Do Matthew & Luke Contradict Each Other?  🔗 **Source:** [Do Matthew & Luke Contradict Each Other?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgFCyGaj6RU) Luke says that after the birth of Jesus, the family fled to Egypt. Matthew says that they went to the Jerusalem temple. Are they both correct or is one of them wrong? >> Yeah, they're both correct. >> All right, let's see it. >> So, here's the supposed contradiction. Matthew says that after Jesus was born, the family fled to Egypt to escape Herod. But Luke says that after Jesus was born, the family went to the temple to dedicate Jesus. So, the Bible's contradicting itself, right? No, not even close. Here's why. When most people read Matthew 2, they assume this timeline. Jesus is born, wise men show up, wise men report to Herod. Herod wants to kill Jesus. Jesus and the family flee to Egypt and they read into the text that all of this is happening directly after the birth. But here's the problem. When the wise men show up, the Bible says they walk into the house, not the stable. And when Herod gets the timeline from the wise men, he orders all babies 2 years and under to be killed. That shows you how much time had passed. Jesus was potentially up to 2 years old when the wise men arrived, which means we know the wise men weren't at Jesus' birth. Now, before we get to the meat of this video, I want to point out that this content creator, by referring to a stable, is doing the exact same thing that he's criticizing others for doing, namely allowing nativity scene traditions to inform the reconstruction of these events. because this content creator is 100% right to point out that the wise men don't show up until much later, until up to two years after Jesus's birth. But when we see nativity scenes, we see the wise men there at Jesus's birth. And so we tend to collapse the uh chronological distance that separates Jesus's birth from the arrival of the wise men. But by referring to a stable, this content creator does the exact same thing. allows nativity scenes to influence the reconstruction of these events because there's no stable anywhere in the story. Nothing even remotely close to that is mentioned anywhere in the Gospel of Matthew. It's in Luke that we have Jesus being placed in a manger because there was no room in the Catala and a traditional reading has understood that to mean no room in the inn. And we reconstruct Joseph and Mary not having a place to stay and so having to hunker down underneath some kind of makeshift shelter like a stable. And that's why Jesus was placed in the manger. But that's not what's going on in the story. And the Greek word catalyma that is being used here actually just means guest room. And so they're in the house. They're just on the first floor, which is where animals would have been stored and where a manger would have been found. So, there's no stable versus house distinction. They're in the house the entire time in the Gospel of Luke. But the wise men are in the Gospel of Matthew. And these are two distinct and yes, directly contradictory accounts of Jesus's birth and early infancy, as we're going to see. And this content creator is going to ignore some of the features of these narratives that most clearly bring that contradiction to the surface. It leaves a gap of up to 2 years between his birth and their flight to Egypt. And that gap is exactly where Luke's account fits. Jesus is born. 8 days later, he's circumcised. 40 days after that, the family goes to Jerusalem for the temple presentation. That's Luke's account. Done. >> No, not done. We're ignoring a very critical detail that makes clear that these two accounts do not fit together. And I don't know if we're ignoring it intentionally or just because we're not paying close attention. But after they are done in the temple, after they have fulfilled everything that is required by the law, what does the Gospel of Luke say happened? Well, here in verses 39 and 40, it says, "When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth, the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him." Now, this content creator would have us believe that this happened. And then they returned back down to Bethlehem and that's when Herod decided that he needed to have the boy killed. And that's when they fled into Egypt. And it's only after they begin to return from Egypt and they realize they cannot return to Bethlehem that they are forced to go into Galilee. And they decide to settle in Nazareth. In the Gospel of Matthew, they're not from Nazareth. They are from Bethlehem. They would have stayed permanently in Bethlehem if Herod had not chased them out and if they had not been warned not to return to Judea. and instead go north and have to find a place to live in the Galilee. In the Gospel of Luke, however, they are from Nazareth the entire time. That is their home town. So, they return to their home town. This doesn't leave room for them to come back down to Bethlehem and then later be driven to Egypt and then later go have to find a place to live in Galilee and decide on Nazareth. this doesn't make sense of the narrative and this content creator has either just ignorantly or intentionally ignored this important detail. >> Then separately, potentially up to two years later, the wise men arrive in Bethlehem. They worship Jesus. Then Joseph gets the dream. Then Matthew's account picks back up and they flee to Egypt. Luke and Matthew are not describing the same moment. There is no contradiction. >> Yes, they do contradict. These stories do not fit together. Again, if we only had the account of Matthew and we did not have the account of Luke, we would conclude that Jesus's family lived in Bethlehem, they were not associated with Nazareth at all until they're coming back from Egypt. and they realize they cannot settle in Judea and are warned in a dream to go north to be outside of the territory of Archelaus to settle in Galilee to settle in a city called Nazareth. If we only had the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus would have nothing whatsoever to do with Nazareth until after returning from the flight to Egypt when they decided to settle in Nazareth to be outside the purview of Herod. Archelaus that directly contradicts the account of Luke where they are from Nazareth the entire time and they return home to Nazareth after fulfilling everything that was required by law for Jesus's infancy. So after visiting the temple after 40 days and doing whatever else was required by the law, they returned to their hometown of Nazareth. And so this content creator without acknowledging it requires that we assume that they came back down from Nazareth to Bethlehem while Herod was still alive and then they had to flee to Egypt and then they came back. Here's what the Gospel of Matthew says. Verses 19 to 23. When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead." Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. That's where he lived, but he can't return there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. He's not going to Nazareth. He's wandering north to a place that he does not know. 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 Nazarene. The prophecy is not already fulfilled in Matthew. This is not their hometown in Matthew until after the flight to Egypt because the prophecy already would have been fulfilled the moment they went home to Nazareth which according to the attempt of this content creator to harmonize these two accounts happened before their flight to Egypt. That's the only place it could have happened. They came down to Nazareth. Jesus was born. They hung out. They fulfilled everything that was required by the law. They went back to Nazareth. They came back down to Bethlehem. Then they fled to Egypt. Then they return to their hometown of Nazareth. But according to the Gospel of Matthew, it is that return from Egypt that results in them settling for the first time in Nazareth so that the prophecy could be fulfilled. Matthew does not know of a Mary and Joseph who lived in Nazareth prior to the birth of Jesus. According to Matthew, they settle for the first time in Nazareth after the flight to Egypt. This does not fit the Gospel of Luke. We have to ignore what the texts are saying and we have to assume that these are both utterly incompetent storytellers. For Luke to say, "Yeah, and then after that they went back to Nazareth and things were cool." entirely ignores. Oh, except for the part where the king of the kingdom had to chase them out of the kingdom and they went and they fled and were as refugees in Egypt until they wanted to come back. But they were still under threat from Herod Archelaus, the king's son. So, they had to flee north to Galilee even though they were from Galilee the whole time. Like Luke just leaves that out. And no, this isn't a question of not knowing it. Luke is supposed to have studied out everything and had known all the accounts. Luke should know these details and in no small part because Luke had access to Matthew most likely if you conclude as I do with an awful lot of scholars that Luke was written after the Gospel of Matthew. So no, these don't fit together and we have to ignore details in order to make it seem like maybe they could fit together. But once we acknowledge those details and try to work with those details, we can see no, they they don't fit together. And this is worth saying before we move on, but people often point to different tellings of the same story in the Bible and assume the differences equal contradictions and that this is why the Bible can't be trusted. But think about it, that's not how eyewitness testimony works. For example, if a car accident were to happen outside right now and I interviewed 10 different people that saw it, every single person is going to give me a slightly different telling of the same event. One person would note the color of the car. Another person would note what the driver was wearing. And another would tell me where the car ended up. None of them are lying. And none of them are contradicting each other. They're just different people with different vantage points catching different details about the same event. That's exactly what you have in the Gospels. Four different authors with four different vantage points all covering different details about the same story. Except here we're talking about a story that is only found in two of the gospels. And no, the details do not all fit together. As we've seen, if you try to fit Matthew and Luke together, at least regarding their nativity accounts, you have to assume that they went back to Nazareth and then came back to Bethlehem and then fled to Egypt and then they wandered north into the Galilee and were like, "What about Nazareth? We could settle there." And then they settled there so that the prophecy could be fulfilled according to the Gospel of Matthew, even though that was already their hometown and they had just left there shortly before. The details don't fit together. And if you have two different people who witness a car accident and tell two different stories where the details don't fit together, that's a contradiction. Somebody's wrong. At least one person is wrong. Maybe both of them are wrong. And the fact that Matthew and Luke have entirely contradictory nativity accounts indicates something important. We only have these two nativity accounts and they're coming rather late in the development of the Jesus tradition. Neither Paul nor Mark say anything whatsoever about Bethlehem. In fact, the only time in the entire New Testament that the word Bethlehem ever occurs is in Matthew and Luke's nativity accounts. and then one verse in John referring to the fact that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. So that would be three of the latest authors of the New Testaments and their accounts contradict each other which suggests that the nativity accounts are probably literary creations. Matthew and Luke or at least the authors of Matthew and Luke came up with their own ways of having Jesus born in Bethlehem even though he was Jesus of Nazareth. Luke has them coming from Nazareth to Bethlehem and then back to Nazareth. Matthew has them in Bethlehem the entire time and only arriving in Nazareth after they cannot return from Egypt to settle in Judea. They're not fitting together. These are two contradictory accounts. And this content creator cannot even engage with all of the details. This content creator is ignoring very, very critical details that demonstrate that you cannot plausibly fit these two accounts together. They directly contradict each other. And here's the thing that critics need to think about. If Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all recorded every single event in identical language with identical details. You know what critics would say? They all copied each other. But the fact that they all have different details that fit together is not a weakness of the Bible. It's one of the strongest arguments for its authenticity. So these are just stock apologetic slogans that don't engage the details, don't engage the data, don't engage the scholarship or the criticism because you know how else eyewitness testimony works. Eyewitnesses frequently contradict each other. And you know what? Sometimes people who claim to be eyewitnesses weren't eyewitnesses. And you know what? Sometimes eyewitnesses recall things incorrectly and their stories change over time. All of these things make it clear that you can't say, "Well, the details can be made to fit together. Therefore, the accounts must be true because that's what we would expect from eyewitness testimony." But again, the details don't fit together. And sometimes details conflict because they're not from eyewitness testimony or the eyewitnesses are wrong. There are a lot of different ways that we can think about this and arrive at entirely different conclusions. This is just apologetic deflection. We're not here to convince people who are thinking critically about this. This content creator is not trying to engage scholars or critical thinkers. This content creator is trying to make people who already agree feel better. It's about trying to make him and the audience that already agrees with him feel better. It's about assaging cognitive dissonance. Not because there's a good reason to, but because the goal of apologetics is to make people who already believe feel justified in that belief. And so you don't actually have to engage the data. You don't actually have to make the stories fit together. You just have to adequately perform conviction that the details fit together. And that plunks the tuning fork in the loins of the dogmatism of the target audience. who are all already believers anyway and are just feeling a little cognitive dissonance and they need that assuaged. That is the primary purpose of apologetics. That's what this content creator is doing. They are not capable of engaging competently with the data with the text on their own terms. They can only do this provided the audience has already signed off on a bunch of dogmas, a bunch of presuppositions like univocality, like inherency. It is begging the question. We all already agree on the conclusion. We just need to see a performance that adequately puts on display confidence, conviction, and academic competence. And this content creator has the first two, but doesn't have the third at all. And the fit for this video has been Marvel., Do Matthew & Luke Contradict Each Other?, YouTube, 01ks15bh4n5vth8rj10x9w3qfb.