'According to the gospel of Luke, Jesus was born at the time when Caesar Augustus required everyone to take part in a census. This at the time when Quirinius was governor of Syria and Herod was king of Judea. However, the facts are: - First, no historian of the Roman Empire makes any mention of a universal census in the reign of Augustus. Second, King Herod died four years before the Common Era began and third, Quirinius was not the governor of Syria during the reign of Herod.
We also know that in the 2nd century, Christianity was in conflict with other religions and needed an official body of sacred texts. The books of the New Testament were canonised in 180 AD, and even today are still regarded by many believers as divinely inspired records written by the apostles. Yet neither they nor eyewitnesses in fact wrote any of them. They were all written between 65 AD and 95 AD.'