[Enlil-An]

I am more interested in your name then your question. Why have you given yourself the names of two Sumerian gods?

I've been studying the Ancient Near East lately as a hobby and I thought it would be a unique user name. Have you studied the cultures of ancient Mesopotamia?

Enlil-An, I agree with you that Matthew sometimes takes unwarranted liberties with his interpretations of Jewish prophecy.

That said, you seem to be (to use the classic legal terminology) "drawing inference upon inference".

On the contrary, it is those who try to reconcile Matthew's account with Lukes who are drawing upon inferences. Nowhere in Matthew's gospel does it say that Jesus' parents are from Nazareth. If we only had Matthew's gospel (like many early Christians in the 1st century), we would naturally assume that Jesus' family was from Bethlehem. It is Luke's gospel that says that Mary and Joseph are from Nazareth.

It's obvious that the Savior's parents in Matthew's gospel are from Bethlehem. It was their home. That's why they stayed there so long after Jesus' birth. That's why they were planning to return there after Herod's death. Luke's divine family are not from Bethlehem, that's why he uses the story of the census as a mechanism to get them there. That's why they stay there only a month before they return home.

If you're using that assumption to assert that Jesus wasn't really born in Bethlehem, that Nephi's account is wrong, and/or that the GAs are suspect because they don't buy into the prior two assertions--that just isn't a bandwagon I'm willing to jump onto.

Nephi isn't wrong at all. Nephi doesn't say what city the Savior was to be born in. That's the point in all the standard works of the Church, the only sources that say that Jesus was born at Bethlehem are Matthew and Luke and not only do they completely contradict each other about how he got from there to Nazareth, their accounts of why he was born at Bethlehem but raised in Nazareth are not credible historically.

Matthew says Joseph moved to Nazareth because he was afraid of Herod's son who became ruler in Judea which is not a valid excuse for him to "turn aside" into Galilee because one of Herod's other sons was also a ruler in Galilee. Luke says that Jesus' parents already came from Nazareth and had to travel to Bethlehem because of the census of Quirinius which is not a valid excuse for getting Jesus to Bethlehem because Roman census' didnt require people to register at the town of their ancestory (not to mention the fact that the census took place in 6 AD the same year that Herod Archelaus - the ruler of Judea Joseph was trying to avoid in Matthew - was banished and seven years after Joseph Smith said the Savior was born).

In other words, Matthew and Luke both try to explain how Jesus was born at Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth. They both contradict each other and they both provide unhistorically credible reasons for how it happened. Since these two authors are the only ones in scripture who ascribe Jesus' birth at Bethlehem (John practically denies the idea that Jesus was born at Bethlehem) and since their accounts can't be trusted in the slightest, chances are the Savior was never born in Bethlehem at all.

I don't really care whether Jesus was born at Bethlehem or not but the point is that if he was it didn't happen the way Matthew and Luke said it did.