Tag: the Gospel of Luke

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Greek New Testament the Bible

Making sense of the Census of Quirinius

by Mark Rogers

In regards to the year of Jesus’ birth there have been various proposals. In particular there has been some debate about what Luke 2:1-5 really means. The debate revolves around when the empire-wide censuses took place in relation to Christ’s birth. James Trimm outlines his explanation in Birth of Yeshua at Sukkot Luke 2:1-7.  Jonathan Sarfati outlines his proposal in The Census of Quirinius. Here I would just like to suggest that there may be a simpler explanation.

What I assert is that the answer is not to be found in the dubious idea that Quirinius ruled Syria twice. The simple proposal that I suggest here is that there are two entirely different Greek words used in Luke 2:1-5, and not one, which unfortunately for 2,000 years many theologians, Bible scholars, historians, linguists, and translators have failed to notice.

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Categories
Greek New Testament the Bible

When were the Gospels published?

The Gospels have been much maligned as being copied one from another, not from independent witnesses (for Matthew, Mark and Luke) and that they were written a long time after the events, hence lack eyewitness statements. The Wikipedia page on this notes:

Although some claim that all four canonical gospels meet the five criteria for historical reliability, others say that little in the gospels is considered to be historically reliable. … Most scholars hold to the two-source hypothesis which claims that the Gospel of Mark was written first. According to the hypothesis, the authors of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke then used the Gospel of Mark and the hypothetical Q document, in addition to some other sources, to write their individual gospels. These three gospels are called the Synoptic gospels since they are all very similar.1

Dr Floyd Nolen Jones responds to claims like these in an article2 “The Gospel Colophons.” In the following I reproduce it in full.

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