Bible Dictionaries
Quirinius

　　QUIRINIUS.—Luke 2:2 Authorized Version Ant. xvii. xiii. 5, xviii. i. 1). But the birth of Jesus took place before the death of Herod the Great (Matthew 2), and that was in b.c. 4. The narratives of the two Evangelists seem to be at hopeless variance on a most important point. How are they to be reconciled?

　　One way of cutting the knot readily occurs. We might suppose that the clause Luke 2:2 was not in the original narrative, but was a marginal date inserted by an early copyist, who made a mistake as to the census intended; but the Manuscriptsἡγεμονεύοντος Κυρηνίου).* for the division of an army under an officer.] Those nearer the Evangelist’s own day, for whom he was specially writing, and who were better acquainted with the secular history of the time than readers nowadays, would find the date he thus gives even more exact than if he had mentioned either Saturninus or Varus; for, as has been shown in art. Census, the enrolment was determined during the rule of the former, but, so far as Palestine was concerned, probably carried out during the rule of the latter. The likelihood of there being two simultaneous governors, one for military the other for civil affairs, in the same province, is supported by parallel instances adduced by Ramsay (op. cit. 238 ff.).

　　Another theory in explanation of the passage about Quirinius is that he was neither civil nor military governor, but merely one of the commissioners appointed to take the enrolment throughout the whole Roman world, the district for which he was responsible being Syria. Palestine, though not at this period actually a Roman province, was under the Roman suzerainty, and from its proximity it would be included under Syria. St. Luke, having no better word for the enrolment commissioner, might use τῆς σκέψεως ‘taking lead in the inquiry,’ Plat. Prot. 351 E]. Tertullian (adv. Marc. iv. 19) states that the census at the time of Christ’s birth was taken by Saturninus, not Quirinius, and thus seems to correct the narrative; but that must be merely because he knew that the enrolment had been decided upon during the civil governorship of Saturninus: he cannot have meant that it was actually accomplished then; for that would be utterly inconsistent with the date he elsewhere (adv. Judges 1:8) gives for the nativity, b.c. 3.

　　Literature.—Lives of Christ; Commentaries on St. Luke; Bib. Dictt. of Smith, Kitto, and Hastings, and works by Zumpt and Ramsay mentioned in article. Schürer’s latest expression of opinion (GJV