(avg. read time: 3–5 mins.)
Mary and Joseph presented Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem, presumably some forty days after his birth (Luke 2:22–24, 39)
Several harmonizations have been proposed for the accounts of Matthew and Luke, because, for all their many commonalities, neither account is marked as assuming the other’s events.1 This does not necessarily mean, contrary to the hasty conclusions of some scholars, that they did not know about the stories that they do not feature, but it does mean that Matthew or Luke do not demonstrate awareness of something. For example, Luke’s account is not clearly marked with awareness of a visit from the magi, the flight to Egypt, or the slaughter of the innocents. For the purposes of this analysis, we need not get into the weeds of these arguments, but there is one harmonization from Simmons that I need to address because of the bearing its author claims it has on the date of Jesus’s birth.2
Simmons has written the most recent scholarly work I am aware of in defense of the December 25 date of Jesus’s birth by drawing on patristic as well as biblical data.3 His particular reconstruction rests on the assumption that Matthew’s account covers a time almost immediately following Luke’s narration up to Luke 2:38. Specifically, his chronology rests on the presentment of Jesus at the temple, presumably around forty days after his birth, as the key detail. Since Luke says that Mary, Joseph, and Jesus returned to Nazareth after fulfilling the requirements of the Law (per Lev 12), Simmons thinks that the magi actually visited the family in Nazareth. In his words:
Popular assumption has it that the magi found the holy family at Bethlehem. However, Bethlehem is only about ten miles from Jerusalem. Since the magi hardly required the star to find Bethlehem and Herod had directed them there in any event, the better view is that the star was interposed by heaven to lead the magi to where the Christ-child had relocated; viz. Nazareth, about seventy miles north, where Luke tells us the holy family returned following the customary sacrifices at the temple. This may be alluded to by Matthew, when he says that the magi entered “the house,” not “an inn” as we would expect if they were still in Bethlehem, but “the house,” viz. the family home (Matt 2:11).4
This proposal, combined with his chronology of the final weeks of Herod’s life (assuming the eclipse in January of 1 BCE was the eclipse Josephus recorded) that extends from Steinmann’s work, results in the following argument:
Using this latter figure, we find that sixty-two days from Passover, April 8th, brings us to February 5th. This would be the point at which Herod's final illness ostensibly worsened before departing Jerusalem for Callirrhoe. If we then reckon backward three days (the period needed for the holy family to travel from Jerusalem to Nazareth) we arrive at February 2nd, the traditional date of the presentation of Christ at the temple. If we reckon backward forty days more … we arrive exactly at December 25th, the traditional date of Christ’s birth.5
Unlike in the traditional fashion of argumentation for December 25, what clinches the argument here for Simmons is a combination of Josephan and Gospel chronology with a rather unique twist in his reconstruction of the magi’s visit.6
The problems with this reconstruction are substantial for the severe contorting it does to Matthew’s account. Scholars have often noted the importance of locations to Matthew in ch. 2. Every one of his Scripture citations (even the odd one in 2:23) in this chapter are driven by place names, in addition to any larger theological messages he declares through them (hence why, despite what seems to be a clear allusion to Num 24:17 in the star of Bethlehem, he never cites that text). When he switches locations in this chapter, he is quite explicit about it. After Herod sends the magi to Bethlehem, Matthew gives no indication that they then radically shifted direction from what would have been a walk of maybe a couple hours south (if they did not ride animals there, that is) to a multi-day journey north.
Furthermore, this reconstruction cannot explain the rest of Matthew’s story. If the magi visited the family in Nazareth, why would the angel instruct Joseph to flee with his family to Egypt from there? Herod shows no awareness that the family has left, which is why he commands the slaughter at the only location he knows that Jesus could be. If the family had already relocated to Nazareth and Herod was unaware of it, surely they would have already been safe there, since it is not as if Herod ordered a Pharaoh-like slaughter of male infants across his kingdom. By the typical reading, a trip from Bethlehem that deliberately avoided getting close to Jerusalem might take a day or so longer to get to Egypt than a trip to Nazareth, rather than the trip from Nazareth that would take twice as long (again, undertaken for no clear reason). This reconstruction would also not explain why Joseph would not want to go back to Judea when Archelaus was reigning if he and his family had already returned to Nazareth beforehand.
Summary
Here, we can be quite brief. If there was some other fixed point to link the forty days to, this would be our most valuable information for pinpointing when Jesus was born. As it stands, because of the lack of any other clear chronological markers relative to the forty-day period, this reference is irrelevant for determining the date of Jesus’s birth.
On links between the accounts, see Bock, Luke 1:1–9:50, 71–72; Brown, Birth, 34–35; Patricia M. McDonald, “Resemblances Between Matthew 1–2 and Luke 1–2,” in New Perspectives on the Nativity, ed. Jeremy Corley (London: T&T Clark International, 2009), 200–201.
Scarola ( “Chronology of the Nativity Era,” in Chronos, Kairos, Christos II: Chronological, Nativity, and Religious Studies in Memory of Ray Summers, ed. E. Jerry Vardaman [Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998], 69–71) is another author who makes this reference crucial to his chronological scheme, but he must build on some stupendous speculation to make it so. He notes several connections between Luke’s narrative and the Book of Haggai, especially in Luke 2:23–35. As interesting as these connections are, they contribute precisely nothing to the next sentence he writes: “Simeon alludes to the Book of Haggai because the infant Messiah is presented at the Temple on 24 Kislev” (ibid., 70). But for the baldness of this assertion, he can find nothing in the narrative that clearly points to this date, as if to the exclusion of others.
Simmons, “Origins,” 299–324. Also see Kurt M. Simmons, “Revisiting the Fathers: An Examination of the Christmas Date in Several Early Patristic Writers,” QL 98 (2017): 143–80.
Simmons, “Origins,” 311.
Ibid., 315. For his overall argument, see ibid., 311–17.
He cites Methodius of Olympus and Epiphanius Salamis for reasons that are not entirely clear (ibid., 311), since they do not support his scheme of Jesus’s family returning to Nazareth before the magi’s visit.