And St. Luke's statement that everyone had to go to his own city, which was long thought to be a difficulty, has been partly confirmed as well. For a decree has been discovered in Egypt, dated in the seventh year of Trajan (A.D. 104), ordering all persons to return to their own districts before the approaching census,[198] which is worded as if it were the usual custom. The next census in A.D. 6, which is the one referred to by Josephus, is also mentioned by St. Luke;[199] but he knew, what his critics did not, that it was only one of a series, and that the first of the series took place at an earlier date.
[198] Ramsay, p. 259.
[199] Acts. 5. 37.
Curiously enough, there used to be a very similar error, charged against St. Luke, in regard to Lysanias; whom he says was tetrarch of Abilene, a district near Damascus, in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, about A.D. 27.[200] Yet the only ruler of this name known to history in those parts was a king, who was killed in B.C. 34. But inscriptions found at Baalbec, and Abila (the latter dating somewhere between A.D. 14-29) show that there was a second Lysanias, hitherto unknown, who is expressly called the tetrarch and who is now admitted to be the one referred to by St. Luke.[201] On the whole then, these Gospels, wherever we have any means of testing them by secular history, appear to be substantially accurate.
[200] Luke 3. 1.
[201] Boeckh's Corp. Ins. Gr., No. 4523; Ramsay, 'Bearing of Recent Discovery on New Testament.' 1915, p. 298.
But it may be said, do not the Gospels themselves contradict one another in some places, and if so they cannot all be correct? Now that there are some apparent contradictions, especially in the narratives of the Resurrection (see [Chapter XVII.]), must of course be admitted; but many of these can be explained satisfactorily, and those which cannot are as a rule quite trivial. For example,[202] St. Matthew relates that at Christ's Baptism the Voice from Heaven said, 'This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased;' and the other Evangelists, 'Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased.' There is a clear verbal discrepancy, whatever words were used, or in whatever language they were spoken. Again, St. Matthew records the passage about the Queen of the South as being spoken just after, and St. Luke as just before, the similar passage about the men of Nineveh, though both can hardly be correct. Such mistakes as these, however, do not interfere with the substantial accuracy of the narratives.
[202] Matt. 3. 17; 12. 42; Mark 1. 11; Luke 3. 22; 11. 31.
(2.) Their sources.
Now the first three Gospels have, as is well known, a number of identical passages, which must plainly be due to copying in some form, either two Evangelists copying the third, or all three some earlier document. The portion they have in common (often called the Triple Tradition) includes some of the parables of Christ, and several of His miracles, such as calming the storm, feeding the five thousand, curing the man at Gadara, and raising the daughter of Jairus. If, as is probable, it represents the testimony of a single witness, there is little difficulty in identifying him with St. Peter.