Diogenes the Cynic

Carlson does not argue against the contradiction between birth dates in that thread but only argues for a theory as to why Joseph would have returned to Bethlehem during the census. If Stephen has argued a defense against the birth date contradiction, I haven't seen it.

waked

[QUOTE

(I don't get the point of quoting the above scripture. Matthew, Mark and Luke gave an account of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. John didn't - that doesn't mean it didn't happen??)[/QUOTE]

does that mean it did happen ? :huh:

Diogenes the Cynic

At least you've improved from a seeming incomprehension of the text to regurgitating standard, boilerplate apologetics.

The solution you offer is ad hoc (it is proposed not because the text of either author requires it but purely from an empirically unnecessary desire to reconcile their accounts), contains no internal textual evidence to support it and doesn't really work in any event. Essentially, the claim here is that Heli was really Joseph's uncle (a claim with utterly no foundation in Luke's text), that Joseph's father, Jacob, had married Heli's widow, and that this somehow made Jesus a legal "son of Heli." This is simply not plausible. Any children who were already born might become legal sons of an uncle who married their widowed mother (he would essentially be adopting the family as his own), and coceivably, either man might be interchangably referred to as their "father," but any NEW children he produced would be his and his alone. They would never be considered the children of the wife's first husband.

Jack the Bodiless

Faithful, perhaps a parable might help here. This story is apparently an urban legend, and various nationalities have been used in different versions of it. It involves a supposed radio conversation between British and Irish sea captains when their radars indicate that they are on a collision course...
I get the impression that, like the ship captain, you imagine that the authority of your "ship" (the Bible) allows you to dictate that anything that opposes it must veer aside: the Bible has priority. But the lighthouse in this story is a fixed feature of the real world: it cannot veer aside, and no amount of imagined authority will cause the solid rock it's sitting on to move.

The Bible is on a collision course with reality. No amount of imagined "Biblical authority" will keep Herod in a state of undeath for a decade until Quirinius becomes governor of Syria: nor will quoting Bible verses at us make this happen. The Bible doesn't alter historical facts which contradict it. Similarly, the authority of the Bible won't cause the ground to rise up under Nazareth to form a hill and a cliff which then sinks back into level ground (leaving no geological evidence of any major seismic event). This would indeed be like the lighthouse moving aside for the ship.

S.C.Carlson

In my blog post, "Luke 2:2 and the Census" (Dec. 22, 2004) and related postings, I argue that the parenthetical comment about Quirinius in Luke 2:2 is not intended to date the birth of Jesus but actually to distinguish the occasion of Jesus's parents returning to Bethlehem from that important census Josephus highlighted in his works.

I didn't mention this in the blog posts, but Luke's own dating of Jesus's birth is better understood from Luke 1:5, which locates the birth of John the Baptist (and necessary that of Jesus) in the reign of "King Herod of Judea"--a dating that happens to agree with Matthew (Luke's source in the Farrer theory, but that's neither here nor there). The traditional interpretation of Luke 2:2 therefore not only creates a contradiction between Luke and Matthew but also a tension within Luke itself.

JoeWallack

JW:
Exxxcellent. There's a scene in the classic Fright Night where the Vampire, Christ Sarandon, says to Charlie (as he flashes a cross), "It doesn't work against me unless you have Faith". So too, I don't like adressing Apologies unless the Apologist really Believes it. Thank you for finally Confessing that you believe "Matthew" and "Luke" are old enough for no Dating contradiction here.

I Believe with a perfect Faith that:

Carrier's Luke vs. Matthew on the Year of Christ's Birth Now Up At ErrancyWiki

Proves that "Luke" did refer to the Same census as Josephus. The Apologist problem than is that "Luke" refers to this census of 6 CE and uses it to Date the Birth of Jesus. The Natural Genesis of Apologetics than is to Concede that it refers to the same census but Deny that "Luke" used it to Date the Birth of Jesus.

Congratulations, you've made the related List. Now, where to rate you? I have to confess myself that what I've written here really isn't so much for the benefit of Faithful.



Joseph

FAITH, n.
Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Diogenes the Cynic

No. Herod was ten years dead.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. You ask "how Quirinius got in here" and then you quote the passage yourself. I don't think you have a grasp of the chronology involved. I'll run it down for you briefly:

Herod the Great was a king of the entire Jewish state ("Israel") who died in 4 BCE. During his reign, Israel was a client kingdom of Rome, not a province. This means that Herod was the ruling authority and that his kingdom was not subject to direct census or taxes by the Romans, nor was it subject to any authority of Syrian governors. Herod got this deal because he had supported Augustus Caesar during the civil war which brought him to power. There was never a Roman census in Judea while Herod the Great was king.

After Herod died, his kingdom was divided between three of his sons. These little mini-kingdoms were called tetrarchies and the rulers were called tetrarchs. Herod Antipas (the guy in the Bible who killed John the Baptist and wanted to see Jesus do magic tricks) was given Galilee (which is where Nazareth was) and a son named Archelaus was given Judea (which included Jerusalem and Bethlehem). Archelaus was so incompetent and brutal that Rome finally removed him from power in 6 CE (ten years after the death of Herod the Great) and annexed Judea (and ONLY Judea, Galilee remained under the authority of Antipas) as a territory of the province of Syria. This is whht put Judea under the authority of the Syrian governor, Quirinius, and Quirinius' firts order of business with his new territory was to conduct a census and tax. This was "the first census" under Quirinius referred to by Luke. It didn't happen until a decade after Herod the Great was dead. Do you understand the contradiction now?

Diogenes the Cynic

thanks, I had forgotten that but now I remember it. Your argument is that Luke conflates an Augustan survey of Roman citizens with Quirinius' census by suggesting that Luke's use of the word prote should be read in a figurative sense of "foremost" or 'most important" rather than in the literal sense of "before," correct?
This presumes two things, that Mary was supposed to already be pregnant at that time (something which is not explicitly stated by Luke) and that this "King Herod" could not have been Archelaus. I believe that Richard Carrier has argued exactly that.

James Brown

I just noticed a little trick that you pulled here. You've been arguing that Herod and Quirinius are contemporaries (not very well, though.) Instead of saying, "my argument shows that this is not a contradiction," you said that this "shows that there are no contradictions."

Is this correct? Do you think that if you can explain a single contradiction, then there are no contradictions at all? Or did you mistakenly type that?

S.C.Carlson

Not quite. I argue that the grammar and syntax of Luke 2:2 (e.g.. the lack of the definite article) indicates that prote has the fairly common sense of of "foremost" or 'most important". Though I initially speculated that Luke may have been thinking of an Augustan survey of 8 BCE, in my third post of the series "Putting Luke 2:2 in Context" (Dec. 31, 2004), I backed off that position as follows:

Carrier's argument as found on the errancywiki uses his understanding of Luke 2:2 to control the interpretation of Luke 1:5: "unless we assume Luke is contradicting himself." Since I don't agree with his understanding of Luke 2:2 nor do I assume that Luke cannot contradict himself, there is no need for me to accept Carrier's tenuous attempt to equate Luke's "King Herod of Judea" with the person that Josephus called "Archelaus, ethnarch of Idumea, Judea, and Samaria" (particularly since I already suspect that Luke knows Josephus). On the other hand, "King Herod of Judea" is a perfectly appropriate designation for Herod the Great.

Carrier's argument assumes that Luke 1:5 is not only inept in how it refers to the ruler but is also more ambiguous than 2:2. But this is not the case, because the history of interpretation of Luke 2:2, including the many different scribal alterations of the verse over the centuries, demonstrates otherwise.

Stephen Carlson