THE MYTHS OF JESUS?

    Every year around Christmas and Easter the major newsweeklies are prone to run feature articles about the historical Jesus, often written by prominent liberal scholars who claim to know what really happened 2,000 years ago. This year is no exception, and in the current issue of Newsweek we are treated to an article by Dr. Bart D. Ehrman entitled "The Myths of Jesus." Dr. Ehrman is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of several best-selling books. At one time he was an evangelical Christian. We understand that he currently considers himself to be an agnostic.
    Dr. Ehrman begins his article by mentioning several stories about the birth of Jesus that are not in the Bible, but then goes on to question the historical accuracy of the biblical narratives themselves. He discusses two alleged discrepancies in particular.
    The first surrounds the genealogy of Jesus. Both Matthew and Luke contain a geneaology; the problem is that the two genealogies are different from each other. According to Matthew, "Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ" (Matt. 1:16). Luke, on the other hand, says that Jesus was "(as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli" (Luke 3:23). So, then, who was Joseph's father, Jacob or Heli?
    Dr. Ehrman tries to tell us that neither Matthew nor Luke "has access to the kind of reliable data they need for the task. So they have provided genealogies that have been invented for the purpose and that, as a result, are necessarily at odds with each other."
    But how does Dr. Ehrman know this? The fact of the matter is that the ancient Jews kept meticulous genealogies. Josephus, for example, the ancient Jewish-Roman historian, could trace his own lineage, and he pointed out that the Jews were especially careful to document the lineage of the priests. The reason was obvious. The priesthood was a hereditary office; it was of critical importance to know who had the proper lineage. This would have been no less true for those who of the royal lineage of David.
    Why, then, do we have two different genealogies for Jesus? The answer should be readily apparent to a biblical scholar of Dr. Ehrman's caliber. There was undoubtedly a "levirate" marriage involved. Under Jewish law if a man died childless, leaving no heirs, a close male relative was expected to take the widow and father a child by her. The child thus conceived would be considered the heir of the deceased husband (Deut. 25:5-10). In this particular case we have it on the authority of an ancient church historian, Julius Africanus, that is what actually happened. To make a long story short, Jacob was Joseph's biological father, while Heli was the previously deceased legal father. Both genealogies are, in fact, correct.

Caesar Augustus

       The other issue that Dr. Ehrman discusses is a bit more difficult to resolve. This involves the census under Caesar Augustus. In the familiar words of Luke 2:1-3: "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, everyone into his own city." There problem here is that we have no record, outside of Luke's account, of this "census" or "register" (for that is what the Greek word actually means). Dr. Ehrman says that "we have good documentation about the reign of Caesar Augustus, and there never was a census of his entire empire."
    This is a considerable overstatement on Dr. Ehrman's part. The archives of ancient Rome have not survived the ravages of time, and as for ancient Roman historians, " . . . in the history of Dio Cassius there is a gap from 747-757 [7 B.C.-A.D. 3], -- the very period in which Luke states this taxing to have been held. Suetonius is very brief, as also Tacitus . . . It has often been remarked how little attention historians of that time gave to the most important measures of civil administration in comparison with military affairs, and even in comparison with things of a momentary popular interest, as games, public buildings, and the like" (Samuel J. Andrews, The Life of our Lord upon the Earth, Part I). It should be noted that Suetonius and Tacitus both lived in the 2^nd Century, after Luke, and that Dio Cassius lived even later, in the 3^rd Century. Luke, on the other hand, lived in the 1^st Century, and is believed to have originally come from Antioch, the capital of the Roman province of Syria. Thus Luke has an even better claim to be a primary source than the others.
    Dr. Ehrman has given us, in effect, an argument from silence. Because the records do not exist, the event did not happen. While it is certainly true that no surviving record of such a census has come down to us, there is nothing implausible in Luke's account. We know that Augustus was an energetic ruler who took matters firmly into hand. Like any good ruler he looked for the most efficient ways to raise revenue. We are also faced with the fact that both Matthew and Luke state that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, even though Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth. Why would Joseph have taken his pregnant wife on a hazardous trip to Bethlehem if there was no compelling necessity? Dr. Ehrman tells us that "it is a narrative designed to show how Jesus could have been born in Bethlehem – whence the Messiah was to come – when everyone knew in fact that he came from Nazareth." But could Mary have forgotten where she had given birth to her famous son? Could both Matthew and Luke have fabricated the story? What we have here is a classic example of a modern scholar making a bold assertion on the flimsiest of evidence.
    Dr. Ehrman concludes by saying "Conundrums such as these have been debated for many years, of course, with some Christian scholars and their lay followers finding ingenious solutions to them and more critical historians insisting that in fact they are bona fide problems that show that these Gospel sources, whatever else they are, are not historically reliable descriptions of what really happened when Jesus was born." We beg to differ with Dr. Ehrman. Matthew and Luke were in a far better position to know what happened in 1^st Century Palestine than the 19^th and 20^th Century critics in Germany and America. Whom should we believe?

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