Luke's Account Of The Roman Census And Jesus Birthday Conflict

by frankiespeakin 13 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  frankiespeakin

  I think this website on the subject helps one see the tweaking nature of stories passed on about gods and men.

  http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2001/what-did-the-census-at-the-time-of-the-birth-of-christ-accomplish

  Luke 2:1-6

  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 interpretations. On the other hand, he also wanted to report that Jesus grew up in Nazareth, presumably for historic reasons. He thus reported the story of Joseph going to Bethlehem where Jesus was born, and then returning to Nazareth where Jesus was raised.

  Matthew does something similar, but has Joseph and Mary living in Bethlehem, then fleeing to Egypt until Herod died, then returning to Bethlehem, finding another Herod in place, and so moving to Nazareth (where there was actually a third Herod, namely Herod Antipas. One of the difficulties of describing any of this is that the whole damn family was named Herod.)

  So Luke reported that Jesus was born in Bethlehem but raised in Nazareth. Why report a census? Well, there were riots after Herod's death in 4 BC and again at the time of the census in 6 AD, so it is possible that Luke (or his source) accidentally combined the two riots and the two dates. A ten year error is relatively slight for ancient authors, working without archives, without a standard calendar, and writing about a period around 80 years earlier.
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  88JM

  For someone who supposedly "traced all things with accuracy" (as they like to parrot) he sure starts off his gospel early with one hell of a whopper. It seems quite strange really why he would make up such a huge lie about something that could so easily be disproved? Did he think no one would bother to check?
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  Phizzy

  Luke, which is quite a late Gospel as you say, obviously is written with the agenda of covering over the contradictions in the other 2 Gospels. (John being later thanLuke/Acts in all probability). This one about the Census is not the only example, and as you say, not a very good attempt, but it fooled people at the time, and for centuries after.

  The Internet is a big exposer of such things, but only recently available, in Bible scholarship terms.

  It all shows that the WT idea that the Bible is inspired and inerrant is total nonsense.
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  Witness My Fury

  Thanks for this.
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  Comatose

  Similar info in the book Zealot. It's a good read.
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  Band on the Run

  I am curious when people started believing the Bible was inerrant. The gospels don't pretend to preach unadorned history but the 'good news." Perhaps there were certain evangelical genre rules to contain the accounts. It was very clear to Church Fathers that the gospels contradicted each other. Something I never considered as a Witness despite reading WT lit. I like the Gospel Parallel books. If we truly studied the Bible and not just WT lit, the hands should have been up at the KH.

  I assume theologians always saw the challenge. Besides, there was the hishtory of the canonization process. Perhaps it is a Reformation idea. I don't know.

  Isn't Luke the author who buttresses the view that Christians are no threat to Rome?
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  designs

  Luke got his information from the Enquirer.
• 

  suavojr

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oli0DTmPmGU
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  suavojr

  It is intriguing how many facts religion hides from us. The WT for example give this bogus explanation when explaining Matthew 2:23:

  Prophetic. Matthew pointed out that the name Nazarene was prophetically foretold as another sign identifying Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah. He called this to the attention of his readers when he told how Joseph brought Mary and her child back from Egypt following Herod’s death. “Moreover,” Matthew wrote, “being given divine warning in a dream, he [Joseph] withdrew into the territory of Galilee, and came and dwelt in a city named Nazareth, that there might be fulfilled what was spoken through the prophets: ‘He will be called a Nazarene.’”—Mt 2:19-23.

  Nazareth is not mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures. Some suppose Matthew had reference to some lost prophetic book or some unwritten tradition, but his expression, “spoken through the prophets,” is used by writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures only in reference to the same canonical collection of the Hebrew Scriptures we have today. The key to understanding, apparently, lies in equating Nazarene with ne′tser, mentioned above as meaning sprout.

  With this in mind, it is evident that Matthew was referring to what Isaiah (11:1) had said concerning Messiah: “There must go forth a twig out of the stump of Jesse; and out of his roots a sprout [we·ne′tser] will be fruitful.” Another Hebrew word, tse′mach, also means sprout and was used by other prophets when referring to the Messiah. Matthew used the plural, saying that “prophets” had mentioned this coming “Sprout.” For example, Jeremiah wrote about the “righteous sprout” as an offshoot of David. (Jer 23:5; 33:15) Zechariah describes a king-priest “whose name is Sprout,” a prophecy that could apply only to Jesus the Nazarene, the great spiritual Temple-builder.—Zec 3:8; 6:12, 13.
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  Bobcat

  suavojr:

  Concerning Matthew's saying about Jesus being called a Nazarene, see my post 696 on this page and 698 on this page. (which is the same thread.) It provides an interesting take on this uniquely Mqatthean saying.