Tag Archives: Gospel of Luke

A palimpsest with Homer, Euclid, Luke and Severus of Antioch

Posted on October 5, 2010 | Leave a comment

Among the British Library manuscripts recently made available online, the earliest is the parchment codex Add. MS. 17210 + 17211. The codex as it stands now was made up from three older codices. The original texts in these earlier codices were written in Greek and have been overwritten with chapters of a treatise by Severus of Antioch (c. 465-538, patriarch 512-518) in a Syriac translation. Leaves from the original codices were turned sideways and folded over to make a new codex.

Manuscript 17210 consists of 60 folios preserving (as its lower text) part of Homer’s Iliad (remains of books XII-XXIV). The text is written in one column to the page; the script has been dated to the sixth century AD. The scribe copying out the text of Severus used only some of the leaves from the Iliad codex.

Manuscript 17211 has two distinct parts, comprising leaves from a codex of the Gospel of Luke (folios 1-48), and leaves with books X and XIII of Euclid’s Elements (folios 49-53). The manuscript is known in New Testament criticism as Codex Nitriensis, the codex from Nitria (the Nitrian Desert, Wadi el-Natrun, in Egypt). The copy of Luke has chapter titles (folios 1-3) followed by chapters 1-23 (with lacunae). These texts are written with two columns to the page.

According to the British Library website the copy of Luke is dated to the sixth century (could it be earlier?), Euclid to the seventh or eighth (could it be sixth or seventh?), and Severus to the ninth century.

The treatise by Severus is against Johannes Grammaticus. Chapters I-VIII are written over Luke, VIII-XX over Homer, and XX-XXI over Euclid.

According to notes on folio 49 of MS. 17211, the codex was acquired by Daniel, bishop of Edessa, when he was a periodeutes; and he bequeathed the book to a monastery at Sarug. On folio 53 is a note which gives details of the copyist of the Syriac text. The British Library website notes that the codex was later in the possession of the Monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Nitrian Desert). The manuscripts were acquired by purchase in 1847.

The name Codex Nitriensis may in other contexts signify a quite different manuscript.

Homer: P9; LDAB (Leuven Database of Ancient Books) 2231. Ed. W. Cureton, Fragments of the Iliad of Homer from a Syriac Palimpsest, London, British Museum, 1851 (see pp. v-viii on the provenance and acquisition of the codex). M.J. Apthorp, ‘New Evidence from the Syriac Palimpsest on the Numerus Versuum of the Iliad’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 110, 1996, 103-114.

Euclid: LDAB 7468; Mertens-Pack 0368.1.

Luke: Transcribed by S.P. Tregelles (1854) and C. Tischendorf (1855); edited by Tischendorf, Monumenta sacra inedita, vol. 2 (1857), pp. 1-92. Registered as R; 027. Cf. van Haelst, Catalogue (1976), no. 400; LDAB 2892. Tischendorf’s Monumenta sacra inedita (6 vols., 1857-1870) are accessible online at the Internet Archive.

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Luke – doctor or priest?

Posted on November 12, 2008 | Leave a comment

A recent translation of the Gospel of Luke has been published, together with some explanatory material, under the title of The Essential Jesus (Sydney, Matthias Media, 2008). The book is available in printed form, or may be downloaded in pdf format for individual reading (but not for printing or circulation) from the publisher’s website or from the website of the Connect09 evangelistic campaign of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney.

According to the introductory material, ‘The biography or ‘Gospel’ of Jesus’ life that you are about to read was written nearly 2000 years ago by a doctor named Luke’ (p. 3).

But was the author named Luke, and was he a doctor?

‘Luke the beloved doctor and Demas’ are mentioned in the (pseudo-Pauline) Epistle to the Colossians as sending greetings (4:14; some witnesses omit ‘beloved’). In the Epistle to Philemon, Demas and Luke are among those ‘fellow-workers’ of Paul who send greetings (24). The author of 2 Timothy writes that Demas has deserted him but Luke is still with him (4:10-11).

These passages all appear to refer to one and the same Luke. Is this Luke the same as the author of the ‘Gospel according to Luke’? Tradition gives that title to the Gospel, and tradition also identifies the author of the Gospel with ‘Luke the beloved doctor’. The idea that the author was a doctor seems to suggest that this Gospel must be accurate and reliable, just as a doctor needs to be accurate and reliable in giving a description and diagnosis.

The question of authorship has to be tested by examining internal evidence, the text of the Gospel itself, in the absence of other firm data. On this basis various proposals have been made for the identity and occupation of the Gospel’s author.

A recently published study has ruled out the possibility that the author was a doctor, and argues instead that he was a priest. Rick Strelan, Luke the Priest: The Authority of the Author of the Third Gospel, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008, develops a detailed case. Strelan has written a number of articles and books on New Testament subjects, and draws on an extensive knowledge of relevant literature in investigating the evidence for the authorship of this Gospel.

Strelan’s argument is discussed in detail by Richard Anderson on his blog about the Gospel of Luke. Anderson has argued for some time that Theophilus, the addressee of the Gospel of Luke and of the book of Acts, was a High Priest, and he is accepting of Strelan’s identification of the author of the Gospel as a priest. In Strelan’s view, both author and addressee were Jewish, and the addressee could have been a priest as well. Strelan stresses the likelihood that the author was a priest in view of the consideration that in the period concerned the authoritative theologians and historians were mostly priests, and the author is claiming to be able to speak with priestly authority. Anderson regards Strelan’s case as ‘surprisingly strong’. There are many details in the Gospel and Acts that have to be weighed up. To take just one example, it is interesting that the expression ‘to do … and to teach’ in the prologue of Acts (1:1) can be paralleled from Ezra 7:10 – the work of a priest.  

Readers of The Essential Jesus have the opportunity to examine with a critical eye this translation of the Gospel according to Luke and assess whether the work may reflect the views of an author with a priestly background and agenda.

According to information in The Essential Jesus, the translation was originally produced by Tony Payne, John Dickson, Greg Clarke and Kirsten Birkett in 2001, and reviewed and revised by Tony Payne, Peter Bolt, Darrell Bock, Evonne Paddison, Tim Thornborough and Anne Woodcock in 2008. The publication is not to be confused with John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images (1994); Bryan W. Ball and William G. Johnsson (ed.), The Essential Jesus: The Man, His Message, His Mission (2002); or Whitney T. Kuniholm, Essential Jesus: 100 Readings through the Bible’s Greatest Story (2007).

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Christmas and chronology

Posted on November 8, 2008 | Leave a comment

The stories of Jesus’ birth and infancy in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are not integral parts of a continuous biographical narrative. They are tacked on at the beginning of accounts of Jesus’ ministry and crucifixion, and their purported historical details are not corroborated elsewhere in the Gospels or in other books of the New Testament. There may have been similar material in the Gospel of Mark, but the beginning of that Gospel is evidently lost (as well as its original ending), and the Gospel of John takes a different approach to explaining Jesus’ origins.

Matthew places Jesus’ birth in the time of ‘King Herod’ (Matthew 2:1). The reference must be to Herod the Great (who is generally considered to have died in or around 4 bc) in view of the subsequent reference to his son and successor in Judaea Archelaus (2:22). Luke places the conception of John the Baptist and Jesus in the time of ‘King Herod of Judaea’ (Luke 1:5). Does he mean Herod the Great or Archelaus, ethnarch of Judaea?

Luke also says that Jesus was born at the time of a census held when Quirinius was governor of Syria. As Quirinius is known to have begun his governorship of Syria in ad 6/7, there is a clear discrepancy in the datings between Matthew and Luke, and a gap of at least a decade or more. With Quirinius taking over from Archelaus in Judaea, it would have been possible for a child to be conceived in the time of Archelaus and born in the time of Quirinius.

We can at least say that Jesus was believed to have been born in the time of Augustus, whose period of rule overlapped for more than twenty years with Herod the Great’s kingship and extended to ad 14.

Given that the birth and infancy accounts in both Gospels are literary creations, we are free to speculate as to when Jesus was born and what these Gospels may contribute by way of information or tradition. If both Gospels are referring to Herod the Great, this does not increase the likelihood of that dating, since both would be using the one tradition. A date of ad 6/7 would allow time for Jesus to reach the age of about 30 if the crucifixion took place in ad 36, as has been argued, instead of the usually preferred 30 or 33, when he would have been in his mid to late thirties at least if born in the time of Herod the Great.

A census in ad 6/7 makes sense because that was when the Roman government assumed direct control of Judaea after deposing Archelaus, who had been cruel and unpopular, and banishing him to Gaul. There is no evidence for an earlier Roman census in Judaea, and none would be expected in a period when Herod the Great or his son was ruling.

A belief that the Bible is inerrant has led to attempts to overcome the dating discrepancy which the Gospel of Luke presents. There is a recent example on the website of the Associates for Biblical Research, where a reader is assured that the Bible is inerrant and the discrepancy is only apparent (Stephen Caesar, ‘A Brief Comment on the Census in Luke 2’, 16/10/08; a list of his articles is given on the www.creationism.org website).

Stephen Caesar cites a number of arguments which are intended to help resolve the difficulty but do not in fact do so.

One of his references is to Clifford Wilson, Rocks, Relics and Biblical Reliability, Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan, 1980, p. 116, for the view that as a high official in central Asia Minor in 8 bc Quirinius was in charge of the army there and apparently put down an uprising which was probably obstructing imposition of the poll tax. It would be interesting to know what birth date for Jesus this argument is understood to imply.

Clifford A. Wilson (b. 1923) studied at the University of Sydney, became Director of the Australian Institute of Archaeology in Melbourne (1967-70), and edited the Institute’s journal Buried History. His books include Archaeology and the Bible Student: A Survey of Some of the Ways in Which Archaeology Has Demonstrated the Accuracy of the Scriptures and Added to Our Knowledge of Bible Backgrounds, Melbourne, Australian Institute of Archaeology, 1967.

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Text and interpretation

Posted on November 5, 2008 | Leave a comment

In his Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary, 1764), Voltaire has a section on ‘Contradictions’ in which he discusses, among other things, examples of contradictions (or apparent contradictions) in the biblical writings. He refers to Jean Meslier (1664-1729), who lived the life of a priest but meanwhile wrote a book, found after his death, in which he lamented biblical contradictions and other problems that undermined traditional theology and persuaded him that atheism was a better alternative.

Voltaire in discussing scriptural anomalies examines the question of the census (or numbering) recorded in the Gospel of Luke. He points out that the historians Tacitus and Suetonius say nothing about a census of the empire, and that at the time when Jesus is said to have been born Syria was governed by Quintilius Varus (as noted by Tertullian and confirmed by coins) and not Cyrenius, who came to Syria ten years later. He considers that a census would have been for Roman citizens, and so would not have included Joseph and Mary.

However, Voltaire offers a solution. Quintilius Varus might have sent Cyrenius – or Cirinius as the scribes call him – to Jerusalem to impose a poll-tax, and Joseph and Mary may have been required to go to Bethlehem as their birth-place to pay the tax. While acknowledging the difficulty that Herod and not the Romans imposed taxes on the population at that time, Voltaire proposes that there could have been a special arrangement in an emergency.

Though rationalist and sceptical in many ways, Voltaire expressed the view in his dictionary article that the Gospels were written to foster holy living and not to provoke learned criticism. He disapproves of the decision of Meslier to abandon his faith in resorting to reason, since (Voltaire argues) the difficulties of life – including irreconcilable contradictions – are sent to exercise the one and humble the other.

We can with reason advance another viewpoint, that the interpretation of texts requires consistent adherence to responsible historical, literary and text-critical analysis, and that we have to be prepared to accept and admit the results of methodologically rigorous investigation. The alternative is to abandon the evidence of texts and the methods of history – an option that lays no sound basis for understanding matters human or divine.

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