Luke 2 is the most famous Christmas passage in the Bible.
Every Christmas pageant is based on it.
Every nativity set is inspired by it.
Linus even quotes from it to explain the true meaning of Christmas to Charlie Brown.
The opening words of Luke 2 set the stage for everything most of us know about the Christmas story. Luke writes, “Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all the people were on their way to register for the census, each to his own city” (Luke 2:1-3, NASB).
But as famous as these words are, are they true?
I’ve heard them described as…
- bogus
- historical fiction to get baby Jesus born in Bethlehem
- historically problematic
Luke’s description of a worldwide census that required everyone to travel back to their hometown and that was administered by Quirinius is known to every Bible scholar as a notorious historical problem. Even conservative Bible scholars acknowledge the problem and have offered various solutions for it. Some even translate the word “first” in Luke 2:2 as “before” to avoid the historical difficulty.[1]
“Even conservative Bible scholars acknowledge the problem and have offered various solutions for it.”
The problem is usually explained like this: There is no record of a worldwide census decreed by Caesar Augustus. The Romans did not require people to return to their hometown for a census…to do so would’ve been an administrative nightmare. We do know of a Quirinius from historical records, but as governor of the region, he ordered his census in A.D. 6, well after the death of Herod the Great and the birth of Jesus. So, it seems Luke got his facts wrong and is in error about the census.
This issue can easily be found on the internet, but it also appears in books of all kinds. It is routinely cited as an example of historical errors in the Bible.
So did Luke err about Quirinius and the census?
The old adage is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I think we need to remember that fact in this case. It is true that we don’t have direct evidence of a census being administered by Quirinius during the time period of Jesus’ birth (sometime probably between 6-2 B.C. See this article for more on when Jesus was born.). But that doesn’t mean it did not happen. In fact, it seems to me that claims that Luke is wrong overstate the evidence. Even though we don’t have any specific record for this census, there are actually a lot of clues pointing in this direction. Therefore, we should practice good historical method and give Luke the benefit of the doubt until proven to be in error.
Six Clues That Point to Luke’s Reliability About the Census
1. Luke is recognized as a reliable guide to history.
As the author of both the Gospel of Luke and Acts, Luke has proven that he pays attention to detail and gets his historical facts right.
First, we should not take for granted the big and obvious facts like the Mediterranean Sea, the Jordan River, and the Sea of Galilee. This also includes political regions such as Judea, Samaria, Galilee, and Syria, as well as the names and places of specific cities: Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Capernaum, Antioch, Tarsus, Ephesus, Troas, Philippi, and the list keeps going.
There are so many of these obvious facts which Luke gets right, it is easy to take them for granted. But we mustn’t, and we should take his accuracy on these matters seriously.
But what’s even more impressive is Luke’s reliability with smaller details too.
For example, Luke accurately mentions all sorts of specific people by name whom we know from other historical records. This includes well-known Roman rulers like Caesar Augustus, Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, and Pontius Pilate, but also lesser-known ones like Sergius Paulus and Gallio. He names Jewish leaders such as Annas, Caiphas (whose ossuary has been found!), and Gamaliel.
“Luke accurately mentions all sorts of specific people by name whom we know from other historical records.”
Luke gets the details about people right too. Take for example people’s political titles. If they are a king, he calls them a king. If they are a governor, he uses that title. One fascinating case is the title for the leaders in the city of Thessalonica in Acts 17. Luke simply calls them “city rulers.” For a while, critics of Luke’s reliability claimed that he simply made up a generic title because he didn’t really know the official title of the leaders of the city. But then an inscription was discovered that used the very word Luke uses for the city rulers—politarchs, which simply means “city rulers.” In Thessalonica, that was the precise title.
Over and over again, Luke’s accuracy and reliability have been confirmed. Here is one final example of a very small detail where once we had more knowledge, Luke proved right and modern critics were wrong. In Acts 14:6 Luke describes how Paul left Iconium and traveled to Lystra and Derbe which he says were cities in the political region of Lycaonia. Critics used to scoff at Luke’s mistake here because they believed that Iconium was also in the region of Lycaonia along with Lystra and Derbe. We now know, however, that Luke is correct in implying that Iconium was not in Lycaonia, because from A.D. 37-72 Iconium was a Phrygian city. The very time Luke is writing about is the only time period during Roman rule that Iconium wasn’t a city of Lycaonia. Luke proves to be very accurate in a very minor detail.
“Over and over again, Luke’s accuracy and reliability have been confirmed.”
All of this goes to show that Luke is a trustworthy guide to history and demonstrates that we should give him the benefit of the doubt as a credible witness even in the case of Quirinius and the census.
2. Luke knows about the A.D. 6 census.
Speaking of Luke and his accuracy, he knows about the later census Quirinius undertook in A.D. 6., the one he supposedly misspoke about in Luke 2. In Acts 5:37, Luke mentions the memorable revolt that was led by Judas of Galilee in response to the A.D. 6 census.
It is because Luke knows about that census that in Luke 2:2 he describes the census associated with Jesus’ birth as the “first” census under Quirinius. It was an earlier one rather than the more infamous one of A.D. 6. He is not confused and getting his facts wrong about the later census, thinking that it occurred in the days of Herod the Great.
3. Augustus was the great census taker.
When Augustus ended the Roman civil war and unified the Empire under his authority, he sought to number everything and everybody within the Empire. He counted Romans. He counted non-Romans. He counted in Italy and in the provinces. He counted in places like Judea with client kings. He counted for tax purposes. He counted for the sake of statistics. He counted people and he counted goods.
He could be called the “Counter in Chief” due to his extensive census practices. He wanted an inventory of all the resources available to the Empire.
“Augustus could be called the ‘Counter in Chief’ due to his extensive census practices.”
What’s more, according to the Res Gestae, in which Augustus recounts his greatest deeds, he says that during his reign he conducted three great censuses of the entire Empire to register all its inhabitants. One of these censuses is currently dated to the middle of the first decade B.C., in the approximate time period of Jesus’ birth. 
So when Luke says that Augustus sought to count all the inhabited earth (i.e., the Empire), that fits with everything we know about Augustus’s desire to reorganize and emphasize the census system and to register all the people of the Empire.
4. Evidence shows that Quirinius was involved in other earlier censuses.
An inscription known as “The Epitaph of Secundus” recounts how the Roman military officer Quintus Aemilius Secundus carried out a census in the region of Apamenes, Syria, at the order of Quirinius. This census was carried out sometime between 1-10 B.C., probably as part of that census specified in the section above.
This epitaph shows that a man named Quirinius was operating under Caesar’s authority in Syria to conduct censuses in the decade when Jesus was born. It actually describes Quirinius as a “legate of Caesar.” This is interesting because it may explain why Luke uses a general word for leader in Luke 2:2. Though often translated “governor,” it is not the official word for governor but the basic word for “leading.” Luke 2:2 literally says that this census took place “while Quirinius was leading in Syria.” This is consistent with Quirinius serving as legate and leading censuses throughout the region at that time.
5. Evidence exists that Romans did require returning to hometowns.
One of the criticisms of the Christmas story in Luke 2 is that it says each person had to return to his own city for the census. But there is some evidence that in certain cases this is exactly what was required.
The climate of Egypt is great for preserving ancient papyri, so many of the ancient papyri fragments we have today come from that area—personal letters, business documents, Bible books, etc., all saved in the dry Egyptian sands for later researchers. A number of census documents have been preserved as well.
One of them, Papyrus 904, dated to A.D. 104 during the reign of Emperor Trajan, describes how each person had to return to their own hometown at the order of Prefect Gaius Vibius Maximus. It describes the census as the “customary business of registration,” which speaks to how common censuses were. It even provides for special circumstances where someone was unable to return home.
“A number of census documents have been preserved as well.”
6. Censuses took place on regular cycles.
Speaking of the customary nature of Roman censuses, we know from preserved records that, at least by the late first century, registration censuses of the type mentioned in Luke 2:1 were conducted every fourteen years. The evidence comes from the late first century but doesn’t rule out that such a practice began earlier.
In an article not at all directly related to Luke 2, Robert Bagnall[2] shows evidence that Augustus may have used a 7-year cycle which later became the 14-year cycle. Based on this evidence, he demonstrates that there was a census taken around 4-3 B.C., which is right in line with the timeframe when Jesus was born.
So you can see why I say the claim that Luke is in error overstates the evidence. Sure, we don’t have a specific document or inscription outside the New Testament that says Quirinius conducted a census that affected Galilee and Judea at the exact date Jesus was born. However, we have all sorts of evidence that says it is quite possible he did. And there is no evidence that such a census did not happen. Therefore, we have good reasons to give a reliable ancient historian like Luke the benefit of the doubt, trusting his credibility that he knew more about Quirinius and Roman censuses than we currently do.
[1] See, for example, David Garland, Luke, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, 118.
[2] See Robert S. Bagnall, “The Beginnings of the Roman Census in Egypt,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 1992.
For more from John, see his website and Listener’s Bible Commentary.
