Читать книгу The Life of Jesus Critically Examined - David Friedrich Strauss - Страница 61

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With respect to the birth of Jesus, Matthew and Luke agree in representing it as taking place at Bethlehem; but whilst the latter enters into a minute detail of all the attendant circumstances, the former merely mentions the event as it were incidentally, referring to it once in an appended sentence as the sequel to what had gone before (i. 25), and again as a presupposed occurrence (ii. 1). The one Evangelist seems to assume that Bethlehem was the habitual residence of the parents; but according to the other they are led thither by very particular circumstances. This point of difference between the Evangelists however can only be discussed after we shall have collected more data; we will therefore leave it for the present, and turn our attention to an error into which Luke, when compared with himself and with dates otherwise ascertained, seems to have fallen. This is the statement, that the census, decreed by Augustus at the time when Cyrenius (Quirinus) was governor of Syria, was the occasion of the journey of the parents of Jesus, who usually resided at Nazareth, to Bethlehem where Jesus was born (Luke ii. 1 ff.).

The first difficulty is that the ἀπογραφὴ (namely, the inscription of the name and amount of property in order to facilitate the taxation) commanded by Augustus, is extended to all the world, πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην. This expression, in its common acceptation at that time, would denote the orbis Romanus. But ancient authors mention no such general census decreed by Augustus; they speak only of the assessment of single provinces decreed at different times. Consequently, it was said Luke meant to indicate by οἰκουμένη merely the land of Judea, and not the Roman world according to its ordinary signification. Examples were forthwith collected in proof of the possibility of such an interpretation,1 but they in fact prove nothing. For supposing it could not be shown that in all these citations from the Septuagint, Josephus, and the New Testament, the expression really does signify, in the extravagant sense of these writers, the whole known world; still in the instance in question, where the subject is a decree of the Roman emperor, πᾶσα ἡ οἰκουμένη must necessarily be understood of the regions which he governed, and therefore of the orbis Romanus. This is the reason that latterly the opposite side has been taken up, and it has been maintained, upon the authority of Savigny, that in the time of Augustus a census of the [153]whole empire was actually undertaken.2 This is positively affirmed by late Christian writers3: but the statement is rendered suspicious by the absence of all more ancient testimony4; and it is even contradicted by the fact, that for a considerable lapse of time an equal assessment throughout the empire was not effected. Finally, the very expressions of these writers show that their testimony rests upon that of Luke.5 But, it is said, Augustus at all events attempted an equal assessment of the empire by means of an universal census; and he began the carrying out his project by an assessment of individual provinces, but he left the further execution and completion to his successors.6 Admit that the gospel term δόγμα (decree) may be interpreted as a mere design, or, as Hoffmann thinks, an undetermined project expressed in an imperial decree; still the fulfilment of this project in Judea at the time of the birth of Jesus was impossible.

Matthew places the birth of Jesus shortly before the death of Herod the Great, whom he represents (ii. 19) as dying during the abode of Jesus in Egypt. Luke says the same indirectly, for when speaking of the announcement of the birth of the Baptist, he refers it to the days of Herod the Great, and he places the birth of Jesus precisely six months later; so that according to Luke, also, Jesus was born, if not, like John, previous to the death of Herod I., shortly after that event. Now, after the death of Herod the country of Judea fell to his son Archelaus (Matt. ii. 22), who, after a reign of something less than ten years, was deposed and banished by Augustus,7 at which time Judea was first constituted a Roman province, and began to be ruled by Roman functionaries.8 Thus the Roman census in question must have been made either under Herod the Great, or at the commencement of the reign of Archelaus. This is in the highest degree improbable, for in those countries which were not reduced in formam provinciæ, but were governed by regibus sociis, the taxes were levied by these princes, who paid a tribute to the Romans9; and this was the state of things in Judea prior to the deposition of Archelaus. It has been the object of much research to make it appear probable that Augustus decreed a census, as an extraordinary measure, in Palestine under Herod. Attention has been directed to the circumstance that the breviarium imperii, which Augustus left behind him, contained the financial state of the whole empire, and it has been suggested that, in order to ascertain the financial condition of Palestine, he caused a statement to be prepared by Herod.10 Reference has been made first to the record of Josephus, that on account of some disturbance of the relations between Herod [154]and Augustus, the latter threatened for the future to make him feel his subjection11; secondly, also to the oath of allegiance to Augustus which, according to Josephus, the Jews were forced to take even during the lifetime of Herod.12 From which it is inferred that Augustus, since he had it in contemplation after the death of Herod to restrict the power of his sons, was very likely to have commanded a census in the last years of that prince.13 But it seems more probable that it took place shortly after the death of Herod, from the circumstance that Archelaus went to Rome concerning the matter of succession, and that during his absence the Roman procurator Sabinus occupied Jerusalem, and oppressed the Jews by every possible means.14

The Evangelist relieves us from a farther inquiry into this more or less historical or arbitrary combination by adding, that this taxing was first made when Cyrenius (Quirinus) was governor of Syria, ἡγεμονεύοντος τῆς Συρίας Κυρηνίου; for it is an authenticated point that the assessment of Quirinus did not take place either under Herod or early in the reign of Archelaus, the period at which, according to Luke, Jesus was born. Quirinus was not at that time governor of Syria, a situation held during the last years of Herod by Sentius Saturninus, and after him by Quintilius Varus; and it was not till long after the death of Herod that Quirinus was appointed governor of Syria. That Quirinus undertook a census of Judea we know certainly from Josephus,15 who, however, remarks that he was sent to execute this measure, τῆς Ἀρχελάου χώρας εἰς ἐπαρχίαν περίγραφείσης, or, ὑποτελοῦς προσνεμηθείσης τῇ Σύρων16; thus about ten years after the time at which, according to Matthew and Luke, Jesus must have been born.

Yet commentators have supposed it possible to reconcile this apparently undeniable contradiction between Luke and history. The most dauntless explain the whole of the second verse as a gloss, which was early incorporated into the text.17 Some change the reading of the verse; either of the nomen proprium, by substituting the name of Saturninus or Quintilius,18 according to the example of Tertullian, who ascribed the census to the former19; or of the other words, by various additions and modifications. Paulus’s alteration is the most simple. He reads, instead of αὕτη, αὐτὴ, and concludes, from the reasons stated above, that Augustus actually gave orders for a census during the reign of Herod I., and that the order was so far carried out as to occasion the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem; but that Augustus being afterwards conciliated, the measure was abandoned, and αὐτὴ ἡ ἀπογραφὴ was only carried into effect a considerable time later, by Quirinus. Trifling as this alteration, which leaves the letters unchanged, may appear, in order to render it admissible it must be supported by the context. The reverse, however, is the fact. For if one sentence narrates a command issued by a prince, and [155]the very next sentence its execution, it is not probable that a space of ten years intervened. But chiefly, according to this view the Evangelist speaks, verse 1, of the decree of the emperor; verse 2, of the census made ten years later; but verse 3, without any remark, again of a journey performed at the time the command was issued; which, in a rational narrative, is impossible. Opposed to such arbitrary conjectures, and always to be ranked above them, are the attempts to solve a difficulty by legitimate methods of interpretation. Truly, however, to take πρώτη in this connexion for προτέρα, and ἡγεμονεύοντος Κ. not for a genitive absolute, but for a genitive governed by a comparative, and thus to understand an enrolment before that of Quirinus,20 is to do violence to grammatical construction; and to insert πρὸ τῆς after πρώτη21 is is no less uncritical. As little is it to be admitted that some preliminary measure, in which Quirinus was not employed, perhaps the already mentioned oath of allegiance, took place during the lifetime of Herod, in reference to the census subsequently made by Quirinus; and that this preliminary step and the census were afterwards comprised under the same name. In order in some degree to account for this appellation, Quirinus is said to have been sent into Judea, in Herod’s time, as an extraordinary tax-commissioner22; but this interpretation of the word ἡγεμονεύοντος is rendered impossible by the addition of the word Συρίας, in combination with which the expression can denote only the Præses Syriæ.

Thus at the time at which Jesus, according to Matt. ii. 1, and Luke i. 5, 26, was born, the census of which Luke ii. 1 f. speaks could not have taken place; so that if the former statements are correct, the latter must be false. But may not the reverse be the fact, and Jesus have been born after the banishment of Archelaus, and at the time of the census of Quirinus? Apart from the difficulties in which this hypothesis would involve us in relation to the chronology of the future life of Jesus, a Roman census, subsequent to the banishment of Archelaus, would not have taken the parents of Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea. For Judea only, and what otherwise belonged to the portion of Archelaus, became a Roman province and subjected to the census. In Galilee Herod Antipas continued to reign as an allied prince, and none of his subjects dwelling at Nazareth could have been called to Bethlehem by the census. The Evangelist therefore, in order to get a census, must have conceived the condition of things such as they were after the deposition of Archelaus; but in order to get a census extending to Galilee, he must have imagined the kingdom to have continued undivided, as in the time of Herod the Great. Thus he deals in manifest contradictions; or rather he has an exceedingly sorry acquaintance with the political relations of that period; for he extends the census not only to the whole of Palestine, but also (which we must not forget) to the whole Roman world.

Still these chronological incongruities do not exhaust the difficulties which beset this statement of Luke. His representation of the manner in which the census was made is subject to objection. In the first place, it is said, the taxing took Joseph to Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, διὰ τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν ἐξ οἴκου καὶ πατριᾶς Δαβὶδ, and likewise every one into his own city, εἰς τὴν ἰδίαν πόλιν, i.e. according to the context, to the place whence his family had originally sprung. Now, that every individual should be registered in his own city was required in all Jewish inscriptions, because among the Jews the organization of families and tribes constituted the very basis of the state. The Romans, on the contrary, were in the habit of taking [156]the census at the residences, and at the principal cities in the district.23 They conformed to the usages of the conquered countries only in so far as they did not interfere with their own objects. In the present instance it would have been directly contrary to their design, had they removed individuals—Joseph for example—to a great distance, where the amount of their property was not known, and their statement concerning it could not be checked.24 The view of Schleiermacher is the more admissible, that the real occasion which took the parents to Bethlehem was a sacerdotal inscription, which the Evangelist confounded with the better known census of Quirinus. But this concession does not obviate the contradiction in this dubious statement of Luke. He allows Mary to be inscribed with Joseph, but according to Jewish customs inscriptions had relation to men only. Thus, at all events, it is an inaccuracy to represent Mary as undertaking the journey, in order to be inscribed with her betrothed in his own city. Or, if with Paulus we remove this inaccuracy by a forced construction of the sentence, we can no longer perceive what inducement could have instigated Mary, in her particular situation, to make so long a journey, since, unless we adopt the airy hypothesis of Olshausen and others, that Mary was the heiress of property in Bethlehem, she had nothing to do there.

The Evangelist, however, knew perfectly well what she had to do there; namely, to fulfil the prophecy of Micah (v. 1), by giving birth, in the city of David, to the Messiah. Now as he set out with the supposition that the habitual abode of the parents of Jesus was Nazareth, so he sought after a lever which should set them in motion towards Bethlehem, at the time of the birth of Jesus. Far and wide nothing presented itself but the celebrated census; he seized it the more unhesitatingly because the obscurity of his own view of the historical relations of that time, veiled from him the many difficulties connected with such a combination. If this be the true history of the statement in Luke, we must agree with K. Ch. L. Schmidt when he says, that to attempt to reconcile the statement of Luke concerning the ἀπογραφὴ with chronology, would be to do the narrator too much honour; he wished to place Mary in Bethlehem, and therefore times and circumstances were to accommodate themselves to his pleasure.25

Thus we have here neither a fixed point for the date of the birth of Jesus, nor an explanation of the occasion which led to his being born precisely at Bethlehem. If then—it may justly be said—no other reason why Jesus should have been born at Bethlehem can be adduced than that given by Luke, we have absolutely no guarantee that Bethlehem was his birth-place.