Note 116 — Chapter IV · BIRTH AND EARLIEST EVENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS.

Let us now revert to the narrative of Luke, chap. ii., so far as it runs parallel with that of Matthew. We have seen that the narrative of Matthew does not allow us to presuppose that of Luke as a series of prior incidents: still less can the converse be true, namely, that the magi arrived before the shepherds: it remains then to be asked, whether the two narratives do not aim to represent the same fact, though they have given it a different garb? From the older orthodox opinion that the star in Matthew was an angel, it was an easy step to identify that apparition with the angel in Luke, and to suppose that the angels, who appeared to the shepherds of Bethlehem on the night of the birth of Jesus, were taken by the distant magi for a star vertical to Judea,116 so that both the accounts might be essentially correct. Of late, only one of the Evangelists has been supposed to give the true circumstances, and Luke has had the preference, Matthew’s narrative being regarded as an embellished edition.