LookieNoNookie
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Joined: 8/9/2008
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quote:
ORIGINAL: jlf1961
Actually not really conned, but there were some shady stuff going on back then.
First, lets get rid of the December 25th as the birth day of Christ. When Constantine legalized the Christian church, he had some conditions, one of which was that the feast for the birth of Christ be celebrated on the same day as the high feast for Sol Ivictus, the Roman sun god.
Contact Hallmark...they may have been involved.
To be honest, no shepherd in his right mind would have his sheep in the fields this time of year in the holy land.
(You don't know the shepards I do).
Now lets look at the year of Christ's birth, it would have to have been before the year 4 AD, since that was the year that Herod died. To get even more confusing is the part of the story about Caesar Augustus decreeing that "all the world be taxed," that little tidbit pushes the year of Christ's birth to before 14AD, the year that Augustus died.
God created the Heavens and the earth in 6 days...he could have easily just said..."hey what the fuck....14 AD....0 AD...I am the fucking It and ALL there was...so...fuck you and the calendar you rode in on".
With that taken care of, let us look at some of the legal aspects in effect at the time.
First, the "world" that Augustus referred to would have only included Roman citizens, not the non-citizens of the lands not considered provinces. In other words, Joseph was not subject to this decree. His taxes would have been levied by the local governor.
Then he was like all the others....47% pay no taxes....nothing new here.
Secondly, even if Joseph were subject to this tax by being a Roman subject, he would have been taxed in the town he lived in. The Romans were methodical and efficient, not anal retentive.
Why Bethlehem?
Easy...it was where all the good Bing Crosby songs would come from (don't think God didn't know the future and the past....uh huh....yeah....I thought so).
This is simple, to fulfill an old testament prophecy about the coming messiah. This fact was well known to Jews at the time of Christ, so the authors of the gospels had to give him the proper street cred, in literary circles, this is called staging.
The Gospel of Luke is the only gospel that has Joseph and Mary traveling to Bethlehem, the gospel of Mathew puts them there already.
Prophecy.
The only way to make this conflict work is like this, the author of Mathew knew that Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem and later moved to Nazareth, while the author of Luke did not know this fact.
And of course, Joseph was an uncaring, cruel man to make is pregnant wife travel late in her pregnancy. Considering the risks, this could have been fatal.
But God foresaw Medicare....and SNAP benefits. Problem solved.
So, let us fix that problem by making the statement that Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem at the time of Christ's birth.
Of course there is the bigger problem, why would 3 pagan kings journey to Bethlehem to honor a baby Jew? Not only that, but if the star they followed was so badly placed that it led them to Jerusalem first, then it moved to show them to Bethlehem. Anyone see the problem with this?
Newp....They had Navistar.
Now, the gospels concerning Jesus' life clearly demonstrates his divinity, with the miracles he performed, so why go through the trouble of all the inconsistencies concerning his birth? Who were these gospels aimed at, contemporary Jews, making it easy for them to convert by making the birth of Christ be in line with the old testament prophecy?
Christian theologians have been trying to explain these points for over 2000 years.
(Thankfully I'm here to resolve all these idiosyncrasies).
For me, I believe that Jesus was the son of god, and he died for our sins. I also believe that his early life was subject to authors taking creative license with the facts.
That and...they didn't have the Gutenberg press at the time....ergo...a few slips.....
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RE: We have been conned for 2016 years. - 
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