Freethought & Rationalism Archive

vid · 08-02-2008, 11:21 PM

Justin Martyr, Apology 1, Chapter 34, writes:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf0....ii.xxxiv.html

Quote:

Now there is a village in the land of the Jews, thirty-five stadia from Jerusalem, in which Jesus Christ was born, as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing made under Cyrenius, your first procurator in Judæa.

I wonder:
- How much is "35 stadia"? I remember that exact length of "stadia" is not so well known, but even within some range, would this fit either Betlehem or Nazareth?
- Do we know about Roman taxation record system? Would records be still present after 100+ years, and could some religious guy from Caesarea have access to them?
- How much specific could that information be, to actually hold information on specific person? I can't imagine Romans managing hundred thousands names in their archives.

Also same here, quote from Tertullian, Against Marcion, Book 4, Chapter 7:

Quote:

And yet how could He have been admitted into the synagogue— one so abruptly appearing, so unknown; one, of whom no one had as yet been apprised of His tribe, His nation, His family, and lastly, His enrolment in the census of Augustus— that most faithful witness of the Lord's nativity, kept in the archives of Rome?

On other side, if such archive records are unlikely, would these guys tell lies obvious to anyone who knows how roman taxation / archiving works?

Toto · 08-03-2008, 12:20 AM

One stadia = 600 "feet" - but a foot at that time was variable.

vid · 08-03-2008, 01:13 AM

Thanks, so it is Betlehem (as expected, since he mentions census).

What strikes me is that
- either romans archives were good enough to acomplish this feat and preserve info about some particluar guy somehow,
- or those several christians who talked about roman archives all told the same lie.

Is there some possibility this "roman archives jesus" argument is based on reality?

Amaleq13 · 08-03-2008, 11:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vid

What strikes me is that
- either romans archives were good enough to acomplish this feat and preserve info about some particluar guy somehow,
- or those several christians who talked about roman archives all told the same lie.

Since we know that Tertullian read Justin, shouldn't you have another possibility?

aa5874 · 08-03-2008, 12:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vid

Thanks, so it is Betlehem (as expected, since he mentions census).

What strikes me is that
- either romans archives were good enough to acomplish this feat and preserve info about some particluar guy somehow,
- or those several christians who talked about roman archives all told the same lie.

Is there some possibility this "roman archives jesus" argument is based on reality?

Knowing the distance from Jerusalem to Bethlehem does not require roman archives. Any person who was familiar with Jerusalem and Bethlehem could have known the distance, and the Jewish archives may also have such information.

Knowing about the taxing by Cyrenius does not require roman archives, Joesphus, the Jew, wrote about the taxation. Perhaps it was recorded in the Jewish archives.

And Justin Martyr was familiar with the writings of Josephus.

Toto · 08-03-2008, 12:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vid

Thanks, so it is Betlehem (as expected, since he mentions census).

What strikes me is that
- either romans archives were good enough to acomplish this feat and preserve info about some particluar guy somehow,
- or those several christians who talked about roman archives all told the same lie.

. . .

Or someone writing much later assumed from the gospel stories that the records must have existed, and knew that no one would actually be able to check on them.

vid · 08-03-2008, 12:25 PM

OK, sorry for my weak knowledge on this subject, I haven't studied Justin nor Tertullian any deeper yet. Tertullian knowing Justing explains a lot.

So basically this looks like some bogus claim of Justin repeated by Tertuallian, or later interpolation as suggested by Toto.

PhilosopherJay · 08-03-2008, 01:42 PM

Hi Toto and Vid,

This may be helpful:

Quote:

It is both striking and important to recognize how relatively little the pre-modern state actually knew about the society over which it presided. State officials had only the most tenuous idea of the population under their jurisdiction, its movements, its real property, wealth, crop yields, etc. Their degree of ignorance was directly proportional to the fragmentation of their sources of information. Local currencies and local measures of capacity (e.g., the bushel) and length (the ell, the rod, the toise) were likely to vary from place to place and with the nature of the transacting parties.6 The opacity of local society was, of course, actively maintained by local elites as one effective means of resistance to intrusions from above. Having little synoptic, aggregate intelligence about the manpower and re- sources available to it, officials were apt either to overreach in their exactions, touching off flight or revolt, or to fail to mobilize the resources that were, in fact, available.
To follow the process of state-making, then, is to follow the conquest of illegibility. The account of this conquest-an achievement won against stiff resistance-could take many forms, for example: the creation of the cadastral survey and uniform property registers, the invention and imposition of the meter, national censuses and currencies, and the development of uniform legal codes. Here we examine what we take to be one crucial and diagnostic victory in this campaign for legibility: the creation of fixed, legal patronyms. If vernacular landscape-naming practices are opaque and illegible to outside officials, vernacular personal naming practices are even more so. The fixing of personal names, and, in particular, permanent patronyms, as legal identities seems, everywhere, to have been, broadly-speaking, a state project. As an early and imperfect legal identification, the permanent patronym was linked to such vital administrative functions as tithe and tax collection, property registers, conscription lists, and census rolls.
To understand why fixed, legal patronyms represent such a quantum leap in the legibility of a population to state officials, it is first necessary to understand the utter fluidity of vernacular naming practices uninflected by state routines. Vernacular naming practices throughout much of the world are enormously rich and varied.7 In many cultures, an individual's name will change from con- text to context and, within the same context, over time. It is not uncommon for a newborn to have had one or more name changes in utero in the event the mother's labor seemed to be going badly. Names often vary at each stage of life (infancy, childhood, adulthood, parenthood, old age) and, in some cases, after death. Added to these may be names used for joking, rituals, mourning, nick- names, school names, secret names, names for age-mates or same-sex friends, and names for in-laws. Each name is specific to a phase of life, a social setting, or a particular interlocutor. To the question, "What is your name?" the reply in such cases can only be: "It depends."
How is local confusion avoided in the absence of permanent patronyms? Let us take the simplest case where there are a small number of fixed, given names (often called "first" or "Christian" names in western Europe). It is claimed, for example, that around the year 1700 in England, a mere eight given names ac- counted for nearly ninety percent of the total male population [John, Edward, William, Henry, Charles, James, Richard, Robert]. Without permanent patronyms, local people had innumerable ways of unambiguously identifying any individual. A by-name, second-name, or (sur)name [not to be confused with a permanent patronym] was usually sufficient to make the defining distinction. One 'John,' for example, might be distinguished from another by specifying his father's name ("William's John" or "John-William's-son"/Williamson)-by linking him to an occupation ("John-the-miller," "John-the shepherd")-by locating him in the landscape ("John-on-the-hill," "John-by-the-brook"--or by noting a personal characteristic (John-do-little). The written records of the manor or the parish might actually bear notations of such by-names for the sake of clarity.

From The Production of Legal Identities Proper to States: The Case of the Permanent Family Surname
Author(s): James C. Scott, John Tehranian, Jeremy Mathias
Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 44, No. 1, (Jan., 2002), pp. 4-44

I believe, without a system of family names it would have been useless for the Romans to keep records on Jewish individuals. Imagine going to a small town of 10,000 and looking for men with common names like Jesus and Joseph. If we assume that 20% of men were named Jesus and 10% Joseph, that would mean over 100 men called Jesus son of Joseph in a small town. Such records would be more confusing than helpful. Romans needed to depend instead on local people who could identify each community member by traits..."Oh you're looking for Jesus the long-haired, rebel preacher who likes to greet men with a kiss on the lips. Don't worry, I'll point him out to you."

A census makes sense as a headcount of a town, if you're trying to figure out how much the town should be paying -- "Okay, 10,000 citizens, you pay 10,000 drachmas, that town has 50,000 people, okay, 50,000 drachmas." As soon as the census was done, and the taxes figured out, there would have been no reason to keep the records of names. Collection would have been done through local tax farmers who would have been sure to know everybody personally, as they got a share of the taxes.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by vid

Thanks, so it is Betlehem (as expected, since he mentions census).

What strikes me is that
- either romans archives were good enough to acomplish this feat and preserve info about some particluar guy somehow,
- or those several christians who talked about roman archives all told the same lie.

. . .

Or someone writing much later assumed from the gospel stories that the records must have existed, and knew that no one would actually be able to check on them.

S.C.Carlson · 08-03-2008, 01:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Knowing the distance from Jerusalem to Bethlehem does not require roman archives. Any person who was familiar with Jerusalem and Bethlehem could have known the distance, and the Jewish archives may also have such information.

No need to get complicated. Justin was born and raised in Palestine.

Stephen

mountainman · 08-03-2008, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by S.C.Carlson

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Knowing the distance from Jerusalem to Bethlehem does not require roman archives. Any person who was familiar with Jerusalem and Bethlehem could have known the distance, and the Jewish archives may also have such information.

No need to get complicated. Justin was born and raised in Palestine.

There is a need, for the sake of historical reality, to point out that it is Eusebius who tenders these details of Justin and Tertullian for the posterity of the christian "history" some centuries removed from these events. It is not as if these details have come to us directly. They have not. They have been vetted on the desk of Eusebius. Moreover they have no external corroborating evidence other than Eusebius. BC&H is way out on a Eusebian limb.

Best wishes,

Pete

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08-03-2008, 12:20 AM	#2
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	One stadia = 600 "feet" - but a foot at that time was variable.

08-03-2008, 01:13 AM	#3
vid Regular Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Myjava, Slovakia Posts: 384	Thanks, so it is Betlehem (as expected, since he mentions census). What strikes me is that - either romans archives were good enough to acomplish this feat and preserve info about some particluar guy somehow, - or those several christians who talked about roman archives all told the same lie. Is there some possibility this "roman archives jesus" argument is based on reality?

08-03-2008, 12:25 PM	#7
vid Regular Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Myjava, Slovakia Posts: 384	OK, sorry for my weak knowledge on this subject, I haven't studied Justin nor Tertullian any deeper yet. Tertullian knowing Justing explains a lot. So basically this looks like some bogus claim of Justin repeated by Tertuallian, or later interpolation as suggested by Toto.

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