Boro Nut

As far as I know the romans had the same census as we do. I think there were five. Smell, Taste, Talking, Hungry and Football I think.

Boro Nut

Toto

Boro Nut makes more sense than Nomad.

Once again, when I track down Nomad’s references, I find litle or no support for what he says. Now I see why Nomad is running a small business in Calgary instead of studying history at a major University where he would have to defend his research against real standards.

Nomad (one of the two Christians on this thread with language difficulties) still doesn’t understand what Richard meant by "indisputable". Can’t help him there.

In other cases, Nomad still shows no evidence of having read what Carrier wrote.

(emphasis added)

From Carrier’s article:

There's no omission here. If Nomad disagrees with the analysis, he needs to point out what is wrong.

Also:

An assertion by Josephus that a nice round number of men did not swear an oath is not evidence that Josephus derived that number from counting registration documents.

Carrier’s article:

Carrier's essay states:

To refute this, Nomad quotes from census's order in Numbers and Exodus (pre-Davidic) and cites the same Solomonic census Carrier did!

Nomad does find a reference to a census in Joash's time (at least in one translation.) Perhaps there is a point there, or perhaps, like Solomon, this was a census of foreigners; if not, Carrier has indicated he will revise his essay.

Enough for now. The rest of Nomad's post is similarly full of invective and lacking in substance.

[ October 04, 2001: Message edited by: Toto ]

Nomad

Hello Toto

Your willingness to defend Carrier's presentation is quite noble, but still misguided. I have asked him direct and specific questions, and his failure to address them is not corrected by your additional failure to do so.

Now, how old was John the Baptist when Jesus was born? Use Richard's essay if you wish, but I would like to know what you think his position is. He appears to be of two minds on this issue.

Second, the Jews recorded that they could and did take census'. You cannot back away from Richard's view that the OT was largely authored in the post-Exile period (IOW, AFTER David was king) and believe that these rules did not apply to the Jews. Such a view is internally inconsistent. David was specifically prohibitted from conducting a single census. No where else in Scripture can you find a commandment against all future census' for all time.

As I have said, your rush to defend your hero is noble, but misguided. If Carrier has changed his mind, then that is fine, but he should then also change his essay. In the meantime, his continued insistence that his views are certain, beyond dispute, true, beyond question ect. is laughable.

For now I would be content to see if any other scholar defends them. We can start with when Luke dates the birth of Jesus, then go from there to how old was John the Baptist, were all census' forbidden for all time...

Final question, you do know that Joash was king after both Solomon and David right? Reread 2 Kings 12:4. It would help to actually read my posts, then address my points, rather than waving your hands quite so much.

Thanks again Toto.

Nomad

Toto

You continue to prove your inability to read. I specifically mentioned that you might have a point with Joash. I assumed you could infer from that that I knew he was after Solomon.

In order to read your post, I had to copy it to a text editor and delete the content-free insults, to extract any possible substantive points. I don't know if Carrier will have the same time or patience. He might actually have a life.

I am not prepared to speculate right now on how old John was when Jesus was born. I think it most likely that the author of Luke was writing legendary fiction, and I would not expect him or her to be internally consistant with such things.

Nomad

Alright, so you do not have a lot of time. No problem. However, I am puzzled by something, so please indulge me.

When I asked who, besides Carrier, had argued that John the Baptist was 12 at the time of Jesus' birth he said:

See Schwarz, “On Quirinius...” Revue de Qumran 13 (1998), pp. 635-46, for argument and bibliography; also, Brown acknowledges that Sherwin-White makes a similar argument (p. 548, i.e. App. VII, text, w. n. 3). The reason so few have proposed it is that so few are willing to admit one author is wrong. Instead, everyone almost to a man tries to reconcile Matthew and Luke, which means forcing Luke into a 4 BC date (since Matthew cannot be forced into a 6 AD date).

Now, I do not have Scwhartz's work, so I cannot verify that Carrier is telling us the truth here. But I do have Brown's Birth of the Messiah, and I looked up Richard's reference and posted it. Here it is again:

One ingenius suggestion, however, is that Luke did not mean Herod the Great but Archelaus, who is occassionally called Herod(Note 2) and who ruled as king of Judea from 4BC to AD 6. One could theorize that the annunciation of JBapt's birth took place toward the end of Archelaus' reign (AD 5-6) and that Jesus was born after Archelaus had been deposed and the newly installed Quirinius began the census (AD 6-7).

Note 2: This is the thesis of Sherwin-White, Roman Society, 167, who thinks that Luke is correcting Matthew's tradition. Rather, the generally accepted independence of the two infancy narratives and the apparent lack of any Lucan knowledge of Matthew makes their mutual reference to Herod the Great persuasive in the dating of Jesus' birth.
(R. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, [Doubleday:New York, 1993], pg. 548, n. 2)

As you can see, Sherwin-White made no such argument at all. In my view, an unreferenced source is a small faux pas, but when that source does not actually say what you claim, then it becomes at least an error, and in the case of a scholar, actual dishonesty. On what basis did you clip my pointing this out as being mere invective on my part?

Quite frankly, once a person demonstrates that they will not quote a source accurately, and are willing to misrepresent what was said, then their entire presentation becomes suspect.

Given that Richard is wrong about Sherwin-White, and also wrong about Joash, why are you still willing to accept what he has to say on this subject at all?

Nomad

Toto

Nomad:

Carrier says that Sherwin-White makes a "similar" argument. I don't know what that argument is, or how similar, but you are assuming a lot to say so definitively that Carrier is wrong.

If Richard Carrier thinks it worthwhile, he can expound on the point.

Remember that Biblical quote about the mote and the beam? How did that go?

Boro Nut

Everyone knows that, Silly.

Richard Carrier

My thoughts exactly about your following reply. There is nothing there that isn't obviously a mistaken reading of what I said above, or in my essay, or that isn't already adequately addressed in that essay, or that isn't false, e.g. you claim to present evidence that Augustus conducted a census until 4 B.C. but the quote you cite contains no proof whatever of that claim. So I will not argue with you. I can't see what there is to gain by it. Every objective reader who cares to actually read what I have writtem will know who is right here, and that is all any sane author can hope for anyway. And until someone presents me with new facts I see no reason to write any more than I already have.

Be well.

Richard Carrier

Just to clear up some issues:

Why do I see no reason to argue with Nomad? Because he never reads what I write, or when he does he fails to grasp what I meant. For example, he says “I am going to assume that you did not read what Josephus told us about this event. He records that 6,000 men did not swear their oath of loyalty,” yet I had already dedicated an entire footnote to this fact, thus clearly I did read it--hence Nomad’s false “assumption” is proof that he did not read my essay in any respectful detail. Many, many more examples like this, or of him ignoring a qualifying word in a sentence of mine and thus claiming I said something I did not, or of him ignoring how people normally speak English (and indeed fixating on a ridiculous verbal quibble as if it were at all relevant to what I actually argue), and so on, could be found, but there is no point.

He also makes no effort at any scholarship. For instance, he allows himself to be deceived by a faulty translation in regard to Joash:

2 Kings 12:4, King James Translation:

"And Jehoash said to the priests, All the money of the dedicated things that is brought into the house of the LORD, even the money of every one that passeth [the account], the money that every man is set at, and all the money that cometh into any man's heart to bring into the house of the LORD."

The context is clear: he describes three kinds of cash sent to the temple. The money paid by those who pass by, the money men paid that is fixed for them individually, and the money people just give out of charity. There is no reference here to a census.

Vulgate

dixitque Ioas ad sacerdotes omnem pecuniam sanctorum quae inlata fuerit in templum Domini a praetereuntibus quae offertur pro pretio animae et quam sponte et arbitrio cordis sui inferunt
in templum Domini

Lit.

"And Joash said to the priests, All the money of the sacred things which has been brought into the temple of the Lord by those who pass by, [and] which is paid for the price of a soul, and which from a spontaneous and free judgement of the heart they have brought into the temple of the Lord of their own accord.”

Septuagint:

kai eipen iwas pros tous iereis pan to argurion twn agiwn to eisodiazomenon en tw oikw kuriou argurion suntimhsews anhr argurion labwn suntimhsews pan argurion o ean anabh epi kardian andros enegkein en oikw kuriou

Lit.

“And Joash said to the priests, All the silver of the holy things coming into the house of the lord: the silver of valuation a man [brings], the silver of the valuation of what was set, [and] all the silver that enters the heart of a man to bring into the house of the lord.”

Tanakh (simplified):

(Yhowash) (amar) (kohen) (keceph) (qodesh) (bow) (bayith) (Yhovah) (keceph) (iysh) (abar) (keceph) (nephesh) (erek) (keceph) (alah) (iysh) (leb) (bow) (bayith) (Yhovah)

Lit.

“Joash said to the priests, The silver of the sanctuary brought to the house of Jehova, the silver of men passing by, the silver of the price of a soul, the silver that comes into a man’s heart to bring to the house of Jehova.”

The Mishnah also lists all the sorts of money that came into the temple in the Second Temple period: Sheqalim 6.5-7.1--they include, altogether:

(1) the annual shekel every adult paid to the upkeep of the temple (i.e. that which was redirected to Jupiter by Vespasian after the Jewish War), a religious duty originally associated with a census in Exodus, but no longer after Davidic times (probably the “price of life” in 2 Ki 12:4).

(2) the goods and money that had to be paid for atonement for various sins (guilt and sin offerings). This is the money of “those that passeth,” since that verb in Hebrew also means to “transgress” a commandment (Nu 14:41, 1Sa 2:24, 2Ch 24:20, Ps 17:3, Jer 2:20), and the Septuagint’s “money of a valuation a man brings” refers to the valuation of something, which in typical Koine Judaism could be the valuation of a man’s sin or guilt (i.e. as a gneric term for anything assigned a value, even land, suntimesis would logically encompass both, since there was no other suitable collective word; note that the priests explain that they did not use some of the money they were told to in 2 ki 12:4 because it was theirs, not the lord’s, and the money they refer to is sin and guilt offerings: 2 Ki 12:16, which can only mean the “money of valuation a man” brings).

(3) free will offerings (which includes money from vows, i.e. Le 27), i.e. the third kind of money mentioned in 2 Ki 12:4.

No mention of a census.

In fact, since most Jews were in a diaspora in the Second Temple period, a census was impossible, since all Jews were obliged to pay the shekel lest they sin, and a census of Judaea would not help at all in enforcing that law. It thus became like any other commandment: if no one witnessed you breaking a rule and you did not confess it, you got away with it. But ever since the episode in David’s reign, a census of Jews was regarded a sin (hence Solomon only took a census of non-Jews). That is no doubt why Josephus never once mentions Herod or any king since David taking a census of Jews.

Nomad

Before we get to your example Richard, let's look once again at my own.

I specifically asked you who has argued that John the Baptist was 12 when Jesus was born. You answered that two sources did exactly this. I do not have the first, so can neither verify, nor confirm that the author made this argument, but I do have Raymond Brown's Death of the Messiah, and I actually posted what he wrote. In it we see that Sherwin-White did not make the argument that John the Baptist was 12 when Jesus was born. He argued that both were born on or about 6AD, but that John was no more than 1 at the time of Jesus' birth. I would have thought that you would at least have the decency to retract your erroneous claim. Instead, you wish to tar me with additional insults. Such is your right, of course, but do not pretend that you have not simply dodged your responsibility to present facts and evidence for your beliefs, and when you are in error, to withdraw your statements.

I have now quoted from three respected scholars that all say the same thing. This is not a fallacious appeal to authority, but rather, a legitimate use of sources. Albert Ball, M. Scully, and H.H. Scullard are among the formost scholars on ancient Rome. I gave you the sources for what they wrote, and from what I can see, their view is not even controversial. You may disagree with them, but your opinion hardly matters here. I would like to see your evidence that refutes them.

Thus far you have not argued Richard. You have piled one misrepresentation upon another, and made bold assertions that I have shown to be false. Further, you refuse to retract your errors, and admit that you made a mistake. If or when you elect to get your facts straight, then we can actually have a discussion. For now, I will have to content myself with simply pointing out your errors, and cautioning readers to take your writings with a very large grain of salt.

Once again you have an opportunity to do the right thing Richard. I hope that you will avail yourself of this opportunity.

Nomad