Word: bethlehem
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With Penn on the horizon, don’t expect Yale to alter its course, as the Bulldogs will probably sleepwalk into and out of Bethlehem, picking up a double-digit defeat along...
...Western Michigan University: "Radical New Testament critics say it's a hopeless jumble. I myself do not think it's impossible to harmonize them." Others champion one Gospel writer while discounting the other. A growing majority, however, conclude that there is simply not enough textual agreement to declare Bethlehem a historical given...
Rather, they see the destination as having been a theological necessity. Bethlehem had been King David's hometown. And in a confused 1st century theological landscape in which many Jews expected a mighty new leader but disagreed on his nature, David's biblical status as God's "anointed one" (or "Messiah") provided a potent precedent of divinely sanctioned kingship. Binding Jesus to him by family (through Joseph) and birthplace consolidated that definition, which then matured into Christianity's far grander messiahship. Says White: "No Bethlehem, no David. No David, no messianic prototype. Matthew and Luke both understood that...
...elements of the Christmas tale. To scholar Brown tracing its path in Matthew, however, the star was a puzzle, a celestial body engaged in a maneuver a little like a car attempting a three-point turn. "A star that rose in the east, appeared over Jerusalem, turned south to Bethlehem, and then came to rest over a house," he ruminated, "would have constituted a celestial phenomenon unparalleled in astronomical history. Yet it did not receive notice in the records of the time...
...those not astronomically inclined, however, the star continues to work just fine as a symbol. With skepticism but not without poetry, A.N. Wilson, author of Jesus: A Life, notes, "Astronomers will never find the real star of Bethlehem because the real star of Bethlehem is a thing of our imagination. It's the light shining over the Christ Child...