Modern scholarship shows that the story of Jesus being born in a stable in Bethlehem is a myth. For instance, A. N. Wilson in the introduction of his book Jesus a Life writes that (page ix), “nearly all the details of the nativity scenes which have inspired great artists, and delighted generations of churchgoers on Christmas Eve, stem neither from history nor from Scripture, but from folklore.”

In Matthew 2:11, the wise men from the east go to Bethlehem and find Mary and her baby in a house. Rev. John P. Meier in volume one of his book A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, which has the imprimatur seal of approval of the Roman Catholic Church, says (page 211), “The Magi find Mary and Jesus when they enter ‘into the house’, not into a stable or cave.”

According to Wilson (page 80), “Luke (2:16) says that Mary laid her first-born son in a manger since there was no place (topos) in the kataluma. This is a Greek word which more often means room than inn. Luke never states that Mary and Joseph were...obliged to sleep that night in a stable. He merely says that the particular room in which Jesus was born did not have a cradle in it. One is presumably meant to understand that someone improvised, bringing a feeding-box for animals into the room, as a substitute for a cradle.

John 1:45-6 insists Jesus does come from Nazareth, and John 7:42 very specifically implies that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem.

Wilson says (page ix), “Once we go into the matter, we discover that the real Jesus, the Jesus of History, is extremely unlikely to have been born in Bethlehem. It is much more probable that he was born in Galilee, where he grew up.”

Meier notes (pages 211-213), “More difficult to harmonize are the two differing accounts of the journeys of Joseph and Mary in the two Infancy Narratives and the two ‘geographical’ plots at the basis of the two stories...Matthew’s basic geographical plot in his Infancy Narrative moves from original home in Bethlehem to adopted home in Nazareth (necessary for political reasons), Luke’s plot moves in the opposite direction: from original home in Nazareth to temporary stay – hardly a home – in Bethlehem (necessary for political reasons), and then back to ‘their original home’ in Nazareth.”

Luke 2:2 dates the nativity to the time of a Roman census when Quirinius was governor of Syria, and Matthew 2:1 dates it when Herod was King of Judea. Wilson notes (page 75) that, “Herod’s reign lasted from 37 BCE until 4 BCE, and Quirinius was never the Governor of Syria during this period... Josephus, in his Antiquities, mentions a census in Judea in 6 CE.”

Prof. John Dominic Crossan in his book The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant agrees with this criticism (page 372), “The Palestinian census was undertaken by the Syrian legate, P. Sulpicius Quirinius, in 6 to 7 CE, about a decade after the birth of Jesus.”

Meier comments (page 212), “Luke’s solution is a worldwide census decreed by Caesar Augustus when Quirinius was governor of Syria (2:1) – unfortunately, such a census (which would have had to occur ca. 5 BC) cannot be documented in any other ancient source. According to ancient records, Quirinius, who became governor of Syria in AD 6, conducted a census of Judea, but not of Galilee, in AD 6-7. Attempts to reconcile Luke 2:1 with the facts of ancient history are hopelessly contrived.”

Prof. Crossan disputes the description of the Roman census given in Luke 2:1-7. He writes (page 372), “First there never was a worldwide census under Augustus.” Crossan observes that, “above all... the Roman custom was to count you in the place of your domicile or work and not in that of your ancestry or birth. That is little more than common sense. Census was for taxation; to record people in their ancestral rather than their occupational locations would have constituted a bureaucratic nightmare.”

Luke 2:8 describes “shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” Marcello Craveri in his book The Life of Jesus says (page 37), “The incident of the shepherds supports the supposition that the birth must have taken place in spring or autumn. During the winter, since the temperature falls well below freezing in Bethlehem and the rainy season lasts until March, animals cannot be left outdoors. In fact, until the fourth century the dates most commonly accepted for the birth of Jesus were March 28, April 18, and May 29.”

Craveri goes on to explain, “But, in the West, special needs of adaptation to the environment caused the Church to set the date of the birth of Jesus as December 25. The fact is, it was necessary to replace the widespread pagan cult of Sol Invictus.” This was based on the astronomical winter solstice when days begin to get longer which gave rise to a sun festival and the cult of the sun-god Sol Invictus throughout the empire. According to Craveri, “Ultimately, Constantine I (306-37) was able, through his skillful political manipulations, to join the Christian symbols to those of the sun cult.”

The Nativity is located in Bethlehem, the city of David, to establish Jesus’ Davidic lineage. But Wilson notes (page 75), “the Fourth Gospel very specifically states (John 7:42) that Jesus was not born...of David’s line.” G.A. Wells in his book Did Jesus Exist? cites Mark 12:35-37 as (page 118), “a flat denial of the Messiah’s Davidic descent.”

Craveri notes that (page 7), “We have not just one but two genealogies of Joseph, and hence of Jesus” which appear in Matthew 1:1-17 and Luke 3:23-38. The two genealogies differ widely. Craveri notes that, “from David to Joseph – not only are the names completely different in the two genealogies, but the number of them is also impossibly at variance. Luke, in fact, lists forty-one persons for that portion, while Matthew names only twenty-seven. Hence there is a discrepancy of fourteen generations, which, chronologically calculated, even if an average of only twenty-five or thirty years is assumed for each, amounts to a disparity of about four centuries.”

Matthew 1:22-23 refers to Isaiah 7:14 as predicting the nativity. Wilson explains (pages 78-79), “The context of the ‘original prophecy’ was made to King Ahaz in the mid-eight century BCE. It was an assurance that the line of Ahaz would be continued in spite of Assyrian threats to Israel’s future... It would have been surprising if Isaiah, who lived 740 years before Jesus, had been thinking of Mary and her first-born son when he made his prophecy to King Ahaz. Even if he had, by some extraordinary gift of foresight, been doing so, he never denoted ...a virgin. The word almah means young woman, and simply that. Yet, even today, one hears this text from Isaiah being used by Christians as a proof ‘that Jesus was born of a Virgin’.”