What is the likelihood that Jesus was born in Bethlehem?

Answer 1

I'm not sure anyone is qualified to tell you what the Vegas odds are, if that is what you mean. For all the certainty in both the nay and yea responses you get, there's nobody here who was actually in Judea at the time.

On the other hand, there are some aspects of the Luke narrative that ring true. Although there is some question about the census of Quirinius, and the dates of his governorship vs. Herod's kingship, the fact that Luke framed the events of the nativity inside something conspicuously historical suggests he wasn't writing pure mythology.... but something which had some grounding in something that had actually happened.

As to the silliness above about "last names", I'd simply point out how foolish an anachronism it is to talk about the medieval "last names" custom regarding ancient Judaea.

Answer 2

I would say 100% likelihood he was born in Bethlehem.

Answer 3

The story that a world wide census was decreed by Augustus, and that everyone had to go to their ancestor's hometowns to register for it, is utterly implausible. There are no historical records of that. It would have been logistically impossible to pull off.

Like so many things, the Christian movement, convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was a messiah, went back over the Hebrew scriptures to find messianic references there and piously composed stories in the gospels and elsewhere, to make Jesus' life fit them as the "fulfillment of prophecies."
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Answer 4

Zero... the only possible way to believe that this "Jesus" was an actual person is to utterly ignore all of the evidence that says he was purely allegorical.

Where are the descendents of his brothers and sisters? Where are the grave of any of his relatives? Why are they still not sure what his last name was, even though they can supposedly trace him back to King David? Who married his sisters? I'm not even going to go into the lack of anything else, I'm just sticking with his supposed blood relatives. If they existed, they would make it known that they were his blood relatives, and there would be stories about what he did during that 18 year gap of his life. SOMEONE on earth would be able to claim biological relation to him... but yet, even two-thousand years AFTER his birth, not even his followers make mention of the families that share biological ties to him. Jesus' lineage ended in the bible, the same place where it started, and the only place it has ever existed. Believers can believe that it happened, but that doesn't make it so.

Answer 5

It was prophesied in Micah 5:2 and fulfilled in the gospels. So you have the witness of God who sees the end from the beginning, as well as the three accounts of Matthew, Luke and John, as well as the kings of the East that came to worship Him, as well as Herod who sought to destroy Him. Which, BTW, was also prophesied in Jeremiah 31:15.

The probability of Jesus being born in Bethlehem, a city of less than 20,000 in a nation of millions at the time is estimated as 20,000/2,000,000 or 1 in 100.

Answer 6

100%

Answer 7

We really have no idea where he was born, assuming he existed at all. The birth stories in Matthew and Luke are obvious fiction based on pre-existing god-man legends and OT midrash.

Answer 8

100%

Answer 9

About the same chance that Herod the Great was alive when it was supposed to have happened.

Answer 10

Less than the likely hood that he was born at all.
There is little to no evidence that he ever existed.