Amaleq13

I seem to recall an argument that Luke's author not only had a copy of Matthew but was specifically writing to refute that account. I'll have to check but I think it was Helms in Who Wrote the Gospels?.

Julian

Maybe I am losing my mind here but it seems to me that the Herod reference is concerning John the Baptist and then an unnumbered amount of days pass ( "Luke 1:23 And it came to pass, that, as soon as the days of his ministration were accomplished, he departed to his own house.") and then we get to Jesus in the days of Quirinius. Am I missing something here?

Julian

Diogenes the Cynic

To be fair, Luke only explicitly places the birth of John the Baptist during the reign of Herod the Great. Mary is visited by an angel in the 6th month of Elizabeth's pregnancy and told that she will conceive a child but is not told when. Mary then goes to visit with Elizabeth, JBap is born and grows to manhood before Luke resumes the narrative with Mary and Joseph on the way to Bethlehem.

There is an indeterminate length of time between the birth of JBap and the birth of Jesus and there is no explicit indication that Mary was yet pregnant when she went to visit Elizabeth. I also think that GLuke implies a passage of time between the respective births numbering in the years by stating that JBap "grew up" before the book gives the details of Jesus' nativity.

I think Luke wanted to claim a relationship between Jesus and John but I don't think he necessarily intended to imply that their births were contemporaneous.

Peter Kirby

I believe that when Mary visits Elizabeth (Luke 1:39-45), Mary was already pregnant. Elizabeth tells Mary that "Blessed is the fruit of your womb" and calls her "the mother of my lord." The alternative reading, that Mary became pregnant about ten years later, does not come from the text.

best,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

I think you have the general idea of the Farrer theory. There is also the Three Source Hypothesis, which acknowledges Luke's use of Matthew (as well as a common written source between them). Here I have argued for Luke's use of Matthew, and I have not adjudicated between Farrer and 3SH.

best,
Peter Kirby

Diogenes the Cynic

Elizabeth says that she knows that Mary will be "the mother of the Lord" because the baby jumped in her own womb. There is no explicit statement that Mary is pregnant at that time and the text even goes on to say that Mary stayed with Elizabeth another three months until JBap was born before returning home. Is that something she would do without telling her husband she was pregnant?

I will also point once again at Luke's description of John growing to manhood before he jumps to Mary and Joseph on the road to Bethlehem. Lk 2:5 states that Joseph was travelling with his wife ouse egkuo, "being pregnant." This is the first time Luke explicitly says that Mary was pregnant and he follows it up by saying that it was the time for her to give birth. If the reader was expected to understand that Mary was already pregnant, then Luke had no reason to repeat it in 2:5. He could have just said it was time to have the baby. The fact that he says she was pregnant and it was time for her to give birth suggests to me that Luke was not attempting to suggest that Mary was already pregnant in the first chapter.

YMMV of course, but I don't think Luke has to be made to contradict himself on this pont.

Peter Kirby

I don't know if it has to be called a contradiction either. My best guess is that Luke has telescoped the time between the death of Herod and the census of Quirinius down to nothing. In any case, it is upon Julian to demonstrate otherwise, for his argument to be effective.

best,
Peter Kirby

Ted Hoffman

I am doubtful that this answers the question. IMO, Luke would only have blatantly contradicted Matthew if (1) It was so obvious that Matthew was wrong on the genealogies etc (2) Matthew was unknown to people.
Otherwise, it doesnt make sense that he would write to contradict Matthew with Matthew in his hand as he wrote - unless Luke is merely an anti-Matthean polemic.

Peter Kirby

I don't think that this "contradiction" is a big deal. For one thing, it is perceivable only when one has external history at hand, namely that Herod died in 4 BC and that the census happened in AD 7. Would anyone like to argue that this would be common knowledge?

best,
Peter Kirby

Ted Hoffman

Julian had written:
Would your response be "I don't think that this "contradiction" is a big deal"?

By the way, now that I think about it, and wrt Rod Green's response at JM:
If Luke was fixing Matt, wouldnt we encounter, in Luke, phrases like "Some have said that XYZ...but that is not true: ABC is what actually happened"?

I think this would be a strong argument. Even today, when we read Meier writing anti-Crossan, he writes (for example). "It has been said that Nazareth was totally isolated. That is not true. Nazareth was actually close to the trade route that led to Damascus..."

I dont think its feasible that a writer could just hold a codex and write material that contradicts it and yet leave no traces in his writing, of his awareness that there exists material that contradicts what he is writing.

:huh: