This is just noting a few of the most notable issues I've found with the Jesus birth accounts, which is by no means exhaustive, but merely the ones I noted during my study of the Bible at the beginning of the decline of my faith. While these have been well documented by many scholars, I came about these by reading nothing but the Bible about five years ago, which I then looked to outside sources to corroborate.
Only two of the four gospels, Matthew and Luke, deem Jesus' birth to be a noteworthy event. John tells us only of the Incarnation - that the Logos "became flesh" - while Mark doesn't say anything about Jesus until his baptism at around 30 years old. Certainly Mark knows nothing of the Annunciation or the Virgin Birth. In fact, Mark's account seems to indicate there was no angelic announcement of Jesus' birth and godliness, since in
3:30-31, Jesus' family declare him to be "out of his mind" upon declaring himself the Son of Man.
There are
discrepancies in the genealogies of the gospels, which I'll merely link to and move on.
Luke 2 tells us that Jesus was born in Nazareth, while
Matthew 2 tells us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and moved to Nazareth after his return from Egypt.
Then there's the issue of the Roman census talked about in
Luke 2. It indicates that Joseph was an inhabitant of Nazareth, yet for some reason was compelled to travel to the "city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David." The genealogies given to us by Luke list dozens of generations between David and Joseph. It's doubtful that Joseph would even know his genealogy going back this far, let alone which part of his genealogy to trace back (I, personally, would have no idea whether to follow my family line back to Ireland, England, Sweden, Finland, Norway or Northwest America). Furthermore, why on earth would he be required to return to the land of his ancestors anyways, when a census would likely require him to register himself in the town he lives in. This would be a ridiculous way to conduct a census.
Just a few things to mull over.
Peace, Love, Krisko Disko
Comments (16)
Well, get ready for the convoluted, unnecessarily complicated excuses of apologists in the face of such glaring, patently obvious discrepancies. *sigh* I've heard it all before. The genealogy issue alone is quite a marvel to look at. There was an article in a freethought magazine, and they made a chart - seeing them side by side was quite revealing. It was a looong article: you need a lot of space to point out the horribly mismatched analogies in one gospel against the other. But, again, apologists have their excuses...there's one that claims that the genealogies are based off Joseph. News flash: according to the gospels themselves, Mary conceived without male intervention, which means Joseph is not Jesus' father in any way shape or form! Ah, the sad maneuvers of apologists.
There's an apologist's Bible available on Amazon that seems interesting: it boasts that is has 6,500 notes explaining apparent problems. Any book that NEEDS that many explanations should call its own validity into question.
As an atheist, I'm learning to understand the Bible from a metaphorical perspective. Each book from the Bible was written by a different man at a different point in time, all of whom were writing to different audiences. They had various messages that they wanted to send about Jesus. For John, Jesus' birth wasn't particularly vital. He used his time to convey the more spiritual aspects of Jesus. Besides, he is also the only of the four who does not write from a first person, I saw it, perspective.
Now this doesn't make it any more real to me, but trying to understand it from a historical, objective stand point does cause everything to make a little more sense. After all, they were just people.
Hi. I'm not sure about what I think of those Old Testament kings. They did have multiple wives and I've learned that men who had more than one wife in the Bible all had bad luck. I guess that was their punishment from God.
I don't know much about this stuff... All I know is that pre-marital sex is a sin and I am just trying to avoid it.
Your comments are always welcome on my site. :) I just don't like it when people are so rude about their opinions on religion. But thank you for being so polite.
[Now this doesn't make it any more real to me, but trying to understand it from a historical, objective stand point does cause everything to make a little more sense. After all, they were just people.]
Of course I understand this, and in the last year or so I've begun to appreciate the Bible quite a bit more when looking at it from the historical critical perspective. I was just pointing out things that drew me away from looking at the Gospels as history in the modern sense of the word... as literal fact, direct recorded events. I should have made this more clear in the post, but thanks for clarifying.
Yeah I suppose you might run into problems if you want to argue that everything is literally "God said this to me so I wrote it down" rather than real people writing inspiration from their perspective. But you know me, I'm a freelancer.
you may have seen this before
http://aboyandhiscomputer.com/Christian_beliefs_vs_atheist_beliefs.html
Have you seen my movie that I posted the other day?
You better have!^^ Yeah, Mark intentionally decided to omit such a miraculous event even as he knew about it. Mhm. Gawd, apologists are so sad.
Wow. I finally found a blog not dedicated to how many calories you consumed today. <3 Finally. Anyway, I'm atheist and love picking out discrepancies in the Bible to my fellow Bible Belt residents. I've actually has someone say to my face what interstellarmachine wrote. Quite an awkward silence.
[ To say “Mark knows nothing of Annunciation or Virgin Birth” is an assumption.]
An assumption I back up with the following sentence, where I point out that Jesus' family declares him crazy for declaring himself holy.
[There are no discrepancies in Jesus’ genealogy considering one is probably Mary’s and one is Joseph’s.]
Except Jesus isn't related to Joseph. Some of the other hypotheses about the genealogy issue can be found here. However, none are backed up by any evidence, biblical or extra. They are all just speculation to validate the preconception of inerrancy.
[Commentary in light of extra-biblical historical accounts on the census would be more convincing than a proclamation of ignorance of your own ancestry and the way you think you would run a worldwide empire.]
Jesus Remembered.a) Since when has common sense been a poor argument? I think I raised some valid points that you have to admit, have some merit.
b) I was listing issues that I personally took from the gospels while being a believer, without looking at outside sources.
c) Even by the shorter of the two gospels (Luke), you have forty two generations between David and Joseph. I dare you to justify running an empire like this.
d) Extra biblical evidence is given extensively in James D. G. Dunn,
A decent online source can be found here. The gist of it is:
- There is no extra-biblical account of any worldwide or Roman-wide census.
- It was never the practice of the Roman empire to make anyone return to the land of their ancestors.
- Joseph himself would not have been required to register in Judea, since Galilee was not affected by the census in 6 C.E.
Yeah, they're all different. So? What you've got here is a faith that in it's primary metanarrative blissfully recognizes the core truth of the postmodern era...that approaching Truth with a Capital T can only be done imprecisely and through triangulation. Ever watch Kurosawa's masterpiece "Rashomon?"
As for the genealogies, the bigger question is why the heck they're there at all. Who cares about Joseph? He weren't the baby-daddy, as they say.
Ancient Judah was a male dominated society and people were know as (and Jews are today) the son of the father, not the mother. Geneologies and inheritances came from the father, but I guess that's moot. If Solomon, the son of David, really had a thousand wives, almost everyone in Israel at the time of Jesus probably could claim descent from David. - The Geezer
I didn't bother to read all the comments so someone probably already said this...
But Luke 2 definitely says Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not Nazareth.Also, if you were an ancient Israelite descended from King David (one of the greatest most respected Hebrew historical figures), you wouldn't forget the fact. They all kept track of which tribe they belonged to already. Genealogy was important to people then then; it isn't now.It is interesting how you did not stop using your brain in the midst of your faith. Most christians do not even blink an eye when reading over these contradictions. I know that I did the same thing when I was a christian, but these contradictions are just too many to ignore. For example, most christian do not know that there was a hebrew gospel of Mattew written. This version did not contain the genealogy of Jesus whereas the current Matthew that is reproduce today has the genealogy of Jesus. This is just one of many contradictions in the bible.