Reflections on the Trials of Jesus he continues with the episode of Zechariah and Elizabeth, coming only in
: to Mary and her fiancé Joseph, ‘‘from the house of David,’’ but settled
in Nazareth in Galilee. The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem is brought about by
the proclamation of the census, requiring all to go to be registered, each to
his own city (:). So Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem ‘‘since he belonged
to the house and kindred of David.’’
Unfortunately the story is a historically impossible construct, which
makes use of the long-remembered and traumatic moment when in..,
ten years after Herod’s death, and following the deposition of Archelaus,
Judaea became Roman provincial territory, and the Roman census, a com-
plete novelty, was imposed. A resistance movement flared up, and was re-
pressed with difficulty. Luke is quite unaware of this precise context. But he
has also forgotten something much more significant. Neither in..nor
at any other time in the life-time of Jesus was Galilee under Roman rule, or
subject to the census. Furthermore, as we know from a much-quoted pa-
pyrus of.., the Roman census in fact required people to return, not to
their ancestral home, but to their normal place of work and residence, which
in the case of Joseph would have been Nazareth.^5
We need not pursue the argument further. Both birth narratives are con-
structs, one historically plausible, the other wholly impossible, and both are
designed to reach back to the infancy of Jesus, and to assert his connection
with the house of David (as it happens, almost the only characteristic of the
earthly Jesus alluded to by Paul, Rom. :) and his birth in Bethlehem. For
if it could be known at all from where theChristoswould come (for some
doubts on this see Jn. :), then it ought surely to have been Bethlehem;
the expectation is underlined most clearly of all in John (:–): ‘‘And they
said, ‘Surely theChristosdoes not come from Galilee? Has not Scripture said
that it is from the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where
David was, that theChristoscomes?’ ’’ John does not claim that in this re-
spect prophecy had been fulfilled; and it is he alone of the Evangelists who
confronts this failed expectation.
This is not the place to attempt to examine in detail the different accounts
in the Gospels of the various episodes of Jesus’ ministry between his recog-
nition by John and his journey to Jerusalem, arrest, ‘‘trial,’’ and crucifixion.
Such a detailed discussion would serve no purpose, for, as mentioned above,
all four Gospels show every sign of deriving, directly or indirectly, from the
real historical environment of Jesus’ preaching, in Galilee, Peraea, in the ter-
ritory of Caesarea Philippi, and of Tyre and Sidon, and en route between
.P. Lond. , lines –;Sel. Pap. II, no. .