In re"How can one explain this?
Now, look at this quote:" (quote on previous page)
"First of all, the dates that Bishop Spong and other critics use in this presumed refutation were never by any means certain. Historians did not accept them. It would be foolish to throw away one's confidence in the Bible on the basis of dates which are questionable at best. For example, Will Durant in 'The Story of Civilization, Volume III, indicated that he did not know when Quirinius (another spelling for Luke's Cyrenius) began his governorship over Syria. If Durant, one of the most highly respected of all historians, said the exact date was unknown, I would be suspicious of a critic who, in order to "prove" the Bible wrong, states dogmatically that Quirinius began his reign in A.D. 6!
Furthermore, on the basis of new evidence since Durant wrote his history, as aready noted, other historians such as A. W. Zumpt are convinced that Quirinius was governor over Syria twice, the first time from at least as early as 4 B.C. That governorship ended in A.D.1. John Elder believes Quirinius'first time as governor began as early as 7 B.C.[John Elder, Prophets, Idols and Diggers (Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), p. 160.] Christ's birth, of course, had to be no later than 4 B.C.., which would have been when Quirinius was governor the first time, exactly as Luke states.
As for the alleged problem with the date of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the historical evidence for its resolution has been well-known for many years. Yes, Agustus Caesar died in A.D. 14 and that date is therefore generally listed as the official beginning of the reign of his successor, Tiberius Caesar. However, the skeptics are so eager to find a flaw in the Bible that they fail to dig deeply enough to discover the perfectly sound reason for an earlier date.
In actual fact, Tiberius, though technically not yet the Caesar, had already begun to rule the empire some years before Augustus' death because the latter was elderly and in poor health. Rebellions had cost the lives of those possible successors closest to Augustus. Left without either aide or successor, Augustus had in A.D. 2 adopted Tiberius as his son and coregent. Subsequently Tiberius had been sent out by Augustus to put down the rebellions and had done a masterful job. Will Durant writes:
'When he [Tiberius] returned in A.D. 9, after five years of arduous and successful campaigning, all Rome, which hated him for his stern puritanism, resigned itself to the fact that though Augustus was still prince, Tiberius had begun to rule.' [Will Durant, The History of Civilization: Caesar and Christ (Simon and Schuster, 1994), Volume III, p.231.]
Counting his rule as having actually begun in A.D. 9, 'the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar' (Luke 3:1) would be A.D. 24-25. If Jesus was born 4 or 5 B.C., just before Herod's death and during the first governorship of Cyrenius over Syria, that would make him 29 years of age in A.D. 24-25, at the beginning of His ministry. Notice that Luke says that He 'began to be about thirty years of age.' Of course, if He was born in 6 B.C., He would have been 30 sometime during A.D. 24,. We don't have precise dates, but what we know certainly confirms the accuracy of Luke's testimony.
The above demonstrates once again how mistaken and deceitfully biased are the wishful criticisms of the supposed scholars such as those of the Jesus Seminar (and apostate religious leaders such as Bishop Spong) who claim that the New Testament cannot be relied upon because it was not written until centuries after the time of Jesus. In fact, the dating Luke gives, which archaeological discoveries took years to verify, could not possibly have been known and recorded with such precision even decades, much less centuries, later, as the critrics insist. It could only have been known to eye-witnesses on the scene at the time, which the Bible writers claim to have been." Dave Hunt, In Defense of the Faith (Harvest House Publishers, 1996), p. 86-87.
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