We continue our look today with the look at the birth narratives of Christ which have earlier been claimed to be contradictory, although no contradictions were given. Let’s take a look and see and keep in mind that it speaks much of how Christ was viewed that a birth narrative even exists. In the huge majority of ancient biographies, you will find nothing about the birth and/or childhood of a person.
The first aspect to deal with is the star. What was it? The consensus is not in on this one yet. I lean towards an alignment of the planets in this case. I’m open to change though. Why didn’t everyone else see it? Well who says that they didn’t? They might have seen it and thought nothing of it. It could have been something only the astrologers would notice. (And astrology was not esteemed too much in Israel.)
Was he born in Bethlehem? We have no reason to think he wasn’t even in Luke. We are told that if we take Luke literally, we can’t say that. Now I am frankly puzzled by that since the Luke account does say that Jesus was born in Bethlehem? I leave it then to give the author the benefit of the doubt and as we’ve studied more, it seems Luke got more and more right we’re finding each time. He would have been familiar with the procedures of the time and why they were done.
Again, Loftus makes a reference to contradictions in the text citing another author. (Robin Lane Fox in the Unauthorized Version.) It should be noted though that something that is not understood is not a contradiction. It will have to be demonstrated what the error is and that will be done by showing what really happened. One looks at the assertions about Matthew being wrong, but one doesn’t find any supporting evidence for it. It is merely an assertion.
As for the hometown of Mary and Joseph, what exactly is the problem? The text simply says that after the family returned from Egypt, they lived in Nazareth. Could it be they simply stayed where Jesus was born for a time and then fled to Egypt and when they came back, they went to their hometown?
Much is made about Mary asking the angel how she can conceive since she knows not a man. The author, Ranke-Heinemann says this has to be made up since she said “man” instead of “husband.” Simple reason. Mary wasn’t married then. She was legally engaged so she didn’t know a man yet. (And Joseph would qualify as one.)
And of course, there’s the silence on the virgin birth in the Pauline epistles, the gospel of John, and the gospel of Mark. (For the record, none of these mention the Sermon on the Mount either.) Why did people in the adult community not know about the virgin birth? Simple guess? You think they would have believed it? They weren’t gullible after all….
As for the translation of Almah and Isaiah 7:14, that is best left to the experts in Greek and Hebrew grammar. I don’t claim to be one. An excellent look at it though can be found in Robert Reymond’s work “Jesus: Divine Messiah.” (An excellent book to read anyway.) I will say the mode of interpretation is pesher. (I urge the reader to look that up himself or herself to learn about it.)
Finally, it ends with science. How can Jesus be a human being? Since we know it takes a male sperm and a female egg now, how could Jesus be human if he didn’t have a human sperm?
Yes everyone. Keep in mind that if you believe that God created the universe, he’s really going to have to work extra hard to make one sperm cell to fertilize an egg. Modern genetics doesn’t do any damage whatsoever to the idea of the virgin birth. We call it a miracle for a reason.
Tomorrow, we start looking at the deity of Christ.
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