II.

Birth and Early Life

Two of the Gospels, those of Saint Matthew and Saint Luke, provide information about Jesus' birth and childhood. They also provide genealogies tracing Jesus' descent through the Hebrew patriarch Abraham and the 10th-century bc king David (Matthew 1:1-17; Luke 3:23-38). Presumably, the genealogies are offered as proof of Jesus' messiahship. According to Matthew (1:18-25) and Luke (1:1-2:20), Jesus was miraculously conceived by his mother. He was born in Bethlehem, where Joseph and Mary had gone to comply with the Roman edict of enrollment for the census. Matthew alone (2:13-23) describes the flight into Egypt, when Joseph and Mary took the child out of reach of the Judean king Herod the Great. Only Luke relates the compliance of Joseph and Mary with the Jewish law, which required circumcision and presentation of the firstborn son at the Temple in Jerusalem (2:21-24). Luke also describes their later journey (2:41-51) with the young Jesus to the Temple for the Passover feast. The Gospels mention nothing concerning Jesus from the time he was 12 years old until the time he began his public ministry, about 18 years later. See Matthew, Gospel According to; Luke, Gospel According to.