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What effect had the announcement of Christ’s birth upon Herod and the people of Jerusalem?
Matthew: “When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him” ([ii, 3]).
According to Matthew the announcement filled with alarm the entire populace, and the most diligent efforts were made to discover and destroy the babe. In strange contrast to this statement of Matthew is Luke’s narrative ([ii, 22–27]), which declares that Jesus, when forty days old, was brought to Jerusalem and publicly exhibited in Herod’s own temple, without exciting any alarm or provoking any hostility.