From the birth of Jesus in a manger to the Star of Bethlehem, the classic details of the Nativity story show up in Christmas pageants and storefront windows everywhere. But how may of those details are rooted in history?
"My overall take on this, which would be the opinion of most other biblical scholars as well, is that there is very little in the Christmas story of the Gospels that is historically reliable," said Brent Landau, a religious studies scholar at the University of Texas at Austin.
But others argue that biblical scholars hold Jesus' birth story to an impossible historical standard, and since Jesus was a minor (at the time) historical figure born in a Roman backwater, it's impressive that any evidence for his life and death exists at all, said Ben Witherington III, a New Testament scholar at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, and the author of "New Testament History: A Narrative Account" (Baker Academic, 2003) Read more...
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