On an objection about Luke, Quirinius, and Herods: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, p. 28-29. (cited in Lowder's pages on The Jury is In)writes ... "The difficulty begins on one small point but spreads from it, like dry rot, to bring larger constructions to the ground. Why do I all of a sudden smell polemic? ;>) ...would you consider 'dry rot' a 'value laden' term? hmm... Quirinius, the governor of Syria whom Luke's Gospel mentions, is known from a careful history of affairs in Judea which was compiled by Josephus, an educated Jew, writing in Greek at Rome between c. 75 and c. 80. Josephus had his own prejudices and areas of interest, but he worked with a framework of hard facts which were freely available for checking and which he had collected responsibly. According to Josephus, Quirinius was governor of Syria with authority over Judea in AD 6, when the province was brought under direct Roman control. The year was a critical moment in Jewish history, as important to its province as the 1972 to Northern Ireland, the start of direct rule. On such a fact, at such a moment, Josephus and his sources cannot be brushed aside. There is however, an awkward problem. Luke's Gospel links Jesus's birth with Quirinius I may have a problem with the word 'with' but keep going.... and with King Herod, but in AD 6 Herod had long disappeared. He had died soon after an eclipse of the moon which is dated by astronomers to 12-13 March 4 BC, although a minority of scholars have argued for 5 BC instead. So far, so good.... The Gospel, therefore, assumes that Quirinius and King Herod were contemporaries, when they were separated by ten years or more. I assume you mean contemporaries in office--they were certainly contemporaries in life...Quirinius, at the time of King Herod's death was doing military expeditions in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire (Tacitus , Annals 3:38; Florus, Roman History 2:31), with some evidence indicating that he either was a co-ruler with the governor of Syria (the somewhat inept Quintilius Varus) or at least placed in charge of the 14-year census in Palestine. Varus was famous for the later fiasco at the Teutoburger forest in Germany (9 ad) and at his appointment as Gov.. of Syria in 7 BC was largely 'untested'. The census was due in 8-7 BC, and Augustus could easily have ordered his trusted Quirinius (fresh from subduing the Pisidian highlanders) to assist in this volatile project. Herod I had recently lost favor of the emperor and was probably dragging his feet on taking the census--a process with always enraged the difficult Jews! This would have pushed the timeframe into the 5 BC mark, which fits the general data. There is no doubt about the Herod in question. When the great King Herod died, his kingdom was split between his sons, two of whom did add Herod to their names. Herod Antipas locally in Galilee as a tetrarch until 39, but Luke 1:5 connects the Annunciation with Herod `king of Judea': This is correct...the Annunciation occurred around the census point, under King Herod--the reference in 1.5 is correct...so why did you use the word 'but'? Did you think the annunciation was under Antipas? King Herod (I) was 'king of Judea' but was also 'king of galilee'..the terms would not have been understood as restrictive (king of 'only') BEFORE the kingdom divided... When he refers to Herod Antipas at 3:1, he correctly calls him tetrarch, not king. Herod Archelaus ruled Judea until AD 6, but only as an ethnarch: like Matthew 2:22, Luke might have misdescribed him as king, but, like Matthew, he would have called him Archelaus or Herod Archelaus. You have confused something here. Both Luke 1.5 and 2.2 BOTH refer to King Herod the Great...3.1 refers to Antipas...no problem so far At 1:5 the Herod must be the great King Herod, just as Matthew's Gospel describes. In Matthew the Nativity coincides with the great Herod, Massacrer of the Innocents, whose death is a reason for the return from the Flight into Egypt. Correct. Luke's Gospel, therefore, assumes that King Herod and the governor Quirinius were contemporaries, but they were separated by over ten years or more. The incoherent dating is only the start of the problem. I think I already explained this above. Also, it is worth noting that we have a MS that describes a soldier who was 'legate of Syria' TWICE during this timeframe. Although it doesn't mention a name, only Quirinius fits this description (see "Quirinius" in The New Bible Dictionary for the MS data.) And curiously enough, even if that were NOT the case somehow, the linguistic data of the last few decades indicates that Luke 2.1 should be translated 'BEFORE the census of Quirinius' instead of the customary 'FIRST census of Quirinius'--see Nigel Turner, Grammatical Insights into the New Testament, T&T Clark: 1966, pp. 23,24 and Syntax, p. 32. And, while we are talking about Greek here...the term Luke uses for Quirinius' 'governorship' is the VERY general term hegemon, which in extra-biblical Greek was applied to prefects, provincial governors, and even Caesar himself. In the NT it is similarly used as a 'wide' term, applying to procurators--pilate, festus, felix--and to general 'rulers' (Mt 2.6). [The New Intl. Dict. of New Test. Theology (ed. Brown) gives as the range of meaning: "leader, commander, chief" (vol 1.270)...this term would have applied to Quirinius at MANY times in his political career, and as a general term, Syria would have had several individuals that could be properly so addressed at the same time.] My point is...nothing is really out of order here... Luke's Nativity story hinges on its `decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.' `Caesar Augustus' was the Roman Emperor, but if the Nativity took place in the reign of the King Herod the Great, the Jews were still Herod's subjects, members of a client kingdom, not a province under direct Roman rule. You are somewhat mistaken here. It is true that did not technically become a Roman province until 6 AD, but the facts prior to that indicate much tighter authority and control than your statement might lead one to believe. Rome did a military conquest of before Herod the Great was even born. Pompey attacked Jerusalem and even invaded the Temple. was made a tributary (read: PAID TRIBUTE$) to Rome until Caesar defeated Pompey in Egypt around 48 BC. Herod the Great's dad had aided Caesar in that endeavor and so won the favor of Julius Caesar (and with it a procuratorship of, plus Roman citizenship and exemption from taxes.) Then in 47 BC, The daddy Herod appointed the son Herod to be governor of Galilee...still completely under Roman rule. He still had to be appointed tetrarch by Antony-- still a thrall, eh?!. He was also proclaimed 'king' by the Roman leaders (Octavius and Antony) in 40 bc--but he had to re-conquer the land from the Parthians, which he did in 37bc. As a 'client kingdom', they were still under the authority of Rome (all of the rulers, for example, were appointed--including ALL the Herods--and ratified by Rome.) Actually, when I keep reading your paragraph, it sounds like you are calling Luke mistaken in referring to Rome as 'driving the issue' of the census. He is INDEED making that point, but HE is correct in that...The client-kings WERE still subject to Roman enrollment decrees. [see Blaiklock, The Century of the New Testament,(1962) and The Archeology of the New Testament (1970)] The status of client-kings in the Roman Empire left them responsibility for their subjects' taxation. Not decision-making authority--they couldn't say 'no', but local execution of the enrollment process-"yes". Relations between the Emperor Augustus and King Herod had often been stormy and had even led to threats of Roman interference which Herod and his envoys had to avert. However, their conflicts never caused the removal of Herod's royal status, although this was the only way in which his kingdom could have been taxed on the Roman model in accordance with orders from the Roman Emperor. It is not just that Herod the Great never coincided with Quirinius the governor: he never coincided with a Roman taxing of." The relationship between Augustus and King Herod had its ups and downs, indeed, but the argument that his Roman-granted title of king meant that his nation was exempt from taxes/tribute/census is just flat wrong. As I hinted at up above, had become a tribute-paying tributary since its conquest by Pompey LONG BEFORE King Herod gets his title! (more below on this). ------------------------- Augustus never issued a decree to tax the whole world. Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, p. 29. "It is even doubtful if the Emperor Augustus ever issued a decree to Rome's provinces that `all the world should be taxed.' Certainly, Romans did take censuses in individual provinces which were ruled directly by their governors. They were not, however, co-ordinated by an order from Augustus to all the world, at least so far as our evidence goes. Read: argument from silence! (see below the points from Historian's Fallacies) As that evidence extends through histories, local inscriptions and the papyrus returns of tax-payers in Egypt, it is immensely unlikely that a new edict of such consequence has escaped our knowledge. Who are you trying to kid? You and I are looking at the same sources, no doubt, and there are HUGE, HUGE, HUGE gaps in the records! 'immensely unlikely'?! In AD 6 we do know that Augustus was enacting a new tax on inheritance to help pay for his armies; BTW, the taxation to support his army, is the main reason it is believed that Quirinius assisted in the taxing of 8-5 BC...his extended military maneuvers on the Pisidian highlands (dating from around 12 BC) would have required additional financing... however, the tax affected only Roman citizens, not Jews of Nazareth, and there was no need for a worldwide census to register their names. Remember, the census in AD 6 is NOT the one of Luke 2.2 (of 8-6 BC.)...but the census of AD 6 DID hit the Jews pretty heavily...at least 600 talents as a nation acc. to Josephus (Antiq. 17.320; Jewish War 2.97--cited in Jeremias' Jerusalem in the Times of Jesus: An investigation into the economic and social conditions during the New Testament period,Fortress: 1969). As a national tax, it DID effect the Jewish folk--loads like this are ALWAYS 'distributed to the people'(!) in addition to the already oppressive tax structure of the Herods... And Luke does NOT place the 'worldwide census' at the time of the AD 6 tax...but rather puts it some time BEFORE the Syrian-based one in 7-5 BC... In Judea under Quirinius, we know from Josephus's histories of something more appropriate, not a worldwide decree but a local census in AD 6 to assess Judea when the province passed from rule by Herod's family to direct rule by Rome. Although this census was local, it caused a notorious outcry, not least because some of the Jews argued that the innovation was contrary to scripture and the will of God. According to the third Gospel, the census which took Joseph to Bethlehem was `the first while Quirinius was governor of Syria.' I have already pointed out that 'first while' is probably a mistranslation of the text -- 'before' is more in line with koine idiom (see the reference of N. Turner, above) Quirinius's census was indeed the first, but it belonged in AD 6 when King Herod, the story's other marker, was long since dead." A couple of concluding points: * That Augustus MIGHT HAVE issued a world-wide census decree (a record of which is only preserved in Luke's gospel) is ALTOGETHER reasonable and plausible. The data about Augustus' 'propensity' to count and tax is well known. For example, he documents, in his own records, how he counted the Roman nation some three times (Res Gestae Divi Augusti , 8--from Roman Civilization--SourceBook II: the Empire, eds. Lewis and Reinhold, p 12)., and increasingly levied detailed taxes throughout his reign--with the attendant increase in bribery and vice (see Gibbons' Rise and Fall). As vain as he was, it would not be surprising at all for this to have occurred. * It was also customary for the Roman empire to take a census when there was a change of local government (e.g. when Archelaus was deposed in AD 6, one of Quirinius' first tasks was to liquidate his estate and hold a census to determine the tribute load.) The implication of this pattern for our discussion is that when Varus became governor of Syria in 7 BC, one of his first acts would have been to take a census (the one which would have produced the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem for Joseph/Mary.) * We KNOW Augustus instituted a 14-year census-cycle for EGYPT in 10/9 BC...(SourceBook II, above, p. 388)...Not only does this give us more confirmation that Augustus was a "countin' sorta guy'" but it may reflect a local execution of a 'worldwide decree' of Augustus. * To assert that Augustus did not make such a decree is an affirmative historical statement. And, "the burden of proof, for any historical assertion, always rests upon its author" (Hacket, Historians' Fallacies, Harper: 1970, p 63.). * And to argue that Luke was wrong because there was NO worldwide decree (because we don't have a record of the specific decree) is to make a common mistake in historical method--arguing from 'slim' silence (some silence-arguments can be made to work, though). Hacket again: "evidence must always be affirmative. Negative evidence is a contradiction in terms--it is no evidence at all. The nonexistence of an object [read: "worldwide decree"-gmm] is established not by nonexistent evidence [read: "we can't find the decree so far"-gmm] but by affirmative evidence of the fact that it did not, or could not exist [e.g. a document that says it did not happen--gmm]" (above, p62) * To summarize this section on the 'the missing census of 7/5 BC': I HAVE affirmative evidence and good arguments for such a census-- o Luke, a very, very, very reliable historian SAYS SO! o Augustus was this 'type of person' with repeated, known actions along this line. o These kinds of events occurred at major changes in ruling personnel--a situation that obtained in Palestine at the time Luke indicates. o Parallel events occurred in other Roman-controlled areas, in roughly the same time (i.e. Egypt 10/9 BC). o There is not a scrap of contrary data. o Quirinius' participation is such an event (along with Varus) is not only possible, but highly likely. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Glenn M. Miller, 2/24/95 END**************************************************************************