by cameo-d 10 Replies latest watchtower bible
they were trying to avoid the census????
Does anyone have any historical research on exactly how the census was performed duing those days?
Were people really expected to travel for days to go "turn themselves in"?
This really seems rather riduculous, as many people would not be able or have a way to go.
I tend to think Joseph and Mary were in flight from the census.
Any ideas?
I was under the impression that the act of taking a census was forbidden under the Mosaic Law. Maybe they were trying to avoid the census the same way a JW avoids donating blood.
Maybe they left town because Joseph got Mary knocked up before their wedding...
Maybe the whole thing is a made up story to try to fit jebus in with some crappy book written by a bunch of halfwit shepherds?
I think she got pregnant by some other guy, he honored the arrangement and so they moved away. Let's fact it, where were his grandma and grandpa..any aunts and uncles? Why no mention of anyone other than Joseph and Mary, and let's face it....why is it that Joseph is never mentioned? Do you think he really existed?
In reality, Mary very well could have been an unmarried young woman who had an affair with a man of another culture or background. It may have been that she herself left the village in shame or else was cast out of the village and ultimately, she gave birth alone in a barn. sammieswife.
There was no census. That part of the story is definitely fiction.
There is a fantastic, thorough study of the Nativity story here:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/quirinius.html
It goes into a lot of detail.
Short version: It really is a smoking gun that the gospel writers were making stuff up. The date of the census mentioned in luke conflicts with matthews account which places the nativity during the reign of Herod.
Prophecy declared that the messiah should be born in Bethlehem. Everyone knew that Jesus was from Nazareth. The two gospel writers attempt to deal with this in two ways. In Matthew's account it appears that Jesus' family lived in Bethlehem and had to flee to Egypt because of the Massacre of the innocents - when they returned they settled in Nazareth. Luke has the family based in Nazareth, they go to Bethlehem for the birth, and return to Nazareth. The two writers deal with the problem in two different and conflicting ways and are caught with the pants down.
Christian apologists have attempted to get around this problem in various ways, all of which are dealt with in the above link.
The Gospel of Luke claims (2.1-2) that Jesus was born during a census that we know from the historian Josephus took place after Herod the Great died, and after his successor, Archelaus, was deposed. But Matthew claims (2.1-3) that Jesus was born when Herod the Great was still alive--possibly two years before he died (2:7-16). Other elements of their stories also contradict each other. Since Josephus precisely dates the census to 6 A.D. and Herod's death to 4 B.C., and the sequence is indisputable, Luke and Matthew contradict each other.
Wow. Thanks for the link and that information, Gladring.
This is surprising info that I did not know.
Here is something else I found interesting:
Paul L. Maier has pointed out also the theological problem Matthew's story creates: "believers are used to Jesus dying for people, not people dying for Jesus ... when the 'people' are babies, it becomes easier to doubt Matthew than wrestle with theodicy". [13]
The story assumed an important place in later Christian tradition, the Byzantine liturgy having 14,000 Holy Innocents and an early Syrian list of saints stating that there were 64,000. Coptic sources raise the number to 144,000 and place the event on 29 December. [15]
A large part of this anti-Christian argument hinges on the date of Herod's death, allegedly in 4 BC. But Herod did not die in 4 BC. Josephus tells us that he died after an eclipse of the Moon, before a passover. The eclipse in March 4 BC is used to fix this date (other indications by Josephus being ambiguous). However, there was no time, after that eclipse, for all the events mentioned by Josephus to have happened in the short time available before passover. There was another eclipse in Jan 1 BC that fits the bill admirably, putting Herod's death in 1 BC. That a 'census' (or rather registration) took place in 3 BC, under Quirinius, is quite plausible; for the reasons why, and a full historical analysis, see The Star of Bethlehem by prof. Earnest L. Martin, which also shows the astronomical events pointing to the year September 3/2 BC for Jesus' birth.
