Luke 2:1-3

"Those days" refer to the time of John’s birth (Luke 1:57-79). Augustus was Caesar from 44 B.C. to A.D. 14. [Note: Harold W. Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ, p. 12.] The purpose of a Roman census was to provide statistical data so the government could levy taxes. [Note: Ibid., p. 13.] "All the inhabited earth" (NASB) means throughout "the entire Roman world" (NIV) or empire. This was evidently the first census taken of the whole Roman provincial system, though it was not the first census that the Romans took within the empire. [Note: A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, p. 168.]

Quirinius served as governor of the Roman province of Syria twice (3-2 B.C. and A.D. 6-7). [Note: Hoehner, p. 22.] However, Herod the Great was still alive when Augustus issued his decree (Matthew 2), and Herod died in 4 B.C. [Note: Ibid.] This incongruity has cast doubt on Luke’s reliability as a historian. [Note: For defense of Luke’s accuracy as a historian, see F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament, pp. 192-94; and I. H. Marshall, Luke . . ., pp. 98-104.] There is evidence that Augustus issued the type of decree that Luke described in A.D. 6 (cf. Acts 5:37). [Note: Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 18:2:1.] However there is presently no evidence that he did so earlier.

One solution to this problem is that the decree went out in 3 or 2 B.C., but we have no other record of it. [Note: Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, s.v. "Quirinius," by E. M. Blaiklock, 5:5-6; The New Bible Dictionary, 1962 ed., s.v. "Quirinius," by F. F. Bruce.] This solves the problem of a census occurring during the governorship of Quirinius, but it does not solve the problem of Herod being alive then. Another possibility is that the word "first" (Luke 2:2, Gr. prote) means "prior" or "former" here (cf. John 15:18). [Note: Nigel Turner, Grammatical Insights into the New Testament, pp. 23-24.] Luke’s meaning would then be that the census that took Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem was the one Augustus made prior to the one he took when Quirinius was governor of Syria (in A.D. 6). This seems to be the best solution. All the evidence points to the birth of Jesus in late 5 or early 4 B.C. [Note: Hoehner, pp. 11-25.]

Customarily people returned to their own hometowns to register for these censuses. [Note: Ibid., pp. 15-16.]

By citing Caesar’s decree, Luke helped his readers see that human decrees, however powerful, fall under and within the divine decree, which ordered the birth of Jesus (Luke 1:37).