Christ's birthday

[theVOID]

I'm not really sure what you meant in #348 but let's take this line for a start.

I think it's the level of creditbility we disagree on the most.

In keeping with the original thread you have 2 sources which tell radically different stories. There is no reconciling them. "Matthew" and "Luke" (bearing in mind that these names were attached in the late 2d century) place the events before 4 BC or after 6 AD. One has Joseph and Mary living in Bethlehem and later moving to Nazareth, the other has them living in Nazareth and going to Bethlehem to take part in a census which is in another country and which did not happen in the manner described in the first place. One gospel claims that his parents were terrified of Herod and fled to Egypt and then were so afraid of Archelaus that they went straight to Nazareth. Meanwhile, Luke has them taking the kid to the Temple in Jerusalem and showing him off.

Now, my point here is that you have only two sources which do not agree with each other. How can you reasonably expect someone like me to give them any credibility at all?

Well said Min, but i would add that the sources not only disagree with each other but are in direct contradiction to each other - there is no way that multiple eye witnesses could have reported events so differently even after generations of oral tradition, we know the oral culture of the time was far more precise than that, and there is no way that a single eye witness account could have diverged into such contradictory statements over a few generations.