oldbadger
Skanky Old Mongrel!
I can acknowledge mostly anybody's religion, as long as it does not lead to outrages, murders and tyrannies.
Wrong. You got that 100% totally incorrect.
A very high % of Jesus history can be gleaned from the gospels. It's just that archeology, numismatics, other historical records, geography, weather patterns, local cultures, farming techniques, and a mass of other research can help to build a more clear picture for objective research.
The difference is that new information can alter the historical view whereas folks who are determined to follow an agenda won't be able to look objectively at anything.
See how you presumed what I think and how I research? Agenda!
Yes...... but you tend to forget or ignore the problems within it's records.
You have no knowledge about how clear Luke was about anything.
I have read that Luke's gospel was not named until the 3rd or 4th centuries. @sojourner an ordained priest in his church may be able to correct me about that.
That is simply a really stretched manipulation in order to get history to fit a gospel.
How much do you know about 'Typical Roman Censuses'?
One technique used of assessing how much Tribute would be paid to Rome from the provinces of Palestine was by collecting and counting the kidneys from sacrificial lambs, taken at a single feast. Over 400,000 vistors were expected to attend the major feasts.
Temple coinage was strictly controlled by Rome, and silver purity and coin weight were both tightly controlled, and no other coinage acceptable, which is how the money-changers got to run such a corrupt racket.
Herod was a secure Client King.
You have done everything possible to draw an earlier census out, for Luke's account to be accurate, but I still wait to see the evidence which was found (in Tivoli?) to show this.
See what historians think:-
Kilman
Scholars have debated about the historicity of this first census since there is no record of it in the Roman archives. Their chief argument is that Augustus would not have imposed a census for the purpose of taxation in the kingdom of a client king like Herod. Herod had his own tax collectors and paid tribute to Rome from the proceeds. They further pose that the census in 6 CE was imposed because Herod's nutty son Archelaus had been deposed and Judea was placed under direct Roman rule. These are good arguments.
See a brief account (wiki) of the life of Quirinius (and see how Luke got the name Cyrenius) :-
Quirinius
Born into an undistinguished family in the neighborhood of Lanuvium, a Latin town near Rome, Quirinius followed the normal pathway of service for an ambitious young man of his social class. According to the Roman historian Florus, Quirinius defeated the Marmaridae, a tribe of desert raiders from Cyrenaica, possibly while governor of Crete and Cyrene around 14 BC, but nonetheless declined the honorific name "Marmaricus".[2] In 12 BC he was named consul, a sign that he enjoyed the favour of Augustus.
From 12 to 1 BC, he led a campaign against the Homonadenses, a tribe based in the mountainous region of Galatia and Cilicia, around 5–3 BC, probably as legate of Galatia. He won the campaign by reducing their strongholds and starving out the defenders.[3] For this victory, he was awarded a triumph and elected duumvir by the colony of Antioch of Pisidia.[4]
By 1 AD, Quirinius was appointed tutor to Augustus' grandson Gaius Caesar, until the latter died from wounds suffered on campaign.[5] When Augustus' support shifted to his stepson Tiberius, Quirinius changed his allegiance to the latter. Having been married to Claudia Appia, about whom little is known, he divorced her and around 3 AD married Aemilia Lepida, daughter of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and sister of Manius Aemilius Lepidus, who had originally been betrothed to Lucius Caesar.[6] Within a few years they were divorced: in 20 AD he accused her of claiming that he was her son's father, and later of trying to poison him during their marriage. Tacitus claims that she was popular with the public, who regarded Quirinius as carrying on a prosecution out of spite.[7]
After the banishment of the ethnarch Herod Archelaus in 6 AD, Iudaea (the conglomeration of Samaria, Judea and Idumea) came under direct Roman administration with Coponius appointed as prefect. At the same time, Quirinius was appointed Legate of Syria, with instructions to assess Iudea Province for taxation purposes.[8] One of his first duties was to carry out a census as part of this order.[9]
The Jews already hated their pagan conquerors, and censuses were forbidden under Jewish law. The assessment was greatly resented by the Jews, and open revolt was prevented only by the efforts of the high priest Joazar.[10] Despite efforts to prevent revolt, the census did trigger the revolt of Judas of Galilee and the formation of the party of the Zealots, according to Josephus.[11]
There is a reference to Quirinius in the Gospel of Luke chapter 2, which links the birth of Jesus to the time of the Census of Quirinius.
Quirinius served as governor of Syria with authority over Iudaea until 12 AD, when he returned to Rome as a close associate of Tiberius. Nine years later he died and was given a public funeral.
See one example of a kidney count (taken earlier by Agrippa) :-
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