Josephus says: “When Cyrenius had now disposed of Archelaus’s money, and when the taxings were come to a conclusion, which were made in the thirty-seventh year of Caesar’s victory over Antony at Actium,” Antiq. xviii. 2. The battle of Actium, in which Octavianus gained his final victory over Antony, occurred in b. c. 31. Counting thirty-seven years, would bring the date of the taxings down to A. d. 6. Archelaus after reigning ten years was deposed for misconduct, and banished into Gaul. Cyrenius, a Roman senator, had been sent by the government to settle up his finances and take an account of the substance of the Jews, or, in other words, to assess their property in order to apportion their taxes. These things were done in the thirty-seventh year after the battle of Actium, or in 6 A. d. Counting ten years back, we would be at the year 4 b. c., or the year Archelaus began to reign. As Herod of course was dead before Archelaus ascended the throne, he consequently died before Christ was born, and hence the entire story of the slaying of the infants, the journey of the wise men, and the flight into Egypt falls helplessly to the ground.
“But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea, in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee.” Matt. 2:22.
Here we have a strange state of affairs. Joseph and the young child turned from Judea to Galilee when Archelaus was as powerful in the one country as in the other, for his ethnarchy included both!
In reading the first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel we find an inexplicable mystery. The very first verse reads: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Then in the sixteenth verse it is said, “And Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ.” In the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth verses the Holy Ghost is represented as the real Father of Jesus by a virgin; and his miraculous divine descent is elsewhere specifically taught in the Gospels, and the divine Sonship of Jesus has been accepted as a fact by the general Church—Roman Catholic, Greek, and Protestant.
On the other hand, there is proof positive, if the record is accepted, that Jesus claimed for himself simple humanity, and consequent inferiority and subjection to God; and Roman Catholics and orthodox Protestants very conveniently settle these contradictions by affirming that he was both God and man; while Unitarians reject the divinity of Jesus, and by way of apology for so doing magnify his manhood so as to make him quite divine, a human god.
It would be easy to fill volumes with accounts, with very slight variations, of the miraculous conception and birth of divine personages born of virgin mothers, who, after laboring and suffering for the good of men, came to a tragic death, which was generally followed by a triumphant resurrection and subsequent deification. The cases are so numerous that one hardly knows where to begin to enumerate them. It would be easy to furnish a roll containing the names of scores of incarnate deities, and it would be tedious to describe the many things in which they substantially agree.
According to some modern writers, supported by abundant sculptures in temples, caves, and rocks, Vishnu, the second person of the Hindoo trinity, has been incarnated eight or nine times, Buddha being the first, Chrishna the eighth, and Gautama, also called Sakya-Muni, the ninth. The fact that these alleged incarnations took place at uniform intervals show their astronomical origin.
Equally suggestive is the fact that there are so many peculiarities connected with the birth of these gods, and also so many incidents in their lives and deaths absolutely identical.
The name of the mother of Buddha was Maia and the same name was given to the mother of the Greek Mercury and even to later divinities; which, like the name Mary, typifies the sea and sometimes the month of May.
Buddha had no earthly father, but was an immaculate conception of a ray of celestial light through a virgin mother. Chrishna, the eighth Indian incarnation, was born of the left intercostal rib of a virgin. His birth was concealed through fear of the tyrant Kansa. He raised the dead and wrought marvellous miracles, and washed the feet of the Brahmans. It would be tedious to give details, as almost every incident recorded in the Gospels of the life of the alleged Christian incarnation is recorded in circumstantial detail of some ancient pagan deity.