spin

Verses are only a quick indicator. Are you talking about short attention spans?


spin

Gundulf

No, levitical law required, after a male child was born, that he be circumcised after 8 days, and 33 days after that, in order to complete purification ritual, that a sacrifice of a lamb (or 2 doves for the poor folks) be given at the temple. Not that Jesus being 8 days old v. 41 days old changes the discussion much, however.

If it is not a nuisance to ask, what is the discussion, exactly? I get the feeling this is a follow on thread to an earlier post? But it sounds like a sticky point is the idea that the family went to Nazareth right after this event, although Matthew has them in Bethlehem a year or two later?

Just a thought: a basic biography of me would not be inaccurate if it said, "After completing high school, I went to college in..." although there was a sizable chunk of time and things done between them, as it just isn't important to the point of the biography to talk about work done for my Uncle Joe...

dzim77

Huh? So you agree that Jesus was around 2?

Why not? Could be a hundred hypothetical reasons.

Good point.

Amaleq13

A good point that the Doctor clearly does not want to address on his site.

Gundulf

How flexible is our ordinary use of language? Parents will refer to their 6 month old as their baby, child, son/daughter, little one,

And parents will refer to their 6 year old as their baby (anyone the youngest of 5 or the like and can testify to this?), child, son/daughter, little one.

There are some words that are more specific, like "infant" and "toddler" that we use, but some that are just more flexible. If Greek is similar (which it is), there are plenty of words that have broader meanings than just the first one you find in a lexicon.

MiddleMan

So what's your point? Sounds like you might be arguing against Dr. Jim for sticking too closely to the definitions of these words in order to have Luke referring to events in Jesus' infancy and Matthew's referring to events in Jesus' toddler years in order to "clear up" a biblical discrepancy. Are you saying Dr. Jim doesn't realize these words can be interchanged just as we interchange words like "baby" for our 6 year olds and "little boy/girl" for our 6 month olds? That the events of Luke and Matthew both refer to a time around Jesus' birth and that both stories conflict in spite of Dr. Jim's misguided attempt to be too precise with his definitions?

Gundulf

Couldn't have said it better myself.




There's enough in the story itself to suggest that Jesus was significantly older (in Matthew's account) than an infant without having to resort to bad linguistics.

One thing I must add, though, (and then there must be more interesting things to discuss! )... but why do people always suggest that Jesus was 2 years old, if we bother taking the story at face value?

OK, see if anyone follows me:

Let's say you're a psycho king that is willing to slaughter whole populations of infants to keep your throne safe.

You find out from some strangers that they believe a King (i.e., usurper) was born 2 years ago.

Would you kill all the kids 2 years old and younger? I mean, if you're looking to be sure to wipe out a kid that is 2 years old, wouldn't you send your soldiers to kill all the kids aged 1 to 3? If the kid you're looking for is around 2 years old, then you can pretty well rule out all the newborns, RIGHT?

And would you really want to risk that your not-too-bright soldiers would miss killing this usurper because they went into a house and estimated that the 2 year old usurper was 2 years and 1 month old?

No, you're going to give a margin of error to cover both sides, so a decent estimate was that Jesus was perhaps around 1 year old, according to Matthews account.

spin

What I like about West's approach is that it shows in a totally plausible manner how traditions can develop. There is some perceived problem which needs resolving. This is done with some new development, which in West's case is the theory that he can use the significances of certain Greek words to delineate a change in interpretation. Then we build up support for the innovation, as we can see with a few posters in this thread. When there was sufficient mass behind the revolution, xmas would change forever! No more Melchior, Balthazar and Casper trundling up to the manger with the shepherds in the synthesis of the two discordant nativities. They'd pop up after the brat was a year old, but then they'd have nothing to do with xmas any more. It doesn't matter. It's all part of the evolution of traditions.


spin

spin

While we are on this subject of brefos/paidion, here's another approach to the issue:

Mt 2:1 says "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, there came Magi from the east to Jerusalem", which is closer to the Greek than translations using "after" in place of "when". We have the wise men in Jerusalem around the time of the birth, then after an audience with King Herod they went off to Bethlehem (a trip of a full day) to find him. Umm, who wants to follow the proposed logic, which has the wise men arriving when the child was a year old, and say that that trip from Jerusalem to Bethlehem took a year or so? It sounds worse than the father who was going down to the corner store for a pack of cigarettes and only turned up a year later.


spin

Gundulf

So they came "from the East" - what, they were living in an Eastern Suburb of Jerusalem?

(Plus, "when" doesn't mean "the exact day," does it? I could say, when the U.S. was fighting Nazis in WWII, and that doesn't speak about a single day...)