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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

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says at the beginning it's of the amounts that Augustus gave out.

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So you would

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read this, and you would never think that he ever took money from anyone.

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And so one of the things you realize is that, yes,

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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.