Justin and Tertullian refer to the census archives

[Peter Kirby]

Today I got the question: "I've been told that Justin and Tertullian both refer their readers to the official records in Rome regarding the census that is mentioned in Luke. I was wondering how I could go about searching your site to find those references?"

So I pulled up a few of these references.

"Now there is a village in the land of the Jews, thirty-five stadia from Jerusalem, in which Jesus Christ was born, as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing made under Cyrenius, your first procurator in Judaea." (Justin Martyr, First Apology, 34)

"the Roman archives preserve the census of Augustus as a very reliable testimony to the birth of the Lord" (Against Marcion, 4.7.7)

"But it is also certain that under Augustus censuses were held in Judea by Sentius Saturninus: in these censuses one could verify his humanity" (Against Marcion, 4.19.10)

For each writer, there seem to be at least 3 possibilities:

(1) Records regarding the census were in fact checked, and it was the census described in Luke.
(2) Records regarding the census were in fact checked, and it was a different census under Augustus in a different year.
(3) Records regarding the census were not checked, but it was common knowledge that census data were recorded.

And then a fourth:

(4) These records actually mention Jesus. (as that is apparently implied in Tertullian's Against Marcion)

What do you think?

[Stephan Huller]

The source is Irenaeus. I have always suspected Tertullian loosely copied Irenaeus in books 4 and 5. Justin Dialogue has additions which could only have been made at the end of the 2nd century. Irenaeus is the source.

Some speculation. The records if they existed would have been stored at the Irenaion, the Temple of Peace which burned in 192 CE. Galen makes reference to this fire.

[Stephan Huller]

The reference in Cassius Dio

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... l%20Temple

Sorry wrong reference.

many eagles of ill omen soared about the Capitol and moreover uttered screams that boded nothing peaceful (eirenaion), and an owl hooted there; and a fire that began at night in some dwelling leaped to the Eirenaion and spread to the storehouses of Egyptian and Arabian wares, whence the flames, borne aloft, entered the palace and consumed very extensive portions of it, so that nearly all the State records were destroyed. This, in particular, made it clear that the evil would not be confined to the City, but would extend over the entire civilized world under its sway. For the conflagration could not be extinguished by human power, though vast numbers both of civilians and soldiers carried water, and Commodus himself came in from the suburb and encouraged them. Only when it had destroyed everything on which it had laid hold did it spend its force and die out.

The Eirenaion certainly contained a library - the bibliotheca Pacis - in which the spoils from Vespasian's conquest of the Jerusalem temple were kept (Joseph. b. Iud. VII.5.7; Plin. NH XII.94; XXXIV.84; XXXV.102, 109; XXXVI.27, 58; Paus. VI.9.3; Iuv. IX.23; Hephaest. ap. Phot. Bibl. 149 32 Bekk., Pliny NH XXXVI.10). The writings associated with 'the schools of Christians and Jews' as Galen refers to them would certainly have been at home there.

Yet it is equally clear that the term Eirenaion - or more specifically Templum Pacis - gave its name to the fourth region of the city in which many libraries, book storage facilities and intellectual gatherings of all sorts took place. As Elżbieta Makowiecka suggests "the buildings within the 'temenos Eirenes' (= Eirenaion) were not differentiated among themselves and they formed one uniform architectural complex." To this end, the destruction of the Eirenaion in 192 CE was an event of seismic significance to the cultural life of the Empire which only came to light owing to a series of discoveries of previously lost manuscripts of the medical writer Galen.

[Bernard Muller]

Very likely Justin is bluffing and just surmising. Any archives of this period (around 4 BC) and place (Judea) would be buried/hidden under masses of more recent archives (and quasi inaccessible, even for high officials) or destroyed already.
However it would be interesting to know if some historians then did claim they got information from archives about this kind of data dating 150 years before their times. I doubt it.

Cordially, Bernard

[Stephan Huller]

Irenaeus likely added it to Justin like the reference to the geography of Arabia in Dialogues. Wasn't Justin. Craig Evans points out, there exists a similar tradition in the aforementioned text of Tertullian ascribed originally to Irenaeus. “Damascus was reckoned to Arabia until it was brought into Coele Syria, on the division of Syria by Septimius Severus between 193 and 198 (Dio Cassius 53.12): Justin, dial. 78, seems to have previous knowledge of this rearrangement unless the observation is a later addition.” Justin had previous knowledge of a name change at the time of Irenaeus? Of course it is a later addition.

[Stephan Huller]

Irenaeus wrote Luke Acts. Didn't exist at Justin's time - both the lie that there was a census and the census results were in the Irenaion. Also if Irenaeus wrote this after 192 CE 'oops ... you will just have to take my word for it ...It was there man I swear. Look its in Justin. I happen to have a copy of Justin's Apology with this reference written in my own hand. Justin must have gone to the library before it burned down.'

[Roger Pearse]

"Now there is a village in the land of the Jews, thirty-five stadia from Jerusalem, in which Jesus Christ was born, as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing made under Cyrenius, your first procurator in Judaea." (Justin Martyr, First Apology, 34)

"the Roman archives preserve the census of Augustus as a very reliable testimony to the birth of the Lord" (Against Marcion, 4.7.7)

"But it is also certain that under Augustus censuses were held in Judea by Sentius Saturninus: in these censuses one could verify his humanity" (Against Marcion, 4.19.10)

For each writer, there seem to be at least 3 possibilities:

(1) Records regarding the census were in fact checked, and it was the census described in Luke.
(2) Records regarding the census were in fact checked, and it was a different census under Augustus in a different year.
(3) Records regarding the census were not checked, but it was common knowledge that census data were recorded.

And then a fourth:

(4) These records actually mention Jesus. (as that is apparently implied in Tertullian's Against Marcion)

This is one of those cases where the data is inscrutable. Words like "certainly" and "probably" appear in any discussion. I think we need to recognise that here, as with much of the historical record, we are faced with something we have no way to verify. We can certainly say that Justin and Tertullian thought such records existed and could be consulted. Neither states that they have seen them.

Beyond this, we're in speculation land. I could say that we should remember that this is a pre-modern state; that they did not live in the sort of society where references had to be verified, or could be verified. That neither was on oath in front of a modern jury. That they lived in a society that had no books, only manuscripts, copied individually. That hearsay was much more difficult to avoid. That the running of archives itself was probably more like that in modern Egypt than in modern Washington. That it is possible that Justin saw an apocryphon, and had it in mind - and nothing in his text suggests more than this - and believed that; and that Tertullian relied on the testimony of Justin; and that the requirements of oratory account for the variations. That alternatively Justin merely assumed, and Tertullian merely copied, based on the general existence of census records. It is easily possible to invent any number of meta-narratives that dismiss this testimony.

But to what end? We were not there. We don't know. Our assumptions will always be based more on our own society, imagination and experiences than anything else.

The Roman state was not that centrally organised. But it did have a permanent bureaucracy, in the shape of the imperial slaves, and their role was already serious in the time of Claudius, as the careers of his freedmen Pallas and Narcissus bear witness (and the sarcastic comments of Pliny the Younger, after seeing a bronze tablet set up to Pallas in the forum, indicate that it was resented by the traditional nobility).

I think we should refrain from deciding for ourselves what is "probable" (or "making up stories", as it might more accurately be called) and simply say that these two writers DO reference such archives.

What I should like to see is a real example of a census record. These must exist from Egypt, surely? But I'd be very wary of arguing from that to general cases.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

[Peter Kirby]

We have some papyri from Egypt regarding census-taking in the second century AD.

What we don't have is anything from Rome - or practically any other region.

http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/greek/census.html

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/pr ... m_4_1_1372

[Stephan Huller]

Since Justin's evidence was tampered with in the late second century and since the census is first reported in Luke and Justin did not know Luke's gospel and the Marcionite version of the same text does not have the census the circumstantial evidence suggests a later date than Justin for this story.

Irenaeus claims Justin for a witness on a number of dubious points most notably Marcion. Since the false claim of the census is related to Marcion my assumption will be it is more likely than not Irenaeus rather than Justin who is the source of the claim

[Stephan Huller]

And the reference in Tertullian book 4 did not originally mention Luke. The original text was restructure to fit the order of Luke. Tertullian's source used a Diatessaron or a gospel that featured a blending of Matthew and Luke. Hence his frequent claim Marcion erased things from 'his gospel' which don't appear in Luke but only Matthew