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 
Jon,
I am curious. What is your point about Nazareth? Do you believe that if archeology proves that Nazareth existed at the time of Jesus that this proves the Birth Narratives in Matthew and Luke true? If so, would you explain?
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Gary
I don’t think I really had a point beyond what I wrote.
No, the birth narratives are individually implausible and collectively irreconcilable. I just don’t think all the other problems with the birth narratives require us to also believe Nazareth must have been invented.
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Gary and Ark,
I think Jon has a good point. There seems to be a strong push among skeptics on the internet for claiming Nazareth didn’t exist in the first century and there are multiple secular sources which indicate that is likely not true. Even Richard Carrier has tried to debunk this claim. Here’s one example:
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2009/03/craig-debate-wrap.html?showComment=1239740100000#c8085560906076284692
He also talks about Nazareth in the first century in his book “Not the Impossible Faith”.
While it doesn’t change the gist of Nate’s argument in this piece, maybe since that claim is brought up a lot on the internet Jon felt it was worthy enough to correct.
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@Gary, yes it is interesting to see the reliance on Papias. The first real historian of the Church, Eusebius of Caesarea cast aspersions on the reliability of Papias after reviewing some of Papias’ other writings (these included Judas not dying as recorded in the Bible but instead being affiliated with giant testicles and an enormous head).
The simple reason for the reliance on Papias is that there is no other source. Interestingly the historians seem to happy to accept what Papias wrote about Mark’s Gospel, but not what he wrote about Matthews (where Papias said it was originally written in Hebrew). The reason the Matthew claim is questioned is that the textual experts consider the Greek version of Matthew to show none of the telltale signs of a translation.
Speaking of Greek compositions. One has to wonder about John’s Gospel. In the interchange with Nicodemus in John 3, the Greek text includes clever word plays in Greek. The problem is that these word plays could not have possibly worked if it was a translation of an Aramaic conversation. This is more evidence that points to the Gospel account being a later invention rather than a record of any actual conversation.
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The point regarding Alexandre is this: Ehrman cites her work as likely evidence and yet her claims have not been corroborated by any other archaeologist.
Surely you recognise the significance regarding her claims having not been corroborated?
As you must have noted, she is also a Christian, although I realise I will likely be metaphorically burned at the stake for raising that point.
I am not an archaeologist and for me to attempt to write an entire explanation about why Ehrman’s piece is biased would be torn to shreds in an instant. Rightly so, as well!
Thus, it’s probably best you read the pieces I suggested: Bagatti’s report and the Nazareth Farm Report and maybe even Salm’s work as well. Just Google it. I once downloaded the Nazareth Farm Report and I seem to recall reading Bagatti’s report and survey online as well.
I also have doubts about Ehrman’s impartiality for writing that piece.
Let me explain.
He has very strong negative views regarding those who consider Jesus of Nazareth a myth/fictional character and this was one of the reasons he published a book on the supposed historicity of the character, thus, anything that might allude to Jesus of Nazareth not having been an historical figure will surely damage his rep as an historian in this regard.
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist but there are also millions and millions of dollars tied up in Nazareth being regarded as a real historical site at the time when Jesus of Nazareth and his mum and dad are claimed to have once lived.
The Nazareth village project is worth a LOT of money. These days, you even get to see where Mary lived, apparently! How cool is that?
It would piss a lot of people off if it turned out that not only was Jesus of Nazareth a narrative construct but that his home town never even existed at the time he was supposedly strutting his stuff and playing the Lake Tiberius Pedestrian.
Regards.
Ark
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Hey Eric. How was your Christmas? I hope it went well for you and yours.
Regarding the book not being required to rise above “merely human”: without some kind of indication of the book being more than a human writing, how do you feel you can consider it as being a reliable source for the parts of it that cannot be confirmed in empirical/historical ways – for example, the parts which describe the ways in which we should live our lives?
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The Nazareth village project is worth a LOT of money.
And MONEY talks. It even retells and revises the stories in the bible. 🙂
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Hi Howie, Christmas was good but busy – we had 11 family for lunch which meant we had to tidy up the hose a bit – not my favourite activity, but worth it. Do you celebrate Christmas?
As I said to William, to me the logical order is:
1. What do (secular) historians say about the gospels and the life of Jesus?
2. From that, what conclusions can I make about Jesus’ claims – i.e. who he was?
3. From that, what do I then think about the inspiration of the Bible?
In very brief, my answers are:
1. The consensus is that, at the very least “we have a good idea of the main lines of his ministry and his message. We know who he was, what he did, what he taught, and why he died.” (EP Sanders)
2. I think that is enough to see him as son of God (see e.g. Jesus – son of God.
3. I think Jesus treated the OT as inspired by God but not set in stone. I think the evidence points to both its human and divine origins.
So the parts that cannot be verified I consider in the light of both historical evidence and faith that God is behind it in some way. The ethical parts which you specifically mentioned are especially easy because (1) they are not always original – Jesus follows other moral teachers, though he often gives the teachings extra depth and (2) they seem to me to be clearly “right”.
I think that both conservative christians and trenchant critics generally make exactly the same mistake, of trying to define and classify the scriptures and truth generally in a black and white way. Either the scriptures are divine or they are human, either they are right or they are wrong. But nothing much in life is like that, very little is certain, but we live with that. So if we conclude that scripture is both divine and human, if truth is more subtle, if we don’t have absolute certainty, then we live with that too. I won’t always get my interpretation right. I have been a believer for something like 54 years and I am constantly questioning, adjusting, learning. I am fine with that.
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I personally accept that Nazareth existed. I also accept that Jesus most probably existed. That he was an apocalyptic preacher. That some considered him a healer and miracle worker. That he irritated the Jewish authorities. That he was crucified by the Romans. And that shortly after his death, some of his followers believed that he appeared to them in some fashion.
I would bet that most NT scholars TODAY in 2016 would not endorse the historicity of the Empty Tomb, but since no recent study had been done, I can’t prove that. My main evidence for this is this: We have evidence that early Christians venerated the alleged site of Jesus’ baptism and birth (see the writings of Clement) but there is no mention of the Empty Tomb until Constantine announces that he wants to build some cathedrals at holy sites in the Holy Land. All of a sudden the Bishop of Jerusalem announces the location of the Empty Tomb under a pagan temple built by Hadrian in circa 110 CE. Eusebius, the Bishop of Palestine, was dubious about this claim. Now, why would the bishop of Palestine by dubious about the location of the Empty Tomb if the site had been known to Christians ever since the time of Jesus. I don’t buy it. I think the Empty Tomb was invented by the author of the Gospel of Mark. The apostle Paul seems to know nothing about Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb.
And as I have mentioned many times, seeing dead people is a very common phenomenon in human history. And since most scholars do not believe that the Gospels are eyewitness accounts, stories they may have started out as “I saw a bright light” end up with sticking fingers in nail prints.
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If anyone wants to check out the archeological evidence for a first century Nazareth, here is a summary of what I have found:
1. Excavations in the 1950s and 1960s on the site of the Basilica of the Annunciation in central Nazareth revealed what were judged by the Israel Antiquities Authority to be “the nucleus of the small Roman-period village” (quoted in Jenks, 2013)
2. A number of tombs and graves dated to the first century have been found in the vicinity of Nazareth (see e.g. the reference to archaeology by B. Bagatti, N. Feig & Z. Yavor in Wikiedia).
3. First century coins have been found at Mary’s Well in Nazareth (probably located outside the ancient village), and there is some evidence of a Roman bath house nearby. However this evidence is considered useful but not conclusive.
4. The Nazareth Village Farm site is located nearby to the above sites, and was once a farm on a hill just outside ancient Nazareth. Excavations and analysis by Stephan Pfann, Ross Voss and Yehudah Rapuano over the period 1997-2007 have found several structures (a winepress, several watchtowers and agricultural terraces). Coins and pottery found at the site confirm that there was an agrarian community at Nazareth in the first century.
5. In 2009, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced it had uncovered the remains of a first century house at the International Marian Center site nearby to these others. Artefacts again indicated the house was occupied in the first century, probably before 70 CE.
6. Dr Ken Dark (PhD in archaeology from Cambridge University, Associate Professor at Reading University, with more than a decade of archaeological work in Galilee and several published papers on his findings), published in 2012 the results of an excavation under the Sisters of Nazareth convent in the centre of the present city of Nazareth.
He concludes from the remains of a structure, and the dating of some artefacts found there and two tombs, that this is the remains of “an exceptionally well-preserved domestic building, probably a ‘courtyard house’” dating from about the middle of the first century. Unusually, it appears that the house went out of use a little later that century and the tombs were cut into the abandoned house before the end of the first century.
This is the basis of historians’ confidence that Nazareth was a small village occupied around the time of Jesus, for example:
Maurice Casey (Jesus of Nazareth p129, written before the two latest finds outlined above were published): ”there does not seem to be any serious doubt among competent investigators that some finds are of sufficiently early date, and that these include a vineyard with walls and a tower, which show that there was some sort of settlement, and shards which are said to date from the Herodian period.”
Bart Ehrman: ”Even though it existed, this is not the place someone would make up as the hometown of the messiah. Jesus really came from there, as attested in multiple sources.”
Larry Hurtado (referring to Ken Dark): ”He has identified first-century CE domestic structures”
For a good summary of the evidence, see The Quest for the Historical Nazareth by Gregory Jenks.
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It was fortunate I was able to find an alternative perspective about Michael Grant’s view of the character Jesus of Nazareth, and fr those who read the articles , it was apparent he was not quite as unbiased as Unklee would like us to beleive.
No matter the heartfelt pleas and crying from the wilderness that believers such as Unk continue to indulge in the argument for ”The consensus is that,” it is becoming clear that this consensus is nowhere near as broad or even a genuine consensus as some might claim.
While archaeological evidence for this period continues to be unearthed nothing
has ever corroborated a single thing that would lend any more credence to such Jesus-Claims.
And it needs to be restated: The ONLY information regarding the life of the biblical character Jesus of Nazareth is in the gospels; documents we now know from experts , many of whom are Christians, surprisingly enough, are fraught with mistakes, interpolation, and in some case outright fraud.
We have absolutely no idea who wrote them, or exactly when they were written ( although we know they are not eyewitness testimony)
And if we consider that one’s eternal soul rests on belief in these spurious texts, or at the very least , believing in the supposed core message they convey, this seems to me very much like giving up everything one owns and leaving your family to set sail for a small island in the South Pacific in a leaky rowboat, simply because you found a hand-drawn treasure map of highly dubious origin, between the pages of a Robert Louis Stevenson novel, signed in red crayon by someone calling themselves Long John Silver.
Maybe it’s my cynical nature, but this seems not quite Kosher to me.
Ark
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And there you have it, Unklee’s version of truth.
In an English Premier League match two nights ago, Liverpool beat Stoke 4-1. However, in truth Stoke didn’t actually lose .
In fact, there is every chance that if the game had been allowed to run even an extra 15 minutes, Stoke could have come back and hammered Liverpool 6-4. At least.
After all, Stoke had three ex-Liverpool players on their team and there is based on history at least two Liverpool players could very likely have been sent off.
And let’s not forget the weather. Stats show Liverpool are never at their best when it rains. Well, they may have lost a couple of games in torrential downpours ,and we all know how much rain there is in the UK, right?
And also, Jurgen Klopp, Liverpool’s manager, was obviously worried about his glasses getting broken again.
So the subtle truth is, there is absolutely no reason not to beleive that Stoke did run out winners.
And this is how the consensus of Soccer journos should report it …. subtly.
Ark.
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@ Howie
Interesting.
However …..
Carrier’s article was penned in 2009!
That is 17 years ago and in those days he was firmly against the mythicist position.
You are aware, I hope, that he has shifted his position somewhat these days?
Although it was nice to read that he also raised the fact of the nearest cliff being over a mile away making ”Luke’s” geography look silly.
Unless they were planning on rolling JC down the hill? 🙂
For what it’s worth, the individual who discovered the Caeserea inscription, the Priestly List, I think it’s known as, turned out to be was a known fraudster and there are now doubts about the authenticity of this small, incomplete inscription.
I cannot remember the link so for now we will just have to say this is hearsay from the Ark.
And again, I strongly recommend reading the results of Baggati’s survey and report and the later Nazareth Farm Report.
Regards.
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@unkleE
Seriously, you believe that Jesus didn’t see the OT as set in stone? Really? When I read that I immediately thought of this scripture:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest part or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.” (Matthew 5:17)
Then there’s this….
“For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven (Uh-oh, you’re being lax with gee oh dee’s rules!); but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” — Matthew 5:18-19
And then we have…..
“It is easier for Heaven and Earth to pass away than for the smallest part of the letter of the law to become invalid.” (Luke 16:17)
And….
“Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law” (John7:19)
You’re a typical Christian, a watered down one. You all have to be because (in all honesty) no one can keep up with all of those scriptures, especially when so many contradict each other. Not to mention, how unreasonable some commandments can be. For instance, Exodus 20 (the Ten Commandments) states that should someone honor his/her parents, he/she will have a long life. The other nine do not carry this promise. So, if a person has a sick and twisted mom or dad he/she should be faithful and loyal to him or her? That’s abuse and manipulation at its finest.
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Ark
While I think the IAA seems to have accepted and published her finding — and Alexandre has published (along with some other scholars) on this matter (see link below) in a publication of the Israel Antiquities Authority — I am happy to be cautious about the conclusiveness of her findings/arguments.
The paper: “Mary’s Well, Nazareth : the late Hellenistic to the Ottoman periods / Yardenna Alexandre ; with contributions by Guy Bar-Oz, Ariel Berman and Noa Raban-Gerstel.” http://franklin.library.upenn.edu/record.html?id=FRANKLIN_5915491
I cannot access the paper, but a review (by a Jewish scholar) published by the The Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society is very positive: http://aias.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Strata-31-Book-Reviews.pdf
In addition to discussion of her findings, the review also says “Based upon other excavations in the area, however, most scholars have continued to hold that there was sufficient evidence to hold that Nazareth was a settlement in the first century CE.”
I generally share his view on this subject, as do well over 99% of relevant scholars.
While I don’t dispute that there are some who are (theologically or financially) motivated to affirm the historicity of Nazareth, I seriously doubt Bart Ehrman or very many critical scholars have any money, job security or prestige riding on Nazareth being populated in the early 1st century.
Frankly, I think this is a strange argument to make against Bart Ehrman. He is a very well-established, tenured professor who became famous, in large part, by writing books that showed how much of what Christians believe isn’t actually true. The idea that Bart Ehrman, of all people, is deeply invested in the accuracy of the Bible is demonstrably false.
My own view is that the balance of evidence is that Nazareth was probably modestly populated in the early first century. If more persuasive evidence for Nazareth being abandoned during the lifetime of Jesus comes out, I will happily change my opinion and conclude that Nazareth was (for whatever reason) a legend that arose later.
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Ark
Carrier gave a talk in 2009 entitled “Why I Think Jesus Didn’t Exist.”
Further, Carrier has also criticized many of his fellow mythicists for making weak/poor arguments that Nazareth did not exist (that is, that Nazareth was not populated in the early 1st century), and he wrote this in 2016:
http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11435
“…Ehrman is right. Though the evidence for Nazareth is more problematic than Ehrman portrayed (e.g. the coin evidence he referred to means just a few first century coins found in a well on a farm nearby Nazareth; being in a well, we can’t establish when those coins fell there, and the existence of a farm does not entail the existence of a nearby village), I still think the balance of evidence supports an early Nazareth, and Ehrman’s second point (that even if Nazareth didn’t exist, that has no effect on the probability Jesus existed) is exactly what I myself argue in OHJ (p. 258, n. 8).”
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Let look at two of Eric’s (UnkleE) principle pieces of evidence for the divinity of Jesus:
1. That people believed that he performed miracles and healings.
Several million Pentecostals on the planet believe that their pastors and evangelists perform miracles and healings every day of the week, but does Eric believe that these men and women are divine? No. Does Eric believe that these deeds constitute evidence that any one of these pastors or evangelists is the Son of God? No. So why do similar claims about Jesus prove that he was the Son of God?
2. A literature search of articles written between 1975 – 2005 on the topic of the Empty Tomb by New Testament scholars demonstrated that 75% of the authors of these articles favored the historicity of the Empty Tomb.
Think about that. Does such a literature search reflect an accurate polling of the views of all New Testament scholars of that time period, i.e., did every New Testament scholar living during that time period write an article on the Empty Tomb? Would a liberal scholar who did not believe in the historicity of the Empty Tomb have written an article on the Empty Tomb? Maybe, maybe not. Would a conservative, born again, evangelical scholar for whom the bodily resurrection is the foundation of his worldview have written about the Empty Tomb? Most likely, yes. So isn’t it very likely that the results of this literature search will naturally favor of the historicity of this claim?
But the more important point is this: Even if there was an Empty Tomb, there are MULTIPLE, much more PROBABLE, NATURAL explanations for an empty tomb than a literal resurrection/reanimation of a three-day-dead body.
The two principle pieces of evidence for Eric’s claim of the divinity of Jesus are very, very weak.
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This is important as the term first century is ambiguous.
There is evidence that suggests the settlement appeared mid to late 1st century but not early, as when JC and his family are supposed to have existed.
And of course, this would suggest the village or whatever it was and its community was firmly established before the first century, and there is simply not enough evidence to support this.
Even Alexandre hedged her terms in this regard and the nonsense around the coins …
well, I suggest you dig deeper, if you will excuse the pun.
And for what its worth, Yaphia is just up the road and it has been speculated that this was the town that utilized the tombs that were discovered where Nazareth is supposed to have been. A more plausible explanation bearing in mind Jewish burial tradition.
If we are to base any credence, and credence at all, on Luke’s description we should be digging for a thriving little city complete with synagogue et al.
Estimates of the size have been down-scaled from a city to a few thousand people to a hamlet / village and a single family farm with a few outbuildings.
Anyway, this is one of those subjects that you and I are unlikely to agree upon and at the risk of coming across like an unklee and cutting the thread short, I urge you to read Bagatti’s initial report and the NFR.
Oh, and pop over to unklee’s site and read the dialogue between him and a bloke called Bernard on the post Nazareth revisited.
An interesting little anecdote to end with.
Eusebius mentioned Nazareth so was apparently aware of it and it was less than a days’ ride by donkey from Caeserea, I beleive. And yet he never visited it. Not once. Not ever.
People have traveled far greater distances to see the birthplace of Elvis.
Personally, I found this odd. One would think he would have wanted to at least visit the birthplace of the Creator of the Universe, wouldn’t you?
And remember, when in doubt ….. follow the money. 🙂
T’ra.
Regards
Ark
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Unklee
Would it be fair to say that the basis for this claim is the bald assertion (based on unpublished research) of Gary Habermas?
Can you identify how many authors were counted to arrive at the 75% figure?
In the piece I presume you are referencing, Habermas wrote, “I have compiled 23 arguments for the empty tomb and 14 considerations against it, as cited by recent critical scholars. Generally, the listings are what might be expected, dividing along theological “party lines.” To be sure, such a large number of arguments, both pro and con, includes very specific differentiation, including some overlap. Of these scholars, approximately 75% favor one or more of these arguments for the empty tomb, while approximately 25% think that one or more arguments oppose it. Thus, while far from being unanimously held by critical scholars, it may surprise some that those who embrace the empty tomb as a historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority.”
Note that he does not explicitly say that the authors counted specifically wrote about the empty tomb. Instead, he only says these authors “cited” some of the arguments/considerations that would be supportive of, or opposed to, the empty tomb. For example, he says “the most popular argument favoring the Gospel testimony on this subject is that, in all four texts, women are listed as the initial witnesses.”
In other words, he may simply be saying that 75% of the authors he counted were supportive of arguments that he classified as favoring an empty tomb. This is substantially different than authors explicitly finding in favor of the historicity of an empty tomb.
Perhaps he is making a stronger claim, but what he has written is much more vague than your argument.
And, of course, it remains a bald assertion.
However, I am willing to be corrected. If I am mistaken, please provide the data.
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@ Jon
btw … are you quite sure this was in 2009?
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Pretty sure.
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2009/01/appearing-at-la-verne.html
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Fair enough … thanks for the link.
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Nate has given an excellent summation why there are too many discrepancies in the two birth narratives to believe that they are accurate historical accounts. Forgive me for the self promotion, but I just finished a comparison of the four Resurrection accounts doing the same type of side by side comparison. These four tales are not harmonizable or believable:
https://lutherwasnotbornagaincom.wordpress.com/2016/12/29/why-are-there-so-many-discrepancies-in-the-resurrection-stories-of-the-four-gospels/
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Hi Charity,
Yes, there are several passages, which you have quoted, showing that Jesus took the OT very seriously. But that doesn’t mean that he set it in stone. Let me share some examples.
Five times in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:21, 27, 31, 38, 43) Jesus used the phraseology of ”You have heard that it was said ….. But I tell you ….” to quote the Old Testament and then modify it or correct it. Some of those OT passages are in the Ten Commandments, yet even they were not “set in stone” for Jesus!
There were many occasions in Jesus’ life where he “broke” the Sabbath law: Matthew 12:1-13, Luke 13:10-17, Luke 14:1-6, John 5:1-15, John 9:1-41 – again one of the Ten Commandments not set in stone.
When he announced his mission in Luke 4:18-19, Jesus quoted from Isaiah 61:1-2 – but he chooses not to complete verse 2 of Isaiah 61, which says: “and the day of vengeance of our God”. It seems he was distancing himself from violence as a means for fulfilling his mission and correcting an Old Testament misunderstanding about God. If he was correcting the OT, he surely didn’t see it set in stone.
On another occasion (John 10:31-39) Jesus totally changes the meaning of the passage he is quoting (Psalm 82), showing again that he was very flexible about the OT. This shouldn’t surprise us, for this form of flexible interpretation (often labelled “midrash” or “pesher”) was common among first century Jews, and Jesus and Paul used it too. (In fact, I once did a survey of all OT quotes from the first 6 books of the NT, and found fully half of them were very flexible – not set in stone – in their interpretation.)
So against your 3 passages I have instanced a dozen counter examples, which is surely enough to justify my original statement.
But you raise a good point, and so we can learn from asking the question: if Jesus so readily modified, changed or flouted the OT, why did he also give it such respect?
I think the answer is found in a verse right alongside one you quoted: Luke 16:16, which says: ”The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing their way into it.” This enigmatic saying seems to be saying he was offering people a choice – they could continue with the old way of the Law, or they could join the stampede to join the new way of the good news of the kingdom of God.
This conclusion is reinforced by one of the best known events in Jesus’ entire life, the Last Supper, where Jesus says (Luke 22:20): ”In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” The allusion is clear. The Old Testament is the old covenant (testament means covenant) characterised by animal sacrifice, but he was beginning a new covenant (also characterised by sacrifice). If we join the new covenant then the old no longer has force. (So I believe the OT is scripture and teaches us about God, but it no longer has jurisdiction over us, which is a clear teaching of the NT.)
So finally, we can see how your passages and mine fit together. Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.” Fulfil means to complete and bring to an end. For the Jews of his day, the Law was the starting point, but Jesus didn’t intend it to be the end point.
I hope you may even see that I am not actually a ” a typical Christian, a watered down one” (though I’m not sure that being watered down is a bad thing!). In fact, you and I agree totally with your last paragraph: “no one can keep up with all of those scriptures, especially when so many contradict each other. Not to mention, how unreasonable some commandments can be. For instance, Exodus 20 (the Ten Commandments) states that should someone honor his/her parents, he/she will have a long life. The other nine do not carry this promise. So, if a person has a sick and twisted mom or dad he/she should be faithful and loyal to him or her?”
You have understood what a lot of christians don’t understand, and are closer to the teachings of Jesus than you probably think. So we have much common ground.
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@unkleE, “but he chooses not to complete verse 2 of Isaiah 61, which says: “and the day of vengeance of our God”. It seems he was distancing himself from violence as a means for fulfilling his mission and correcting an Old Testament misunderstanding about God.”
Then why did Jesus say, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Mt 10:34
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