fromdownunder

From the earlier posts:

The above is a complete record of the conversation regarding the census. Your initial claim was that my statement that a census occured in 6CE was implausable. Not what the author of Luke got right or wrong. In any event, as I said on another post in this thread, Luke never put a date on the census, so how could he be "wrong"? Maybe, if Jesus existed, he was born in 6CE, and Luke and Matthew got the Herod bit wrong.

Norm

Dina Noun

No, it’s not. You left out all of this from my post.

There, that's all of it.

No, my initial claim was that the census associated with Luke’s story was implausible, for several reasons.

One problem is the idea that everyone would know exactly where their ancestral “home town” was in order to register there. For Joseph, this went back 1000 years or so. Could everyone actually know where their family came from 1000 years or so in the past? Maybe, but it’s implausible.

For example, I don't know where my ancestral family was in the high middle ages. And I doubt I am the only one here in that boat. Further, I don't know what city in the United States my family forefathers first lived in.

Another problem is the idea that everyone in the “world” would up and travel at the same time to their ancient “home towns”. Imagine the utter disruption of society such a mass migration would produce.

Another reason the census described in Luke is implausible is that we have no record from the time of such a worldwide, mass-migration census, even though we have good historical records for the time of Caesar Augustus' reign.

Another of the problems is that Luke’s account says that the census that took Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem occurred during the reign of Quirinius: this is implausible because several historical evidences – “the Jewish historian Josephus, the Roman historian Tacitus, and some inscriptions”, as mentioned above - indicate that Quirinius did not rule until 10 years after Herod’s death, so Luke contradicts Matthew.

I’ll touch on that last part in a minute when I respond to your next part.

Why do you consider that the most plausible explanation?

As a couple examples that argue against that.

First, Herod’s death is central to Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, whereas Quirinius’ rule is virtually irrelevant to Luke’s. Isn’t it therefore more plausible that Matthew did his homework and got the dating of such a pertinent event correct?

Second, Herod is much more mentioned in the New Testament than is Quirinius, so it seems that more was known about Herod by those who wrote the New Testament. Therefore, it seems more plausible that the dating of Herod's death is correct one of the two.

TedM

I doubt it for the following reasons:

1. We have NO evidence of a belief in a crucified Messiah as having existed before the traditional date of Jesus' crucifixion. I would expect some kind of such evidence because a crucified Messiah was repulsive to the traditional expectation of the Messiah among the Jews. Paul is the first to defend the concept, in Galations, around 45AD. Had such a repulsive belief existed long before, I would expect there to be signs that someone Jewish would have referenced it long before, since the evidence most strongly supports Palestine as the geographical origin of the early Christians

2. Paul refers to a contemporary as 'the Lord's brother', and also the 'Lord's brothers'. I believe these are referring to biological brothers, as later writings corroborate against the ideal of Jesus being an only child born to a perpetual virgin.

3. The traditional expectation was that the Messiah would usher in the kingdom of God. Paul and others believed the kingdom had come during their lifetimes, so much so that many stopped working and sold their possessions in anticipation of Jesus' return. Yet Paul never explains a period elapsing between Jesus' crucifixion and the kingdom he ushered in, which would have been a major issue of concern had they also believed that Jesus had actually lived many decades or centuries prior.

4. In 1 Cor 15, written around 55AD Paul refers to Jesus' resurrection appearance to him, which occurred some 20 or so years prior as being the 'last one', following a number of other earilier appearances, which had occured to other contemporaries of Paul. He represents the appearance to him as in someway 'untimely'. If appearances were inspired simply by invented ideas about an unknown man who lived long before, I would not expect Paul to have been the last one to have had such visions in the 20 years or so between his 'vision' and the writing of 1 Cor 15..

5. 1 Timothy, which references Jesus' stand before Pilate could well have been written by Paul, as its author claims. See http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/pastorals.html for a reply to those who question its authenticity.

ted

Clivedurdle

Welcome!

Fascinating post - I thought Ellegard was pushing things, but Troy!

Didymus

If you're answering Eowyn's first question, I share your doubt that Paul believed that Jesus was born and crucified in the first century.

On the other hand, in the more likely event that you're responding to the second question:

Why would a Palestinian Jewish scribe feel compelled to report on such a "repulsive belief"? And why would other Jews feel compelled to preserve reference to such a belief?

Paul's epistles would not have been written if the crucified messiah idea hadn't taken hold in the Diaspora, where his congregations were located, where he lived, where Greek influence was strong, and where all the gospels were also written.

The only evidence that "strongly supports" a Palestinian origin of early Christianity appears in the NT itself. There's no epigraphic or archeological evidence to support that theory; Christianity could have just as easily originated in Syria or even more likely in Egypt, where the earliest Christian manuscripts have been found. Paul's ideas were not preserved by Palestinian Jews, they were preserved by the gentile Christian church.

(Paul's references to the Jerusalem "pillars" suggest that there were some Christians in Jerusalem. But he only names a couple of leaders. He gives no indication as to the size of the community.)

What does that have to do with the dating of the earliest belief in a crucified messiah? I don't see the connection.

Where does Paul specify when Jesus' appeared to him? He's not even clear about when he appeared to the others, and he certainly doesn't say that the appearance took place 20 years prior. He does say, however, that it happened on the "third day" after the crucifixion. But the "third day" idea is an obvious lift from Hosea 6:2, and as such is almost certainly scriptural, not historical.

Where does Paul cite any accounts of those post-resurrection visions by those "other contemporaries"? 500 Jerusalemites seeing a dead man in the sky would cause quite a stir! But no non-Christian, not even Pliny or Philo, bothered to mention this amazing event. Nor did it result in the large and permanent Jewish Christian community one would expect to result from such a large scale miracle. To the contrary, there's no archeological evidence to suggest that a large Christian community, Jewish or gentile, was active in 1st or 2nd century Palestine. The first archeological evidence comes from the mid-3rd century, when, paradoxically, Christianity was apparently exported to the region by the Byzantines. (The Sukenik ossuary discovered in 1948 is not now considered to be indicative of a 1st century Christian population. It's not even thought to be Christian.)

If there was any truth to the NT accounts of public miracles witnessed by thousands, Palestine would have been teeming with eyewitnesses and Judaism would have quickly been relegated to the dustbins of history.

"COULD WELL HAVE" been written by Paul? Slippery, misleading apologetics, like almost everything found on Tektonics.

Didymus

TedM

Hi Didymus. Because it would have repulsed him, and offended him. I don't think such an offensive subject would have been ignored for decades or centuries.


I think there is enough Jewish influence in Paul's writings and some of the gospels and Hebrews and other non-biblical writings that at least some of them would have referenced a long-standing repulsive belief among the Jews had it been long-standing.


There is plenty in there--the location of Jesus himself, and the inclusion of a number of Aramaic phrases said to be spoken by him. Papias references Matthew's sayings of Jesus written entirely in Aramaic, and translated to Greek later. The Didache has the same Aramaic word Paul uses --Maranatha--meaning 'Our Lord, come'. Paul was writing to Greek speaking audiences, yet includes the Aramaic word "Abba" when referencing prayers to God in which the Spirit is also mentioned. These things betray a tradition known to have come from Palestine. Paul, with all of his troubles with those who required Gentile adherance to Jewish law, travelled to Jerusalem on several occasions, concerned with supporting the Church 'the Poor' financially, and lays his gospel before the church pillars, 'lest I had been running in vain'. James, the first bishop of the Church, located in Jerusalem, was one of those leaders. Peter, one of the other one, and James are both mentioned in 1 Cor 15 as being among the first to have seen the resurrection Jesus, according the the tradition Paul passed along. Clement of Alexandria's Recognitions, along with Acts, both agree that the church began in Jerusalem, grew fast and numbered in the thousands, was led by James, and persecuted by Paul. Paul himself refers in 3 different letters to his persecution of the church. This may explain in part why he went to the Gentiles. The origin in Jerusalem may also explain why Paul's teachings were being attacked by Jews who favored the Jewish law. Had it developed in Gentile lands first, this probably would not have been such an issue. And, let's not forget, this Jesus was seen as the Jewish prophet or Messiah by the earliest Christians. We have not an inkling that he was anything but that. Paul himself twice says he was Jewish. A number of writers link him biologically to James and others, who were Jewish. The overall evidence for Palestinian origins is grossly stronger than that for far away lands.


Yet, they still reflect origins in Palestine. Most likely because that was accurate.


ref: brothers, James
It links the crucified messiah with contemporaries of Paul, one who was the leader of the Jerusalem group, in contrast with a figure who lived decades or centuries prior.



In Galations--he says 11 or 14 years prior to his writing them. Corinthians is considered to have been written within 10 years or so of that.

Perhaps, but another possibility is that the 3rd day was when a tomb was traditional first visited. I question whether anyone inventing a resurrection story would use Hosea 6:2 to derive the 3 day period. It seems more likely to be a response to a belief that it happened on the 3rd day for some other reason.

I don't have good answers for this. However, I'm curious if you have heard of the ossuary finds on (I think) Mount Olive, which curiously contain a high percentage of names we know from the NT?

Why? Elijah and Elisha were said to have been miracle workers, yet, they didnt' cause the creation of a new religion or the abolishment of Judaism. The Jews are reported in the NT and later in the role of Celsus (I think) and maybe even in the Talmud to have been skeptical of Jesus' miracles, and there are reports indicating that miracles were performed by others in those days. Anyway, one doesn't have to believe the miracle stories to believe that Christianity arose in Palestine.


I haven't looked closely enough to decide, but I think Holding makes some very good points in the article. It is claimed to be by Paul, contains a number of Pauline concepts, details which seem to have no theological purpose, and he provides some good arguments against the common problems scholars cite as indicating unauthenticity. If you'd like to address any of them, I'm open to a discussion with you.

ted

k_smith123

Actually, I would not suggest that the "Christ/Phoenix" idea dates to the actual fall of Troy, but rather I feel that it dates at least to the period when the Iliad was was penned.

Clivedurdle

I would argue that Egyptian roots of this religion are very important - remember the Greeks and Egyptians were interchangeable - Alexandria - an epic based on the Phoenix Christ written in Egypt but based in Palestine?

Any good writer or editor would dump some aramaic in the story!

A comment on the radio this morning - epics were meant to be spoken aloud and listened to with our ears. Novels and reading - using our eyes - is a much later technique.

What happens to the New Testament when its primary means of communication is by listening? Does it obviously become classic epic?

Have we missed a basic primary translation, from ears to eyes?

Celine

This is no small point, no small point at all. I've been tempted to make it after lurking and reading many, many threads on this forum.
And while I admire and find enlightening so many of the linguistic and semantic discussions around here. your point, Clivedurdle, is almost totally obscured.

There is a VAST difference between the context and meaning received by the human ear, and that "heard" by the inner, translating, narrative voice.
I think maybe Harold Bloom, somewhat of a semi-amateur biblical scholar, may have written something about this.