• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1269 0

and preaching in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberias, i.e., 28-29 C.E., when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, i.e., 26-36 C.E. According to the New Testament, this also happened when Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene and Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. But Lysanias ruled Abilene from c. 40 B.C.E. until he was executed in 36 B.C.E. by Mark Antony, about 60 years before the date for Tiberias and about 30 years before the supposed birth of Jesus! Also, there were never two joint high priests; in particular, Annas was not a joint high priest with Caiaphas. Annas was removed from the office of high priest in 15 G.E. after holding office for some nine years. Caiaphas only became high priest in c. 18 C.E., about three years after Annas....

Many of these chronological absurdities seem to be based on misreadings and misunderstandings of Josephus's book Jewish Antiquities which was used as reference by the author of Luke and Acts.

Thus, the few incidents useful for dating are found mainly in Luke and turn out to be false. Doane states:

Luke ii. 1, shows that the writer (whoever he may have been) lived long after the events related. His dates, about the fifteenth year of Tiberius, and the government of Cyrenius (the only indications of time in the New Testament), are manifestly false. The general ignorance of the four Evangelists, not merely of the geography and statistics of Judea, but even of its languagetheir egregious blunders, which no writers who had lived in that age could be conceived of as making-prove that they were not only no such persons as those who have been willing to be deceived have taken them to be, but that they were not Jews, had never been in Palestine, and neither lived at, or at anywhere near the times to which their narratives seem to refer.31

As concerns Jesus's birthplace, while the synoptics place it in Bethlehem, such that he is from David's village, John says he is from Galilee and that the Jews rejected him because was not from Bethlehem, whence the Messiah must come to "fulfill scripture" (Jn. 7:41-42). Also, in the conflicting and illogical gospel account, Jesus's birth is heralded by a star, angels, and three Magi or wise men travelling from afar, and represents such a danger to Herod that he takes the heinous and desperate act of slaughtering the male infants in Bethlehem. Yet, when Jesus finally appears in his hometown, he is barely acknowledged, as if the inhabitants had never heard of his miraculous birth with all the fanfare, or of Herod's dreadful deed, or of any of Jesus's "wisdom" and "mighty works," not even the purportedly astounding temple-teaching at age 12. Even his own family, who obviously knew of his miraculous birth and exploits, rejects him. In addition, in the Christian tale, the three wise men are represented as following the star until they arrive near Herod's house, whereupon he tells them to continue following the star until they reach the place where the baby Jesus lies. The wise men then go off and find the baby, but Herod cannot, so he must put to death the firstborn male of every family. One must ask, how is it that the "wise men" needed Herod's help to know that the star would lead them to the babe, when they were already following it in the first place? And why wouldn't Herod simply have followed the star himself and killed only Jesus, rather than all the boys? In reality, the terrible story of Herod killing the infants as portrayed only in Matthew is based on ancient mythology, not found in any histories of the day, including Josephus, who does otherwise chronicle Herod's real abuses.

In the gospel story, practically nothing is revealed of Jesus's childhood, and he disappears completely from the age of 12 to about 30, when he suddenly reappears to begin his ministry. After this dramatic and unhistorical appearance out of nowhere, Jesus is said in the synoptics to have taught for one year before he died, while in John the number is around three years. Furthermore, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus's advent takes place in Galilee, except for the