There is also great confusion about the time of the birth of Jesus, though the Church in a sort of perfunctory manner settled this by saying he was born December 25, A. D. One. But the Church adopted this date for reasons of an astronomical character. More than one hundred different dates, some extending back nearly a century, have been fixed as to his birth, showing that no one knew anything about it. A blundering notice of his birth assigns its date to the period when Cyrenius was governor of Syria, and makes the enrolment ordered by that official the occasion of Joseph’s temporary sojourn at Bethlehem when that event took place. This enrolment, however, was not made till after the displacement of Archelaus from the kingdom of Judea and some ten years or more after the death of Herod, and the story is accordingly in direct contradiction with the account of the flight of Joseph into Egypt, while Herod was still alive, to preserve the life of his son from that monarch’s jealousy. But what is very significant is the fact that when Cyrenius commanded the enrolment Judas of Galilee arose and denounced it. He established a distinct sect which continued till the overthrow of the Jewish people. 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!