jjramsey

Actually, I was trying to say that the disciples probably didn't know Jesus' exact age.

aa5874

I have actually dismissed the 'oral tradition' theories, and think that the authors called 'Matthew' and 'Luke' wrote about a person, namely Jesus, who they did not know or even heard about. The books called 'Matthew' and 'Luke' now appears to me to have been written very long after the so called Jesus would have lived.

I am not a historian, but I am just trying to show why I have this opinion.

Both 'Matthew' and 'Luke' place the birth of Jesus at the time King Herod was alive. Matthew 2:1, 'Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king....'
Now 'Luke' 1:5, ' There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain preist named Zacharias......'

However, for some uknown reason, two 'national' events which should clarify the date of Jesus' birth, has, instead, made his birth become more obscure. 'Matthew' claims Herod kills all the young babies in Behlehem and in the surrounding area (Matt 2:16) and 'Luke' claims Jesus was born during a census carried out when Cyrenius was govenor of Syria (LK2:2).

Theses two 'national' events are independent of 'oral traditions' and would have been known by virtually every adult alive at that time, yet these 'events are not corroborated by any contemporary historian, which leads me to hypothesize that these events were written when it was highly unlikely that anyone, at the time of writng, would have been able to challenge the authenticity of the events.

Chris Weimer

And why would they? What benefit could that possibly have?