Luke 2:2's census and Codex Siniaticus 1's word order, etc.

[Diane]

Again this post is off topic, sorry I couldn't find the magi star topic page.

Copying from the New American Bible.
1-2.  “When Jesus was born in Bethlehem...., magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, "Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.”
Who are "magi?" The NAB footnote on verse 1-2 states: “Matthew's magi are astrologers.” Footnote vs 2: "We saw his star: it was a common ancient belief that a new star appeared at the time of a ruler's birth." What part of the East were they from? Babylon is 500 miles East of Jerusalem. Word Pictures in the New Testament says: “Babylon was the home of astrology.”

3-6. Herod, now “greatly troubled”asks the Jewish priests “where the Messiah was to be born.” They reply, "In Bethlehem.”

7. Then Herod “ascertained from them the time of the star's appearance.”
The ‘star’ appeared "in the East" when the new king was born, not when the astrologers arrived in Jerusalem. Babylon is 500 miles from Jerusalem. How long was the trip? Six hundred years earlier Jeremiah said Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in the 4th month of the 2nd year of the siege. Ezekiel says a man who escaped from Jerusalem that night cane to him in Babylon 6 months later, in the 10th month, that trip took 6 months. —Jeremiah 39:2, 4; Ezekiel 33:21.

8. Herod tells the astrologers to search for the child so he may  “do him homage.”
He had already murdered  3 of his sons to protect his kingship, did he really want to give homage to a new king?

9. They leave, the star leads t hem “until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.” After the astrologers have been told where the king was born, the ‘star’ leads them to him.

10-11. Happy to find him, “on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother.” Then they give him the “gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”
The astrologers find the “child” in a house, not a stable. The Greek word Matthew used for "child" is paidion,, which means little boy or young child, one old enough to be a toddler. Whereas the Greek word Luke (1:41) used to describe the "infant" in the manger is brephos which refers only to an unborn or newborn. (See Luke 1:44 about Elizabeth’s unborn "infant" brephos). The legend of  ‘3 wise men’ may be because of the 3 gifts.   
 
12-15. An angel warns the astrologers not to return to Herod and tells Joseph to take his family to Egypt.

16. Herod, furious when the magi didn’t come back, murdered all the boys in Bethlehem and its neighboring towns “two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi.”
Who caused the astrologers to see a ‘star’ that led them to Jerusalem? Why would Herod kill children up to 2 years of age if he only needed to kill a newborn? Because of “the time” of his birth which "he had ascertained from the magi." Clearly then, Jesus had been born some months or even more than a year, before the astrologers found him in a house. The God and Father of Jesus intervened and proved superior to the demon gods of the astrologers, in this, Satan’s first attempt to kill Jesus. Instead of returning to Herod, the astrologers headed home another way after being given “divine warning in a dream.”—Matthew 2:2, 12.
The traditional story is a lie, one of the 7 things that God hates. (Proverbs 6:16-19) The story of the astrologers and their star brings no honor to the Son or to his God and Father.

P.S. It is true that the word magos can mean “Oriental scientist,” but what kind of science was it for which the magi were famous? Was it science as it is understood today? Hardly. Rather, historically it appears to have been compounded largely of magic and astrology.
The prophet Isaiah said concerning Babylon and its magi: "All the counsel you have received has only worn you out! Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month, let them save you from what is coming upon you. Surely they are like stubble; the fire will burn them up. They cannot even save themselves."—Isaiah 47:13-14

[Brianroy]

Diane,
    thanks for your input.

While we are on the Magi...what do you think of them going another way as being :
 south from Bethlehem to the road that passed from Kadesh Barnea (through Edom on the King's Highway) to Rabboth-Bene-Ammon, then due east to Dumah, and from Dumah to Babylonia?

The Highway to Israel from Babylonia would have been via:  Accad, Mari, Tadmor, Damascus, etc..

 Even with taverns along the way, it would have been impractical for them to travel without some pack animals...which I figure were so used to haste their getaway from Herod's potential capture by traveling secretly and quickly along the above route I described. 

I don't have any links at this time for such ancient road maps.  Just an older book which copyrights the map of ancient highways I refer as credited to Thomas Nelson, Inc. 

Peace.

[Brianroy]

Anthony F. Aveni at Archaeology Magazine declares that:
A triple conjunction (three close passes in a row) of Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation of Pisces in 7 B.C. is one astronomically sound explanation for the Star of Bethlehem.

For his abstract, click:

The Star of of  Bethlehem

If this date of 7 B.C. is accurate, and the Magi were motivated first by a triple pass of Pieces...then this too, would legitimately fall into Herod's inquiry and why he would slay those born from such a date as the "triple pass"  two years before, and afterwards to the time of the massacre.


You may also wish to read:  Archaeology:  The Three Kings & the Star  December 21, 2004  [a Learning Channel review, etc. ] by Mark Rose

  The Three Kings & the Star


Peace.

[Brianroy]

http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/

This Website will go live on July 24, 2008


Codex Sinaiticus

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world. Handwritten well over 1600 years ago, the manuscript contains the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. Its heavily corrected text is of outstanding importance for the history of the Bible and the manuscript - the oldest substantial book to survive Antiquity - is of supreme importance for the history of the book.
The Codex Sinaiticus Project
The Codex Sinaiticus Project is an international collaboration to reunite the entire manuscript in digital form and make it accessible to a global audience for the first time. Drawing on the expertise of leading scholars, conservators and curators, the Project gives everyone the opportunity to connect directly with this famous manuscript.
The Codex Sinaiticus Website
The first release of the Codex Sinaiticus Project website will be launched on 24 July 2008 here. The website will be substantially updated in November 2008 and in July 2009, by when the website will have been fully developed.

[Brianroy]

An example of the Codex readings already available is that which has the Mark copy passed down as ending on Mark 16,verse 8.


Mark 16

2 And very early on the first of the week they came to the sepulcher, the sun having risen.
3 And they said among themselves: Who shall roll away for us the stone from the door of the sepulcher?
4 And looking up they see that the stone had been rolled away; for it was very great.
5 And they entered the sepulcher and saw a young man, sitting at the right side, clothed in a white robe; and they were amazed.
6 But he says to them: Be not amazed. You seek Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified; he has risen, he is not here: see the place where they laid him.
7 But go, tell his disciples, especially Peter, that he goes before you into Galilee: there you shall see him, as he said to you.
8 And going out they fled from the sepulcher; for trembling and astonishment had seized them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.


Scans of codex Sinaiticus.


In Albania, New manuscripts  have been found last year (2007) in archives which may precede these Siniaticus manuscripts.  Only some of the newly discovered manuscipts were able to be digitially copied on ultra-high resolution specialty, including variations of infra-red and x-ray technologies.  

It appears that there are some of these manuscripts (at least fragment extants) that followed a different and somewhat independent manuscript branch source than the Codex Siniaticus...raising new questions and new interest.

 The question for the Albanian manuscripts is whether the book of Hebrews first contained the appendaged event of the woman caught in adultery, as alluded to by the ancients.  The analysis is pretty much now limited to a couple handfuls of graduate and doctoral students who study and discuss what has thus far been photographed for as long as class time allows.

Funding for the photography is generally at a cost of 5-7 dollars per plate resolution, so the expense and strain on a small (think one middle class household) budget appears to dictate when the final Albanian manuscripts may be photographed and analyzed.


 Greek New Testament Manuscripts Discovered in Albania
By: Daniel B. Wallace , Th.M., Ph.D.


As of June 2007, thirteen (13) Greek New Testament manuscripts were known to exist in the National Archive in Tirana, Albania. Western scholars had tried for decades to gain access to them. There were few success stories. A large part of the reason was due to the fact that Albania is a former police state. Only two of the manuscripts had ever been photographed, both with microfilm decades ago. Things changed dramatically in July.

In December 2006, as the executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (
   Home - CSNTM
), I wrote a letter to Dr. Nevila Nika, the general director of the National Archive, seeking permission to send a team to Tirana to digitally photograph the thirteen manuscripts. The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) is a five-year-old non-profit institute dedicated to high-resolution digital preservation of ancient handwritten copies of the New Testament. CSNTM had photographed manuscripts in Constantinople (a.k.a. Istanbul) at the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church; at the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung or Institute for New Testament Textual Research (INTF) in Münster, Germany; at Tübingen University, Germany; at the Monastery of St. John the Theologian on the island of Patmos, Greece; and a few sites in the United States. I have also examined manuscripts first-hand at St. Catherine’s Monastery at the base of Mt. Sinai in Egypt, The Vatican, Cambridge University, Oxford University, the British Library, Dresden, Cologne, Berlin, Florence, Harvard University, Duke University, the University of Michigan, The Smithsonian Institution, and several other sites.

When CSNTM sends out a team on an expedition, a lot of preparation is needed. Each four-person team uses special digital cameras, uploading the images onto bus-powered external hard drives connected to laptops. Optimally, a team can shoot between 1200 and 1800 pictures a day, varying on the size and condition of the manuscripts. Each page of a manuscript is shot separately; those with faint text or text that has been erased and reused for another document (known as a palimpsest) are also photographed with UV light. All of the equipment that is brought to a site must be battery operated because the conditions on-site are unknown ahead of time and electrical power is not always reliable. Plenty of camera and computer batteries, along with several chargers, are brought. In addition, tripods, reflectors, DVD burners, hundreds of DVDs, backup cameras and computers, and specially-designed cradles to hold the manuscripts are also lugged on these expeditions. Everything is burned onto DVDs in triplicate, and the library gets a copy of the images for its own use. An image can be as large as 48 megabytes, and is able to be ‘blown up’ to a poster size of 3 feet x 4 feet without any pixelation. The images that the Center retains are stored in multiple locations and backed up with a RAID system for double insurance.

In the spring of 2007, the reply came from Tirana: yes! Preparations were made, and schedules were coordinated. A team of four would be returning from the island of Patmos three days before the Albanian team would set out. Equipment needed to be checked, and some repaired. A brand new suitcase had already been damaged and needed to be exchanged. A team of Dallas Seminary students (who have spent a large portion of their academic preparation studying ancient Greek) and photographers/computer technicians arrived in Tirana on July 2, expecting to take two weeks to shoot six thousand images. The team—Greg Jenks (PhD student), Tim Ricchuiti (ThM student with a BS in film), Garrett Mathis (ThM student), and Nathan Wagnon (ThM graduate)—began looking over the in-house catalog that had been typed out on a manual typewriter. Although it was in Albanian, they got some help from library staff. By the end of the first day, the news came back across the Atlantic: there were more than thirteen Greek New Testament manuscripts in Tirana—far more.

It turned out that as many as seventeen more manuscripts that had been presumed lost for many years also were at the National Archive. Western biblical scholars had lost track of the manuscripts, though the presumption was that they had been relocated to the National Archive. But this information could not be verified. The most recent documentation, the second edition (1994) of the Kurzgefasste Liste der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments (“Abridged List of the Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament”) by Kurt Aland, former head of the INTF in Münster, listed these manuscripts as “formerly” in Berat, Valona, and Argyrokastro. The INTF is the official cataloguer of Greek New Testament manuscripts, and the K-Liste (as it is sometimes nicknamed) is its official list of all extant MSS. When the INTF learns of a previously unknown manuscript, it assigns the manuscript a unique number. To date, 5752 manuscripts have been catalogued by INTF.

[Brianroy]

Daniel B. Wallace continues:


A note in the K-Liste on the manuscripts in Berat, Valona, and Argyrokastro reads, “the library or its manuscripts no longer exist today and/or nothing more is known about the fate of the manuscripts.”1 To rediscover these manuscripts would be of great significance, especially since only rarely will one or two lost manuscripts show up from time to time (usually on the auction block). Whether such manuscripts were in fact rediscovered is not yet known. The catalog description in the K-Liste functions as a ‘fingerprint’ for each known manuscript. Every manuscript is listed by its unique number, contents (e.g., whether gospels, epistles, etc.), date, material (papyrus, parchment, or paper), leaves, columns, lines per column, and dimensions. Although it is possible that all seventeen manuscripts were now housed at the National Archive, this is not possible to verify at the present time. Some of them had not been examined in any detail before, as indicated by the frequent question marks in the K-Liste on their data. Once or twice, all that was known for certain was the material on which the text was written and the number given to the manuscript in the K-Liste. And since these manuscripts had been moved from their original locations, with the shelf numbers also changing, we simply did not have enough to go on to determine whether we were looking at a formerly lost manuscript or a newly discovered one. To complicate matters further, the data in the K-Liste were not always accurate. Occasionally, the date or leaf count could be way off, especially with manuscripts that had been described long before INTF was founded in 1959.

Not one of the seventeen formerly lost manuscripts has yet been positively identified with an INTF number, although nine of them are considered possible. That, in itself, is very good news. CSNTM will be working with INTF and with the Albanian government to try to determine whether the lost manuscripts have been found.

This was not the only good news of the day, nor even the most momentous. The catalog revealed several other Greek New Testament manuscripts that had never been catalogued by western scholars. Simple arithmetic told us this: There were forty-seven Greek New Testament manuscripts listed in the National Archive catalog, while the K-Liste noted only thirty in Albania (thirteen plus the seventeen that had been presumed lost). Thus, Tirana was housing at least seventeen manuscripts unknown to western scholarship and as many as thirty-four! Since the dawn of the 21st century, an average of two or three Greek New Testament manuscripts is brought to light each year. A cache of 17 to 34 manuscripts is a remarkable find, regardless of the age and pedigree of the manuscripts.

After this stunning revelation, the first thing the CSNTM team did was to calculate how much time it would take to photograph all these documents. They quickly realized that two weeks would not be enough. Instead of 6000 images to shoot, there were now 18,000! The library at the National Archive extended its hospitality and allowed CSNTM to add three more weeks to the work. Traveling schedules were quickly adjusted so that the team could stay in Albania as long as possible. But three men had duties back home and could only stay for an extra four days. Greg Jenks would remain behind, as a second team was assembled. Since CSNTM is a non-profit organization with almost no overhead, using virtually all donations for photography expeditions, it rarely has much in reserves. The summer of 2007 was the first time that the Center sent out two teams (the previous summers only saw one expedition), making our budget even tighter than normal. But when we got the news that there were three times as many images to shoot as we had planned for, we knew that we needed to raise the funds—and fast! We had to raise several thousand dollars in just four days, so as to avoid increased rates on airfare. As it was, the flight to Albania was still $2000 per person. Wait a few more hours, and it would have shot up to $3000. A second team of just two men was assembled—Brian Wright, ThM student; and Noah Wallace, BS graduate and professional computer technician; they arrived shortly after the first team left, and got a crash-course in the particulars of this expedition.

First, there was good news: almost 10,000 pictures had been photographed by the first team. But then there were the difficult conditions to contend with: the national government would shut off electricity every day, at random times, and not turn it back on for two or three hours. This was a cost-saving measure, but something that was not fully anticipated. The outside temperature would soar to 100 degrees, and when the AC was just getting its sea legs, the electricity would cut out. But because of the compressed schedule and the importance of these manuscripts, the team could not stop working. It was at times like this that we realized the wisdom of bringing backup batteries for computers and cameras. Even a short day at the NA could prove exhausting. But the staff continued to be helpful, pulling the manuscripts from the archives so that the team could continue working. At times, the library staff were anxious because so many manuscripts were being photographed. This revealed the care with which they had kept the documents. The CSNTM team did not disappoint; white cotton gloves are the order of the day when handling ancient treasures of this sort. And after five years and 60,000 photographs, not a single page has ever been damaged.

In the evenings, more work needed to be done. The manuscript images needed to be converted from RAW to TIFF, then from TIFF to JPEG. Everything needed to be double-checked. There could be no blurry images, no cropped pages, no missing or doubled pages. But with the multi-tasking that was needed each day, having a short-handed team, and needing to shoot over 8000 pictures, a few mistakes were inevitable. But, on average, only 1 out of a 1000 pictures were even mildly blurry.

The team finished the task and photographed virtually all 47 manuscripts that they set out to do. As well, one or two other manuscripts were photographed—manuscripts that had been initially thought to be of the New Testament. Nearly a terabyte of pictures were taken in just under five weeks.

In the fall, I taught a course on New Testament textual criticism at Dallas Seminary, and had a record enrolment: twelve master’s students and five doctoral students. Much of the time was spent examining the images of manuscripts from Albania. Although it’s one thing to have discovered a manuscript, it’s another to have discovered exactly and precisely what’s in the manuscript. Through a refined and efficient process, the students were able to determine several things about these ancient treasures. But more is yet to be discovered. Still, the preliminary results are quite encouraging: several of these manuscripts are fairly important for establishing the wording of the text of the New Testament.

The oldest manuscript in the collection is Codex Beratinus, a codex that had been dyed in purple, with silver and gold letters written on it. Containing only Matthew and Mark today, this codex, written in the sixth century, is very rare because it is a royal codex. Only a handful of purple biblical codices still exist. The NA staff told of some of the great lengths that they had to go to to protect this document. For example, during World War II, Hitler learned of it and sought it out. Several monks and priests risked their lives to hide the manuscript. Codex Beratinus is now registered with UNESCO as a world treasure.

Codex 1143 is another purple codex in the collection, from the ninth century. It contains the gospels. Beratinus and 1143 are the only manuscripts known to have been photographed before the National Archive opened its doors to CSNTM.

Codex 1709 is a twelfth century manuscript that belongs to a very important group of manuscripts known as family 13. It is one of the earliest members. In fact, this particular codex is the reason that CSNTM came to Albania in the first place. Jac Perrin, a pastor in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, is completing his doctorate at the University of Birmingham, England, under Professor David Parker, an internationally respected textual critic. Perrin is writing his doctoral thesis on the relationship of the family 13 manuscripts. There was one that he still needed to gain access to—codex 1709. It was because of this lead that CSNTM found out that the manuscripts in Albania had not been photographed. As it turns out, 1709 might not be the only family 13 manuscript in Albania. More research needs to be done, but one or two others may also belong to this family. If so, they would be the oldest members of the family.

In addition to these manuscripts, some of the newly discovered manuscripts show a good deal of promise. This can be seen in a single passage, the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11). Most scholars today would argue that this story is inauthentic, added fairly early on in the transmission history of the text, largely because it is so moving and speaks of the compassion of Jesus. It’s my favorite passage that’s not in the Bible. There is much emotional baggage associated with these twelve verses, but the truth must win out over emotion. And for this reason many scholars and preachers are both adamant that this text is not authentic and simultaneously silent on the matter in the pulpit. The pericope adulterae, as it is called, has enjoyed this scholarly tradition of timidity for a long, long time, well after biblical scholars recognized its poor pedigree.

The vast majority of the nearly 1700 manuscripts that have John’s gospel in them have this story wedged between John 7:52 and 8:12. Although they represent the majority, almost all of these manuscripts are late. Relatively speaking, there are very few manuscripts that do not have the passage at all, and an even smaller number that have it but place it at the end of the four gospels. The manuscripts that lack it number about 250; of this number, only 111 are manuscripts without commentaries. To this number can now be added one more manuscript, Albanian National Archive (ANA) 15, an 11th–12th century minuscule manuscript that contains the four gospels. At John 7:52, the scribe simply continued on to write John 8:12. A later scribe, incensed at what he thought was an oversight, took a piece of paper and carelessly stitched it into the front of the next parchment leaf (using only five stitches!) and scribbled the passage on it!

ANA 92, a thirteenth-fourteenth century minuscule manuscript, can also be added to this total. Neither ANA 15 nor ANA 92 has a commentary as part of the manuscript; together they bring the total of non-commentary manuscripts that lack the pericope adulterae to 113.

At least two other manuscripts, although containing the pericope adulterae, place it at the end of the four gospels. ANA 85, a fourteenth-century minuscule manuscript, places the text at the end of the four gospels. The same scribe who wrote out the gospel of John also wrote the pericope adulterae at the end. There are only twenty-six manuscripts known to place this passage at the end of the four gospels, ten of which being text plus commentary manuscripts. ANA 85 is strictly text, making it the seventeenth manuscript known to place the pericope adulterae at the end of the gospels. It is in rare company with less than two percent of all known manuscripts placing the pericope adulterae at the end of the gospels, and of those that lack commentary but have the PA at the end of the gospels, ANA 85 is in rarefied air: only 1% of all MSS of John are in this category.

Finally, ANA 4 also has the passage at the end of the four gospels, but it is clearly written by a different scribe, one who lived much later. There is an indication in the margin at John 7:52, also written by this later scribe, that the story would be found at the end of the gospel. ANA 4 therefore, technically, did not have the pericope adulterae, since what the original hand wrote constitutes the testimony at the time that the manuscript was produced.

As well, ANA 4 has quite a few family 13 readings, although it does not appear to be strictly family 13 in its nature. One or two other Albanian MSS also have a high percentage of family 13 readings.

These four manuscripts only represent the tip of the iceberg. To piece together the history of the transmission of the New Testament manuscripts is a tentative enterprise. It is like working on a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing. But with the discovery of new manuscripts, more of the pieces make sense. And the net result is that we are getting closer to reconstructing the original wording of the New Testament in the few places where there still is doubt.

Special thanks go to Dr. Nevila Nika, the general director of the National Archive, and Ms. Esmeralda Novaku, the librarian in charge of working with CSNTM. Their hospitality toward us and care for the manuscripts was as encouraging as it was welcomed. And their care for these ancient treasures of the church is to be commended.

CSNTM is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) institute that depends on donations to fulfill its mission of the digital preservation of ancient Christian manuscripts.

[Brianroy]

BAR blog announces the Codex Siniaticus being made available for public view.  In fact, the BAR blog leaves out some essential details that I left in:

The first release of the Codex Sinaiticus Project website will be launched on 24 July 2008 here. The website will be substantially updated in November 2008 and in July 2009, by when the website will have been fully developed.

The BAR blog reads as:


Bible Manuscript Journeys from Mount Sinai to the Internet
July 29, 2008


The Codex Sinaiticus, one of the most important ancient copies of the Bible and one of the most valuable books in the world, can now be seen online. The Sinaiticus dates to the mid-fourth century and contains the earliest copy of the New Testament and a copy of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible used by the earliest Christians (though much of Sinaiticus’ Septuagint is missing).

The internet Sinaiticus project resulted from the unprecedented cooperation of the four institutions that have portions of the ancient manuscript: the British Library (formerly a part of the British Museum), the National Library of Russia, Leipzig University and St. Catherine’s Monastery, at the traditional site of Mount Sinai and where the manuscript was first discovered in the mid-19th century.

The convoluted journey of the Sinaiticus from a desolate mountain peak in the Sinai Desert to various western institutions and now to cyberspace is a colorful story recounted by Biblical Archaeology Review editor Hershel Shanks in “Who Owns the Codex Sinaiticus?” (November/December 2007). You can read this article in the BAS Library, along with Shanks’ interview with Father Justin, the Texas-born son of Baptist missionaries and now a monk who serves as librarian at St. Catherine’s.

To explore the important ancient Bible manuscript, go to
   Codex Sinaiticus - Home
.

Peace.

[Brianroy]

El Brocense on the So-Called Inn of Luke 2:7
Stephen C. Carlson

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Lee Irons, Interpreting Luke 2:6-7 (Dec. 24, 2008),

http://www.upper-register.com/blog/?p=252

critically discusses Kenneth Bailey’s interpretation of Luke 2:7 that the so-called inn in Luke 2:7 is really a guest room. My own view about this verse is closer to Bailey than to Irons.

As far as I can determine, the first Western scholar to realize that Luke 2:7 is not talking about an inn but rather some kind of private dwelling was Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas (a.k.a. “El Brocense”).

Here is how he explained it to the Spanish Inquisition on Sep. 24, 1584:

Here is my (admittedly rough) translation:

The improper ingenuity of painters [of Church nativity scenes] has been so effective among the ignorant populace, that it has even persuaded the learned that Christ the Lord had been born in an old and ramshackle shed and almost outdoors. Because I will demonstrate by easy reasoning that it is different from correct reasoning and the gospel narrative. But first I would like to shatter the supposition that it is believed, because of the assembling of those coming on the order of the edict of Caesar, that no other lodging-place was found for the Divine Virgin and Joseph. Then I will also make plan that the Divine Virgin did not give birth the very night she first arrived at Bethlehem.

Well then: why are you dreaming of an assembly and multitude of those coming to such a tiny city? It is more believable to me that no one else came to Bethlehem besides Joseph with his wife. For either everyone else gave their names in their own cities, or those who came from towns and villages hastened to their own city. Few then would have been able to come to Bethlehem to give their names. Nor, on the other hand, was it necessary for everyone to be present on the same day: for it was enough within the rule they register on any day.

Therefore Joseph came either to his own house (for he was a citizen of Bethlehem of the house of David) or certainly in the house of any neighbor, if his own house was located elsewhere. What because by the witness Theophylact that city Bethlehem was the home town of the Virgin Mary. Therefore how realistic is it that no one from the Virgin’s side or from Joseph’s side had been nearby who would receive such guests?

They were therefore received in a lodging-place of friends or relatives: in which place while they had stayed some days, the time arrived for the Virgin to give birth.

For this is what the words of the divine Luke seem to mean: but it happened that when they were there, the days were fulfilled that she became ready and gave birth etc.

But the lodging-place is not taken here for what we say in the vernacular meson [inn], but for any sort of private dwelling, as in 1 Kings 9, and St. Luke [22]: where is the guest-room where I will eat the passover with my disciples?  In Greek, kataluma.

Concerning which house it is said in Matthew, when he was talking of the Magi: and entering the house, in Greek oikian.

Cicero, book 7, epist. ad Gallum: Nor more willingly would I buy a place to stay (diversorium) at Tarricina, so I would not ever be bothersome to my host: and book 6 ad Leptam: a dwelling and a place to stay (diversorium).

And so the Evangelist says: because there was not for them a place in the lodging-place, that is, because in that house, there was neither a cradle, nor other more convenient place where the boy was set down, they put him in a manger.

For it used to be common for many in the countrysides (that we often see also in ours) that in the same part of the house both the lords and cows and cattle would stay.

 And so the infant wrapped in rags was put in the manger, and so we also add this: the word rags (pannis) means nothing for the poverty of the Virgin: not so much that she was unanticipating for the childbirth but prepared so she would not have had bands and a rattle. And the Greek word sparganon, that is bands, can also be appropriate for kings.


…the key to his argument is that Joseph, as a citizen of Bethlehem (Luke 2:3-4), would have had family or friends in Bethlehem (and therefore would not have needed an “inn”) and that the Greek word   kataluma   (as well as the Latin diversorium) does not mean “inn” in Luke 22:11.

[Brianroy]

 
The 6th century A.D. Philopon , ON THE MAKING OF THE WORLD, 2.21, wrote in his Greek text regarding the manuscript text from Phlegon,

"And of this darkness... Phlegon also made mention in "the OLYMPIADS".
For he says that "in the second

[only the letter d as the abbreviative is used, as was common practice, d as deutero is "second"]

year of Olympiad 202 [i.e, A.D. 30] an eclipse of the sun happened, of a greatness never formerly known, and at the sixth hour of the day it was night, so that even the stars in heaven appeared."

Philopon continues, conjecturing an interpretation for the abbreviative letter "d" to mean "four", when the most plausible is "two", and then obviously adds to what the manuscript of Phlegon  said, calculating from that presumption.  This addendum apparently then leading to some confusion by some scholars about the year of the crucifixion of Christ.


In the Syriac of 12th century Michael the Syrian writes,

“Phlegon, philosopher of the common, had wrote this: The sun it is darkly obscured, and the earth trembles; the dead are brought back to life to enter Jerusalem and they cursed the Jews.'

That is, the pagan philosopher Phlegon, who wrote from the 120s to 137 A.D. using Roman records available at the time to research his Olympiads and write into 16 books that data, confirms Matthew 28's own account as accurate from the Roman records themselves; finding these tidbits as note-worthy historically true trivia,  as he passes by on dealing with the 202nd Olympiad.

Did Michael the Syrian add the part about the resurrected dead cursing the living? Hard to say. But if one went to hades and back, and found religious works a deception from true faith...then, surely, it is NOT an anti-Semitic (but rather a human) flavor being added.

So if we can accurately date the Crucifixion, and see that the "eclipse"or "obscuration" event was NOT a predictable event, but a miracle...then fairly date the birth of Christ, and state  that the birth star of Christ also was a "miracle". That is, the birth star and the full moon solar eclipse or total sun-spot blackout in A.D. 30, were events that were  NOT something necessarily calculable by the NASA charts, being as if an anomolia...something outside the bounds of a common rule or presumption.


Origen in the 3rd Century A.D., mentions Phlegon as "writing in his 13th or 14th books":
of "the eclipse in the time of Tiberius Caesar, in whose reign Jesus appears to have been crucified, and the great earthquakes which then took place" (Phlegon, Chronicles {of the Olympiads}, cited by Origen, Against Celsus, 2.33).

and that, "Jesus, while alive, was of no assistance to himself, but that he arose after death, and exhibited the marks of his punishment, and showed how his hands had been pierced by nails" (Phlegon, Chronicles{of the Olympiads}, cited by Origen, Against Celsus, 2.59).

Origen had no problem with quoting his adversary Celsus, or of the Greek philosophers accurately at length, to prove his point.  It seems that the same also applies here in regard to Phlegon, as well. 

The question we might ask, may have to deal with what specific records Phlegon relied upon for his information? 
    Early Church apologists point to the report of Pontius Pilate in regard to Judea and Jerusalem...but we must also remember, that  Rome and its provinces did not live in an administrative vacuum.  There were other administrators and other reports that were filed...but what these were, and who these reports were from, have been lost to history.

 At the moment, it appears to me that Phlegon may have used the same reports as did the Christians; those which were ascribed as authentic by the Roman Library of Caesar as being that  from Pontius Pilate and having had proper chain of custody. 

In the end analysis, we therefore see that the eclipse of 4 B.C. as a "predictable event", BECAUSE IT IS A MIRACLE that couldn't be predicted beforehand,  has little bearing in regard to either the Census.  It also has little bearing in regard to  the birth of Jesus, who is called "Yeshua" / Salvation, the predicted one of Jacob in Genesis 49:18; whom is to be rejected by Israel / Jeshurun, while being the hoped for and expected one of their Patriarchs.

Deuteronomy  32:15 But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he abandoned G-D which made him, and scorned lightly the Rock of his Yeshua.

That is exactly what  the Gospels,  and that history recorded outside the Gospels, tells us.

Peace.