An Interview With Stephen Carlson On Christmas Issues

I recently saw a Facebook post from Chris Powell that linked an interview with Stephen Carlson about some Christmas issues. Carlson makes a lot of good points about the meaning and historicity of the infancy narratives, especially Luke 2. The interview is about an hour long and is well worth listening to. You should also read his article on Luke 2, which is one of the best resources available on Luke's census account and some other issues.

I disagree with some of what he says during the interview. I would date Luke's gospel earlier, for reasons I've explained here, among other places.

Does the behavior of the figures involved in Matthew 2 make sense?

I've seen some recent skeptical videos that repeat the common objection that the behavior of the people involved in Matthew 2 doesn't make sense (God's behavior, the behavior of Herod, the behavior of the magi, etc.). We've addressed those issues many times over the years, and I want to gather some of those responses in one place. Here are five posts I've written that address the topic to one extent or another: one, two, three, four, and five. And here's one Steve Hays wrote.

The Discussion Of Jesus' Birthplace Between Jimmy Akin And Bart Ehrman

I just listened to it live. There's supposed to be a recording available within a few days, but I'll just go by my memory and notes for now.

Did Paul believe in the virgin birth?

C.J. Cornthwaite recently produced a video that's partly about the subject. I want to make several points in response:

Luke 3:38 And The Virgin Birth

The reference to Adam as "the son of God" in Luke 3:38 is unusual. And Jesus had just been referred to as the Son of God in Luke 3:22, right before the genealogy. The concept of Jesus' being the Son of God is a prominent theme in early Christianity, in Luke's writings and elsewhere. The similar terminology involved in the references to Jesus and Adam, the proximity between the references to Jesus' Sonship and Adam's, and the unusualness of referring to Adam as a son of God make more sense if Luke is paralleling the two.

They can be paralleled in multiple ways. Adam's initial sinlessness is reminiscent of Jesus' sinlessness, Adam's initial good relationship with God is reminiscent of Jesus' good relationship with the Father, etc. But the reference to Adam's sonship is in a genealogy, so it makes the most sense to focus on a parallel in terms of origins or begetting.

That doesn't single out a virgin birth. Jesus, in his humanity, could have been created without a father or mother, as Adam was. But the parallel could also be partial, so that Jesus' humanity comes from God's intervention, without sexual intercourse, even though he has one or more human parents. Isaac is referred to in the genealogy as the son of Abraham (verse 34), without being referred to in any unusual way, unlike Adam, which provides some evidence that Luke has something more in mind than just the sort of Divine intervention involved in Isaac's conception. The wording of verse 38 doesn't single out the virgin birth, but it leads us in the direction of some sort of Divine intervention in Jesus' origins beyond what we see with Isaac. The larger context, in Luke's gospel and in early Christianity more broadly, provides us with further information, including the fact that Jesus was born of a virgin. Most likely, both Luke 3:23 and 3:38 are alluding to the virgin birth.

That provides us with another example of how the material in Luke 1-2 is reflected in later chapters of the gospel, despite what critics often allege to the contrary. For other examples, see here.

Early Extrabiblical Sources On Jesus' Childhood

It's sometimes argued that the infancy narratives were added to Matthew and/or Luke sometime after the documents were originally published, perhaps even as late as around the time of Marcion. Or an infancy narrative will be considered part of the original document, but the document will be dated late, such as in the 90s or even sometime in the second century.

If Jesus was born outside Bethlehem, would the ancient sources be so unsupportive of that conclusion?

Critics of the Bethlehem birthplace often act as if they're confident that Jesus wasn't born there or that he was born in Nazareth instead. I've addressed their arguments many times, such as in the posts collected here. The article here argues for the likelihood that the early Christians and their opponents had access to reliable information on Jesus' birthplace and the likelihood that they obtained that information. For a brief overview of the evidence for the Bethlehem birthplace, do a Ctrl F search on "shows" here and go to the last hyphenated section here for information on ancient non-Christian sources. What I want to focus on in this post is something I wrote in a Facebook thread a few years ago. This is about whether evidence was lost or suppressed for a false date Jesus and the early Christians had set for the second coming. The same principles can be applied to the notion that Jesus was born outside Bethlehem, but that the evidence for that birthplace was lost or suppressed:

The Value Of Geographical Issues In The Christmas Context

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:

Two Important Verses For Framing The Chronology Of Jesus' Childhood

The first is more commonly discussed, but is sometimes neglected. Matthew 2:16 suggests that Jesus was somewhat close to two years old when the events in the surrounding context occurred. See here, including the comments section, and here for discussions of the passage. The timing of the Matthew 2 events goes a long way in explaining why Matthew's material is so different than Luke's (the two authors are covering different timeframes) and addresses other objections.

The other verse to keep in mind, which is seldom understood or discussed as it should be, is Luke 1:56. See my post on the passage here and my explanation of some of its implications here, for example, among other posts in our archives that discuss it. Joseph and Mary probably went to Bethlehem during the first half of her pregnancy, not at the end of it. Luke 2:4 picks up where 1:56 left off. If you understand Luke 1:56 and its implications rightly, other issues in Luke and elsewhere will fall into their proper place, and some objections that are often brought up will be weakened or eliminated.

Points To Make In Support Of A Traditional Christian View Of Jesus' Childhood

A lot depends on the audience you're addressing. Talking to a doubting Christian is different than talking to a Jesus mythicist who's highly antagonistic to Christianity. But here are a few good points to make, with links to posts that discuss the issues further:

Abraham In Matthew 1 And The Virgin Birth

One of the problems with the popular claim that the concept of a virgin birth was borrowed from paganism is that it would be so easy for anybody to come up with the idea without doing any borrowing. And pushing the earlier virgin birth claim into paganism just pushes the question back a step. Where did the initial pagan source get the idea? If pagans could come up with it without borrowing, so could Jews, including the early Christians.

The first two verses of Matthew mention Abraham. And verse 2 mentions his begetting of Isaac. That was a miraculous conception, though not a virginal one. Matthew may have begun his genealogy with Abraham because Abraham is the father of the Jewish people. Or he may have started the genealogy with Abraham because of the similarity between the miraculous conception of Isaac and the miraculous conception of Jesus. Or starting with Abraham may have been chosen for both reasons. Whatever the case, the opening two verses of Matthew's gospel illustrate how easily a virgin birth claim could originate without any significant influence from paganism. It's not much of a step from Isaac's miraculous conception to the miraculous conception of Jesus. And the remainder of Matthew's gospel is highly Jewish and anti-pagan.

Why are the women in Matthew's genealogy included?

There are ongoing disagreements about why Matthew refers to Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba in Matthew 1:3-6. It's sometimes suggested that they're included because of the theme of God's acceptance of Gentiles. That theme is prominent in early Christianity, including in the gospel of Matthew, as the magi in chapter 2 illustrate. But Bathsheba apparently was Jewish. She lived in Isarael. In 2 Samuel 11:3, her father is referred to as Eliam, with no further qualifier, whereas the same verse qualifies Uriah as "the Hittite". See, also, 2 Samuel 23:34. If Ahithophel was the grandfather of Bathsheba, which would be further evidence of her Jewishness, that would help explain why Ahithophel betrayed David (because of what David did to Bathsheba). Matthew 1:16 includes Mary, who was Jewish, in a way similar to how the other women are included earlier. Furthermore, when Bathsheba is referred to in verse 6, she's identified as the wife of Uriah, not "the wife of a Hittite", "the wife of Uriah the Hittite", or some other such thing. And she's referred to as Uriah's wife in a context about giving birth to Solomon after marrying David. She wasn't Uriah's wife at the time, yet Matthew chose to mention that she had been Uriah's wife. The focus seems to be on the adulterous origins of her relationship with David, not any connection to Gentiles. Matthew probably didn't think Ruth was guilty of sexual sin, and he didn't think Mary was, so he didn't think the women had sexual sin in common. Even the women who were sexually immoral were so in significantly different ways. For example, Rahab's background as a prostitute is substantially different than conceiving the child mentioned in the genealogy by means of sexual immorality. It also seems unlikely that the women were all thought to have had a low social status independent of issues like sexual immorality (being born into a disreputable family, being of low economic status, etc.). As explained above, Matthew highlight's Bathsheba's involvement in adultery, which is distinct from the sort of social status issues I just referred to. What's the common thread with these women, then?

Christmas Resources 2025

Since Jesus' childhood spanned so many years and so many issues are involved, there's no quick and easy way to address everything. But I've put together a collection of approaches that can be taken to begin an argument for a traditional Christian view of his childhood. See here.

It's important to be knowledgeable about how much Matthew and Luke agree concerning the childhood of Jesus. They agree more than is usually suggested. See the post here for forty examples of the agreements between Matthew and Luke. For a discussion of the agreements among other early sources, go here. The post here discusses some neglected evidence related to the church of Ephesus. For some recommendations about how to argue that the early sources agree more than people often suggest, see this post.

Isaiah 9:1-7 is significant in the context of Christmas (e.g., what it tells us about Jesus' self-perception, demonstrating continuity between the accounts of his childhood and the accounts of his adulthood). Here's a collection of posts about the passage.

Here are some examples of our posts on Christmas issues, with many others available in our archives:

Does the unbelief of Jesus' brothers support Mary's perpetual virginity?

I recently heard somebody make that claim. If Jesus' brothers grew up in the same house as Jesus, which would have included having a large amount of information about or even witnessing miracles associated with him, for example, why weren't they believers?

That's just a variation of an objection that's been raised for a long time in other contexts. See my response to Raymond Brown's formulation of it here and here and my response to Bart Ehrman's version of it here, for instance. There's no reason to think there were as many or more miracles occurring in association with Jesus in his home prior to his public ministry than during that ministry. But his brothers were unbelievers during that latter timeframe. The typical non-Christian argument pertaining to Jesus' miracles at the time wasn't that there weren't any miracles, but rather that they didn't come from God. It wasn't an absence of miracles that was motivating the unbelief.

And though children of Joseph from a previous marriage and cousins would be further removed from Jesus than children born from Mary, we'd still expect children from a previous marriage and cousins to have had a lot of contact with Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. Look at how often they're in close proximity to Jesus and Mary in the gospels and elsewhere. That probably occurred prior to Jesus' public ministry as well. Just as there isn't much difficulty in reconciling the unbelief of Jesus' brothers with their being step-brothers or cousins, there isn't much difficulty in reconciling their unbelief with their being brothers in the most common sense of that term.

Distancing the brothers from Jesus makes their unbelief less difficult to explain in some ways, but not in every context. If the brothers were children from a previous marriage, then they lived through the events of the infancy narratives, as Joseph and Mary did. By contrast, children later born from Mary didn't. Children from a previous marriage also would have been more mature during Jesus' childhood, more capable of handling evidential contexts like having conversations with Joseph and Mary about the relevant issues. In some ways, the unbelief of Jesus' brothers is easier to explain if they were children born from Mary after Jesus' birth or cousins born later rather than earlier.

Even if somebody concludes that a perpetual virginity scenario offers a better explanation of the brothers' unbelief, I don't think it would be much of an advantage. As I said in an earlier post, an advantage for a particular view of the brothers in one context can be accompanied by a disadvantage in another context. What we're after is the best explanation of the evidence as a whole. As the post just linked argues, the view that Mary gave birth to other children is the most efficient explanation on balance, even though it's not the best explanation of every piece of evidence. A Joseph who was older at the time of his marriage to Mary better explains his death prior to Jesus' public ministry, and the perpetual virginity view was held by more of the church fathers, for example, but the advantages of a perpetual virginity view are accompanied by more numerous and weightier disadvantages.

Boy Jesus

Joan Taylor recently published a book about Jesus' childhood, Boy Jesus (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Academic, 2025). Taylor is a scholar who's specialized in the study of Judaism and Christianity in the ancient world. She isn't a conservative, but her book argues for conservative views on some significant issues related to Jesus' childhood (e.g., Jesus' Davidic ancestry, the credibility of his genealogies, his Bethlehem birthplace). So, the book is a good illustration of the fact that conservative conclusions are often supported by non-conservative scholarship.

But Taylor takes some positions I disagree with, and I want to link several of my posts addressing those issues. She cites Yigal Levin's work against the idea that Jesus could have been considered a son of Joseph by adoption. She doesn't interact with Caleb Friedeman's response to Levin, discussed in the second hyphenated section of my post here. See here for my argument against the notion that Luke's infancy narrative wasn't finalized into its canonical form until the time of Marcion. On objections to the historicity of Luke's census account, I've written many posts, such as here and here. (To Taylor's credit, though, she's more reasonable than many other critics of the census account, such as by acknowledging that the census wasn't ancestral and that Joseph had more than an ancestral relationship with Bethlehem. On the evidence for such conclusions, see here.) She thinks Jesus' family was more supportive of him than they likely were. On the unbelief of his family (faith mixed with unbelief in the cases of Joseph and Mary), see Eric Svendsen's Who Is My Mother? (Amityville, New York: Calvary Press, 2001). Taylor probably thinks the family's unbelief would be too problematic for the historicity of other parts of the New Testament (and whatever extrabiblical sources), but they're not too difficult to reconcile. See the section of the post here discussing Matthew 13:54-55, for example. I've also discussed the subject elsewhere, like here on the gospel of Mark in general. Since Taylor mentions some early sources who rejected the virgin birth and sometimes cites Andrew Lincoln's book against the virgin birth, go here and here for my discussion of how widely the virgin birth was accepted early on, in response to Lincoln, and here for my overall assessment of Lincoln's book. On the issues Taylor is right about, she often leaves out a lot of the evidence that could be mentioned. There's far too much of that to discuss all of it here, but see, for example, this post on Jesus' relatives for further evidence supporting Jesus' Davidic ancestry and the genealogies (e.g., Luke's use of James as a source, James' comments on Davidic ancestry in Acts 15). Or see here on the Bethlehem birthplace. Or here on how much Matthew and Luke agree about Jesus' childhood.

The book goes into a lot of depth about what we know of the context of Jesus' childhood from extrabiblical sources, like Josephus and archeology. A lot of ground is covered: the physical characteristics of Bethlehem and Nazareth, what Joseph and Jesus would have done in their work as builders, connections between Jesus' childhood and his public ministry (e.g., his parables and illustrations), etc. You'll probably disagree with much of the book, but also learn some significant things from it.

The Historicity Of The Christmas Accounts

Lydia McGrew was recently interviewed about the historical reliability of the Biblical accounts of Jesus' childhood and made a lot of good points about the subject.

The Early Prominence Of Luke's Gospel And Its Christmas Material

Trent Horn recently put out a video that largely reiterates some points he's made before about sola scriptura. In the process, he repeated the claim that none of the New Testament documents were "prominent" before Irenaeus wrote in the late second century. I want to respond to that claim with an example that's relevant to the current Christmas context. On the other issues brought up in his video, see my earlier responses to Trent here and here.

Go here to watch Trent citing Lee McDonald's remarks about the lack of prominence of the New Testament documents before Irenaeus. What I want to do in the remainder of this post is focus on the gospel of Luke as a counterexample. With Christmas coming up later in the week and the popularity among skeptics of denying that the earliest chapters of Luke's gospel were part of the original document, I want to discuss not only the early prominence of the gospel of Luke, but also the inclusion of our first two chapters and other Christmas material in the gospel. (For more about the Christmas material in Luke outside the earliest chapters, see this post.)

Matthew As A Source On Jesus' Childhood

The authorship of the gospel of Matthew has important implications for issues related to the childhood of Jesus. The gospel says a lot about his childhood, including in chapter 3 and beyond. The apostle Matthew would have been in a good position to have had a lot of reliable information on Jesus' background. But the evidence for his authorship of the gospel has been largely neglected, including among conservative scholars. You can find a collection of articles we've written about that evidence here. See the comments section of the thread for notes about how the collection has been updated over the years. For example, I added a link a few years ago to an article about the significance of Matthew's living and working in the area of Capernaum. More recently, I added a link to a post about evidence for Matthean authorship in the lists of Jesus' disciples in the Synoptics and Acts. That post also discusses the significance of the use of Hosea 6:6 in the gospel of Matthew. And I added a link to a post about evidence for the financial interests of the author. See the collection of links for more evidence of Matthew's authorship of the document and responses to objections.

Did John 19:27 actually happen?

Last year, I wrote about the implications of John 19:27 for Mary's influence on the apostle John, the church of Ephesus, and other sources. But what reason do we have to think John 19:27 is historically accurate?

Disproving Luke's Census Wouldn't Disprove The Bethlehem Birthplace

Nor would disproving the star of Bethlehem, the Slaughter of the Innocents, etc. Events like those are relevant to Jesus' place of birth. They can offer evidence pertaining to it. But the truthfulness of his birth in Bethlehem doesn't depend on something like the accuracy of Luke's census account or whether the Slaughter of the Innocents occurred. In his video I responded to in my last post, Bart Ehrman addressed events like the ones I just mentioned while ignoring the large majority of the evidence relevant to where Jesus was born.