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Mary and Joseph Lived Where!?

Can the Gospels of Matthew and Luke be reconciled?

Brian Tubbs
Faith Renewed
4 min readDec 24, 2024

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Photo by Xulong Liu on Unsplash

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke are the only books in the Bible that contain the story of Jesus’ birth, but…

Critics say these sources can’t be trusted because they are inconsistent with what we “know” from history and because they contradict. One of the alleged contradictions concerns the hometown of Mary and Joseph.

James McGrath is the Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. In a January 11, 2022 piece for Patheos, he writes:

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke tell stories about Jesus’ birth and infancy with incompatible details. The geographical movements cannot be reconciled. In Matthew they are from Bethlehem and want to return there, and only go to Nazareth when they fear Herod’s son Archelaus. In Luke they are from Nazareth, go to Bethlehem and within a couple of months of Jesus’ birth they are back in Nazareth by way of Jerusalem.

If you follow debates in biblical scholarship, you’re likely familiar with Bart Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Like other Bible critics, Ehrman believes the writer of the Gospel of Matthew had religious motives…

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Faith Renewed
Faith Renewed

Published in Faith Renewed

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Brian Tubbs
Brian Tubbs

Written by Brian Tubbs

Sharing thoughts and insights about faith, history, and personal growth. Hoping to inspire more faith, hope, and love in a world that needs it.

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