Mary and Joseph are traveling toward their goal in Bethlehem when they come into a region -- the region between Galilee and Samaria -- that highlights the volatile political times in which they are living. This episode will help you to understand the historical circumstances in which the Gospel of Luke describes the birth of Jesus taking place.

Mary and Joseph are traveling toward their goal in Bethlehem when they come into a region -- the region between Galilee and Samaria -- that highlights the volatile political times in which they are living. This episode will help you to understand the historical circumstances in which the Gospel of Luke describes the birth of Jesus taking place.

This is the first episode in the new "Retelling the Bible" Podcast.

We will spend the first season retelling the story of the birth of Jesus as it is told in the Gospel of Luke, focussing specifically on the journey that Luke says that Mary and Joseph took from Nazareth to Bethlehem. This story raises all kinds of historical questions and makes me wonder how its author really meant for people to understand it. I suspect that we have largely missed many of the points that Luke was trying to make.

We start out in this episode by looking at the ways in which the story has traditionally been understood and seeing some of the problems with that traditional understanding.

This is the first episode in the new "Retelling the Bible" Podcast.

We will spend the first season retelling the story of the birth of Jesus as it is told in the Gospel of Luke, focussing specifically on the journey that Luke says that Mary and Joseph took from Nazareth to Bethlehem. This story raises all kinds of historical questions and makes me wonder how its author really meant for people to understand it. I suspect that we have largely missed many of the points that Luke was trying to make.

We start out in this episode by looking at the ways in which the story has traditionally been understood and seeing some of the problems with that traditional understanding.