Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Kerygmania: That madcap census in Luke 2
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David
Complete Bastard
# 3
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Posted
I do believe that this may be the longest ever Kerygmania thread. However, I'm not sure whether champagne or vinegar is called for.
Posts: 3815 | From: Redneck Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2001
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Glenn Oldham
Shipmate
# 47
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Posted
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!
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
Posts: 910 | From: London, England | Registered: May 2001
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theMadFarmer
SOCKPUPPET
# 4252
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Posted
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?
Posts: 32 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
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
-------------------- Kerygmania host --------------------- See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
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)
-------------------- Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
It sounds to me as though we are ready to concede that Luke is divine revelation from the mouth of God. Period. The end.
-------------------- "Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
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.)
-------------------- Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
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.
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?
-------------------- "Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Sarah Dylan Breuer
Apprentice
# 3169
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Posted
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
-------------------- _ ______________ _ Sarah Dylan Breuer
Posts: 6 | From: Maryland | Registered: Aug 2002
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
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
-------------------- Kerygmania host --------------------- See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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David
Complete Bastard
# 3
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Posted
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.
Posts: 3815 | From: Redneck Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2001
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Amanuensis
Idler
# 1555
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Posted
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...)
-------------------- What's new?
Posts: 547 | From: Cornwall | Registered: Oct 2001
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Glenn Oldham
Shipmate
# 47
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Posted
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
Posts: 910 | From: London, England | Registered: May 2001
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
<bump>
Moo
-------------------- Kerygmania host --------------------- See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Why bump?
-------------------- Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
Fermat posted this on a thread in Purgatory. I referred him to this thread and bumped it to make it easy to find.
Moo
-------------------- Kerygmania host --------------------- See you later, alligator.
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