Enjoyed. thanks for posting.
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You have the fact but are inventing the reasons.
Christ could have come into any human community to achieve His goals, but there are certain mechanics involved for Him to be identified.
His Jewish heritage is as much accommodation as the transfer to being a Universal saviour. Scripture is just part of those mechanics.
It was, as God ordained, but it could have been different. It was/ is as it was/ / is. Credentials only matter to humans not God.
You care too much about details.
Richard
I love this part!:
The Gospel authors were thus confronted with a literary problem that had to be solved. They wanted to tell the story of Jesusā birth, but apparently had little to work with. Here, then, is --where tradition and theology came in. In 1965, the Second Vatican Council held that while the Scriptures are ultimately ātrue,ā they are not necessarily to be taken as accurate in the sense we might take an Associated Press wire report about what happened at a school-board meeting as accurate. The council focused on the importance of paying attention to āliterary formsā in Scripture. The Gospels are such a āliterary form,ā and the accounts of Jesus in the canon are not history or biography in the way we use the terms. Classical biography, however, was a different genre. Writers like Plutarch invented details or embellished traditions when they were reconstructing the lives of the famous, and the Christmas saga features miraculous births, supernatural signs and harbingers of ultimate greatness similar to those found in pagan works. If we examine the Nativity narratives as classical biography, then the evangelistsā means and mission ā to convey theological truths about salvation, not to record just-the-facts history ā become much clearer.
I think it is also very clear Matthew used themes from the stories that were told about Moses during that time.
While the affairs of the Hebrews were in this condition, there was this occasion offered itself to the Egyptians, which made them more solicitous for the extinction of our nation. One of those sacred scribes, 18 who are very sagacious in foretelling future events truly, told the king, that about this time there would a child be born to the Israelites, who, if he were reared, would bring the Egyptian dominion low, and would raise the Israelites; that he would excel all men in virtue, and obtain a glory that would be remembered through all ages. Which thing was so feared by the king, that, according to this manās opinion, he commanded that they should cast every male child, which was born to the Israelites, into the river, and destroy it; ā¦
A man whose name was Amram, one of the nobler sort of the Hebrews, was afraid for his whole nation, lest it should fail, by the want of young men to be brought up hereafter, and was very uneasy at it, his wife being then with child, and he knew not what to do. Hereupon he betook himself to prayer to God; and entreated him to have compassion on those men who had nowise transgressed the laws of his worship, and to afford them deliverance from the miseries they at that time endured, and to render abortive their enemiesā hopes of the destruction of their nation. Accordingly God had mercy on him, and was moved by his supplication. He stood by him in his sleep, and exhorted him not to despair of his future favors. ā¦
Know therefore that I shall provide for you all in common what is for your good, and particularly for thyself what shall make thee famous; for that child, out of dread of whose nativity the Egyptians have doomed the Israelite children to destruction, shall be this child of thine, and shall be concealed from those who watch to destroy him: and when he is brought up in a surprising way, he shall deliver the Hebrew nation from the distress they are under from the Egyptians. His memory shall be famous while the world lasts; and this not only among the Hebrews, but foreigners also:āall which shall be the effect of my favor to thee, and to thy posterity. He shall also have such a brother, that he shall himself obtain my priesthood, and his posterity shall have it after him to the end of the world.
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I myself live in a town next to a rural area. So I know what you mean.
Nonetheless, in this case both archaeology and more recent knowledge about homes in the Middle East prove my case.
Archaeological evidence [edit: forgot to add link]:
More recent evidence (from same article):
And another article:
The details of the one-room peasant home with its manger in the floor have not gone unnoticed. William Thomson,long- term Presbyterian missionary in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, wrote in 1857:
āIt is my impression that the birth actually took place in an ordinary house of some common peasant, and that the baby was laid in one of the mangers, such as are still found in the dwellings of farmers in this region.ā
The two leading 20th century authorities on Palestinian life and the New Testament are Gustaf Dalmann and E.F.F. Bishop. Bishop comments on Luke 2:7 and writes:
āPerhapsā¦recourse was had to one of the Bethlehem houses with the lower section provided for the animals, with mangers āhollowed in stone,ā the dais being reserved for the family. Such a manger being immovable, filled with crushed straw, would do duty for a cradle. An infant might even be left in safety, especially if swaddled, when the mother was absent on temporary business.ā
Dalmann, in his study of the same verse, records:
āIn the East today the dwelling place of man and beast is often in one and the same room. It is quite the usual thing among the peasants for the family to live, eat, and sleep on a kind of raised terrace (Arab. mastaba) in the one room of the house, while the cattle, particularly the donkeys and oxen, have their place below on the actual floor (kaā al-bet) near the doorā¦ On this floor the mangers are fixed either to the floor or to the wall, or at the edge of the terrace.ā
Dalmann himself has nearly 100 pages of photographs and scale drawings of a wide variety of such peasant homes, all of which fit his two-level description given above. Thus a peasant home is the natural place for the Holy Family to have found shelter and the expected place to find a manger.
I understand this, however, Genesis tells us that it was through Eveās seed that the Messiah would come.
15And I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your seed and her seed.
He will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.cā
Thats Eveās lineage. As i said before, given there were no other males on the earth at the time, obviously it was also Adam by defaultā¦but the text clearly says what it says, theres no changing or reading into that.
why are we taking architecture from 1800 years after Christs birth to determine what it looked like when he was born?
This is a uniformatarian view that isn t even consistent with the very same historical architecture of our own cultures (whether it be European, US, or any other). It also tries to apply heathan arabic cultural living habits to Jewish culture. Rather strange given the Mosaic laws that already existed for centuries prior to Christ.
The archaeological evidence I shared is from Iron Age I (1200 - 1000 BC). Those are Israelite houses. So for 3000 years this kind of architecture has been used in the same area. First by Jews, then Christians, then Muslims.
If you know a law of the Torah that says something about where to keep your animals, let me know.
Besides, there is not much difference between Jewish and Muslim law regarding hygiene.
āPersonal cleanliness is paramount to worship in Islam.ā
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Given general hygiene of the day, the chances that a person wealthy enough to eat a lot of meat would have at least a few worms is high, and they would also have a much higher chance of getting medical exams that would notice the parasites. Of course, having an especially severe infestation is not guaranteed, but thereās nothing implausible in helminth infestations being an accurate detail, especially if the Herods ate pork. (Thus, Acts 12:23 shows the first helminths angel.) That doesnāt contradict the likelihood that the more unpleasant details are highlighted for bad guys.
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Once I read something that pointed out that with the broad meaning of the Hebrew term ×Ö²×Ö°×Öø×Ö° (mal-awk), āmessengerā, Balaamās donkey qualified. If a total ass can be an angel, I suppose worms can, too.
Though I wonder what particular event could have precipitated sudden death ā they penetrated the heart, perhaps?
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I think that one should not forget however, to place jews in the basket with others around them would be a mistake when it comes to stuff like thisā¦we have significant Old Testament evidence of a considerable number of laws the Jews were expected to follow quite a few of which related directly to personal hygiene (around 600 laws actually). God clearly separated His people from the filth of the nations and taught them how to be hygenicā¦so i do not for a moment agree that in general, Jewish households would have ignored these Mosaic rules.
Herod the Great was a somewhat Judaized Idumaean. In Rome, it was joked that his pigs were safer than his sons, alluding to Jewish food regulations and Herodās partially justified paranoia about various would-be heirs plotting against him. However, he and his heirs tolerated pagan practice outside the Jewish areas, and may not have avoided pork when in such settings. The account quoted above from Josephus referred to Herod the Great having worms; Acts refers to them for Herod Agrippa I, a grandson of Herod the Great (who stole the throne from his half-uncle and his sister, Herod Antipas and Herodias).
Of course, there are plenty of parasitic worms that one can get from other sources besides pork, but pork carries some particularly dangerous ones if you donāt cook it adequately.
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It is so common for us to read the translation to mean āthis was the first census when Quirinius was governorā (I presume because of it being so in KJV and its familiarity in Christmas narratives), that many people ignore, or are simply completely unaware of, the other perfectly possible translationā¦
In Greek, just like in English, the word āfirstā (ĻĻĻĶĻĪæĻ) can mean the first in a series, or it can mean ābeforeāā¦ it is perfectly possible to understand Luke as referencing a census before Quirinius was governor. John 1:15 and 1:30 are good examples where āfirstā (ĻĻĻĶĻĪæĢĻ) is indisputably translated ābeforeā.
(For what it is worth, I have found far too many examples where people insist on an error in the text, when the error can be sustained only by the critic insisting (almost with a fundamentalist level of stubbornness) on only one certain possible linguistic interpretationā¦ the only one that sustains the supposed error.)
Phil, you are stating as if undisputed fact the critical view of the dating of Luke without acknowledging alternate possibilitiesā¦
I am genuinely curiousā¦ are you so thoroughly aware of the reasoning behind earlier dates and the myriad difficulties with the later dates, yet have found such reasoning so fallacious, that you have discounted the former as not even worth acknowledging?
Not that this is a problem in itself, I do so myselfā¦ in general, when i reference the date of the Luke, just like when i reference the author if 2Timothy or Titus, I only reference the conservative perspectiveā¦ but this is because I have done my own study, and to my satisfaction the evidence for the one, and against the other, is so overwhelming that I donāt find it worth mentioning the controversyā¦ (in the same category that I donāt generally acknowledge controversy surrounding the moon landing)ā¦ even so, generally when discussing things in this kind of context, I do generally acknowledge the existence of alternative views.
Iām just genuinely curious if, regarding the dating of Luke (and Acts), you have studied both alternatives and are so fully persuaded, or if you simply have chosen to defer to the perspective of the critical scholars as the only perspective worth acknowledging? It piqued my curiosity when I noticed that Vinnie below acknowledged the range of different perspectives, but you stated the dates as if undisputed fact?
My other favorite example is that of Belshazzar, who critics claimed never existed and that the Bible was in errorā¦ when extra biblical data did confirm his existence as coregent with his father, it actually aligned surprisingly perfectly with the text of Scripture, even making sense of Belshazzarās promise to Daniel to make him the third highest in the kingdom (since Belshazzar himself was actually only second).
where the jury is out at least for those who wish to keep an open mind, remain open to exploring new evidence, and not claim that we have achieved exhaustive knowledge of the topic in question.
Any time someone definitively claims or asserts an error in any ancient document, they are tacitly claiming that our knowledge and understanding of that ancient period and writing is so complete and exhaustive to exclude even the possibility of future discoveries that could change our understanding.
in general, i think open inquiry and scholarship should be very slow to definitively claim this level of knowledge surrounding the statements of any ancient document.
Lewis was quite wise in his thoughts:
The āassured results of modern scholarshipā, as to the way in which an old book was written, are āassuredā, we may conclude, only because the men who knew the facts are dead and canāt blow the gaff.
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The structure there is a bit clumsy if ĻĻĻĶĻĪæĻ is taken as ābeforeā. I think the solution lies in the fact that Quirinius was in fact āgoverningā in Syria at the time in question, he just didnāt hold the office of āgovernorā.
I havenāt read anything lately that leans to the late range of 80 - 110; scholarship seems to have put the date fully in the first century if nothing else.
That is a great example. It was used in grad school as an admonition against jumping to conclusions.
Unless itās a āone of these must be wrongā situation, which are few indeed ā and often involve numbers, for example one writer might report 7,000 warriors in a battle while the next might write 7,200, and example I love because both numbers are suspect since 70 and 72 are both used symbolically and so the numbers may not be meant literally in the first place, which is another complication that has to be considered.
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I donāt want to derail this threadā¦ but dating of the gospels is fascinating to me, one that deeply piques my curiosity, as the counter arguments against relatively early dating are downright baffling to me and stretch my credulity.
Acts in particular, at face value, seems so obviously written by a contemporary travelling companion of Paul (the āweā sections), and ends so abruptly, that at face value the obvious conclusion is that it was written and finalized at Paulās (first?) imprisonment. This isnāt utterly conclusive but the counter evidence needs to be weighed against these very obvious facts. claiming that the āredactorā unthinkingly gathered various accounts, some in first person plural, with no textual evidence for this whatsoever, seems a desperate stretch.
The counter arguments, at my reading, all seem to be desperate attempts to move the dating until after the events that were prophecied by Jesus, betraying a rather obvious anti-supernatural presupposition going into said dating as I observbe.
I agree with the principle in general, but for this particular example, Iād have no issue refraining from claiming either of them are in error - my assumption would be that one rounded to the nearest hundred, the other to the nearest thousand. Only pedantic demand for modern precision would conclude an āerrorā because an ancient source rounded his numbers. And even for stylistic or other reasons I wouldnāt necessarily claim error if the author wanted to round the numbers to the nearest multiple of 7 (as we like to round to the nearest multiple of 10 when possible).
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Getting a chance to look up details on the settling into the central Canaanite hill country at the time of the Exodus:
Archaeological surveys of the hill country, where Israel first settled, have largely been the work of Finkelsteinās and Zertalās groups. The immediate pre-Israel population at roughly 4,000 jumps to about 20,000 or more within less than a century. Lemche (1985) thoroughly critiques the revolting peasant/tax evader ideas, though his own sociological ideas are rather weak on verification. The settlement trends east to west, as expected for a group of people coming in from the east. As for Europe, the sometimes violent incursions of more nomadic people from the east was a persistent nuisance for the more settled populations of richer agricultural areas.
While certain building and pottery styles seem to be especially typical of accepted Israelite sites, they are not unique to them. The general absence of pig bones in food refuse in the Canaanite hill country around the Bronze Age-Iron Age transition contrasts with Philistia and Ammon. Hesse, BASOR 1986 264:17 is one source on those.
Pharoah Merenptah records defeating Israel in 1209; a people group thus identified must have existed in Canaan by then. Kitchen suggests that Merenptahās raid may have been in response to Canaanite cities failing to provide tribute due to Israelite raids disrupting the supply of produce to pay it with.
Culturally, the setting of Exodus through Judges fits with the late 2nd millennium BC.
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This book was released two months ago:
The Realia Jesus: An Archaeological Commentary on the Gospel of Luke
Not necessarily. Itās been discovered that campaigns against troublesome foreigners in the Nile delta area, which is where the Hebrews were, were recorded the same as those against foreigners outside of (what we think of as) Egyptās borders. Some have argued that this indicates that Mereneptah was the āking who did not know Josephā.
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Technically possible but unlikely, given that Israel is listed among specific Canaanite towns and groups. But at any rate, it indicates the existence of āIsraelā at that date.
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@St.Roymond @paleomalacologist I wrote a reply here: