Now, we have a lot of records from Rome relevant to say, the Huns, but it is fair to say we don't have most governmental records of Rome. They used scribes not printing presses so making a lot of copies did require effort. And there was a bit of vandalism in the last days of the Empire. And things will get lost after 1,500 years anyway.
But with all that, the evidence is that the cenus occurred as described in Luke. There are 4000 ancient Greek manuscripts (the NT was written in Greek) containing all or part so the New Testament which survive till today. The earliest extant copy of a gospel is a piece of John 19 from 130 A.D. (which is belived to be about 40 years after the Gospel was written.)
The consensus of scholars is that Luke was written about 63-70 AD which would have been in generational memory of the census which means it would have been easily refuted by enemies of the church of which there were many.
With all that there is still corroborating records for Luke.
Since that was a religious site, which you might reject, here is a link to an antiquities site which basically accepts the census as, well, gospel.
Did you know that a prelate or governor as Pontius Pilot was, WOULD NEVER have brought ANYTHING to a vote to the Jews, he would have made the decision himself.
Well, he did. Jesus was killed by Roman authorities at the request of Jewish leaders.
Why are the Jews blamed for Jesus' death, because they were trying to convert Romans, and you don't blame the death of someone on someone you are trying to convert!!
I'm confused as to what you are trying to say with the sentence. Jews weren't trying to convert Romans. They were trying to maintain their traditons/expel them. Jesus wasn't trying to convert anybody. He redeemed us to God. He told us how we should live and gave us a choice as to accept or reject.
Also, the ONLY ones that were nailed to crosses were those that were fomenting revolution against the romans or were traitors. ALL other criminals were put on the cross with rope.
At least we agree that being nailed to a cross was a Roman punishment. What exactly was Jesus' crime? Treason/rebellion would have likely been the crime the Romans offically charged Him with.
Also, it would be PHYSICALLY impossible for a man, nailed to a cross to die in 3 hours
No. You can die sitting on a couch watching TV. I will agree that it is physically impossible to rise from the dead.
Actually, the expectation of a longer death might be why a Roman soldier felt a need to stick a spear in his side to be sure.
If Jesus Had been nailed through the middle of his hands, and a good percentage of the statues have him this way, his body weight would have torn his hands apart and he would have fallen off the cross.
Maybe the statues have it wrong.
The dead sea scrolls being part of such a set.
The Dead Sea Scrolls mostly involve the Old Testatment and scholars are amazed at how little they differ from modern translations of scripture
Quite correct, however in addition to the above, the fact is that paper disintegrates after a certain amount of time. Almost all our ancient texts are copies made by monks in Carolingian times (9th century). To find something older than that is due to tremendous luck. Yes, in very dry climates such as the sands of Egypt we do find some older texts, but by and large all paper from that time has dissappeared. There certainly was no reason to copy such papers as those ordering a census hundreds of years later. Censuses were quite common in Roman times for the purpose of taxation so there is no reason to doubt that there was such a census at the time of Christ's birth.