A few years ago I watched the film Gravity when it came out. The effects were spectacular, the photography breathtaking, the characterisations engaging, and the story held one’s attention throughout. It even raised some profound (religious?) questions about life, death and purpose. And yet, when I left the cinema, I could not decide whether I had enjoyed the film or not. For some reason, I felt detached and rather distracted from it, but I wasn’t sure why. Then I read the comments of some astronauts on how realistic a portrayal it was of life in space—and I realised what was distracting me.
As great a story as it was, was it credible? There were a number of things about it which kept nagging at me as implausible, and this distracted from engaging with the story. (If you want to know, they were to do with whether different satellites were in synchronous orbit, whether you can see something clearly from a hundred miles away, and whether you could get there just by pointing and shooting.) The following year I went to see Interstellar and was not bothered in the same way—the film has been commended for getting the science right.
I think this is how a lot of people feel about the Christmas stories. They might be profound, they might be of great cultural significance, they might even point to religious truth—but are they really plausible? (Interestingly, this was one of the questions three days ago in my monthly Premier radio Bible questions phone-in.)
Perhaps the greatest culprit in raising this question is Luke’s comment about the timing of Jesus’ birth. He appears to claim that Jesus was born in Bethlehem because Joseph had to travel there to take part in the census, which was taken during the time when Quirinius was governor of the Roman province of Syria, since this was his ancestral home.
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.
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. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. (Luke 2.1–5)
There are a considerable number of significant objections to this account; in scholarship there has been a long debate about this, and Howard Marshall (in his NIGTC commentary on Luke, p 99) decides that it is ‘inconclusive’. The objections are as follows:
- When Augustus issued this degree, Judea was not part of the Roman province, but was a client kingdom ruled by Herod the Great. It would therefore not have been part of any Roman census.
- Quirinius was governor of Syria from 6 to 12 AD, and not during the reign of Herod, who died in 4 BC, where both Luke and Matthew date the birth. The governor of Syria then was either C. Sentius Saturninus (9–6 BC) or possibly Quinctilius Varus (6–4 BC).
- There is no record of Romans requiring people to return to their ancestral home; people were registered where they lived, not where their ancestors came from.
- There would have been no need to take Mary with him; registration was by the male head of the house only.
This has led some sceptical commentators to conclude that Luke is flatly contradicting Matthew, and demonstrates that neither record is historically reliable.
There is no way to rescue the Gospels of Matthew and Luke from contradicting each other on this one point of historical fact. The contradiction is plain and irrefutable, and stands as proof of the fallibility of the Bible, as well as the falsehood of at least one of the two New Testament accounts of the birth of Jesus.
But there are some things to say immediately in response to this. First, Luke is not contradicting Matthew; they both agree that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. In fact, considering that they tell very different stories, presumably drawing from very different sources (Matthew’s account focusses on the men, Luke’s on the women), the number of points of factual agreement are quite remarkable.
| Jesus was born in Bethlehem | Matt 2:1 | Luke 2:2 |
| In time of Herod (d. 4 BC) | Matt 2:1 | Luke 1:5 |
| Mother: Mary | Matt 1:18 | Luke 1:26 |
| Father: Joseph (named the child) | Matt 1:18 | Luke 1:26 |
| But not the biological father | Matt 1:16, 20, 22 | Luke 1:34; 3:23 |
| Brought up in Nazareth in Galilee | Matt 2:22-23 | Luke 2:39 |
| From the line of David | Matt 1:1 | Luke 1:32 |
Secondly, as Marshall p 102 points out, women were quite often involved in taking of the census. He also comments that ‘it must be presumed that Joseph had some property in Bethlehem.’ In fact, Stephen Carlson has argued that Bethlehem was Joseph’s family home, not simply his ancestral home, and that he had come to Nazareth to be betrothed to Mary, and was bringing her back to the (initial) marital home in Bethlehem. Interestingly, this idea concurs exactly with Matthew’s account, which only mentions Bethlehem, and makes no mention of the journey to and from Nazareth.
Thirdly, it is perfectly possible that Herod ordered a local census to be taken, or that the Romans decided to intervene directly into matters of taxation. It has been argued that if this were the case, Josephus would surely have mentioned it, but this is an argument from silence. We simply do not have a complete historical record for the period.
But the significant problem remaining is that of the date of the census and the apparent impossibility of reconciling Herod’s reign and the period that Quirinius was governor of Syria. Josephus tells us (in Antiquities 17.355 & 18.1–2) that Quirinius took a census of Syria and Judea in 6/7 AD, in part as a way of consolidating Roman rule over Judea after Herod the Great’s son Archelaus was deposed and exiled. (Josephus argues that this led to the formation of the Zealot party, and was the incipient cause of the Jewish War 60 years later; taxation is a way of confirming the subjugation of a nation to its imperial rulers, hence the power of the question in Matt 22.17.) Luke appears to refer to this as ‘the’ census in Acts 5.37.
There are two main traditional arguments deployed in defence of Luke’s accuracy.
a. There are three inscriptions which are often cited as suggesting that Quirinius was governor of Syria for two distinct periods: the Lapis Tiburtinus; the Lapis Venetus; and the Antioch Stones. You can read a transcript of all three here. William Ramsay was the first to put this interpretation on them in 1912, and you will find them cited often on apologetics websites. But I agree with the sceptical commentator who has collated them: they don’t really demonstrate any such thing. We know who the governors of Syria were at the time, and there is no known mechanism under Roman government by which Quirinius could really be described in these terms at the right time.
b. Could Luke 2.2 be translated as ‘this was the census before Quirinius was governor…’? As Steve Walton helpfully highlights in the previous discussion of this issue, this is the position taken by Tom Wright in Who was Jesus? (pp 98-99):
In the Greek of the time, as the standard major Greek lexicons point out, the word protos came sometimes to be used to mean ‘before’, when followed (as this is) by the genitive case. A good example is in John 1.15, where John the Baptist says of Jesus “he was before me”, with the Greek being again protos followed by the genitive of “me”.[18] I suggest, therefore, that actually the most natural reading of the verse is: “This census took place before the time when Quirinius was governor of Syria.”…
My guess is that Luke knew a tradition in which Jesus was born during some sort of census, and that Luke knew as well as we do that it couldn’t have been the one conducted under Quirinius, because by then Jesus was about ten years old. That is why he wrote that the census was the one before that conducted by Quirinius.
(In the comments on that post there is also a fascinating discussion about the reliability of Luke compared with Josephus.)
Other commentators argue that the grammar does not really allow for this, and it would suggest that Luke assumed his readers knew about another census, for which we have no other historical evidence—which Wright concedes.
But the debate does not stop there. We need to remember that the registration for a census, in the context of the first century, was a complex and protracted thing. Around the same time as Jesus’ birth in 6 BC, a census commenced in Gaul that took 40 years to complete. We know from Augustus himself (Res Gestae 2.8) that a census took place around the Empire somewhere around 10–9 BC, and that it was intended to repeat this every 14 years.
It is also worth noting that in comparing Luke with Josephus, we are not comparing a ‘religious’ text with a ‘historical’ one. On the one hand, Josephus had a clear motivation in writing his works, an apologetic for the antiquity and reasonableness of his native Jewish people. On the other, Luke appears to have been careful to observe the conventions of historiography of his day. (One of the oddest things about the atheist/sceptical arguments is the way that Josephus is taken as infallible.) In biblical scholarship over the last 200 years, Luke has often been criticised for being unhistorical—only for subsequent archaeology to confirm the accuracy of his record, in particular in relation to the names and titles of Roman officials.
• It was thought Luke was in error in mentioning ‘Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene’ (Luke 3.1) as there was no record of such a person—until an inscription was found near Damascus which speaks of “Freedman of Lysanias the tetrarch” dated to the right period.
• In Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas go to ‘Iconium in Phrygia’, for which there was no archaeological evidence—until a monument was found in 1910 by Ramsay which confirmed this was the case.
• In Acts 17, the leaders of Thessalonica are called ‘politarchs’. It was thought that Luke had made this term up, until it was confirmed in inscription—19 in all, one of which can be seen in the museum in the modern city (my photo of it at left; you can see the word POLITARXOU across the middle).
• Luke’s references to ‘proconsul Sergius Paulus’ in Acts 13.7 and ‘Gallio was proconsul of Achaia’ in Acts 18.12 were both thought to be mistaken until confirmed by inscriptional evidence which agreed with Luke’s use of titles. And the dating of the year in which Gallio was proconsul, 51/52, in fact now forms a major fixed point in confirming the chronology of Paul’s life and writings.
(This is not to say that there are no issues about the historicity of Luke-Acts. But it is perhaps worth noting that all the above arguments against Luke’s accuracy have been arguments from silence, and that not a single of the discoveries has actually proved Luke to be mistaken.)
On the other hand, we know from his two major works that Josephus was capable of changing his data to support his arguments. John Rhoads notes, in a recent article:
When reporting Archelaus’s symbolic dream, he reported that Archelaus saw 9 ears of corn representing 9 years of rule in J.W. 2.112–13 but 10 ears of corn representing 10 years of rule in Ant. 17.345–47. So, in one of these accounts, he changed the number of ears of corn and the number of years of rule from how they appeared in his source in order to match his reconstruction of events. So, indeed, it is quite possible that Josephus similarly changed the date for the census to match his reasonably reconstructed chronology of events.
As a result of this, and other analysis of Josephus’ account, Rhoads argues that of the two historical accounts, Luke’s is the more accurate, and Josephus is mistaken. He suggests that Quirinius did initiate the census during the reign of Herod; the possibility then arises that it was only completed when he had become governor (Legate) of Syria some years later.
Intriguingly, this ties in well with a quite separate argument about Luke’s language here. Marshall notes that ‘the form of the sentence is in any case odd’ (p 104); why say something was ‘first’ when there is nothing to compare it with? Stephen Carlson has looked even more closely, and also noted that the verb egeneto also seems strange; why suggest the census ‘became’ something, rather than that it simply ‘was’? Carlson suggests that prote, rather than ‘first’ numerically, should be read as ‘of most importance’—much as we might say ‘so-and-so is Arsenal’s Number One player.’ This would then give the translation as:
This registration became most prominent when Quirinius was governing Syria.
or
This [decree to get registered] became the/a most important registration when Quirinius was governing Syria.
In the end, the mystery of the conflict between Luke and Josephus remains unsolved and (as Marshall puts it) ‘can hardly be solved without the discovery of fresh evidence.’ But these arguments at least offer a plausible explanation—and when considering questions of history, proof is rarely possible, but plausibility is an important measure. It certainly offers no grounds to write off Luke’s account, think it unhistorical or a fabrication, or see it as in conflict with Matthew.
So, unlike my experience of watching Gravity, as we read the nativity accounts we can put our anxieties to rest—and can enjoy and engage in the narrative as we have it in Luke. And what is the point of mentioning Augustus, Quirinius and Herod—or for that matter Lysanias, Iconium, politarchs, Sergius Paulus, Gallio and all the others? Luke is making a very specific point, as we can see in the contrast between Luke 1.5 which locates the story in the local region and Luke 2.1, which locates it within the Roman world—that this is not just a story about the Jews for the Jews, but in fact will touch and shake the whole world, including its rulers. And because of that, you and I are reading the story today.
(Previously published in 2018.)
In their book ‘Evidence for the Bible,’ C. Anderson and B. Edwards argue, from an inscription discovered in Antioch, that Quirinius was Chief Magistrate of Syria circa 8BC. However this was an honorary position and the day to day duties were carried out by his deputy, Sentius Saturninus. This was because Quirinius was in Syria leading the army there. He became Governor in his own right in 5AD and oversaw a second census, hence Luke’s reference to the first census.
Given that Luke is recognised as a accurate recorder of history might this be a valid explanation?
Yes–that is very interesting, thanks.
As always, we are dealing at a great distance with details that are hard to be sure of. Odd then, that we so easily dismiss Luke’s evidence!
Who’s ‘we’? Secular folk and liberal theologians, clearly, but I’ve learnt that if you trsut scripture and keep thinking (and praying and reading) then often the inconsistences resolve. This teaches me that, where I hven’t resolved, I haven’t thought and prayed and read enough. For instance, in the clash between the synoptics and John over whether the Last Supper is a Passover meal or the night before, I learnt that two Jewish factions held views on when Passover should be celebrated that differed by 24 hours. If the authorities who ran the Temple got their scriptures wrong then what was Jesus going to do?
More generally, the little book Alleged discrepancies of the Bible by John Haley resolves a lot of issues that scoffers raise.
I must say I’d wondered if ‘Quirinius’ was misrendered as ‘Quintilius’ in a very early copy of Luke’s gospel and that Luke meant Quintilius Varus – who crucified 2000 Jewish militants to restore order following the factional fighting after Herod ‘the Great’ died (Josephus, Antiquities 17.10). This man met a spectacular and gruesome end in the Teutoburg Forest around the time Jesus would have had his bar mitzvah, when the three legions he commanded were ambushed and destroyed by his Germanic turncoat number two, Armin.
The grim fate of Varus (“give me back my legions”) is well described by Peter Wells in.
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Battle_that_Stopped_Rome.html?id=anwMNSq4azgC&redir_esc=y
Christmas joy to all Old Cranmerians.
A Happy Christmas to you too (and thank you for that late hint at Cranmer about who you are).
I confess to something of an obsession with this battle. It is a story of defeat of a great empire by a far smaller group assembled by a man with a vision of freedom for his people, and it is a tale of betrayal leading to a battle in stormy weather, with danger hidden in the woods. These are powerful themes. My most recent related purchase was Joanne Ball’s biography of Varus, published 16 months ago. She discusses the motivations for writing of the Roman historians who described the battle and warns where they might consequently give a distorted picture. I also hadn’t realised that Mommsen correctly identified the battle site in 1885, a hundred years before Tony Clunn got going with his metal detector:
https://tpsalomonreinach.mom.fr/Reinach/MOM_TP_071591/MOM_TP_071591_0005/PDF/MOM_TP_071591_0005.pdf
“Redde legiones, Quintili Vare!”
The Battle of Teutoburgerwald was one of permanent historical significance because it represented the defeat of Roman expansionism into Germania. Had Germania been colonised and Romanised, the future of Europe (and the world) would have been completely different.
I used to teach about this when I taught Latin, including a famous passage describing the revenge mission by the Romans some years later when they discovered the skulls of the massaced legions.
That’s Tacitus, Annals 1.61.
The defeat was only temporary, for the reprisal, in AD15/16, ended all organised resistance to Rome between the Rhine and the Elbe, but Emperor Tiberius ordered the legions back to the Rhine and the plan to annexe the area was dropped. Why he did so is unclear; either Tiberius (who had campaigned in the area) decided it was too poor to be worth it, or (hints Tacitus) he was growing jealous of Germanicus’ success.
James,
In the last 24 hours this barbarian government has axed all funding for Latin in State schools.
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/schools-face-significant-disruption-as-government-culls-latin-scheme/
It’ll be Freezing This Christmas…
I remember reading that (1) Varus’s severed head was delivered to Rome, and (2) Augustus banged his head against the doorpost and cried “Give me back my legions!” I wondered whose head was meant…
I enjoyed Gravity, although I had been expecting a 90-minute discourse on Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
I thought the film lacked weight …
You should stick to mass, Jack.
Now that has gravitas, James.
At this time of year my object is to remain at perfect rest. However, on December 23rd I expect to be acted upon by an external force. I have written a poem about this. It’s called the Square In-Law Verse.
My wife thinks I’m giving her jewels for Christmas.
But I really said “joules”.
Or maybe “duels”.
This exchange is making me tensor and tensor.
‘I don’t believe it!’ – Vector Meldrew
Very scalarly …
Tres Lourdes?
Happy Christmas, Jack.
Tell yer fatty ma to get off the scales!
Happy Christmas, James.
Joyeux Noël, Anton.
Joyeux ABCDEFGHIJK MNOPQRSTUVWXYZ, Frere Jacques.
You been on the ait de poule early, Jacobus?
Clue, Jack: what letter is missing?
Merci, Antoine, t’as bien compris.
Talking of the letter ‘L’, and straying back to the previous topic:
Question: What’s the difference between L. Ron Hubbard and Ayn Rand?
Answer: One author is delusional and whose fans follow blindly like a religion … and … the other is L. Ron Hubbard.
‘The First No L’ is on the radio as I write!
Jack, you are John Galt and I claim my £5.
Hubbard was not delusional, I agree. In the 1950s he was overheard speculating about what it might be like to invent your own religion for your own ends.
The best book on the religion he founded is the hostile biography of him Bare Faced Messiah> by Russell Miller. When it came out, years ago, I remember Miller using understatement to good effect in a TV interview, along the lines “I think he was a charlatan, they think he was the greatest man ever to walk the earth. Naturally there is some disagreement.”
James and Anton,
Did you both overlook HJ’s ‘typo’ here: ait de poule?
No, I saw that, Jack. I wondered why you didn’t write ‘ait de pou e’.
Well, thinking of the other thread on annihilationism, I wish you a Joyeux No ‘ell!
To accompany it, is there an ‘f’ in sprouts, Jack?
That’s too subtle for HJ, Anton!
In which case I think you’ve twigged it!
It’s a good summary of the issues.
Re ‘protos mou’ John should never be taken as typical in either grammar or diction, nor should his peculiarities be cited in dictionaries as implying such (they can in fact easily be seen to be peculiarities; the very opposite of the typical). There is usually something else going on. One example is that he speaks of sheepfolds having a thura. But within his closed system thura is the word he would use here, regardless of normal usage or reference to the external world. Here we have another example with ‘protos mou’. He gets the double meaning he wants (‘my Protos’).
There are a few other lines that you don’t mention which might be worth pursuing. I’m not a classicist or language scholar so it is beyond my competence level.
The WIKI (I know…) on the Census of Quirinius (aka Cyrenius) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census_of_Quirinius#:~:text=Another%20Christian%20apologist%2C%20Tertullian%20(c,Syria%20from%209%E2%80%937%20BCE.) Mentions comments by Justin Martyr that the census records were still extant.
More interesting are Tertullian’s comments about a census conducted by Sentius Satirinus who was active of Syria from 9-7 BCE. Satirinus’ previous job was that of governor of Africa.
Whilst nothing is conclusive, as you argue Luke was much closer to the events than modern scholars and might, just ,know what he was talking about…
I see this article was first published in 2018. Perhaps it should be updated to reflect a book published a couple of years ago by a Basel (?) NT scholar, referenced by Peter Williams in a recent Tyndale House youtube programme. I don’t recall the scholar’s name, but according to Peter, she argued that the verb hegeomai has a broader range of meaning than ‘to be governor’and was used of other officials at that time in Syria, including Quirinius. Perhaps Luke mentions him because he was the best known figure from that area – perhaps as we would say ‘in 1916 when Winston Churchill was in the Government”, though he wasn’t Prime Minister then.
The scholar is Sabine Huebner, Professor of Ancient History at Basel. She suggests Quirinius could have been financial procurator then abd the verb is flexible enough to embrace this possibility. She admits we don’t know enough about Quitinius’s earler career, but Roman politicians typically went through the cursus honorum in their careers,
I don’t profess to be a scholar or proficient in Greek in any way, but it is a fact that the first Christians were all Jews and spoke and thought in Hebrew. When we only have their Greek texts to study, what value is there in asking what they would have said if they were writing Hebrew or Aramaic? Maybe the subtle nuances and meanings attached to the Greek words would then be understood in a different way? That may not help with the details of historical events but might illuminate the thought processes of the gospel writers.
Thanks. ‘it is a fact that the first Christians were all Jews and spoke and thought in Hebrew’ I don’t think that is a fact. All would have been multilingual, especially in the north, in ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’, and of course many Jews lived in the diaspora and read the OT in Greek.
Actually I think there is more evidence for it than mainstream scholarship holds. The Pharisees started well as a back-to-our-roots movement after the Maccabean wars against a Helleniser; they were Hebraisers and it caught on more than is generally credited. This issue is somewhat above my pay grade, but the book “Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus” by David Bivin and Roy Blizzard makes the case in a way I find reasonably convincing. Bivin is a Jewish believer in Jesus resident in Israel.
In neither Hebrew nor Aramaic – in one of which Jesus spoke at the Last Supper – does the verb ‘is’ appear in the phrase (“This, my body, given for you…”). This is relevant to the Communion controversies. Russian is the same, I understand.
In Biblical Hebrew, there isn’t a verb like “to be”. It is to be understood in a “nominal sentence”, one with two (absolute) nouns/pronouns/noun phrases. What makes it a sentence which tells you something – the predicate – about the subject is that the subject is more ‘definite’ than the predicate. There are three levels of definiteness. The lowest would be something like “a body”. The next is when the noun is made more specific, e.g. “the body” or “my body”. The highest level of definiteness is found in personal pronouns and demonstrative pronouns.
Thus, in Hebrew (which does not have commas, by the way) “this” is more definite than “my body”. So “This my body” (or, indeed, “my body this”) is correctly translated as “This is my body”.
In Matthew’s account, Jesus says “Take, eat, this is my body”. The ‘this’ would seem to refer to what was being offered for eating.
Interesting, David.
Of course Scripture is written in Greek and (presumably) this is what God desired.
HJ is no philologist but understands the Greek verb estin can mean “is really” or “is figuratively.” So we have to consider wider Scriptural references and also that Our Lord is performing a miracle; and one which faith is necessary to understand and accept. Paul’s discussion of the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:23-30 reflects his belief that the Presence is real, not figurative. Paul’s discourse may antedate the earliest Gospels by as much as eight years. It is hardly likely, in view of that, that Matthew or Mark meant estin to be taken figuratively.
Furthermore, the Greek word for body used in John 6:52-58 is the Greek sarx, which means quite specifically and only “physical flesh.” The Aramaic word bisra, which Jesus may have used, is as close as you can get in Greek to this.
The very earliest Church belief is expressed by Ignatius of Antioch – writing in A.D. 110. Ignatius was taught by St John himself. He’s writes about “certain people” who were giving “heterodox opinions” that he deemed “contrary to the mind of God” – very strong language for the personal disciple of John.
Ignatius says:
Would Ignatius hold to a doctrine antithetical to what he had been taught him by St John?
Jesus literally meant for bread to become His body and wine His blood. It’s a miracle accepted by faith and one repeated as He commanded .
A miracle is something startling because you can see it. Transubstantiation would be startling because you CAN’T see it.
Are all miracles discernible to the senses?
No, that’s too restrictive. True, the standard definition is that a miracle is a discernible, Divine act in the world, outside, above, or beyond the natural order of things, and is accessible to the senses – we can see it, hear it, taste it, touch it, or smell it – or at least its effects. However, some Divine acts might not be discernible in this way. They would be discernible to the believer through faith.
Did anyone actually witness the greatest miracle – the Incarnation – when the virgin Mary conceived Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit? Was it discernible to anyone other than Mary? For all we ‘know’ it was a natural pregnancy. This miracle is revealed to us through the Gospels and through the witness of Mary and through the early Church. All orthodox Christians accept the Annunciation through the gift of faith.
It’s the same with the Eucharist. Our Lord changing bread and wine into His body and blood is not discernible to the senses. The effects of the change cannot be seen, heard, tasted, touched, or smelled. However, it is a miracle attested to by Scripture and by the witness of the Church. One either takes Christ at His word and, through faith, and accepts the testament of Scripture and the witness of the early Church, or one does not.
That isn’t the definition of a miracle, Jack. It’s the point of it.
By all means take Christ at his word in the physical sense. In that case he’s a door.
Anton, according to ‘Bible Hub’s’ Greek concordance the verb estin is used over 900 times in Scripture. From my reading, on most occasions it means “is really.” To understand whether it means “is really” or “is figuratively” when used at the Last Supper depends on context (the New Covenant sealed in blood) and other Scriptural references. Plus, the consistent and constant beliefs of the Church in the East and the West.
You cannot use a lexicon to work out whether a word is used ‘literally’ or metaphorically.
And that is really what I’ve suggested, Ian, and why it’s inappropriate to compare the Last Supper with John 10: 7–10. That’s why we consider His words in the light of 1 Corinthians 11:23-30 and John 6: 41-70. We also factor in the belief of the early Church.
Best, as Ignatius of Antioch says: “to avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils,” and accept what the Churches of the East and West have believed and taught for 2000 years rather than novel interpretations.
Here’s what the Orthodox Patriarch Dositheus of Jerusalem said in 1672:
What do Jesus’ words mean? The Catholic answer is that the bread and wine are transformed miraculously, during the rite of Communion, into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, prior to ingestion. God supposedly does this transformation on demand by an ordained Catholic priest (only). The procedure is a key part of the sacramental system by which the ‘laity’ are dependent on the ordained clergy to administer the sacraments recognised by Rome (even though all Christians are priests according to Revelation 1:6, 1 Peter 2:9). That is what gives the debate about transubstantiation its charge.
The Catholic church calls the asserted change ‘transubstantiation,’ by which it means that the ‘substance’ of the bread and the wine has changed, although the ‘accidents’ of its appearance (its physics and biochemistry) have not. Substance and accident are ideas from Greek philosophy that can be illustrated by example: a pen is a writing implement which conveys ink to a nib that touches paper and puts the ink onto it; that is the ‘substance’ of what a pen is. Its brand, its colour, its length are ‘accidents’ of any particular pen. But notice that the word ‘pen’ is attached to the substance of the thing it is describing, not its accidents. If you change the accidents then it is still a pen, whereas if you change the substance then you must use a different noun to describe it. Regarding transubstantiation, the biochemistry and physics of the liquid – its smell, colour and taste – are not accidents, since something that did not smell or taste like human blood, or which was not red, would not be called blood. These are of its substance. The claim of transubstantiation is therefore incoherent. Smell and taste do not change during Catholic Mass. Nobody noticed anything different in those churches that went protestant at the Reformation. So I reject transubstantiation.
Did Jesus really eat and drink his own flesh and blood at the Last Supper, and tell other Jews to? They would have been appalled, for the Law of Moses forbade them from drinking blood (Leviticus 3:17). The Last Supper was before the Crucifixion when it is not in question that the Laws of Moses in the Pentateuch were in force. This is the knockdown argument that you have always failed to counter with any meaningful argument. In the two paragraphs above I’ve explained the philosophical error in the Vatican’s explanation and suggested the real motivation: to induce a dependence in the so-called laity upon the ordained priesthood, even though all believers are priests according (amusingly) to St Peter himself (1 Pe 2:9). By the time transubstantiation was formalised as a doctrine, Rome was primarily in the business of social order.
‘Did anyone actually witness the greatest miracle – the Incarnation – when the virgin Mary conceived Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit? … The effects of the change cannot be seen, heard, tasted, touched, or smelled. However, it is a miracle attested to by Scripture and by the witness of the Church.’
The difference, I think, is that the incarnation was not the changing of one physical thing into another physical thing. So one is invoking ‘faith’ to excuse the evidence of one’s eyes and tongue that nothing has happened. Does Jesus really encourage ‘blind’ faith?
In other contexts non-Catholics are just as guilty of this kind of dualisn. For example, many YECs believe that the Earth is 6000 years old. You can present any amount of evidence to the contrary – after all, there were pharaohs on the throne from at least 2800 BC – but they believe it ‘by faith’. It’s what the Bible says, they think, and who are we to question the Bible? In one case there’s no allowance for metaphorical language, in the other no allowance for the possibility that Heb. ‘beget’ might mean ‘be the ancestor of’ rather than the immediate parent.
At the other extreme, there was a recent comment concerning Genesis 1 that “a poem can be full of truth and meaning, doesnt mean you take it literally”. Christians think it possible for Genesis 1 to be factually untrue but spiritually true. In my opinion, this is logical nonsense and foreign to biblical thinking (where spiritual truth is always based on literal truth), and worse than belief in transubstantiation. Why not be honest enough to say that Genesis is not true? But Genesis 1 is part of the Bible, so if it can’t literally be true it must be a poem.
The debate over whether the Bible taught that the Sun revolved around the Earth was another instance.
It’s all about recognising how language is being used in a particular context, about the skill of reading.
Unbelievers – those outside the bubble – look on in amazement.
@ Anton
HJ has responded previously to the issue of Jesus commands to drink His blood.
Jesus came to fulfil the law, not break it.
Any Divine command that comes later modifies earlier Divine commands. Jesus declared all foods clean (Mk 7:19), so His command superseded the earlier command that certain foods be regarded as unclean (Lv 11:1-8). If Jesus commands us to drink His blood, His command supersedes any prior command concerning drinking blood.
Jesus tells us: “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body” (7:18-19).
More importantly, the Old Testament is very specific about why one was not to eat blood: “The life of every creature is the blood of it; therefore I have said to the people of Israel, You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood” (Lv 17:14, cf. Dt 12:23). The Israelites could not eat animal blood because it contained the animal’s life, but there is one Person whose life you must have in us, “Christ who is your life” (Col 3:4).
“The blood is the life,” the Torah taught the Jews, and the life of a creature belongs to God. Hence the Jews were to pour the blood out on the earth, because it was sacred. They were to seek their life, not from any creature, but from God himself. How fitting then that when Jesus comes we are commanded to drink His blood. His is the blood we must drink if we are to have life in us (Jn 6:53). It is the reality of which all other blood is an image. (Heb 9)
So far as the priesthood is concerned, the Jews also recognised the distinction between the priesthood of the faithful and a separate ministerial priesthood. Peter was quoting from Exodus 19:6, where God told the Israelites that if they kept His covenant they would be to Him “a royal priesthood and a holy nation.” There was a common priesthood of the Israelites, but God also appointed a ministerial priesthood from the sons of Aaron (Exod. 28:1). Rather than undermining the idea of a ministerial priesthood, Peter’s citation of Exodus actually supports it by invoking for the Church the same priestly concepts that applied to Israel.
“Transubstantiation” is best regarded as an apt description of the miraculous change of bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood. One doesn’t have to accept Aristotle’s metaphysics. The change is described as a “Sacred Mystery” by the Eastern Church. We don’t need to explain it – indeed, we cannot – “scientifically” or “philosophically.”
The term “transubstantiation” itself is not Aristotelian. The word is Latin rather than Greek, and it comes from perfectly common Latin roots: “trans,” which means across or beyond, and “substantia,” which means substance. Latin speaker of the time would naturally understand it to mean a change of one substance or reality into another.
Some history: The term transubstantiation had been around for centuries before Aquinas and his use of Aristotle. Its first recorded use was by Hildebert of Tours, in 1079. The term was regarded as an apt one for expressing what the Church had always believed, and it spread among theologians.
It appears and is endorsed in a letter of Pope Innocent III from 1202, and in 1215, the ecumenical council of Lateran IV taught that Christ’s “body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the appearances of bread and wine, the bread being transubstantiated into the body by the divine power and the wine into the blood.”
So the term was proposed before the major translation of Aristotle’s writings into Latin and before any integration of Aristotelian and Christian thought. This indicates that there’s no essential connection between the two. We do not find distinctly Aristotelian terms like prime matter, substantial form, or even accidents in the Church’s articulation of transubstantiation. When the Council of Trent met, it issued the following definition:
There’s nothing distinctly Aristotelian in that. The Council even avoids the Aristotelian term accidents and uses the term species – which means appearances – instead. The Council thus articulated the faith of the Church without endorsing any particular philosophical school of thought.
Trent’s canon contains two infallible definitions: first, that the whole substance of bread and wine is changed into Christ’s body and blood so that bread and wine do not remain and, second, that this change is fittingly called transubstantiation. The term transubstantiation is not part of the deposit of faith – the change of bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood is.
We don’t need a a mini-course in Aristotelianism to explain transubstantiation. All we have to say is, “The bread and wine become Jesus. After the consecration, bread and wine aren’t there anymore. Jesus is present under the appearances of bread and wine.”
It’s not complicated!
Great, Jack, you say it’s not complicated and then put up – on December 25th – by far the longest post yet on the subject. Happy Christmas!
Jesus declared all foods clean but that did not free him or other Jews from obeying his Father’s commands to Jews prior to the Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension.
Aquinas said that if atomism held and matter was not indefinitely divisible then his arguments for transubstantiation failed (Summa Theologiae, III, Q.75). Today we know atomism is correct. This does not wreck transubstantiaton but it does mean that anybody who quotes Aquinas in suppport of transubstantiation is off the pace.
Regarding other facets of the debate, let Ian’s readers decide. I agree that there is something supernatural about Holy Communion (1 Cor 11), but it isn’t in the elements.
Anton
Jesus met the intent of the law – He didn’t follow it for the sake of following it!
According to Jewish law, if a person touched someone who was leprous, they would become unclean, yet Jesus did so. Was He unclean? Jesus ate with “sinners” and people of dubious reputation; He didn’t ritually wash His hands before eating; He healed on the sabbath; and, most significantly, He forgave people’s sins and bypassed the Temple sacrifices.
Jesus came to reveal the law and fulfil the law, not violate or abrogate it. HJ has explained why drinking the blood of an animal was prohibited under the Old Covenant – it was believed to contain the life force. It was set aside as a sin offering, e.g., in the Yom Kippur sacrifices discussed in Leviticus 16. If one consumed such blood, he was either saying, in effect, that he was not in need of atonement and/or that he was seeking the attributes of the animal, i.e., being drawn downward to the level of a beast in seeking, say, the strength of a bull.
In fulfilling all Old Testament sacrifices, including the Passover sacrifice in which lambs were not only offered but eaten, Jesus was then and now bidding us to eat His body and drink His blood that we might have eternal life, being divinized (2 Pet. 1:4) and raised upward to a higher life in Him.
Why wouldn’t Christ do this whilst alive? And, given His reasons and the significance of the act, how would this be a violation of the Mosaic Law?
Catholic teaching on the Eucharist is not reliant on Aquinas. This belief goes back to the very first Christians. It was only challenged as late as the mid-10th century. That’s why words had to be found to express the faith. The Orthodox Church hold the very same belief but are not in favour of Latin scholasticism.
And the law was not given as an obedience test but for good if varied reasons.
Can you specify chapter and verse of a law from Exodus 20 (Sinai) to Deuteronomy that Jesus violated during his time on earth? Leviticus 5 speaks about a man who becomes aware he is guilty by touching uncleanness; Jesus knew he was not guilty. (Nevertheless in Matt 8:4 he told the man to keep it quiet because he didn’t want to be accused – falsely but plausibly – of breaking the Law by the Pharisees.) Healing on the Sabbath is not the same as working on the Sabbath. And what do you mean by saying he ‘bypassed’ the Temple sacrifices?
As for the alleged continuity of belief of your view by the early church, please see
https://blog.tms.edu/did-the-early-church-teach-transubstantiation
@ Anton
I note you failed to address the issue of the Mosaic Law regarding blood.
So far as the early Church and the sources you cite, let me respond to just one for now.
In Book I, chapter six of his Paedagogus, St Clement affirms that the Eucharist is both symbolic and the Real Presence, i.e., the body and blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ – it’s not either/or!
First, he discusses its symbolic value:
Then, in the same chapter, he affirms the Real Presence:
If the Eucharist were purely a symbol, it wouldn’t be an “amazing mystery.” The Real Presence is further affirmed by St Clement’s assertion that we hide Christ within us in receiving the Eucharist, “enshrining the Saviour in our souls.” This can’t happen if the Eucharist were merely bread and wine and thus only a symbol of His body and blood.
This article answers all the other points made in the one you linked to by Nathan Busenitz:
https://catholicconvert.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Critque-of-Webster-on-the-Eucharist.pdf
I don’t consider that your response about blood has any force before the crucifixion. Let readers decide for themselves.
You have failed, on request, to give chapter and verse of any written Law of Moses – from Sinai (Exodus 20) to the end of Deuteronomy – which Jesus broke.
Anton, as HJ noted, Jesus changed the understanding of the Law and fulfilled it.
Jesus declared all foods clean. (Mark 7:14-19). One has to note the conclusion made here by Mark: “In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.” Jesus was not simply rejecting the traditions of the elders in regards to hand washing, He was rejecting the biblical teaching of uncleanliness. This is clearly an example of Jesus changing the understanding of the Old Testament law. This forbids eating certain foods. Jesus rejects these laws, declaring all foods clean. Did this make Jesus a lawbreaker? No. However, He re-defines the definition of what makes a person unclean or defiled.
He did, but when? He never said to the disciples, “Just believe in me and you can forget all the gore at the Temple.” That became an option AFTER he shed his blood for them and us at the cross.
I can easily rephrase my argument about the pen (see above) without using the words substance (or accident). Then it is still applicable to the elements of Holy Communion.
Why do you think human beings, made in the image of God, are unable to perceive the elements as you say they really are in the Eucharist?
And do you believe that Christians are unable to see beyond mere appearances by grace with the mind of Christ? The Eucharist cannot be “explained” scientifically or metaphysically – it’s a mystery!
St Ignatius of Antioch wrote:
“Consider how contrary to the mind of God are the heterodox in regard to the grace of God which has come to us. They have no regard for charity, none for the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, none for the man in prison, the hungry or the thirsty. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead.”
(Letter to the Smyrnaeans)
The Last Supper brought the (future) sacrifice of Calvary into the present for the Apostles. It was a sacrificial meal pointing to the New Covenant in His body and blood. And Christ shared His gloried, resurrected body, blood, soul, and Divinity with those present. And it’s the same sacrificial mean celebrated today – the Last Supper and Cavalry is made present for us and Christ’s sacrifice re-presented.
St Cyprian wrote:
“The priest who imitates that which Christ did, truly takes the place of Christ, and offers there in the Church a true and perfect sacrifice to God the Father.”
(Letter to the Ephesians)
Anyone who argues against transubstantiation by hoping to show that the early ‘Fathers’ all took the Protestant line is on a hiding to nothing. The Cyprian quote illustrates how Roman Christian theology and practice were already departing from Scripture in the 3rd century. Cyprian believed in infant baptism/baptismal regeneration as well as transubstantiation, and indeed the two doctrines are allied. One becomes a Christian through a physical act:
HJ: ‘Jesus was then and now bidding us to eat His body and drink His blood that we might have eternal life.’
Of course faith is involved, faith in Jesus, but also faith in the power of the priest to turn the bread & wine into flesh & blood. I don’t know whether the Church teaches one needs to have been both baptised in the Catholic Church and to have eaten transubstantiated bread & wine to receive eternal life, but if you have done neither, it follows that you (Anton) will not have eternal life.
As I say in my Prophecy (which is wide-ranging),
Transubstantiation is literalism taken to the extreme, but it’s not because the official interpreters are fools. They don’t read “You are the temple of God” (I Cor 3:17) and teach that the human body has been transubstantiated into blocks of stone. They understand that would be pointless. It’s because the doctrine sets the ordained priests apart from the rest of the body and invests the hierarchy with spiritual power. They are mediators of God’s grace.
The result is ritualism and the form of religion rather than the substance (II Tim 3:5), tradition making the word of God void (Mk 7:13).
Steven
>>Anyone who argues against transubstantiation by hoping to show that the early ‘Fathers’ all took the Protestant line is on a hiding to nothing. The Cyprian quote illustrates how Roman Christian theology and practice were already departing from Scripture in the 3rd century.”<<
Well, we agree about your first sentence; not the second. Just when did the Church become corrupted?
The Church Fathers were writing about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist in the first century – see St Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of John, writing circa 80-110 A.D. At the time, there was no "Roman Christian theology" – just one catholic/universal church.
Out of interest, do you dismiss the First Council of Nicaea in AD 325, that enunciated the Nicene Creed in its original form and as modified by the First Council of Constantinople of 381, as the touchstone of orthodoxy on the doctrine of the Trinity. Or is this "Roman Christian theology"?
And do you believe that Christians are unable to see beyond mere appearances by grace with the mind of Christ?
You do, Jack, because you have agreed with me that transubstantiation (if it happens) is an invisible miracle.
So, do you reckon you can consistently tell which samples of bread and wine have been transubstantiated by a Catholic priest and which haven’t?
Way to misunderstand, Anton!
Ever heard the expression “seeing with the eyes of faith”?
We’re speaking of a vision that is spiritual, not physical. The change of substance of the Eucharist is invisible. The Real Presence has always been a spiritual doctrine, one that demands a movement from the eyes of the body to the eyes of faith.
Any ordained priest who says the essential words of consecration will transubstantiate the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood.
Hardly an eye of faith if it needs to be told what it’s looking at, is it?
John 20:29 …
Faith, Anton.
“My God, I believe in you and all that your Church teaches, because you have said it, and your word is true. Amen.”
Faith is the assent of the mind to what God has revealed. It requires supernatural Divine grace …. Faith is performed under the influence of the will, which requires its own assistance of grace to render a person ready to believe.
Yes, I note you don’t dispute the inference that, to receive eternal life, one has to eat bread from a Catholic priest and therefore that your interlocutors are not Christians. That is not what John has Jesus teaching in his gospel, and as you note, Ignatius was a disciple of John. You’re not defending Scripture, you’re defending Catholicism, a corruption of the gospel. Sadly, where they conflict, your loyalty is to the latter. But that just goes to illustrate the spiritual power that the priesthood exercises over those under it.
Part of your defence is to squeeze more significance out of Ignatius’s words than they will properly bear. For myself, I think the apostles’ teaching about the bread cannot be boiled down to representing it as merely symbolic. The believer in Jesus is to eat as if it were transubstantiated. Transubstantiated not by the ‘esssential words of consecration’ but as by faith. ‘Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. … Anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.’
If you really are interested, I have given my views on the Nicene Creed in my book and also several times on this website (use the search facility). I recognise no authority for Christian doctrine apart from Scripture, so that excludes the Creeds. The Creeds are statements of belief, and are true only so far as they accord with Scripture. They certainly should not be treated as things to be themselves believed in.
Unfortunately, Ignatius does show signs of sacerdotalism, so I would not dispute the suggestion that the seeds of corruption may be found even earlier than the 3rd century. He ends his letter to the Ephesians:
Steven
>> “I recognise no authority for Christian doctrine apart from Scripture, so that excludes the Creeds.”<<
What you actually mean is:
"I recognise no authority for Christian doctrine apart from my own interpretation, or the interpretation of theologians I agree with, of Scripture.”
No, that’s not what I mean, or I would have said it. But you have of course put the standard Catholic response to the Protestant insistence on Sola Scriptura. Catholicism then says that we need the Catholic priesthood – from the Pope downwards – to save us from the perceived subjectivism. But the whole point of Scripture is that it gives us a body of truth that alone has the imprimatur of the Holy Spirit of God. It stands apart. It judges us, we don’t judge it. Those who have been born again in the Spirit submit themselves to its authority.
This is so that our ‘faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. … [For] no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.’ (I Cor 2)
God gives his Holy Spirit to all who believe in the Lord Jesus, not just to priests, and therefore all, to the extent they submit to the Lord, are equipped to understand what his Word says.
There is always a risk with this – of subjectivism, of being misled by one’s own flesh and beliefs about what one would like to be true. That is one reason why Christ ordained that believers be linked to a fellowship of believers, that they might be open to mutual correction and upbuilding, again through the Spirit. Catholicism can’t live with the risk. The price of its laying down what Scripture means is that ‘the faithful’ believe what they are told to believe, even if they do not understand internally what they subscribe to as a matter of catechism and received doctrine.
To say that the process of arriving at what one understands to be the truth involves the process of interpretation is something of a modern platitude, is it not. The arriving at knowledge always involves personal seeking, discovering, interacting. Read philosopher Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge if this is alien to you.
Steven
None of those arguments support the doctrine of sola scriptura.
Catholics agree with Protestants that Scripture is a “standard of truth”- the preeminent one – but this doesn’t rule out the binding authority of authentic Apostolic Tradition and the Church. Scripture doesn’t teach that.
Catholics agree that Scripture is materially sufficient, i.e., every true doctrine can be found in the Bible, if only implicitly and indirectly by deduction. But no biblical passage teaches that Scripture is the formal authority or rule of faith in isolation from the Church and Tradition. Sola scriptura can’t even be deduced from implicit passages.
“Private interpretation” is Catholic code for “non-Catholic interpretation”. Well yes, your correspondents on this subthread aren’t Catholic. But I am calling you on this empty rhetorical trick.
Just as Jesus never added what was later called Talmud to Tanakh, so there is no call to add the Vatican’s interpretation to the New Testament.
Catholics agree that Scripture is materially sufficient, i.e., every true doctrine can be found in the Bible, if only implicitly and indirectly by deduction. But no biblical passage teaches that Scripture is the formal authority or rule of faith in isolation from the Church and Tradition.
We have the equivalent of this in the revisionism currently going on in the C of E and elsewhere. See, for example, this from Richard and Christopher Hays’ recent book:
Anton
But you demonstrate the Scripture is not clear – for example, in your support of Darby’s (heretical) interpretations concerning the “end times” and an anticipated physical reign of Christ on earth from Jerusalem.
The Catholic Church does not teach that Scripture is so clear that every person will be able to interpret it. That doesn’t mean we reject the Bible or add to it. The question, however, is who can authoritatively, definitively determine what that teaching is. It is not individual Christians – or separate sects of people – who possess the ability (or authority) to intuit the Bible’s meaning on salvation, but the magisterial authority of the Church.
It is this magisterial interpretive authority that has been exercised in ecumenical councils across Church history, from Nicaea and Chalcedon, which settled debates over Christ’s personhood and his relationship with God the Father; to the counter-Reformation Council of Trent, which rejected various Protestant misinterpretations of the Bible. It is this same magisterial interpretive authority that has over the centuries sought to unite and consolidate the various biblical interpretations and theological reflections of Church Fathers.
So, no, it is not a rhetorical trick.
Steven
The Catholic Church does not believe there are any “new and surprising truths,” to be discovered that will amount to a change in doctrine or teaching – in the case of Hay’s, for example, on same sex relationships). If anything the Hay’s demonstrate the need for an authoritative magisterium.
The Catholic Church teaches that the question in every instance is only: “What does this mean; what did the biblical author, inspired by, God, wish to convey and teach?” To ascertain this we believe the guidance of the Church is essential.
We believe the Church founded by Christ leads His followers to a deeper understanding of the truth over time. So, we read, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13), as men and women coming to a fuller comprehension of the teachings of Christ – not that “new truths” will emerge.
Doctrine doesn’t “evolve” into something different over time. One epoch cannot forbid same sex relationships and another endorse them. Truth does not fundamentally change. How it is presented can change. Reading second-century Church apologetics on the Trinity, for example, we see a less precise view than that posited by Augustine or Aquinas. More advanced views of later centuries comes from longer and deeper reflection on Christian mysteries and development of philosophical categories in which to understand them. Later views are not a change in doctrine, but the way doctrine is presented. Doctrine cannot change; but it can develop.
You are making idealistic declarations that bear no relation to reality. The Reformation happened because the RCC had lost its way and was practising and teaching things inconsistent with true Christianity. To name the worst: worship of Mary (to add a fourth deity to the three co-eternal gods of the Roman creed), indulgences (still offered today), the idea that you can earn your salvation, sacerdotalism (not even the synagogues, as far as I know, had officiating priests – sacerdotalism was imported from paganism), the idea of the Mass (re-enacting Christ’s sacrifice on an altar), transubstantiation (as discussed), infant baptism (about which the Reformers equivocated), canonisation of miracle-working ‘saints’, the idea that was Peter was head of the Gentile Church and every Pope stands in his shoes, holding the keys of heaven, and the infallibility of the Pope when he speaks ex cathedra. These things are not examples of Christ leading his followers to a deeper understanding of the truth over time, and some are downright heretical. Like the Hays’ misguided teaching, they demonstrate, yes, the need for ‘an authoritative magisterium’, one that is to be found only in Scripture, not in the utterances of men who have manifestly failed to submit themselves to the Word and the Holy Spirit of God.
John 16:13-15 is referring to the inspiration of the ‘apostles and prophets’ who founded the Church (Matt 23:34, Eph 2:20, 3:5) – hence the reference to things yet to come. The last prophet of that kind was John, who was told ‘Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this’. It is of course typical of the Catholic Church that it should wish to claim these verses as applying to itself, to bolster its entirely self-manufactured authority.
Rome’s rhetorical trick, Jack, is not to claim that its interpretation is right – for everyone thinks that, or else they would change their mind – but that it *cannot* be wrong.
It is not provable from scripture that *any* church – let alone Rome – is protected from error in its teaching, so the claim is part of tradition. In other words it is no different from a playground bully saying he is never wrong. And this is disproved by examples, such as the incoherence of your arguments about transubstantiation above, and Mary’s perpetual virginity contrary to John 7:5, “even Jesus’ own brothers didn’t believe in him”. This cannot refer to spiritual brothers or else they would believe in him.
Anton… you demonstrate the Scripture is not clear – for example, in your support of Darby’s (heretical) interpretations concerning the “end times” and an anticipated physical reign of Christ on earth from Jerusalem.
I do not support Darby’s belief in a pre-tribulation rapture (as you might remember from my arguments against it at the Cranmer blog) and I take my belief in a physical reign of Christ on earth for a limited duration from Revelation 20 and the early church. Regarding which, “come, let us reason together”.
You say “spoke Hebrew”, but which Hebrew?
Even the language of the Tanakh evolved. That of the Second Temple books such as Chronicles and Ezra/Nehemiah show some significant differences from the books from the First Temple period. One important influence was the influence of Aramaic (of which there are different dialects, and also changes with time). By the time of the writing down of the ‘Oral Torah’ in the Mishnah, circa 200AD, the Hebrew used had changed quite a bit.
One obvious difference in common language visible in the NT is the use of the Aramaic ‘bar’ rather than the Hebrew ‘ben’ to denote ‘son of’.
These days we have “Hinglish” and “Spanglish” for varieties of English with influence of Hindi or Spanish, respectively – or indeed ‘Franglais’. My supposition is that the Semitic language commonly spoken was some “Hebric” or “Arabew”, i.e. a version of Hebrew stongly influenced by Aramaic, or a version of Aramaic strongly influenced by older Hebrew.
However, your statement that “the first Christians were all Jews and spoke and thought in Hebrew” can be challenged to some extent. If one dates the the start of there being “Christians” to the day of Pentecost, present in the crowd were many Jews from around the Roman empire – and elsewhere. They were surprised to hear the apostles – and others – speaking in each in their own language. This implies that their mother tongues were not Hebrew/Aramaic.
In Acts 6, the issue arose between the “Hellenists” and the “Hebrews”, which is probably an issue of language rather than ethnicity at this stage.
I have read the idea that Paul thought in Aramaic, but wrote in Greek. However, when the NT writers quote the OT, they do seem to use the LXX.
If Luke were mistaken, in error, as to significance and substance, he could readily have been corrected by anyone so minded such as modern day scholars with their current historical methodologies.
That is, the veracity of the birth of Jesus in place, time and space, in history could have been evidenced by witness testimony to counter doubters and deniers.
Worship Him: Immanuel.
Born at Hanukkah is my best guess of the time of year. It’s the lambing season for the Awassi sheep in the Holy Land (explaining why the shepherds were on watch) and Jesus is the lamb of God, and it’s also the Jewish festival of light and John opens his gospel – where you’d expect a nativity narrative – by portraying Jesus as the light of the world. All of the journeys made by Mary would then not be in the muddy winter months. (The gospels do not state how long before Jesus’ birth she travelled with Joseph.)
Thanks so much for this post! May I venture a comment as a Civil Engineer, and certainly no Greek or BT scholar! As such I look for multi-disciplinary approaches to problems like this one.
The ESV has a note on Luke 2,2: “Or this was the registration before”. I understand from Sir Colin Humphrey’s writings, peer reviewed internationally by scholars of different disciplines, that the Greek sentence in this verse is of unusual construction and might well be translated as suggested in the ESV note.
Furthermore we know that Luke knew of the census taken during Quirinius’ governorship of Syria, see Acts 5, 37. It was infamous for unrest, and Luke is drawing attention to the 5BC census, as the one before Quirinus was governor, ie the census before the one you’ve all heard about. Probably a census of allegiance not for taxation purposes.
See Colin Humphreys “The Star if Bethlehem” http://www.asa3.org