During the cross-examination period of my recent debate with Bart Ehrman, Bart asked me how I would reconcile the fact that Matthew 2 suggests Joseph had a residence in Bethlehem with the fact Luke 2 suggests he had a residence in Nazareth.
I responded by saying that I thought he had homes in both places—that Joseph likely was from Bethlehem but that he had moved away for work and settled in Nazareth.
You can watch the exchange here.
Bart replied, “That’s an interesting idea. I hadn’t thought of that.”
To his credit, Bart then began thinking through the idea seriously, wondering how a two residences theory would square with the fact that Joseph was from the working class and wondering whether he’d really have been able to afford two homes, which is a good question (see below).
I’ve thought that two residences is the obvious, straightforward answer for a long time, but since Bart had only 10 minutes to cross-examine me, I kept my answer brief, and I wasn’t able to go into all the reasons for my conclusion.
So, I thought I’d discuss the subject here.
The Evidence of Luke
The first thing to mention is that the “Joseph’s two residences” view is not based on a desire to harmonize Matthew and Luke.
It is something that Luke’s Gospel indicates, without any need to consult Matthew.
The first time we hear about Joseph in Luke, we read:
In the sixth month [of Elizabeth’s pregnancy] the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary (Luke 1:26-27).
People in any age—and this was certainly true in the first century—tend to live in the same area as the ones they are engaged to be married to (or are already legally married to), and so from this we would expect from this passage that Joseph was residing in Nazareth.
Doing an inductive, narrative reading of the Gospel of Luke, that should be the default expectation for the reader from this point forward: Joseph has a residence in Nazareth.
Later, we read:
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. . . . And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city (Luke 2:1, 3).
This corresponds to known Roman enrollment practices, which involved calling people back to the place of their legal residence.
I have discussed this matter further here, but—even in modern times—there are multiple practices based around one’s place of residence. If you want to comply with the law, you need to:
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- Pay taxes based on your place of legal residence
- Vote based on your place of legal residence
- Register for the draft based on your place of legal residence
Given the mobility of modern society and the massive communications networks we’ve set up (including the original one—the postal service), we now have the flexibility to do many of these things at a distance, but we’re still tied to our legal residences for various governmental functions and duties.
People in the ancient world did not have modern communications networks (not even a formal postal delivery service), and so they needed to appear at their places of legal residence on certain occasions.
Thus, in A.D. 104, the Roman governor of Egypt, Gaius Vibius Maximus, issued a decree in which he stated:
Since registration by household is imminent, it is necessary to notify all who for any reason are absent from their districts to return to their own homes that they may carry out the ordinary business of registration and continue faithfully the farming expected of them (lines 20–27; Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, 268).
Reading Luke inductively, the ancient reader would thus understand Luke to be saying in 2:3 that people who were away from their place of legal residence to be returning there for the enrollment required by Caesar. Every person had to return to “his own city.”
We then read:
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David (Luke 2:4).
In context, the first century reader would infer that Joseph’s primary legal residence was in Bethlehem, and so he returned there. He had been away in Nazareth, where he was betrothed to Mary, but now he came back to comply with the enrollment requirement.
Luke also has an explanatory comment for why Joseph had a residence in Bethlehem: “because he was of the house and lineage of David.”
Given the importance of keeping land within tribes and families in Israelite culture (as well as maintaining legacy connections to prestigious ancestors like David), some Davidids still had residences in Bethlehem, and Joseph’s family was one of them.
We thus see that—reading Luke’s narrative one piece at a time—Joseph had two residences: one in Bethlehem (his legal one) and one in Nazareth.
Our initial conclusion that Joseph had a residence in Nazareth was an inference based on the fact he was betrothed of Mary of Nazareth, but later, Luke is explicit. After Jesus has been born and the customary birth rites have been performed, Luke says:
And when they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth (Luke 2:39).
So, Luke describes Bethlehem as Joseph’s “own city” (2:3-4) and Nazareth as Joseph and Mary’s “own city” (2:39).
Joseph thus had two residences, with stronger ties for legal/governmental purposes to Bethlehem, indicating it was his primary place of legal residence.
Why Nazareth?
Why had Joseph set up a secondary residence in Nazareth?
People may move away from home for a variety of reasons (e.g., to get away from difficult family members, to avoid trouble with law enforcement, to avoid oppressive political regimes), but both historically and today the most common reason is economic advantage. In other words, to find work.
Joseph thus may have left Bethlehem in order to make money, although it could have been for some other reason.
But why would he go to Nazareth?
The most likely explanation is because he already had family there. We know that there were other Davidids living there.
Luke confirms this later in the chapter, when discussing the finding of Jesus in the temple at age twelve:
Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom; and when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the company they went a day’s journey, and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances (Luke 2:41-44)
This reveals that Joseph and Mary had relatives in Nazareth, with whom they traveled to Jerusalem annually for Passover, and relatives of the holy family continued to dwell in Nazareth for a considerable period of time afterward.
The extended family of Jesus—a group known as the Desposunoi (Greek, “the Master’s people”) after Jesus, the Master (Greek, despotês)—continued to be known in the early Church until at least the third century.
About A.D. 200, the early Christian writer Julius Africanus (who was born in Jerusalem and had lived in Emmaus) wrote that after Herod burned the public genealogical records:
A few of the careful, however, having obtained private records of their own, either by remembering the names or by getting them in some other way from the registers, pride themselves on preserving the memory of their noble extraction.
Among these are those already mentioned, called Desposyni, on account of their connection with the family of the Savior.
Coming from Nazareth and Kokhaba—villages of Judaea—into other parts of the world, they drew the aforesaid genealogy from memory and from the book of [Chronicles] as faithfully as possible (apud Eusebius, Church History 1:7:14).
So, in Africanus’s day, members of Jesus’ extended family were still living in Galilean villages like Nazareth and Kokhaba (which is about 10 miles from Nazareth).
Indeed, Davidides may have been prominent in these communities, as both of their names may reflect Messianic aspirations:
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- Although the etymology of Nazareth is uncertain, it is often thought to be derived from the Hebrew term netser (“branch”), in keeping with Isaiah’s prophecy: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots” (Isa. 1:11).
- Kokhaba means “star,” in keeping with the prophecy “a star will go out from Jacob, and a scepter will rise from Israel” (Num. 24:17).
When people do move for work, they often move to where they have family, as relatives represent an already-existing social support network.
And so, there were likely migrations of Davidids between Bethlehem in the south and Nazareth and Kokhaba in the north.
Joseph thus likely went to Nazareth because he already had relatives there.
What About the “Inn”?
If Joseph had a legal residence in Bethlehem, why did he and Mary seek to stay in an “inn” when Jesus was born (Luke 2:7)?
Here we are confronted with a translation issue. Greek does have a specific term for what we would call an inn (pandocheion, used in Luke 10:34), but the term Luke uses in his infancy narrative—kataluma—has a broader range of meanings.
It can, for example, refer to a specific part of a house.
This can be seen from the fact that, later in the Gospel, Luke uses the same word to refer to the “upper room” or “guest room” where Jesus and the disciples eat the Last Supper:
[Jesus said:] And tell the householder, “The Teacher says to you, ‘Where is the guest room [kataluma], where I am to eat the Passover with my disciples?’” (Luke 22:11).
Paul H. Wright has more on the nature of a kataluma:
Most houses (be they of a commoner or a king) had a guestroom or lodging place (katalyma) where a traveler could pause to eat or sleep for a period of time. This is the word that is usually, though incorrectly, translated “inn” in Luke 2:7. When in the katalyma, the traveler received the hospitality and protection of the family who lived there (see Sir 14:25).
There were proper inns (pandocheion) at certain places along the network of roads in the Roman Empire, though only one is mentioned in the Gospels: the inn of the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:34). That story reflects travel conditions that could be found on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, a route essentially absent of houses and hence guestrooms.
The Mishnah (m. Yebamot 16:7) also mentions an inn on the road from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, though likely from a later period. In any case, it seems as though proper inns were not a significant part of first century ad Judea, and that travelers who were fortunate enough not to overnight in the open typically stayed in a katalyma instead (Barry Beitzel, gen. ed., Lexham Geographic Commentary on the Gospels, 3).
Concerning the location of the kataluma within a house, Wright states:
Village houses of the first century ad were composed of a number of small rooms and open courtyards with no fixed floor plan per se. Styles of housing differed regionally (Galilee vs. Judea, for instance), but the functionality of space was rather consistent.
For instance, rooms that were more private in character (e.g., the place where the homeowner and his wife slept) tended to be toward the back of the housing compound, well out of view of visitors, while spaces for public activities such as wedding feasts or acts of hospitality were up front, closer to the street.
Some of the rooms and/or courtyards were reserved for the family’s animals (a donkey or two, perhaps, and the sheep and goats). Flocks and herds were brought into the household compound in times of danger or inclement weather, and their body heat slightly warmed the living spaces of its residents.
In villages built in the hill country, houses could easily have multiple stories, especially if the building was located on a slope. In this case, the room for the animals was typically in the lower story while the family lived above.
In any case, because the katalyma served guests rather than persons who were permanently attached to the household, it was likely a room close to the front of the house, near the street.
Traditional village homes throughout the Middle East today are arranged the same way, and a visitor will invariably find himself or herself hosted in a place within the household compound that is somewhat detached from rooms where the regular daily activity of the household takes place.
There was no room, we read, for Mary and Joseph in the katalyma of the house where they intended to stay in Bethlehem (Luke 2:7). All the protocols of hospitality operative in the ancient Near East suggest that this was the home of a relative, and it was blood ties that had brought Joseph (and Mary) to Bethlehem for the census in the first place (Luke 2:4) (ibid., 3-4).
As to why Mary gave birth outside the kataluma, Wright observes:
Why there was no room in the katalyma is a matter of speculation. Perhaps the homeowner was already using the space for other purposes. Perhaps other guests were already in town for the census.
Or perhaps this was simply not an appropriate place for someone to give birth, reading Luke 2:7 idiomatically, “there was no room there for that.”
This latter suggestion is supported by birthing practices that have been documented in traditional village homes in places such as Bethlehem prior to the introduction of hospitals in modern times.
At the moment of birth, the expectant mother would go to the room where animals were normally kept (the stable) to give birth, and only later was brought back up into the living spaces of the housing compound (ibid. 4-5).
This proposal has been made by other scholars, and I find it particularly likely. Childbirth involved the release of bodily fluids that produced ritual uncleanness (cf. Luke 2:22, Lev. 12:1-8).
In view of this, it is scarcely likely that a family would want their guestroom ritually polluted in this way, and it would be much more natural for a woman to give birth in a part of the dwelling not regularly used as a living space for humans—per the custom described above.
In any event, it would be most natural:
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- For Joseph and Mary to be staying in a home owned by family members in Bethlehem (possibly with Joseph as the legal owner)
- For them to stay in the home’s kataluma since they were not usually living there, and the main rooms were being occupied by whichever relatives were the current householders (e.g., those Joseph had loaned the home to)
- And for Mary to give birth outside the kataluma, either because it was too crowded by other enrollment visitors or because of the ritual uncleanness childbirth involved
The Issue of Ownership
Luke indicates Joseph had two places of residence—Bethlehem and Nazareth—but we haven’t fully addressed the issue of what property Joseph may have owned.
If the enrollment of Jesus’ birth was a tax census, it is possible that Joseph owned property in Bethlehem—either as sole owner or as part owner with other family members.
However, this may not have been the case if the enrollment was for other purposes (see this article).
It should be pointed out that there is more than one way a person may occupy a particular dwelling. Options include:
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- Squatting—i.e., occupying the dwelling illegally, against the will of the owner
- Flopping—i.e., occupying the dwelling rent-free but with the permission of the owner
- Renting—i.e., paying the owner for occupancy, either with money, goods, or labor
- Owning—i.e., holding legal title to the dwelling, either as a result of purchasing or inheriting it
Theoretically, any of these options could have been the case with respect to Joseph’s residences in Bethlehem and Nazareth.
Squatting is not a common living arrangement, as it is discouraged both by property owners and the law. Also, we are told that Joseph was a righteous man (Matt. 1:19), and if he had relatives in both Bethlehem and Nazareth, there would be no need for him to squat. As a result, this is unlikely to be the arrangement applying to either of his residences.
However, given the presence of relatives in both places, a flopping and/or renting arrangement would be quite possible—particularly in Nazareth if Joseph had moved there relatively recently for work.
He might have found living space in a property owned by a relative and been allowed to live there either rent-free or by contributing what he could to the broader family finances (an arrangement common in many lower-class families historically).
It’s also possible that he had purchased a modest dwelling in Nazareth and was its legal owner.
Since his primary place of legal residence was in Bethlehem—as indicated by the need to go there for the enrollment—that would suggest greater legal ties to Bethlehem, and this would fit with him actually owning property there.
I have not been able to determine the extent to which first century Palestinian law recognized the concept of co-ownership, but if it did, Joseph may have been co-owner via inheritance of family property in Bethlehem.
If co-ownership was not practiced, Joseph may have inherited family property but still moved to Nazareth to find work, in which case it would be natural and culturally expected for him to allow other family members to have the use of the Bethlehem property while he was away (both out of family generosity and to avoid people squatting in it!).
Affording Two Dwellings?
It should be pointed out that moderns can have a distorted idea of the expense involved in owning two homes.
Today, most people do not pay for their homes outright. Instead, they take out mortgages, which require them to pay money to the lender on an ongoing basis for years or decades.
To own two homes today thus commonly involves doubling up expenses over an extended period of time.
However, this would not have been the case for Joseph, and especially not for the residence in Bethlehem. That would have been family property that Joseph inherited and that he paid nothing for.
Regardless of whether he was flopping with relatives, renting a home, or had bought a dwelling in Nazareth, the Bethlehem property would have been owned free and clear, and there would be no ongoing expenses for him when he was not using it.
There would be no electricity bills, no water bills, no trash collection bills—none of the auxiliary costs that typically accompany home ownership today, because none of these public services existed.
The one expense that could apply to Joseph’s Bethlehem property on an ongoing basis was taxes—the very thing that could require Joseph’s presence to pay them, since there was no secure way to send money in Roman Palestine.
And taxes may have been the very thing that brought about the trip to Bethlehem we read about in Luke.
My Own Experience
When thinking about this piece in preparation for writing it, it struck me how similar this scenario is to my own life experience.
I had the fortune to grow up in a middle-class family that came from Texas—where I was born—but my parents relocated to Arkansas when my father accepted a professorship at the University of Arkansas.
When I embarked on a career as an apologist, I had to move to find work. There were no Catholic apologetic ministries in Arkansas, and so I moved to California to work for Catholic Answers.
There thus was a period in which I was renting in California, but my legal place of residence was still in Arkansas—not unlike what may have been Joseph’s situation when he first came to Nazareth.
Later, when my parents passed on, my siblings and I inherited both family land in Texas and the home we grew up in in Arkansas. Under Texas and Arkansas inheritance laws, we became co-owners of both properties.
So, now I was living in California but also had property in two other states by inheritance. As a result, I did not have an ongoing mortgage to pay on either property, as they were already owned free and clear—just as would have been the case for Joseph’s property in Bethlehem.
Of special interest is what happened with our house in Arkansas. For a time, we used it as a rental property, but it was always understood (and openly discussed among us) that if any of us ever fell on hard times, we could use the house if needed.
When my sister’s husband changed jobs, my brother and I let her family use the house–free of charge–and eventually we sold it to my sister, keeping the property within the broader family.
This illustrates a situation that is not at all uncommon in our society, where a son—like myself or Joseph—strikes out on his own to make a life in a new place and establishes a residence there, while still inheriting property where the family was based.
This experience is not at all uncommon, and it does not require a middle-class background.
The Experiences of Others
In fact, anybody who moves for work needs a place to stay, and so even working-class people from economically underdeveloped regions maintain multiple residences.
I encountered an illustration of this a number of years ago when I went as a speaker on several apologetically themed cruises.
The housekeeping and wait staff on the ships came from places like Indonesia and the Philippines, and they spent much of the year away from their families in their home countries.
Naturally, they maintained a residence there, and they also maintained a secondary residence (including a mailing address) onboard the ship, which was included as part of the wages for their labor.
Here in Southern California, we have many migrant workers from Mexico and other Latin American countries, and they do the same thing: They often maintain a family home in their country of origin—to which they often send remittances from their earnings—and they have a secondary residence here in the U.S.
After my debate with Bart, I was contacted by an individual who reports the same occurring in East Africa, writing:
I conducted ethnographic research into “East African Perspectives of Family and Community” several years back.
There is a common trend that adults (more often men), have a “country home” and a “city home.”
The country home is the property that’s been in the family for many generations, and it’s often the residence of the current matriarch/patriarch of the whole (extended) family.
The working adult (again, most often the man) will live in the country home on weekends and during work breaks.
The “city home” is where the working adult lives during a stretch of working days (often Monday-Friday) since employment that supports them is rarely found around their ancestral familial estate. . . .
It’s certainly within the realm of possibility that the Holy Family had more than one home—and it is also certainly not a “luxury of the rich,” as in modern East Africa it’s actually the working class who have to live in two places in order to make a living.
It’s usually only the rich (and lower-poverty people) who only have one residence found within the cities—whether it be houses or slums.
Similarly, in the comments on my debate with Bart on YouTube, Bradley Kisia writes from Kenya:
Just a note about poor people having two homes… come to Africa.
People have a home they call home in the rural, then they maintain a residence in their place of work.
It is so normal that I’m kind of bewildered that those in the west would assume it is a preserve of the rich.
In Kenya, we have ushago (rural where our ancestry can be traced) and a home in Nairobi.
Our rural home is over 200 miles from where I grew up… It is where my father was born and my ancestors for about 500 years lived.
Also, a listener of Catholic Answers Live from Nigeria recently called in to confirm this. You can listen to the account here. (She also pointed out that people would identify themselves as coming from an ancestral location, even if they had not been raised there, though this doesn’t directly address the two-homes issue.)
So, having two places of residence is not at all uncommon. It tends to happen naturally with people who move for work—whether those people are me, seafarers, migrant workers who find employment in another country, or people whose families live in the countryside but who work in the city.
After all, no matter where you’ve gone to find work, you still need somewhere to sleep!
And so, this certainly would not be unexpected for someone from Bethlehem—like Joseph—who moved to Nazareth for work.
The Evidence of Matthew
Thus far, everything we’ve covered has been based on Luke’s description of the holy family.
This illustrates the fact that my proposal is not simply an effort to harmonize Luke with Matthew (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Here at the end, though, we should look at what we find in Matthew.
In that Gospel, we first encounter a genealogy of Jesus (Matt. 1:1-17), after which we learn about the birth of Jesus (Matt. 1:18-25).
Matthew tells us about Joseph and Mary, but he does not indicate where they were living. It could have been Nazareth; it could have been Bethlehem; it could have been anywhere else. Matthew is simply silent on the matter.
Then, at the beginning of the account of the magi and the flight to Egypt (Matt. 2:1-18), we read:
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, Wise Men from the East came to Jerusalem (Matt. 2:1).
This tells us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, though not about anything before that time.
Matthew also records that the magi visited up to two years after Jesus was born, for:
Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the Wise Men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the Wise Men (Matt. 2:16).
Being warned in a dream that this is to occur, Joseph takes the family to Egypt and stays there until Herod is dead (Matt. 2:13). When they return, we read:
But when [Joseph] heard that Archelaus reigned over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth (Matt. 2:22-23).
Matthew thus records how the holy family ended up in Nazareth—where we know on other grounds that Joseph had Davidid relatives—though Matthew is silent about whether they had been there before.
Some have suggested that the verb Matthew uses to describe Joseph dwelling in Nazareth (katoikeô) implies that Joseph settled there for the first time, never having lived there before, but this is not true. The verb simply does not mean “settled somewhere for the first time.”
According to the Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek, katoikeô means things like “to make one’s dwelling,” “to inhabit,” “to settle,” “to dwell,” “to live,” etc.
And according to Bauer, Arndt, Danker, and Gingrich’s A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (3rd ed.), it means “to live in a locality for any length of time, live, dwell, reside, settle (down)” and “to make something a habitation or dwelling by being there, inhabit.”
The verb doesn’t require anything more than Joseph living/dwelling/inhabiting/residing in Nazareth after he came back from Egypt.
Even if we were to opt for the translation “settle,” which could suggest that this was a long-term relocation after a substantial period spent elsewhere, that would be explained by the fact the family had just spent a substantial period in Egypt. It also would be explained if—as is quite possible—Joseph and Mary had relocated to Bethlehem and were living there on a regular basis before the flight to Egypt.
In no case does the verb tell us that they went to live in Nazareth for the first time. And, as noted, Matthew is silent about where they were before the birth of Jesus.
Integrating Luke and Matthew
We thus do not see any contradictions between Luke and Matthew. They select different facts for inclusion in their accounts, but as Bart acknowledged in the debate, selection differences are not contradictions.
We may integrate the data from the two accounts as follows:
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- Originally, Joseph was from Bethlehem but moved to Nazareth for work since there were relatives there.
- Joseph thus had a residence in Nazareth, though we do not know whether he purchased it, rented it, or lived in it rent-free through the generosity of relatives.
- Joseph still had a legal residence in Bethlehem, likely through inherited property.
- When the enrollment occurred, he went to Bethlehem since it was his primary legal residence.
- While there, Joseph and Mary stayed with relatives, perhaps in a house that Joseph owned but that was being occupied at the time by family members.
- Either because the guest area (kataluma) was full or because it would ritually defile the guest area, Mary gave birth in a different part of the house.
- After the customary rites of purification had been done a month later, the family returned to Nazareth.
- Between one and two years later, the family was back in Bethlehem. This may have been for one of the annual pilgrimage feasts—Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles (Deut. 16:16)—which we are told the holy family kept (Luke 2:41), or it may have been because Joseph had relocated to Bethlehem on a more permanent basis.
- After the visit of the magi, Joseph temporarily took the family to Egypt.
- And when they returned, Joseph learned that Herod’s son Archelaus was ruling in Judea, so he went to Nazareth instead of Bethlehem.
Joseph may have originally planned to stop at Bethlehem to visit relatives there (as would be natural when passing through the area on the way to Nazareth). Or, if they had been living in Bethlehem on a regular basis before the flight to Egypt, he may have planned to resume their lives there.
Either way, once he learned about Archelaus, he cancelled the plan to go to Bethlehem and went to Nazareth, where it was safer. (Archelaus was a cruel ruler whose reign was terminated by the Romans in A.D. 6 for mismanagement, which is why there was a Roman governor—Pontius Pilate—in charge of the region during Jesus’ adult ministry.)
This scenario is based on facts from both Gospels, it does not contradict anything in either Gospel, and it is quite plausible given what happens when people move away from their family homes for work.
We thus do not find a contradiction between Matthew and Luke.
See here for more about how the Infancy Narratives fit together.
Every year at Christmastime, you hear people trying to debunk aspects of the holiday and the biblical accounts behind it.
Various social media sites have claimed that—in the Old Testament—God originally had a wife that the Israelites worshipped.
The four Gospels are our primary sources of information about Jesus Christ, and thus they are prime targets for skeptics. Those who want to discredit the Christian faith must in some way cast doubt on the Gospels and what they tell us about Jesus.