Did the shepherds and kings visit jesus the same day?

shepherds

AnswerIn the view of John Shelby Spong (Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus), neither birth story, in Matthew and Luke, contains any historical truth. This being the case, we can ignore the inconsistencies and allow that either the shepherds came first, or the wise men did.

To say otherwise would create an impossible dilemma. If Luke is right, and the young family left Bethlehem for their home in Nazareth a few days after the Shepherds arrived, then they were never in Bethlehem for the wise men to find them living in a house. If Matthew is right and the family fled from Bethlehem to Egypt for fear of Herod, then they could never have travelled from Bethlehem to Nazareth after the birth of Jesus (Luke 2:21-39).