Ian Paul recently asked: Did
Luke get his nativity history wrong? He highlights the overlap between the nativity
history as told by Matthew and as told by Luke in spite of their great
differences. Some see an irreconcilable contradiction in the geographical moves
implied by Matthew’s account on the one hand and Luke’s on the other. Whether someone
considers this a problem or not does of course depend on one’s view of the
character of the Gospel stories in the Bible. My own view is that the Gospel writers
are not telling edifying stories but giving an account of what happened. But I
believe that they may well have done so with a greater latitude than would be
acceptable today or is accepted by some readers.
The Framework
·
Matthew gives no geographical
reference for the pre-natal story. The birth is located in Bethlehem in Judea
where the holy family also receives visitors from the East. The arrival of these
foreign dignitaries alerts Herod to the birth of a rival king. This presents a
threat to the holy family who flee to Egypt. After Herod’s death the family
returns to the land of Israel, apparently at first with the intention to return
to Judea but, having been warned against this, make their home in Nazareth.
·
Luke places the
annunciation of the birth of Jesus in Nazareth, the starting point also of the
journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, implying that both Joseph and Mary
were residents there before the birth of Jesus. Both Mary and Joseph are said
to have Judean connections. Mary visits her relative Elizabeth in the Judean
highlands and Joseph as to be in Bethlehem to be registered. The birth takes
place in Bethlehem, the purification eight days later in Jerusalem. “When they
had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to their
own town of Nazareth [or: to a town of their own, Nazareth].” (Luke 2:39)
The Difficulty
·
In Matthew’s account the holy
family appears to move to Nazareth for the first time upon their return from
Egypt a few years after the birth of Jesus. They did so because they were
afraid of Archelaus.
·
Luke, by contrast, speaks
of Nazareth as the home town of both Joseph and Mary and strongly suggests that
soon after the birth of Jesus the holy family moved from Bethlehem to Nazareth,
without going via Egypt.
Some aspects of this difficulty may
be more apparent than real. If Mary and Joseph had connections to both
Judea and Galilee, there would be nothing odd about abandoning a plan to return
from Egypt to Judea in favour of settling in Galilee and there is nothing in
Matthew’s account to suggests that the family had no connections with Galilee
prior to their return from Egypt.
It does not seem to be too
difficult to imagine a set of circumstances in which the broad outline of both
accounts makes sense.
A Scenario
(1) Joseph is a Bethlehemite not
simply by virtue of descent from David but having grown up there and owning a
plot of land to which he holds on for reasons of theology and identity even if
it cannot support him economically.
(2) Mary may have been born and
raised in Nazareth, although the fact that her relative lives in the Judean
highlands suggests that she herself is of Judean descent and may have been a
factor in getting betrothed to the Judean Joseph.
(3) Joseph moves to Nazareth for
economic reasons. The massive building projects in Tsipori have created job
opportunities, especially for people who can work with wood and stone. He does
of course not enter into a modern employment contract and may have moved to Nazareth
without a clear idea of how many months or years he might stay there. While he now lives in the small hamlet of Nazareth,
his home is still very much Bethlehem.
(4) The registration requires
Joseph to move back to Bethlehem, at least for a while. There was likely some
flexibility in the timing of this. Joseph combines this requirement with ‘bringing
his bride home’, i.e. marrying in his home town.
(5) While they are in Bethlehem
(not: upon their arrival, as in nativity plays), most likely staying with
family but in crowded circumstances (“no room in the inn” being a mistranslation),
Mary gives birth to Jesus. Eight days later they are found in the temple in
Jerusalem.
(6) Having decided to stay in
Bethlehem, a year or so later the holy family receives visitors from the East
which leads to their flight to Egypt. Both Galilee and Judea were in the domain
of Herod the Great and by then he had already even some of his own sons killed
for fear of losing control.
(7) Herod’s death leads to the
division of his kingdom. The holy family’s initial plan to return to the
paternal home town which had come under the rule of Archelaus is abandoned in
favour of settling in Nazareth, Mary’s home town, now under the rule of Philip
the Tetrarch. The maternal home town thus becomes the family’s own town.
I am not saying that this is how
it happened. But if it did, Matthew may have deliberately omitted any
geographical reference in the pre-natal story to link each location at its
proper time with a prophecy Bethlehem (2:1-6), Egypt (2:13-15), and Nazareth
(2:23). Luke, by contrast, seems to offer geographical references for their own
sake. From these emerge the connections Joseph and Mary have to both Galilee
and Judea, connections in which Matthew shows no interest.
The remaining question
Luke 2:39-40 concludes
the infancy narrative; in the next event Jesus is twelve years old. It is
possible that Luke is telescoping events in Jesus’ life. Due to a phrasing
which emphasises the fulfilment of the law, this makes it appear as if the return
to Nazareth happened shortly after the visit to the temple. This impression is
either correct, if the story of the flight to Egypt is not based on an
historical event, or misleading. New
Testament scholars are not agreed on whether Luke deliberately omitted the stay in Egypt or might not have known about it.
For myself, I do not find it
difficult or forced to see the various references to Nazareth and Bethlehem in
the two accounts as in harmony with each other. It is only Egypt that presents
a problem. But is is arguably not impossible to locate the Egypt episode, which given the chronology relating to Herod and Jesus would have been short, between Luke 2:38 and 2:39. Indeed, in a sense this too is a (typological) “fulfilment
of the law” (“law” referring to the Torah). Given the likelihood that Mary was a key source for Luke, it does not seem very plausible that Luke would not have known about a stay in Egypt.
