Ship of Fools: Kerygmania: That madcap census in Luke 2

Thread: Kerygmania: That madcap census in Luke 2 Board: Limbo / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Glenn Oldham (# 47) on :

That madcap census in Luke 2
There has been a recent exchange in the Guardian (a UK broadsheet newspaper) relating to the census mentioned in Luke’s gospel which results in Jesus being born in Bethlehem not Nazareth.

Luke 2:1-5a says:

quote:
“(1) In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. (2) This was the first enrolment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. (3) And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. (4) And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, (5) to be enrolled …” [my italics]

Leaving aside the much debated question of Quirinius not being governor at the time - how likely is it that the Romans would adopt such a bizarre and madcap way of running a census?

It is hard to work out from these verses precisely what the command from the Romans was. Each had to go to ‘his own city.’ What is meant by ‘own city’? One might think that it meant the city where you live, or where your main dwelling place is. However, for Joseph verse 4 seems to suggest that ‘own city’ means something like ‘the city of one of your ancestors’. But that leaves us asking which ancestor? How many generations back? Should all Jews go back to Jacob’s city? Or Judah’s? or whose? And what possible purpose would the Romans have in asking people to go to the city of an ancestor of theirs? What would it tell them that they could not find out more easily in other ways?

And further: if they did do it then it would result in the odd situation that towns that had been established and settled after David’s time would not be the home city of any ancestor and thus would be deserted as people left them to go and register elsewhere. Why risk the theft and looting that might result? Do it in stages and ask neighbours to watch the house while you are away?

And if part of the purpose of the census was taxation then surely if Joseph turns up in Bethlehem and says ‘All I have is a tiny house in Nazareth’ how are the officials going to check that he lives in Nazareth, let alone whether he is lying about his assets? And if it is tax money the Romans are after why waste people's time and energy travelling about the country when they could be at home cultivating their fields, making things or otherwise being profitably employed creating wealth for the Romans to cream off?

All in all this is a madcap way of organising a census and surely not what actually happened. Terry Eagleton (in an article on fundamentalism in the Guardian on 22 02 03) makes the same kind of point more briefly.

Is there an answer to this argument? Mark Greene of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity offers one in the review section of the Saturday Guardian of 01 03 03 (page 23). There he states that it was ‘imperial practice’ for the Romans to require ‘the population to register in their birth places’ when a census was taken.

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that Luke does not say directly that Joseph went to Bethlehem because he was born there, my question is

What evidence is Mark Greene relying on here?

I have been hunting for this and the closest I have got to a possible answer is that he may have in mind the edict of Gaius Vibius Maximus for the Roman census in Egypt in 104 AD Census Edict

This says, amongst other things that “it is essential that all those who are away from their home districts be summoned to return to their own hearths so that they may perform the customary business of registration and apply themselves to the cultivation which concerns them.”

But the problem with that is that this decree refers to asking people to return to their home districts and their hearths (to devote themselves to cultivation incidentally) – their own homes surely and not to their place of birth nor to their ancestral towns? This is not what Luke describes nor what Mark Greene claims.

So does anyone any idea what evidence Mark Greene has in mind?

Glenn

[ 30. March 2004, 12:51: Message edited by: Moo ]

Posted by Astro (# 84) on :

Since Matthew puts it that Joseph took his family to Nazereth because he was warned in a dream not to return to Bethlehem, I think that it might have been that he lived at Bethlehem before the birth of Jesus but was away on long term business in the North (or visiting his future in-laws family?) and had to return home to be taxed, but after the birth he made the move to Nazereth permenent.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

Romans (probably) didn't run censuses like that.
I've no idea what Mark Greene has in mind, but I think I know what Joseph had in mind (or Luke, if you want to look at it that way)

Joseph is laying claim to a share in the patrimony of the tribe of Judah - in fact to being a descendant of David - by returning to the city of David.

It is his choice (& presumably that of any others who made similar journeys) to be counted as one of the family of David.

Symbolically it is the year of Jubilee in which the land is redivided within each tribe.

Posted by Spong (# 1518) on :

Glenn, AFAIK the Egyptian census you refer to is the only one that has been quoted in favour of the Romans requiring a return to the home town, and for the reasons you give it's not a very good example. The other problem with the analysis is that Israel was not part of the Roman empire at all in the time of Matthew's story (prior to 4BC and the death of King Herod) - it was a client state, but it was not subject to direct Roman taxation and therefore not an empire-wide census. For which, of course, there is in any case no other historical evidence, which would be rather surprising if it really took place across the empire.

Luke seems to be thinking of a census that is recorded elsewhere and took place in Judaea in 6AD when it passed into direct rule by Rome (because Herod Archelaus made a mess of running it) - but Galilee remained a client state under Herod Antipas. Hence the whole issue of who had the right to try Jesus, but also the fact that Joseph would not be subject to the census.

Astro, the problem with your analysis is Matt 2:22-24 - directed in a dream to settle in 'a town called Nazareth'. Not 'to return back home to Nazareth'. The reader of Matthew's gospel, on its own, would assume that they had originally lived in Bethlehem and came now to Nazareth for the first time. If this is not the case, God seems to have ensured that the first gospel is deliberately written in a way that is misleading... ?

Posted by Glenn Oldham (# 47) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Spong:
Glenn, AFAIK the Egyptian census you refer to is the only one that has been quoted in favour of the Romans requiring a return to the home town, and for the reasons you give it's not a very good example. ...

Spong,
Thanks for that and for the other useful details in your post. It will be interesting to see if any other source that Mark Greene may have used turns up.
Glenn

Posted by Sean D (# 2271) on :

It is generally believed that Q (i.e. material common to Matthew and Luke) had little or no narrative material, which would make it possible that they both attest to the Bethlehem tradition independently.

Personally I think Q might have had a lot more narrative than some scholars are prepared to allow, however. But the fact that Matthew omits the details of Luke shows that either there are two traditions present or Luke is simply making it up.*

In any case, one might point to the record of the census in Luke as evidence in itself! Of course, that doesn't mean it did happen like that, but one cannot assume automatically that it didn't, unless there is evidence to the contrary. However, in this case there is, namely that it would be odd to gather info in this way.

* This may be the case. I am not an inerrantist and have no a priori problem with saying he is.

Posted by eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Glenn Oldham:
That madcap census in Luke 2

(...) how likely is it that the Romans would adopt such a bizarre and madcap way of running a census? (...)

And what possible purpose would the Romans have in asking people to go to the city of an ancestor of theirs? What would it tell them that they could not find out more easily in other ways?

Sorry to interrupt such a scholarly debate, but I wonder Glenn if you have ever encountered a French bureaucrat? After one hour in the "Préfecture" today, I can quite imagine the Romans (on whose bureaucracy the current French administrative system is based) doing just such a thing [Big Grin]

Posted by Fen (# 4052) on :

quote:
posted by ken:
Symbolically it is the year of Jubilee in which the land is redivided within each tribe.

Is it only symbolic? This makes a lot of sense to me.

I Am Not A Historian But: if the Jews were still observing Jubilee at this time, and the census takers knew this, it might make sense for them to actually request that the Jews all return to their "home towns", so that they could gather information based on the "default" state of the population rather than where they all happened to reside at the time.

quote:
posted by Glenn Oldham:
What would it tell them that they could not find out more easily in other ways?

What would the practicalities of collating that amount of data be in those days? If you wanted a list of all the men who came a particular town (based on the above), it might make sense to take a big scroll to the town and get everyone to go there and write their name on it.

However it would seem to make more sense (to us) to put a big scroll in all the towns, and get everyone to write their name and birthplace on, collect them all together and get your scribes to rewrite everything. Or might inaccuracies start creeping in once you have to rewrite the data?

Might the Romans just have wanted to assert their authority for no reason? Could there have been a political reason such as breaking up a potential rebellion (the prophets of this people they ruled over having forecast one, and all that)?

(As I say, I am speculating and lay no claim to actually knowing what I'm talking about; certainly the Jubilee idea makes sense, but please feel free to "educate" me [Smile]

)

Posted by Glenn Oldham (# 47) on :

quote:
Originally posted by eutychus:
...I wonder Glenn if you have ever encountered a French bureaucrat? After one hour in the "Préfecture" today, I can quite imagine the Romans (on whose bureaucracy the current French administrative system is based) doing just such a thing

Point taken (and it isn't cofined to France of course!) Mark Greene makes a similar point and reminds us that the Romans did indeed do some madcap things and that, therefore, we can't just write off Luke's census story as impossible just because it is a daft way of doing it. But just how likely it is that the Romans would do things this way is not an easy question to decide on. That's why Mark Greene's assertion that it was in fact 'imperial practice' at least to get people to go to their place of birth is so intriguing. What evidence is he drawing on, I wonder?

Posted by Glenn Oldham (# 47) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Fen:
...I Am Not A Historian But: if the Jews were still observing Jubilee at this time, and the census takers knew this, it might make sense for them to actually request that the Jews all return to their "home towns", so that they could gather information based on the "default" state of the population rather than where they all happened to reside at the time.

Fen, thanks for your speculations.

On the jubilee issue, I seem to remember reading somewhere at some time that there is very little evidence that the year of Jubilee was ever observed at all at any time in Israel's history.

Naturally, with such accurate recall of the evidence for that statement ( [Embarrassed]

) I could be wrong!

Glenn

Posted by Cusanus (# 692) on :

The historian Robin Lane Fox, in an admittedly polemical book, the title of which escapes me now (sorry), does a pretty good hatchet job on the historical plausibility of the whole census narrative (pretty much for all the reasons above).

Posted by Spong (# 1518) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cusanus:
The historian Robin Lane Fox, in an admittedly polemical book, the title of which escapes me now (sorry), does a pretty good hatchet job on the historical plausibility of the whole census narrative (pretty much for all the reasons above).

'The Unauthorized Version'. It's where I cribbed a lot of my post from, I should have referenced it, sorry... [Embarrassed]

Posted by Fen (# 4052) on :

Thanks Glenn,

I suppose if the Israelites didn't manage to observe the Sabbaths, I shouldn't be surprised to find that the Jubilee didn't get observed either.

Googling reveals only one quote suggesting there are "Jewish sources" that say Jubilee was observed before the exile to Babylon, but it doesn't cite the sources. But the vast majority of sites agree it was never observed. (Here endeth the Jubilee tangent.)

Posted by The Wanderer (# 182) on :

So, if it was never observed, why is there all that stuff about Jubilee in the Pentateuch? Why was it put there, and what effect did it ever have? (I know we're getting off topic, but this is interesting.)

Posted by Astro (# 84) on :

quote:
Astro, the problem with your analysis is Matt 2:22-24 - directed in a dream to settle in 'a town called Nazareth'. Not 'to return back home to Nazareth'. The reader of Matthew's gospel, on its own, would assume that they had originally lived in Bethlehem and came now to Nazareth for the first time. If this is not the case, God seems to have ensured that the first gospel is deliberately written in a way that is misleading... ?

Certainly not return back home to Nazareth but "go to that town called Nazereth where you did the carpentry for that rich mans new kitchen last year the one where he was replacing the stuff from MFI..." [Smile]

Posted by Second Mouse (# 2793) on :

I've always been lead to believe that Luke was a very reliable and accurate, in terms of the historical detail in Luke and Acts. Is this generally accepted to be the case, or is it only one opinion among many? ( I only believe it, cos I've been told it so often, I've never seen any actual argument or evidence for it [Embarrassed]

)

If it is true, then it would seem a little out of character to be concerned about accuracy on one level, but then to invent a whole census on another. Surely everyone reading it would have said "Nah, Rubbish, That never happened"

Sorry, this is probably a rather simplistic question, but I'd be interested to hear anyones thoughts on it.

Claire

Posted by Dr Teeth (# 4119) on :

Hey folks, leave Luke alone! Tradition has it that Luke went back to Galilee, Nazareth and other places to try and interview people so that he could provide Theophilus with the proper account he was looking for. Although this can't be proved it does explain why he provides certain details, even stories, that other Gospels don't include. He may have talked with Mary herself which would explain why his Gospel describes what she was thinking at the time of Jesus' birth.

I recall reading about a specific criticism of the accuracy of a reference in Acts that was subsequently resolved by an excavation which validated Luke. I don't have the details to hand but I recall it was about his description of an official's title.

As for the Quirinius debate (was he governor circa 4 BC when records have him governor later?), many people have proposed that he served two terms as governor which sounds plausible to me.

Apologies to all those who hate history lessons!

Posted by SteveTom (# 23) on :

Two things to throw in.

1. I would dispute the idea that Luke implies that the census required everyone to go to their 'ancestral seat' or even their birthplace.

As Glen says, Luke only says they had to go to 'their own towns'. The most obvious interpretation of this is that they went to the nearest town to their permanent place of residence.

This would mean that according to Luke Joseph was (maybe temporarily) in Nazareth, but either lived in Bethlehem or had grown up their and now went back to his family.

2 possible explanations for this. One, being an unmarried man (and maybe underage) he may have been required by the terms of the census to go back to the family home. Alternatively (or additionally), he could quite conceivably been in Nazareth taking part in the arrangements for his marriage to a girl who lived there, and come home to register, later returning to live in Nazareth.

According to this interpretation, Luke mentions Joseph's descent from David, not because everyone had to go to their ancestral seat, but (a) because in this case Joseph's home town was his ancestral seat, and (b) because Luke just wants to mention Joseph's lineage, making the point that Jesus birth in the line and town of David was to fulfill the scriptures.

2. This is all hugely speculative, but my point is to show that nothing in Luke 2 requires the extraordinary idea that everyone in the Roman Empire was required to go back to the town of their most illustrious ancestor.

This is important because where the case of Robin Lane Fox etc. - that Luke is talking crazy nonsense - is weakest is in the question of how Luke could have expected anyone to swallow such a story.

If Fox is right, that Luke is talking about an ancestral census, and that such a thing never happened and nothing like it ever could have happened, then surely anyone reading the first edition would go "What the hell are you talking about?" For Luke not to realise this, he would have to be a lot more stupid than he otherwise appears to be.

Bear in mind that he is writing - at the most sceptical estimates - around AD80, possibly 20 years earlier. It would be like an educated person today writing about someone being born in the inter-war years, saying that their parents had to go to the capital city to vote in a general election.

A priori, the wider you push the gap between what Luke says happened and what could conceivably have happened, the more likely you are to be wrong.

Posted by Cusanus (# 692) on :

Posted by Dr Teeth

quote:
As for the Quirinius debate (was he governor circa 4 BC when records have him governor later?), many people have proposed that he served two terms as governor which sounds plausible to me.

But not to me. It would have meant he had to have an otherwise-unheard of dual governorship, as the legate of Syria at that time was the later-notorious Quinctilius Varus.

I'm not sure, Steve, that your interpretation would survive Occam's razor. And it doesn't address the other objections that Fox raises, as noted above by Spong -- particularly the issue of Galilee not being part of the empire or subject to an imperial census.

Posted by Mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cusanus:
I'm not sure, Steve, that your interpretation would survive Occam's razor. And it doesn't address the other objections that Fox raises, as noted above by Spong -- particularly the issue of Galilee not being part of the empire or subject to an imperial census.

Why should that matter, if Joseph was from Bethlehem? If he was "out of the country" and the census was called and he somehow heard of it, he could be expected to "go home" and be censed.

Methinks the skeptics paint even more hard-to-swallow scenarios to prove the narrative wrong than the narrative is on its face.

Reader Alexis

Posted by Cusanus (# 692) on :

Mousethief said:

quote:
Methinks the skeptics paint even more hard-to-swallow scenarios to prove the narrative wrong than the narrative is on its face.

Well, I've looked over this thread and what Spong and I (the more "sceptical" of the posters) have posted. And those hard-to-swallow scenarios are?

I am a Christian who believes in the Incarnation as set out in the creeds. (In fact it is the absolute bedrock of my faith, but that's another issue.) I have no interest in 'proving the narrative wrong' but I am an ancient historian by training and I know how to employ historical method.

I have no problems accepting that the birth narratives are not 'historical'. They still tell us important things about the Incarnation.

Posted by Cusanus (# 692) on :

Apologies for the double post but:

quote:
It would be like an educated person today writing about someone being born in the inter-war years, saying that their parents had to go to the capital city to vote in a general election

Maybe... but anyone who has had to teach middle school history/civics courses would see this as quite plausible [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cusanus:
I have no problems accepting that the birth narratives are not 'historical'.

Why should I accept this? It certainly hasn't been proven. From what I've read in this thread it appears to be based on hunches which are in turn based on nothing.

Reader Alexis

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

I understood (from RE A-level: gosh that was a long time ago!) that the birth narrators somehow had to make the Jesus story fit the prophesy that the Messiah was to come from Bethlehem. Now how else could they wangle it when Jesus was obviously a Nazarene - I know, let's have his family make a sudden trip to Bethlehem because of some census requirement.
A cynical interpretation? Who knows?

Posted by babybear (# 34) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chorister:
I know, let's have his family make a sudden trip to Bethlehem because of some census requirement. A cynical interpretation? Who knows?

A pretty daft thing to write if it wasn't true. Much better to have some sort of 'family emergency' and Mary delivering early. The secret of making up a good lie is to make it sound logical and reasonable.

Given a date of around 80CE for the writting of Luke's account there would be people around who would be able to 'There wasn't a census then!". I think that there must have been some administrative happening around the time of Jesus' birth.

bb

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

And presumably the same applies to the appearance of a huge star and three(?) men on camels!!!

Isn't part of the problem the fact that in early times the accurate recording of historical fact and the development of myth through oral traditions were not seen as two important and distinct strands, rather that they were interwoven? It was not seen as lying, rather than pictorial interpretation.

It is similar to the idea of plagiarism which was seen as an honour rather than a crime - so we don't even know who wrote things.

Sorry to sound so negative - I'm reporting what I have been taught. I prefer to keep an open mind on the actuality.

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chorister:
And presumably the same applies to the appearance of a huge star and three(?) men on camels!!!

Yes. Exactly.

In places where things aren't often written down people remember things and tell stories about them. When Matthew wrote his gospel it would not have become generally accepted if it was not in accord with the many stories circulating at the time.

The gospels are full of unbelievable things. Why pick out only a few as more unbelievable than others?

Posted by Mousethief (# 953) on :

What I find amusing is that we, 2000 years removed, know better what sorts of things the Romans were or were not likely to do, than did people who lived under their thumb and in and among their occupation armies. They swallowed the whole census thing hook line and sinker; we are so much more knowledgeable about Roman behaviour that we can see through these lies.

Spare me. [Roll Eyes]

Reader Alexis

Posted by Cusanus (# 692) on :

Posted by Mousethief:

quote:
They swallowed the whole census thing hook line and sinker; we are so much more knowledgeable about Roman behaviour that we can see through these lies.

And spare me the sarcasm and the caricaturing of my position thanks. I have never referred to the Gospel as lies. Nor has anyone else on these threads.

Luke was written in about 80CE (probably), and most likely outside Palestine. So -- forty years after the end of the tetrarchate and maybe ten years after the major...erm...'re-organisation'of the administration of Judaea following the Jewish revolt. So the historical context for the birth narrative was substantially different (in a political and administrative sense) to that of Luke's readers.

Posted by Mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cusanus:
And spare me the sarcasm and the caricaturing of my position thanks.

YOUR position? I don't recall addressing that post to you; are you Robin Lane Fox? Or have you swallowed his/her arguments to such an extent that you have internalized them as your own?

quote:
I have never referred to the Gospel as lies. Nor has anyone else on these threads.

Proving what? If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, does it matter what you call it?

Reader Alexis

Posted by SteveTom (# 23) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cusanus:
'm not sure, Steve, that your interpretation would survive Occam's razor.

No, it was a bit convoluted, wasn't it? But it was just an example of a possible explanation, and I prefer it to the alternative that Luke was inventing a census system that his readship would instantly recognise as completely barking.

Posted by Cusanus (# 692) on :

Posted by Mousethief

quote:
Proving what? If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, does it matter what you call it?

Yes it fucking does arsehole. Please refrain from making the suggestion that I regard the gospels as 'lies'. I find this post patronising, misleading and extremely fucking offensive.

Posted by Mousethief (# 953) on :

You have lost all credibility with me, jerk.

Reader Alexis

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

Am I really reading this in Kerygmania?
(fetches mobile popcorn stall from hell)

Posted by Mousethief (# 953) on :

You are of course right, Chorister. I apologize to everybody and to Cusanus for calling him/her a jerk.

However if he/she doesn't clean up his/her act, I will call him/her far worse over in Hell.

Reader Alexis

Posted by babybear (# 34) on :

hostly biretta on

I can't quite believe what I have just read here! As Chorister so rightly pointed out, this is Keryg, not Hell.

If you would like to continue your little slanging match please feel free to use the facilities over in Hell.

Mousethief, thank you for your apolgies.

hostly biretta off

bb

Posted by Mousethief (# 953) on :

I didn't go far enough, BB.

Cusanus, I apologize for insinuating that you believe the nativity narrative in Luke to be "lies."

Please tell us what you really believe about it.

Reader Alexis

Posted by babybear (# 34) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cusanus:
Yes it fucking does arsehole. Please refrain from making the suggestion that I regard the gospels as 'lies'. I find this post patronising, misleading and extremely fucking offensive.

Hostly biretta on

I had thought that those words were written in the heat of the moment, and that Cusanus would return in the morning very shamed faced for such disgraceful behaviour in Keryg. It has now been over 24 hours since the above was written.

Cunanus, I am sure that you are fully aware that an apology is required. I expect that your next post on the ship is an apology. If that is not forthcoming then it will lead to some enforced shore-leave.

Hostly biretta off

bb

Posted by Cusanus (# 692) on :

I apologise and withdraw my intemperate language.

Posted by Cusanus (# 692) on :

And Rdr Alexis: I believe it to be a profound but symbolic presentation of the nature of Christ and his Incarnation. That is, I believe to have poetic rather than historical truth.

Posted by Mousethief (# 953) on :

Did Luke know it wasn't historically true when he wrote it?

Reader Alexis

Posted by Smart Alex (# 1916) on :

Did Luke care? It seems fairly obvious that "John" wasn't too bothered about "historical accuracy", so why should we assume that Luke was?

Posted by Second Mouse (# 2793) on :

To me, the beginning of his gospel suggests that Luke was concerned about historical accuracy.

Luke 1:1-4

1Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled[1] among us, 2just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

His talk of eye-witness accounts, careful investigation, and drawing up an orderly account certainly suggest he was looking to record a factual account as best he could.

Claire

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

I'm glad you quoted that, since this is what I was thinking as well. It's a very striking, and modern, statement.

Posted by Sine Nomine (# 3631) on :

I printed this & read it during lunch. Very interesting.
The largest stumbling block to me seems to be the fact that Judea wasn't part of the Roman Empire at that time. This point has been raised several times so far, but not really addressed by those who feel that Luke's account is historically accurate (unless I missed something while chewing.)
On a related issue, I believe remember a discussion on the ship a while back where the point was made that since Luke does state that he was concerned with historical accuracy, that it is fair to judge him by that standard. That made sense to me.

Posted by theMadFarmer (# 4252) on :

quote:
Did Luke know it wasn't historically true when he wrote it?

It's worth considering that he didn't, largely because our standards for what is historically true are vastly different from the standards of ancient Rome.
For Luke, interviewing some Christians who'd been in the presence of Christ, and maybe some locals who'd witnessed stuff probably counted - doing even that would've set a pretty high standard for his day.

Nowadays, a good historian would interview Jesus's enemies and rivals, would try to dig up a primary source about the census (records of some kind), and would compile as many possible perspectives as possible. Luke's narrative style is, like all the other gospel writers, pretty hagiographic rather than historical.

As to the issue of "lies" - some of us, Mousethief, (or do I call you Reader?) believe that there several kinds of truth, some of them based in fact, but others which exist outside the ken and realm of facts - the kinds of truths best known through experience or in the very fact that they exist in the space outside factual truth. Someone mentioned poetry; all art seems to accomplish this if it is good art.
The Bible is excellent art: its truth is a stumbling block for people reliant too much on narrow modernist concepts of truth-as-propositions, and its wisdom stands, as Paul said, as "foolishness".
The truth of the Bible, to people like us, is koanonical rather than canonoical.

Posted by Sine Nomine (# 3631) on :

quote:
Originally posted by theMadFarmer:
It's worth considering that he didn't, largely because our standards for what is historically true are vastly different from the standards of ancient Rome.

*sigh* I'm probably going to get shot down, but...

I'm not sure that "our standards for what is historically true are vastly different from the standards of ancient Rome." Thucydides wrote "The History of the Peloponnesian Wars" 400 years before Luke wrote his gospel. As a Greek, or someone familiar with Hellenistic culture, Luke would have had to have been familiar with it. Even today I believe it is considered a model of good historical writing.

On the other hand, Livy, who wrote around the time of Christ, is entertaining but not particularly accurate since he freely uses legends as long as they make the point he wanted to make (Hmmm...that sounds familiar), but he was much farther away in time from what he was writing about than either Thucydides or Luke.

I wouldn't dream of approaching the Gospel of John as "history", but Luke pretty much says his gospel is history, and I really don't understand why he can't be judged by the same standards we use to judge Thucydides, which, while not maybe the same standards we would apply to Will Durant, are not "vastly different".

If Thucydides said there was a battle when there wasn't a battle, he would lose points. The same I think if Luke says there was a census if there wasn't a census. That is either a historical fact, even by the standards of ancient Rome, or it isn't. I don't think it is ultimately important to the "truth" of Christianity, but it is what this thread is about. (I think.)

p.s.: I only have an undergraduate degree. Those better educated in classics may feel free to rip me apart.

Posted by Cusanus (# 692) on :

Posted by Sine Nomine:

quote:
If Thucydides said there was a battle when there wasn't a battle, he would lose points. The same I think if Luke says there was a census if there wasn't a census. That is either a historical fact, even by the standards of ancient Rome, or it isn't. I don't think it is ultimately important to the "truth" of Christianity, but it is what this thread is about. (I think.)

I agree that it's not ultimately important to the 'truth' of Christianity, but I'd quibble over the 'losing points' thing. I know Luke makes a statement at the start of the Gospel that sounds like he's endeavouring to present objective history but I don't think that's what he means. In the end, we go to Luke for the Good News rather than To Find Out What Happened in History, so I don't think he "loses points" at all.

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cusanus:
...I know Luke makes a statement at the start of the Gospel that sounds like he's endeavouring to present objective history but I don't think that's what he means.

It's almost exactly what he means, your expectations notwithstanding. Unless you have some insight into what he really means that you'd care to share with us?

Posted by theMadFarmer (# 4252) on :

Sine Nomine,

I'm not all trying to argue that the ancients had no standards for historical accounts, but rather that their standards were different. Modern historians definitely recognize Thucydides as a good and reliable source, but I doubt any of them would consider him as reliable as they'd consider a history of World War II - not just because World War II is closer to us in time, but also because some of the main methods of historical research and a great many of the standards for what counts as good evidence developed since Thucydides (or Luke.)
Luke's account is probably very reliable for a document of its day, but modern readers would be misreading Luke if they understood his idea of what counted as reliable sources and research to be the same our ours.

Posted by Sine Nomine (# 3631) on :

quote:
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled.

...a pretty definite statement: "all the world". Not just some dinky province that wasn't even a province yet in Palestine. "All the world" You'd think there'd be a stray tablet or scroll or something somewhere else. Curious.

But it certainly doesn't affect my faith or lack of it. And Luke was a great writer, even in translation. And I love good historical fiction. (Kidding. I'm just kidding. Don't hurt me, please!)

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by theMadFarmer:
Sine Nomine,

I'm not all trying to argue that the ancients had no standards for historical accounts, but rather that their standards were different. Modern historians definitely recognize Thucydides as a good and reliable source, but I doubt any of them would consider him as reliable as they'd consider a history of World War II - not just because World War II is closer to us in time, but also because some of the main methods of historical research and a great many of the standards for what counts as good evidence developed since Thucydides (or Luke.)
Luke's account is probably very reliable for a document of its day, but modern readers would be misreading Luke if they understood his idea of what counted as reliable sources and research to be the same our ours.

Gah. Chronological snobbery. Granted, what Luke (or Thucydides) regarded as reliable evidence may have been different, but this doesn't mean that it was necessarily less reliable.
Here's the challenge: tell me which history of WWII is the most reliable, based on the views of modern historians. [Wink]

Ancient historians, like modern ones (remember, ancient historians were once modern ones!) come in all varieties -good, bad and indifferent. They are generally separated by their methodology. The good ones (Thucydides, Tacitus, later Josephus) in general checked their sources, did not accept hearsay alone as evidence, and weighted their sources on predetermined criteria.

Bad ones didn't. Herodotus, for example.

Nothing has really changed. If you like, I'll point you to various WWII histories that conflict for various reasons. Good historians invariably treat their sources correctly. Bad historians don't, and this has been the same since Thucydides gave us the foundations of what history should be.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sine Nomine:
...a pretty definite statement: "all the world". Not just some dinky province that wasn't even a province yet in Palestine. "All the world" You'd think there'd be a stray tablet or scroll or something somewhere else. Curious.

I think the use of "all the world" in this context is similar to the way many people use "everyone" nowadays. "Everyone" is talking about this book or movie, "everyone" is wearing this style, etc. What is usually meant is "everyone I know".

I think Luke's sources had a very restricted perspective, but I see no reason to doubt that there was some sort of census that affected everyone in an area which included Bethlehem.

Moo

Posted by Cusanus (# 692) on :

Posted by David

quote:
It's almost exactly what he means, your expectations notwithstanding. Unless you have some insight into what he really means that you'd care to share with us?

Is it at all possible for you to disagree with me without being snide?
Luke is writing in a context where differing, and sometimes conflicting, 'versions' of Jesus were circulating. (At least Mark, possibly Matthew, and heaven knows what sort of oral traditions that were going to lead into gnosticism.) The word I would use for what Luke is doing is 'authoritative' rather than 'objective': that is, his primary concern is theological rather than historical (as we would understand it).

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cusanus:
Is it at all possible for you to disagree with me without being snide?

Probably not, but I've been told that's part of my charm.

I'll answer the rest when I get home, since I need to be precise about what I disagree with.

Posted by Cusanus (# 692) on :

quote:
Probably not, but I've been told that's part of my charm.

Damn! Now I know why all my previous attempts to be charming have been conspicuously unsuccessful. [Big Grin]

Posted by David (# 3) on :

This is the problem, see? Charm doesn't come about by trying, it occurs naturally as a result of the process of not trying at all.

Posted by Smart Alex (# 1916) on :

My personal theory (which is worth very little):

Luke, seeking to make an account of the life of Jesus that would make sense to Gentile Christians, has certain information available to him:

a) Mark's gospel
b) Q (whatever this may have been - I suspect that it was purely oral tradition)
c) Knowledge that Jesus came from Galilee
d) An account of Joseph and Mary coming from Galilee to Bethlehem, here Jesus was born.

He then tried to put what he knew into some sort of coherent order. But we have to bear in mind that he didn't have access to vast libraries or official documents or any of the sources of information we might take for granted today.

Having a strong tradition that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Luke had to find some explanation of how he got there when it was well-known that he was raised in Galilee. I doubt that he actually had access to Mary's personal memories, but he did have some sort of awareness of a census around about that time which had caused people to move about. He put two and two together and assumed that the move to Bethlehem was because of the census. It turns out that he was wrong, but that doesn't really invalidate his gospel. In the end, the reason for move isn't that crucial to the "truth" of the gospel, unless you stick to the view that all of the Bible must be 100% accurate in every way - a view which I think is very hard to hold these days.

If push comes to shove, my theory for why Mary and Joseph left Nazareth for Bethlehem is that, had Mary given birth in Nazareth, everyone would have known that the birth was too soon after the marriage. They went to Bethlehem, because there no-one would know exactly when they had got married. And they returned to Nazareth when it would be impossible to tell exactly when Jesus had been born. In other words - it was a way of protecting Jesus (and Mary) from the stigma that would have come from an illigitimate birth in a small village where everyone knew everyone else. It is a ploy that has been used down the centuries.

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cusanus:
Luke is writing in a context where differing, and sometimes conflicting, 'versions' of Jesus were circulating. (At least Mark, possibly Matthew, and heaven knows what sort of oral traditions that were going to lead into gnosticism.) The word I would use for what Luke is doing is 'authoritative' rather than 'objective': that is, his primary concern is theological rather than historical (as we would understand it).

As promised. The single source I have at home at the moment is Witherington's New Testament History: A Narrative Account. I like Witherington; he looks conservative, but unlike me he bases a lot of his conclusions on the factual existence of Q, something I've never been convinced about. Which means that I can quote parts of his work while at the same time disclaiming a sycophantic regurgitation.

Anyway, a few points that summarise why Luke can be regarded as attempting a history rather than anything else (most especially NOT an 'hagiography', as someone blurted previously).

1. Luke is interested in causality. Whether this is theological in nature (God's plan) or events at a point in time is irrelevant. Luke places 'a stress on the historical manifestations of God's earlier promises, prophecies and plans'.[pp24-25]

2. If Luke were an (ancient) biography, Luke 1 would have had its focus on Jesus. This is a prime indicator of bioi that Luke lacks. And it lacks it in spades.

3. Luke's emphasis is on events, not character. This, again, is a prime indicator of form. 'Notice that only Luke among the gospel writers shows any real interest in historical synchronisms (Luke 3:1; Acts 18:2) or in the historical development of Jesus' life (Luke 2:41-52)'. [p25]

4. The Greek and Roman historiographical traditions are substantially different. Witherington places Luke firmly in the Greek tradition, for a number of reasons that are probably out of range for this conversation.

5. There is no denial of a theological impetus to the work; however this bears not at all on the genre of the work. 'The differences between parallel accounts of Jesus' teachings remind us, however, that ancient authors felt more free than moderns do to edit their material in ways conducive to their larger literary, or, in this case, theological purposes.[p27]

Perhaps this last point is the cause of some confusion and/or anachronism.

Posted by SteveTom (# 23) on :

quote:
Originally posted by David:
Gah. Chronological snobbery. Granted, what Luke (or Thucydides) regarded as reliable evidence may have been different, but this doesn't mean that it was necessarily less reliable....

The good ones (Thucydides, Tacitus, later Josephus) in general checked their sources, did not accept hearsay alone as evidence, and weighted their sources on predetermined criteria.

Bad ones didn't. Herodotus, for example.

Nothing has really changed.

Yes, up to a point.

But on the other hand, Luke was writing in a tradition that allowed him, for example, to put long poems such as the Magnificat into his characters' mouths, and to move Jesus' rejection at Nazereth from half way through his ministry to the beginning for reaosns of literary structure. This is, it hardly needs saying, completely alien to contemporary ways of doing history.

Thucidyides likewise was happy to give his characters lines 'expressing sentiments appropriate to the occasion', rather than what they actually said.

So, I agree Luke had a "sound" attitude to choosing his sources. The question is what he did with them - how he adapted them, what he omitted from them, and - especially in the case of the birth story - how much he filled in the gaps in his information with guesswork or even edifying fiction.

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SteveTom:
So, I agree Luke had a "sound" attitude to choosing his sources. The question is what he did with them - how he adapted them, what he omitted from them, and - especially in the case of the birth story - how much he filled in the gaps in his information with guesswork or even edifying fiction.

Spot on, Steve.This is the real question that needs answering (although I note you've made a dodgy attempt at it [Big Grin]

)

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SteveTom:
But on the other hand, Luke was writing in a tradition that allowed him, for example, to put long poems such as the Magnificat into his characters' mouths...

This is an interesting assertion - it's probably worthy of a thread all of its own. What's the reasoning here? (Truly interested, not putting on the charm!)

Posted by Glenn Oldham (# 47) on :

quote:

Luke 1:1-4

[1] Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, [2] just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. [3] Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, [4] so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

Luke appears to be claiming to give an account based on those accounts he believes to have been handed down by “eyewitnesses and servants [or ministers] of the word.” The phrase ‘ministers of the word’ implies that the message handed down is a theological message and not merely an historical one. This leaves open the possibility that parts of Luke’s account consist of stories that were intended as theological expositions of Jesus’s significance rather than historical details of events.

Glenn

Posted by SteveTom (# 23) on :

quote:
Originally posted by David:

quote:
Originally posted by SteveTom:
But on the other hand, Luke was writing in a tradition that allowed him, for example, to put long poems such as the Magnificat into his characters' mouths...
This is an interesting assertion - it's probably worthy of a thread all of its own. What's the reasoning here? (Truly interested, not putting on the charm!)

Well, the fact that he did it shows that he was wrorking in a tradition that allowed him to do it. But if that's a little glib for you....

It's the OT histories rather than Greek that gave Luke his precedent here. OT folk break out into verse at the least provocation, as well you know.

You could argue, in fact, that this is part of Luke's attempt to show Greek readers that they're entering an alien and exotic Hebrew world.

Posted by SteveTom (# 23) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Glenn Oldham:
Luke appears to be claiming to give an account based on those accounts he believes to have been handed down by “eyewitnesses and servants [or ministers] of the word.” The phrase ‘ministers of the word’ implies that the message handed down is a theological message and not merely an historical one.

I disagree. The servants of the word in the 1st century were the original followers of Jesus, plus converts of those followers. All Luke's saying is that he got his stories from those who knew the stories.

Are you suggesting that if an eyewitness is a preacher, their evidence is likely to be more symbolic than their flock's?

Obviously Luke and his sources had theological agendas, but this does not diminish the historicity of their stories any more than the fact that modern historians have political agendas.

Posted by Glenn Oldham (# 47) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SteveTom:
Are you suggesting that if an eyewitness is a preacher, their evidence is likely to be more symbolic than their flock's?

But the eyewitnesses did not just give evidence of events as if in a court. They spoke of the significance of what they had experienced of Jesus. A preacher is a witness to the significance and meaning of the events and is not simply interested in telling hearers merely what happened when. One cannot therefore discount the possibility that they employed ways of conveying the message that we would regard as odd e.g. by creating some of the Christmas stories.

Posted by theMadFarmer (# 4252) on :

My goodness! All you U.K. folk post in the middle of the night! And copiously, at that. JUst so you know I'm not ignoring the thread- I'm catching up.

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

Another aspect to this is that Luke has traditionally been held to be a work of divine origin.

If this is not the case, then there is a lot more inacuracy than the matter of the census.

If divine revelation is actually involved, I don't think this renders the question of the census moot, but it does make it of secondary importance.

Is logical positivism the basic assumption here? Are we assuming that these matters are definitely not divinely revealed?

Posted by SteveTom (# 23) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
Another aspect to this is that Luke has traditionally been held to be a work of divine origin.

This is rather on a tangent, but in a nutshell I don't see what difference it makes to the question either way.

If God inspired the gospel, that doesn't mean he decreed every word of it should be infallibly historically accurate.

(If you want to take this further a new thread is probably in order.)

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Glenn Oldham:

quote:
Originally posted by SteveTom:
Are you suggesting that if an eyewitness is a preacher, their evidence is likely to be more symbolic than their flock's?
But the eyewitnesses did not just give evidence of events as if in a court. They spoke of the significance of what they had experienced of Jesus. A preacher is a witness to the significance and meaning of the events and is not simply interested in telling hearers merely what happened when. One cannot therefore discount the possibility that they employed ways of conveying the message that we would regard as odd e.g. by creating some of the Christmas stories.

Foregoing for a while some other things I'd want to comment on, we don't know what sources Luke used (although people have been trying to work it out for the best part of 2000 years); therefore any speculation on the style and quality of his direct sources is just that - pure speculation. I'd be extremely reluctant to draw any conclusion from that, let alone rely on it. There's an enormous amount of ground between court-style evidence and preaching as a source, and neither of the extremes is necessary, nor are they indicated.

In any case, I'm having trouble working out who's disputing who's position on what, let alone why. My fault probably.

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SteveTom:
Well, the fact that he did it shows that he was wrorking in a tradition that allowed him to do it. But if that's a little glib for you....

It's the OT histories rather than Greek that gave Luke his precedent here. OT folk break out into verse at the least provocation, as well you know.

You could argue, in fact, that this is part of Luke's attempt to show Greek readers that they're entering an alien and exotic Hebrew world.

(Ignoring the Big Beg at the start [Big Grin]

) I think we're in danger of confusing form and content here. The content is unwaveringly Semitic. This has to do with the source material. It's hardly surprising to see semitic devices (nice poems, for instance) in the text. None of this affects the intentions of the author.

Now, the Magnificat thing. I can guess at the reasoning behind this, since you wouldn't tell me [Disappointed]

- I think it goes something like this:

1.
A. It is a theologically sophisticated work.
B. Mary is just a sweet young thang, and not theologically sophisiticated.

Therefore, it is unlikely that it was the product of Mary, especially at that point in time. This I can accept with the proviso that it's only a reasonable assumption, not a certainty.

2.
A. Since it probably didn't originate with Mary, someone must have made it up.
B. Since someone else made it up, it must have been attributed to Mary by someone.
C. Historians in that tradition were allowed to make things up and put them in people's mouths.

Therefore it is likely that Luke was the one that done it.

Now, assuming that this is the line of reasoning and not a straw man I've pulled out of the nearest available orifice, I have to say that 2C is just plain wrong. Contrary to what appears to be popular belief, there was not a tradition of giving characters things to say because the author thought that's what they would say if they'd have said anything. Yes, it did happen, mostly in the Roman tradition. They were big on speeches as summary devices, and there is some spurious stuff that's survived. No, it's not the same thing as summarising concepts in speeches (non-literate society, remember, so things would have been reported from memory).

I don't know where the theory or idea started, but it's just plain wrong to say that there was a tradition (or even a practice) of making things up. My own theory is that Magnificat was inserted into the source, and not made up by Luke - there are a number of possibilities here as well.

Posted by SteveTom (# 23) on :

quote:
Originally posted by David:
Now, the Magnificat thing. I can guess at the reasoning behind this, since you wouldn't tell me.

It didn't occur to me for a moment that you asking why I said the Magnificat wasn't historical.
It's so perfectly obvious to me that the outbursts of poetry in the early chapters of Luke are literary devices rather than verbatim transcripts of spontaneous monologues that if you want me to explain why, you'll have to give me some time.

Are you really asking that?

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SteveTom:
But on the other hand, Luke was writing in a tradition that allowed him, for example, to put long poems such as the Magnificat into his characters' mouths,...

I understand that the Magnificat is typical Hebrew poetry. I am surprised that Luke, a Gentile, was so conversant with Hebrew literary conventions that he would include this if he had not been told it was spoken by Mary.

Moo

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SteveTom:
It's so perfectly obvious to me that the outbursts of poetry in the early chapters of Luke are literary devices rather than verbatim transcripts of spontaneous monologues that if you want me to explain why, you'll have to give me some time.

Are you really asking that?

Yes, I'm asking (but I'm not asking you why they aren't "verbatim transcripts of spontaneous monologues" - that's a straw man you can keep, thanks). I'm question the assertion that it was Luke that inserted it, not that it was inserted, so anything supporting the insertion by Luke would be good.

Thanks.

Posted by theMadFarmer (# 4252) on :

Firstly, I must say I'm largely in a greement with much of what SteveTom has written, and not just because his avatar is a photo of Dylan either...

quote:
am surprised that Luke, a Gentile, was so conversant with Hebrew literary conventions that he would include this if he had not been told it was spoken by Mary.

But what if he had been told that Mary spoke that poem? What if, by the time Luke went about collecting his data, the Christian communities had already been telling themselves this story for long enough that even the kids of the the folks who'd been there "remembered" it that way?

This sort of thing happens all the time; part of the problem of establishing the historicity of events transcribed from oral histories is that research has shown pretty conclusively that oral historians adjust, without realizing it, their oral history's facts here and there to suit the needs of the community at the time.*
There is even significant evidence to suggest that an average person is not likely to "accurately" recount a recent event- by the time the story gets told, it's been "infiltrated" by numerous tropes and been edited "for effect."
My wife often edits me entirely out of stories. I'll make a joke or an observation, and when she tells the story to friends or family she is the one making the joke or observation. She has even edited me out of stories she tells me!
That's an extreme example, perhaps, but my point in my original observation about history and standards was that even if Luke were the best of historians, he did not have the training and extensive education and benefit of fifteen hundred years of previous historians' accumulated refinements in methodology to help him get around the necessary inconsistencies of oral memory and storytelling traditions. Consider that, a thousand years after Luke, guilt and innocence in legal proceedings was still being decided by rituals rather than by presentation of evidence and argument. People who believe the truth can be divined through combat or ordeal are not people who share our understanding of what facts are.
It's a fair bet that he couldn't do serious archeology, or compare primary sources, or do serious textual anaylsis, and further, that he probably wouldn't have felt it necessary to do so if he had - because the idea of history writing as a science was to be developed in the far distant future. If the ancients differed with us about what counts as a "fact", then even the most rigorous deidcation to accuracy would yeild a different kind of account than the same dedication would today.

And that he may not have even had the mindset (as SteveTom pointed out above) that using literary tropes was "bad" history writing.

But I don't think this is bad - I prefer a Mary reciting the Magnificat to one who is just a poor illiterate inarticulate teenager.

(Curious folks who want an in-depth treatment of this phenomenon can check out Fr. Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy).

[ 13. March 2003, 00:14: Message edited by: David ]

Posted by theMadFarmer (# 4252) on :

Oy. Could a moderator pretty please change my HTML to UBB code? I mistakenly thought clicking "HTML is off" would turn it on. Thanks!

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SteveTom:
If God inspired the gospel, that doesn't mean he decreed every word of it should be infallibly historically accurate.

Yes, you are right. I'm not meaning this to be a tangential discussion. My only point is that for many people God's guidance is an important part of the equation of how the gospels came to be written.

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by theMadFarmer:
But what if he had been told that Mary spoke that poem? What if, by the time Luke went about collecting his data, the Christian communities had already been telling themselves this story for long enough that even the kids of the the folks who'd been there "remembered" it that way?

This is exactly what I suspect happened.

quote:
This sort of thing happens all the time; part of the problem of establishing the historicity of events transcribed from oral histories is that research has shown pretty conclusively that oral historians adjust, without realizing it, their oral history's facts here and there to suit the needs of the community at the time.*

Sort of. To some extent, Ong's work is a bit dated; even so, he showed that adjustment of the text was situational, and facts aren't adjusted so that meaning is lost. The work of Kenneth Bailey is more important here, since it deals directly with the issue of transmission in agrarian communities by direct observation.

quote:
There is even significant evidence to suggest that an average person is not likely to "accurately" recount a recent event- by the time the story gets told, it's been "infiltrated" by numerous tropes and been edited "for effect."
My wife often edits me entirely out of stories. I'll make a joke or an observation, and when she tells the story to friends or family she is the one making the joke or observation. She has even edited me out of stories she tells me!

This is mostly because of the difference between oral and literary societies. Put simply, memory works differently in a literary society than an oral one. This is Ong's thesis, BTW. How your wife - or anyone else from and industrialised society - does, is irrelevant.

quote:
That's an extreme example, perhaps, but my point in my original observation about history and standards was that even if Luke were the best of historians, he did not have the training and extensive education and benefit of fifteen hundred years of previous historians' accumulated refinements in methodology to help him get around the necessary inconsistencies of oral memory and storytelling traditions.

???????
Luke lived in an oral culture - historians are only just getting back to grips with what that means. Modern historians are trying desperately to rediscover what Luke would have understood implicitly. If this is the benefit of 1500 years...

quote:
Consider that, a thousand years after Luke, guilt and innocence in legal proceedings was still being decided by rituals rather than by presentation of evidence and argument. People who believe the truth can be divined through combat or ordeal are not people who share our understanding of what facts are.

I'm sorry, but this is irrelevant and anachronistic. Roman law (and Judaic law, for goodness' sake!) were not based on ordeal. Trial by Ordeal was an innovation of the Middle Ages.

quote:
It's a fair bet that he couldn't do serious archeology, or compare primary sources, or do serious textual anaylsis, and further, that he probably wouldn't have felt it necessary to do so if he had - because the idea of history writing as a science was to be developed in the far distant future.

I'm sorry, but this is untrue. The idea of history as a science was begun at least 300 years before. The question is whether Luke was a party to this or whether he was following a different historiographical tradition.

Moreover, archaeology is irrelevant, since Luke was contemporary, or near contemporary, with his sources. Neither is textual analysis necessary - I suspect that you've started to look at it from the point of view of a modern ancient historian looking back, rather than a modern historian working with contemporary history - that's the only valid way to look at it. Of course the tools will be different!

I'll leave the rest, since it relies on the above.

Posted by David (# 3) on :

Damn, I missed something, which means that there will now be a 19th discution strand to this thread

quote:
From SteveTom:
But on the other hand, Luke was writing in a tradition that allowed him, for example, to put long poems such as the Magnificat into his characters' mouths, and to move Jesus' rejection at Nazereth from half way through his ministry to the beginning for reaosns of literary structure. This is, it hardly needs saying, completely alien to contemporary ways of doing history.

Ignoring the Magnificat stuff [Killing me]

, the reason that material gets moved from its chronological place is actually a feature of Greek historical method. Material is usually arranged geographically, rather than in strict sequnce (naturally, chronology is still a consideration, certainly in the broader scope. It'd read pretty strangely if someone died at the start, were born in the middle and grew up in the Grand Finale!).

Anyway, to the point. It is "completely alien to contemporary ways of doing history." This doesn't have any sort of bearing on accuracy though; its a matter of the reader adjusting their expectations.

Posted by theMadFarmer (# 4252) on :

quote:
The idea of history as a science was begun at least 300 years before.

I think we're meaning different things by "science"? I'm using the term in the modern sense, as it relates to the scientific method and the idea of testing an hypothesis repeatedly, which, if my memory serves, is a product of a period much later than the one in which Luke lived...

Posted by David (# 3) on :

...and therefore has nothing to do with history.

Posted by Cusanus (# 692) on :

This thread is getting increasingly complicated! Especially as I realise how dated my reading on oral transmission is. (If Ong is dated, David, what would you recommend?) However, to throw my two cents worth in on other subjects...

I agree that something like 'scientific history' was born well before Luke. I'm less sure that Luke is doing it, particularly as Thucydides would have recognised it. The Big Theta distinguished his work from myth-making or fabulism by his resolute refusal to resort to supernatural explanations for anything. While Luke is obviously influenced by the Hellenic school of historiography deriving from Thucydides, he's pretty obviously not going that far!

Posted by David

quote:
Contrary to what appears to be popular belief, there was not a tradition of giving characters things to say because the author thought that's what they would say if they'd have said anything.

Erm... Pericles' funeral oration? Thucy. says pretty explicitly that he's done this. Or are you dealing with a different concept here?

I don't know how tangential or helpful it is to remind ourselves that the ancient texts that Luke's Gospel resembles most closely are Mark and Matthew, even if it is more clearly influenced by Hellenism than either. So he's writing a Gospel, a literary form of which he has at least one example.

Posted by SteveTom (# 23) on :

quote:
Originally posted by David:
Yes, I'm asking (but I'm not asking you why they aren't "verbatim transcripts of spontaneous monologues" - that's a straw man you can keep, thanks).

Glad to hear it.

quote:
I'm question the assertion that it was Luke that inserted it, not that it was inserted, so anything supporting the insertion by Luke would be good.
Thanks.

When I said that Luke put these poems into his characters' mouths and that therefore something had indeed changed, I wasn't meaning necessarily that they were Luke the final "redactor's" creation.
It doesn't make any difference to my point either way.

Either Luke got the information contained in ch. 1-2 orally and wrote the narrative himself, in which case he composed the verses as a self-conscious Hebraism;
or he came across a rather obscure and highly sylised birth story in writing, and decided to plonk it onto the start of his gospel with the "musical numbers" in tact.

Either way Luke made the final decision to have his characters say this stuff, demonstrating an approach to history significantly different to ours today.
Is what I was trying to say.

Posted by SteveTom (# 23) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
I understand that the Magnificat is typical Hebrew poetry. I am surprised that Luke, a Gentile, was so conversant with Hebrew literary conventions that he would include this if he had not been told it was spoken by Mary.

I don't think it's at all surprising. Luke seems thoroughly versed in the LXX, the Greek translation of the scriptures, most likely because (like many Gentile Christians probably) he had been a Godfearer before his Christian conversion.
Thus he would be familiar with Hebrew verse style.

I'm sure many people have studied the Greek of Luke 1-2 in comparison with the rest of the gospel in an attempt to detect its origin. I haven't .

But even a cursory glance shows up for example the repeatd mention of the Holy Spirit - a classic Luke thumbprint.
And if he composed the narrative in ch1-2 himself, then the chances are he composed the verse too.

After all, in what context on earth can one imagine The Song of Mary upon the Visitation to Elizabeth, or The Song of Zechariah upon the Birth of John, or The Song of Simeon upon Meeting the Infant Messiah being written in the middle of the 1st century if not part of a birth narrative?

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cusanus:
This thread is getting increasingly complicated!

Preach it. It isn't so much complicated as completely out of control. I blame semillon.

quote:
Especially as I realise how dated my reading on oral transmission is. (If Ong is dated, David, what would you recommend?) However, to throw my two cents worth in on other subjects...

The work of Ken Bailey appears to highly regarded (note: I haven't read these, I've only read people who have!) eg. "Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and The Synoptic Gospels" [1995]. Also Vansina "Oral Tradition as History" seems to be oft used.

If you like I can look at compiling a short bibliography of the more recent work on the net (usually at SBL and offshoots).

quote:
I agree that something like 'scientific history' was born well before Luke. I'm less sure that Luke is doing it, particularly as Thucydides would have recognised it. The Big Theta distinguished his work from myth-making or fabulism by his resolute refusal to resort to supernatural explanations for anything. While Luke is obviously influenced by the Hellenic school of historiography deriving from Thucydides, he's pretty obviously not going that far!

Fair enough, although a couple of points come to mind. The first one is that the subject matter is of enormous influence with regard the supernatural. Th. recognised that his predecessors had a tendency to grab at anything; I'm not sure he said anything about avoiding supernatural explanations, but he wrote principally about a war. Luke writes principally about a quite amazing series of events.

The second is that to suggest Luke is deviating from Th. tradition tends to put the cart before the horse. If supernatural events actually happened (or can reasonably be deduced to have been due to eg. the quality of the witness) the Luke is writing history.

quote:
Erm... Pericles' funeral oration? Thucy. says pretty explicitly that he's done this. Or are you dealing with a different concept here?

A fair bit different, yes. This relates more to the point about summary due to the constraints of being largely a non-literate society. While it's more than likely that Th. reconstructed the speech, there is no real indication that Pericles didn't make a speech or, if he did, it was nothing like Thucydides reports. In other words, there is no indication that Th. made it up out of whole cloth, which is what I was suggesting there was not tradition of.

quote:
I don't know how tangential or helpful it is to remind ourselves that the ancient texts that Luke's Gospel resembles most closely are Mark and Matthew, even if it is more clearly influenced by Hellenism than either. So he's writing a Gospel, a literary form of which he has at least one example.

I think a new thread to discuss this; a couple of points that you might like to take issue with. Luke resembles Matt and Mark in subject matter rather than form; in some shared text, rather than the organisation of that text and the purpose for which it was assembled is radically different. Strangely, Luke is different to John in form, but John is much like Matt and Mark.

In short, there is no such literary form as gospel (I think I covered some of this ground in a semi-recent Purg. thread. Matt, Mark and John are generically bioi; Luke isn't.)

Or something.

Posted by David (# 3) on :

[Partial Tangent]

On reflection, perhaps "dated" is too imprecise with regard to Ong. His work is not primarily concerned with the detail of oral transmission; rather he utilises other sources of information for this. It is these things that are dated, rather than the primary focus of Ong which is the alteration of consciousness in the transition from an oral society to a literary one.

[/Partial Tangent]

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SteveTom:

[snippety snip]
Either Luke got the information contained in ch. 1-2 orally and wrote the narrative himself, in which case he composed the verses as a self-conscious Hebraism;
or he came across a rather obscure and highly sylised birth story in writing, and decided to plonk it onto the start of his gospel with the "musical numbers" in tact.

Either way Luke made the final decision to have his characters say this stuff, demonstrating an approach to history significantly different to ours today.
Is what I was trying to say.

Thanks Steve, that's much clearer. Although I think it would show a different type of source rather than a different approach to history, but that may just be me.

Posted by theMadFarmer (# 4252) on :

Good morning everyone!

I should not write when tired; I realized, upon re-reading that I had a lot more complaints with David's response to me than I initially realized.

quote:
To some extent, Ong's work is a bit dated; even so, he showed that adjustment of the text was situational, and facts aren't adjusted so that meaning is lost. The work of Kenneth Bailey is more important here, since it deals directly with the issue of transmission in agrarian communities by direct observation.

People have already brought this up, but the whole approach here bothers me to some extent. Without you providing some kind of synopisis about how and why Bailey's work is improved upon/different from Ong's, this ends up just being an ad hominem circumstantial argument - Ong wrote before Bailey did.
But I let it slide because in general, when us moderns are talking about scholarship, that is the very sort of thing we take for granted, that, all things being equal, newer scholarship is likely to be more accepted as authoritiative. That is the kind of convention I meant with the term "scientific history"; it is possible that I'm misusing a term, but do you see what I mean now? Luke may have been a decent interviewer and fact-gatherer, but the fact reamins that the way history is understood and studied today is incredibly different from the way it was done then.

quote:
This is Ong's thesis, BTW. How your wife - or anyone else from and industrialised society - does, is irrelevant.

It is indeed Ong's thesis, but I don't see how it makes my wife's memory irrelevant. I was discussing her oral storytelling in specific, not just her memory. I don't think that Ong's thesis could be used to support the idea that because pre-literate cultures had to rely on memory and mnemonics alone to retain and relay information that they were better at it, on average, than modern humans.
I have a friend whose family can trace thier Scottish lineage back to Scotland but who pretends, because he works in a Cappucino shop, to be Italian-American. He never tells anyone he's Itialian, but he speaks Itialian to customers, talks about Italy, and if you asked most people in town what his ethnicity was, they'd tell he was Itialian. They probably think he's from New Jersey, even though he grew up here.
I have another friend who's got a slowly detaching retina and who compains often about how badly he sees, holds the newspapr a half-inch from his face, and yet he can see well enough to do some of the most beautiful carpentry work, and to remark on the size of the breasts of a woman leaving the grocery store 25 yards from the coffee shop where he sits.
None of these people exemplify Ong's thesis, but they do exemplify my point, which was that oral memory is only as reliable as the people remembering and the people who made the memories. An oral historian might very well "remember" my first friend as Italian and my second as near-blind.

quote:
I'm sorry, but this is irrelevant and anachronistic. Roman law (and Judaic law, for goodness' sake!) were not based on ordeal. Trial by Ordeal was an innovation of the Middle Ages.

Totally not my point, David. Did I say trial by ordeal was practied in Luke's time? I did not. It was an example of how facts were not understood to be the measure of truth in times earlier to ours.
Perhaps I ought to bave gone and looked up examples of Judaic law or Roman law instead of assuming you'd distinguish between my example and its implied point. But again, here I find your technique frustrating, and again, rather than presenting examples of Roman and Judaic law which would support your implied thesis that their jurisprudence was based on an idea of facts-as-evidence-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt, you just make note of the fact that my example was about a time after Luke's. Helpful if you want to win the debate, but unhelpful to everyone you beat, because I haven't learned anything.
If understand Roman jurisprudence correctly, it was based on the idea that the local magistrate was the "judge" in the sense that he heard cases and decided guilt or innocence based on testimosy. I may be mistaken, but I don't think there was much more to it thasn that, as in the case of Jesus and his accusers - Pilate deicded Jesus's innocence based solely on testimoy - no extra facts were gathered, no corraborating witnesses produced, etc.

quote:
The work of Ken Bailey appears to highly regarded (note: I haven't read these, I've only read people who have!)

Now, this frustrates me most of all: you haven't read it, and yet you put it up against Ong's work as being an improvement? Again, I can definitely see that Ong's work is old and it is reasonable to asume that there's newer scholarship, but my frustration is that a lot of your arugments focus on how wrong I am but don't offer any alternatives. If Bailey is authoritative here, it'd be helpful to actually know what his ideas were.

quote:
Although I think it would show a different type of source rather than a different approach to history, but that may just be me.

I constitutes a different appraoch because modern historian would include a caveat of some kind: that there are no primary sources about the incident, being that it was a private encounter between Mary and Elzabeth, both of whom are dead, and then an explanation of the source for Mary's poem - Luke does neither - he presents it seamlessly in the narrative, which is a perfect example of the difference in the ways we and they understood truth and facts - a modern historian would make a point of letting us know he has no means for getting at what really happened, but Luke doesn't do that. That signifies a big difference in method to me.

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by theMadFarmer:
Good morning everyone!

I should not write when tired; I realized, upon re-reading that I had a lot more complaints with David's response to me than I initially realized.

I'm not going to go into a great deal of detail on most of this, simply because it's a fair bit off the main topic (well, what the main topic has become, not what it started out as). If you want to pursue the extraneous stuff further, maybe start another thread in the appropriate place? Otherwise I'll find myself arguing 10 different sub-plots, instead of the seven we have at present. [Help]

A few points. First, I did clarify what I meant by "dated". Did you not see that? There is nothing 'ad hominem' about what I said at all; and I certainly don't think "new" is better than "old" in terms of scholarship. If an idea has been superseded by something that is either more thorough, more specific to the question at hand or has better foundations, then it is "dated". Where's the insult in that?

In any case, I explained why other work is more relevant. What's the problem?

As for most of the rest, you're simply repeating an ealier mistake. You're trying to provinde an analogy to the reliability of oral transmission in a non-literate society by providing anecdotal examples from a literate one. It doesn't work. Ancients were better at it, just as modern pre-literate society is better at it.

Now, trial by ordeal. You originally said

quote:
Consider that, a thousand years after Luke, guilt and innocence in legal proceedings was still being decided by rituals rather than by presentation of evidence and argument. People who believe the truth can be divined through combat or ordeal are not people who share our understanding of what facts are

Which part have I misunderstood? You are clearly stating that trial by ordeal was still being practiced 1000 years after Luke. This is a direct implication that it was being practiced at the time of Luke, and that this is somehow evidence that they had a different approach to "facts" then we do. If I was at all cynical I'd say you were trying to weasel out of it by complaining about how I'm frustrating you by not providing you with all of the "answers" to your mistakes. If you want to know about Roman law, go and find out about it, maybe ask a question in Purgatory - someone will answer it, I'm sure. It's completely marginal to this discussion, so I'm not going to go into any details, just point out that you have made an error. (Your summary of Roman jurisprudence is way off the mark, BTW).

Next. I am allowed to suggest works that I haven't read. I can't read everything, nor can any person be an expert in everything (I'm an expert in nothing, but that's OK because I don't claim to be). What I can do, though, is read summaries of work by experts in their fields. That's why summaries are put out in the first place (Ong's work is one of these!). Again, it is not a question of Ong's work being old; it's a matter of more relevant material being available. The fact that it's newer is just a matter of circumstance. And, again, this is only marginal to the discussion. Start another thread perhaps?

Your last paragraph is on-topic, so I'm going to reply to that separately.

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:

quote:
By me:
Although I think it would show a different type of source rather than a different approach to history, but that may just be me.
By you:

I constitutes a different appraoch because modern historian would include a caveat of some kind: that there are no primary sources about the incident, being that it was a private encounter between Mary and Elzabeth, both of whom are dead, and then an explanation of the source for Mary's poem - Luke does neither - he presents it seamlessly in the narrative, which is a perfect example of the difference in the ways we and they understood truth and facts - a modern historian would make a point of letting us know he has no means for getting at what really happened, but Luke doesn't do that. That signifies a big difference in method to me.

There are three (broad) activities related to the formulation of historical documents that are relevant:

1. Investigation and colllection of source material.

2. Selection and "processing" of source material.

3. Arrangement of source material and production of the document.

I point this out because I have no idea which one(s) you are talking about, or whether you're talking about the entire process. You talk about the availability of the sources, but your example has to do with the production of the document. Whether or not there's footnotes or a bibliography has absolutely nothing to do with how Luke understood "facts" and "truth"; neither has it got anything to do with methodology.

Sorry, but I can't unpack that any further. Can you be more precise with what you mean?

Posted by theMadFarmer (# 4252) on :

quote:
There is nothing 'ad hominem' about what I said at all; <snip> Where's the insult in that?

To say an argument is ad hominem is not to say it was an insult - it's to say that the argument's strength lies in changing the subject from the topic at hand to another one - in this case, when people wrote their books. Ad hominem circumstantial is one of three kinds of ad homniem arguments, and it means pretty muich what it sounds like: that you argue we shouldn't value (or we should value it less) Ong's work because of his circumstances - it's older than that of Bailey's. Again, that's an easy-enough proposition to accept, but it's wholly useless for everyone who hasn't read Baliey. I could just as easily say that Bailey's work is less relevant in comparison with Wilhelm's - the argument doens't convey anything because I haven't really said anything. What I want to know is what Bailey's thesis is exactly. How hard is that information to provide?

quote:
I explained why other work is more relevant.

Because it's "more highly regarded". Right. But I don't want to why you prefer it; I want to know what it says.

quote:
Ancients were better at it, just as modern pre-literate society is better at it.

How do you know?

quote:
You are clearly stating that trial by ordeal was still being practiced 1000 years after Luke.

I can see how you read it that way, but that's not what I said - what I said was that rituals were still being used to decide guilt or innocence. I provided trials by ordeal and combat as examples of stuff people did later.

quote:
Your summary of Roman jurisprudence is way off the mark, BTW

I don't believe you - not for any other reason than because you provide absolutely no reason for me to. Just because you say so? I'm not a historian of Roman justice; I have only my limited education to inform me. It shouldn't be that hard to say something convincing about it...

quote:
I am allowed to suggest works that I haven't read.

Of course you are; but you should expect reasonable people to doubt you when you make claims based on a book you haven't read, which is what you did when you posited Baliely's work as somehow refuting/being better than Ong's.

quote:
What I can do, though, is read summaries of work by experts in their fields.

How about sharing that information with the rest of us?

Posted by theMadFarmer (# 4252) on :

quote:
I point this out because I have no idea which one(s) you are talking about, or whether you're talking about the entire process.

The entire process, and more importantly, it's product. I really don't see what's so difficult about my idea: a modern historian sees a difference between reasonably substantiated facts and hearsay, folk legends and the like.
If a modern historian was told the story of Mary and Elizabeth while doing research, they would in all likeliehood investigate further, try to find out if it really happened, get alternative accounts, maybe study into the way the particular oral histories of that culture work, etc. (That's in the info-and-source-gathering box if we must follow your taxonomy).
When writing, the modern historian would then likely be careful to qualify, not in a footnote or endnote, but in the text itself, that it's a folkd legend. It'd likely sound something like this:

"Early Christian oral tradition seems to support the idea of Mary visiting Elizabeth, her cousin, while pregnant with Christ. Tradition includes the 'Magnificat', a poem Mary is said to have uttered upon meeting Elizabeth. The text of the pome follows, though it should be noted that several version of it exist; I have chosen the most common one here"

And so on. The person writing a passage like that has a very differet idea of what a fact is, what counts as truth - that person puts distance between himself and the oral tradition. Luke, on the other hand, wove it into his narrative, without signifying it as a folk legend.

quote:
You talk about the availability of the sources, but your example has to do with the production of the document.

Well the one affects the other, doesn't it? If you have one kind of source, like, say oral history, and that kind of source counts as "facts" for you, you likely hold a different idea baout what a "fact" is than someone for whom oral history doesn't necessarily count as "fact".

Posted by David (# 3) on :

I'm not arguing with you any more, because I would just be repeating myself. If you don't believe me, go and do some research, then come back and tell me why I'm wrong.

Posted by David (# 3) on :

[To continue with the real discussion]

quote:
Originally posted by theMadFarmer:
I really don't see what's so difficult about my idea: a modern historian sees a difference between reasonably substantiated facts and hearsay, folk legends and the like.

You're begging the question, by equating oral transmission/tradition with "hearsay, folk legends and the like". They are not the same thing. Not even a little bit.

quote:
If a modern historian was told the story of Mary and Elizabeth while doing research, they would in all likeliehood investigate further, try to find out if it really happened, get alternative accounts,

What evidence do you have that Luke didn't do this?

quote:
...maybe study into the way the particular oral histories of that culture work, etc.

No need for Luke to do this. Don't mix up an Ancient Historian with an Ancient Historian.

quote:
When writing, the modern historian would then likely be careful to qualify, not in a footnote or endnote, but in the text itself, that it's a folkd legend. It'd likely sound something like this:

"Early Christian oral tradition seems to support the idea of Mary visiting Elizabeth, her cousin, while pregnant with Christ. Tradition includes the 'Magnificat', a poem Mary is said to have uttered upon meeting Elizabeth. The text of the pome follows, though it should be noted that several version of it exist; I have chosen the most common one here"

I don't disagree with this at all.

quote:
And so on. The person writing a passage like that has a very differet idea of what a fact is, what counts as truth - that person puts distance between himself and the oral tradition.

No. This is why I differentiated between investigation and production. The lack of footnotes etc. in an ancient document says nothing - absolutely nothing - about the research the writer undertook or the decisions that were made in selecting the material. In turn, it says absolutely nothing about what the author thought was a fact.

quote:
Luke, on the other hand, wove it into his narrative, without signifying it as a folk legend.

Ignoring the begged question, why did Luke have to signify anything at all about the source of the material?

quote:
Well the one affects the other, doesn't it? If you have one kind of source, like, say oral history, and that kind of source counts as "facts" for you, you likely hold a different idea baout what a "fact" is than someone for whom oral history doesn't necessarily count as "fact".

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but my point was that the final form of the document is not representative of the sources. You can only "guess" at the sources from the content, not the form; therefore it says nothing at all about what the writer treats as fact.

In turn, I don't see what's so difficult about this.

Posted by theMadFarmer (# 4252) on :

quote:
In turn, I don't see what's so difficult about this.

Ah. I am not certain I have the free time to continue to find ways to explain it in a way other than I have. I'm also not entriely sure I understand a lot of your objections - I know that you object to a lot of my ideas, but am not certain what your reasoning behind your objections is exactly, which seems to be okay with you, so I'm guessing that convincing me of your points isn't a major goal?

e.g.:

quote:
The lack of footnotes etc. in an ancient document says nothing - absolutely nothing - about the research the writer undertook or the decisions that were made in selecting the material. In turn, it says absolutely nothing about what the author thought was a fact

Um. Okay. I disagree. I think that how a writer writes and how he chooses to address his audience and what his text takes for granted and it does not take for granted tells us a great deal about his state of mind. Because Luke's text doesn't take it for granted that we'll be suspicious of how he came by a reliable account of a private encounter, while a modern historian's text would take this into account and address is up front, I see a difference in the mindsets of the two.
Beyond your confident assertion that this isn't the case, you provide neither evidence nor reasoning to convince me otherwise, (because you don't provide any at all - you just make your assertion and move on) I still think what I originally thought.

Posted by Mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by David:
I'm not arguing with you any more, because I would just be repeating myself. If you don't believe me, go and do some research, then come back and tell me why I'm wrong.

Translation: Do my work for me; convince yourself of the truth of my hypothesis; I can't be bothered to.

Reader Alexis

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by David:
I'm not arguing with you any more, because I would just be repeating myself. If you don't believe me, go and do some research, then come back and tell me why I'm wrong.
Translation: Do my work for me; convince yourself of the truth of my hypothesis; I can't be bothered to.

Reader Alexis

Translation: I am in Troll mode again.

Posted by Mousethief (# 953) on :

An apology would be accepted at this point.

reader Alexis

Posted by David (# 3) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
An apology would be accepted at this point.

reader Alexis

OK, if I must.

Glenn, I'm sincerely sorry for the part I played in wrecking your thread.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

Host hat on

This thread is getting bogged down in a discussion of how ancient historians worked. It's a very interesting topic, but it is more suited to Purgatory.

If the participants in this discussion want to continue it, please start a thread there.

Host hat off

Moo

Posted by David (# 3) on :

I do believe that this may be the longest ever Kerygmania thread. However, I'm not sure whether champagne or vinegar is called for.

Posted by Glenn Oldham (# 47) on :

quote:
Originally posted by David:
Glenn, I'm sincerely sorry for the part I played in wrecking your thread.

Thank you for wrecking it in an interesting fashion! [Smile]

Going back to my opening post, it seems, however, that no-one here on Ship of Fools knows where Mark Greene of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity gets his evidence for that view that it was ‘imperial practice’ for the Romans to require ‘the population to register in their birth places’ when a census was taken.

I'll just have to see if I can ask him.

Glenn

Posted by theMadFarmer (# 4252) on :

quote:
Glenn, I'm sincerely sorry for the part I played in wrecking your thread.

The same goes for me; I'm not used to the posting culture of the Ship yet - we splinter threads off of threads when they get this tangenetal, I'm guessing?

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by theMadFarmer:
I'm not used to the posting culture of the Ship yet - we splinter threads off of threads when they get this tangenetal, I'm guessing?

And we splinter them off onto a different board when appropriate.

Moo

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by theMadFarmer:

quote:
Glenn, I'm sincerely sorry for the part I played in wrecking your thread.
The same goes for me; I'm not used to the posting culture of the Ship yet - we splinter threads off of threads when they get this tangenetal, I'm guessing?

Oh yes - this thread itself is but a spin-off from "That madcap census in Luke", and will be followed by "That madcap census in Luke 3", "Return to David's City", "Little House in the Holy Land", "Son of Man", and "Ariel Resurrection".

Meanwhile, I still think it is a symbolic Jubilee and what's more I'm right. So there.

Whether or not that implies that Joseph actually traveeled to Bethlehem or that Luke (AKA "Son of Redactor of the 3rd Gospel") talked to eyewitnesses of such a thing is another matter (& one I suspect that we will never have convincing evidence for or against on this earth)

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

It sounds to me as though we are ready to concede that Luke is divine revelation from the mouth of God. Period. The end. [Not worthy!]

Posted by The Wanderer (# 182) on :

Luke is indeed divine revelation from the mouth of God.

And he got the details of the census wrong. It is possible to believe both of these at once (without even being the Red Queen.)

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Wanderer:
It is possible to believe both of these at once (without even being the Red Queen.)

I actually agree. [Wink]

It's just that very often we seem to have a choice between two plausible alternatives involving the historicity of a passage. While I firmly believe that it is the message, not the literal accuracy, that is important, my prejudice would be to accept the literal accuracy unless there is good reason not to.

In this case I see no compelling reason to dismiss the census. The unanswered questions are what you would expect 2,000 years after the fact. I also think that it doesn't really matter - unless you jump from "this may not have happened" to "none of it may have happened" to "there is no God." But who would be stupid enough to make those kinds of leaps? [Roll Eyes]

Posted by S. Dylan Breuer (# 3169) on :

With respect to Luke concern for "historical accuracy," it might be useful to compare Thucydides' approach. Thucydides both presented himself as seeking to write a complete and accurate history (he is often called, misleadingly IMO, the "father of scientific history") and said quite clearly that communicating the "truth" of the situation meant imagining details, speeches, or entire episodes.

The truth that Luke was most interested in communicating was theological and christological rather than historical. Luke felt free to play with the chronology, wording, and details he found in his sources (compare Luke to Mark, which Luke most probably used as a source, and you'll see lots of examples) to get across his most important points, which were about who Jesus is, what Jesus did, and what Luke's community ought to do in response.

Blessings,

Dylan

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

I have found another reference to a census in the New Testament. I have no way of telling whether this is the same as the one referred to in Luke.

The context is Gamaliel's address to the council in Acts 5. Here is Acts 5:37;

After him Judas the Galilean rose up at the time of the census and got people to follow him; he also perished, and all who followed him were scattered.

There seem to have been censuses of some sort in Palestine in the first century AD.

Moo

Posted by David (# 3) on :

That'd be the census of AD 6.

BTW, there may be evidence that client kingdoms were subjective to enrollment, but the text I have is frustratingly without a bibliography, so I'll need to do some more work.

Posted by Amanuensis (# 1555) on :

Hello Dylan. Welcome to SOF and Kerygmania. Anyone who chooses this board for their first post has to worth talking to (away with your everlasting sentences and other such fluff).

quote:
Originally posted by S. Dylan Breuer:

The truth that Luke was most interested in communicating was theological and christological rather than historical. Luke felt free to play with the chronology, wording, and details he found in his sources (compare Luke to Mark, which Luke most probably used as a source, and you'll see lots of examples) to get across his most important points, which were about who Jesus is, what Jesus did, and what Luke's community ought to do in response.

Do you think that "theological/christological" is necessarily incompatible with "historical"? Obviously Luke applied his own style and wording to the material, but that doesn't necessarily make it historically inaccurate or unreliable.

I am interested in your comparison with a classical writer. Do you think that the aims and priorities of the Gospel writers are really analagous to classical historians like Thucydides?

(Thucydides?? crazy name, crazy guy...)

Posted by Glenn Oldham (# 47) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Glenn Oldham:
Going back to my opening post, it seems ... that no-one here on Ship of Fools knows where Mark Greene of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity gets his evidence for that view that it was ‘imperial practice’ for the Romans to require ‘the population to register in their birth places’ when a census was taken.

I'll just have to see if I can ask him.

Glenn

I emailed him but got no reply - which is not surprising given the amount of junk email flying around these days. I probably just got deleted unopened. Ah well. Thanks for everyone's comments!

Glenn

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

<bump>

Moo

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

Why bump?

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

Fermat posted this on a thread in Purgatory. I referred him to this thread and bumped it to make it easy to find.

Moo

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