Elhanan, son of Jair
Elhanan son of Jair-Oregim the Bethlehemite ( "’Elḥānān ben-Ya‘rê ’Ōrəḡîm Bêṯhallaḥmî") appears in 2 Samuel 21:19, where he is credited with killing Goliath. As this contradicts the better-known story in 1 Samuel 17 in which it is the famous David who kills Goliath, the 4th century BC Book of Chronicles explains the second Goliath by saying (20:5) that Elhanan "slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath", possibly constructing the name Lahmi from the last portion of the word "Bethlehemite" (""beit-ha’lahmi"). The King James Bible translators modified 2 Samuel 21:18–19 to make it read as if Elhanan had slain Goliath's brother: "And there was again a battle in Gob with the Philistines, where Elhanan the son of Jaare–oregim, a Beth–lehemite, slew "the brother of" Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam", although the Hebrew text at this point makes no mention of the word "brother"; the medieval Jewish authors of the Targum Jonathan solved the problem by explaining Elhanan as an alternative name for David. However, this makes it difficult to explain why David is called "Elhanan" in verse 19 but consistently "David" in the verses that surround it (15, 16, 17, 21, 22). The most widely accepted explanation is that the storytellers have displaced the deed from the obscure Elhanan to the more famous character, David.
Life of Jesus in the New Testament
The genealogy and Nativity of Jesus are described in two of the four canonical gospels: the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. While Luke traces the genealogy upwards towards Adam and God, Matthew traces it downwards towards Jesus. Both gospels state that Jesus was begotten not by Joseph, but conceived miraculously in the womb of Mary, mother of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Both accounts trace Joseph back to King David and from there to Abraham. These lists are identical between Abraham and David (except for one), but they differ almost completely between David and Joseph. Matthew gives Jacob as Joseph’s father and Luke says Joseph was the son of Heli. Attempts at explaining the differences between the genealogies have varied in nature. Much of modern scholarship interprets them as literary inventions.
The Luke and Matthew accounts of the birth of Jesus have a number of points in common; both have Jesus being born in Bethlehem, in Judea, to a virgin mother. In the Luke account Joseph and Mary travel from their home in Nazareth for the census to Bethlehem, where Jesus is born and laid in a manger. Angels proclaim him a savior for all people, and shepherds come to adore him; the family then returns to Nazareth. In Matthew, The Magi follow a star to Bethlehem, where the family are living, to bring gifts to Jesus, born the "King of the Jews". King Herod massacres all males under two years old in Bethlehem in order to kill Jesus, but Jesus's family flees to Egypt and later settles in Nazareth. Over the centuries, biblical scholars have attempted to reconcile these contradictions, while modern scholarship mostly views them as legendary. Generally, they consider the issue of historicity as secondary, given that gospels were primarily written as theological documents rather than chronological timelines.