Image: A drawing taken from the Lapis Tiburtinus, which may well affirm the historicity of Luke 2:2's disputed reference to Cyrenius [Quirinius] as governor of Syria at the time of Jesus' birth.
Note: I preached Sunday on The birth of Jesus from Luke 2:1-7.
In part of the message I addressed several challenges to the historical
reliability [inerrancy] of Luke’s account, particularly in vv. 1-3. Here are three excerpts from my notes
from: the introduction, the
exposition of vv. 1-3, and the
application:
The thing that is most striking about these verses is how
Luke grounds the birth of Jesus in history.
The birth of Jesus is a historical fact.
It is not a myth. It is not a
fairy tale. It does not require some
“leap of faith.” You may deny the claims
Christ made of himself and you may deny the claims that his followers make of
him, but you cannot deny that this man was born in Bethlehem and that he really
lived and walked upon this earth.
Because the Bible as God’s divine revelation of himself has
come under attack, the historical details of Luke’s account have likewise come
under attack. We will speak some of that
today—perhaps more than we ordinarily do on such matters—because it is such a
peculiarly important point specific to this passage. I think in the end we will be able to
conclude as the great Biblical historian A. T. Robertson did, after studying
the challenges offered to our text, that, in the end, “Luke is shown to be the
careful and accurate historian that he professed to be” (Luke the Historian, p. 129).
______
The final note in Luke 2:1 is that Caesar Augustus decreed
“that all the world [this would mean the entire Roman world] should be taxed
[the verb is apographo, to be
registered or enrolled]. ” This is the
first fact of the story that some non-believing scholars have challenged. The challenge is this, they say, we have no
extra-biblical account of such a decree being issued by Caesar Augustus at this
time.
The first thing we need to understand here are the limits
of our knowledge of ancient history.
Records were not kept in the way that modern records are kept, and many
of the records that were kept have been lost forever. We know of many ancient books by various
ancient authors, for example, only by their titles, the works themselves being
completely lost. We have many gaps in
our understanding of Roman history. I
just started reading a book by the historian Adrian Goldsworthy on the fall of
Rome (How Rome Fell [Yale University
Press, 2009]). In one of the opening
chapters, Goldsworthy notes: “There is a
good deal that we simply cannot know about the history of the Roman Empire in
the third and later centuries [the time period his book is focused upon]. To a greater or lesser extent this is true of
most periods of ancient history” (p. 25).
We might add that though we might not have extra-biblical
references to this specific “census”, we do, however, have accounts of Roman
Emperors conducting registrations like the one mentioned. The Romans typically did this for one of two
purposes: (1) to have a list of men who
could be drafted into military service; and (2) to have a list of people to
tax. Given that the Jews were exempt
from military service in the Roman army, the purpose of this registration was
most likely, as our translation indicates, for the purpose of taxing.
Finally, we might add that we do, in fact, have a
reliable record of this registration that proves it did happen. That is the record of the Gospel of Luke.
In v. 2 there is another very specific historical tag
mentioned by Luke: “(And this taxing was
first made when Cyrenius [alternate spelling:
Quirinius] was governor of Syria.)”
Now most of us believers read this verse, and we just accept it as truth,
because it is in the Gospel. But this is
a verse that the skeptics of the Scriptures love, because they claim that it
provides an example of what they see as a historical error. From sources outside the Bible, like
Josephus, we know that there was a Roman leader named Publius Sulpicus
Quirinius who served as the Roman governor or Syria from 6-9 A. D. and that a
census was performed under his administration in 6 A. D. Here is the perceived problem: The birth of Jesus is presented as occurring
in Luke at least ten years before this time.
Why do I say that? Because
according to Luke 1:5 the birth of John and the birth of Jesus took place
during the rule of “Herod, the king of Judea.”
This would be Herod the Great, who Matthew also tells us massacred the
innocents, in his mad attempt to snuff out the life of Jesus (see Matt 2). Here is the historical rub. We know from extra-biblical sources that
Herod died in 4 B. C. This means that
Jesus was most likely born c. 6 B. C.
BTW, the Bible nowhere tells us precisely the date of Christ’s birth.
How do we reconcile this seeming inconsistency (Jesus born c. 6 B. C., Quirinius governor of Syria c. 6 A. D.)? Here we need to remember that any
inconsistency we think we see in Scripture is only an apparent inconsistency. Our
inability to understand or reconcile facts is due to our limitations and not
the Scriptures. Faithful men have, in
fact, found various solutions to this problem.
I think the most likely of these is the possibility that Quirinius
served two terms in leadership in the Roman province of Syria. The second was from 6-9 AD, but the first of
these was earlier at the time of the birth of Jesus. Some historians, in fact, argue that
Quirinius shared the governing duties of Syria with a man named Vallus at the
time of Christ’s birth. Here’s the
really interesting thing: In the year
1764 they uncovered a marble slab in a place called Tibur (it is referred to as
the Lapis Tiburtinus, or “stone of
Tibur”) in which there is an inscription mentioning a Roman who served twice
(Latin iterum) as legate in
Syria. Various Christian scholars have
convincingly argued that this reference is to Quirinius, thereby verifying the
historical accuracy of Luke 2:2.
Let’s move on to v. 3 where Luke adds, “And all went to
be taxed, every one into his own city.”
This is yet another place in Luke’s account where some scholars have
cried foul. They point out that we have
no evidence that the Romans ever required this kind of registration in one’s
ancestral home. I have even read modern
scholars, like Bart Ehrman, who claim that it is illogical to think that people
would be able to trace their ancestral homeland after gaps of hundreds if not
thousands of years. That might be true
of modern people, but we must remember that first century Hebrews were not
modern people. Paul, for example, was
proud of the fact that he was from the tribe of Benjamin (see Phil 3). And we
can rest assured that both Joseph and, I believe, Mary also, knew they were
from the house of David. As with our
last example, here is another place where historical discovery has served to
support the reliability of Scripture. In
the year 1910 the respected scholar Adolph Deissmann published an edict he
uncovered in Egypt that came from Maximus, the Roman governor of Egypt, in the
year 104 A D in which he required an enrollment of the population at the
ancestral homes, just the type that Luke records.
Here is how A. T. Robertson sums things up:
Every statement made by Luke in 2:1-7 was once challenged. Every one is now shown to be correct (Harmony of the Gospels, p. 265).
For all these years the record in Luke 2:1-7 has stood all by itself, the
butt of ridicule by historians and theologians. Now the rubbish heaps of Egypt and the stones
of Asia Minor cry aloud in support of the narrative. The enemies of Luke are put to rout (Luke the Historian, p. 129).
______
In the end I might take us back to some of the things we
worked though in the beginning of the message, namely, the trustworthiness of
the historical record in Luke. I hope we
are reminded today that we can trust God’s word. Well has it been said that the Scriptures are
an anvil that has broken many a hammer.
I hope we are reminded today that when we meet any challenge to God’s
word or when any apparent discrepancy is raised that we will trust the power of
God’s word. Given enough time and enough
knowledge we will find no conflicts of any significance.
The Scriptures are like a life line. If you were drowning and I were to throw you
a line would you want one made of a strong, sturdy rope or metal cable or would
you want a line thrown to you made of tissue paper? In the recent storm I heard of trees falling
and even snapping strong cables and power lines. But nothing can break the power of God’s
word. Read it. Hear it.
Trust it. Grasp it. And by laying
hold of it, you will find that you are laying hold of Christ.
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