Quieting Quirinius

With the advent of the Internet, information has been able to spread rather quickly and facts are disseminated at an astronomical rate. This is, of course, a good thing. But it would be naive to assume that misinformation could not be spread as quickly, and perhaps in some cases, even quicker. Needless to say, I think issues of paramount importance, such as the one I am about to undertake, have suffered mercilessly from this abusive and perpetuating trend. It is indeed ironic that widespread access to information should facilitate the exact opposite of the expected effect (but again, maybe not given what we can see in history). Anyways, I think the author of the Gospel of Luke has unjustly become the victim of this. The issue arising from the purported discrepancy in the dating of Christ's birth has been continuously peddled as the knife in the heart of biblical inerrancy. Of course, the edifice of biblical inerrancy may come crashing down, but I don't see any reason to think that it will be at the hands of Luke.









Most scholars widely recognize that Luke the Evangelist wrote both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. The book of Acts has withstood serious historical scrutiny and Luke is seen as being quite astonishing in terms of historical accuracy. Very few issues have arisen upon an analysis of the historicity of Acts that are even remotely troubling. Perhaps the most conspicuous is the Theudas problem, but I think several convincing arguments have been put forth to solve this. My point here is not undertake and detail every issue, but rather to suggest that Luke has the luxury of being repeatedly correct from what we can see, and that his historical endeavors are incredibly noteworthy in that he is shown to be right again and again. The Theudas problem and the census of Quirinius are two of the most hotly contested issues, but of the two, I have found Quirinius to be much more compelling.


So let's get down to it.


Luke 2:1-5 ASV


"Now it came to pass in those days, there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrolment made when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to enrol themselves, every one to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David; to enrol himself with Mary, who was betrothed to him, being great with child."


The italicized portion is the infamous line. So what is so troubling? Well, we have Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews placing a census around 6 A.D. when Quirinius was governor of Syria and also placing the death of Herod around 4 B.C. Since we know from the Gospel of Matthew (2:1) that Herod is alive upon Jesus' birth (Luke also mentions Herod). Josephus also gives us an account of the various governors surrounding our time period and in doing so, shows that Quirinius was not governor during the rule of Herod the Great.  So we are left with an obvious ten year contradiction. Or are we?


Note: the above links are to Wikipedia and certainly aren't meant to be exhaustive, but instead brief descriptions to unfamiliar readers who might happen to stumble across this post.


The first and easiest answer is that Josephus was wrong. This is unsatisfactory in my opinion, but it has certainly been proposed. Josephus does seem to be elevated to infallibility among the non-Christian, but this is for obvious reasons, and I don't think ignoring Josephus will solve anything.


Thus, I think a sufficient answer must be approached from several angles. The first will be to flesh out exactly what is meant in the passage by governor. In fact, Luke does not even use the Greek word for "governor."  In following this theme, we know that Quirinius was acting as a military commander around the time of Herod and would have had significant authority to direct this census himself or at the behest of another governor. (I have seen various accounts suggesting that some could have fallen into disfavor with Augustus around this time, but I won't take that up here.) It remains to be seen why Luke would have not have used the Greek word for "governor" if he meant governor in the strict sense; if he had known the trouble he would have caused by doing so, I think he may been clearer in his wording. By not using "governor" it can certainly be construed then that he did not in fact mean governor as we see in Josephus. Therefore, I see no reason to think that the term can't be understood loosely. Moreover, I think there is a convincing case for this interpretation based on the evidence we have seen.  Quirinius' becoming a dynamic character enables me to make my next point.


Still, however, we have the positive evidence that there was a census around 6 A.D when Quirinius was acting as the official governor of Syria. But let's take a look at the text again: "This was the first enrolment made when Quirinius was governor of Syria." Now the use of the adjective "first" is puzzling here. This is clearly meant to distinguish it from the second, third, fourth, and more generally, every other census that Quirinius could have administered. But unfortunately, we don't have the evidence for any other census besides the 6 A.D census as described by Josephus; this, of course, does not mean they did not happen, for absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Indeed, the use of "first" is doing a great deal of work here and allows us to consider a few things: 1) that there are other censuses associated with Quirinius and 2) in following (1) we can plausibly make the case that the familiar census was administered years after the census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. This is not disqualified by the fact that we have no extra-Lucan material corroborating the earlier census. It is also interesting that Luke makes reference in Acts 5:37 to the revolt of Judas of Galilee in "the days of the census." This is probably the census to which Josephus was referring. Luke is clearly aware of this later census and seems to be differentiating between the two by adding the qualifier "first" when he speaks of the census in the birth narrative.


So this seems very possible.The problem with this, as I mentioned before, is that we don't have an extra-biblical mention of the earlier census, but this is, as has been noted, nothing more than an argument from silence: Since we don't have clear evidence of at least two censuses, Luke must be wrong. Of course, this is not the deal breaker most make it out to be and really proves nothing other than the fact that we have limited information regarding this whole issue in the sources that we have been able to recover. Besides, a considerable amount of criticism (at least what I have seen) hinges around the internal coherence of Luke's gospel given the evidence of the single census. The evidence points to the fact that Luke had knowledge of the census associated with the revolt of Judah around 6 A.D. that would have been well-known to a historian like Josephus and then distinguished another census before this one in which Quirinius is also involved acting in some considerable capacity. Now, someone might ask, "What are the chances that there would have been two censuses separated by a considerable amount of time both overseen by Quirinius?" Or they might ask, "Why wouldn't Luke have been clearer in distinguishing between the two?" Well, to the latter I would answer that Luke has given enough to show a subtle difference that would have been sufficient for his expected readers and that he could not have foreseen the amount of scrutiny that his gospel and the Bible as a whole would come under. To the former I would say that the historical evidence does not dispute this and that it really is an argument from silence. Moreover, if we assume Quirinius' involvement in the "first census" then this would give rise to a very ad hoc description of Roman politics that probably would not have been articulated tersely or have been appropriate in a book oriented to the end the Bible is. Logically, then, I think we can see good reason for Luke to omit some of the details. Of course other issues have arisen concerning whether or not a census would have decreed in this period that all return to their ancestral homeland, but we have censuses from several decades later that mandate something to a similar effect, so I don't think this is an inherently implausible concept.


Many would say that Luke needed a way to get Joseph to Bethlehem in order to fulfill the prophecy, so he either invented this census or made a major faux pas in his dating. This is unsatisfactory given the fact that the other Gospels make no mention of this census and still place Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem. Luke, of course, attempts to put the birth and death of Christ in a historical context. We can not evaluate his efficacy in doing so unless we are sure we have all the facts, and I don't know many who (perhaps in either lamentation or rejoice)  would make the case otherwise. Regardless, we must bear in mind, as has been said about Jesus himself and I will say it about Luke in a different manner,that, however dubious one may find it,the Evangelist was not trying to make his readers historians.


One final point. Suppose I am wrong and Luke muffed the dates. This would almost certainly destroy Luke's reputation in other areas, but it certainly would not be evidence that Christ was never born. It would probably do some serious damage to many conceptions of biblical inerrancy, but it wouldn't destroy the Christian faith. It seems as if many Christians, and I can think of a few in particular, put some serious stock in biblical inerrancy, and gives the impression to the non-Christian that Christianity depends wholly on this doctrine. I find that puzzling to say the least. I'll close with the words of Pope John Paul II in his Fides et Ratio:


There are also signs of a resurgence of fideism, which fails to recognize the importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse for the understanding of faith, indeed for the very possibility of belief in God. One currently widespread symptom of this fideistic tendency is a "biblicism" which tends to make the reading and exegesis of Sacred Scripture the sole criterion of truth. In consequence, the word of God is identified with Sacred Scripture alone, thus eliminating the doctrine of the Church which the Second Vatican Council stressed quite specifically. Having recalled that the word of God is present in both Scripture and Tradition,(73) the Constitution Dei Verbum continues emphatically:



"Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture comprise a single sacred deposit of the word of God entrusted to the Church. Embracing this deposit and united with their pastors, the People of God remain always faithful to the teaching of the Apostles".



Scripture, therefore, is not the Church's sole point of reference. The "supreme rule of her faith" (75) derives from the unity which the Spirit has created between Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church in a reciprocity which means that none of the three can survive without the others.(76)


Moreover, one should not underestimate the danger inherent in seeking to derive the truth of Sacred Scripture from the use of one method alone, ignoring the need for a more comprehensive exegesis which enables the exegete, together with the whole Church, to arrive at the full sense of the texts. Those who devote themselves to the study of Sacred Scripture should always remember that the various hermeneutical approaches have their own philosophical underpinnings, which need to be carefully evaluated before they are applied to the sacred texts.