A film director preparing a documentary, or a police detective piecing together a picture of events, would have a hard time piecing together the stories of Jesus' birth. Over the years, we have inherited a story recounted in numerous Nativity Plays, painted by numerous artists, a story of ox and ass, of three mysterious kings, of the heavily-pregnant young girl on a donkey, of holly and ivy, mistletoe and snowflakes. But the gospels mention none of these things, and all we really have are two accounts which almost seem to be describing different sets of events.
For the stories are different - so different that people have spent time and effort inventing reasons why this could be so: did Luke have special access to Mary's recollections, for example? These theories have sometimes prevented Christians from taking each account at its own independent face value, from seeing what the writers were trying to say. For Matthew and Luke were not writing for the front page of the Blick. They were trying to bring out the deep truths that lay within their stories: the same truths that John's Gospel sets out directly, that "the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory."
The two accounts both tell us that Joseph had nothing to do with Jesus' conception. They do this not to make us wonder at what miracles God can do, or at the mechanics of fertilization, but to recall Isaiah's prophecy to Ahaz (7:14): that liberation would come when "the young woman is with child" - a child to be called God-with-us, Emmanuel.
The two accounts both tell us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem - again, not to locate his birth six miles south of Jerusalem, but because Bethlehem had been the birthplace of King David, and was not far from the burial place of Jacob's favourite wife, Rachel. David had restored the fortunes of Israel, and without Rachel's son Joseph, Israel would have died of famine. Jesus was even more the bearer of God's salvation. Hence his name, Joshua in Hebrew, Jesus in Greek, meaning "God saves."
The two accounts also associate Jesus with Nazareth, though the centre of his ministry later was Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, further south. Luke has Mary and Joseph travelling from Nazareth to Bethlehem for some sort of civil registration - the Gospel says nothing about her being "heavily" pregnant, and nothing about any innkeeper - the picture is more of a poor family house, and the manger, with its layer of soft hay, could have been brought into the main living room from outside. (The word translated "inn" is later used of the "guest room" where Jesus and the disciples ate the Last Supper.)
Matthew has the family moving to Nazareth because of the political situation in Judaea. But for Matthew at least, this was a fulfilment of prophecy - perhaps Isaiah 11:1, where the prophet is looking forward to "a branch", growing, like David, from "Jesse's roots" who would usher in a reign of perfect peace. The place name Nazareth and the Hebrew word for "branch" (nazar) are related, and people who knew their Bible would see numerous hopes expressed in Isaiah being fulfilled by "Jesus the Nazarene".
The shepherds, the magi, the flight to Egypt, all in their different ways illustrate the significance of Jesus' birth, either by echoing Old Testament prophecy (like Hosea 11:1: "Out of Egypt I called my son" - Jesus is God's true son, led, guided and protected, as God's people were in the time of Moses), or by emphasizing that the hopes of all the world were being fulfilled - not just Bible-readers, but also pagan astrologers and maligned peasants (for even if God was seen as "Israel's shepherd", real-life shepherds were despised because their work kept them from observing the Sabbath).
The stories in Matthew and Luke have a magic of their own, just as there is a magic in the thought of Bethlehem's "deep and dreamless sleep", above which "the silent stars go by." But behind the emotion, the tinsel and the mistletoe lies the greater truth - that in the birth of the baby in the manger "the hopes and fears of all the years" were met. Come, let us adore him.
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