lic history,
but sometimes in minute, recondite, and very peculiar circumstances, in
which, of all others, a forger is most likely to have been found
tripping.

II. That the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place forty years
after the commencement of the Christian institution, produced such a
change in the state of the country, and the condition of the Jews, that
a writer who was unacquainted with the circumstances of the nation
before that event would find it difficult to avoid mistakes, in
endeavouring to give detailed accounts of transactions connected with
those circumstances, forasmuch as he could no longer have a living
exemplar to copy from.

III. That there appears, in the writers of the New Testament, a
knowledge of the affairs of those times which we do not find in authors
of later ages. In particular, "many of the Christian writers of the
second and third centuries, and of the following ages, had false notions
concerning the state of Judea between the nativity of Jesus and the
destruction of Jerusalem." (Lardner, part i. vol. ii. p. 960.) Therefore
they could not have composed our histories.

Amidst so many conformities we are not to wonder that we meet with some
difficulties. The principal of these I will put down, together with the
solutions which they have received. But in doing this I must be
contented with a brevity better suited to the limits of my volume than
to the nature of a controversial argument. For the historical proofs of
my assertions, and for the Greek criticisms upon which some of them are
founded, I refer the reader to the second volume of the first part of
Dr. Lardner's large work.

I. The taxing during which Jesus was born was "first made," as we read,
according to our translation, in Saint Luke, "whilst Cyrenius was
governor of Syria." (Chap. ii. ver. 2.) Now it turns out that Cyrenius
was not governor of Syria until twelve, or at the soonest, ten years
after the birth of Christ; and that a taxing census, or assessment, was
made in Judea, in the beginning of his government, The charge,
therefore, brought against the evangelist is, that, intending to refer
to this taxing, he has misplaced the date of it by an error of ten or
twelve years.

The answer to the accusation is founded in his using the word
"first:"--"And this taxing was first made:" for, according to the
mistake imputed to the evangelist, this word could have no signification
whatever; it could have had no place in h