Christmas Resources 2016

Each year, I post a collection of resources for the Christmas season. Here are the posts from previous years:

2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015

The 2008 post is foundational to the others. You may want to start there.

And here's an archive of our posts with the Christmas label. Keep in mind that you can scroll all the way down and click on Older Posts to see more.

Here are some representative examples of our posts on Christmas issues:

Responding To Raymond Brown On The Infancy Narratives
Reviews Of Books On Christmas Issues
Do Passages Like Matthew 2:1, 2:11, 2:22-3, And Luke 2:39 Prove That The Infancy Narratives Are Inconsistent?
How Much Matthew And Luke Agree Concerning Jesus' Childhood
What Sources Outside The Infancy Narratives Say About The Childhood Of Jesus
The Origins Of The Christmas Holiday And Its December 25 Date
The Genre Of The Infancy Narratives
Typology And The Infancy Narratives
The Authorship Of Matthew
The Authorship Of Luke
The Virgin Birth
Jesus' Davidic Ancestry, The Genealogies
Evidence For The Bethlehem Birthplace
The Historicity Of Luke's Census
The Star Of Bethlehem
The Slaughter Of The Innocents

In 2007, I posted the text of the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke with links to relevant Triablogue posts. For example, you could click on the text of Luke 2:1 to read a post about Luke's census account. After my 2015 post linked above, I posted an update to both indexes, so that both now include material beyond 2007. Steve Hays put up a post about common objections to Halloween and Christmas, including Santa Claus issues. I posted another response to Colin Nicholl on the star of Bethlehem. And here's something I wrote about how the Mary of the infancy narratives differs from the Mary of Roman Catholicism. I also posted some ideas for Christmas sermons. Steve wrote about Zechariah's prophecy in Luke 1:71-4. I posted a collection of Stephen Carlson's material on Christmas issues. I also put up a collection of posts responding to Raymond Brown's work on the infancy narratives. Patrick Chan posted a video about four kinds of Christmas. I linked a response by John Byl to Colin Nicholl's book on the star of Bethlehem. Patrick posted a video about the Help Chris See Christmas effort, involving a right to life case in Texas. I posted a link to my 2015 collection of Christmas resources and commented on the apologetic significance of the last several days of the Christmas season. Peter Pike wrote about some implications Arminianism has for the humanity of Christ. And here's something I wrote about a Time article and media bias on Christmas issues. I posted about Hebrews 2:11 and the incarnation. Steve wrote about Isaiah 7:14. He also addressed the issue of whether Mary was too young to get married when she did. I posted about the death of Acharya S on December 25 of 2015. Steve addressed the reasoning behind the virgin birth. He also wrote about the virgin birth and John 8:41. And here and here are responses he wrote to Bart Ehrman, parts of which address Christmas issues. His response to Ehrman here addresses the genealogies of Jesus, among other issues. And here's another post he wrote on the genealogies. I put together a collection of links to our material on Matthew's authorship of the first gospel. Steve wrote about an inconsistency on the part of some critics of Luke's census account. He also addressed the subject in another post about Bart Ehrman. And here's something he wrote on Andrew Lincoln's motives for questioning the virgin birth. Here's a thread that addresses Jonathan Pennington's comments about how little the infancy narratives agree with each other. I discussed a recent book about the star of Bethlehem here and here. That book has a chapter by Annette Merz, in which she makes a radically skeptical case against the historicity of the infancy narratives. I wrote several posts in response to her, which you can access here, addressing historiography, why Jesus' family reacted so negatively to him, why Nazareth rejected him, whether he was a descendant of David, and other issues. Steve responded to Graham Oppy's comparison between the accounts of Jesus' birth and the unreliable accounts of the births of other figures. Steve also linked an article he wrote for another web site on the virgin birth. He also posted a link to a page about a hipster nativity set.