Quite right. The question of the nativity and indeed the whole Jesus thing, seemed to go round in circles trying to work out the likelihood of witnesses not agreeing that much or whether some parts were so unlikely (e.g the shekel -eating fish) or so discrepant - the nativity is the touchstone case, here - that some parts had to be discarded and, thus, various 'Lives' of Jesus were proposed, though I have to say, rather than being based on the bits that any one writer could think likely. they seemed more based on a personal pet theory (Jewish rabbi, Liberal reformer, Hasmonean general) and then cherry pick the bits that fitted the theory.
What I am claiming is that examination of the text can show how the writers worked. Some of the synoptic text is so aligned that it HAS to be a common original text. I ask only that people - other bible critics - look and see for themselves. Redaction criticism has been going on for some time. I can't believe that nobody else spotted this.
Nor that they overlooked the implication that discrepancies and contradiction had to imply the writers' own additions.
This tells us a lot about the basic story of Jesus, and i reckon an understanding of Paul tells us a lot about what the apostles thought about Jesus. That tells us something else - that the original story of Jesus rowing with the Pharisees is not eyewitness Jesus, but a post - Pauline view of Jesus, for all that it is common to all four writers.
I was going to go a bit further like informed guesswork, such as Pilate's trial and the supposed Sanhedrin, but, as I said before, that's best left to Easter.
For now I reckon that the Nativity makes the case. Eusebius argued as stoutly as he always does, and I reckon I made a good case for the nativity being impossible and contradictory together, unfeasible and unworkable in isolation and of course, mark's silence and John's implied denial of a Bethlehem birth is telling.
Add to this the clear signs of a plot -being worked out in Matthew and almost as detectable in Luke - the whole thing is pointless as well as unfeasible unless for one purpose - to get Jesus born in Bethlehem, and I'd say, despite the attempts to have a secret census in Herod's time and the efforts to make the star feasible (The coin was fun, but astronomical events and the mobile star in Matthew are too far apart for a connection to be wangled to try to make the nativities believable) the nativities do not work, even if we took the star out. Even if we made Luke's census in Herod's time, we wopudl have to discard Matthew as Luke starts in Nazareth, Matthew in Judea. This is proven by the need to scare Joseph in going to Nazareth - if he lived there to begin with, that wouldn't be necessary.
And even then, though a Herodian head tax which would indeed also apply to Galilee, would still not make sense of the pointless journey to an ancestral city. And when our dear old mate Eusebius says it makes perfect sense to him, I can only leave it to others to make their minds up.
And that's really what I'm doing with the whole of Arq's pet theory.
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