Note 119 — Chapter IV · BIRTH AND EARLIEST EVENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS.

On neither of the above plans, therefore, will the presentation in the temple bear to be placed after the visit of the magi, and the only remaining alternative, which is embraced by the majority of commentators,119 is to make the incident noticed by Luke, precede both those narrated by Matthew. This is so far the most natural, that in Matthew there is at least an indirect intimation of a considerable interval between the birth of Jesus and the arrival of the magi. For we are told that Herod’s decree included all the children in Bethlehem up to the age of two years; we must therefore necessarily infer, that even if Herod, to make sure of his object, exceeded the term fixed by the magi, the star had been visible to these astrologers for more than a year. Now the narrator seems to suppose the appearance of the star to have been cotemporary with the birth of Jesus. Viewing the narratives in this order, the parents of Jesus first journeyed from Bethlehem, where the child was born, to Jerusalem, there to present the legal offerings; they next returned to Bethlehem, where (according to Matt. ii. 1 and 5) they were found by the magi; then followed the flight into Egypt, and after the return from thence, the settlement at Nazareth. The first and most urgent question that here suggests itself is this: What had the parents of Jesus to do a second time in Bethlehem, which was not their home, and where their original business connected with the census must surely have been despatched in the space of forty days? The discussion of this question must be deferred, but we can find an ample substitute for this argument, drawn from the nature of the fact, in one which rests on the words of the evangelical narrative. Luke (v. 39) says, in the most definite manner, that after the completion of the legal observance, the parents of Jesus returned to Nazareth, as to their proper home, not to Bethlehem, which, according to him, was merely a temporary residence.120 If, then, the magi arrived after the presentation in the temple, they must have met with the parents of Jesus in Nazareth, and not in Bethlehem, as Matthew states. Moreover, had the arrival of the magi really been preceded by the presentation in the temple, together with the attention which must have been excited by the language of Simeon and Anna; it is impossible that at the period of that arrival the birth of the messianic child could have been so much a secret in Jerusalem, that the announcement of it by the magi should be, as Matthew relates, a source of general astonishment.121