Well, it’s the Christmas season, and as to be expected, many “social media scholars” have posted material that deals with the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke. One such scholar is someone I’ve written a couple of my own posts on over this past year—Dan McClellan. And so, today I thought I’d write yet another post, commenting on two recent videos he has come out with over this past week. In the first video, McClellan “takes down” the attempt of a “social media Christian apologist” who tries to argue that Matthew and Luke’s nativity accounts do not, in fact, contradict each other. McClellan is going to argue, “Yes they do!” In the second video, which is really sort of a supplement to the first video, McClellan focuses solely on Luke’s nativity account and argues that Luke’s own nativity account contradicts itself—take that, Christian apologists!
Here’s my spoiler alert. The argument of the social media Christian apologist McClellan addresses is really problematic. BUT…McClellan’s rebuttal and own argument is really problematic as well. One can excuse this Christian apologist because (I’m guessing) he probably doesn’t have a Biblical Studies degree. McClellan, though, does, and that makes his woefully ignorant take on the nativity accounts even more shocking. But then again, it’s McClellan. He has a track record—it’s actually not that shocking.
In any case, sit back and enjoy. Hopefully, I’ll do much better than these two in explaining what’s going on in Matthew and Luke’s nativity accounts.
An Overview of the Two Videos
In the first video, McClellan shows a clip from a Christian apologist who is addressing Bart Ehrman’s claim that Matthew and Luke’s nativity accounts are irreconcilable.
- In Matthew: Joseph and Mary start in Bethlehem. After Jesus is born and the Magi visit him, they flee to Egypt for a certain amount of time to escape from King Herod the Great’s killing of all the boys two-years old and younger in Bethlehem. Then, after Herod the Great dies, they come back, but when they learn that Herod’s son Archelaus is now king in Judea, they travel up to settle in Nazareth.
- In Luke: Joseph and Mary start in Nazareth. They then travel to Bethlehem because of Caesar’s census that took place during the governorship of Quirinius in Syria. After Jesus is born (and the shepherds visit him), they go to Jerusalem to dedicate Jesus in the Temple, and then they return to Nazareth.
There you have it. On the surface, they are quite different in places. Ehrman says they seem to contradict each other. This Christian apologist, though, says, “Not so fast!” Yes, there are both similarities and differences between the two accounts, but just because one account doesn’t mention something the other account mentions, that doesn’t mean there is a denial of that event. In fact, this Christian apologist argues, both accounts very easily fit together historically.
- Joseph and Mary start in Nazareth.
- They travel to Bethlehem because of Caesar’s census.
- After Jesus is born, they travel to Jerusalem to dedicate him at the Temple.
- Then they escape to Egypt for a time until Herod the Great dies.
- After he dies, they come back to Bethlehem, find out Archelaus is now king, and then make their way back to Nazareth. Voila! Easy!
Enter McClellan, who gives a “Not so fast yourself there, buddy!” to the Christian apologist. McClellan’s argument boils down to this: “Of course the two accounts contradict each other!” He then makes the following points:
- While Luke has Joseph and Mary start in Nazareth, travel to Bethlehem, then return to Nazareth, Matthew has them start in Bethlehem and then settle in Nazareth. There’s no hint that they ever were in Nazareth before, and there’s no hint they’re returning. In Matthew, it seems they’re setting in Nazareth for the first time—CONTRADICTION!
- The temporal conjunction in Luke 2:39 suggests that Joseph and Mary go back to Nazareth right after they dedicate Jesus at the Temple. The claim that Luke simply forgot to mention there was up to a two-year gap during which Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt strains credibility. If Luke was a good historian, such an omission would be gross negligence on his part.
- After that, McClellan mocks such attempts by Christian apologists to harmonize these two clearly contradictory accounts: “But the argument [of apologists] here is, ‘You can’t tell me it’s impossible to read months of traumatic experience, refugee status running from a king trying to take your life into the gap in between the completion of the requirements of the Law and the returning home to their own city.’”
- McClellan ends the video with a bit of a tirade against Christian apologists: “The main goal of apologetics is to convince people who already believe that they are justified in believing, and all they need is the tiniest little sliver of not impossible…I win. This is not scholarship. This is not taking the text seriously. It’s not seeking after the most likely interpretation. It’s not trying to understand the text on the author’s own terms. It’s trying to tergiversate the text, bend it to their own will, to their own ideologies and to their own dogmas, because fundamentally apologetics is about putting dogmas ahead of data.”
In the second video, McClellan argues that Luke’s own nativity account contradicts itself and is therefore not historically credible. He makes the following points:
- In Luke 1, the pregnancies of both Elizabeth (of John the Baptist) and Mary (of Jesus) are clearly set in the days of Herod the Great. We know that Herod the Great died in 4 BC, therefore the births of both John the Baptist and Jesus would have happened before 4 BC.
- But in Luke 2, Luke claims that Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem because of the first census of Augustus Caesar while Quirinius was governor of Syria. We know that this census happened in AD 6. Quirinius was not governor of Syria at any time before 4 BC.
- Therefore, McClellan argues, Luke’s own nativity account contradicts itself, and therefore is fiction—a literary creation, and “cannot be historical.”
What Both Social Media Guys Get Wrong (and Why I am Right!)
Let’s start with the obvious: you really cannot historically make the two nativity accounts jive with one another. The attempt to do so by this Christian apologist just doesn’t fly. Matthew (and Luke 1!) situates the birth of Jesus in the days of Herod the Great—and Herod the Great died in 4 BC. Accordingly, Jesus had to have been born prior to 4 BC (please, excuse the fact that our calendar is based on the miscalculations of the medieval monk—yes, in the Christian calendar, Jesus was probably born around 6-7 years before Christ!). But then in Luke 2, Jesus’ birth is clearly situated during the time of Caesar’s census—and that happened in AD 6. Let’s be clear: Jesus could not have been born BOTH prior to 4 BC AND in AD 6. Even if you grant the possibility that Matthew just doesn’t mention that Joseph and Mary were originally in Nazareth, or the census, and that after Luke 2:39, he just doesn’t mention the flight into Egypt and Herod’s killing of the young boys in Bethlehem (as recorded in Matthew 2:13-22—even if you grant all that as a possibility, 4 BC ain’t AD 6. You can’t get around that.
That being said, McClellan’s rebuttal to this Christian apologist is just as problematic, in that he, just like this Christian apologist, is assuming something about the nativity accounts that isn’t necessarily true. The Christian apologist comes to these accounts that they are straight up history, and then proceeds to argue a rather convoluted way that says, “Well, there is a way to make it all jive as straight up history.” Sorry, it’s not convincing. But McClellan basically comes to these accounts with the same assumption that they purport to be straight up history, and then, in light of the details, concludes that not only do Matthew and Luke contradict each other, but also that Luke contradicts itself. And therefore, what we have isn’t history, but fiction and literary creations.
So…if McClellan is right that this Christian apologist is wrong in his attempt to make the nativity accounts in Matthew and Luke historically jive, then how is McClellan wrong?
He is wrong in the way he is presenting what the nativity stories actually are, and how they function within the larger context of their respective gospels. Simply put, he isn’t taking into serious consideration that these gospels are ancient historical biographies, and ancient historical biographies were written in a certain way, with certain typical features. First of all, an ancient historical biography was not necessarily trying to give a “historical documentary” kind of account. Yes, it was about a real historical figure, and yes, it would tell of the things that figure said and did, but it did so in a highly creative, literary, and artistic way. It was about history, but given in a creative, literary format. Yes, that meant the author had a certain amount of artistic license…and that doesn’t call the history of that figure into question.
Secondly, oftentimes, ancient historical biographies, as a way to set the stage for their account of that actual historical person, would include nativity accounts in which some of the key themes and points of emphases about that historical person in the historical biography would be introduced. And in doing that, again, the author would use his artistic license.
Put those two things together, it would be the equivalent of a modern movie about a historical figure or event. The movie writer and director might “invent” dialogue that gets to the heart of what was actually said by certain figures; they might move a few details and events around in order to fit better into the 2-hour movie format. Or sometimes, they might move a certain historical event a few years here or there in order to make a creative point regarding the significance of that particular historical person or event. When it comes to strict historical accuracy, a few things are fudged, but no one in their right mind really cares. We know it’s a movie and we realize that’s what often happens in movies. We don’t discount the movie’s historicity. We realize it is history, artistically presented.
This is what is going on in Matthew and Luke’s nativity accounts. Historically speaking, most scholars and historians agree that Jesus was probably born in Bethlehem somewhere between 4-7 BC, and that he grew up in Nazareth. That, if you will, is the historical “bare bones” in both accounts. Beyond that, let’s be honest, no one can “prove” anything more. Still, when it comes to believability…
- If you already don’t believe in the supernatural, you’re not going to believe Gabriel visited Mary, that angels appeared to the shepherds, or that Joseph was warned in a dream. But if you don’t believe those things happened, it isn’t rooted in any contradiction; it is rooted in your presuppositional rejection of the supernatural.
- There is nothing really unusual about shepherds visiting a couple who just had a baby.
- The idea of Herod the Great sending some soldiers in the middle of the night to a small town down the road to kill certain children because he was paranoid about threats to his power is completely consistent with what we know about Herod the Great. (And Bethlehem was a very small town of only a few hundred people. It would be very easy for Herod to do something like this and kill off a handful of children).
- It also is not out of the question to suppose a small family fled out of a certain king’s jurisdiction for a time. Again, people around the world flee from danger every day.
- As for the Magi seeing “the star,” we do know that three times in 7 BC there was a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter within the constellation of Pisces that was visible in the Middle East (May 29, September 30, December 5), and that conjunction was understood to be associated the Jewish Messiah.
The real historical sticking point is Luke’s claim that Joseph and Mary travelled to Bethlehem because of Caesar’s census during Quirinius’ governorship. That is the real cause of contention. This is just my opinion, but I think that Luke, in the spirit of other ancient historical biographies, is purposely juxtaposing Jesus’ birth with Caesar’s census because one of the main themes he emphasizes in his gospel is that Jesus is Lord…not Caesar. He sets up that contrast in his nativity account by placing Jesus’ birth during the census. Now, I do not think Luke was a negligent historian. In Luke 1, he clearly says it happened in the days of Herod the Great; therefore, when he mentions the census in Luke 2, I think it is artistic license.
Likewise, one of the main themes in Matthew’s gospel is that Jesus is the king of Israel…not Herod. That is why he includes the Magi searching for a newborn king of the Jews, and that is why he mentions Herod’s attempt to kill the baby Jesus.
Now, someone might ask, “If Luke made up the census story, then why couldn’t Matthew have made up the stories of the Magi and of Herod’s killing of the boys in Bethlehem?” My answer is simple: First, Luke didn’t “make up” the census story. There really was a historical census that happened in AD 6. For thematic, creative purposes, he associated it with Jesus’ birth in his nativity account to make a point about who Jesus is. Does that mean Jesus wasn’t actually born during the actual census? Probably not—but who cares? If you understand what ancient historical biographies do, you realize it is really no different than a historical movie that moves a few historical events around to make a larger point in the movie.
Secondly, there is nothing historically unbelievable about the possibility of astronomers from Mesopotamia recognizing a “star” and then traveling to Jerusalem, and the idea of Herod trying to kill any and all perceived threats is entirely consistent with who we know him to be.
Maybe Joseph and Mary weren’t originally living in Nazareth. Maybe they moved there from Bethlehem after Herod the Great died. I don’t care. I don’t think that calls the integrity of the nativity accounts into question because I don’t think they are trying to give a “newspaper-style account of ‘just the facts’” about Jesus’ birth. If you understand Luke’s (and Matthew’s) thematic emphases about who Jesus is in their respective gospels, you will understand what they’re doing in their nativity accounts. And if they use artistic license to do it, what’s the problem?
All That Said, This is Why McClellan Irritates Me
What I’ve just banged out in a few minutes helps make sense of what both Matthew and Luke are doing in their nativity accounts and helps the reader understand them better. To do that shouldn’t be too hard for anyone who has any kind of education and training in Biblical Studies. That’s not what McClellan does, however. In truth, that’s not what he ever really does in any of his videos.
Yes, in this instance, he correctly shows why this Christian apologist isn’t convincing. Fine. But he doesn’t do what a competent Biblical scholar should do…and actually explain the text and enlighten its meaning for the reader (or watcher of his videos). I can guarantee you that the typical response of most of McClellan’s followers to this video (as with most of his videos) is something like this: “Preach, Dan! Those Christian apologists are DUMB! They’re bad! Idiots! Dan is right! It’s all just fiction, nothing more! We can dismiss it all! Thanks Dan, for exposing such crap!”
But McClellan hasn’t explained anything. He never does. That’s why I think he’s a charlatan who profits off of angry atheists and disgruntled ex-Christians. And that’s what makes his concluding comments so hilariously pathetic. Again, here is what he says: “This is not scholarship. This is not taking the text seriously. It’s not seeking after the most likely interpretation. It’s not trying to understand the text on the author’s own terms. It’s trying to tergiversate the text, bend it to their own will, to their own ideologies and to their own dogmas, because fundamentally apologetics is about putting dogmas ahead of data.”
The ironic thing is that McClellan isn’t taking the text seriously either. McClellan is not seeking after the most likely interpretation. He doesn’t even try to explain what the text means in the first place. And McClellan is not trying to understand the text on the author’s own terms. Again, he makes no reference to authorial intention at all, so how can he claim he’s trying to understand the text on the author’s own terms?
And the ironic thing about that is that McClellan routinely insists that texts have no inherent meaning. Just a week ago, in a video entitled, “Why is it so hard to read the Bible with fresh eyes?” he claimed that very thing. He dismisses the notion that one can extract meaning from the biblical text because the biblical text has no inherent meaning. For McClellan, reading is a “process of creating meaning with the text, because the texts are just collections of scribbles, or bumps on a page, or soundwaves, or light bouncing off of hand signals.” Therefore, what readers do is to try to convert those things into “semantic content” that is in agreement with different groups of people—and therefore those meanings can be different from group to group and time to time. And therefore, every time we read a text, “we construct meaning all over again.”
What that means is that McClellan isn’t interested in authorial intent. He doesn’t think it is possible to get at it. Now, it is true, that reading the Bible (or any text for that matter) is a “creative” act, in a sense. I see things in a T.S. Eliot poem that I’ve never seen before. And I sometimes see things in a particular biblical passage that I hadn’t seen before. But when that happens, I’m still trying to understand what that author/writer is trying to communicate. What governs my reading is trying to understand authorial intent. Any creative insight I might have in a text stems from that very thing. That is what “taking the text seriously” and “on the author’s own terms” looks like.
But McClellan never does that. He spends his time ripping apart the (often admittedly) bad claims regarding the Bible of certain people, but he never contributes anything useful to understanding the biblical text. He doesn’t explain; he doesn’t enlighten. He does the exact same kind of thing he accuses those apologists of doing—not taking the text seriously and not understanding the author on his own terms. McClellen twists biblical passages to his own will, to serve his own ideology and dogmas, because, despite his claim, he’s not just about “following the data.” He doesn’t give a damn about the actual data or about trying to understand what the biblical authors are actually trying to communicate.
His entire shtick is a postmodern dogma that seeks to tear down any and all claims of actual meaning and yes, destroy the biblical text.
The nativity accounts are not something I have studied, but I just recently came across 2 claims that may be relevant: 1) When the ancients say star, we should understand that to mean some kind of observable light in the heavens above, which might be a conjunction of planets as you say.
2) Rome did a census every 5 years and the numbering of it took place over 12-18 months, so there is a built in fudge factor. Historians have found a record of a census in 6 CE, but there were others.
Yes, it is possible there was another census BEFORE Quirinas, but I think the natural reading of Luke 2 is that it was the one during his governorship. Besides, AD 6 was the spark that launched Judas the Galilean and the Zealot movement….and that plays into the Jesus story, especially his prophecy regarding the destruction of the Temple in AD 70.
I’ve always found the idea that Luke contradicts himself in the nativity narrative as quite odd. It is clear from both Luke 1:26-45 and Luke 3:1 that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great (explicitly in Luke 1 and implicitly by dating the start of Jesus’ ministry to the 15th year of Tiberius in Luke 3:1). Luke also knows of the 6 AD census under Quirinius since he records Gamaliel mentioning it in his speech to the Sanhedrin in Acts 5:37.
It seems obvious that Luke either knows of another census that we don’t know about (and his reference to Quirinius is more in the lines of “in command of/in Syria” though I recognize that he uses the same phrase to refer to Pilate in Luke 3:1 and Pilate is clearly the governor) or he is associating the census with Jesus’ birth for another reason as you have proposed.
There is always the point in Luke that the “census” required that they return to the home of their ancestors, an aspect that no one has been able to substantiate. Can you imagine the pandemonium of everyone in the empire – or even the region – returning to the home of their ancestors? Joseph had to return to Bethlehem because he was related to David, almost 1,000 years before? Why did it stop there? Why didn’t they go back to Jesse, or Jesse’s father, or his father? And finally, what exactly was the point of requiring that they return to the town of their ancestors? What did the Roman administrators get out of this requirement? The point of the census is simply to count people for tax purposes, they wouldn’t have cared a bit about where they were.
Also, there’s the so-called “slaughter of the innocents” where Herod orders the murder of all male infants under the age of 2 years. It seems like both of these events should have been mentioned by someone during the time and yet not a single contemporaneous author writes a single word.
Regardless as to whether or not they contradict each other, which I believe they clearly do, there are many other disturbing aspects of the birth narratives that cannot be reconciled. I have always found this to be troubling.
“There is always the point in Luke that the “census” required that they return to the home of their ancestors, an aspect that no one has been able to substantiate.”
This is a common misreading. The the text says that the census required everyone to go to their hometown to register (Luke 2:3). This was standard practice.
The point that Luke is making is that Bethelehem was Joseph’s hometown because he was a descendent of David k (Luke 2:4), not that the *Romans* made him go to Bethlehem because he was a descendent of David (the Romans obviously wouldn’t care about that)
Still, the strict historical problem is that the census Luke mentions happened in AD 6, whereas Matthew has Jesus’s birth happening at least two years before Herod’s death in 4 BC.
I think Luke is using creative license to emphasize Jesus is the true Lord, not Caesar. And I have no problem with that. Luke is still historically reliable, but he has a bit of creative license in the storytelling as well.
Except that Joseph wasn’t really from Bethlehem, he was from Nazareth, which is why Jesus is/was called “Jesus of Nazareth”. The whole Bethlehem maneuver was invented in order to fulfill some Hebrew scripture (Micah?) that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem. This is another ruse created by Christians to fit “Jesus” (Yeshua) into the messiah mold.
Excellent!
Um…Merry Christmas?
I fully understand “the point” of the return to Bethlehem, but it is certainly not about making a point about Joseph, it’s about a point he’s trying to make about Jesus’ birth. He is intentionally trying to put Jesus in danger in Bethlehem when, contrary to what Andersen is saying here, almost NO SECULAR scholars believe Jesus was born in Bethlehem. That’s a ridiculous writing device used to fulfill some equally specious and erroneous biblical “prediction”. Just like the pony baloney “Jospeh of Arimathea” episode used to get Jesus INTO a tomb so he can be raised FROM a tomb. Just an ancient writing device. Artistic license? Sure! A once of verisimilitude? None. Never happened in a million years. the entire story is made up out of whole cloth.
Sure Jan
From a scholarly Christian apologetic standpoint, I think several distinctions need to be made that your comment collapses too quickly.
1. “Almost no secular scholars believe Jesus was born in Bethlehem” is an overstatement.
It is true that many critical scholars are skeptical of the Bethlehem birth, often because they see the infancy narratives as theologically motivated. But “almost none” is simply inaccurate. A non-trivial number of historians—some secular, some Jewish, some Christian—regard Bethlehem as at least plausible, even if not demonstrable. Scholars such as Géza Vermes, James Dunn, and even E. P. Sanders do not dismiss Bethlehem as “impossible,” only as uncertain. Skepticism is not consensus, and uncertainty is not refutation.
2. The charge of “dangerously putting Jesus in Bethlehem” presupposes Matthew’s narrative is fiction rather than evidence.
You are assuming what you are trying to prove. Matthew does not “intentionally put Jesus in danger”; he reports a tradition in which danger arises. If one rules out historicity a priori, then yes, the story becomes a literary device. But historians cannot simply assume theological motivation equals fabrication—especially when the story creates obvious difficulties (e.g., Herod, the flight to Egypt, political violence), which is normally a mark against pure invention.
3. Micah 5:2 is not a “specious” prophecy in Second Temple Judaism.
Whether one accepts it as fulfilled or not, Micah 5:2 was widely understood messianically in Jewish tradition long before Christianity (see the Targum Jonathan and later rabbinic discussion). Matthew is not inventing an obscure or forced prooftext; he is appealing to an already-existing messianic expectation. That does not prove fulfillment—but it decisively undercuts the claim that this is a Christian fabrication with no Jewish grounding.
4. Luke and Matthew are independent traditions, not a single literary contrivance.
Luke’s Bethlehem tradition does not rely on Herod, the Magi, or the massacre narrative. Matthew’s does not rely on a census. If Bethlehem were a late Christian invention, it is difficult to explain why two independent infancy traditions justify it in completely different ways, neither of which is particularly elegant. This looks far more like inherited tradition than creative storytelling.
5. The “Joseph of Arimathea” argument fails historically.
The burial by Joseph of Arimathea is accepted as historically probable by a broad range of scholars—including skeptical ones—because:
Jesus’ burial is multiply attested (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Paul).
Naming a Sanhedrin member as the one who buries Jesus is highly unlikely to be invented, given early Christian hostility toward the Sanhedrin.
Romans did allow burial in Judea, especially before festivals (confirmed by Philo and Josephus). Calling this “pony baloney” is rhetoric, not historiography.
6. “Ancient writing device” is not a historical argument.
Yes, ancient authors shaped narratives. So do modern historians. But narrative shaping ≠ wholesale fabrication. By that standard, we would have to dismiss Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus as fictional novelists whenever their accounts serve thematic ends. Serious historical method asks whether a claim is possible, plausible, and evidenced—not whether it carries meaning.
7. “Made up out of whole cloth” ignores how early and constrained these traditions are.
The infancy traditions appear within living memory of Jesus’ family and earliest followers, in a hostile environment, among people who knew where Jesus was from. A fabricated birthplace could easily have been contradicted. The repeated reference to Nazareth as an embarrassment (“Can anything good come from Nazareth?”) strongly suggests the early Christians were not freely inventing convenient biographical details.
In short, one can reject Bethlehem on critical grounds—but dismissing it as a laughable fiction, universally rejected by “secular scholars,” built on fake prophecy and narrative trickery, is not a scholarly position. It is a polemical one. A historically responsible discussion recognizes ambiguity, competing explanations, and the limits of what can be proved—without pretending that skepticism itself is evidence.
Well, first off, I am not a “scholar” per se, and yes, my argument may be seen more as polemical, however I don’t think you have to be a scholar to see religion for what it is; nothing more than a human construct, mythology. This is particularly true of Christianity. It is such a poorly thought-out theology and so obviously man-made. Many of the great atheists of history were not Biblical scholars, nor did they have to be. A critical evaluation of scripture is all that is needed to identify the many defects, inconsistencies, and contradictions contained in order to identify it as primarily fiction with just a touch of interested history.
While there may well be some religious leaders that believe these stories as written, most – yes, most – SECULAR scholars do not believe the Bethlehem trip, or the subsequent steps taken by the family afterward. The entire episode is/was invented by interested followers that needed to find a way to make “prophecy” work for Jesus, which is does not. Jesus doesn’t fulfill ANY of the messianic predictions in the Hebrew Bible and so his followers need to find ways to make it work for him. And you may even call Micah “prophecy” even if it is 2500 years or so old and has never come to fruition. Personally “prophecy” doesn’t fall into my bailiwick when it comes to assessing historical events.
“The infancy traditions appear within living memory of Jesus’ family and earliest followers”: If this is true, why do we not know anything about the subsequent years of his life? We have some information about his birth, also clouded in mythological narrative, then nothing until he’s thirty years old or so. Why? Because the birth narratives are also woven out of nothing, made up after the claim of his divinity in order to fill in the messianic criteria.
However the idea about Joseph of Arimathea is the most bizarre claim of the NT. It is not multiply attested when the writers all copied from one another; both Matthew and Luke copied Mark copiously, more than half of each contain Mark’s writings verbatim. I don’t consider that independent traditions. They are both riffing on the same oral traditions and, yes, not in very lettered ways. Joseph, a supposed Pharisee that just left a meeting the evening before they voted “unanimously” for Jesus’ death, is now concerned that he needs to be buried according to the Law. Even after Gamaliel argued against punishing Peter or any Jesus followers in Acts for potentially looking like they are fighting against god himself. And, we’re supposed to believe that this “Joseph” is close enough that Pilate agrees to turn over a known seditionist’s executed body just hours later so he can be buried according to Scripture. Is this possible? Sure, it is. But it is almost impossible to believe knowing Pilates history from ex-Biblical sources. And, BTW, exactly where is Arimathea? It doesn’t appear on any maps; ancient, medieval, or modern. There isn’t now nor has there ever been, a place called Arimathea. It is an obvious writing device to used get Jesus into a tomb so he can be raised out of a tomb. It is my humble opinion that Jesus was never in a tomb, he was summarily executed by Pilate, – without a trial – crucified and left on the cross until he literally crumbled to the ground. Such was the sentence of crucifixion by the Romans and certainly would be supported by what we know about Pontius Pilate.
“Serious historical method asks whether a claim is possible, plausible, and evidenced—not whether it carries meaning.” I agree that this is an excellent measure of historical viability. Unfortunately, none of this is “evidence” of anything. The claims of the NT are exactly that, claims, none of it is evidence by any rational standard. We cannot be 100% certain of almost anything in the NT; not the stories, the people, or what they did or said. The NT is the claim of Christians, it cannot also be the evidence.
I appreciate the candor of your reply, and I want to continue engaging it at the same serious level. What follows is not an appeal to faith or authority, but a clarification of historical method and where your conclusions move beyond what the evidence actually allows.
1. “You don’t need to be a scholar to see religion is mythology”
That is a philosophical claim, not a historical one. Many intelligent people—atheists included—hold it, but it is not something “seen” simply by reading texts critically. It depends on prior metaphysical commitments about whether God can act in history at all. If one begins with the assumption that religion must be a human construct, then Christianity will inevitably look poorly thought out and man-made. But that is a filter, not a conclusion drawn from the data.
The fact that many famous atheists were not biblical scholars cuts both ways. One does not need to be a biblical scholar to reject Christianity—but one also cannot claim that rejection as the result of careful historical analysis if the relevant scholarship is not being engaged.
2. “Most secular scholars reject the Bethlehem narratives”
Again, this needs precision. Most critical scholars are agnostic about the infancy narratives, not confident they are fictional. There is an important difference.
What most secular scholars reject is certainty, not possibility. They typically say:
The traditions are theologically shaped
The evidence is insufficient to verify details
We cannot know with confidence
That is not the same as saying, “This was invented out of nothing.” In historical Jesus studies, agnosticism is not disproof.
If Bethlehem were simply a late apologetic invention, we would expect:
One clean, unified explanation
A smoother narrative
Removal of embarrassing elements (Nazareth, poverty, political danger)
Instead, we get two awkward, mutually incompatible explanations—neither of which is especially persuasive as propaganda. That is exactly what inherited tradition often looks like.
3. “Jesus fulfills NONE of the messianic prophecies”
This is not a historical claim; it is a theological judgment based on a particular reading of messianism.
Second Temple Judaism did not have a single, settled messianic checklist. There were:
Davidic king expectations
Priestly messiahs
Suffering righteous figures (Isaiah 53, Wisdom literature)
Apocalyptic Son of Man traditions (Daniel 7)
Christians did not invent prophecy ex nihilo; they interpreted existing texts in light of Jesus’ life and death. You may judge those interpretations incorrect—but that is not the same thing as claiming they were fabricated cynically to “make it work.” There is no evidence of that kind of conscious manipulation.
4. “Why don’t we know anything about Jesus’ childhood?”
This is a weak historical argument.
Ancient biographies routinely skip childhood unless something politically or publicly relevant occurred. We know almost nothing about:
Alexander the Great’s early childhood
Pontius Pilate’s upbringing
Hillel’s youth
Socrates’ early life
The absence of data is normal, not suspicious. Moreover, Luke explicitly says he is selective. Silence does not imply invention.
5. Joseph of Arimathea: independent attestation and plausibility
You are correct that Matthew and Luke use Mark—but that does not mean the tradition originates with Mark. Mark himself is drawing on earlier oral tradition, and Paul independently affirms burial (1 Corinthians 15), which predates the Gospels by decades.
Even skeptical scholars such as Bart Ehrman, Géza Vermes, and John Dominic Crossan acknowledge that Jesus was buried. The debate is over how, not whether.
About Pilate
Pilate was brutal—but brutality does not equal irrationality. Josephus records that Pilate did make concessions to Jewish customs under pressure, especially during festivals. Allowing burial before Passover is not historically implausible.
About Arimathea
Arimathea is widely identified with Ramathaim / Ramah. The absence of a precise archaeological match is common for minor Judean villages. This is an argument from silence, not proof of invention.
“Left to rot on the cross”
That was typical—but not universal. Roman law allowed exceptions, especially in Judea. The claim that Jesus must have been left to decay is not supported by the evidence; it is an inference based on general practice, not a rule without exceptions.
6. “The New Testament is not evidence, only claims”
This is a misunderstanding of historical evidence.
All ancient historical evidence is claims. Tacitus’ Annals are claims. Josephus’ Antiquities are claims. Evidence is not modern video footage; it is early, multiple, constrained testimony.
The New Testament qualifies as evidence because:
It is early (within decades)
It is multiply attested
It contains embarrassing material
It reflects internal disagreements
It was written in a hostile environment
One may judge the evidence insufficient—but to dismiss it as “not evidence at all” would eliminate almost all of ancient history.
7. Where the real disagreement lies
Your position is coherent—but it is not primarily historical. It is philosophical:
Religion is mythology
Prophecy is meaningless
Supernatural claims are excluded
The NT cannot count as evidence
Given those assumptions, your conclusions follow logically. But those assumptions are not dictated by historical method itself. They are imposed before the evidence is assessed.
A scholarly Christian apologist does not claim certainty where the evidence does not warrant it. What we claim is this:
The wholesale dismissal of the Gospel traditions as “made up out of whole cloth” is not a conclusion demanded by history. It is a verdict rendered in advance.
And that is the crucial difference between skepticism and scholarship.
What is the difference? The Jews made them go back to Bethlehem because he was ancestor 1,000 years earlier, of David’s? There is no historical precedent for this at all. Whether it was the Romans that made the call or the Jews; just consider the pandemonium caused by an entire region of people returning to their “ancestry” town/village for a census. There is simply no evidence for this or precedent.
The key issue here is not whether the census narrative as Luke describes it matches a modern bureaucratic model, but whether the objections you raise actually rise to the level of historical disproof. I would argue they do not.
1. Clarifying the claim: ancestry vs. household registration
The objection hinges on a caricature of Luke’s claim. Luke does not say that “everyone in an entire region returned to their ancestral town from 1,000 years earlier.” That formulation vastly overstates the text.
Luke says people went “each to his own town” (Luke 2:3). In a first-century Jewish context, this most naturally refers to:
A town of family registration
A place of land ownership
Or a legally recognized household origin, not a mythical genealogical hometown stretching back centuries
In Judea, lineage, land inheritance, and tribal affiliation mattered in ways that have no modern Western parallel. The idea that a family would be registered where it held ancestral land or legal standing is not implausible in that cultural setting.
2. Roman censuses were locally adapted, not monolithic
The argument assumes a single, standardized Roman census procedure. In reality, Roman administration was famously pragmatic and flexible, especially in client kingdoms and newly annexed territories.
We know that:
Censuses varied by region
Local customs were often incorporated
Herod the Great ruled Judea as a client king with significant autonomy
Roman authorities frequently relied on local elites and existing records
There is no historical requirement that Judea’s census must mirror Egyptian census practices or later provincial censuses exactly. Absence of precedent is not evidence of impossibility.
3. “Pandemonium” is anachronistic speculation
The objection imagines mass chaos—but this is conjecture, not history.
First-century populations were:
Far smaller
Far more locally rooted
Already accustomed to pilgrimage travel (Passover alone moved tens of thousands)
Temporary travel for registration—especially within the same region—would not necessarily produce social collapse. Bethlehem is roughly 6 miles from Nazareth; this is not a continent-spanning migration.
4. Luke shows awareness of census realities, not ignorance
Luke is not writing fantasy. He knows:
Who Quirinius was
That Judea underwent Roman census oversight
That censuses were politically sensitive (Acts 5:37)
A later Christian fabricator trying to “force prophecy” would likely have avoided a historically fraught and easily challenged administrative detail. Instead, Luke anchors his narrative in real, verifiable political figures—something mythmakers generally avoid.
5. No evidence ≠ evidence of nonexistence
It is true we lack independent documentation of this specific registration requirement. But that is normal for provincial administrative practices in antiquity. We lack records for the overwhelming majority of Roman censuses, tax edicts, and local decrees.
Historical method does not require positive corroboration for every claim—only that a claim be:
Possible within known practices
Plausible in its context
Not contradicted by established facts
Luke’s account meets those criteria.
6. The cumulative problem with the objection
The objection assumes:
1. Luke must be wrong unless we can produce a direct precedent
2. Roman/Jewish administration must operate like modern states
3. Lack of surviving records equals disproof
None of those assumptions reflects how ancient history is actually done.
A historian may remain skeptical. That is reasonable. But skepticism must stop short of declaring impossibility where the evidence does not justify it.
Conclusion
The census narrative is certainly debatable. But it is not absurd, impossible, or historically incoherent. What you have identified is not a fatal flaw, but an unresolved historical question—one that cannot bear the weight of dismissing the entire infancy narrative as fabrication “out of whole cloth.”
That distinction—between uncertainty and disproof—is precisely where scholarly analysis must remain disciplined.
Thank you for reply, I, too, am enjoying this and appreciate the challenges presented in your reply. I will try and respond to your various claims individually where appropriate but wanted to first address the aspect of historical vs. philosophical argumentation.
Whether you wish to call my argument historical or philosophical doesn’t render the conclusions erroneous or inconclusive. True, I do reject the portions of scripture that are miraculous or beyond the normal scope of the physical world, but the supernatural is not within the purview of an historian however, a theologian or person of faith may accept those aspects simply as part of their belief system. Ehrman, Goodacre, Vermes, and many others deem the miraculous to also be outside the parameters of the historian. (As an aside, of all the previous named scholars, I can tell you that Ehrman at least, does not accept the burial of Jesus as historical, but only his death. He has said on numerous occasions that Jesus more than likely died and was left on the cross. I believe that Paula Fredericksen and Helen Bond among others agree as well. More on this later.)
All religion is a human construct, full stop. You’ll agree, I hope, that the Bible was written by people, many of whom remain unidentified or wrote pseudonymously or pseudepigraphically. (E.g., there were perhaps three and as many as four separate authors writing as ‘Isaiah’ and many secular scholars now believe that as many as 6 of Paul’s 13 letters were not written by Paul and their authors will remain unidentified. And, it is now recognized by secular scholars everywhere that the authors of the NT are, in fact, anonymous).
For thousands of years, most of man’s existence in our present “form”, gods of all shapes and sizes (primarily female in gender initially, at least) were man made. They were invented as needed to explain various natural events. The Judeo-Christian god is no different. Both El and Yahweh were originally Canaanite gods, (I will site a number of scholars and books that will substantiate this) part of a pantheon of multi-faceted, multi-powered gods and goddesses. In fact, we now know that the Israelites themselves were also born out of the Canaanite population, all substantiated by DNA research and archeological data. (See Jonathan Laden, Biblical Archeology Review/Biblical History Daily, January 15, 2026) In this respect, much of the so-called “History” of Hebrew Bible must now be recognized as cultural myth. The Israelites did not come from Egypt, there was no Exodus – at least as characterized in Hebrew scripture – and there was no conquest of Canaan by the Israelites. There is simply no archeological data to support these theories. This, I believe, is firmly rooted in the subject of history and is not philosophical in any way.
Any claims you may make about “god”, a god, or “The God” cannot be anything other than speculation or conjecture since such an entity operating outside the laws of Nature must be considered supernatural. There is no other way to characterize it and only believers would be willing to accept it as reality as a function of their faith a priori, since there is no evidence for such an entity. I am sure you will disagree with this but then your argument can neither be historical – and I would argue – nor philosophical since there is no line of rational thought or reason that would lead one to consider it evidential.
If one were not to hold religion as a human construct, then how should one consider it? The only other answer is supernatural; god did it, or god inspired it, or some such similar claim, but it could only be a ‘claim’ since there is no evidence for such an entity or many of the events as described in the New Testament.
I leave this here for now but I have much more to say about your response and look forward to continuing our debate. I will get to some your numbered points specifically in a day or two, I thought this one over-arching topic should be addressed before some of the other points.
Thank you, again, for your very enlightened and frank discussion. I appreciate it very much.
RaPaR
I’ll continue at the same level of rigor and try to keep the categories as clear as possible, because much of the disagreement here turns on what history can and cannot say, rather than on the raw data itself.
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1. History, miracles, and methodological naturalism
You are correct about one important point: most historians, including Christian historians, practice methodological naturalism. That is, they do not invoke supernatural causation as an explanatory tool. Ehrman, Goodacre, Vermes, and others are right about that.
Where the disagreement begins is in what follows from this.
Methodological naturalism is a method, not a metaphysical conclusion. It does not entail that miracles did not occur—only that historians, as historians, cannot adjudicate supernatural causation directly. This distinction matters greatly.
A historian may say:
“I cannot affirm that God raised Jesus.” But that is categorically different from saying:
“Therefore the resurrection did not happen,” or
“Therefore all miracle claims are fictional.”
The latter moves beyond historical method into philosophical naturalism. That move is legitimate philosophically—but it is not historical necessity.
—
2. Ehrman, burial, and scholarly diversity
You are right that Ehrman personally doubts the burial of Jesus and has argued that crucifixion victims were often left on crosses. But it is important to be precise about the state of scholarship.
1. Ehrman is in the minority on this point.
2. Even scholars who emphasize Roman brutality (Fredriksen, Bond, Crossan) typically frame the issue as uncertain, not impossible.
3. Many non-confessional scholars (Vermes, Sanders, Dunn, Allison) regard burial as historically plausible or probable.
This reinforces a broader pattern: the evidence supports multiple live options. That does not favor Christian certainty—but it does undercut claims of historical refutation.
—
3. Human authorship ≠ purely human origin
You are absolutely right that:
Biblical texts were written by humans
Many authors are anonymous
Pseudepigraphy exists
Composite authorship (e.g., Isaiah) is widely accepted
No serious Christian scholar disputes this. The doctrine of inspiration has never required:
Single authorship
Named authors
Dictation
Absence of redaction
The mistake is assuming that human mediation exhausts explanatory options. To say “people wrote the Bible” is true—but it does not logically entail “therefore God was not involved.” That conclusion only follows if one assumes in advance that divine action is impossible.
This is where philosophy re-enters the discussion.
—
4. Ancient religion, myth, and the uniqueness claim
Your overview of ancient religions is broadly accurate:
Polytheism was widespread
Gods were used to explain natural phenomena
Israel emerged within a Canaanite cultural matrix
Yahweh shares linguistic and cultural features with West Semitic deities
None of this is controversial among critical scholars—and none of it, by itself, refutes biblical theism.
What makes Israel distinct is not that it sprang from nowhere, but that:
It demythologized nature rather than divinizing it
It subordinated all gods to a single moral will
It made history—not cycles of nature—the arena of divine action
Israelite monotheism is best understood as a development, not a fabrication. Development does not imply falsehood; it implies historical emergence.
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5. Archaeology, Exodus, and conquest
You are correct that:
There is no evidence for a mass Exodus as described in Exodus
There is no archaeological support for a violent conquest of Canaan
Most Christian scholars agree.
But this does not force the conclusion that the Hebrew Bible is “cultural myth” in the same sense as pagan cosmogonies. It forces a more nuanced conclusion:
Biblical narratives are theologically shaped memory
History and identity are intertwined
Literary form ≠ modern historiography
This is exactly how ancient peoples—including Greeks and Romans—wrote history.
Rejecting a literal Exodus does not logically entail rejecting Israel’s historical existence, covenantal self-understanding, or later theological claims.
—
6. “All religion is a human construct, full stop”
This is the crux of the disagreement—and it is philosophical, not historical.
History can say:
Religions develop
Religions are culturally embedded
Religious texts reflect human concerns
History cannot say:
“Therefore God does not exist”
“Therefore no divine action occurred”
“Therefore religion is only a human construct”
Those are metaphysical claims. They may be defensible—but they are not conclusions demanded by history.
—
7. “There is no line of rational thought that leads to God”
Here we simply part company.
Classical theism does not argue from miracles alone. It argues from:
Contingency
Causation
Order
Moral realism
Consciousness
The intelligibility of the universe
You may reject those arguments—but to claim that no rational path exists is demonstrably false, given two millennia of philosophical theism across religious traditions.
Again, disagreement is not disproof.
—
8. Evidence, inference, and explanatory scope
You are correct that claims about God cannot be tested like chemical reactions. But not all rational belief is empirical in that sense.
Historical inference itself relies on:
Explanatory power
Coherence
Scope
Probability
Christian belief does not claim proof in the scientific sense. It claims inference to the best explanation—a cumulative case that integrates history, philosophy, and experience.
You reject that inference. That is an intellectually respectable position. But it is not the only rational one.
—
9. The real disagreement, stated plainly
At bottom, we disagree about this:
You believe:
Only natural explanations are admissible
Religion must therefore be human-made
Claims about God are necessarily speculative
The Christian apologist argues:
Natural explanations describe how, not whether God acts
Human mediation does not exclude divine origin
Metaphysical naturalism is not forced by history
This is not a dispute that archaeology or textual criticism alone can resolve.
—
Conclusion
Your position is coherent, informed, and philosophically consistent. What it is not is historically compelled.
Christian belief does not arise from ignoring evidence—but from interpreting the same evidence through a different metaphysical lens. History may constrain belief; it does not eliminate the possibility of transcendence.
That is the point at which scholarship ends and worldview begins—and no amount of polemic, on either side, can erase that boundary.
PS if you wish to continue this discussion, I respectfully ask that we relocate out of respect for Dr Anderson. My email is truth_seeker85@hotmail.com. I won’t be responding here anymore.
PPS thank you for being a serious interlocutor unlike some of the other jokers around here
Good morning, David. Yes, I would enjoy continuing our debate and will sundry next reply to your private email. At this moment, I am in Las Vegas, having come out to see the Eagles at the Sphere and am now stuck for an extra day and a half! I will respond when I return to New Hamshire on Tuesday or Wednesday.