Herod's massacre of the innocents is, of course, unknown to Luke, because, according to him, no "flight of the holy family to Egypt" ever took place. This massacre is not mentioned in the four Gospels, except in this Chapter of Matthew, nor is it recorded by any profane historian of that time, like Josephus. Even supposing that Herod--a Roman tetrarch and not an independent despot--would have dared a wholesale slaughter of Roman subjects without express authority from Augustus Cæsar, yet so terrible an event would have left an indelible impression on the Jewish people. If it had occurred, connected as it was with the birth of Jesus, it is incredible that the other evangelists should have omitted all mention of it, as well as Josephus, who records the other cruelties of Herod. Bethlehem was some six miles south of Jerusalem, and Nazareth some sixty or seventy miles north of Jerusalem. Matthew does not explain why Joseph and Mary should have been in Bethlehem at this time, especially in view of her then approaching confinement. In fact, the inference from Matthew's narrative would be, that they were residents of Bethlehem at this time. But the unvarying testimony of all the Gospels, except in this one passage, is that Galilee was the native country of both Joseph and Mary, and that their home, after her marriage, was at Nazareth. Luke states this explicitly (Luke I:26), and Matthew himself, in every other passage but this, speaks of Jesus as coming from Nazareth, and asserts that Galilee was "his own country" (Matt. XIII:54; XXI:11; XXVI:71). Luke, who recognizes Nazareth as the native city of Joseph, explains his presence in Bethlehem on the theory that he, being of the house of David, came to Bethlehem to be enrolled under the census taken by Quirinius, pursuant to a decree of Cæsar Augustus (Luke II:1). But the authorities generally agree that this census did not extend to the tetrarchies, like Judæa, and that it was taken at least ten years after the birth of Jesus (Renan, Life of Jesus, Chap. II). Besides, it is taxing one's credulity to the utmost to suppose that the Roman officers would have allowed a citizen of Nazareth to enroll himself in an insignificant village, more than sixty miles distant, on the ground that some problematical ancestor had been anointed with oil in that place a thousand years before (1 Sam. XVI:13). As to the contradictory accounts of Matthew and Luke concerning Jesus' movements immediately after His birth, Cadman in his "Harmony of the Gospels" pp. 4, 45, 48, "harmonizes" them by printing each of them without comment, as though both could be true. (b) The silence of Mark and John as to the birth at Bethlehem is even more significant than in the matter of the miraculous conception. There were two points most essential for Jesus and His followers to establish in order to convince the Jews that He was truly their expected Messiah: (1) that He was of the "house of David"; (2) that He "came" from Bethlehem.