It’s one of the black-and-white irreconcilable contradictions in the Bible. The gospel traditionally attributed to Matthew puts Jesus birth during the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE. The gospel traditionally attributed to Luke puts Jesus birth during the census of Quirinius. Quirinius wasn’t Herod’s successor, he was Herod’s successor’s successor, and his reign didn’t begin until around 6 CE. The other canonical gospels don’t have nativity accounts.
Well, not so much. Because the bible doesn’t mention the dates of life and rule of the two figures, so you have to go outside the bible to find the problem - so it’s not a contradiction in the bible but a contradiction between the bible and other sources.
(And for biblical literalists, there is no contest of course!)
I wouldn’t say it is a contradiction in the bible because the bible doesn’t say e.g [Romans 67:420, ‘And henceforth ye shall keep a calendar of AD and the Datum between AD and BC shall be Jesus’ Birth/Jesus’ death. So speaks God’] - what I’m saying is it was a stylistic decision by the Roman Catholic state a good while after Jesus’ death.
I also like how Jesus has two different lineages depending on which gospel you read. Apologists try to say one of them is about Mary’s parents and not Joseph’s, but the text is explicit.
Matthew 1: “Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus…”
Luke 3: “Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli.”
So was Joseph’s father Jacob, or Heli?
There are many more. The bible is literally unbelievable. Chapter 2 lists a different creation order from chapter 1. Anyone claiming it contains no contradictions is drinking the kool-aid. It would be funny if people weren’t dying for it.
My understanding is that any sort of a census of the sort described in Luke (requiring males to return to the towns of their birth for registration) probably did not actually occur, as it would have created impractical logistical issues.
Most critical biblical scholars agree that the Gospel of Luke is erroneous.[10] Its author seems to have invoked the census as Joseph and Mary’s motivation for departing “their own city”[11] of Nazareth, Galilee, for Bethlehem.[12][13][14] Additionally, the author may have wished to contrast Joseph and Mary’s obedience to the Roman edict with the rebelliousness of the Zealots, and also to find a prophetic fulfilment of Psalm 87:6: “In the census of the peoples, [princes] will be born there.”[12][b][c] (Luke and Matthew also give different accounts of the family’s departure from Bethlehem.)[17][d] Catholic priest and biblical scholar Joseph Fitzmyer states:[20]
It is clear that the census is a purely literary device used by him to associate Mary and Joseph, residents of Nazareth, with Bethlehem, the town of David, because he knows of a tradition, also attested in Matthew 2, that Jesus was also born in Bethlehem. He is also aware of a tradition about the birth of Jesus in the days of Herod, as is Matthew; Luke’s form of the tradition, unlike Matthew’s, tied the birth in a vague way to a time of political disturbance associated with a census.
Scholars point out that there was no single census of the entire Roman Empire under Augustus and the Romans did not directly tax client kingdoms; further, no Roman census required that people travel from their own homes to those of their ancestors. A census of Judaea would not have affected Joseph and his family, who lived in Galilee under a different ruler; the revolt of Judas of Galilee suggests that Rome’s direct taxation of Judaea was new at the time.[21] Catholic priest and biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown postulates that Judas’s place of origin may have led the author of Luke to think that Galilee was subject to the census.[22][e] Brown also points out that in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke the Evangelist (the traditional author of both books) dates Judas’s census-incited revolt as following the rebellion of Theudas, which took place four decades later.[22][f][g] Protestant theologian and biblical scholar E. P. Sanders concedes that, because revolts followed both Herod’s death and the census, Luke’s author may have “decided to elaborate the event [as] a reason for Joseph to travel … to Bethlehem”, calling this “a relatively slight historical error for an ancient author”.[8]
Also Luke was written ~20 years after Matthew. The oldest copy of Matthew 1-16 predates our oldest copies of the other gospels by a long time IIRC. Kind of circumstantial but it is indirect evidence that the Matthew account might be older and less embellished.
Just picking a small nit: Matthew is not considered the oldest gospel, Mark is. There may be fragments of Matthew that are the oldest, but it is generally agreed that the writer of Matthew was influenced by the already-written gospel of Mark. Luke was written around the same time as Matthew, or a few (5-10) years later.
It’s an early form of a 419 scammer’s typo-riddled email or letter. Filter out anyone who pays attention to inconsistencies and you can squeeze some easy money from the gullible leftovers.
There’s also a lot of stuff that’s not meant to be taken literally. The text is full of similes and metaphors that are a lot less clear today than they were at time of writing. For example, many numbers in there are just used to convey a vague serve sense of size. Sometimes concrete numbers just mean “many”, which was well-understood back then.
On top of that we have later edits for various reasons and assorted other sources of imprecision. The Bible makes a lot more sense as a book that’s not meant to be taken literally in it’s entirety. Of course figuring out what’s really meant isn’t very easy all this time later.
Plus what you pointed out. That’s also in there, probably especially by means of edits.
Numbers were often imbued with a mystical significance. For example, 40 with spans of time indicated that the time was chosen by God. 40 days and nights of the flood, the Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years, Jesus going into the desert for 40 days.
People in groups of 12 were chosen by God. 12 tribes of Israel, 144,000 (12x12x1000) saved in the Rapture, 12 apostles, etc.
3 and 7 were similarly associated with God. Tions of examples.
It’s one of the black-and-white irreconcilable contradictions in the Bible. The gospel traditionally attributed to Matthew puts Jesus birth during the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE. The gospel traditionally attributed to Luke puts Jesus birth during the census of Quirinius. Quirinius wasn’t Herod’s successor, he was Herod’s successor’s successor, and his reign didn’t begin until around 6 CE. The other canonical gospels don’t have nativity accounts.
Well, not so much. Because the bible doesn’t mention the dates of life and rule of the two figures, so you have to go outside the bible to find the problem - so it’s not a contradiction in the bible but a contradiction between the bible and other sources.
(And for biblical literalists, there is no contest of course!)
I wouldn’t say it is a contradiction in the bible because the bible doesn’t say e.g [Romans 67:420, ‘And henceforth ye shall keep a calendar of AD and the Datum between AD and BC shall be Jesus’ Birth/Jesus’ death. So speaks God’] - what I’m saying is it was a stylistic decision by the Roman Catholic state a good while after Jesus’ death.
(Unless someone can correct me on that.)
I also like how Jesus has two different lineages depending on which gospel you read. Apologists try to say one of them is about Mary’s parents and not Joseph’s, but the text is explicit.
Matthew 1: “Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus…”
Luke 3: “Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli.”
So was Joseph’s father Jacob, or Heli?
There are many more. The bible is literally unbelievable. Chapter 2 lists a different creation order from chapter 1. Anyone claiming it contains no contradictions is drinking the kool-aid. It would be funny if people weren’t dying for it.
This feels like one of those riddles where the answer is that the doctor is a woman. Today, Heli is considered a feminine name.
However, the biblical figure was male.
A slightly longer quote from the verse makes that clearer
So on average our calendar is mostly close enough
My understanding is that any sort of a census of the sort described in Luke (requiring males to return to the towns of their birth for registration) probably did not actually occur, as it would have created impractical logistical issues.
searches
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census_of_Quirinius
Also Luke was written ~20 years after Matthew. The oldest copy of Matthew 1-16 predates our oldest copies of the other gospels by a long time IIRC. Kind of circumstantial but it is indirect evidence that the Matthew account might be older and less embellished.
Just picking a small nit: Matthew is not considered the oldest gospel, Mark is. There may be fragments of Matthew that are the oldest, but it is generally agreed that the writer of Matthew was influenced by the already-written gospel of Mark. Luke was written around the same time as Matthew, or a few (5-10) years later.
It’s an early form of a 419 scammer’s typo-riddled email or letter. Filter out anyone who pays attention to inconsistencies and you can squeeze some easy money from the gullible leftovers.
There’s also a lot of stuff that’s not meant to be taken literally. The text is full of similes and metaphors that are a lot less clear today than they were at time of writing. For example, many numbers in there are just used to convey a vague
servesense of size. Sometimes concrete numbers just mean “many”, which was well-understood back then.On top of that we have later edits for various reasons and assorted other sources of imprecision. The Bible makes a lot more sense as a book that’s not meant to be taken literally in it’s entirety. Of course figuring out what’s really meant isn’t very easy all this time later.
Plus what you pointed out. That’s also in there, probably especially by means of edits.
Numbers were often imbued with a mystical significance. For example, 40 with spans of time indicated that the time was chosen by God. 40 days and nights of the flood, the Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years, Jesus going into the desert for 40 days.
People in groups of 12 were chosen by God. 12 tribes of Israel, 144,000 (12x12x1000) saved in the Rapture, 12 apostles, etc.
3 and 7 were similarly associated with God. Tions of examples.
Luke I’m Your Fatha… sorry wrong fake story.