
“Because math,” and “because bones,” is like saying, “2 plus 2 is 8, because bananas.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Look, this is what should be obvious, but it wasn’t to me either, at first. Initially, I was taught God wrote the bible and that the Bible was always true, and I was told this as matter of factly as I was told that Native Americans ran around the continental US before Europeans arrived, or how the Write Brother invented airplanes.
I didn’t encounter many people who seemed to question any of it, so I accepted it. I didn’t line passages of the bible up side by side, in stead when I read it, I was trying to get the moral lessons, and gain understanding and wisdom. Anything questionable that I saw, i dismissed as my lack of understanding.
But when I decided to take one step back and allow myself to question it, just like I expected Muslims to do, or anyone else from a differing religion, it all became clear. It was indeed obvious. As obvious as it is that Santa Clause isn’t real.
Doesn’t it frustrate you that you cannot seem to find a good and clear defense for what you “know” to be true? For what you claim to be obvious?
Take a step back, as you’d expect a Muslim to do with the Koran, the holy book they’ve been taught not to question, that they’ve been taught was the word of God, that they’ve been taught “honest” people would see as true, and actually look and see if it actually measures up. And then ask yourself, what would I expect a Muslim to see as faulty in the Koran, and does the Bible contain some of those things?
For me? It was obvious. And even so, here I am, willing to search the scriptures with you, a believer. But the believer is the one unwilling to do it with me. Why is that? What should truth fear?
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Colorstorm
Oh,see the mange from ill-gotten gains,
That adorns thy hide from root to tip,
How the carrion flies of conscience
Lay their eggs on the dangling, rotting flesh that resides between your blunted teeth;
Where even the Dentist of Deliverance is reluctant to poke.
Oh, how Lucifer Laughs on the other side of his hand,
As His desperate Fellatio Friendly Feline
Expends himself hugely in flatulent displays of self-mockery.
As he inevitably bites the arse out of his own trousers,
And the crowd cries,
”Ole!”
Colorstorm has been gored by his own Bull.
LikeLike
I do thank you that your comments expose the blistering indictment against the heart of man.
Perhaps one of saner minds will appreciate your on-time grunge posing as intellect.
Which nativity story? Yes, back on point. The only one that matters.
LikeLike
I’m not trying pose anything. I’m also not dodging direct questions, nor trying to deploy smokescreens in order to avoid backing up my comments.
Yeah, let’s get back on point. You say nate is wrong about the birth narrative of Matthew and Luke. Please demonstrate how he’s wrong. He has set them side by side, shown the disparities and explained them as well as why he finds them problematic. Can you, will you, do the same to support your claim that Nate is wrong and that the bible is always true and without error?
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Imagine your response to a Dickhead like Colorstorm if you could categorically state that the character Jesus of Nazareth was simply a narrative construct.”
But that’s the problem, Ark, you are never going to able to “categorically” prove that Jesus did not exist. History is a matter of probability not absolute certainty. The most we can say is that Jesus probably existed or that he probably did not. You are welcome to believe that he probably didn’t, but most people, including the experts, believe he probably did.
I suggest we concentrate on a Christian claim much more probable to be false: How probable is it that Jesus, if he existed, performed never heard of before or since magic tricks? With that question, we still can’t say “categorically” that these tricks did not occur…but we can get pretty damn close!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Amen, Colorstorm, Amen. You keep that circular argument going. You are never going to lose, Baby.
LikeLike
While you sit on the wall like Humpty Dumpty,
Doomed to eat your own dung and drink your own piss
Your Commander in Chief, King James,
Sets Balaam before you,
That you may converse of carrots,
In an Eddy Murphy accent,
And as you get cross at Jesus for biting his nails, you begin to topple from your perch.
eloi eloi lama sabachthani
While the crowd cries,
”Colorstorm, you crucify us!”
And all King James’s horses and all King James’s men,
Couldn’t put Colorstorm back together again.
LikeLike
Hi CS,
I’ve just now had a chance to read all the replies since I was on here last night. First of all, thanks for your initial reply to my comment, and I apologize if my tone came across poorly. I know it’s difficult to the lone voice of dissent in a discussion, so you have my sympathies there, if that’s any consolation. 🙂
I think your last couple of “back-and-forths” with William go to the heart of the issue. When I read William’s summation about his former Christian beliefs and how he came to question them, I felt like I could have written that myself. When you talk about the creator of bones and stars, I know what you mean. I used to think God was that obvious, too.
But as William has said, there’s a large chasm between Creator and God of Christianity. So how do we bridge that gap? Perhaps you’re comfortable taking a presuppositional stance that the Bible must simply be trusted in its claims, but the rest of us don’t see things that way. If you want to have a true dialogue, then I think William’s right — you should engage with us on the specific arguments we’ve been making. If we’re misrepresenting or misunderstanding scripture, please show us where we’re wrong! Acts 17:11 suggests that this is a reasonable approach to finding truth.
Of course, you’re welcome to comment here whether you decide to get into the weeds with us or not, but I think your comments will likely carry more gravity if you do.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Believe me ark, I do not deserve all these laurels, but tkx for the compliments.
It only means the scriptures have found their mark.
But if you would wake up, you would no longer be friends with the dark…….
(sorry nate, a little poetry to lighten up the load)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ark, I know you’ve had run-ins with ColorStorm before, so your patience with him may be shorter than usual. But let’s please leave off the personal stuff, you dig? If there really are neutral parties reading from the sidelines, any valid points we might make are going to be poisoned by the vitriol. You feel me? 🙂
LikeLike
@Gary.
Once upon a time the world was flat and we were the center of the universe.
I would not be so quick to state that proof will never be forthcoming …. One day, it might.
Or at the very least, some form of ecclesiastical confession with accompanying documents.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@ Nate.
I was trying my best to sound as biblical as possible … even throwing a bit of Kings in there!
But fair enough. I appreciate my brand of humour may not be to everyone’s cup of tea.
We shall just have to allow Colorstorm to call us all liars or …
Ah yes, the criminal indictment of a heart left alone to its own devices; a heart that will molest a retarded woman; a heart that will embezzle penny candy or rob a bank; a heart that will steal film from the darkroom, a heart that will kill a puppy, a heart that will boast there is no God………..
:=)
LikeLiked by 1 person
But even then, it would probably be subject to debate. After all, there would have been huge incentive for enemies of Christianity to fabricate such documents. Either way, that’s not the situation we find ourselves in now, and I think Gary’s right: it’s better to focus on the more extreme claims of Christianity, or on prophecy/ consistency problems, or even on the logic of certain doctrinal claims. The data’s more solid there.
LikeLike
You think so?
I rather thought by quoting a bit of scripture it showed just how vile its proponents are?
Ah, well, all about the interpretation I guess?
Blessed are the Cheesemakers?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I hear you, Ark. And I know I may be asking for a double standard at times, but I think there’s a lot of value in trying to take the high road. And like I said to ColorStorm, I know how difficult it is to be the lone voice “crying in the wilderness,” so I realize that some of our Christian commenters might lose their cool with us from time to time. That’s to be expected. The rest of us don’t have the same pressure — at least not on this site.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ark, I appreciate the Monty Python Reference – nice!
only the true messiah would say that he wasn’t.
LikeLike
While the data may be more solid, in my (albeit limited) experience, people deconvert largely for emotional reasons, just as they converted or were indoctrinated in the first place.
Beside, a full on Papal confession would carry huge weight, especially if it encouraged a similar public gesture from Jewish Rabbis across the board and would also have massive political repercussions, even if there was equal as huge a denial backlash.
Once the word is out ….
Never say never …
LikeLiked by 2 people