I wrote a post a few years ago about a geographical argument for prophecy fulfillment related to Christmas. It's based on Micah 5:2 and Isaiah 9:1. I want to discuss a few of the reasons why such geographical factors are evidentially significant, both in the context of prophecy and in other contexts:
- The amount of time Jesus was in these locations is important. As I've argued elsewhere on the basis of the timing of Luke 1:56 and other evidence, Luke has Jesus in Bethlehem for at least around half a year, and Matthew has the family there until Jesus is somewhat close to two years old (Matthew 2:16). He seems to have been in Nazareth for a double-digit number of years. The move to Capernaum is referred to as happening early in Jesus' public ministry, meaning that he wasn't just there for something like a few weeks or a few months. And his time ministering in Galilee more broadly also starts early in his public ministry. For a discussion of the implications of how much time Jesus is said to have spent in these locations, see my post here. It's focused on Bethlehem, but the principles involved are applicable to the other locations as well. Because of the amount of time involved, matters like these aren't as susceptible to some of the objections that can be raised against events involving a substantially smaller amount of time. Hallucinations, mistaken memories, and such are less plausible because of how much time is involved. And keep in mind that with all of these geographical issues, the early Christians could have claimed that Jesus was in these places for some much shorter period of time if they were lying, speculating, or some such thing and wanted their claims to be less falsifiable. My Bethlehem post linked above discusses how easily they could have claimed that Jesus was only there for some far smaller amount of time while Joseph and Mary were traveling, for example. The fact that they have him there so much longer instead is significant and needs to be explained.
- Something else that's important about geographical matters is that they involve such a large number of witnesses (neighbors, relatives, coworkers, etc.). If you live in a house somewhere, neighbors are going to notice it. Relatives will hear about it and will be expected by others to have heard about it. Coworkers will often ask and know where you live. And people in general, not merely ones in the categories just mentioned, will want to know where a public figure like Jesus lives and has lived, and some of them will take the initiative to look into it. Geographical issues like the ones under consideration tend to be matters that a large number of people know about.
- The variety of witnesses is significant as well. Setting aside factors like Jesus' deity for the moment, it's not as though Jesus or the early Christians had control over who Jesus' neighbors would be, who his coworkers would be, and so forth. It would be inevitable that many of the witnesses to these geographical facts related to Jesus would be non-Christians, sometimes even unusually hostile non-Christians. Regarding that last point, it would be ridiculous to suggest that the religious authorities, who were concerned enough about Jesus to have him crucified, wouldn't have looked into these geographical issues to some extent.
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