our one historian. But even if Josephus knew of the incident, and even if he thought it in itself worthy of remark, there was in this case a special reason for his silence. The incident involved Jewish Messianic hopes; and without doubt Josephus purposely avoided the mention of such things in the history that he wrote for Roman readers. There is no reason, therefore, for supposing that if the massacre of the innocents had really happened Josephus would necessarily have included it in his historical work.

But something more positive needs also to be said. Although the massacre of the innocents is not directly attested by secular history, it is exactly in accord with what we know of the character of Herod in his declining years. Herod the Great was an able monarch, but in the last years of his reign he entered upon a career of cruelty that reached the verge of madness. His actions in putting to death his own children and his beloved wife, and his plan (interrupted only by his death) of butchering all the leading citizens of Jerusalem in the theatre, possess just exactly that quality of wild and useless bloodthirstiness which appears in the massacre of the innocents at Bethlehem. Never was a story more completely in character than this. In general we may say that the difficulty which has been found in the silence of secular history about the bloody deed at Bethlehem amounts to nothing at all.

Far more important is the other of the two objections which have been drawn from secular history against the truthfulness of our narrative—namely, the difficulty regarding the census of Quirinius. At that point we have a problem which, despite a certain amount of light that has been shed upon it in recent years, has not yet quite been cleared up.

The account of the census to which exception has been taken is found in Lk. 2: 1-5. In this account, verse 1 presents no real difficulty. When it is said that “in those days a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled,” that does not at all mean that a census was to be taken, in the modern fashion, in all parts of the Empire in the same manner and on the same day. On the contrary, the language of the verse is fully satisfied if we think only of the announcement by Augustus of a general policy of enrolment for the Empire. It is not at all necessary to suppose that this policy was carried out in any uniform manner, or even that it was carried out in every one of the provinces and vassal kingdoms at all. In accordance with the wise Roman policy of adaptation to local circumstances, a large amount of liberty would naturally be allowed to the several administrators and vassal monarchs. In Egypt, where, because of the discovery of the non-literary papyri, our information is particularly abundant, we find a census being taken under a regular

fourteen-year cycle; a census was also taken, we know, in Italy and in Gaul and other provinces; and the census in Judea in A.D. 6 is mentioned not only by the New Testament but also by Josephus. In some provinces, indeed, modern historians have asserted that no census was taken. But it is quite unnecessary for our present purpose to discuss the question whether this assertion is correct: for Luke says only that the decree of Augustus was issued; he does not say that it was completely carried out. Certainly the issuance of such a decree is altogether in accord with Augustan policy; there is a great abundance of evidence to show that this emperor was greatly concerned with an inventory both of the material resources of the Empire and of its man power. The “decree” mentioned in Lk. 2:1, though not directly attested elsewhere, is quite in line with all that we know with regard to Augustus’ reign. There is not the slightest reason to think that it is not historical.

The real difficulty in the passage is found in connection with verse 2. This verse is to be translated as follows: “This happened as a first enrolment when Quirinius was governing Syria,” or “this became a first enrolment when Quirinius was governing Syria.” The expression is certainly peculiar; and the linguistic difficulty in it has been reflected in changes introduced by copyists. It is no wonder that conjectural emendations of so difficult an expression have been attempted in ancient and modern times; and the possibility that some primitive corruption has crept in cannot altogether be excluded. But since the best-attested text is not absolutely impossible, that text must be made the basis of our discussion.

The verse as it stands seems to distinguish the enrolment here referred to from one or more subsequent enrolments; it seems to mean that this enrolment was either the first that was made in the Empire as a whole or else the first among two or more that were made during the rule of Quirinius over Syria. Since in Acts 5: 37 the well-known enrolment under Quirinius in A.D. 6 is mentioned by this same writer, it is natural to think that he is in our passage distinguishing an earlier event from that. Thus he seems to mean that there was an earlier enrolment under Quirinius as distinguished from the enrolment in A.D. 6. That earlier enrolment must apparently have taken place during the reign of Herod the Great. Herod is mentioned in Lk. 1-5, and there is no evidence to show that he is regarded as having died in the interval between the time referred to in that passage and the time of the birth of Jesus. No doubt, therefore, Luke as well as Matthew regards the birth of Jesus as having taken place before the death of Herod in 4 B.C.; and since the birth of Jesus was connected with the census, the latter too must apparently have taken place at the same time.

The problem, therefore, if the narrative is to be regarded as accurate at this point, is to find room for a census during the rule of Quirinius over Syria and yet prior to the death of Herod the Great.

Some progress toward the solution of this problem has been made by the patient researches of recent years. It has been rendered altogether probable, on the basis of information quite independent of the Third Gospel, that Quirinius was actually legate of Syria at a time prior to his well-known legateship that began in A.D. 6. This former legateship of Quirinius is accepted by some scholars who are as far as possible removed from any desire of rescuing the trustworthiness of the Gospel according to Luke.

But the difficulty is that the former legateship of Quirinius apparently cannot be put quite early enough. Saturnius, we know, was legate of Syria from 9 to 6 B.C.; and Varus was legate from 6 B.C. until after the death of Herod in 4 B.C. The former legateship of Quirinius, therefore, cannot be put earlier than about 3-2 B.C. How, then, can a census under Quirinius have taken place, as the Lucan narrative seems to represent it as having taken place, in the days of Herod the Great?

With respect to this difficulty, two things may be said. In the first place, one may suppose that although the enrolment began during the reign of Herod, it was not brought to completion until after his death. In favor of this suggestion may perhaps be urged the very peculiar expression that is used by Luke. “This became a first enrolment,” Luke says, according to one possible interpretation of his words, “when Quirinius was governing Syria”; or “This took place [that is, was brought to completion, was actually carried out] when Quirinius was governing Syria.” Possibly the intention is to distinguish the earlier stages of the process of enrolment—during which earlier stages the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem took place—from the consummation or final carrying out of the decree, so far as Judea was concerned, under the (earlier) legateship of Quirinius. This solution of the problem is perhaps not quite impossible.

More probable, however, is the other suggestion that has been made in this connection—the suggestion, namely, that the rule of Quirinius in Syria which is here referred to is not his legateship, but a special commission of a military kind which he held during the legateship of Saturnius or Varus. There are some slight indications that Quirinius did hold such a special commission; and there is at any rate nothing that absolutely forbids us to suppose that he did so. The special commission of Quirinius might include expressly the duty of taking a census. Hence it might be possible for the author of the Third Gospel to speak of a census taken in Palestine in the closing years of Herod the Great as being the former of two enrolments under Quirinius.

Our conclusion, then, is that although the problem of the enrolment has not as yet been fully solved, there is no reason to think that it might not be solved if our knowledge should become more complete than it is at present. Certainly the example of other places in which the Lucan writings were formerly thought to be inaccurate about matters of civil administration, but have now been vindicated in the most thoroughgoing way, should make the historian very cautious about asserting the presence of an error at this point.

NOTE: The latest findings surrounding the worldwide census of Caesar Augustus and Quirinius are to be found in Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe’s When Critics Ask (Baker Books, 1992). The following materials on this subject are from this work:

Problem: Luke refers to a worldwide census under Caesar Augustus when Quirinius was governor of Syria. However, according to the annals of ancient history, no such census took place.

Solution: Until recently, it has been widely held by critics that Luke made an error in his assertion about a registration under Caesar Augustus, and that the census actually took place in A.D. 6 or 7, (that is mentioned by Luke in Gamaliel’s speech recorded in Acts 5:37). The lack of any extra-biblical support has led some to claim this is an error. However, recent scholarship has reversed this trend, and it is now widely admitted that there was in fact an earlier registration as Luke records. This has been asserted on the basis of several factors.

First of all, since the people of a subjugated land were compelled to take an oath of allegiance to the emperor, it was not unusual for the emperor to require an imperial census as an expression of this allegiance and as a means of enlisting men for military service, or, as was probably true in this case, in preparation to levy taxes. Because of the strained relations between Herod and Augustus in the later years of Herod’s reign, as the Jewish historian Josephus reports, it is understandable that Augustus would begin to treat Herod’s domain as a subject land, and consequently would impose such a census to maintain control of Herod and the people.

Second, periodic registrations of this sort took place on a regular basis every 14 years. According to the very papers that recorded the censuses, (see W.M. Ramsay, Was Christ Born in Bethlehem? 1898), there was in fact a census taken in about 8 or 7 B.C. Because of this regular pattern of census taking, any such action would naturally be regarded as a result of the general policy of Augustus, even though a local census may have been instigated by a local governor. Therefore, Luke recognizes the census as stemming from the decree of Augustus.

Third, a census was a massive project which probably took several years to complete. Such a census for the purpose of taxation was begun in Gaul between 10-9 B.C. that took a period of 40 years to complete. It is quite likely that the decree to begin the census, in about 8 or 7 B.C., may not have actually begun in Palestine until some time later. Problems of organization and preparation may have delayed the actual census until 5 B.C. or even later.

Fourth, it was not an unusual requirement that people return to the place of their origin, or to the place where they owned property. A decree of C. Vibius Maximus in A.D. 104 required all those who were away from their home towns to return there for the purpose of the census. For the Jews, such travel would not have been unusual at all since they were quite used to the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem. There is simply no reason to suspect Luke’s statement regarding the census at the time of Jesus’ birth. Luke’s account fits the regular pattern of census taking, and its date would not be an unreasonable one. Also, this may have been simply a local census that was taken as a result of the general policy of Augustus. Luke simply provides us with a reliable historical record of an event not otherwise recorded. Since Dr. Luke has proven himself to be a reliable historian in other matters (see Sir William Ramsey, St. Paul the Traveler and Roman Citizen, 1896) there is no reason to doubt him here (see also comments on Luke 2:2).

Problem: Luke states that the census decreed by Augustus was the first one taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. However, Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until after the death of Herod in about A.D. 6. Is this an error in Luke’s historical record?

Solution: Luke has not made an error. There are reasonable solutions to this difficulty.

First, Quintilius Varus was governor of Syria from about 7 B.C. to about 4 B.C. Varus was not a trustworthy leader, a fact that was disastrously demonstrated in A.D. 9 when he lost three legions of soldiers in the Teutoburger forest in Germany. To the contrary, Quirinius was a notable military leader who was responsible for squelching the rebellion of the Homonadensians in Asia Minor. When it came time to begin the census, in about 8 or 7 B.C., Augustus entrusted Quirinius with the delicate problem in the volatile area of Palestine, effectively superseding the authority and governorship of Varus by appointing Quirinius to a place of special authority in this matter.

It has also been proposed that Quirinius was governor of Syria on two separate occasions, once while prosecuting the military action against the Homonadensians between 12 and 2 B.C., and later beginning about A.D. 6. A Latin inscription discovered in 1764 has been interpreted to refer to Quirinius as having served as governor of Syria on two occasions.

It is possible that Luke 2:2 reads, “this census took place before Quirinius was governing Syria.” In this case, the Greek word translated “first” (prôtos) is translated as a comparative, “before.” Because of the awkward construction of the sentence, this is not an unlikely reading.

Regardless of which solution is accepted, it is not necessary to conclude that Luke has made an error in recording the historical events surrounding the birth of Jesus. Luke has proven himself to be a reliable historian even in the details. Sir William Ramsey has shown that in making reference to 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands he made no mistakes!

Few who sing “Joy to the World” this holiday season would suspect they’re singing a psalm.

For one thing, you wouldn’t look in the Old Testament for such a joyous salute to the birth of Jesus, an event far in the future.

But Isaac Watts, whose great hymns include “O God Our Help in Ages Past” and “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” wanted psalms and hymns to convey a distinctly Christian message to the churchgoers of his time. Thus, Psalm 72, in Watts’ version, became “Jesus shall reign, where’re the sun.”
He reworked Psalm 98 as “Joy to the World.”

In the 250th year since his death, Watts’ songs remain a staple of the Christian repertoire.

“Simply, he is the best hymn writer that there has ever been,” said J.R. Watson, professor of English at the University of Durham.

Mr. Watson’s book, “The English Hymn—A Historical and Critical Study,” published last year by Oxford University Press, includes a long chapter on Watts.

“What he does is to take all the elements of post-Reformation religious expression—metrical psalms, divine lyrics, the first stabs at hymn writing—and forges them into one magnificent art,” Mr. Watson said. “I think he is an extraordinarily clear writer, wonderfully direct, and pierces to the heart of things, as great poetry should”

Watts wrote more than 600 psalms and hymns. His contemporary, the lexicographer and critic Samuel Johnson, said Watts “was one of the first who taught the dissenters to write and speak like other men, by showing them that

elegance might consist with piety.”

Watts died Nov. 25, 1748, and commemorations of the 250th anniversary centered on his native Southampton.
The Rev. Cliff Bembridge of Avenue St. Andrew’s United Reformed Church in Southampton said that Watt’s hymns continue to appeal because of their simplicity and depth.

Born July 17, 1674, Watts was the son of a dissenter who refused to conform to the Church of England and was in prison when Watts was born. They boy, however, had a privileged upbringing, being schooled in Latin, Greek and French.
His hymn-writing stemmed from his dissatisfaction with the practice at the time of singing versified translations of the Psalms.

“To see the dull indifference, the negligent and thoughtless air that sits upon the faces of a whole assembly, while the psalm is upon their lips, might tempt even a charitable

observer to suspect the fervency of their inward religion,” he declared.

In one of his hymnbooks, Watts summarized his method and aims:

“I have entirely omitted several whole psalms, and large pieces of many others; and have chosen out of all of them, such parts only as might easily and naturally be accommodated to the various occasions of Christian life, or at least might afford us some beautiful allusions to Christian affairs…”

“Joy to the World,” so prominent in U.S. celebrations of Christmas, is largely unknown in Britain, and is only beginning to spread through the hymnals.

—Associated Press, The Washington Times, December 19, 1998, p. C9

I started reading this semi-autobiographical book of Soviet horrors on a day the Christian Science Monitor was reporting that another mass grave of Joseph Stalin’s victims—this time perhaps 30,000—had been found in a forest glade near St. Petersburg. Scores of skulls, each with a bullet hole in its base, have been unearthed. Perhaps to make people forget about this past, in which perhaps as many as 20, 30, 40 million people—nobody will ever know –were killed by the Lenin-Stalin killing machine, usually after unspeakable tortures, ex-KGB Russian President Vladimir Putin has allowed a set of commemorative coins bearing Stalin’s image to be struck by the Russian mint. Disgusting.

Alexander N. Yakovlev is no ordinary Russian writer-historian. He is a major figure in Russia who, I am sure wittingly, helped bring down the Soviet Union. As advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, Mr. Yakovlev developed the concepts of perestroika and glasnost. He is a crippled veteran of World War II and still limps from his wounds. More recently, as one of the few Russians who has had unfettered access to the secret police archives, he has come to a lapidary conclusion: We are still far from escaping our barbarism.”

Everywhere you go in Russia or Ukraine, says Mr. Yakovlev, there are statues and monuments to V.I. Lenin, streets are still named after him, Lenin’s portrait hangs in many government offices, hundreds of Bolshevik and Fascist newspapers, many of them viciously anti-Semitic, are being published, speeches defending Stalin are made in the Duma.

Mr. Yakovlev’s book, based on archives, told me nothing I didn’t know about the horrors of Bolshevism. What makes the

book so gripping is that you see the nuts and bolts of the Great Terror, the simple inhumanity of the killers who did things to their fellow human beings, including children, babies, adolescents, pregnant women, grandmothers. Just as with Adolf Hitler, Jews, everybody, was Stalin’s enemy, even the wife of his closest companion-in-arms, Vyacheslav Molotov. Stalin sent her to a concentration camp.

It is incredible that, while what Mr. Yakovlev calls Bolshevism’s “bloodsoaked harvest” was going on, there were distinguished Western intellectuals who willingly denied the Bolshevik atrocities. They said it was all capitalist propaganda, or else actually defended the trials, the executions, the Great Terror. A leading British intellectual, Harold Laski, speaking up for the “Moscow trials,” found little difference between the Soviet and British legal systems, noting that “basically I did not observe much difference between the general character of a trial in Russia and in this country.”

In Andrei Vishinsky, Stalin’s infamous prosecutor who provided a legal luster to the villainous Moscow trials of the’30s, Mr. Laski saw “a man whose passion was law reform… He was doing what an ideal minister of justice would do if we had such a person in Great Britain—forcing his colleagues to consider what is meant by actual experience of the law in action.”

There were so many, many others, like Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, who defended Stalin’s crimes and spoke in admiration of the man. And there were Sidney and Beatrice Webb, who described Stalin’s accomplishment in a two-volume study as a “new civilization.” They wrote about Stalin’s genocidal collectivization program: “Strong must have been the faith and resolute the will of the men who, in the interest of what seemed to them the public good, could make so momentous a decision.”

continued on page 7

Harry Belafonte’s contemptuous and contemptible assaults on Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice surprised a lot of people - but shouldn’t have. Most do not know that Belafonte always was, and apparently still is, an unreconstructed Stalinist - a man who firmly, profoundly believes that America is evil.

Belafonte told CNN’s Larry King that Powell was the equivalent of a slave “who lived in the house” during the days of slavery and who “served the master.”

Then he used his influence to get the African aid group, Africare, to disinvite Rice, the scheduled keynote speaker at their fund-raising dinner, at which Belafonte was to be honored for his humanitarian efforts.

On King’s show, Belafonte said Rice is a “Jew . . . doing things that were anti-Semitic and against the best interests of her people.” Evidently, helping lead the war against terrorism is something not of concern to African-Americans.

Most Americans remember Belafonte as a path-breaking opponent of segregation and racism, and the first black American artist to break the color bar in the 1950s entertainment world and become a major celebrity. Few are aware of the toxic political vision he espouses.

Let’s look at a few of his tributes.

* In June 2000, Belafonte was a featured speaker at a rally in Castro’s Cuba, honoring the American Soviet spies, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Tears, one observer reported, “streaked down” Belafonte’s face, “as he recalled the pain and humiliation his friend [Paul] Robeson had been forced to endure” in 1950s America. Undoubtedly, he was pleased to hear Cuba presented “as an example of keeping the principles the Rosenbergs fought and died for alive.”

* In 1997, Belafonte was a featured speaker at the 60th Anniversary celebration of the “Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade,” at which he honored these self-proclaimed “premature anti-fascists” who served in the mid-1930s as Stalin’s private Comintern army, a battalion (not a brigade) that served as enforcers of Soviet policy during the Spanish Civil War. To Belafonte, nothing had changed since the 1930s.

The VALB were still representatives of “a truth that engulfed the universe . . . that fascism anywhere is a threat to people everywhere.”

He did not pause to remind the aging vets that their anti-fascism disappeared overnight after their return home - when the remaining soldiers got the news about the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939, and quickly declared that the only enemy was FDR’s warmongering and Great Britain.

* Speaking in October 1983 at a “World Peace Concert” run by East Germany’s official Communist youth organization, Belafonte gave his blessings to the Soviet-sponsored “peace” campaign pushing unilateral Western disarmament, at a time when the Soviets were putting SS-20 missiles in East Germany.

As The New York Times reported, Belafonte “attacked the American invasion of Grenada and also criticized the scheduled NATO weapons deployment” of Pershing 2 missiles in West Germany, which Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan deployed to offset the Soviet missile offensive.

Belafonte, in other words, was supporting the Soviet bloc in its Cold War with the United States. And he was doing so in full embrace with the East German prison state. Here, where the notorious secret police, the Stasi, ruled by waging a perpetual witch-hunt against the entire population - Belafonte had only love and good wishes for their success.

No wonder that the late Leo Cherne, head of the International Rescue Committee, rejected Belafonte’s being honored. “I happen to have some reservations about Belafonte,” he wrote one of the IRC’s board, “I have found him . . . beyond my tastes for the elements of left-wing predisposition. He played a significant relief role in Ethiopia at a time when Ethiopia was under the control of the left wing dictator Mengistu, at the very time that the Castro military forces were playing an active support role.”

To Harry Belafonte, Castro is a freedom fighter and Colin Powell and Condi Rice merely “house slaves.” Ever the diplomat, Colin Powell responded to Belafonte’s blast by calling the singer his “friend,” and noting that the slave analogy was from another time and place and was simply “unfortunate.” Secretary Powell should take to heart the simple adage, with friends like that . . . .

—FrontPageMagazine.com, October 24, 2002

Communists March on Washington
By David Horowitz

In politics it is important to call things by their right names. Otherwise you are fooling yourself with other people’s propaganda. The press is reporting Saturday’s “Stop the War” demonstration in Washington as though it was a peace march. Of course it was no such thing. It was a regrouping of the Communist left, the same left that supported Stalin and Mao and Ho. Indeed, this Communist left, organized by Ramsey Clark and his cohorts even supports Slobodan Milosevic, and of course Saddam Hussein. They are not pacifists and they are not peaceniks. They are anti-American radicals whose dream is a Communist revolution in America but whose immediate agenda is to force America’s defeat in the war with terror we are now in.

Even the signs saying “Jobs Not War” are telltale signs of their Communist roots. (And of course this does not mean that the Communist Party itself organized the march —— although it supported it. That was done by the Workers World Party, a self-styled Marxist revolutionary organization.) “Peace, Jobs and Democracy” was the Communist slogan in the first May Day parade I participated in - 1948. Of course anyone can be for jobs and most of us want to avoid war if possible. The theme of the 1948 May Day parade was stopping America’s efforts to prevent Stalin from marching all over Europe. “We don’t want another war” - its slogan - meant we don’t want Harry Truman’s Cold War against the Communist conquest of Eastern Europe.

The Communist left also opposed “American militarism” in the 1930s to prevent the West from stopping Hitler. Their tune changed of course when Hitler attacked his ally, the Soviet Union, in 1941. The Communist “New Left” also opposed the Vietnam War, not because it opposed war, but because it wanted the North Vietnamese Communists to win. The success of the anti-Vietnam left resulted in the deaths of two and a half million people in Indo-China who were slaughtered by the Marxists after the “peace movement” forced America’s withdrawal.

The real meaning of slogans like “Jobs Not War” is that America is the axis of evil that is plotting war. That the “greatest terrorist state” in the world, in Noam Chomsky’s words is the USA. We are the Great Satan and we deserve to be attacked. This is the real message of the so-called peace movement, often covertly and disingenuously expressed. But it is its message nonetheless. It is a movement of, by and for America’s enemies within.

The fact that a movement of America-hating communists, who

regard their own country as the enemy and who sympathize with America’s terrorist adversaries should be able to marshal 100, 000 activists is a cause for concern. The communist New Left left was not able to organize such large demonstrations in support of the Communists in Vietnam until the draft was instituted in 1964. We have no draft in this country now. The size of these demonstrations is a reflection of the growth of a treacherous anti-American radicalism in this country that has no Communist Party per se, but is just as dedicated to America’s destruction. The fact that the new technologies of war make it possible for terrorist groups both foreign and domestic to inflict enormous damage on industrial democracies like ours, and that our borders are porous and our security capabilities wanting, underscores the daunting dangers posed by this internal threat.

That the desire to hurt this country and its citizens is uppermost in the protesters minds was manifest in their reactions at the Washington march. According to the Los Angeles Times the demon singled out by the demonstrators for the greatest opprobrium was Attorney General John Ashcroft - the man responsible for the security of 300 million Americans: “The most unpopular figure of all appeared to be John Ashcroft, the U.S. attorney general. The mere mention of his name prompted boos to swell from the crowd, followed by semi-obscene chants.” The hatred of John Ashcroft reflects the demonstrators’ hatred for the American government and for the ordinary Americans whom our government protects. Their agenda is to weaken America’s defenses from within. The question is: will we let them?

—FrontPageMagazine.com, October 28, 2002

continued from page 7

When you read the archives supplied textually by Mr. Yakovlev, you can only shake your head and marvel that there are American academics today who are writing in defense of Stalin. And you wonder about an American vice president, Henry A. Wallace, who was so carried away by the Soviet Union that he praised Stalin for having created what Wallace called “economic democracy” as against our pitiful political democracy.

As for Russia, its economy today may be improving and inflation may be under control but for Mr. Yakovlev there is little hope for Russia after a decade of freedom: “Without the de-Bolshevization of Russia there can be no question of the nation’s recovery, its renascence and its resumption of its place in world civilization. Only when it has shaken free of Bolshevism can Russia hope to be healed.”

—The Washington Times, October 22, 2002, p. A 19