Christmas Resources 2014

For several years, I've been posting a collection of resources for each Christmas season:

2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013

The 2008 post is foundational to the others, so you might want to start there. Here's a recent illustration of the importance of addressing these Christmas issues.

Below are some examples of the posts you can find in our archives on topics that often come up during the Christmas season:

The Origins Of The Christmas Holiday And Its December 25 Date
The Virgin Birth
The Bethlehem Birthplace
The Star Of Bethlehem
The Slaughter Of The Innocents
Luke's Census

After I wrote the 2013 post linked above, I published an article on agreements between Matthew and Luke concerning Jesus' childhood. Then I wrote about what early sources outside of the infancy narratives say about the childhood of Jesus. Here's a post about how Americans celebrate Christmas and how much they know about the infancy narratives. I wrote about a new e-book addressing the alleged pagan roots of Christmas and related issues. Steve Hays posted about the controversy surrounding Megyn Kelly's comments about a white Jesus. I put together a collection of my reviews of books related to the infancy narratives. Steve addressed the common comparison between trusting your parents about Santa and trusting them about Christianity. He also posted a link to a Christmas sermon by Evan May. I linked to a thread about whether Christians should celebrate Christmas and commented on how opponents of the holiday seem to do less work on Christmas apologetic issues. Patrick Chan posted a Christmas music video. Steve linked an article by Jim Hamilton on Revelation 12 and Jesus' birth. He also linked an article by Paul Barnett that's partly about the importance of the work Christians do, including in the context of Christmas. I posted a Christmas poem by Eugene Field. I also wrote about declining belief in the historicity of the infancy narratives and how pastors and others in our society are addressing the problem. The authorship of the gospels is a highly significant issue when evaluating what the gospels tell us about Jesus' childhood. Here's a post about liberals questioning the notion that the gospels originally circulated anonymously. Steve linked a post about what Mary provided in the virgin birth. I wrote a post about overly positive Amazon reviews of Raymond Brown's The Birth Of The Messiah. And here's a series of posts about Craig Keener's recent commentary on Acts, addressing the genre of Luke's writings, their historicity, their authorship, Luke's sources, and other issues relevant to his material about Jesus' childhood. I wrote a review of a book by Aaron Adair that argues against the historicity of the star of Bethlehem. Steve linked a few articles by Tim McGrew on Christmas issues. Steve also wrote about Matthew's use of Hosea 11:1. In another post, Steve wrote on the subject of how widely we should expect the star of Bethlehem to have been reported if it was more than a local event. He also posted about Peter Enns' view of the virgin birth. Then Steve addressed the objection that the virgin birth is only mentioned by two gospels. I also posted on the subject. Steve wrote about why Jesus was conceived of a virgin. He also linked an article arguing that Josephus misdated the census of Quirinius. Later, he discussed Richard Carrier's trust in what Josephus reported about the census. And he wrote about reports of miraculous phenomena in modern times that are similar to the star of Bethlehem. I put up a post about evidence for an early date for Luke and Acts. Critics often claim that Christianity's prophecy fulfillments, like Jesus' fulfillment of the Son of David and Bethlehem prophecies, don't have much significance. Here's a post I wrote about how Islam has failed to produce such prophecy fulfillment, despite having so many resources at its disposal. Steve cited R.T. France regarding reconciling the genealogies in Matthew and Luke. I wrote about the insufficiency of some early reviews of Andrew Lincoln's book on the virgin birth. Steve wrote about the possibility that the star of Bethlehem is the Shekinah. And here's a post I wrote about a conference on the star of Bethlehem at the University of Groningen. I also posted about a new article on Matthew 1:17 and how Matthew arrived at his count of three sets of fourteen generations. And here's a post I wrote about a recent radio program that discussed how much Matthew and Luke differ in their infancy narratives. Steve wrote about whether it's necessary that Jesus was born on December 25 in order to justify a commemoration of his birth on that date. I responded to Jonathan Cahn's case against Jesus' birth on December 25. John Bugay wrote about a recent ad based on the Christmas Truce of 1914.