Matt and Luke: Ships Passing in the Night

[YahwehIsTheWay]

Fair enough, but you have to remember that Matthew had an agenda - he was trying to equate (more or less) Jesus with Moses, so it would have been understandable for him to fabricate the sojourn into Egypt.

As for the bit about 'came into the house', there is clearly a time gap.  The wise men came to Herod in Jerusalem and asked about the infant, then Herod had a bit of a chin wag with 'all the chief priests and scribes of the people'.  It should have taken a few days at least to get them together, then figure a day for the confab, then maybe a half day for the Three Wise Men to go the 6 miles to Bethlehem. It isn't unreasonable to expect that Mary and Company found better accommodation between the birth and the visit.  The text says Jesus was born in the stable, not that the family stayed there for any great length of time.

Boru

Not a bad apologetic but the narrative by Luke has Mary conduct business at the temple and return immediately to Nazareth, not go into Egypt.

The home as a rental might work but I'm still fuzzy on why Matt's version had them consider returning to Jerusalem if they lived in Nazareth. After all, once the census was concluded (some 10 years after Herod died!), there was no reason to even consider going to Jerusalem ...unless that was their home and Nazareth was a relocation necessitated by avoiding Herod Archeleus. The story makes no sense if they had lived in Nazareth all their lives outside their trip to Egypt. 

The text of Matthew reads as lived in Bethlehem, fled to Egypt and came to settle in Nazareth.

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Here's the passage in Matthew that doesn't support the idea that their hometown was Nazareth

Matthew 2:21-23

And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee: And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.

Now, my question if I wasn't clear, is why go back to Bethlehem at all? Why not just go straight back to your hometown in the first place? And this passage reads like he came to Nazareth for the first time, not returned home. I maintain this passage makes no sense if Nazareth was their hometown and Bethlehem was just a journey for a census (that, by the way, wouldn't happen for another 10 years).