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Quirinius
The Census of rinius
Lk 2:1
In those days a decree went out from Emperor
Augustus that all the world should be registered. This
was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius
was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be
registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth
in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called
Bethlehem.
Antiquities 18.1.1 1
Quirinius, a Roman senator who had passed
through all the other magistracies until he became
consul, and one who in other respects was very
distinguished, came at this time into Syria, with a few
others, having been sent by Caesar to be governor of
that nation and to make an assessment of their property.
Coponius, a man of the equestrian order, was sent with
him to have supreme authority over the Jews. Quirinius
came himself to Judea, which had now been added to the
province of Syria, to make an assessment of their
property and to dispose of Archelaus's estate. Although
the Jews at first took the report of a taxation angrily,
they gradually left off any further opposition to it by
the persuasion of the high priest Joazar son of Boethus.
Persuaded by Joazar's words, they gave an account of
their estates without any dissent.
But there was one man, Judas, a Gaulanite from a
city named Gamala, who, taking with him Saddok, a
Pharisee, became zealous to draw them to revolt. They
both said that this taxation was no better than an
introduction to slavery, and exhorted the nation to
assert their liberty...
Comment
The discrepancy between
Luke and Josephus on this famous registration, or
assessment, has caused many scholarly attempts to
reconcile the two. None of these attempts have been
accepted as successful. Josephus' story, which is
supported by various evidence in Roman historians,
clearly places Quirinius' beginning tenure and
assessment in 6 CE, ten years after the death of Herod
the Great. Yet Luke places this event during the time of
Herod. From everything we know, Luke is mistaken.
Then where did Luke find this
story? The theory that Luke used Josephus for historical
events has difficulty dealing with this discrepancy.
Thus it is either proof that Luke worked from a poor
summary, or preliminary version, of the Antiquities, or
that he had a separate source, possibly an oral
tradition among some of the Jesus followers who were not
consulted by the other gospel writers.
There is also a peculiar way
to look at this story (original with myself, for good or
ill). The census of Quirinius was the immediate cause of
the rise of Judas the Galilean and the Fourth
Philosophy. This philosophy would, sixty years later,
lead to the war with Rome that would destroy the Temple
and weaken the attraction of Judaism that many non-Jews
had throughout the empire. It also contributed to the
suspicion the authorities had of popular leaders,
particular those with new philosophies and origins in
Galilee, and so quite likely was an important factor in
Jesus' arrest. In seom sense, then, the census of
Quirinius gave birth to the "spirit of the revolution"
and the destruction of the Temple. Could it be that
certain revolutionaries saw Jesus as their hoped-for
leader, and even after his death felt he was the
mystical embodiment of the spirit of the revolution?
Then the association of Jesus' birth with the birth of
the Fourth Philosophy would have come naturally to this
strand of the Jesus followers.
For the complete history of
Judas the Galilean, see
Causes of the War Against Rome.
Bron:
http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/ntparallels.htm
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