From what I read on the subject of the censuses...is that they took place on a pretty regular basis...there wasn't just one, that'd serve no purpose, they were every 5 or 10 years (I think)..more likely 10 years..

gizmo_2655 wrote on Aug 14^th, 2011 at 2:34pm:

True, but the first census in that part of Palestine occurred only after the banishment of Herod Archelaus and the imposition of direct Roman rule. Emperors only took a census of Roman territory for direct taxation purposes.

Herod Archelaus was banished from Judea in 6CE. Galilee was ruled by Herod Antipas.

gizmo_2655 wrote on Aug 14^th, 2011 at 2:59pm:

The only King Herod (circa that time) was Herod the Great.

Herod Archelaus was an Ethnarch and Antipas was a Tetrarch.

Also Mary and Joseph, as residents of Galilee, were the subjects of Antipas and not subject to direct Roman rule at the time.

There was certainly a psychological advantage of having Jesus born near 4BCE and therefore subject to Herod the Great's infamous tyranny (the deaths of the innocents - even though there is no evidence this ever took place) as Herod the Great was by 3BCE roundly despised in Palestine even by his own family, many of whom he had executed on suspicion of trying to poison him (which was probably true!).

you are guilty of what you accuse others of doing and that is quoting the bible out of context Isn't that typical of course.

Lisa wrote...
In short .. Jesus was making a statement about THEM .. ie the religious leaders of the time.

Seems Jesus wasn't all too thrilled with Religion either.

The Last Nail wrote...
And there is no evidence that Jesus even existed. It is just one of many fictional characters in the biblical equivalent of a Harry Potter novel

To Tiberius Caesar and the Senate of Rome from Herod Antipas
[excerpt]

As to what Pontius Pilate says in regard to my cowardice and disobedience in the case of Jesus of Nazareth, I will say in my own defence: I ws informed by all the Jews that this was the same Jesus that my father aimed to destroy in his infancy; for I have it in my father's private writings and accounts of his life, showing that when the report was circulated of three men inquiring where was he that was born King of the Jews, he called together the Hillel and Shammai schools, and demanded the reading of the sacred scrolls; that it was decided he was to be born in Bethlehem of Judea, as read and interpreted that night by Hillel. So when my father learned that there was a birth of a male child in Bethlehem under very strange circumstances, and he could not learn who nor where the child was, he sent and had the male children slain that were near his age. Afterward he learned that his mother had taken him and fled into the wilderness. For this attempt to uphold the Roman authority in the land of Judea the world has not ceased to curse him to this day; and yet the Caesars have done a thousand worse things, and done them a thousand times, and it was all well. Just think how many lives have been lost to save the Roman Empire; while those infants were only removed in their innocence from the evil to come. The proper way to judge of action is to let the actor judge, or the one with whom the action terminates. If this should be done, and there is a life of happiness beyond for innocence to dwell in, those infants as well as the Rachels should be thankful to my father for the change. Again, my lords, Pilate is a higher officer than I; and you know in our law the lower court always has the right to appeal to the higher. As to Pilate's saying that Jesus was a Galilean, he is mistaken. Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, as the records show. And as to his citizenship, he had none. He wandered about from place to place, having no home, making his abode principally with the poor. He was a wild fanatic, who had taken up the doctrines of John (but not his baptism), and was quite an enthusiast. He had learned sooth-saying, while in Egypt, to perfection. I tried to get him to perform some miracle while in my court, but he was too sharp to be caught in a trap; like all necromancers, he was afraid to show off before the intelligent. From what I could learn he had reprimanded some of the rich Jews for their meanness, and his reproaches were not out of the way, from what I heard they would have been much better men if they had practised what he preached.

Sappho wrote on Aug 14^th, 2011 at 3:18pm:

The question is, how do you account for it?

It is dated from the 6th - 7th centuries CE.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Aug 14^th, 2011 at 3:32pm:


Just saying it is so does not make it so... Your statement is evidential and so needs evidence.

Sappho wrote on Aug 14^th, 2011 at 3:55pm:

As does yours.

However, even the Vatican does not acknowledge the authenticity of this letter nor many allegedly written by Pilate.

Also no Tetrarch would speak so brazenly towards an Emperor... That would only occur as an apocryphal document written when it was safe to be seen to address a long dead non-Christian Emperor in that manner long after the old Empire had been Christianised and the period 1CE - 3CE widely considered as corrupt and sinful.

It blatantly tries to undo the obvious irreconcilability of Jesus birth circa 4BC and in Bethlehem and his birth just prior to the Census of Quirinius (6CE), spuriously attempting to give historical credence to the Gospels' birth accounts. They should've stuck to St Mark's story.