Professor Helen Bond examines the many discrepancies between Matthew and Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth narrative.

Helen Bond is Professor in Christian Origins with Specialisation in New Testament at the University of Edinburgh. This is a brilliantly concise and informative description of the two very different and contradictory accounts of the birth of Jesus in the Bible.

Categories: Bible, Christianity, Christology, Jesus

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22 replies

  1. She can’t acquire academic respectability without adopting a sceptical view of the bible.


    • That is an ad hominem remark that fails to deal with the issues she raised. She is merely describing the distinct storylines we see in each gospel. The fact they result in contractionary accounts is not her doing. It is there in the Bible for anyone to see for themselves.


  2. The accounts look at the birth of Jesus from a different perspective. Does that mean they are contradictory?


  3. The only historian she can quote is Josephus who wrote many years after the events. Both the gospel writers were alive at the time of the events they describe.


  4. Qurinius could have been governor at both times. Both in BC and AD. If Josephus is correct that is. Maybe he was mixed up or was in error for some reason.


  5. As an academic if she has to choose between a biblical and non-biblical source in conflict she must choose the non-biblical source even if there is no evidence for it.


  6. I dont see it as a problem that Matthew emphazises the kingly aspect of Jesus and Luke his down to earth humanity. She has to see this as a problem.


  7. Didn’t she claim in the video that according to Matthew the hometown and birthplace of Jesus was Bethlehem so he had to get him up to Nazerath somehow? And for Luke Nazerath was the hometown so the academically manufactured problem was that he had to get him down to Bethlehem This is nonsense. This is why I don’t read books by so called scholars.


  8. The genealogy is not the subject of the video.


    • Madman you are a hardline fundamentalist so you will forever reject a priori any suggestion that the bible contains discrepancies, contradictions and errors.

      I don’t share your presuppositions (though I did) so I am free to see the text for what it really is.


  9. The interesting question for me would be how Luke can move Jesus in the narrative from his birth in Bethlehem to the temple and up to Nazerath in same the time it takes for Matthew to move Jesus from Bethlehem down to Egypt and up to Nazareth.


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