The Bible only tells us some events from each person’s life, not every day that happened in each person’s life. For example, it is estimated that Jesus’ ministry lasted about three and a half years, but the four gospels combined only tell us about 52 days of his ministry.
The selectiveness means we sometimes skip over details and get confused, like how long Jesus and his parents were in Bethlehem. We know they were in Bethlehem when Jesus was born, but did Joseph and Mary move to Bethlehem, or only stay temporarily?
Why Did Joseph and Mary Go to Bethlehem?
As discussed in Matthew 1 and Luke 2, Joseph and Mary lived in a town called Nazareth and were engaged to be married when the angel Gabriel told Mary she would bear a divine child. Since the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus decreed a census had to occur, the head of each family had to visit his ancestral home to be registered. Joseph and Mary went to Joseph's ancestor David’s home, Bethlehem.
The text does not make it clear where Joseph and Mary stayed when they reached Bethlehem. Luke 2 mentions that they placed baby Jesus in a manger because there was no room for them at the inn, but the word “inn” could mean family house, not necessarily a traveler’s inn. All of Joseph’s extended family had come into town for the census, and the honor-thy-family values would have made it rude not to invite the couple to stay. Most houses had some space for holding livestock, so Jesus may have been born in a barn connected to a family house, or (if his family had no room), a stable connected to a traveler’s inn.
Critical details indicate that Joseph and Mary were in town for a while, so long that they had planned to stay there permanently.
How Do We Know Joseph and Mary Moved to Bethlehem?
Wherever Joseph and Mary stayed in Bethlehem, they were in town for an extended period. Forty days after Jesus’ birth and the shepherds’ visit, the family went to Jerusalem for a ceremony consecrating Jesus to God (Luke 2:22-24). They met Simeon and Anna at the temple, who prophesied that he was the promised child to rescue Israel from their sins. Samuel James Andrews notes in his book The Life of Our Lord Upon the Earth that Mary makes a poor person’s offering in Jerusalem, which means the Magi had not yet arrived and given the couple the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
When the Magi arrived in Judea, they went to Jerusalem to ask about a long-prophesied king who had just been born (Matthew 1). Herod the Great, an Edomite whom the Romans had set up as king over Judea, asked the Magi about their information. Shortly after the Magi visited Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem, an angel warned the couple to flee to Egypt. A massacre happened not long after they left, in which Herod’s forces killed any children two years old or younger (Matthew 2:16).
Based on the details about the massacre, we know that Jesus was a toddler, not a newborn, when the Magi visited. Joseph and Mary did not go back to Nazareth after the census. Doug Bookman suggests that Joseph could have gone into Bethlehem himself and registered. It would have taken one healthy man about four days to reach Bethlehem, but a pregnant woman would have needed a week. The fact that Joseph took Mary along strongly suggests they were planning to move.
Even if Joseph only brought Mary along because he wanted to be close when she gave birth, they only needed to stay in Bethlehem for a month or so. They likely wanted to stay in Bethlehem for a few weeks anyway to avoid coming back when Nazareth was crowded with census visitors. Bethlehem was closer to Jerusalem than Nazareth, and they were expected to consecrate Jesus to God in Jerusalem about 40 days after birth (circumcision at eight days old, Mary considered ceremonially pure 33 days later [Leviticus 12]). Even granting these factors, they only needed to be in Bethlehem for a handful of weeks, not two years. The fact that they stayed longer indicates they planned to stay in Bethlehem.
Why Did Joseph and Mary Move to Bethlehem?
The Bible does not tell us why they would have stayed in Bethlehem, primarily because the details are split between two gospels, which emphasize different facts about Jesus’ life. Matthew, much more interested in Jesus’ messianic status, includes the detail about the Magi visiting, a visit designating Jesus as a kingly figure. Luke, more interested in Jesus’ care for the downtrodden, includes the detail about shepherds (low on the social ladder) visiting him and Jesus’ parents having to put him in a manger.
Granting the Bible does not outright tell us why Joseph and Mary moved to Bethlehem, there are two obvious possibilities.
One possibility is that the census changed Joseph’s job situation in unexpected ways. People were leaving temporarily to register. New people or old family members were coming in to register. Every business had to accommodate the crowds and bustle. If the bustle and business changes included hiring visitors from out of town as cheap labor, Joseph may have lost his job.
The more likely possibility is something that Bookman mentions: Mary’s pregnancy would have created a big scandal. Remember, Joseph got his visit from an angel after it was discovered that Mary was pregnant. Most likely, “it was discovered” meant that Mary had returned from her three-month visit to her relative Elizabeth (Luke 1:56): everyone could see she was pregnant. Ancient Near Eastern cultures took pregnancy outside of marriage very seriously; it was seen as a shameful event, and Old Testament law decreed the woman had to be stoned to death or her fiancée had to break the engagement. Joseph planned on ending the engagement, but decided to go ahead with the marriage after Gabriel appeared to him. Nazareth was known as a tiny, backwater town (John 1:46), so word about the scandal would have traveled fast, and people would have talked about it for a long time. Given how important honor and shame were in Joseph and Mary’s culture, the scandal would have affected their standing in town, including Joseph’s job prospects.
Given all these factors, it is perhaps not surprising that they decided to start a new life in Bethlehem. With Joseph’s extended family living in the area, finding work would have been simple. Some people would have remembered his fiancée was pregnant when they arrived in town, but it was much easier to keep that fact quiet in a new town, especially when Joseph and Mary were one of many couples who had arrived in town during a census.
Why Did Mary and Joseph Leave Bethlehem?
We know that the young family left Bethlehem to avoid a massacre, but we do not precisely know why Joseph decided to take his family back to Nazareth after some time in Egypt. The simplest answer may be that people perceived it as a backwater location, so the chances of Herod’s son trying to finish his father’s massacre and seeking a messianic child in Nazareth were remote.
It is unclear if the scandal was still going in Nazareth when Joseph and Mary returned. Herod did not live very long after Jesus’ birth, but it would still have been two years or more since Joseph and Mary left, and a lot had happened in the interim. A new king had been crowned. The census would have produced lots of local scandals (newcomers not having room to stay, squabbles with the soldiers organizing the census, visitors impregnating local girls) that may have been more interesting than the old scandals. Joseph and Mary also appear to have had several children together (see the brothers mentioned in Matthew 12:46, Mark 3:31, Luke 8:19), possibly while they were living in Bethlehem and Egypt. The average Nazarene seeing Joseph and Mary with their multiple children would not have connected them to old stories about “that carpenter and his pregnant fiancée.”
It is worth noting that Jesus gets a cold reception when he starts his ministry by preaching in Nazareth (Luke 4). It is easy to imagine people being offended if some people still remembered him as Mary’s illegitimate son.
The better question may be: what does Joseph and Mary’s move to Bethlehem teach us?
What Can We Learn from Joseph and Mary’s Move to Bethlehem?
We can learn several key things from this interesting detail about Joseph and Mary’s relocation to Bethlehem.
First, the fact that Joseph and Mary moved to Bethlehem in itself is helpful for showing how the gospels record details that help its original audience follow the timeline. The first generation of readers would have remembered the census, the stories about Herod’s massacres, Herod’s death and his son taking over. The gospels may not give us a meticulous timeline like we get in modern history books, but it tells us enough historical details to show it is a historical narrative, not a fairytale.
Second, knowing where Jesus’s parents were from, where they moved to and for how long helps us to understand how Jesus fulfilled seemingly contradicting messianic prophecies. The Messiah had to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), but be called out of Egypt (Hosea 11:1), and known as a Nazarene (Matthew 2:23). The move to Bethlehem and subsequent moves to Egypt and Nazareth enabled Jesus to fit all of the directions, setting him on a path to become the only historical person who fulfilled all of the many messianic prophecies.
Third, thinking about the move to Bethlehem helps us to consider the faith that Joseph and Mary had, a faith that waited years to see God’s work fulfilled. Mary and Joseph received angelic messages before Jesus was born, then confirmation of Jesus’ special birth when he was about a month old, then new evidence of his kingly status two years later. They then received evidence of his unique talents about a decade later when he spoke to priests in the temple (Luke 2:41-52). Finally, after Joseph had apparently died (he is not mentioned anywhere during Jesus’ ministry years), when Jesus was in his early thirties, Mary saw her son travel the country sharing his message that salvation had come. This couple trusted God knew what he was doing, even though his plans took longer and took a very different shape than they expected.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/gldcreations
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