One of the priests of Baghdad said to me: " I wonder when I heard some Muslims say that Jesus was born in Iraq in Karbala or Baghdad, and when you ask him to prove it, he answers: ((Date-palm trees do not grow in Palestine and God said in Quran, chapter Mariam, 25: "Shake the trunk of the date-palm tree, and it will drop ripe dates for you.", this means that Mariam had traveled to Iraq, the country of date-palm trees, to give birth)). This is the only proof which Muslims have got from their Quran which I do not believe in. How can these Muslims proof that Palestine has no date-palm trees? While the Gospel itself mentions that Jesus Messiah was born in Palestine and the place in which he was born was full of Palm trees as in John Book, 12: 12-13: "On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord." More over, the Deuteronomy Book, 34:3 says that: "And the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zoar." And the Judges Book, 1:16 says: " And the children of the Kenite, Moses' father in law, went up out of the city of palm trees". So, how can these Muslims say that Palestine is not a palm tree country?"
- "Are you completely confident that there were date-Palm trees in the birth-place of Jesus?" I asked.
- "Yes." he said.
I gazed at his face for a long time.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked annoyingly.
- "I am pondering over your story about Jesus' place of birth, which I find hard to believe." I said to him.
- "Are you accusing me of being a liar?" he said.
- "Yes, not lying to me, but you pretend that these lies are found in the Holy Bible which you consider holy." I answered.
He kept silent for a while and then he said:"Show your own evidence!" I said to him: "O sir, firstly, the texts which you mentioned are correct but they are not referring to (Bethlehem) but to other warm places which have date-palm trees such as Jericho and Jerusalem. It is just like saying that there are date-palm trees in Erbil, Duhok and sulaimaniya only because there are date-palm trees in Basra and all these cities lie in Iraq". He kept silent. "O Sir, secondly, (Bethlehem) is a rocky hilly area which has no rivers and people there, until this day, use wells to get drinking water. Anciently speaking, it has no date-palm trees because it has a very cold winter and date-palm trees cannot bear such weather. Similarly, in the north of Iraq date-palm trees do not grow, but instead there are gigantic cold weather resisting walnut trees which grow up on the top of mountains. Did not you read in the Holy Bible that prophet Solomon took Bethlehem as a summer resort because it is not hot in summer? Moreover, all Christian communities use birch tree during the Christmas day, which is a very popular tree growing in Bethlehem, because it bears the severe cold winter of that area. And if there had been date-palm trees growing there, Christians would have used the date-palm tree as a symbol for Christmas instead of the birch tree". "Do you know why Jews chose Bethlehem as a birth place for Jesus?" I added. "No, I do not know" he said. "Because there is an alleged text in Torah that a new born baby will be born in this city and this baby will dominate over Jews. For this reason, Jews did artfully insert this text in Torah because they thought that this new born baby will be one of them and will regain their glory, but unluckily forgot that Bethlehem is a city of mountains, snow and wells which has no rivers nor date-palm trees in it as mentioned in the Book of Micah, 5:2: "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting". But the one who wrote the Gospel forgetfully made a mistake when he said: (when Jesus was born, there were shepherds sleeping in the wilderness to guard their sheep where the angels brought them the glad tidings associated with Jesus' birth). So, how it comes that Jesus' birth was in amidst a snowy severe cold winter while the shepherds were sleeping to guard their sheep in the wilderness? For this reason, we can notice that this text agrees with what was mentioned in the Quran because both texts are speaking about a baby's birth in the summer when the dates are ripe and the shepherds are capable of sleeping in the wilderness to guard their sheep. Dr. John D. Avis in his book "The Holy Bible Dictionary", has the same opinion as he explains the word 'year' saying that: “the dates ripen in the Jewish month of September” as it was mentioned in Big's book interpretation of the Holy Bible on page 117. This book leads us to say that Mary could have given birth in another place which is full of date- palm trees rather than Bethlehem.
For this reason we cannot refute Muslims claims when they say that Jesus was born in Karbala or Baghdad, simply, because these two cities have a lot of date-palm trees. Let us see how the story that Jesus was born in winter was created? According to both Encyclopedia Britannica and Shamir's Encyclopedia no one is convinced in determining an exact day or year for Jesus' birth, but some fathers in the year 340 A.D. have fixed a date for the celebration, so they wisely chose the day of winter solstice which then was deep-rooted in people's minds and became their greatest festivals (Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th Edition, Vol. 5, P. 642-643).
It is worth saying that the winter solstice is a day of rebirth the Sun. In Rome, the 25th of December was celebrated as a national pagan day which the church have not been able to put an end to it, but rather blessed it as a national celebration. This means that the church turned this pagan celebration to a religious one by relating it to Jesus Messiah and for this reason we cannot find its origin in Gospel