Is there any evidence for the census mentioned in Luke 2:1-7?
Years ago when I worked at a corporate laboratory in upstate New York I had the occasion to visit our facilities in the Gulf Coast. I met a number of their personnel and after I had given a presentation, one young woman came up to me and asked in a Southern drawl, “Where y'all from? You shore don't sound like a Yankee.” I replied that I was originally from Southern California. Her comment was, “Oh, then you're not a Yankee, you're a foreigner.”
The point is that people often falsely assume that the last place where you lived must be close to where your original home was. That is not as much true today, but it especially applied in Biblical times. Thus, we have two ironic conversations recorded by John.
Culpepper discusses the various types of irony found in John's Gospel and continues by saying, “The most common device employed by the evangelist is the unanswered question, often based on a false assumption, in which the character suggests or prophesies the truth without knowing it. For each of these questions the character assumes an answer the reader knows to be wrong...By suggesting the truth in some of these questions, the interlocutors expose the error of their assumptions.” He cites two examples: 1:46 (“Can anything come out of Nazareth?”) and 7:42 (“Has not the scripture said that the Christ is descended from David [i.e. in Micah 5:2], and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?”).
The source of confusion in these cases, of course, comes from the fact that Jesus was widely known as coming from Nazareth (as stated no less that eighteen times in the New Testament). But John (and the reader) know that He was actually born in Bethlehem and His family only settled in Nazareth after returning from their time in Egypt. It is highly doubtful that John would have been confused as to Jesus' birthplace since he was given charge of Mary when Jesus when dying on the cross.
But the question is: “Do we have any independent indication that Bethlehem was the birthplace of Jesus?” Mark does not mention the fact at all. Matthew, in Chapter 2 of his Gospel, does state that Jesus was born in Bethlehem but gives no additional information as to why the Holy Family was there at the time. We are most dependent on Luke's detailed account for that fact. He explains that they were there for a census carried out when Quirinius was governor.
That statement raises a huge red flag in the minds of many skeptical commentators. But to explain, we first need to pin down the year of Christ's birth. Geldenhuys says, “That would seem to be a given since our whole calendar system is based on the year of Jesus' birth. However, we know from the Bible that after Herod's encounter with the magi, he determined to kill all the children in Bethlehem aged two years or younger. That was probably since the magi did not arrive until some time after Jesus' birth itself. But Herod died in 4 BC according to the latest calculations of scholars. That would mean that Jesus was actually born somewhere between 4-7 BC.
However, even this may not be accurate. The traditional date for Herod the Great's death was actually 1 BC, using a different line of reasoning. And in addition, Herod's heir to the rule over Judea was Herod Archelaus, who may have had some hand in ruling the region even while his father was still alive. And the biblical account may have been referring to him instead of his father.
Then there is the census carried out under Quirinius to be taken into account. It turns out that the only recorded census under him that we know about occurred in A.D. 6-7. However, it has been proposed that Quirinius may have carried out an earlier census, of which we know nothing. Alternatively, 'Quirinius' in the biblical text may have been confused with 'Saturninius,' who was governor of Syria from 9-6 BC.”
In addition, Geldenhuys notes, “Although no express mention of this enrollment has been found outside the New Testament and Christian writers, this does not by any means prove that Luke's statement is incorrect for numerous important events are mentioned, e.g. in the works of Josephus, which are not mentioned elsewhere and yet no one will allege that all such statements of his are false.”
The footnote in the Jerusalem Bible reads, “The first [census] of a series. The translation sometimes given, 'This census preceded that which was held when Quirinius was governor of Syria', is difficult to justify grammatically. The historical circumstances are little known. Most scholars put the census of Quirinius in 6 A.D., but the only authority for this is Josephus who is doubtfully reliable in this matter. The most probable explanation is that the census, which was made with a view to taxation, took place about 8-6 B.C. as part of a general census of the empire, and that it was organized in Palestine by Quirinius who was specially appointed for the purpose. Quirinius might have been governor of Syria, between 4 and 1 B.C., and if so Luke's expression would then be a rough approximation. Jesus was certainly born certainly before Herod's death (4 B.C.), possibly in 8-6 B.C. The 'Christian Era', established by Dionysius Exiguus (6th century), is the result of a false calculation.”
The scholarly literature on this subject is extensive and would take a book-length discussion to thoroughly canvass. So I am just going to quote from two additional commentators who are typical, respectively, of the liberal and conservative side of the issue.
The Catholic scholar Joseph Fitzmyer goes on for several pages in his commentary on Luke's Gospel to explain why the account in Luke 2 is “a Lucan composition;” in other words, it was a totally fictional story made up by Luke. He starts out by saying that “it is clear that the census is a purely literary device used by him to associate Mary and Joseph, residents of Nazareth, with Bethlehem, the town of David...Aside from this statement here in Luke (and of later Christian and pagan writers who depend on him), there is no ancient evidence of a universal worldwide registration or census ordered by Caesar Augustus. No ancient historian tells of a Roman census conducted on this scale in the time of Herod the Great (37-4 B.C)...Hence it seems that Luke, living in the Roman world of his day...was aware of censuses under Augustus and indulged in some rhetoric in his desire to locate the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem under the two famous reigns, of Herod the Great and Caesar Augustus, using a vague recollection of an Augustan census to do so.”
In looking over Fitzmyer's reasoning above, a couple of things stand out:
First, note that he conveniently rules out the confirmatory evidence of Matthew, John, other early Christian writers, and even pagan sources by simply stating that they must all have been dependent on Luke's account. That is a huge, and unprovable, assumption designed solely to prejudice the case against the historicity of the Bible.
Second, the only evidence Fitzmyer has for his scenario is that no such census was known outside of Luke's account. A standard saying of archaeologists is: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” And that truism has played out a number of times in the history of Biblical criticism. Supposed fabrications in the Scripture were later shown to be historically accurate once more hard evidence came to light. Just one of many famous examples was the denial by liberal scholars for decades that Pontius Pilate ever existed, until inscriptions containing his name and title were later uncovered.
Third, the brief statement by Geldenhuys above hints at several other explanations for the seeming contradiction. F.F. Bruce goes a little further in this direction, as quoted below, starting with the claims Luke has to being considered a serious historian:
“Luke inherited the high tradition of Greek historical writing, and had access to various excellent sources of information [including probably Mary herself] about the events with which he dealt, besides being himself present at some of the incidents which he narrated...after Luke there arose no writer who can really be called a historian of the Christian Church until Eusebius, whose Ecclesiastical History was written after Constantine's Milan Edict of Toledo (AD 313).”
One way in which Bruce demonstrates Luke's care with the details is to demonstrate the historical accuracy with which he records in the Book of Acts exact titles of various minor officials in the Roman Empire. Thus, of all the Gospel writers, Luke certainly has the strongest claim to being strictly scrupulous regarding his facts.
As to the specific charges against the accuracy of Luke's infancy account, I am going to rely below extensively on Bruce's comments in his short but excellent book titled “The New Testament Documents: are they reliable?” He begins with summarizing his conclusions, saying that “it is now widely admitted than an earlier enrollment, as described in Luke ii. 1ff, (a) may have taken place in the reign of Herod the Great, (b) may have involved the return of everyone to his family home, (c) may have formed part of an Empire-wide census, and (d) may have been held during a previous governorship of Quirinius over Syria.” His evidence for such statements is summarized below:
(a) “The holding of an imperial census in a client kingdom (as Judea was during Herod's reign) is not unparalleled; in the reign of Tiberius a census was imposed on the client kingdom of Antiochus in eastern Asia Minor.”
(b) “The obligation on all persons to be enrolled at their domiciles of origin, which made it necessary for Joseph to return to Bethlehem, has been illustrated from an edict of AD 104, in which C. Vibius Maximus, Roman prefect of Egypt” issues such an order.
(c) “There is scattered evidence of the holding of enrollments in various parts of the Empire between 11 and 8 BC, the papyrus evidence in the case of Egypt being practically conclusive.”
(d) “There is good inscriptional evidence that when Quirinius took up office in Syria in AD 6 this was the second occasion on which he served as imperial legate...But our evidence does not state expressly in which province he was imperial legate at this earlier date. Sir William Ramsay argued that the province was Syria. We have, however, a continuous record of governors of Syria for those years, which leaves no room for Quirinius; Ramsay suggested that he was appointed as additional and extraordinary legate for military purposes [the reason that most censuses were carried out]...Then there is the possibility due to hints in Tertullian's writings that Saturninus was the name that Luke mistakenly wrote as Quirinius, as Geldenhuys also mentions above.”
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