Responding to a Critical Scholar’s Apologetic Argument  I recently caught some heat from some other scholars on social media for characterizing as apologetic one of the chapters in Sabina Huner's 2019 book Papy and the Social World of the New Testament. And in this video, I'm going to demonstrate that my characterization was accurate. Hey everybody, I'm Dan Mlelen. I'm a scholar of the Bible and religion. And this is the cover to Huner's 2019 book published by Cambridge University Press. And before I go any further, I want to point out that this is a serious and valuable work of critical scholarship. And if you are at all interested in the social world of the New Testament, I highly recommend you pick up this book. However, the third chapter, which you can see here, is apologetic in nature. And what I mean by that is that it is trying to play a little fast and loose with the data and the sources to jin up a sense of plausibility for the historical claims. And in this video, I'm going to demonstrate exactly why. But to start, this chapter is not the kind of apologetics I normally engage because this is a serious critical scholar who is not even arguing for the historicity of Luke chapter 2. What she's arguing is that these claims would not have set off the alarm bells in the heads of the intended audience like it does for critical scholars today. In other words, what Luke chapter 2 is describing is something that would have made a lot more sense to someone who understood the Roman census system in the first century CE. So she's framing this as not arguing for the historicity of the account, but arguing for a sense of historicity to a reader in the original audience. That may not seem like a distinction with a difference to y'all, but I think it does move this a little closer to the scholarly side of the spectrum between apologetics and scholarship. However, it is still quite apologetic. And there are three main concerns with the claims of Luke 2 that are going to be engaged in this chapter. First is the notion that a census in this time period would have required anyone return to their ancestral hometown. Second would be the notion that Rome would impose a census upon a client kingdom, specifically Herod's kingdom. Third would be the notion that Corinius had anything to do with a census that took place during or very shortly after the reign of Herod. Since Corinius's census took place in 6 CE after the annexation of Herod's kingdom by Rome, let's start with the first claim down in the red box. We know from the tax lists that have survived on Papyrus that everybody had to register in the place where they lived. People's places of residence and the places where they owned property were normally identical. But when somebody also owned property elsewhere, such as land or houses, perhaps an inheritance, which was now let out to tenants or unoccupied, he also had to travel to that location to declare what he owned there himself. Moreover, several decades ago, a papyrus came to light in Egypt which showed that some people were indeed required to return home and register in the place where their families lived. The document in question is an edict issued in Alexandria by the prefect of Egypt in 104 CE. And then we see the beginning of the text. Gas Vivious Maximus, Prefect of Egypt, declares, "The census by household has begun, and it is accordingly necessary that all persons who are not resident at home for one reason or another at this time return to their home places in order to undergo the usual registration formalities and to attend to the cultivation of land, which is their concern." Now, I have put a red box around a sentence near the bottom because this is critical. Everybody else must return to the place of residence of their family within 30 days. Now, Huner's claim was that this edict provided evidence that people were compelled to, as she says, return home and register in the place where their families lived. Now, usually when people cite this edict, they cite the part that says anyone who is away from their gnomes, and a gnome is an Egyptian administrative district, kind of like a county, must return to their own hearth ephesios, which means fireplace, its matonomy for where you live, your home. That's what people usually quote. But that has absolutely nothing to do with returning to an ancestral hometown. This sentence that I have highlighted here would seem to contribute to the conclusion that people could have been required to return to the places where their families were from. Again, it says everybody else must return to the place of residence of their family within 30 days. Now, my main concern is that that is not in this Greek papyrus. That sentence is not to be found in that papyrus. Now, let's take a look at a critical edition of this papyrus. We can go to Greek Papyrie in the British Museum catalog with text. This is volume 3. You can find this for free online. And we have the introduction to the critical edition of Papyrus 9004. And you can read that if you want, but basically what it's saying is what we have is a letter book where somebody has recorded the text of all the letters that they have received. And on this particular piece of papyrus, we have three letters. The end of one letter, the entirety of a second letter, and then in a second column, we have the entirety, although fragmentaryary of the third letter. And the third letter is where we have this reference to a census. Here is an image of the entire piece of papyrus. You can see it's two columns. On the left you have the end of the first letter, the entirety of the second letter, and then on the right you have the third letter which has the reference to the census. And here is a much better color photograph of the right column which has the reference to the census. And just out of sheer pettiness, I want to point to an image that an online apologist recently posted where they were defending the historicity of Luke's census in Luke chapter 2. and they showed an image of the papyrus and put a red box around the completely unrelated letters, the end of the first letter, most of the second letter. And then they shared a translation and this translation comes from a man named Casey Hansen who is a wonderful scholar. However, they have changed one word in this translation and I don't think they knew what they were doing. Uh you can see in the bold the census by household having begun. It is essential that all those who are away from their homes be summoned to return to their own hearths. Only the text doesn't say homes. As I pointed out earlier, it says gnomes, an Egyptian administrative district, not your home. Uh I think maybe whoever copied the text just didn't recognize that the N was not an H. Uh and it made more sense to them as homes. But this has nothing to do with Huner's text. Getting back to the critical edition in the red box you can see the beginning of the letter and then the rest of it follows on the next page. And the big lacuna in the bottom of this is is where we just don't have the papyrus. Uh and here's the issue. This sentence about being required to return to the homes of your families would have to be in that lacuna in that space where we do not have any text. Now I have looked at other editions of this. For instance, we have this lobe classical library volume select papyran five volumes volume two non literary papy and public documents. Here is the Greek transcription of lines 18 through 38. So it doesn't include the bottom fiveish lines. But if you look at the bottom of the English translation, starting after the ellipses, Fesus prefectus alle whom I have appointed for this purpose, from whom those who have shown their presence to be necessary shall receive signed permits in accordance with this edict up to the 30th of the present month at peif and then the text is damaged after that and it doesn't include the last few lines. But if we go back to what Hubner said was in this text, we have everybody else must return to the place of residence of their family within 30 days. So that's the sentence in which we should find a Greek reference to returning to the places of their families. It's just not there. I don't know where Huner found this Greek that she translated this way. I cannot find it. If someone knows that we have recovered that little fragment that goes in the center of that papyrus. Nobody on the internet seems to know about it. I don't know where she got the Greek for that translation. I cannot find it. If you know where that came from, please let me know. I would like to know because it seems like the evidence for interpreting this papyrus as a requirement to return to where your family is from is fabricated or at least hallucinated. I don't know where this is coming from, but it's not in that papyrus. But let's go to our conclusion of the argument about this issue. It was noted even by ancient commentators that this return to one's ancestors home in the Gospel of Luke described something which was not self-evident and called for an explanation. John Chrysstm, the patriarch of Constantinople, explained in a sermon from the late 4th century that the journey had been necessary because Joseph was only temporarily resident in Nazareth, but a citizen of Bethlehem, where he likely also owned some land. This explanation is supported by what we have discovered in our Egyptian papyrie. Various groups, workers from the countryside in Alexandria, as well as individuals who owned property in several different locations, needed to leave their places of residence and register elsewhere. In this light, Luke's description seems thoroughly realistic if one accepts that his intent was to leave his readers with the impression that Joseph's family was originally from Bethlehem and own some property there. Now I think there are two different arguments being blended together here and I think one of them actually has merit and the other does not. The relevance of papyrus London 9004 has no merit. There's nothing in that papyrus that supports what's going on in Luke. The other argument that if you owned property in some other place you were required to go there and declare that you own that property. That I think has merit. That is plausible. However, there are some complications with assuming that that's what's going on behind the story in Luke 2. To begin, the author of the Gospel of Luke never says that Joseph owned property there. In fact, in describing the census, the author says that everybody went to their own cities. And then at the end of chapter 2, we see that Joseph and Mary are said to return to their own city of Nazareth. So the notion that Joseph was just temporarily residing in Nazareth but really lived in Bethlehem or had citizenship in Bethlehem doesn't really fit what is stated in Luke 2. Luke never mentions owning property. But that is certainly plausible. However, the story complicates this a little bit because if he lived with Mary, who is pregnant in Nazareth, but was required to travel down to Bethlehem to just submit a declaration of the ownership of property there. He didn't have to bring Mary with him. She's pregnant. That would be an uncomfortable, problematic journey. She could have just stayed at home. They would have had people helping out at home. if he owned property in Bethlehem, they were well enough off that they had people around them that could have helped Mary while he said, "I'm going to bounce for a few days. I'm going to drop off this declaration and I'll be right back." So, the text of Luke 2 could plausibly have been understood in the first century CE as an indirect reference to Joseph owning property elsewhere. Somebody who knew how the censuses worked might have heard the story and been like, "Oh, he is from the lineage in the house of David. Well, I guess that means he owns property there because that would be the only reason to need to go to another city which is not your own city." Sure, that's plausible, not probable, because why didn't they just say that that he owned property in Bethlehem? Saying he was descended from the lineage in the house of David is an entirely different claim that would be unrelated to his actual reason for going down there which would only be very tangentially and indirectly related to why he would be going down there. Additionally, that they would have to be on the bottom floor of the house and Jesus would have to be put in a manger indicates that they were not the owners of whatever house they were staying in. So, what kind of property was it that Joseph owned down there that other people took priority in that property? It doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. I don't think it's probable, but I think that's the most plausible part of the entire argument. But I think we have to entirely omit Papyrus London 9004 because I don't think it's relevant. and the relevance that is argued by Huner seems to me to come from a part of the papyrus which as far as I can tell was just fabricated. Now let's move on to issue number two. The notion that Rome would impose a census upon a client kingdom. Here's what Huner has to say about this. A passage in the annals of Tacitus suggests, however, that a census in the territory of a Roman client king was not an impossibility. At the same time, the clite, a tribe subject to the Capidocian Archelaus, retreated to the heights of Mount Taurus because they were compelled in Roman fashion to render an account of their revenue and submit to tribute. There they defended themselves by means of the nature of the country against the king's unwarlike troops till Marcus Tbellius, whom Vatellius, the governor of Syria, sent as his lieutenant with 4,000 legionnaires and some picked auxiliaries, surrounded with his lines two hills occupied by the barbarians. The lesser of which was named Kadra and the other Dvara. Those who dared to sally out he reduced to surrender by the sword, the rest by drought. Tacitus makes reference to a Roman census in 36 CE in the kingdom of Archelaus II. The Roman client king of Celicia Trachea. The Roman governor of Syria is depicted as having assisted the client king in holding a census on the Roman model in the territory he ruled. This means we can add an additional category to the two varieties of Roman census normally distinguished. We have one the imperial census, two, the provincial census and three now also the client state census presumably conducted by client rulers surveying their subjects according to the model of the Roman provincial census, most probably on Roman orders and with the support of Roman units. Now, you see a footnote marker at the end of that statement, and I was hoping for some kind of data in support of this claim, and there was none. The footnote just says, "While evidence is lacking, it seems quite probable that Augustus also had censuses conducted in other client kingdoms such as Thrace, Komaini, and Moritania." Now the reason I wanted substantiation is because the characterization of this passage from Tacitus is inaccurate because Hudner says that it was Rome that was carrying out this census and that Archelaus II was just facilitating it for them. But that's not what the text says. What we have in the text is that a tribe was being subjected to a census in the Roman fashion and literally the Latin is according to our model. And then it says they fought back and Archelaus was unable to subdue them and then some Romans came in and were able to defeat them. This doesn't suggest that Archelaus was conducting this census under the ages of the Roman Empire. It suggests that Archelaus was doing it himself, got into trouble because some people fought back and had to call in Roman reinforcements. Now, Huner doesn't seem to think that is the best reading and suggests, as we see here, that this was done most probably on Roman orders and with the support of Roman units. I looked at multiple different pieces of scholarship and commentaries on this part of Tacitus and I could not find a single scholar who argued anything that fit with Huner's reading. In fact, everyone who addressed it interpreted it the same way that I did. And we can start way back in 1890 with Emil Shurer's uh history of the Jewish people in the time of Jesus Christ. And I'm not using an English translation because the section I'm going to read from is not in any of the English versions of this text. But if we go to segment 17, which talks about the census of Corinius, page 439, we see a little German paragraph here, which basically says, hey, this text does not say that Rome did it. This text says Archelaus did it and then had to get Rome involved. And in case you don't trust my German, and that's okay. I don't trust it all that often either. Here is what Google translate says Shurer wrote in English. But it is not stated here that a Roman census was held in the territory of King Archelaus, but only that Archelaus wanted to conduct a census among the subject to him according to the Roman model literally in our manner. Nostroman modem and then we can look at Forno's 1896 commentary on the annals of Tacitus. Starting in the bottom left, the expression here seems to show as Shurer points out that this was not an imposition by the Romans of a census and tribute on the kingdom of a Rexokius, but an attempt by the king to organize his system of taxation on the Roman model. The rebellion is against him, his Roman protectors, only intervening by reason of his weakness. And then from 1965 we have Costermanman's Analine uh band 2 books four through six. This is in book six part 41. Here again we have some German and here is what the German says. Apparently an attempt had been made to organize the taxes according to the Roman model to defer Kensus perhaps every 5 years. Compare Markart regarding the payment of the tributum. This led to unrest as the people occupied the heights of the Taurus mountains and from there easily defended themselves against the rather ineffective troops of the local ruler. Thus, the Romans although not directly involved were forced to intervene. And then from 2017, we have Woodman's commentary on the annals of Tacitus book five and six in the red box. Norstrom modem seems to show that this was not an imposition by the Romans of a census and tribute on the kingdom of a rex soius but an attempt by the king to organize his system of taxation on the Roman model. So here Woodman is just quoting Fno. He continues the situation is thus the converse of that in which rulers sent out from Rome failed to adapt to local conditions. So, as far as I can tell, the reading of Tacatus that Huner asserts here doesn't fit the overwhelming consensus. Again, everyone I was able to find talking about what's going on here said that this was not Rome's doing. This was Archelaus's doing, and Rome was forced to intervene when things got out of his control. I cannot find any peer-reviewed publication on Tacitus' annals that agrees with Huner's interpretation which she just asserts. She provides no scholarly support for her interpretation of that passage in Tacitus. So let's go on to the third issue which is that Corinius's census was started in 6 CE a full 10 years after the death of Herod the great during whose reign Luke chapter 1 places the birth of Jesus or within about 6 months or so of his death at the very very latest. Here's what Huner has to say. Justin in his apology for the Christian faith writes around the middle of the second century. Now there is a village in the land of the Jews 35 stadia from Jerusalem in which Jesus Christ was born as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing made under Kenius your first procurator in Judea. Justin is directly highlighting the possibility of consulting the Roman archives to access the census data given by the family of Jesus. Here we know from Roman Egypt that it was quite straightforward for the local population to obtain a copy of census declarations from earlier censuses from the archive in their gnome. Historic census declarations could be retrieved from the local archives even after many decades in order to resolve disputes over inheritance and similar issues. Justin's apology was addressed to Emperor Antonius Pius and the Senate. And if the census data had not actually existed, it would have been quite easy for them to demonstrate that Justin was lying. It is interesting to note that Justin does not refer to Corinius Corinius as governor, but as procurator, an entirely different office. The governor of an imperial province such as the province of Syria, the Legatus Agusti was normally tasked with managing military and administrative affairs and with the administration of justice at the highest level. Financial affairs were however normally the responsibility of an independent procurator of finance who was directly responsible to the emperor and was tasked with collecting taxes and levies and above all with the organization of the provincial census. We have for example inscriptions referring to a procurator adenus echipendos capaciier at Armenia minorus a census administrator in Capidoshia and Armenia and to a procurator adensus panonier a census administrator in pannonia when Herod died in 4 B.CE CE Varus was governor of Syria and a certain Sabinus the man who confiscated the temple treasure of Herod in Judea was his procurator. The Greek translation of procurator used by Josephus is hegamon or epitropos. The term procurator never refers to a governor. Luke also uses the present participle hegenevon to be a hegeimon to refer to the role of Corinius indicating that he might in fact have held the position of procurator. Luke certainly does not call Quirinius a governor, a term normally rendered in Greek as thros. Quirinius could then have taken a census in the function of a procurator of finance, a treasurer subordinate to the governor of Syria. So what Hunner is arguing is that maybe prior to Corinius's time as the legot in Syria where he conducted the census in 6 CE maybe Corinius was procurator and this probably took place between 8 and 6 BCE and that's when the census would have been conducted. The only problem is what Justin said was that he was procurator in Judea. And if this happened between 8 and 6 BCE, there was no procurator in Judea because Judea was a part of Herod's client kingdom. He would have had to have been procurator in Syria and then to have overseen a client kingdom census. And as we've already seen, the only argument for a client kingdom census falls apart once you accurately read the one passage from Tacotus that could seem to support that. So what Justin claims is that Corinius was procurator in Judea when this census happened. The only time when there was a Roman official in Judea conducting a census was when Quirinius was leot in Syria and oversaw the census in Judea because it had just been annexed and Judea was subordinate to the province of Syria. And so the officials in Syria would have administered what was going on in Judea until they had their own officials put in place. So what Justin is talking about makes most sense as a reference to Quirinius's census that took place in 6 CE. And what Hunner's argument entirely ignores is that Justin cannot have been referring accurately or historically or plausibly to Corinius as a procurator in Judea between 8 and 6 BCE because again Judea was not a province of Rome. Judea had no procurator between 8 and 6 BCE. Additionally, a procurator ship in Syria between 8 and 6 B.CE kind of becomes entangled with some of the other things we know about the career of Corinius in this time period. We know he was named console in 12 B.CE by Caesar. We know that around 3 B.CE CE when a lot of the hostilities with the tribal groups in Asia Minor finally ceased, he was given honors because of his role leading a military campaign against the homonies in Galatia, Celicia or Kilikia. And this ended by 3 B.CE and started somewhere between around 5 and 8 B.CE. And so depending on how long that military campaign lasted, Quirinius may have been legit in Galatia Kilakia while Huner is claiming he is a procurator in Syria. We don't know for sure because we don't have firm dates. We're trying to triangulate a bunch of different information to try to figure out when these things started and ended. And we don't know for sure. But there's more. Justin and Tertullian both highlight independently of one another that the documents from the census relating to the family of Jesus were available for consultation in the Roman archives. If this had been untrue, it would have been an incredible claim to make in light of the ease with which documents in the archives could be retrieved and consulted. We've already seen what Justin said about Corinius as procurator in Judea cannot have been accurate. So, we already know that what Justin claimed wasn't accurate. The notion that they would not have said anything inaccurate because they were writing to the emperor of Rome who could have just gone downstairs and checked this for himself presupposes that they actually read it and presupposes that they would have taken time to fact check every little detail. They wouldn't have cared. they wouldn't have taken the time to go factch checkck something like this because they had a bunch of other reasons to reject the supernatural claims that were being made in these texts. So I don't think this is a good argument particularly in light of the fact that it entirely ignores that what Justin claims doesn't work with the data. Now, Huner goes on, "The simplest solution to the puzzles thrown up by this much discussed passage appears to be that the Gospel of Luke made reference to Corinius not as governor but as procurator. It is clear from other sources that Gaas Centius Saturnus was governor in Syria from 9 to6 B.CE. The correct translation of Luke 2:1 should then read, "In those days, a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered." This was the first registration taken under the procurator Quirinius from Syria. Again, what Justin says is that he was procurator in Judea. So, this does not work. And the notion that we should trust that Tertullan and Justin had access to a lot more data than we do and they wouldn't have lied because they could have been proven wrong is not a strong enough argument against this interpretation of the data which again is ignoring parts of the data. So I don't think this argument works either. But Huner has one more thing to say on this issue. If the census mentioned in the Gospel of Luke took place during the governorship of Saturninus rather than that of Corinius, the historical Jesus would have been born between 9 and 6 B.CE. We have already seen that the Egyptian census records show that the population had around 1 and a half years to report to the authorities for the purpose of registration after a census had been decreed. This would mean that a contemporary reader of the Gospel of Luke would have assumed that if Augustus had issued the edict in 8 B.CE, Jesus's family had registered in 7 or 6 B.CE. This also matches the account of Jesus's childhood given by Matthew which situates his birth and early childhood in the last few years of Herod's reign. And then from the conclusion both Matthew and Luke state that Jesus was born during the reign of King Herod who is definitely known to have died in 4 B.CE. Matthew places the birth of Jesus a few years before the death of Herod. According to Luke and Mark, Jesus began his work after being baptized in the Jordan by John who had begun to preach and baptize people in 28 CE and had been arrested shortly afterwards. Luke reports that Jesus was about 30 years old at this point. This makes it extremely doubtful that Luke was referring to the census of 6 CE in his retelling of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. If Jesus had been born in or close to 6 CE, he would only have been 21 or 22 years old in 28 B.CE. and that's just a typo. It should be 28 CE and not about 30. And he would have been born more than 9 years after Herod's death. Luke's statement about the census would then contradict both the other two dates given by Luke and Matthew. If Luke had been aiming to connect the birth of Jesus with a census under Augustus in order to give credibility to a journey to Bethlehem that was necessary for reasons of salvation history, he would have needed to stick to historical facts and to ensure that his description of how the census was conducted was in itself credible. And I believe he did do this. It seems considerably more plausible that a general Roman census in the entire territory of Herod would have prompted Joseph to travel from Galilee to the possessions of his family in Judea than that a later census taking place after the division of Herod's kingdom would have prompted him to travel out of the territory governed by Antipus and into the territory previously governed by Archelaus which had now been annexed by the Romans. I believe that this census in the kingdom of Herod was part of a general census in the province of Syria under the governor Centius Saturninus whose censuses are also mentioned by Tertullian. There would have been nothing new or unusual about a Roman provincial census in the province of Syria. By this point in time several censuses would undoubtedly already have been taken since the establishment of the province by Pompei in 63 B.CE. This time however the population was also counted in the neighboring kingdom of Herod and Quirinius as procurator was tasked with holding the census. Now, we've already talked about problems with all three of these issues. And Huner's arguments all have to be correct. So, we're arguing in each case that this is plausible. This is plausible. This is plausible. The plausibility of all three of them being correct is significantly lower than the plausibility of any one of them. But in this final argument, the idea is that the timeline doesn't match up given Luke says that Jesus was about 30 when this happened. However, this doesn't engage with the theory that I prefer and that many other scholars prefer that Luke 1 and 2 were a secondary addition to the Gospel of Luke. That were not written by the author of the Gospel of Luke. So, not only does that mean the timeline across the entire Gospel of Luke is irrelevant, it also means we don't have to try to attribute to the author of Luke 1 and 2 the same historical care and concern as we attribute to the rest of the Gospel of Luke. However, the rest of the Gospel of Luke does not show as high a degree of concern for historical and chronological accuracy as a lot of people claim because there's a reference to a census in Acts chapter 5, which was written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke, at least perhaps not chapters 1 and two, but the rest of the Gospel of Luke. And there is a chronological problem here as well. So starting in verse 34, but a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, respected by all the people, stood up and ordered the men to be put outside for a short time. Then he said to them, "Fellow Israelites, consider carefully what you propose to do to these men. For some time ago, Theodas rose up claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about 400, joined him, but he was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and disappeared. after him. Judas the Galilean rose up at the time of the census and got people to follow him. He also perished and all who followed him were scattered. So in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail. And then he goes on to famously claim that you don't want to be fighting against God in case it is of God. So here's the problem. Judas the Galilean led a revolt when Quirinius held that census in 6 CE. So this text puts Theodus prior to 6 CE. However, we know from Josephus that the whole theodus revolt that ultimately failed took place in the mid40s CE. Here is the text from antiquities of the Jews book 20 chapter 5 AD 46. Now it came to pass while Fetus was procurator of Judea that a certain magician whose name was the persuaded a great part of the people to take their effects with them and follow him to the river Jordan. For he told them he was a prophet and that he would by his own command divide the river and afford them an easy passage over it. And many were deluded by his words. However, Fetus did not permit them to make any advantage of his wild attempt, but sent a troop of horsemen out against them, who falling upon them unexpectedly slew many of them and took many of them alive. They also took Thetus alive and cut off his head and carried it to Jerusalem. This was what befell the Jews in the time of Kaspius Fetus's government. So, we have in Acts 5:37 another huge chronological problem. And apologists say, "Well, it must have been another Theodus." Or, "Well, maybe Josephus was wrong." And these are all just assumptions to jin up that tiniest little sliver of not impossible. But if Luke 1 and 2 were not written by the author of the rest of the book of Luke, they were also not written by the author of the book of Acts. And if they were added secondarily, it makes sense why they would add in that this was the first census that was taken because they would know that in Acts 5, there's a reference to a census that occurred when this whole Judas the Galilean thing took place. And maybe they were trying to place it before that because they knew the Judas the Galilean event took place at the census of 6 CE. However, they screwed up when they said that it happened when Quirinius was governing in Syria. So, if you ignore the argument for the independent composition of Luke 1 and two, then yeah, there does seem to be a chronological issue with Jesus being 30 when he began his ministry. But if Luke 1 and 2 were not composed by the person who wrote the rest of the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, then that doesn't matter. But also, the person who wrote the book of Acts screwed up chronologically themselves. So, we already know that we cannot leverage Luke's chronological and historical care to overrule the likelihood that he got something wrong in Luke 2. And that is even if we ignore the fact that Luke 1 and 2 were probably written by somebody else later on after the rest of Luke and Acts had already been written. So this doesn't really make the case that we should assume all three of Huber's arguments are true because that then turns Luke 1 and 2 and the rest of Luke and Acts into a historically plausible narrative because there are already problems with the rest of the narrative. And as we've seen, Huner is playing rather fast and loose with some of these issues and with the scholarship on them. And now I want to go to Huner's conclusion of this chapter. I am not arguing here that Luke's report of the journey made by Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem corresponds to historical facts. Only that if it is fictional, at least a story that could be true. Since the author of the Gospel of Luke knows and respects the historical circumstances of the time in which he places the birth of Jesus, his depiction of the census can be seen as thoroughly realistic. Here's why I would characterize this as apologetic. We're not concerned with what's most likely. We're concerned with what's plausible. And while there is this scholarly concern for not being misunderstood to be saying, hey, we can prove this is all true, not even claiming, hey, it's plausible this is all true. No, we're concerned with how this would have come across to the readership in the late 1st century CE. That's what the argument is for. However, again, it's not looking at what's most likely. It's not looking at what's probable. It's looking at what's plausible or not impossible. It's overlooking an awful lot of data in order to make the case for the plausibility of these three different arguments. And I think it is misrepresenting an awful lot of data as well. And while I am not going to attribute this to Huner herself, maybe even repeating evidence that is a fabrication and specifically that sentence within the edict from 104 CE about people having to return to the homes of their families. So I don't think these are convincing arguments and I would characterize these arguments as apologetic and therefore I would characterize this chapter as apologetic. But if I'm wrong, if this is not apologetic, by all means, show me where I have gone wrong in representing the data and the scholarship. And the fit for this video is Dale Keon's Incredible Hulk., Responding to a Critical Scholar’s Apologetic Argument, YouTube, 01kdx7ck1859jtfam89sdd1zn8.