This is the seventeenth chapter in the series My List: Believe the Bible? Read why I started this list in About Me.
As we approach the holiday of Christmas, millions celebrate the birth of a Jewish man from 2,000 years ago. The story of a virgin birth under a guiding star with angels, wise men, and shepherds all around. A savior king who was God himself asleep in a manger filled with hay.
Like most Christians, I loved the story of Jesus’ birth. Unfortunately this amazing story is one of the most erroneous, inconsistent and impossible testimonies in the entire Bible.
Let’s start by looking at the New Testament as a whole. The birth of Christ only appears in two Gospels, Matthew and Luke. It wasn’t even mentioned in the first Gospel of Mark written 40+ years after Jesus’ death. You have to agree that it’s a pretty huge detail to exclude from the story of Jesus. Why would the author overlook mentioning that Jesus was incarnated by God in a virgin and was God himself in the flesh? The earliest texts by the Apostle Paul don’t refer to Jesus’ virgin birth either. Paul says that Jesus “was born of the seed of David” (Romans 1:3) and was “born of a woman,” not a virgin (Galatians 4:4).
The reason the story of Jesus’ birth was important was to convince skeptical Jews that Jesus had fulfilled Old Testament prophesy to prove he was the messiah. Unfortunately the authors of Matthew and Luke didn’t get their stories or historical data straight.
THE DATE
According to Matthew, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1). According to Luke, Jesus was born during the first census in Israel, while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:2). This is impossible because Herod died in March of 4 BC and the census took place in 6 and 7 AD, about 10 years after Herod’s death.
THE PLACE
Both Matthew and Luke say that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Luke has Mary and Joseph traveling from their home in Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea for the birth of Jesus (Luke 2:4). Matthew, in contradiction to Luke, says that it was only after the birth of Jesus that Mary and Joseph resided in Nazareth, and then only because they were afraid to return to Judea (Matthew 2:21-23).
In order to have Jesus born in Bethlehem, Luke says that everyone had to go to the city of their birth to register for the census. This is absurd, and would have caused a chaotic nightmare. The purpose of the Roman census was for taxation, and the Romans were interested in where the people lived and worked, not where they were born (which they could have found out by simply asking rather than causing thousands of people to travel).
THE PROPHECIES
Matthew says that the birth of Jesus and the events following it fulfilled several Old Testament prophecies. These prophecies include:
This verse is part of a prophecy that Isaiah relates to King Ahaz regarding the fate of the two kings threatening Judah at that time and the fate of Judah itself. In the original Hebrew, the verse says that a “young woman” will give birth, not a “virgin” which is an entirely different Hebrew word. The young woman became a virgin only when the Hebrew word was mistranslated into Greek.
This passage obviously has nothing to do with Jesus (who, if this prophecy did apply to him, should have been named Immanuel instead of Jesus).
2. The “slaughter of the innocents” (Jeremiah 31:15)
Matthew says that Herod, in an attempt to kill the newborn Messiah, had all the male children two years old and under put to death in Bethlehem and its environs, and that this was in fulfillment of prophecy.
This story is pure historical fiction. Herod was guilty of many monstrous crimes, including the murder of several members of his own family. However, ancient historians such as Josephus, who delighted in listing Herod’s crimes, do not mention what would have been Herod’s greatest crime by far. It simply didn’t happen.
The context of Jeremiah 31:15 makes it clear that the weeping is for the Israelites about to be taken into exile in Babylon, and has nothing to do with slaughtered children hundreds of years later.
3. Called out of Egypt (Hosea 11:1)
Matthew has Mary, Joseph and Jesus fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod, and says that the return of Jesus from Egypt was in fulfillment of prophecy (Matthew 2:15). However, Matthew quotes only the second half of Hosea 11:1. The first half of the verse makes it very clear that the verse refers to God calling the Israelites out of Egypt in the exodus led by Moses, and has nothing to do with Jesus.
As further proof that the slaughter of the innocents and the flight into Egypt never happened, one need only compare the Matthew and Luke accounts of what happened between the time of Jesus’ birth and the family’s arrival in Nazareth. According to Luke, forty days (the purification period) after Jesus was born, his parents brought him to the temple, made the prescribed sacrifice, and returned to Nazareth. Luke makes no mention of Egypt or the slaughter of children.
The main focus of Christmas today is on secular traditions. Gathering with family, exchanging gifts around an illuminated pine tree, all while waiting for an old fat man to come down the chimney. Maybe Christians were trying to distract from the absurdity of the true Christmas story. But who doesn’t enjoy getting a few days off work to party, overeat and to receive a few cool new gadgets to play with?
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