Evidence For The Bethlehem Birthplace

I've written a lot of material over the years about Jesus' fulfillment of the Bethlehem prophecy of Micah 5:2. What I want to do in this post is collect some links to those posts.

The most significant series of posts on the subject can be found here. In the first post, I discussed the messianic and eschatological nature of chapters 4 and 5 in Micah and how well Jesus fulfills that material. I then wrote about how difficult it would have been for ancient sources to determine where Jesus was born. My next post addressed what the earliest sources outside Matthew and Luke reported about Jesus' birthplace.

Here's a five-part series I wrote several years ago:

Jesus' Birthplace (Part 1): Early Interest And Potential Sources
Jesus' Birthplace (Part 2): Prophecy And Honesty
Jesus' Birthplace (Part 3): Matthew, Luke, And Other Early Christian Sources
Jesus' Birthplace (Part 4): Other Early Christian Sources
Jesus' Birthplace (Part 5): Early Non-Christian Sources And Conclusion

After John Loftus wrote a post at his blog ignoring the sort of evidence linked above, I replied to him. He later wrote another article consisting of more of the same. I replied again.

A few years ago, I got into a discussion with a liberal who argued against Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, citing sources like Marcus Borg and John Spong. My discussion with him is linked here.

Here's something I wrote on whether references to "Jesus of Nazareth" suggest that he was born in that city.

And here's one about early evidence outside of Matthew and Luke.

I've discussed some of the internal evidence for the historicity of Matthew 2, such as at the end of the post here and here.

I've written a lot about the historicity of the Slaughter of the Innocents, like here, and that event is associated with the Bethlehem birthplace.

So is Luke's census, which I've addressed here and here, among other places.

And here's a post about how the apostle John and other early sources interpreted the infancy narratives, which has implications for the Bethlehem birthplace reported there.

Here's a post about the problematic implications of arguing for a birthplace other than Bethlehem.

I wrote a post about whether Luke just carelessly accepted what Matthew said about the Bethlehem birthplace.

Here's something I wrote about John 8:12 and its implications for Jesus' birthplace.

I wrote a post about how much Matthew and Luke agree concerning Jesus' childhood. That post addresses some issues related to the Bethlehem birthplace.

In a series of posts about Jesus' childhood outside the infancy narratives, I discuss the Bethlehem birthplace in those sources outside of the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke.

I've written a couple of posts, here and here, that discuss the doubts raised about Jesus' Davidic ancestry and Bethlehem birthplace in John 7. Those posts also address the evidence for Jesus' Davidic ancestry and Bethlehem birthplace in general, in response to Annette Merz.