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FreezBee

February 8th 2006, 11:51 AM

technomage

February 8th 2006, 05:03 PM

The Curtmudgeon

February 8th 2006, 05:16 PM

Hello!

I know this is the wrong forum to ask my question, but after an hour or so of scavenging this site, I gave up trying to find the appropriate forum, so please bear with me :cheers:

On the ErrancyWiki (http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Luke_2:2#The_CTT_article_in_closer_look) I have been writing a bit about Luke 2:2, you know the verse about the census, and whether that contradicted Matthew's claim that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great.

I remembered having read an article by James Patrick Holding, in which he reconciled the two birth narratives, and I searched for that article on tektoniks, which sort of led me to this place in stead. That's why I'm here!

Now, to ask a question: does it actually have any theological significance, whether Jesus was born bce or ce? I mean, apart from trying to defend Biblical inerrancy?

Thanks in advance for any reply :bow:

- FreezBee

I think you are really raising two different questions here, Freez:
Does it actually have any theological significance, whether Jesus was born bce or ce? Does it actually have any theological significance, whether Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great?

The answer to the first is, No, it doesn't matter in the least because the distinction between BC/BCE and AD/CE was definitely a post-Biblical human invention. At the time of Jesus' birth years were dated (in the Roman Empire) as AUC -- Ab Urba Condite, or "from the founding of the City [of Rome]". The year of Jesus' birth was not a special number like 1 AD or anything in that system, and wouldn't be until nearly 600 years later.

As a concrete example of this, let's say that for some silly reason the English-speaking world decides to redo the calendar and base it on the birth of Geoffrey Chaucer, the first great English writer. The problem is, we don't actually know his birth date, only that it was probably between 1340 and 1350. So if the guy responsible for creating the new calendar opts for 1350, in which case we are now living in the year AC 656, but then later archaeological and/or historical dating work proves that Chaucer was actually born in 1343, we would suddenly have the situation of Chaucer being born in 7 BC [Before Chaucer]. Would that have any impact on the assessment of his writings, or even the question of whether he actually wrote The Canterbury Tales or the like? Not in the least. It's simply not important. Same situation with Jesus' birth in relation to the BC/AD switch in our current calendar.

The answer to the second question is, Yes, it does matter, because Matthew clearly states as a historical fact that Herod the Great was king of Judaea at the time of Jesus' birth. If it could be proven somehow that He was not born during Herod's reign, then there would be clear evidence that the Bible is wrong in asserting that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God through the Holy Spirit, or else that God is capable of making a simple dating goof.

So the question of whether Jesus was born in BC or AD is, in and of itself, not an important question for Christians (and probably not even an interesting question to most of us), but we do accept that He was born while Herod the Great was on the throne because God has told us so in His Word.

For more details on the dating itself, and whether Quirinius' census was during Herod's reign, check the Christian Think-Tank here (http://www.christian-thinktank.com/quirinius.html), or Biblical Chronology here (http://www.biblicalchronology.com/census.htm). These two don't agree on exactly what year the Lukan census should be dated, but they do show that it is not very difficult to show that there probably was an earlier census under Quirinius than the AD 6 one that is often quoted.

The (then again, I haven't had a date since sometime BC myself) Curtmudgeon

FreezBee

February 9th 2006, 06:07 AM

Not to my understanding. The only point in defending this apparent contradiction is to support an argument that the Bible is inerrant.

Thanks for you reply!

And, yes, I am of that opinion myself as well - but as Curtmudgeon says, it's important for those to whom Biblical inerrancy is theological significant, so I guess that's what it boils down to.

For me it's quite ok for God to have inspired Matthew to write as if Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, who was of Edomite origin = a descendant of Esau. That makes sense in Matthew's gospel that "mimicks" the Pentateuch.

- FreezBee

FreezBee

February 9th 2006, 06:20 AM

I think you are really raising two different questions here, Freez:
Does it actually have any theological significance, whether Jesus was born bce or ce? Does it actually have any theological significance, whether Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great?

Thanks for your reply!

And you're right that my question might be confusing - what I meant was whether it made any difference if Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, that is the second entry in your list.

....
The answer to the second question is, Yes, it does matter, because Matthew clearly states as a historical fact that Herod the Great was king of Judaea at the time of Jesus' birth. If it could be proven somehow that He was not born during Herod's reign, then there would be clear evidence that the Bible is wrong in asserting that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God through the Holy Spirit, or else that God is capable of making a simple dating goof.

This might depend a bit on what inspiration of God through the Holy Spirit means. As I have written in my reply to A Cup of Mystery, for Matthew's storyline it makes sense to have Jesus born during the reign of Herod, independent of, when Jesus was actually born. It's only a problem, if we assume that God cannot inspire an author to twist actual history a bit to make a clearer point.

And my point is actually that this demand of historical accuracy makes more problems than needed, but that may of course just be me :smile:

So the question of whether Jesus was born in BC or AD is, in and of itself, not an important question for Christians (and probably not even an interesting question to most of us), but we do accept that He was born while Herod the Great was on the throne because God has told us so in His Word.

For more details on the dating itself, and whether Quirinius' census was during Herod's reign, check the Christian Think-Tank here (http://www.christian-thinktank.com/quirinius.html), or Biblical Chronology here (http://www.biblicalchronology.com/census.htm). These two don't agree on exactly what year the Lukan census should be dated, but they do show that it is not very difficult to show that there probably was an earlier census under Quirinius than the AD 6 one that is often quoted.

I have read the CTT article and have given it a closer look at the ErrancyWiki site, but the other link you give is new to me, so I'll go have a look at it.

The (then again, I haven't had a date since sometime BC myself) Curtmudgeon
:lol:
I can't quite compete with that - though I haven't had a date sinece the last millenium, so it's almost a ties, isn't it?

- FreezBee

The Curtmudgeon

February 9th 2006, 02:39 PM

This might depend a bit on what inspiration of God through the Holy Spirit means. As I have written in my reply to A Cup of Mystery, for Matthew's storyline it makes sense to have Jesus born during the reign of Herod, independent of, when Jesus was actually born. It's only a problem, if we assume that God cannot inspire an author to twist actual history a bit to make a clearer point.

And my point is actually that this demand of historical accuracy makes more problems than needed, but that may of course just be me :smile:

I think that it is a problem to assume that God can or would inspire an author to twist actual history. If that is allowed, then how can we distinguish Him from Satan, the Father of Lies? I know that for humans, it's not only possible but common to label Herodotus both the Father of History and the Father of Lies Historical Fiction :lol: but I do not believe that we can accept the same latitude with respect to God.

More to the point, I believe that "this demand of historical accuracy" is in no way a problem, except insofar as it challenges us to be more accurate in our historicals. That is, what you see as a problem with reconciling the Matthean and Lukan "birth" accounts (I put 'birth' in quotes because, like many evangelicals, I see Matthew's account as dealing not with the time of Jesus' birth but rather a separate incident as much as two years after the birth, as dated by Herod himself, but the point is not especially important in our current conversation) I see as an issue, not particularly a problem, with reconciling the combined Gospel account with what we know about the time period from non-Biblical sources. You are, basically, assuming that our current knowledge of the time based on sources outside the Scriptures trumps what the Gospel writers tell us; I assume that, since all Scripture is given by inspriation of a God who is described as being Truth, then it is our outside knowledge of the history that is at fault.

After all, if we do not even know what year Geoffrey Chaucer was born (to return to my earlier illustration) -- and we don't know, that was not just a point I invented for the sake of the illustration -- then it would be hubris in the extreme to say that our non-Biblical historical sources are so much more complete and accurate on the time period in which Jesus was born, some 1300 years earlier.

Archaeology is constantly improving our knowledge of the history of Judaea; remember, it was fashionable to call even Pontius Pilate's governorship into question until the Caesarea inscription was discovered in 1961. The fact that we cannot, at this time, point to unmistakable evidence for an earlier Quirinius governorship in Syria is not such a different issue than Pilate was pre-1961, and yet that now is no longer an issue, not because of any new understanding or reading of the Gospel accounts but because of an improvement in our non-Biblical knowledge of the history. Even archaeology outside of the Middle East, say for example in Rome, could find an artifact or inscription to broaden our knowledge of the time.

I, and most evangelical Christians, prefer to rest on "God is Truth" rather than put that trust in fallible humans.

The (after all, if history was invented by a guy who could write about a war between the storks and pygmies then what is it not capable of?) Curtmudgeon

FreezBee

February 10th 2006, 07:31 AM

I think that it is a problem to assume that God can or would inspire an author to twist actual history. If that is allowed, then how can we distinguish Him from Satan, the Father of Lies?

But can humans distinguish God from Satan? Compare the two versions of David's census:

Again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, "Go and take a census of Israel and Judah."

and

Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.

If it was simple to tell God and Satan apart, then maybe the world would be a bit different, don't you think?

I know that for humans, it's not only possible but common to label Herodotus both the Father of History and the Father of Lies Historical Fiction :lol: but I do not believe that we can accept the same latitude with respect to God.

Why not? Check with

I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the LORD, do all these things.

God is the creator of everything, even that which we humans consider bad for the one or the other reason. We are not the judges, but judged!

More to the point, I believe that "this demand of historical accuracy" is in no way a problem, except insofar as it challenges us to be more accurate in our historicals. That is, what you see as a problem with reconciling the Matthean and Lukan "birth" accounts (I put 'birth' in quotes because, like many evangelicals, I see Matthew's account as dealing not with the time of Jesus' birth but rather a separate incident as much as two years after the birth, as dated by Herod himself, but the point is not especially important in our current conversation) I see as an issue, not particularly a problem, with reconciling the combined Gospel account with what we know about the time period from non-Biblical sources. You are, basically, assuming that our current knowledge of the time based on sources outside the Scriptures trumps what the Gospel writers tell us;

The question though is, what do the Gospel writers tell us? Are they at all concerned with telling us when Jesus was born? I am actually trying to figure out, what the Gospel writers are telling us, and that may require me to have Jesus born at different times in Matthew and in Luke.

Both these writers connect the birth of Jesus with foreign rulers, Matthew with Herod the Great, Luke with Augustus and Quirinius. Why?

I assume that, since all Scripture is given by inspriation of a God who is described as being Truth, then it is our outside knowledge of the history that is at fault.

Or maybe our understanding of Truth that is not completely the same as God's, maybe?

After all, if we do not even know what year Geoffrey Chaucer was born (to return to my earlier illustration) -- and we don't know, that was not just a point I invented for the sake of the illustration -- then it would be hubris in the extreme to say that our non-Biblical historical sources are so much more complete and accurate on the time period in which Jesus was born, some 1300 years earlier.

True, but relect that back on the Gospel writers. They might not have known exactly, when Jesus was born, so they have the birth happen at a time, which is of particular significance within their story-line - divine inspiration does not imply omniscience, I would venture to say :smile:

That kind of making things up to make a more stream-lined story was fully accepted in that time. When reading the Gospels we cannot pull them out of there historical-literature environment and enforce our standards on them - we need to respect the standards of thir time.

Archaeology is constantly improving our knowledge of the history of Judaea; remember, it was fashionable to call even Pontius Pilate's governorship into question until the Caesarea inscription was discovered in 1961.

Yes, I have read that, but I am a bit confused by it - Pilate is well-known from the writings of Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus, so those who have claimed the non-historicity of Pilate must have imagined quite some conspiracy theory!

As archaeology emerged in the late 18th century, a critique towards the written word - ANY written word - followed en suite. Everything was questioned, even the Homeric epics, remember! Like all that kind of anti-traditionalism, it went a bit to far, and today most scholars, Christian or not, have a more nuancé opinion on literary sources - though there are always extremists in either of the camps!

Also, if I may say so, many Christian apologists make too much out of the archaeological discoveries that confirm the Bible - often to the extent of not realizing that many of these discoveries actually do not confirm the Bible. For instance, the Hittites - the word "Hatti" was actually in use for the Syro-Palestinian area even into Hellenistic times. The Assyrians as they advanced across the Euphrates expanded the meaning of the word, which was the only one they knew. Why are the Carribbean Islands also called the "West-Indian Islands"? Because Christoffer Columbus did not know better than that he had arrived at India, the country that he knew about! So the discovery in Anatolia of the Hittites did not confirm the Bible, even though that is a common claim.

The fact that we cannot, at this time, point to unmistakable evidence for an earlier Quirinius governorship in Syria is not such a different issue than Pilate was pre-1961,

Please allow me to disagree here, will you? Quirinius' historicity is not questioned at all, and we do know that he was governor (legatus juridicus) of Syria (including Judea as an annexed province) from 6 ce, and we know that one of his taska as he received the office was the assessment of "Archelaos' estate". The word used by Luke is "apographe", which of course implies some book-keeping. Compare with the Domesday Book, which was commisioned by William the Conqueror for the assessment of his new kingdom.

So we have a case that corresponds exactly to what Luke writes. Now, consider yourself to a reader of Luke's gospel some time in the 1st century ce, you are probably an educated Greek - Luke's style is standard Greek-Roman - so you know some of the above, what would you think? Would you say: "Aha, the census Luke is referring to must be the one that happened, while Quirinius was governor of Syria!", or would you start speculating, whether Luke could be referring to some possibly existing census before that, when possibly Quirinius might have been some kind of governor in Syria?

If there is a plain, simple solution, why not choose that?

and yet that now is no longer an issue, not because of any new understanding or reading of the Gospel accounts but because of an improvement in our non-Biblical knowledge of the history. Even archaeology outside of the Middle East, say for example in Rome, could find an artifact or inscription to broaden our knowledge of the time.

Indeed so, but the way things work is that you argue from, what you know, not from what you don't know. Of course, conclusive statements should rarely be made, but neither should far-fetched solutions. Notice that some even want "first" to really have meant "before", which is a new reading of the Gospel!

I, and most evangelical Christians, prefer to rest on "God is Truth" rather than put that trust in fallible humans.

And Christians aren't fallible humans? They are so, often to the extent of blindfolding themselves and thinking that everybody then must be as much in the dark as they themselves are!

The (after all, if history was invented by a guy who could write about a war between the storks and pygmies then what is it not capable of?) Curtmudgeon

Herodotus - if it's him you are referring to - supplies us with a lot of interesting anecdotes mixed up with maybe a few bits of actual history, but extracting the last from the first is the real, real, real tricky bit. Yet many Christians rely on him as a fully reliable source :eek:

- FreezBee

The Curtmudgeon

February 13th 2006, 06:29 PM

But can humans distinguish God from Satan? Compare the two versions of David's census....If it was simple to tell God and Satan apart, then maybe the world would be a bit different, don't you think?

I agree that it is not always simple to distinguish between God's working and Satan's, but the problem cannot be laid to God's not telling the truth, which was the specific point I was making: not that it is difficult to tell the difference sometimes, but that if God is capable of lying about historical facts, then it becomes not difficult but impossible to distinguish.

As for the causitive factor(s) behind David's census, check here (http://www.christian-thinktank.com/hcensus.html) and here (http://www.christian-thinktank.com/gutripper.html#census).

Why not? Check with [added because the TWeb stoopid BB software won't quote quotes properly]I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the LORD, do all these things.
God is the creator of everything, even that which we humans consider bad for the one or the other reason. We are not the judges, but judged!

It's different to say that God can create things that appear to us to be bad, such as adversity (or "disaster" in the version you quote), from creating things that are not only bad but in direct opposition to God's character, such as lies. The Scripture, and indeed history in general, shows that not every adversity or disaster is, truly, an evil ("That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.") The problem is our restriction of judging events according to short-term effects and not God's outside-of-time perspective. Even the sinking of the Titanic, as one single example, can be seen as a long-term good, based on all the positive changes it forced the international maritime community and national legislatures to make which, in the long run, have saved countless more lives than were lost in that single horrible night.

The question though is, what do the Gospel writers tell us? Are they at all concerned with telling us when Jesus was born? I am actually trying to figure out, what the Gospel writers are telling us, and that may require me to have Jesus born at different times in Matthew and in Luke.

Both these writers connect the birth of Jesus with foreign rulers, Matthew with Herod the Great, Luke with Augustus and Quirinius. Why?

Because, in that day before international standardised calendars from Hallmark, that was the way important events were dated: in terms of who was sitting on the throne. And I draw immediate exception to your use of the phrase "foreign rulers": it is palpably untrue of Herod, the King of the Jews, and also obviously untrue of the Roman emperor and governor since Judaea was a part of the Roman empire at the time and specifically a part of the Roman province of Syria. If Matthew or Luke had listed the Parthian king, or the governor of Hispania or Gaul, then you might have had a case, but even that would have been justified if it can be shown that people in those areas were intended readers of the work in question.

Although the Roman Empire as a rule used the AUC dating for many things, it was still common, and was culturally usual in the East, to use regnal dating. Matthew and Luke have used standard historical procedure in dating the birth of Jesus just as any secular historian of their time would have dated the birth of an important philosopher or the like. A more generalised form of dating would take some important known event and relate the date in question to that; the Greeks did this by relating most dates to the four-year Olympiads, but other events could just as easily be used. A cursory glance through Josephus Jewish Antiquities turns this up in Book 18, Chapter 2:

When Cyrenius had now disposed of Archelaus' 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 ...

I picked this, not because of it dealing with Cyrenius/Quirinius and the taxation census of 6 AD, but because it shows how this style of dating worked. The Battle of Actium had nothing, directly, to do with the subject at hand, still it was a convenient date which would be known to Joe's readers to anchor his reference to the taxation. So Matthew and Luke were writing exactly as would any other historian of their period in dating the birth of Jesus: Matthew, in line with the Jewish emphasis of his gospel, dating it to Herod's reign, and Luke, in line with the more world-wide approach he favours, dating it to Augustus Caesar and Quirinius.

(And, in fact, Matthew is doing something more than merely dating his story: Herod the Great is mentioned because he is important to the story itself. The fact that we can use this to get an approximate date of Jesus' birth is perfectly incidental to Matthew's reference to Herod.)

Or maybe our understanding of Truth that is not completely the same as God's, maybe?

That's just sophistry, and doesn't deserve a response.

True, but relect that back on the Gospel writers. They might not have known exactly, when Jesus was born, so they have the birth happen at a time, which is of particular significance within their story-line - divine inspiration does not imply omniscience, I would venture to say :smile:

Translated: "I don't like the idea that they knew what they were writing, so I'm going to suppose that they didn't have a clue." The Jewish culture was one of the more date-conscious cultures of the time. Also, it's one thing for a writer (although not a theopneustos writer) to make up a date for some event that supposedly occured back in the dim, dark, distant past; it's quite another for a writer to try to con his readers with a fictitious date that occured within their own lifetimes or, at worst, the lifetimes of their parents. Not in a work of serious history, and all the scholars of Graeco-Roman writing accept that the Gospels follow the form of historical writing, not like the few examples of GR fiction that have survived.

Divine inspiration does imply omniscience: or do you only use the word "divine" in regard to singers named Midler?

That kind of making things up to make a more stream-lined story was fully accepted in that time. When reading the Gospels we cannot pull them out of there historical-literature environment and enforce our standards on them - we need to respect the standards of thir time.

And I would strongly advise that you do that very thing: respect the standards of their time. Your claim that making things up was fully accepted is not a claim that would pass muster with any current scholars of Graeco-Roman historical writing. While they may have included events that we would not today accept as factual, GR historical writers did not make up events on their own; if anything, we can only accuse them of being somewhat too credulous in accepting reports from indirect testimony. And I challenge you to point to any surviving GR historical writing of the time period where a specific date can be shown to be simply made up to make the story better.

Yes, I have read that, but I am a bit confused by it - Pilate is well-known from the writings of Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus, so those who have claimed the non-historicity of Pilate must have imagined quite some conspiracy theory!

Conspiracy theories are nothing new, and in fact following the so-called Enlightenment there was a definite trend to discount not only the Bible but the writings of Philo and Josephus (and others) as well where they supported the Bible. Also, while I mentioned it was "fashionable" I did not say that it was the general concensus; but it was certainly not only the lunatic fringe that took that position until it was carved out from under them (yes, pun intended, go ahead and stone me! :lol: ).

As archaeology emerged in the late 18th century, a critique towards the written word - ANY written word - followed en suite. Everything was questioned, even the Homeric epics, remember! Like all that kind of anti-traditionalism, it went a bit to far, and today most scholars, Christian or not, have a more nuancé opinion on literary sources - though there are always extremists in either of the camps!

That certainly was the case, and more or less the point that I was also making. I especially love the claim that the Iliad and Odyssey weren't written by Homer, but by another man with the same name. :teeth: The greatest benefit from modern ANE archaeology, and Greek as well, has been the extent to which it has re-instated a respect neither slavish nor grudging for the historic record. Although we are now seeing a new wave of "challenge the Bible at all points" theorising in archaeology, relying heavily on arguments from silence.

Also, if I may say so, many Christian apologists make too much out of the archaeological discoveries that confirm the Bible - often to the extent of not realizing that many of these discoveries actually do not confirm the Bible. For instance, the Hittites - the word "Hatti" was actually in use for the Syro-Palestinian area even into Hellenistic times. The Assyrians as they advanced across the Euphrates expanded the meaning of the word, which was the only one they knew.

I fail to follow your point here. Are you claiming that there were, in fact, no Hittites at all, but that the Assyrians applied this name willy-nilly to other people? The only extent to which the existence of the Hittites "confirm" the Bible is exactly the point of their existence, which was denied prior to the 19th century re-discovery of their ruins and inscriptions. The Bible said that there were people called Hittites, the naysayers said no there weren't, and the archaeologists "confirmed the Bible" by proving that, yes, there were indeed Hittites. Do you dispute that they have proven their existence?

Why are the Carribbean Islands also called the "West-Indian Islands"? Because Christoffer Columbus did not know better than that he had arrived at India, the country that he knew about!

A more correct statement would be that he did not want to admit that he had failed to arrive at India (more properly, "the Indies" or Spice Islands, what are now called Indonesia). A mere propoganda ploy, as just about all his contemporaries, not otherwise politically guided to agree with him, were well aware that these were not the Indies nor Indians long before Columbus finished his voyages.

So the discovery in Anatolia of the Hittites did not confirm the Bible, even though that is a common claim.

Ah, now I see your point: the ANE historians who labour under the idea that the Hittites were not confined to Anatolia are mistaken! Such ideas as:

Roaring into history from mysterious origins, the Hittites would rule a great empire that stretched from Mesopotamia to Syria and Palestine. The Hittites are shrouded in fog and mystery; we don't where they came from, and for a long time the language they spoke was undecipherable. In the end, it turns out they were Indo-European, that is, they spoke a language from the Indo-European language family, which includes English, German, Greek, Latin, Persian, and the languages of India. Their invasion spelled the end of the Old Babylonian empire in Mesopotamia (1900-1600 BC), and like so many others before them, the invaders adopted the ways of the conquered; after the conquest of Mesopotamia, the Hittites adopted the laws, religion, and the literature of the Old Babylonians thus continuing the long heritage of Sumerian culture.

Their empire was at its greatest from 1600-1200 BC, and even after the Assyrians gained control of Mesopotamia after 1300 BC, the Hittite cities and territories thrived independently until 717 BC, when the territories were finally conquered by Assyrians and others. (see http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MESO/HITTITES.HTM)

And no, that's not from some Bible-thumper's home page, that's Washington State University. Check The Hittite Home Page (http://www.asor.org/HITTITE/HittiteHP.html) here for more links to the Hittites and what we know about them.

Three important words to remember when writing on historical matters: Research, Research, Research.

Please allow me to disagree here, will you? Quirinius' historicity is not questioned at all, and we do know that he was governor (legatus juridicus) of Syria (including Judea as an annexed province) from 6 ce, and we know that one of his taska as he received the office was the assessment of "Archelaos' estate". The word used by Luke is "apographe", which of course implies some book-keeping. Compare with the Domesday Book, which was commisioned by William the Conqueror for the assessment of his new kingdom.

So we have a case that corresponds exactly to what Luke writes. Now, consider yourself to a reader of Luke's gospel some time in the 1st century ce, you are probably an educated Greek - Luke's style is standard Greek-Roman - so you know some of the above, what would you think? Would you say: "Aha, the census Luke is referring to must be the one that happened, while Quirinius was governor of Syria!", or would you start speculating, whether Luke could be referring to some possibly existing census before that, when possibly Quirinius might have been some kind of governor in Syria?

If I'm an educated Greek, I would say, "Why does that Luke fellow say protos at all? What is that word doing in his sentence?" And go from there.

If there is a plain, simple solution, why not choose that?

"A theory should be as simple as necessary to explain all facts, but no simpler." If the "plain, simple solution" overlooks some facts, that's a pretty good reason not to choose it. The fact is, we're told both that Jesus' birth was coincident with a taxation decree connected with Quirinius' governorship in Syria and that it occurred before the death of Herod the Great.

Indeed so, but the way things work is that you argue from, what you know, not from what you don't know. Of course, conclusive statements should rarely be made, but neither should far-fetched solutions. Notice that some even want "first" to really have meant "before", which is a new reading of the Gospel!

Ah, your credentials in Greek grammar are weightier than those of F.F. Bruce! My apologies, I didn't realise that.

And Christians aren't fallible humans?

Of course we are! That's why we put, or at least should put, our trust in God alone. The argument is based on what God said: Jesus' birth was in Bethlehem due to a taxation decree associated with Quirinius of Syria, and up to two years later, Herod the Great was still alive and on the throne of Judaea. Everything else has to be based off of that.

They are so, often to the extent of blindfolding themselves and thinking that everybody then must be as much in the dark as they themselves are!

No, generally everybody else is even more in the dark. It's hard for people to see when they refuse to open their eyes.

Herodotus - if it's him you are referring to - supplies us with a lot of interesting anecdotes mixed up with maybe a few bits of actual history, but extracting the last from the first is the real, real, real tricky bit. Yet many Christians rely on him as a fully reliable source :eek:

Actually, I'm aware of very few Christian academic sources that put any faith in Herodotus at all. He is treated, by GR scholars in general, as being a pretty good source when he seconds, or is seconded by, another worthy writer, but events which are single-sourced in his writing are generally not given any credence unless they seem un-unusual. He not only treats the stork/pygmy war as a factual event (more like a perennial series of events, happening for some centuries at least every year when the storks migrated south to Africa), but his reason for rejecting the account of the Pharoanic circumnavigation of Africa (that is, a circumnavigation in Pharoanic times, not necessarily that Pharoah Necho was actually on board) is the one reason that the account is credible today: the navigators claimed that the sun shone on their right-hand sides, which Herodotus rejects because he doesn't know that Africa extends below the equator where indeed the sun shines in the northern sky (right as the sailor sail westward below Africa). In fact, we know now that if such an event happened (and I'm not saying that it necessarily did, only that it could have), then they would have seen the sun in the northern sky, despite what Herodotus thinks he knows about the shape and size of the continents.

Anyone, Christian or otherwise, who would clasify Herodotus as "a fully reliable source" no doubt has no more direct knowledge of his writings than would be available in a high-school World History course: i.e., about a bare mention of him as "Father of History" and nothing more. No one who has actually read his work would make that mistake.

The (but he is good for an entertaining evening) Curtmudgeon

FreezBee

February 14th 2006, 10:12 AM

I agree that it is not always simple to distinguish between God's working and Satan's, but the problem cannot be laid to God's not telling the truth, which was the specific point I was making: not that it is difficult to tell the difference sometimes, but that if God is capable of lying about historical facts, then it becomes not difficult but impossible to distinguish.

Why? Isn't this imposing human rules on God, rules that God need not apply to? Rationalistic Christiany may sound tempting, but its limit is that it imposes rules on God and therefore tries to make God subservient to humans!

As for the causitive factor(s) behind David's census, check here (http://www.christian-thinktank.com/hcensus.html) and here (http://www.christian-thinktank.com/gutripper.html#census).

Yes, we can all speculate and invent reasons from our own image of God, so nothing surprising here, I'm afraid! I don't find Glenn Miller an unable apologet, but he tends to want to have it in as many ways as he can, clouding his own arguments in impenetrable fog of not very much.

It's different to say that God can create things that appear to us to be bad, such as adversity (or "disaster" in the version you quote), from creating things that are not only bad but in direct opposition to God's character, such as lies. The Scripture, and indeed history in general, shows that not every adversity or disaster is, truly, an evil ("That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.") The problem is our restriction of judging events according to short-term effects and not God's outside-of-time perspective. Even the sinking of the Titanic, as one single example, can be seen as a long-term good, based on all the positive changes it forced the international maritime community and national legislatures to make which, in the long run, have saved countless more lives than were lost in that single horrible night.

Well, isn't that simply a practical way of seeing things? We all have to learn from our mistakes, so let's make a lot of mistakes!

Why is lying against the nature of God? Since when didn't each and every politician have a defense for each of their lies? What is really the distinction between true and false?

Because, in that day before international standardised calendars from Hallmark, that was the way important events were dated: in terms of who was sitting on the throne. And I draw immediate exception to your use of the phrase "foreign rulers": it is palpably untrue of Herod, the King of the Jews, and also obviously untrue of the Roman emperor and governor since Judaea was a part of the Roman empire at the time and specifically a part of the Roman province of Syria.

Not sure exactly, what you mean here. Herod the Great's father was from Edom (Idumaea), hence a descendant of Esau, not of Jacob, hence not a Jew, but a foreigner. The Roman emperor and Roman governor of Syria were non-Jews, independent of whether Judaea was a part of the Roman empire or not. You also consider e.g. Nebuchadnezzar a non-foreigner, because Judah became part of the Babylonian empire in his time?

If Matthew or Luke had listed the Parthian king, or the governor of Hispania or Gaul, then you might have had a case, but even that would have been justified if it can be shown that people in those areas were intended readers of the work in question.

I did not mesn foreign to the readers (except in the case of Herod - but note that Luke doesn't say anything negative about him!), but simply non-Jews. Excuse for not making that clear originally.

Although the Roman Empire as a rule used the AUC dating for many things, it was still common, and was culturally usual in the East, to use regnal dating. Matthew and Luke have used standard historical procedure in dating the birth of Jesus just as any secular historian of their time would have dated the birth of an important philosopher or the like. A more generalised form of dating would take some important known event and relate the date in question to that; the Greeks did this by relating most dates to the four-year Olympiads, but other events could just as easily be used.

Indeed! And that's why I am sure that Luke implies that Jesus was born in 6 ce, because Luke refers to Quirinius as governor of Syria!

A cursory glance through Josephus Jewish Antiquities turns this up in Book 18, Chapter 2:

When Cyrenius had now disposed of Archelaus' 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 ...

I picked this, not because of it dealing with Cyrenius/Quirinius and the taxation census of 6 AD, but because it shows how this style of dating worked. The Battle of Actium had nothing, directly, to do with the subject at hand, still it was a convenient date which would be known to Joe's readers to anchor his reference to the taxation. So Matthew and Luke were writing exactly as would any other historian of their period in dating the birth of Jesus: Matthew, in line with the Jewish emphasis of his gospel, dating it to Herod's reign, and Luke, in line with the more world-wide approach he favours, dating it to Augustus Caesar and Quirinius.

Don't expect me to disagree!

(And, in fact, Matthew is doing something more than merely dating his story: Herod the Great is mentioned because he is important to the story itself. The fact that we can use this to get an approximate date of Jesus' birth is perfectly incidental to Matthew's reference to Herod.)

True, because we can't really date the birth of Jesus according to Matthew very precisely, only to the last years of the reign of Herod the Great - because Jesus was still a child, when Heros died. Matthew is much less concerned with the matter of dates than Luke is.

That's just sophistry, and doesn't deserve a response.

Please allow me to disagree, will you? How do we know what God understands by Truth? I am sure you have read some of Plato's dialogues. These deal among other things with the problems of exact definitions. Plato as any other idealist believed in the Truth, the Good, and so on. But to what extent do we humans know about these never-changing ideas? They are confined to the mind of God, if they exist at all. That's not sophistry, but a very serious question. To what extent should we humans operate with something that is beyond our knowledge?

Translated: "I don't like the idea that they knew what they were writing, so I'm going to suppose that they didn't have a clue."

Wrong translation :smile:

Apparently they had some clue - they are not more than maybe 12 years apart.

The Jewish culture was one of the more date-conscious cultures of the time. Also, it's one thing for a writer (although not a theopneustos writer) to make up a date for some event that supposedly occured back in the dim, dark, distant past; it's quite another for a writer to try to con his readers with a fictitious date that occured within their own lifetimes or, at worst, the lifetimes of their parents. Not in a work of serious history, and all the scholars of Graeco-Roman writing accept that the Gospels follow the form of historical writing, not like the few examples of GR fiction that have survived.

But this exactly gives you the problem: Matthew has Jesus born in 6 bce, maybe earlier, and Luke has Jesus born in 6 ce! If that's from divine inspiration, then you may have to reconsider your idea of divine inspiration :smile:

Divine inspiration does imply omniscience: or do you only use the word "divine" in regard to singers named Midler?

As you indirectly imply here, "divine" may mean different things to different people. And how do you know that divine inspiration implies omniscience? Isn't that simply an assumption?

And I would strongly advise that you do that very thing: respect the standards of their time. Your claim that making things up was fully accepted is not a claim that would pass muster with any current scholars of Graeco-Roman historical writing.

Oh, you genuinely believe that Josephus was quoting original tape records of the speeches he wrote for various persons? In Greek and Latin there is no distinction between "history" and "story" - it's only in English it's two slightly different words!

While they may have included events that we would not today accept as factual, GR historical writers did not make up events on their own; if anything, we can only accuse them of being somewhat too credulous in accepting reports from indirect testimony.

True - the historical-critical method was not fully developed back then, and indicating your sources wasn't either. But notice that Luke begins like this:

1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled[a] among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

This is quite standard, and it does not mention anything about divine inspiration! As Luke says it, he has investigated everything, where "everything" must refer to that which "were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses". This is very different from Matthew, please note!

But also note that Luke mentions that there are other accounts in circulation, so may we not be excused in believing there was some disagreements? Why else would Luke try to sound as if his account was the result of a thorough investigation almost as if it were a court case?

And I challenge you to point to any surviving GR historical writing of the time period where a specific date can be shown to be simply made up to make the story better.

Of couse it's tricky to show that s date has been made up, when we do not have undisputed evidence of the date :smile:

Conspiracy theories are nothing new, and in fact following the so-called Enlightenment there was a definite trend to discount not only the Bible but the writings of Philo and Josephus (and others) as well where they supported the Bible. Also, while I mentioned it was "fashionable" I did not say that it was the general concensus; but it was certainly not only the lunatic fringe that took that position until it was carved out from under them (yes, pun intended, go ahead and stone me! :lol: ).

Well, the critics of the time had to match the apologetics of the time, hadn't they?

That certainly was the case, and more or less the point that I was also making. I especially love the claim that the Iliad and Odyssey weren't written by Homer, but by another man with the same name. :teeth: The greatest benefit from modern ANE archaeology, and Greek as well, has been the extent to which it has re-instated a respect neither slavish nor grudging for the historic record. Although we are now seeing a new wave of "challenge the Bible at all points" theorising in archaeology, relying heavily on arguments from silence.

Wasn't it the plays of Shakespeare that had been written by someone else named Shakespeare?

As for, whether there is more challenge to the Bible than usual, I do not know. Hasn't that been the opinion ever since the start of Bible citicism?

But I will to some extent agree with you that the "argument from silence" is used too much, but also notice that there's a reason for the phrase "roaring silence" :teeth:

I fail to follow your point here. Are you claiming that there were, in fact, no Hittites at all, but that the Assyrians applied this name willy-nilly to other people?

Nope. The Hittites wre a people in Anatolia, but controlled an area including northern Syria. In the 12th century bce Aegean peoples (called "the sea peoples" in Egyptian inscriptions) wrecked havoc in the eastern Mediterranean causing the downfall of the Hittite empire in the process. However, a group of city states in northern Syria retain the name "Hatti Land" and are so mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions. But as these states were conquered by Assyria and the Assyrian army moved southward, the name was applied to the whole Syro-Palestinian region that the Assyrians had no other name for.

And it was still in use, while the Seleucid kings were residing in Babylon.

The only extent to which the existence of the Hittites "confirm" the Bible is exactly the point of their existence, which was denied prior to the 19th century re-discovery of their ruins and inscriptions. The Bible said that there were people called Hittites, the naysayers said no there weren't, and the archaeologists "confirmed the Bible" by proving that, yes, there were indeed Hittites. Do you dispute that they have proven their existence?

The existence of the Hatti people has indeed been verified, but not as described in the Bible, where the name is used of people outside the area that formed the Hittite empire. So the Anatolian Hittites are not the Biblical Hittites, if that answers your question :smile:

A more correct statement would be that he did not want to admit that he had failed to arrive at India (more properly, "the Indies" or Spice Islands, what are now called Indonesia). A mere propoganda ploy, as just about all his contemporaries, not otherwise politically guided to agree with him, were well aware that these were not the Indies nor Indians long before Columbus finished his voyages.

Ok, I'll asume you're right - but we still have a case of a name applied to another area than it was originally applied to, don't you agree?

Ah, now I see your point: the ANE historians who labour under the idea that the Hittites were not confined to Anatolia are mistaken! Such ideas as:

(see http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MESO/HITTITES.HTM)

Please note the dramatic tone of the page! Does it sound as a standard scholarly introduction?

Anyway, the page gives no real information - it's all somewhat confused to me. Why should the Hiittite empire have lasted until 717 bce? No evidence at all! Yes, Assyrian inscriptions from the 8th century mention "Hatti Land" and even Hittites, but anachronistically! Not that Sennacherib counts Judah as part of Hatti Land and so does Nebuchadnezzar!

And no, that's not from some Bible-thumper's home page, that's Washington State University.

I'll email them and ask, if that page is to be taken seriously at all!

Check The Hittite Home Page (http://www.asor.org/HITTITE/HittiteHP.html) here for more links to the Hittites and what we know about them.

This is much better :thumb:

Take a peek at this picture from the page:

http://www.allempires.com/empires/hittites/hittitemap.gif

When were the Hittites ruling in Babylon?

Three important words to remember when writing on historical matters: Research, Research, Research.

Yes, Yes, Yes!

If I'm an educated Greek, I would say, "Why does that Luke fellow say protos at all? What is that word doing in his sentence?" And go from there. [QUOTE]

Yes, it was the first census - because Judaea had recently become a province!

[QUOTE=The Curtmudgeon]"A theory should be as simple as necessary to explain all facts, but no simpler." If the "plain, simple solution" overlooks some facts, that's a pretty good reason not to choose it. The fact is, we're told both that Jesus' birth was coincident with a taxation decree connected with Quirinius' governorship in Syria and that it occurred before the death of Herod the Great.

But not in the same gospel! So a possible theory is that at most one of the authors got the date right, and the other got it wrong!

Ah, your credentials in Greek grammar are weightier than those of F.F. Bruce! My apologies, I didn't realise that.

But now you know! What I meant is that all translations translate "prôtê" as "first", not "before" - that's why it would be a new way of reading the Gospel of Luke.

Of course we are! That's why we put, or at least should put, our trust in God alone. The argument is based on what God said: Jesus' birth was in Bethlehem due to a taxation decree associated with Quirinius of Syria, and up to two years later, Herod the Great was still alive and on the throne of Judaea. Everything else has to be based off of that.

In Biblical apologetics, yes! But some of us happen to believe in God instead of a book, and we see things slightly differently!

No, generally everybody else is even more in the dark. It's hard for people to see when they refuse to open their eyes.

If you don't open your own eyes, how do you know if anybody else does? And even if you open your eyes, but in darkness, how can you tell, if anybody else has their eyes open?

Actually, I'm aware of very few Christian academic sources that put any faith in Herodotus at all. He is treated, by GR scholars in general, as being a pretty good source when he seconds, or is seconded by, another worthy writer, but events which are single-sourced in his writing are generally not given any credence unless they seem un-unusual. He not only treats the stork/pygmy war as a factual event (more like a perennial series of events, happening for some centuries at least every year when the storks migrated south to Africa), but his reason for rejecting the account of the Pharoanic circumnavigation of Africa (that is, a circumnavigation in Pharoanic times, not necessarily that Pharoah Necho was actually on board) is the one reason that the account is credible today: the navigators claimed that the sun shone on their right-hand sides, which Herodotus rejects because he doesn't know that Africa extends below the equator where indeed the sun shines in the northern sky (right as the sailor sail westward below Africa). In fact, we know now that if such an event happened (and I'm not saying that it necessarily did, only that it could have), then they would have seen the sun in the northern sky, despite what Herodotus thinks he knows about the shape and size of the continents.

He is frequently used for support of such things as that Cyrus was the son of a Medean princess and therefore of Medean descend, and for the violent takeover of Babylon by the Persians. Of course, only people that defend the historicity of the Book of Daniel would bother with such things, and there may be no academics among those, so excuse me for believing there were :bow:

Anyone, Christian or otherwise, who would clasify Herodotus as "a fully reliable source" no doubt has no more direct knowledge of his writings than would be available in a high-school World History course: i.e., about a bare mention of him as "Father of History" and nothing more. No one who has actually read his work would make that mistake.

Well, some of the stories in the Bible are nearly as unbelievable as some of Herodotus' anecdotes, but they count as true by even some university professors, I can tell you!

The (but he is good for an entertaining evening) Curtmudgeon

Yes, I also take it that his "Histories" were supposed to entertain rather than enlighten anyone :smile:

- FreezBee