Summary: What is the controversy surrounding Quirinius in Luke’s Gospel account of Jesus’ birth?
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. – Luke 2:1 (ESV)
This was the first registration when[a] Quirinius was governor of Syria. – Luke 2:2 (ESV)
(Note [a] reads: “This was the registration before…”)
And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. – Luke 2:2 (KJV)
Luke’s Account of Jesus’ Birth
Luke, as he begins his account of the birth of Jesus, brings us the name Quirinius, “governor of Syria.” Who was this man, and why does Luke include his name?
Critical scholars of the Bible say Luke made a serious error about Quirinius which takes away from the credibility of his Gospel. But ancient statements and deductive reasoning say otherwise.
Quirinius at a Glance
P. Sulpicius Quirinius was an aristocratic Roman at the time of Augustus and Tiberius Caesar. He is known outside the Bible from several references by ancient historians, and from three stone inscriptions. Quirinius came up through the stations of responsibility known as the cursus honorum to become a consul and a governor. He is known to have carried the title duumvir as well, which means a person who shares responsibility with another duumvir for governing.
The record shows that Quirinius was an able administrator. Among his accomplishments, during the time he governed Syria, was his defeat of a tribe in Galatia known as the Homonadenses.
Quirinius was considered wise, able, and loyal enough to be the one chosen to replace the corrupt Marcus Lollius as advisor to Augustus’ adopted son, Gaius. This role was especially important because Gaius was to be the next emperor, though he died before it could happen. Quirinius’ job was to guide the emperor-to-be in learning what it would take to administer the Empire.
During the short time around 1 BC, when Gaius was the de jure governor of Syria and Quirinius was with him, we must ask whether Quirinius was the de facto governor of Syria aside from his official tenure(s).
There’s good reason to believe that Quirinius’ second wife, Lepida, tried to poison him. Even though Quirinius could not prove the charge against her, he tried to ruin her life forever afterward. The public sympathized with Lepida, taking her side because she was the granddaughter of the famous and popular general Pompei. Consequently, when Quirinius died as a childless, old man from an unimportant family, Tiberius had to cajole the Senate to give him the honor of a public funeral.
The Quandary
Most likely your only contact with the name Quirinius comes from Luke’s nativity account, unless you are a student of Roman history or of the Gospel of Luke. No doubt if you are a student of Luke’s Gospel, you have heard much about Quirinius since his name within the Gospel has brought challenges to its credibility.
In this short article, we can only treat this matter summarily. (For a deeper dive, see When the Bible Meets the Sky: The Star of Bethlehem and Other Mysteries by Frederick Baltz). With that understood, here are some problems connected with the governorship of Quirinius at the time of Jesus’ birth:
- Quirinius is known from Josephus to have come into Syria as governor in AD 6, which is years too late for Luke to be correct about Jesus’ birth if Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. Both Luke (1:5) and Matthew (2:1ff) say Herod was still alive when Jesus was born. But Herod is believed, by the majority, to have died in 4 BC.
- No Roman census is known to have taken place during those years, not from 8 BC to AD 14.
Luke says a world-wide registration happened when Quirinius was governor of Syria, which included the Biblical land of Israel. At least most Bibles are translated that way. A few have made the case that Luke’s text should be translated: “This was the registration before Quirinius was governor of Syria.” The problem with this is that no one would ever have thought of so forced a translation if the integrity of Luke as an historian were not at stake. The Greek word prote means “first,” not “before.”
Shown here is R. E. Brown’s list of the governors of Syria with their respective terms of service. It is compiled based on Brown’s reading of the text of Josephus (from The Birth of the Messiah, p. 550). Brown acknowledges that others have proposed a somewhat different list.
- 23-13 BC: M. Agrippa
- ca. 10 BC: M. Titius
- 9-6 BC: S. Sentius Saturninus
- 6-4 BC or later: Quintilius (or Quinctilius) Varus
- 1 BC to ca. AD 4: Gaius Caesar
- AD 4-5: L. Volusius Saturninus
- AD 6 to after 7: P. Sulpicius Quirinius
Quirinius does not appear in this list until AD 6. This is when Josephus tells us Quirinius was sent into Judea to count the people and liquidate the holdings of the now-deposed tetrarch, Archelaus, Herod’s son (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book XVIII, Ch. 1).
Critical scholars have maintained that Luke mistook the AD 6 census for what brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, and therefore, was off by a decade for the birth of Jesus. But other scholars have cautioned that Luke is known to have been a careful historian, and they point to a gap in the list of governors of Syria. Perhaps Quirinius was there during the gap as governor, and this is what Luke is referring to.
It is noteworthy that Quirinius was undeniably present in Syria already around 1 BC as advisor to the Governor Gaius Caesar, which we saw earlier. So, his presence in Syria in AD 6 was not his first time there.
The AD 6 Quirinius mission almost led to a war. It was the cool-headed influence of the High Priest that kept the peace. For the first time, Judea came under direct Roman rule; a bitter fact the Jews had to accept. From this moment on, a Roman ruler would preside. No Jewish client king, ethnarch, or tetrarch would be on a throne in Judea ever again.
Translating the Greek Word Prote
This brings us back to the translation “before.” Some object that Luke had no reason to say or imply “before,” so we should not impose that meaning when translating Luke’s Greek. They reason that this is only an attempt to “save the credibility of Luke” because the Greek word prote does not mean “before,” but “first.” Those who have argued for translating prote as “before” seem not to have thought of it, but the census-like event of AD 6 was traumatic for everyone in Judea. It was for them a pivotal event, like a December 7 or a September 11 for us.
Realizing this makes sense that Luke may have been differentiating a prior registration from that later, infamous one when Quirinius was governor of Syria. In other words: “This was the earlier, first, lesser-known registration conducted by Quirinius, not that infamous, well-known census which also happened under Quirinius when he was governor of Syria.”
There is another way to approach the Quirinius issue. It also concerns the meaning of a particular word. Luke does not necessarily say Quirinius was the “governor” of Syria, though the King James Version and many versions since have translated the text that way. Luke uses a participle of the verb for ruling/governing (hāgemoneúontos).
We should not press the meaning of Luke’s words beyond: This was the first registration when Quirinius was governing in Syria. Some, like Sir William Ramsey for instance, have suggested that Quirinius was prosecuting a war elsewhere in Galatia (the Homonadensan War), or busy with something else, but was technically the governor of Syria when Luke says he was.
In fact, Quirinius need not have been the Roman “governor” at all for Luke to be correct. What might Quirinius have been doing in an official governing role if he was not serving as governor? One plausible answer: securing loyalty oaths to Caesar from the people of Syria, and perhaps beyond, as we will see now.
The Census or Loyalty Oaths
The missing “census” ceases to be a problem when we discover that historical and inscriptional evidence points to an empire-wide collection of loyalty oaths from citizens and non-citizens throughout the Roman Empire.
The evidence comes from many places:
- the Armenian historian, Moses of Khorene, giving a date of 3 BC.
- Paul Orosius, a theologian, historian, and assistant to Augustine and Jerome.
- an inscription found in Paphlagonia (in the northern part of Asia Minor along the Black Sea) dated to 3 BC.
- Josephus, who wrote that the entire Jewish people took an oath to Caesar and Herod shortly before Herod died (Antiquities XVII.41–45). As we will see, Herod’s death year was actually 1 BC, after the world-wide registration of loyalty oaths.
According to Orosius, Caesar “ordered that a census be taken of each province everywhere and that all men be enrolled. … This is the earliest and most famous public acknowledgment which marked Caesar as the first of all men and the Romans as lords of the world, a published list of all men entered individually …. This first and greatest census was taken, since in this one name of Caesar all the peoples of the great nations took oath, and at the same time, through the participation in the census, were made a part of one society…” Orosius, VI.22 and VII.2
According to these reports the people of the empire were all counted in a way different from the standard Roman census, or lustrum. They registered their loyalty, and the verb Luke uses is derived from apographā, registration. This was not about taxes, though the King James Version is so translated.
Justin Martyr, writing in the 2nd century, said Quirinius was Rome’s first procurator in Judea (Apology 1.34). This is significant because a procurator could be governing simultaneously with the governor in a province. The original meaning of “procurator” was manager, overseer, agent, or deputy.
Before the honor of “Father of the Country” could be given to Augustus, as planned in February of 2 BC by the Senate (an honor apparently related to the gathering of all the loyalty oaths) someone had to secure the loyalty oaths of the people of Rome, the people of Syria and the people of every other province. It is quite plausible, in view of what Justin Martyr wrote, that Quirinius was that person, sent for that reason. So, the early Justin Martyr tradition allows for Quirinius to have been “governing” in Syria before AD 6 as procurator.
Governor Varus and Herod’s Death
A critical reader might respond: But Governor Varus is still a problem. Josephus said Herod was in conversation with Varus shortly before Herod’s death. The list of governors of Syria has Varus in Syria from AD 6 to 4. If Herod died in 4 BC as the majority has thought, and Jesus was born during Herod’s reign as both Luke and Matthew say, that puts Jesus’ birth before the 3 to 2 BC loyalty oath registration, and Luke is still in error.
We now have new evidence to resolve the long-contested question of when Herod died. Josephus reported a lunar eclipse shortly before the death of the king. The eclipse favored by the majority has been that of March 12, 4 BC. The minority have favored the eclipse of January 10, 1 BC.
According to Josephus, sometime following the eclipse, Herod requested an apple and a knife, actually planning to kill himself with the knife. This could hardly have happened in March because only since the 20th century has knowledge and technology existed to sufficiently control gases, light, and temperature in order to preserve fruit that long. Put succinctly, the presence of an apple five days before Herod died, as related by Josephus, rules out his death in 4 BC. (See Thinker Article: Herod’s Death Year, Key to Jesus’ Birth).
The Mystery of the Inscribed Stone
With Herod’s death year established as 1 BC, a particular stone discovered in 1764 and held in the Vatican Museum may shed new light on the Governor Varus matter. Inscribed on the stone are words about a person who was twice governor of Syria but unfortunately, the name of the person is broken off.
The grammar of what is inscribed has been debated. A. N. Sherwin-White claims it speaks of a person who was twice governor of Syria, as opposed to a governor twice in two different places, once in Syria, and once somewhere else. Of course, some scholars like Ramsey, for instance, have been most eager to say, on the basis of the stone, that it must be about Quirinius. If Quirinius was governor of Syria twice, his AD 6 mission ceases to be a problem for Luke’s account. It would be Quirinius who then belongs in the gap on the list of governors of Syria.
But according to Sherwin-White, what little is written on the stone does not conform to the career of Quirinius (Roman Law and Roman Society in the New Testament, p. 162-169). So, even though the stone is called the “Sepulchral Inscription of Quirinius” at the Vatican Museum where it is kept, it probably has nothing to do with Quirinius.
The stone was found near the entrance to the remains of an old Roman villa that has long been considered the home of Quintilius Varus and the events written on the stone do conform to his career. What would it mean if Varus had been governor of Syria twice?
First, it would make perfect sense, because these were threatening times in Roman Judea. Keeping a person in place who already knew the political and military context of a region made more sense than replacing him with someone at a difficult time. Second, given the new death year for Herod of 1 BC, it would allow Varus to have conferred with Herod shortly before Herod’s death, as reported by Josephus, after the gathering of the loyalty oaths in 3 BC.
Revised List of Governors of Syria
Here is the revised list of governors of Syria as presented by Jack Finegan:
- Prior to 7 BC M. Titius
- 7 or 6-4 BC P. Quintilius Varus
- 4 BC – 2 BC C. Sentius Saturninus
- 2 BC – 1 AD P. Quintilius Varus
- AD 1-4 C. Caesar
Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, Revised Edition, Hendrickson, 1998, p. 304. TABLE 147. Revised List of Governors of Syria BC/AD (C. Caesar is the same individual as Gaius Caesar in Brown’s list above).
In this reconstruction, Varus still occupies those years as governor which were never contested in 7 or 6 to 4 BC, but also the time in which the new proposal for Herod’s death in 1 BC requires, if Varus spoke to Herod just before he died. Varus’ earlier rule ceases to be a problem for assigning Herod’s death to 1 BC, and for assigning the birth of Jesus to the time of the gathering of loyalty oaths in 3 BC.
Notice that the second term of Varus in Syria in the revised list follows Saturninus’ two-year term. Tertullian in the 2nd century was one of those claiming that Jesus was born in 3 to 2 BC. Tertullian was a lawyer in Carthage. He knew and practiced the Roman system of law. Tertullian said the Roman records related to Jesus’ birth existed for his doubting debate opponent Marcion to see, and that they were obtained in the governorship of Saturninus (Against Marcion, 4:19).
Tertullian, without doubt, knew Luke’s Gospel. He knew what Luke had said about Quirinius but saw no contradiction in saying Saturninus was the governor when Jesus was born. He apparently believed Quirinius had been governing in a different capacity around 3 BC. This serves to confirm further that Varus served as governor twice, and Quirinius governed as procurator during the time of Jesus’ birth, which was in 3 or 2 BC.
One of the names most associated with matters of Biblical chronology is Jack Finegan. He wrote a compendium of helpful time-related information and published it in 1964. The title suggests a short, simple volume: Handbook of Biblical Chronology. But the book is amazingly thorough on matters of both New and Old Testament events, calendars, and dates.
In 1999, Finegan published a revised edition. One of his main reasons was that he had changed his mind about when Jesus was born. In 1964, he had accepted the 4 BC death year for Herod, with the nativity year prior to that. As Professor Finegan learned of some of the matters we have discussed here, he was convinced that Jesus was born in 3 or 2 BC. He felt strongly enough about this that he revised his classic book.
Conclusion
Quirinius was a busy man in Syria, probably serving as procurator when Jesus was born. He coerced the people of the land to register their names in support of Caesar Augustus or pay the consequences. Neither he, nor Varus, nor Caesar, nor anyone else in authority realized that their registration of the world would be the mechanism for bringing Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, where according to the prophet Micah the Messiah would be born. And that’s enough for us to Keep Thinking!
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- Dr. Frederick Baltz is Pastor Emeritus of St. Matthew Lutheran Church in Galena, Illinois. He is the author of numerous books including Exodus Found, A Faith to Suit You Well, When the Bible Meets the Sky: The Star of Bethlehem and Other Mysteries, and Preach With All You’ve Got.
TOP PHOTO: The Census of Quirinius. Mary and Joseph (right) register for the census before Syrian governor Quirinius. Byzantine mosaic, c. 1315. Meister der Kahriye-Cami-Kirche in Istanbul. (credit: Chora Church, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
NOTE: Not every view expressed by scholars contributing Thinker articles necessarily reflects the views of Patterns of Evidence. We include perspectives from various sides of debates on biblical matters so that readers can become familiar with the different arguments involved. – Keep Thinking!
