What are facts about the birth of jesus?

Answer 1

The birth of Jesus is described in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, although the two accounts are so contradictory that at most only one could be historically true. On the first of these, John Shelby Spong (Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus) says that Matthew was clearly writing Christian midrash. On Luke's account, Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament) says, in part, that although Luke likes to set his Christian drama in the context of well-known events from antiquity, sometimes he does so inaccurately. In other words, we must look elsewhere for any facts about the birth of Jesus.

Apart from Matthew and Luke, some of the non-canonical gospels provide even more fanciful stories about the infant Jesus, and can not be regarded as factual. We have no verifiable facts about the birth of Jesus.