here from 4 B.C. to 7 A.D.
Matthew says that Jesus was born "in the days of Herod", while Luke says
it was "When Cyrenius was governor of Syria." Herod died in 4 B.C.,
while Cyrenius did not become governor of Syria until 7 A.D.

The romantic story of the Christ-child is not corroborated by the
historians of the time and is in opposition to the theory of evolution
by natural processes. And yet it is still one of the main sources of
Jesus' fame, being repeated at Christmas-tide in the churches, thus
connecting Jesus with God in a superhuman manner.

The consensus of scholarship is in practical agreement that the theory
of the virgin birth as a link between Jesus and God is a mistake; but
whose mistake was it? Jesus never referred to his miraculous birth. If
he was merely a man and never heard of the rumor about his conception,
he was not to blame for the spread of this misleading story throughout
Christendom.

While Jesus did not refer to his divine paternity in a physical sense,
he did endeavor to convince his hearers that he was more directly
connected with God than other men. "I and my Father are one."[3] "No
man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father,
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him."[4]

Jesus thus proclaimed himself identical with the Lord God of the Old
Testament who called himself Jehovah. This is entirely in keeping with
the whole Christian theory, for the _raison d'etre_ of Jesus derived
from the act of God soon after the creation. Adam and Eve ate of the
fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which God had
commanded them not to touch, and for this disobedience, this fall of man
from grace, God cursed mankind. Jesus came to earth to save man from the
wrath of Almighty God.

But this claim of Jesus to oneness with God renders him liable to
censure for the acts of Jehovah which represented a standard of ethics
inferior to that preached by the Son of God. According to the
scriptures, which anyone may freely search, God advised or countenanced
deception[5]; stealing[6], selfishness[7], conquest by force[8],
indiscriminate slaughter[9], murder[10], cannibalism[11], killing of
witches[12], slavery[13], capital punishment for rebellious sons or for
seeking false gods[14], sacrifices of animals[15] and other acts
representing the concepts of primitive men.[16]

While Jesus could read[17] and was familiar with the scriptures, it is
possible that