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The Bible: Most flawed document ever?
by bboyneko 15 Replies latest jw friends
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jgnat
Most flawed? Surely there are others.
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suavojr
Nice find BU2B! Marking for later reading...
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frankiespeakin
I espeacially enjoyed this point I even think it deserves its own thread:
Turning to the New Testament, the second chapter of the book of Luke states that, shortly before the birth of Jesus, the emperor Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Roman world. Luke states that every person had to travel to the town of his ancestors in order for the census to be taken. He points to the census as the reason that Joseph and Mary traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where Jesus is said to have been born.
In the book entitled Gospel Fictions, Randal Helms states that no such census was ever taken in the history of the Roman Empire. He also says that it is ridiculous to think that the practical Romans would require millions of people to travel enormous distances to towns of long-deceased ancestors merely to sign a tax form. Moreover, in Asimov's Guide to the Bible, Isaac Asimov states that the Romans certainly would arrange no such census.
Luke's famous account of the census (Luke 2:1-6) reads as follows:
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David . . .
P. Sculpinius Quirinius was legate (governor) of Syria in the years 6 - 7 AD. He did order a census. However, the assumption that Jesus was born in the year of Quirinius's census (6 AD) leads to irreconcilable chronological problems in the subsequent events of his life. It is entirely unlikely that Jesus was born in the year of Quirinius's census; most scholars put Jesus' birth around 4 BC, a good ten years before Quirinius's census.
The remainder of Luke's account is also highly improbable (I'm being generous here), for a number of reasons:
- There was no census of "all the world" (read: the entire Roman Empire) declared by Augustus; at least, if there were, it's not mentioned in any Roman documents that we've uncovered so far. The census was of Judea, Samaria, and Idumaea--not Galilee (where Luke puts Joseph and Mary). Quirinius used the opportunity to also conduct a census of Syria.
- The notion that each male would have to register in the home town of a remote ancestor is unbelievable. The entire Roman world would have been turned upside-down. There would surely have been records of such widespread dislocations, and there are none. Augustus was arguably the most rational of the emperors, and would never have ordered such an irrational thing.
- Ancient census-takers wanted landowners to be connected to their land, for tax purposes. The census-takers traveled, not those being taxed.
So, almost all scholars agree that it is not reasonable to think that there was ever a decree that required people to travel for purposes of tax registration.
Why, then, do we have Luke's account? Luke wanted to report that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the City of David, in order to fulfill various prophetic .....
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looter
The bible has been around TOO long. By now, it should have just been some book in a museum. Unfortunately, men kept using it to control the masses.