uled by Herod Antipas
as an allied prince, and that a census taken by the Roman Governor
would, therefore, not extend to Galilee, and could not affect Joseph,
who, living at Nazareth, would be the subject of Herod. See, as
illustrative of this, Luke xxiii. 6, 7.] Thus he deals in manifest
contradictions; or, rather, he has an exceedingly sorry acquaintance
with the political relations of that period; for he extends the census
not only to the whole of Palestine, but also (which we must not forget)
to the whole Roman world" (Strauss's "Life of Jesus," vol. i., p. 206).

After quoting one of the passages of Josephus referred to above, Dr.
Giles says: "There can be little doubt that this is the mission of
Cyrenius which the Evangelist supposed to be the occasion of the visit
of Christ's parents to Bethlehem. But such an error betrays on the part
of the writer a great ignorance of the Jewish history, and of Jewish
politics; for, if Christ was born in the reign of Herod the Great, no
Roman census or enrolment could have taken place in the dominions of an
independent King. If, however, Christ was born in the year of the
census, not only Herod the Great, but Archelaus, also, his son, was
dead. Nay, by no possibility can the two events be brought together; for
even after the death of Archelaus, Judaea alone became a Roman province;
Galilee was still governed by Herod Antipas as an independent prince,
and Christ's parents would not have been required to go out of their own
country to Jerusalem, for the purpose of a census which did not comprise
their own country, Galilee. Besides which, it is notorious that the
Roman census was taken from house to house, at the residence of each,
and not at the birth-place or family rendezvous of each tribe"
("Christian Records," pp. 120, 121). Another "striking witness to the
late composition of the Gospels is furnished by expressions, denoting
ideas that could not have had any being in the time of Christ and his
disciples, but must have been developed afterwards, at a time when the
Christian religion was established on a broader and still increasing
basis" (Ibid, p. 169). Dr. Giles has collected many of these, and we
take them from his pages. In John i. 15, 16, we read: "John bare witness
of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh
after me is preferred before me: for he was before me. And of his
fulness have all we received, and grace for grace." At that time none
ha