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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: All scripture is given by inspiration of God.
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Croesos
quote:
One takes place when Israel is a new Roman province having its first census (so Herod would already be dead when Jesus was born), while the other is set while Israel is still a nominally independent Roman client state (which would not be subject to a Roman census).
Such a census would essentially be for tax purposes; in the situation of that time it seems a reasonable proposition that client kingdoms would be expected to make tribute as well and would do the necessary by their internal rules. Gentile Luke from outside Palestine doesn't give the full details of the situation.
Luke give us plenty of details. He specifies that it's "the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria", an historical event which we can independently date. It took place early in the Tetrarchy. Herod was dead about ten years at the time. This is a fairly different situation than the Herodian monarchy, which was expected to deliver tribute but which wouldn't have a Roman census. (Such matters were typically left to local control in client states.) The question of dating would be a side issue were it not for the fact that it's a fairly significant plot point in each narrative. Luke uses the Quirinius census to give Joseph a motivation to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, while Matthew uses Herod as a motivation for the family's flight to Egypt and their later settling in Nazareth rather than returning to Bethlehem.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And note BTW that it specifically says
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They all went to be registered, each to his own city, and Joseph too went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, . . .
confirming in effect that Joseph was in fact a Bethlehem resident with an oikia there even though obviously spending time in Nazareth at the period in question.
I added back in the bit you cut out. Luke takes the trouble to explain to us why Bethlehem is Joseph's "own town", it's "because he was of the house and lineage of David". This is another example of special and different interpretive methods being applied to scripture than to any other book. The author takes the trouble to explicitly spell out what he means (Bethlehem is Joseph's "own town" because of his ancestry) but you feel the need to reject this plain assertion because it doesn't match up with the work of a completely different author.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
As I said, if you thoroughly rid yourself of the idea of an 'inn', the story does make good sense.
![[Confused]](confused.gif) When did I ever mention an inn?
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Stejjie, no great problem with what you're saying. As I see it, the 'problem' here is generated by a situation in which Joseph and Mary were in effect living in two homes at once before and after the birth of Jesus.
There is no textual evidence to believe this. The only reason to postulate this is a desire to harmonize Luke's nativity with Matthew's, or possibly to harmonize how Luke claims Roman censuses worked with how Roman censuses actually worked. Either way, you're pretty far beyond what could be called "read[ing] the Bible like other books".
It should be noted that your proposed "solution" to the different narratives simply introduces more problems. Joseph and Mary can apparently afford to maintain two residences in different cities, yet can only afford the post-birth purification offering for paupers. Joseph is a migrant laborer who, despite having two homes, requires his pregnant fiancée to migrate with him from city to city.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
This tangent is getting a bit out of hand....
I'm making a simple point; Matthew refers simply to Jesus being born in Bethlehem, fairly clearly implying it's the family home. Luke, if you accept the rendering of 'katalyma' as an 'inn', appears to be telling a different story in which Bethlehem definitely isn't the family home but a place to which Joseph has to travel for reasons which are not entirely sensible. As in, why does he have to go and register for the census in a place with which he has no current connection?
And there are other anomalies like if they are having to stay in an inn - or more accurately, in the stable because there isn't room in the inn, why are they still there forty days of Mary's purification later?
IF however, you accept the correct translation of a 'katalyma' as a guestchamber, by implication in the family home, then Luke is telling the same basic story as Matthew, of Jesus born in Joseph's family home, and it is reasonable, indeed necessary, to read his account in that light. Other aspects also make sense - Mary's origin in Nazareth, for example.
I'm not claiming everything is resolved just by that. But it seems to me to be a good start to get rid of a needless problem produced by a later mistranslation.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
How could there not be room in Joseph's own family home for Joseph?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
I sometimes suspect the literally truest words in the gospels on Jesus' birth are when the crowd says "we don't know where this man comes from".
[ 25. January 2018, 07:51: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
It was a kinsman's home. The kataluma may have been the rooftop booth built for Sukkoth. Xmas came early that year. Being a kinsman's home would explain why the Sagrada Família was still in town months or YEARS later when the magi came.
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Love wins
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
How could there not be room in Joseph's own family home for Joseph?
That's a rather exaggerated statement of what's going on. The point is that normally the 'guest chamber' would have been the ideal place for Mary to give birth to Jesus; for some reason that had become impractical and the animal quarters were adapted instead. In an attempt a few years ago to rewrite the traditional nativity play without the obviously wrong 'inn', I envisaged (partly for comic effect!) a visit at just the wrong moment from demanding elderly and somewhat hypochondriac maiden aunt Hepzibah; another option I considered was a visit from the steward of one of Joseph's customers to discuss a building job - a person of such status you certainly couldn't have relegated him to the stables! There are lots of possibilities and I wouldn't wish to be definite. If you do write a nativity play round this idea you've got to come up with a specific answer; but you'd also make plain that some aspects were speculative and you'd invite discussion afterwards....
What I'm trying to do here is come up with reasonable probabilities/likelihoods based on a mix of the indications in the gospel accounts and a wider knowledge of the things which were typical of the period.
For example I had for some time been aware of the general type of building that would be involved, including that likeness to the North England 'bastle house' - the general idea was widespread in 'antiquity' from well BCE to well into CE. When we discussed this in a church housegroup a few years back I was able to show an illustration in a book borrowed from our local library which was described as a typical ordinary house from the region over many centuries. Basically it was two stories plus a roof usable for summer accomodation. Downstairs was divided between a stables/animal accomodation, a cooking area, and a daytime living space. Upstairs had the family bedroom and a guestchamber/spare room.
Such a house would be lived in by a family a bit larger than our 'nuclear family' and there might be servants even in quite a modest household. As an artisan rather than peasant house most of downstairs in Joseph's case would probably be a workshop with more of family life happening upstairs. With the illustration in front of you it was quite easy to envisage how this might work out in the situation implied in the gospels.
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Steve Langton
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# 17601
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
And the dating of the census, Steve?
There are a couple of curious points about this.
To start with, Luke refers to it as 'the first census' under Quirinius. And also he uses the general wording of Quirinius 'governing Syria' rather than being the formal "The Governor". This would fit an earlier period when Quirinius was apparently running the Middle East generally while conducting a 'police action' against unrest in Asia Minor.
The census of 6CE was the one that kicked off the revolt of Judas the Galilean and resulted in the destruction of the 'new city' of Sepphoris in Galilee. I think it to be fair comment that setting the nativity in that census would produce a very different story to the one in the gospels!! Being post-Herod it was an emphatically Roman effort and probably carried out somewhat unsympathetically....
And Acts 5;37 shows that Luke was well aware of the Judas the Galilean revolt, and would know that that census was an unlikely period for the nativity.
An enrolment in the late Herod the Great period would, though originating in Roman needs, be carried out by Jewish authorities in a client kingdom and would not create such a stir. I'm going to do a bit of further online checking but it is my understanding that following Julius Caesar's death there was a long period of instability, with Octavian/Augustus' position only being regularised in 27BCE and the eastern empire continuing unstable till much later. Around 10-5BCE would be a plausible time for Augustus to be making an attempt at getting a grip on the administration via enrolments throughout the empire. We should probably not be imagining anything quite as elaborate as a modern UK census.
I've recently been trying to confirm an account which I was told appeared in a US astronomy magazine a few years ago, in a discussion of the 'Star of Bethlehem', which claimed there was inscription evidence in modern Turkey of a census in the c6BCE period. If that checks out it would answer your question - but I've not yet been able to confirm it.
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
It was a kinsman's home....
Certainly a possibility, and also fitting the point of Joseph's family connection with Bethlehem. But overall I think the probabilities are better that Joseph was a resident in Bethlehem and enrolled in a place where he had property that the bailiffs could be set on if he defaulted on the taxes.
Croesos, BTW, I think exaggerates what I was implying in referring to Mary and Joseph having 'two homes' for a period.
As I see it both are in modest respectable circumstances, nowhere near destitute but also nowhere near rich. Joseph is probably the head of his modest household in Bethlehem but sharing the house with a somewhat extended family. Mary of course doesn't have her own household, she is a dependent young adult in her father's house.
The point I was making was that with convenient work taking Joseph to Galilee he would be partly living 'on site' and partly receiving the hospitality of his fiancee's family in their house. This state of affairs could potentially have continued after Joseph and Mary formally married and started their family, with Joseph still legally resident in Bethlehem but spending time in Galilee as well; in the event continuing in Bethlehem became impossible and the family became permanent Nazareth residents.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
Well, if it keeps you off the streets and makes for a fun Nativity Play ...
It's not exactly going to convince anyone from an apologetics point of view, but then that could be said about a lot of things ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
It's not exactly going to convince anyone from an apologetics point of view, but then that could be said about a lot of things ...
It is my experience that what might be called the "INN-terpretation" is increasingly found even more unconvincing from an apologetics point of view. So how does it make sense to perpetuate it? Why not preach an account which is more convincing and also more biblically accurate?
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The point is that normally the 'guest chamber' would have been the ideal place for Mary to give birth to Jesus; for some reason that had become impractical and the animal quarters were adapted instead.
Which raises the obvious question of why, if Joseph and Mary were staying with family, Joseph’s family would kick a pregnant woman out of the house and send her to the stable to give birth.
quote:
In an attempt a few years ago to rewrite the traditional nativity play without the obviously wrong 'inn', I envisaged (partly for comic effect!) a visit at just the wrong moment from demanding elderly and somewhat hypochondriac maiden aunt Hepzibah; another option I considered was a visit from the steward of one of Joseph's customers to discuss a building job - a person of such status you certainly couldn't have relegated him to the stables! There are lots of possibilities and I wouldn't wish to be definite. If you do write a nativity play round this idea you've got to come up with a specific answer; but you'd also make plain that some aspects were speculative and you'd invite discussion afterwards....
And here you demonstrate the elaborate assumptions that have to be constructed to explain this treatment of a family member giving birth.
quote:
What I'm trying to do here is come up with reasonable probabilities/likelihoods based on a mix of the indications in the gospel accounts and a wider knowledge of the things which were typical of the period.
. . . Such a house would be lived in by a family a bit larger than our 'nuclear family' and there might be servants even in quite a modest household. As an artisan rather than peasant house most of downstairs in Joseph's case would probably be a workshop with more of family life happening upstairs. With the illustration in front of you it was quite easy to envisage how this might work out in the situation implied in the gospels.
Believe it or not, Steve, some of us are very familiar with everything you’re sharing about housing and the like, and yet it still seems you’re straining to force a convenient reading where it won’t fit. Luke is suggesting that Mary and Joseph lived in an artisan house rather than a peasant house? Then why does Luke specifically tell us that when Jesus was circumcised, Mary and Joseph offered two doves—the offering of the poor?
If Luke wanted us to understand that this was Joseph’s family house, wouldn’t he yet have said there was no room for them in the house, instead of in the guest room?
Instead of having to construct elaborate assumptions about why Joseph's family wouldn’t make room for Joseph’s wife to deliver a baby, why not go with the more straightforward assumption that fits with the rest of Luke’s story: With people coming to Bethlehem to be counted, residents of Bethlehem were essentially taking in boarders, allowing others to stay in their guest rooms. Mary and Joseph couldn’t find a room, but someone said “my guest room is full, but you can stay in my stable.”
Which interestingly enough, gets to the idea conveyed by “inn,” even if “inn” isn’t a proper translation of the Greek.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
It was a kinsman's home....
Certainly a possibility, and also fitting the point of Joseph's family connection with Bethlehem. But overall I think the probabilities are better that Joseph was a resident in Bethlehem and enrolled in a place where he had property that the bailiffs could be set on if he defaulted on the taxes.
Croesos, BTW, I think exaggerates what I was implying in referring to Mary and Joseph having 'two homes' for a period.
As I see it both are in modest respectable circumstances, nowhere near destitute but also nowhere near rich. Joseph is probably the head of his modest household in Bethlehem but sharing the house with a somewhat extended family. Mary of course doesn't have her own household, she is a dependent young adult in her father's house.
The point I was making was that with convenient work taking Joseph to Galilee he would be partly living 'on site' and partly receiving the hospitality of his fiancee's family in their house. This state of affairs could potentially have continued after Joseph and Mary formally married and started their family, with Joseph still legally resident in Bethlehem but spending time in Galilee as well; in the event continuing in Bethlehem became impossible and the family became permanent Nazareth residents.
Nope. They were dirt poor, like almost everybody. From a hovel in Nazareth. Joseph wasn't renting out another hovel in Bethlehem.
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Love wins
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
by Nick Tamen;
quote:
With people coming to Bethlehem to be counted, residents of Bethlehem were essentially taking in boarders...
Why would all these people be "coming to Bethlehem to be counted..."? It's rather the point of such an enrolment that you're enrolling the residents - the people who live there and pay their taxes there and have property there that the bailiffs can get at if there is a default. The idea that lots of non-residents are rather pointlessly turning up to be registered at a place they aren't actually practically connected to is precisely the really really incredible feature of the 'INN-terpretation', and your suggestion of everybody taking in boarders is just perpetuating that inherent MASSIVE improbability. In my lifetime my mother registered to vote in Stockport where she then lived; she didn't have to go back to Oldham where she was born but no longer had any connection. The same practicality also applies to the NT enrolment.
And this kind of stable is not quite the cold out in the inn's backyard place you're thinking of - in this kind of house this is animal accommodation inside the house. For the house itself to be tolerable the place can't be allowed to get too messy or smelly. It offers space, privacy, and a manger as improvised cot.
'Artisan house'? Simply the house of a tradesman or jobbing builder rather than a farmworker. Still poor enough to take the doves option for a sacrifice.
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
by Martin60;
quote:
Nope. They were dirt poor, like almost everybody. From a hovel in Nazareth. Joseph wasn't renting out another hovel in Bethlehem.
NO, Joseph was resident in Bethlehem from the start and was a guest in his fiancee's house in Nazareth when he went up there because there was good work for his trade. That is so regardless of 'hovel' or relatively respectable house.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
From what I can gather, a carpenter in 1st century Palestine included work as a jobbing builder and although not high up the social pecking order certainly wasn't as low as agricultural workers, with shepherds being at the bottom of the heap.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And this kind of stable is not quite the cold out in the inn's backyard place you're thinking of - in this kind of house this is animal accommodation inside the house.
Steve, please stop assuming that you are providing all of us with new information. As I already told you, nothing you have said about any of this is new information to me. That includes the meaning of the word typically translated into English as “inn.”* It also includes stables. I already know. So there’s no need to take it upon yourself to teach me.
I simply think that the spin you’re trying to put on Luke’s account based on the translation of this one word doesn’t work because it’s undercut or contradicted by other things Luke says.
* For the record, I’ve gone with the translation of “katalyma” as “guest room” (or “guest chamber”) because that’s what you used. My understanding is that “lodge” or “lodging” is probably a better translation. “Katalyma,” as I understand it, comes from a root having to do with “breaking up,” as in breaking up a journey. The sense is of a room that can be used by someone on a journey or without a place of their own.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
IF however, you accept the correct translation of a 'katalyma' as a guestchamber, by implication in the family home, then Luke is telling the same basic story as Matthew, of Jesus born in Joseph's family home, and it is reasonable, indeed necessary, to read his account in that light.
There's nothing to indicate that the katalymati referred to is in Joseph's home, or necessarily even in a family home. The etymology suggests that the term is applied to travel and travelers. (Literally to down [kata] lay [luó], probably from the idea of wayfarer's laying down their packs or unharnessing any harness animals.) The only other place where Luke uses a cognate of the word (katalyma) is also used in the context of travelers coming to some place that is not their home.
So we have a relatively straightforward narrative of travelers on a journey reaching their destination and having some unanticipated difficulty relating to the lack of a "guest chamber" (alternative translation "lodging place"). The easiest and least complicated interpretation is that the destination these travelers have reached is one where they don't normally reside or have a regular dwelling place. At least that's the case if you read this narrative "like any other book".
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I'm not claiming everything is resolved just by that. But it seems to me to be a good start to get rid of a needless problem produced by a later mistranslation.
It's only a "problem" if you have an a priori assumption that Luke is saying the exact same thing as Matthew. In other words, you're not reading the Bible like any other book, but instead forcing it to conform with the intellectual priors of your (large or small 'T') tradition.
Have you considered the possibility that Luke is saying different things than Matthew because he's trying to say different things than Matthew? If the Gospels all conveyed exactly the same information Christians would only need one, not four.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The census of 6CE was the one that kicked off the revolt of Judas the Galilean and resulted in the destruction of the 'new city' of Sepphoris in Galilee. I think it to be fair comment that setting the nativity in that census would produce a very different story to the one in the gospels!! Being post-Herod it was an emphatically Roman effort and probably carried out somewhat unsympathetically....
No, that doesn't sound like a "fair comment" since one of the Gospels tells you right up front that the Nativity is set during that census. A Nativity during the Quirinius census is "the one in the gospels" (Luke's), as is the Nativity set during Herod's reign (Matthew's).
This seems to be another example of reading what's expected rather than what's actually there.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And Acts 5;37 shows that Luke was well aware of the Judas the Galilean revolt, and would know that that census was an unlikely period for the nativity.
How so? People get born during wars and revolutions all the time. They even travel during them. Given that Luke actually does date the Nativity to this census, he would seem to disagree with your analysis of his work. Why is your half-assed guessing more reliable than the author's own words?
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Why would all these people be "coming to Bethlehem to be counted..."? It's rather the point of such an enrolment that you're enrolling the residents - the people who live there and pay their taxes there and have property there that the bailiffs can get at if there is a default. The idea that lots of non-residents are rather pointlessly turning up to be registered at a place they aren't actually practically connected to is precisely the really really incredible feature of the 'INN-terpretation', and your suggestion of everybody taking in boarders is just perpetuating that inherent MASSIVE improbability.
INN-probability? I understand that it seems like a massive plot hole to you, but that's the account we have. Luke describes Joseph and Mary requiring guest accommodations while in Bethlehem and refers to Nazareth as "their own town" (polin heauton). If this doesn't comport with your understanding of how a Roman tax census should work you're not alone, but that's the account we have.
This returns to what I noted earlier were the two narrative points of agreement between Luke's Nativity and Matthew's: that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and that he and his family lived in Nazareth afterwards. This seems to indicate that these were the most important points to the two Gospel authors who felt Jesus' origin story was important enough to document. Everything else was negotiable. They take opposite approaches, though. Luke sets up Joseph and family in Nazareth and has to explain how Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem, while Matthew starts with Joseph and Mary living in Bethlehem and has to explain how they ended up living in Nazareth.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Martin60;
quote:
Nope. They were dirt poor, like almost everybody. From a hovel in Nazareth. Joseph wasn't renting out another hovel in Bethlehem.
NO, Joseph was resident in Bethlehem from the start and was a guest in his fiancee's house in Nazareth when he went up there because there was good work for his trade. That is so regardless of 'hovel' or relatively respectable house.
What?
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Love wins
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
From what I can gather, a carpenter in 1st century Palestine included work as a jobbing builder and although not high up the social pecking order certainly wasn't as low as agricultural workers, with shepherds being at the bottom of the heap.
Yeah. If carpenters were dirt poor, imagine what it was like for unskilled, landless peasants.
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Love wins
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
It’s only a "problem" if you have an a priori assumption that Luke is saying the exact same thing as Matthew. In other words, you're not reading the Bible like any other book, but instead forcing it to conform with the intellectual priors of your (large or small 'T') tradition.
Have you considered the possibility that Luke is saying different things than Matthew because he's trying to say different things than Matthew? If the Gospels all conveyed exactly the same information Christians would only need one, not four.
Exactly this. And, regardless of all the specific problems that others on this thread have pointed out, it’s this refusal to accept that the differences in the texts may exist for a reason, this refusal to see these texts (and others like them) as texts that were designed by their writers to say and point out particular things, and not to be harmonised or reconciled or anything else with other texts, that’s at the heart of this.
This isn’t taking the Bible seriously, it isn’t respecting the text or anything like that. It’s the opposite: it’s refusing to take Mathew and Luke’s stories seriously on their own terms, that they must somehow be reconciled to each other because that’s the only way they can be “inspired”.
And it leads to the convoluted mess that all the attempts to harmonise them and “iron out the problems” have led to here: coming up with all kinds of solutions to non-existent problems that have no support from the texts, or from any information about how things were in those days, or that flat-out contradict the texts, like the insistence that the nativity couldn’t have really happened during a census, even though that’s exactly what Luke says. If, in your attempt to show the inspiration of Scripture, you’re contradicting what it says then you’ve lost your way, badly.
It feels less like taking Scripture seriously and more like treating it like an embarrassing relative who needs to be explained away.
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
On re-reading Croesos’ last post, I should row back on one point in mine: he and Steve appear to be debating whether the nativity happened during one particular census, not whether it happened during any census (I think). If so, then Intake back that one point.
My wider point still stands, though.
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stejjie:
On re-reading Croesos’ last post, I should row back on one point in mine: he and Steve appear to be debating whether the nativity happened during one particular census, not whether it happened during any census (I think). If so, then Intake back that one point.
My wider point still stands, though.
I won't speculate about what Steve is arguing, but you got my point just fine. Luke's nativity takes place during the Quirinius census because that's what Luke tells us. Matthew's nativity occurs "during the time of King Herod" because he says so himself. I'm open to arguments that either author (or even both) is mistaken about the underlying facts, or using dramatic license to make some broader point, or any of the other propositions we often take up when analyzing a text. I'd even be willing to entertain the notion that one (or both) is the victim of a mis-translation or an alteration by a later writer, but it would require more evidence than "it's inconvenient for me if these two different authors don't say the same thing".
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
by Croesos;
quote:
INN-probability? I understand that it seems like a massive plot hole to you, but that's the account we have. Luke describes Joseph and Mary requiring guest accommodations while in Bethlehem and refers to Nazareth as "their own town" (polin heauton). If this doesn't comport with your understanding of how a Roman tax census should work you're not alone, but that's the account we have.
It's not that it's a 'massive plot hole' or that it's about my understanding of "how a Roman tax census should work". It's just very fundamental common sense. This enrolment isn't just collecting a list of names for the fun of it; it is being done for a purpose and it seems 99% or better certain that it's for a purpose of collecting tax from those enrolled.
The sensible and obvious way to achieve that is to enrol/register people at either places where they live, or places where they have relevant property and you may need to summon them to the place to clarify things. On this basis most people stay where they are or at worst have to go a short journey from their village to a neighbouring town where the registry has been set up.
Only a very few will have to travel further and the vast majority of them will have no need of an inn or other accommodation because they'll either be returning to their home or to the kind of property where they would as owner be given the best accommodation available while servants/slaves would do their best to cope with sleeping on the floor or some such.
What is extremely unlikely - indeed pretty much insane - is that bureaucrats would be arranging to enrol people in a place where they don't live, possibly never have but only have a long past ancestral connection, and don't own any property - Martin even seems to think this might happen to someone who is 'dirt poor', who surely in reality might not even have to enrol since he probably doesn't have anything to tax in this kind of context!
You all seem to be quite happy to argue not only that the Romans might do this utterly absurd thing, but that they did do it. And possibly on such a scale that Bethlehem was effectively paralysed by all the needlessly displaced people going to be pointlessly enrolled in an irrelevant place....
I'm simply arguing that the Romans did the registration in the obvious sensible way and that Joseph went 'to his own city' (Luke 2; 3) which happened to be Bethlehem because of his ancestry. The city where he lived. What's so hard about that? He didn't need an inn because he went HOME!!
When Jesus' birth came due, the house's 'guestroom' was not available for whatever reason, so they improvised in a way that made sense in the kind of house it most likely was.
Yes the 'katalyma' means something like a 'lodge', a place for people who don't normally live there; that's what a 'guestchamber' is. In this case it would also have normally been available as a good place for Mary to give birth - but it wasn't available....
As of now this really comes down to "Are you proposing that the Romans organised this enrolment on a completely stupid basis so that Joseph was required to pointlessly go to a place he had no relevant connection with?" And if you're not proposing that, what is supposed to be wrong with my interpretation based on the assumption that the Romans organised the enrolment in a normal sensible way with which the actual text is totally compatible? - whereas the 'inn' idea isn't a good translation anyway....
Posts: 2245 | From: Stockport UK | Registered: Mar 2013
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
What is extremely unlikely - indeed pretty much insane - is that bureaucrats would be arranging to enrol people in a place where they don't live, possibly never have but only have a long past ancestral connection, and don't own any property
How often do you interact with bureaucrats?
In France you can be taxed for land you own that doesn't even exist.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
[
The sensible and obvious way to achieve that is to enrol/register people at either places where they live, or places where they have relevant property and you may need to summon them to the place to clarify things. On this basis most people stay where they are or at worst have to go a short journey from their village to a neighbouring town where the registry has been set up.
What is extremely unlikely - indeed pretty much insane - is that bureaucrats would be arranging to enrol people in a place where they don't live, possibly never have but only have a long past ancestral connection, and don't own any property - Martin even seems to think this might happen to someone who is 'dirt poor', who surely in reality might not even have to enrol since he probably doesn't have anything to tax in this kind of context!relevant connection with?"
It may seem sensible and obvious to you in this day and age, but there may have been all sorts of reasons to have some people return to their birthplace. In a strictly feudal society, people would be bound by fealty to the person from whom they held any land. Even the landless would owe duties. This period is before the feudal system as we know it came into operation even in northern Europe, but that does not mean that the ties to the land and its local lord did not exist. Then there were the family ties that saw Palestine divided amongst the various tribes after the return from Europe. While those particular ones no longer existed, the general concept of returning to the land of one's forebears certainly did.
BTW, any basis for the comment that Joseph was living in Nazareth as a boarder with Mary's parents?
Otherwise, what Eutychus has so simply put about modern bureaucrats.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Stejjie
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# 13941
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Posted
Steve:
Luke specifically says that Joseph went to Bethlehem "because he was descended from the house and family of David" (2:4). He goes on to say in v39 that Mary and Joseph "returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth". He gives no indication that the reason Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem was because he lived there. The only way you can get that is an inference you're putting on "their own towns" in v3, which could be interpreted in several different ways. If he knew Joseph was living in Bethlehem, why didn't he just come out and say it explicitly? There's no reason not to, especially for a writer like Luke, who's keen on "the facts".
And this, again, is my problem with this whole enterprise. In order to prove the scriptures as inspired, according to a particular view of "inspired", you end up doing some horrible, horrible eisegesis that denies what's written in the text to try and make it "fit" with another text. Why? Why not accept that these 2 texts don't fit neatly together, stop trying to mangle one to fit with another, and try and work out what Matthew and Luke (or whichever texts it may be) are trying to tell us through their distinctive, different, stories?
(And it's distracting me from doing work/playing SimCity*. ![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif) )
*delete as appropriate
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
Posts: 1117 | From: Urmston, Manchester, UK | Registered: Jul 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Croesos;
quote:
INN-probability? I understand that it seems like a massive plot hole to you, but that's the account we have. Luke describes Joseph and Mary requiring guest accommodations while in Bethlehem and refers to Nazareth as "their own town" (polin heauton). If this doesn't comport with your understanding of how a Roman tax census should work you're not alone, but that's the account we have.
It's not that it's a 'massive plot hole' or that it's about my understanding of "how a Roman tax census should work". It's just very fundamental common sense. This enrolment isn't just collecting a list of names for the fun of it; it is being done for a purpose and it seems 99% or better certain that it's for a purpose of collecting tax from those enrolled.
The sensible and obvious way to achieve that is to enrol/register people at either places where they live, or places where they have relevant property and you may need to summon them to the place to clarify things. On this basis most people stay where they are or at worst have to go a short journey from their village to a neighbouring town where the registry has been set up.
Only a very few will have to travel further and the vast majority of them will have no need of an inn or other accommodation because they'll either be returning to their home or to the kind of property where they would as owner be given the best accommodation available while servants/slaves would do their best to cope with sleeping on the floor or some such.
What is extremely unlikely - indeed pretty much insane - is that bureaucrats would be arranging to enrol people in a place where they don't live, possibly never have but only have a long past ancestral connection, and don't own any property - Martin even seems to think this might happen to someone who is 'dirt poor', who surely in reality might not even have to enrol since he probably doesn't have anything to tax in this kind of context!
You all seem to be quite happy to argue not only that the Romans might do this utterly absurd thing, but that they did do it. And possibly on such a scale that Bethlehem was effectively paralysed by all the needlessly displaced people going to be pointlessly enrolled in an irrelevant place....
I'm simply arguing that the Romans did the registration in the obvious sensible way and that Joseph went 'to his own city' (Luke 2; 3) which happened to be Bethlehem because of his ancestry. The city where he lived. What's so hard about that? He didn't need an inn because he went HOME!!
When Jesus' birth came due, the house's 'guestroom' was not available for whatever reason, so they improvised in a way that made sense in the kind of house it most likely was.
Yes the 'katalyma' means something like a 'lodge', a place for people who don't normally live there; that's what a 'guestchamber' is. In this case it would also have normally been available as a good place for Mary to give birth - but it wasn't available....
As of now this really comes down to "Are you proposing that the Romans organised this enrolment on a completely stupid basis so that Joseph was required to pointlessly go to a place he had no relevant connection with?" And if you're not proposing that, what is supposed to be wrong with my interpretation based on the assumption that the Romans organised the enrolment in a normal sensible way with which the actual text is totally compatible? - whereas the 'inn' idea isn't a good translation anyway....
As I said, what? Deal with that.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
by Stejjie;
quote:
And this, again, is my problem with this whole enterprise. In order to prove the scriptures as inspired, according to a particular view of "inspired", you end up doing some horrible, horrible eisegesis that denies what's written in the text to try and make it "fit" with another text.
Not "In order to prove the scriptures as inspired..." but simply trying to work out what they actually mean, in a situation where the common interpretation has a glaring anomaly. There are in effect about five slightly different ways of interpreting the text, most of which involve either the Romans stupidly organising an enrolment in a bizarre way that could displace huge numbers of people to provide irrelevant information in an irrelevant place, or involve someone else (Joseph or Luke?) stupidly thinking that's what happened. All those explanations are seriously improbable.
The other explanation is that the Romans set up a totally sensible normal enrolment, and Joseph went to the obvious place to enrol, 'his own city' (Luke 2; 3) where he was legally resident even if at this period he was spending time elsewhere and had to go back home to enrol.
The primary reason for believing Joseph went to a place where he didn't live is the rendering of that word 'katalyma' as being an 'inn', implying that Joseph didn't live there and needed to stay at an inn in order to attend the enrolment. If that is a later misunderstanding, then the text reads quite naturally as Joseph going home to enrol and some problem with a guest-room/spare bedroom resulting in Jesus being born elsewhere in the house and a manger being used as an improvised cot/cradle.
Sure, some things remain unexplained which we'd like to have details of and where, if writing a nativity play you'd need to imagine one particular reason; but lots of plausible explanations are available which make far better sense than the basic absurdity of registering lots of people for tax where they don't actually live.
Among other quite major anomalies, would Joseph risk drawing attention to his Davidic descent in a Judaea ruled by the notoriously insecure, paranoid and brutal Herod? Luke is not saying Joseph HAD to go back to Bethlehem, even though he didn't live there, because of the ancestral connection; rather he is saying that Joseph's residence in Bethlehem was connected with his ancestry.
As far as I can see, all the 'eisegesis/reading into' stuff is being done in the cause of justifying the implications of a later misunderstanding/mistranslation of one word of the original text; and produces a clearly anomalous and stupid result. Restore the proper rendering of that one word and exegesis gives a sensible account even if we would have liked Luke to give us more details....
Posts: 2245 | From: Stockport UK | Registered: Mar 2013
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
As far as I can see, all the 'eisegesis/reading into' stuff is being done in the cause of justifying the implications of a later misunderstanding/mistranslation of one word of the original text; and produces a clearly anomalous and stupid result. Restore the proper rendering of that one word and exegesis gives a sensible account even if we would have liked Luke to give us more details....
No, no, for the umpteenth time no. No one is hung up on the “inn” translation (except you) or trying to justify the implications of the traditional word “inn.”
What everyone else is saying is that the interpretation of Luke’s version you’ve put forward—particularly the idea that Joseph had homes both in Bethlehem and Nazareth—relies on assumptions that aren’t supported by what Luke wrote and that are actually contradicted by what Luke wrote.
As for the census, the appropriate question is not whether having everyone move around makes any sense. The question is whether that is how Luke describes it. And the answer is yes, it is.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
I was going to say the same as Nick Tamen, but he got in first. I gave a number of reasons why I thought your idea, Steve, of Joseph living in Bethlehem was wrong and unsupported by the text, and none of them had to do with the translation of "inn". So let's try again:
1) Luke nowhere says explicitly that Joseph lived in Bethlehem - if he knew that, why didn't he make it clear?
2) Luke gives an explicit reason for Joseph and Mary travelling to Bethlehem - because Joseph was of the line of David. Again, if it was really because Joseph lived there, why didn't he say that?
3) Luke explicitly says that after presenting Jesus in the Temple, Mary and Joseph returned to "their own town" of Nazareth, clearly identifying that as home for them. Why would he say this if Bethlehem was really home for Joseph?
There's also the point GeeD raises: do we have any evidence that Joseph was boarding with Mary's parents?
As for the census: I know most scholars seem to think Luke's got himself muddled up when referring to the census Augustus ordered when Quirinius was governor, because those dates don't match up. But his intention seems clear: to see Mary and Joseph having to move to Bethlehem on the orders of the Romans, as a result of which Jesus is born in Bethlehem - the town of David. I think for Luke that movement from Nazareth to Bethlehem is important, theologically if nothing else. By trying to make it "make sense", you not only mangle the text, you miss the more interesting question of why is this so important to Luke?
And again, for the sake of clarity: It. Has. Nothing. To. Do. With. The. Inn.
[ 26. January 2018, 11:06: Message edited by: Stejjie ]
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
Posts: 1117 | From: Urmston, Manchester, UK | Registered: Jul 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Well done throughout Stejjie.
Steve cannot possibly go back on making up Joseph being a Bethlehemite.
[ 26. January 2018, 11:36: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
As for the census, the appropriate question is not whether having everyone move around makes any sense. The question is whether that is how Luke describes it. And the answer is yes, it is.
Not necessarily - Luke only says that everyone went to their own towns to be registered. That doesn't mean that everyone moved around to the town of origin of their clan or tribe, as Joseph did. For most people "their own town" would mean the urban centre with a tax office nearest to their place of residence, which would be a minimal amount of moving around, but possibly enough, with the more distant rural population moving temporarily to the towns, to fill up available inns and guest rooms.
It's entirely possible that Joseph's decision not to register in Nazareth but to go to Bethlehem and identify himself with his kingly ancestry, was deliberate, not imposed. The requirement to register was certainly imposed (at least, according to the text) but the text doesn't say one way or the other whether Joseph was specifically required to go to Bethlehem, just that he did, in fact, go there, not because he was a resident, but because of his lineage.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
[Luke] seem[s] to be quite happy to argue not only that the Romans might do this utterly absurd thing, but that they did do it.
<snip>
As of now this really comes down to "[Is Luke] proposing that the Romans organised this enrolment on a completely stupid basis so that Joseph was required to pointlessly go to a place he had no relevant connection with?" And if [Luke's] not proposing that, what is supposed to be wrong with my interpretation based on the assumption that the Romans organised the enrolment in a normal sensible way with which the actual text is totally compatible?
Fixed that for you. None of this is invented by me or anyone here. It's Luke's account.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The primary reason for believing Joseph went to a place where he didn't live is the rendering of that word 'katalyma[ti]' as being an 'inn', implying that Joseph didn't live there and needed to stay at an inn in order to attend the enrolment.
Actually the primary reason for believing that according to Luke Joseph lived in Nazareth rather than Bethlehem is the common authorial conventions associated with most forms of narrative writing. Authors explain things they feel need an explanation and don't explain things they feel require no explanation. Luke spends a lot of time explaining why Joseph is traveling to Bethlehem. He spends almost no time explaining why Joseph is traveling from Nazareth. He also doesn't spend any time specifying the number of legs or eyes Joseph has. Absent some bit of text telling us otherwise we simply assume what's typical; that Joseph has the normal number of eyes (two) and that he needs no special explanation for why he's in Nazareth because he lives there. On the other hand Luke spills a lot of ink on why Joseph has to go to Bethlehem and goes out of his way to specify that he needs a guest chamber when he gets there. If we read this account like we would any other narrative writing the obvious conclusion we're supposed to draw is that Joseph being in Bethlehem is an anomaly while his presence in Nazareth is the normal state of affairs. Compare Luke's convoluted explanation for the trip to Bethlehem, with a census and a description of Joseph's ancestry, with his later description of the family's return (epestrepsan) to Nazareth. He simply and plainly states that they go there because it's "their own town/city", without the need for a further gloss or explanation.
This is in contrast to Matthew, for whom Joseph's presence in Bethlehem requires no explanation but his reasons for moving to Nazareth require a lot of words to explain.
To borrow a term from cinema, for Luke the Quirinius census seems to be a MacGuffin, something which is used to motivate the people in his account to take the actions his narrative requires them to take. The exact details of the MacGuffin are usually irrelevant, whether it's Brazilian uranium ore, the Golden Fleece, or the Holy Grail, so long as the MacGuffin gives a reason for the required actions to be taken. Whether the Gospel of Luke is an accurate depiction of a Roman tax census misses the point, since the question is premised on the idea that the Gospel of Luke is about Roman tax censuses.
quote:
Originally posted by Stejjie:
As for the census: I know most scholars seem to think Luke's got himself muddled up when referring to the census Augustus ordered when Quirinius was governor, because those dates don't match up.
Match up with what? They don't match up with Matthew's chronology, but there's no historical contradiction within the text of Luke's Gospel. Since Luke only gives us one fixed point in time (the Quirinius census), it's hard to see what else that point is supposed to match up with.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Superb. Sir.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
As for the census, the appropriate question is not whether having everyone move around makes any sense. The question is whether that is how Luke describes it. And the answer is yes, it is.
Not necessarily - Luke only says that everyone went to their own towns to be registered. That doesn't mean that everyone moved around to the town of origin of their clan or tribe, as Joseph did.
Point taken, and I did think of that. But I’m not sure it’s that different from what I was saying—or at least thinking. Luke says that the decree went out and “everyone went” to their own towns. I read that as suggesting more than just people going to the tax office downtown. I think it suggests some greater degree of movement, even if it doesn’t mean everyone went to the tribal-ancestral seat.
And I agree with others that the question to be asked is not whether it happened or exactly how. The question to ask is what Luke intended to convey by telling the story the way he did.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Stejjie:
As for the census: I know most scholars seem to think Luke's got himself muddled up when referring to the census Augustus ordered when Quirinius was governor, because those dates don't match up.
Match up with what? They don't match up with Matthew's chronology, but there's no historical contradiction within the text of Luke's Gospel. Since Luke only gives us one fixed point in time (the Quirinius census), it's hard to see what else that point is supposed to match up with.
Luke gives us two people in chapter 2 v1 as fixed points in time: Caesar Augustus and Quirinius; he also sets the story in the time "when Herod was king of Judea" back in chapter 1 v5; so far as I can tell, this is universally taken to refer to Herod The Great.
By "not matching up", I mean that Herod The Great died (c4 BCE) before Quirinius became governor of Syria. There also appear to be doubts about whether any Empire-wide census took place under Augustus and whether, even if it did, it would've included the lands Herod was king of (as far as I can make out, the 6CE census took place after Herod the Great's son was deposed and the land came under direct Roman rule). So the census couldn't have happened during Herod The Great's reign, which is when Luke sets the story of Jesus' birth. The three points Luke gives us (Quirinius, Augustus and Herod The Great) don't match up with each other and with the census.
There's an article on it on Wikipedia which, although the usual Wikipedia warnings apply, seems to sum up the problem reasonably accurately.
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
Posts: 1117 | From: Urmston, Manchester, UK | Registered: Jul 2008
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
Other matters taking a lot of my time today and between you you have posed me a lot of issues....
For tonight, just one where I think Eliab (probably unintentionally!) has put his finger on the problem....
quote:
It's entirely possible that Joseph's decision not to register in Nazareth but to go to Bethlehem and identify himself with his kingly ancestry, was deliberate, not imposed. The requirement to register was certainly imposed (at least, according to the text) but the text doesn't say one way or the other whether Joseph was specifically required to go to Bethlehem, just that he did, in fact, go there, not because he was a resident, but because of his lineage.
The problem with this is simple. Whether in Herod's kingdom or later Roman Judea, it's not exactly going to be safe for Joseph to openly "identify himself with his kingly ancestry", is it? I can imagine the conversation...
"So, Joseph ben-Jacob, why have you come to enrol in Bethlehem, a long way (about the length of Wales) from where you live?"
"It's because of my ancestry!"
"Which is...?"
"Well basically I'm probably the rightful king of Judea ahead of that Edomite upstart Herod, and I or a descendant might be the promised Messiah who will free Israel from foreign domination and conquer the world...."
At which point surely his life as a free man would be a matter of minutes, and his total life only much longer because they'd want to interrogate him and make sure that not only he but a lot of his family were ... er ... 'disappeared'.
And if it's not safe for Joseph to go public on that one with Herodian or Roman officials, why would he go to Bethlehem at all? It's unlikely anyone will make any waves if he takes the 'healthier' option and just stays where you all think he lives and enrols there instead.
On the other hand if he lives in Bethlehem but happens to be spending an extended time elsewhere when he becomes aware of the need to enrol, no problem - he just goes to Bethlehem and enrols as a normal resident.
Luke on that basis is not telling us the reason Joseph will give for registering in a not exactly obvious place; he's telling us the reason why Bethlehem is "Joseph's own city" - he lives there because he is descended from David. And he's again unlikely to face any awkward questions or need awkward explanations - he's the guy with the local building business and he's been away working....
And another thought before bed - some of you have been majoring on the reference to Nazareth as "Their (Joseph and Mary's) own city" (though in our terms I think at best a 'walled town' rather than anything we'd call a 'city'). But why not give equal weight to the earlier reference to Joseph going up to Bethlehem as one of many who go 'to be enrolled, each to his own city'? The point being that for Joseph on his own, Bethlehem is his own city; but for the couple, Nazareth is 'their' own city - and especially in an account written when it had been so for many decades after they settled there. The two ways of looking at the phrase 'own city' are not necessarily incompatible.
Posts: 2245 | From: Stockport UK | Registered: Mar 2013
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Luke on that basis is not telling us the reason Joseph will give for registering in a not exactly obvious place; he's telling us the reason why Bethlehem is "Joseph's own city" - he lives there because he is descended from David.
Except that’s not what Luke says. Luke explicitly says:
quote:
“So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.”
In other words, for Luke the whole reason Joseph goes to Bethlehem is because he is of the line of David. That’s it: nothing to do with Joseph living there; Luke never gives that as a reason, it’s something you’ve come up with. And there was no need, when giving a reason for his coming to Bethlehem, for Joseph to go off on one about Herod’s illegitimacy; he just had to say he was there because he was a descendant of David and leave it at that.
I keep trying to connect this rabbit hole we’ve fallen down with the wider questions about inspiration, infallibility etc that this thread started off about, and I just can’t. It came from a discussion about harmonisation of differing biblical accounts, about whether Scripture could be interpreted the same as any other book or not. You claimed, Steve, that reading Luke’s account of the nativity in this way made it easier to harmonise with Matthew’s, and that this might make it more plausible. Which seems to see Scripture as something that is... what? It’s not literalism, it’s not infallibility because it’s asking us to see Scripture as actually saying something very, very different from what the text says. Is it such a fear of contradictions that may exist between different accounts, that elaborate explanations have to be created that end up contradicting what the text says?
I don’t get this view of “inspiration” at all:Schrodinger’s scripture, that is at once inspired and at the same time needs to be made “plausible”?
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
Posts: 1117 | From: Urmston, Manchester, UK | Registered: Jul 2008
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I don't get it either, but it has an appeal to particular mindsets and approaches that find comfort in tying up loose-ends and have everything neatly sewn up and cut and dried.
I'd suggest that it's the kind of mindset that appeals to certain forms of Dispensationalism, or some of those who lean very heavily on extra-biblical material within the High Church traditions in order to 'fill the gaps' or explain apparent anomalies or things the Gospels don't tell us up front.
Of course, there are shades and gradations at both ends of the spectrum and I'm a lot more open to extra-biblical stuff than I used to be, without according it the status of holy writ.
On the Protestant evangelical side there sometimes be the assumption that if all the threads can't be demonstrated to tie up internally, then somehow the status of the scriptures as the word of God is at stake and we are all going to hell in a handcart.
Hence the obsession with biblical prophecy and pinning it all down to fixed dates and times - despite our Lord's clear instruction not to do so.
Hence the obsession in some quarters with a kind of pseudo-science Young Earth Creationism.
It's all completely unnecessary of course and entirely counter-productive.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stejjie:
It’s not literalism, it’s not infallibility because it’s asking us to see Scripture as actually saying something very, very different from what the text says.
This.
Conservative evangelical scholarship claims, often loudly, to be based on what the text actually says, but behind all the bluster, on closer inspection, the text often turns out not to say what is claimed. Steve offers a textbook example of this here.
It's like the nutrimatic drinks dispenser's idea of tea: almost but not quite entirely unlike what the text actually says.
And yes, I think Gamaliel's right about personalities. Jamat's explanation of his dispensationalism on the Rapture thread, "it all goes to bed quite nicely", has passed into the Eutychus household vernacular.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Other matters taking a lot of my time today and between you you have posed me a lot of issues....
For tonight, just one where I think Eliab (probably unintentionally!) has put his finger on the problem....
quote:
It's entirely possible that Joseph's decision not to register in Nazareth but to go to Bethlehem and identify himself with his kingly ancestry, was deliberate, not imposed. The requirement to register was certainly imposed (at least, according to the text) but the text doesn't say one way or the other whether Joseph was specifically required to go to Bethlehem, just that he did, in fact, go there, not because he was a resident, but because of his lineage.
The problem with this is simple. Whether in Herod's kingdom or later Roman Judea, it's not exactly going to be safe for Joseph to openly "identify himself with his kingly ancestry", is it? I can imagine the conversation...
"So, Joseph ben-Jacob, why have you come to enrol in Bethlehem, a long way (about the length of Wales) from where you live?"
"It's because of my ancestry!"
"Which is...?"
"Well basically I'm probably the rightful king of Judea ahead of that Edomite upstart Herod, and I or a descendant might be the promised Messiah who will free Israel from foreign domination and conquer the world...."
At which point surely his life as a free man would be a matter of minutes, and his total life only much longer because they'd want to interrogate him and make sure that not only he but a lot of his family were ... er ... 'disappeared'.
And if it's not safe for Joseph to go public on that one with Herodian or Roman officials, why would he go to Bethlehem at all? It's unlikely anyone will make any waves if he takes the 'healthier' option and just stays where you all think he lives and enrols there instead.
On the other hand if he lives in Bethlehem but happens to be spending an extended time elsewhere when he becomes aware of the need to enrol, no problem - he just goes to Bethlehem and enrols as a normal resident.
Luke on that basis is not telling us the reason Joseph will give for registering in a not exactly obvious place; he's telling us the reason why Bethlehem is "Joseph's own city" - he lives there because he is descended from David. And he's again unlikely to face any awkward questions or need awkward explanations - he's the guy with the local building business and he's been away working....
And another thought before bed - some of you have been majoring on the reference to Nazareth as "Their (Joseph and Mary's) own city" (though in our terms I think at best a 'walled town' rather than anything we'd call a 'city'). But why not give equal weight to the earlier reference to Joseph going up to Bethlehem as one of many who go 'to be enrolled, each to his own city'? The point being that for Joseph on his own, Bethlehem is his own city; but for the couple, Nazareth is 'their' own city - and especially in an account written when it had been so for many decades after they settled there. The two ways of looking at the phrase 'own city' are not necessarily incompatible.
What?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Steve Langton
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# 17601
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Posted
by Stejjie;
quote:
Except that’s not what Luke says. Luke explicitly says:
quote:
quote:
“So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.”
In other words, for Luke the whole reason Joseph goes to Bethlehem is because he is of the line of David. That’s it: nothing to do with Joseph living there; Luke never gives that as a reason, it’s something you’ve come up with. And there was no need, when giving a reason for his coming to Bethlehem, for Joseph to go off on one about Herod’s illegitimacy; he just had to say he was there because he was a descendant of David and leave it at that.
And you are omitting the thing Luke says immediately before that passage, that "All went to be enrolled, each to his own city".
Luke has been telling the story thus far centred on Nazareth and Mary's family and the related family of John the Baptist. But Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Luke now explains the move; Bethlehem is in fact Joseph's 'own city' where he lives and where naturally he would register - he happens not to be there at the time, so he goes there with Mary, from his viewpoint taking her home to his residence. Joseph lives in Bethlehem because he is descended from David....
If there were not the later mistake of rendering the 'katalyma(ti)' as 'Inn' rather than 'guestroom' in a house, I doubt if we'd be having this discussion; it is the idea of Joseph and Mary needing to stay in an inn or hotel which has led to the impression of Joseph not actually living at Bethlehem. Without that, all is consistent - Joseph goes to 'his own city' to enrol and is in his own house.
Of course by this time there are lots of descendants of David. But in the unsettled circumstances of Palestine/Israel/Judea at that time, I don't think anyone would find it wise to make a point of asserting their royal lineage by going expensively out of their way to register in a former royal city rather than just register where they normally live. Eliab appeared to be suggesting exactly that unwise act.
Whether Roman or Herodian, the census is for the hard-nosed practical purpose of taxation; that purpose is best served by registering where you normally live. If Joseph lived in Nazareth, that would be where he would register. Going to Bethlehem, the other end of the country, to register is at best rather pointless - doing so to actually deliberately draw attention to your royal lineage at that time would be virtually an act of open treason. Herod's reaction in Matthew's account shows the likely result....
Posts: 2245 | From: Stockport UK | Registered: Mar 2013
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Stejjie;
quote:
Except that’s not what Luke says. Luke explicitly says:
quote:
quote:
“So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.”
In other words, for Luke the whole reason Joseph goes to Bethlehem is because he is of the line of David. That’s it: nothing to do with Joseph living there; Luke never gives that as a reason, it’s something you’ve come up with. And there was no need, when giving a reason for his coming to Bethlehem, for Joseph to go off on one about Herod’s illegitimacy; he just had to say he was there because he was a descendant of David and leave it at that.
And you are omitting the thing Luke says immediately before that passage, that "All went to be enrolled, each to his own city".
Luke has been telling the story thus far centred on Nazareth and Mary's family and the related family of John the Baptist. But Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Luke now explains the move; Bethlehem is in fact Joseph's 'own city' where he lives and where naturally he would register - he happens not to be there at the time, so he goes there with Mary, from his viewpoint taking her home to his residence. Joseph lives in Bethlehem because he is descended from David....
If there were not the later mistake of rendering the 'katalyma(ti)' as 'Inn' rather than 'guestroom' in a house, I doubt if we'd be having this discussion; it is the idea of Joseph and Mary needing to stay in an inn or hotel which has led to the impression of Joseph not actually living at Bethlehem. Without that, all is consistent - Joseph goes to 'his own city' to enrol and is in his own house.
Of course by this time there are lots of descendants of David. But in the unsettled circumstances of Palestine/Israel/Judea at that time, I don't think anyone would find it wise to make a point of asserting their royal lineage by going expensively out of their way to register in a former royal city rather than just register where they normally live. Eliab appeared to be suggesting exactly that unwise act.
Whether Roman or Herodian, the census is for the hard-nosed practical purpose of taxation; that purpose is best served by registering where you normally live. If Joseph lived in Nazareth, that would be where he would register. Going to Bethlehem, the other end of the country, to register is at best rather pointless - doing so to actually deliberately draw attention to your royal lineage at that time would be virtually an act of open treason. Herod's reaction in Matthew's account shows the likely result....
What?
I'm reading Haidt's superb The Righteous Mind at the moment. Your reasoning is directly analogous, structurally the same, as most moral reasoning, which is after the event.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
quote:
If there were not the later mistake of rendering the 'katalyma(ti)' as 'Inn' rather than 'guestroom' in a house, I doubt if we'd be having this discussion;
If you didn't feel the need to tie up every apparent loose-end in scripture than I doubt we'd even be having this discussion ...
[ 27. January 2018, 17:41: Message edited by: Louise ]
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Mind you, if I were any good at code, a kindly Host or Admin wouldn't have to come along and tidy up the mess I've made with the quote from Steve ...
Be that as it may, you've not resolved your own issue, Steve Langton.
You haven't answered why there wasn't any room in Joseph's own house in Bethlehem nor why they would require to stay in a 'guest room' in their own house. The only way you can square that one is to speculate.
Perhaps they had relatives staying? Perhaps other people were in the house?
None of which is indicated in any way in the text and only becomes a possible inference if, like you, we feel the need to mess around with it to get it to fit some scheme or format we are carrying around in our own heads.
It only becomes a problem if we want to make it a problem.
You clearly do.
Why?
Clearly not because you 'read the Bible like any other text.'
If you were really 'reading the Bible like any other text' then you wouldn't be bending over backwards to make sure this bit over here dove-tailed so neatly with that part over there ...
I very much doubt that any of us read the Bible 'like any other text.'
It's not like a railway timetable where we can expect - delays, the wrong kind of snow and leaves on the line permitting, that if a train leaves Paddington at such and such a time we should expect it in Didcot by whenever it happens to be ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And you are omitting the thing Luke says immediately before that passage, that "All went to be enrolled, each to his own city".
Luke has been telling the story thus far centred on Nazareth and Mary's family and the related family of John the Baptist. But Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Luke now explains the move; Bethlehem is in fact Joseph's 'own city' where he lives and where naturally he would register - he happens not to be there at the time, so he goes there with Mary, from his viewpoint taking her home to his residence. Joseph lives in Bethlehem because he is descended from David....
Fixed that for you. You seem determined to ignore the actual written text. Luke tells us that everyone is traveling (eporeuontos pantes) for this tax census. This may be bureaucratically inefficient and contrary to everything we know about Roman tax censuses from every other source, but it's what Luke says.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Of course by this time there are lots of descendants of David. But in the unsettled circumstances of Palestine/Israel/Judea at that time, I don't think anyone would find it wise to make a point of asserting their royal lineage by going expensively out of their way to register in a former royal city rather than just register where they normally live.
This is kind of like suggesting that the newly installed Hanoverians were really worried about descendants of Harold Godwinson, rather than the Stuart line. That's about the chronological difference between the last rulers of the Davidic line and the much more recent Hasmonians.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
Essentially I am doing Luke the courtesy of assuming that he really meant what he said in the first four verses of the gospel and that he is at least trying seriously to write something like a proper history of Jesus' life, even if it's not quite what we'd expect from a modern impartial historian writing a carefully balanced PhD thesis.
And therefore that his account of the nativity is based on the best evidence he could get about what happened, and that he'd be a bit insulted by suggestions like that he just regards the census as a 'McGuffin' to get the family to Bethlehem for arbitrary theological reasons, rather than that he puts that in because that's what his sources told him happened. The kind of account he produces suggests that the source would be Jesus' family recounting their family traditions, though given the time of composition not the direct eyewitnesses Luke would probably have preferred.
For some time there has been an assumption that what Luke wrote is to be interpreted in a particular way, with the family living in Nazareth and being required by the census to go to Bethlehem on the basis of ancestral lineage rather than any actual current connection with the place. I suspect in the past people would just be assuming that this was weird foreign customs and weren't really paying attention to the underlying absurdity. This is the account usually represented in nativity plays with the dramatic scenes of Joseph and Mary being turned away from inn after inn till somebody takes pity and lets them use a stable.
In the last couple of centuries this has been challeged by better knowledge of the customs of the area and era; and for example I know of the case of a great-grandfather of one of our church members who spent some years in the late 19thC in Palestine researching, and wrote books about customs in 'Bible lands'.
Atheist propagandists like Stephen Fry have attacked that older interpretation, mocking its obvious absurdities. It seems to me quite reasonable to ask whether Luke's text really gives that absurd story, or whether it has been misunderstood. And the aforesaid great-grandfather was one of quite a few people who have drawn attention to the different implications of "No room in the Inn" versus "No room in the guestchamber", in deciding what Luke intended.
In the traditional interpretation people are being required to travel what would be considerable distances even today to enrol in towns they no longer have real connection with - and apparently on such a scale as to overwhelm local inns and other boarding facilities. And doing this to provide information which would obviously be much more relevant and useful if they gave it by enrolling in a town near where they actually live.
But does Luke actually say this? Everything he says is totally compatible with maybe not the fully modern world where much of this stuff will be done online etc, but certainly with the pre-electronic world or pre-Industrial Revolution world where 'everyone travelling to their own town' to enrol would mean going only at most a few miles to register at the nearest town to where they live. Of course if you were away from home for some reason you might have to travel some distance, but not otherwise. ('town' because in our terms that's what most biblical 'cities' actually were)
As far as I can see, that's what Luke says happened - unless you accept that phrase 'no room at the INN' as meaning that Joseph and Mary were going to a place where they didn't have a home but had to stay in an inn. But if it doesn't mean an inn, but simply a room in an ordinary house, we're back in sensible territory.
Joseph is away from home when the need to enrol arises; not a great mystery that he is in Nazareth where his betrothed (and given the pregnancy, by now his wife) lives. But yes, there's a bit of a question that he is clearly spending quite a long time up in Galilee rather than occasional visits, and that it seems he hadn't taken Mary back to Bethlehem immediately on marriage. But that's hardly a major issue compared to the inherent daftness of the idea of Joseph having to go all the way to Bethlehem to enrol even though he doesn't live there!
We can't absolutely prove the notion of Joseph doing building work in Galilee. But the biblical word for him is 'tekton/builder' rather than what we would think of when we call him a 'carpenter', and at this period there was plenty of work in Joseph's trade in the Galilee in that city of Sepphoris. Joseph going where there was both work and his betrothed and her family is a reasonable explanation of what Luke describes. He would spend a fair bit of time there but of course would need to go home for the enrolment.
Again, take out that 'inn' and its implications, and this is not an arduous dash with a heavily pregnant wife who gives birth almost immediately on arrival; they don't have to worry about the expense of living in an inn for an extended period, and it's also not a problem that they stay over a month after the birth for that period of purification. They're at home and again it seems a reasonable guess that the family business is functioning locally and Joseph can earn some money now he is back at home.
Yeah, plausible guesses at what happened rather than certainty - but much more reasonable than the version where Joseph doesn't live in Bethlehem in the first place....
Agreed, Croesos, that there's a long time from David to Herod, and yes, Hanoverians would be more worried about the recent Stuarts like Bonnie Prince Charlie than the descendants of King Harold. But then Harold wasn't David, and despite their occasional pretensions the Stuarts were not the family in which the Messiah was promised. And even false Messiahs caused the Romans a lot of problems during and after the time of Jesus.
Posts: 2245 | From: Stockport UK | Registered: Mar 2013
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Atheist propagandists like Stephen Fry have attacked that older interpretation, mocking its obvious absurdities. It seems to me quite reasonable to ask whether Luke's text really gives that absurd story, or whether it has been misunderstood. And the aforesaid great-grandfather was one of quite a few people who have drawn attention to the different implications of "No room in the Inn" versus "No room in the guestchamber", in deciding what Luke intended.
This is all beginning to be uncomfortably like the debate over whether 'almâ means "virgin":
1. Conservative offers specific translation vs. word in the original text ("katalyma" -> "guest room"; "'almâ" -> "virgin").
2. Conservative insists on a particular and linguistically unlikely meaning of the word, invoking flaky evidence, to defend a hermeneutical assumption, not because it's prima facie more plausible but because the alternative opens the floodgates to evil liberals and atheists.
3. The flaky evidence is inspected and found to be wanting. The explanation creates more problems than it solves and departs further and further from the text.
4. People like me start wondering whether any con-evo argument actually holds up at all, or whether I've just been being conned all these years.
*
By the way, in addition for being taxed for fictitious land, French people frequently and traditionally stay on the electoral roll in their original home town or village, and travel great distances at election time to vote there.
[ 27. January 2018, 18:21: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
Steve, please, please, please will you stop making this all about the inn? I'm quite happy to believe that katalyma doesn't mean "inn", it's not a part of my case at all. In fact, here's a very good blog post arguing that Jesus wasn't born in a stable that specifically says that katalyma doesn't mean "inn" - but which doesn't remotely see that as incompatible with the idea of Joseph living in Nazareth but travelling to Bethlehem because that's what he was required to do.
And I really don't know how to go on with this any more (apart from to Hell, which I must admit is tempting), because there's just so much that seems wrong with your account. In your attempts to make it more harmonious with the Matthew story, in your attempts to make it more plausible to the Stephen Frys of our world (and when has doing that ever, ever been a hallmark of good exegesis?), you're constructing a very elaborate theory that has practically no support in the text, apart from one possible interpretation of the phrase "their own town" in v3 (which I did address in one of my previous posts). Far from taking Luke seriously as a writer (not just a historical writer, but a historical-theological-literary writer), your argument basically says that Luke didn't write what he means, but had a whole alternative scenario in his mind that for some reason he didn't make explicit. I wonder how this squares with what you said earlier about the importance of Scripture being understandable and interpret-able by the "ordinary reader" (something that, with caveats, I'd agree with): what you're proposing is so far from what Luke's text says, has so many guesses and suppositions and assumptions and "it says this, but actually means that" statements that it's as far from what an ordinary reader could glean from the text.
And I still don't get what this elaborate theory has to do with the bigger picture questions of interpretation that this thread is all about: how does your theory about Luke 2 square with your views on the inspiration of Scripture? Because I'm completely at a loss.
But I feel I and others have already said all this upthread and I should probably stop for fear of tipping over into Hellish-mode, because you simply aren't addressing the issues we've raised at all.
[ 27. January 2018, 19:33: Message edited by: Stejjie ]
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
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