Thursday, December 12, 2024

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.

Sunday, December 08, 2024

Why would early sources who believed in the virgin birth not mention it?

Critics of the virgin birth often suggest that it surely would have been mentioned by sources like Paul and the authors of the gospels of Mark and John if those individuals believed in it. I've discussed the evidence for the virgin birth elsewhere, including evidence for the earliness of belief in it, and that evidence is weightier than objections like the one I'm considering in this post. Still, I want to say more about that objection.