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The Census of Quirinius

THE opening verses of Luke 2 have long baffled interpreters of the Bible. Despite Luke's intention to set the birth of Jesus on the timeline of world history, many scholars claim that Lk 2:1-2 are the most historically inaccurate verses of the entire Gospel! It is said that Caesar Augustus never ordered an empire-wide census (Lk 2:1) and that the census of the Roman governor of Syria, Quirinius, did not occur until A.D. 6, a full decade after what many accept as the date of Jesus' birth (c. 64 B.C.). If Caesar's decree is historically suspect and Quirinius' census is chronologically too late to have brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, how can Luke bind these events together to set the stage for the first Christmas?

Various explanations for this have been proposed by scholars. Some think Luke was confused about his facts. Others suggest Luke was giving us a rough sketch of these early events without intending to be precise about chronological details. Still others rush to Luke's defense as a reliable historian but are forced to reconstruct the history of the period in ways that are not easily reconciled with the historical data currently available. Thankfully, recent research is beginning to shed more light on this issue. It involves a reinterpretation of three essential pieces of the historical puzzle: the year of Herod the Great's death, the nature of Caesar's decree, and the role of Quirinius.

1. A majority of scholars believe that Herod the Great, the ruler of Palestine, died in the spring of 4 B.C., soon after a lunar eclipse in March of that year. Widespread agreement on this date has led modern interpreters to place Jesus' birth a year or two earlier, between 6 and 4 B.C.—after all, Herod was still alive at the time of the Nativity (Mt 2:1-18). Objections are now being raised against this view. In fact, several scholars are favoring a date for Herod's death in the early spring of 1 B.C., soon after a lunar eclipse in January of that year. Interestingly, this alternative chronology would push the date of Christ's birth into full agreement with the testimony of the early Christians. By calculating the Nativity according to the years of Caesar Augustus' reign, several Church Fathers, such as Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, Hippolytus of Rome, Eusebius, and Epiphanius, fix a date for Christ's birth between 3 and 2 B.C. If accepted, this chronological revision moves the Nativity closer to the end of the first century B.C. and opens new possibilities for understanding the circumstances described by Luke.

2. Caesar's decree has long been a problematic detail in Luke's narrative (Lk 2:1). There is clear evidence that Augustus initiated registrations of Roman citizens at different points during his career, but there is said to be no indication that any was taken in the closing years of the first century B.C. or that such a census would have embraced the entire empire. Since most registrations in the Roman world were taken for taxing purposes, it is further argued that Caesar would never have taken a census of Palestine while Herod the Great ruled the region as king and collected taxes of his own. These commonly accepted views are currently coming under fire. The Jewish historian Josephus recounts that during the last years of Herod's rule, Judea was required to swear an oath of loyalty to Caesar. Archeological evidence confirms that the same type of oath was sworn elsewhere in the empire around 3 B.C. This might well mean that the registration described in Lk 2:1 involved an oath of allegiance sworn to the emperor, not a census taken for the purpose of taxation. A later Christian historian named Orosius (fifth century A.D.) says explicitly that Augustus required every person in every Roman province to be enrolled with a public oath. His description of the event strongly suggests that this oath was required in the years just prior to 2 B.C., when the Roman people hailed Augustus as the first of all men. Even Caesar Augustus tells us in his personal writings that the whole Roman world had professed him to be the "Father" of the empire by the time this title was officially given to him in 2 B.C. These converging lines of evidence make it possible that the census of Luke 2 was not a registration of residents to be taxed but a public enrollment of subjects expressing their loyalty to the reigning emperor.