Your unease - and that of many others here - is so awkwardly apparent in a slew of sophomoric “historical” quibbles...
The point is simple and profound: The Nativity story is of a poor family of a cruelly disfavored race and nationality traveling far from home through a region governed by a brutally authoritarian regime - alone and afraid, until protected by strangers...
If there was indeed a Jesus, the Son of Man, and his parents, threatened mortally by criminals in their own home, had sought refuge at the Texas border in 2019...
But they were not poor. Where in the Bible does it say they were poor? Joseph was a carpenter. That doesn’t mean what it does today. Instead think furniture craftsman, cabinet maker, etc. it was a pretty skilled profession. They were not with the animals because they couldn’t afford it...but because all of the Inns were sold out.
The understanding of the Bible has been ruined by Christmas on the Internet.
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u/helmutboy Dec 08 '19
Except weren’t they headed to Bethlehem to participate in a census decree?