Bart Ehrman Is Wrong About Jesus' Birthplace

He just posted a video arguing against the Bethlehem birthplace. There are a lot of problems with his argument:

- He doesn't address any of the evidence for non-Christian corroboration of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem. See the last hyphenated section of the post here for a discussion of some of that evidence. Justin Martyr refers to the Bethlehem birthplace as a historical fact, one that he thinks is corroborated by the Roman government (First Apology 34), and he shows no awareness of any Jewish or pagan argument against the Bethlehem birthplace. He interacts with the rejection of Christian claims and arguments against Christianity on many other issues, but not with regard to Jesus' place of birth. Origen refers to corroboration of the Bethlehem birthplace from multiple non-Christian sources, and he was in a good position to have been well informed about what those individuals believed. Eusebius, who had access to many documents we don't have today and acknowledged non-Christian opposition to other Christian claims, wrote that "all agree that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem" (Demonstration Of The Gospel 3:2). Again, see my post linked above for further information. The best explanation for the lack of controversy over Jesus' birthplace and the references to non-Christian corroboration of it is that it was a matter that was widely agreed upon.

- Ehrman doesn't discuss most of the earliest Christian sources who support the Bethlehem birthplace. See my post here for a discussion of those: the sources used by the gospels of Matthew and Luke, the gospel of John, Ephesians, and 1 Timothy.

- Ehrman doesn't address issues like how much interest there would have been in Jesus' birthplace early on, how easy his birthplace would have been to discern, and how easily a false claim about it could have been falsified. See my post here that discusses those issues. As I mention there, Jesus' place of birth would have been connected to other issues, like where his father did work as a builder, where Joseph had residence, and where his wedding with Mary occurred. (On the evidence that Bethlehem is Joseph's primary place of residence in Luke, not just in Matthew, see my recent post on the subject.) If Jesus' family was never in Bethlehem for as long a time as the gospels report, then there would have been multiple, independent lines of evidence that would have left easily discerned traces to that effect in the historical record for many decades that followed. Both Matthew and Luke have the family in Bethlehem for a long time (at least half a year in Luke and close to two years in Matthew), though they could so easily have had them there for a far shorter period if they were trying to explain a lack of evidence for a Bethlehem residence and evidence against it. Again, see my post here for further discussion of these issues.

- There isn't much support Ehrman can cite for his position among the ancient sources. The best he can do is appeal to what Jesus' opponents said about his Galilean background in John 7. But there are a lot of problems with that approach, and it fails to explain why there was so much agreement about the Bethlehem birthplace elsewhere. For a discussion of the John 7 material in this context, go here and do a Ctrl F search for "In John 7:41-42". The individuals in John 7 are ignorant, misinformed, and inconsistent. They don't deny the Bethlehem birthplace, but instead object to Jesus' affiliation with Galilee, which isn't inherently inconsistent with a birth in Bethlehem, and ask some questions without making any claims in verses 41-42. To whatever extent one or more of them doubted the Bethlehem birthplace, their doubt seems to have been poorly grounded and brief. After Jesus challenges them, especially at the opening of chapter 8, they retreat from their initial claims. And we know that later opponents of Christianity didn't argue against the Bethlehem birthplace and affirmed it in some cases. In my post linked above, I give examples of similar situations in modern history, in which initial ignorance and misconceptions give way to a more widespread recognition of the truth later on. Any doubt of the Bethlehem birthplace that existed in John 7 is far outweighed by the much more widespread acceptance of that birthplace elsewhere, including among the people most in a position to be well informed on the subject.

See my article here for a discussion of how easily the early sources in general, both Christian and non-Christian, would have been able to have gotten reliable information about where Jesus was born. An obvious example I discuss there is the people of Nazareth, who would have had memories of Jesus' birth there if he was born there, would have interacted a lot with Jesus and his family, etc. And we know there was a substantial amount of opposition to Jesus in Nazareth. Yet, there's widespread acceptance of the Bethlehem birthplace both among the early Christians and their early opponents. The New Testament, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and other early sources preserve hundreds of claims, arguments, and such that came from a large number and variety of non-Christian individuals and groups. The idea that the early opponents of Christianity would have lacked the ability or the will to preserve something as obviously significant and easy to preserve as a birthplace is absurd. The best explanation for the lack of support for Ehrman's view among the ancient sources is that his view is wrong.

- A persistent problem running through so much of Ehrman's argument is that he has a poor understanding of Luke's material. Ehrman claims that Joseph and Mary have their residence in Nazareth, that Mary is heavily pregnant at the time they leave for Bethlehem, and that the census requires its participants to go back to the location of their distant ancestry. And that sort of view of Luke leads him to misread 2:39 as a reference to an immediate return to Nazareth. Actually, Mary was only about three months into her pregnancy the last time she was mentioned, in 1:56, and delaying a wedding another few months or longer in the context of the bride's premarital pregnancy is unlikely. They probably went to Bethlehem shortly after 1:56. And the census isn't ancestral. See here regarding the evidence that Bethlehem was Joseph's primary place of residence. Because Ehrman is wrong about Joseph's relationship with Bethlehem, he misses the fact that his interpretation of Luke 2:39 doesn't make sense within Luke's own context. The Christian view that the return to Nazareth wasn't immediate doesn't just make more sense of the evidence we have from the gospel of Matthew. It also makes more sense of Luke's material, since people with a home in Bethlehem would be unlikely to immediately move to Nazareth after fulfilling the initial requirements of the law after the birth of a child. A reading of 2:39 that allows for more time to have passed makes better sense of Luke's material and is more in line with the external evidence, namely Matthew's account. Ehrman's view makes less sense of both the internal and the external evidence. For more about Luke 2:39, see here. You can also go here and do a Ctrl F search for "went to Nazareth" to read more on the subject, including a discussion of how Luke uses the same language in Acts 13:29 without intending to convey immediacy.

- In addition to being wrong about the alleged ancestral nature of the census, Ehrman is wrong about some other aspects of it. There's too much ground to cover here, so I'll point anybody who's interested to my material on the subject elsewhere, such as this post and our list of posts under the Luke's Census label here. Ehrman's claim that the census account was fabricated to get Jesus to Bethlehem is absurd. You could get him there far more easily. If the census is anywhere near as unhistorical as Ehrman claims, then using such an account to get Jesus to Bethlehem not only would be overkill on a large scale, but also would create a lot of problems that could so easily have been avoided. If the family's connection to Nazareth was too historically established to allow Luke to put the family in Bethlehem from the start, without using a census to get them there, why are we supposed to believe that Luke was able to be so unhistorical about the history that came just after Jesus' conception in Nazareth? The alleged inability to alter the place of Jesus' conception doesn't sit well with an alleged ability to alter history to the extent Ehrman claims Luke did when discussing the census that happened shortly after the conception. Ehrman comments on how little Luke's audience supposedly would have cared about history and verifying what Luke reported, but why didn't Luke just have the family in Bethlehem all along, then? And if there was so little concern about history, why did Luke say so much about the importance of history, of doing a lot of research, of Theophilus' interest in such matters, etc.? Why did Luke do the large amount of work needed to produce so much detail and accuracy in his gospel and Acts? See here for a presentation by Craig Keener on Luke's historiography. Or here for some relevant excerpts from Keener's commentary on Acts. Or here for Lydia McGrew's discussion of how Luke gets hard things right.

- At one point, Ehrman makes some comments about how Micah 5 doesn't use the term "Messiah". So what? The primary issue we should be concerned about is what concepts are present, now what terminology is used. Christians aren't the only people who think Micah 4-5 is Messianic. Many Jews, from the ancient world to today, have agreed with Christianity that those chapters in Micah are Messianic. And you don't even have to place them in the Messianic category in order to consider the passage a prophecy Jesus has fulfilled, a passage that's evidentially significant in support of Christianity, etc. The passage anticipates the birthplace of some kind of highly significant future religious leader. Whether that individual is called "the Messiah" isn't the main issue. For more about the evidence for a traditional Christian view of Micah 4-5 (which many Jews have accepted as well), see here.