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 
Hi CS,
There was a period during this thread where I felt like you were truly engaged in the conversation. I think you and William had some good exchanges, and I think that you and I did as well. But with these 2 latest comments, I have to agree with Gary. I think you’re coming off more like a troll. You broke into the conversation with comments that were mostly just insulting toward atheists, and you made a pronouncement about how clear and accurate the scriptures are without actually demonstrating how any of that is true.
Now to be fair, I realize that the criticisms the rest of us make may be offensive to you, since you believe the Bible is legit. But typically, we don’t intend for them to be taken that way. We’re really just trying to analyze the claims of Christianity, and if you ever care to share real observations about the specifics of the passages in question, we’d welcome your input. But if you aren’t interested in that kind of discussion, then I’ll just respectfully ask that you not interject with comments that seem designed to distract.
Hope that makes sense… Thanks!
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Hi Gary,
I haven’t heard of Resurrection, Reconsidered. I read the synopsis on Amazon… looks interesting.
I sympathize with the experience you just had with your former pastor. Those kinds of meetings can be really frustrating. The only advice I can offer is to remember that his position is the one that needs defense (this is something I have a hard time remembering too). He doesn’t have to think that conflicts within the scriptures is a big deal, but it’s fine for you to think it’s important. And if he wanted to understand why you think it’s so important, you’d be able to defend that position all day long. And he is welcome to think that Jews in the first century were somehow impervious to misperceptions, but without really good evidence, there’s no reason for you to think that.
In the end, when you have a conversation like this between two people who are both very well informed, the conversation may not last long. You can quickly and easily reach an impasse, since you’re both aware of the relevant facts. His position likely won’t change. But it’s at least a good opportunity to find out if there’s any evidence or argument out there that you haven’t considered yet.
Do you guys have plans to get together again?
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Nate, Gary, I think the answer to both your questions is NT Wright, and his mammoth study The Resurrection of the Son of God. I haven’t read it (740 pages is a big commitment!) but I have read quite a few of Wright’s articles on the subject. Here are 3 that might explain: Only Love Believes: The Resurrection of Jesus and the Constraints of History, Christian Origins and the Resurrection of Jesus: The Resurrection of Jesus as a Historical Problem and The Resurrection of Resurrection.
Wright argues several things (if I have understood him correctly):
1. The christian concept of the bodily resurrection of Jesus was unique. Greeks & Romans didn’t believe in resurrection and the Jews believed it would happen at the end of the age. Jesus’ resurrection wasn’t seen as an intermediate state between death and the final resurrection, or a ghost.
2. A historian looks for a hypothesis that explains the events. In this case, the events included a belief that Jesus was Messiah, the kingdom of God on earth had commenced and Jesus was alive – despite the fact that he had been executed and defeated. It is a fact that Jesus’ followers were highly motivated and went out and changed the face of the Roman Empire and eventually the world. It isn’t enough for sceptics to deny the resurrection – they also have to propose another hypothesis that explains all the evidence plausibly.
3. Wright argues at length that none of the other hypotheses work when examined in detail. He says that the post-Easter reports include Jesus eating fish, touching people, and other tangible things that ghosts and hallucinations don’t do. He argues, what seems now to be the consensus, that the resurrection stories are not some late legendary addition, but were part of the christian claim from the beginning. Nothing less than an empty tomb and real tangible experience, he argues, explain why the disciples didn’t take one of a number of other courses of action that we might expect – find another Messiah, go back to fishing, etc.
I hope that’s fair to Wright. But I think it explains what Gary’s minister was saying. I think most of this can be well argued historically. The difference between you guys and me, I suspect, is more related to our prior assumptions and probabilities. We all agree that if there’s no God there’s no resurrection, and I imagine you would both agree that if there’s a God then there could feasibly be a resurrection. My assessment is that once I believe God exists and I believe Jesus was a good man, probably a God-man, the resurrection is quite clearly the best historical explanation – it is simple and explains all the facts, Occam’s Razor, etc. But since you don’t believe in God, that option is closed to you and almost any hypothesis will be more plausible for you.
I suggest that is where the difference lies.
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Thanks for the links, unkleE. I’ll check them out. I’ve heard of Wright many times, of course, but haven’t read any of his stuff. And for some reason, whenever I hear “N.T. Wright” I think of “T.D. Jakes.” Very different people, I know. Just something weird my brain does. 😉
Perhaps Wright will convince me otherwise, but I’ve had some issues with the three points you laid out.
There are at least two different stories in the Old Testament about people coming back to life, or bodily resurrections (2 Kings 4:32-37, 2 Kings 13:20-21), which shows that the notion of Jesus coming back to life would not have been completely unheard of to Jews of the time. And the Greek religions had stories about beings who came back to life as well (Wiki). Even if one could argue that Jesus’s resurrection was somehow different from those Greek stories, I think the disparities would be pretty minor.
I disagree with this a bit, as well. I think it’s good for skeptics to offer hypotheses, and I’m aware of several, but I don’t think the assumption should be that the resurrection must have happened unless someone else can offer another hypothesis. I think “I don’t know” is probably a better position than accepting the resurrection, just because I think the minimum evidence for demonstrating such a miraculous event should be very high. We won’t agree on that, which is completely fine with me — I just wanted to offer my position on that.
This is the one I disagree with most strongly. The stories of Jesus touching people, eating fish, etc aren’t established well enough to be considered fact. They’re just claims. And it’s not hard to see why writers of the gospels would have been compelled to include details like these as an attempt to ward off skeptics who might suggest that the first disciples were just seeing things. There’s very good reason to think there never was an empty tomb, as the article Gary linked to much earlier in the thread argued for very convincingly.
And while a real resurrection would definitely explain the actions of the disciples, the rise of Christianity, and the impetus behind all the writings that we have, it’s not the only explanation. We can’t layout cause-and-effect chains with perfect precision. Sometimes people do unexpected things. Exactly what caused Christianity to spread, we may never know. And when we consider all the very human aspects of the Old and New Testaments, the imprecise selection of books for the canon, the disagreements among Christians about very foundational aspects of Christianity, unclear teachings about the requirements for salvation, confusing passages about what happens after we die, archaeology that calls much of the OT into question, etc, etc, I think it’s very unlikely that the best explanation is an actual resurrection.
But after saying all that, I think you’re right that Gary’s ex-pastor probably had these things in mind. Thanks for making that clearer for me!
I don’t think the biggest difference between us is our views on whether or not there’s a God. I stopped believing in Christianity while I still very much believed in a God, in fact. I think our different viewpoints have more to do with what we expect from a God. I admit, I expect a lot, especially if God has the kind of attributes claimed for the Christian God. And I just don’t think Christianity lives up to those expectations.
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Thank you for the input Eric (UnkleE). I was hoping that you or another Christian had read Riley.
I read NT Wright’s “The Resurrection of the Son of God”. I agree with your analysis. Wright claims that the idea of one person coming back from the dead in a body of flesh and blood would have been unheard of in first century Greco-Roman culture and in first century Jewish culture. Is he right? Since I am not an expert on Antiquity, I had no way to challenge Wright on this point. I have ordered Professor Riley’s book and look forward to his analysis. His book has good reviews and Professor Riley seems to be highly respected so if his position disagrees with Wright’s then that will be something I will find very interesting.
Here are a couple of thoughts: The idea that the body which appeared to the apostles and to Paul ate food in front of them and allowed them to poke their fingers into it only occurs in the Gospels, many decades after the alleged event. If we look at First Corinthians 15, the earliest record we have about Jesus’ appearances, it is very possible from a careful reading of this text that these “appearances” were no more physical than the “appearance” of Jesus that is described in the 26th chapter of the Book of Acts: his appearance as a bright light in a “vision”. In other words, all the fascinating physical details we read in the Gospels could be later embellishments to the story. The earliest Christians may have never heard of these physical details.
And why should we believe my former pastor’s claim that first century Jews would never confuse a vision/vivid dream/ghost with reality when…
1. The disciples saw a real body on the Sea of Galilee but perceived it to be a spirit.
2. Many Jews believed that John the Baptist was Elijah raised from the dead.
3. King Herod (a half Jew) believed Jesus to be John the Baptist raised from the dead.
4. Peter was not sure if his experience of seeing a floating sheet full of unclean animals was reality or a trance.
5. Paul was not sure if he had literally been teleported/beam up to a “third heaven” or if it had been a vision/vivid dream.
Just from the Bible, it seems that first century Jews were frequently confusing reality with ghosts and other supernatural phenomena.
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Hi Nate, thanks for your thoughts. I agree with you that expectation about what God might/should do is a major difference between your conclusions about God and mine. But I think assessments of the possibility of Jesus’ resurrection will vary immensely depending on our belief in the supernatural.
Re other people being raised to life, I think they are very different to resurrections. The belief is that Jesus was raised to new life, eternal life, whereas others were raised back into this life, resuscitated is the better word. As CS Lewis wrote, Lazarus had to go and do his dying all over again at some stage, but not Jesus.
No I’m sorry Gary, I’d never heard of the Riley book before. I don’t think I would claim that the disciples couldn’t possibly be mistaken, but I think we have to see that they said they saw and heard and touched in ways that seem beyond mere hallucination. Now either they were right, or they were lying or the stories were made up much later. Now it seems they weren’t made up much later, although it may be possible, as you suggest, that those details were added later.
On this, an interesting book is Visions of Jesus by philosopher Philip Wiebe. He interviewed 30 people who said they had seen visions of Jesus and discussed supernatural, psychological and neurological explanations and found that no single explanation (which included hallucinations) satisfactorily explained the data he had. It is easy to postulate hallucinations but not always so easy to fit all the facts in.
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Eric,
As a physician, I can assure you that there is a very big difference between a vivid dream/vision and an hallucination. Most skeptics do not believe that the disciples’ belief in a Resurrection was based on some form of mental illness. We believe that very healthy people had very vivid experiences which led them to believe that they had seen a risen Jesus.
I knew I had read Wright’s book, but I forgot I had reviewed it, chapter by chapter on my blog in August of 2014. Here is a brief excerpt from the first post:
“Wright asserts that the Christian movement could not have developed and spread so rapidly within the Jewish community of the first century unless Jesus really and truly…physically…rose from the dead. The physical resurrection of a dead person was inconceivable in first century Judaism. No one would have converted to this new Faith based on such an outrageous, unheard of, supernatural assertion…unless…people had really witnessed and interacted with, a resurrected, walking, talking dead man.
Quote : “Never before had there been a movement which began as a quasi-Messianic group within Judaism and was transformed into a sort of movement which Christianity quickly became. Nor has any similar phenomenon ever occurred again. The common post-Enlightenment perception of Christianity as simply ‘a religion’ masks the huge differences, at the point of origin, between this movement and , say, the rise of Islam or of Buddhism. Both pagan and Jewish observers of this new movement found it highly anomalous: it was not a club, not even like a religion (no sacrifices, no images, no oracles, no garlanded priests, certainly not like a racially based cult.
…how might we speak of such a thing, which had not been seen before and has never been seen since?
…If we are to speak truly about the early church, we must describe something for which there was no precedent and of which there remains no subsequent example. In addition, as we shall see, the early church by its very existence forces upon us the question which we, as historians, must ask: what precisely happened after Jesus’ crucifixion that caused early Christianity to come into being: Ironically, then, it is precisely the uniqueness of the early church that forces us to say : never mind analogies, what happened”
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‘And for some reason, whenever I hear “N.T. Wright” I think of “T.D. Jakes.”’
It seems to be the use of initials, Nate. I take it you are no fan of T.D. Jakes.
As to N.T. Wright, he is among a most prolific author and has a very folksy sort of style, It seems to me that his works are very much designed for the ‘common folk’ rather than the academics.
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I wonder if Jews, Muslims, Hindus and other non-Christians would describe the early Christian movement with such awe-struck terms? Was early Christianity really that different from other new, radical, minority religious sects?
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For those interested in a presentation of the Christian case for the resurrection, here is an apologetics presentation from Art Lindsay of the CS Lewis Institute. Whilst you may not agree with the conclusion this is high brow apologetics:
http://www.cslewisinstitute.org/audio/by/title/basic_apologetics_course_-_set_i_lecture_v_-_case_for_the_resurrection_can_you_prove_that_christ_was_raised_from_the_dead
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@Gary, the answer I think depends upon one’s belief. I grew up on apologetics that stated how different Christianity was from other religions. It is only now almost two years after deconverting that I can say that from an outsider’s perspective, it is more alike than it is different.
So my view is that in the case of any religion, the insiders focus on the unique aspects whilst the outsiders focus on the similarities.
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Very true, Peter.
Ever wonder where the idea of “Heaven” ever came from? Check this out from NT Wright’s book!
Quote, page 58-59, “But the idea of the soul going off to where the stars are and in some way almost being identified with the stars, became popular across the Hellenistic world. This belief found a further classic expression in a work written about a hundred years before the time of Paul. The epilogue of Cicero’s De Republica consists of a reported dream: the dreamer is the second-century BC Scipio Aemilianus, and in the dream he meets his famous father and grandfather. His grandfather addresses him first, and tells him that all those who have been good statesmen will go to heaven which is after all where they came from in the first place:
‘All those who have protected or assisted the fatherland, or increased its greatness, have a special place reserved for them in heaven, where they may enjoy perpetual happiness…It is from heaven that the rulers and preservers of the cities come, and it is to heaven that they eventually return.’
Gary: Good grief. And we are told that Christianity did not copy the pagan religions.
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Ok, and here is NT Wright’s main argument:
Quote, page 64:
“Ordinary people in the Greco-Roman world clearly thought that from time to time one might see ghosts, spirits or visions of dead people. It was even possible to precipitate such encounters oneself. But we should not make the mistake of supposing that this had anything to do with resurrection. No such experiences would have persuaded anyone in that world that the total denial of resurrection in Homer and the tragedians had been broken. These visions and visitations were not cases of people ceasing to be dead and resuming something like normal life, but precisely of the dead remaining dead and being encountered as visitors from the world of the dead, who have not and will not resume anything like the kind of life they had before. This is the vital distinction that must be maintained if we are to understand the ancient pagans in their own terms, never mind Judaism or Christianity.”
Gary: Ok. I buy that. But let’s look at the Biblical claims of the “resurrected” Jesus:
–he is not usually recognized when he first appears out of thin air. He must prove who he is. (If he had looked like the human Jesus, would his disciples have had problems recognizing him? Sounds like a ghost to me.)
–he or his clothing is VERY white/bright/radiant (sounds ghost-like to me)
—He can disappear in front of your eyes as occurred with the two disciples with whom he ate a meal along the Emmaus Road. (sounds pretty ghost-like to me.)
—He can walk through locked doors. (I don’t know many humans who can do that)
—He levitates off of the ground and disappears into the sky (ghost, ghost, ghost)
See, Christians aren’t claiming that Jesus was a flesh and blood human come back from the dead. Christians were claiming that Jesus was a SUPERHERO-LIKE supernatural being with a body that LOOKED like a human body but in no way functioned like a human body. The “resurrected body” of Jesus was NOT human!
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Gary, the apologist might counter that Luke included the part where the resurrected Jesus ate some fish to prove he was not a ghost.
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@Gary — you wrote (as part of your review of Wright’s book): The physical resurrection of a dead person was inconceivable in first century Judaism.
I couldn’t help but think to myself … it’s inconceivable to people living in the 21st century as well. 🙂
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Hey nan, do you ever consider the bigger picture as to what is inconceivable?
Like how to bones grow? especially since they are just laying around waiting to be attached to flesh, after waiting for a heart……after waiting for a brain……
Whaddya think, a few billion years or so for gold to appear under the earth? Inconceivable?
No, what is inconceivable is for your dining room table to appear without aforethought, no design, no planning.
such is the hallucinating effect of godlessness.
God’s word is excellent as always, and needs absolutely no defense.
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First, CS, my comment was not directed to you.
Secondly, I think you need to re-read Nate’s comment that was directed to you — https://findingtruth.info/2016/12/24/which-nativity-story/#comment-32436.
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Good gravy nan. Are you that shallow? How many times have I made an observation and had to put up with 30 ‘strangers’ all willing to ‘jump in’ and offer their pence worth, including yours.
For God’s sake, grow up and get a spine. If this thread has proven anything, it has demonstrated the mindnumbing gripes of people who find scripture detestable.
I find that revealing, since God has offered the proof of such rebellion.
Did Nazareth exist? Please. I trust the accounts of scripture more than a million so called theologians who doubt the existence of the Creator.
Popular vote means nothing to ‘finding truth.’
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Hi CS,
For the record, I thought your question to Nan was fine. If you don’t mind, I’ll offer a reply, even though it wasn’t directed at me.
I think I understand the point you’re making. Why don’t you think the same question could apply to God? Is it conceivable for God to just “appear without aforethought, no design, no planning”?
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hello sir
it is my understanding that luke has the family visit jerusalem every year for passover:
39 When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. 40 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.
41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival.
Dr avalos says that the parents went to jerusalem from birth of jesus onward.:
First, the language of Luke 2:41 certainly indicates that Mary and Joseph went to Jerusalem EVERY YEAR because the Greek has KAT’ ETOS, which means annually or every year. This is a well-attested expression, on which you can see other examples in Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon (1957 edition), p. 317. Luke 2:41 indicates that they made this annual trip from the birth onward, and so that would have included the entire reign of Archelaus.
some apologists assume that only the parents went and the child stayed behind in nazareth.
but if the magi find a 2 year old jesus in bethlehem, then the apologists must acknowledge that the baby jesus was making trips from nazareth, right?
matthew says that the parents depart from bethlehem to egypt and then after herods death, they return to israel.
::::::::::::
When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, 20 “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” 21 Then Joseph[k] got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee.
because of danger from herods son, joseph is afraid and heads north to palestine.
the text clearly says “he was afraid to go there” would indicate he feared for himself and his family, right?
so why does luke say that joseph was doing yearly trips to jerusalem, when matthew clearly says that joseph was afraid to go to judea ?
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what i am trying to say is that regardless of where joseph lived, according to luke, he did yearly trips to jerusalem for passover.
is there anything in the greek text which indicates that herods death took place under 1 year or that his son ruled for only a few months?
or that joseph used to go pass over by hiding in large crowds ?
some time apologetics makes the trip to egypt useless. jesus could have been left behind in palestine according to some apologists.
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NT Wright’s either or explanation is typical of the Apologist mentality, as it Lewis’s Triple L hypothesis.
Of course there is a third alternative to the Resurrection story and why the disciples believed: the stories are simply fabrication.
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CS: It is presumptuous for people who are as ignorant as you are not to take up the work of a herdsman.
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If you haven’t guessed, I am insulting CS for his trolling with someone else’s insults. Can anyone guess who?
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I am still reviewing my 2014 review of NT Wright’s book. I ran across this crucial issue. Is “resurrection” even a Jewish belief or did it originate from the Greeks? Here is an excerpt from Wright that may surprise some of Nate’s readers. He seems to agree that the Book of Daniel is spurious:
NT Wright, page 108-109
Nobody doubts that the Old Testament speaks of the resurrection of the dead, but nobody can agree on what it means, where the idea came from, or how it relates to the other things the scriptures say about the dead. But since the Jewish world of Jesus’ and Paul’s day looked back to these texts as the principal sources for their widespread belief in resurrection, we must take care at least to examine the relevant texts and know how they work. Is resurrection here an innovation, bursting upon an unready Israelite world? In which case, where did it come from? Or is it, rather, the climax of the ancient Jewish hope?
Resurrection is what did not happen to Enoch or Elijah. According to the texts, it is what will happen to people who are at present dead, not what has already happened to them. If this point is grasped, a good deal becomes clear, if forgotten, confusion is bound to follow.
The text which became central for much later Jewish thought on this subject is Daniel 12:2-3:
“Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth[a] shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky,[b] and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.”
Gary:
Hmm. The previous entire Old Testament describes the grave as the end of existence, and all of a sudden the last book written in the OT starts talking about an after-life. Is it just coincidence that the Jewish people were suffering horribly at the hands of a foreign occupier at the time “Daniel” was written. The promise of God’s blessings in this life if one lives righteously had proven untrue. Now the Jewish priests had to offer the people hope of a future reward for their faithfulness to Yahweh: a blessed life after death.
So had God been hiding this doctrine in the misty fog of innuendo for thousands of years, only to reveal it now for unknown divine reasons, as NT Wright and most conservative Christians believe? Or is the belief in an after-life simply the invention of a desperate and hopeless ancient, middle-eastern people??
Most conservative Christians are not aware that the Book of Daniel was the last book of the Old Testament to be written. And, even more surprising, the Book of Daniel was not written by “Daniel” living in Babylon during the exile, nor in Persia under the benevolent King Cyrus. The Book of Daniel was written in Judea, only 150-200 years prior to the birth of Christ. It was written during the horrific persecution of the Jewish people under the occupation of the Greeks, specifically Antiochus Epiphanes. Daniel 11:31 speaks of Antiochus’ desecration of the Jerusalem Temple, and his setting up of the ‘abomination of desolation’ mentioned already in verse 9:27.
Who is my source for this information? Answer: NT Wright, pages 113-115!
I am shocked that a conservative, evangelical Christian apologist would admit to believing the modern scholarly view that the Book of Daniel was not written in Babylon, but in Judea during the time of Antiochus. Here is a quote by NT Wright:
….considering the exilic themes of the whole book of Daniel (the fictive setting is of course Babylon, and the historical setting is that of the ‘continuing exile’ of 9:24, under various pagan rulers climaxing in the Syria of Antiochus.)
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