[B-Greek] Luke 2:2 Again

Stephen C. Carlson scarlson at mindspring.com
Tue Dec 21 23:38:51 EST 2004


Now that Christmas is near, I figure that it's a good
time to take yet another look at a well-known crux,
hopefully giving a different twist to it :--

Luke 2:2 hAUTH * APOGRAFH PRWTH EGENETO hHGEMONEUONTOS
THS SURIAS KURHNIOU          (* later MSS add hH)

Apart from all the historical quandries that I don't
want to or need to get into, this verse is very
exegetically challenging.  When all is said and done,
translations usually end up rendering this verse as:
"This was the first registration, taken when Quirinius
was governor of Syria." (NET)

The difficulties in Luke 2:2 have led to a number of
proposals, but many are worse than the text they are
trying to interpret.  In particular, I disagree with
the attempt to read PRWTH as a comparative ("before"
or "earlier") followed by a genitive of comparison to
get something like "before Quirinius was governing
Syria" because KURHNIOU has to be the subject of a
genitive absolute hHGEMONEUONTOS.

Nevertheless, the standard interpretion still leaves me
cold with a number of problems, the chief among them is
why would Luke specify that it was PRWTH ("the first").
If Luke merely wanted to tell when the registration
happened, presumably under Quirinius (c. AD 6), there
is little need to use PRWTH.  What does that word do
for the text?  Of course, the census under Quirinius
was hugely important.  Josephus had recognized it as
as a major factor ultimately leading to the Jewish War
in the 60s.  In fact, this census is so important that
Luke could merely refer to it in Acts 5:37 as "the
census" THS APOGRAFHS.

Another problem for me is the rather weak rendering
of EGENETO as "was."  It seems that HN would do a better
job.  Also, it is difficult to figure out what belongs
in the subject and what belongs in the predicate.

I would suggest that Eph. 6:2 "TIMA TON PATERA SOU KAI
THN MHTERA" hHTIS ESTIN ENTOLH PRWTH EN EPAGGALIAi is
a very helpful syntactic and semantic analogy for Luke 2:2.
In particular, we have a pronoun + noun + PRWTH + adv.,
a very similar sentence structure to Luke 2:2, withthe
chief difference is the location and root of the verb,
ESTIN vs EGENETO.

Eph. 6:2 is usually translated like "'Honor your father
and mother' [cf. Ex 20:12], which is the first commandment
with by a promise." (NRSV)  But Danker disagrees with
rendering PRWTH as "first" because it "loses sight of
the fact that Ex 20:4-6=Dt 5:8-10 has an implied promise
of the same kind as the one one in Ex 20:12=Dt5:16."
Danker concludes that PRWTH "here is best taken in the
same sense as in Mk 12:29 above."

Mark 12:29 has POIA ESTIN ENTOLH PRWTH PANTWN, which means
"Which commandment is greatest of all?" and definitely not
"which commandment is chronologically first of all?"  Thus,
Eph. 6:2 should mean something like "which is the greatest
commandment with a promise."

Danker identifies two major senses for PRWTOS: (1) being
first in sequence, time, number, or space, and (2) being
first in prominence or importance.  Many examples of the
second sense can be found in Luke's writings, e.g. Luke
15:22 STOLHN THN PRWTHN "[my] best robe"; Luke 13:30
(first vs. last); Acts 17:4 "quite a few prominent women"
(NET); Acts 13:50 "the prominent men in the city"; Luke
19:47 "the prominent leaders of the people" etc.

This second sense gives full force to the GINOMAI as
"become" (experience a change in nature) and Luke loves
using adj. + GINOMAI (e.g. Luke 23:31, Acys 1:19, 9:42,
12:23, 16:27, 19:17, and 26:19 [exx. from BDAG]).  Thus,
PRWTH EGENETO would mean "became most prominent"

Using the sense of "most prominent" in Luke 2:2 hAUTH
[hH] APOGRAFH PRWTH EGENETO hHGEMONEUONTOS THS SURIAS
KURHNIOU, we get either, depending on whether APOGRAFH
goes into the subject or the predicate:

"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."

Stephen Carlson
-- 
Stephen C. Carlson                        mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
Weblog:    http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/hypotyposeis/blogger.html
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words."  Shujing 2.35




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