By Water & Blood

Two years between birth and the magi

And those held by ignorance do not know the power of the Holy Spirit. For to each of the evangelists he granted to narrate the things truly fulfilled at each time and season. And Matthew, having narrated only that he was born in the Holy Spirit and that he was conceived without a man’s seed, said nothing about circumcision nor about anything of the two years that happened concerning him after the birth, but narrates the coming of the magi,

as the true word of God also witnesses to us—Herod asking the magi the time and ascertaining about the appearing star, and the magi’s answer that it was from two years and under—so that this time is not the time treated by Luke.

But Luke narrates the things before the two years, while Matthew, having spoken of the birth, leaps to the two-year period and has made clear the things that happened after the two years.

Therefore Herod also, having considered this after the magi turned aside by another road, thought that among the multitude of the children the one who had been born would also be found and killed with them.

For he ordered the children in the borders of Bethlehem to be killed, those from two years and under, as far as the very day on which the magi were with him. From this, then, to whom will it not be clear that when the magi came the child had been born two years?

For the narrative itself also clarifies the whole precision. For Luke says that the child was wrapped in swaddling clothes as soon as he was born and laid in a manger and in a cave, because there was no place in the lodging.

For there was a registration then, and those who had been scattered from the time of the wars under the Maccabees were dispersed over every land, and very few remained dwelling in Bethlehem. Therefore in some copies of the evangelists it is called a city of David, while in another it calls it a village, because it had come to little land.

But when the decree of Augustus the king came, and those who had been scattered were compelled to come according to their families to the place to be registered, the crowds flowing in filled the place, and there was no room in the lodging because of the crush.

Then after the registration each went away wherever on earth he had his settled dwelling; therefore there was again breadth in the land.

And coming, so to speak, for the sake of memory of the things that had happened there, when the first year had been completed and the second fulfilled, the parents came there from Nazareth as to this festival gathering.

Therefore the coming of the magi also took place at such a coincidence, no longer perhaps at the lodging of Mary and Joseph then because of the presence for the registration spoken of by Luke. For they did not find Mary in the cave where she gave birth; but as the Gospel has it, that the star guided them, it says,

as far as the place where the child was. And entering the house they found the infant with Mary—no longer in a manger, no longer in a cave, but in a house—so that the precision of the truth and the interval of the two years’ time might be known, that is, from when he was born until the magi arrived.

And on that night, after two years from the birth, the angel appeared and said to take the mother and the child into the land of Egypt. Therefore Joseph no longer returns to Nazareth, but flees together with the child and his mother into Egypt and spends another two years there; and so again the angel, after Herod’s death, turns him back toward Judea.