Quirinius and the Census, Herod and the Slaughter

Some objections to the biblical Christmas narratives expand outward more to the world beyond Judea. How do the Gospel records square with the people, places, and timeline of the known Roman world? In other words, there is an uncritically accepted suspicion: Why didn’t this make the headlines? Here are the main instances of those.

Born in the Days of Herod?

Matthew records the birth of Jesus “in the days of Herod the king” (2:1) and Luke has Herod at the same time, as “king of Judea” (1:5), yet Herod’s death was 4 B.C. So the objection here is obvious enough. The Gospel writers are suspected of being much later, supposed to have been ignorant of the facts.

It may help to remember that the Bible never claims that Jesus was born at a moment called “0,” which wouldn’t have made sense to a Jew anymore than to a Gentile. It only made sense afterwards. While it is true that the Western world began to mark its calendars—what was known as the Gregorian calendar—by the birth of Jesus, this was done in the sixth century A.D. and so has nothing to do with any actual biblical claim.

You will notice, for example, that while various timelines are presented in the New Testament, none of them say anything like “A.D.” Now why is that? It is because they existed in the larger world of Roman time, with its Julian calendar, and in their own neck of the woods, it would never have occurred to them to alter the Hebrew calendar.

Luke’s Chronology, the Census, and Quirinius

Skeptics have spent much effort drilling at Luke’s opening narrative. They suppose he erred both about the fact of who was governor, when it occurred, and whether there was a worldwide census at all. The same “AD” and “BC” fallacy is at work here, but even leaving that aside, the challenges about external corroboration remain. 

Many Christian apologists and historians have addressed this question over the years. Not all have come to the same way of resolving the data, but we have solid reason to believe that Luke got his facts right. The short answer involves five basic points:

(1) that the birth of Jesus at 4 BC has long been held among biblical scholars;

(2) that both the practice of holding such a post as governor more than once or of having a common name that functions as either first, middle, or a third, were both equally common in the Roman world, and so either could have been the case about the Quirinius referenced by Luke;

(3) that the claim of Luke signified by the Greek adjective protos (first) could refer to either the beginning of the single decree for the census, or else the first in a set of such orders; and

(4) that the same Luke, authoring Acts, references the census from the time of the rebellion of Judas the Galilean (Acts 5:37), which happened to be 6 AD when that Quirinius is known to have done so. This shows that Luke was well aware of the second census, which latter census is corroborated by external data (an inscription from Venice); and finally,

(5) speaking of Greek terms, Luke specifically uses the participle form for governor (hegemon), that is “governing” (hegemoneuontos), and so argues for a looser sense: one of the legates in the office but not necessarily “governor” in the sense we may tend to take it. It is reasonable to suppose that even if Quirinius was not acting governor in the earlier instance, that he worked for that office in this capacity.

Moreover, skeptics will often reply that no such record exists of a “worldwide” census, as the words of Luke 2:1 seem to suggest. Two replies may be offered. First, the Bible often speaks of “the world” in restricted senses depending on the context, and Israel was so much at the world’s geographical center that it was natural to describe any world affairs transcending their borders as being about “all the world.” It was a normal manner of speech. Secondly, the moment the skeptic points to the absence in the external record, he makes an argument from silence, and one which (whatever else it is) has departed from the original claim of contradiction. So in summary, there is no contradiction here, but also no need to confuse the burden of proof. That we do not know of any physical evidence of such a decree at that time from Augustus Caesar means just that and nothing more.

Flight Pattern and External Corroboration  

Matthew 2:13-15 has Jesus being taken to Egypt right away, but Luke 2:39 has the family returning to Galilee right away. So which is it? The short answer is that Luke’s account is actually not claiming that the return to Galilee was “right away.” It begins the next section and thus skips any information about the flight to Egypt. Likewise Matthew skips the details about Mary’s purification and the circumcision of Jesus. But note also that Matthew never says that the dream or their flight happened on such and such a day.

Instead it uses the words, “when they [the wise men] had departed” (v. 13) for the dream, and subsequently the words: “And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt” (v. 14). That’s it. There’s actually no timeline presented anywhere in the text. Consequently, the notion that the circumcision on the eighth day and the time for purification (that Luke discusses) could not have happened in between those times is utterly unfounded. One has to imagine exact day-counts into the text in order to show that. But there are none.

But would there not be more external corroboration of such a slaughter of all children in the region, say in Josephus?

Actually, not at all. First, the majority of writings that report even on this region are Roman writings, and in Roman society (as in Greek society), children were disposable. The Spartans would throw their defective ones off cliffs. But then there’s the numerical context. In his commentary, R. T. France says this, “The number of boys under two, if Bethlehem’s population was about 1,000 … would not be more than twenty … It was a minor incident in a period full of atrocities, and the absence of clearly independent accounts in secular history is not surprising.”1 

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1. R. T. France, Matthew (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985) 92.