spin

What's the problem, judge? You can check the sources, you can do the arithmetic. It indicates 4 BCE.

You've provided no source for this material and it gives nothing of relevance to the current issue. It deals with Josephus's biases and reflects on his redactional activities. It in no way affects the several indicators of the end of Herod's reign.

You've called Richard Carrier "dogmatic" and his words "a bit too strong" when he cites evidence the scholarly community has accepted for a long while. In E.M. Smallwood's The Jews Under Roman Rule (or via: amazon.co.uk), Brill, 1976, p.104 you'll find a footnote which provides a discussion on similar material. You'll find similar analyses in other scholarly works and the arithmetical data is all there for you to see.

All you've got is a rehash of an article written in 1966 (W.E. Filmer, JThS xvii) which is based on a dating the one eclipse of the moon mentioned in Josephus and the time needed for a series of events before the Passover, an argument which disappears by dating the eclipse itself to 5 BCE.

I find nothing dogmatic nor too strong to justify your evaluation from what you have cited. The arithmetic is in.


spin

judge

Maybe, I'm still not quite sure about your thoughts on this arithmetic.

Or that apparently the earliest copies of Josephus show Philip dying in the 22nd year of Tiberius. The footnote you mention seems an entirely different matter than this.
I will try to get some more info on the earlier mss.

spin

According to my footnoted edition, it's from a Latin version of the text (vicesimo secundo). The Greek simply has twentieth.

But does it matter when there was not an earlier opportunity for the census of Quirinius who ruled Syria? This date, despite the perennial quibbling by people who don't know anything about Roman social structure, is well fixed to ten years after the death of Herod, by the length of the reign of Archelaus. The fact that Quirinius ruled Syria meant that he could not have been in a subordinate role, and any such role must be excluded by the fact that Quirinius had reached consular level.


spin

judge

I dont think anyone disputes that there was a census later on. They seem to have happened every 20 years, although that one was 21 years later IIUC.

What is questioned is whether the writer of Luke really meant this census, or did the author mean the oath taking around 3 BCE?

So the question then becomes, is there any additional evidence to point to this earlier date?
It seems there is, as mentioned previously, which gives us reason to be cautious rather than dogmatic.

spin

Luke's word is apografh "registration", which doesn't have anything to do with an oath. It is the word used for what Quirinius did in 6 CE as indicated in AJ 18.1.1, which talks specifically of "registration of properties".

The earlier date is not related to the Lucan text which specifically talks of a registration carried out by Quirinius who governed Syria at the time, ie 6 CE. You should be able to see why it has been brought into the affair, despite its irrelevance.

Cautious about what? Seeing that Quirinius who governed Syria according to Luke carried out a registration and that that registration was the only one carried out by Quirinius and that was in 6 CE?


spin

judge

Well, Josephus tells us that 6000 pharisees refused to take the oath, so obviously the people had to register. Josephus, Antiquities XVII.41–45.

Orosius, writing in the 5th century wrote..

See the reference here that it marked Caesar "the first of all men". Not seeming to be one of the 20 year census's but rather the oath taking in connection with Augustus receiving the title of Pater Patriae, on February 5, 2 B.C.E


So, there does seem to be evidence that the oath taking had evrything to do with a registration.

spin

When one talks about registrations, why talk about oaths?

The oath in AJ 17.2.4 deals with loyalty to Caesar. The Pharisees refused to take the oath, so they were fined and the wife of Pheroras paid the fine and everything was dandy. Nothing to do with a registration.

Now you change subject totally:
It's a bit hard to understand Orosius without seeing the original because the citation is the fusion of two separate passages from the writer. And reference from the fifth century doesn't seem particularly relevant to the first.

From what Orosius says, he seems confused as to the purpose of a census. Whatever the case, it seems unrelated to the registration for taxation purposes mentioned in both Luke and Josephus.

This seems to be an argument regarding dating the end of Herod's reign based on an oath of allegiance to Augustus, but why would you assume that the oath was that of 2 BCE? There was an oath in 5 BCE related to Augustus's consulship of that year, as shown from an inscription from Samos (John Briscoe, review of "The Imperial Oath of Allegiance" in Classical Review 1971).

No connection whatsoever has been established.


spin

judge

As I mention it "marked caeser as the first of all men" it was the recognition of the fatherhood of caeser, a more prestigious occaision than the one you mention .

Secondly we know it was empirewide from an inscription

From here The Census of Quintilius Varus



I am still curious as to your thoughts about this

If we can use parts of josephus to give us a 4BCE date then why cant we use parts of josephus to give us a 2-1 BCE date?

judge

From here The Dark Decade in History

Not only does Josephus contradict himself on the date of Herod's death but even different mss of Josephus contradict one another and here it seems all the older readings support Herods death at the later date.

IOW according to your original reasoning, with the correct number of years inserted, Herod died in 1 BCE!

Here is your original reasoning.

JoeWallack

JW:
Apparently you can figure out all sorts of Amazing facts from this site but you can't figure out that the nearby Thread here:

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

I'm posting answers to all your questions there so in the future I know that everything that's come up on the subject at II can be found in One thread.

Here's what I posted there on Carrier's response to Beyer:

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...ius.html#Herod

"Was Philip made king in 2 B.C.?

Apart from all this ad hoc assertion, Finegan's only 'case' for his hypothesized mass-coregency is an attempt to redate the reign of just one successor, Philip, according to an obscure textual variant (§ 218). He proposes that in Jewish Antiquities 18.106 "in the twentieth year of Tiberius" should be read as "in the twenty-second year of Tiberius," so that Philip's "thirty-seven year" reign would have begun in 2 B.C. (and thus, so the argument goes, Herod must have died then). The original basis for all this tinkering is the fact that Philip's obituary is indeed placed in Josephus' narrative seemingly around the year 35 or 36. But it is clear that Josephus wrote "twentieth" and not "twenty-second," and analysis shows that Josephus is either wrong about the dates of all the events he places in this year, or else he is compressing many years together, or both. It is therefore most likely that Josephus is correct about when Philip began his reign, just as he is with all the other tetrarchs, and simply misplaced (or loosely placed) his obituary among external Roman events he knew less well.

As evidence of Josephus' confusion about events, Cassius Dio dates the Vitellian parley, which Josephus places before Philip's death, to the reign of Caligula, several years after Philip's death (59.17.5, 59.27.2-3). And it appears that Tacitus may have, too: Vitellius, as a future emperor, is an important person, yet the event is not recorded by Tacitus for the reign of Tiberius, while Tacitus' account of Caligula's reign is lost. Likewise, Tacitus (Annals 6.31) and Cassius Dio (58.26) both date the other Parthian events to 34/35, which Josephus places after 36/37. Thus, while Josephus dates the death of Philip as having happened "about the same time" as all these Parthian affairs (Jewish Antiquities 18.96-105), they did not happen in the same year. Indeed, it appears that the Parthian king Artabanus established his son Arsaces as ruler of Armenia in 33 or 34 A.D., not 36 as Josephus' narrative implies (s.v. "Artabanus" and "Armenia," Oxford Classical Dictionary). Since Josephus clearly did not have a good idea of when the surrounding events actually happened, or else is not discussing a single year at all, he is certainly being too vague to pinpoint an exact year when he says Philip's death happened "around" then. Likewise, right after Philip's obituary, Josephus says "around the same time" Herod and Aretas began to have a falling out, but the narrative of this event spans several years in a matter of a few paragraphs. Thus, very little can be concluded about the date of Philip's death from where Josephus has placed it in his narrative.

What about that obscure textual variant? Finegan's only source for this claim is a mysterious, unpublished speech given by David Beyer.[17.3] In Finegan's summary, he never identifies any actual manuscripts, and though Beyer names them he does not identify their relationship to other manuscripts or their known quality or origins. All Finegan (and Beyer) does is "count manuscripts" and argue that older manuscripts are the most reliable. But neither is true, as any palaeographer knows. We have no way of knowing which of the manuscripts Beyer counted were copies of other extant manuscripts (and thus completely irrelevant to the question), and we have no idea whether the manuscripts he looked at are known to be reliable or unreliable or to what degree or in what ways. Older manuscripts can sometimes be poorer than new manuscripts, since newer ones can be based on even older but more reliable archetypes (see "On Calvinist Scorn of Textual Criticism" for more about textual analysis), and older ones may stem from especially faulty textual traditions. Moreover, Beyer examined only manuscripts in the British Museum and the Library of Congress--yet the best manuscripts are in France and Italy--one of which is the oldest, Codex Ambrosianae F 128, inscribed in the 11th century (the oldest manuscript Beyer examined was 12th century); and another is the most reliable: Codex Vaticanus Graecus 984, transcribed in 1354; both confirming a reading of "twentieth," and thus invalidating all his conclusions from the start. Finegan and Beyer seem ignorant of all of these issues. Consequently, we cannot trust them here.

When, instead, we examine all existing critical editions of Josephus, composed by scholars (Niese, Naber, and Thackeray) who themselves looked at the manuscripts, and properly, identifying relationships among them and assessing their reliability, we find a very different story. First of all, little more than a handful of manuscripts are worth even examining for this passage--yet Beyer is counting dozens (none of which are even among the best), proving that his investigation is completely disregarding the proper criteria of textual analysis. Second, all scholarly editions agree: the word for "twentieth" (eikostô) exists in all extant Greek manuscripts worth considering. Where does the reading "twenty-second" come from? A single manuscript tradition of a Latin translation (which reads vicesimo secundo). Beyer's case completely falls apart here. The Latin translations of Josephus are notoriously inferior, and are never held to be more accurate than extant Greek manuscripts, much less all of them. Indeed, this is well proven here: whereas the Latin has 22 for the year of Tiberius, it also has 32, or even in some editions 35, as the year of Philip, not the 37 that Finegan's argument requires. Thus, clearly the Latin translator has botched all the numbers in this passage. Any manuscripts that Beyer examined were no doubt either from these inferior Latin manuscripts, or Greek translations from these Latin manuscripts. Therefore, there is no basis whatever for adopting "twenty second" as the correct reading. Philip was crowned in 4 B.C. exactly as Josephus says, and just as all the other tetrarchs were who inherited portions of Herod's kingdom. This means Herod died in 4 B.C., exactly as Josephus claims."


JW:
Note that your friend, Jeff, thinks Quack, er, sorry, Jack Finegan, is an authority and Richard Carrier is a quack. The above exercise begs to differ.



Joseph

"And what else floats?" - Sir Bedevere

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