Johnny Skeptic

In another thread, Lee Merrill said "One requirement fulfilled was that he was a descendant of David, for instance", so I thought that I would start a thread on this issue so we can see how well Lee can defend his position.

Micah 5:2 says “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” Some Christians interpret the verse as meaning that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem.

Christians often accuse skeptics of taking things out of context, but Micah 5:2 is an excellent example of where some Christians have taken things out of context. Let’s take a look at the entire fifth chapter of Micah.

Micah 5:1 Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek.

2 But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.

3 Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel.

4 And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God; and they shall abide: for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth.

5 And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men.

6 And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders.

7 And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the LORD, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men.

8 And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many people as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep: who, if he go through, both treadeth down, and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver.

9 Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all thine enemies shall be cut off.

10 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD, that I will cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I will destroy thy chariots:

11 And I will cut off the cities of thy land, and throw down all thy strong holds:

12 And I will cut off witchcrafts out of thine hand; and thou shalt have no more soothsayers:

13 Thy graven images also will I cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee; and thou shalt no more worship the work of thine hands.

14 And I will pluck up thy groves out of the midst of thee: so will I destroy thy cities.

15 And I will execute vengeance in anger and fury upon the heathen, such as they have not heard.

Johnny: Verses 5 and 6 obviously describe someone completely different from what the New Testament says about Jesus. With evidence as shabby as is found in Micah, it is no wonder that most Jews rejected Jesus in the first century, and in every other century for that matter. I, and the vast majority of the rest of the people in the world, am still waiting for Christians to come up with one single messianic prophecy that came true.

Consider the following:

http://hnn.us/articles/744.html

The belief that Jesus was born in Bethlehem is based mostly upon the birth narratives of Christ provided in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke:

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn." (Luke 2:4-7)

According to this passage, Jesus' parents were from Nazareth, but traveled to Bethlehem in order to be counted in a census; this leads to Jesus being born in a manger in Bethlehem, rather than his parent's native home in Nazareth. In the book of Matthew, Jesus is also born in Bethlehem. But his parents are said to have been from Bethlehem. And he isn't born in a manger, much less a cave. (Matthew 1:18-2:12)

The contradictions in the accounts and their unreliability -- there is, for instance, little historical evidence of a census being taken at the time, as Luke states -- have led many scholars to believe that Jesus may not have been born in Bethlehem at all, a belief that would effectively devalue the significance of the Church of the Nativity.

According to Robin Lane Fox, the discrepancies can easily be explained. "Early Christian tradition," he says, "did not remember, or perhaps ever know, exactly where and when Jesus had been born." What was important, Fox suggests, was that Jesus be identified with Bethlehem because in the Old Testament it was prophesied that the messiah would be descended from David and David was from Bethlehem.

http://www.archaeology.org/0511/abstracts/jesus.html

Theologians question biblical accounts of the Nativity. Now archaeologists are doing the same.

Many Christians accept the story of Jesus' birth in a manger in Bethlehem in Judea. But what if there was no Bethlehem in Judea at the time of Jesus' birth?

The town of Bethlehem in the West Bank, some six miles south of Jerusalem, is revered by millions as the birthplace of Jesus. According to the New Testament account of the apostle Matthew, Joseph and Mary were living in Bethlehem in the southern region of Judea at the time of Jesus' birth and later moved to Nazareth in the northern Galilee region. In the more popular account of the apostle Luke, Joseph and a very pregnant Mary traveled more than 90 miles from their residence in Nazareth to Joseph's Judean hometown of Bethlehem to be counted in a Roman census. Regardless of the variation, both apostles agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, the city where King David had been born a thousand years earlier. The Christian Messiah could thereby be considered a descendant of the House of David--a requirement for followers of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

But while Luke and Matthew describe Bethlehem in Judea as the birthplace of Jesus, "Menorah," the vast database of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), describes Bethlehem as an "ancient site" with Iron Age material and the fourth-century Church of the Nativity and associated Byzantine and medieval buildings. But there is a complete absence of information for antiquities from the Herodian period--that is, from the time around the birth of Jesus.

I had never before questioned the assumption that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea. But in the early 1990s, as an archaeologist working for the IAA, I was contracted to perform some salvage excavations around building and infrastructure projects in a small rural community in the Galilee. When I started work, some of the people who lived around the site told me how Jesus was really born there, not in the south. Intrigued, I researched the archaeological evidence for Bethlehem in Judea at the time of Jesus and found nothing. This was very surprising, as Herodian remains should be the first thing one should find. What was even more surprising is what archaeologists had already uncovered and what I was to discover over the next 11 years of excavation at the small rural site--Bethlehem of Galilee.

Aviram Oshri is a senior archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority.

http://www.beliefnet.com/features/se...rth/birth1.asp

Traditional View: Bethlehem

It is consistent with history that Joseph, fearful that an aggressive King Herod Antipas would level Bethlehem, might have taken Mary and the infant Jesus to Nazareth to keep them out of harm's way.

Non-Traditional View: Nazareth

Some scholars assert that there is no historical evidence of a census being taken that would have brought Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

Also, in the first century, the Jewish naming convention was to call a man either according to his father's name or according to the town in which he was born. Jesus was known as "Jesus of Nazareth."

Another view is that the early Christian writers changed Jesus' birthplace to Bethlehem because they wanted to make it appear that Jesus fulfilled an Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem.

Jack the Bodiless

Interestingly, the Gospel of John strongly implies that Jesus wasn't born in Bethlehem. According to John 7, people rejected Jesus because he wasn't born in Bethlehem.

It appears that "John" knew of the expectation that the Messiah should be born in Bethlehem: but, if he was also aware of the Matthew & Luke Nativity stories, he chose to ignore them (maybe he knew they were fictional).

Another Bethlehem, in Galilee, would fit: but John doesn't mention this.

TedM

Johnny, you actually question a bunch of other things in your post: Was Bethlehem a messiac prophecy? Was there a Bethlehem during the time of Jesus? Are the accounts in Luke and Matthew believable?

To those I'll answer this:

How legit is the prophecy?
Certainly the passage in Micah is considered Messiac because it foretells a future Deliverer who will conquor Israel's foes. Typical messiah stuff. It is debatable whether it is saying that he will be come from the town of Bethlehem or simply be a descendant of David's or his clan, who came from/resided in Bethlehem. It is not surprising that for those that 'searched the scriptures' some decided that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Whether Jews did that BEFORE Jesus lived (assuming he was historical) or Christians first did it after he lived is a question I don't know the answer to.

Did Bethlehem exist? The archeological evidence you presented is interesting. However, if that saying there is no sign of habitation from AD 0 to AD299, then that requires an explanation of its mention in the gospels. Its mention in 3 of the gospels would attest to its existence within a century or so of Jesus. In addition Justin Martyr refers (Dial., lxxviii) to the birth as having taken place in a cave near the village of Bethlehema cave near Bethlehem Origen, perhaps around 250AD, wrote "In Bethlehem the cave is pointed out where He was born, and the manger in the cave where He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and the rumor is in those places and among foreigners of the Faith that indeed Jesus was born in this cave". This clearly refers to Bethlehem's existence by some time before 250AD. Also, logically one would expect the town of Bethlehem to continue to exist since it had such a powerful connection to their King David.

Are the accounts in Luke and Matthew believable? Even from the gospels it is clear that if Jesus was born in Bethlehem it was not his place of upbringing. Christians of course would say that was by design. That sounds reasonable to me until one compares the reasons why Jesus was born in Bethlehem and then left it as explained in Luke and Matthew. As such, I think they cost each other a lot of credibility points.

ted