Loading...Here now is the ninth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. This one comes from 2018.
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Let’s explore the key contradiction in the Birth Narratives of Jesus. Several readers have asked about my comment that Matthew and Luke appear to contradict each other in their birth narratives, especially when Matthew indicates that Jesus’ family fled to Egypt after his birth but Luke claims they went straight back to Nazareth, a month later. I’ve posted on this issue several times over the years on the blog, but maybe a refresher would be helpful for those with questions. Here is how I explain the matter in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, slightly edited. (See especially my final point.)
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Matthew and Luke go to great lengths to have Jesus born in Bethlehem to fulfill prophecy. Can we expand the argument of ‘How would anyone know where their ancestors were born 1000 years ago’ (and as an example report for the census). Have any scholars given thought to the possibility that David’s ancestors over time moved to different locations? Therefore, couldn’t Jesus (or anyone else for that matter) have been a descendent despite being born outside of Bethlehem simply because ancestors may have migrated a bit?
The authors could have skipped Bethlehem all together!
Well, I’ve thought about it! There must have been davidic descendants virtually everywhere there were communities of Jews! The reason the authors didn’t skip Bethlehem was not because Jesus had to be Son of David but because they wanted him to fulfill the prophecy of Micah 5:2.
Given that most scholars agree that Luke/Acts was written after Matthew, could we infer that the author of Luke/Acts did not know the Gospel of Matthew or was the author of Luke/Acts deliberately writing his own version of the story to convey a different meaning to a different audience?
It is debated whether he knew Matthew, but I myself think absolutely not. Still, the author of Luke says at the outset that he knows of many accounts of Jesus’ life, and he is writing his to provide a correct one! (A bit rather damning comment given teh circumstance that he clarly did know Mark!)