Well since nobody decided to pm me, I'll just reply to a post or two and be done here, I'm just not in a real debate-y mood, hehe
The Talmud, which was sort of an atlas written around the time Jesus was died, names 63 Galilean towns but Nazareth is not there. There are dozens of records from the era which name cities and Nazareth isn't mentioned until 400 years after Christ's supposed death.
We might have a lot of records of different cities and towns from that time, but that doesn't mean we know about
all the towns that were around at that time. Seriously, it was 2000 years ago, we have some wiggle room here. There is no way we can be certain that there weren't other towns around at the time.
Checkmate herp a derp
I'll admit that my explanation on that was wrong, but I looked it up and that objection still doesn't work. Dodger hit the nail on the head- Herod was the resident king of Judea under the Roman empire, and Augustus Caesar was the ruler of the whole Roman empire. Caesar was over Herod and they were both around at the same time.
So you're saying that people are more likely to revolt on behalf of a prophetic birth than they are for having their babies killed? There's no mention of such an atrocity ever taking place in any other historical document.
Not exactly. But Herod obviously wouldn't want the Jews calling some other guy their king instead of him or Caesar. That was a very big deal back then. I doubt they would revolt though because again, they really couldn't. Rome was much more powerful than they were.
No but historians do, and they like to publish things on the internet for me to read.
I wouldn't say that historians know exactly how it worked either, and you really shouldn't put that much trust in them. As good as historians and scientists are, they tend to take their findings and make all sorts of assumptions and blow them out of proportion to get themselves more attention. I figure they probably found some documents and stuff that they can make reasonable guesses based off of, but that doesn't mean that this is exactly how taxes were done without a doubt when Jesus was born. You can't reasonably make that assumption
Mhmm. Have you even read your Bible before?
You
really don't know what you're talking about (and yes, I've read the whole thing cover to cover.) You just said Mathew claimed he was born in an inn. Which you just showed us something else. Not only that, but this has nothing to do with when he was born. This is talking about when the wise men visited Jesus and Mary, which was probably several years later, like Dodger said.
These aren't small details that someone should forget. If a group of pagan priests are so sure that Jesus is God that they give him a small fortune in gifts is kind of a significant event. I mean that's a serious plot point that's completely omitted.
It kind of is a small detail. It's a story Jesus probably told them, that, while interesting, isn't really relevant to his ministry- which is what most of the Gospels are- a summary of the three years of Jesus' ministry. And when you already have people like Mathew giving a good account of that story, why should someone else go through the time to write it in their account when they may not even remember that part very well?
Are you trying to tell us something?
That was just a mini-side-rant because I constantly hear people misquote the Bible and take it out of context and then assert it like it's fact. Like how Jesus was apparently born in an
inn house in Mathew because the Wise men showed up then. *cough cough*
And I think I'm going to end my side of the argument here. Like I said, I'm not in the mood to really do a full on debate, and debates like these just don't work very well normally. If you'd like to continue the conversation, pm me. Otherwise I won't respond
