Queen of Swords

You're right. I looked through the gospel and couldn't find any mention of the stable.

The birth tales might be almost as difficult to harmonize as the resurrection stories. For supposedly inspired accounts, the gospels seem to have a number of discrepancies.

rlogan

OK, you got me.

For a second there I had to think about that...

lpetrich

It gets worse.

The Matthew and Luke genealogies contradict each other, and both of them try to have it both ways about Jesus Christ's paternity. They trace Joseph back to King David, presumably to show that JC satisfies one of the qualifications for being the Messiah, and they tell us that JC's biological father was really God himself.

The first three Gospels closely parallel each other, but there are lots of word-for-word matches. Not the same incidents described in different words, but the exact same words. If Matthew, Mark, and Luke had been students who had submitted their Gospels as part of some assignment, their professor would come after them for plagiarism. The usual conclusion is that Matthew and Luke had copied word-from-word from Mark, and that Matthew and Luke had gotten some extra material from a now-unknown source called Q (I'm using their traditional authors as shorthand for their true, unknown authors).

Matthew refers to God less directly than Mark and Luke -- "Kingdom of Heaven" vs. "Kingdom of God", most obviously. So Matthew had bowdlerized his Lord and Savior's statements, doing something like writing "Kingdom of G-d".

JC wants his career and teachings to be secret in Mark, though not in Matthew, where he preaches before whole crowds.

In Mark, JC forbids divorce under all circumstances, while in Matthew, he makes an exception for sexual misbehavior.

While Matthew, Mark, and Luke are similar in overall style, which is why they are called the Synoptics, John is drastically different. JC's origin is much more metaphysical, he says and does different sorts of things, he stays in Jerusalem for a whole year instead of two weeks, his Temple temper tantrum does not provoke the authorities the way it does in the Synoptics, etc. Dr. Asimov, who considered the JC of the Synoptics a plausible historical JC, suggested that one can think of John as something like a Platonic dialogue, something not meant as literal history, but more a way to expound certain ideas.

See what happens when you read the Bible?

Lolabrigida

"Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying,
"Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His Star in the east, and have come to worship him."

They were magi from the east and they saw his star in the east. They just kept going east!! those guys went all the way across what is today Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the entirity of China, Across the North Pacific, landed in North America....traversed that...set sail across the Atlantic, through Gibralter and the Mediterranean sea all they way back to where the started from....just to head south about 20 or so miles...

Jesus was two or three when they got there...

Chili

Not really if you consider that "no room at the Inn" suggest that the birth of Christ is a non-rational event that takes place in the conscious mind of Joseph. The 'stable image' is a metaphor used to depict this state of mind when man is non-rational and more like the animal man but now without reason (beyong theology). Notice that in Matthew Joseph was absent when the Magi entered . . . or they would no thave entered since Mathew is the rational religious persepctive.

Luke reports that Joseph was there when the Magi arrived to say that it did happen to Joseph but not to Joseph the Jew. These two passages just confirm that rebirth is a non-rational event and that is how they try to achieve this.

Amaleq13

I specifically had in mind Herod's kid killing combined with the flight into Egypt. That seems a deliberate attempt to recall the similar slaughter at the birth of Moses as well as the flight out of Egypt.

This idea is not original to me but I can't remember where I read it. Maybe Spong?

rlogan

Ace investigtive journalist Jeremiah Ben-popsicle arrives at the hotel Bethlehem to interview the grandson of the former proprietor of 1 CE:

"Jim - tell us what your grandfather related to your family about the Son of God that was born here to an unwed virgin. What rooms did the visiting kings stay in, and did they tip well?"

"Well Ben, my grandfather said nothing of the kind."

"Oh."


So you see, there cannot be such a story. The gospel perps have to weave a story that has HB prophesy within it, but on the other hand in a manner that cannot be refuted by blood relatives of the principal agents.

If they told such a story in Bethlehem it wold be falsified. So there's no room at the inn. Makes good imagery too. Born in such humble circumstance.