Re: The wise men and their star

[Peter Ruest]

| Stein Arild Stromme wrote:
|
| >I agree that the visit of the magi is not necessarily to the newborn
| baby Jesus, he might have been up to two years old, given the logic of
| the text. You are also right that there is no mention of any manger
| anywhere, in Matthew nor in Luke.<
|
| There is no mention of any stable anywhere, but a manger is mentioned
| in Luke 2:7,12,16.

Yes of course. The stable is what I had in mind.

| ... It would be useless to ask whether or not Matthew knew they had
| lived in Nazareth before. If he knew it, there is no reason to
| expect him to say so. None of the evangelists presents anything like
| a complete biography (or historical account in the modern sense).

We seem to agree, then, that there is nothing to indicate that Matthew
knew of any possible previous connection to Nazareth or Galilee. But
if so, where is the house that the magi found?

| >In any case, it hardly makes any sense for a star to stop over a house
| :-) The nativity stories have many characteristics of myths.<
|
| I'm not Bultmann - I prefer a miracle to a myth. The most natural way
| to read the text seems to indicate a sign. To invoke myths appears to
| me to be a cop-out for evading a difficulty.

Perhaps it is, it depends on the a priori view one takes of the texts.
I think that you are putting very particular interpretations into the
text in the interest of harmonization, rather than looking for the
most probable "correct" reading (by which I mean the closest possible
reconstruction of the author's intention). The device "let scripture
interpret scripture" becomes "let Luke interpret Matthew and vice
versa". I'm not convinced that this gets us any closer to the truth.

In addition, there are other difficulties, as you are probably aware,
like the timing in Luke, concerning Quirinius and the census.

SA

-- 
Stein Arild Strømme                 +47 55584825, +47 95801887
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Matematisk institutt, UiB               www.mi.uib.no/stromme/         
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