Luke 2-3

[wolfpurplemoon]

Luke seems to be where the Christmas story I learnt in school comes from, we have the Most Ridiculous Census Ever (seriously, you do not make everyone travel back to their home town 90 miles away to register for a census!), and Mary has to put her new baby in a manger because there is no place left in this little village with all the people who'd been born there and moved away popping home for the census.

Also some shepherds abandon their sheep after a vast heavenly army of angels appeared and told them about the baby. We don't normally get taught about Mary and Joseph sacrificing birds when they presented Jesus at the temple.

So, if you were Simeon and you'd been told that you wouldn't die until you'd seen Christ, would you go and seek out an audience with Jesus or avoid all contact and hope to live forever?

The 12 year old Jesus stays behind to chat to the teachers in the temple court, worrying his parents but amazing everyone else with his understanding.

John the Baptist is paving the way for Jesus with his preaching, though it gets him in trouble with Herod and he is imprisoned.

And then Luke lists Jesus' lineage through Joseph who isn't his father (and apparently there are several differences between this one that the one in Matthew).

Comments

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

It seems there are more reliable records of the Quirinius census than there were of Jesus' life and modern historians have discovered that it didn't take place in the area Jesus' family are supposed to have lived in anyway.

Also, it wouldn't have involved people travelling away from their home. Especially not to the home of an ancient ancestor several centuries into the past.

We don't normally get taught about Mary and Joseph sacrificing birds when they presented Jesus at the temple.

If Matthew's account is right, they should be in Egypt at that point in time. (Either that or it was a really quick "hide out in Egypt". More like a quick holiday to overcome the stress of your child's life being at stake before popping back as if nothing ever happened.)

The 12 year old Jesus stays behind to chat to the teachers in the temple court, worrying his parents but amazing everyone else with his understanding.

Am I the only one who thinks there's something really mean about Jesus going "you're not my daddy!" to Joseph?

And then Luke lists Jesus' lineage through Joseph who isn't his father (and apparently there are several differences between this one that the one in Matthew).

Yeah, I can't be bothered to check right now, but doesn't it match him all the way back to Abraham? Or possibly back to Adam? Remind me why anyone laughs at James Ussher....?

[bonsaye.livejournal.com]

Well, they didn't necessarily leave for Egypt with a newborn baby. Matthew says that they were living in a house in Bethlehem when the magi came to visit Jesus, so all those census people had cleared out enough for them to find some more permanent lodging than a stable.

It could have been anytime during Jesus's first two years, really. That seems to be the age that the magi and King Herod decided upon based on when the star first appeared.

The trip to the temple? Jesus is 40 days old here, if they did it right according to the Jewish law (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=leviticus%2012&version=NIV). 40 days of purification for a boy baby, and 73 days for a baby girl. (I know, it's not fair.)

I'm thinking they got back from the temple and went house-hunting. Then the magi came, then they fled to Egypt, then they came back and lived in Nazareth.