I find the nativity stories interesting and informative
It does not, of course, appear in the youngest gospel, called John. John, rather interestingly, disposes of the entire origins question briefly -- In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was G-d ... The Light shines on the darkness, and the darkness has never understood it -- but in a manner that clearly references the opening of the Tanahk: The earth was tohu vavohu ... And Elohim said, Let there be light: and there was light
Nor does it appear in the oldest gospel, often called Mark, though the actual title of the text is The Beginning of the Good News. Mark's untutored writing distressed the ancient teacher of rhetoric, Augustine of Hippo, and this text starts As written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’” -- which is, in fact, not really a text from Isaiah, suggesting that the author is either not much of a scholar or is not eager to portray himself as one. The original Marcan text, moreover, seems not to include the resurrection story either but ends with the women fleeing the empty tomb in terror. So Mark would lead us from a discomforting voice from untamed regions to a discomforting case of a missing body -- as a description of the beginning
The book called Matthew, on the other hand, begins with a strange genealogy, which traces Joseph's line through Tamar (who disguised herself as a prostitute to have sex with Judah), Rahab (who was apparently a prostitute), Ruth (a foreigner) and the wife of Uriah (sent by David to die in battle so David might take his wife), before telling us that Joseph learned his fiancee was pregnant without his help, a difficulty resolved for Joseph by a dream. After the birth of the child, stargazers pass through the King's court, looking for a newborn king, and when the King does not see them on their return, he flies into a rage and orders a massacre, from which the child and parents flee for their lives
In Luke, the genealogy is postponed, and the handful of women mentioned in Matthew are omitted. Luke begins instead with the conception of John (later called the Baptist) by Mary's cousin Elizabeth, followed by the conception of Jesus, at which point Mary visits Elizabeth. Luke says Mary was engaged to Joseph and was pregnant: she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. Celestial messengers appear to shepherds in the hills, who are initially terrified but then visit the newborn
These stories do not celebrate the established and the respectable. King David's line is riddled with prostitutes and adultery. The priest Zechariah is not portrayed as a hero. The star-gazers are simply idiotic about the behavior of kings. Anxiety and outcasts run throughout these stories of beginnings. Early in John, the Baptist discomforts the Pharisees, and then Jesus discomforts the disciples of John; in Mark, John discomforts the whole of Judaea; in Matthew, Mary's pregnancy discomforts Joseph, the stargazers discomfort Herod, Herod discomforts the entire region, and the parents and child become refugees; in Luke, Elizabeth's pregnancy discomforts Zechariah, Mary's own pregnancy discomforts Mary, when she is forced to give birth in a stable, and the celestial messengers discomfort the shepherds. The Baptist is a strangely dressed man who eats insects; Mary, a woman pregnant out of wedlock; Joseph, a man who must naturally suspect he has been cuckolded; Elizabeth, a woman shamed for never giving birth; the star-gazers, foreigners; and the shepherds, simple people of no account
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Baby Jesus had no dad, but the Bible insists on a family tree through Joseph.
The lulz..
You refuse to address the key issues, you just obfuscate about the way things are said.
Was Moses' pharaoh Ramses II?
How can Jesus have the family tree of Joseph who was not his father?
When did Abraham live? 2000BCE? First mention of an Israel in 1200BCE. 800 lost years?
Muslims are more 'serious': they try to give dates:
What else?
• a young family fleeing for their lives: made-up story, can you seriously imagine a governor asking for all baby boys to be killed? The general insurrection, the riots? Nonsense.
• a baby born in a stable: unlikely, but anyway, what's the message?
• the teaching that humans are made in the divine image: that's magic belief of ancient populations: a universal desire to find reassurance in a xausality to unexplained things.
• and that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves: the golden rule, put forth earlier in ancient Greece, Egypt, India, China. In China, without a god (Confucius).
• and to a man crucified by the powers-that-be for teaching that. No. And you know it. IF we accept the NT account as remotely accurate (a big if), then Jesus was crucified for endangering the power of the Jewish priests. Politics, power and money far more than philosophy.
All in all, tell me why you believe,
because the reasons above wouldn't in and of themselves convince anyone.
Then I can help you see the light.
Come to the atheist dark side of the Force, s4p, we have cookies.
