Hmmm ...andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Tue Apr 10, 2018 11:33 am This thread is a response to interesting recent discussion's about Josephus Pilate Luke 3:1 ans other matters.
However I am trying to answer a specific point. Can we determine when Luke understood the crucifixion to have occurred without relying on either our present text of 3:1 or our present text of Josephus.
I think we probably can. The correct text and translation of Luke 23:45 is in all probability the sun was eclipsed
A solar eclipse cannot happen at Passover but if Luke is associating the crucifixion with an historical eclipse in Palestine it must be the eclipse of november 24 29 ad. This implies that Luke understood the crucifixion as occurring around 29-30 CE.
(This is not a claim about the actual date of the crucifixion merely about what Luke believed.)
Andrew Criddle
Perhaps the copyists were not sure whether this eclipse was intended to be a dating circumstance, or a miracle (outside of natural phenomenon). If you are right and the original reading in Luke was "the sun was eclipsed" then it may have simply been intended as a miracle.
Alternatively, if the author of this passage in Luke is assumed to have drawn from legend, we cannot really assume that the author would *surely* have *known* that a solar eclipse cannot happen at Passover, and conflated two accounts, one related to Passover and another presenting the event as a miraculous portent.
DCH