lace at least ten
years later; thus Luke contradicts Matthew, and also contradicts
himself. The discrepancies surrounding the birth are not yet complete;
passing the curious differences between Matthew and Luke, Matthew
knowing nothing about the visit of the shepherds, and Luke nothing of
the visit of the Magi, and the consequent slaughter of the babes, we
come to a direct conflict between the Evangelists; Matthew informs us
that Joseph, Mary, and the child, fled into Egypt from Bethlehem to
avoid the wrath of King Herod, and that they were returning to Judaea,
when Joseph, hearing that Archelaus was ruling there, turned aside to
Galilee, and came and dwelt "in a city called Nazareth." Luke, on the
contrary, says that when the days of Mary's purification were
accomplished they took the child up to Jerusalem, and presented him in
the Temple, and then, after this, returned to Galilee, to "their own
city, Nazareth." Moreover, had Herod wanted to find him, he could have
taken him at the Temple, where his presentation caused much commotion.
In Matthew, the turning into Galilee is clearly a new thing; in Luke, it
is returning home; and in Luke there is no space of time wherein the
flight into Egypt can by any possibility be inserted. We may add a
wonder why Galilee was a safer residence than Judaea, since Antipas, its
ruler, was a son of Herod, and would, _prima facie_, be as dangerous as
his brother Archelaus.

The conduct of Herod is incredible if we accept Matthew's account:
"Herod's first anxious question to the magi is to ascertain the time of
the appearance of the star. He 'inquires diligently' (ii. 7); and he
must have had a motive for so doing. What was this motive? Could he have
any other purpose than that of determining the age under which no
infants in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem should be allowed to live?
But, according to the narrative, Herod never conceived the idea of
slaughtering the children till he found that he had been 'mocked of the
wise men;' and the mythical nature of the story is betrayed by this
anticipation of motives which, at the time spoken of could have no
existence. Yet, further, Herod, who, though in a high degree cruel,
unjust, and unscrupulous, is represented as a man of no slight sagacity,
clearness of purpose, and strength of will, and who feels a deadly
jealousy of an infant whom he _knows_ to have been recently born in
Bethlehem, a place only a few miles distant from Jerusalem, is here