The apostles of Jesus told the story of his birth. How did they get the story when they weren't there?
Mary, the mother of Jesus, was with Him on much of His journey. She is mentioned in John 2:1 “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there” “The third day” refers to how long the first disciples were with Jesus Mary was at the cross when Jesus died. She was in the upper room. At some point Jesus appeared to James, his brother, after His crucifixion. The stories about the birth of Jesus were probably well known in the early church. In the Catholic tradition, James was the son of Joseph by his first deceased wife. If that be true, he was older than Jesus. Jude is the brother of James and altho there are some who question that the book of James was written by the LORD’s brother, we attribute the book of Jude to the LORD’s brother. So much of what we see in scripture is taken from first hand witnesses Luke was Greek Doctor that wrote one of the accounts you mentioned. Jewish men did not talk to women outside of their family but Luke had no such qualms. I am certain he spoke to Mary to find out about the birth of our Savior. Matthew was Jewish and was highly literate. I believe he kept a running chronicle which he later put together in his gospel. These are the only accounts of the birth of Christ. We think Mark was written by John Mark, a young man who followed Jesus but was too young to be an apostle. John was the last gospel written and two of his purposes was to fill in some gaps and to explicitly show the divinity of Jesus. He knew about the gospels of Luke and Matthew and did not think it necessary to write another Nativity account. Hope this helps.
Hmmm ... I don't know … maybe Jesus and Mary fricking told them!
Is that really so hard to grasp?
Seriously, listening to most critics of the Gospels you'd think they think the authors just materialized out of thin air, fully grown and fully literate, but completely ignorant of all their surroundings and the recent past, wrote a book from pure imagination, and handed it to a Church before poofing into oblivion again. In my world people are born and grow up in a culture that leaves it's mark on them, and they meet and know many people often alive long before they were, and they live for many decades and are endowed with this faculty called memory. They also talk to each other, often comparing notes. Yet among Biblical critics this world might as well be Neverland.
Assuming for a moment that the stories told were true, it’s relatively easy to work out how that would have happened.
People who were there told them the stories.
To take a mundane example, I know the story of how my parents met. Patently, I wasn’t there at the time, as I was born a few years after they married. The story, however, has been told rather a few times over the years - usually in an attempt to hose down a more bizarre version thereof - so I’m relatively well-across the circumstances. I know, for example, that contrary to a commonly-cited version of the story, Dad did not “throw a stapler at Mum’s head” in the process.
The stories of the birth of Jesus only appear in the Gospels of Mathew and Luke in the Bible. The authors of these Gospels are unknown, and might not be apostles. Even if, and that’s a big IF, they actually were eye witnesses to the life and death of Jesus, they make no claim to have been present at His birth.
There is, however, one gospel whose author does claim to have been present at the nativity. That is the gospel of James, the older half brother of Jesus, son of Joseph, but not of Mary. You will not find this gospel in the Bible, because it was not accepted into the cannon by the compilers of the New Testament as we have it today.
The accounts of the nativity in Mathew and Luke are incompatible; they cannot both be correct. Mathew has the ‘wise men’, while Luke has the shepherds. These are different, but not contradictory. However, the genealogies which precede each account are incompatible, as are the accounts of the movements of the Holy Family on leaving Bethlehem.
Neither of the canonical Gospels mentions the presence of James at the nativity, but the gospel of James, technically known as the Protoevangelium of James, is an attempt to combine the two Biblical accounts.
In it, the shepherds are not mentioned, but we do have the magi, complete with the ‘Star of Bethlehem’. There is no ‘flight to Egypt’, but the infant Jesus escapes the murderous soldiers of Herod by being hidden in a manger.
So, to address your question, “how did they get the story?” If we restrict ourselves to the Bible, there are two stories. They cannot both be correct. Perhaps neither is correct. In which case, one or both, were fabricated.
How do biographers get details of the people they are writing about?
They get them from other people. Additionally, in the case of the gospel accounts, the men writing them were inspired by God.
They were not.
The prevailing opinion would be that those accounts were invented, or at least embellished, by the writers to suit their purpose in presenting Jesus as one sent by God.
However, if we want to take the position that the writers were sincerely attempting to record events, that doesn’t require them to have personally witnessed every single one. People write biographies and history books now who were never present for every private moment of an individual’s life, or for events that happened before they were born. They interview people who were there, or consult other pre-existing sources. That is what the author of the Gospel of Luke claims to have done — collected all the stories going around about Jesus and arranged them into a coherent narrative for his patron.
People who believe that Luke’s infancy narrative was a genuine attempt to gather and record the events surrounding Jesus’ conception and birth often speculate that he interviewed Mary herself, who would have experienced most of those events. If that seems too implausible, certainly the author of Luke’s Gospel could have done exactly what he says he did — gone looking for the different stories going around about Jesus and collected them together into a single story.
How did you get the story of your own birth?
Have you ever shared that story with anyone?
How are you asking this question, if you aren’t there?
Maybe, you imagine that Mary was a bit player on a small stage who appeared to play her half-page side to never be seen again?
The Lord, His Mother, His Apostles, the growing Churches - they all knew each other. Walked and ate together, in some cases lived together, spent long visits together, had a lot of friends in common, wrote to each other…
The disciples of Jesus were not present at his conception and birth. But some, such as St. Luke or St. Matthew, were able to write accounts based upon the testimony of others. For example, Luke speaking to St. Mary:
The relationship with Mary is the other striking characteristic of St Luke’s Gospel. Thanks to him, and — we might piously believe — thanks to the account Mary gave to him, we know about the words of the Angel at the Annunciation; the visit of Mary to Elizabeth and the Magnificat; the details of the Presentation in the Temple; and the beautiful portrait of the anguish of Mary and Joseph when they could not find the 12-year-old Jesus.
(From St. Luke, Evangelist, Physician, Patron of Artists, St. Luke, Evangelist, Physician, Patron of Artists - Information on the Saint of the Day print - Vatican News)
Luke tells us.1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.
The author uses eyewitnesses to reports about things where the writer was not there or even known. The Gospel of Mark was one source. A compiling of the saying of Jesus called Quella, never found, was another.
Matthew and Luke did the research..
Well, first of all, only two of the apostles wrote gospels, Matthew and John. And only Matthew speaks of Jesus’ birth. And, of course, Luke, who was not an apostle, talks about Jesus’ birth in his gospel. How did they get their stories? One of two ways. 1 ) They asked someone who knew the facts. We know that Mary, Jesus’ mother, was still alive, because she was at the cross when Christ died. She would have been able to provide all the facts in the Bible that we read about; 2) It could have been given to him through revelation — in other words, placed in his mind by God himself. Paul wrote most of the New Testament, and when talks about things that he was not there to see, it was given to him by revelation. There are parts in the Bible where he says that himself. Another example is that the entire Book of Revelation was, as it says, the revelation of Jesus Christ to John the Apostle.
The same way that you learned details about your own birth. Others told you. Sometimes people do further research.
“Seeing that many have undertaken to compile an account of the facts that are given full credence among us, 2 just as these were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and attendants of the message, 3 I resolved also, because I have traced all things from the start with accuracy, to write them to you in logical order, most excellent The·ophʹi·lus, 4 so that you may know fully the certainty of the things that you have been taught orally.” - Luke 1:1–4
Church fathers were the ones who told us the date of Jesus birth.
Luke Gospel mentioned that John the Baptist father, a priest named Zeccariah entered into the temple and all the people were outside waiting for him, and the only date when this happened was on Yom Kippur celebrated on september 25th, this date was taken as the John the Baptist mother pregnancy. Luke Gospel also mentioned that John the Baptist mother named Elizabeth recieved the visit of virgin Mary when Elizabeth has 6 months of pregnancy, that means on March 25th of the next year, this date was taken as the virgin Mary pregnancy of Jesus, becuase Mary also recieved the visit of the angel Gabriel, so Jesus was on Mary´s womb on March 25th and 9 months later on December 25th Jesus was born.
Mery Christmass!!!
The oldest prototype christian bible is known as Codex Sinaiticus and it was written in the late 4th century by three human authors we recognise only by their distinctive handwriting styles and use of Koine Greek vernacular.
The 17th century also entirely human authored King James Version bible and all currently circulating confused and internally contradictory historically inaccurate and historically unsupported scientifically absurd versions based upon it are very significantly different from the 4th century prototypes Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus.
There is absolutely no authentic and original first century originated historical evidence of the existence of the historically invisible and entirely fictional character only comparatively recently known as Yeshua/Jesus and no first century historical trace of any messianic cult similar to the 4th century founded Roman state religion they called christianity.
Seriously!
Moses told the story of creation but he wasn’t there.
The prophets said many things about the future, but were they in the future.
Do you not know that the apostles, Moses and the prophets all had the Spirit of God living in them! Unless you think that there are things God himself is not aware of.
There is no time in eternity.
If you love your God, you will know all things on account of him. Everything of God is by the Spirit of God. He alone is the eternal God.
In those days, much of history was via oral history. It is likely the names attached to the four gospels are the “writing down” of the oral histories related/told by each of those apostles. Be well.
First, the apostles didn’t have anything to do with any of the gospels.
The gospels were written by anonymous Greek-speaking authors and the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were added long after the fact. The apostles were illiterate fishermen and other rurals who would not have known how to speak Greek, much less read and write it like seasoned pros.
Second, there was no real-life story of Jesus’s birth. The authors of Matthew and Luke made up two completely contradictory virgin birth narratives.
They were both lying and couldn’t keep their lies straight, because they were so far apart geographically. That is, if they had wanted to agree. I would guess not, since they clearly had different theological agendas.
The two lie-filled virgin birth narratives cannot be reconciled:
Matthew says nothing about the family of Jesus being subject to a census or Jesus being born in a manger. It sounds like his family was living in Bethlehem and Jesus was born in his family’s house. After the Magi tell King Herod the Great about the birth of Jesus, the family flees to Egypt to escape Herod’s fictional “massacre of the innocents.” After Herod dies, the family moves to Nazareth in Galilee because Herod's son now rules Judea, making it too dangerous for them to return to Bethlehem. But that makes no sense because another son of Herod ruled Galilee!
Luke says all that is trash and tells a completely different story. Per Luke, the family lives in Nazareth and travels to Bethlehem due to a Roman census. Jesus is born in a manger in Bethlehem. The family is never in danger from Herod and they return to Nazareth after about a month. No Magi, no magical star, no “massacre of the innocents,” and no “flight into Egypt.” But this story makes no sense because Galilee was not a Roman province at the time, so Joseph would not have been subject to a Roman census. Furthermore, no Roman census ever required people to return to their ancestral birth places. The Romans always counted and taxed people where they currently lived.
Moreover, the births are at least ten years apart in time. Matthew is set before the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC. Luke occurs during the census of Publius Sulpicius Quirinius in 6 AD.
Both stories are lies.
And the other gospels contain none of this nonsense.
by Michael R. Burch
In the comments the main defense seems to be “the bible is true because it says so!”
#BIBLE #MRBBIBLE #MRBBIRTH
101.7K views on 6–30–2025, (E)
She probably told them about it. Very few people who write about events were eyewitnesses to them.
The same way any of us learn about the circumstances of our births – from our parents.
They were there and they tell others.
Hardly a mystery.
Let’s start with Luke. He travelled with Paul, and was in Jerusalem in the 5th decade CE. It was here that Luke outlined the genealogy of Jesus. Being a Jew, he could have accessed the records that was available at the time at the Temple. It is reasonable that Mary, or a number of her sons were alive, and could have told him of the events that open his Gospel account.
Matthew was an Apostle, and was there at Pentecost, which Mary was too. They had know each other for over 3 years already, before then, and had been at many events together.
John, also an Apostle, is considered to have been a relative to Mary. Again, the same as Matthew spent time with Mary at a number of events.
Mark, who didn’t write any about the early life of Jesus, was part of the disciples before Jesus’ execution.
All 4 of them were associates of Peter, who too could have been told about what Mary shared with others.
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