Christmas Resources 2019

The issues surrounding the childhood of Jesus are important, but often neglected. For over a decade now, I've been putting together a collection of resources for each Christmas season:

2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018

You can also click here for an archive of all of our posts with the Christmas label. Keep clicking on Older Posts at the bottom of the screen to see more. Or you can view the text of the infancy narratives with links to relevant material from our archives. Go here for Matthew and here for Luke.

Here's a collection of our reviews of Christmas books. Some of the reviews are on Triablogue, but others are on Amazon or Goodreads.

Since Raymond Brown's book on the infancy narratives is still widely considered the standard in the field, it's important to know what to make of it. See here for a collection of responses to the book.

I've compiled some responses to skeptical misrepresentations of the church fathers, including on issues related to Christmas. You can find the collection here.

For more about the importance of apologetics in general, not just Christmas apologetics, see this post I wrote several months ago.

And here are some examples of the posts we've written on Christmas issues over the years:

Mutually Exclusive Skeptical Claims About Christmas
God Incarnate In Isaiah 9
Written Sources On Jesus' Childhood Prior To The New Testament
The Earliness Of Matthew And Luke
The Genre Of The Infancy Narratives
Typology And The Infancy Narratives
Whether Matthew Derived His Material On Jesus' Childhood From His Old Testament Citations
Material Against Luke's Interest In Luke 1-2
The Authorship Of Matthew
The Authorship Of Luke
Matthew And Luke's Agreements About Jesus' Childhood
Do passages like Matthew 2:1, 2:11, 2:22-23, and Luke 2:39 prove that the infancy narratives are inconsistent?
The Consistency And Historicity Of The Annunciation Accounts
The Historicity Of Luke's Census
What Sources Outside The Infancy Narratives Say About The Childhood Of Jesus
Jesus' Childhood In John 7-9
The Significance Of 1 Timothy 5:18
The Virgin Birth
The Mechanism For The Virgin Birth: Joseph's Biological Relationship With Jesus
Jesus' Davidic Ancestry And The Genealogies
The Star Of Bethlehem
Evidence For The Magi
The Slaughter Of The Innocents
Evidence For The Bethlehem Birthplace
What if alleged miracles, like the virgin birth, were caused by a currently unknown natural process?
The Origins Of The Christmas Holiday And Its December 25 Date

We've written a lot about Christmas issues since the last Christmas Resources post linked above. I posted an article on the deity of the king in Isaiah 9:1-7. I then wrote about other evidence that the king isn't Hezekiah. In another post, I discussed some ways in which Jesus could be a descendant of David under a virgin birth scenario, including how he could be biologically related to Joseph. Steve Hays wrote about the subject as well. I put up a post addressing how skeptics make mutually exclusive claims about Christmas issues. Steve wrote about alleged problems with the genealogies of Jesus. I collected several lines of evidence we've discussed over the years for the historicity of the magi account and put them in one post. Steve addressed the notion that God entered time and space at the incarnation. He also wrote some satirical posts on Christmas issues: Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Puritan view of Christmas. I wrote against the notion that the New Testament material on Jesus' childhood was based only on oral tradition. Steve linked an article by Lydia McGrew that responds to Michael Licona's claims about the genre and harmonization of the infancy narratives. He later wrote about some details of Isaiah 7:13-14 that are supportive of a traditional Christian view of the passage. I wrote about how we should argue for the virgin birth, in response to some comments William Lane Craig made to the New York Times. Steve linked a video discussing whether belief in God is comparable to belief in Santa. He also quoted Lydia McGrew about an agreement between Matthew and Luke concerning Joseph's response to Mary's pregnancy. I quoted Charles Spurgeon on the providential timing of Jesus' birth. Steve wrote a post summarizing the evidence for a Christian view of Jesus. He later wrote about why people react so differently to Christmas than to Easter. In another post, he addressed the possibility that alleged miracles, like the virgin birth, were caused by a currently unknown natural process. And he wrote about how the incarnation is like God entering a penal colony or concentration camp. In another post, he discussed some alleged Bible contradictions, including material related to Christmas. I wrote about Jesus' fulfillment of the first three Servant Songs in Isaiah, and the post includes some Christmas material. Steve responded to a common criticism of the "no crying he makes" line in a popular Christmas carol. I wrote about how the gospels are corroborated in the letters of Peter. The post isn't primarily about Christmas issues, but it addresses them to some extent. Steve wrote about a controversial painting of Jesus in his home as a child. He also wrote about the implications of idealism for the events surrounding Jesus' childhood, such as the virgin birth. In some other posts, here and here, he discussed Matthew's comments on fourteen generations in Matthew 1:17. Hawk wrote about a controversial piece of modern artwork depicting Joseph and Mary. Steve quoted some of Andrew Steinmann's comments on Genesis 49:8-12. And Hawk addressed a contrast between Buddhism and Matthew 1:21-23. I made some suggestions about how we should argue for prophecy fulfillment, such as by using the Servant Songs to argue for fulfillment in the modern world. Steve wrote about music in heaven, and he discussed Luke 2:13-14 in the process. He also wrote about the relationship between good and bad movies and discussed some Christmas issues in the process. He later linked a post by Craig Keener about the relationship between Jesus' background in Bethlehem and his background in Nazareth. In another post, Steve discussed how old Mary was at the age of her marriage to Joseph and some issues surrounding the appropriateness of marriage at that age. In a response to Mike Licona on Biblical inerrancy, Steve discussed Matthew's genealogy. He also wrote about God bringing us into his life through Christmas. Then he contrasted Christian Christmas music to Unitarian Christmas music. In another post, he discussed some problems with Bart Ehrman's objections to the New Testament, including Luke 2. And he linked a video, "There's A Dragon In My Nativity".