Within Reason - #49 Christmas Special with Bart Ehrman - Did Christmas Really Happen?

Episode Date: December 23, 2023

In this Christmas special of Within Reason, New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman explores the history and narrative of Jesus' birthday, and demonstrates where the accounts seem to contradict. Get Bart Erhman's courses here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply. Season's greetings. Welcome to this Within Reason Christmas special. I'm Alex O'Connor. I'm joined today by Bart Erman, an agnostic New Testament scholar, whose previous appearance on this podcast was one of my favorite episodes yet. Today, we talk about Christmas. Historically, was it placed in December to usurp the Roman holiday of Saturnalia, but also narratively. There are two different accounts of Jesus's birth in the New Testament, which appear to sometimes contradict each other. Also, some of the prophets, that Jesus is said to fulfill by Matthew are perhaps a little bit dubious. But should these issues really be a problem for Christians? Dr. Erman doesn't think so, and neither really do I. Dr. Erman has a number of courses for sale, including Did the Christmas Story Really Happen? And Jesus, the actual son of Joseph. The latter of these explores the biblical evidence for Joseph being the biological father of Jesus,

rather than Jesus being the result of a virgin birth. I'll put a link to these courses in the show notes if you're interested in learning more. I'll also get a commission on any sales, so you'll be supporting the podcast. And if you'd like to support the show more generally and receive early access to episodes whenever available, you can do so on patreon.com. A link to that is in the show notes as well. That said, I give to you Dr. Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman, Merry Christmas.

Or are you a happy holiday? kind of person. Well, you know, I'm both. I mean, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays. I'm a little surprised by people going on about, you know, keep Christ in Christmas because, you know, holiday means holy day. So why not keep holy in holiday? It's, you know, holiday is not like, it's not a secular term. Do you know what? I genuinely had never considered that before. Nobody asked. What should, what should the secularists be saying? Like, happy, happy, you know, festive break or something. Happy end of the year season. I don't know. Well, well, happy end of year season to you.

Yeah, well, you do. It's good to have you back. Thanks. It's funny, I should tell the viewers, I asked you just before we started recording, is it all right if we start 10 minutes late? Because it's taking a little bit longer than usual for me to set up. And for those watching on YouTube, they'll notice it's because I've gone a bit Christmasy with the decorations.

I went out and spent, I want to say the equivalent of about 15 or 16 US dollars on this Christmas tree just because I knew that we were going to be recording this podcast. I've never done a Christmas tree as a tax write-off before, so... Well, you know, in the US, that tree would cost about $50. I'm sure I was cycling around town, trying to find somewhere that would sell them. They're all trying to get rid of them because it's so close to Christmas. Very close indeed, if we're going to pretend as though... Yes.

It's the day that this comes out, which will probably be Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. So welcome to anybody listening who may have escaped an awkward family argument at the Christmas dinner table and snuck off into a back room and stuck some headphones on to watch them YouTube. It's good to have you with us. We're going to be doing something of a Christmas special of Within Reason today talking about the story that inspired this holiday. But first, one of the questions that people always want to ask about Christmas is not just where did it come from narratively, but where did it come from historically?

There seems to be this idea floating around that Christmas is something of a pagan festival. What do you know about this, Dr. Herman? do you think it's true? Well, I don't think it's true that Christmas was ever a pagan festival since it's celebrating Christ. So I think, well, so the deal, historically the deal is, is that the early Christians did not celebrate the birth of Jesus. They didn't celebrate. Even though they came to believe in the incarnation, the birth of Jesus was never a celebration for the first 300 years, basically. Easter was celebrated, and that was the time when, you know, Of course, that was the big, big celebration, the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In the fourth century, as more Gentiles, pagans, are converting into the faith, Christmas begins to be a holiday that's celebrated. There are debates about the date. December 25th is not written in stone. It's not written in the Bible. It's not written anywhere. But it is close to the celebration of a very famous Roman festival. That was a big deal for people, the Saturnalia, which was a great festival because it was a time when people would give gifts to one another.

And it was also a time when all of the roles would be reversed. And so masters would become slaves for the day. The slaves could order the masters around. And so it's kind of this reversal of fortune thing. And so... That's somewhat what happens in the Christmas story, really, isn't it? The reversal of the master into the slave. No, that's right.

It's the child who comes in who's the king, and the king who's going to be dethroned. And, you know, the first shall be last and the last first. It's very much implicit in the Christmas story. Kings, worshipping a child, a child going to be taking over the kingdom. And so all of that. also the giving of gifts and a celebration at the end of the year. And so many people think that Christmas was a way of kind of substituting when these pagans come into the faith, you know, they're kind of lost out of one of these great holidays. And so Christmas becomes more of a thing

like that. But it's, I should say that our celebration of Christmas today owes a lot more to 19th century England than it does to anything else. I mean, it's, it started being, becoming a big thing at the end of the 19th century in England. But even then, even then Christmas was celebrated when you put up your tree on Christmas Eve and, you know, it'd be a one-day thing. It wouldn't be, you know, starting right before Halloween. Yes. Where do we get this 25th of December date from? Well, it's close to Saturnalia and it's, I mean, there are debates about it, whether it's related to the winter solstice, you know, the new year, and then you have the birth of the new,

the new, the savior then. And so it's close to that. It's around Saturnalia. There are scholarly debates about how to settle this. And I know, I know about 30 people who think they've got it settled, but they have different opinions about how it actually, how it actually, but it's right around that time. And so it's, yeah. And so, right. But it's a problem because December 205th, you know, probably was not snow on the ground in Israel, you know, or, you know, so yeah. No. I mean, like you say, it doesn't come around the Bible. There's nothing in the New Testament about this date, but there is a fair bit in the New Testament about the story of Christmastime. In fact, an overabundance to the extent that there are two versions of the same story, it seems.

Before getting into exactly what happened on Christmas morning, according to the two Gospels that report the birth narratives, what do you think is the genre of this story? I mean, we have this, most people have an idea in their heads of what happens on Christmas, you know, a child in a manger and Mary and the angel, but when the gospel authors were writing these stories, do you think that they thought they were writing history? so let me say something about the stories kind of broadly generic and otherwise that I would not say there's an overabundance of evidence of information in the New Testament about the birth of Jesus of the 27 books in the New Testament it's mentioned in only two

and so it's so basically you have the first two chapters of Matthew in the first two chapters of Luke in terms of genre both of these books are being written in a way that's pretty similar to ways ancient people would write biographies of important people, almost always an important man. And many times in those biographies, if it's a really, really, truly significant figure, you'll have a birth account that shows something spectacular happening at the birth. And so we have a number of these of famous, famous men who have amazing births, sometimes with a divine being, making a mortal being a woman pregnant. And so we have, you know, we have stories like that.

In the modern world, people use genres in different ways. In the ancient world, this would have probably just seen as kind of a biography of Jesus. But I think when you ask, would the New Testament authors have thought they're writing history? Yeah, I think they did. Of course they did. They thought this is what happened. Now, these birth narratives only occur in two of the Gospels, Matthew and Luke, these being sort of the two in the middle chronologically in terms of when they were written. Mark comes first, doesn't have a birth narrative, seems also not to have an understanding of the virgin birth at all, which is perhaps a little suspicious, but we don't want to make an argument from silence.

The question I want to ask is that if Matthew and Luke have two different stories about the events of Jesus's birth, do you think that they were aware of each other's stories? Do you think they were aware of each other's traditions that they were drawing on? Because these Gospels are written decades after the death of Jesus, let alone his birth, which would have been another sort of 30 years, 33 years prior. It seems like this has to have been drawn from some kind of tradition, an oral tradition. Do you think they would have been aware of each other's given that they seem to contradict each other in places? Well, it's much debated now. For many decades, it was simply assumed that Matthew and Luke had different stories and that they weren't dependent on each other. There are now some scholars who are arguing that Luke used Matthew for his gospel, that he had a copy of Matthew in front of him,

and it based some of his stories on Matthew. And I don't think that's right, but if it is right, It certainly didn't happen much in the birth narratives because when you actually compare the two accounts, if you just make a list, I have my students do this all the time. I have them, I don't tell them what to expect. I tell them, okay, list everything that happens in Matthew's birth story, chapters one and two. Then list everything happens in Luke's birth stories, chapters one and two, and then compare your lists. And they come back and they say, oh, my God, I had no idea.

They don't tell the same stories. Yeah, none of the same stories. They have several of the same themes. Jesus is born to Mary in Bethlehem, and she's a virgin. You know, there's some basic themes, but the stories are completely different. There are certainly no word-for-word agreements between them the way there are in other passages in Matthew and Luke. I think they're getting these from separate traditions, which have the basic, the major theological themes about Bethlehem and Virgin, But otherwise, I don't think that they're dependent on each other.

Well, let's start at the beginning here. The virgin birth is really the beginning of the Christmas story here, or rather the announcement to Mary that she's going to be the mother of the son of God. An angel appears to Mary and says that she's going to conceive of a child and that this will be through the Holy Spirit because she's a virgin. And Matthew writes that this is to fulfill a prophecy in the book of Isaiah, Isaiah 714, which says that a virgin shall conceive. What's going on here? Well, you're right.

They're two different stories. They are both explaining why Jesus had to be born of a virgin. They have two different explanations for it. Matthew's explanation is Matthews usually thought to be earlier than Luke. though there's not, doesn't have to be, but it probably is. And as you said, we're talking about accounts now that are, they've got to be 85 or 90 years after the event by, by people who weren't obviously there to see any of it or, and didn't know anybody or living a different part of the world. And that, by the way, is even on the sort of earliest models of, you know,

plausibly when these gospels could have been written, that's not a skeptical approach. It's like Even the most optimistic accounts of when the Gospel of Matthew will have been written will still place this story many decades after the birth of Jesus. Well, that's right. I mean, I guess, you know, there are some conservative Christian scholars who would say that the Gospels were written like in the 50s or the 60s. Almost all historical critical scholars, most of them date them at least in the 80s later. But even if you say the 50s, you know, if Jesus was born during the reign of King Herod, Herod the Great, Herod the Great died in what's now for B.C.E.

And so even if this thing, you know, suppose Matthew was written in the year, you know, 56, well, that's still 60 years later, six decades later. So they are much later. So Matthew, you know, supposing that it's first, it says that Jesus was born of a virgin in order to fulfill the scripture, as you say. said, Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14. This fits in with Matthew's entire birth narrative, because in Matthew's narrative, virtually everything that happens is a fulfillment of scripture. So he's born of Bethlehem because Micah chapter 5, verse 2 says the Savior's coming from Bethlehem. You know, Herod kills all the baby boys in Bethlehem because Jeremiah talked about weeping in Rama. And so the women are, he goes to Egypt in order to escape the wrath of Herod.

because Josea says, out of Egypt, I will call my son. So Matthew quotes all of these to show this is a fulfillment of scripture. And that's his only explanation for why Jesus is born of a virgin. And Luke has a different explanation. Luke doesn't quote scripture. He doesn't reference Isaiah 714. For Luke, it's the reason that you said. The angel comes to Mary and says, you're going to conceive a child.

And she says, I've never had sex. How am I going to conceive a child? And he explains, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the most high will overshadow you so that the one born of you shall be called holy, the son of God. So in Luke, Jesus is born of a virgin to show that he really is the son of God. Literally, God gets Mary pregnant. Yeah, Luke is a more theological approach to the virgin birth here, and that the reason it happens is for the sake of the holiness of the child.

Whereas in Matthew, it's essentially an exercise in prophecy fulfillment. I mean, Matthew is tripping over himself throughout the entire gospel to show how Jesus is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. And, of course, he references Isaiah 714. But, I mean, he also references seemingly a prophecy that doesn't exist. We spoke about this in our other podcast briefly. Matthew, in putting forward this litany of Old Testament prophecies that Jesus fulfilled says, And he comes from Nazareth to fulfill the prophecy that says he shall be called in Nazarene. And if you're reading an online Bible and you look at all the little footnotes, whenever Matthew says a quote from prophecy, I'll have a little footnote and you can click on it and it will show you exactly what prophecy he's fulfilling.

When he says that this will fulfill the prophecy that Jesus will be called it or that he shall be called in Nazarene, there's no footnote. Why is that? Well, there's sometimes you get a footnote that says, source of. Unknown. There'll be a, yeah, citation needed. There'll be a footnote of a kind. Please add footnote. Please add citation later.

Yeah, so there's no. You can help by expanding. I know, yeah. Of course there are. What's going on here? Well, it's hard to say because it doesn't know, it's not clear whether Matthew thinks there's a prophecy that says he shall be called a Nazarene. Or if he's actually doing something more sophisticated than that. There, as you know, there are a lot of debates about it.

The theory that I've always found most convincing. is that it's a reference to a passage in Isaiah. In Isaiah, chapter 11, verse 1, it talks about kind of a savior figure coming down from the root of Jesse, from a branch of David's genealogical line. And it uses the word branch, and branch of David,

branch is the word Nazar in Hebrew. And so you could get Nazar, he's come from the branch to be Nazarite. you know, or Nazarene. So Nazare Nazarene. And so it may be that he's doing something sophisticated like that. But I kind of doubt it because in other places, it's really not very clear that Matthew knows Hebrew. He's writing in Greek. Greeks, obviously, is his native language. And to be able to do that kind of tricky analysis, you'd have to know, you'd have to know something about Hebrew. So if Matthew is, if he's repeating something that somebody else has told him,

That may be what that someone else was thinking about. But I don't think it's something Matthew would have come up with himself. Now, there's deeper relevance to the fact that Matthew apparently didn't know Hebrew in that he will have been reading a Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. And this prophecy that we've already mentioned of Isaiah 714 has got a lot of attention from critical voices who have pointed out that if you read the Hebrew of Isaiah 714, where it says a virgin shall conceive, the word for virgin used there is Alma,

which just means a young woman of marriageable age. And in fact, there's another specific Hebrew word that's used for virgin that's actually used elsewhere throughout the Old Testament when specifically referring to a virgin that isn't used in Isaiah 714. And so it seems strange if he was intending for this to be a virgin birth, why he wouldn't have used the Hebrew word for virgin. However, the Greek version of the Old Testament translates this into Pathanos, I think is the word, which is the Greek word for virgin. And so if Matthew's reading a Greek version of the Old Testament, he's going to read, a version shall conceive. And lo and behold, the story that we get is one in which a virgin conceives.

but do you think it's the case that had Matthew spoken Hebrew and had he been reading a Hebrew what we now call Old Testament, we wouldn't have had the virgin birth at all? Well, it's a good question. And, you know, the thing is that part, all of these words are a little bit tricky. The Hebrew word Alma, which you said means young woman. It means young woman irrespective of whether she's ever had sex or not. And so it could be a virgin, but it's not necessarily a virgin. it's just a young woman.

The Hebrew word Bethula, the other one you're referring to, it does mean virgin. And you're right, Hebrew doesn't use that word. He uses young woman. But, you know, it's possible that Matthew might have,

like, you know, interpreted the young woman to be a virgin. I don't know. So I think it's impossible to say what Matthew would have done. But it's, the other reason

that's kind of tricky is because Parthanas also can mean young woman. It doesn't have to mean a young woman who's never had sex. But eventually it comes to mean, you know, a woman has never had sex. And Matthew definitely reads it that way. But it's not the only problem he has from not being able to read the Hebrew.

The other problem is that in Isaiah 714, the verb that's used is a verb, Hebrew doesn't have past, present, future tenses the way we do in English, you know, she did this, she's doing this, she will do this. it has two tense is one that is an action that's already been completed and another an action that hasn't yet been completed but the not completed thing could be past present or future right you could be about the past or something not completed so in Isaiah 714 it uses the perfect tense which means it's a completed action it's saying this is this woman has conceived and she will bear a son and so it's taught Isaiah talking about a woman who's pregnant at the time. He's talking to the king of Israel. If you just read

the entire chapter, which nobody does, you just read the whole chapter. It's really pretty clear what he's talking about. The Jerusalem's been besieged by two armies, and the king is just worried that they're going to be, he's just distressed. They're going to be wiped out here. He calls in the prophet, and the prophet says, you don't need to worry. God has you here. This woman is pregnant, and she's going to bear a son, and before this child's old enough to know good from bad, you know, good from evil, these two armies will have dispersed. That's what he's saying. And so he's not talking about some events, you know, hundreds of years later. He's talking about something's going to happen in a few years. And so, you know, the woman's pregnant. She's going to,

she's going to give. And so Matthew, though, reads the verse in Greek and reads it as virgin, will conceive and thinks it's a messianic prophecy. But it was never taken as a messianic prophecy before Matthew. Can it not be that God in his infinite wisdom was providing a solution for the troubles of the time whilst also prophesying something that would happen in the future? I mean, I'm aware of this concept of the prophetic perfect tense that oftentimes in prophetic passages, the past tense is used to describe future events. This sometimes happens when prophets are speaking.

And as far as I understand, this has got something to do with it, we know it's going to happen with such certainty that it's spoken of as if a past event. And it's this, I was introduced to this concept by a biblical scholar friend when talking about this very verse. And he suggested that that was what was going on here. And that's why you get this, this past tense language that we're actually using the prophetic. Well, it's not a past tense. It's not a past tense. It's a completed text. There's no such thing as a prophetic perfect.

I mean, if you look up in a Greek grammar, that's a theological phrase, but it's not a syntactical phrase. It's not like, you know, it just means what this person's explaining it to be. So if you say, could it have been that way? Yeah, sure. I mean, if you're a Christian, that's what you'd say it was, because that's how Matthew often uses his scripture. For example, when he says, out of Egypt have I called my son, Josea 11, 2, Matthew's used. using it to refer to Jesus, having to go down to Egypt so he can come back out of Egypt. Jose is talking about the Exodus event that God called Israel out of Egypt.

And when Matthew says it's referring to the Messiah, he's not necessarily saying it does not apply to the Exodus, but it does apply to the Messiah. He's saying that it's something that happened that is now fulfilled with Jesus. And so in this case, the way of understanding how a prophecy is fulfilled is it's not just that like there's a prediction and then it happens. It can be fulfilled in the sense that what happens now fulfills the meaning. It fills the meaning fuller. It's now fuller in meaning. You filled it with meaning because now it's an anticipation of the real salvation that's going to come later.

Yes. And I mean, the Exodus story is in many ways seen as. a sort of prototype for the liberative force of Jesus. And so this would actually make sense. You know, Moses being something of a proto Christ, that Christ is the fulfillment of this. Although I will say that reading the birth narratives, having this seemingly quite bizarre detour to Egypt, the stories going on, then all of a sudden, we've got to go up to Egypt for a bit. And then we're going to come back down again because, you know, Herod wants to kill a lot. of the babies. And then you're thinking, well, this is, this is a little bit strange.

And it's a little bit strange that, that Matthew doesn't mention this as well. That Luke doesn't. Oh, that Luke, sorry, that Luke doesn't mention this. And then Matthew says, oh, and this is because Josea says, out of Egypt, I called my son. And you think, I don't want to be a cynic, but it sounds maybe a little bit contrived. Well, it's, yeah, it is, I think. And it's, it's not just that it's not in Luke, But Luke's chronology doesn't work if Matthew's chronology is right. Now, that's something that I did want to speak to you about, because in our previous podcast, we spent about six minutes talking about the birth narratives, and it's good to go into more detail here. And one of the things you said that people have responded to, and I've seen people on YouTube commenting on this, is specifically about this point.

Now, we should be clear for our listeners what we're talking about here. we've sort of got two chronologies like you say surrounding the birth of Jesus and specifically specifically to see with the flight of Egypt you think that there's a contradiction here so maybe you can lay out what the two stories are and why it is that they contradict each other and perhaps I can put to you some of the criticisms that I've heard

of the position since then. Well let me point out this isn't like my idea this has been around forever because if you just read the two accounts you've got a problem in Matthew's account the Matthew's account, King Herod finds out that the child has been born in Bethlehem from the

wise men. And he finds out, you know, how, he finds out. And so he sends out the troops to kill the children in Bethlehem. But Joseph has warned in a dream that this is going to happen. And so he's told to take the child and his mother and go to Egypt. So if they go to Egypt, it's about a hundred miles or so, I suppose, or over 100 miles when they go to Egypt. So they go down to Egypt, and the normal route would be on foot, which take a week or so. And they go down there, and they stay there until Herod dies, whenever that is. Then when Herod dies, they learn, then word comes down that Herod has died, and then they return, but they learn that they can't return to Judea, which is where Bethlehem is, because Archelaus is now the king,

and he's worse than his father, Herod was, so they have to relocate to Nazareth. Okay. So that's, so that's the sequence of things. And so there's a lot of time going on between trips to Egypt, staying there, Herod dying, word coming there and they're coming back and all that. Luke also gives a pretty specific chronology, even more specific. In Luke's account, Mary gives birth in Bethlehem. there temporarily because they're actually originally from Nazareth, according to Luke. They've made

a trip down to register for a census because Joseph is from the lineage of King David, who was born in Bethlehem. So they have to register for the census in Bethlehem. While they're there, she goes into labor, she gives birth. Eight days later, they have Jesus circumcised. Thirty-three days later, they fulfill the requirement of Leviticus, Chapter 12, for her to perform her. a little sacrifice in the temple for her purification. And then they returned to Nazareth. So in Luke's account, they returned to Nazareth. They're in Jerusalem for 40 days, and then they returned to

Nazareth after 40 days. In Matthew's account, they go down to Egypt. And for months, years, I don't know how long, but, you know, months at least. And so this has been widely, you know, this, again, this isn't just kind of a crazy criticism. This is like, this is a widely held view among historical critics that this just doesn't work. And the reason it doesn't work is because Matthew wants Jesus to fulfill the scripture about Egypt. And so he's got to get him down to Egypt. Yeah, now I asked you about

this before. I said, well, what does a Christian, what's the answer to this? I mean, how do people respond to this? And you said, I don't know, you just have to make something up. Now, it seems to me that the the most common criticism of this view that you're espousing here is that yes we've got uh in in luke's narrative eight days after jesus birth he's circumcised and then when the time came for the purification rights uh joseph and mary took him to jerusalem which okay 33 days oh yeah okay okay yeah 33 days i mean some people might want to say well it doesn't specify the time but we know we know how long it was supposed to be. I mean, maybe there's, in the New Testament, I mean, it says when the time has come. And if you look at the, look at the, um, look at the amount of time that

you're supposed to wait, it's, it is specified, right? So we know it was 33 days, in other words. Yes. Now, some people might want to say that the language here, when the time came for purification rights by the, by the law of Moses. I mean, I don't know. If there were some kind of circumstances that prevented somebody from, from getting to the temple, would there perhaps be some kind of exception made such that they could say, look, the time has come means once all this business in Egypt is over. But in Luke, they don't return to Jerusalem. I mean, Matthew, when they come back from Egypt precisely, it says precisely they don't

come back to Judea. Sure. That's where Jerusalem is. That can't be right. Which means that if there is going to be some kind of flight to Egypt, it's going to be after the purification rights. So it's going to be eight days after, eight days after Jesus is born,

circumcised, 33 days after taking to the temple, purification rights. And then you say that in Luke, after this happens, it says that they go to Jerusalem, right? No, no. After it happens, they go to Nazareth.

And why is it that it can't be that the flight to Egypt happens in between these? At what point? It seems strange that it doesn't get mentioned, but why couldn't it be the case that Jesus undergoes the purification rights, then the flight to Egypt happens, then the move to Nazareth? You may so that when it says, so after they perform the purification rights, then they return to Nazareth, what it really means is, after they performed the purification rights, they went down to Egypt for some months. and then return to Nazareth. Yeah, that is exactly what I mean. Okay.

Look, if you want, you can reconcile anything. I mean, yeah. So, like, if you want to say it doesn't mean what it says, that's fine. What it really means is they went to Egypt. So some people have said... Why do people say that it says that? Why doesn't it mention Egypt, in their opinion? Well, their opinion is not that they know why it isn't mentioned,

but I suppose what they're trying to do is avoid an argument from silence. Just because it doesn't say that this happened, doesn't mean that it doesn't. For example, you know, if we read the text, when Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And some people, what they say is like,

this is a bit like me saying, you know, well, what did I do this morning? Well, I got up and I had to respond to my emails for my job. You know, I had to go into work and I had to do some emails. And after I finished my emails, you know, I went and got lunch.

And then somebody else says, oh but I saw you at the post office and he says well yeah okay so I went and got breakfast and after I finished that yeah I had to pop to the post office and then I went and used the toilet you know and then I went and got coffee

and then I went and got lunch the fact that you know this information doesn't get mentioned might just be because it wasn't considered particularly important or might have been left out for any other kind of reason we don't know I mean it does okay yeah okay maybe it seems silly

that it wouldn't be important but maybe not important to the narrative I mean there are the gospel writers say The gospel writers say that there are so many things that happen in the life of Jesus that, you know, John says that if we attempted to write down everything that happened with Jesus, you know, the books would fill libraries. And so you have to sort of pick and choose. And in other words, it doesn't seem to be a contradiction to the extent that you, it's impossible to say that where Luke says, when they finished at the temple, they went to Galilee, when it might be the case that when they finished at the temple, lots of other things actually happened. They went up to Egypt. They came back down. But then where they ended up settling is Galilee. And that's the next important sort of permanent fixture in their lives. And that's why Luke simply says, well, when they'd finish with this, they went to Galilee.

I don't know how Luke could have said it any more clearly than he does. If you look at it in the Greek, it's very quite clear. There are eras tense here. Well, so it's not clear to me. So perhaps you can tell me as someone who speaks the language. Well, it says, when they completed everything, they returned to GERALDINE. Galilee. So

suppose, okay, let me give you another hypothetical. To be clear, I mean, it's not clear to me because I don't speak Greek. No, no, it's not clear. I mean, in English, it's clear. Yeah, but it seems clear in English, but that's why I'm interested in what the Greek

and what the Greek says. Let me give you an analogy. So I know people who think that Jesus, as a young man, went to India. Yes. And study with Brahms. Now, what if I wanted to say that what's really going on here in Luke chapter 2, verse 39,

is that when it says that when they completed all the things according to the law, they returned to Nazareth. What it really means is they went to India, and he stayed there for 10 years, and then from there he went to Nazareth. The people who are suggesting to you that Egypt is found in verse 39, what would be there argument against India being found in verse 39. I think they would probably say one of two things. Either they would say that Jesus going and living in India for 10 years seems sort of different and more significant to fleeing to Egypt for what may be a couple of months.

Oh, no, no, no, no, it's got to be more than a couple of months. because the it takes it may it take it would take a week or more for them just to get there and it'd take a week or more for the information to

I mean okay suppose they say suppose I'd say he went to India for two months yes yes so that then is the other thing that I think they might say which is that they might just say well we don't know

that he didn't do that. I think, in fact, I think they'd be committed to saying that, right? They'd be committed to saying, and it's a good point that you're making implicitly there, therefore, that if this is a line of response that you take, then when somebody says that Jesus made a trip to India, you're unable to say that he didn't, and that he didn't do it here, because how do you know? So there are other traditions that say, for example,

that Jesus later in life, or after his resurrection, came to the Americas. So, and suppose I want to say, you know, actually they made an earlier trip there, And it was after the 40 days were up, they took a trip to America. And that's how he got familiar with it, you know, as a child. And then he came back. Then he went to Nazareth. And I'd have to say, you know, Luke allows for that possibility. And you have to say, yeah.

So in other words, you could multiply the possibilities. If you're reading Luke and letting Luke have his say instead of putting something into Luke, then they finish their rights of purification. turned home. Yeah, I think, I think it's a fascinating retort, and I'll be interested to see what the same people say to that. My wife says, you know, so I get home, I get home at three in the morning. And my wife says, where have you been?

I said, well, I worked at the office and then I came home. And actually, I went out to the bar and drank all night. And would she think, oh, well, he's telling me the truth. He worked at his office and then he came home. Well, I suppose if there were sort of, if there were sort of two accounts that you'd written, one of which was like a quick text message and one of which was a sort of, you know, a more exploratory or explanatory, the diary entry style letter that you'd written to her, one of them. And let's say, you know, that this isn't because you're coming home tonight. This is, you know, you're on holiday and you're writing back to her. And you send her a text and you say, yeah, I, I, after, after the, the, the time. talk tonight, after the talk that I delivered, I went and stayed in the town, you know, the town over. But then when you wrote home, you said, yeah, well, I finished the talk, and then we went out and we got some drinks. And I talked to this person and we said this and we did

this. And, you know, we got in his car and went for a drive. And then, and then eventually I ended up in the other town over. And that's why I, that's why I slept there. It might seem that that, I get what you're saying, in other words. I get what you're saying that it's, it seems weird that Luke just wouldn't mention this. And it seems to allow for essentially you to splice in anything you like there, but bear in mind that it's the gospel of Matthew that people are saying are splicing in this story, not some random theory about Jesus going to India. In other words, they have a theological motivation for it. They would not do this normally. If I tell you right now that, you know, when we're done here, I'm going to the airport to fly to

London. And that's absolutely true. I am. But if I say that, and I actually don't go to London for three months, you know, technically I'd be right. When I'm done with you, I'm going to fly to London. But that's not the way you normally read or listen to somebody. And so if you have a reason for thinking that Luke actually knows about Egypt, but he doesn't want to mention it, the only motivation I can think of is to get rid of what looks like a contradiction. Because you wouldn't do this with two other accounts of, like if you're reading two accounts of the life of Jefferson, you just do it with your Bible because you can't have a contradiction. But that's a theological reason. If you're just reading as a text and you don't care one or the other, you just

just say, look, I'm sorry, you know, you can make, as I said earlier, you make something up, but I mean, it's like you're just reading the text. That's not what the text says. And what it says seems to contradict what you're saying. Yeah. Now, if this is the case, I'm thinking of when the New Testament is canonized, when we have this process of deciding which books are accurate portrayals of things that happen to Jesus and which are not, would this not have been something that would have been raised as a problem? Because there are a number of Gospels that were ruled out as either a historical or, you know, theologically unsound. And if this is as glaring a contradiction as it seems to be, would not the people putting this New Testament

together have thought that this is a problem and potentially used it as grounds to exclude at least one of the stories? Yeah, you know, they were concerned about things like this. I And they recognize things like this. There certainly were church fathers who recognize that there were contradictions. The church father of their origin loved these kind of contradictions because he said it shows that you can't take these texts literally. And he just said, look, these are contradictions. And so, but most people, you know, when I wouldn't call it a blatant contradiction in the sense that people normally use it because I know thousands and thousands of people who have read, Matthew and Luke, and have never noticed this. In fact, I don't know anybody who's noticed this without

somebody pointing it out to them. Hmm. So that you just don't notice. It's just like when you go to the Christmas pageant, you're not thinking, you know, you go to the Christmas pageant at the church. And you're not noticing that you've got shepherds and you got wise men at the same time. And it doesn't occur to you. Wait a second. That's not actually, because you just, in your head, since it's all the Bible, you think of it as all being integrated. And it's not until you look closely, you realize, wait a second, this doesn't work. Yeah. Now, okay, so let's grant it.

And I think you make a powerful case. And like I say, I'm really interested the people who were responding to the initial conversation we had. I'm really interested to see what they say about this. But I'm wondering what this does for the historicity of the story. That is, we've already acknowledged and even Christians will acknowledge that these stories were written decades after the events that they report. Do you think that from a contradiction like this, we can say something like, well, these stories probably aren't historical, or maybe only one of them is historical, or maybe that the things that they agree upon can be thought of as historical, but the particular events might be wrong.

For example, if we were talking about, you know, George Washington, and we found these biographies that were written a hundred years after based on stories that had been passed down through a generation or two, and one person says that, you know, George Washington becomes the president of the United States, after which he goes and retires at Mount Vernon. And another one says, George Washington becomes president of the United States, and perhaps he says directly afterwards, you know, he sort of leaves, leaves the office and goes straight back to. to Mount Vernon. And the other one says, oh, no, he didn't. He went on a, you know, he went on a tour of New England first, and then he went back to Mount Vernon. And we could say that actually, it's not the case that one person just sort of knew about and didn't include it. No, these contradict each other. These are contradictory passages. But I think we'd still be able to say that it's, you know, it doesn't affect the historicity of him having been the president and having retired at Mount Vernon, even though they disagree on something. And it's a little strange

that that happened and it seems to undermine our trust in the source as a whole. The fact that they both agree on this particular thing means that we have good evidence to think that at least that's historical, right? I think it's important to understand how historians go about looking at their sources of information. The only way to know anything about the past is if you have sources of information. And historians, they never simply accept everything that a source says and they never just simply reject everything that a source says, they engage in a very detailed critical analysis to figure out, are the sources consistent with each other? Do they corroborate what each one says? If they corroborate from what each one said, did they collaborate? Because if they

collaborated, then just somebody's getting it from someone else, right? And so if you've got two sources that tell the same basic story, but contradict each other in some details, then they both can't be right about the details, those details. In other words, Matthew and Luke cannot both be right about what happened 40 days after Jesus. So either one of them is wrong or both of them is wrong, but they both can't be right about that detail. So once you do that, you kind of establish, you know, what can't both be right.

that doesn't necessarily you mean so all the rest is right and it doesn't mean you say all the rest is wrong you engage in the same kind of analysis for every detail of the story and so the fact that they agree on on bethlehem for example that's a very important point they both agree he was born in bethlehem but raised in nazareth and so the historian looks into how plausible is that is are there accounts, are the reasons for doubting that? Well, historians doubt every source.

If you don't doubt a source, you're not being a historian. You're just a reader, which is fine to be just a reader. But historians have to figure out, given the fact that sources have mistakes in them, so you have to assume there may be mistakes here, and you have to look. And so is it, you know, what would be the problems with saying he was really born in Bethlehem? what would be the problem is saying that it was not really born in Bethlehem and you do the and you look at every possible piece of evidence you can and you make an argument one historical contradiction of sorts that I find really fascinating is fascinating to me because it isn't a contradiction between Gospels but rather a historical problem within one of the Gospels itself and that is we've already mentioned this census we mentioned it very briefly but the story as to why Jesus needs to travel from Bethlehem, from Nazareth up to Bethlehem, why Joseph and Mary have to travel up to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus, is because of the census where

Joseph, for some reason, has to go back to the sort of place of his lineage, and so he has to travel all the way up here. And this is said to happen, and it seems strange to me why this detail is even given. It seems, it said that this happens while Corinius is the governor of Syria. Why is that specified and why is that a problem? Well, it's specified because Luke, Luke especially, I'd say more than the other gospels, wants to situate the things that happen in a real historical moment. And, you know, they don't have, they don't date things the way we do. So you can't say, you know, yeah, this was in the year, you know, 5 BCE. You know, they don't have calendars like that. And so they date

things by who is ruling when. This is very common in the Roman world. You say, you know, this happened when so-and-so was the consul, you know, for the second time. It's how they date things. And so he's dating, he's dating this. He's saying this is during when the census that happened when Corinius was the governor of Syria. But the problem is that Corinius became the governor of Syria 10 years after Herod the Great had died. And Luke is also specific that this happened during the reign of Herod the Great. And so he just didn't, you know, he didn't know. And you think, well, how could he not know? Well, okay. So 60 years ago was, what, I guess it was probably the 19, say in the 1970s. And suppose I say something about how, you know, George Schultz was the

secretary of state when, you know, Richard Nixon was the president. Well, That I don't think that's true. I don't know if that's true or not. See, I don't even know. And I've got a PhD and I have newspapers and books and things. I don't think George Charles was the secretary to say till later, but like, you know, you kind of associate people in your head. And so he's saying this thing about Corinius, and he's wrong.

He couldn't have been, I mean, it's a contradiction with known facts. We know when Corinius was the governor of Syria from a number of ancient sources that have no stake in the matter. Josephus just tells us when he was the governor of Syria. and it was, you know, after Herod the Great was dead for 10 years. So this seems to be a flat contradiction, again, not because we've got sort of two competing sources and they say things a little bit differently, but within a singular narrative, what do Christians say about this contradiction? Well, what they usually say is that they come up with some explanation that Quirinius was a governor again, you know, that he, they invent a different rule of Quirinius or they, you know, or they say, you know, all the other sources got it wrong. Actually, Luke is right. You've got to say something, but usually they say something about how there is a local census under Corinius, and it's referring to that one. And but then they can't resolve the thing with Herod without just saying that the other sources are wrong, or that this was the second time Corrinez was governor of Syria, which is not

true either. Yeah. Now, how troubling is it, do you think, or should it be to a Christian, to just be able to say something like, yeah, Luke got this wrong? I mean, the Gospels, inspired by God, by the Holy Spirit, you know, moving the pen or whatever, but the Gospels are written by men. Yeah. And it seems to me that perhaps shouldn't be as problematic as people claim it might be to

just say, look, I still believe in the thrust of the story, but Luke just got this bit wrong. Yeah, I know. Well, it'd be much easier for people just to do that. And a lot of people do, of course. I mean, my, you know, when I was trained at Princeton Theological Seminary, all of my friends there were training for Presbyterian ministry. And most of them would have had no trouble saying, yeah, well, that's, you know, that's not right. Historically, it's not right. But the point of the story is not to get your names and dates right. The point of the story is that a savior has come into the world and that God has brought salvation, it's not when Corinius ruled in relationship to Herod. That isn't the point. And so I just think that, I think what's

happened is that fundamentalist Christians who insist that the Bible has to be inerrant in every detail, they claim that it's always been the view of Christians. That's historically false. That actually is a view that developed big time starting the 1890s when conservative theologians had to double down because the Bible was under threat from the sciences, from Darwin, from geology and stuff. And so they doubled down on the inerrancy of the Bible. And then fundamentalists said it's always been that way

and that if you don't believe it's inerrant, you can't be a Christian. And so people are afraid, you know, they're going to go to hell if they think there's a contradiction here. And that's just crazy talk. Christianity has never insisted on that until modern times. And today, people who are scholars of the New Testament, the true historical scholars of the New Testament are almost all Christians

who just tell you, you know, the historic, so I'm not talking about fundamentalists or hardcore evangelicals. I'm saying, but just if you go to any university or divinity school in the high level divinity school in the country go to any of the high level of divinity schools in the country and the New Testament professors

will tell you yeah that's a mistake but that's not the point of the story and so yeah and thank goodness because of course the most important part of the stories do seem to share some level of agreement

you know when you look at the Gospels and you look at the really important bits you know the fact that Jesus dies and rises again this kind of stuff whilst the details may differ. They seem to agree on the important bit. And I suppose that's what all the Gospels are about. I mean, I'm aware that I have quite a strong Christian listenership, at least

sort of proportionally what you might expect from an atheist, skeptic, style, podcaster, and YouTuber. And so I think it's worth specifying that because, you know, although it does seem quite clear to me that, like you say, this is just a mistake. The mistake doesn't need to be as dramatic, I think, as many people often make it out to be. Shifting gears, just while I still have you, we were speaking just before we started recording about a course that you've recently produced about Joseph. And I was fascinated to hear about this because it's not something I've even considered before.

Tell us about the course. Yeah, so this is a course, it's a two lecture course that I gave here in the season about the birth narratives. And this course was about, it's called. Jesus, the actual son of Joseph, the New Testament evidence. And what I point out is that the idea of the virgin birth, that Mary was a virgin, is found in only these two passages of Matthew and Luke, but that there's a lot of evidence in the New Testament that most Christians thought that Joseph was actually the father, and that he's known to have been the father.

and kind of even surprisingly, evidence within the New Testament that Mary may have gotten pregnant out of wedlock. Now, this is fascinating because the virginity of Mary, specifically her virginity before Jesus was born, and for some denominations, well afterwards as well, is iconic for want of a better word. And that's why I was so fascinated to hear that you've got this New Testament. evidence for Joseph being the actual biological father of Jesus, and like you say, evidence from the New Testament. Yeah. What kind of evidence are you talking about?

Well, okay. So for one thing, you know, in terms of the virgin birth, it is worth pointing out that there are 25 other books that say nothing about it, and it's not clear if they don't know about it, but if they knew about it, surely you'd think somebody would mention it, like Paul says nothing about it. Paul at one point says that Jesus was born of a woman. Galatians 4-4, but, you know, most people are, and so it's not quite clear why he says that, but you would think that that would be kind of a moment where he could say, you know, born

of a virgin, but he doesn't. So it's not really, that's not really evidence, but it's just kind of strange. Paul doesn't say anything about Jesus being born virgin, even though he says a lot about Jesus, but either do any of the other books, including Mark, as you pointed out, our first gospel is silent about it, and John, our last gospel is silent about it. I'd say anything about virgin birth and both of them call Joseph the father. And it seems strange as well. It's something that I've heard you mention as well and it's something a friend mentioned to me recently too that Mark, for example, Jesus is performing an exorcism in Mark

and Jesus' own family come out and say that they think he's lost his mind. And it seems strange. In other words, somebody who would remember this miraculous birth of Jesus and remember that he is the son of God and the Messiah and all of this kind of stuff, who knows that that's the case, would see Jesus performing a miracle and come out and say, you've lost your mind, what are you doing? Yeah. That, again, not sort of strict evidence, but it seems strange to reconcile that with the idea

that within Mark, we have this idea of the version of birth and that both the sort of characters within the story and the author of the account have a knowledge of this birth narrative. No, I know. And because it's part of the family, one of the people who comes to rescue him is his mother. And his mother, so his mother doesn't seem to know. And, you know, in a gospel that doesn't narrate the virgin birth. But, you know, what people always do is they take Mark's gospel and they put it in relationship to Matthew and Luke and John. And they put them all together.

So you have kind of this one big gospel from the four. And so you don't notice things like that because when you're reading Mark, you've got Matthew and Luke in mind. But when Mark wrote his gospel, he was probably the first one to write it. His audience did not have Matthew and Luke. They had Mark. And if you're just reading Mark, you just think, okay, what does Mark think about Jesus in relation to his mother? Man, he does not think that she was a virgin. It doesn't seem to anyway.

At least later, she thinks he's gone out of his mind, and there's no account of her being a virgin. But, you know, you also get it in John, and you get other weird things in John that, where Jesus, you know, she's called her, his mother, but he's also called the son of Joseph. He's called the, he's in Luke's Gospel, which has a virgin birth story. After the virgin birth story, Joseph is called his father. Your father and I've been looking all over you, says Mary at one point. And so those are some of the things I talk about in the chorus. But I also talk about the genealogies and how the genealogies may see.

suggest that Joseph was the originally the father, the genealogies of Matthew and Luke. And yeah, so, yeah, so there's a range of stuff. It seems strange to me that, I mean, where you say Luke has a narrative of the version birth, and yet later on refers to Joseph as Jesus' father. Yeah, it's great. It seems to me, I mean, my initial reaction to that is to say that, of course, you can refer to someone as a father who's not a biological father. I mean, adoption is the obvious example.

Yeah, yeah. I understand why if you're reading John or you're reading Mark, and it refers to Joseph as the father of Jesus, it is a bit suspect that it doesn't issue this clarification that this isn't, you know, biological fathership. Yeah. But given that Luke has written an account of the Virgin Birth, doesn't that just tell us that when he writes Joseph is the father of Jesus? Yeah. Well, I'll say two things about it. That doesn't mean biological fathership, you know, that he's not talking about a biological relationship. Oh, that's how I used to read it, too.

So I get that. That's what I always used to think. And I, you know, it's a possibility. It's a possibility. You have to look at the other possibilities, too. Two things to say about Luke is that when it comes to saying things about Jesus, he does flat out contradict himself in other places. For example, when he's born in chapter one, the shepherds are told that to you this day is born, you know, Christ, you know, Christ the Lord. or, yeah, Christ's the Lord.

Jesus born is... Yeah, Christ the Lord. So Jesus is born as the Messiah, as the Lord. But when you read the book of Acts, written by the same guy, in chapter 13 and in chapter two, you have speeches by Peter, Paul and Peter, who both say that Jesus became the Son of God, the Messiah at the resurrection. Acts 13 verses 32 to 35 Paul says that God

fulfilled the promises to the fathers by making Jesus his son when the voice came at the resurrect by raising him from the dead you're my son today I have begotten you he says what? So Luke has these kind of contradictions

it just does and part of it is because he has different sources of information But the other big thing I do in this lecture is I try to show why there are scholars who have long argued that the virgin birth story in Luke, chapters one and two, was not originally in the gospel of Luke. Whoa. Really? Yeah. It looks like it originally was circulated without these stories and got added later, either by the author or by someone else. will it be too much to ask for a brief glimpse into why that might be the case? It takes a long time to develop, to explain it, but there are all sorts of weird things in Luke that people don't notice. Here's one thing they don't notice. Why does Jesus give a, so Matthew

gives a genealogy of Jesus before he's born. That's when you get a genealogy, you're tracing the family light, right? So father and son down to, you know, when you're born, then you're born. So you're in this family line, right? Luke gives a genealogy right after Jesus is baptized when he's 30 years old. Why would you give a genealogy of baptism? And not only that, but when Jesus is baptized in the original form of Luke's gospel, Luke gets baptized in chapter 3 and verse 22, the voice comes from him when Jesus is baptized, and the voice in what I think is the old.

his form of the text says, the voice says, God says, you are my son, today I have begotten you. At his baptism. There were early Christians who thought that Jesus became the son of God as a baptism. And it's the next verse begins the genealogy, which traces Jesus' line, not just back to King David, not back to Abraham, traces it back to Adam, the son of God. The genealogy goes back to God and God's just adopted Jesus. That makes sense if you don't have a birth narrative. If you have a birth narrative. So it's stuff like that. It's a whole bunch of stuff. That's fascinating. It's it's it's weird stuff that yeah. Scholars have known but people at large yeah, you wouldn't think of that one. Brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's

fascinating and I'll make sure that that's linked down in the description below. I believe I've got some kind of affiliate link as well. So it'll be helping out the channel as well if people want to go and check it out. I mean, it's a, it's, yeah, you just mentioned it sort of in passing before we started, and I thought we have to talk about that. I've never really come across a serious investigation into Joseph being the biological father of Jesus on New Testament ground. So, so what a, you know, it's funny because people would think, well, that's weird. He had a human father. Yeah. That's the weird point. Yeah, people do believe all kinds of crazy.

things, it seems. I don't think the verge of birth is crazy. I don't think the Christian faith is crazy at all. And I love this season, and I love the story. I really do love the story, although it has its dark moments, that story, the slaughter of the innocence in Bethlehem. I mean, it's a hard story in many ways. But it's a fantastic season. It's a great story, and I'm not condemning anything Christian at all. But I am saying that people who are Christian, you know, you don't have to, you know, you don't have to make contradictions not be contradictions when they're contradictions. And it just means you might have to change how you understand the story, but it doesn't mean you have to give it up. You just

have to, you know, understand it in an intelligent, historical way, and that's fine. Well, an instructive and optimistic place to leave things, I think, and allow people to get back to their arguments over the dinner table. Dr. Bart Ehrman, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. my pleasure