The early Christian community seems to have had no knowledge of the Christmas stories.
Even the two gospel authors who mention them make no reference to them after the first two chapters. Yeshua’s birth is not referred to in either ‘Matthew’ or ‘Luke’s’ accounts of his adult ministry, trial, crucifixion or resurrection. Most reputable scholars think these chapters were added later.
There is no mention of the miraculous nativity anywhere else in the New Testament: not in the earliest gospel, ‘Mark’, nor in Paul’s letters (which pre-date ‘Mark’); not in the Fourth Gospel, Acts of the Apostles or the later letters. Don’t you think that these other authors would have mentioned these events? Did they not know of them, or did they not consider them important? This seems unlikely.
The New Testament tells us that Paul spent a couple of weeks with Yeshua’s disciple Peter and brother James in Jerusalem – are we to believe that the subject was never raised? Or were they unaware of it too?
Nowhere in the gospels does Yeshua make any reference to his birth, not even in the Fourth which largely consists of him talking about himself. Nor is there anything in the New Testament to suggest that his mother Maryām acknowledged the miraculous conception when her son was active in the world. Curious indeed! Needless to say these inconsistencies are never pointed out from pulpits, raised in discussion or mentioned in church literature. Why not?
Simple. There is absolutely no evidence outside the gospels (which are highly questionable) that they ever happened!
©David Lawrence Preston, 16.11.2016
Follow me on Facebook and Twitter @David_L_Preston
Balboa Press, 2015
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