First ask yourself why these two authors came up with such radically different stories for the birth of their godboy? Why... it's almost as if they made the whole thing up! Matty has Mary living in Bethlehem and giving birth. This seems to be a result of a misreading of Micah 5. Later they leave. Luke invents a phony census to get Joseph and Mary to leave "Nazareth" and go to Bethlehem and then has a completely different scenario to get them back to "Nazareth."
It seems that the authors of each had a copy of mark, given the liberal amount of copying they did from it but it seems as if their audiences were demanding to know the particulars of his birth that mark had not bothered to tell. Hence they made up stories. In matty's case it seems for a largely Palestinian audience which was familiar with jewish myths and legends. Although matty also claims that jesus will be called a Nazorean from OT prophecy....except there does not seem to be any such prophecy that anyone can find. There is speculation that the term is derived from netzer meaning "branch" and referring to a messianic concept. When you start getting into this Greek-Aramaic translation shit and then insist that it can be reliably rendered into English you are automatically moving on to shaky ground.
Now, we do not get these named gospels until very late in the 2d century. The earliest canon of xtian writings was put out by the heretic Marcion c 140 AD. It included something called "the Gospel of the Lord" which turns out to be the gospel later known as "luke" without the first two chapters. In fact Marcion's original work claims that jesus descended (from heaven) into Capernaum in the 15th year of Tiberius' reign ( 29AD).
http://gnosis.org/library/marcion/Gospel1.html
Feel free to look it over.
Later on when xtian writers rehabilitated the gospel of the lord they attached two chapters which included all the census/virgin birth/ bullshit. But the earliest version of the gospel that we know about (and we are told about it from xtian writers themselves like Tertullian and Irenaeus) does not have any of that nonsense as part of it.
It seems that the authors of each had a copy of mark, given the liberal amount of copying they did from it but it seems as if their audiences were demanding to know the particulars of his birth that mark had not bothered to tell. Hence they made up stories. In matty's case it seems for a largely Palestinian audience which was familiar with jewish myths and legends. Although matty also claims that jesus will be called a Nazorean from OT prophecy....except there does not seem to be any such prophecy that anyone can find. There is speculation that the term is derived from netzer meaning "branch" and referring to a messianic concept. When you start getting into this Greek-Aramaic translation shit and then insist that it can be reliably rendered into English you are automatically moving on to shaky ground.
Now, we do not get these named gospels until very late in the 2d century. The earliest canon of xtian writings was put out by the heretic Marcion c 140 AD. It included something called "the Gospel of the Lord" which turns out to be the gospel later known as "luke" without the first two chapters. In fact Marcion's original work claims that jesus descended (from heaven) into Capernaum in the 15th year of Tiberius' reign ( 29AD).
http://gnosis.org/library/marcion/Gospel1.html
Feel free to look it over.
Later on when xtian writers rehabilitated the gospel of the lord they attached two chapters which included all the census/virgin birth/ bullshit. But the earliest version of the gospel that we know about (and we are told about it from xtian writers themselves like Tertullian and Irenaeus) does not have any of that nonsense as part of it.
