“When
you look at the two stories of Christ’s birth (by
Matthew and Luke), doesn’t it seem that you can
believe neither, or one or the other, but surely not
both at the same time?!”
It is
true that Matthew and Luke deal with different
aspects of our Lord’s birth. Matthew alone
mentions the visit of the Magi, the killing of the
infants and the flight to Egypt. Luke simply declares
(2.39) that after the presentation of Jesus in the
Temple, the family returned to Nazareth (not
Bethlehem); i.e. the visit of the wise men to
Bethlehem and the flight to Egypt (and subsequent
settling in Nazareth) appear simply not to fit in
with Luke. Surely one must be wrong – or both!
Where we tend to stumble is over one or the other of
two ideas that get fixed in our minds. One is that
these are “stories” – that is often
the word that is used. And so we may find ourselves
regarding the Christmas events as legends or
mythology. The other error is that we may tend to
treat the Gospels as biographies, and virtually
demand that the four writers submit identical
manuscripts, which can then be pored over and
compared with each other for variations. But these
are quite definitely not biographies. They are
Gospels.
I don’t mean that they are unhistorical. We can
have confidence that they are historical. These were
men committed to the truth and were prepared to die
for what they believed. But what I mean is that each
writer has a specific purpose in writing, that is
distinctively his own and that makes the manuscript
unique.
We must remember that Matthew writes for the Jewish
reader mainly, and is concerned to present Jesus as
the Messiah, promised in the Old Testament. Read
through Matthew 1 and 2, and you will discover five
main incidents relating to the birth of Christ –
which are highlighted in order to connect them, in
each case, with five prophetic passages. The aim? It
is a teaching aim – to present Jesus as the
Christ (or Messiah): the one who fulfils the Old
Testament expectations. Bethlehem gets a mention
– primarily so that the connection with Micah
chapter 5 can be established.
Luke has a different perspective. Yes, there are
omissions – no mention of the flight, for
example. He does the same thing in his other work,
the Acts of the Apostles – there he omits
Paul’s journey into Arabia after his conversion.
But if there is some telescoping in the way in which
he writes, we must not interpret an omission as a
denial. Unfortunately, many of the critics wrongly do
just that! Each of the Gospel writers had to be
selective in which material they included and which
they omitted.
These Gospels complement one another. They fill out
the total picture for the reader, whether Jewish or
Gentile. The thoughtful reader can discern the
sequence: the birth at Bethlehem; the presentation in
the Temple (Luke 2); return to Bethlehem and the
subsequent visit of the Magi and escape into Egypt (Matthew
2); settling at Nazareth.
Of course it’s not always easy to piece a
picture together. But over the course of 2000 years
this is how ordinary readers of the Bible have seen
the earliest days of the world’s greatest life.
Robert
Bashford
