Doug Shaver

Am I missing something? It seems pretty clear to me that the edict requires people to return to their current homes, not to the birthplace of any ancestor. This in no way corroborates Luke.

DCHindley

Well, that is what the reviser of Schuerer was saying a little further in the post.

Ramsay said that Luke 2:3's "every one to his own city" (hEKASTOS EIS THN HEAUTOU POLIN), was roughly equivalent to the edict's "outside of their nomes" ([EKSTASI TWN hEAUTWN] NOMWN). The square brackets indicate what was conjectured by the editors. In Egypt, a "nome" was a village or town. There technically weren't any Greek cities in Egypt, including Alexandria, although there were obviously larger settlements that were supported by the grain produced by a group of smaller ones. In Luke a "polis" likely meant both a formally constituted city and all villages and towns under the authority of that city. What Schuerer seems to have objected to was the context added by the further instruction to "return to their domestic hearths" (EIS TA hEAUTWN EFESTIA). A "domestic hearth" in a nome is harder to equate with an ancestral home, as some were supposing Luke meant by "own city." The hearth was the cooking fire of a dwelling place, and held special significance to those of Roman extraction. As far as I am aware, this term did not imply a kind of ancestral home or estate, although it did draw on warm & fuzzy collective memories of familial fellowship, especially between wives/mothers with their husbands/children.

DCH

credoconsolans

I had been hearing this for sometime and the last Xmas Story special I saw on the History Channel, a scholar gives a little detail, saying the edict refers to people who are unemployed, hence the

"that they may also accomplish the customary dispensation of enrollment and continue steadfastly in the husbandry that belongeth to them."

Basically so they can go back to their family homes and be supported as part of the household or be given jobs by their families. Not sure how much of the edict is available for translation so that that scholar got this from it.

It sounds like that, but why would that make sense? People already live in their homes and go back to them every night. Why would they need an edict to make them do it? It seems this would apply only to people who travel for a living.

Regardless, laws varied from region to region and governor to governor. I hardly think that a census edict written 100 years later in a land hundreds of miles from the Middle East area of the Xmas Story would be considered a standard census procedure for all of the Roman Empire.

DCHindley

Yes, the fragment continues down the page quite a bit farther. The fragment was from a "letter copy-book" of published edicts (numerous others are known), part of imperial record-keeping, so there were other edicts and such that followed this one. The beginning of the edict is heavily damaged, but the following detail tells us who should have issued it.

You have to understand something about 1st-2nd century Egypt. Except for the Roman aristocratic elite and their Greek retainers in the larger towns, all arable farmland was leased to local Egyptian tenant farmers. The elites "owned" (really, had control over it by the emperor's permission) the land and their household slaves and upper level retainers managed these estates, but local Egyptians worked plots of land and lived in villages. Sometimes, especially in the 2nd century, these farmers were also lower level Egyptian retainers like scribes and artisans, who moonlighted as farmers. They plowed and planted the land before the inundations, and after the growing season they harvested it. During periods that did not require their direct presence, many of these local farmers would head for the bigger towns and try to pick up wage labor at the docks or try their hands as lower level merchants or artisan tradespersons.

What it sounds like to me is the edict for the 14 year poll-tax registration was issued around the time that the farmers should have been preparing to plant or reap, and this was a gentle reminder that besides those who would have to return in order to report for their household, those who were not going to report for their households should ALSO get back home to work so they will be able to pay the resulting poll taxes. Roman citizens did not pay poll taxes, and Greek retainers paid at a reduced rate.

DCH

Pataphysician

I would say it was more for historical metaphor reasons. Israel's first King, Saul, was publicly chosen when everyone gathered together at Mizpah (watchtower) and organized themselves by tribes and clans, (essentially a census). But Saul though already chosen by god was hidden at first among the baggage, during this event. Then after this, each person was sent back each to their own house. Saul went to Gibeah, and then certain powerfull men went to him with their support, But certain worthless men said, "How can this one deliver us?" And they despised him and did not bring him any presents. But he kept silent.

A pattern of circumstance, where that last of something would be like the first of something, is not an uncommon ancient "logic". So the messiah being the last King of Israel, would come about in similar ways as the first.

Also later, the confusion of whether Jesus was from Nazereth or Bethlehem had to be explained. Nazereth was actually just a curruption of some natsar root word based word, to watch, and probably a reference to Mizpah in the Samuel story, which is a pretty much an unknown location anyway.

Chili

Nono, you are thinking born again and again and again until it finally catches [fire].

This here is the one shot deal with no refills.

Dryhad

Not really, no. The Egyptian census and Luke's census are actually quite different. Joseph wasn't asked to go to Bethlehem because he lived there, he was asked to go there because his great^n grandfather lived there. It only seems similar to apologetics who are desperate to find evidence that such censuses really did occur. The fact that this is the best they can do rather hurts a literal interpretation of Luke.

Comment on what? The political situation in Egypt in the second century? Whatever that situation was, I can't imagine an analogous situation in Palestine leading to the census described in Luke. Why not make it exactly the same as the Egyptian census, if we are supposed to believe they occurred for the same reason.

Also of note is that the Egyptian census was confined to Egypt. Luke claims that his census was conducted on the "entire world". It therefore seems even less likely it would have been prompted by some kind of political upheaval.

If it's a metaphor it's a bloody metaphor, isn't it? I have no problem with metaphors in religious texts. I do have a problem when people insist that because they are in religious texts, they can't possibly be metaphors. That's where creationists come from.

Clivedurdle

This sounds familiar - the Elizabethan and nineteenth century poor laws and the first words of the 1948 National Assistance Act!

Would it help to research social security systems of the time? Was the family responsible so if you were homeless you had to return to your ancestral hearth? How did tax gatherers fit into the social security systems?

Does the term eco appear anywhere?

We are not looking in the gospels at fledgling social security systems are we? Blessed are the poor etc?

Doug Shaver

Does he have any comment about the relevance of this, from the verse immediately following?

Doug Shaver

That seems to have been exactly why the edict was promulgated: "it is necessary to notify all who for any cause soever are outside their nomes to return to their domestic hearths."