{"id":14344,"date":"2025-12-10T13:18:51","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T19:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/?p=14344"},"modified":"2025-12-10T13:20:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T19:20:26","slug":"jesus-bday-per-matthew-or-luke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/jesus-bday-per-matthew-or-luke\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus BDay per Matthew or Luke?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Below is the summary by Claude.ai of the scholarly article by Mark D. Smith (see PDF in his directory in Dropbox), challenging the traditional dating of Jesus&#8217;s birth to 4-6 BCE during Herod the Great&#8217;s reign, arguing instead that Jesus was born in 6 CE during Quirinius&#8217;s census.  In my words, he is giving priority to the writer of Luke, accurately citing the census by Quirinius for which there are records when it occurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Main Arguments<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Against the Traditional View:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The traditional dating relies on harmonizing Matthew&#8217;s mention of Herod the Great with Luke&#8217;s reference to Quirinius&#8217;s census<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Two common attempts to resolve this conflict both fail:\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Two terms for Quirinius<\/strong>: There&#8217;s no historical room for Quirinius to have served as Syrian legate before 6 CE, as that period was occupied by Saturninus (10\/9-7\/6 BCE) and Varus (7\/6-4 BCE)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Luke made an error<\/strong>: This assumes Luke included easily falsifiable information that would undermine his credibility as a careful historian<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Smith&#8217;s Alternative:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Luke 1:5&#8217;s &#8220;Herod, King of Judaea&#8221; refers to Herod Archelaus (ethnarch 4 BCE-6 CE), not Herod the Great<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Archelaus was popularly called both &#8220;Herod&#8221; and &#8220;king&#8221; despite his official title of ethnarch<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Jesus was born in 6 CE during Quirinius&#8217;s actual census after Archelaus was deposed<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The census didn&#8217;t require ancestral registration (as commonly misinterpreted); Joseph voluntarily went to Bethlehem, likely to register property or claim tax benefits<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Regarding Matthew:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Matthew&#8217;s infancy narrative serves a theological\/literary purpose\u2014creating a Moses typology<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Matthew needed a baby-killing tyrant for this parallel, making Herod the Great essential to his story regardless of historical accuracy<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Matthew likely adapted chronology to fit his theological scheme, not to record history<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The article concludes that Luke&#8217;s account is historically reliable while Matthew&#8217;s is primarily theological, placing Jesus&#8217;s birth about a decade later than traditionally accepted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Below is the summary by Claude.ai of the scholarly article by Mark D. Smith (see PDF in his directory in Dropbox), challenging the traditional dating of Jesus&#8217;s birth to 4-6 BCE during Herod the Great&#8217;s reign, arguing instead that Jesus was born in 6 CE during Quirinius&#8217;s census. In my words, he is giving priority [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[97,96,156],"class_list":["post-14344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jesus","tag-jesus","tag-luke","tag-matthew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14344"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14348,"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14344\/revisions\/14348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}