Tough times ahead for the Thinking Christian II

Cont'd
Fairy Tales & Legends

According to Tobin, the teaching of moral lessons with fables, fairy tales was common in the ancient world eg. the famous Aesop's fables with talking hare, tortoise and fox, was written around 6th century BCE, more or less the same time as the stories of the Pentateuch. Likewise, in Genesis 2, we have tales of a talking snake tempting Eve and in Numbers 22, we have the story of Balaam and a talking donkey. It is also usual in the ancient world to credit exceptional individuals with exceptional birth associated with the supernatural world of gods etc. in various legends and myths. Thus in ancient Mediterranean world, there were many similar stories of virgin births eg. the Greek Perseus was born of the virgin Danae, inseminated by Zeus in a shower of gold, the Phoenician Adonis was said to be born of the virgin Myrrh and the Phrygian Attis was born of his mother Cybele also from a supernatural insemination. Though not born of virgins, great men were often associated with unusual birth stories e.g. the Greek Alexander the Great  (356-323 BCE) was said to be born when his mother dreamt of a lightning (symbol of Zeus) and the Roman emperor Augustus Caesar (63 BCE-14 CE) was said to be conceived by Apollo in the form of a snake when his mother was sleeping in a temple and Apollo was implicated also in the birth of the Greek philosopher Plato (ca 427 BCE-347 BCE)  and  that of the great Greek mathematician Pythagorus (6th century BCE). and Romus & Remus were said to be conceived by his mother, the vestal virgin Rhea Silvea by  Mars, a war god.

Is it surprising that Jesus is said to be born when the virgin Mary was said to be inseminated by the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1: 20; Lk. 1: 35) part of the so-called Holy Trinity? To link the birth of Jesus with true historical figures like King Herod the Great (ca 74-4 BC) and Quirinius (ca 51 BCE-21 CE), the Roman governor of Syria. To give it authenticity, further fairy tales were invented. It is said that Herod tried to murder Jesus by ordering the massacre of all male infant children aged 2 and below in and around Bethlehem (Mt. 2:16) and the reason given for Joseph  and  Mary going from Nazareth to Bethlehem (in Lk 2: 3-4) , the city of King David, (as prophesized by Micah 5:2 ) was that Quirinius wanted to have a census. Thus in Matt. 2:2, we are told that some "wise men" who followed a star to Judea from the East to look for the newborn "King of the Jews." and that when they arrived, they saw the star standing "over where the young child was." and they offered their gifts of gold, incense and myrrh and was then warned by an angel in their dream not to go back to Herod and again in a dream, Joseph was told by another angel to take his family to Egypt for fear of being killed by King Herod and that it was only after the death of King Herod that Joseph took his family back from Egypt back to Judea and then went back to live in Nazareth of Galilee when Archelaus was king after Herod the Great's death.

We know from history that Herod the Great was just the type to go around murdering people and killing babies. From the historical records compiled by the Roman historian Josephus (37-100 CE) (in his Jewish Antiquities Books 14-17), he murdered his wife, executed his brother in law and three of his own sons and also had Aristobus, the Jewish high priest and 45 members of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish religious council ) killed for supporting the revolt of Hasmoneans. But we know that only Matthew mentioned about the massacre of the infants, not any other evangelists nor Josephus. Hence it looks like it was a pure invention by Matthew. If God really wanted to avoid the massacres of the innocents, why did he not lead the wise men directly to Bethlehem instead of to Jerusalem? If so, then Herod the Great would never have known about the birth of a possible rival to his throne and many innocent lives could have been spared and Jesus could be born as the messiah of Jews.  It seems likely that in thus inventing the story of the wise men and the flight into Egypt, Matthew was just following a well know Jewish exegetical tradition called aggadic midrash ( recasting older stories into new ones))which views the life of Jesus as somehow destined to  parallel the story of the life of Moses in respect of whom Exodus 1;22. says that the Egyptian pharoah ordered that every male Jewish child be killed by being thrown into a river. including Moses and Moses's later flight from Egypt. Matthew actually used a passage from Hosea (11:1-2) which referred to the original exodus as a prophetic passage about the return of Joseph and Mary and Jesus back to Judea. In fact, Moses's own life is portrayed as parallelling that of earlier and older Jewish heroes e.g. Moses' parting of the Red Sea in Exodus 14: 2-31 may be viewed as a rehash of the earlier story of Joshua parting the River Jordan in Joshua 3: 14-17.

To follow the same aggadic midrash tradition, Luke resorted to his own method to explain why the pregnant Mary had to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem (Lk 2:1): it was a census by Quirinius, who ordered that all Jews should go back to their town of origin (a practice which in the view of Tobin is totally unnecessary because the purpose of the census is to collect taxes and it was totally and unnecessarily troublesome way of taking the purported census! If such a census had really been ordered, it made more sense to take the census of where a person's property was located, ie. his residential "home" and not his ancestral hometown)  But the Evangelicals sought to prove that it was  indeed a truly historical thing by pointing to a papyrus dated to 104 CE where the prefect of Egypt ordered all to return to their own homes to register for the census.(Strobel The Case for Christ 1998). In addition. Luke 2:1 said that Caesar Augustus ordered a census for "all the world". There is no independent record that such a census had ever been ordered. Moreover, per Luke 1: 26, Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth but the jurisdictional area of Quirinius covered only Judea, where Bethlehem was, not Nazareth, which was then under the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas (d ca 40 CE). Even if a census had been ordered by Quirinius at the time of birth of Jesus (no evidence of this), then since they were living in Nazareth, it should not have affected them. Then finally both Matthew and Luke said Jesus was born during the time of Herod the Great (Mt. 2:1; Lk. 1:5) and we know for certain that  Herod the Great died in 4 BCE and Quirinius' census took place only in 6 CE., there is thus a whole 10 years difference between the two events. Therefore there is doubt both in respect of where and when Jesus was supposed to have been born! ( See Raymond Brown Birth of the Messiah 1993; Marcello Craveri Life of Jesus; John Dominic Crossnan Who is Jesus 1996 ; Edwin Freed Stories of Jesus's Birth: A Critical Introduction 2001; Gerd Ludemann Virgin Birth? The Real Story of Mary and her Son Jesus 1998;  Charles Guingebert Jesus 1956; Robert J Miller Born Divine: The Births of Jesus & Other Sons of God 2003 and  Robert Price Incredible Shrinking Son of Man).

To tackle such difficulties, the evangelicals claim that there was an earlier census under Quinirius during the reign of Herod the Great. What this means is that Quirinius would have to be governor of Syria twice:, once between 6 and 12 CE and a second time during the reign of Herod the Great. But this argument has now been proven false upon the following grounds:
1. The alleged evidence consist of an inscription found by Sir William Ramsay (1851-1939) which merely mentioned that Quirinius was honored for a military victory and Ramsay guessed that he was rewarded by being given the governorship of Syria earlier than 6 BCE. It does not specifically say that Quirinius was governor of Syria before 6 CE.         2. We got from Josephus a list of governors of Syria  from 23 BCE to 7 CE and according to the list, the two last governors of Syria during the last years of Herod's reign were Gaius Sentius Saturninus (9-6 BCE) and Publius Quintilius Varus (6-4 BCE)
3. The political career of Quirinius is relatively well documented in Tacitus Annals of Imperial Rome (3: 22-23, 3: 48), Suetonius Tiberius (49), Strabo Geography (12: 6, 5) and Josephus Antiquities of the Jews (17:13: 5; 18:1:1). From this we know Quirinius was born some time before 50 BCE and died in 22 CE. He was consul of Rome by 12 BCE, in Asia Minor between 12 and 6 BCE and died in 22 CE.. Josephus mentioned him several times when he was governor of Syria in 6 CE (17:13:5, 18:1:1). There was not a single mention that he was governor of Syria any time during the reign of Herod! There is also no evidence of any Roman census in Judea before 6 CE because the Roman took direct control of the area only after 6 CE and since Herod the Great was compliant to the Roman demand for tax, there was no reason why the Romans should take any direct control by conducting the kind of census suggested before 6 CE. The mysterious wise men from the East who followed a magical star which stood over where Jesus was born (Mt 2:9), the angels who spoke to Mary (Lk 1:26-37), to Joseph (Mt 1:20) and the shepherds (Lk 2:15) and people who burst into spontaneous songs of praise (Lk 1:46-55; 1:68-79) are clearly elements of a fairy tale and not historical facts!