but I say it is true. Your thoughts please
Perhaps you could enlighten us as to why you think this is true.
All accounts of his birth put it in Bethlehem, a good 200 miles from Iraq. Could you possibly be thinking of Adam and Eve? Accounts put them somewhere in the Tigris/Euphrates region.
Bethlehem was just south of Jerusalem… close to 250 miles from the closest Iraqi border. Saudi Arabia is probably closer. Jesus was born in modern day Israel.
I suspect the historical Jesus was born in Nazareth, but that doesn’t really help your case much, as it is also in Israel.
Bethlehem still is just south of Jerusalem, but it has not been annexed by Israel. It is currently under Palestinian administration.
So Jesus was an Arab!
All kinds of things happened in what’s now Iraq, if you take the Bible literally.
Based on the accounts in Genesis, the Garden of Eden would have been in what’s no Iraq. So would the Tower of Babel. The entire Book of Daniel took place in what’s now Iraq.
But neither Bethelehem not Nazareth was anywhere close to modern Iraq. Sorry.
The Arabs and the Jews who lived there back then were Semites. They were people of Shem, according to tradition. That’s why the term anti-Semitic is puzzling to me. Wouldn’t the Palestinian Arabs be Semites?
I have a feeling I’m showing myself to be three kinds of fool in saying that. Perhaps you shouldn’t quote me on it. :smack:
You’re not being foolish. “Anti-semitic” is one of those misnomers that has unfortunately entered the common lexicon.
Yes, Arabs are Semites. BUT the term antisemitic has only been used in reference to a particular subgroup of Semites – Jews. So “antisemitism” does NOT mean hatred of all Semites, but only hatred of Jews.
Wikipedia article. Check the opening paragraph, and the first paragraph under “Usage.”
There are a number of things in the Bible that are set in what is now Iraq. As has been mentioned, the Garden of Eden was there, some of the other stories from Genesis are set there and Babylon was a little bit south of Baghdad, but I’m not aware of any tradition (certainly no evidence) of Jesus having been born outside of what is now Israel (though probably not in Bethlehem).
Out of curiosity, now that the OP has been answered, where in the Bible does it give the location of Eden?
The Book of Genesis 2:10-14
10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
12 And the gold of that land is good: there is dellium and the onyx stone.
13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
It’s not a very reliable map, but it does mention the river Euphrates.
No He wasn’t unless George Washington was born in China and Adolf Hitler in India. 
Jesus was born in the sweaty imaginations of a bunch of con artists.
The Tigris as well (Hiddekel is the Hebrew word for the Tigris).
I thought the garden of Eden was just outside Moscow.
A wery nice place. It must have made Adam and Eve wery sad to leave.
Thank you, Pavel. Now go do your time in the agonizer booth.
And isn’t this why the Bible believers (and some others) refer to Iraq as the birthplace of “civilization”?
[No political or religious agenda here.]