A. There’s absolutely no Biblical reason to believe that Joseph was married before and brought children into his relationship with Mary.  Nor have I ever seen any credible extra-Biblical evidence.  This is something put forth  by those who want to maintain Mary’s status as a virgin for religious reasons.  Speaking of Jesus, Matthew 13:55-56 says,

“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?”

The clear implication in these verses is that Joseph, Mary, Jesus and all His brothers and sisters were of one family. John, who also knew the family spoke of the Lord’s brothers in John 7:3-10.  The only ones to whom it’s important to portray Mary as a perpetual virgin are those who venerate her as more than a Jewish woman who was blessed to give birth to the Son of God.

Do they use DNA testing for this or do they rely solely on family records?  I know when Herod’s temple was destroyed in 70 AD all the genealogy records that were kept there  were destroyed with it.

A. Certain names can be good indicators of tribal heritage, but the DNA of the priests carries a genetic marker called the Cohen Modal Haplotype identifying them as direct descendants of Aaron.  With their legendary attention to detail, and the Lord’s very specific requirements, you can sure they go to great lengths to choose only qualified candidates.

A. It sounds to me like you don’t know why you should believe the Bible and so you’re looking for indicators that it might not be true. But think about it.  How could Hinduism predate Judaism?  Judaism had its beginnings in the Garden of Eden when there were only 2 people on Earth. If you want to be certain that the Bible is true, study the thousands of fulfilled prophecies it contains.  That’s the method of proof the Lord provided (Isaiah 46:8-10, 48:3-5, etc.).

It’s easy to prove these things weren’t added later if you just do a little homework.  For example, take the prophecies of the first coming.  They’re all in the Old Testament and were part of the public record hundreds of years before the Lord was born.  No other “holy” book can authenticate itself like the Bible does.

A. No.  It will just mean that we’ve guessed wrong about the timing (again).  But God’s word will still be true. 1 Thes. 1:10 says Jesus will rescue us from the coming wrath, and 1 Thes. 5:9 says God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through Jesus Christ.

A. All four gospels agree that before the rooster crowed Peter had denied the Lord three times.  Mark  is the only gospel to say the rooster crowed twice.  It helps to know that some early manuscripts of Mark don’t have the rooster crowing twice, either in the Lord’s prophecy or in Peter’s realization.   But one time or two, it’s clear that Peter disowned the Lord three times before the rooster crowed his deadline, like the prophecy said he would.  And if that’s all you and your friend can find in the Bible to argue about, consider yourself blessed.

A. Satan reads the Bible but doesn’t believe the things it says will actually come to pass.  Many men and women have read the Bible and rejected it as well.  The difference is that they’ve simply chosen not to believe it.  Satan actually thinks he can foil God’s plan and make things happen according to his will, rather than God’s. (Isaiah 14:12-14)

I understand there’s an argument for the Magi coming to Bethlehem as much as two years after the birth.  All I can figure is that the went to Nazareth about 30 days after Jesus was born but then returned to Bethlehem for some reason and stayed there until the Magi showed up.  Am I missing something?  Do you have a better explanation?

A. The simplest explanation is that Luke skipped over the early part of the Lord’s life and picked up the narrative when the family returned to Nazareth. Luke also failed to make mention of the visit by the Magi and King Herod’s subsequent extermination order against the children of Bethlehem, two events that actually made the trip to Egypt necessary.

It’s important to remember that none of the gospels was intended to be a strictly historical account. Each one includes only those parts of the Lord’s life that would be important to its particular audience and would best make the point it was written to make.  Matthew wrote to the Jews, showing that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the King of Israel. The visit by the Magi, Herod’s reaction, and the escape to Egypt were all important in that context, and fulfilled Messianic prophecy from the Old Testament.

Luke wrote to a Gentile audience portraying Jesus as the Son of Man, Savior of all mankind. Showing Jesus to be Israel’s king was not critical to his message so he didn’t include it. The only way to get the complete picture of the Lord’s ministry is to read all four gospels.

A. I’ve done my own research on the Hebrew of Genesis 1:6-7 and disagree with the author’s conclusions.  I think the most straight forward interpretation of the passage  describes what we could call a water vapor canopy that encircled the Earth before the Great Flood.  Rather than wondering if God changed atmospheric conditions to make a water vapor canopy possible, wouldn’t it make more sense to wonder if the collapse of the canopy caused the Earth’s atmosphere to change?  After all the Bible says there was one, and no man can measure atmospheric conditions before the collapse.

For reasons I fail to understand, we seem much more willing to accept fallen man’s objections to what the Bible says than we are to take God’s word for things. I always suspect that people who write articles like the one you referred to begin with the conclusion that the Bible is wrong, and then set about to prove it.  What do people gain by disputing God’s word? Are they trying to prove they’re smarter than He is? Or that His word isn’t reliable?

A. I don’t bother with things like this because they’re so obviously untrue.  They pander to people who have refused to believe and are looking for any excuse they can find to justify their position.  There’s probably more historical evidence to prove Jesus is who He claims to be than there is to prove you are who you claim to be.  For example, there are 5,686 Greek manuscripts in existence today for the New Testament, thousands more than for any other ancient text. Because the copies are so numerous, they can be cross checked for accuracy. This process has determined that the internal consistency of New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure. In addition there are over 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic languages. The total supporting New Testament manuscript base is over 24,000 manuscripts. Can you provide that kind of documentation for your existence?

As for the mythology,  the earliest man knew the truth about our Creator and His plan for our salvation.  Those who rebelled created the mythology, which is simply a distortion of that truth.  These people are asking us to believe that the lie came first, when both history and logic tell us that the truth preceded the lie.  What is the likelihood that in the age before long range communication, so many of the mythologies of the world would be so similar?  This could only happen if they all sprang from a truth that every man once knew.

I may be stating the obvious here, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to take the word of unbelievers about the legitimacy of our belief.

Which leads to my second question.  If we then have to take the rest of the Bible as the Word of God on faith, then, from an objective point of view, how is this faith different from faith put into anything else?

A. You’re right in saying that when Paul wrote that all Scripture is the Word of God (2 Tim. 3:16), the New Testament had not been completed, much less compiled.  But since the Bible is a timeless document and since Paul was writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (who knew the New Testament was coming) it is logical to assume he meant the whole Bible.

The Bible is different from all other so-called holy books in that it offers justification for asking that we believe it.  This justification comes in the form of fulfilled prophecy.  For 4000 years God has been saying he would do something and then doing it, without fail.  In Isaiah 44:6-8 He explained to us that this is the way we can tell He is the only God and there is no other.  By the way, He has done this in both Old and New Testament times.  The life of Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies, and a dramatic example of a prophecy fulfilled in our life time is the re-birth of Israel. There are hundreds of prophecies yet to be fulfilled that concern the end times.