Matthew's account presents Joseph and Mary as living in Bethlehem where Jesus was born (v. 1-2). Joseph had a dream and the family fled to Egypt to escape King Herod and later settled in a town called Nazareth.

It is not explicitly stated that they lived in Bethlehem in Matthew but the account implicitly assumes this through out. We know this because of all the events narrated throughout the account.

Luke tells us that "Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth" (v.4). He says they went to Bethlehem for a census and while there Jesus was born. Finally, after circumcision and doing everything required by the Law of the Lord and presumably when Mary was able to travel Luke tells us that "they returned to their home in Nazareth" (v.39).

It is plain in Luke that they lived in Nazareth and left for a short time to go to Nazareth for a census. While there Jesus was born and they left shortly after to return home.

What happens during Luke's short trip:

• Jesus is born.
• Wisemen come from the East to Jerusalem looking for the king of the Jews.
• Herod is disturbed and all of Jerusalem with him.
• A meeting of all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law is called.
• Herod secretly calls the magi
• He deploys them to find the child.
• They follow the star and find the child in a house and present gifts.
• They did not report back to Herod but went back to their own homecountry.
• Joseph is warned to flee to Egypt after they leave and he does. They go and live there in Egypt for some time.
• Herod realized the magi had outwitted him an then decides to have all the boys in the Bethlehem vicinity who are two years and younger killed. Considerable time must have passed since Jesus was born and the magi had outwitted him. We must think that someone with the resources of Herod would have known the magi outwitted him quickly after it occurred.
• Herod dies and Mary and Joseph go to Galilee instead of Judea and settle in Nazareth.

All of these events are not consistent with the statements in the Lucan infancy narrative.

Indications in Matthew that Mary and Joseph lived in Bethlehem:

• Bethlehem is the first place mentioned in the Matthean Gospel and no narrative change is ever recorded. The most obvious interpretation is that the house in the account is Joseph and Mary's and that Jesus was born there because they lived there.
• Herod has all the boys in the Bethlehem vicinity two years and younger slaughtered. Since Joseph and Mary must have remained in Bethlehem for a year or so for this account to make any sense this indicates Matthew is telling the story with Bethlehem as their home.
• The magi are warned in a dream and they flee to their own homecountry. Joseph is warned in a dream by an angel but he is never told "do not go home" which would seem proper since his first reaction might be to flee to his own home country as the magi had done if he was not already in it. Thus, the presumptions appears to be that Mary and Joseph are already home.
• When Matthew returns from Egypt he is afraid to go to Judea which is where Bethlehem is because Herod's son is ruling. But why would he want to go to a place where he was only making a short trip to for a census (Luke!)? Instead he settles in Nazareth which is where we would expect him to return to in the first place if it was his home (Luke!).
• The sense in Matthew is that Mary and Joseph are settling in a new town, not returning the to old homestead. Nazareth receives no prior mention in the account but is first introduced here.

Matthew should be read with the presumption that Mary and Joseph's residence was Bethlehem when Jesus was born.

It says that Mary and Joseph went to live in a town called Nazareth. The sense here is that this is their first time here but as Luke 2:39 tells us, they returned home to their own hometown of Nazareth. The ending here of Matthew 2 has the sense of them "finally settling in Nazareth". A lengthy citation from historical Jesus scholar John Meier (A Marginal Jew, V1, pp 212-213) describes this well,

"In the case of Matthew, the first place name that occurs in his narrative proper (1:18-2:23) is Bethlehem of Judea (2:1). Since no indication of a change of place is given at this point, the reader who knows only Matthew's story would naturally take the preceding story of "annunciation to Joseph" (1:18-25) as located in Bethlehem too. This fits in perfectly with details in the magi story. The Magi find Mary and Jesus when they enter 'into the house' (2:11), not into a stable or cave. Presumably this is the house Joseph and Mary dwell in permanently in Bethlehem. This in turn fits well with the fact that Herod, having ascertained from the Magi the time of the star's appearance (in order to calculate the child's age), orders the slaughter of all the boys in Bethlehem and the surrounding region "two years of age and younger." Matthew emphasizes the point by adding the explanation "according to the time he [Herod] had carefully ascertained from the Magi" (2:16). In other words, Matthew's story does not presume that Jesus has just been born when the magi arrive. To ensure Jesus' murder, Herod must have boys even as old as two years slaughtered. Obviously we are not dealing in Matthew as in Luke with a birth during a quick trip to Bethlehem from Nazareth to be followed by a fairly swift return to Nazareth after the visit to Jerusalem.

Matthew thinks of Bethlehem as Joseph's permanent home--so much so that he must strain to explain how Jesus wound up living permanently in Nazareth and so was called "the Nazorean." Matthew's plot takes a long detour to get to Nazareth from Bethlehem. First, the flight into Egypt (Matt 2:16-18), for which there is no time in Luke's plot, conveniently removes Jesus from Bethlehem. On returning from Egypt, Joseph is afraid to return to Judea (and therefore Bethlehem) because Archelaus, Herod's son, is reigning in the old tyrant's place. Curiously, Joseph's solution to danger posed by a ruler who is a son of Herod the Great is to go into Galilee--where another son of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, the future slayer of John the Baptist, is ruling! Out of the frying pan into the fire. Joseph has a strange sense of security measures.

More to the point, Matthew brings Joseph's peregrinations to a close by narrating: ". . . and coming he [Joseph] settled down in a city called Nazareth" (2:23). This hardly sounds like a return to the old homestead; Nazareth is formally introduced in a way that intimates that it was not on the mental horizon of author or audience before Joseph's "strategic retreat." Significantly, Matthew uses exactly the same Greek wording to describe the adult Jesus' transferal of his home from Nazareth to Capernaum: "And leaving Nazareth, coming he [Jesus] settled down in Capernaum" (4:13). This is Jesus' first trip to Capernaum, undertaken to set up a new home there; and so the natural sense of the parallel text in 2:23 is that this is Joseph's first trip to Nazareth, undertaken to set up a new home there, after Bethlehem has proved too dangerous. In short, the whole geographical pattern of Matthew's Infancy Narrative rests upon the basic movement from Bethlehem, Joseph's original home, to Nazareth, his new home, sought out as refuge."

Conclusion: Both Matthew and Luke agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem but they disagree on why. Matthew assumes they lived in Bethlehem while Luke says they left their hometown and went there for a census. The short trip of Luke is inconsistent with the details of the Matthean infancy narrative.

Other Discrepancies:

The Nazareth tradition must have been strong since Matthew goes through great pains to get Jesus out of Bethlehem and into Nazareth. Matthew's placing of Jesus in Bethlehem gets him into trouble.

As John Meier writes, "Matthew thinks of Bethlehem as Joseph's permanent home--so much so that he must strain to explain how Jesus wound up living permanently in Nazareth and so was called "the Nazorean." Matthew's plot takes a long detour to get to Nazareth from Bethlehem. First, the flight into Egypt (Matt 2:16-18), for which there is no time in Luke's plot, conveniently removes Jesus from Bethlehem. On returning from Egypt, Joseph is afraid to return to Judea (and therefore Bethlehem) because Archelaus, Herod's son, is reigning in the old tyrant's place. Curiously, Joseph's solution to danger posed by a ruler who is a son of Herod the Great is to go into Galilee--where another son of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, the future slayer of John the Baptist, is ruling! Out of the frying pan into the fire. Joseph has a strange sense of security measures." (A Marginal Jew, v. 1 p. 212)

Matthew then must be viewed as creating from whole cloth, the rationale for why Joseph and Mary ended up in Nazareth and we see it got him into trouble since the same rationale would have restricted him from taking his family to Nazareth as well.

The Moving Star.

Matthew says, "After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was." Stars are very large objects very far away. Shooting stars are really dust particles and space junk burning up in the atmosphere, not dying stars. Our sun is an average star which is 93 millions miles away and has a diameter of approximately 865,000 miles. Our ancestors did not know these things about stars and saw things like shooting stars and thus could say such things "the star went ahead and stopped over a house". Stars do not behave in such a way and a star which is many times the size of the earth, cannot stop over a house. The planet would be incinerated instantly. Likewise, a star, even if this account only meant it moved in the sky, cannot give directional precision down to finding a small house. It can certainly guides us north or west, in a general direction but not with accuracy to a specific house.

Josephus does not narrate the Slaughter of the Infants

Flavius Josephus was a Jewish historian who wrote at the end of the first century. He does not mention the supposed slaughter of the innocents mentioned in Matthew. This might look like little more than a poor argument from silence but Joseph went through great troubles to outline, in detail, the insanity's of Herod at the end of his reign (Brown, Birth, p. 226). Therefore, the omission of such an incident by Josephus weighs against historical accuracy here. Surely he would have included it if he knew of it and if it had acquired any sort of notoriety he would have heard of it.

Two problems with the Lucan Census

There are chronological errors in the Lucan infancy narrative. The Birth of Jesus is placed towards the end of Herod's reign. Herod died in 4 B.C. This is ten years before Quirinius actually became governor of Syria and conducted a census (Brown) in 6 C.E.

Furthermore, a Roman census would not have sent people back to their ancestral homes to enroll. This would have created a bureaucratic nightmare. The general Roman practice for a census, which was taken largely for taxation purposes, was to have each person enroll where they were or "in the nearby principal city of a district" (Brown).

Cultural Errors Some People Make Today

The day of Jesus' birth is not known. No precise chronological indicators are supplied by the Bible. Thus, December 25th is probably not the actual birthday of Jesus (it has a 1 in 365 chance) which we do not know

The number of wisemen is not known. Three types of gifts were presented. Therefore many mistakenly assume there were "three wisemen". This is simply false. We do not know how many wisemen came to visit Jesus.