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the Judeans. We know that Matthew 2:6 is quoting from the book of Micah about a prophesy of the birth of the Messiah. The prophesy is talking of Bethlehem a town occupied by Judahites in Galilee not a place in Judea to the south, other wise the word Greek word for Judea, Ioudaia, would have been used. We also know that at the time of Micah, which was about 735–700 BC, the country of Judea did not exist yet. At that time there was the Northern Israelite Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Judah was eventually overrun by Assyria (2 Kings 18:13) in about 701 BC and the Assyrian King carried away almost all (200,000 Judahites) of the decedents of Judah to Assyria, which is what is now the area around western Turkey and northern Iraq and Iran.

We can further confirm from the Bible that Bethlehem was in Galilee by looking at Luke 1:39, Mary who was living in the area of what is Nazareth in Galilee is said to have made haste to the city of Judah. That is a city in Galilee, which was populated by Judahites, not a city more then ninety miles away. No young girl of Mary’s age would have been allowed to make haste to a place 90 miles away. In Matthew 2:1 we see the word Judea used to describe Bethlehem. Again, the bible is accurate and church tradition is in error. King Herod was king of Judea, Galilee was a state/province within the kingdom of Judea, and therefore Bethlehem of Galilee was in Judea just as the bible tells us. At the time of King Herod there was only one town of Bethlehem in all of Judea, it was located in the providence

 of Galilee, and its population was predominately Judahites, who had been driven from their former lands in the south by the Pharisees.

So why is this important? Jesus tells us in John 8:32 “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” When we understand the truth about our scriptures then we can feel comfortable in the message we receive from them. For centuries the common people only knew what the church representatives told them about the scriptures, it was unlawful for a non-clergy member to even read the scriptures for centuries. It was during this time that much of the ‘dogma’ or ‘traditions’ followed by many denominations today was fabricated by the leadership of the Roman Church to further there own self-interest. Today we are free to explore the scriptures ourselves and the masses are more educated now then ever before in recorded history. With (cont.)