Talk:Census of Quirinius

This article is still not encyclopedic

I am very concerned that after all the discussion in 2008 and the plea for a rewrite in 2009, the earlier sections of the article reflect in the main the "critical" point of view. But the whole "critical" academic movement is based on re-interpretation of and casting doubt on the accuracy of Biblical texts.This one-sided bias is specifically against Wikipedia rules.

Where there is profound disagreement among scholars - and I use that word in its widest meaning - then that should be reflected in the article. I am not pleading for a bias in the other direction but for a proper balance and honest adherence to Wikipedia principles.

Let me give some examples of this disguised bias:

Six examples of bias

1. The article title is "Census of Quirinius" but Luke mentions "the first" census whilst the Roman Emperor Tiberius himself wrote in "The Deeds of the Divine Augustus" "I made a census of the people with Marcus Agrippa as my colleague. I conducted a lustrum, after a forty-one year gap, in which lustrum were counted 4,063,000 heads of Roman citizens. Then again, with consular imperium I conducted a lustrum alone when Gaius Censorinus and Gaius Asinius were consuls (8 B.C.), in which lustrum were counted 4,233,000 heads of Roman citizens." (Obviously the dates were calculated later) It is not scholarly to say, "Oh, those were Roman citizens only so we don't have to mention that census." The fact is that there was am empire-wide census in 8 BC and Quirinius MAY have been involved and it certainly best fits the Luke narrative. So the very title of the article shows a "critical" bias - only one census. It should be renamed "Quirinius and Census" and the first paragraph should explain the dispute over whether there were one or two under his auspices.

2. Throughout Josephus is held forth as a more authoritative historian than Luke, whereas the fact is that Luke has proven far more reliable. For example, Josephus' narrative of the events of the reign of the emperor Caligula, which was 30 years later and in the historian's own lifetime, is universally held to be confused and inaccurate. That Josephus did not mention the 8 BC census is neither here nor there, we know it happened from a far more authoritative source - the emperor.

3."This passage has long been considered problematic by Biblical scholars, since it places the birth of Jesus around the time of the census in 6/7, whereas the Gospel of Matthew indicates a birth during or just after the reign of Herod the Great." Why is the "whereas" there? This gives readers the impression that Luke indicated that Jesus was born after Herod's demise. In fact, Luke 1.5 specifically begins his story, "There was in the days of Herod king of Judaea ..." referring to a time just one year before Jesus' birth. So here the article is blatantly mis-leading.

4."No other record of such a census exists." Blatantly untrue, as I have shown above.

5. "Modern scholars tend to explain the disparity as an error on the part of the author of the Gospel." There was a lot of discussion of this in 2008, but it is still there. "Some modern scholars..." or "Modern scholars of the critical persuasion ..." is all that is needed to even this up.

6. "The same author, in Acts of the Apostles, associates the census with the much later revolt of Theudas," is just untrue. It was Judas that Gamaliel associated with the census and this was most definitely the one of which Josephus wrote.

I think that establishes enough that this article needs to be rewritten. I see that the article Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles is headed by various banners telling readers that the neutrality of the article is disputed and suggesting that it should be rewritten. I am therefore surprised that the same banners have not been added to this article.

I'm unclear as to the procedure for a rewrite. I would be quite happy to undertake that myself and submit the result for discussion. Obviously I would use the verifiable facts presently included along with missing facts and outline the matters in dispute.In fact, large sections on the history of the arguments over the centuries should be left intact, they represent genuine historical research as opposed to the opinions expressed earlier in the article.

In the meantime, those banners should be placed at the top of the page immediately. Logical Analyst (talk) 17:41, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

There are all sorts of problems with the above. Just a few : you say "the Roman Emperor Tiberius himself wrote in The Deeds of the Divine Augustus 'I made a census of the people with Marcus Agrippa as my colleague'." Excuse me, why do you think that is by Tiberius? Res Gestae Divi Augusti, (Latin: "The Deeds of the Divine Augustus") is the funerary inscription of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, giving a first-person record of his life and accomplishments. "Augustus left the text with his will." It is by Augustus himself.

You say "Throughout Josephus is held forth as a more authoritative historian than Luke, whereas the fact is that Luke has proven far more reliable." Please. A narrative which jumps straight into visitations from angels, chats between them and mortals, and miraculous births, is quite obviously not history at all, but a completely different form of literature altogether. I don't have time right now to go into more detail, but I have just seen this and want to let you know that there is severe and profound disagreement with what you say and the changes you want to make. Smeat75 (talk) 07:15, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Luke's "all the world"

The lead has this sentence: " the Gospel of Luke connects the birth of Jesus to a census of the entire Roman world in which individuals had to return to the birthplace of their ancestors."

This is unsourced, and I think it's wrong: in English, when we say "all the world" we mean all the world, but in other languages this phrase simply means "everyone" - French, "tout le monde", modern Arabic "kul il-alam". Luke was, of course, written in Greek, and I have no idea what the Greek phrase is or was, but if it's similar than Luke would have had no intention of implying that the entire Roman world was caught up in the census. PiCo (talk) 00:13, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Exactement. Now how do you exactly in Arabic? History2007 (talk) 15:54, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

"Bizabt" (phonetic spelling of Egyptian dialect). There must be a source somewhere for this - surely one of the mainstream commentaries on Luke would note it?PiCo (talk) 21:53, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Bizabt. History2007 (talk) 21:45, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

The Greek used is "πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην", which actually means "the whole of the inhabited earth", [[1]]. It is translated as " Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth" by the New American Standard Bible. It has long been felt that "the whole of the inhabited earth" cannot be meant literally, and that Luke is referring to an empire-wide census of the Roman world. This is the standard interpretation, see for instance Scofield Reference Bible 1917:[[2]] "1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

[1] world

Gr. "oikoumene"= "inhabited earth." This passage is noteworthy as defining the usual N.T. use of oikoumene as the sphere of Roman rule at its greatest extent, that is, of the great Gentile world-monarchies Dan 2:7. That part of the earth is therefore peculiarly the sphere of prophecy." I have never seen anyone suggest before that it just means "everybody", I think this is quite wrong and the article is correct to say "the Gospel of Luke connects the birth of Jesus to a census of the entire Roman world in which individuals had to return to the birthplace of their ancestors."Smeat75 (talk) 02:05, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Lede section

The writing in the lede section is horrible and unencyclopedic. I came here to find out when scholars believe the census took place (the time of year), and I couldn't make heads or tales out of the second paragraph.

Text from lead section, 27 December 2012, with added comments in bold by User:Scrapbkn

In Christianity, the Gospel of Luke connects the birth of Jesus to a census of the entire Roman world in which individuals had to return to the birthplace of their ancestors. It describes how Jesus' parents, Joseph and Mary, travel from their home in Nazareth, in Galilee, to Bethlehem, where Jesus is born. This explains how Jesus, a Galilean, could have been born in Bethlehem in Judea, the city of King David. There is no evidence of the Romans requiring people to return to their ancestral homes for a census and there is skepticism among scholars that such a custom existed or would have been practicable. (Separate paragraph for readability.)

The Gospel of Matthew, which has a different birth narrative, describes Jesus' birth taking place during the life of Herod the Great, who died ten years earlier, in the spring of 4 BC. Biblical scholars, troubled by the apparent contradiction in Scripture, have traditionally sought to harmonise these accounts, while most critical scholars regard this as an error by the author of the Gospel of Luke.

However, as is evident from this article's What article? The Wikipedia article? lack of reference then add it to the article to Sir William Ramsay's 19th Century ground-breaking, on-site exploration of the historical and physical evidence in situ, which so confounded his previous colleagues in Germany, the author (Who? Once again, is this referring to the Wikipedia article?) prefers to cite those who seem to be unable to believe that events happened as Luke, the physician and careful observer and chronicler of events, recorded them. Ramsay was the first "arm-chair" critic to actually go and see the locations mentioned in the New Testament, with the avowed aim to find evidence once and for all that would prove the disbelieving critics of Europe correct, and those who believed the Bible to be true, to be fools. Nor was he ignorant of the Quirinius problem. A search of the Web for articles related to Ramsay's analysis of the Quirinius problem demonstrates this fact. (What? Why is this statement in an article that is supposed to be encyclopedic? Present sources to support your statement, rather than stating an ambiguous "a search of the Web". Poor scholarship.) Ramsay wrote four books dealing with the historicity of Luke's writing. The reference is incomplete; poor scholarship. Yet, most of the author's article is given over mostly to the views and opinions of those who maintain that there is a historical conflict between what Luke wrote (in the matter of the Census) and what is believed to be true by modern scholars. This is not a balanced or honest presentation of the issue nor of the actual evidence. At the same time, to be fair, no less a conservative scholar than F.F. Bruce also had a problem with Ramsay's explanation. But, by offering a possible alternate translation of a single Greek word in Luke 2:2 , Bruce offers a solution to the Quirinius problem, as well as his criticism of Ramsay. It should be noted especially, that many of the objections to Luke's record have more to do with what other historians of the time did NOT write, than with what Luke DID write! (Oh dear heaven, this whole section needs to be removed. Since when do scholars (or those pretending to be) write with exclamation marks? I gave that up in high school.

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References

Really, this needs to be completely re-written. The lede is not supposed to be a critique of the article - it is supposed to present a concise summary of said article. I don't know anything about the subject, so I can't really fix this, but someone really needs to take it in hand. Scrapbkn (talk) 18:41, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Agree with most of your points. The problem is finding someone who will cut the bad stuff out of the article and whip it into shape in a fair and neutral manner. The non-Christians are so intent on ensuring that "everyone" knows that the Bible is crap (and therefore want to make sure the lede says so) and the Christians are intent on ensuring that the Wiki narrative stays absolutely faithful to the Biblical account. So random editors come in, add and subtract as they see fit and you are left with what we have and no one with an interest in really improving the page has time to follow it through. IMO, this is true with many Bible pages on Wikipedia where the (predominantly) secular editors war against the Biblical ones and concensus is hard to gain without ticking off one party or the other.

That being said, you seem to have both a (passing) interest in the subject as well as knowledge in writing techniques and methods - you don't need to know the subject in depth to be able to honestly read through it, correct obvious mistakes, and cut out the chaff. Think about it. Yours - Ckruschke (talk) 20:38, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Christianthinktank.com content is non-free

A big chunk of text from christianthinktank.com/quirinius was pasted into the Gospel of Luke section, and removed by Dougweller in the next edit (31 January).

Material from Christianthinktank.com is non-free, due to a "prayerware clause"; the 3rd condition of christianthinktank.com/prayware (linked from the site's FAQ). --83.255.57.204 (talk) 11:52, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. That was a one-off edit by that IP and it's interesting to find out where it came from. Dougweller (talk) 18:06, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Including W.M. Ramsay's "Was Christ Born in Bethlehem?" as source

Hello everyone!

I've recently tried to add a 5-point summary of arguments presented in W.M.Ramsay's Was Christ Born in Bethlehem?, chapter 5 (see this revision), that would “mirror” the similar one about Emil Schürer, but it's been rolled back a few times.

Dougweller motivated the last removal in the notes to the 16:04, 13 October 2014‎ revision referring to the wp:undue policy and requested to discuss it in the talk page.

By itself, I think that the source is at least worth mentioning, it would contribute to complete the picture of arguments and relevant sources included in the article (judging from what I can find, W.M.Ramsay was a somewhat notable New Testament scholar and archeologist, the work cited is fully accessible and verifiable online and it deals particularly with the Census of Quirinius. It isn’t really recent (1898) but that’s not older than other sources used and it has been recently reprinted).

However, if giving this source its own separate 5-point summary (like I was doing) lends an undue weight to minoritarian theories then we could use it in a different way.

I propose that instead of making a separate summary, we simply use it to integrate the already existing “various suggestion” bullet point list with a short mention:

The new point in "their various suggestion" could be:

• There was a first general census that included Herod’s kingdom and that he held on basis of tribal descent during a previous mandate of Quirinius’. [new source]

What do you think? Bardoligneo (talk) 15:43, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Missed this and am reverting it. Wikipedia can't state this as fact - and if it were anything close to a consensus opinion there would be plenty of modern academic sources. Recent reprint doesn't make it any better. A huge amount of 19th century material has been reprinted recently due to technological reverting. Dougweller (talk) 18:59, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

And in any case, the link you gave is just repeating what Luke says, not adding anything new to the claim so far as I can tell. Dougweller (talk) 19:05, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Biased

This article has plenty of evidence against the chronology of the nativity story, but little evidence for it. what little evidence there is is quickly disproved.