Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [142]
So Matthew has Jesus born between 7 and 4 BCE. Luke has him born before 4 BCE, while Herod the Great is alive, and then in 6 CE, ten years after Herod the Great died. These two Gospels disagree by about ten to twelve years. The date is wrong and the year is a mystery. In other words, the birthday of the “Son of God” is a movable feast. If this is divinely inspired, couldn’t God get that year right?
BIBLICAL VOICES
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registra tion and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. (Luke 2:1-7)
O Little Town of Bethlehem?
Okay. The day and the year were fudged a bit. But surely we know Jesus was born in Bethlehem? Oh dear. The place of Jesus’ birth also raised some problems. If we had only Mark and John to go on, we would assume it was Nazareth because they call Nazareth his hometown, as Jesus himself does. But Luke and Matthew both set the story of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. Matthew simply states that Mary and Joseph are in this sleepy little town that is six miles (10 k) south of Jerusalem, and a long way from Nazareth, which is north of Jerusalem. In Luke, Joseph and Mary live in Nazareth but travel to Bethlehem for the big imperial census. Even if there had been a worldwide census, Joseph wouldn’t need to go to Bethlehem to report to the Roman version of the IRS. Even less likely is a demand that he would have to drag a pregnant woman there.
The exact place of the birth of the revered Jesus within Bethlehem is also unknown. Luke’s “manager” may have been a stall with almost no covering, or even a feeding trough in the open; the “inn” was most likely a yard with partial shelter on three sides. Based on current archaeological and other clues, Bethlehem lacked a Holiday Inn two thousand years ago. Another early Christian tradition held that a cave was the birthplace of Jesus; this was according to Origen, a Greek theologian and scholar (c. 185-254) who became an early Christian teacher and said he had been shown the cave. Best remembered for his early attempts to coordinate the Hebrew and Greek versions of the Bible, Origen also castrated himself because Matthew said that some would become “eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven.” By about 338, the Emperor Constantine built a church over the cave, and it was here that Jerome settled in 386 to translate the Bible from Greek into more commonly used Latin (the “Vulgate”).
So why put Jesus in Bethlehem, a small, obscure village? Because to the Jewish people, Bethlehem was not obscure at all. First mentioned in Judges, it took added significance from Ruth, whose heroine went to Bethlehem, married there, and became the ancestor of the future King David. As the birthplace of Israel’s greatest king, Bethlehem became an even more significant national landmark. Then the prophet Micah prophesied that a shepherd king, a Messiah to lead Israel, would come from Bethlehem.
There are only two possibilities here. Jesus was born in Bethlehem—even though Jesus later says he is from Nazareth and there is no valid historical reason for his parents