The Jesus Itinerary

[John V]

Well, to repeat my list of reasons:

1. When Matt introduced the word "house", the simplest assumption is that Joseph and Mary lived there unless other details were provided, like who else owned the house?

And maybe they did live there. That's not problematic as you haven't shown that this was at the time of Jesus' birth. Or, they could have been visiting someone. We don't know.

2. Why would they need an inn if they owned a house or had relatives they could have stayed with?
3. Why give birth in a manger when they had access to a house?

Again, you have the time problem. You seem to have read one version that said "when" and based your argument on it, not realizing that the text doesn't really specify that.

4. Why did Joseph try to return to Bethlehem if it wasn't where his home was?

Maybe he liked it better than Nazareth and, as the family had already been moved and he now had money, he wanted to live there.

Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is its exactly what it looks like, two authors working independently produced a continuity gaffe.

The simplest explanation to me is that two authors each gave incomplete accounts.

To Matt, Bethlehem was the home town, necessary since Jesus would have to be born in/near Jersualem and later they had to relocate to Nazareth to explain why he was Jesus of "Nazareth". Luke had a different, more convoluted plot device: the unlikely census that dragged Joseph and his family to Bethlehem and Mary's water broke at an inopportune time.

Except you haven't shown that in Matt they lived there prior to Jesus' birth.

This is why I disparage overuse of ad hoc hypotheses. If you keep saying "maybe... maybe... maybe..." enough, you can "harmonize" anything, from UFO abductions to Bigfoot to conspiracy theories to faeries to any crazy thing you want to believe.

Neither claimed to be a complete account, so it's not surprising that there are gaps.

Occam's Razor is a useful tool for slicing through the pile of ad hocs.

You mean like inferring "their" house, instead of an unknown house?

Occam's Razor (Occam was a Christian BTW) is in my experience pretty useless, as it's usually impossible to objectively quantify what is simplest.

Which brings me back to what were they still doing in Bethlehem? Joseph had just been dragged there to the census. I don't think he was a rich man, certainly not before the Wise Men arrived, so renting a house for year and being removed from his livelihood during that time doesn't seem likely.

He came back for some reason - maybe he made connections while he was there for 6 weeks the first time.