rhutchin

You seem to be confused about this. Matthew says--

We have a chain of begats. It ends with “Jacob begat Joseph.” It does not say that Joseph begat Jesus because, as we read further in Matthew 1, we find that he was not the father.

Instead, it says that Joseph was the husband of Mary and Jesus was born to Mary. Later we see that Joseph knew that he was not the father and initially thought to divorce Mary. All this happened around 6 BC based on the account of King Herod killing the babies in Bethlehem in hopes of killing Jesus.

Luke has--

Luke is careful with his language having, apparently, gotten the straight scoop from Mary. There is an issue with the parentheses used. It should be (being as was supposed the son of Joseph) since everyone thought Joseph, being married to Mary, was actually the father of the boy, Jesus. Not so as we read in Matthew. Luke then tells us that Jesus was of Heli (not son of as the translators add). Jesus was of Heli meaning that Heli was the father of Mary. Luke is careful not to say that Heli begat Jesus since he did not. Luke just starts with Mary and goes backwards.

In both Matthew and Luke, the authors choose their words carefully so that we know that Joseph was not the father of Jesus.

As to the timing, we have--

Herod fits the 6 BC timeframe as does Augustus being Caeser. People get up tight over Cyrenius being governor of Syria. Apparently, there is other historical evidence that Cyrenius was governor of Syria around 4 AD. Because there is not additional historical evidence of Cyrenius being governor around 6BC, people get excited. Luke, being closer to the action than any current historian probably knew what he was talking about.

jeremyp

I don't find your argument credible. Luke doesn't even mention Mary in this passage so there's no reason to suppose that Heli has anything to do with her.

I'm not qualified to comment on the Greek as I can't understand it (there are plenty of others here who can and no doubt will), but I've seen no reputable English translation that remotely looks like it could mean what you say.

mdarus

Jeremyp,
Rhutchin summarized the issues nicely. There is a ton of literature on both sides of this issue. Skeptics like it because it seems to cast doubt on Luke who gets a lot of other things right. When it comes to history, getting the date right is fundamental from our point of view. However, harmonizing ancient event references with our calendar system is extremely complex. As Rhutchin notes, Luke was a lot closer to the action (even if it is someone other than Luke in the second century).

The most important fact to remember is that Christians are not surprised by the differences in the genealogies or the controversy about Jesus' date of birth. You should be much more suspect of the gospel documents if everything harmonizes exactly. That would fit much better into the claims that the Bible was manufactured by the Christian church to gain power over the masses. What we have is much more likely well preserved eye witness accounts from different perspectives. The fact that the problem exists can give you greater faith in the Bible. If everything had pat answers, it would not be as interesting.

rickP

Are you saying we can trust the accuracy of the NT because it is not necessarily accurate? Which parts are accurate and which are not? Is there some scoring system by which you can grade the facts as accurate and important down to inaccurate but not important?

The Evil One

Well, some Christians are, namely inerrantists, who bend over backwards to deny any conflict in any point of fact, no matter how minor. The argument from Joseph's father is directed towards them.

But see now, there are conflicts and conflicts. The birth date is a case in point. If Luke had said something like "Jesus was born in the 17th year after the death of King Muckitymuck", and Matthew said "Jesus was born in the 12th year after the death of King Muckitymuck", then this could be what you say - minor inconsistencies which don't affect the content of the story.

But it's not like that. M & L don't actually cite dates. Instead, they each cite external personages and make them integral to the "action" of their account (Quirinius' census making Joseph & Mary travel, Herod slaughtering the children). We *know* that these two events cannot have happened at the same time, because there was never any time at which both Quirinius and Herod ruled over the area in which Bethlehem is situated*.

So one of these accounts is fictional/mythical, or both are. This is not a minor inconsistency.

(*contra rhutchin, even if Quirinius had been in charge of Syria before Herod's death - which he wasn't - there couldn't have been a Roman census in Judea before Herod's death because Judea wasn't ruled by the Romans until after Herod's death.)

mdarus

So it is not open for any serious discussion?

I am not sure we *know* as much as you think. This can be illustrated by the relevant Wikipedia articles on the subject. The Article about Quirinius agrees with your contentions completely. There is no sign of controversy. However the article about the Census of Quirinius provides significant archeological evidence for an early census under the influence of Quirinius and according to the Jewish (tribal) method. There would be a lot less wiggle room if dates were used and they were wrong. As it is, we don't know who was govenor of Syria in 6-4 BC. It seems to me that there is room for a riddle solution. The main variable is how one evaluates whether a solution is "credible."

aa5874

Rhutchin, isn't it possible that it was Matthew who made the mistake, it does not have to be Luke that erred.

(KJV) Matthew 1:16, 'And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ'.

I will now harmonise Matthew 1:16, And Jacob begat Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

Anyone can omit and add words to the Bible to make it mean whatever they want.

Rhutchin, you are hopeless.

The Evil One

Everything is open for discussion! But given that you appear to agree that there is a difference in the genealogies, it's not entirely clear what you want to dicuss. My point was simply that a biblical inerrantist (which I assuem you are not) will deny that there is any conflict between the authors of GLuke and GMatthew on this matter.

I can't see this "significant archaeological evidence" that you appear to see. That wiki article is full of speculation from slim evidential pickings, which is questionable in itself, but you are stretching even that speculation further than it will legitimately go. None of the stones mentioned provide evidence for an "early" census. Only one actually mentions a census in Syria at all, and it is not dated. The only mention of "according to the Jewish (tribal) method" is in a discussion of the report in GLuke - there is no archaeological evidence for this part of your statement at all.

I thought that you said Christians had no problem with minor discrepancies? A couple of dates being a bit off strikes me as a much less major discrepancy than part of the nativity story being made up out of whole cloth, but that's just my perspective, of course.

No, we do know who was governor of Syria in 6-4BC: it was Quintilius Varus. The Wiki article you cited says this specifically: "Sentius Saturninus was provincial governor in Syria from 9 to 6 B.C., followed by Publius Quintilius Varus, who according to Josephus led a force against a revolt in Judea after Herod's death, which would mean he was an authority in Judea until at least April of 4 B.C." Not that this matters; as I said originally, even if Quirinius had been governor of Syria at some point while Herod was alive, Judaea wasn't under Roman rule at that point.

Let's assume (counterfactually) that some "riddle solution" exists and Quirinius was governor of Syria while Herod was alive. The point remains that there couldn't have been a census in Judaea at the command of Augustus before Herod's death, because Judaea was a client kingdom, and the whole point of client kingdoms was to avoid direct Roman control of things like censuses.

The Evil One

It's perhaps unfair that I'm criticising attempts to harmonise L&M without actually stating where I stand on the issue myself. So briefly, I think that both L & M inherited a very sketchy set of traditions about Jesus' birth, including the virgin birth and the two birthplaces (Bethlehem and Nazareth), and independently fleshed them out - Luke by using the historical census to explain the two birthplaces, Matthew by inventing a tall tale that riffs on the OT account of Moses and the Exodus.

gregor

mdarus
If you're going to make an argument from wikipedia, at least reference it correctly.

And why go to an unverified source. Read Carrier's article on the date of the birth narrative on this very site.

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...quirinius.html