Luke does NOT name a Specific Governor of Syria.

 First in the actual Greek text of Luke 2:2 the word translated Cyrenius is the last word and Syria the second to last word.  And the word for "governor" is not a noun and should be more literally translated "governing".  In fact the most accurate rendering of the verse should be something like.

"This counting was first made during the governing of Surias Kureniou"

The last two words I chose not to transliterate and represent them as they are spelled in the Greek.

The only reason why Bible Skeptics insist this MUST be the AD 6 Census in-spite of all the ways it's nothing like that Census (Empire wide not local, and while Herod was still King or at least had been less then 2 years earlier) is the name of Kureniou.

In Josephus Quirinus is spelled Kurinios, which, like I would expect, uses more then one Iota.  Also there is no "e".  It is a much more plausible Greek rendering of Quirinus.

I'm not sure how early on this confusion started.  Maybe simply because Luke refereed to the AD 6 Census in Acts 5:37 people made the wrong assumption it must be the same Census.  Or maybe the translation of Luke into Latin played a key role in the confusion, when Translations of The Bible into modern languages finally began to happen after the reformation, they were greatly influenced by the Vulgate directly or indirectly, even the KJV.

But Tertullian in his against Heresies book IV chapter XIX simply states Saturninus was governor of Syria at the time without any acknowledgment that supposedly Luke identifies someone else as Syria's Governor.  That tells me that neither he or his readers had heard of the idea that Luke tells us who the governor was.  (Note, identifying Saturninus would fit it being the 8 BC Census).  And none of the 3 Lustrums of Augustus would have extended into the 19-21 AD Governorship of Gnaeus Sentius Saturninus, so the claim that Tertulian was referring to younger siblings of Jesus being born then doesn't work.  It was the earlier Saturninus who's administration of Syria coincided with a documented Roman Census.

To be exact, Tertullian said that Roman records proved the fact that censuses (he used the plural) were conducted in Judea when Saturninus was governor.  Also in his Apology to the Jews Tertullian clearly dates the Nativity to 3-2 BC saying it was 27 years from the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra.  But that is hard to reconcile with the Saturninus reference.

Since I'm contending that Kureniou doesn't mean Quirinus, what does it mean?

Below is how Cyrene and Cyrenian (of Cyrene) is rendered in various Greek NT verses.  Because these will be using 2 different Greek letters for o, lower case o is Omicron and capitalized O is Omega.

Matthew 27:32, Kurenaion
Mark 15:21, Kurenaion
Luke 23:26,  Kurenaion
Acts 2:10, Kurenen
Acts 6:9,  KurenaiOn
Acts 11:20, Kurenaioi
Acts 13:1, Kurenaios

It's rendered differently almost each time, in total 5 different ways, and Luke used all 5.  So that Kureniou is identical to none of them means little.  Interestingly the last one is almost identical to how the Strongs incorrectly claimed Cyrenius was rendered (Kurenios) with the only difference being the added Alpha.

The differences are all a matter of vowels and what the closing suffix should be.  All of them begin with Kuren just like Kureniou does.

Ending with iou is the same as how Luke renders Jesus of Nazareth in Luke 24:19 (Iesous tou Nazoraiou).

So perhaps Luke 2:2 wasn't referencing the Governor of a province at all but two provinces?

I could also note that when Luke identifies Pilate as Governor of Judea in Luke 3:1 he lists the name of the Governor before the name of the province.

Maybe the verse should just be translated as saying "when a Syrian was Governing Cyrene"?  Or perhaps that a Cyrenian was governing Syria.  Plausible translations are "during the Governing of Syria and Cyrene" or "during the Governing of Syria by Cyrene" or "during the Governing of Cyrene by Syria".  But I feel from everything I've observed above the best translation is "during the Governing of the Syrian of Cyrene".

An Atheist who is unlike me willing to consider the text hasn't been perfectly preserved should consider that a name is missing, that it's saying someone of Cyrene was Governing Syria.  Heck what Tertullian said you could use as evidence Saturninus was named in the texts he had.

The Roman Legion called the Legio III Cyrenacia was based for some reason in Bosra Syria;  Again I note the terminology of Luke properly translated is not necessarily identifying a person as Governor at all.

The last known exploit of this Legion before the time frame of The Nativity (from the timeline of the Legion Wikipedia has anyway), was being involved in a conflict between Rome and Nubia in Egypt in 23 BC.  The next time they show up is AD 7-11 when the Nikopolis fortress is established.

I'm thinking it's possible this Legion carried out the Census in Judea.

Given how often modern translations claiming to be directly translating the Greek are still influenced by the Latin translation, I was prepared to consider the Latin Vulgate perhaps the origin of this mistake.. But to my surprise the Latin doesn't mention Quirinius here, Jerome or whoever actually wrote the Vulgate did not recognize this as a Greek transliteration of a Latin name, it spells the name Cyrino.

haec descriptio prima facta est praeside Syriae Cyrino

According to Google Translate, everything preceding the two names at the end is, "This was the first President of the".  That is distinct from how the Vulgate does make references to Cyrene, but the main distinction there is using an E where that spelling has an I, something that isn't a difference in the Greek.  So the Vulgate translation is mistaken, but I find it fascinating that the educated Latin speakers who made it didn't see it as clearly a form of a specific Latin name.  This may possibly be similar to the version of the verse Tertullian would have read.

Herod The Great probably was not of Idumean ancestry

The common claim that Herod was Idumean is built entirely on one passage in Josephus that itself acknowledges that isn't the only view of Herod’s ancestry.  Yet everyone on this issue is inclined to trust Josephus over Nicolaus of Damascus in spite of the fact that Josephus himself had an agenda in writing this History the way he did.

First I’m going to Copy/Paste here exactly the relevant passage from Josephus.

Antiquities of The Jews Book 14 Chapter 1 Section 3.

https://gutenberg.org/files/2848/2848-h/2848-h.htm#link142HCH0001

“ But there was a certain friend of Hyrcanus, an Idumean, called Antipater, who was very rich, and in his nature an active and a seditious man; who was at enmity with Aristobulus, and had differences with him on account of his good-will to Hyrcanus. It is true that Nicolaus of Damascus says, that Antipater was of the stock of the principal Jews who came out of Babylon into Judea; but that assertion of his was to gratify Herod, who was his son, and who, by certain revolutions of fortune, came afterward to be king of the Jews, whose history we shall give you in its proper place hereafter. However, this Antipater was at first called Antipas, and that was his father's name also; of whom they relate this: That king Alexander and his wife made him general of all Idumea, and that he made a league of friendship with those Arabians, and Gazites, and Ascalonites, that were of his own party, and had, by many and large presents, made them his fast friends.”

Here are my issues with what Josephus says about this.

First: It makes no sense to me that Alexander Janneus would appoint someone who was an Idumean to govern a people they’d recently conquered and forcibly converted in a region they intend to fully annex.  In that situation like when Rome appointed governors of full provinces you appoint someone fully of the ruling nation not the local population.  What was called Idumea during this period was Biblically the heart of Judah's tribal allotment, so I see a lot of logic in letting a descendent of David govern it.

Second: When Rome appointed Client Kings they were always someone with legitimate verifiable Royal Ancestry of the people they are being appointed to rule.  Even Tigranes V of Armenia did descend from Tigranes The Great through his mother.  I know a lot of modern fictionalizations of Ancient Rome want to make it seem like anyone with enough money could just bride the Senate into making them a King, but the Romans understood that in order for a puppet King to be accepted in a culture used to hereditary Monarchy he needed something of a valid ancestry. Herod would have needed to be of Davidic Ancestry especially if he indeed wasn’t a Hasmonean.  Because Rome didn’t crown him King of the Idumeans but King of The Jews.

Third: Look into the history of Costobarus the man who actually led the Idumeans during Herod’s reign, Herod oppressed the Idumeans in a way distinct from the way he can be said to have oppressed the Jews, he clearly viewed them as a Subjugated people not his own people.  Josephus talks about this in Antiquities of The Jews Book 15 Chapter 7 sections 9 and 10. 

https://gutenberg.org/files/2848/2848-h/2848-h.htm#link152HCH0007

Now you may object that “Josephus wasn’t even hostile to all the Herodians, he seems to have liked both Agrippas?".  Those Herods had Hasmonean heritage either way through Mariamne.  Josephus claimed a Hasmonean connection for himself at the start of his autobiography so that kinship may have meant more to him than descent from David anyway.  So Josephus' genealogy makes the Herodians he doesn't like foreigners who shouldn't have ruled Israel and the ones he does like part of a unified dynasty with equal right to rule both Israel and Idumea.

It frustrates me how many Christians take this so for granted they try to read it sub-textually into Herod’s New Testament significance, saying that when The Magi said “Born King of The Jews” it’s partially a dig at Herod’s Idumean heritage.  The New Testament doesn’t address Herod’s ancestry one way or the other.  But by showing that Jesus’ descent from David could still be documented it does testify against the plausibility of Nicolas of Damascus being able to get away with simply making a Davidic ancestry up. When Josephus wrote Antiquities however much of those records had been destroyed with The Temple in the War, so he could lie about Herod’s ancestry (or uncritically repeat lies other told) without being fact checked.

If the Magi were commenting on an issue with Herod's legal right to rule at all, it could just be him not being the Senior Heir even to his father, he was not Anipater's First-Born.

But mostly I think they are only referring to how Jesus Kingship is more valid because it's ordained by God.

I often allude to this view of mine when discussing other things, so I felt it was about time I devoted a BlogPost to defending it. 

Edom and Christianity

In Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature both Rome and Christianity are often identified with Edom.  The popular assumption is Rome was identified with Edom first then it was applied to Christianity after it became the dominant religion of Rome.  However both these identifications seem to start in the Fourth Century with Rhetoric from the Jewish Revolt against Constantius Gallus, so the identification going the other way is just as plausible.

There is a poetry to associating Christianity with Edom from a Jewish POV that I think many overlook.  Christianity is an Abrahamic Religion but one that unlike Islam identifies itself with Isaac over Ishmael in Romans 9:7-9 and Galatian 4:28.  

The relationship between Edom and Israel in The Hebrew Bible is complicated, they are often enemies yet their shared kinship is never forgotten.  In Deuteronomy 23:7 God tells Israel to always welcome Edomites even though the then contemporary King of Edom refused to let the Israelites pass through their territory back in Numbers 20:14-21.  Esau himself was not ultimately a bad person and in fact plenty of Rabbis will acknowledge that he was partly in the right in his conflicts with Jacob.  And sometimes the worst aspects of Edom’s legacy is entirely placed on Amalek.  

One of the very few direct references to Esau in the New Testament is in Romans 9:10-13 where Paul quotes Malachi’s opening verses.  What Calvinists ignore is the role this plays in the greater context of this part of Romans going into chapter 10 and 11 where now those God “hated” before are being blessed and Israel is under temporary spiritual blindness.  So Paul himself is arguably poetically identifying Gentile Christianity with Edom, and doing so to specifically a Roman audience.  There’s also the interesting case of how James in Acts 15:15-17 quotes Amos 9:11-12.

I’m a Leftist, but one common opinion among Breadtubers I don’t like is the notion that "Judeo-Christian" is a problematic term that shouldn’t be used.  They say it from two angles, one of “how dare you suggest Jews and Christians ever have common ground”, but the other angle is that it’s offensive to exclude Muslims.  However this fact that Jews see Christianity as Edom itself proves that they do see the common Isaac based heritage and thus see Christianity as closer to them then Islam is in some senses at least.  However the name of Isaac does not phonetically lend itself to making a derivative term like “Abrahamic”.  I’m not one of those Christians who wants to deny Islam is Abrahamic, for better and for worse they are the true heirs of Ishmael, but there are contexts where it’s necessary to be more specific.

But now let’s also look specifically at the Fourth Century Context of Jews in The Roman Empire.  

The Empire was claiming to now worship the same God yet was still enforcing Hadrian’s ban on them entering their Holy City of Jerusalem.  Hadrian didn’t just forbid Jews entering Jerusalem but even living anywhere Jerusalem was visible from, Jerusalem is visible from as far away as Bethlehem.  Hadrian didn’t resettle the area primarily with expats from Italy, Rome didn't quite do Colonialism like that, no most of it was moving around nearby Gentiles.  

The Idumeans seemingly disappeared from history after AD 70.  I imagine some Christians want to interpret Bible Prophecy so this is when they were wiped out, fulfilling many Hebrew Bible prophecies about Edom, but if The Jews survived this then the Idumeans who were even less centered around Jerusalem certainly did.  What I do think happened was that they mostly stopped practicing Judaism (which they were forcibly converted to by the Hasmoneans in the first place) and either reverted to Paganism or started becoming Christians, and during the Fourth Century those that were Pagan gradually converted to Christianity.  I suspect it was to a large extent Idumeans who made up the new population of Aelia Capitolina and its surrounding villages, and that the modern Palestinian Christian communities in this same region are their descendants.

But some Idumeans may have remained where they were before.  The city of Eleutheropolis is an interesting case, also known as Bayt Jibrin and Baitogabra.  In Josephus it seems like the Idumeans of this town were completely wiped out or expelled in AD 68, but its references in the Midrash Rabba (Genesis Rabba, section 67) show Jews still saw it as Edomite well past that point.  The Roman Emperor Septimius Severus gave it the status of ius italicum meaning its citizens were all legally considered Roman Citizens.

Whether or not this city actually had a Pre Fourth Century Christian Community is hard to determine, tradition says Joseph Barsabas Justus of Acts 1:23 was its first Bishop but there are no historically confirmed Bishops till Macrinus who was at The Council of Nicaea, that could be just because they didn’t practice Episcopal Polity till Nicaea.  In the Fourth Century Eleutheropolis is said to have the largest territory of any Bishopric in Palestina which is shocking considering that Province includes the very important Early Christian Bishoprics of Caesarea and Jerusalem.

Christian Rome also refused to let Jews live in Hebron, a city important in The Pentateuch but that had also become Idumean after the Babylonian Exile.

The Bishop of the Christian Community in Rome when the Edict of Milan was issued was named Militades, a Greek name that comes from a Greek word for Red that more specifically means “Red Earth”.  Edom is a Hebrew word for the color Red deliberately spelled the same as Adam which means Earth.  

So the logic behind seeing Christianity as the symbolic heirs of Edom in the Fourth Century both locally in Palestine and in the heart of the Empire is sound.

Maybe this Jewish Identification of Christianity with Edom even influenced the early development of Islam.  Esa/Isa the name for Jesus in the Qurran is famously not a logical Arabic form of Yeshua or Yehoshua or Iesous.  But I’m not the first to notice that it oddly does work as an Arabic form of Esau. 

Cleopatra and Julius Caesar had a Daughter

In May of 44 BC Cicero wrote to a friend indicating that Cleopatra (who was in Rome at the time) was pregnant with Caesar's child:

"I am grieved to hear of Tertia's loss of an expected child...(but) I should be glad of such a loss in the case of the queen (Cleopatra) and that [expected] scion of the breed of Caesar.​" [Cicero, ad Atticum, 14:20:2, 14:20:2, 15:1:5, 15:4:4]

There is also a coin of Cleopatra's which shows her suckling a child, usually interpreted to be Caesarion, and marked 'Kupr' (Cyprus).  Cleopatra only acquired control of Cyprus in 43 BC, when Caesarion, who was born in 47 BC, would be too old to be a suckling infant, and her children with Anthony weren’t born yet either.

This additional child with Caesar escaping further documentation is only plausible if it was a daughter, the Romans would not have considered a daughter a potential heir, Augustus had to adopt his Maternal Grandsons for them to be heirs.

You may ask why she's not mentioned in the Donations of Alexandria in 34 BC if she existed and was still alive then,  since Selene's inclusion implies women aren't left out.  Given the prior traditions of Ptolemaic Egypt I think this Daughter of Cleopatra was planned to simply be married to Caesarion and that's why she wasn't given a Kingdom of her own.  

Now others before me who’ve argued that this daughter of Cleopatra and Caesar existed seek to identify her with Musa the wife of Phraates IV and mother of Phraates V.  And I followed suit the first time I wrote something online about it.  But I no longer think Augustus would have given such a valuable daughter to the Parthians. And if Musa was actually some kind of Royalty and not the Italian Slave Girl historians have assumed her to be, it'd have to be an inheritance more relevant to Parthia not a connection to Egypt and Caesar.

If Augustus did intend to use this daughter for some Dynastic marriage then given her age he’d have done so before 20 BC, the significantly younger Cleopatra Selene was married to Juba in 25 BC (though she didn’t start bearing him children till over a decade later).

The thing is there was another woman named Cleopatra who got married to a Client King of the Roman Empire in 25 BC and whose ancestry is a complete mystery.  Cleopatra of Jerusalem the fifth wife of Herod The Great.  This Cleopatra started having children much sooner then Selene making me assume she was older, because contrary to popular myth no it wasn't normal for women back then to be forced to have children as young as 12-15.  If Cleopatra of Jerusalem was born in 44 BC then she would have been 20 by the time she had her first son by Herod who was also named Herod, the second was named Philip and is the Tetrarch mentioned in Luke 3:1.   And Judea had been part of Ptolemaic Egypt at times so there was a relevant connection there.

Matthew 14:3, Mark 6:17 and Luke 3:19 all say Philip was the name of the brother of Herod Antipas who Herodias left to marry Antipas, in Luke's context the same Philip as verse 1 is clearly the presumption.  But in our Greek Texts of Josephus this was the Herod who was the son of the daughter of High Priest Simon Boethus.  

Because of this many theologians just want to call both these men “Herod Philip” but there is no real evidence either used the other name.  I think it’s Josephus (or our current versions of Josephus) who got Herodias’s husband wrong and also Philip’s wife wrong, I don’t think he was ever married to Salome daughter of Herodias but rather I think he’s the father of Salome.

Herod, grandson of Boethus, was not one of the Tetrarchs, he was actually living in Rome like many other non ruling Herodians at the time.  I’m sure many assume this is why Herodias wanted to change husbands, but this geographical distance makes arranging the swap difficult.  

When Antipas married Herodias he divorced his prior wife who was the daughter of Aretas IV of Nabataea, Aretas went to war with Antipas over this in AD 34 and Philip The Tetrarch gave him assistance, so it sounds like they had a shared grievance.  

I’ve also seen it claimed that in Slavonic Josephus Herodias was married to Philip, but that’s easy to dismiss as altered by Christians and I’m not sure I trust what people say it says, I don't have the means to read it for myself.

So if Salome was a great granddaughter of Cleopatra VII, does the line continue?  She married Aristobulus of Chalcis, a son of her mother’s brother, and had three sons named Herod, Agrippa and Aristobulus.  

The Very Name of God contradicts Divine Immutability

I have a prior post on this blog covering my dislike of Divine Immutability.  But now I have realized an even stronger argument against it.

At the burning bush God famously responds to Moses asking for His Name with “’ehye ’ăšer ’ehye” which the KJV and other well known translations render as “I Am that I Am”.  However few scholars think that’s actually the best translation of the phrase.

Popular alternatives include.

“I will become what I will becoming”

“I am what I will be”

“I am what I am becoming”

“I will become what I choose to become”

“I am who I shall be”

“I shall be who I shall be”

I am about to use Wikipedia as a source, given recent Internet controversies I feel I need to be upfront about that fact.  Wikipedia can be crap, but in this case it’s accurately reflecting Hebrew Scholarship in a way that’s easy to understand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

Biblical Hebrew did not distinguish between grammatical tenses. It instead had an aspectual system in which the perfect denoted any actions that have been completed, and imperfect denoted any actions that are not yet completed.[5][6][7] Additionally, if a verb form was prefixed by וַ־‎ (wa-), its aspect was inverted; a verb conjugated in the imperfect and prefixed by וַ־‎ would read as the perfect, while a verb conjugated in the perfect and prefixed by וַ־‎ would read as the imperfect. The word אֶהְיֶה‎ (ehyeh) is the first-person singular imperfect form of hayah, 'to be', which in Modern Hebrew indicates the future tense 'I will be'; however, it lacks the prefix וַ־‎ which would necessitate this reading in Biblical Hebrew. It therefore may be translated as 'I am', but also as a modal form such as 'I may be', 'I would be', 'I could be', etc. Accordingly, the whole phrase can be rendered in English not only as 'I am that I am' but also as 'I will be what I will be' or 'I will be who I will be', or 'I shall prove to be whatsoever I shall prove to be' or even 'I will be because I will be'. Other renderings include: Leeser, 'I Will Be that I Will Be'; Rotherham, 'I Will Become whatsoever I please'.

In other words it is perfectly valid to see the fundamental meaning of this phrase as God defining Himself as still a Work in Progress.

Egypt and Japan (April Fools Day Post)

The surviving ancient depictions of Queen Nefertiti the wife of Akhenaton are kind of an Ethnic Rorshaq test.  In my time browsing the fringes of the Internet I’ve seen Afrocentrist Websites place one up with certainty that any unbiased observer would conclude she looks like a Sub Saharan Black African woman, and I’ve seen White Supremacists show the same images with equal confidence that she looks like a Blond Haired Blue Eyed Aryan.  Meanwhile I as a Weeb look at them and see Sanae Horikawa.

Now I have no actual desire to argue that any inhabitants of the Japanese islands (Yamato, Ainu or Ryukyuan) are the true rightful heirs of Ancient Egypt rather than the Copts. But as seemingly the only person in the Venn Diagram of people who are 1. Weebs, 2. Well informed of how Lost Tribes style fringe history works, and 3. Know more than the average person about Ancient Egypt.  I feel like making the argument facetiously just to show how easy it is to make up the more serious versions.