Part 36 of Post Your Tough Questions Regarding Christianity

No, I mean the claim that the Romans required everyone to go to the place of their father's birth. Roman censuses were conducted for taxation purposes, and Roman taxes were based on property. They didn't require people to leave their property to be counted.

 

ecco said:
So, YOU are the one who gets to define who is and who is not a "true christian"! That's convenient.

Maybe you and Maxwell should get together and see if your definitions of "true Christian" agree.

If you know that, it should be easy to point out just where the Bible says it.

 

You give them too much credit.

 

The moral?- People promoting religions often have their own agenda and are therefore not always trustworthy.

 

But many did. Also it was recorded on film.

NONE DID! Not even one of the thousands who were miraculously fed with bread and fishes thought it was significant enough to write about it. Not one. A friggin miracle.

Been there, mate. Seen that. Ain't gonna bother to write grandma about it.

Uh Huh.

 

Herod died 4BCE. Quirinius was on campaign in Asia Minor from 12-1BCE then supported Gaius until Gaius died of injuries. After Archelaus was dismissed his territory came under direct rule under Prefect Coponius. At the same time Quirinius was made Legate of Syria. This did not include Archelaus territory. However, Rome wanted a check on Archelaus previous financial dealings and ordered Quirinius, senior to Coponius, and trusted by the Emperor, to do a census of the territory. Censuses were mainly for taxation purposes. This was not a general census including the other provinces under Antipas, Philipp, cities of Salome, the cities of the Decapolis.

The Egyptian censuses were just that. They were not worldwide censuses. Did Maximus write to every Egyptian living in Italy, Spain, Asia Minor. Of course not. Can you imagine a worldwide census where everyone had to travel to their home town. The Romans were not that stupid. The whole world would have been in chaos. Censuses would have varied according to province. Travelling in some provinces for a census would be impossible.

For Luke's census hundreds of thousands of Davids descendants (1000 years worth) would have deluged Bethlehem, Jerusalem and the whole area. Accomodation, food and water would have run out almost immediately. You really shouldn't rely on Biased religious sites. Try studying for yourself.

 

For sure - the oral sex analogy was lost on the Apostle Paul - that's for sure.

I mostly reject what Paul has to say as his teachings (IMO) so often do not reflect Jesus. James - leader of the Church of Jerusalem and brother of Jesus felt similarly... calling his "salvation by faith alone" doctrine - Foolish.

 

What did Hitler do that was unbiblical or even un-Christian?

 

Presided over the murder of a bunch of Jews.

Oh, and he tried to take over the world.

Oh yeah, and he lied and cheated his way into office.

oh, and he sought political office in the first place.

Oh, shoot, I just thought of something else: Fascism.

 

There were different kinds of Christians one minute after Jesus bit the dust.

 

Seeing that countless Christians have done the same thing why is he worse than any of them? Maybe it has something to do with his funny mustache?

 

How many times did Moses carry the stone tablets in his arms up and down the mountain? Have you ever thought about how heavy they were? Do you know what the real Ten Commandments are that were written on the stone tablets?

 

Oh, I thought you were talking about unbiblical and un-Christian.

 

So this guy Luke wrote this very long letter to some guy called Theophilus who lived in some unidentified place in the Middle East or in maybe in Greece in the 80s or 90s and just like a super miracle Theophilus kept it for historical reasons and it found its way into the hands of a collector who passed it on to other people intact for someone to include with all of the other stories that make up the Bible? Sorry, but I have to call dinosaur crap on that. The entire thing is fiction. The committee that wrote the Bible in the late 7th Century made it all up. There's no way such a private letter would have survived the events of that time and ended up in a collection with other such letters at that time.

 

7th century, seriously? There are extant manuscript fragments of the whole damn thing from the 2nd century. How is it even debatable that it's older than that? This whole made-up-later story is more convoluted than the commonly accepted story.

 

Get real. There might have been bits and pieces of written stories but there was never one complete unified collection until around the year 700. Do you think those bits and pieces were written in numbered chapters with numbered verses? Do you think the Koran was written that way also?

The fact is that you can't prove that the Bible existed before the year 700. If the existence of the entire universe hinged on you proving that the Bible existed as a complete unified volume before the year 690 it would vanish. So produce your proof.

 

You'll know them by their fruit.

 

Yes,

Yes, I know.

 

I study the Word of God.

 

Care to share? Don't hide your light under a basket.

 

"bits and pieces of written stories"
That's not even what you should be looking for if you're trying to establish a limit after which an event must have occurred. You're talking about many different events though. Manuscript fragments don't contain bits and pieces of stories. They are pieces of pages written on both sides. There are over 25,000 distinct sets now, most of them newer than your earliest date, as you probably know. The thing is; if you have even just a few pieces of a given book matching all of the other thousands of manuscript copies from later dates, you have to set the terminus ante quem for the writing of that book to the date of the oldest fragment, or posit a massive conspiracy theory that would require divine intervention.

You also mentioned the compilation of the NT in a form including at least what it includes now. That's a different event from the writing of each book, right? I'm not gonna go digging up links right, but I'm telling you; that was done by 220 AD.

 

Then you will never learn the truth.

Rome allowed their Provinces to be run by the Governor, provided it fulfilled its pledges to Rome. The way censuses were carried out was down to the Governor. ROME did not require everyone to return to their family home. In some cases women were included in censuses. That would mean husband and wife would have to leave the home they had set up together.

If the governor decided to do this it was his decision. Quirinius was called on to 'audit' the kingdom when Archelaus was dismissed because Archelaus had made a mess of his rule. He was also as bad as his father Herod the Great for cruelty.

Cities of the Decapolis were autonomous cities. They did their own censuses for Rome. Tetrarch Antipas, just across the river, had no problems with censuses. And he ruled for 40+ years.

And a 9 month heavily pregnant woman travelling several days on a donkey is just ridiculous.

All this furore because Luke got his facts wrong.

 

Yes, if some historians and religionists are just in it for the money, we should always take what they say with a pinch of salt, for example historians might include "sensational new findings" to promote their new book, or religionists might be after donations etc.