After all, it's just a harmless story, no?
Things About The Nativity Story That Are Not Actually In The Bible
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.According to the Gospel of Matthew Jesus was born of a virgin in fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14. But in the original Hebrew (the language of the Old Testament) the passage in question reads “a young woman” or “maiden” (al’mah) shall give birth. The Hebrew Scriptures were then translated into Greek (the Septuagint) in the 3rd to 2nd century BC, as Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language by then, having been replaced by Aramaic and Greek within Jewish communities of the time. And the translators chose the Greek word “parthenos” (virgin) for that passage. (The dedicated Hebrew word for virgin is beth’ullah). So a “young woman shall give birth” was mistranslated into a “virgin shall give birth”, an error that was then carried forward into all our modern Bibles. Pretty well every other Gospel episode can be dismantled in a similar way. The Gospels are therefore not derived from eyewitness testimony or memory as claimed by the Church. In fact, there really is only one gospel story, which is the first one written: Mark. And Mark bears all the internal hallmarks of allegory. From that point forward all other gospels are rewrites or spin-offs of Mark, whose original fictional narrative then gets historicized by these later gospels and accepted and promoted as such by the Church of Rome as a means to usurp authority from the Jerusalem Church. These winners of history then went on to write their own story, eclipsing the original form of the religion based on the writings of Paul, whose Celestial Jesus did all of his incarnating, suffering, dying and rising in a sub-lunar heavenly realm, where he had been crucified by the “rulers of this age”, a Pauline reference to the demon powers of the air. This is the mythicist theory of Christian origins, whose leading proponents are scholars such as Richard Carrier, Robert Price (he’s the Bible Geek:awesome Podcast!) and Earl Doherty. Sounds far fetched when you first hear it, but hey, the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Joseph and Moses,etc.) were considered to be historical figures by the “scholarly consensus” back in the day. That’s now a minority opinion, existing only in the netherworld of Evangelical Christianity. So things change. So yes, the non-historicity of Jesus is a live option that can no longer be easily dismissed.
NostraDumbass
Level 7
May 7, 2021
2
Matthew is an assigned name. Don’t really know who wrote that Gospel
@abyers1970 All of the gospels are written anonymously, with names and traditions becoming attached to them during the course of the 2nd century. The Pauline epistles don’t fare much better, with 7 at most considered authentic, the balance being later forgeries, written long after Paul had died. And all of the non-Pauline epistles are forgeries, except for Hebrews, which was written anonymously, like the Gospels.
What is in the bible is
An account of a census that did not happen till (8AD) after Herod was dead, and did not require people to return to their ancestral homes
The supernatural rape and impregnation of a 14 year old girl,
More lies about Herod the great and when he died (4 BCE),
A slaughter of the innocents that is actually stolen from the Talmudic story of the birth of Abraham and King Nimrod 4000 years before
And Christians think this a suitable story for young children.
LenHazell53
Level 9
May 6, 2021
0
The census was actually in 6 CE (AD if you prefer), about 10 years after the death of Herod the Great. Quirinius was installed as the 1st Roman governor of Judea at this time, and yet Luke portrays him and Herod as contemporaries. Oops! And you registered for a Roman census in the town in which you owned property, not where your distant ancestors lived (got that one right Len). And the head of the household (the man of course, sorry ladies) could register his entire family on his own, so no need to bring your pregnant wife along for the trip. But it’s all a moot point anyway, because this was a local census that applied only to Judea (not the “whole world”/Roman Empire as Luke claims). Galilee remained a semi-autonomous client kingdom of Rome under the rule of Herod Antipas, and so anyone living there was unaffected by the census of 6 CE. And there is no census in Matthew, the only other gospel to mention a nativity. And after Jesus is born in Matthew his family flees to Egypt to escape the “slaughter of the innocents”. But there is no such slaughter in Luke. Instead, the family in that gospel leisurely saunters down the road to Jerusalem to present Jesus in the temple (not a smart thing to do if Herod was looking for newborns to kill) and then returns to Nazareth, with no mention of a side trip to Egypt. Holy crap, what a clusterfuck!
He never even existed. The Bible is a bullshit book.
barjoe
Level 9
May 6, 2021
2
The consensus is that he did exist but the story of his life was embroidered somewhat and he certainly didn't rise from the dead.
@Moravian the "consensus" of a bunch of "believers" is not worth the paper is written on. N9o such "consensus" exists outside of their narrow purview.
@AnneWimsey Not really. Independent biblical scholars reckon that the Jesus story was more than likely based on a real person but as the first gospel of Mark had no nativity scene it was probably added later to embellish the story and further prove the divinity of Jesus.
The only historical evidence of Jesus is a writing by Flavius Josephus who was born 5 years AFTER Jesus death and is noted as a forgery too. Earliest books on Christianity or gospels were found 100 years after Jesus death. All of the earlier Christians were pokes, slaves and illiterate
@abyers1970 There are two references to a Jesus of Nazareth in the massive 20 volumes in the book of Josephus. One mention of John the Baptist.
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