The Life of Jesus Critically Examined: (4th ed.)Strauss, David Friedrich
Religion
The Life of Jesus Critically Examined: (4th ed.)
Strauss, David Friedrich
Jesus Christ -- Biography; Jesus Christ -- History of doctrines
A more thorough attempt at reconciliation is made in the Evangelium de
nativitate Mariæ, and has met with much approval from modern
theologians. According to this apocryphal book, the house of Mary’s
parents was at Nazareth, and although she was brought up in the temple
at Jerusalem and there espoused to Joseph, she returned after this
occurrence to her parents in Galilee. Joseph, on the contrary, was not
only born at Bethlehem, as Justin seems to intimate, but also lived
there, and thither brought home his betrothed. [437] But this mode of
conciliation, unlike the other, is favourable to Matthew and
disadvantageous to Luke. For the census with its attendant
circumstances is left out, and necessarily so, because if Joseph were
at home in Bethlehem, and only went to Nazareth to fetch his bride, the
census could not be represented as the reason why he returned to
Bethlehem, for he would have done so in the ordinary course of things,
after a few days’ absence. Above all, had Bethlehem been his home, he
would not on his arrival have sought an inn where there was no room for
him, but would have taken Mary under his own roof. Hence modern
expositors who wish to avail themselves of the outlet presented by the
apocryphal book, and yet to save the census of Luke from rejection,
maintain that Joseph did indeed dwell, and carry on his trade, in
Bethlehem, but that he possessed no house of his own in that place, and
the census recalling him thither sooner than he had anticipated, he had
not yet provided one. [438] But Luke makes it appear, not only that the
parents of Jesus were not yet settled in Bethlehem, but that they were
not even desirous of settling there; that, on the contrary, it was
their intention to depart after the shortest possible stay. This
opinion supposes great poverty on the part of Joseph and Mary;
Olshausen, on the other hand, prefers enriching them, for the sake of
conciliating the difference in question. He supposes that they had
property both in Bethlehem and Nazareth, and could therefore have
settled in either place, but unknown circumstances inclined them, on
their return from Egypt, to fix upon Bethlehem until the divine warning
came as a preventive. Thus Olshausen declines particularizing the
reason why it appeared desirable to the parents of Jesus to settle in
Bethlehem; but Heydenreich [439] and others have supplied his omission,
by assuming that it must have seemed to them most fitting for him, who
was pre-eminently the Son of David, to be brought up in David’s own
city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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