Light from the Ancient East

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“Perhaps the most remarkable discovery of this kind in the new texts is a parallel found some time ago to the statement in Luke 2:3, which has been so much questioned on the strength of mere book-learning, that on the occasion of the enrolment for taxation made by Cyrenius, ‘all went to enrol themselves, every one to his own city.’¹ That this was no mere figment of St. Luke or his authority, but that similar things² took place in that age, is proved by an edict³ of G. Vibius Maximus, governor of Egypt, 104 a.d. (Figure 42).” (Page 268)

“I propose to show the importance of the non-literary written memorials of the Roman Empire in the period which led up to and witnessed the rise and early development of Christianity, the period, let us say, from Alexander to Diocletian or Constantine.” (Page 4)

“In this Hellenised world, however, men no longer spoke local dialects of Greek. The world had become unified, and men spoke no more the ancient Doric, or Æolic, Ionic, or Attic, but a single Greek international language, one common tongue. The precise origin of this international Greek, which it is usual to refer to as the Κοινή (‘common’ language), has not been made out,¹ nor need it detain us here. The fact remains that in the period which gave birth to Christianity there was an international Greek language.” (Page 59)

“Two examples are now forthcoming to prove that the word εὐαγγέλιον, ‘gospel, good tidings,’ which was in use in pre-Christian times in the profane sense of good news, and which then became a Primitive Christian cult-word of the first order, was also employed in sacral use in the Imperial cult. One of the examples is that calendar inscription of Priene, about 9 b.c., which we have mentioned² twice already, and which is now in the Berlin Museum.” (Page 370)