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There are also many flaws in the story such that there was never any requirement for people to travel to their ancestor's home towns to be registered.
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It would have made no sense whatsoever to have the Jewish people returning to their home towns for purposes of accessing taxes if they now lived and earned their money elsewhere. These were the days where one's wealth was not measured by bank account balances, rather it was a survey of your property...how many goats did you own, how many workers did you employ in your shop....that sort of thing. The taxes were most often collected in the form of goods, not coins. Farmer Ezra owns 75 sheep, his tax is ten of those sheep etc.
The sheep, the goats, the structures and businesses, that is what the Romans were examining and how could they have done this if potential tax payers had to travel away from their goods to be accessed?
Re: 'a perfect monotheistic religion that introduced guilt in the Roman World'..
I'd say Roman law already handled and worked with that construct without the intervention of the revolutionary Christians. Really they introduced something that was a bit more interesting
than the run of the mill paganism that the majority adhered to. In a way, Christianity's incredible 'social' orientatation and organization figured much in its development throughout the Empire. Pagans did not have this thought process in their 'religions' since the relationship between them and their gods were different than the new Christian one.
The Census of Quirinius was carried out by Quirinius during the reign of Augustus. When Quirinius was appointed governor of Syria and Rome itself had taken direct control of the Tetrarchy of Judea after Herod Archelaus was banished. The pupose of the census was not to count "citizens", but to conduct a general survey of the population for the purposes of taxation in Syria and Judea. It prompted unrest among the Jewish population and led to a minor revolt led by Judas of Galilee.
The Biblical account of these events contained in Luke has many flaws within it. The most obvious flaw is that Luke (and Mathew) claims that this event happened during the reign of Herod the Great. Herod the Great died in 4BCE or 10 years before this census was taken. There are also many flaws in the story such that there was never any requirement for people to travel to their ancestor's home towns to be registered.
The account in Luke is extremely flawed with no basis in history and no companion text (even in the Bible) to support the claims. It was most likely a flawed creation of the author of the Gospel in order to build proper credentials for Jesus being the Messiah. Having him born in the "City of David" which also means he was from the line of David was required for him to meet prophecies about the Messiah. Either that or it was just an attempt to "flesh out" the story and the early evangelical authors just did the best they could, but got the details wrong. Either way, the account in Luke means nothing as it was almost assuredly made up centuries after the fact.
Even if we were to assume that it wasn't, the fact that Joseph would have to partake is not necessarily indicative of his citizenship status either way.
Your sources are a Bible College and the National Catholic Registry.
Your presentation would be more persuasive if you had neutral sources rather than ones with a vested interest in establishing one and only one thing.
If you used historical rather than religious sources, then you might be in a position to lecture others. As it stands, you are not.
the links parent websites is not of topic. it's what they say that is relevant.
i posted them because they pertain to refute njgoat's post. they are not
of a religious nature. have a nice day.
the links parent websites is not of topic. it's what they say that is relevant.
i posted them because they pertain to refute njgoat's post. they are not
of a religious nature. have a nice day.
The reliability of one's sources is always relevant. That you would operate under any other sort of thinking is methodology error. You cannot divorce a source from those who are providing it.
No. Only Romans could become citizens. King Herod was the ruler of the Jews even though he was subservient to Augustus, the Roman Emperor. Other kings ruled Roman provinces, and Romans ruled some of the remote areas where the Romans only had outposts. Pontius Pilate was the Roman sent to oversee Herod's rule.
That Pilate judged Jesus was a very uncommon event. A Jewish criminal or troublemaker wasn't even tried by Herod usually, and having the Roman Prefect, who could over-rule King Herod, judge a commoner like Jesus was extraordinary. That's why so much was written in the gospels about Pilate and Jesus' trial- a Prefect would sit in judgement of a King, not a commoner. The trial gave Jesus' claims of being the Christ legitimacy to the Jews of the time.
No. Only Romans could become citizens. King Herod was the ruler of the Jews even though he was subservient to Augustus, the Roman Emperor. Other kings ruled Roman provinces, and Romans ruled some of the remote areas where the Romans only had outposts. Pontius Pilate was the Roman sent to oversee Herod's rule.
That Pilate judged Jesus was a very uncommon event. A Jewish criminal or troublemaker wasn't even tried by Herod usually, and having the Roman Prefect, who could over-rule King Herod, judge a commoner like Jesus was extraordinary. That's why so much was written in the gospels about Pilate and Jesus' trial- a Prefect would sit in judgement of a King, not a commoner. The trial gave Jesus' claims of being the Christ legitimacy to the Jews of the time.
Not to attempt to legitimize the gospels as I could care less, but I do believe that in the story pilate didn't want to preside over said event. However it was mob rule that forced his hand. No matter what a States policy, mob rule can have a certain.....influence over policy. Perhaps he chose to simply preside over the hearing in order to subdue any political up stir.
No matter what a States policy, mob rule can have a certain.....influence over policy. Perhaps he chose to simply preside over the hearing in order to subdue any political up stir
You know the proverbial 'washing of hands' by Pilate really doesn't completely come off as an action of 'mob rule' as such since didn't Rome and the Sanhedrin get what they wanted, i.e. Jesus 'the King of the Jews' executed?
Judea at that time was under the relentless Roman boot and Pilate was doing an excellent job by doing what he had to namely imprisoning or slaughtering would-be messiahs or those who had a problem with Roman ways of doing things. His track record with Jewish relations was pretty dismal. Really Rome did not get points for sensitivity to Jewish feelings in Judea at the time.
Pilate in fact was all in control and completely ruthless all the time when it came to keeping order in Judea I'd say. That doesn't mean he ignored Jewish concerns though since he had a long relationship with Caiaphas who also saw Jesus as bad for social order. Pilate surely was glad he was rid of Jesus as he went on to be crucified as a revolutionary upstart.
It is well to keep in mind that the accounts of the trial of Jesus were not set down on paper until three decades after the events were supposed to have taken place. When they were written, they were not written by eye witnesses, but rather by members of the cult which had arisen in the region over the previous thirty years. The authors would have been relying on three decades plus of word of mouth. And they would have been writing with an agenda specific to their needs and beliefs.
Consequently it is not possible to know what is reliable and what is not in the gospel accounts. For all we really know, the washing of hands by Pilate may have actually represented the fact that he wasn't even there and took no part in any trial, ruling that the internal religious squabbles of the Jews and their multiple messianic claimants, to be beneath his notice.
In that Jesus was not a Roman citizen, and did not enjoy the right to a trial as a result, we have to question the entire idea of there being a trial before the Romans. Trouble making peasants were typically just executed, the Romans were notoriously efficient and notoriously intolerant at these sorts of things.
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