Lucifer's True History of Everything
Sep 1, 06 07:53 AM
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The True Life of Jesus, continued
The birth of Jesus is said to have happened on this wise (none of which is how I actually remember it, but bear with me: I'm giving you the exact true story as told in the Gospel of Luke):
In 6 CE – no, make that zero CE (we're following Luke's version here, not the secular histories) – Caesar Augustus issued a decree that Quirinius, the governor of Syria, must take a census of the Jews of Palestine (Luke 2:2). But Quirinius (who would not actually become governor of Syria for another six years) had no more clue how to conduct a state census than how to run a local beauty pageant: so instead of having everyone remain at home to be counted, Quirinius, that idiot, evidently commanded everyone to register for the census in the town of a famous biblical ancestor. As an incentive (worse and worse!), Quirinius commanded that every adult Jew, upon arriving in his or her favourite ancestral city, would be charged a census tax (Luke 2:1). Says Luke.
(You will remember that it was a sin, in the Old Testament period, to count the Israelites; and you will recall that every state census was followed by a vile plague just as surely as 2 follows 1, or night follows day [e.g., 1 Chron. 21]. But the otherwise undocumented Roman census in 0 BCE was not followed by a vile plague, it was followed instead by Christianity; which shows that the Advent of Christ signaled a whole new era in Heaven-Earth diplomacy.)
In the end, it was only the good-citizen Jews, like Joseph and Mary of Nazareth, who made the trip to their favourite ancestral villages to be counted and taxed. The rebellious Jews stayed home, making sarcastic remarks about the wacky newfangled census-taking scheme of that nutter, Quirinius.
Now Joseph (through both of his biological fathers) claimed King David as a biological ancestor; which is not unimportant, because the Old Testament prophets had said that the Messiah would be a lineal descendant of King David; but those same prophecies now made necessary an inconvenient trip to Bethlehem, so that Quirinius's people could count and tax the baby Messiah in David's own birthplace.
Another good reason is that, when Luke (in 80 CE) finally wrote his gospel, readers needed to be reassured that Jesus of Nazareth was not just a provincial Galilean rabbi but a lineal descendant of King David, born in David's own native village of Bethlehem.
The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, by land travel, is a 145-kilometer, weeklong donkey-ride over a rocky, twisted trail, mostly uphill – a challenging trip for a tender young virgin who was already nine months pregnant.
Joseph said: "Too bad."
Mary reminded her fiancé that she was of the house and lineage of Aaron, and of the tribe of Levi, not of David and the tribe of Judah (Luke 1:5). And besides, she didn't think that Joseph should have to keep his eye on her every single minute, as if she couldn't be trusted.
"Pack our bags," said Joseph. "You're coming with me, to Bethlehem." (Luke 2:4-5).
– L.
(Up next: Merry Christmas!)
Posted by Lucifer at 07:53 AM
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