Was Jesus born in the days of King Herod or at the census under Quirinius?

Hard question · The life of Jesus · raised by 2 of the lists sceptics circulate

The passages

The objection

Matthew and Luke both date Jesus’ birth to the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC by the usual reckoning. But Luke also ties the birth to a census taken when Quirinius governed Syria, and Josephus places Quirinius’s governorship and his census of Judea in AD 6, about ten years after Herod’s death.

The answer

Luke himself shows that he did not confuse the two dates. He sets the birth “in the days of Herod” (Luke 1:5), and in Acts 5:37 he mentions the later, well-known census of AD 6, which set off the revolt of Judas of Galilee. In Luke 2:2 he calls the census at Jesus’ birth the ‘first’ (Greek prōtē) connected with Quirinius, which marks it off from that later one.

How then does Quirinius belong to the earlier census? First, prōtos followed by a genitive can mean ‘before’, as in John 1:15, “for he was before me” (prōtos mou); read that way, Luke 2:2 says this enrolment was made before Quirinius governed Syria, a rendering John Gill already offered, though many grammarians think it strained. Second, Luke’s word is a verb, hēgemoneuontos, ‘while … was leading’, which need not mean the formal post of governor of Syria: Luke uses the same verb of Pilate (Luke 3:1), who ruled Judea with the lesser rank of prefect. Quirinius was a senior Roman commander in the East under Augustus well before AD 6. Gill, following Tertullian, suggests that he was sent to make the enrolment in Judea while Sentius Saturninus was governor, and that Luke names him by the office he later held. On either reading there were two registrations, one near the end of Herod’s reign and a later, better-known census under Quirinius as governor, and Luke knew of both.

One census begun and finished later

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown suggested that the registration was ordered about the time of Jesus’ birth, but the taxing based on it was carried out only under Quirinius, so that Luke links the whole process with his name.

Still open

No document outside the Bible yet confirms a census in Judea before Herod’s death or an earlier post held by Quirinius in Syria, so Christian scholars still differ over which explanation is best. The year of Herod’s death is itself debated: most scholars give 4 BC, some argue for 1 BC.

From the classic commentators

Moreover, the words will bear to be rendered thus, ‘and this tax, or enrolment, was made before Cyrenius was governor of Syria’John Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Luke 2:2 (1746–1763)

it is perhaps better to suppose, with others, that the registration may have been ordered with a view to the taxation, about the time of our Lord's birth, though the taxing itself—an obnoxious measure in Palestine—was not carried out till the time of Quirinus.Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary, on Luke 2:2 (1871)