Getting the Story in Context
This is a forgery that is pretty easy to unravel. In Matthew 2, as the story is told, the terrible, murderous king Herod hears rumors about Jesus who is born, and according to messianic prophecy would messiah king of the Jews.
Now Herod is worried that this child will grow up and become the new king and replace him and he was worried about this. And supposedly “all of Jerusalem with him”. Yeah right! All of Jerusalem is worried that someone would come along and replace their terrible, murderous king. (Mat 2:2, 3) So Herod gets all the chief priests and scribes together and tries to get them to tell him where this baby will be born who will replace him as king so that he can murder that baby.
Opinion: The chief priests and scribes had to have known this since Herod was famous for murdering people who he feared would take his throne and also because it says “all of Jerusalem” were worried about this too! Surprisingly, the chief priests and scribes go ahead and tell him that according to the “prophecies” this new king of the Jews is supposed to be born in Bethlehem of Judea. (can you actually believe that?!) And they quote him the “prophecy”.
They must really love their murderous king and hate the idea of him being replaced by a baby boy of this “prophecy” who would one day grow up and replace this horrible murderous king. (Mat 2:4-7) (Opinion: that doesn’t make much sense either, unless they were as horrible as he was!)
It’s not even a believable story. It’s ironic really — people dedicated to the scriptures, who supposedly believe that the promised Messiah king (of messianic prophecies) who would come to “deliver them from their enemies”, give up a helpless baby to a murderous and treacherous king!
So Herod tells them to go out and find this baby so that he can “worship” him too. So they go out and find out where the child is, and when they find the baby… they’re happy? — and now they can go back and tell the king? (Opinion: You would think that these people would try to hide the whereabouts of their promised “Deliverer” from this murderous madman!) (Mat 2:8-11)
The Forgery
So, according to the story, God warns Joseph, baby Jesus’s father, in a dream to “flee into Egypt” so that Herod won’t be able to find the baby and kill him. And this is supposedly why there is this so-called prophecy: “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”
And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son. (Mat 2:15)
“Prophecy” in Hosea — taken out of context
The scriptures that the writer of Matthew quotes is in the book of Hosea. This is taken out of context and applied, wrongly, to Jesus to make it look like fulfilled prophecy:
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images. (Hos 11:1,2)
This story was literal and not even meant to be prophetic.
Another Forgery
As it says plainly “When Israel was a child… called my son”. When Israel came out of Egypt it was a child, that is a young nation. Obviously, here, my son refers to the nation of Israel — not Jesus.
Israel, “God’s son”, did in fact worship idols — Jesus was not an idolater, according to what we read in the Gospels. Therefore, this passage of scripture couldn’t possibly refer to Jesus. In fact, this passage was NOT even a prophecy!
This is just another example of how the Greek writer (whoever he was — not the disciple of Jesus) invented a supposed prophecy to make the whole fabricated story more believable.
The fabricated Story Continues…
Next: Jesus’ Childhood | The Name Jesus Christ