From: Tim.ONeill@english.utas.edu.au (Tim O'Neill)
Subject: Re: More on history
Organization: University of Tasmania (Australia)
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 01:14:26 GMT

In article <adams.713821896@spssig>, adams@spss.com (Steve Adams) writes:
> 
> feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld) writes:

> >Herod the Great, whom the NT credits with the massacre of the
> >innocent, died four years before the relevant time.
> 
> No, it is recognized that the date of the year '0' and the date of Jesus'
> birth do not coincide.  He is said to have been born about 4BC...The
> persons adopting the calander blew it.

Actually, we have no real idea when he was born. Luke 2 says he was born during 
the census of 'Cyrenius', though earlier he said that John the Baptist, who was
conceived a few months before Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great.
We know that Quirinius (Luke's Cyrenius) conducted the first census of Judea when
the Romans deposed the client king Herod Archelaus in 6 AD. We also know that
Herod the Great died in 4 BC. Thus Luke has contradicted himself. Jesus cannot have
been born both during the census of Quirinius *and* during the reign of Herod the 
Great since the one was 10 years after the other.

Christians have tied themselves in knots in their desperate efforts to get Luke
off the hook in this regard. They have tried to argue that Quirinius could have
held *two* censes, one in 6 AD and another ten years before during the reign of
Herod. This theory is 'supported' by an inscription found in Turkey which refers
to a campaign against bandits in the Taurus Mountians by a certain 'Qurinius'.
This, christian apologists proclaim triumphantly, is 'proof' that P. Suplicius
Quirinius held an earlier, otherwise unrecorded, governorship of Syria and thus
could well have instituted an earlier census.

This is patent nonsense. To begin with, 'Quirinius' was a reasonably common name,
and there is no indication that the 'Quirinius' of the Taurus Moutains campaign
was P. Suplicius Quirinius. Secondly, the Taurus Mountains are in modern Turkey,
hundreds of kilometres from Judea. The 'logic' by which an inscription which
mentions a minor military campaign can be said to indicate a governorship and a 
census in a area hundreds of kilometres to the south is quite beyond me, though it
is clear to our christian friends. Thirdly, before the death of Herod the Great
and the deposition of his son Archelaus, Judea was a client kingdom. It was part 
of the Province of Syria, but it was ruled and administered by the Herods. The
whole reason a census was held in 6 AD at all was that after the deposition of 
Archelaus, the Romans were ruling Judea directly for the first time, and they
needed accurate taxation information, thus they held a census. They would not have
needed to do this if censes had already been taken in Judea previously. Luke 
himself corroborates Josephus in saying that the census of Quirinius was the 
first taken in Judea, and Josephus tells us that this first (6 AD) census was
memoralble because it sparked a revolt (this is also mentioned in Acts). There is 
no way Quirinius could have taken an earlier census, the first census was
definitely taken in 6 AD, it was taken by Quirinius and it was the census refered
to in Luke 2, in blatant historical contradiction of both Luke 1 and Matthew. Our
only reasoinable conclusion must be that Luke got his dates wrong.

The Quirinius census only involved Judea, there is no way that Joseph would have
been affected since he was a citizen of Galilee. He certainly would not have been
required to go to Bethlehem because that was the town of his ancestor David, since
Roman censes were for taxation purposes only; they wanted to know who owned land 
and how much it was worth, they were not interested in whose ancestors lived
where hundreds of years before. The idea that Joseph took his (heavily pregnant!)
betrothed with him on this fictional journey is even more beyond belief.

The major problem with this whole story, however, is that it completely contradicts
the story told by Matthew. The only point on which the two gospels connect is the
idea that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. On every other point the two stories are
completely different. In Matt, the family live in Bethlehem to begin with, the
child is born in their house, they are visited by Magi but have to flee into 
Egypt to escape Herod the Great's persecution (which, strangely, is not recorded
by any of the historians who chronicle the Herod family in some detail). On 
returning to Palestine they find Herod Archelaus is now king in Judea, so they
go to settle at Nazareth in Galilee instead, to avoid the Herod family (despite
the fact that Galilee is also ruled by one of Herod's sons, Herod Antipas)
Luke says they started in Nazareth, they went to Bethlehem as a result of 
Quirinius' census, the child is born there and visited by shepherds. Magi, 
massacres and quick side-trips to Egypt are not even hinted at, and the happy
family returns to Nazareth via Jerusalem.

One thing is clear, both writers were keen to explain how a Galilean from Nazareth
could possibly be the messiah, since the messiah had to come from Bethlehem.
Both tell a story about how he was *born* in Bethlehem but was raised in Nazareth,
but, because they tell contrdictory stories, they trip each other up.
Modern christians can only get around this by conflating the two accounts and 
trying to argue that each evangelist tells separate bits of the same story.
You can see why it takes faith to be a christian.
Tim O'Neill
Newsgroups: alt.atheism