[B-Greek] Luke 2:2 Again

Stephen C. Carlson scarlson at mindspring.com
Wed Dec 22 15:08:23 EST 2004


Thanks for your comments, Iver.

At 07:42 PM 12/22/2004 +0300, Iver Larsen wrote:
>> Luke 2:2 hAUTH * APOGRAFH PRWTH EGENETO hHGEMONEUONTOS
>> THS SURIAS KURHNIOU          (* later MSS add hH)
>
>Or rather, a few early MSS left out hH by mistake. It seems that it was left
>out in the original hand of Sinaiticus, a mistake that was later corrected
>in that MS. The vast majority have the article which makes better sense of
>the text. With the article, the subject of the sentence is "THIS census"
>with emphasis on THIS because of its fronted position. It must be
>contrastive emphasis relating to another census known to Theophilus. Whereas
>one can say in English "This census" Greek has to say "hAUTH hH APOGRAFH"
>for "THIS census" or "hH APOGRAFH hAUTH" for "this census". The article is
>obligatory with the demonstrative. Without the article, hAUTH has to be
>analyzed as a substantive use of an adjective with the noun (APOGRAFH)
>implied. I think that this is too awkward grammar to be original.
...
>Yes, from the corrupted text without the hH, but PRWTH should have preceded
>APGRAFH if it were to modify it.

Yes, with the article hH, APOGRAFH belongs to the subject ("This
registration became ..."); without it, APOGRAFH belongs to the
predicate ("This became the registration").  As for PRWTH, you're
right that it is not in attribute position with APOGRAPH, but it
could still be in predicate position, getting something like
"This became the registration which was most prominent ...".

>> 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.
>
>I don't see the logic of this argument. KURHNIOU is genitive and the subject
>for hHGEMONEUONTOS no matter how we understand the rest of the sentence. The
>comparative sense of PRWTOS followed by a genitive of comparison is well
>attested, e.g. PRWTOS MOU HN (he was/existed before me) in John 1:15,30.

If hHGEMONEUONTOS is a genitive absolute participle, it is not
formally governed by PRWTH, which is what the comparative sense
needs.  For the comparative sense to work, I would expect a noun
such as hHGEMONEUMATOS or a substantized participle as in TOU
hHGEMONEUONTOS, but the text has neither.

>These are important considerations, and I suggest we need to go into
>pragmatics and make some assumptions about what was already well known to
>Theophilus.

OK, but let's be very careful about eisegesis when we make these
assumptions.

>Assumption 1: The census under Quirinius in AD 6 was so famous and well
>known that it could be referred to as "THE census" by the time Luke was
>writing.

OK, this is evidenced by Acts 5:37.

>Assumption 2: It was known that this famous census happened under Quirinius,
>and in particular Luke assumed that Theophilus knew this fact.

OK.

>Assumption 3: The census referred to here about 12 years earlier was not
>well known and not associated with Quirinius.

This assumption is unclearly worded and may presuppose the answer.  In
particular, I'm not ready to agree that hAUTH refers ahead to the census
in vv. 3ff; rather, is a reference back to Augustus's policy in v. of
conducting censuses throughout his empire.

Let us merely assume that the actions of Joseph in Luke 2:3ff. are to an
earlier, less well-known registration unaffiliated with Quirinius.  I
understand Luke 2:2 as a reference to the Quirinius census, and Luke 2:1
to an Augustan-era policy that resulted in many registrations empire-wide.
The patron's prior knowledge that the Q. census was later would allow
him to understand from 2:2 that the census Joseph obeyed was a less
prominent and earlier registration.

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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