We continue through the bible by chronologically by hitting the intro of each of the Gospels.  Notice the differences between each of them.

John 1:1-14

Why does John start his Gospel the way he does? He is writing to Greeks and desires to show Jesus as the eternal God so he begins with a theological introduction that shows just that…

By using the term Word for Jesus John is declaring him to be the embodiment of God’s revelation. It is a term his audience would be familiar with as many philosophers used it as “The Greek term translated “word” was also used by many philosophers to mean “reason,” the force which structured the universe” (Bible Background Commentary)

Matt 1

The Genealogy of Matthew was not complete, it is written in three sets of 14 generations, but generations are skipped in order to be concise. Interestingly I probably would have skipped some of the people listed, the more scandalous births like Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar. Tamar’s story from Gen 38 is very much like a modern Jerry Springer show.

Wow, I realized that Joseph didn’t have sex with Mary until after the birth of Jesus but he “took her home as his wife” The Bible doesn’t say how much time was left in their betrothal, a time where the couple was more than engaged but less than married as they didn’t live or sleep together, but he cut it short and lived with her, talk about self control. We today Christians can’t even keep their pants on in the car, let alone while living with your wife.

Luke 2:1-28

V1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.

• I heard from the Chair of Religion at UNC chapel hill that there is no historical record outside of the Bible to support that this census happened. I am looking into it currently

John 1:15

According to the Bible Exposition commentary Pharisees were baptizing Gentiles that wanted to adopt the Jewish faith. John however was baptizing Jews. We understand he was baptizing them to repentance, much like many churches baptize people who have walked away from their faith and then return. But the Pharisees were investigating John as the custodians of the faith and were making sure there wasn’t a false teacher leading people astray, they were actually doing, at least part, of their duty.