Translation of Luke 2:2

[theophilus]

Anyone know anything more about this apology?

This article contains a possible explanation:

http://www.biblehistory.net/Quirinius.pdf

Here is one paragraph from it:

And as for Quirinius being the governor of Syria during this census, it is worth noting that the Bible never calls him the governor, at least the New King James Version doesn't. It says he was governing in Syria. And we know that Quirinius was indeed governing in some capacity in this region at
this time.

"Luke" and "Matthew" (names made up by later editors) were telling stories to different audiences. With the focus on Jewish rites, customs and personalities it would appear that whoever wrote "Matthew" was writing for a Palestinian audience, whereas the author of "Luke", with his focus on Roman personalities was writing for a Greco-Roman audience that didn't give a shit about Jewish rituals.

You are probably right about their writing for different audiences. The book of Acts ends with Paul living in Rome so it was probably written at this time. Since Acts is a continuation of Luke's gospel they were both probably written at the same time and were addressed to the Roman Christians, who were mostly gentiles.

[Minimalist]

And as for Quirinius being the governor of Syria during this census, it is worth noting that the Bible never calls him the governor, at least the New King James Version doesn't. It says he was governing in Syria. And we know that Quirinius was indeed governing in some capacity in this region at
this time.

apologetic horseshit, nothing more. As I said above, a real scrotum sprainer.

P. Sulpicius Quirinius was one of a number of advisors to Gaius Caesar when the young man was named Governor of Syria. Gaius' dealings were with the far more important nations of Parthia and Armenia. Unfortunately, he was wounded in battle in Armenia in 3 CE and died on his way back to Rome.

All of which serves to underscore the fact that at the time both Galilee and Jerusalem were parts of different independent kingdoms under different rulers. Rome would have had no reason to conduct any sort of census as they received tribute from these kingdoms and how Antipas and Archelaus scraped up the money was no concern of theirs. Josephus is explicit: Quirinius' accounting of Judaea was in the aftermath of Augustus' decision to remove Archelaus as king and accept the petition of the Judaeans themselves to become part of the empire in 6 AD. This decision did not effect Galilee which remained independent until 44 AD. By the time Augustus acted, Herod had been dead for more than 10 years. There is no salvaging "Matthew" and "Luke" on this point. They are flagrantly contradictory.

Now, and here is where it gets tricky. There were "lustra" conducted by Augustus at various times during his long reign. None exactly match up with Luke's census but the point of Augustus' census was to find out how many Roman citizens there were in the empire. He really didn't care how many people were kicking camel shit on the Damascus trade routes. An award of Roman citizenship was complicated but it was not until 211 AD that Caracalla made all free-born men in the Empire "citizens" ( he was not being an idealist - Caracalla was a scumbag - he was doing it to increase the tax base!) No where is it claimed that jesus or joseph were Roman citizens so they would have no part in Augustus' lustrum of 8 BC or 14 AD.

Further, "Luke's" assertion of a census for "taxation of the whole world" under Augustus is patently stupid. Direct taxation of Roman citizens in Italy had been abolished in the second century BC.

However, "Luke" had a much more recent example. C 73 AD, in the aftermath of the Civil War which put him on the throne, Vespasian did conduct a census of the whole empire with taxation as a prime reason. In addition, Vespasian also imposed the Fiscus Judaicus ( Jewish Tax ) at about the same time ( the finances of the empire were wrecked by the civil war ) and it is almost laughably easy to see how "Luke" combined these two ideas and worked them into his novel and assigned them to Augustus to fit the time line and - as noted above - because "Luke" pays much more attention to Roman personalities/events than Jewish ones. This gives us a terminus a quo for "Luke:" It had to have been written post-73 AD when all these Vespasianic actions had been taken. Of course, since "Mark" is generally considered the first gospel and is placed around 70 for reasons which don't really hold up, either, and since much of "Luke" is copied from "Mark" that means that "Luke is even later.