Did any author in the New Testament actually know Jesus?

as i said, a father in law was considered the father the groom anyway, so it makes no differencein patriarchal societies, the patriarch was considered the father of all his children hence why we see the jewish nation being called 'the nation of 'Isreal' ' Isreal being the patriarch Jacob... or we hear the jews being called 'the children of Abraham'in any case, if the accounts were inaccurate in any way whatsoever, the jewish religious leaders of the day would have made known the inaccuracy in a heartbeat... but the birth of Jesus and his genealogy was on public record available for anyone to view and there were no objections at the time to either luke or mathews accoutns.

Your evidence for this is what exactly? How do you know there were no objections at the time?Since there are no contemporary mentions of Jesus anywhere in the extant hostorical record I suggest you are making this up.However, there is evidence from a Jewish source to the true identity of Jesus father. try reading the talmud, it proves () that Jesus' father was a soldier named Panthera.

Bryan wrote: "Since there are no contemporary mentions of Jesus anywhere in the extant hostorical record I suggest you are making this up."How rare is that, Bryan? Enthusiasts simply making it all up as they go.

The thing is, for the fundamentalist, a particular apologetic really doesn't have to be supported by any evidence at all, all it needs to do is to sound good.The quality of apologetics on the Internet is appalling, but all it takes is one 'scholar' to come up with something that sounds plausible and all the fundies clutch at it.Peg doesn't even stop to think that if Jesus' genealogy was on public record then why do matthew and luke's accounts differ so much, they should be identical. I wonder if Peg's imaginary Jewish records included the geneaology of women?Also, with Joseph not being Jesus' father there is no bloodline to David, hence Jesus was no messiah.Fundies mention that Mary was a descendant of David, but that isn't even what the Bible says. The Bible specifically says that Joseph HAD to go to Bethlehem for this imaginary census because HE was descended from David, it does not say that Mary was, and this would be the ideal place to mention that.However, even if we grant that she was a descendant of David there are other problems, the main one being that the messiah would come from David through Solomon, and apparently Mary's link to David is through his other son Nathan, thus Jesus again is no messiah.But we will get embarrassing apologetics about this too. Critical thinking is not part of a fundies nature.

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as i said, a father in law was considered the father the groom anyway, so it makes no difference

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I made three points.Firstly I pointed out that a similar assertion of yours contradicted another assertion (that it was patrilineal descent that matters) in the same post. You do not address that point. Please remember that it might be that the father-in-law was considered the father in some sense - without being considered the father in a genealogy.I asked for evidence that it was acceptable in genealogies to use the father-in-law's name instead of the father's in the way Luke did. An assertion is not evidence.I asked you to supply your "sound reason" that Luke DID use the name of Mary's father. An assertion that he might have done so - especially one backed by no evidence whatsoever - is not a sound reason to think that he did.So even though you don't say which of these three points "doesn't matter" - it seems that they all do.

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in any case, if the accounts were inaccurate in any way whatsoever, the jewish religious leaders of the day would have made known the inaccuracy in a heartbeat... but the birth of Jesus and his genealogy was on public record available for anyone to view and there were no objections at the time to either luke or mathews accoutns.

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Please show evidence that this information was available in "public records" (which ones ?) at the time the Gospels attributed to Luke and Matthew became available to "Jewish Leaders".

Jesus birth records. As the romans were ruling at the time, Caesar Augsutus decreed that all Jews must be registered in the city of their births, both Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem to register."He revived the office of the Censor which had long been disused and whose duty it had formerly been to take an account of the number of people."
Seutonius Roman Historian - Augustus 23 - Lives of the Twelve Caesars Page 81."This contained the number of citizens, subject kingdoms and taxes. All these details Augustus had written with his own hand"
Tacitus Annals - Book 1 Roman HistorianSo like to today, they registered their births, they paid taxs, they conducted businesses...they kept records of all these things and those records were obviously used by Luke to trace the geneology of Jesus as he says in his writing.

it really doesnt matter that they differ... both show that both Joseph & Mary came from the kingly line. Actually, if anything it adds weight to the geneology because both parents have been traced back.but here is another source in case my simple answer is not scholarly enough So in that culture, what would have been the point of using Mary alone as the source of the geneology. Do you really think the Jews would have taken the account seriously? It is undoubtedly for this reason the historian Luke says that Joseph was the “son of Heli.”You just have to look at Genesis and Numbers to see that female children were not recorded in the births...only the male children.

why would they be exactly the same? If one follows the fathers line and the other the mothers (thru her father heli) how can they possibly be exactly the same?

Peg, if one record was the mother's through Mary's father(Heli)and other were the father's (Joseph), why is Joseph's name even listed ...remember Joseph isn't the biological father. God is. Plus Joseph is listed as the father on BOTH lists. Please explain this. Or is it more likely, when the story was changed later (to make Jesus more Godly and borrow the virgin birth scam from other stories hundreds if not thousands of years prior) did the perps forget that the story simply does not gel?

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Jesus birth records. As the romans were ruling at the time, Caesar Augsutus decreed that all Jews must be registered in the city of their births, both Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem to register.

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This is an example of dodgy history in the Gospels. To the best of our knowledge Augustus did not make any such decree. The closest match we can find is a tax census of Judaea which would have required adults (not children) to have registered where they lived. (Also note that Matthew insists that Jesus was born about 10 years prior to the Roman annexation of Judaea).

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"He revived the office of the Censor which had long been disused and whose duty it had formerly been to take an account of the number of people."
Seutonius Roman Historian - Augustus 23 - Lives of the Twelve Caesars Page 81.

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This refers to a count of Roman citizens. Neither Mary nor Joseph would have qualified, even after the Roman annexation of Judaea.

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"This contained the number of citizens, subject kingdoms and taxes. All these details Augustus had written with his own hand"
Tacitus Annals - Book 1 Roman Historian

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This again does not mean that there was a public record of Jesus' ancestry.

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So like to today, they registered their births, they paid taxs, they conducted businesses...they kept records of all these things and those records were obviously used by Luke to trace the geneology of Jesus as he says in his writing.

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It isn't even obvious that the detailed genealogy you refer to even existed as a public record at the time Luke was written - let alone that the unknown author of the Gospel used it. None of your quotes makes any reference to such a document, let alone gives us a reason to suppose that it would still be available at the time Luke was writing. (And there's good reason to doubt that any such records survived until then).

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it really doesnt matter that they differ... both show that both Joseph & Mary came from the kingly line. Actually, if anything it adds weight to the geneology because both parents have been traced back.

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Neither shows Mary as coming from the "kingly" line. And no, the extra names do not add any weight to the genealogies. In all probability both were simply cooked up on the assumption that Jesus was of the House of David.

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but here is another source in case my simple answer is not scholarly enough

M’Clintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia (1881, Vol. III, p. 774): writes:

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“In constructing their genealogical tables, it is well known that the Jews reckoned wholly by males, rejecting, where the blood of the grandfather passed to the grandson through a daughter, the name of the daughter herself, and counting that daughter’s husband for the son of the maternal grandfather (Numb. xxvi, 33; xxvii, 4-7).”

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The references given do not support the claim. Numbers 27 deals with inheritance, not genealogy (and only applies where the maternal grandfather had no sons).

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So in that culture, what would have been the point of using Mary alone as the source of the geneology. Do you really think the Jews would have taken the account seriously? It is undoubtedly for this reason the historian Luke says that Joseph was the “son of Heli.”

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If the Jews would have discounted Mary's lineage the author of Luke should have given Joseph's real lineage instead of deceptively trying to pass off Mary's ancestry as Joseph's. So why didn't he do that ? You claim that he had the records, and that Joseph really was of the House of David so if you are right he had no need to try to deceive as you insist that he did.

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You just have to look at Genesis and Numbers to see that female children were not recorded in the births...only the male children.

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Your own source above provides the reference that proves you wrong:
Numbers 26:33 (NASB)

The good thing about this claim is that I can use the Bible to prove you wrong.To begin with NOT everyone had to register at the ”city of their births’ ONLY MEN had to register!Let’s actually look at what ”Luke’ writes:Luke 2:3 And everyone went to his own town to register.So, there we have it, strike one, everyone went to HIS own town to register. It does not say that everyone went to their own town, or his or her own town, it specifically says HIS own town.Then in Luke 2: 4 my point is further supported: So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. Strikes two and three. Joseph went to Bethlehem because it was he that belonged to the house of David. No mention of Mary having to go, no mention of her belonging to the house of David. How obvious does it have to be?Luke even goes on to tell us why Mary went to Bethlehem.Luke 2:5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. ALL the emphasis is on Joseph in regard to the census, Mary is ONLY there because she was pledged to be married to Joseph.So there you have it, I don’t expect you to accept the Bible’s word for it though, because you already have your mind made up and you accept so many amateur apologetics as being true that you will never accept anything that contradicts your preconceptions.Luke makes it clear that it was Joseph who was descended from David. The author of Luke obviously didn’t realise that the virgin birth removes Joseph from Jesus’ genealogy and he has effectively removed Jesus from being the promised Messiah.There is a lot more however that proves Jesus was not the long awaited Messiah, but this one point should be enough.Also, as I said before, even if we did accept that we have Mary’s genealogy, which I really don’t think we do have, it is of no use because ”mary’s’ genealogy goes back to Nathan, David’s son, who is not included in the prophecy.2 Samuel 7:12-13 states: When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.God makes it clear that it is through Solomon, who built the Temple (House for my Name), that the Messiah will come from.The Messiah will come from the house of David through Solomon, so once again we can see that the Bible itself negates the possibility that Jesus was the Messiah.Jesus, nice guy, but no Messiah.

its quite simple really and its posted aboveonly the male births were recorded therefore only Josephs line could be traced genealogicallyIt has been traced for us using Joseph, thru his own father AND Mary's father Heli (Josephs father in law)And both lead to the line of David

We're still waiting for a "sound reason" to think that the lineage in Luke is Mary's.

Since Jesus was not the natural son of Joseph but was the Son of God, Luke’s genealogy of Jesus would prove that he was, by human birth, a son of David through his natural mother Mary.To prove this, Luke traced the line through David’s son Nathan, instead of Solomon as did Matthew. He evidently follows the ancestry of Mary, thus showing Jesus’ natural descent from David, while Matthew shows Jesus’ legal right to the throne of David by descent from Solomon through Joseph, who was legally Jesus’ father.this wasnt a point they tried to hide either, they both signify that Joseph was not Jesus’ actual father but only his adoptive father, giving him legal right.Luke even says: “Jesus ... being the son, as the opinion was, of Joseph, son of Heli.” Lu 3:23.I'm not sure what you see the problem as being, perhaps you could re phrase your concern???