The Date of John the Baptist's Ministry

Luke gives us another precise date when he sets the beginning of John's ministry to 28 A.D. (3.1), and this has caused some confusion, though for no good reason. Luke later says that when Jesus began his own ministry he was "about thirty years old" (3.23), and it is often supposed that this was the same year that John began his ministry. That would make Jesus born around 2 B.C. and maybe as early as 4 B.C. This is so attractive to those who want to reconcile Luke and Matthew that its implausibility is overlooked. Such an interpretation does not solve the many problems created by Luke 2:2 anyway--for it essentially trades a contradiction between Luke and Matthew for a contradiction within Luke. It is more likely that Luke had in mind the passing of some years between the two inaugurations, than that he got major public facts wrong. And since Luke clearly doesn't know when Jesus began his ministry, he cannot have thought his precise date for the ministry of John also applied to Jesus. For Luke knows the precise year of Jesus's birth, but can't say exactly how old he was when he began his ministry, yet he knows the precise year that John began his ministry. It follows that Luke would only have said "about thirty" if Jesus didn't begin his ministry in the same year as John.

It also seems unlikely that Jesus would start his ministry in the same year as John: surely John was preaching some years before, preparing the way. It is hard to imagine how he could otherwise have won such widespread and lasting repute (even Josephus sings his praises in Antiquities of the Jews 18.116-19). And we are told Jesus began his own ministry only after John was arrested: Mark 1:14; Matthew 4:12; Luke 3:20 (Luke 3:21-2 refers back in time, while John contradicts all the others by having Jesus start preaching before John is imprisoned). Josephus allows that this may have happened after 32 or even as late as 35 A.D. Moreover, all the descriptions of John's ministry imply an extended period, and since we are not told how long John ministered before he baptized Jesus, we cannot assume it happened in the same year. Certainly, Luke 3:21 does not entail a single event of mass baptism (the other narratives of John's ministry also indicate otherwise), but most likely refers to the whole period of the ministry, especially considering the liberal use of the imperfect tense throughout this part of the narrative (3.7, 3.10, 3.14, 3.18), which describes continuous action, and not a single event (Matthew's narrative does this also, cf. 3.1-13).

Of course, Luke could always have his chronology wrong, but I believe in the principle of interpretive charity: since he clearly allows an interval of some years, it is unnecessary to assume Luke contradicts himself by dating Jesus' birth first to 6 A.D. and then to several years previous. It is more reasonable to read Luke as dating the beginning of Jesus' ministry between 33 and 36 A.D. (the last years of Pontius Pilate's tenure), which dovetails nicely with Josephus' report that John could have been killed around then. This also fits the narrative of John the Baptist in Josephus, who reports that a military victory against Herod between 35 and 36 A.D.[1.1.4] was at the time hailed as God's revenge for executing John, and since people would be calling up the most recent crime of Herod as the cause of his military defeat, John's execution must not have been long before this, certainly some years after 28 A.D.

In Ancient Literacy (1989, p. 269) William Harris observes that it was common in inscriptions to round someone's age off to the nearest multiple of 5, and even then this often indicated an illiterate lack of any real knowledge of one's age to begin with. So when Luke says Jesus was "about" thirty, he could mean any age between 27.5 and 32.5, although, from ignorance of the actual year the ministry started, Luke could be in error by an even wider margin. But if Jesus was born during the census of 6 A.D. he would pass the middle of his 27th year in 33 A.D., which agrees with most attempts at dating his ministry. So if Luke only knew the ministry began at some uncertain time in or near 33 A.D. he would be warranted in saying Jesus was "about" thirty at the time. On the other hand, if Jesus began his ministry shortly after John's death, and John was killed within a year of the military defeat that was thought to have avenged his execution (which is a more reasonable conjecture than any greater span of time between the war and John's death), then Jesus would have begun his ministry in 34 or 35 A.D. at the age of 28 or 29.

The above two defenses of Luke do not mean that Luke is correct. I think using a census in the story to explain both of Jesus' reputed ancestral homes (the village of Nazareth and the town the messiah had to come from, Bethlehem) is rather convenient and looks more clever than genuine. And Luke's probable use of Josephus suggests a deliberate attempt to paint a veneer of genuine history around an otherwise questionable hagiography. For Luke's accuracy is only provable in details such as these, which were already painstakingly researched by other men and published in Luke's own day. When we get to the question of whether Jesus was actually born during this census or any other, or even to the question of how Luke could possibly know this (and Matthew apparently not know it), we are talking about an entirely different problem. Nevertheless, though Matthew's account looks and smells like a fantastical legend (see below), I do not see Luke's account as historically impossible, as some have tried to argue. To the contrary, I think Luke strained to force his story to seem more plausible than it already was when it got to him. But if one of the two authors must be correct, then Matthew is far more likely the one who has it wrong.

Matthew

Matthew 2.1 begins by reporting that "after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in days of Herod the king" [2.1] the magi reported to Herod that a King of the Jews had been born, stirring Herod and "all Jerusalem" to be troubled (2.3). Herod then seeks to kill the baby by killing all the children in Bethlehem and surrounding areas who would have been born around the right time, i.e. two years earlier (cf. 2.7, 2.16). This would constitute the murder of 10% of the population of that territory [2.2], possibly several hundred children. This is an unimaginable atrocity which probably never happened. A clear and reprehensible crime, it would have almost certainly started a war, and at least been mentioned among the many evil deeds of Herod catalogued by Josephus. Moreover, the myth of the evil tyrant trying to keep his reign by seeking to kill one or more babies (often as a result of an oracle of an usurper's birth), but being thwarted somehow, was a common legendary motif in the period, from Oedipus and Cypselos of Corinth, to Krishna, Moses, Sargon, Cyrus, even Romulus and Remus, just to name the most famous examples. The author of Matthew also gives us some internal evidence that this is mythical: for if so public an event had really occurred (2:3, 2:4, 2:16), it is curious that no one remembers it later (13:54-56), not even Herod's own son and heir (14:1-2). And Matthew is more prone than any other New Testament author to contrive the fantastical--his account of the crucifixion strains credulity, with its rock-splitting earthquakes and hordes of undead descending on the city (27:51-3), and his account of the empty tomb is as fabulous as legends can get (28:2-5).[2.3] Nevertheless, if we believe Matthew at least has the date right, if not the real events, he is placing the birth of Jesus around 6 B.C., since Jesus was supposedly about two years old when Herod was still alive, and though we do not know how much time passed between this supposed "mass murder" and Herod's death, the narrative implies that it was not long. We might also imagine Herod to have been playing it safe, and thus the date might be 5 or even (though rather unlikely) 4 B.C., or some time could have passed before his death, and thus the date implied could be many years before 6, though the coincidence of Luke's effectively dating the birth of John to 6 B.C. may hint at a possible source of confusion (if there is any true story at all being preserved in these accounts, which is not very likely).

This discrepancy is not the only one. Matthew contradicts Luke (above) on other points of detail. Luke describes Jesus being presented in the temple to repeated public pronouncements of his status, which would not have escaped Herod's supposedly murderous eye (or memory). Matthew, in contrast, has Herod only finding out roughly two years later, from foreigners. The family of Jesus, according to Matthew, flees to Egypt and stays there until Herod's death (2.15, 2.21-23). In fact they stayed away from Jerusalem, not only for as many as two intervening years or more, but for the entire ten-year reign of Herod's successor Archelaus (2.22) as well. This flatly contradicts Luke's claim that they stayed in Nazareth the whole time, from the very beginning, and went to Jerusalem every year without fail. The two accounts thus contradict each other in the most fundamental way: if Matthew is right, Luke's account fails to make any plausible sense at all, and vice versa. For the one story entails that Jerusalem was dangerous for the child Jesus, while the other entails that it could not have been. One story has the family start in Nazareth, then journey to Bethlehem and back again, while the other story has the family start in Bethlehem, then flee to Egypt, then find a new home in Nazareth only to avoid the wrath of Archelaus. Other details could be reconciled, but it is strange the authors themselves did not do this. For example, one mentions a visit by magi but not shepherds, the other shepherds but not magi. But these can be reconciled only by supposing that each author by some queer chance failed to mention the other's similar detail, though one wonders how they could know so much and so little at the same time. But the other details are inescapably at odds. They are telling different stories.

II. Was Quirinius Twice Governor?

Some have tried to reconcile Matthew and Luke by inventing a second governorship of Quirinius, placing it in the reign of Herod the Great. However, we have no evidence at all that Quirinius served as governor of Syria twice, much less that he did so when Herod was king of Judaea. Moreover, no one ever governed the same province twice in the whole of Roman history, making the very proposal implausible. Three inscriptions and a coin have been used to imply otherwise, but none of these items contain any of the information claimed by those who want Quirinius to have been twice governor, and they offer no support to the theory. We also know who was governing Syria between 12 and 3 B.C. and therefore Quirinius could not have been governor then (or before, since he was not qualified before the year 12). Also, in section 3 it will be shown that there was never any such thing as a dual governorship, nor could there have been, given the nature of Roman political and social organization, and even if Quirinius had been governor or co-governor of Syria at an earlier date, no census could have been conducted in Judaea while Herod or his successor Archelaus were alive.

Some Christian apologists, following extremely outdated scholarship, have tried to argue (or have even stated as if it were a fact) that Quirinius was actually governor of Syria on two different occasions--the first time, conveniently, while Herod was alive. Therefore, this argument goes, the census Luke is talking about happened in the days of Herod the Great. Unfortunately, this fails to solve the other contradictions between Luke's and Matthew's accounts. It is also both groundless and implausible.  Nevertheless, every single piece of evidence we have about Quirinius has been twisted into "evidence" of a second or earlier governorship of Syria, and evidence has even been invented wholesale--once by an innocent mistake, and once by pseudoscientific insanity. This "evidence" consists of three inscriptions and one coin, which I will examine in detail.

But first I will mention the several preliminary reasons why this "theory" is absurd. First, we know that Quintilius Varus, not Sulpicius Quirinius, was governor of Syria from 7 B.C. to just after Herod's death in 4 B.C. (and Calpurnius Piso came after him), while before him Sentius Saturninus held the post from 10 B.C. to 7 B.C., and he took the post immediately after Marcus Titius, who probably had been appointed in 13 B.C. (as three years was the typical length of a governorship).[4.1] In other words:

There is no room here in which to fit Quirinius. And since we know he first attained the consulship in 12 B.C.,[4.1.5] and only ex-consuls held the governorship of Syria in the time of Augustus, he could not have governed before that year. This means one would have to propose that Jesus was born between 12 and 10 B.C. even for this theory to be remotely possible, but that still would be ad hoc, involving a truly maverick position regarding the chronology of Jesus, presuming an unusually short tenure for Titius, inventing a spot for Quirinius nowhere attested, and still not solving the problem of the census (below). Second, we do not even have any evidence that anyone ever served as governor of the same consular province twice in the whole of Roman history, so it would have been extremely unusual and quite remarkable--so much so that it would be odd that no one mentions it, not even Josephus, or Tacitus who gives us the obituary of Quirinius in Annals 3.48, a prime place to mention such a peculiar accomplishment. It is certainly unheard of.[4.2] Now for the reputed evidence to the contrary.

The Antioch Stones

The only other real material evidence mentioning Quirinius to date is a pair of stones found in two different Muslim villages outside Pisidian Antioch in 1912 and 1913. The stones had been removed from wherever they originally lay and then were reused as wallstones. Both are commemorative inscriptions, originally parts of the bases of statues of a certain Gaius Caristanius Sergius (possibly later named Julius Caesianus Fronto, unless these are the names of two different men). Both stones happen to mention as one of his offices the deputy management of a duumvirate held by Quirinius. Once again, the first inscription mentions no date and itself can only be dated by conjecture to sometime between 11 and 1 B.C. The second inscription offers no clues at all, though it was most likely set up after the first, since it mentions additional posts, apparently gained in the interim. Though even earlier dates are remotely possible, later dates are much less likely. Only a sketch exists of one of them, but a photo survives of the other.[7.1] They read as follows:

	GAIUS CARISTA[NIUS...]  SON OF GAIUS, SERGIUS FRONTO  CAESIANUS JUL[IUS...]  OFFICER IN CHARGE OF WORKS, PONTIFEX,  PRIEST, PREFECT OF  PUBLIUS SULPICIUS QUIRINIUS THE DUUMVIR,  PREFECT OF MARCUS SERVILIUS.  BY THIS MAN, THE FIRST OF ALL [WITH A]  PUBLIC DECREE OF THE DECEMVIRATE COUNCIL, THE STATUE  WAS SET UP.
	BY GAIUS CARISTANIUS ...  FRONTO CAESIANUS  JULIUS, OFFICER IN CHARGE OF WORKS, COMMANDING OFFICER  OF THE TWELFTH LIGHTNING LEGION, PREFECT OF THE BOSPORAN COHORT,  PONTIFEX, PREFECT OF PUBLIUS SULPICIUS QUIRINIUS THE DUUMVIR,  PREFECT OF MARCUS SERVILIUS, PREFECT...

The only item here that allows any guess at the date the first statue was erected is the fact that it mentions that this was the first man to set up a statue by public decree (in other words, the city legislature voted to pay for it). Since this presumably would not be long after the city was founded (no more than five or ten years), if we can figure out when Pisidian Antioch was established, we will have some idea of when it was set up, though nothing like an exact date. This is not the most famous Antioch (in Syria), founded in 300 B.C. and one of the largest cities in the world at the turn of the era, but "Antioch near Pisidia," possibly as old but refounded sometime after 25 B.C. under the new name "Colonia Caesareia" (Caesarean Colony), for Roman veterans, definitely in the reign of Augustus, but we actually don't know for sure when. Only after this date would "decemvirs" be issuing public decrees, since these were the officials comprising the city council under a Roman colonial charter. When all things are considered, we can speculate Quirinius' duumvirate was held between 6 and 1 B.C. (see box below).

But even with other dates, the inscription offers no proof of a second governorship of Syria. First, there is no particular connection between being governor and being the Duumvir of a city. The one does not entail or even imply the other. Second, this city is well outside of the Roman province of Syria, on the border between Lycia-Pamphylia and Galatia (near modern day Egridir lake in Turkey). Indeed, it is even Northwest of Cilicia, on the other side of the Taurus Mountains. This makes any connection between this office and a governorship of Syria impossible. No one would range so far from his province or have any major connection with a city so thoroughly separated from his area of control.

Even so, this has not stopped some Christians from telling tall tales about what these inscriptions prove. For example, one Christian periodical reports to its readers, as if it were a simple fact:

Luke had stated that Quirinius was the Governor of Syria at the time of Jesus' birth, however secular records showed that Saturninus was the governor at that time. An inscription was later found in Antioch which showed that Quirinius indeed was governor of Syria at the time.[7.2]

This short statement doesn't even address the possibility that, if Matthew's date is correct, either Saturninus or Varus could have been governor at the time (as mentioned above). But what it really gets wrong is the claim that the Antioch inscription proves Quirinius "was governor of Syria at the time." Every single thing in italics here is false. As we've seen, the stones (and there are two, not one) only report that Quirinius was a Duumvir, not a governor, and not in Syria, but well outside that province. And they give hardly any reliable clues as to the date. Only pure speculation can set the date between 9 and 4 B.C., and what little argument could be advanced for a date between 6 and 1 B.C. actually goes to prove that Quirinius was fighting a war in Galatia at the time (see box below) and that refutes the possibility that he was governing Syria (see below), so there is in the end no evidence in these stones regarding any Syrian governorship of any date.

Yet essentially the same claim regarding these stones, with the addition of a false appearance of precision ("Quirinius was indeed governor of Syria in 7 BC as well"), is made by Doug Raymer in his 1999 online essay "The Accuracy of the Bible." I have traced this particular claim to its source, since it also appears in Kirk R. MacGregor's online essay "Is the New Testament Historically Accurate?" MacGregor at least tells us where he heard this: he cites page 160 of John Elder's bookProphets, Idols, and Diggers: Scientific Proof of Bible History (New York: Bobbs Merrill Co., 1960). Elder's credibility is certainly in question. He reports that the Antioch stone (he, too, only seems aware of one) says that Quirinius was Prefect as well as Duumvir. Obviously, Elder never actually read the stones, for they are about the Prefecture of Caristanius, not Quirinius. He also asserts as if it were a fact that the stone "records his election to the post of honorary duumvir...in recognition of his victory over the Homanadenses" yet I have placed in italics precisely what the stones do not say. Scholars only propose these as possible interpretations, yet Elder seems blithely unaware of the difference. Furthermore, Elder thinks this inscription "proves that Quirinius was in the area as a commander" but he does not seem to understand that it places him well outside the province of Syria, where no governor of that province would have been. Thus, when Elder asserts, again without any qualification, that the date of the inscription "can be fixed as somewhere between 10 and 7 B.C." we know he is not to be trusted. He claims that the names on the inscription set that date, yet does not explain how. In fact, the names fix no date at all (see box below). It is clear that Elder did not actually read or study the inscription himself--he must be relying on some other scholar, yet he cites no one.

The moral of this story is: always be suspicious of an unsourced "fact" that goes against the common consensus. From an online archive I came across a likely source for Elder's claims: the hopelessly outdated early 20th century work of G. L. Cheesman.[7.3] Cheesman dates the Duumvirate on the conjunction of two speculations: that the Dummvirate coincided in some way with Quirinius' war against the Homanadenses--a likely possibility, but hardly a known fact--and that the war happened between 10 and 7 B.C.--a very unlikely possibility in light of more recent archaeological evidence (see box below), but at any rate nothing like a known fact. This teaches us another lesson: in the arguments of Christian apologists, the speculations and inferences of other scholars suddenly and inexplicably become definite facts. For example, on Franke J. Zollman's online "Dustface Chart" of "Biblical Characters Whose Existence has been Confirmed from Archaeological or Secular Historical Sources" he declares matter-of-factly: "Inscription found in Antioch of Pisidia names Quirinius as legatus." The position of Legatus (a title that implied, but did not entail, being the governor of a consular province) is nowhere mentioned or implied in the Antioch stones.

Arguing for the date of these inscriptions as between 6 and 2 B.C. is a long and tedious task and is included next only for those who want to explore the issue in depth. Others can skip it.

Vardaman's Magic "Coin"

The late Dr. Jerry Vardaman, an archaeologist at the Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State University, claimed to have discovered microscopic letters covering ancient coins and inscriptions conveying all sorts of strange data that he then uses matter-of-factly to assert the wildest chronology I have ever heard for Jesus. He claims these "microletters" confirm that Jesus was born in 12 B.C., Pilate actually governed Judaea between 15 and 26 A.D., Jesus was crucified in 21 and Paul was converted on the road to Damascus in 25 A.D. This is certainly the strangest claim I have ever personally encountered in the entire field of ancient Roman history. His evidence is so incredibly bizarre that the only conclusion one can draw after examining it is that he has gone insane. Certainly, his "evidence" is unaccepted by any other scholar to my knowledge. It has never been presented in any peer reviewed venue,[8.1] and was totally unknown to members of the America Numismatic Society until I brought it to their attention, and several experts there concurred with me that it was patently ridiculous.

Nevertheless, his "conclusions" are cited without a single sign of skepticism by Biblical apologist John McRay, who says "Jerry Vardaman has discovered the name of Quirinius on a coin in micrographic letters, placing him as proconsul of Syria and Cilicia from 11 B.C. until after the death of Herod."[8.2] This actual claim has never been published in any form, but I will address a related published claim by Vardaman, for which some background is necessary. I will devote considerable space to this since, as far as I know, I am the only one who has taken the trouble to debunk this obscure and bizarre claim.

What Vardaman means by "micrographic letters" (he usually calls them "microletters") are tiny letters so small that they cannot be seen or made without a magnifying glass and could only have been written with some sort of special diamond-tipped inscribers. He finds enormous amounts of this writing on various coins supporting numerous theses of his. Vardaman claims that he and Oxford scholar Nikos Kokkinos discovered microletters on coins in 1984 at the British Museum, but Kokkinos has not published anything on the matter. Nevertheless, Vardaman tells us that some coins "are literally covered with microletters...through the Hellenistic and Roman periods"[8.3] and that "whatever their original purpose(s), the use of microletters was spread over so many civilizations for so many centuries that their presence cannot be denied or ignored."[8.4] Such fanatical assertions for an extremely radical and controversial theory that only he advocates, and that has not been proven to the satisfaction of anyone else in the academic community, gives the impression of a serious loss of objectivity. Supporting this conclusion is the fact that he cites one authority in support of his thesis that does not in fact support him, yet he does not qualify this citation for his readers but acts as if this makes his theory mainstream.[8.5]

Apart from the fact that it is totally unattested as a practice in any ancient source and none of the relevant tools have been recovered or ever heard of as existing in ancient times, and it has never been subjected to a professional peer review much less accepted by any expert but Vardaman himself, there are several other reasons to regard this as insanity. First, it is extremely rare to find any specimen of ancient coin that is not heavily worn from use and the passage of literally thousands of years, in which time the loss of surface from oxidation is inevitable and significant. Even if such microscopic lettering were added to these coins as Vardaman says, hardly any of it could have survived or remained legible, yet Vardaman has no trouble finding hundreds of perfectly legible words on every coin he examines. Second, to prove his thesis, Vardaman would at the very least be expected to publish enlarged photographs of the reputed microscopic etchings. Yet he has never done this. Instead, all he offers are his own drawings. Both of these facts are extremely suspicious to say the least. Finally, the sorts of things Vardaman finds are profoundly absurd, and rank right up there with Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods.

Here is a typical example:

Notice that this is merely a drawing, not a photograph, and that he gives no indication of scale.[8.6] He never even properly identifies the coin type, and though he quotes the British Museum catalogue regarding it, he gives no catalogue number or citation, so I was originally unable to hunt down a photograph of it or to estimate its size. But even if among the largest of coins it would not be more than an inch in diameter. Most coins were much smaller. Yet his drawing (left) has a diameter of 4.75" for a scale of at least 5:1 or more, and his blow-up (right) is a little over three-times that, for at least 15:1. That means that his letters, drawn at around a quarter inch in size, represent marks on the original coin smaller than 1/50th an inch, less than half a millimeter.[8.6.5] It would be nearly impossible to have made these marks, much less hundreds of them, and on numerous coins, at minting or afterward (indeed, even the number of men and hours this would require would be vast beyond reckoning), and it would be entirely impossible for them to have survived the wear of time. Yet Vardaman sees them clear as day.

But this is merely the beginning of the madness. Vardaman's quotation of the coin catalogue establishes this as minted by the city of Damascus in the reign of Tiberius, and the coin itself says "LHKT DAMASKWN" or "328th [year] of the Damascenes," referring to its re-establishment as a Greek city by the first Seleucus, in the last years of the 4th century B.C. However, coins minted in Eastern Greek cities did not use Latin letters or words, they used Greek--one can see even from his drawing that the real letters on this coin are Greek, spelling Greek words--yet almost all of Vardaman's "microletters" for some strange reason appear in Latin. Second, and most humorously, all the Latin letters for "J" appear, as Vardaman reproduces them, as modern J's, yet that letter was not even invented until the Middle Ages! If his J's were genuine, they should be the letter I. This alone makes it clear his claims are bogus.

But in case there is any doubt: Vardaman claims to find in these tiny letters the clear statement that the coin was minted in the first year of king Aretas IV in 16 A.D. But Damascus was not a part of the kingdom of Aretas until after the death of Tiberius in 37 A.D. when it was briefly granted to him by Caligula, so Vardaman uses the microletters as evidence that refutes the accepted history. Yet it is a plain contradiction for the minters to boldly date this coin according to their independent Seleucid heritage, and then microscopically reverse that fact and date it by the reign of a recent king. Yet Vardaman doesn't stop there. The microletters tell him all sorts of new facts about the ancient world, like that the full name of the king was Gaius Julius Aretas, and so on. But even more bizarre still:

The most important references on this coin are to "Jesus of Nazareth." He is mentioned frequently, often in titles and phrases found in the New Testament, for example, "Jesus, King of the Jews," "King," "the Righteous One," and "Messiah." Reference to the first year of his "reign" is repeated often...for example, "Year one of Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee [sic]." [8.7]

The absurdity of all this, officially and microscopically inscribed on every coin by the royal mint of the King of the Nabataeans in 16 A.D., stands without need of comment.

Vardaman also "sees" microscopic letters on inscriptions, even though stone, by its roughness and its exposure to weathering, would be even less likely to preserve such markings, even if they had ever been made. Indeed, stones of the day were not polished, making it literally impossible for microscopic letters to be inscribed on them in any visible way. Yet he finds these tiny letters on the very Lapis Venetus inscription (above) showing "that the text dates to 10 B.C., that the fortress Secundus took on Mount Lebanon was Baitokiki, and that the colony mentioned was Beirut."[8.8] All but the last point would be a valuable addition to our historical knowledge, yet he has never published any papers on these claims. More bizarre still, despite several pages of confused text in his later work on how he arrives at this date, he never even says how he gets the date from the microletters. He merely asserts it over and over again,[8.9] and then appends an unnumbered page with some rough remarks about how his microletters date every office of Secundus by the years from the founding of the Beirut colony in 15 B.C. One could write volumes on the weirdness he finds in his microletters (like the name of the Jewish rebel Theudas on the Lapis Venetus, calling him the king of the Scythians![8.95]). But I think it is clear enough that this is all nonsense on stilts.

Now for the punch line. There is no Quirinius coin. McRay's reference is to an unpublished paper that no doubt comes up with more complete nonsense about Quirinius in the reading of random scratches on some coin or other, twisted into letters by what must be a chronic mental illness. But Vardaman hasn't even published this claim. Instead, almost a decade later, when he did present a lecture on the matter, his paper on the date of Quirinius, though over 20 pages in length, never mentions this coin that apparently McRay was told about. Instead, a date of 12 B.C. is arrived at using nonexistent microletters on an inscription. So we can dismiss this claim of Vardaman's and McRay's without hesitation.

Was Quirinius Sharing Command with a Previous Governor?

To get around the problem that all the governors of Syria between 12 and 3 B.C. are already known, some have tried to argue that Quirinius was actually holding a dual governorship with one of those other known governors. This is truly a desperate ad hoc argument, for there was never any such thing as a dual governorship under the Roman Empire, and it would be very strange if there were.[14.1] It also does not solve the problem of the census--for even if Luke was referring to an earlier date, there could not have been a census of Judaea then, as shown above. Nevertheless, it is argued that Roman provincial commands were ambiguous and thus could be held by multiple persons at the same time, though this is argued with no evidence whatsoever, and it is flatly contradicted by the evidence we do have.

I have seen only two examples offered as evidence to the contrary, but they do not make the case. The first comes from Josephus, where the casual remark "there was a hearing before Saturninus and Volumnius, who were in charge of Syria"[14.2] is taken to imply that there were two governors in Syria at the same time. But when we read Josephus' account of another hearing within a year or two of that one, we are given more specific information: it was held before "Saturninus and the senior colleagues of Pedanius, among whom was Volumnius the procurator."[14.3] The procuratorship was a post held by men of the equestrian class (sometimes even ex-slaves), who were ineligible for the position of governor, and always of inferior rank to the governor (the relationship is similar to that between Quirinius and Coponius, as described by Josephus above).  So Volumnius was not and could not have been a governor of Syria, much less co-governor. The second "example" makes essentially the same error.[14.4]

Could Luke mean that Quirinius was prefect of Syria under a superior official? Besides the fact that it is illogical to name the second in command rather than the actual governor, Quirinius had been a Senator of consular rank since 12 B.C. and thus could never have been a prefect, who had to be of equestrian rank (see Two Last Ditch Attempts below). It simply makes far more sense to read Luke as saying just what he says, rather than trying to lap on layers of undemonstrable and implausible hypotheses grounded in nothing but fantasy. The likely fact that Luke is borrowing from Josephus further undermines all such attempts at a solution (cf.Luke and Josephus)..

Was "Quirinius" a Mistake for Someone Else?

Some are tempted to propose the notion that Luke made a mistake: that he really meant Publius Quinctilius Varus rather than Publius Sulpicius Quirinius. Of course, this would entail that Luke is wrong, and thus would admit that the text as we have it (which reads "Quirinius") contradicts Matthew. And it fails to solve the census problem anyway (as discussed above). But it is also not a plausible conjecture. Around the turn of the 3rd century, it is believed that Tertullian claimed the Lukan census occurred during the tenure of Gaius Sentius Saturninus (who was governor of Syria from 9 to 6 B.C.).[15.1] Of course, Tertullian is not very reliable.[15.2] So the fact that he makes this claim in the context of antiheretical rhetoric is enough to cast doubt on its authority. Moreover, this would have been an easy mistake to make: the governor relieved by Quirinius was Volusius Saturninus, who governed Syria from 4 to 5 A.D.

But this is all moot. For in fact Tertullian does not link Sentius Saturninus with the census in Luke 2:1, as is commonly supposed by those who ignore the context of this passage. Rather, he says censuses (plural, not singular) prove that Jesus had brothers, in defense of Luke 8:19-21. Since Tertullian believed Jesus was the first born, just as Luke says he was, there could not be any record of his brothers in the census of the nativity. Therefore, Tertullian could not possibly have been thinking of the census during which Jesus was born. So he may well mean another Sentius Saturninus (an ancestor of the other), who was governor of Syria in A.D. 19-21 (Tacitus, Annals 2.76-81), a plausible time before which Jesus' siblings would have been born. For the sentence sed et census constat actos sub Augusto nunc in Iudaea per Sentium Saturninum, apud quos genus eius inquirere potuissent, can be translated "But it is also well known that censuses were conducted under the Augustus in that time in Judaea by Sentius Saturninus, consulting which they can investigate his family."[15.3] But even if Tertullian meant brothers by a previous marriage, and thus had in mind the previous Sentius Saturninus, this still would not be the census during which Jesus was born, since Jesus had to be born later to a subsequent wife of Joseph. And Tertullian in that case would simply be bluffing, since no census under the first Saturninus would have counted the inhabitants of Judaea (as shown above and below).

So there is no basis for imagining any scribal error in Luke. Certainly, if Luke borrowed his information from Josephus (cf. Luke and Josephus), then he clearly meant Quirinius. And it is not likely that Luke was mistaking the men, rather than making a mistake in writing the name: Quirinius is a cognomen, but Quinctilius is a nomen. In Roman nomenclature there were three names: praenomen (a "first name" or "casual name"), like Publius (the fact that the two men have the same first name cannot explain the mistake--that would be like confusing Kevin Klein with Kevin Sorbo); nomen ("family name," the equivalent of our last name), like Quinctilius or Sulpicius; and cognomen (like a "nick name" or a traditional name, similar to our middle name), like Varus or Quirinius. It would be odd for an author to confuse one man's cognomen for another man's nomen. This is all the more so since Varus was a notoriously famous general, the only one to have lost legions in the early Empire (his three legions were destroyed by Germans in 9 A.D.), a disaster echoing ominously across the Roman world and credited with scaring Augustus into a non-expansionist policy, and leading to the universal glory of Germanicus, beloved all over the empire, who recovered the lost legionary standards in the reign of Tiberius. Why someone like Luke would mistake a famous man for a relatively unknown one is hard to fathom. The reverse would have made more sense. Finally, a mere transcriptional "error" would not likely produce "by chance" the correct name of an actual governor under whom a census was known to be made. But for those die hards who want to argue that anyway, see next. Others can skip it. 

Was it a Census Conducted by Herod the Great?

One might try to argue that the census was actually not Roman at all, but conducted by Herod. Of course, this is prima facie implausible, for it is most strange that Luke would not simply say this, but instead associate it with a Roman governor and an Imperial decree: the plain language and obvious context leaves no reasonable interpretation but that Luke meant a Roman census (and again, the possibility that Luke is drawing on Josephus would support this). Even if some other nations held their own censuses, the Jews held a negative attitude toward taking a census in peacetime.[16.1] Had Herod conducted such a census on his own initiative, it would have been a truly remarkable event, and could not have escaped mention by historians such as Josephus. And Herod the Great enjoyed the greatest favor and freedom of any client king ever under Roman influence, so any Roman attempt to "force" Herod to run a census would have been even more inexplicable and unprecedented.

Nonetheless, Brook Pearson argues for this interpretation and his arguments will be addressed here.[16.2] First, Pearson traps himself in a false dichotomy: arguing that Luke can only be seen as "historically accurate" if Quirinius governed Syria in the reign of Herod or the census took place before Quirinius, he then argues for the latter. But he ignores the easiest solution of all: that Luke is right and Matthew is wrong. Of course, it is just as likely both are wrong, but if one's goal is to defend Luke, one need only reject the historical accuracy of Matthew. But having set up the goal of defending the only thesis he hasn't seen refuted, Pearson is left to try and build a case on poorly-researched conjectures. His relevant points are:

• 1 •  Pearson claims that "Josephus records a great deal of indirect evidence that a careful and detailed system of census and taxation existed under Herod" (p. 265). But he then presents evidence only of the latter: a careful and detailed system of taxation. He assumes that taxation entailed a census (p. 266). But it did not. Only capitation and corvee taxes (taxes paid per person) required a census. Most taxes had no need of census returns, which were very expensive to administer: land taxes were based on records of property ownership, which were maintained regularly throughout the year; tariffs and other taxes on transportation or sale were levied on the spot; rents of royal land or animals were collected by contractual agreement peculiar to every case; fixed tribute assessed on townships andmetropoleis was due in full no matter who had to pay it, and the general point of such taxation was to leave the central power without the expense of having to worry how they came up with it; taxes on produce were based on annual outcomes or predictions, and even when the productivity of land was based on scheduled assessments, this had nothing to do with counting people (and so would not require Joseph to travel).[16.3] What Pearson needs to show is evidence that any sort of capitation or corvee tax was ever levied by Herod, but he doesn't give a single piece of even indirect evidence of this. Pearson fails to recognize that this is why Egypt had a 14-year census cycle: the only reason a census was taken there at all was that a tax levied on each person began when boys reached the age of 14 (cf.How Often Was the Census Held?, above). There is no evidence of any such cycle or capitation tax in Judaea in the time of Herod, and as noted above it is particularly improbable for a Jewish king, and even more improbable that Josephus should never once mention or allude to such a thing despite covering in detail every year of Herod's thirty-seven-year reign.

• 2 •  Pearson cites Heichelheim on the account books of Herod, claiming they "could not have been possible" without a census (p. 266).[16.4] Of course, Heichelheim's work is rather outdated, but this conjecture is plainly false from what we know of ancient taxation (as noted above, most taxes required no census) and from the fact that the reference in question is only to records of Herod's own estates and the annual income of the whole kingdom, which affords no evidence at all of any capitation or corvee taxes (or even land productivity assessments for that matter), and thus provides no evidence of census-taking.[16.5] In fact, one passage Pearson cites implies the opposite: Herod's kingdom was taxed by assigning fixed annual tribute to each territory, and thus not based on a census. This is clear when Augustus reduces by a quarter the annual tax owed by the whole "Samaritan territory," rather than, for instance, reducing by a quarter the tax each Samaritan had to pay. In fact, Josephus uses here the word for tribute, which was not capitation or corvee tax but a fixed annual amount levied on cities or groups of cities, who then had to figure out on their own how to come up with it.[16.6]

• 3 •  Pearson cites evidence that there were 'town scribes' (kômogrammateis) under Herod and therefore census records and therefore a census (p. 271). It never occurs to him to investigate what else such scribes did: for in fact, government-employed scribes kept property records and records of contracts, records pertaining to market taxes and tariffs and and legal cases, and so on, and thus had plenty to do and plenty reason to be in every town. Their existence does not in the least entail a census (indeed, one wonders just what Pearson thinks they did in the years of down-time between censuses). Moreover, not all town scribes were employed by the government: many were private businessmen who read and wrote documents for a fee, hired by the great majority of people, who were illiterate. Thus, once again, non-evidence is blown way out of proportion and turned into a phantom 'proof'.

• 4 •  Pearson tried to dismiss the obvious objection, that Luke refers the census to an Augustan decree and the governorship of Quirinius, by insisting that ancient people dated events by reference to the most memorable event near it, and thus Luke meant to refer to an earlier census by reference to a later 'more memorable' one (pp. 277-8). Here all evidence contradicts Pearson, and it is not surprising that he does not give a single analogous example to demonstrate his generalization. Not only would people not have any good idea eighty or so years later when 'the census of Quirinius' occurred without reference to some standard chronology, but it was routine to date all events by regnal years of important persons (or, in some places, from the foundation of important cities): coins, handled by everyone, routinely did this, and it would be second nature to understand such a dating scheme. And in fact this is just what Luke does in 3:1. If Luke is comfortable dating events by a precise and normal means there, why would he use an imprecise and abnormal means in 2:1-2? Thus Pearson's reasoning is entirely shot through. To the contrary, Luke associates the census not with a private action of Herod, but with a decree of Augustus: a Roman action, not a Herodian one. And Luke says it happened whenQuirinius was governor of Syria, not before (as has been amply shown above). Indeed, if we follow Rosen, the passage may be taken to mean the first year of Quirinius' reign, making 2:2 just as precise as 3:1.

The bottom line is that there is no evidence of a Herodian census, and no reason to believe there ever was one. And even if there were, there is no way Luke's reference could be to such a census, and thus Pearson's argument is baseless. For the alternative claim that it wasn't a census but a national oath, see Two Last Ditch Attempts below.

Conclusion

There is no way to rescue the Gospels of Matthew and Luke from contradicting each other on this one point of historical fact. The contradiction is plain and irrefutable, and stands as proof of the fallibility of the Bible, as well as the falsehood of at least one of the two New Testament accounts of the birth of Jesus.

[1.1] 2:1 egeneto de en tais hêmerais ekeinais exêlthen dogma para Kaisaros Augoustou apographesthai pasan tên oikoumenên 2:2 hautê apographê prôtê egeneto hêgemoneuontos tês Syrias Kyrêniou. I have attempted to render all Biblical translations as literally as possible without spoiling the genuine meaning in Greek. 
      Jacques Winandy recently claimed that a connective de after hautê is required by the rules of Greek grammar (it fulfills the role of a period in English), and thus its absence here is peculiar, cf. "Le recensement dit de Quirinius (LC 2,2): une interpolation?" Revue Biblique July 1997 (104:3), pp. 373-7. He takes this as evidence that this entire line began as a marginal line note made by a scribe that was later accidentally assimilated into the text (for an example of this very thing, see my discussion of Phlegon in my article on Thallus).  But given the evidence of borrowing in Luke from Josephus, I find this unlikely (see my article on Luke and Josephus). It would be more probable that Luke simply made an error or the de was lost in transmission. 
      But in fact, this is simply a Lukan affectation, for he often omits a connecting particle when beginning a sentence with a pronoun (cf. Luke 1:32, 7:27, and esp. 23:51 for a close parallel; Acts 1:14, 4:11, 6:6, and esp. 16:17 for a close parallel), and it is common in Koinê Greek for the nominative pronoun to mark transition. Winandy also regards the absence of an article in this phrase as indicative of an interpolation, but his argument (and suggested re-translation) are misguided: the absence of an article is perfectly acceptable for a predicate adjective construction with a form of "to be" in Koinê Greek. Moreover, the use of the reflexive hautos ashoutos is not unusual for Luke but would be unusual for a scribal note. I must conclude that the phrase is genuine.

[1.1.2] One might suppose that Luke 1:42, Elizabeth's greeting to Mary, implies that Mary is already pregnant, but it does not entail that. She may merely be anticipating the future, as is the case in Deuteronomy 28:4, where the same present participle construction is used in the Septuagint clearly in reference to future generations and not to present conceptions. And this is likely, since there is no actual verb used in 1:42, while at 1:45 she actually uses the future tense: what the angel told Mary will be fulfilled. Likewise, in 1:48-49, Mary doesn't say she is blessed because she has conceived, but because God has chosen her to be the mother of the messiah. 
      Some have noted that this entails a twelve year-long betrothal between Joseph and Mary, but there is nothing incredible about a long betrothal--anyone familiar with societies where marriages are arranged (even from birth) knows that well enough, especially when the would-be husband is not yet financially sound or the woman's parents can't yet come up with an adequate dowry, and as we have reason to presume Jesus' family very poor, we might expect such complications. Mary's age would also have been an issue, if she was still only a child at her betrothal. At any rate, we are never told when or even if Mary and Joseph marry--they are still unmarried when Jesus is born (Luke 2:5), which would have been nearly a year in and of itself.

[1.1.3] Mark Smith has composed a good article explaining in his own terms why attempts to reconcile Luke and Matthew fail, while concluding with strong support for the accuracy of Luke as against Matthew: Mark Smith, "Of Jesus and Quirinius," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 62:2 (April, 2000): pp. 278-93. 
      Smith argues that Luke may have meant by "Herod the King" not "Herod the Great" but "Herod the Ethnarch," in other words Archelaus, Herod's successor (ibid. pp. 285-6). Smith makes a good case for this. I originally decided against it because I thought Luke was otherwise very precise with the titles of men in power throughout Luke and Acts (a fact that Smith himself documents), but Luke fails to be precise in naming the offices of Pilate and Quirinius, too. Archelaus only called himself Herod on his coins (Burnett, Roman Provincial Coinage 1992, nos. 4912-17) and the historian Cassius Dio also knows him only as such (55.27), while even Josephus, who otherwise refers to Archelaus as ethnarch, could still call him a king (Antiquities of the Jews 18.93), facts that slipped my notice before. Additionally, the title of "ethnarch" is never used by any Gospel author, and appears only once in the New Testament (2 Cor. 11:32), while at the only place in the New Testament where the name "Archelaus" is used (Matthew 2:22), he is said to have basileuei, "reigned," a term that does not entail but nevertheless implies a status of king (basileus), in contrast to other verbs of governing that could have been chosen. Likewise, though Archelaus was technically a tetrarch, this term is only used in the New Testament of later rulers. 
      It has been suggested that the potential for confusion between the two Herods would call for precision, since Herod the Great is the more famous. But this requires assuming, at the very least, (1) that Luke thought of this (authors don't always anticipate every confusion they could be causing) and (2) that Luke expected his audience to know there was a technical difference in title between Herod the Great and his son Herod Archelaus (not everyone was a history major) and (3) that Luke actually knew which Herod it was (his sources may have been vague) and (4) Luke thought precision here mattered (even though he doesn't attempt to identify the year with the kind of precision he does in Luke 3:1) and (5) Luke thought the context (proximity to the census which came upon the removal of Herod Archelaus) didn't already make it clear which Herod he meant and (6) Luke knew what Herod Archelaus' formal title actually was (just because he had good sources on what the titles were of other men in 30 A.D. doesn't mean he had good sources on what Archelaus' title was fifteen years earlier) and (7) Luke wasn't bothered by contradicting himself (or confusing his readers by appearing to contradict himself) by incorrectly preceding a census in 6 A.D. with a king who had already been dead for ten years. Overall, that's a lot of assumptions to adopt simply to overcome Smith's analysis. A few of these assumptions could be granted, but to grant all of them is a bit much. 
      Hence I believe Smith could be right, and thus Luke intended the year of John's birth to be 5 A.D.

[1.1.4] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.113-19; see also Bowersock's Roman Arabia, pp. 65-6, and Kasher's Jews, Idumaeans, and Ancient Arabs, pp. 177-80.

[1.1.5] Robert Smith, in "Caesar's Decree (Luke 2:1-2): Puzzle or Key?" (Currents in Theology and Mission 7:6; Dec. 1980, pp. 343-51), recapitulates a theory proposed by a few other scholars that Luke created (or emphasized, if they are true) these features in order to paint Jesus, via his family, as peaceful and obedient to Caesar, in contrast to rebels and radicals with whom Christianity was often in danger of being compared. Smith shows very clearly Luke's preoccupation with this theme, for Luke alone mentions numerous times census-related rebellions and the theme of disobeying Caesar, while never showing Romans committing an injustice (in all the trials related in Luke-Acts, the Romans come out as superlative judges), and repeatedly emphasizing the unrebellious and obedient nature of Christians, etc. Although I think it is clear that Luke has these apologetic concerns, I don't think he needed to emphasize, much less invent, a universal census or a journey of Joseph and Mary to convey them. Mark Smith and other scholars agree with me (op. cit. 1.1.3, p. 284).

[1.2] A.N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament 1963: p. 168.

[1.3] The famous P.Lond. 904, discussed in F. Kenyon and H. Bell Greek Papyri in the British Museum 3 (1907), p. 125 (with plate 30), and in George MilliganGreek Papyri (1910) pp. 72-3. Rostovtzeff cites other evidence proving that there was an idea of a return to the idia, "place of origin," employed in some censuses conducted in the east, cf. Studien zur Geschichte des römischen Kolonates, pp. 305 ff. Also, cf. Rosen, op. cit., in 10.2.

[1.3.5] Mark Smith (op. cit. 1.1.3, pp. 287-91) even proposes a possible "tax dodge" was at work, and otherwise explains how this migration is not as incredible as critics propose. Robin Lane Fox, on p. 31 of The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible argues that "Roman censuses cared nothing for remote genealogies, let alone false ones," but this isn't true. Membership in Roman tribes was certainly a fiction, yet essential for census taking. It is possible that tribal fictions were maintained in Judaea for similar purposes, and Romans would see an obvious utility in exploiting them to ease the counting of a highly itinerant population (a great many Jews were herdsmen or pilgrims). Likewise, it is very doubtful that Luke would use a system of census taking that his every reader would know didn't exist--certainly, his apologetic aims would fail if his "explanation" held no water. Therefore, there must have been something to it--for even if fiction, it had to play on some fact or else the lie would be obvious to everyone. At the very least, we can suppose many Jews believed they could trace a lineage to some ancestor in the town of their family land, so as to justify their belonging there and to secure their claim in perpetuity, not to mention the mere glory of tracing one's line to some tribal hero (many Greeks and Romans did just the same). We can suppose that Luke believed (or wanted his readers to believe) that Joseph had family land in Bethlehem, and that this was because it was a portion of David's land, and since Jewish Law required the return of sold land every fifty years (Lev. 25:10-28), it was impossible to ever be dispossessed of it--thus, it might have seemed obvious to every Jew that any family plot could be traced to an ancient owner, even if this really wasn't the case. And as noted in the text above, residing outside the taxed area would not exempt any landowner from taxation or the related census so long as he held any property or citizenship in the taxed region.

[1.4] This same position is well argued by Lily Ross Taylor, "Quirinius and the Census of Judaea," American Journal of Philology 1933, pp. 120-33, esp. pp. 129-31 and 133; and the evidence is gathered and analyzed by S.R. Llewelyn, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity 6 (1992) pp. 112-32, and addressed in the context of Egypt by Bagnall & Frier (cf. op. cit., pp. 14-6, in 12.5).

[2.1] 2:1 tou de Iêsou gennêthentos en Bêthleem tês Ioudaias en hêmerais Hêrôdou tou basileôs. On the reigns of the Herods, cf. A. Jones, The Herods of Judaea, 1967, esp. pp. 28-155ff.

[2.2] Based on "Frier's Life Table for the Roman Empire," p.144 of T.G. Parkin, Demography and Roman Society (1992), from Bruce Frier's Landlords and Tenants in Imperial Rome, 1980); cf. also Coale & Demeny, Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations, 2nd ed. (1983).

[2.3] Mark Smith (op. cit. 1.1.3, pp. 291-3) points out several reasons why Matthew could be inventing this story, noting poignantly "If Luke has as a minor theme the submission of Jesus' family to Roman authority, the central theme of the infancy narrative and early chapters of Matthew is a theological, typological parallel between Jesus and Moses acknowledged by virtually all interpreters...[and] the presence of a baby-killing tyrant is essential" to this comparison, a role only Herod would serve, thus giving Matthew a reason to "change" the date of the nativity to suit his theological purpose.

[3.1] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (completed in or shortly after 93 A.D.), 17.355

tês d' Archelaou chôras hupotelous prosnemêtheisês têi Surôn pempetai Kurinios hupo Kaisaros anêr hupatikos apotimêsomenos te ta en Suriai kai ton Archelaou apodôsomenos oikon.

[3.2] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 18.1-2:

Kurinios de tôn eis tên boulên sunagomenôn anêr tas te allas archas epitetelekôs kai dia pasôn hodeusas hupatos genesthai ta te alla axiômati megas sun oligois epi Surias parên, hupo Kaisaros dikaiodotês tou ethnous apestalmenos kai timêtês tôn ousiôn genêsomenos, Kôpônios te autôi sunkatapempetai tagmatos tôn hippeôn, hêgêsomenos Ioudaiôn têi epi pasin exousiai. parên de kai Kurinios eis tên Ioudaian prosthêkên tês Surias genomenên apotimêsomenos te autôn tas ousias kai apodôsomenos ta Archelaou chrêmata.

[3.3] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 17.342-4:

Dekatôi de etei tês archês Archelaou hoi prôtoi tôn andrôn en te Ioudaiois kai Samareusi mê pherontes tên ômotêta autou kai turannida katêgorousin autou epi Kaisaros...ho toinun Kaisar hôs êkousen, orgêi...hôrmêsen auton eis tên exodon...Biennan polin...ta de chrêmata apênenkato.

[3.4] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 18.26:

Kurinios de ta Archelaou chrêmata apodomenos êdê kai tôn apotimêseôn peras echousôn, hai egenonto triakostôi kai hebdomôi etei meta tên Antôniou en Aktiôi hêttan hupo Kaisaros

[3.5] Cassius Dio, Roman History 55.27 (begun in 202 and completed around 235 A.D.). Dio's history is annalistic (it covers events year by year), and for the year 6 he reports that Archelaus' brothers accused him before Augustus who then deposed him and annexed his territory to Syria. He clearly does not have his account from Josephus because Dio says he does not know why Archelaus was deposed (though he should if he had read Josephus), does not call him Archelaus but Herod the Palestinian (his political name; Josephus uses only his real name), and implicates his brothers as his accusers even though Josephus only mentions "leading men in Judaea and Samaria." For corroboration, coins minted in Judaea by Roman officials begin in A.D. 6 (Burnett, Roman Provincial Coinage, 1992, no. 4954: note that his supplemental volume corrects a typographical error: the coin in fact reads "Year 36 of Caesar," i.e. the 36th year after Actium or A.D. 5/6).

[3.6] Antiquities of the Jews, 18.1-8, 20.102; Jewish War (completed between 75 and 79 A.D.), 2.433-4, 7.252-4.

[3.7] This isn't necessarily an independent confirmation, since Luke may in fact be borrowing this from Josephus, cf. my article Luke and Josephus. Some try to claim that Acts 5:37 refers to a different census, but this is illogical: it clearly says "in the days" of the census and Luke has only mentioned one census, the one that happened "in the days" (exactly the same words) of Augustus (Luke 2:1). Robert Jones in his web essay Historical Evidence for the Gospel Accounts of Jesus Christattempts to argue for two censuses by claiming that in 2:2 Luke says only "a" census but in Acts 5:37 he says "the" census. Apart from the fact that this would not entail an implication of two different censuses, it is also wrong on the Greek, for Luke does not say "a" census but "this census" (hautê apographê). A pronomial adjective is even stronger than a definite article, not weaker. Indeed, the absence of the article is actually a common idiom in Koinê Greek, and does not carry the same weight as its absence in English (it is more like a ****ney dialect, where the article is often omitted even when normally necessary to the meaning).

[3.8] Many scholars have chewed over the facts and the consensus is that Herod may have died in 5 B.C. instead of 4 B.C., but whatever the case he had to have been dead before 3 B.C. For analysis, see pp. 372-3 in Nikos Kokkinos, The Herodian Dynasty: Origins, Role in Society and Eclipse (1998), and also, here, Was Herod Alive in 2 B.C.?.

[4.1] For Saturninus: Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 16.277-81, 16.344, 17.6-7, 17.24, 17.57, Jewish War 1.577. For Titius: Strabo 16.1.28, Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 16.270-77 (vs. 16.277-81). For Varus: Velleius 2.117.2; Tacitus, Historiae 5.9.2; Josephus, Jewish War 1.617-39 & 2.66-80 (i.e. Varus there before and still there after Herod's death), Jewish Antiquities 17.89-133, 17.221-23, 17.250-98. See Edward Dabrowa, The Governors of Roman Syria from Augustus to Septimius Severus (1998), pp. 17-35 for the evidence and names of all the governors of Syria from 25 B.C. to 25 A.D. (e.g. see pp. 22-26 on the evidence that Piso was governing Syria in the year 1 B.C., and that Varus had left by the end of the year 4).

[4.1.5] The date of the consulship of Quirinius is attested in consular lists found in stone throughout the Roman empire, and by Dio Cassius 54.28.2 (cf. the relevant entry in Pauly, Wissowa, & Kroll, Real-Encyclopädie d. klassischen Altertumwissenschaft). Tacitus Annals 3.48 and the Josephus passage cited above both paint a picture of Quirinius' consulship as the pinnacle of a career that arose from obscurity, so it is very unlikely that he had held any previous consulship that escaped mention in consular lists or other sources (e.g. as a suffect consul, for example).

[4.2] J. Anderson, Cambridge Ancient History 10, 1934, p. 878. Syme, op. cit., pp. 873-5 (590-2), in [5.1], reiterates the fact, but points out some hopelessly sketchy evidence that might make it a little more conceivable, though still unprecedented. Nevertheless, there is no evidence for, and no sense or reason, in any repeated consular command.

[5.1] For the most decisive treatment of this item, cf. Ronald Syme, "The Titulus Tiburtinus," Roman Papers, vol. 3, Anthony Birley, ed., 1984, pp. 869-884 (originally appeared in Akten des VI. Internationalen Kongresses für Griechische und Lateinische Epigraphik: Vestigia xvii, 1973, pp. 585-601). The primary sources areCorpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 14 § 3613 (= H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae § 918), with a photograph (pl. 33b) in J. and A.E. Gordon, Album of Latin Inscriptions 1, 1958 (cf. also p. 70). I will translate all inscriptions literally within standard epigraphic conventions, e.g. all abbreviations I expand fully, etc.

[5.2] Inscriptions suggest, but do not prove it. For the whole case for Piso, cf. Syme 5.1 pp. 878-81 (594-9). A.N. Sherwin-White concurs, and defends the same thesis further in Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament 1963, pp. 162-6.

[5.3] E. Groag, Jahreshefte des österreichischen archäologischen Instituts in Wien 21/22 (1924) pp. 473f. Normally, for the use of iterum in this sentence to mean a second governorship of Syria, it would have to appear before the verb, yet it clearly does not. Since iterum does not appear before the verb, nor beside any adjective, the normal conventions governing adverbs do not apply, since they only relate to the modification of verbs or adjectives (Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar § 439-40); instead, the established routine in epigraphy is to place it as a modifier of the office, not the province. This has been challenged by Sherwin-White (op. cit. 1963, p. 164, in 5.2), but all of his supposedly "contrary" examples either prove Groag's rule instead or engage circular reasoning (and thus do not in fact prove what he thinks). At best his argument only allows the possibility of reading the sentence either way, which is insufficient to establish the sense needed here, especially given that we have no evidence of any second governorship of the same province in Roman history. Hence his conclusion has not been accepted (Syme, op. cit., p. 873, in 5.1).

[6.1] For details see H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (1892-1916) § 2683 (in vol. 3), also in V. Ehrenberg and A. Jones, Documents Illustrating the Reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, 2nd ed. (1976), § 231, and originally appearing in Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 3 Suppl. § 6687, from which I acquired the sketch.

[6.2] The Roman Near East (1993), pp. 48, 250.

[7.1] Sketch and photo, and all other details unless otherwise stated, from G. L. Cheesman, "The Family of the Caristanii at Antioch in Pisidia," Journal of Roman Studies 3 (1913), pp. 253ff. The text is also available in H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae § 9502-3.

[7.2] "Can We Trust Scripture?" Return to God Magazine 1:2 (1994) p. 16. No author is named. The text was available as of August 2006 athttp://www.advancemeants.com/creation/rtgevd4.txt.

[7.3] My suspicion is based on an anonymous apologetic tirade in Comp-Software-International Digest 23:3 (Tuesday, 16 March 1999). This is hardly a source worth citing, but it exemplifies some of the trends I have been exhibiting. The author says some ridiculous things (like that Herod's son Archelaus was "governor of Syria in 1 B.C."), but he cites Sir William Ramsay specifically, reporting that "he discovered an inscription at Antioch of Pisidia establishing Quirinius in Syria 10-7 BC, while leading a campaign against the Homanadenses (in the Taurus Mountains), a fact confirmed by Tacitus." In actual fact, though Ramsay did discover both stones, his colleague G. L. Cheesman wrote the relevant article on them (see 7.91 below), and these details match somewhat the (entirely speculated) claims of Cheesman. Thus there is likely some intermediary source involved. But again, the speculations of Cheesman are here presented as if "proven" by the stone, and it is even suggested that Tacitus "confirms" all this, but he only confirms that Quirinius conducted a war on the Homanadenses, not when or in what command, nor where the Homanadenses were--the Taurus mountains is actually not the likely location (see box above).

[7.91] G. L. Cheesman, op. cit., in 7.1. Though drawing on communications and other work of Sir William Ramsay, the arguments in this article are Cheesman's.

[7.92] Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 2 § 6843.

[7.93] For details, cf. Syme, op. cit., p. 876 (592), in 5.1. The latest and most thorough analysis of the evidence for this war is provided by Barbara Levick, "The Homanadensian War," Roman Colonies in Southern Asia Minor, 1967, pp. 203-14. Cf. p. 213 on this point in particular.

[7.94] For details, cf. Syme, op. cit., p. 876 (592), in 5.1.

[7.95] Levick, op. cit., pp. 39-40 and 211, in 7.93. Cf. Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (2000), R. Talbert, ed., maps 62-6. Syme has also supported this entire position at some length, refuting outdated scholarship on Quirinius, in "Galatia and Pamphylia under Augustus: The Governorship of Piso, Quirinius and Silvanus," Klio 1934, pp. 122-148.

[8.1] His chronological arguments, and the use of this pseudo-evidence, only appear in print in two publications: "Jesus' Life: A New Chronology," Jerry Vardaman & Edwin Yamauchi, eds., Chronos, Kairos, Christos: Nativity and Chronological Studies Presented to Jack Finegan (1989), published by the small Biblical studies press Eisenbrauns (of Winona Lake, IN); Jerry Vardaman, Chronology and Early Church History in the New Testament, a series of typed and photocopied lectures delivered once, to the Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary, in 1998 (only a few cheaply-bound copies of this exist; though I was based in New York city, I had to acquire mine on loan from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary of Kentucky). Vardaman also presents his conclusions, though not his evidence or arguments, in another book he edited, Chronos, Kairos, Christos II.

[8.2] John McRay, Archaeology and the New Testament (1991), p. 154. McRay cites a manuscript Vardaman sent him, which was never published, but a similar claim appeared in one of the lectures delivered in China in 1998 (cf. 8.1). That Vardaman had this theory since 1989, had a more detailed manuscript in 1990, and yet never published in any peer reviewed journal, but instead made a significantly different claim in an isolated foreign seminary lecture eight years later, demonstrates that Vardaman either realizes he cannot convince any real experts on the subject, or was told so by any independent reviewers he submitted it to. I am not surprised.

[8.3] Vardaman, op. cit. 1989, p. 66, in 8.1.

[8.4] Vardaman, op. cit. 1989, p. 67, in 8.1.

[8.5] Vardaman, op. cit. 1989, p. 67, in 8.1, citing "hand-scratched microletters" produced by E.T. Newell in the American Journal of Numismatics 46 (1912), p. 112. However, Newell only shows evidence there of graffitti on coins: one or two letters, roughly scratched by hand with an ordinary object, and quite visible to the naked eye. This phenomenon is in fact well known and not unusual. But these are not "microletters" in Vardaman's sense: they are neither microscopic nor do they literally cover coins with added information, but only a few letters at most. Moreover, their date cannot really be established, since the scratchings could have been made decades after the coins were minted. In contrast, central to Vardaman's thesis is the claim that most of these inscriptions were created by the minters and thus reflect official records.

[8.6] Vardaman, op. cit. 1989 8.1 p. 70 and 71.

[8.6.5] I subsequently found the coin on my own, and my estimates were almost exact: the scale for his blow-up section is approximately 14:1 and the letters he sees would be less than half a millimeter in size. The following is an enlarged reproduction of a plastercast of the coin available in A. M. Burnett, Roman Provincial Coinage, 1992, item 4797:

This coin is only 26mm in diameter. Though a cast cannot preserve microscopic details, it is still obvious that the coin was so smooth that all the details of the goddess's face have rubbed off, yet Vardaman draws them in as if they are there; likewise the veins of the laurel leaves are almost rubbed into oblivion right where Vardaman sees his microletters. I examined the actual coin myself at the British Museum, with a digital microscope, and found pits and cracks but no microletters. See: Richard Carrier, "Pseudohistory in Jerry Vardaman's Magic Coins: The Nonsense of Micrographic Letters," Skeptical Inquirer 26.2 (Mar-Apr 2002): pp. 39-41, 61; and Richard Carrier, "More on Vardaman's Microletters," ibid. 26.4 (Jul/Aug 2002): pp. 60-61.

[8.7] Vardaman, op. cit. 1989, p. 72, in 8.1.

[8.8] Vardaman, op. cit. 1989, p. 62 (n. 5), in 8.1.

[8.9] Vardaman, op. cit. 1998, Lecture 1, pp. 8-11, in 8.1.

[8.95] Ibid., unnumbered appended page titled "The Problem of Theudas and Microletters on the Lapis Venutus."

[9.1] For the nature of Roman Imperialism during the formation of the Empire, which was nearly completed by the Republic, see William Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome: 327-70 BC (1979). Then, for Roman imperialism in early Imperial period, see Martin Goodman, The Roman World: 44 BC - AD 180 (1997).

[9.2] Led by Judas the Galilean: Acts 5:37 (cf. 3.7); Josephus, Jewish War 2.117-8, and Jewish Antiquities 18.1-8.

[9.3] A.N. Sherwin-White, "Quirinius: a Note" (op. cit. 5.2, 1963, p. 167), on Horst Braunert's study "Der römische Provinzialzensus und der Schätzungsbericht des Lukas-Evangeliums," Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 6 (1957), pp. 192-214.

[9.35] Justin Martyr's Apology 1.34 and 1.46 also shows that this is exactly how Christians understood their own history: Quirinius was the first governor of Judaea, and Jesus was born during the census he took there, which happened 150 years earlier. It is believed that Justin wrote his first apology around 155 A.D., which produces a birth year of 6 A.D. (the 150th year before Justin wrote). Justin also claims that one can check the census records to confirm this, but this is certainly a bluff: it is extremely unlikely that Justin checked them himself. He does not say he did, and the information he gives is too vague to suggest he was drawing on an official record. Had he read the actual record, he should have been able to report at least one of the items the record would include: for Joseph there would be a full name, age, name of father or family, residence, occupation, and amount of property, as well as the character and extent of any land and the number of slaves owned. If a baby Jesus would be listed at all in the census records, it would only be as part of this entry. It is also unlikely that just anyone could access such important records--to prevent fraud, they must have been kept under very tight guard and accessible only to Roman magistrates. Cf. Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996), s.v. "census." It's also very improbable such a record would survive that long (even apart from the common contingencies of accidental fire and inevitable decay, space considerations alone would prohibit any interest in the government maintaining the detailed census records of hundreds of millions of people for 150 years, especially since searching such a vast archive without a computerized database would be effectively impossible).