Bibliography
| Title: Apographe and apographesthai in Luke 2:1-5 Secondary Title: ET Volume: 82 Pages: 377-380 Type: Journal Article Year: 1974 Abstract: "Since apographe in Luke 11,2 is anarthrous and the prote modifying it is used elsewhere to mean "before", the verse can be translated. "This was an enrolment conducted before Quirinius was gobernor of Syria". Luke probably had in mind Herod's requirement, in 7 B.B., that all his subjects take an oath to Augustus and to himself. Josephus mentions this incident in Ant. XII.31. // It is unlikely that inhabitants of Nazareth in Galilee would go to Bethlehem in Judea in A.D. 6-7 for tax assessment purposes, since they were members of an independent client state. From Josephus' Antiquities 18.3-4 and War 7.253 it appears that apographe can stand as "enrollment" or "registration" and that the idea of assessment for tax purposes is not necessarily implied. In ca. 7 B.C., after his relationships with Augustus had become strained. Herod required the people to take an oath of allegiance to Augustus and himself. (Antiquities 17.42; cf. 15.369). Some machinery for enrollment was probably established to ensure the execution of the oath-taking. Was it for this apographe that Joseph and Mary came to Bethlehem? Lk 2:2 may be translated: "This was an enrollment conducted before Quirinius was Governor of Syria." Luke's failure to specify the purpose of the apographe may have been to avoid the implication that Jesus' parents had taken an oath that in the experience of many of Luke's Gentile reader would have been blasphemous (thought the oath of 7 B.C. in Judea must have involved the name o Israel's Lord, not those of Gentile deities). An apographe in 7 B.C. would also suit Luke's chronology (cf. Lk 1:5; 3:23). - D.J.H." Keywords: History of Terms, language, style |