Just testing

Tried to upload a post from Gaz Muses onto Facebook but told it was abusive.  No idea at all why. It was a discussion on Classical Theism.  Just checking to see if the blog site is blocked or just that post.

Has God, writ large, been lost?

Over the holidays I have read two significant books.  The first was Karen Armstrong's History of God.  The second, and one which I am still reading, is Gretta Vosper's With or Without God. Both books are mind-stretching.  I am particularly enjoying Vosper's thought at the moment.  She makes the comment at one stage, 'God, writ large, has been lost; god, writ small may yet disappear.'  Both books I would recommend to anyone who is seeking to understand what God has become, or perhaps needs to become, in the 21st century.  Vosper's musing also reminded me of a paper I wrote a few years back that explored the notion of 'God, writ large, has been lost.'  I'm reproducing it in this post. I hope you enjoy reading and thinking about it.

Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild?

Who was Jesus?  In the course of my theological studies I have needed to find a response to this question.  My understanding of who Jesus was has inevitably changed since when I was a child.  (I'll post my journey some time in the future. ) At the moment though, I recently presented the following piece as a sermon at my local church.  It is the culmination of a number of years of thinking and owes much to the influences of Living the Questions, a course I first led at my local church and then critiqued whilst completing my BTheol at Murdoch University.  Anyway I hope you enjoy reading my thoughts on the subject ...

Hebrew Creation Voices

I've been following a blog over the holiday period entitled Evolutionary Christianity.  An interesting number of contributors including well known names such as Ian Lawton, John Shelby Spong, Gretta Vosper, Matthew Fox, John Cobb, Ian McLaren and Bruce Sanguin. Thought I'd post some of my musings on the biblical creation accounts.  Hope you enjoy them ...

A feature and beauty of the Hebrew sacred texts is the different voices that have been captured in the canon.  These voices derive from different eras, different cultural backgrounds, and different traditions.  Most people, to whatever degree of literalness or metaphor, generally acknowledge there is a creation story that derives from the book of Genesis which seeks to establish how the world began.  Yet there are perhaps just as many people who are unaware, be it from mistranslation, naïve ignorance, or even a deliberate choice to disregard what is written, that the Hebrew scriptures do not simply relate one single story of creation but many, from which I would like to consider four.

These four are found in Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Psalm 104 and Job 36 – 41.  While each story essentially assumes a transcendent deity as the source of creation, the details of the stories change in each retelling.  Some are more descriptive, some are more ordered and all use metaphorical language to convey meaning.  We are unaware of the exact time period from which each story derives or in which era the stories were transcribed, but it is generally agreed by most Hebrew scholars that the Psalm and Job accounts preceded Genesis 2, which in turn preceded Genesis 1.  This places the Genesis 1 account, in all probability, as the final one to be written but I will consider them in the order in which they appear in the Hebrew canon.

Genesis 1, the ‘six-day’ story, and often also called the Elohist account because it uses the word Elohim for God, is a chronological list of creative acts that is orderly and highlights the celebration of the Sabbath.  Skies, land and sea are created, plants are created, animals are created, and finally male and female after which the creator rests.  The account is comparatively brief, with very little detail and it bears the hallmarks of a ‘tidying-up’ of previous traditions.  It presents a voice of order – a voice that is recognisable in the phrase, ‘the earth was formless and void’ but Elohim gave it order and ‘it was good.’

Genesis 2, from verse 4 onwards, gives us another account of creation where the focus is on explaining the predicament of human life and death.  This is often called the Yahwist account because throughout this story the name Yahweh is used for God not just Elohim.  It reflects another, and perhaps older, tradition.  The account is more ‘hands-on’ and the creation order differs from that given in Genesis 1.  Man is created, a garden planted, animals created as a possible mate for man, and then woman.  Yahweh touches, breathes, talks, walks and interacts with his creation in a highly metaphorical manner.  It explains the moral dilemmas that were the day-to-day experiences of men and women.  It is a voice of explanation.

Although the book of Job appears next in our Christian Old Testaments, the Hebrew canon lists Psalms first.  Psalm 104 is a creation hymn of praise.  It follows the stylistic parallelism of Hebrew poetry and has thematic similarities with other Ancient Near Eastern creation hymns such as the Egyptian Great Hymn to Aten.  Psalm 104 is a voice in praise of the creator.  Its poetic voice envisages a transcendent God to whom nature is subordinate.  It includes metaphorical details of Yahweh’s creative acts such as in the separation of the waters and seas from dry land …

You set the earth on its foundations,

so that it shall never be shaken.

You cover it with the deep as with a garment;

the waters stood above the mountains.

At your rebuke they flee;

at the sound of your thunder

they take to flight.

They rose up to the mountains,

ran down to the valleys

to the place that you appointed for them.

You set a boundary that they may not pass,

so that they might not again cover the earth.

Our final voice, found in Job 36 from about verse 24 to the end of Job 41, is a wonderfully poetic and metaphorical description of God’s creative interaction with the world.  In this account, and one of the reasons why it is presumed to have derived from an early and more general tradition, the word for God is El – the shortest and simplest form.  In Job, El is depicted as the one who ‘draws up drops of water which the skies pour down’.  El’s voice is that of thunder, and ice results from his breath.  He lays the cornerstone of the earth and places the stars in place to sing.  An example of its beautifully poetic metaphor is found in Job 38 – the birthing of the sea and the creation of dawn,

Who shut in the sea with doors

    when it burst out from the womb?

When I made the clouds its garment

    and thick darkness its swaddling band,

        and prescribed bounds for it,

            and set bars and doors, and said,

‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,

    and here shall your proud waves

        be stopped?’

Have you commanded the morning

    since your days began,

and caused the dawn to know its place,

    so that it might take hold of the

        skirts of the earth

and the wicked be shaken out of it?

It is changed like clay under the seal,

    and it is dyed like a garment.

The account in Job has no specific order and begins with cosmic elements, moves to meteorological phenomena and ends with animals and birds.  Job’s creation story instills a sense of awe, mystery and a pre-scientific understanding in the face of the unknown.  Its purpose was to convince Job of God’s sovereignty and man’s futility in seeking to know God’s mind.  The creation voice, which is at times attributed to Yahweh, is a voice of wisdom that expresses the notion that the knowledge of the creation of the world is inaccessible to men.  We see and experience the result, but not the act, nor the agent.

So, how are we to understand and respond to these differing creation voices?  The Hebrew canon presents a variety of voices, each valid in its own terms, though each incomplete, and while the individual voices are imperfect in this sense, they can contribute with – rather than against – the others towards a fuller understanding of the whole.  We can therefore learn from each voice. 

- The voice of order gives its hearers a confidence that behind the chaos there is as Einstein suggested, ‘a God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists.’ 

- The voice of explanation enables its hearers to find a purpose for their existence and the paradoxes of life and death. 

- The voice of praise allows its hearers to express wonder when a sunset steals their breath or a newborn baby leaves them speechless. 

- The voice of wisdom leads its hearers to concede that the knowledge of the creation of the world is inaccessible to them. 

The diversity of voices in these creation stories gives us an appreciation that what is written in the Hebrew sacred texts was never intended to be taken as a literal description of that about which we can never be certain.  If we wish to consider a particular voice as literal, we then have to choose that poetic voice over the others.  However, we can acknowledge that creation may not have actually happened this way or that, but still recognise that the metaphorical creation voices ring true.

Christmas Musings

This was the first Christmas I celebrated with FaceBook and many of my friends posted the digital Christmas story - the one where the birth of Jesus is announced via FB chat and searched on Google etc.  Clever but it assumes without question the whole historical accuracy of the narrative accounts given in Matthew's and Luke's Gospels.  That wonderful blend that has become 'fact' probably more so by its retelling over and over than by any historical analysis.  For many the story is sacrosanct and beyond any analysis.  That's a pity because in a world where questioning is encouraged at almost every level of life, it is not encouraged at the crucial issues - such as, is the perpetuated Christmas story grounded in history at all?  So, here's a muse on one aspect of the Christmas story - the Census spoken about in Luke's Gospel.  It is a rehash of a lecture I gave in a history course at Christian Heritage College earlier this year.  It's quite a long read but if you would like to explore the historicity of the first Christmas it may help to clarify a few points ...

Is History Fact or Fiction?

‘History is fiction,’ Robespierre observes at one point during British writer Hilary Mantel's fictive account of the French Revolution, A Place of Greater Safety.  Mantel has Robespierre continue:

The entire record of the human race has been falsified; it has been made up by bad governments to suit themselves, by kings and tyrants to make them look good.                              

       A Place of Greater Safety, p. 565

Peter McPhee’s review of Mantel’s work in the Sydney Morning Herald highlights an intellectual maxim of the present era where the distinction between works of fiction and non-fiction has blurred.

In this age of postmodernist literary criticism, we are more than ever aware of the ways in which historical writing resembles the novel as one individual’s reconstruction of an imagined past.  Historians may seek to be as ‘objective’ as possible, but they are no longer under positivist illusions about the scientific pretensions of their discipline.                          

Lunatic Liberty, SMH, 17/10/1992

According to Keith Windschuttle, McPhee’s self-assured assertion derives from the permeance of poststructuralist theories into the field of humanities and social sciences.  ‘Old-fashioned’ notions of the historian’s task to describe what really happened in the past have been exploded by the work of anthropologists, linguists, scientists, political and literary theorists.  These theories have changed the old concepts of history to the extent that it is impossible for historians to work in isolation from these new developments.  Windschuttle concludes:

In the 1900s, the newly dominant theorists within the humanities and social sciences assert that it is impossible to tell the truth about the past or to use history to produce knowledge in any objective sense at all.  They claim we can only see the past through the perspective of our own culture, and hence, what we see in history are our own interests and concerns reflected back at us.  The central point upon which history was founded no longer holds:  there is no fundamental distinction any more between history and myth.

The Killing of History, p.2

Many theorists agree that historians create histories from the perspectives of their own time and place with histories being produced from Western historiographical traditions.  Keith Jenkins draws a similar distinction between history and the past when he asserts that ‘history is a discourse about, but radically different to the past.’  For Jenkins the past has gone and history is what historians make of it.  Historians invent the descriptive categories and meanings of the past.

The form in which history appears further compounds the question of fiction and non-fiction.   Herodotus, in a critique of Homer, declared that poetry by its nature for completeness could not address the multiplicity of stories in history.  Prose he suggested is more flexible and allows for differing views,

This the priests said was the manner of Helen's coming to Proteus; and I suppose that Homer also had heard this story, but since it was not so suitable to the composition of his poem as the other which he followed, he dismissed it finally, making it clear at the same time that he was acquainted with that story also …

Histories, Bk.2:116

Samuel Byrskog also identifies the problem with historiography when he writes,

Story is story and history is history, one is accustomed to think today.  The two should not be mingled, lest one fuses the narrative and fictional world with the extra-textual and real world … to read narrative texts both as ‘mirrors’ reflecting self-contained world and as ‘windows’ opening up to extra-fictional and diachronic levels of history is often considered a violation of proper hermeneutical conduct.

History as Story, p.1

It is true that historical narratives contain an irreducible and inexpugnable element of interpretation but many historians claim to be presenting truth.  Such an instance occurs in the case of the author of the Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles.  The prologue to this narrative reads,

Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.

Luke 1:1-4

This prologue follows the pattern of scientific, historical prologues used by ancient historians who sought to confirm the reliability of their work. While the meaning of the word, ‘truth’ is the subject of some debate; the common translation implies that the author was seeking to write ‘fact’ as opposed to ‘fiction.’ It is the purpose of this paper to consider Luke’s historical factuality by comparing the date of the birth of Christ during the census under Quirinius with contemporaneous Roman records.

It came to pass in those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the inhabited earth should be registered. (This first registration was when Quirinius (Cyrenius) governed Syria.) And each man went to his own town to be registered. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was from the house and family of David, he went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was pregnant.

Luke 2:1-5

The Chronological Dilemma – Matthew 2:1 and Luke 1:5

It should be noted that if Luke 2:1–5 stood alone there would be no particular problem with the chronology of this event.  Augustus reigned from about 43 BCE to CE 14 and Quirinius became legate of Syria in CE 6 and conducted a census of Judea (not Galilee) in CE 6–7.  However, the chronological information in Luke 2 does not stand by itself when it is compared to Matthew 2:1 and Luke 1:5.  In these passages, the authors of Matthew and Luke both place the birth of Jesus during the reign of Herod the Great,

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem.

Matthew 2:1

In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah.

Luke 1:5

In his Antiquities XVII, the Roman historian Josephus records the date of the death of Herod shortly after an eclipse of the moon and a Passover,

Herod deprived Matthias of the high priesthood, and burnt the other Matthias, who had raised the sedition, with his companions, alive. And that very night there was an eclipse of the moon … Now, upon the approach of that feast of unleavened bread, which the law of their fathers had appointed for the Jews at this time, which feast is called the Passover … he died, the fifth day after he had caused Antipater to be slain …

The best dating for such an astrological event is in 4 BCE (or 750 AUC, Anno Urbis Conditae is Latin for ‘from the founding of the city of Rome’).   As the date of Jesus’ birth, this also accords with the statement in Luke 3:23 that Jesus was ‘about thirty years of age’ in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar (about CE 27 or 28).  The anomaly that Jesus was born ‘before Christ’ (BC) results from an ancient mistake in 533 by Dionysius Exiguus when he calculated 754 AUC as CE 1. 

Such a date, around 4-3 BCE as the birth of Christ, means that the time of the 'Quirinius census', (CE 6-7), is some ten years before Quirinius was legate of Syria.

There are essentially three ways of dealing with this dilemma in Luke’s historical account.  The first seeks to reorganise the Herodian chronology of Luke 1 to agree with the Quirinius census, i.e. to move Herod’s death forward to CE 6–7.  The second is to reinterpret the Quirinius census chronology to agree with the Herod dating, i.e. to move the census back to 4–3 BCE.  The third is to recognise that Luke’s datings are confused and there may be no need to reconcile them when we acknowledge that historical narrative reflects a historian’s own interests and concerns rather than historical ‘facts.’

Solution # 1 – Reorganising the Herod Chronology

Attempts to deal with the census dilemma by reorganising the Herod chronology are thwarted by the fixed nature of Herod the Great’s reign based on Josephus’ dating and that of other ancient chronologists.  To counter this, J. Duncan Derrett suggests that Luke and Matthew did not actually mean Herod the Great when they were writing but in fact were referring to Archelaus who ruled from 4 BCE to CE 6.  Some early church fathers also distinguish between the date of John the Baptist’s birth (3–4 BCE) and that of Jesus (CE 6–7). 

These suggestions actually conflict with Luke’s other items of chronological information and narrative as well as that of Matthew.  For example, Matthew has Jesus return from Egypt when Herod dies and Archelaus was ruling over Judea. (Matt.2:19-22)  In the light of the reliability of Herod’s chronology and the historical difficulties encountered in altering this, most historians who seek to reconcile the dating dilemma turn themselves to the possibility of re-dating the Quirinius census.

Solution # 2 – Reorganising the Quirinius Chronology

The second solution, which involves the reorganising of the Quirinius census, presents a new set of historical difficulties.  During the reign of Augustus, three censuses of Roman citizens took place, in 28 and 8 BCE and CE 13–14.   These are attested to in the Res Gestae divi Augusti,

When I was consul the fifth time (29 BCE), I increased the number of patricians by order of the people and senate.  I read the roll of the senate three times, and in my sixth consulate (28 BCE) I made a census of the people with Marcus Agrippa as my colleague. I conducted a lustrum, after a forty-one year gap, in which lustrum were counted 4,063,000 heads of Roman citizens. Then again, with consular imperium I conducted a lustrum alone when Gaius Censorinus and Gaius Asinius were consuls (8 BCE), in which lustrum were counted 4,233,000 heads of Roman citizens. And the third time, with consular imperium, I conducted a lustrum with my son Tiberius Caesar as colleague, when Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Appuleius were consuls (14 CE), in which lustrum were counted 4,937,000 of the heads of Roman citizens.

It should be noted that the lustrums (originally a sacrifice of purification  offered by one of the censors of Rome in the name of the Roman people at the close of the taking of the census) conducted by Augustus counted Roman citizens not non-citizens.  Apart from the Lukan account, Augustus is not recorded as taking a census of the ‘inhabited earth’ that included non-citizens.  The distinction made between Roman citizens and non-citizens was an important feature of the Roman republic and empire.  Citizens enjoyed rights and privileges not granted to non-citizens.  That being said, other censuses were conducted of non-citizens in the provinces; organised by local officials for the purpose of taxation and military service,

But now it is worthwhile to see how the censors were appointed in Sicily while that man was praetor. For that is the magistracy among the Sicilians, the appointments to which are made by the people with the greatest care, because all the Sicilians pay a yearly tax in proportion to their incomes; and, in making the census, the power is entrusted to the censor of making every sort of valuation, and of determining the total amount of every man's contribution. Therefore the people choose with the greatest care the man in whom they can place the greatest confidence in a matter affecting their own property; and on account of the greatness of the power, this magistracy is an object of the greatest ambition. 

Cicero, In Verrum, ii, 53.

Luke’s suggestion of a ‘worldwide’ census ordered by Caesar Augustus during the time when Quirinius was legate of Syria does not accord with the chronology and the nature of such censuses as recorded in Roman historical records. It would appear that Luke’s account of a worldwide census conducted in Judea by Quirinius is actually a description of a provincial census, and the first one undertaken when Quirinius was legate.

Returning to one’s ‘house’

Before considering the historicity of a specific provincial census conducted under Quirinius, a general question of whether provincial censuses required people to return to their place of birth is pertinent.  Since enrolment was primarily for taxation purposes, the general pattern of provincial censuses was to register people where they lived or in the nearby principal city of a district.  A ‘corrupted’ Egyptian papyrus dated from CE 104, is understood to describe a proclamation ordering a temporary dweller back to his regular domicile for a census. The implication is that the regular domicile was where the person held his property and worked (the cultivation that concerns them) not his birth. 

In attempts to relate this practice to the Lukan text, there have been suggestions that Joseph had property in Bethlehem; but the accounts that he could not find a place for his sojourn in that city would tend to negate this.  While the possibility exists that Romans officials may have adapted their practices to respect the attachment of the Jews to ancestral relationships, among extant historical records, Luke’s narrative is unique in this requirement.

The Date of the Quirinius Census

Quirinius was a ‘true’ historical character, a senator and consul, who later became a legate of Syria.  Men who filled the office of legate were drawn from among the senatorial class of Rome.  There were two main positions; the legatus legionis who was an ex-praetor given command of one of Rome's legions while the legatus propraetor was an ex-consul, who was given the governorship of a Roman province with the magisterial powers of a praetor.  We know of Quirinius through ancient historians who write about him in some detail.  Tacitus, Seutonius, and Dio Cassius, as well as Jewish historian Josephus all mention him.  His full name was Publius Sulpicius Quirinius and he died in CE 21.  He was what the Romans called a ‘new man’ meaning he came to hold his political office on the basis of his own merits rather than by family tradition and inheritance. It was through his military conquests in Cilicia and elsewhere that Quirinius was exalted by the emperor to hold the office of governor in Syria in CE 6–7.

About the same time he requested the Senate  to let the death of Sulpicius Quirinus be celebrated with a public funeral. With the old patrician family of the Sulpicii this Quirinus, who was born in the town of Lanuvium, was quite unconnected. An indefatigable soldier, he had by his zealous services won the consulship under the Divine Augustus, and subsequently the honours of a triumph for having stormed some fortresses of the Homonadenses in Cilicia . He was also appointed adviser to Gaius Caesar in the government of Armenia, and had likewise paid court to Tiberius, who was then at Rhodes. The emperor now made all this known to the Senate, and extolled the good offices of Quirinus to himself, while he censured Marcus Lollius, whom he charged with encouraging Gaius Caesar in his perverse and quarrelsome behaviour. But people generally had no pleasure in the memory of Quirinus, because of the perils he had brought, as I have related, on Lepida, and the meanness and dangerous power of his last years.

Tacitus, Annals, III, 48

Quirinius conducted a provincial census in CE 6–7 when Archelaus (Herod’s successor) had been deposed and Judea came under direct Roman control.  Josephus records (NB Cyrenius is Quirinius),

Now Cyrenius, a Roman senator, and one who had gone through other magistracies, and had passed through them till he had been consul, and one who, on other accounts, was of great dignity, came at this time into Syria, with a few others, being sent by Caesar to be a judge of that nation, and to take an account of their substance … Cyrenius came himself into Judea, which was now added to the province of Syria, to take an account of their substance, and to dispose of Archelaus's money; but the Jews, although at the beginning they took the report of a taxation heinously, yet did they leave off any further opposition to it, by the persuasion of Joazar, who was the son of Beethus, and high priest; so they, being over-persuaded by Joazar's words, gave an account of their estates, without any dispute about it. Yet was there one Judas, a Gaulonite, of a city whose name was Gamala, who, taking with him Sadduc, a Pharisee, became zealous to draw them to a revolt, who both said that this taxation was no better than an introduction to slavery, and exhorted the nation to assert their liberty …’

Antiquities 18,1

The latter section of Josephus’ account alludes to an uprising of Judas the Gaulonite who most probably is the same person referred to in the Acts of the Apostles,

Then he addressed them: ‘Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men.  Some time ago Theudas appeared, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing.  After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered.’

Acts 5:35-37

If the census being referred to by Luke is the one mentioned by Josephus and the Acts of the Apostles, it would have taken place in CE 6–7.  An inscription that supports the fact that Quirinius undertook a census is called the Aemilius Secundus.  It records, among other things, that Secundus served under Publius Sulpicius Quirinius when the latter was legate of Syria, some time during the reign of Augustus, and when in this command Secundus helped conduct a census of a Syrian city, Apamea.  It supports the ‘fact’ that Quirinius was governor of and conducted a census in Syria.   No date is given in the inscription and it is presumed that it refers to the CE 6–7 census.  It reads in English translation:

QUINTUS AEMILIUS (SON OF QUINTUS)

SECUNDUS OF THE PALATINE TRIBE, IN

THE SERVICE OF THE DIVINE AUGUSTUS, UNDER

PUBLIUS SULPICIUS QUIRINIUS THE LEGATE

OF CAESAR IN SYRIA, WAS DECORATED

WITH [THESE] HONORS: PREFECT

OF A COHORT FROM THE FIRST AUGUST LEGION;

PREFECT OF THE SECOND FLEET; ALSO

CONDUCTED A CENSUS BY ORDER OF QUIRINIUS

IN THE APAMENE COMMUNITY OF

117,000 CITIZENS;

ALSO, WHEN HE WAS SENT BY QUIRINIUS AGAINST

THE ITURAEANS ON MOUNT LEBANON

HE CAPTURED THEIR CITADEL; AND BEFORE

HE WAS IN THE ARMY AS OFFICER IN CHARGE OF WORKS,

HE WAS DELEGATED BY THE TWO CONSULS TO RUN

THE TREASURY; AND WHEN HE WAS LIVING IN A COLONY

HE SERVED AS QUAESTOR, AEDILE TWICE, DUUMVIR TWICE,

AND PONTIFEX.

QUINTUS AEMILIUS SECUNDUS, SON OF QUINTUS,

OF THE PALATINE TRIBE, HAVING PASSED ON,

AND AEMILIA CHIA, [HIS] FREEDWOMAN,

HAVE BEEN LAID TO REST HERE. 

THIS MONUMENT NO LONGER BELONGS TO [HIS] HEIRS.

Another issue with this date is that Luke’s account seems to presume that the census of Quirinius affected Galileans – Joseph lived in Nazareth of Galilee and Luke places Judas as a Galilean.  (While Josephus identifies Judas in Antiquities 18,1 as a Gaulonite, he also calls Judas a Galilean in four other instances).  In CE 6–7, Galilee was not under Quirinius’ direct supervision but was a tetrarchy ruled by Herod Antipas.  (Herod Antipas inherited the territories of Galilee and Perea when his father died.)  If Quirinius was conducting a census of both Galilee and Judea then it raises the question whether Quirinius conducted an earlier census as legate before Judea and Galilee were separated in 4 BCE? 

According to Josephus the legates for Syria were –

29-25 BCE M. Tullius Cicero

24 BCE ? Varro

23-13 BCE M. Vispanius Agrippa (died in 12 BCE)

12-10 BCE Unknown

ca. 10 BCE M. Titius

9-6 BCE C. Sentius Saturninus

6-4 BCE P. Quinctilius Varus

4-1 BCE Unknown

1 BCE - CE 4 Gaius Caesar (died in CE 4)

CE 4-6 L. Volusius Saturninus

CE 6 P. Sulpicicus Quirinius

CE 7-10 Unknown

CE 10/11 – 17 Q. Caecilius Metellus Creticus Silanus

The two possible time periods for an earlier governorship by Quirinius would be before M. Titius, i.e. before 10 BCE; or at the latest between Quirinilus Varus and Gaius Caesar, i.e. between 4 and 1 BCE.  No legate is nominated for these dates in Josephus’ accounts.  The latter date is made more difficult because we are told that Quirinius served as an adviser to Gaius Caesar and it would appear odd if he had previously served in the position of legate in the same region.  (Advisors were considered below the ‘rank’ of the person they advised)  What we know of Quirinius’ life is that he served as consul in 12 BCE (Tacitus, Annals, III,48) and that he was in Asia Minor sometime after 12 and before 6 BCE leading the legions in war against the Homonadenses.  He was in Syria as an advisor of Gaius Caesar before CE 4 but there is no mention of his being legate for the twenty years of his career from 12 BCE to CE 6.

William Ramsay

Two inscriptions have been used to lend support to an earlier governorship by Quirinius.  William Ramsey, who actually located the second inscription, cites them in his 1898 work, Was Christ Born at Bethlehem?  and  The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament (1915.)  Ramsay was a British archaeologist who researched in Asia Minor and among Conservative Christians he is often credited with establishing the historical accuracy of the Book of Acts and declaring that Luke ‘is a first-class historian of the first century AD.’  However, one of the foremost difficulties of his work is their lack of academic rigour.  A peer review notes,

The facts and arguments themselves are interesting but do not carry us as far as Ramsay thinks, and do not meet all the difficulties which have led many older scholars to question Luke's statements. It is Sir William's habit to present arguments in which gaps unfilled by positive evidence are supplied by assumptions; and readers can seldom, even with the best will in the world, share the author's confidence in his own power of divination. His views are always suggestive, but it ought to be recognized that they are often unproved, and hence can never be safely adopted without rigorous and independent scrutiny of the evidence. It would be unfortunate if they should become part of the common stock of popular and supposedly trustworthy biblical knowledge.

The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Apr., 1917), p.211

Nevertheless, Ramsay hypothesises that Luke’s account refers to an early census generally ordered by Augustus through Quirinius but undertaken by Herod,

[It was] tribal and Hebraic, not anti-national.  It was wholly and utterly unconnected with any scheme of Roman taxation; and it was conducted by Herod on strictly tribal methods.  It roused little indignation and no rebellion; and it therefore gave no reason for Josephus to notice it.

Was Christ Born at Bethlehem? p.108

As to Luke’s dating of a census with reference to Quirinius, Ramsey proposes that Quirinius was a governor of Syria over two time periods.  He suggests his first tenure followed that of the Quinitilus Varus in 3–1 BCE.  Ramsay draws this conclusion based mainly on two inscriptions.   The first of these is Lapis Tiburtinus, an inscription on a marble slab found in 1764 in Tivoli.  Composed after CE 14 the inscription describes an unnamed person who twice reigned as legate, the second time serving as a legate in Syria.  However, there is no reference to the person’s name and it could be any of the legates mentioned by the Roman historians.  The English translation of the incomplete inscription reads,

KING BROUGHT INTO THE POWER OF

AUGUSTUS AND THE ROMAN PEOPLE AND SENATE

FOR THIS HONORED WITH TWO VICTORY CELEBRATIONS FOR THE SAME THING THE TRIUMPHAL DECORATION

OBTAINED THE PROCONSULATE OF THE PROVINCE OF ASIA

AGAIN OF THE DEIFIED AUGUSTUS SYRIA AND PH[OENICIA]

To whom this inscription refers is unknown and that it may be Quirinius is speculative based really on the word – ‘first’ in Luke’s Gospel.   Even historians who are general supporters of Lukan historicity do not generally see this as archaeological proof.  (see Sherwin-White, Roman Society, p.164-66)

Ramsay found the second inscription on a marble base in Antioch of Pisidia in 1912 (there were actually two stones discovered.)  In this inscription, Gaius Caristianius Fronto is described as serving as prefect for Quirinius and Servilius.  Quirinius is identified as a chief magistrate (duumvir) but Servilius is not.  Ramsay argues that they were of equal status and Quirinius was therefore legate of Syria at the same time that Servilius was legate of Galatia during the Homonadensian War (pre-6 BCE).   Ramsey’s interpretation goes beyond what the inscription actually says:

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.

Regrettably, Ramsey’s thesis has since been quoted as fact with the following quote typical of many that incorrectly assert that the Antioch stones prove Quirinius was legate of Syria in 6 BCE,

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.

Return to God Magazine 1:2 (1994) p. 16

As can be seen above, the Antioch inscription does not show that Quirinius was governor of Syria and Ramsay’s evidence does not prove that Quirinius had an earlier governorship in Syria.  It is, in fact, quite speculative.  There is no extant archaeological or textual evidence that supports the case for Quirinius being legate in Syria prior to CE 6-7.  Luke’s mention of the Quirinius census on two occasions in his writings adds weight to the view that he had the same census in mind – it was a notorious census involving an uprising and presumably would have been well-known to his readers.

Tertullian and Sarturninus

A much earlier attempt to reconcile the dates of Jesus’ birth concerns the allusion in the Return to God Magazine quote cited above.  There is mention that ‘Saturninus was the governor at that time.’  This of course accords with the record in Josephus and attempts to correct the Lukan text in 1:5 to read Saturninus (9–6 BCE) rather than Quirinius.  Support for this is drawn from the writings of Tertullian. Tertullian was a prolific early Christian author and the first to produce a corpus of Latin Christian literature. Although conservative, he advanced new theology to the early Church and is the oldest extant Latin writer to use the term Trinity and a formal exposition of a Trinitarian theology.  In Adversus Marcion IV, xix, 10 he writes,

At that time there were censuses that had been taken in Judea under Augustus by Sentius Saturninus, in which they might have enquired about Jesus’ ancestry.

Tertullian’s argument is not, however, to correct the Quirinius question but actually concerns an argument against Docetists.  Docetists believed that Jesus' physical body was an illusion, as was his crucifixion; and that Jesus only seemed to have a physical body and to physically die.  Tertullian is arguing that Jesus had a human ancestry.  It is interesting though that he does not use Quirinius as the dating ‘instrument’ of the Augustan census but alters it to Saturninus. 

Luke and 'Truth'

This paper has briefly surveyed the attempts to reconcile the dating issues surrounding the birth of Christ and sought to elucidate evidence from contemporaneous textual and archaeological sources that may inform the dilemma.  It has been shown that the weight of evidence for the possibility of reconciling the information in Luke 1 and 2 is weak.  There is no firm proof of a Roman census of Palestine under Quirinius during the reign of Herod the Great.   If Jesus was born during, or at the end of, the reign of Herod the Great there is inaccuracy when the author of Luke associates the birth with the single census conducted in CE 6–7 under Quirinius.  Ronald Syme, one of the twentieth century's leading historians of ancient Rome, offers an explanation of Luke’s confusion:

Two striking events in Palestinian history would leave their marks in the minds of men.  First, the end of Herod in 4 BC, second the annexation of Judaea in AD 6.  Either might serve for approximate dating in a society not given to exact documentation.  Each event, so it happened, led to disturbances.  More serious were those in 4 BC, according to Josephus.  Varus the legate of Syria had to intervene with the whole of his army.  But the crisis of AD 6 was the more sharply remembered because Roman rule and taxation were imposed.  Thus in Acts 5:37, the speech of the Pharisee Gamaliel: ‘In the days of the census.’

The Titulus Tiburtinus, p.600

The author of Luke, like any historian, was inevitably coloured by elements of interpretation and in this case specifically by a theological agenda, despite asserting to be relating the ‘truth’.  As a third solution to the dating dilemma, it is possible to recognise that Luke’s datings are confused and there may be no need to reconcile them when we acknowledge that historical narrative reflects a historian’s own interests and concerns.

This brings us to a final consideration.  What does it mean in the Lukan ‘historical’ prologue when it reads, ‘so that you may know the truth’?   The translation of the word asphaleia as ‘truth’ is an interesting choice because koine Greek normally uses the word aletheia for ‘truth’.  The word that Luke uses in his prologue, asphaleia, is normally used to signify ‘safety’, ‘security’ and ‘stability’.  In fact it is the Greek root to our word asphalt - that firm base upon which we drive.  Often Luke is understood to be talking about ‘the facts’ or seeking to affirm the historical veracity of his narrative.  Some suggest he is seeking to provide a historical foundation for the Christian message.  Others, such as Joel Green in The Gospel of Luke, suggest that the author is less concerned with ‘what happened’ and more concerned with the ‘interpretation’ presented in his narrative. (p.45)

Trying to make sense of the use of asphaleia, Rick Streland in Luke as Priest, construes Luke’s interests ‘not so much as ‘the truth’ in the sense of historical reliability and historical facts, as in providing … a stable written narrative.’  (pp.26,27)   Lovejoy Alexander in The Preface to Luke’s Gospel, notes that there is no evidence that asphaleia ‘was ever adopted by historians … [but] has the connotation of the greater ‘security’ of written document against oral report.’ (pp.140-1)  If this is correct, Luke’s stress is not on ‘historical veracity’ but on ‘written narrative over oral reports.’  Dionysius of Halicarnassus uses asphaleia repeatedly to refer to the safe and conservative style of some orators compared to the daring and original style of Thucydides.  (Demosthenes 2.31)  Translated with this meaning, Luke 1:4 would read, ‘so that you may know the ‘security’ (of a written account) concerning the things about which you have been instructed (orally).’

If this is the case, perhaps an assertion of historical accuracy is not being stressed in the Lukan prologue but rather the security of guarding in written form previously oral instruction.  Consequently, the dating issues surrounding the birth of Christ do not need to stand against a claim of historical reliability because the author does not actually make this claim.  Instead the claim is organisation of eyewitness oral traditions into an orderly written account.  Perhaps the commonly held perception of the author of the third gospel as a historian, à la history equals fact, is what should be reconsidered?