The Evil One

If this were the case we would have the census under Quirinius two years plus before Herod died, which is just as impossible as having the census zero years plus before Herod died.

spin

I'd say it's extremely improbable, given that the following verse also has paidion. That's a little too much fatigue, isn't it? The text has also had a liberal rewrite if it came from Mk 10:13ff.

Then going back to West's example of brefos in Lk 2:12, it is followed in 2:17 by the shepherds finding what the angels had told them about the child (paidion). This is further followed by the example that Steven Carr mentioned at 2:21. The child is eight days old and ready for circumcision, yet Luke has once again paidion for child.

I think there is an even simpler approach to the evidence. Look at 2 Tim 3:15, "from a child (apo brefous) you were taught the sacred writings". I truly doubt that the writer meant that "Timothy" would have been taught the sacred writings from when he was a new-born baby. There is just more flexibility with regards to the usage of the term brefos than West's surgical approach to meaning allows, despite its more intrinsic significance.

We also must remember that in the gospels brefos is limited to only Luke, so we cannot be sure that it was in the other gospel writers' vocabularies, leaving them to make do perhaps with the less specific term paidion.

The precision distinction West is trying to make is simply unconvincing.


spin

(The imagery of "surgical approach" and "precision distinction" should invoke the rhetoric of certain bombing missions of a pre-Dubya era where collateral damage was a little higher than reported.)

Gundulf

Call me nitpicky, but for the sake of accuracy, do note that the return to Nazarath was most certainly not immediately following Jesus' circumcision. According to Luke's account of the events, at least.

yalla

Is this, perhaps, suggestive of a link of some sort between the author of "Luke" and the author of 2 Tim ?
cheers
yalla

Steven Carr

Luke 2:39 'When they had finished everything required by the law of the land, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth'.

The last required thing was the circumcision, was it not?

spin

Yo, yalla. I don't think one word without even a similar context is enough to say anything.


spin

yalla

Well I was sort of adding that one word to other stuff.
I've read that there is a certain similarity of style and vocab between "Luke" and the PE's.
I'm not seriously suggesting common authorship but maybe a similarity of time and place, perhaps the same literary 'set".
Anyway I got myself interested enough to do a google and pretty quickly came up with this:

Catholic Encyclopaedia
"Another point much insisted upon by objectors is a certain limited literary or verbal affinity connecting the Pastorals with Luke and Acts and therefore, it is asserted, pointing to a late date. But in reality this connexion is in their favour, as there is a strong tendency of modern criticism to acknowledge the Lucan authorship of these two books, and Harnack has written two volumes to prove it (see LUKE, GOSPEL OF SAINT). He has now added a third to show that they were written by St. Luke before A. D. 64. When the Pastorals were written, St. Luke was the constant companion of St. Paul, and may have acted as his amanuensis. This intercourse would doubtless have influenced St. Paul's vocabulary, and would account for such expressions as agathoergein of I Tim., vi, 18, agathopoein of Luke, vi, 9, agathourgein, contracted from agathoergein, Acts, xiv, 17. St. Paul has ergazomeno to agathon Rom., ii, 10."

Do you reckon there is any merit in this alleged literary relationship at all at all?
yalla

Malachi151

That sounds like a whole bunch of mythology to me. It has long been claimed that "Luke" was an associate of "Paul". I don't think this is anything more than wishful thinking.

yalla

The "Luke"/Paul connection is something that I reject.
I may not have made that clear.

I was actually interested in the vocab similarities which associate, however validly, the author of "Luke"/Acts, however tenuously, with the PEs thus dating them early to mid 2C.
And just wondering if 'brefos'' can be added to the list of verbal similarities mentioned by the CE.
As far as I can tell the only place that word appears in the Tanakh and NT is in "Luke" and 2Tim.
Just a passing thought stimulatd by some comments read somewhere some time ago [thats precision for you] and the comments in this thread.
cheers
yalla

S.C.Carlson

Don't count verses; they're not original. Eighteen words separate the two terms.

Stephen