@The Anointed,
Quote:If any of the above is true, then that would mean that Mary could not have presented Jesus in the Temple in Jerusalem and performed the ceremony of purification according to the time prescribed by the law of Moses, until Jesus was over two-years old and after the death of Herod the great in 4 B.C. when they were supposed to have returned from Egypt.
Luke tells us that Mary gave birth to her firstborn son in the town of Bethlehem of Judea, as opposed to the Bethlehem, which was about two miles from Nazareth in Galilee, and that eight days after the child was born, it was circumcised and named Jesus. Then thirty-three days later, and before the wise men from the east had come and lavished their gifts of Gold, Frank-incense and mire, on the baby Jesus, he was taken
OPENLY to the temple in Jerusalem by his not so financial parents, where his mother performed the purification ceremony, in accordance ‘
TO THE TIME’ demanded by the law handed down through Moses.
And after they had completed everything in
ACCORDANCE TO THE LAW, they returned to their home in Nazareth. Luke makes no mention of any wise men traveling to Bethlehem of Judaea, or of any slaughter of the innocents.
How do we know, even though it is not mentioned in Luke, that it was thirty-three days after the circumcision that the ceremony of purification was performed? Because Luke says, "And when the days of her purification
ACCORDING TO THE LAW OF MOSES were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.
According to scripture, the child was taken to the temple in Jerusalem for the ceremony of purification at the correct time demanded by the law of Moses, which was 41 days after the birth, immediately after which, the family returned to their home in Nazareth.
To find out when the days of her purification according to the Law of Moses were accomplished, we simply turn to Leviticus 12: 3-4; and let the Bible reveal itself to us: (3) On the eighth day the child shall be circumcised. (4) Then it shall be 33 more days until she is ritually clean from her loss of blood; etc.
How do we know that the parents of Jesus were not flushed financially?
Again, we must let the Bible reveal that to us, Leviticus 12: 8, "If the woman cannot afford a lamb, she shall bring two doves or pigeons etc," the fact that the birds were offered, shows that they were unable to afford a lamb, and had not yet received the gifts of Gold, etc.
How long was it before the wise men, after seeing the comet early in the spring of 5 BC, which is believed to have been the inspiration for them to travel to Jerusalem, decided that they should go to pay homage to the heir of that throne, whose heavenly sign they had seen in 6 B.C., and to organize that trip? And how long did it take them to travel from Mesopotamia to Jerusalem?
The only help that we receive from the Bible is found in Ezra 7: 8-9; "They (Ezra and his group) left Babylonia on the first day of the first month, and with God’s help they arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month."
Four months, it took them to travel to Jerusalem. Even if we halve that time and take into account that the comet which inspired them to travel to Jerusalem had not appeared until sometime after the triple conjunction of 6 BC, which had heralded the birth of Jesus, there is no possible way that the wise men could have seen the baby Jesus in the manger in Bethlehem of Judaea, as the family (According to Luke) had returned to Nazareth 2 months after the birth of the child in Bethlehem.
On bright moonlit or cloudy nights or dust storms, the comet would be hidden from view, and apparently this was what had happened before they reached Jerusalem and went to the Palace of Herod the Great, expecting to find there, the heir to the throne of the Jews, and asked; Matthew 2: 2- “Where is the baby born to be the king of the Jews? We saw his star when it came up in the east, and we have come to worship him.”
They believed that the child had already been born.
Matthew 2: 7; So Herod called the visitors from the east to a secret meeting and found out from them the exact time that the star had appeared, etc.
After revealing to Herod in 4 B.C., the exact time that they had seen the heavenly sign that had heralded the birth of the promised Messiah, we read in Matthew 2: 16; it was in accordance to this information that Herod determined the age of the children who were to be slaughtered, all those who were two years and below and had been born in 6 B.C., or after. This reveals that the wise men had seen the heavenly sign that had heralded the birth of Jesus, almost two years previously.
Having been told that the child was prophesied to be born in Bethlehem of Judaea, (Although we know from Luke that the family had left Bethlehem 41 days after the child had been born and had returned to their home in Nazareth) the wise men Left the palace of Herod, and behold, there in the north west of Jerusalem, the star that they had seen in the east, was visible once again, and “Oh what joy was theirs.”
Traveling north in the direction of the hairy star, we can almost picture the scene, the wise men with their entourage travelling along the dusty roads of northern Israel, it’s late in the day and as they come to a rise, and there, just above the distant horizon, in the deepening darkness of the evening sky, is the star with its tail streaming up into the heavens and appearing to ‘
STAND OVER’ the small and insignificant hamlet, or Zealot Commune, called "Nazareth," as it slowly followed the setting sun.
After entering, ‘
NOT’ the manger in Bethlehem of Judah, but the ‘
HOUSE’ of Joseph and Mary in Nazareth, the wise men paid homage to the child Jesus. That very same night, the wise men, who would presumably have travelled to Jerusalem across the Kings Highway, were warned in a dream not to reveal to Herod, the child’s whereabouts, and they returned home by a different route from which they had come, which would, more than likely, have been up through the northern route of Damascus, and Joseph was also warned to get out of bed immediately and take the child and his mother and flee into Egypt.
Herod’s secret police had eyes and ears throughout the entire land, and when he realised that he had been tricked and the wise men were not going to return and reveal the child’s location as promised, he was furious and gave the order to kill all the male children in the district that Herod's spies had confirmed that the wise men with their entourage had travelled to, which was around Bethlehem of Galilee, who were two years and below according to the time that he learned from the wise men about when they had first sighted the star that had heralded the birth of the promised king and savour.
According to Josephus the historian, Sepphoris, which was only about 4 miles from Bethlehem of Galilee, and a few kilometres from Nazareth, had a population of around thirty thousand and he called it, "The Ornament of Galilee."
Around the time of Herod’s death in the spring of 4BC, just after he had ordered the slaughter of the innocents around the district of Bethlehem of Galilee, who were two years and below, according to the time that the wise men had seen the heavenly sign that had heralded the birth of Jesus in 6 B.C. there were riots among the peasants of the area in Galilee of which Sepphoris was the centre.
Judas, the son of Hezekias attacked the arsenal of Herod in the city of Sepphoris in order to arm the peasants.
The Romans under Quintillius Varus of Syria, attacked and burnt the city, putting down the uprising in which many families died and others were taken prisoner and transported to Rome, where they were sold as slaves. But Joseph, with his wife and her child had escaped the slaughter by fleeing into Egypt.
After a failed suicide attempt, which I believe may have been an option given to him by Caesar Augustus, in the spring of 4 BC, Herod the Great died, then in the spring of 3 B.C., after the death of Herod his father, when Antipas returned from Rome where his father’s will had been ratified by Augustus, he chose and rebuilt the magnificent city of Sepphoris as his capital city for ruling over Galilee.