Faith claims elsewhere that the Bible is completely reliable as history. I'm going to dicusss one example where the evidence is that the Bible is not reliable.
While there are a number of discrepencies in the Nativity accounts of Matthew and Luke, this one involves the historical evidence. I am prepared to discuss the other discrepencies in this thread, but only after the main point introduced here has been dealt with.
Here are the facts:
1) Matthew dates the birth of Jesus to the latter years of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:22 makes this certain).
2) Luke places Jesus' birth during a Roman census of Judaea (at the least) under Quirinius the then Governor of Syria, in the reign of Augustus
3) In
Antiquities 18 Josephus records a Roman census of Judaea under the new Governor of Syria, Quirinius - when the Romans annexed Judaea. This ended the reign of Herod the Great's successor (in Judaea), Archelaus
Josephus' story makes sense - with Judaea incorporated into the Roman province of Syria a census would be needed for the Roman taxes. It would not be needed before, because client states raised money as they saw fit, although they did pay tribute to Rome.
Given that the census recorded by Josephus is a good match for Luke's story, and it is not very likely that there was an earlier census at all, we should take it as the one referred to by Luke unless we have a better match.
I present the following challenge.
Can anyone show extra-Biblical evidence of a Roman census in Judaea, under Quirinius during the reign of Herod the Great ? Or indeed of any census that is a better match for Luke's story.
Quirinius was an important man in his time and a census of a nominally independent state would be a significant event that should not have escaped the attention of the historians (especially Josephus). If it had actually happened we should be able to do better than simply assuming that both the Nativity accounts are accurate (since they appear to disagree on other points this is not a safe assumption anyay). If we cannot then the evidence does not support the accuracy of the Bible of this point - on the face of it, one or both of the two Nativity accounts is probably wrong.
Two pieces piece of advice: Remember to take into account the fact that the people of Judaea were not Roman citizens (nor indeed were most of the people in the provinces). Also remember that the challenge is to produce extra-Biblical evidence, not speculate on how it might have happened.
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