Wait, I thought the consensus was that there wasn’t even a town called “Nazareth” at the time.
More or less there was a small village, maybe 400-1000 people, with a name something like that. Very small burg.
Jesus could have been born in Bethlehem, but lived all his life in Nazareth. I was born in a small town in Washington state, but even since 1 yo, lived in CA.
Yes, the chronology of His birth does not match what we currently know about Roman history. It is likely that some details were confused by Luke, or that he was writing in generalities. Or that perhaps, we dont know all the minor details of Roman history as we think.
Jesus’ birth and infancy are really only discussed in Luke and Matthew (not by Mark or John, or by Paul or any of the other writers of epistles).
Matthew and Luke agree that:
1.) Jesus was born of a virgin (which Mark, John, Paul, et al. don’t bother to mention).
2.) Jesus was the Messiah, and Scripture (Old Testament) prophecy says the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem (see the fifth chapter of Micah); therefore, Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
Other than that, they don’t agree on much of anything, and frequently flatly contradict each other.
The genealogy in Matthew and the genealogy in Luke can’t be reconciled. They don’t even agree on who Jesus’ (step-)grandfather is. (Not to mention they’re both tracing a line of descent from David–and in Luke’s telling all the way back to Adam–through Joseph, even though both writers also deny Joseph was even the biological father of Jesus in the first place.)
Where they don’t actually contradict each other, Matthew and Luke still fail to include any details about Jesus’ birth that are included by the other biographer, including some pretty iconic and showy stuff: Matthew talks about the Star of Bethlehem and the Magi or wise men from the east, none of which is mentioned by Luke. Luke gives us the familiar story of Jesus being born in a manger (and the shepherds in the fields); Matthew doesn’t mention that at all. (The familiar picture from a bazillion nativity scenes of the “Three Wise Men” standing around in somebody’s barn, with the shepherds and all the farmyard animals gathered around the infant Jesus, and the Star of Bethlehem overhead, is a popular synthesis of the two biographies.)
Then it’s back to outright contradictions. Matthew has the “massacre of the innocents” and the flight into Egypt, neither of which is mentioned by Luke. Herod’s alleged mass infanticide in Bethlehem isn’t mentioned by anybody else in the world, not just by Luke–for example, Josephus doesn’t mention it–even though it was a well-established Jewish tradition that “the Messiah” would come from Bethlehem, and then all of a sudden a conspicuously non-Davidic Jewish ruler decides to have all the male infants and toddlers in the Messiah’s hometown murdered, which is really the sort of thing that would have gotten the attention of everyone in the Jewish world at the time. Anyway, Jesus’ parents (according to Matthew) flee to Egypt to escape Herod, and remain in Egypt until Herod has safely died (which happened in 4 BCE), after which time they decide to move to Galilee instead of back to Bethlehem. (Matthew states “…and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene”. Nobody seems to know what the heck Matthew is referring to with that statement.)
Meanwhile, in Luke, Joseph and his family are only in Bethlehem because of a completely daft alleged Roman practice of having everyone return to the city of their ancestors for a census (which is not a thing the Romans ever did, because the Romans may have been ruthless bastards, but they weren’t total idiots when it came to administering restive provinces: “Say, Quirinius, let’s have everyone go marching hither and yon on the roads of this notoriously rebellious province for a census–disrupting the living hell out of everything for everybody to the point where pregnant women can’t even find a Motelus Sextus to give birth in–so we can count them by where their great-great-grandfathers’ lived, rather than by where they live now.” “Sounds good to me! Make it so!”) (Matthew never mentions this census; Matthew just starts off with Joseph and Mary living in Bethlehem, where apparently they’d been living all along.) Anyway, in Luke they hang around in Bethlehem for about six weeks, then they go home to Nazareth in Galilee (which is where Luke says they were from in the first place, apart from the cockamamie census); there’s no mention of fleeing to Egypt for some extended period to escape Herod’s alleged mass infanticide.
Oh, and John seems to think Jesus is from Galilee. “How can the Messiah come from Galilee?”
This would have been a great place for Nicodemus, or someone, to point out that Jesus wasn’t from Galilee; he was from Bethlehem, just like the prophecy said he would be! At the very least, John (the narrator) could have pointed out in a little aside how the Pharisees were getting it wrong here.
Bottom line: Discussions of the “historical Jesus” and the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth are much fun, but regardless of your take on the historicity of Jesus more generally, a reasonable reading of the New Testament texts paints a picture where no one had really heard of Jesus of Nazareth until he started preaching as an adult; all these miraculous infancy stories of virgin births, and signs and wonders in the heavens and wise men from the East and the Messiah born in a manger, and the whole claim that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and was a verifiable direct descendant of David (In Accordance With the Prophecy), are pious stories made up after the fact.
First- the slaughter of the innocents is not unreasonable. Herod did slaughter lots of people, even kids. There is even a mention of what may be in in Roman history:
http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2009/12/08/The-Slaughter-of-the-Innocents-Historical-Fact-or-Legendary-Fiction.aspx
*
Macrobius (ca. AD 400), one of the last pagan writers in Rome, in his book Saturnalia, wrote: “When it was heard that, as part of the slaughter of boys up to two years old, Herod, king of the Jews, had ordered his own son to be killed, he [the Emperor Augustus] remarked, ‘It is better to be Herod’s pig [Gr. hys] than his son’ [Gr. huios]” (2.4.11; cited in Brown 1993:226). Macrobius may have gotten some of his historical facts garbled, but he could have given us a chronological key as well. If he was referring to the death of Antipater in 4 BC, the slaughter of the Innocents would have been one of the last, if not the last, brutal killings of Herod before he died. What is also interesting is the word-play in the quote attributed to Augustus- “pig” and “son” are similar sounding words in Greek. Herod would not kill a pig because he kept kosher, at least among the Jews; yet he had no qualms killing his own sons!*
And it is only a few boy children:
Yet Professor William F. Albright, the dean of American archaeology in the Holy Land, estimates that the population of Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth to be about 300 people (Albright and Mann 1971:19). The number of male children, two years old or younger, would be about six or seven (Maier 1998:178, footnote 25). This would hardly be a newsworthy event in light of what else was going on at the time.
And if Jesus was born in Bethlehem but moved and lived all his live in Nazareth in galilee, the sure, people would say “Jesus of Nazareth”.
Well, his mother would have. The gospels show Mary as still being around during Jesus’s adulthood, so there’s at least one possible source for info about his birth. But that doesn’t explain why Matthew’s and Luke’s Nativity narratives are so different from one another.
This is remarkably weak. “Well, it COULD have happened. Just because no one else in the world mentioned it doesn’t mean it DIDN’T happen. And Herod did a lot of other bad things that people DID mention.” But none of that is any kind of actual evidence that it DID happen.
As to Macrobius, he was writing four centuries later; and, although he was a pagan, he certainly could have gotten (some garbled version of) the tale from the Gospel of Matthew itself; by that point, Christianity was all over the place in the Roman Empire. This passage hardly constitutes any very convincing independent corroboration of the story from Matthew.
But being born in Bethlehem was very important if you were claiming to be the Messiah. It would be like people saying “Barack Obama of Indonesia”. (“How can the President of the United States come from Indonesia?” You would expect his supporters to be quick to jump in with “Oh, he only grew up in Indonesia; he was born in Hawaii, in the United States of America, in accordance with the Constitution. As it is written: No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”)
Jesus’ supporters didn’t bother to assert that he was born in Bethlehem in the Gospel of John (or in Mark) because they had never heard any such story that he had been; that particular pious fable (or rather, two different, internally inconsistent fables) hadn’t been invented yet (or John at least hadn’t heard of it).
True enough. But no “Gospel of Mary” has survived, if there ever was such a thing. (I mean, there’s probably some totally gonzo Gnostic “Gospel of Mary” out there, that was written a 150 years after the fact, and claims that the Boy Jesus could fly and shoot death rays out of his eyes. Some of the Gnostic writings make the accepted New Testament texts seem sober, restrained, and well-sourced by comparison.)
But somebody in the world did mention it- Matthew. And Macrobius. And honestly, besides Josephus, we have almost no history of the Middle east at that time. And it is totally in line with the sort of stuff Herod did. Herod was famous for that sort of thing.
So, it’s hardly a stretch and we have two sources. Just dismissing the sources doesn’t prove anything.
Thank you, MEBuckner. I tried to short-circuit much of this detail and just got lectured on the meaning of “obvious.” 
I assumed it was widely thought that Matthew was conflating “Nazarene” with “Nazarite.” (How similar are these words in … [What language was Matthew’s Gospel first written in anyway?])
Samson was the most famous Nazirite (excluding Jesus if he was also one!) Among the monkly vows of a Nazirite was No Haircuts! (Spoiler alert: Samson did get his hair cut.)
There are more details about Joseph and Mary through early church fathers and apocrophal sources, which probably isn’t any more accurate than anything else we have to go by, but found parts of in interesting. These earlier writings put Joseph’s age around 80-90 when he had his second marriage to Mary, while she was only 12 years old. This is something that would rightfully get you labeled a pedophile today, and put into the pokey. One early source mentions Joseph married at age 40 for his first marriage to Melcha of which lasted 49 years before her death. They are said to have had four sons and two daughters. This also falls in step with Mary’s perpetual virginity, explaining the children that way, instead of it possibly being her own biological kids.
Reading from the earlier sources, it’s amusing how much emphasis that was put on Mary’s virginity even when she was only 12 years old at the time. Seriously, at that age, were virgins that hard to come by in those days?
Matthew 1:25 seems explicit enough to me that states Joseph and Mary did consummate their marriage after she gave birth to Jesus, but like most holy writ, religious folk are given wide enough berth to let it mean whatever their hearts desires it to mean.
Nitpick: The emphasis on her virginity is related not so much to the fact that she is 12 but to the fact that she has had a child. And, yeah, virgin mothers were as rare then as they are now.
Yes, but no one believes those sources, which is why they are *apocryphal *, and even those sources disagree on 12 vs 14. However, in those times you could get betrothed at age 12 (but not married) and Mary had been betrothed to Joseph.
So, 14 or even 16 are also possible ages. Certainly a young woman.
And I will point out that with Parental consent (which they certainly had), even here, *today in the USA, *you can get married as young as 13 in some states. So, no, you wouldn’t get thrown “in the pokey”.
So, it is very very likely the ages of 12 and 80 are wrong, but yeah, Mary was quite young, as was the custom then- and is perfectly legal here in the USA.
I haven’t put too much time on this, but several of the apocryphal sources has a priest calling out to find all undefiled virgins in the house of David, i.e., his descendants. It’s been about one thousand years since the time of David at the time. One source says they found seven, another said they found seven plus Mary, there are a few other sources I’d have to refresh my memory on to see if the numbers are similar.
Yes, having a child without having intercourse at the time was certainly a big deal, but they also made a big deal out of the woman being a virgin.
Considering many women have went through life without being with any man, and nothing ever special happens to them in their lives, just find the story amusing how much fuss they made over it, especially when she was as young as she was. While she starts having sex with Joseph in her early teens, I don’t recall any of the apocryphal mentioning the two of them having any kids of their own, just the children from Joseph’ previous marriage. She also breaks her vow of virginity to the Lord when she started doing this, but I guess that’s why the apocryphal writings never made it in to the canon, too many details.
Many biblical scholars don’t believe what is in today’s bibles either, but they don’t go calling it apocryphal for that reason. According to quite a few scholars the meaning of that word has changed. It’s original intent was simply concealed, shared with a chosen few, hidden. Augustine used it as obscure in origin, as if the origin is really known of other canons. Origen did use it to mean it was corrupt, however his canon consisted of only 22 Hebrew books instead of the 39 found in the OT in Protestants bibles today, so these would have been corrupt to him. The original King James 1611 bible had 80 books total, while most Protestants settle for 66 today, so these 14 are now considered apocryphal. Protestants consider Catholics extra seven books as apocryphal, and then you have all the other variations of bibles to deal with today. I’m sure you’ll find the inerrant apologist crowd finding their canon special, while all other canon’s that differ than theirs is spurious, not to be trusted. It’zzz all good.
Sure, there are bible scholars who don’t believe what’s in the standard Bible, but they know that a lot of other people do, and that makes it interesting enough to be worth study. But nobody believes the apocryphal books.
And I’ve never heard mention of Mary making any sort of vow of virginity, but if there is any sect or source that believes or claims such a thing, it’d presumably be one that also claims that she did not, in fact, ever have sex with Joseph.
As for the story of only finding seven virgins in all of the House of David, well, I can find jokes set in present-day America with that same punchline. It doesn’t mean that modern-day virgins are all that rare, nor even really that anyone believes they’re that rare.
^^^
They do when it matches what they already have established in their own canon, and quite a bit of it does match up, they just add more detail, where the Gospels prefer to stay silent about it. I don’t need to believe the stories myself, but find some of them entertaining.
Yes, you presume right, she makes the vow of virginity in at least one that I’m aware of such as The Gospel of the Nativity of Mary and she remains the perpetual virgin there. It is also in that book that mentions Mary being chosen between her and seven other virgins.
In The Protoevangelium of James there is also another mention where a priest calls out to find him the undefiled virgins, and they find seven. In that book, Salome doesn’t believe that she is a virgin, so thrusts his finger in to see for himself. The Lord God messes his hand up, at least temporarily, but when he is told to lay his hand on the infant Jesus, and says he will worship Him, he is instantly healed.
But Yeah, I hear ya, it’s ripe with all sorts of jokes here, there’s plenty of material to go with, but won’t cover that here.
I find the New Advent site helpful, it’s where I go from time to time to read it on-line. The books are short reads. When you type in a search engine on their site, it sends you to google, but you can find the newadvent url’s to go back and read the books on their site.
^^^
Actually Salome is a she. My bad.
Joan of Arc (`Jehanne la Pucelle d’Orléans’) was a virgin.
It’s a dogma also shared by the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, and by some of the more conservative Anglicans. And it’s in the Fourth or Fifth Ecumenical Council, which is pretty “ancient”. z
The Hebrew version of the OT (I think) says “young woman”, but the Greek OT says “maiden”, and I think the Greek version is the one that the authors of the NT considered to be authoritative.
I’m not sure that “authoritative” was quite developed as a concept, then, but the Septuagint (Greek OT) was definitely the version used in most of the Jewish world, and it was a translation made by Jewish scholars.
Only because those sects which did believe in them eventually got extinguished.
Anyway, I don’t think this is true. No existing religion that I know of includes the early Christian apocrypha in its canon, but some of the material in the Protevangelium of James and some other apocrypha are (I think) accepted as fairly reliable by the Eastern Orthodox (although they don’t concider it to be scripture), and I believe there are one or two sources about the childhood of Jesus that eventually got accepted into Islamic tradition (the one about him turning clay birds into life, or something). Something doesn’t have to be accepted as “CANONICAL” in order for people to value it as a historical or religious source at some lesser level.