An Interview With Stephen Carlson On Christmas Issues

I recently saw a Facebook post from Chris Powell that linked an interview with Stephen Carlson about some Christmas issues. Carlson makes a lot of good points about the meaning and historicity of the infancy narratives, especially Luke 2. The interview is about an hour long and is well worth listening to. You should also read his article on Luke 2, which is one of the best resources available on Luke's census account and some other issues.

I disagree with some of what he says during the interview. I would date Luke's gospel earlier, for reasons I've explained here, among other places.

A Review Of Stephen Carlson's New Book On Papias

Here's a review I recently posted on Amazon.

Stephen Carlson Interviewed On His Upcoming Book About Papias

Here's an interview he did with Michael Bird.

An Upcoming Book On Papias

Stephen Carlson is nearing completion of a book on Papias. Bart Ehrman recently put up two guest posts from Carlson on his blog, here and here, and it looks like at least one more is on the way. I've recommended Carlson's material in the past, especially on Christmas issues. I expect his book on Papias to be good, and Ehrman anticipates that the book will be "a definitive, full-length study of Papias". Judging by what I've read of Carlson's views so far (at Ehrman's blog and elsewhere, including in an email exchange), I expect to agree with most of what Carlson has to say about Papias, but not all of it. And we need to be careful to distinguish Carlson's views from Ehrman's.

In the introduction to his first guest post by Carlson, Ehrman refers to how Papias "claims to have known and interviewed the companions of disciples of Jesus’ own apostles (it’s a bit confusing: but Jesus had his apostles; after his death they themselves had disciples; Papias knew people who knew these disciples of the apostles)". It's highly unlikely that Papias was always so far removed from the apostles, though, as I explained in a response to Richard Bauckham a couple of years ago. (To get to the most relevant section of the post, do a Ctrl F search for "beginning with Papias", and start reading at that paragraph.) Most likely, Papias was a disciple of John the son of Zebedee, the apostle, and consulted other people who had been in contact with John and the other apostles. And he probably relied on sources further removed from the apostles on other occasions. So, the degree to which Papias was removed from the apostles varied from one situation to another. But he did on some occasions have closer contact with the apostles than Ehrman refers to. Remember, Ehrman's views aren't equivalent to Carlson's. But I recommend reading Ehrman's posts and Carlson's book when it comes out.

Stephen Carlson's Christmas Material

Stephen Carlson has written a lot of good material on Christmas issues in recent years. I've often cited a 2010 article he published that addresses how we should interpret Luke 2:7 and some issues related to the passage (whether Joseph and Mary were married yet in Luke 2:5, whether Joseph was from Nazareth, etc.).

He's also proposed a new rendering of Luke 2:2 that hasn't gotten much attention yet, but has been endorsed or taken seriously by some scholars who have commented on it. See here. And see here for a discussion of Carlson's response to Richard Carrier on the subject several years ago. I don't know enough about Greek to render much of a judgment of Carlson's proposed translation, but it seems more promising than other translations that are often suggested.

More than a decade ago, Carlson published an article on a passage in Clement of Alexandria that has some relevance to the infancy narratives. See my discussion of the subject here.

Carlson has also published an article on Matthew 1:17 and how Matthew arrived at his count of three groups of fourteen generations.