Grateful for the birth of the concept of personal salvation
May this gift come through for all of us.

Bart
The story teaches a lesson we still need to hear. What kind of king do we want? One who comes in order to serve others, who is destined to provide help for those in desperate need, or one who doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself and his own power, willing to slaughter the innocents in order to make sure he stays in power?

On one hand you have the future king of the Jews, who relinquishes all his divine power in order to “save his people from their sins.” People have horrible lives, often of their own doing. This future king is willing to give up everything he has for the sake of helping others. In fact, as the reader already knows, this king is willing to sacrifice his life for others. Not just by dying of old age but by being publicly humiliated and tortured to death. This king will teach people to love others as themselves, to do what is right, to provide for those in need; and he models his teaching by how he himself lives. That is the nature of his rule, a rule of service.

And the other king? He is a brutal tyrant who pretends to be pious and godly. He claims he wants to know where the child is so he “too can go and worship him.” It’s a bald-faced lie. This king is nothing but lies. He doesn’t want to worship the child: he wants to destroy it. He cannot stand anyone who, but himself, will have power and authority. Any threat has to be demolished. … They, their mothers, their fathers, their family members, and anyone else with any decency be damned.

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Steve, Author of Historical Accuracy (self-published, well-edited, well-reviewed by professional reviewers)
The Biblical Jesus was a false apocalyptic prophet who led and leads people astray.

1) Apocalypse: Tribulation, Judgment by the Son of Man, and Glorious Rule on Earth
The Biblical Jesus only gave us the Tribulation of the Jewish Revolt with the Jewish Civil War.
It was false that all would be judged and the wicked would stop, put to an end, unable to be saved for the Glorious Rule on Earth.

2) The Biblical Jesus led people astray from Yom Kippur. God forgives. People forgive each other (brothers forgive each other, a multiple of times).
Fogive each other, memorialized in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, Contessa, a wife, forgives husband who isn’t as forgiving).

3) The Biblical Paul and the Biblical Jesus gave us the metaphor of cannibalism and in the gospel of John, this meal is pushed beyond metaphor (For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. … From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him). “Any Israelite or any alien living among them who eats any blood–I will set My face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people. I have given the blood to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar [not human sacrifice].”  Leviticus 17: 10-11

See Ps 27: 8, 106: 38, Jer 19:3-9, Deut 28: 49-57, Lam 4:10

KevinK
Bart, you mentioned before that the birth narrative in Luke is not original to Luke. Do you think it was added as a sort of second edition or is it a scribal addition? Also, do you think the birth narrative in Luke is in reaction to Matthew’s birth narrative?

Bart
I differentiate between a “scribal alteration,” for which we would have some evidence in one manuscript or another and an “editorial interpolation” for which there is no manuscript support (it’s a thin but important line).

So, I think it is a later edition that may or may not have been written by the original author, whoever that was.

I don’t think the author[of Luke’s gospel] was responding to Matthew (I don’t think he knew Matthew; there’s certainly no evidence he did).

My hunch is that he added the chapters since he had heard these stories…

I’m not sure there was a common “narrative” behind the two accounts, though certainly there was a common theme: born to Joseph and Mary, a virgin, in Bethlehem. The stories themselves, however, appear to be independent.