“And it happened in those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census took place for the first time when Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2:1).
Dates mattered to the ancients. Not strictly as chronological markers either. Dates provided ancient authors the ability to make a point beyond merely a chronological point in time. Dates often reflected the ancients’ ideas of the divine organization of the universe. For example, Josephus, the first century Jewish writer, placed the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in AD 70 on the same day the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple in 586 BC. It is unclear whether the two temple destructions occurred on precisely the same date, but Josephus sought to make a bigger point. So too, he placed the fall of Masada on Passover. Previously in his narrative, he related how the Jewish rebels on Masada slaughtered the Jewish community of ‘En Gedi on Passover a couple of years prior. They slaughtered Jews on Passover; they died on Passover as well.
We can see in our modern world how certain dates become more than a point on a calendar but become part of a cultural collective consciousness. 1776. Most Americans immediately identify this year with the beginning of the American Revolution, where thirteen colonies sought to break away from Great Britain. Did other events happen in the world in 1776? Certainly, they did. But to the American consciousness, 1776 represents a key date in what became the United States.
September 11, 2001. Most immediately think of the tragic events of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. We have even telescoped our consciousness of that day and its traumatic events into the phrase 9/11. Did other events happen on September 11, 2001? They did. Yet, certain dates become more within a culture’s collective consciousness; they represent a watershed, where history is separated into what happened before and what came after.
Luke set the chronology of Jesus’ birth, within the time of the census taken by Quirinius, the Roman governor of Syria. Writing as an ancient historian, he connected Jesus’ birth to a date tied to the collective conscious within Judaism in the first century. And that, was his point.
The Gospels present conflicting chronologies regarding the birth of Jesus. Matthew sets his birth narrative during the reign of Herod the Great (Matt. 1-2). Herod died in 4 BC. The census of Quirinius, which serves as the setting for Luke’s birth story, took place in AD 6. Thus, Matthew and Luke present different chronologies, and scholars have sought to explain this discrepancy. But, if we look at Luke’s own narrative closer, he contains an internal inconsistency within his chronology between chapters 1 and 2. He mentions the angelic appearance in the temple to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, as occurring during “the days of Herod, King of Judaea” (1:5). Zechariah returned to his home after his service finished in the temple, and his wife, Elizabeth, became pregnant with John (Luke 1:24-25). Luke then shifts his narrative to the Annunciation of Jesus’ birth to Mary and begins “And in the sixth month” (Luke 1:26). The sixth month of what? Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Mary goes to Elizabeth after Gabriel’s visit, presumably impregnated with Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Thus, John was born during the days of Herod the Great (according to Luke’s chronology), but Jesus gestated in his mother’s womb for another twelve or so years. That is a long gestation, even for the Messiah!
So, what is Luke doing? Why did he connect the birth of Jesus with the Census of Quirinius?
The Census of Quirinius
When Herod the Great died in 4 BC, Caesar Augustus divided Herod’s kingdom among three of his sons. All wanted their father’s lands and the title king. None of them received his title or the extent of his territory. His son Archelaus (Matthew 2:22) received the territories of Judea (around Jerusalem), Samaria (the heart of the central hill country), and Idumea (the southern Judean hills and the Negev basin); he also controlled the coastal region attached to those territories. He received the title ethnarch (a ruler of people).
His son, Antipas (Luke 3:19-20), received the territories of Galilee (the land to the west of the Sea of Galilee) and Perea (the land south of the Sea of Galilee along the eastern bank of the Jordan River to the northeastern end of the Dead Sea). He received the title tetrarch. His third son, Philip, received the title tetrarch as well, and the territory of the Golan.
The census of Quirinius ties into the tenure of Archelaus (see Josephus, Antiquities 18:1-2). Archelaus was a poor administrator of his territory. So, in AD 6, a Jewish delegation asked Rome to remove Archelaus and bring his lands under direct Roman rule in the form of a Roman governor. Rome gladly obliged; removed Archelaus and annexed his lands to the Roman Empire.
Many make the mistaken assumption that Rome’s entry into Judaea in 63 BC with the army of Pompey the Great annexed the land to the Roman Empire. They did not. Rome took a more “hands on” policy in Judean politics, first establishing the client kings of the Hasmoneans and then Herod the Great, but it did not annex the land. Rome pulled the strings and exerted its will, but the local rulers still wielded power. The land of Israel remained an independent, yet client kingdom of Rome. This changed with the removal of Archelaus and Rome’s annexation in AD 6.
When Rome annexed Archelaus’ territory, the Roman governor of Syria, Quirinius, enacted a census for taxation purposes. This was the first Roman census of any part of the land of Israel. In other words, ten years after the death of Herod.
The census of Quirinius meant more than a date in history for the Jews in the land of Israel in the first century. It signaled Rome’s takeover of part of the land, including Jerusalem, which the God of Israel promised to His chosen people, the Jews.
By the first century, all Jews agreed on three basic beliefs: 1) there is only one God, the God of Israel; 2) Israel is His chosen people, and the Torah codifies this relationship with Him; and 3) only when Israel is free, in the land God gave them, can the Jews truly worship Him as He desires. Roman rule, the annexation of Archelaus’ territory, was a direct affront to these beliefs.
Josephus describes a revolt led by Judas from Gamla in response to the census of Quirinius. Rome’s annexation of Archelaus’ territory, which included Jerusalem, imposed a foreign ruler over the land of Israel and the Jewish people. Judas viewed the census as “amounting to downright slavery, no less, and appealed to the nation to make a bid for independence” (Antiquities 18:4-5). According to Josephus, Judas “upbraided his countrymen as cowards for consenting to pay tribute to the Romans and tolerating mortal masters, after having God for their lord” (War 2:117-118; Antiquities 18:23-25). Judas viewed Jewish submission to Rome as a sin, for God alone was the sovereign for the Jewish people. When faced with such a reality, those who adhered to Judas’ philosophy believed their response should be the taking up of the sword and shedding of blood for the sake of Jewish independence. Josephus says about Judas and his followers that they felt, “they would win honor and renown for their lofty aim; and that Heaven would be their zealous helper to no lesser end than the furthering of their enterprise until it succeeded—all the more if with high devotion in their hearts they stood firm and did not shrink from the bloodshed that might be necessary” (Antiquities 18:6-10).
Judas and his movement looked to the precedent of the zealous Hasmoneans, who fought the Greek Seleucids, driving them out of the land of Israel. Judas believed God would likewise aid his efforts to drive out the Romans. Josephus ascribes to Judas the founding of what he termed, the “Fourth Philosophy.” The other three Jewish philosophies being the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. Josephus notes an agreement in many areas between the Fourth Philosophy and the Pharisees, “except that they have a passion for liberty that is almost unconquerable, since they are convinced that God alone is their leader and master. They think little of submitting to death in unusual forms and permitting vengeance to fall on kinsmen and friends if only they may avoid calling any man master” (Antiquities 18:23).
Josephus makes clear that Judas’ descendants continued his movement and violently opposed Roman rule throughout the first century. The ideology of Judas and his movement, which others embraced as well, eventually led to the militant activism on the Jewish side which spawned the First Jewish Revolt (AD 66-73). A splinter group, Josephus referred to as the Sicarii, emerged from Judas’ movement during the Procuratorships of Felix (AD 52-60) and Festus (AD 60-62). This group effectively used terror and assassination of Romans and Jewish sympathizers in the years leading up to the revolt.
Luke knew of Judas’ movement and the role the census of Quirinius played in its formation as we see in Acts 5:37-38. Luke, in fact, provides our only source for the historical detail of Judas’ death during the revolt he led in response to the Roman census.
The census of Quirinius not only represented direct Roman rule of Judaea and the loss of Jewish liberty and subjugation to an idolatrous empire, but it also represented the rise of a Jewish redemptive movement which sought redemption through taking up the sword and shedding blood.
Luke was in the land of Israel, as part of Paul’s entourage, during the Procuratorships of Felix and Festus. He was there when the redemptive aspirations of those who embraced a militant activism were about to boil over and lead the Jews in the land of Israel into open revolt against Rome. The consequence: the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, and its repercussions have been felt by the Jewish community for two thousand years.
Luke’s placement of Jesus’ birth during the census of Quirinius drew upon these larger themes represented by this event, the loss of Jewish independence, direct Roman rule, the rise of a redemptive movement. Yet, unlike Judas who revolted from paying Roman taxes, Jesus’ parents consented to paying taxes, to being counted as part of the census—they did the very thing Judas upbraided his countrymen for doing. The angelic proclamation to the shepherds, however, identified this baby born in Bethlehem as tied to God’s redemptive reign breaking forth, not through the force of arms, but through a baby born to two Jewish parents.
When we read the New Testament, we can never forget, the proclamation of the Gospel was subversive against Roman rule. Moreover, this Jewish figure who inaugurated the inbreaking of God’s kingdom died as a criminal of Rome. Paul faces seditious accusations on several occasions in Acts, even being identified with the Sicarii on one instance (see Acts 17:1-9; 21:38). The New Testament authors had to navigate this political tightwire. Luke’s depiction of Joseph and Mary adhering to the census, thus, conveys that Jesus’ movement was not a militant Jewish movement seeking to overthrow Rome. It also communicates to those who sought redemption through a militant activism that God’s redemption had dawned, but not in the form of Judas’ Fourth Philosophy. Rather, through Jesus and his movement, the kingdom of Heaven, which opposed the militant activism espoused by Judas and others.
This, in part, explains Luke’s placing Jesus’ birth during the census of Quirinius, but there is another aspect to the census of Quirinius in AD 6 which plays a role in Luke’s history, what has been termed sabbatical messianism or chronomessianism,[1] the belief that God’s redemption (the coming of an anointed leader) would occur in the sabbatical or Jubilee year.
Sabbatical Messianism
Sabbatical messianism appeared most commonly within literature expressing apocalyptic ideas, yet it was also found within mainstream Judaism. People searched the biblical prophecies to ascertain the exact date of this coming redemption. Daniel 9:24-27 served as the central passage for sabbatical messianism. Daniel receives an angelic interpretation of Jeremiah’s prophecy of 70-years as 70 weeks (sabbatical cycles) of years, or 490 years. During the first century, a Jubilee was calculated as 49, not 50 years; thus, 490 years equals ten Jubilee periods (7 x 70 = 490 / 49 = 10). The division of history into ten periods was something Judaism likely inherited from Persian religion. Jewish writings from the Hellenistic and Roman periods expected God’s redemption will dawn in the tenth and final Jubilee (see below).
Before diving too deep into sabbatical messianism, a few words about the sabbatical year within the Bible. The sabbatical year is described in Exodus 23:10-11, Leviticus 25:2-7, and Deuteronomy 15:1-11. Every seventh year, according to Exodus and Leviticus, the Israelites were to let the land rest; they were not to sew or farm it. Deuteronomy describes the seventh year as the year of release, in Hebrew sh’mittah (שמטה), when one released a fellow Israelite from a debt owed. In this way, there were to be no poor in the land (according to Deuteronomy and Exodus). Leviticus 25 not only describes the sabbatical year, but it also describes the Jubilee year. A Jubilee occurred after seven sabbatical cycles, so every fifty years. The Jubilee was inaugurated on the Day of Atonement, and “liberty” was proclaimed throughout the land. In the Jubilee, land returned to its original owner. The commands of the sabbatical and Jubilee years took place only within the land of Israel and pertained solely to dealings between Israelites.
Important for the development of sabbatical messianism, Leviticus 25, within the Hebrew Bible, offers the most concentrated chapter containing the verb “to redeem” and the noun “redemption.” The language of redemption in Leviticus 25 did not originally mean political redemption, but by the first century, Jews read it in this manner.
There is no evidence that the Jubilee was ever celebrated, either in the Old Testament period, or in the time of the first century. The sabbatical year, however, was observed during the Second Temple Period, and the Jubilee, while not observed, provided an important chronological framework for history and redemptive expectations.
A document found in Cave 11 at Qumran, among the Dead Sea Scrolls library, reflects a sabbatical messianism. Penned in the first half of the first century BC, the preserved portion of 11Q13 describes the tenth Jubilee, which will occur at the end of the age, and the redemption of the righteous, whom this author identified as “the men of the lot of Melchizedek.” The first eight lines of the second column read:
[ -- ]l and as it says, “In [this] year of the Jubilee [each one will return to his property” (Leviticus 25:13). And concerning it, it says, “And th]is is [the matter of the release:] each creditor will remit the claim that he holds [against his neighbor, not exacting it from his neighbor and his kin because it has been proclaimed] a remission [of God”] (Deuteronomy 15:2). Its interpretation is for the end of days concerning the captives as [it says concerning them, “To proclaim liberty to the captives”] (Isaiah 61:1) and whose [◦◦◦◦ ◦◦◦◦ ◦◦◦◦] and from the inheritance of Melchizedek , fo[r -- ] ◦◦◦◦ and they are the inheri[tance of Melchize]dek who will return them and proclaim to them liberty to release them [of] all their iniquities. And this matter [will happe]n in the first week of the Jubilee after the ni[ne ]Jubilees. And the d[ay of Aton]ement i[s] the e[nd ] of the tenth [Ju]bilee to make atonement for all the sons of [light and] the men [of] the lot of Mel[chi]zedek. (emphasis added)
This author interpreted the Jubilee and sh’mittah as pertaining to “the end of days concerning the captives,” and he interpreted the debt forgiven on the sh’mittah as the debt of iniquities, not financial debt. At the beginning of the tenth Jubilee, Melchizedek, who is the priest-king from Genesis 14 and Psalm 110, returns “the captives” to the land and “proclaims to them liberty” and the release from their iniquities. Their redemption occurs at the conclusion of the tenth Jubilee, when they are atoned. Melchizedek is also identified by this author as “the anointed of the Spirit.”
The expectation of God’s redemption occurring on a sabbatical/Jubilee year appears within ancient Judaism outside of 11Q13. Yet, this manuscript shows the connection between the Jubilee, sh’mittah, and the proclamation of liberty (see Leviticus 25:10; and Isaiah 61:1-3). The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, likewise, represents this by how it translated the Hebrew words Jubilee (יובל), the year of release (שמטה; sh’mittah), and liberty (דרור). The Septuagint used the same Greek word, ἄφεσις (aphesis), to translate all three Hebrew words. The Greek word means “remission,” as in the phrase “remission of sins” (see Luke 3:3; 24:47; Acts 2:38). The Greek word ἄφεσις never translates the Hebrew word “forgiveness.” As we saw in 11Q13, the debts forgiven in the year of release (sh’mittah) were interpreted as the debt of sins, or iniquities. The sabbatical/Jubilee period of redemption was marked as a time for the atonement of iniquities, the remission of sins.
How does this tie into the census of Quirinius? Based upon the sabbatical years identified within ancient Jewish sources, AD 6, the year of the census, was a sabbatical year. Ben Zion Wacholder has suggested the sabbatical year may have encouraged Judas in his revolt. Because it was a sabbatical year, Judas believed his action would inaugurate God’s redemption.
But would Luke be aware of this? The answer is yes. Luke placed the beginning of the ministry of John the Baptist in the fifteenth year of Tiberias; regardless of which ancient dating system this was based on—the Julian calendar, the Jewish calendar, the Syrian calendar, or the Egyptian calendar—the fifteenth year of Tiberias was a sabbatical year, AD 28. We hear this recognized in the proclamation of John the Baptist, “And he went into all the region of the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins,” or if I could suggest, “a baptism of repentance to bring about the Jubilee/sabbatical year of redemption” (Luke 3:3). Among the New Testament writers, Luke used the language of the “sabbatical/Jubilee remission of sins” far more than any other (Luke 1:77; 3:3; 4:18; 24:47; 2:38; 5:31; 10:43; 13:38; 26:18). So, yes, Luke was aware of the idea of sabbatical messianism within ancient Judaism. His framing of the beginning of John’s ministry, which also relates to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, in a sabbatical year points to the breaking forth of God’s redemptive reign.
His placement of Jesus’ birth during the census of Quirinius, a sabbatical year, likewise signaled to his readers, God’s redemption had dawned in the birth of the baby born in Bethlehem. This baby, who, instead of advocating the taking up of a sword, called upon the people of Israel to hear the word of God and keep it (Luke 11:27-28). The promise of redemption, God’s fulfilling His promises to Israel’s fathers, has come, but not through Judas’ militant movement; rather, through those who repent and obey God’s commandments.
Learning to read ancient sources requires us to enter the world and outlook of the ancient authors. They did not think or write as we do. They often used dates to convey a larger point, and they found no incongruity in their doing so and writing history. By entering their way of thinking, we gain insight into their words and meaning. And, as in this case with Luke, we understand him a bit more clearly, and we too can say about the birth of Jesus: Glory to God in the highest, on earth, peace; goodwill towards all mankind.
[1] Ben Zion Wacholder, “Chronomessianism, The Timing of Messianic Movements and the Calendar of Sabbatical Cycles,” HUCA 46 (1975): 201-218.
Love this!! So many wonderful details and insights!!