Hi Jehanne,
Sorry, I got waylaid from this discussion. I just wanted to acknowledge that the disputes about the Luke Census (as compared to the previous examples) is one of the better arguments against the Bible that I am familiar with.
It is basically an argument from silence, but it does have some merit. It's not definitive, but not completely unjustified either. We have found information, which can contend with those who argue, that a census would not have required them to travel, and we have found information which can validate the title given to the roman governor. The main crux of the issue is that the census is not mentioned by others (which to my understanding it is mostly just Josephus who chronicles a number of census's). So we do have the assumption that Josephus is correct and that Luke is wrong. And there are some who argue and give reason to possibly doubt Josephus as the one who is incorrect, as well as additional census's not recorded by him.
Any ways, I don't have time, to do all the research and get into a proper discussion for all this. But I did want to acknowledge that this is a decent argument as compared to the others which are bad logic, and bad history. The argument from silence is still a difficult one to build up (especially from that long ago), but Kudos for bringing it up, and I hope that in the future you would focus more on arguments like this rather than the others.
Sorry, I got waylaid from this discussion. I just wanted to acknowledge that the disputes about the Luke Census (as compared to the previous examples) is one of the better arguments against the Bible that I am familiar with.
It is basically an argument from silence, but it does have some merit. It's not definitive, but not completely unjustified either. We have found information, which can contend with those who argue, that a census would not have required them to travel, and we have found information which can validate the title given to the roman governor. The main crux of the issue is that the census is not mentioned by others (which to my understanding it is mostly just Josephus who chronicles a number of census's). So we do have the assumption that Josephus is correct and that Luke is wrong. And there are some who argue and give reason to possibly doubt Josephus as the one who is incorrect, as well as additional census's not recorded by him.
Any ways, I don't have time, to do all the research and get into a proper discussion for all this. But I did want to acknowledge that this is a decent argument as compared to the others which are bad logic, and bad history. The argument from silence is still a difficult one to build up (especially from that long ago), but Kudos for bringing it up, and I hope that in the future you would focus more on arguments like this rather than the others.
It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. - Alexander Vilenkin
If I am shown my error, I will be the first to throw my books into the fire. - Martin Luther
If I am shown my error, I will be the first to throw my books into the fire. - Martin Luther
