Saw a Youtube video rebuttal of Prof. Ehrman which was based on just horrible scholarship; however in it the creator mentions letters of Theodoric the Great preserved in Cassdorius’s Variae (3.52) in which Theodoric says that Augustus made a complete survey of the whole “Orbis Romanus” the results of which were compiled by a “Hyrummetricus.” He also references the Res Gesti of Augustus and says that Augustus instigated three “registrations” (the creator often conflates census with registration) of Roman citizens during his reign.

I am unable to find much apart from a translation of the Res Gesti which I have not yet read through to find the “registration” passages. Can anyone connect these dots? This creator’s style was to (unintentionally or not, I’m not sure) leave out important details. For instance he makes a very big point of “Matthew” NOT quoting Micah in verse 1 to support his position that the writer of Matthew was not emphasizing Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem, completely ignoring that exact point, and quote, being delivered in Chapter 2. While I’m not faniliar with that material, I have no reason to think his analysis of Cassidorius/Theodoric and Augustus isn’t similarly flawed but I’m intrigued as this is the first time I’ve encountered these references. The creator asserts that Theodoric did not know “Augustus made a complete survey…” from scriptures but from the results of the census compiled by this Hyrummetricus (Hyrum the surveyor?) I find myself wondering whether there’s distinction between “survey” in the Latin Gesti and “census” in the Greek Matthew, since the Theodoric quote is clearly concerned with land surveying and borders.