[Enlil-An]

There are a lot of problems with Matthew's account. For one thing, the idea that Joseph would avoid Judea by turning aside into Galilee because the new ruler of Judea was Archelaus, a son of Herod is not historically viable because the ruler of Galilee at the time was Herod Antipus (another son of Herod).

Second, many of the prophecies Matthew quotes to support the authenticity of his story were never recognized as messianic prophecies, are often taken out of context, and are quoted from the Greek Septuigent (not from the original Hebrew) and don't mean what he says they mean when taken from the original Hebrew writings.

For example, Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 to show that the virgin birth was predicted in scripture. The problem is that the scripture he quotes is the Greek translation which uses the word parthenos (an ambiguous Greek word meaning either "young girl" or "virgin"). The original Hebrew reading uses the word aalmah which simply means "young girl" (the Hebrew word for "virgin" is betulah) and would not be construed by anyone reading Hebrew to mean that a baby would be born from a virgin.

Also, Matthew claims that it was "spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene" when no such prophecy in ancient scripture exists. I'm sure that we could suppose (like the Bible Dictionary does) that this prophecy exists in one of the lost books of scripture but if the Jews of Matthew's day had a copy of this lost book then why do the Jews of John's gospel have such a problem with Jesus coming from Nazareth. In one case (John 7:52), when Nicodemus tries to stick up for Jesus, the Pharisees retort, "Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet."

I think if Matthew believed that Joseph and Mary originally came from Nazareth, the wording in his gospel would not be, "And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth" after returning to Israel from Egypt.

The historians' arguement is that the fact that Jesus was from Nazareth was always an embarassment to early followers of Jesus (who believed him to be the Messiah) because Jewish tradition held that the Messiah would come out of Bethlehem. So Matthew and Luke, determined to make Jesus the legitimite Messiah of the Jews, concocted their own accounts (or borrowed stories from two seperate oral traditions) of how Jesus was both from Bethlehem and Nazareth (John didn't care where Jesus was from and one of the major themes of his gospel is that if you're worried about where Jesus comes from, you won't be able to recognize him for what he really is) and came up with two totally different renditions.

It doesn't bother me so much to believe that the Bible was originally written (or copied) by unenlightened men who were writing several years after the original stories were written. But many of the Joseph Smith translations seem to be completely oblivious to these discrepencies and the fact that all the LDS student manuals and scripture commentaries I've ever read keep trying to force these two birth narratives to fit together bothers me because now I feel that nothing can be taken at face value anymore, even if it comes from a general authority...which is a disturbing thought...