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Hi Ron,<br><br>
If you think Luke's method of taxation is so great, will you pay my plane
fare to Madison, Wisconsin, so that I might visit the county tax office
so that I might offer to pay property taxes on a farm that the Gier
family no longer owns??<br><br>
Come on, Ron, fess up. There is no historical evidence for such a
fantastic system of taxation. And back to my very first
point: Mary did not have to go even if it were the case. I'm very
happy that she stayed home in Nazareth and gave birth to a son who gave
us such a profound message of love, compassion, and peace. She
surely would have miscarried on that donkey!<br><br>
Luke states that one must return to his own city (<i>idios</i>) and
whenever Jesus refers to the "<i>idios </i>of his father" it is
always Nazareth in Galilee. (See Jn. 4:44; Matt. 13:57; Mk.
6:4) Jesus never mentions his alleged birth in Bethlehem.
That would have been a very important fact if he really claimed to be the
Messiah. <br><br>
The Jews had very good reasons to reject Jesus as Messiah, the primarily
one being that he did not coming as conquering king defeating the enemies
of Israel. The Suffering Servant of Isaiah was never identified as
the Messiah except in one very late commentary. See the section on
"Jesus as Suffering Servant" at
<a href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/gre8.htm" eudora="autourl">www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/gre8.htm</a>.
The opening passage from Isaiah in Gibson's <i>The Passion of the
Christ</i> is therefore not a messanic prophecy.<br><br>
Thanks also to Ron for reminding us that his religion, agreeing with
Roman patriarchy, would completely disenfranchise all women of
their rights.<br><br>
I leave you with a quotation from French Bible Scholar Charles
Guignebert: "It is all outside the plane of reality....It is
incredible that such an unusual and disturbing proceeding, as the census
spoken of by Luke must necessarily have been, should have escaped all
notice in Josephus. We will not unduly stress the peculiarity of the mode
of census taking implied in our text, but it is to be noted that it is a
very strange proceeding. The moving about of men and families which this
reckless decree must have caused throughout the whole of the Empire is
almost beyond imagination, and one cannot help wondering what advantage
there could be for the Roman state in this return, for a single day, of
so many scattered individuals, not to the places of their birth, but to
the original homes of their ancestors. For it is to be remembered that
those of royal descent were not the only ones affected by this fantastic
ordinance, and many a poor man must have been hard put to it to discover
the cradle of his race. The suspicion, or rather, the conviction, is
borne in upon us at first sight that the editor of Luke has simply been
looking for some means of bringing Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, in order
to have Jesus born there. A hagiographer of his type never bothers much
about common sense in inventing the circumstances he
requires."<br><br>
Nick Gier</html>