he occasion of the first census which was
taken in Judea under Cyrenius, he went up from Nazareth, where he
lived, to Bethlehem, to which he belonged, to be enrolled; for his
family was of the tribe of Judah, which then inhabited that region.
Then, along with Mary, he is ordered to proceed into Egypt, and
remain there with the Child, until another revelation warn them to
return to Judea. But when the Child was born in Bethlehem, since
Joseph could not find a lodging in that village, he took up his
quarters in a certain cave near the village; and while they were
there Mary brought forth the Christ and placed Him in a manger, and
here the Magi who came from Arabia, found Him. 'I have repeated to
you,' I continued, 'what Isaiah foretold about the sign which
foreshadowed the cave; but, for the sake of those which have come
with us to-day, I shall again remind you of the passage.' Then I
repeated the passage from Isaiah which I have already written,
adding that, by means of those words, those who presided over the
mysteries of Mithras were stirred up by the devil to say that in a
place, called among them a cave, they were initiated by him. 'So
Herod, when the Magi from Arabia did not return to him, as he had
asked them to do, but had departed by another way to their own
country, according to the commands laid upon them; and when Joseph,
with Mary and the Child, had now gone into Egypt, as it was revealed
to them to do; as he did not know the Child whom the Magi had gone
to worship, ordered simply the whole of the children then in
Bethlehem to be massacred. And Jeremiah prophesied that this would
happen, speaking by the Holy Ghost thus: 'A voice was heard in
Ramah, lamentation and much wailing, Rachel weeping for her
children, and she would not be comforted, because they are not.'"
(Dial. ch. lxxviii.)

Now any unprejudiced reader, on examining this account, would instantly
say that Justin had derived every word of it from the Gospels of St.
Matthew and St. Luke, but that, instead of quoting the exact words of
either Evangelist, he would say that he (Justin) "reproduced" them. He
reproduced the narrative of the Nativity as it is found in each of these
two Gospels. He first reproduces the narrative in St. Matthew in
somewhat more colloquial phrase than the Evangelist used, interspersing
with it remarks of his own; an