Historical Corroboration
Matthew, Luke, and John give the birth narratives for the Lord Jesus Christ. John does not include a traditional nativity story, instead offering a “prologue” that focuses on the theological incarnation — the “Word becoming flesh” (John 1:14). Scholars defend their historical accuracy by highlighting many compelling lines of evidence and “undesigned coincidences.” To be honest, a core principle of historical research is two or more independent sources agreeing on specific details. Historians consider those historical. Despite different focuses, Matthew and Luke agree on several hard facts that hold the whole story together.
To be consistent, the cohesion of these facts corresponds to the means by which people operate who do history. Something in scripture must be history too if it follows the same rules used for all other history. Historians have the rule, “the criterion of multiple attestation.” The maxim unus testis, nullus testis (one witness is no witness) originated in Roman law and became a cornerstone of historical methodology during the 19th and 20th centuries. Professional historians often cite it to explain why a single source — no matter how detailed — cannot be accepted as “proof” without corroboration.
Historians Use Multiple Testimonies
In The Historian’s Craft, Marc Bloch writes:
The old legal adage, testis unus, testis nullus, may still be a useful warning; it is no longer the law. For the historian, it is only by a comparison of testimonies that he can hope to reach the truth.
Arnaldo Momigliano discussed the rule in the context of how classical historians, like Herodotus, viewed evidence compared to legal scholars.
The historians of the Renaissance were the first to systematically apply the legal rule unus testis, nullus testis to the study of the past, realizing that a fact reported by only one author must be treated with suspicion.
Andreas Wacke, a prominent legal historian, wrote extensively on the transition of this rule from Roman law into European civil law (Ius Commune):
The principle testis unus, testis nullus resulted from the awareness that it was deeply rooted both in human as well as God’s law . . . guarding the judge against passing judgment on the grounds of an uncorroborated statement.
In their 1898 manual Introduction to the Study of History, French historians Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos codified the methods of history, treating the “one witness” rule as a baseline for skepticism:
It is a principle of historical criticism that a fact is not established so long as it rests on the testimony of a single witness . . . unus testis, nullus testis is the beginning of wisdom in our field.
Applied to Birth Narratives
As Corroboration of Multiple Attestation relates to the birth narratives, Matthew and Luke agree as separate witnesses these points that establish the historicity of the birth of Jesus Christ as history.
The Names: Jesus’ parents were Mary and Joseph.
The Location: Jesus was born in Bethlehem but grew up in Nazareth.
The Timing: The birth occurred during the reign of Herod the Great.
The Lineage: Both affirm Joseph was of the “House of David.”
The Nature: Both claim a virginal conception rather than a natural one.
The fact that these two authors — writing for different audiences (Matthew for Jews, Luke for Gentiles) — independently preserved these core “stubborn facts” fulfills the standard for verifiable history. This isn’t all.
Nazareth, Herod, and Quirinius
For years, skeptics argued that Nazareth did not exist during the time of Jesus because it isn’t mentioned in the Old Testament or by the historian Josephus. However, 20th and 21st-century excavations have confirmed courtyard houses, olive presses, and tombs in Nazareth dating precisely to the early Roman period. A 1962 discovery of a Hebrew inscription at Caesarea Maritima explicitly lists “Nazareth” as a place where a priestly family lived, confirming its historical existence.
Matthew 2 records Herod’s massacre of the innocents. While there is no specific secular record of this event, it aligns perfectly with what we know of Herod from the historian Josephus: Herod was notoriously brutal, murdering his own wife (Mariamne), several of his sons, and many rivals to protect his throne. The Emperor Augustus joked that it was “better to be Herod’s pig than his son.” Given that Bethlehem was a tiny village, likely with only a dozen or so male toddlers, a small-scale massacre would not have made the front page of major Roman histories, but it is entirely consistent with Herod’s documented psychological profile.
Critics often cite Luke 2:1–2, noting that Quirinius was governor of Syria in AD 6, while Herod died in 4 BC — a 10-year gap. Scholars defending Luke offer two main historical solutions. The Greek word protos can mean “before.” Thus, Luke 2:2 could be understood as, “This census took place before Quirinius was governor of Syria.” Inscriptions suggest Quirinius was in a high-ranking military or administrative role in the region much earlier (around 6–1 BC), potentially overseeing an earlier enrollment. In Acts, Luke reads as a meticulous historian, so he would have referred to this earlier “first” census in Luke 2.
Comparing Two Accounts
When you compare the two accounts of Matthew and Luke, the two narratives deal with the separate emphases of them, not contradicting or conflicting accounts. They fulfill together a more complete picture of what happened.
| Feature | Gospel of Matthew | Gospel of Luke |
| Primary Focus | Joseph’s perspective | Mary’s perspective |
| Visitors | Magi (Wise Men) | Shepherds |
| Travel | Flight to Egypt | Journey from Nazareth |
| Historical Anchor | King Herod the Great | Caesar Augustus / Quirinius |
| Theological Goal | Jesus as the New Moses/King | Jesus as the Savior for all people |
Historians note that while Matthew and Luke differ significantly in their details, they both independently name Bethlehem as the birthplace. Most scholars agree these authors emphasized Bethlehem to align Jesus with the Old Testament prophecy in Micah 5:2, which stated the Messiah would come from Bethlehem, the city of King David.
The Birthplace of Jesus
By the mid-2nd century, a specific tradition emerged that Jesus was born in a cave in Bethlehem, rather than a wooden stable. Justin Martyr (c. 150 AD) is the first to record that Jesus was born in a cave near the village. Origen (c. 248 AD) wrote that “the cave is pointed out where He was born,” suggesting it was a well-known local landmark for pilgrims even then. In ancient Judea, it was common for houses to be built over or in front of caves, which were used to house animals, the “manger” area. This fits the archaeological reality of 1st-century Bethlehem.
The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem today sits over a grotto venerated since at least the 100s AD. In 326 AD, the Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena built a basilica over the cave tradition long identified as the birthplace. The early Christian writer Jerome claimed that the Roman Emperor Hadrian (c. 135 AD) had planted a grove dedicated to his god Adonis over that cave to discourage Christian worship. It didn’t work. Instead, this helped in fact mark the spot for later generations, preserving the site’s location until Constantine’s time. Archaeologically, the cave beneath the church building in Bethlehem is real.
Secular historians treat the Gospels with a “hermeneutic of suspicion,” assuming they are guilty of fabrication until proven innocent, whereas they might give a secular historian like Tacitus or Suetonius the benefit of the doubt on non-supernatural details. They accept the existence of many ancient figures, such as a figure like Hannibal, based on fewer and later manuscripts than we have for Jesus. When secular historians dismiss the birth narratives because they appear in only two sources, Matthew and Luke, this is a standard rarely applied so strictly to other ancient biographies.