The Nativity: Fact or Fairytale?

Is the Nativity a true story? Why are there differences between Matthew and Luke’s accounts of Jesus’s birth? Was Luke historically correct when he wrote about the census? What was the star and is it even possible for the wise men to have followed it? What year was Jesus actually born? Peter Williams answers all these questions and more in this special Christmas podcast episode.
 
Visit our Christmas resources page on our website for further reading on this topic: tyndalehouse.com/christmas

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Tyndale House podcast.

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Today I'm joined by our principal, Peter Williams,

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and we are going to be talking about Christmas.

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Hello, Peter.

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Good to see you.

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So you've written this book on ‘Can we trust the Gospels?’

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And there is, within culture generally, there is some skepticism,

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It has to be said, about the reliability of the Christmas story.

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This is all just invention.

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This is a Christian repackaging of Saturnalia

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And because Jesus clearly wasn't born on the 25th of December

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and all these kinds of things, can we believe what the Gospels

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tell us about the Nativity?

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Yes, I think we can.

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In my book, ‘Can we trust the Gospels?’

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I didn't actually handle those

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the birth passages, of course, from Matthew and Luke specifically.

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And of course, there is a difference because they are about,

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30 years earlier in terms of the events than the rest of the Gospels.

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So that always gives people more time,

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if you like, to be skeptical.

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And I like to say with the Gospels that they’re written close enough

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to the events to be entirely reliable and, and far enough away from the events

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to be entirely unreliable.

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I mean, just in terms of time,

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T: Yeah P: that isn't really a key issue.

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You know, my, my granny's 104, which is pretty amazing.

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You know, I can go and see her and get, on a good day,

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get memories from a really, really long time ago.

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The question is not so much about the length of time as about

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when we actually get into the details.

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And of course, that's

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where some people are skeptical, because of the supernatural nature of things.

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And there's also some skepticism around the census of Quirinius,

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I'm sure we will get to talk about that in Luke,

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sometimes about the Magi, the wise men.

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But what I'd say is there's absolutely no reason why these

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narratives can't be true.

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I suppose the other area, I’m sure we’ll

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get into this as well is how do you fit or can you fit,

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Matthew and Luke together?

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T: We certainly will get into that. P: in terms of what they do

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So those are some areas for skepticism.

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But I do think these are wonderful narratives, and it's perfectly rational

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to trust them that they are, fully reliable.

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Okay.

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Well, let's start

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with that question of the apparent contradiction

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between them, because this is often thrown at me that that these two accounts

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are just so completely different.

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You've got some common characters, Jesus and his parents, and that's it.

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Yeah.

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Well, yes, they are so completely different and yet

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so similar at the same time.

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I mean, both Matthew and Luke both give you genealogies

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of Jesus. Different genealogies, but they both have decided

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they're going to do a genealogy as well as a birth story,

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as well as telling you about him being born

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of a virgin and being born in Bethlehem.

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So in a sense, there's lots going on in common.

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And that's already quite interesting.

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So given that they are so different when we might say

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we get down to the detail, the fact that they are insistent on these

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key issues, Jesus being born as a Saviour.

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Oh, and each of them just happened to have one set of visitors that come and see him.

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Yeah, okay,

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different set because in Matthew it's the, it's the Magi, the wise man.

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And in Luke it's the shepherds.

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But there is something just uncanny about that

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sameness alongside the difference

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that needs to be fitted in.

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So if you're going to take it that

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just chaos happened and people wrote down whatever they thought.

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And that's why there's, you know, so much difference, that won't really

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explain what we have.

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There's something more deliberate going on.

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We might say it's at a level of divine planning of these two

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Gospel beginnings.

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But it's certainly, for me, really striking.

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So why do you think, then, that

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Luke and

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Matthew have these different visitors?

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So part of it is if you allow there to be a complementarity.

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So as I'd say, say, in Genesis 1 and 2,

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I think there's a complementarity between these two narratives.

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They're meant to be read alongside each other.

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So why not have that at the level of Matthew and Luke?

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This is what we do

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actually every Christmas we read these

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as complementary narratives.

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They give you a different take on things,

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but that doesn't mean that there isn't a way of fitting them together.

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There are in fact

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multiple ways of fitting them together, and that, that can be one of our issues,

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because we're not exactly sure

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which of several ways of fitting them together.

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And I think that's an important thing about how we read the Gospels, that they are,

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as a Christian, it's right

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to believe they're entirely true. From a historical perspective

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I think you can make a defence of them.

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But also that doesn't mean you know exactly, if you were to try and make

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a blending of the two narratives, exactly the order in which you would put things.

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So there are various possibilities there.

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I've got some thoughts on that.

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Go on then give us your thoughts.

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Which way do you lean?

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Well, let us

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put it this way.

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We've got the question of who's Joseph's father?

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T: Yeah. P: Okay.

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Is it, as in Matthew,

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Is it Jacob?  Or is it, as in Luke, Eli?

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So this is coming from the genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke 3?

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T: 4? P: I think there's a there's a great way of putting this together,

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which let's start with Matthew.

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In Matthew's genealogy, in Matthew’s story,

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Joseph is thinking about

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putting away or divorcing his betrothed fiancé.

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It's a different way

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of doing things back then, but it's a really serious engagement.

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He’s thinking of putting Mary away on the basis of,

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you know, because she's pregnant and it wasn't by him.

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And then an angel appears to him and says,

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don't worry, you know, everything's okay.

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And so he just decides to, you know, go ahead

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and you know, stay with her. Now,

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think of that as

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something that really happened.

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When Joseph is thinking about divorcing,

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does he talk to anyone?

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Yeah, he talks to his dad, for instance.

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And he says, you know, Dad, we've got a problem here.

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Mary's pregnant, and it wasn't by me.

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And so I'm thinking about divorcing her. Now,

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in the meantime, angel then appears to him and,

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so he goes back to Dad and says, ‘Dad, I'm going ahead with this.

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You know, an angel told me, it's okay.’

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At that point,

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father might well, in that culture say you're not my son anymore, okay?

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At that point, we all know what it's like to have a

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a legal and a biological father.

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They can be different. I've got a stepfather as well as a, you know, biological father.

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So, it's, it's quite possible for that to happen.

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And so that's easily the sort of scenario on which you can have two fathers.

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You then add together the fact that, interestingly,

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Joseph has this father called Jacob,

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which is a nice Hebrew name in Matthew.

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And then when we read the Gospels, we find that

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Jesus has four brothers

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and one of them is called Iakobos

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P: So it's Jacob, with, that's the name James, Jacob with a Greek ending on T: Right.

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Another is called Joseph.

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And it’s as if, the next

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boy to be born in the family

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is called after his grandfather, which is very common custom.

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Next one called after his dad, very common custom.

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All of that sort of fits.

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Can I prove it?

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No, but but but, it's a scenario that works.

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I don't feel like I'm having to force the narrative for anything.

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And so I feel that

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what there aren’t between these two narratives

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are defeater contradictions, things that couldn't possibly be true.

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Where for instance, if it was saying that Jesus was born

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in Bethlehem in Judea and born

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in Alexandria in Egypt, and you know, just

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how do you do that? T: Sure, yeah.

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P: And so, that that's... T: the bits of information...

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P: not the sort of thing we’ve got T: ...in each gospel fit into the gaps created by the other gospels.

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Yeah, and let's remember these are two pretty short narratives.

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P: Okay. T: Yeah.

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I'm going to give, Luke's got a bit more length, about his.

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But it's not that they are claiming that they're telling you everything

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that went on.

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You know, and, I can think of my, my aunt who died

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recently, who was, you know, born in India, born in India

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and in Pakistan because, I mean, she was born in Lahore,

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which was India at the time, and is now Pakistan.

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And so you can have these sorts of things that go on.

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Right.

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Where people can say, oh, you can't put those things together.

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Yes, you can, and you just need a bit of imagination.

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But but I think fundamentally you read these

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two narratives, and you trust them.

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There are different ways they can be fitted together.

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P: The fitting them together isn't necessarily the key thing T: Yeah

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What are your thoughts on why Luke chooses to include

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the shepherds, and Matthew chooses to include Magi?

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Because presumably both could have included both?

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So, Matthew is,

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as a tax collector, the most financially orientated gospel.

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And so having the wise men with their treasures

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as well as the temple tax, the bribe to the guards at

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the tomb, the exact sum of money that

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Judas is

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paid to betray Jesus, these sort of things, the parable of the talents.

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These are all particularly in Matthew, that can be part of it.

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Then I think there's another royal side to the theme that's going on.

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So even in his first verse, it's a book of the genealogy of

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Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the son of Abraham.

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And then we're going to pause a little bit through the genealogy to

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to give an extra bit on the name David, to say David the King.

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And that's all quite important. The 14 generations

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that the genealogy in Matthew chapter one is divided into, the name David

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in its normal, old spelling is, has the same number as the number 14.

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So all of that sort of fits.

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And so here along come these wise men, and they're inquiring,

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where's the king of the Jews?

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And they're talking to the person

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who thinks he is the king of the Jews, namely Herod.

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That's an a, that's an amazing set up,

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and it really works well within,

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Matthew's gospel. Matthew is going to give us a bit of a world tour,

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early on in terms of, well,

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the Holy Family's visit to Egypt as well as these wise men, coming from

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the east and, a lot of it is showing you

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the fulfillment of prophecy. With Luke,

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he's got this big emphasis on the humble

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and the poor being included, and that's really great.

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These shepherds don't come along with great gifts.

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But they do come and they worship.

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And again, that fits beautifully with the themes that you have in Luke.

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So I think, in God's providence, these, these gospels just work wonderfully,

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not only to inform us about what happened, but also to move

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our hearts in, and stir us to worship

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P: this child who’s born. T: Yeah, sure.

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So one of the, the questions that is particularly challenging for people

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is about this census of the entire world,

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when Quirinius is governor and people say

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T: this doesn’t make sense, there is no record, it didn't happen. P: Yes.

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So, Luke chapter two, has the, you know,

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decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

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And this happens when Quirinius is,

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let's say, use the word governor of,

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of Syria.

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And people look at that

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and they say, well, hang on, Herod dies in the year 4 [BC]

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and they say, well, hang on, Herod dies in the year 4 [BC]

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As we look at our textbooks, Quirinius is

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in charge of Syria from the year 6 [AD] onwards.

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Therefore, it doesn't stack up.

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So what I'd back up with firstly on the census,

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and some people are skeptical about the census

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and that people might have to go to their home town about the census.

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And where’s the record of this census. I think that's a

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winner really. So

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firstly, if you go back to the middle of the 19th century [AD],

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we, the only evidence we have that

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Romans are taking censuses

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of a material kind is from text, including the New Testament.

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And so, after that, papyri are found in Egypt

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and you start finding census records and guess who's the first person

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to begin censuses? It is Caesar Augustus.

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And that's a really significant thing, because if the, if the Bible's just a

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fictional story, fairy stories, we shouldn't expect it

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to be telling us important things like that.

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So the fact that Augustus is the, you know,

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first person to say, I want to know exactly how many people are in my empire.

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Pharaohs and Assyrian kings don't seem to have been quite interested in

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that, they were interested in how much tax they could squeeze, but they weren't

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interested in that particular question, that makes sense.

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People say, well, hang on.

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But the census isn't mentioned in his autobiography.

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Namely the ‘Res Gestae’, which, was, yeah, written by Augustus himself.

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And put up on monuments straight after he died.

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But hang on, that autobiography specifically

00:14:13:15 - 00:14:17:22
says at the beginning it's of the amounts that Augustus gave out.

00:14:18:21 - 00:14:19:10
So you would

00:14:19:10 - 00:14:22:23
read this, and you would never think that he ever took money from anyone.

00:14:23:08 - 00:14:26:08
And so one of the things you realize is that, yes,

00:14:27:00 - 00:14:30:00
Roman emperors did spend time taking in money as well.

00:14:30:00 - 00:14:34:24
T: Really? P: Yes, really T: Imperial powers taking in money, surely not! P: And you wouldn't get this impression

00:14:34:24 - 00:14:35:21
from his autobiography.

00:14:35:21 - 00:14:37:13
So it's clearly very selective.

00:14:37:23 - 00:14:43:00
Then there's a question about, well, did people return to, their hometowns?

00:14:43:00 - 00:14:43:21
People question that.

00:14:43:21 - 00:14:48:18
Well, there is a papyrus from Egypt from the year 104 AD.

00:14:48:18 - 00:14:52:03
where it's telling people they need to go back to town.

00:14:52:03 - 00:14:55:03
So that's another interesting piece.

00:14:57:10 - 00:14:59:11
What about this particular timing?

00:14:59:11 - 00:15:02:11
Well, census doesn't happen in one go.

00:15:02:11 - 00:15:04:06
It does happen,

00:15:04:06 - 00:15:06:10
it takes more than a year to carry out a census.

00:15:06:10 - 00:15:09:13
So we got to bear in mind that whereas

00:15:09:22 - 00:15:13:00
Augustus can begin with a decree, there needs to be a census,

00:15:13:00 - 00:15:17:14
it's not going to happen immediately in every country.

00:15:18:07 - 00:15:21:07
And it is really striking that whereas

00:15:21:14 - 00:15:25:01
pharaohs and Assyrian kings

00:15:25:12 - 00:15:27:13
don't seem to have wanted to know the exact number

00:15:27:13 - 00:15:30:18
of people in their empire, this is something that, that Augustus

00:15:31:09 - 00:15:33:03
does try and measure.

00:15:33:03 - 00:15:37:00
And then I think you've got the question about when exactly Quirinius was governor.

00:15:37:02 - 00:15:40:09
Well, whenever people say there's a contradiction, there's a problem in Luke.

00:15:40:13 - 00:15:43:16
They're saying that because they are relying on the information from Josephus.

00:15:44:08 - 00:15:47:12
So in a sense, their premise is, Josephus is true,

00:15:47:12 - 00:15:49:24
therefore Luke is false.

00:15:49:24 - 00:15:53:22
I'd say Josephus is probably ten years younger than Luke.

00:15:54:05 - 00:15:57:11
Luke's active as a doctor in the year 50s.

00:15:57:17 - 00:15:59:18
T: Yeah. P: Or he’s, sorry

00:15:59:18 - 00:16:02:17
traveling with Paul in the 50s. He'd been a doctor before that.

00:16:02:17 - 00:16:06:21
He's probably older and therefore closer to the events than Josephus

00:16:06:21 - 00:16:11:18
who's born around the year 37 [AD]. But I don't think you have to say that either

00:16:12:00 - 00:16:13:15
is wrong.

00:16:13:15 - 00:16:17:11
I'm open to, you know,

00:16:18:04 - 00:16:21:22
the fact that, you know, Josephus may have had his own agenda,

00:16:21:22 - 00:16:24:22
as he often did for why he recorded things, but,

00:16:25:05 - 00:16:29:18
Sabine Huebner, who is the professor

00:16:29:18 - 00:16:32:22
of Ancient History in Basel University, head of her department and a real

00:16:32:22 - 00:16:36:02
paid-up ancient historian, in a book

00:16:36:02 - 00:16:40:00
published by Cambridge University Press in 2019 has a great essay,

00:16:40:09 - 00:16:44:18
on exactly this problem, saying it isn't a problem

00:16:45:01 - 00:16:49:22
because when we read this word, this Greek word, which we translate as governor,

00:16:50:12 - 00:16:55:00
it can correspond to more than one position in Roman terms,

00:16:55:00 - 00:16:59:14
and it can refer to the financial

00:16:59:22 - 00:17:03:01
governor rather than to the,

00:17:03:13 - 00:17:07:15
say, person who's in charge of government at the time.

00:17:07:21 - 00:17:12:00
And what we got to remember with all of these positions is although we say,

00:17:12:00 - 00:17:15:02
well, it's a fact that these people were governors at this particular time,

00:17:15:15 - 00:17:19:00
often those are things that come at the end of investigation,

00:17:19:00 - 00:17:21:04
at the end of a conclusion, when you're putting pieces

00:17:21:04 - 00:17:24:24
of the jigsaw together, you're working out from coins,

00:17:24:24 - 00:17:26:03
who was around?

00:17:27:20 - 00:17:30:22
You're working from different historical records

00:17:31:03 - 00:17:35:16
and trying to piece together, and that's where we are.

00:17:35:16 - 00:17:38:16
So I don't think we should be too worried

00:17:39:00 - 00:17:41:04
about this issue in Luke chapter 2.

00:17:41:04 - 00:17:45:09
And to be fair, this, question of who's the governor,

00:17:45:23 - 00:17:48:15
or what's going on with that census in Luke

00:17:48:15 - 00:17:51:15
chapter 2 is arguably the biggest historical problem

00:17:51:20 - 00:17:55:05
in the entire New Testament, and it isn't a defeater.

00:17:55:11 - 00:17:57:01
P: And I find that very encouraging. T: Yeah. Right.

00:17:57:01 - 00:17:59:04
Namely, yes, it's a, it's an issue.

00:17:59:04 - 00:18:00:04
It's a puzzle.

00:18:00:04 - 00:18:02:24
But it's not the,

00:18:02:24 - 00:18:06:07
the sort of thing that there could not possibly be any answer to.

00:18:06:13 - 00:18:08:05
Yeah, that's very interesting.

00:18:08:05 - 00:18:11:02
What about the date of Jesus's birth?

00:18:11:02 - 00:18:16:05
Because it, there obviously, there was no 0 BC or 0 AD

00:18:16:08 - 00:18:20:03
but why was Jesus, when do you think Jesus was born?

00:18:20:06 - 00:18:20:11
Yeah.

00:18:20:11 - 00:18:23:05
So obviously the year before AD 1

00:18:23:05 - 00:18:24:19
P: is 1 BC. T: Yeah.

00:18:24:19 - 00:18:28:24
Not everyone knows that, and sometimes you need a year 0.

00:18:28:24 - 00:18:30:14
Like when you're doing astronomy,

00:18:30:14 - 00:18:33:02
and you want to do some certain sorts of calculations.

00:18:33:02 - 00:18:36:13
But for ancient history, you just go straight from the year 1 to the year

00:18:36:13 - 00:18:42:16
1. The question really depends on when Herod died.

00:18:42:21 - 00:18:46:00
And the standard dating for Herod's death is 4 BC

00:18:46:12 - 00:18:49:09
there are some journal articles arguing it's 1 BC.

00:18:49:09 - 00:18:52:06
What we know is that Josephus says,

00:18:52:06 - 00:18:55:14
that there was a lunar eclipse just before he died.

00:18:55:14 - 00:18:59:21
Now there are actually lunar eclipses in the year 6, 

00:18:59:21 - 00:19:04:23
4 . . .6, 5, 4 and 1 BC. And the one in 4 BC

00:19:04:23 - 00:19:09:02
is a partial eclipse, but it's been,

00:19:09:02 - 00:19:12:02
an intellectual consensus for about 400 years

00:19:12:13 - 00:19:16:10
that, that's the right date, but it's not a cast iron consensus.

00:19:16:12 - 00:19:16:21
Right.

00:19:16:21 - 00:19:21:12
And one reason to do that is, in a sense, if you try and put Herod's

00:19:22:15 - 00:19:23:11
reign later,

00:19:23:11 - 00:19:26:11
you then have a problem with the next guy, namely Archelaus

00:19:26:11 - 00:19:30:13
Because if we've got coins from his ninth or tenth year or what—

00:19:30:13 - 00:19:31:03
Sorry.

00:19:31:03 - 00:19:33:15
Josephus at one point says he reigns for nine years.

00:19:33:15 - 00:19:36:15
Another point say he reigns for ten. But,

00:19:36:16 - 00:19:39:11
if you start trying to shunt him forward, you're going to start having

00:19:39:11 - 00:19:42:02
major problems unless you have an interregnum.

00:19:42:02 - 00:19:44:19
But that's going to be really awkward with a paranoid Herod.

00:19:44:19 - 00:19:47:17
who, like actually kills off some of his heirs.

00:19:47:17 - 00:19:53:03
So, those are reasons why I think people settle on, you know, 4 BC

00:19:53:03 - 00:19:57:21
and then that gives you, some sort of limits

00:19:58:03 - 00:20:01:24
on when Jesus was born, which had to be before then.

00:20:02:14 - 00:20:07:12
Early church tends to put Jesus’s birth a little bit later than that.

00:20:07:22 - 00:20:11:20
So I'd say there are plenty of conundrums in there.

00:20:11:20 - 00:20:13:24
There's no,

00:20:15:18 - 00:20:17:12
this is, you must believe this,

00:20:17:12 - 00:20:20:23
with Christians, you’ll have different chronologists,

00:20:21:00 - 00:20:24:00
and it is a very specialized and technical field in which you can get

00:20:24:01 - 00:20:26:12
things wrong, different chronologists having different views.

00:20:26:12 - 00:20:29:12
And where does the star fit into that?

00:20:29:12 - 00:20:32:10
Well, again, what is the star?

00:20:32:10 - 00:20:36:12
Remember, until relatively recently, a star is a bright, sky

00:20:36:12 - 00:20:39:19
bright thing in the sky.

00:20:39:22 - 00:20:43:02
So just as we have shooting stars today, a comet is a star.

00:20:43:08 - 00:20:46:03
A, what we call a star is a star.

00:20:46:03 - 00:20:47:22
A supernova is a star.

00:20:47:22 - 00:20:51:09
And yes, a meteor can be a star.

00:20:51:09 - 00:20:52:24
All of these things can be stars.

00:20:52:24 - 00:20:56:10
And so, where does it fit in?

00:20:56:10 - 00:21:00:02
Well, there's a couple of readings of this.

00:21:00:02 - 00:21:01:14
You've got Ignatius,

00:21:01:14 - 00:21:05:04
the early church father, who thinks that the star is the brightest in the sky.

00:21:05:13 - 00:21:07:08
The narratives don’t actually say that,

00:21:07:08 - 00:21:11:24
the narrative has the wisemen coming along and saying,

00:21:11:24 - 00:21:15:19
we saw the star in the East, and then they're really gobsmacked

00:21:15:19 - 00:21:17:06
they've seen the same star again.

00:21:17:06 - 00:21:20:22
So is this a really super bright star or is it just one

00:21:21:01 - 00:21:24:20
that specialist, say Babylonian, astronomers are able to see?

00:21:25:04 - 00:21:29:02
That's that's another question, but I don't think

00:21:29:02 - 00:21:30:22
that will necessarily be determinative.

00:21:30:22 - 00:21:35:23
There have been some pretty interesting things

00:21:35:23 - 00:21:39:19
going on astronomically the decade leading up to Jesus birth.

00:21:39:23 - 00:21:40:24
I think we got Hailey's Comet,

00:21:40:24 - 00:21:44:03
we got a triple planetary conjunction. 

00:21:44:03 - 00:21:45:04
Lots of exciting stuff.

00:21:45:04 - 00:21:49:15
So in a sense, let's say the skies were lining up for something big to happen.

00:21:51:00 - 00:21:51:09
And is

00:21:51:09 - 00:21:54:09
it plausible that the Magi could follow a star?

00:21:55:04 - 00:21:57:21
Well, it's,

00:21:57:21 - 00:21:59:03
that's an interesting thing.

00:21:59:03 - 00:22:02:23
The, a star, depending what a star is.

00:22:02:23 - 00:22:06:24
So if you go for our local professor, Colin Humphreys from Selwyn College,

00:22:06:24 - 00:22:11:20
not far from here, who has a sort of comet with its tail pointing upwards.

00:22:12:00 - 00:22:16:05
Then, yes, it can appear to stand over a place and you can go towards that.

00:22:16:13 - 00:22:21:19
You, but they don't have to follow it.

00:22:21:19 - 00:22:24:14
So it's not like on the Christmas cards.

00:22:24:14 - 00:22:25:19
They see it in the East.

00:22:25:19 - 00:22:29:02
And then that tells them the king has been born of Jews.

00:22:29:02 - 00:22:30:05
Well, we know where the Jews are.

00:22:30:05 - 00:22:32:19
We look in our atlas they’re over Jerusalem.

00:22:32:19 - 00:22:34:22
P: So therefore we we head on our, T: Yeah

00:22:34:22 - 00:22:36:09
P: let's say camels. T: Yeah.

00:22:36:09 - 00:22:38:09
Because that's what the pictures say.

00:22:38:09 - 00:22:40:04
Head on their camels over to Jerusalem.

00:22:40:04 - 00:22:43:16
And then you ask someone, well, you know, well ask the king,

00:22:43:16 - 00:22:46:06
where's the king born of the Jew, king of the Jews?

00:22:46:06 - 00:22:48:06
And obviously he gets a bit upset about that.

00:22:48:06 - 00:22:53:12
But it's not that they have been following a star from one place to the other

00:22:53:12 - 00:22:53:18
Yeah.

00:22:53:18 - 00:22:56:18
So one of the problems, I guess, with the Christmas story is that

00:22:56:22 - 00:23:00:04
we learn them so early in

00:23:00:05 - 00:23:04:17
life, often as children, that we can slightly mis learn them.

00:23:04:23 - 00:23:07:23
And then you have to sort of reread and what's actually there.

00:23:08:02 - 00:23:08:20
Are you suggesting

00:23:08:20 - 00:23:11:21
that there may have been some accretions to this story through Christian history?

00:23:11:21 - 00:23:12:22
It is just possible.

00:23:12:22 - 00:23:16:23
And, you know, I mean, obviously, sometimes the star even looks like a cross

00:23:16:23 - 00:23:19:17
with a final sort of point, by the way, way down.

00:23:19:17 - 00:23:19:23
Yeah.

00:23:19:23 - 00:23:23:23
P: So, yes, T: Yes, Over the stable that isn't quite mentioned

00:23:25:02 - 00:23:25:12
That's right.

00:23:25:12 - 00:23:25:20
Yeah.

00:23:25:20 - 00:23:28:20
So, how many people do we want to upset on this?

00:23:29:14 - 00:23:30:13
Oh, as many as possible.

00:23:30:13 - 00:23:32:18
Okay, fine.

00:23:32:21 - 00:23:33:21
One further difference

00:23:33:21 - 00:23:36:21
between the gospels is that,

00:23:37:04 - 00:23:41:08
Matthew has Jesus and his parents fleeing to Egypt.

00:23:41:08 - 00:23:47:07
To a, well, to avoid the the massacre, that supposed massacre

00:23:47:07 - 00:23:51:18
that Herod inflicts on the, the children of Bethlehem.

00:23:53:22 - 00:23:55:04
What is going on there?

00:23:55:04 - 00:23:57:03
Because Luke doesn't mention it.

00:23:57:03 - 00:24:00:22
Luke doesn't mention the, the, the killing of the children.

00:24:01:12 - 00:24:03:21
Is this just

00:24:03:21 - 00:24:06:07
T: he's not interested in that or? P: Yes.

00:24:06:07 - 00:24:11:03
So, I mean, I think there are various things like, let's start with the massacre.

00:24:11:07 - 00:24:15:20
So some people would say, well, if as in Matthew chapter 2,

00:24:15:24 - 00:24:20:22
Herod kills off all the children two years and under in Bethlehem,

00:24:20:22 - 00:24:23:22
wouldn't that be recorded elsewhere, wouldn’t that be recorded in another gospel?

00:24:23:22 - 00:24:25:03
The answer is no.

00:24:25:03 - 00:24:30:06
What we do know is that, Herod was into killing a lot of people.

00:24:30:06 - 00:24:34:15
He even killed his favourite wife, Mariamne, and then was really regretful

00:24:34:15 - 00:24:35:11
that he had killed her.

00:24:35:11 - 00:24:40:22
You know, he would kill off anyone who was a slight threat,

00:24:41:07 - 00:24:44:20
again, killed some of his sons. So,

00:24:45:23 - 00:24:47:16
it's not really surprising

00:24:47:16 - 00:24:51:09
that when you have one of these bloodthirsty dictators,

00:24:51:09 - 00:24:55:13
they kill all sorts of people, and there aren't records of that

00:24:55:13 - 00:24:59:15
that wouldn't strike people as particularly noteworthy.

00:24:59:15 - 00:25:03:17
Because if Herod was killing people and committing atrocities all the time,

00:25:03:17 - 00:25:07:18
it doesn't become a particular record unless there's a reason.

00:25:07:23 - 00:25:09:10
But then you’re also looking at the questions,

00:25:09:10 - 00:25:12:24
I mean, one of how many children that would be?

00:25:13:07 - 00:25:16:07
And again, it depends on how many,

00:25:16:14 - 00:25:19:16
what you think the population of Bethlehem was.

00:25:19:16 - 00:25:21:06
One person calculated,

00:25:21:06 - 00:25:24:20
they thought it would just be, I say just, I mean obviously a great tragedy,

00:25:24:20 - 00:25:25:18
20 children.

00:25:25:18 - 00:25:29:13
So there are all sorts of much bigger

00:25:29:13 - 00:25:32:24
atrocities that, you know, just don't get recorded over time.

00:25:32:24 - 00:25:34:20
So that's not particularly surprising.

00:25:34:20 - 00:25:40:08
You then have the question of going down to Egypt, which is only in Matthew.

00:25:40:08 - 00:25:44:08
Now, of course, Matthew's got this thing that he's presenting where,

00:25:44:18 - 00:25:48:06
you've got in a sense, it's like Genesis 1 with its genealogy

00:25:48:08 - 00:25:49:13
in Matthew chapter 1.

00:25:50:20 - 00:25:53:24
It's like Exodus in Matthew chapter 2,

00:25:54:05 - 00:25:58:15
chapter 3, we're going to have the baptism, going through the water,

00:25:58:20 - 00:26:03:00
a bit like going through the Red sea,

00:26:03:00 - 00:26:07:01
let's say, and then, the Israelites going through the Red sea.

00:26:07:01 - 00:26:09:24
And chapter 4 is going to be, they're out in the desert.

00:26:09:24 - 00:26:11:17
He's in the desert getting tempted by Satan.

00:26:11:17 - 00:26:13:11
Chapter 5 is going to be giving the law.

00:26:13:11 - 00:26:16:23
All of these are very reminiscent of early things going on in the Bible

00:26:16:23 - 00:26:19:24
says that's a theme that Matthew's going to get across.

00:26:20:07 - 00:26:23:08
People might say, well, hang on, Luke doesn't mention it at all.

00:26:23:08 - 00:26:25:09
Well,

00:26:25:09 - 00:26:27:21
I guess one of the things is

00:26:27:21 - 00:26:30:10
when people ask how my wife and I met,

00:26:30:10 - 00:26:34:19
I can give them the short version, we met in Belgium,

00:26:35:02 - 00:26:38:12
or I'm going to have to give them a lot longer version.

00:26:39:16 - 00:26:40:11
You know, if I start

00:26:40:11 - 00:26:44:07
bringing in an extra player that there was in this,

00:26:45:24 - 00:26:47:22
then we're going to have to give an even longer story.

00:26:47:22 - 00:26:52:02
And so that's where, I think if Luke would say, oh,

00:26:52:02 - 00:26:55:24
and they just took a little detour to Egypt and then, came

00:26:55:24 - 00:26:59:03
back, that fundamentally changes

00:26:59:03 - 00:27:02:22
the nature of his story because it just draws attention to itself.

00:27:02:22 - 00:27:03:21
You want to say, well,

00:27:03:21 - 00:27:06:10
what were they doing in Egypt, and all that sort of thing.

00:27:06:10 - 00:27:09:04
So if you allow for a true

00:27:09:04 - 00:27:12:04
writer to be allowed to use precis, that is,

00:27:12:06 - 00:27:15:18
summary in which you basically,

00:27:16:05 - 00:27:19:10
yeah, you don’t have to say everything and, and you,

00:27:19:19 - 00:27:23:18
you create a coherent narrative of all the things

00:27:23:18 - 00:27:27:20
you think are most prominent, then that allows you to omit things like that.

00:27:28:01 - 00:27:31:15
So in Luke, you would think that after they've

00:27:32:17 - 00:27:33:03
been in

00:27:33:03 - 00:27:36:19
Bethlehem and they've they've gone up to Jerusalem and, done

00:27:36:19 - 00:27:41:04
the purification, basically, they're going straight off to Nazareth.

00:27:41:08 - 00:27:44:09
And I think it's not at all

00:27:44:18 - 00:27:49:11
against Luke to say, there was more to it than that.

00:27:49:12 - 00:27:54:22
And, and that this was the point at which they actually, went to Egypt.

00:27:54:22 - 00:27:57:24
I mean, after all, Bethlehem and Jerusalem are really quite close.

00:27:57:24 - 00:28:00:00
You know, they’re a day's journey.

00:28:00:00 - 00:28:03:23
It's it's not that you have to see them as fundamentally,

00:28:04:05 - 00:28:08:21
you know, you have to record every time you travel between them.

00:28:08:21 - 00:28:11:21
So I don't think there's any problem with the fact that there was

00:28:11:23 - 00:28:12:24
an extra trip in there.

00:28:12:24 - 00:28:15:24
And Egypt is not that far away.

00:28:15:24 - 00:28:19:14
I mean, depending how deeply into Egypt you go.

00:28:19:14 - 00:28:22:10
But to get to the Egyptian border is not that far.

00:28:22:10 - 00:28:25:12
Okay, well, all sorts of interesting questions.

00:28:25:12 - 00:28:29:17
And there's lots of, lots of others we could have delved into

00:28:29:17 - 00:28:32:13
about the number of Magi, where did the Magi come from?

00:28:32:13 - 00:28:33:19
But we'll leave that for now.

00:28:35:05 - 00:28:35:21
There are

00:28:35:21 - 00:28:38:23
articles about some of these things on the Tyndale House website.

00:28:39:06 - 00:28:41:24
There's an article by David Armitage on the census.

00:28:41:24 - 00:28:44:15
There's one by Ian Paul on the stable.

00:28:44:15 - 00:28:47:24
T: You've written one on P: Yeah I've written one T: on the Gospels?

00:28:48:17 - 00:28:51:01
Yes. And on the genealogies specifically.

00:28:51:01 - 00:28:53:22
On the genealogies. Yep. Indeed. Yeah. And why they're different.

00:28:53:22 - 00:28:54:18
So. Yeah.

00:28:54:18 - 00:28:57:18
Dig around on the Tyndale House website and you'll find those articles.

00:28:57:21 - 00:29:01:12
And do join us again for more conversations coming from Tyndale House.

00:29:01:12 - 00:29:02:07
Thank you for joining us.