the so fallible Bible

[xpastor]

Jesus was known to come from Nazareth, but if he truly was the messiah, then prophecy demanded that he should be born at Bethlehem.

Not really. The Bethlehem bullshit of Micah 5 is exhibit A for xtian cherry-picking of OT texts.

To me this and all the other OT prophecies co-opted in the NT to point to Jesus go way beyond cherry-picking. I would define cherry-picking as citing Bible passages without considering those which contradict them, as in my last example. Fundamentalist Christians are always picking up on the Romans 5 verses and every other thing Paul wrote about justification by faith while steadfastly ignoring all the other passages (like Ezekiel 18) which insist that everyone is judged on the basis of his own works, and this includes texts supposedly uttered by JC himself. However, the OT prophecies are simply ripped out of context. Someone has already decided that something applies to Jesus, King of Israel, for instance, and any text in the OT which mentions that is fair game. Like Matthew's little story of Jesus' traveling to Egypt and back so that he can cite "Out of Egypt have I called my son."

However, I think this is just the way a lot of minds worked in ancient times. I'm sure we could find similar examples in pagan writings about the Sibylline prophecies or the Delphic oracle. No point getting excited about it unless someone is seriously arguing the point today.