Sean McDowell recently posted a brief video on Twitter responding to the idea that Jesus lied about being born in Bethlehem. You can see a somewhat longer response in the original YouTube video. His comments are good as far as they go, and he's deliberately being concise, but much more could be said.
I have a collection of resources on the evidence for Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, and I'll be saying a lot more about the subject during the Christmas season later this year. However, there's more evidence for, and more ancient and modern non-Christian acknowledgement of, Jesus' background in Nazareth and Capernaum, which fulfills Isaiah 9:1. See here regarding problems with alleging that Jesus or the early Christians made up the claim that he was raised in Nazareth. And you can go here to read my interaction with a skeptic on these issues in a thread last year. Here's an interaction with a skeptic in the Sean McDowell thread.
There are a lot of other prophecy fulfillments that are similarly unlikely to have been fabricated by Jesus or the early Christians. See here for a collection of examples.
The skeptic in the Sean McDowell thread keeps editing his posts and changing his claims and arguments along the way. His posts have been automatically sent to my email account. That's how I have my Google account set up. So, I know what he's said before he edits it later. Before he edits his latest response or changes his claims or arguments again, I want to post his latest reply to me, which reflects his mindset and the mindset of so many other skeptics:
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@Jason Engwer It would have Bern very difficult to check if people if Nazareth had known Jesus. see o you thunk that they could call them with a telephone? That they could hop in a car or train from Rome or Turkey and jot on down to Gallelli to check a detail which no one, even the Jews who were educated,thought fulfilled any prophecy, as the prophecy doesnt even exist. The very notion is ridiculous. Almost BB as BB ridiculous as the claim that Caesar would require men , along with very pregnant women to travel to their home towns. Or that a star came dowb iver a certain location on Earth without burning the planet to a cinder. That absurd. But, yeah, these historical "issues" are totally and assuredly reported accurately and without an agenda. Sure
As to why historians would report that Jesus was from Nazareth your missing the forest for the trees its be DC cause "Nazerrenes", ofsome variant thereof, was what early Christians called themselves.
You're a pip, you know that? You bitch when I give you a different argument from oneI used earlier, and you butch if I use the same argument, which you did NOT address with any ideas that hadn't already been rebutted.
Its almost like, golly-gee, you don't really want to engage in a discussion, but just want to get " points" for criticisms.
Typical, I'm afraid, of the game playing behavior of those who fancy themselves to be Christian apologists, but only have vapid arguments that address nothing.
If you can't conceded that gospel writers attempting to shoegorn details into jesys' story that they imagined were prophciess fulfilled is at least a probable scenario, then you have no business discussing this topic. You have a block on your thinking mechanism. The very fact that no such prophecy can be found in Jewish texts , not even extrabibkicak writungs, alone tells you the story isn't a reliable account; I really didn't even have to go into showing that it's doubtable whether Jesus came from Nazareth, because the whole point of making the claim is doubtful to begin with
He gave you a brain because He wanted you to use it. Having a closed mind is sacriledge
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