Bible Discussion Thread

It's not a question of belief. Luke's account of the nativity is impossible, placing as it does the annunciation within the reign of Herod and the birth at the time of the great census. Events which are separated historically by at least a decade. Moreover Luke's genealogy for Jesus certainly does not dovetail with its source in the OT. Compare it for yourself; there are whole generations missing. There is also the little matter of what the genealogy is trying to achieve. It seems that in their zeal to fulfill a prophecy some gospel writers overlooked a basic fact of biology; either Jesus was the son of God and the virgin Mary or the biological son of Joseph and a distinctly non-virginal Mary. You may take your pick, but you can't have it both ways; if the former then the genealogy is pointless and if the latter then the prophecy is fulfilled but at the price of Jesus not being the son of God. As to whether John the Baptist was prophesied in the OT, rather depends on how you view the apocrypha. If you pretend they don't exist (in which case I'd like to know on who's authority) then it looks as if Malachi is the last word of the OT and possible a harbinger of J the B. However if you restore Maccabees together with some 500 years of Jewish history to their rightful place then Malachi is just another failed prophet from the exile period, or even earlier, predicting the restoration of the Jewish monarchy. Finally and in view of the above it really doesn't matter if or how these Essenic families were interrelated. It's a bit like saying Robin Hood must have existed because Will Scarlet was the cousin of Friar Tuck.