For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Confused Ape]

Plus, depending on how you get the census working, it doesn't let the birth happen at 1CE, but a few years earlier or later. Here's a quote about that:

History gets messy in the gospels.

There's no discrepancy for anyone with a bit of imagination.

Attempts At Harmonisation

Traditional scholars, especially in past scholarship when Biblical inerrancy was more or less taken for granted, have sought to reconcile the two accounts. For the most part this has involved the suggestion of an earlier census carried out, or begun, during the reign of King Herod. It may have been in response to this problem that Tertullian, writing around 200, stated that the census had been taken by Gaius Sentius Saturninus (legate of Syria, 9 – 6 BC) rather than Quirinius.[26]

So there you are. Luke just got confused.

So there is no history of Herod wiping out baby boys because he wasn't around at the time he was supposed to have killed them!

Of course he was around - Tertullian solved the slight problem of the dates not matching.

Even if the dates had actually matched there still wouldn't have been references to the mythic formula story, though, because it's a mythic formula.

What's a special child worth if nobody tries to kill him? Moses escaped death by being floated down the Nile in a basket of bulrushes. Romulus and Remus were also put into a basket which floated down the Tiber. Hera tried to kill Heracles by sending two snakes to his cot but he managed to strangle them. Other heroes were left to die of exposure such as Paris and Oedipus. Herod turned out to be a convenient baddie for a Jesus death escape story because everyone would believe he was capable of it.

The lack of records is easily explained now for those who still want to believe. All it takes is a bit of Tertullian type imagination.

Estimates of the number of infants at the time in Bethlehem, a town with a total population of about 1000, would be about twenty.[6][7]

Of those scholars willing to grant the massacre's historicity, R. T. France argues for plausibility on the grounds, inter alia, that “the murder of a few infants in a small village [is] not on a scale to match the more spectacular assassinations recorded by Josephus”.[15] Schnackenburg follows this line also,[16] and Gordon Franz points to Josephus' failure to mention other pivotal events in the first century AD, such as "the episode of the golden Roman shields in Jerusalem which was the cause of the bad blood between Herod Antipas and Pontus (sic) Pilate".[17] In similar vein Barclay follows Carr in finding Josephus' silence not relevant, drawing a parallel with the diarist John Evelyn's failure to mention the massacre at Glencoe.[18]

Historians didn't think the death of twenty babies was worth mentioning. Problem solved.

When I was looking up these myths I found an interesting variation on the basket story from India about a character called Karna

Karna is one of the central characters in the epic Mahābhārata, from ancient India.

Karna's father was the solar deity Surya and his mother's name was Kunti. Karna was born before his mother's marriage to prince Pandu.[5] The story of Karna's miraculous birth is this:

When Kunti was a young woman, a wise though irascible old man, the sage Durvasa, visited her father's palace, where Kunti served him with utmost care for an entire year. Pleased by her service and hospitality, the sage foresaw that Kunti would have difficulty having a child after her marriage to Pandu, and granted her a boon to overcome this difficulty. By this boon she could call upon any god of her choice, and receive a child through him. Out of curiosity, Kunti still being unmarried, she decided to test the power of the mantra and called upon the god Surya. Compelled by the power of this mantra, Surya appeared before her and handed her a son, who was as radiant and powerful as Surya himself. The baby was wearing armour ('Kavacha') and a pair of earrings ('Kundala'). Though Kunti had not physically given birth to the baby, she was unwilling to be accused of being an unmarried mother and so with the help of her maid Dhatri, she placed the baby Karna in a basket and set him afloat on 'Ashwa' a tributary of the holy river Ganges, the Ashwanadi, in the hope that he would be taken in by another family.

The child Karna was found by Adhiratha, a charioteer of King Dhritarashtra of Hastinapur. Adhiratha and his wife Radha raised the boy as their own son and named him Vasusena. He also came to be known as Radheya, the son of Radha.

Babies floating down the river is such a popular mythic theme that it was used in the movie, Willow

Maybe the only reason why Jesus didn't set sail in a basket is because there was no convenient river near Bethlehem.