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Comment by cogman10 | Hacker News Reader

One of the more interesting pieces of evidence in the Bible.

The Roman census that required every family go back to their hometown did not happen (why would it?). Romans kept very good records of censuses and such an event would be well covered.

So why does the Bible have this story? The best guess is that Jesus was well known to have come from Nazareth. Yet the older messianic texts say the Messiah would be from Bethlehem. The gospel author undoubtedly was trying to square that circle to make sure the prophecy was fulfilled. Something they'd not need to do if Jesus wasn't real. The author had to explain to people who had grandparents who knew him as being from Nazareth why that still jives with older prophecies.

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Before you tie yourself in this knot it might be useful just to look and see if there was a Roman census in that time period:

"When I administered my thirteenth consulate (2 B.C.E.), the senate and Equestrian order and Roman people all called me father of the country, and voted that the same be inscribed in the vestibule of my temple"[0]

[0] http://classics.mit.edu/Augustus/deeds.html

Oh, I'm sorry I must not have been super clear.

That Rome did censuses and kept detailed records of the censuses is not in dispute. The thing that never happened is people making long trips to the ancestral lands.

The entire point of a census is to get an accurate population count for reasons of taxation and public spending. People uprooting to go to grandpa's home to be counted messes with that count. It's counter productive. Rome would never have required this and in fact would have tried to restrict travel during the census because they wanted an accurate population count.

The much more likely explanation is the author of Luke needed Jesus to be born in Bethlehem, which was problematic because Jesus was well known to be from Nazareth.

Here's a good article detailing those problems:

https://bam.sites.uiowa.edu/faq/can-you-explain-problem-cens...

I should note, this is not a controversial take.

That doesn't describe a census or anything like it. There is absolutely no evidence there was a census covering the Roman empire let alone the whole world (as actually stated in gLuke).

However, there was a census of Judea ordered by Quirinius when Herod Archelaus was kicked out in 6AD. And that makes sense because, prior to that time, Judea was a client state so Rome would not have directly taxed it. Once it became a province, it would be subject to direct taxation and, hence, would have needed a census to determine the taxable population.

So, by far the most likely scenario is that the author of gLuke was referring to this census but got his facts a bit wrong. He made way bigger whoppers than that one.

Just to be clear: there is no evidence of anything in the Bible. It's a collection of stories, opinions, lessons and prophecies.

That's too strong of language.

There's little evidence for a lot of the big claims (such as a global flood). However, there's quite a bit of evidence for people, places, and some of the events.

The bible is a collection of writings by multiple authors over almost a millennium. How accurate it is depends entirely on who is writing about what.

That's not "evidence". The bible mentions Babylon and Babylon existed, but the bible mentioning Babylon is no evidence of Babylon's existence. In this sentence, I'm mentioning the Sun, and it exists, but I provide no evidence whatsoever.

I may have misinterpreted what you are saying. When I read this

> there is no evidence of anything in the Bible

I interpreted it as you saying "Nothing in the bible has corroborating evidence". Not "the bible is not evidence for anything".

The bible mentions the sun and we have corroborating evidence that the sun does indeed exist. The bible's mention of the sun alone isn't evidence for it's existence.

That said, the bible does provide some soft evidence. Like I mentioned, the fact that Jesus probably existed isn't in that the bible says he existed, but rather the fact that the bible makes errors in his history likely to cover up well known facts about him at the time.

An example of 2 figures that likely didn't exist in the bible are Moses and Abraham.

> but rather the fact that the bible makes errors in his history likely to cover up well known facts about him at the time.

Out of curiosity what errors are you referring to?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42452217

why hold a specific set of writings to a different standard than other books from the same area and timeframe? all texts hold a non-zero evidential value regardless to how people treat those texts outside of academic processes. you don´t take them at face value of course but neither other texts.

> why hold a specific set of writings to a different standard than other books from the same area and timeframe?

I don't? I know more about the bible than other writings at the time just because of upbringing/curiosity but I don't particularly hold it in high regard.

> all texts hold a non-zero evidential value regardless to how people treat those texts outside of academic processes. you don´t take them at face value of course but neither other texts.

I agree. How strong the evidence for a writing will is will be based on corroborating evidence and other writings.

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