A Few Unfashionable Notes on Harmonizing the Infancy Narratives of Luke and Matthew

Timothy W. Whitaker is a Retired United Methodist Church bishop who served the Florida Area.

Every year when I read the infancy narratives of Luke and Matthew, once again I find my mind considering the differences between them and how they may be viewed as compatible. I am quite aware of the common wisdom of contemporary New Testament scholars that the infancy narratives of Luke and Matthew cannot be harmonized. It is not just that Luke tells about shepherds and Matthew speaks of magi, for instance, but that the times and places of the events in the two Gospels do not coincide. After describing the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem and his presentation in the temple in Jerusalem, Luke indicates an immediate departure to Nazareth, saying, “When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth” (Luke 2:39). But Matthew’s narrative, which describes the visit of the magi followed by a flight to Egypt, requires a longer residence by Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem than Luke acknowledges. Matthew describes the family’s settlement in Nazareth following the birth of Jesus, the visit of the magi to “the house” at Bethlehem, and the flight to Egypt:  “There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean'”(Matthew 2:23).

If we take both infancy narratives at face value, the scholars’ warning that it is impossible to harmonize them seems reasonable. Yet Christians have always presumed that, somehow, the two narratives can be harmonized, and some of the church’s finest ancient scholars published harmonies of the texts of all the Gospels. 

For centuries, The Diatessaron of Tatian (ca.120-ca.180), a harmony of the four Gospels, was used instead of the four Gospels for reading during Sunday worship in the Syriac churches. In The Diatessaron, Matthew’s narrative of the visit of the magi and the flight into Egypt is placed after Luke’s narrative of the birth of Jesus, the visitation of the shepherds, and the rituals in the temple in Jerusalem. Origen’s teacher Ammonius of Alexandria (ca.175-ca. 242) and Eusebius of Caesarea (ca.265-ca.340) also published harmonies of the Gospels. 

No less an authority than Augustine of Hippo (354-430), the great doctor of the Latin Church, published The Harmony of the Gospels around the year 400. Augustine’s work was a kind of ancient critical analysis of the texts of all the Gospels. Concerning the infancy narratives of the two evangelists, Augustine observes that, when describing the revelation to Joseph of the birth of Jesus, Matthew leaves out what is described in Luke about the announcement to Mary about the birth of Jesus. Both evangelists, Augustine states, “bear witness that Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit,” but each omits something about the events that the other noticed. Moreover, both are in agreement that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but Luke describes what Matthew ignores, which is “in what way and for what reason Joseph and Mary came to it,” i.e. the journey from Galilee to Bethlehem because of the Roman census. Then he observes how Luke omits the information about the magi while Matthew says nothing about the shepherds’ visit and the family’s observance of the laws of Moses in the temple in Jerusalem. Then Augustine rightly focuses on the crux of the differences between the two narratives: “But the real question is as to the exact period at which these things could have take place which Matthew has linked on to his narrative; to wit, the departure of the family into Egypt, and their return from it after Herod’s death, and their residence at that time in the town of Nazareth, the very place to which Luke tells us that they went back after they had performed in the temple all the things regarding the boy according to the law of the Lord.” Augustine’s answer to this question amounts to operating with the critical analytical principles that each evangelist had his own literary purpose in mind which required being selective in narrating traditions and telling a story that gives an impression of being complete in itself. Augustine says that “each evangelist constructs his own particular narrative on a kind of plan which gives it the appearance of being the complete and orderly record of the events in their succession. For, preserving a simple silence on the subject of those incidents of which he intends to give no account, he then connects those which he does wish to relate with what he has been immediately recounting, in such a manner as to make the recital seem continuous.” Then he adds, “On this principle, therefore, we understand that where he tells us how the wise men were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, and how they went back to their own country by another way, Matthew has simply omitted all that Luke has related respecting all that happened to the Lord in the temple, and all that was said by Simeon and Anna; while, on the other hand, Luke has omitted in the same place all notice of the journey into Egypt, which is given by Matthew, and has introduced the return to the city of Nazareth as if were immediately consecutive.” 

Augustine arranges the different scenes from the two infancy narratives in order as follows:  the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Zechariah of the birth of John (Luke); the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary of the birth of Jesus (Luke); the visit of Mary to Elizabeth (Luke}; an angel’s announcement of the birth of Jesus to Joseph in a dream (Matthew); the birth of John and his circumcision (Luke); the census, the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem where Jesus is born, and the visitation of the shepherds (Luke); the visit of the magi (Matthew); the presentation of Jesus in the temple and the testimonies of Simeon and Anna (Luke); the warning of an angel to Joseph to flee to Egypt and the journey to Nazareth following the death of Herod (Matthew); the account of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple (Luke).

Augustine’s scheme of harmonizing the infancy narratives of the Gospels of Luke and Matthew is logical, and it is probably the way many Christians tend to think of the way the events in the two different narratives unfolded in fact. I would only add a few simple thoughts.

It matters whether or not we judge that both infancy narratives are based upon historical traditions. Some of the best contemporary scholars do acknowledge that it is possible or even probable that each evangelist had received traditions about the events surrounding the birth of Jesus, but the overall sense conveyed in much contemporary scholarship is that each evangelist basically created his own story for theological and literary reasons. On the contrary, an ancient scholar like Augustine presumes that, while each evangelist clearly had his own theological and literary purposes, both of them were selecting from a body of reliable traditions about the birth of Jesus. If Augustine is right, as probably most Christians presume, then there can be a harmonization of the two accounts of the birth of Jesus given by Luke and Matthew. This means that the events selected by each evangelist can be fitted together in relation to one another even though it is not possible to literally harmonize the two texts since, as Augustine says, each evangelist composed a narrative of selected events and described them as if they were “complete” and “continuous.” The two texts cannot be harmonized literally, but, employing a critical judgment which acknowledges the literary and theological purposes of each evangelist, the two narratives of events can be seen as fitting together. 

Also, a seeming discrepancy between the two narratives is based upon an erroneous interpretation of the Gospel of Luke about the particular place where Mary gave birth to Jesus. Matthew describes events at the time of the birth of Jesus taking place at “the house” (Matthew 2:11). However, many preachers and scholars usually speak of Jesus being born in a “stable” because Luke mentions Mary laying the newborn child in a “manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” The same Greek word (katalyma) usually translated as “inn” in Luke 2:7 is always translated as a “guest room” of a house in Luke 22:11. Luke himself never mentions a “stable,” and his use of the same word (katalyma) twice must have the same meaning, which is that he is referring to a “guest room” of a house. I would infer that Luke intends his readers to think that, because it was already occupied or otherwise unsuitable for the birth of a child, Jesus was not born in the “guest room,” which was typically an upstairs room of a house, but in the main room on the first floor of a house which was adjoined by a space for animals to dwell in inclement weather that contained a manger for feeding the animals. This arrangement sounds strange to modern people, but it was a common practice during the time of Jesus. Even though Luke is not describing a stable or barn some distance from a house, he is still conveying a sense of the humble, ordinary circumstances of Jesus’ birth. Overall, the scene Luke is describing is not one of the rejection of Jesus by some innkeeper, but of the welcome of Jesus by a caring family. I also think that it is reasonable to infer that both Matthew and Luke presume that the house where Jesus was born was the ancestral home of Joseph’s family in Bethlehem. Matthew simply alludes to this house in Bethlehem, and Luke assumes that it is the destination of Joseph and Mary in their journey to Bethlehem.

Mention of the house in Bethlehem carries with it a suggestion that, if they were staying at the ancestral home of Joseph very probably in the company of some of Joseph’s relatives, Joseph and Mary could take their time being in Bethlehem rather than hurrying back to Nazareth in Galilee. The probability that they had a place to stay for weeks or many months if they chose allows for us to fit together all the events narrated by both Luke and Matthew to unfold. They did not have to hurry to Nazareth because they were not living in a makeshift arrangement in a stable, but they were comfortably situated at Joseph’s ancestral home.

Furthermore, we might assume that Matthew’s account of a flight to Egypt was a kind of long and arduous trek that involved a very lengthy sojourn, but this, too, may well be a misunderstanding. At the time Jesus was born, the Roman territory of Egypt extended all the way to Gaza. All Joseph had to do to get his family out of the jurisdiction of the unstable and dangerous King Herod was to reach the area of Gaza, a quite feasible task to accomplish. Joseph may have gone on farther in order to find a place to stay that was most suitable, but the idea of the family journeying to Egypt is not at all difficult to imagine; and if the family sojourned near Gaza, then the return to Bethlehem would have also been quite doable. How long they stayed in the jurisdiction of Egypt is not known, but it may not have been a very long time since Herod’s mental instability that led him to do cruel things was the result of illness that rather soon led to his death.

There is even another factor that should be kept in mind while trying to envision in our mind Joseph shuttling between Nazareth in Galilee and Bethlehem in Judea. According to the Gospels, both Joseph and the grown Jesus were craftsmen (Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3). The Greek term to describe their occupation is tekton, which is usually translated as “carpenter” but may also be translated as “stone mason.” It literally refers to someone who makes a living working with hard materials, and since most buildings in Judea and Galilee were made of stone and wood, it should be assumed that Joseph and his son had skills working with both materials. It was quite common for such a craftsman to travel around to where work could be found. It is very interesting to note that between 4 B.C.E. and 26 C.E. there was much construction going on at Sepphoris, the first capital of Galilee under Herod Antipas, and a lovely Hellenistic city less than four miles from Nazareth. Many craftsmen sought work at Sepphoris, especially in the years after it was destroyed in 4 B.C.E. because of a local revolt against Rome. Opportunity to work at Sepphoris may well explain why the Judean Joseph ended up in Nazareth in Galilee. There would have been much more work near and in Nazareth than at Bethlehem. And, it is likely that an observant, pious Jew like Joseph would have considered Sepphoris too unclean to be a place of residence, but Nazareth, a new town settled by Jewish nationalists, would have been attractive to him as a place to live and also raise a family. It is not difficult to envisage Joseph being a tekton who had an interest in a house and land in Bethlehem in Judea who also settled in Nazareth where work would be plentiful. Trips back and forth between the two places for personal, business or religious reasons would not be surprising.

The reasons why each of the two evangelists selected what to tell and omitted what the other had written from among various traditions concerning the beginning of Jesus’ life are discernable in the kind of Gospel each wrote. For instance, Luke centers both his Gospel and Acts in Jerusalem and Judea, and he aims to connect for his Gentile audience both Jesus and the church to Israel. Hence Luke narrates Jesus’ presentation in the temple but omits the visit of the magi. Matthew, while writing a much more Jewish Christian Gospel than Luke, emphasizes how the church is called to a mission to the Gentiles. Hence Matthew has no need to stress Jesus’ Jewishness in his infancy narrative, but he would want to include an account of a visit of Gentile magi to the child Jesus. In both of his volumes, Luke is very anxious to present Christianity as not being a threat to Roman authority, and so he would be hesitant to include an account of the holy family having to flee Herod in Egypt, for Herod was a Roman vassal and a close ally of Caesar Augustus. But Matthew, who emphasizes that Jesus called his disciples to be witnesses to all nations, would find a story about a sojourn in another region and province appealing as well as fitting a scriptural pattern of Israelites migrating to Egypt during crises.

Ruminations about how the two infancy narratives, or at least the events to which they refer, may be harmonized is quite unfashionable today among contemporary scholars and those who have been trained by them. We who grew up hearing the two narratives as one story in church and who find the critical reasoning of ancient scholars like Augustine sensible are considered naïve and unsophisticated while we shrug at the skepticism of many contemporary scholars because it discloses a mind far too bookish and cluttered with abstract theories of literary and theological constructions. If one is not intimidated by precious contemporary scholarly conventions, she or he is likely to enjoy reflecting upon the ancient tradition of harmonizing Luke’s and Matthew’s versions of the events that took place when Jesus was born.