Are the details surrounding Jesus’ birth historically accurate?

Here are some reasons to think they are not:

  • The earliest Christian writings make no mention of a virginal conception or of a birth in Bethlehem with a star, magi, etc. In fact, only Matthew and Luke, both written after the AD 70 fall of Jerusalem,  mention it.
  • Paul said Jesus was “born of the seed of David.” This means Jesus was conceived by the sperm of a male-line descendant of David.
  • In the earliest gospel (Mark, circa AD 67-70), Jesus’ mother and brothers think Jesus is crazy as he gathers disciples. How could Mary have forgotten about the angel visitation; the star; the magi; and oh, the fact that she got pregnant without having sex?
  • The Gospel of Mark is believed to be the recollections of Peter, written by Mark. If this is the case, it’s hard to believe Peter knew about the virginal conception and forgot to mention it to Mark.
  • It was a common practice in Greek and Roman biographies for famous people to have extraordinary origin stories: omens preceding their birth and/or genealogies tracing their lineage to other famous icons or even gods.
  • The Ebionites, a Jewish-Christian sect that was around in the first century, taught that Jesus was the son of both Joseph and Mary.
  • The story of the virgin conception could have been created by early Jewish Christians who grew up reading the Greek Septuagint (LXX), which mistranslated the Hebrew word for maiden or young woman in the book of Isaiah. As a result of this mistranslation, they thought Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be born of a virgin, so they could have created a story to align with this.
  • Many ancient Jews viewed sexual passion and intercourse as things that could lead to sin, and they believed as Jesus did that in the kingdom of God, men and women would no longer be paired together but instead, all would be like angels.
  • Some early Christians believed Jesus could not have been sinless if he had human parents. The Catholic church resolved this by first adhering to the doctrine of Virginal Conception and later by creating the doctrines of Immaculate Conception and Perpetual Virginity, stating respectively that Mary did not have a sin nature because she was born sinless and that she remained a virgin her entire life.

For the reasons given above, I believe it makes more sense to celebrate the miraculous Christmas story as a fun legend rather than a historical event.

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