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The Occasion of Luke III:1–2
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2011
Extract
Various views have been held in the past concerning the purpose of the sixfold chronology in Luke. “The breaking of this oppressive silence [since the time of Malachi] by the voice of the Baptist caused a thrill through the whole Jewish population throughout the world. Lk. shows his appreciation of the magnitude of the crisis by the sixfold attempt to give it an exact date.” From this we may pass to a somewhat calmer later view. “The evangelist is using here a form which he has taken over from an alien sphere. … It is derived from secular historiography, which has the habit of making prominent important events, especially those with which the principal narrative begins, by means of circumstantial datings and synchronisms.”
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References
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10 The Epideixis is found only in an Armenian version, but its teaching is elsewhere so orthodox that I cannot suppose a substitution.
11 Texte und Untersuchungen, xi. 1 (1893), pp. 148–49Google Scholar ; Irenaeus himself preferred 20 years.
12 Eusebius, H. E. v. 18. 14; Acta Petri c. Simone v.; Pistis Sophia, etc. The apostles alone are found in Kerygma Petri (in Clem. Alex., Strom, vi. 5. 43).
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17 Descensus ad inferos, xiii (in Tischendorf, Ev. Apocr., p. 413); Acta Petri et Pauli (in Tisch., Acta Apost. Apocr., p. 16).
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19 Ibid., p. 598.
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