Deardorff Research

Central finding: The TJ preserves the historically precise ruler and a complete cause-and-effect story. Matthew changes the ruler and the reason for the family’s return, producing both a chronological conflict and a recognizable Moses parallel. This is evidence about which account came first.

A decisive Matthew–TJ comparison

Missed for centuries: The Book of Matthew references the wrong Herod.

Put the two accounts side by side

Matthew and the TJ begin with the same basic scene, but they do not identify the same ruler and they do not explain the family’s return in the same way.

Matthew 2

Herod the king must die

Matthew 2:1 places the birth in the days of Herod the king.

Matthew 2:19–20 says the family may return only after Herod dies because those who sought the child’s life are dead.

Matthew 2:22 identifies Archelaus as the son who follows his father. This makes the ruler Herod the Great.

Talmud Jmmanuel 2

Herod Antipas changes his mind

TJ 2:1 names Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea.

TJ 2:21–24 says a messenger will explain the truth to Antipas. His fear ends and he promises to stop the pursuit.

TJ 2:25–26 says the family may return because Antipas and his followers have changed their attitude.

The TJ contains a complete chain: fear → explanation → understanding → changed decision → safe return. Matthew keeps the flight and return but removes the explanation. Its chain becomes: fear → flight → death → return.

Read the complete Matthew and TJ passages together →

The small detail that changes everything

There were several rulers named Herod. Confusing them is easy when a story is retold long after the events. The TJ does not merely say “Herod.” It gives a precise identification: Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea.

4 BCEHerod the Great dies. Matthew’s birth story must occur before this death.
4 BCE–AD 39Antipas rules Galilee and Peraea as tetrarch—the office and territory stated in the TJ.
AD 6Archelaus is removed, Quirinius conducts the known census, and Antipas adopts the dynastic name Herod.
About AD 85–90A common scholarly estimate for Matthew’s composition—many decades after the birth events.

The title matters. Antipas was a tetrarch, not a king. He later asked Rome for the title of king and did not receive it. The TJ uses the more exact identification. Matthew uses the broad remembered figure of King Herod and then makes his death essential to the story.

The date matters too. The known census under Quirinius occurred around AD 6. That fits the period highlighted by the TJ’s Antipas identification and his adoption of the name Herod. It does not fit a birth before Herod the Great’s death in 4 BCE. Matthew’s substitution therefore creates a gap of roughly ten years.

One connected edit explains Matthew’s version

Deardorff recognized that Matthew’s differences are not random. They work together as one literary revision:

  1. Start with the TJ account.Antipas fears a possible rival. A messenger explains that the child brings wisdom, not a threat to his rule.
  2. Antipas changes his decision.The danger ends without his death, and the family is told that it is safe to return.
  3. The later writer wants a Moses pattern.Exodus 4:19 tells Moses to return because the men seeking his life are dead. Matthew 2:20 uses strikingly similar wording.
  4. Antipas cannot be allowed to die.He must remain alive for the adult ministry. To use the Exodus ending, the writer substitutes his already-dead father, Herod the Great.
  5. The surrounding story is reshaped.The messenger and change of mind disappear. Death becomes the solution, Archelaus is inserted as the successor, and the birth moves into an earlier decade.

Independent Matthew scholarship recognizes the deliberate Moses pattern: the threatened infant, the killing of children, the flight, and especially the near-verbal echo between Exodus 4:19 and Matthew 2:20. The TJ supplies the missing pre-edit form—the same narrative position, but with a living ruler who changes his mind.

Earlier, complete sequenceAntipas is persuadedThe danger ends through explanation.
Later, Moses-shaped sequenceHerod the Great diesThe danger ends in the words of Exodus.

This direction is natural: a later editor can shorten a complete story and reshape it around a familiar sacred model. The reverse direction is much harder. It requires a later fabricator to begin with Matthew’s damaged chronology, identify the correct Herod, restore the exact office and territory, reconstruct a missing explanation, and accidentally create a sequence that explains why Matthew chose its Exodus wording.

Scholars saw the conflict—but not its cause

The Herod–census conflict was not unknown. Scholars debated it for generations. They proposed an earlier census, a different reading of Luke, a mistake by Luke, or a different official. Those proposals all begin with the Gospels as the surviving starting point.

What they did not have was the TJ’s complete alternative scene. Without it, Matthew’s words are dead look like an ordinary part of the story. With the TJ beside Matthew, the removed explanation becomes visible and the reason for changing Antipas into Herod the Great becomes clear.

Deardorff stated that he could find no earlier literature proposing this complete solution. Our review likewise has not identified a pre-TJ publication that combines all of these elements:

This is why the evidence is so important. The TJ does not merely avoid an objection already listed in a scholar’s book. It preserves the information needed to expose and explain a problem that readers had not traced to Matthew’s choice of Herod.

Why a later fabrication is a poor explanation

Calling the TJ a modern rewrite of Matthew does not explain this passage. It only renames the problem.

A later fabricator would have needed to notice a subtle dynastic detail missed in the standard debate, reject the familiar King Herod framework, connect Antipas’s name to the AD 6 setting, construct a longer causal story, and make that story explain several of Matthew’s edits at once. The result would then have to look less like an attempted correction and more like the coherent account from which Matthew’s shortened version naturally developed.

The odds should not be reduced to a pretend laboratory percentage. The meaningful point is the asymmetry:

TJ → Matthew requires one understandable editorial decision: turn the birth story into a Moses story by replacing persuasion with death and Antipas with his father.

Matthew → TJ requires an extraordinary reconstruction: discover the hidden historical problem, reverse the literary edit, restore the correct ruler and office, and invent the missing narrative links without an identified prior model.

The first direction explains the evidence with fewer assumptions. The second asks us to believe that a modern author solved more than the known problem and left behind the very details needed to reveal how Matthew had been composed.

What the evidence shows

The Herod difference cannot be dismissed as one name replacing another. It is a connected historical and literary correction. The TJ preserves:

Matthew removes those links, substitutes a ruler who can die, borrows the return formula from Exodus, and leaves later readers with a chronological conflict. That pattern is exactly what we would expect when a fuller account is abbreviated and rewritten many years later.

Compare the verses Read Deardorff’s complete analysis Read TJ chapter 2

Sources and verification

  1. Primary comparison: James W. Deardorff, Matthew–TJ Verse Comparisons, Matthew 2:19–20, including his discussion of Herod Antipas, Exodus 4:19, and the direction of revision.
  2. TJ text: Talmud Jmmanuel, chapter 2, especially 2:1 and 2:19–28.
  3. Herod Antipas: Jan W. van Henten, “Herod (2) Antipas,” Oxford Classical Dictionary. This source confirms Antipas’s tetrarchy, territory, reign, adoption of the dynastic name Herod after AD 6, and unsuccessful later request for the title of king.
  4. Census setting: Josephus, Antiquities 18, which connects Quirinius, the assessment, Roman administration of Judea, and Judas’s resistance.
  5. Date and character of Matthew: Daniel J. Harrington, “Gospel of Matthew,” Oxford Bibliographies, summarizing the common scholarly dating around AD 85–90 and Matthew’s literary reshaping of earlier material.
  6. Moses pattern: Francois P. Viljoen, “Intertextuality and Moses imagery in Matthew’s infancy narrative”, documenting the parallels and the strikingly similar language of Exodus 4:19 and Matthew 2:20.
  7. Deardorff’s extended case: “His Birth Year: 6 B.C. or A.D. 6?” and the preserved Matthew 2 discussion.

Editorial note: External historical sources verify the rulers, titles, dates, census setting, conventional date of Matthew, and Matthew’s Moses imagery. The conclusion that Matthew edited an earlier TJ account comes from the direction and explanatory fit of the two texts when read side by side.