The story of the Nativity most likely arose as an oral tradition among the early Jesus Movement, the purpose of which, historians believe, was to address Jewish arguments that Jesus could not be the Messiah because he was not born in Bethlehem. Indeed, most scholars are quite confident that Jesus was simply born in Nazareth, and there is a lot of textual evidence to support this. For example, Paul in his authentic letters makes no mention of a nativity or of Jesus coming from Bethlehem, and the first Gospel we have, Mark, introduces Jesus by saying that “Jesus came from Nazareth in the province of Galilee” (Mark 1:9). This suggests that both Paul and the author of Mark were unaware of the Nativity story, and simply accepted that Jesus came from Nazareth. However, as time went on, followers of Jesus found themselves in arguments with other Jews who said that Jesus could not be the Messiah, since Jewish tradition held that the Messiah must be born in Bethlehem, and be the descendant of David. In both Matthew and Luke, the next Gospels to follow Mark, the opening chapters containing the Nativity stories seem written to specifically resolve this issue. Both Matthew and Luke emphasize repeatedly that Jesus is a descendant of David; the first verse in Matthew in fact reads “this is the list of the ancestors of Jesus Christ, a descendant of David” Matthew (1:1). Luke also devises an explanation for Jesus’ being born in Bethlehem, despite being known as Jesus of Nazareth. There is a census called by the Romans that all men must go to the towns of their birth, so Joseph, being from Bethlehem, goes there with Mary who gives birth to Jesus there. It is also worth noting that the idea of the Nativity seems to predate Matthew and Luke; since most scholars believe both authors wrote independently of each other, it is likely that both drew on the emerging oral traditions meant to reconcile Jesus’ being from Nazareth with traditional beliefs about the Messiah coming from Bethlehem.