Page 139 - Doctrine and History of the Preservation of the Bible revised

So, he was crowned king at 8 years old so that He was guaranteed the throne, but actively became
king at 18, upon the death of his father. Both verses are true.

When was Jesus born?
Matthew 2:1 and Luke 1:5 – He was born in the time of King Herod. Herod died in 1 BC (some say 4 BC,
but the evidence is stronger for 1 BC and fits the Biblical narrative for Jesus’s age).

In Luke 1:1-4 it says that He was born while Quirinius was governor of Syria. History says Quirinius
became governor of Syria in 6 A.D. Obviously, both sentences cannot be true. There is an evident
contradiction.

The solution
Again, a history lesson and a student of the Greek language helps us resolve this issue.

Publius Sulpicius Quirinius (c. 51 BC – AD 21), also translated as Cyrenius, was a Roman aristocrat and
ruler. After the banishment of the ethnarch Herod Archelaus from the tetrarchy of Judea in AD 6,
Quirinius was appointed legate governor of Syria, in which was located the province of Judaea. In 12 to
1 BC, he led a campaign against a rebellion in Turkey and won the campaign by starving out the
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defenders. For this victory, he was elected duumvir (a magistrates with trusted powers). His job was
to administrate justice and oversee the commands of the Caesar in the greater Turkey and Syrian region.

In 1 BC Caesar Augustus was emperor of Rome and he issued a degree that Syria (which included
Palestine) be taxed, but first every person had to return to his family home to register. In 1 BC, Herod
Saturninius was governor of Syria and Quirinus was his overlord. However, Satuninius was not in favor
with Caesar Augustus who felt him an ineffective leader. It is apparent that Caesar put Quirinius in
charge of the inept Saturninus to oversee the registration.

In Luke 2:2, Luke tells us that the enrollment was made when Quirinius was governor (Greek, Hegemon)
of Syria. The word Luke used was the Greek word, “hegemon”, which is a ruling officer or procurator
over a broad territory. Luke did not use the word, “legatus” which is the political title for the
“Governor.” It’s evident that Luke was referring to the procurator of Syria, Quirinius, Saturninus’s higher
authority as procurator.

Perhaps a better translation for Luke 2:2 is that Quirinius was “procurator” over Syria, which he was at
the time of Jesus’s birth. The English translation of “governor” is not correct and not the word Luke
used to describe his title.

Gleason Archer writes, “In order to secure efficiency and dispatch, it may well have been that Augustus
put Quirinius in charge of the census – enrollment in Syria between the close of Saturninus’s
administration and the beginning of Varus’s term of service in 7 BC. It was doubtless because of his
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competent handling of the 7 BC census that Augustus later put him in charge of the 7 AD census”
Archer also says that Roman history records Quirinius leading the effort to quell rebels in Judea at
exactly that time, so such a political arrangement is not a stretch.
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By giving Quirinius his proper title in Luke 2:2, the apparent contradiction vanishes.

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