Lk 2:2 hAUTH EGENETO APOGRAFH PRWTH (D05)

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Sep 19 21:38:32 EDT 2002


Forwarded to the list for Virgil Salvage <virgilsalvage1 at email.msn.com>:

hHGEMONEUONTOS THS SURIAS KURHNIOU....This, it seems to me is key to
understand what Luke is writing to this person QEOFILE and what it meant to
him based on how Luke presents it. It had been ordered that APOGRAFESQAI was
to happen. This was a first. PRWTH  It apparently hadn't happened before.
...and Luke, I think, wanted to describe to QEOFILE what it was like, that
is, what were it's characteristics. What it was like to  have gone through
it...with it's conditions and implications. Luke says of AUTH...EGENETO it
was accomplished....this first ever...APOGRAFH. What was it like QEOFILE...
?? It was just like it was when you experienced it up in Syria. It was a
hHGEMONEUONTOS THS SURIAS KURHNIOU kind of registering and record taking. "
"administrative term 'list, inventory' of the
statistical reports and declarations of citizens for the purpose of
completing the tax lists and family registers.

    It was characterized by what was characterized by the then governing of
that which is The Syria....being done by KURHNIOU. How was it performed...?
Like hHGEMONEUONTOS THS SURIAS KURHNIOU. This genitive cased phrase is
limiting or giving classification to the doing of the APOGRAFH. How did the
action happen ? Just as in the governing of the region or OIKOUMENHN of
Syria. Quirinius apparently followed suit from what was a first census in
the OIKOUMENHN decreed by Caesar Augustus. Whatever was that region or
regions...it apparently did not include Syria, because Luke, when he is
writing about it and describing it to QEOFILE, he says it was just like the
governing that you experienced under Quirinius. This would explain from the
grammar how this census could have occurred before the census taken by
Quirinius some years later. Quirinius's census which was part of his
governing was not the first...but it was just "like" the first that had been
ordered by Caesar Augustus to at least be carried out " in the OIKOUMENHN
and all that were in that region where Joseph was. That was "all" their
world. Just think...if you were Luke who and what and where was "all" the
world you were in ? Just like in Acts 24:5 where the Jews claimed Paul had
been doing his deeds "throughout the world,"....how do we tell what the
extent of that statement meant to them. How big was their OIKOUMENHN ? It
seems to me that the grammar of the phrase...hHGEMONEUONTOS THS SURIAS
KURHNIOU...indicates that "all of that world" that was censused....did not
include Syria and that Syria experienced at some future time a census that
Luke used to describe to QEOFILE what the one was like that Joseph submitted
himself and Mary to.....After all...we don't know when Luke wrote this and
where QEOFILE was living at the time of Joseph going to Bethlehem. Luke, I
think, is referencing some information that QEOFILE is familiar with so he
( Luke ) can more accurately portray what and how things were happening at
that other time.

That, anyway....FWIW is what I get from the grammar, as well as the
information in the archives on the background of this passage.

The census that Joseph submitted to was a .....governing of Syria by
Quirinius kind of census.


Virgil  Newkirk
Salt Lake City, Utah



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