Mary's 10 Year Pregnancy!

[DeistPaladin]

I am not an Historian nor a Bible scholar, but I found this interesting. However, it isn't convincing one way or the other:

http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/200...px#Article

There's a logical fallacy called Ad Hoc Hypothesis, the abuse of which involves coming up with improvised and unsupported ad-ons that dismiss any contrary evidence, repeated as needed until all contrary evidence is dismissed. It's a mental slight of hand that is intended to wear down the skeptic and shift the burden of proof so that the skeptic must prove a negative.

The nature of the fallacy is demonstrated by the Monte Python Dead-Parrot sketch where the pet shop owner keeps improvising ad hocs to dismiss any evidence that the parrot is dead, ranging from "he's resting" to "pining for the fjords".





The logical counter to the endless stream of Ad Hoc Hypotheses is Occam's Razor. A hypothesis with many ad ons is complex. The simpler explanation is that it's exactly what it looks like.

So yes, you can speculate that when Luke said "ruler" (hegemon) that he really meant "administrator of a census being conducted in Herod the Great's client kingdom" but this seems really unlikely. You'd have to further speculate that he was called away from being governor of a province in the middle of modern-day Turkey (where he was at that time) to perform less important bureaucratic duties but that seems really unlikely. You'd need to further propose that Augustus in doing so would be stepping on the toes of the actual governor of Syria but there's no evidence for it. You'd also need to muse that the census in 9 CE was dragged out for five years to make JC even plausibly young enough to be "about 30" at the time of JtB's ministry and then truncate JtB's ministry to just a year and then... (really, long list of further ad hocs ensue).

Or you could just say it's what it looks like. Luke said "ruler" which refers to Quirinius' term as governor.