Christians can you reconcile these apparent contradictions for me?

When you are essentially dealing with material made up on the fly, you can make go which ever way you want. Before I get burned as a heretic here remember the Council of Nicaea where it is possible all the bit that didn't make sense either suddenly got a make over or were just conveniently removed.

Me I would put more faith in what Josephus wrote rather than Luke, I can be pretty certain Josephus was one man and not the pen name of many...

Jesus' genealogy is given in two places in Scripture: Matthew 1 and Luke 3:23-38. Matthew traces the genealogy from Jesus to Abraham. Luke traces the genealogy from Jesus to Adam. However, there is good reason to believe that Matthew and Luke are in fact tracing entirely different genealogies. For example, Matthew gives Joseph's father as Jacob (Matthew 1:16), while Luke gives Joseph's father as Heli (Luke 3:23). Matthew traces the line through David's son Solomon (Matthew 1:6), while Luke traces the line through David's son Nathan (Luke 3:31). In fact, between David and Jesus, the only names the genealogies have in common are Shealtiel and Zerubbabel (Matthew 1:12; Luke 3:27).

Some point to these differences as evidence of errors in the Bible. However, the Jews were meticulous record keepers, especially in regard to genealogies. It is inconceivable that Matthew and Luke could build two entirely contradictory genealogies of the same lineage. Again, from David through Jesus, the genealogies are completely different. Even the reference to Shealtiel and Zerubbabel likely refer to different individuals of the same names. Matthew gives Shealtiel's father as Jeconiah while Luke gives Shealtiel's father as Neri. It would be normal for a man named Shealtiel to name his son Zerubbabel in light of the famous individuals of those names (see the books of Ezra and Nehemiah).

Another explanation is that Matthew is tracing the primary lineage while Luke is taking into account the occurrences of “levirate marriage.” If a man died without having any sons, it was tradition for the man's brother to marry his wife and have a son who would carry on the man's name. While possible, this view is unlikely as every generation from David to Jesus would have had a “levirate marriage” in order to account for the differences in every generation. This is highly unlikely.

With these concepts in view, most conservative Bible scholars assume Luke is recording Mary’s genealogy and Matthew is recording Joseph’s. Matthew is following the line of Joseph (Jesus’ legal father), through David’s son Solomon, while Luke is following the line of Mary (Jesus’ blood relative), though David’s son Nathan. There was no Greek word for “son-in-law,” and Joseph would have been considered a son of Heli through marrying Heli's daughter Mary. Through either line, Jesus is a descendant of David and therefore eligible to be the Messiah. Tracing a genealogy through the mother’s side is unusual, but so was the virgin birth. Luke’s explanation is that Jesus was the son of Joseph, “so it was thought” (Luke 3:23).

http://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-genealogy.html

Read on, true unbeliever...

Skeptics have argued that Luke got the timing wrong as well. They claim that Quirinius did not become governor until c. 7 AD according to Josephus. Yet according to Matthew’s Gospel, Christ was born before Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC. Supposedly, Luke was misled by a great census performed under Quirinius that was very well known.

But this is an absurd charge: even on the face of it, it is not likely that Luke was simply confused, because he showed that he was well aware of this in Acts 5:37: “Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him.” Here, Luke didn’t even need to say which census was being referred to; his original readers would know perfectly well what “the census” referred to. He also used the same word in Greek for census, ἀπογραφὴ (apographē) as in Luke 2.

There are two main solutions, both recognizing that Luke was aware of the census by Quirinius:

1. This was not the main census of Quirinius, but a first census, which implies at least one more, e.g. great one referred to in Acts. This implies that he twice governed Syria, once around 7 BC and again around AD 7. Sir William Mitchell Ramsay (1851–1939), the archaeologist and professor from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, argued that Quirinius was twice ruling in Syria on two occasions.4 This was partly based on the Latin Tiburtine Inscription, discovered in 1746, which referred to someone ruling Syria twice, and Ramsay argued that Quirinius fitted that description.5

F.F. Bruce (1910–1990), Ryland professor of Biblical Criticism at the University of Manchester, suggested that the passage should be translated, ‘This enrollment (census) was before that made when Quirinius was governor of Syria.’

Publius Sulpicius Quirinius (51 BC – AD 21) was known to be a most able commander, defeating the Homonadenses tribe in Galatia and Cilicia, in what is now the mountains of Turkey. For this, he was awarded a triumph (a ‘triumph’ was a public procession in honor of a great victory), and after he died, he had a public funeral. This was a contrast to the official governor of Syria, Publius Quinctilius Varus (46 BC – AD 9). Varus was known to be a brutal man, who imposed confiscatory taxes and crucified 2000 Jewish rebels. More importantly, he is now infamous for leading three whole Roman legions to annihilation in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9—the clades Variana or Varian disaster.

Caesar Augustus (63 BC – AD 14), a good judge of character, may have realized that Varus was not the man to oversee a census. So under this scenario, Augustus appointed Quirinius to perform this duty—Cilicia, the scene of his triumph, was annexed to the province of Syria around this time. The Greek phrase is ἡγεμονεύοντος τῆς Συρίας Κυρηνίου (hegemoneuontos tes Syrias Kyreniou6), which uses a verb participle based on the word hegemon, a lower official title than Governor (“Legate”).

Thus biblical scholar Gleason Archer (1916–2004) suggests:

In order to secure efficiency and dispatch, it may well have been that Augustus put Quirinius in charge of the census-enrollment in Syria between the close of Saturninus’s administration and the beginning of Varus’s term of service in 7 BC. It was doubtless because of his competent handling of the 7 BC census that Augustus later put him in charge of the 7 AD census.7

2. This was not Quirinius’ census at all, but a census before Quirinius’, aka “the census”. The New Testament scholar N.T. Wright argues that ��ρῶτος (prōtos) not only means ‘first’, but when followed by the genitive can mean ‘before’ (cf. John 1:15, 15:18).8 Wright’s view also has quite a lot of scholarly support, although not universal.9

For example, F.F. Bruce (1910–1990), Ryland professor of Biblical Criticism at the University of Manchester, suggested that the passage should be translated, “This enrollment (census) was before that made when Quirinius was governor of Syria.” Harold Hoehner (1935–2009), Distinguished Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, suggested that the passage should read, “This census was before that [census] when Quirinius was governor of Syria”10 Therefore the census around the time of Christ’s birth was one which took place before Quirinius was governing Syria, of which Luke was well aware, as shown above.

Read more: http://creation.com/quirinius-census-luke

God-bearer Virgin Mary died 15 years after Christ's ascension. In 3 days, Christ resurrected Her body. Jesus was born of the Father before time. Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only. God is one. God=Most Holy Trinity. 80 foot (25 meter) dinosaurs (man-eaters) are still alive today. They live under our level by the way. They will use sinkholes and lakes to come out to our level to play a game. Demons ride in UFOs. Don't go into a UFO ship to be healed by demons! Aborted babies go to hell for 33.5 years to grow up there in the dark. Abortion needs to be stopped! New documents lead to hell. Reject the chip, the evil plastic small world grey passport, and the 666 tattoo by lasers from hell! Antichrist is an evil flying pale gay man with red eyes from the tribe of Dan. God is one. Jesus is 100% God and 100% man! Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only. Christ preached in hell; those who believed, got out of hell. Orthodoxy is the only Biblical faith. http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/55141.htm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYZ49eCro2E http://esv.scripturetext.com/revelation/13.htm http://esv.scripturetext.com/revelation/14.htm http://bible.cc/1_john/1-5.htm

Have Faith...Jesus is The Christ..prepare for his return...Yesterday is gone, tomorrow never comes, TODAY is the time to prepare and worship God.

actually after Bethlehem they fled to Egypt, as it is written in the Holy scriptures, "I called My Son our of Egypt"