Loading...Here now is the seventh of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas.
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As I’ve indicated, it is only Matthew and Luke that tell the tales of the infancy narrative, and the annual “Christmas Pageant” that so many of us grew up seeing is in fact a conflation of the two accounts, making one mega-account out of two that are so different up and down the line. And so, the Annunciation to Mary is in Luke, the dream of Joseph in Matthew; the shepherds are in Luke, the wise men in Matthew; the trip to Bethlehem is in Luke, the Flight to Egypt is in Matthew, and so forth and so on. You can compare them yourself, up and down the line, and see the differences.
In this post
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Question. Bart, when you debate and bring up the fact that there are no records in the Roman account of this massive census, how does your debate opponent respond?
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a response.
I’m a little confused on the genealogies of both Matthew and Luke. Both attempt to trace Jesus’ lineage back but use Joseph as their starting point. If Joseph isn’t biologically related to Jesus, is that a genealogy by association? I would have thought Mary’s family would be the important one. I don’t see how Joseph’s family tree is at all relevant unless we’re pursuing an adoptionist thought process.
Yup, it’s a serious problem. But neither Matthew nor Luke could trace the genealogy through Mary since Jewish genealogies were patrilinear. So they trade it to Joseph leaving the very real problem that Jesus was not biologically / genealogically related to him!
Can we be certain that it is Herod the Great that Luke refers to in 1:5, and not Herod Archelaus? All Herod the Great’s sons, grandsons, etc. were named Herod, with different added names. Archelaus would fit a little better to Quirinius and the local census than his father.
IN Matthew it has to be Herod the Great because it was only later that his son Archilaus became ruler according to the story itself (it’s the reason Joseph and Mary can’t settle in Bethlehem). Maybe Luke got them confused? But that wouldn’t be the only problem cinse the census of Augustus didn’t happen in the time of Quirinius either. And it’s not said to be a local census.