Challenge to atheists: I find your lack of faith disturbing!

[xpastor]

....Again I also want you to tell me:

. Who was Joseph's dad?

In one thread we rejoice over same-sex 'marriage' and gay adoption. Of course a child can have two dads.

In another thread we whine about the bible's ambiguity about father, father in law.

Typical hypocrisy from the bible errancy crowd.

You seem to have missed the point of the question. Matthew 1 says that Joseph's father was named Jacob. Luke 3 says Heli.

There is no ambiguity about a child having two dads when he is adopted by gay parents. Trying to lay down a trail of red herrings as usual.

..... How come nobody other than Matthew talks about the huge 'kill the firstborn' operation launched by Herod, which would have required enormous coordination and manpower?

You mean how come people were afraid to write bad stuff about a blood-thirsty dictator who murdered his own family members and who had an army?

Or maybe you are wondering why Herods day-to-day exercise of brute force in order to hold on to power wasnt particularly newsworthy back then. Abortion isnt very controversial and it is 2013!

You're being obtuse—deliberately? Why would anyone be afraid to write about the slaughter of the innocents if it had happened? Herod was long dead by the time Matthew wrote about it. Josephus does in fact list in detail all of Herod's crimes but knows nothing about the murder of the babies in Bethlehem, suggesting it never happened, and Matthew put it in so he could slip in another garbled Old Testament reference:

16 When Herod realized that the visitors from the East had tricked him, he was furious. He gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its neighborhood who were two years old and younger—this was done in accordance with what he had learned from the visitors about the time when the star had appeared.

17 In this way what the prophet Jeremiah had said came true:

18 “A sound is heard in Ramah,
the sound of bitter weeping.
Rachel is crying for her children;
she refuses to be comforted,
for they are dead.”

But they claim Herod murdering babies never happened.

They claim the Exodus out of Egypt never happened.
...and yet it was the folk who left Egypt who went on to invade Canaan!!!

Come on WesOlsen. Make up your mind which part of the bible happened and which didnt.

I can't answer for WesOlsen, but my answer is that most of it is fiction, evil fiction, a sort of snuff literature as in Psalm 137:

8 Babylon, you will be destroyed.
Happy are those who pay you back
for what you have done to us—
9 who take your babies
and smash them against a rock.