Well, it’s that time of year again. Regular church attendees are going to have to share their pews with people who have finally decided to make it out for their second service of the year. Their belief that Jesus bled and died so they can gain eternal salvation might be unshakable, but it apparently isn’t all that motivating, considering how little these believers seem to do in response. Nevertheless, they can at least be counted on to show up for a retelling of Jesus’s miraculous birth.
But what version will they hear? More than likely, they’ll hear a “Hollywood” version of the tale that incorporates the most exciting elements of the two versions that we read about in Matthew and Luke. A quick Google search turned up this one, which illustrates my point perfectly. But what if someone tried to tell the full version? A version that included every detail that both Matthew and Luke provide?
Honestly, it just can’t be done. I had wanted to attempt it here, but there’s just no practical way to do it. For example, the version I linked to above goes like this:
The Standard Tale
- Mary’s visited by an angel who tells her about the pregnancy (Luke)
- She and Joseph live in Nazareth of Galilee, but are forced to travel to Bethlehem in Judea for a census commanded by the Roman authorities (Luke)
- They’re unable to find normal accommodations and are forced to room in an area intended for livestock. Mary gives birth there and is visited by local shepherds (Luke)
- Wise men far to the east see a star that somehow signifies the birth of the Jewish Messiah (Matthew)
- They travel for an unspecified period until they reach Jerusalem, where they inquire about the child (Matthew)
- These inquiries reach Herod, the ruler of the region, and he asks the wise men to send back word to him once they find the child, so Herod himself can also pay his respects (Matthew)
- The wise men make their way to Bethlehem, find the family, bestow their gifts, and return home via a different route (Matthew)
- An angel tells Joseph to hightail it out of Bethlehem, because Herod’s sending a posse to wipe out all the children 2 years old and under in an effort to stamp out Jesus (Matthew)
- Joseph and his family flee to Egypt and remain there until an angel tells him it’s safe to return, because Herod has died (Matthew)
- Joseph intends to go back toward Bethlehem, but after finding out that Herod’s son is in charge, he takes the family to Nazareth in Galilee (Matthew)
So what’s wrong with this story? I mean, it’s very cohesive, and it makes for a compelling tale. What’s not to like? Its only real problem is that the very books of the Bible that provide its details, contradict its overall narrative.
Two Very Different Stories
Let’s go back to Luke’s version. After Jesus’s birth and the visit from the shepherds, we don’t read about wise men or Herod’s animosity. Instead, Luke 2:22 says that after the days of Mary’s purification were over, the family went to Jerusalem. The “days of purification” are referring to Leviticus 12:1-4, where the Law of Moses stated that a woman was to be considered “unclean” for 40 days after giving birth to a male child. So when Jesus was about 40 days old, Luke claims that they all traveled to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices as thanks for his birth. While there, two elderly people see Jesus and begin proclaiming praise and prophecies concerning Jesus. And there’s no indication that an effort was made to keep any of this quiet, which is very different in tone to what we read in Matthew. Finally, in Luke 2:39, we read “And when they had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.” We’ll come back to this point in a moment.
The synopsis we looked at earlier incorporated most of Matthew’s version of the story. As we just read, his story ends very differently from Luke’s. However, it’s also significant to note that Matthew gives no indication that Joseph and Mary are from Nazareth. Matt 1:18 through the end of the chapter talks about Mary’s pregnancy, even though she and Joseph had never slept together, but it never specifies where they’re living. Chapter 2 begins with the sentence “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?'” Of course, it’s possible that Matthew still knew they were originally from Nazareth and just doesn’t bother to tell us that or divulge how they got to Bethlehem in the first place. But there are three context clues that point against such a possibility. First of all, regardless of how far the wise men had to journey, it likely took them quite a while to make the trip. When Matthew says “the east” he certainly doesn’t mean “east Jersualem,” and travel being what it was back then, any journey would have taken considerable time. The second clue is that Herod supposedly kills all the male children of Bethlehem who are 2 and under. So it’s unlikely that we’re supposed to still be thinking of Jesus as a newborn. Finally, Matthew says that when the family was able to leave Egypt, Joseph wanted to go back to Judea (where Bethlehem is). But after finding out Herod’s son was ruling, he became afraid and “went and lived in a city called Nazareth” (Matt 2:23). This is a very strange way to refer to Nazareth, if it’s where Joseph and Mary were already living.
So Matthew gives no indication that Joseph and Mary were just visiting Bethlehem. He never mentions a manger; instead, he references a house that they were staying in. He never talks about the shepherds from the fields, but has wise men who visit the child. He includes a story about Herod slaughtering a town’s children, though no other historical or biblical source ever mentions this. He claims that the family flees to Egypt until Herod’s death, that they want to return to Bethlehem, but finally settle in “a city called Nazareth.”
Luke, on the other hand, says that Nazareth is their home town, and they’re only visiting Bethlehem. He has no story about wise men, but does talk about shepherds from the fields that visit the newborn Jesus. Instead of Herod attempting to hunt them down and a subsequent flight to Egypt, the family travels straight to Jerusalem, where Herod lives. And there’s no effort to keep Jesus’s identity secret while they’re there, as two elderly prophets begin proclaiming who he is. And after making their sacrifices, the family simply goes back home to Nazareth, far from Herod’s reach (not that Luke indicates Herod’s even interested).
Can These Stories Be Put Together?
The main sticking points between the stories are the flight to Egypt and the trip to Jerusalem. On the one hand, Luke is very clear about his timeline: Jesus was only about 40 days old when they went to Jerusalem and then went home to Nazareth. Matthew doesn’t give specifics on how old Jesus was when the family was forced to flee to Egypt, except that it must have occurred before he was 2 years old.
Could the trip to Egypt have happened before the trip to Jerusalem?
No. First of all, considering all the details Luke provides, why would he have left out such an important event? Secondly, this means Herod would have needed to die within the 40 day purification period, but Matthew tells us that this still wouldn’t have been good enough, because Joseph was determined to avoid all of Judea while Herod’s son was reigning. There’s simply no way he would have felt safe enough to travel directly into Jerusalem. That just makes no sense.
Could the trip to Egypt have happened after the trip to Jerusalem?
No. Luke 2:39 is clear that the family went straight back to Nazareth after their trip to Jerusalem. And considering Luke claimed that Nazareth was already their home, why would they have needed to go back to Bethlehem anyway?
In fact, Luke’s claim that the family was from Nazareth creates a lot of problems for Matthew’s account. Nazareth was far outside of Herod’s reach. So if Herod really had hunted Jesus in Bethlehem, the family could have simply gone back to Nazareth rather than flee to Egypt. But this isn’t a consideration in Matthew’s account, because for him, the family has never been to Nazareth until they simply can’t go back to Bethlehem anymore, even after Herod’s death (Matt 2:23).
Additional Problems
I don’t want to spend too much time here, but for completeness sake, I need to mention a couple of historical issues. Both Matthew and Luke say that Jesus is born during the reign of Herod the Great. Historians usually place his death in 4 BCE, which means Jesus would have been born sometime before that. However, Luke says that Mary and Joseph had traveled to Bethlehem, because Quirinius, the governor of Syria, had commanded a census. However, Quirinius didn’t become governor of Syria until 6 CE — 10 years after Herod’s death. You can find additional resources about these two issues here.
Finally, Luke’s claim is that this census required Joseph to travel back to his ancestral home of Bethlehem, since he was of King David’s lineage. But David would have lived some 1000 years before Joseph. It’s ludicrous to think that the Romans would have cared about such a thing, or that they would have wanted their empire to be so disrupted by having people move around like that for a census. It would have been an impossible feat and would have made for a highly inaccurate, and therefore useless, census.
What Do We Make of All This?
The easiest way to understand why these accounts have such major differences in detail is to understand why either writer bothered with a story about Jesus’s birth at all. You have to remember that the writers of Matthew and Luke didn’t know one another and didn’t know that they were both working on the same material. They certainly didn’t know that their books would one day show up in the same collection. Both of them were working with two basic facts: Micah 5:2 seemed to prophesy that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem; Jesus came from Nazareth (John 1:45-46).
Since those two facts were at odds with one another, it’s easy to see how both writers would have been compelled to explain how Jesus could be from Nazareth but still be from Bethlehem. Unfortunately for them, close comparison shows that both versions simply can’t be true.
How would people react if they showed up for church this weekend and were presented with the full details from both of these stories? I like to think it would spur many of them into deeper study. That it would possibly make them question some of the things they’ve been taking for granted. But 2016 has been pretty demoralizing when it comes to the number of people who seem concerned about what’s true, and I’m not sure how many of them would see this information as a call to action. I know there are people who can be changed by facts. Perhaps there aren’t as many of them as I once thought, but I know they’re out there. And with the way information spreads these days, I’m sure they’ll eventually find the facts they’re looking for.
Finding Truth 
Only if you’re talking about all the claims in the Bible, especially the miraculous. But no one in this discussion is suggesting that any of that took place. So what you would be left with is 2 preachers. Well there were a ton of those in Greece and Palestine during the first century. There’s simply no way we would have contemporary evidence about all of them.
Even today, it would be hard to meet such a standard. I personally know several preachers who are well-known within their own denominations, but are unheard of beyond that. And I doubt there are any contemporary, secular writings about them as preachers, even in this information age. Why would we expect to have the kinds of evidence you’re looking for? As Jon has said, none of us thinks that either of these individuals were famous during their own lifetimes.
This would be like saying a small “exodus” of around 50 people couldn’t have happened, because we don’t see evidence of The Exodus.
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Fair enough. And under whose authority did he persecute Christians?
Why did he have to travel to persecute them when there were the supposed ring leaders still in Jerusalem?
This is the point we seem to be having major trouble ironing out.
The bible claims he is a real historical character. This opinion is based on the Epistles. and Acts.
The initial doubt creeps in when we compare the supposed authentic letters, with fraudulent ones and then with the tales found in Acts.
If we were solely to affirm our belief in his historicity on Acts then, based on all the things he supposedly did, all the people he claimed to have come into contact with on his wondrous travels it is perfectly reasonable to expect some secular mention of him.
However, there is nothing.
Neither is there any mention of him in the gospels.
While apologists have regularly offered a defense of this, it is, on the face , still odd that he is not mentioned.
There are other things that one might expect in the natural course of extended correspondence, but again, there is no record.
So in all honesty, all we have are the seven epistles that the current consensus of scholars have deduced are written by the same hand.
Therefore, if he didn’t exist, except to those who wanted/needed him to there is no reason why he should feature in any writings outside of the bible – and, of course, he doesn’t.
There was no intention to plagiarize. Although it was not an original piece, It was a comment on another blog site I cam across and, surprising enough not from the link you provided. Go figure!
But in light of how heated you seem to be getting,I should have provided the link.
I apologize
Would you like the link in question, now, Jon?
Oh, and a similar text can be found here …
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/philo.html
Ark.
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@William
Sadly, it is precisely because they are afforded historicity that the claims of divinity are so much easier to ‘tag on’ and why no one considers Zeus or Quetzacoatl were real, flesh and blood individuals.
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Ark,
Is there any contemporaneous confirmation of the existence of Philo and Josephus? If not, why should we not doubt the existence of these two men, based on your rationale in regards to Paul?
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Maybe, but Paul wasn’t believed to have been living on Olympus or to have been eternal and the maker of lightning, so I do think there are some real differences.
And we have plenty of evidence on how people embellish real events and people into something bigger than what they were, over time. We also have a lot of missing documentation on a lot of people at the time.
So I, and many others, believe it’s most likely that there was a guy named Paul and dude named Jesus, who lived at that time and who were known as preachers, if nothing else. It seems very plausible that the legends of these guys grew from real men. It happens, so for me, it doesn’t seem crazy to default to that position.
I can get expressing it this way, “Sure, the biblical characters were likely based on embellishments of real people, although outside of the bible and bible believers, there’s no other supporting evidence for the real or embellished people.”
but again, I dont really care so much about this point anyways. I’ll let you and Jon duke it out from here.
Peace, Brotha
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@Gary
Out of interest, why exactly do you beleive in the existence of Paul?
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Evidence, Ark. The same evidence that makes me believe that Josephus and Philo existed.
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@Gary
You mean the 7 authentic epistles?
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Ark,
so you really think that a preacher named Jesus and a preacher named Paul, most likely didn’t exist at all, but that a few un-named individuals created each of these guys from thin air, and built a religion around those fictitious characters?
We’re not talking about guys who are sued to explain things like lightning, typhoons or sunrises. We’re not even talking about guys who were likely super famous or widely known at the time, but guys who were essentially local, charismatic cult leaders who were able to secure a foothold in the imaginations of some superstitious people of the time; superstitious followers who came to embellish these guys and add stories and positions overtime, as it suited them and their movement.
Does the first one really make more sense to you?
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Ark,
so you really think that a preacher named Jesus and a preacher named Paul, most likely didn’t exist at all,
In all honesty, no hiding or semantics …. no, I do not believe either of these character were real.
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Fair enough.
But I’m sure you can see how and why others believe Jesus and Paul were likely based off of real guys…
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@William
Here is very interesting and informative article
http://www.gospelsandhistory.eu/approfondimento.asp?ID=26
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Ark: Is there any contemporaneous confirmation of the existence of Philo of Alexandria and Josephus? If not, why should we believe these men existed?
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I have not actually investigated whether there is, Gary?
Is there?
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Nate, you wrote: I personally know several preachers who are well-known within their own denominations, but are unheard of beyond that.
But the question then becomes … do any of these preachers offer salvation and a path to another world after death? Do any of these preachers have an entire religion built around them?
I understand where you’re coming from … but I also understand Ark’s POV. There simply isn’t sufficient evidence beyond the bible to prove the existence of Jesus … or Paul. What you believe or I believe or thousands of Christians believe is one thing. Substantiated proof is another.
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Granted, with the millions of preachers / religious leaders in the world today, almost none of them are able to create a new religion. But it has happened in the past. Even if Jesus and Paul were both myths, real people still had to create the myth, which then became a full blown religion. That doesn’t happen often, either.
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I will repost this link once again, in case anyone misses the comment further up the thread as it is excellent and I think it is well worth a read.
It might even give my chief antagonist on this thread, Jon, pause for thought.
🙂
Here is an excerpt…. non plagiarized.
This “evidence” of the existence of the first “followers of Jesus”, with another strained reference to the High Priest of the Temple and of the Sanhedrin (for Luke it was an obsession which he could not avoid “tripping on”), is another “show” recanted by Roman law; the aim of this “production” is to preserve imperial domination by means of a group of rigidly hierarchical public officials.
The High Priest who presided over the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem did not have the power to send his thugs to arrest Damascene citizens subject to the jurisdiction of the Province of Syria, governed directly by Rome through an official stationed in Antioch: the Lieutenant of the Emperor, who answered only to the Emperor himself. The authority of the Imperial Legate would have been supplanted by the power of the High Priest and the Jewish Sanhedrin (but the power to “slaughter” men which was a prerogative belonging solely to the Romans).
http://www.gospelsandhistory.eu/approfondimento.asp?ID=26
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And we know people have existed in the past, for whom there is no confirming record – not all records survive, and for most, no one cares enough to make any records – especially pre-printing press – and especially for those whose closest company were illiterate.
so absence of record doesn’t mean, “non-recorded person never lived,” just like having a record written after someone has died or written within a book which has supernatural and outlandish claims in addition to a few factual ones, doesn’t automatically mean, “We’re certain these men lived.”
we’re really talking about plausibility and likelihood.
Here, we have belief in a guys who went around that time preaching. That’s not hard to believe and it’s easy to accept. A lot of what’s written about them is difficult to swallow.
I’d prefer agree to disagree. And again, for me, it makes more sense that these guys were real, but somehow their stories, grew, evolved and were embellished into something akin to legend and myth. To me this seems more plausible than being complete works of fiction.
We dont have any records for most of the people who lived back then, but we’re not gonna say most people back then didn’t exist, because there’s no record at all. Jesus and Paul have some record, even if it’s a crappy record(s).
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Ark, that’s definitely information that should be considered. At the same time, during the Civil Rights era in the US, many people were killed via lynch mobs. They were completely illegal, but it didn’t stop them from occurring.
If my memory is correct, the details about Paul’s actions and intents prior to his conversion are only laid out in Acts (his reminiscing in Galatians is pretty general), and that book is known to conflict with some of Paul’s writings. We don’t know how official or legal his directives were.
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Here you go , Gary , found something. I don’t know if this satisfies your criteria, but have a look.
Josephus Flavius is unanimously recognized as the most famous Jewish historian of all time. He lived in the first century A.D. and his Jewish chronicles, perfectly connected to those of the history of Rome, were verified by Roman historians before being deposited in the Imperial Archives by order of Titus and Emperor Vespasian, who granted him Roman citizenship.
The Jewish historian was therefore protected by the two son of Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, both of whom were Emperors, and his writngs were consulted by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, as Superintendent of the Imperial Archives under Emperor Hadrian. The works of Josephus Flavius are: “The Jewish War” (Bellum); “Jewish Antiquities” (Ant.); “Autobiography” (Bios); “Contra Apionem” (C.A.).
http://www.gospelsandhistory.eu/approfondimento.asp?ID=25
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Stoicism was founded by Zeno of Citium, but most of what we know about him comes from Diogenes Laertius, who lived over 500 years later. Should we assume that Zeno was mythological, then?
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Ark, do you happen to know what ancient sources we get that information from?
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Who knows? Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t think Paul says. In Acts, it seems like he may be doing it under the authority of Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, but Acts is pretty dubious. It seems very unlikely that Jewish leaders had their own prisons, and even less likely that Roman authorities would punish Jews for heretical religious beliefs.
We can speculate — perhaps the Jewish leaders asked some devout Jews to harass heretics; perhaps Jewish leaders asked their allies to punish people who went against their authority; perhaps Roman authorities were willing to harass people who “disturbed the peace” in some way and Paul was one of the people who helped them do this — but it’s only speculation.
If I were to guess, I would speculate that Paul probably harassed heretical Jews, with the implicit (or maybe even explicit) permission of Jewish leaders who were operating under the thumb of Roman authorities.
We have very little information about the Jewish authorities of that time, so it is difficult to even speculate about the political and social dynamics with any confidence.
Christianity began in Galilee, not Jerusalem. Clearly, some Christian leaders seem to have gone to Jerusalem and eventually stayed there, but there is no reason to believe they were all there. Perhaps Paul traveled in order to persecute people, or perhaps he just persecuted people when he encountered them. Paul was from Tarsus and he describes his “vision” experience as happening on the road to Damascus.
I don’t have any trouble ironing it out. I say there are no contemporaneous Jewish or secular texts (apart from Paul’s own letters) that we should expect to mention some ordinary Jewish guy who converted to a minor upstart movement within Judaism and then traveled around the region working as a laborer while spreading his own version of that movement’s message.
You are the only one who has trouble ironing this out, because you seem to imagine we must have lots of texts that should mention some traveling laborer/preacher. You will no longer have trouble ironing it out when you realize that your premise is false.
Why? How many prisoners do we have contemporaneous records of? How many traveling preachers do we have contemporaneous records of? Even if the stories in Acts were true, we just don’t have records of that kind of thing.
Because the Gospels are only about the life, death and ascension of Jesus, all of which happened well before Paul was a player. This is like complaining that a book about the presidency of Bill Clinton (which ended in Jan 2001) didn’t talk about Donald Trump (who flirted with running in the mid-00’s, but only became politically significant in 2015-2016).
Given that we have letters written by Paul, letters (falsely) attributed to Paul and a number of mentions of Paul by early Christian writers, the onus is on you to demonstrate that Paul was invented. So far, you have provided zero evidence for this proposition. The only arguments you have made are that A) Acts is unreliable, and B) contemporary writings (which mostly don’t exist) don’t mention Paul (who was not important enough to be mentioned by the few writers whose works do remain). This is an argument from incredulity and ignorance.
Look, is it possible that Paul was invented? Sure. It’s possible. But is it probable that Paul was invented? No. Not even close. Historians have to deal with probabilities. Given the evidence we have, it is overwhelmingly probable that Paul existed. If you want to make an argument to the contrary, you need to stack up evidence that outweighs what we have. So far, you have not shown any evidence of invention. You have not produced a single early Christian writer or critic who spoke of Paul as a mythical character or questioned his historicity. You have not produced a single Christian apologist (which many early christian writers were) who argues against the historicity of Paul (or of Jesus, for that matter).
It is certainly possible that Paul — or most other historical figures regarded as real and yet lacking much contemporary evidence — did not exist. But it is not probable that they did not exist. And given this lack of evidence for the mythicist interpretation, it seems pretty clear that the mythicist position makes the same errors as the fundamentalist position — a confusion of possible with probable, selective methodology, and a capacity for straining the evidence to fit the conclusion.
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Do we have any sources for Josephus other than himself? I’ve been Googling for the last few minutes, but haven’t found anything yet…
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william, you offer valid points, but where I think many people run into a problem is that an entire religion is built around someone that we can’t validate ever existed. We simply must “take it by faith” — which is what thousands and thousands of people have done throughout the centuries.
Personally, I would like to think someone named Yeshua did exist — but I tend to think he was simply an individual who said things the Jewish people needed/wanted to hear at the point in time. The fact he was later transformed into a “Savior” by someone named Paul? Hmmm. Not so much.
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