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>(DAVE 9/11) Tod: Why? Easy. Farrell and you both make all your
>assertions, supposedly, based on proof you have. I don't. Regardless of
>whether I'm right or wrong, Farrell must provide evidence for his claims,
>not me. If he can't, he's just like me - relying on faith.
TILL 9/11 Okay, someone (Sassanian, I believe) has presented the chronological problem in the gospel of Luke, which claims that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. Christian apologists have searched high and low for some record of this enrollment, but none has been found. Luke further said that this enrollment was made when Quirinius was governor of Syria (2:2), but Quirinius was not appointed governor of Syria until A.D. 6. This enrollment was Luke's pretext for getting Joseph and Mary down to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. However, Matthew states that Herod was king when Jesus was born, but we know from Roman records that Herod died in 4 B. C. These aren't problems serious enough to cast suspicion on the historical "reliability" of the NT?
If you will check "Enrollment" in *Eerdmans Bible Dictionary,* which is a reference work used by many fundamentalist Xians, you will find a fairly good discussion of these problems that Luke 2 presents.
So now I have met your challenge and presented just one reason why the reliability of the NT should be doubted. Let's see you explain away the problem. I have read various attempts to explain this problem, but they all sound as if Roger Hutchinson wrote them. Let's see if you can do better. If you can, I have other problems I can send you.
Farrell Till Skepticism, Inc. jftill@midwest.net