The truth is that we will never know the true story of the birth of Jesus . The only two accounts that speak of him, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, are totally contradictory; if one is true, the other cannot be. Mateo says that he was born in Bethlehem of Judea , at his home. No caves, mangers or shepherds. From that moment on, Mateo made an effort to justify why Mary and Joseph end up living in Nazareth. For this he makes them travel through the desert, fleeing to Egypt for fear of Herod: imagining two parents with a child under two years of age crossing the harsh Sinai desert far exceeds the fiction of the Da Vinci Code .
On Herod’s death they decide to return – an almost unique case among the Jews of the diaspora – and settle in Nazareth. Why don’t they do it in Bethlehem? Because Herod’s son Archelaus reigned in Judea and ‘was afraid to go there.’ Matthew should not think poor Joseph was very intelligent because he installed him in Nazareth, in Galilee, a region governed by another son of Herod who should also be afraid: Herod Antipas, the future murderer of John the Baptist.
For his part, Lucas does not have time for the long journey described by Mateo, so he reverses the path. The family lives in Nazareth and travels to Bethlehem because of an unnatural and foolish Roman census that forces its inhabitants to register in their city of birth and not in the city of residence – one can imagine all the Jews of Rome crossing the entire Mediterranean to be registered in their city of origin. This without taking into account that a census of Caesar had no application in Galilee, territory governed by the tetrarch Herod Antipas. In spite of that, can we imagine a husband forcing his wife, almost out of accounts, to leave their home and relatives and travel about 130 km along complicated roads, subject to attack by thieves and robbers, to comply with a census that only he had to sign? Lucas seems to have as little appreciation for José as Mateo, because with such an attitude he presents him as a man without any empathy and absolutely unconcerned about his wife’s life.
