Did Jesus Fulfill Prophesy?
The birth of Jesus is obviously one of the most important Christian narratives. Or is it two of the most important Christian Narratives? Either way, one of the great apologetic claims about nativity is that it fulfilled over three hundred prophesies. This week, we're going to look at what Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis says about some of those prophesies, and see if those claims hold up. Then it's roll-play time. Dan B will do his best to take the place of online apologists who challenge Dan M's claims. Will McClellan actually answer their complaints, or will this be an exercise in straw-manning their arguments? You be the judge!
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Dan Beecher You're saying they couldn't find the clitoris?
Dan McClellan I'm just going to say, that's delightful. Look, they were hiding. They were up under a cleft.
Dan Beecher It's not always easy to find. It's not their fault.
Dan McClellan Oh, gosh. It's a good thing my wife doesn't listen to podcasts. Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.
Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.
Dan McClellan And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?
Dan Beecher Riding high. Just having fun.
Dan McClellan Oh.
Dan Beecher Getting out into the world. No, not right now. Right now, I'm just sitting in a- Sitting in the comfort of your apartment. Podcast studio.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Coming to you live from Data Over Dogma Studios here in Utah.
Dan McClellan In lovely downtown Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City, Utah.
Dan Beecher Utah.
Dan McClellan All right.
Dan Beecher I'm fine. How are you, Dan?
Dan McClellan I'm doing all right. I'm getting over my post-SBL, what do they call them? Con cruds? The con crud. The con crud, yes. The convention sickness- Yeah ... that I always manage to pick up, usually, probably in an airport on the way home from a convention.
Dan Beecher I think they call it conclave, is what they call it.
Dan McClellan They made a movie about that, didn't they?
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan But yeah, other than that, it's a lovely-ish, very cold day- Mm ... here, but the sun's out at least, I guess.
Dan Beecher Yeah, man.
Dan McClellan And- Yeah ...
Dan Beecher and you know what I hear? What do you hear? I hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring, ting, tingling, too. It is, for us now, in this part of the temporal plane- ... the holiday season.
Dan McClellan It is.
Dan Beecher Others may be listening. You, listener at home, may be catching this a different time of year. But for us right now, it is the holiday season. And so, as is our wont, or want, if people want to get weird about it- ... we're going to talk about Jebus and his birth.
Dan McClellan It's the time of year where we've got to confront some of that ever-present misinformation.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan And we've done this many times in the past, talking about things like why December 25th.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan We've talked about no room at the inn.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan We've talked about stuff like that.
Dan Beecher Which turns out there's not even an inn.
Dan McClellan So- There's no inn to speak of, yeah.
Dan Beecher So, why would there be room there? It doesn't make any sense.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And we may actually, in this episode, I will warn people, we may cover some ground, or touch on some ground that we have hit before, because it's one of those things where, I don't know, sometimes you've got to- Yeah ...
Dan McClellan you've got to hit some things that you already talked about, but- There are only so many passages in the Bible that discuss Jesus' birth, so yeah.
Dan Beecher But I think we got some fun angles to talk about.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher First, we're going to take issue with... This is mostly just apologetics we're going to take issue with.
Dan McClellan Yeah. But right, the whole show's going to be apologetics.
Dan Beecher But our first taking issue, we're going to get onto Ken Ham's website.
Dan McClellan Ken Ham.
Dan Beecher And we're going to go over to Answers in Genesis, and we're going to see if the birth of Jesus actually fulfilled prophecies from the Hebrew Bible.
Dan McClellan Dun, dun, dun.
Dan Beecher And then in the second half of the show, and it will be an exact half, too. You watch. Numerically, work it out. I want you guys to make sure that you hold us to this.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher We're going to do sorry apologetics, or sorry, apologetics- ... in which we will talk about some of the objections that people have raised, Dan, to your claims on the media of socials.
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher Yes, because- So that'll be a lot of fun ...
Dan McClellan I am out here to ruin Christmas for everybody.
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan And so a lot of apologists have said, "No, here's the story," and we're going to talk about those claims. So- Yeah.
Dan Beecher All right. Well, let's dive in with Taking Issue. And we're taking issue this week with, as we said, Answers in Genesis. There's an article written by one Dr.
Dan McClellan Tim Chaffey.
Dan Beecher And earlier, what you guys at home don't know is that Dan immediately dove into, "Where is that doctor from?" Do I need to call out how- Well- ... whether that doctor title is deserved or not?
Dan McClellan Whenever people make a big deal of including doctor on their names in their credits for articles, and particularly blog posts and stuff like that, it always raises the red flag, because there are a lot of folks out there who insist on being called doctor, like Dr. James White. It's hilarious how much people insist on referring to him as Dr. James White. And he does not have a legitimate doctoral degree. So, it's always just a red flag of mine, but- Sure ... while it is a theological seminary that awarded this doctorate, it is, as far as I can tell, accredited.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan I have nothing to say about the credentials of the good doctor, but we will have some things to say about whether or not the birth of Christ fulfilled a bunch of prophecies, because- Yes ... that's something that related to a claim we hear all the time. "Oh, Jesus fulfilled 300 plus prophecies, and the chances of that happening are..."
Dan Beecher What? Are infinitesimal.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Well, they're significantly better if you craft the story so that he does fulfill those prophecies.
Dan McClellan And that's one of the things that you have to bring up every time people talk about that, because the fulfillment is found in the same book- Right ... as the prophecy. So it's like Harry Potter fulfilled a lot of prophecies as well, as long as you just keep the scope internal to Harry Potter.
Dan Beecher Right. And so- It's harder to make Harry Potter fulfill the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible, but I'm sure we could find a few.
Dan McClellan I'm sure we could find a couple. But yeah, what we're talking about is somebody writing about Jesus in a way that makes the story fulfill prophecy.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And one of the reasons that this is the best interpretation of the data is precisely because there's another story about Jesus's birth from another text, and it's different in most of the places where, at least the story in Matthew, has Jesus fulfilling prophecy, and we'll talk about that. But to start- Yes ... probably the most famous prophecy of the whole nativity comes from the Book of Isaiah.
Dan Beecher Isaiah, yeah. We're doing Isaiah 7:14. Is that the one we're doing right now?
Dan McClellan Right. So this is coming from probably the second half of the 8th century BCE, and a lot of whether or not this seems like a prophecy is going to come down to how it's translated.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan And the way the good doctor, the translation that the good doctor has here is, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."
Dan Beecher Which, by the way, we've mentioned this before, but it really blows my mind how willing they are to throw this one out there, right out the chute, right out the gate, when we know that his name was not called Immanuel.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Forget the virgin thing. We're going to get to the virgin thing. I get that, but what the heck is going on with the Immanuel part?
Dan McClellan Yeah, it's not like it was his middle name. It was like- Jesus Immanuel Christ.
Dan Beecher No.
Dan McClellan That's not what- And then Mary was like, "Jesus Immanuel Christ, you get down here and clean your room."
Dan Beecher "Yeah, Mom, okay." No, that's so weird to me that they trot that one out, but okay.
Dan McClellan Well, and there's a reason for that. If you look in, because it's quoted in Matthew 1, I think it's in the 20s somewhere.
Dan Beecher 1:23.
Dan McClellan 1:23.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Matthew 1:23. So I've got a few different translations in front of me. King James Version says, "And they shall call his name Immanuel." Now, if you'll notice in Isaiah 7:14, it doesn't repeat or it doesn't give us a subject because it's still being governed by the subject, the virgin- Right ... shall call his name. So the mom is going to name him Immanuel according to Isaiah 7:14. Once we get to Matthew, it's no longer the mom who's naming him.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan What it says is, "They shall call his name Immanuel," which sounds like this unnamed they may not be the parents, it may be that the followers of Jesus will refer to him as if he were God among us. So it's kind of- As if.
Dan Beecher Point of order.
Dan McClellan The author is kind of massaging things- Right ...
Dan Beecher a little bit. I get that.
Dan McClellan Point of order?
Dan Beecher And yet it says, "Shall call his name," even in Matthew, "his name Immanuel." It doesn't say, "Shall call him- Yeah ...
Dan McClellan the Immanuel."
Dan Beecher Shall refer to him by title of Immanuel. And by the way, no one ever does.
Dan McClellan No.
Dan Beecher Right? No one calls him Immanuel.
Dan McClellan Not in the New Testament. But we don't need exactness here, and this is one of the things that apologists will sometimes say. Prophecies are vague.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And that just makes them more true.
Dan Beecher That doesn't- Right.
Dan McClellan Yeah. It's not like they're intentionally vague so that they can be shellacked over a variety of different contexts. So I think the way that you can get around people going, "Well, wait a minute, his name's not Immanuel." In the same chapter, you say his name's going to be Jesus, so- Right ... so yeah. This is one of the fudgy ways to get around the fact that this prophecy doesn't seem to be quite on target. But that's a change that is introduced in the way that Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14. But Isaiah 7:14 is being mistranslated here as well because it does not say the virgin shall conceive. If you go look into the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh, you go look in the NRSVUE, you go look in a variety of different translations, and it will use the words young woman because the Hebrew is almah, which means young woman of marriageable age, and it doesn't let you know whether or not it is in the future or in the past because it's using an adjective which means pregnant. And so it's just saying ha'almah, hara. And then you have to provide the to-be verb. And so you could technically say, "Well, I want it to be in the future." And that's what the Septuagint does in the Greek translation.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan But that adjective overwhelmingly is used to refer to either a current existing pregnancy or an imminent pregnancy.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan So it's usually is pregnant or is right about to become pregnant. Is about to be pregnant.
Dan Beecher Yeah. And so- Is currently doing the dirty deed.
Dan McClellan Yeah, the pregnancy is in the post, to be brief. And so yeah, what this almost certainly is referring to, the overwhelming majority of scholars will agree on this, is this is a reference to a woman who is pregnant in the time period when the author, who probably is some historical dude named Isaiah from the 8th century BCE, knew about some woman who was pregnant and was like, "Look, that woman right there, she's pregnant." And then it goes on to say she will give birth to a son, which is not much of a prophecy because that frequently happens when women are pregnant.
Dan Beecher Yeah, you got a 50/50 shot on that one.
Dan McClellan Yeah. And she will call his name Immanuel. And so the prophetic part really comes in the next verse where it says, "He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, for before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted." Because the king is wringing his hands over the fact that there's this coalition that's forming up in the north, and Isaiah's like, "Enhance your calm."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan "Because that lady's pregnant. She's going to have a son, Immanuel, and before his," whatever euphemism or whatever idiom you want to use today to mean before he grows up, "those countries are not going to be countries anymore, so relax." And that's what the prophecy is doing in Isaiah 7:14.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan So Matthew, the author of the Gospel of Matthew, has wrenched this out of context, now with the help of the Septuagint's translation, because the Septuagint wants it to be relevant to its own time and place hundreds of years later, so- Right ... it's already being brought a little closer, and so Matthew has just given it one additional step. And it should be noted that this notion that there's a virgin birth is widely agreed to be a posthumous secondary accretion to the Jesus tradition, where you're starting to get sensitivities to the origins of Jesus. Paul and Mark say nothing about Jesus' origins- Right ... except that Paul says he was born of a woman, but great.
Dan Beecher Whoa.
Dan McClellan Happened to most of us.
Dan Beecher Really sets him apart there.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So there's nothing significant about his origins until we get to the later gospels where they begin to push the divinity of Jesus' origins further and further back in time. And so the virgin birth probably developed as sensitivities about just the nature of sexual desire and sexual intercourse is leading people to want to distance the divine Messiah from a natural birth. And we talked about the Immaculate Conception.
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan That's just the further teasing out of those concerns.
Dan Beecher Yeah. And so, yeah- Part of me wondered if the virgin birth, because I get that there were all of these new sort of sexual mores and a little bit of conservative ideas of sexual impropriety creeping in or what in this moment in history. But also, could it be that it was just the author of Matthew was trying to square this idea of the... I think I remember you saying something about the Septuagint taking the Hebrew of Isaiah and then making it the word virgin. Is that right? So- Could Matthew just be trying to square it with that prophecy as he's writing it?
Dan McClellan I don't think it is solely a result of the translation of almah as parthenos.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan I think that contributes. I doubt that that is the sole reason. I doubt that the author was just like, "Look, it says parthenos. I've got to do something about that."
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Because it calls Dinah parthenos in the Septuagint after she has been violated.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And I have a friend named Rodrigo de Jesus who wrote a wonderful paper published, 15, 10, 15, no, 2008, so 17 years ago, entitled, "Is the Choice of Parthenos Theologically Motivated in LXX Isaiah 7:14?" Or something like that, and talks about the fact that that word had some semantic fuzziness to it even back then.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And so it may have just been like, "Eh, it works." And so the author of Matthew, I think it's probably a combination of factors. And then the author of the Gospel of Luke, I think, is probably just picking up that football and running with it, writing as they are after. And the nativity account in Luke chapters one and two, I think is probably even later than the rest of Luke. I think it's a secondary addition to the Gospel of Luke as well, so- Interesting.
Dan Beecher Okay ...
Dan McClellan it's coming later.
Dan Beecher Sorry. I know you want to move on with this, but I do want to check in with one thing.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher I consulted another scholar About this.
Dan McClellan We talked about this, Dan. We don't consult other scholars on- One Dr.
Dan Beecher ChatGPT.
Dan McClellan And that scholar- Dude didn't even get his degree.
Dan Beecher No, but he did steal all of y'all's degrees.
Dan McClellan He did, yeah. That's fair.
Dan Beecher So, what ChatGPT said was that somehow Matthew taking these older prophecies and squirreling around with them was part of a midrashic tradition.
Dan McClellan A certain...
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Go ahead.
Dan Beecher And so I want to know more about that, or if that's just sort of not really a thing. But what is a midrash, and how do you clear it up? Is it a cream? What do you use?
Dan McClellan Well, midrash comes from darash, which means to seek. And so it's an approach to scripture that tries to uncover significance and meaning that is relevant to the reader and the person engaging the text. And so, I think there is a sense in which it is certainly engaging in a very dynamic, interpretive, hermeneutic practice that is related to midrash. I would hesitate to say that the authors were like, "I'm going to do midrash on this." And so, I don't think that's illegitimate. I don't know that if I were writing about this, that I would choose to focus on that, but yeah.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan I think that fits.
Dan Beecher You're in a fight with Dr. GPT, that's all I'm saying.
Dan McClellan I get in fights with Dr. ChatGPT all the time.
Dan Beecher Yeah. As well you should.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher As well you should. Don't trust ChatGPT, kids. Straight out the barrel. Get yourself a Dan, and then- ... I guess what ChatGPT said was that the midrash, the reason it said that it was a midrash was that- Ah ... it claimed that it was normal, as a Jewish interpretive technique, to sort of take older scripts and twist them and play with them and sort of- Yeah ... expound on them and whatever.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And so to take an old prophecy that doesn't actually apply to this and then just sort of apply it would've been understood, at least at the time, to have been a, not this is the absolute fulfillment of this prophecy, but look at this echo to something in the past or something.
Dan McClellan Yeah. And I think there's truth to that. Obviously, we've already talked about how the Septuagint is fiddling with the rendering itself.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And so yeah, absolutely it is following in the footsteps of other Greco-Roman Jewish interpretive practices. In that sense, it's not an outlier.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Now, to the degree I would agree with the notion that everybody knew, and it was transparently just, "This is how we play with the text. We're not taking it seriously." I don't know about that. There's an argument to be had there.
Dan Beecher Now- Although, it does sound like to me, to my untrained ear, it sounds like Matthew is making hard claims.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And- It doesn't sound like it's like, "Hey, let's just play with this a little bit- Yeah ... and see what we think about it."
Dan McClellan Yeah. Have fun with it. And I don't think Dr. Chaffee is suggesting this is just their creative exegetical practice.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan I don't think that's the claim. I think the claim is, "This is absolutely historical, and this is what the prophets were talking about, and this is how Jesus fulfilled all these prophecies, and that's how you can know that Jesus actually resurrected." That seems to be the argument coming from the folks who are appealing to these things today.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Now, whether or not the original audience of the Gospel of Matthew would've been like, "Oh, I didn't know that was what that was about." I think that depends on the audience you reconstruct, and so I think that's a little fuzzier and also not really the point of what we're doing here.
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan But- Sorry ... not to say you're going off topic, but just to say, "Shut up."
Dan Beecher Yeah, I am a little lost in the woods here. So, should we get back into some more prophecies?
Dan McClellan Yeah, let's do a few more of these.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan I think the next one that's brought up is, "And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel." That's Matthew 2:6, and this is obviously riffing on Micah 5:2, which, if I can just pull it up here real quick, is a prophecy that says... Well, it starts in 5:1, doesn't it? It depends on how you divide this up. "But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days." So that's the messianic prophecy- Sure ... as it came to be understood by the time of the New Testament from Micah 5. Now, in the original context, this is probably pre-exilic, and the expectation is that there is an Israelite king, probably from the line of David, who is going to arise and Rule the people and lead the people. And there are a lot of details about what's going on in there that are still hotly debated by scholars, but nobody thinks this is actually about somebody who's going to be born 700 years later. This is about someone who is supposed to shepherd Israel prior to the exile.
Dan Beecher And- But the reason we're bringing this up is that this is why the Gospels have- Have Jesus- ... squirreled this guy into Bethlehem somehow.
Dan McClellan Yes. And this is an interesting point to bring up. Again, Paul and the Gospel of Mark say nothing about Bethlehem. In fact, there are only three places where the word Bethlehem ever occurs in all of the New Testament. One is in Matthew's nativity account, one is in Luke's, well, multiple occurrences, but- Yes ... one place is Matthew's nativity account, one place is Luke's nativity account, and then there's a single verse in the Gospel of John, I think in chapter 7, that references the Messiah being born in Bethlehem. And one of the reasons we think, hey, maybe this is just something that was added later, is because both Matthew and Luke have very different ways of getting Jesus to Bethlehem.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Because Jesus is Jesus of Nazareth, and so both of them have to get Jesus back to Nazareth so he can be raised in Nazareth and be of Nazareth.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Middle name of Nazareth, Jesus of.
Dan Beecher Here.
Dan McClellan So they have very different ways of doing it. And if you- Right ... just read Matthew, if you do not have the Gospel of Luke, if you just read Matthew, Joseph and Mary are from Bethlehem. And then- They live there, yeah.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And then they take off, Herod does his thing, and they've got to scramble into Egypt as refugees. And then they want to come back after Herod's dead, but Herod's son Archelaus is ruling in Judea, and so they've got to head north. And it says they settle in Nazareth, which is not what you do when you're returning home. It's what you do when you're going to find a new place to live.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And so the Gospel of Luke is entirely different. They live in Nazareth. They're just going down to Bethlehem because of this census thing that is going on that we're going to talk about later.
Dan Beecher Yeah. And the reason behind this is just that, for the fulfillment of prophecy's sake, we have to get him to be both from Nazareth and from- Yeah ...
Dan McClellan Bethlehem.
Dan Beecher Is that correct?
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan He's Jesus of Nazareth. Everybody knows where he came from, but we've somehow got to have him born in Bethlehem.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan So we have two completely different stories about how Jesus of Nazareth was actually born in Bethlehem.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And scholars think this is probably because after Jesus's death, when stories about, "Oh, this is the Messiah. He resurrected. Game on. Game on, everybody." People were going, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. This is Jesus of Nazareth, but the Messiah's supposed to come from Bethlehem. At least, last time I checked Micah 5, the Messiah was supposed to come from Bethlehem." And so the story develops, "Oh, yeah, nobody knows about it, but he actually was born in Bethlehem." So I think that's probably what's going on there.
Dan Beecher All right.
Dan McClellan Which brings up the next prophecy that he fulfilled, which is not actually a prophecy.
Dan Beecher What? How dare you.
Dan McClellan So we go down to Matthew 2 verse 18, and we have Herod, the slaughter of the innocents.
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan Not a part of Luke.
Dan Beecher And the reason- And that one feels like a pretty strong oversight. That one feels like, ooh, Luke, come on, man. What are you doing?
Dan McClellan Yeah. And the reason all these prophecy fulfillment things are in Matthew is because Matthew was the one who was like, "We've got to have him fulfilling all these prophecies. More prophecies, more prophecies."
Dan Beecher And so- Well, and he often overtly says, "And this fulfilled the prophecy- Right ... of X."
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher He was being very overt about the whole thing.
Dan McClellan Yeah. One of the main rhetorical goals of the Gospel of Matthew is to show how thoroughly and comprehensively Jesus fulfilled Messianic prophecy from the Hebrew Bible, even if it's not an actual prophecy from the Hebrew Bible.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan So here in Matthew 2:18, we get a quote. "A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be comforted because they are no more." And this is from Jeremiah 31, and this is about the exile. It's just a lament.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And this is something that happens quite a bit in the Gospels, where they take something that is lamenting something that has already happened, and they flip it and they say, "Oh, this is about the future. This is about this thing that just happened." And this is about Jesus. And so obviously, this is about Herod killing all the innocent people in Bethlehem because Ramah is not by Bethlehem. Well- Bethlehem is six miles south of Jerusalem. Ramah is six miles north of Jerusalem.
Dan Beecher Well, that weeping and lamentation was loud.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher It was a very loud lamentation.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So probably that one's not as much of a bullseye as- ... the others also weren't.
Dan Beecher So- It's a slant prophecy.
Dan McClellan And then just a few verses before that, because of Herod's slaughtering of the innocents, we have Joseph and Mary grabbing Jesus and running off to Egypt. And then we have, "Out of Egypt I have called my son," which is another non-prophecy that comes from the book of Hosea 11:1. And that is, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt, I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me. They kept sacrificing to the Baals and offering incense to idols." So this is about Israel coming out of Egypt with the exodus- Right ... and just not being able to figure out, keep those dirty Baals out of your mouth.
Dan Beecher Keep your Baals to yourself, man.
Dan McClellan Yeah. You don't know where they've been. So, another thing that is not really a prophecy, but is something that the author of Matthew, and certainly this is something that you see in a lot of biblical hermeneutics and a lot of biblical exegesis, is just see resonances. "Oh, this is just like this thing that happened over there."
Dan Beecher Boom.
Dan McClellan Prophecy.
Dan Beecher Roasted.
Dan McClellan It gets to be a prophecy even though it was never understood that way.
Dan Beecher Is your understanding of this one, because it is confusing why Matthew sent them to Egypt when nobody else talks about him going to Egypt. Or do other people talk about him going to Egypt?
Dan McClellan I don't know.
Dan Beecher No. So, is it your understanding that Matthew took this Hosea and was just like, "I'm going to run with that. I'm just going with it," and just threw it into the story? It's so confusing to me because you're right, "Out of Egypt, I called my son" is very clearly a reference in Hosea to the people of Israel. It's so weird to me.
Dan McClellan Why?
Dan Beecher Why put him in Egypt?
Dan McClellan I think it's a pretty complex constellation of events that- Yeah ... Matthew has constructed here, but you need to get Jesus to Nazareth. Luke has Jesus, or at least Jesus' parents, starting in Nazareth. Matthew does not. So how do you get him to Nazareth? Well, if you have him leave- Uh-huh. You scare him out of Bethlehem.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan You scare him out of Bethlehem. He comes back, but he can't resettle in Bethlehem.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan You need him in Nazareth. Okay, well, you have Archelaus ruling in Judea, but guess what? Archelaus was not ruling in Galilee. Okay, we can get Jesus to Galilee. That's how we get him to Nazareth. He's got to leave, come back when Herod is dead, but then because somebody else took that part of Herod's kingdom, then Herod's direct line is no longer ruling over Galilee. We can have them settle in Nazareth. Okay, where's he going? Why is he getting out of Bethlehem? Oh, let's get him to Egypt because we've got this passage that says, "I have called my son out of Egypt," and let's get him to Egypt because of Herod's slaughtering of the innocent. It's a very complex procession of events- Yeah ... but it all fits together quite well. It's a dramatic story that has Jesus get from Bethlehem up to Nazareth and allows Matthew to say, "Oh, prophecy. Oh, prophecy.
Dan Beecher Guess what?
Dan McClellan Prophecy," along the way. So- Okay.
Dan Beecher And yeah- And I just had to look it up and remind myself, Nazareth- Mm-hmm ... is way up north.
Dan McClellan It's like- Yes ...
Dan Beecher 150 kilometers north of Jerusalem, and Bethlehem's right next to Jerusalem.
Dan McClellan It's six kilometers or miles, I forget which one. Six is the number, though. South-southwest, just barely a little bit west of Jerusalem.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So, if you're standing in a high point in Jerusalem, you can just make out one of the hilltops of Bethlehem, if you're looking south, and you know what to look for.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So, and then we got an interesting one- Yeah ... that, "God warned Joseph in a dream not to go back to Judea, so instead he took Mary and Jesus to Nazareth in Galilee, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene." And what I think is interesting here is, and this is another reason to think that Matthew does not have Joseph and Mary in Nazareth prior to Bethlehem, is if this prophecy is that he would be called a Nazarene, why didn't Matthew say, "So they went home?" Or why did-- He- Right ... has this decision to go to Nazareth, and that decision is what ultimately fulfills this prophecy, which it does not seem to be motivated by any kind of previous connections to this place at all. But the problem is, there's no part of the Hebrew Bible that says he would be called a Nazarene.
Dan Beecher So that's a reference to a prophecy that we have no knowledge of.
Dan McClellan Well, and there are two ways that this has traditionally been answered, and one is more common these days than the other. One is that Nazarene is really supposed to be like Nazarite.
Dan Beecher Okay. And- And those two things are not even related conceptually. Is that right?
Dan McClellan They are not related conceptually. However, the way they are written in Greek transliteration is very close together.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan But there's nothing in the Hebrew Bible that says the Messiah would be a Nazarite either.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And the other thing is that it could be something from Isaiah 11:1, which talks about, "A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots." And Jesse is David's father.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan So it's Davidic, and it just so happens that the word for, "The branch shall grow out of his roots," is netser. And so the The claim is that Isaiah 11:1 basically says the Messiah will be a Netzer or a Nazarene- ... if you like. So it's still squinting at this pretty hard- Yeah ... to try to make a connection there. And it might be that Matthew was like, "We've got to have a prophecy here. Come on, let's find something." And they were like, "Netzer?" He's like, "I can work with that. Let's do Nazarene. That sounds like he's from Nazareth."
Dan Beecher So- It's also possible that there was just a Nazarene- Or there's a text ... prophecy going around that we don't have or whatever.
Dan McClellan Yeah. It could've been something that they were like, "This is the agrapha, the unwritten prophecy." Or it could be something that was in some text that we just don't have anymore, that at that time, the author of the Gospel of Matthew was like, "I can buy that being scripture."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So, what we have in Matthew is a series of things that really apart from just the identification of Nazareth and the identification of Bethlehem are not in Luke.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Where Matthew is telling the story in their own unique way to have Jesus fulfilling these prophecies. And the data don't support the conclusion that Jesus actually fulfilled these prophecies. The data, I would argue, don't even indicate he was born in Bethlehem. I think most likely he was probably born in Nazareth, and then not long after he died, people were like, "Who's going to stop us from saying he was born in Bethlehem?"
Dan Beecher We can say whatever we want.
Dan McClellan You? The president? They were just like, "Yeah, we can have him born in Bethlehem." And these are ways to tell the stories in ways that make it seem like you're fulfilling prophecies even when they're not even prophecies to begin with.
Dan Beecher Yeah. So- Throw a few in. Why not?
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Make a few up. It's fine. Oh, my gosh.
Dan McClellan And so I think if you want the fulfillment of prophecy to be evidence of something, you've got to do an awful lot better than this.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Because it's easy to fulfill prophecy when you're the one telling the story. And if your whole goal is to show that Jesus fulfilled prophecy, you're a motivated crafter of a specific kind of story.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So, yeah, I just find that a stretch.
Dan Beecher Yeah. Other prophecy fulfillment in this article from Answers in Genesis doesn't even merit talking about. Things like Nazareth was looked upon with scorn- Oh, yeah ... which meant that it fulfilled the idea that the Messiah would be despised and rejected of men.
Dan McClellan Come on.
Dan Beecher Really? We're going to stretch that hard?
Dan McClellan Yeah. That's quite a reach.
Dan Beecher Yeah. But these kinds of articles are not for critical thinkers.
Dan McClellan They're for people who really want to believe and just want to be made to feel like they have good reason to believe, because even some of the things in here are about-- When we get to the, he would be called a Nazarene prophecy, they introduce these options, and it says, "However, there are a few plausible solutions to this dilemma." So what is the argument? The argument is that it's plausible. Here are ways that we can argue that it's plausible. So it's not about what's most likely. And I would say plausible is even a little bit of a stretch. It's that tiny little sliver of not impossible that apologetics is concerned to gin up.
Dan Beecher Well, if that's where we're going to go, if we're going to talk about that, let's do some sorry apologetics and move on to our next segment.
Dan McClellan All right.
Dan Beecher So sorry, it's apologetics. We're going to get to this. You, Dan, sent me a document.
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher Let me pull it up. It's somewhere. Here we go. Give us the setup for what this is.
Dan McClellan Okay. So I've frequently pointed out that Luke chapter one and two, one, contradict the Gospel of Matthew, but two, contradict themselves. And they contradict the Gospel of Matthew mainly in the fact that-- We've talked about some of it. Matthew has Joseph and Mary living in Bethlehem.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan They have nothing to do with Nazareth until they're coming back from their refugee stint and are forced to go up to Galilee, in fulfillment of some prophecy that might exist somewhere. So that's one example. Luke has Jesus is born in Bethlehem, and they're hanging out with family. They go to the temple, they fulfill what's required of them, and then they just mosey on back to Nazareth.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan You do not get the sense that the king is trying to murder the baby- Right ... in the Gospel of Luke.
Dan Beecher No one's fleeing or whatever.
Dan McClellan Yes. And they're like, "Well, the author just didn't think it was important." That is pretty profound authorial neglect- ... to be like, "Yeah, they went to the temple. This is really important that you know that they fulfilled all this stuff." What about the fact that the king tried to murder him, and so they had to flee to another country? No, not important.
Dan Beecher So- Well, let's go through your arguments and objections.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher What you've done is you've separated this out into you've made some argument.
Dan McClellan Yes. We're going to do some role-playing here.
Dan Beecher And I'm going to make the apologetic objection to whatever your claims are.
Dan McClellan So- And feel free to editorialize to your heart's content.
Dan Beecher Oh, you know I will. You know I will.
Dan McClellan Glad to hear it.
Dan Beecher All right, go.
Dan McClellan Okay. So- We're going to start with the fact that the Bethlehem story is likely a secondary addition to the Jesus tradition. We've already talked about some of the reasons why.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan But one of them is the fact that it's never even mentioned in the letters of Paul or in the Gospel of Mark. And again, the word Bethlehem only ever occurs in Matthew's nativity account, Luke's nativity account, and John's reference to the prophecy of the Messiah coming from Bethlehem.
Dan Beecher Aha. This, my friend, is the fallacy of the argument from silence.
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher That is- Just because they didn't mention it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. Doesn't mean it didn't happen. It just means they were not paying attention to important things.
Dan McClellan Yeah. And you know what? I think of all the stuff we're going to go through, this probably is the least illegitimate.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan No, that- Because there is a degree to which it is an argument from silence.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Now, there is a point that a lot of people will make. An argument from silence is not a fallacy if we should have it, if we should expect to see it, if they should have mentioned it. And I think that that is not necessarily true, at least of the writings of Paul. Because Paul's not really about his temporal life.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan We have a passing reference to him being born of a woman, but that's serving a more theological point.
Dan Beecher In the- Well, and Paul's not even not claiming to have met Jesus.
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher Whereas these Gospel authors, at least if the authorship attribution were correct, we would be assuming that the authors had actually met and hung out with Jesus.
Dan McClellan Yes. Now, Mark is supposed to have just been the interpreter for Peter.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So he not necessarily knew stuff. Luke is doing all this investigating. So, to a degree, yeah, we would expect them to have hung out with him. So it is true that that's a bit of an argument from silence. Mark, I think you would expect some kind of reference to this.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan But what's interesting is, even just outside of the nativity accounts of both Matthew and Luke, they never refer to Jesus having come from Bethlehem. It's always Jesus of Nazareth.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan And scholars think that the nativity account in Luke is a secondary addition, and there are even scholars who think the nativity account in Matthew is a secondary addition.
Dan Beecher Hmm.
Dan McClellan And the fact that you never have a reference back to anything that happened before Jesus's baptism in any of the Gospels, apart from the nativity accounts themselves, is suggestive that his origins were not important to the stories that were in circulation about Jesus. Once his ministry begins, that's when Jesus becomes relevant to everybody. And so you've got those nativity accounts, but outside of that, there just doesn't seem to be any relevance to Jesus' origins, and certainly no indication about being born in Bethlehem.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan But we've talked about other reasons to think this is a secondary addition as well. So if we're just isolating that one point, I would say, to some degree, touché.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And would say, but there are a lot of other things- Right ... that contribute to that conclusion as well. And this is one of the conclusions I think is, I would say is probable, is most likely, but it's certainly not a slam dunk. And- I'm going to guess we're not going to get a lot of touchés in this- I was about to say, that's the last you're going to hear that from me. So relish it.
Dan Beecher All right.
Dan McClellan Next.
Dan Beecher Next.
Dan McClellan Matthew, and we talked about this in the previous segment, seems to have Joseph and Mary living in Bethlehem and only later settling in Nazareth as a result of their desire not to return to Bethlehem in light of Archelaus' rule in Judea.
Dan Beecher Aha. "But," says Mr. Apologist coming in, "Matthew never says that they were from Bethlehem and not Nazareth. He never claims that. They just happen to be there then."
Dan McClellan Yeah. And this is a pretty common one. And this is something you see in a lot of the arguments about contradictions where one resurrection story says there was an angel, and then another resurrection story says there were two angels. And it's like, whoa. It said there was one. It didn't say there weren't two.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan One, two- To say there's an angel only means there's at least one- ...
Dan Beecher two includes one.
Dan McClellan Yeah. If it says there's an angel, all that means is there was at least one angel. And if it says there were two angels, all that means is that there were at least two. Could've been billions of angels.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan There could've been angels coming out of the cracks in the rocks.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And they only felt it was relevant to mention one or two.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And this is a much weaker point, because as we pointed out, the narrative states pretty clearly that they are coming back out of Egypt, and they're like, "Oh, we can't go back to Bethlehem. I guess we got to go to Galilee." And the text says that they settle in Galilee, in Nazareth, which is what you say when someone is moving somewhere new, not what you say when someone is returning home.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan If this is where they were originally from, the narrative would be different. This is not the way you describe someone returning home.
Dan Beecher They- Well, and that hit home for me when I looked at that map just a few minutes ago.
Dan McClellan Oh, and saw how far away they were.
Dan Beecher Just because that is so much farther away.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And they're on donkey back, if there's even a donkey. There's not even a donkey. But when you're going that far out of your way You'd mention that that was home. It does feel like.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher All right.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So, I don't think that objection holds any water. I think that's a pretty weak one.
Dan Beecher Okay, next.
Dan McClellan Matthew has Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem until they flee to Egypt to escape Herod's killing of the innocents, and only returning to settle in Nazareth after Herod's death. Luke 2:39 has them peacefully returning to Nazareth after they fulfill the legal requirements related to Jesus's birth. In other words, Luke does not seem to know that they were literally chased out of the country by the king.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And then forced to reside in another country before returning to Nazareth.
Dan Beecher Right. And here the objection is the obvious thing.
Dan McClellan Is very similar.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher It's just, well, it doesn't preclude the possibility that the slaughter of the innocents happened, and they went into Egypt. It just doesn't mention it.
Dan McClellan Yeah, and this is the same kind of thing as earlier, where you take these incongruities and suggest that, hey, it's dealer's choice.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan The author could've said something, but just decided not to. But again, in this case, that is- Luke thought he was running long. He was like- Yeah ... "Gosh, I need to use- I just started this story, but ...
Dan Beecher One needs to use the editorial mind- ... if you want to craft an interesting story.
Dan McClellan Yeah, and my argument would be that is pretty criminal neglect- ... to leave out that detail.
Dan Beecher Yeah. It's such a strong detail, too.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher That's juicy. But also- That's a juicy part of the story ...
Dan McClellan Oh, yeah, big time. And just chronologically, it doesn't seem to work because in Matthew, Herod says, "When did the star appear?" And then goes and has everyone two years and under killed.
Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.
Dan McClellan Which suggests that this is taking place two years after Jesus's birth.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan So, Jesus is maybe almost two years old, if not two years old when this is happening. And still in Bethlehem. And still in Bethlehem. So, another indication that they lived in Bethlehem- Right ...
Dan Beecher in Matthew.
Dan McClellan But in Luke, it says that they had to present him at the temple, and when all was fulfilled, they returned to their own city or their own town in Nazareth. And then it says they visited Jerusalem at the Passover every year. That does not allow for, one, them to- ... flee to Egypt until Herod dies. It does not allow for them to be persona non grata in Jerusalem for- Right ... however long. It does not allow them to still be around in two years when Herod is on the lookout. And it also suggests that they were free to come back once a year. And so, it just doesn't fit.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan It doesn't fit.
Dan Beecher Well, speaking of them coming from Nazareth down to Bethlehem- Yes ... why did they do that?
Dan McClellan Well, the mechanism in Luke is this notion of a worldwide census.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Caesar wanted the world to be taxed, so he told everybody they had to go to their own city to be taxed. And the point to make here is that Rome would not have issued a census requiring everyone return to their ancestral hometown to register because that, one, wouldn't be possible for many people, would nuke the economy for months- Yeah ... and would give the Romans utterly useless information.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Because the whole point of the census is who's living and working where, so we can tell the people who are governing that place, "This is how much we want from you in taxes." So, the notion that you would just go wherever you were from to register is just bafflingly asinine, just ahistorical. That would not have happened.
Dan Beecher Excuse me, Dr. McClellan, but I do believe that you are- If that is your real name ... If that's from an accredited university, that doctorate of yours. But I do think that if you went to the British Museum and looked up P London 904, the Papyrus 904- Yes ... you would see very clearly that there was a Roman edict that read, "Gaius Vibius Maximus, prefect of Egypt, says, 'The enrollment by household being at hand, it is necessary to notify all who, for any cause whatsoever, are outside their nomes,' or territories, 'to return to their domestic hearth,' or home, 'that they may accomplish the customary dispensation of enrollment and continue steadfastly in the husbandry that belongs to them.'"
Dan McClellan Hmm.
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan So ha-ha.
Dan Beecher Ha-ha. They were, "Wait a minute. I think I see the problem of my own argument."
Dan McClellan Yes, and that would be that this says nothing about ancestral homestead- Right ... or hometown. It says your hearth, and this is talking about returning home precisely because people traveled. People traveled for work. People traveled for pleasure. And if they're doing a census, they want to know where you live or where your job is.
Dan Beecher Yeah. Where's your hearth?
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher Get to your hearth.
Dan McClellan Get to the hearth. Olly olly oxen free. We need you. We need you back at your hearth. And this is unrelated to the notion that this census would require Joseph to travel to Bethlehem, and the The text says that he went down to Bethlehem because he was of, or descended from, the house and the lineage of David. It's not saying that's where he lived. It's saying that's where he descended from ancestrally. He was of that ancestral hometown.
Dan Beecher A point of order. Luke 2:3 says that everyone went to his own city, which suggests hometown rather than ancestral hometown. Boom, you got schooled.
Dan McClellan Yes, it does say they all went to their own towns to be registered in verse 3. And then it says, "Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David." So here's the interesting thing, though. When you go all the way down to where it says they went home, which is, I think Luke 2, is it 39?
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan "When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord," so this is that stuff in the temple with the baby Jesus and all that. Then they've fulfilled everything that is required of them. "They return to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth." And the Greek is identical- Huh ... to the Greek of Luke 2:3. In other words, it says everybody in verse 3 went to their own town. According to Luke 2:39, Joseph and Mary's own town, exact same Greek, was Nazareth.
Dan Beecher Oh.
Dan McClellan So if you're saying that the census only required you to go to your own town, then they left their own town.
Dan Beecher Right. Then they messed up the census somehow.
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher One way or another, they messed it up.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So he just misunderstood. It was pretty big mistake.
Dan Beecher He's like, "Ah."
Dan McClellan Yeah. I showed up at SBL a day early because I am on a committee at SBL, and I thought our committee meeting was on the Friday- Uh-huh ... and SBL starts on Saturday. And no, it turns out that there are a lot of meetings that take place on Friday, but my particular meeting had actually been scheduled for Saturday.
Dan Beecher So- Oh, okay ...
Dan McClellan I showed up a day early because I didn't understand. So yeah, that kind of thing happens.
Dan Beecher Yeah, sure.
Dan McClellan But it's a much bigger mistake for Joseph and Mary in first-century CE.
Dan Beecher It's too bad Joseph and Mary had to travel that distance while she was pregnant- Yeah.
Dan McClellan Yeah, that's rough ...
Dan Beecher based on a misunderstanding.
Dan McClellan She's like, "Why would we have to go to our ancestral hometown?"
Dan Beecher "I don't know.
Dan McClellan I don't know." "Just-" "Sweetie, I don't know. I just think that's what it means."
Dan Beecher "Will you at least get me a donkey?"
Dan McClellan All right. Or do they have those new electric donkeys?
Dan Beecher It's an e-donkey.
Dan McClellan All right.
Dan Beecher Okay. Next thing.
Dan McClellan So, we have no record of an empire-wide census from anywhere in ancient Rome, and they would not have conducted a census themselves within Herod's own client kingdom. Herod was a client king, very similar to the way that we have a lot of other countries that do our bidding in the United States, and we have a long history of telling countries to do our bidding.
Dan Beecher We're good at it. What do you want?
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher It's fine.
Dan McClellan And something very similar went on then. And basically, Rome said, "Hey, this is the tribute that you owe to us, and we don't care how you get it. Just pay it."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And then Herod would go around and say, "Give me my money," and charge taxes to people based on the tribute. And obviously, Herod would also, "One for me, one for them, one for me, one for..." He would charge extra.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan But Herod was in charge of figuring out how to get the money, and all Rome wanted was, "Hey, we'd like this much money from you." So yeah, the notion that there was an empire-wide census that included Herod's client kingdom is not supported by the data.
Dan Beecher Except for in Tacitus' Annals book 7, chapter 41.
Dan McClellan Hmm.
Dan Beecher A tribe known as the- Say it right.
Dan McClellan Cetae?
Dan Beecher Caetani. C- Did I misspell that?
Dan McClellan Yeah. It's actually the I should be an L, and- Oh ... the E should be an I. So try again to say it right.
Dan Beecher I can't. I don't know what you just said. You say it.
Dan McClellan C-L-I-T-A-E.
Dan Beecher Clitae?
Dan McClellan Yeah, something like that.
Dan Beecher Okay. Sorry it's misspelled. That's okay. I looked up other things. I didn't get around to looking up what that was.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher Anyway, in Tacitus, the Clitae were required to give an account of their revenue and submit to a Roman tribute even though they were subject to a client king named Archelaus.
Dan McClellan Yes, and this is not the Archelaus that took over rule of Judea after Herod died. This is Archelaus of Cappadocia. This is a different Archelaus. So this is brought up in- It's my preferred Archelaus, actually. Yeah, he's a better Archelaus.
Dan Beecher But- This is the best one.
Dan McClellan Yes. The Arc Archelaus, if you will. And this is brought up a lot. Our good friend, Inspiring Philosophy, quoted a scholar who brought up this passage as evidence that they would've meddled in the affairs of other client kingdoms, including imposing censusi, censi, censuses- ... upon them. And the problem is, that's not at all what the text says. I'm going to read from a translation and then correct some of the translation, and then explain what's going on here.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan "At the same time, the Clitae, a tribe subject to the Cappadocian Archelaus, retreated to the heights of Mount Taurus because they were compelled in Roman fashion to render an account of their revenue and submit to tribute. There they defended themselves by means of the nature of the country against the king's unwarlike troops till Marcus Trebellius-" "... whom Vitellius, the governor of Syria, sent as his lieutenant with 4,000 legionnaires and some picked auxiliaries, surrounded with his lines two hills occupied by the barbarians, the lesser of which was named Cadra, the other Devara." It just goes on like that.
Dan Beecher I stopped paying attention. I don't know what we're- Yes.
Dan McClellan I did, too. But in short, it does not say that Rome imposed a census. It says that this tribe that was subject to Archelaus was compelled in Roman fashion to render an account of their revenue. Now, here's the problem. It doesn't say in Roman fashion. The Latin actually says, "According to our mode, they were subjected to a census."
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Now, here's the thing. If you go ask a classicist what's going on here, they will, every last one of them, tell you, "Oh, this means Archelaus imposed a census upon the tribe that was in his own kingdom and did it in the Roman fashion."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And it didn't work. They objected. They ran off to the hills, and then they were giving Archelaus trouble, and Archelaus had to go, "Rome, can you help out here a little bit?" And Rome was like, "Ugh, you again?
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan We're going to send Marcus Trebellius with a bunch of legionnaires and some auxiliaries to root out the rebels that you evidently can't handle on your own."
Dan Beecher So- You're saying they couldn't find the Clite?
Dan McClellan I'm just going to say, that's delightful. Look, they were hiding. They were up under a cleft.
Dan Beecher It's not always easy to find. It's not their fault.
Dan McClellan Oh, gosh. It's a good thing my wife doesn't listen to podcasts. But I just realized that could've reflected negatively on me, and that was not where I was going.
Dan Beecher I'm letting it hang out there. I'm just letting it hang.
Dan McClellan That's not where I was going, I promise you. Not where I was going. But that has nothing to do with Rome imposing a census on a client kingdom. That has to do with a client king imposing his own census and trying to do it in the Roman fashion, because- Right ... when Rome imposes a census, you don't say Rome is imposing a census in the Roman fashion.
Dan Beecher As those Romans are wont to do.
Dan McClellan Yeah. You just say they imposed a census, because- Right ... of course they're doing it in the Roman fashion.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan But no, this was a client king doing it as the Romans did.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Like they do on the Discovery Channel. And so, this has nothing to do with that. So yeah, there are apologists who will bring this up, and it is profoundly misguided.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And that brings us to the final- Yeah, let's do this last one real quick. Let's do this quick.
Dan Beecher Real quick. Let's get to them. We're running long here, but that's okay.
Dan McClellan Now, this could go on forever, but Luke 2:2 claims that the census took place when Quirinius, I'm going to say that name again because I slurred it, Quirinius governed in Syria, and that would be a reference to the census overseen by Quirinius when he was legate in Syria starting in 6 CE after Herod Archelaus was deposed, and Rome took over direct rule of Judea and needed to know how to tax the region.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher So, the objection you've given me- ... involves a word that I- Just say prote or prote.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher We're not crushing our protes here?
Dan McClellan We- No.
Dan Beecher No.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher So, the objection is Luke 2:2 uses the word prote, which can mean earlier or before. So, the passage should be translated, "This was the registration before Quirinius began to govern in Syria." Suck it.
Dan McClellan And the problem here is that prote, it's actually spelled slightly differently when it's used to mean earlier or before, is followed up immediately after by a noun or a participle, or a phrase that is in the genitive case, and that is not what we see in Luke 2:2. So, there are scholars who have been like, while it's not an utterly impossible reading, it is not a plausible reading, and it's- Okay ... clearly just apologetic in origin. It is just an attempt to sidestep the fact that Luke 2:2 would have to have this census and Jesus's birth dating to 6 CE, which directly contradicts Luke 1, which has it occurring during the reign of Herod the Great or very shortly after his death in 4 BCE- Right ... a full decade before Quirinius took over rule. So, yeah. That objection also does not work. It's not the weakest of all the objections here, but it's far from a plausible objection to the recognition that Quirinius had nothing to do with Syria or any census anywhere near the reign of Herod the Great.
Dan Beecher All right. Well, there you go. Sorry, apologists. Your sorry apologetics don't seem to be cutting it this time.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher But next round, they're going to come through with some hardcore stuff, so you- Oh, I'm sure they will ... you better be getting down to fight and wait, because they're coming for you. Friends, thank you so much for tuning in. If you would like to get an ad-free version of this show, possibly get it early, you can become one of our patrons over on patreon.com. You go over there. You give us a little bit of your money every month. We appreciate it. It keeps our families fed. And then you get to be a part of making the show go, and you get access to the show, to the ad-free version of the show. You can get access to the after-party that we do every week, bonus content where you can ask us questions. It's the best way to actually get us to respond to you if you want- ... a response from us. It may not be timely, but we will respond to you. So, head on over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma to do that. We always appreciate our patrons the most. But speaking of appreciating people, we appreciate Roger. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing the show, and we will talk to you all again next week.
Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.
