How Could the Holy Family Present Jesus in the Temple When They Were Supposed to Have Fled to Egypt?

Many of us grew up hearing the beautiful accounts of Our Lord’s birth as described in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. But taking a closer look at these episodes can sometimes become a source of confusion to the more diligent reader.

One particularly pertinent problem is figuring out how to reconcile Matthew’s assertion that the Holy Family fled to Egypt right after the visit of the three wise men (see Mt 2:13-15) with Luke’s claim that the Holy Family had ample time to travel into Jerusalem and present Jesus in the Temple a solid forty days after Jesus’s birth (see Lk 2:22-38).

This raises an important question: following the birth of Jesus, were the Holy Family in immediate danger or not? If they weren’t, then how do we understand Matthew’s account of the flight to Egypt? But if they were in danger, then how could they have brought Jesus to the Temple in the way Luke describes?

To answer these questions, we need to understand that sometimes the biblical authors won’t pause to describe every single thing that happened to a particular person or family. Just like modern biographers, the four evangelists pick and choose which details to share; but just because they don’t include a particular story, that doesn’t mean they’re saying it didn’t happen.

Applying this principle to Matthew and Luke, we should understand that Matthew’s failure to mention the presentation in the Temple is not evidence that the presentation didn’t happen. Instead, we can place Matthew and Luke alongside one another, and piece together with relative ease a more complete story of what took place in the time surrounding Jesus’s birth.

To begin with, Joseph and Mary traveled from Nazareth in the north down to Bethlehem in the south. Bethlehem is just a few miles from Jerusalem, and the Holy Family were compelled to travel there for tax reasons (see Lk 2:1-5). It is in Bethlehem that Mary gives birth to Jesus (see Lk 2:6-7). At this time, the shepherds visit the newborn king, and the angels appear singing in the sky (see Lk 2:8-20).

Then come a couple of events which Matthew, in his more condensed narrative, simply skips over. Since their lives are not yet in danger, the Holy Family feel comfortable remaining in the Bethlehem region for several weeks. Jesus is circumcised and named eight days after His birth (see Lk 2:21), and presented in the Temple forty days after His birth (see Lk 2:22-38).

At this point in Luke’s narrative, we are told that, “[W]hen they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth” (Lk 2:39). Although Luke doesn’t offer an exact timeline, this verse is suggestive that the Holy Family did return to Nazareth following the presentation in the Temple, but as we’ll see, it doesn’t mean they intended to stay in Nazareth forever.

In any event, we know from Matthew’s Gospel that when the three wise eventually show up on the scene, it is to Bethlehem that they come, not Nazareth. This means that even if the Holy Family returned to Nazareth at some point, they later came back to Bethlehem, and it is on this occasion that their meeting with the wise men takes place.

Importantly, the visit of the wise men does not take place immediately following Jesus’s birth. In fact, the visit seems to have taken place a year or even two years after the birth of Jesus. Hence when Matthew gives his description of the wise men showing up in Bethlehem (see Mt 2:1-12), we need to understand that this is taking place a good while after the nativity, even though most of us tend to merge these events together in our imaginations!

But isn’t all this a bit of a stretch? Not at all! In fact, the suggestion that the Holy Family traveled to Bethlehem regularly and / or spent a lot of time there fits with the general picture of Bethlehem being a town where they have family or property connections, hence their tax obligations. Moreover, as faithful Jews they would have already been obliged to travel to Jerusalem three times a year for religious purposes; and as we’ve seen, Bethlehem is just a few miles from the city.

As for the idea of Jesus already being one or two years-old when the wise men arrive, this is indirectly corroborated by the infamous edict of Herod, which only occurs after the wise men have visited: “[H]e sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under” (Mt 2:16). Clearly, Matthew is implying that some time has elapsed between the birth of Christ and the arrival of the wise men and subsequent massacre of the Holy Innocents. If these events had taken place simultaneously, then Herod’s men would only have needed to focus on killing newborns, which aren’t difficult to distinguish from two year-old infants.

So, to re-cap, a possible timeline would be:

1. Birth of Jesus in Bethlehem; shepherds come and angels appear (Lk 2:8-20)
2. Presentation of Jesus in the Temple a few weeks later (Lk 2:22-38)
3. Holy Family probably returns to Nazareth for a time (Lk 2:39)
4. A year or two after Jesus’s birth, the Holy Family are back in Bethlehem (Mt 2:8)
5. The three wise men, who set off from a distant land some time ago, finally arrive in Jerusalem (Mt 2:1)
6. The wise men come to meet with the Holy Family in Bethlehem, and they are warned in a dream not to return to Herod (Mt 2:9-12)
7. Joseph is warned in a dream to take his family and flee with them to Egypt (Mt 2:13-15)
8. Enraged, Herod orders his soldiers to put to death all male boys in Bethlehem aged two or younger (Mt 2:16-18)
9. The Holy Family remain in Egypt until the death of King Herod some 3-4 years later (Mt 2:19)
10. Joseph hopes to return to the Judean region—perhaps implying the Holy Family had made Bethlehem, which is located in Judea, their home base following Jesus’s birth—but he is warned against it by an angel; so the Holy Family moves back north to Nazareth instead (Mt 2:19-23)

Further Reading:

Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives (Image Books, 2012)

http://jimmyakin.com/how-the-accounts-of-jesus-childhood-fit-together