I just read an excellent post on Lu 2.2 and the census over at Hypotyposeis. You should go read it, really.
One point that Dr. Carlson made immediately caught my attention. He writes:
Nevertheless, the standard interpretion still leaves me cold with a number of problems, the chief among them is why would Luke specify that it was πρώτη ("first"). If Luke merely wanted to tell when the registration happened, presumably under Quirinius (c. AD 6), there is little need to use πρώτη. What does that word do for the text? Of course, the census under Quirinius was hugely important. Josephus had recognized it as as a major factor ultimately leading to the Jewish War in the 60s. In fact, this census is so important that Luke could merely refer to it in Acts 5:37 as "the census" τῆς ἀπογραφῆς.
Dr. Carlson later works through the different major senses of the word πρῶτος:
Danker identifies two major senses for this adjective: (1) being first in sequence, time, number, or space, and (2) being first in prominence or importance. Many examples of the second sense can be found in Luke's writings, e.g. Luke 15:22 "[my] best robe"; Luke 13:30 (first vs. last); Acts 17:4 "quite a few prominent women" (NET); Acts 13:50 "the prominent men in the city"; Luke 19:47 "the prominent leaders of the people" etc.
All of this reminded me of 1Ti 1.15. You know, the part where Paul (assuming Pauline authorship, of course) says he is “the greatest” or “the foremost” of sinners? Here's what I've got in my current draft of notes (emphasizing the word draft) on v. 15. Single ‘quotes’ indicate glosses quoted from a lexicon (BDAG/others, cited in the note); bold text represents the ESV text.
After establishing the general principle that Christ Jesus had come to save sinners, Paul offers that he is the foremost of sinners. While the word translated “foremost” (πρῶτος) literally means ‘first’,38 Paul is not claiming to be the first or primary sinner. The sense is that of ‘most prominent’ or perhaps ‘worst’ of the sinners.39 This is less of a boast and more of an effort to establish a very high bar that all can pass under.
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38 BDAG, p. 893. Occurs 155x in NT; 10x in PE.
39 “ … and I am the worst of them!” is the NET Bible translation of this verse.
Just another instance where πρῶτος doesn't necessarily mean 'first'. (This also happens in 1Ti 1.16, but the eight other occurrences in the PE all seem to be along the lines of ‘first’.) Of course, to relate this back fully to Dr. Carlson's post, I'd have to ask if this use of πρῶτος fits the pattern of use in Luke/Acts, and if that has any merit whatsoever in advancing the argument of Luke as Paul's amanuensis for the Pastoral Epistles.
Addendum: It occurs to me that I should say why I think the original post is so “excellent”. I'm not one who could say one way or the other what the proper translation of Lu 2.2 is. It is a difficult verse for the very reasons mentioned in the original post. What I like about the post, though, is the exploration. Not just dismissing something because it hasn't been looked at recently; but working through it to see if it has merit.
I think sometimes I take a “majority rules” approach to working with the Greek text. My skills aren't the best and I'm still working through issues (particularly syntax). If I'm stumped (which happens more often than I'd like to admit) and if most of the modern translations treat a verse or phrase or word in a similar way, then it must be right. Right? Well, not necessarily.
What I appreciated about Dr. Carlson's post was that he examined an alternative to the typical approach and worked through it, and then posted his stuff for other folks to check out. Dr. Carlson's thoughts could stimulate someone else's thinking on the issue, and who knows where that will lead.
All in all this is fun stuff. This is what “biblioblogging” (or whatever the label ends up being) should be like.