Category: Apologetics

Taken from my book A Daily Defense:

Day 85: Descended from David How?

Challenge: Jesus’ genealogies contradict each other. Matthew has Jesus descended from David’s son Solomon (Matt. 1:6), while Luke has him descended from David’s son Nathan (Luke 3:31). Similarly, Matthew has him descended from Zerubbabel’s son Abiud (Matt. 1:13), while Luke has him descended from Zerubbabel’s son Rhesa (Luke 3:27).

Defense: Jesus was descended from David and Zerubbabel by more than one line.

Normally, a person has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. But this doubling pattern does not go back indefinitely.

Marriages usually occur within the same community (a village, region, tribe, or nation). People in a community tend to be related. Consequently, the number of ancestors is less than what the doubling pattern would predict. In a small community, an individual may occupy more than one slot in a family tree.

Suppose William has a son named Henry, who has descendants, and several generations later, one named Elizabeth is born. Suppose William also has a daughter named Adela, who also has descendants. Because of intermarriage in the community, Elizabeth is also one of Adela’s descendants. Genealogists would say Elizabeth is descended from William by the Henry “line” and the Adela “line.”

This describes the British royal family. Queen Elizabeth II descends from William the Conqueror (c. 1028-1087) by the line of King Henry I and the line of St. Adela of Normandy, both of whom were William’s children. In fact, Elizabeth II is descended from William by multiple lines (at least eight through Adela alone). William the Conqueror thus appears in multiple slots in Elizabeth II’s family tree.

The same was true for David and Zerubbabel concerning Jesus, who descended from David by both the Solomon and Nathan lines and from Zerubbabel by both the Abiud and Rhesa lines. This is not unexpected. David lived a millennium before Jesus. Matthew records twenty-seven intervening generations, so according to the doubling pattern, Jesus would have at least 67,108,864 ancestors in David’s generation.

There were not that many Israelites alive in David’s generation, so, since David was one of Jesus’ ancestors, David filled multiple slots in Jesus’ family tree, and Jesus was descended from David by multiple lines. The same is true of Zerubbabel, though to a lesser degree, since Zerubbabel lived only half a millennium before Jesus (for more, see Day 95).

 

Day 95: The Judgment of Jeconiah

Challenge: Jesus is disqualified from being Messiah since he descends from the last king of Judah, Jeconiah (Matt. 1:12). God judged Jeconiah so that “none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David, and ruling again in Judah” (Jer. 22:30).

Defense: There are multiple flaws with this argument. Here are several.

First, Jesus was not descended from David only by the line of Jeconiah. He was also descended through the line of Nathan (Luke 3:31; see Day 85). It may have been questions among some Jews about whether a descendant of only Jeconiah could be Messiah that prompted Jesus’ family to preserve the memory of the Nathan line. The presence of both genealogies in Scripture shows that, regardless where a Jew fell on the Jeconiah question, Jesus had a qualified lineage either way.

Second, the prophecy need mean no more than Jeconiah’s immediate sons wouldn’t be kings because the Babylonian Exile would go on for too long (cf. Jer. 22:25-28).

Third, one of Jeconiah’s grandsons—Zerubbabel—received ruling authority in Judah, being made its governor (Hag. 1:1). (On Zerubbabel’s lineage, see 1 Chron. 3:17-19; there may be a levirate marriage involved since Zerubbabel’s father is usually said to be Shealtiel, though here he is said to be son of Pediah; both were sons of Jeconiah, and thus Zerubbabel was his grandson).

Fourth, the language used concerning Zerubbabel suggests a reversal of God’s judgment. God told Jeconiah, though you “were the signet ring on my right hand, yet I would tear you off” (Jer. 22:24), but he told Zerubbabel he will “make you like a signet ring; for I have chosen you, says the Lord of hosts” (Hag. 2:23). The image of making one of Jeconiah’s descendants again like a signet ring suggests a restoration of the family to divine favor.

Fifth, multiple Jewish sources indicate Jeconiah (also called Jehoiachin) repented and the curse was lifted. The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906 ed.) notes: “Jehoiachin’s sad experiences changed his nature entirely, and as he repented of the sins which he had committed as king he was pardoned by God, who revoked the decree to the effect that none of his descendants should ever become king” (s.v. “Jehoiachin”).

 

Day 106: Matthew’s Missing Generations

Challenge: Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus omits some generations and thus is wrong.

Defense: In Israelite genealogies, it was permitted to skip generations.

Hebrew and Aramaic don’t have terms for “grandfather,” “great-grandfather,” “granson,” “great-grandson,” and so on. Any male ancestor was called a father (Hebrew, ’ab, Aramaic, ’ab, ’abba), and any male descendant was called a son (Hebrew, bēn, Aramaic, bar).

Thus, prophesying the birth of Jesus, Gabriel tells Mary, “The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:32). David lived a millennium before Jesus, yet he is called Jesus’ father. Similarly, both Jesus and Joseph are called “son of David” (Matt. 1:20, 9:27). This made it possible to skip generations in genealogies, whether they ran forward (“Joram was the father of Uzziah”) or backward (“Uzziah was the son of Joram”).

Richard Bauckham notes:

That a family descended from one of the sons of David had at least an oral genealogy must be considered certain. This does not, of course, mean that it would be a complete genealogy. Oral genealogies, like many of those in the Old Testament, regularly omit generations, since their function is not to preserve the memory of every name in the list but to link the family with an important ancestor who gives it its place in the community (Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church, 341).

Matthew skips generations for literary purposes, grouping his genealogy in three sets of fourteen generations (Matt. 1:17). The reason may be to stress Jesus’ connection with David. In Hebrew and Aramaic, David (DVD) adds up to fourteen (D = 4, V = 6, D = 4).

Matthew would have expected his readers to recognize that the generations he skips are recorded in the Old Testament. In 1:8, he says Joram was the father of Uzziah (aka Azariah), but 1 Chronicles 3:11-12 shows three generations between the two. The missing names are Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah. These three figures were kings of Israel. Their stories are told between 2 Chronicles 22 and 25.

When Matthew skips three Jewish kings in the line of David—well known to the audience from the Old Testament Scriptures—he expects his readers to recognize the literary device he is using in the genealogy.

 

Day 162: His Father Was Who?

Challenge: Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus contradicts Luke’s. Matthew says Shealtiel’s father was Jeconiah, while Luke says it was Neri (Matt. 1:12; Luke 3:27). Similarly, Matthew says Joseph’s father was Jacob, while Luke says it was Heli  (Matt. 1:16; Luke 3:23).

Defense: There are multiple possible explanations, given the way Israelite genealogies worked.

Hebrew and Aramaic didn’t distinguish between fathers, grandfathers, and so on. All male ancestors were called “fathers” (see Day 106). Consequently, since one person can be descended from another by more than one line (see Day 85), both Jeconiah and Neri could have been Shealtiel’s “father” (male ancestor) if one genealogy skipped a generation. The same is true of Jacob and Heli with respect to Joseph.

Alternately, adoption (legal rather than biological descent) may have been involved. Shealtiel may have had a legal and a biological father. The same is true of Joseph. This is particularly relevant because of the levirite marriage custom, which required that if a man died childless, his brother was to marry the widow and father a son who was legally attributed to the line of the dead man (Deut. 25:5-6). The levir (Latin, “brother-in-law”) thus supplied a son for his deceased brother. Given the ancient mortality rate, this situation was common. It is not surprising if it occurred more than once in the millennium between David and Jesus in their family tree.

It may have happened with respect to Shealtiel, and we have early testimony that it did happen with respect to Joseph. Early Christian writer Julius Africanus (c. A.D. 160-240) reported a tradition from Jesus’ surviving relatives in his day regarding the fatherhood of Joseph.

According to Jesus’ family, Joseph’s grandfather Matthan (mentioned in Matthew) married a woman named Estha, who bore him a son named Jacob. After Matthan died, Estha married his close relative Melchi (mentioned in Luke) and bore him a son named Heli. Jacob (mentioned in Matthew) and Heli (mentioned in Luke) were thus half brothers. When Heli died childless, Jacob married his widow and fathered Joseph, who was biologically the son of Jacob but legally the son of Heli (see Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1:6:7).

Regardless of which explanation is true, the fact that multiple explanations exist indicates that no contradiction has been shown.

It’s sometimes claimed that the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) disagree with the Gospel of John about the day on which the Crucifixion occurred.

It is asserted that the Synoptics portray Jesus being crucified the day after Passover, while John portrays him crucified on Passover, when the lambs were being slaughtered at the temple.

This is not the case.

To see why, we will begin by looking at the events of the days of Holy Week, starting with the events of Easter Sunday and working our way backwards to the Last Supper.

Then we’ll look at how these days relate to the Jewish feast of Passover.

 

The First Day of the Week (Sunday): Resurrection & the Empty Tomb

All four Gospels indicate that Jesus rose on Sunday or the “first day of the week.” This was the day that the women visited the tomb and found it empty.

• • 28:1—“Now after the sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.”
  • Mark 16:2—“And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen.”
  • Luke 24:1—“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared.”
  • John 20:1—“Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.”

So, the tomb was found empty on Sunday, the first day of the week.

Confirmation of the Resurrection occurring on this day also is found in 1 Corinthians, where St. Paul indicates Christians gathered on this day, making it appropriate to take up money for church collections:

• • 1 Cor. 16:2—“On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that contributions need not be made when I come.”

See also Acts 20:7 for an example of Christians meeting on the first day of the week “to break bread”—a reference to the Eucharist and the “agape feasts” that Christians celebrated in connection with it (cf. Acts 2:42, Jude 12, 1 Cor. 11:17-34).

 

The Seventh Day of the Week (Saturday): The Weekly Sabbath Rest

The day before Sunday is the seventh day of the week, but in the New Testament it is regularly referred to as “the sabbath.”

The Gospels thus describe the previous day as the sabbath:

• • 28:1—“Now after the sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.”
  • Mark 16:1—“And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.”
  • Luke 23:56b-24:1—“On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment. But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb.”
  • John 19:31—“Since it was the day of Preparation, in order to prevent the bodies from remaining on the cross on the sabbath (for that sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away [and buried].”

The Gospels are thus in agreement that the day Jesus lay in the tomb—before it was found empty—was the sabbath.

Since it is the day before “the first day of the week,” this is the regular, weekly sabbath, or Saturday. (We will deal later on with the meaning of John’s statement that “that sabbath was a high day.”)

 

The Sixth Day of the Week (Friday): Jesus Crucified and Buried

We refer to the day before the weekly sabbath—the sixth day of the week—as Friday.

However, in first century Palestine it was referred to as the “day of preparation” (Greek, paraskeuê) because of the preparations that Jewish people needed to make in advance of the sabbath rest, such as procuring and cooking food ahead of time.

All four Gospels indicate that Jesus was crucified and buried on Friday, the day of preparation:

• • Matt 27:59-62—“Joseph took the body, and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud, 60 and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb. Next day, that is, after the day of preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate.”
  • Mark 15:42-43—“And when evening had come, since it was the day of preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus.”
  • Luke 23:53-54—“Then [Joseph] took it down and wrapped it in a linen shroud, and laid him in a rock-hewn tomb, where no one had ever yet been laid. It was the day of preparation, and the sabbath was beginning.”
  • John 19:31—“Since it was the day of preparation, in order to prevent the bodies from remaining on the cross on the sabbath (for that sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.”
  • John 19:42—“So because of the Jewish day of preparation, as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.”

The Gospels thus indicate that Jesus was crucified and buried on the day of preparation (Friday), before the weekly sabbath (Saturday), before “the first day of the week” (Sunday).

 

The Fifth Day of the Week (Thursday): The Last Supper

All four Gospels also indicate that—the night before he was crucified—Jesus held his last supper with the disciples.

This means that the supper was held on the fifth day of the week, or what we would call Thursday.

The Gospels do not specifically name this day of the week, but they do indicate that the supper was held the day before the Crucifixion.

• • Matthew records the supper from 26:20-35, he records Jesus’ arrest and his time before the Jewish authorities from 26:36-75, and then at 27:1-2 says, “When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death; and they bound him and led him away and delivered him to Pilate the governor.”
  • Mark records the supper from 14:17-31, he records Jesus’ arrest and time with the Jewish authorities from 14:32-72, and then at 15:1 says, “And as soon as it was morning the chief priests, with the elders and scribes, and the whole council held a consultation; and they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him to Pilate.”
  • Luke records the supper from 22:14-38, he records Jesus’ arrest and time with the Jewish authorities from 22:39-65, and then in 22:66 and 23:1 says, “When day came, the assembly of the elders of the people gathered together, both chief priests and scribes. . . . Then the whole company of them arose and brought him before Pilate.”
  • John records the supper from 13:2-17:26, he records Jesus’ arrest and time with the Jewish authorities from 18:1-27, and then at 18:28a says, “Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the praetorium. It was early.”

Since Jesus was brought before Pilate and crucified on the day of preparation (Friday), these passages indicate that the supper occurred on the evening of the preceding day—the fifth day of the week (Thursday).

 

Events by Days of the Week

From the foregoing, we see that all four of the Gospels are in agreement on the chronology of events as reckoned by the days of the week:

• • Fifth Day of the Week (Thursday): In the evening, Jesus holds the Last Supper. Afterward, he is arrested and spends time before the Jewish authorities (much of this likely happened after midnight).
  • Sixth Day of the Week (“The Day of Preparation,” Friday): In the morning, Jesus is taken before Pilate. He is subsequently crucified and buried by his followers.
  • Seventh Day of the Week (“The Sabbath,” Saturday): Jesus’ followers rest, and Jesus remains in the tomb. The Jewish authorities go to Pilate and arrange for a guard to be placed at the tomb (Matt. 27:62-66).
  • “First Day of the Week” (Sunday): Jesus’ tomb found empty. Resurrection appearances begin.

With the days of the week determined, we are now in a position to look at the issue of which day was Passover.

 

Passover: The Day and the Week

The biblical authors understand Passover both as a single day and as a week-long festival.

Per Exodus 12:6, the day of Passover was celebrated on the 14th day of the month Abib (later called Nisan).

The day of Passover inaugurated a period of seven days in which the Israelites had to remove leaven from their houses and could eat only unleavened bread (Exod. 12:15; cf. 12:18). This period became known as the “feast of unleavened bread” (Exod. 23:15).

However, since this period was inaugurated by the day of Passover, the overall period of unleavened bread was also called “Passover,” and so Passover was also understood as a week-long festival.

Thus, in Luke 22:1 we read:

Now the feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover.

The same is found in Jewish sources of the period. Philo writes:

And there is another festival combined with the feast of the Passover, having a use of food different from the usual one, and not customary; the use, namely, of unleavened bread, from which it derives its name (The Special Laws 2:150).

And Josephus writes:

And, indeed, at the feast of unleavened bread, which was now at hand, and is by the Jews called the Passover, and used to be celebrated with a great number of sacrifices, an innumerable multitude of the people came out of the country to worship (Jewish War 2:1:3[10]).

In view of this, we have to consider whether a particular passage is using the term “Passover” to refer to the day of Passover or the week of Passover (or the Passover sacrifice or Passover meal, both of which are also possible).

 

The Synoptic Gospels on the Last Supper

The Synoptic Gospels indicate that the Last Supper was a Passover meal that occurred on the first day of Unleavened Bread (i.e., the day of Passover; 14 Nisan). This is seen from the way that they introduce their accounts of the supper:

• • Matthew 26:17 states: “Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, ‘Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover?’”
  • Mark 14:12 states: “And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, ‘Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?’”
  • Luke 22:7-8 states: “Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, ‘Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.’”

Multiple other passages in Matthew, Mark, and Luke also identify the Last Supper as a Passover meal (Matt. 26:18-19, Mark 14:14, 16, Luke 22:11, 13, 15).

 

John’s Gospel and the Synoptics

Before we look at the Last Supper in John’s Gospel, it is important to understand the nature of the fourth Gospel and what John is trying to do.

John is consciously supplementing the Synoptic tradition. He expects his readers to already know the Synoptic tradition. This is why, after describing the activities of John the Baptist, he suddenly says “For John had not yet been put in prison” (John 3:24).

The imprisonment of John the Baptist is mentioned nowhere else in the fourth Gospel. It is something John expects the audience to already know about.

John also displays awareness of the other Gospels when he states:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe (John 20:30-31).

But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written (John 21:25).

John thus expects his readers to know about events recorded in the Synoptic Gospels (like the imprisonment of John the Baptist), he indicates that he has been selective in what he has put in his own Gospel, and he indicates—hyperbolically and with a possible hint of exasperation—that a huge number of Gospels could be written, suggesting that he is aware of an supplementing the Synoptics but warning the readers that the task of describing everything Jesus did would be impossible.

This much can be discerned from a casual reading of John, but a closer reading makes it even clearer that John is deliberately supplementing the Synoptic Gospels.

In particular, he has structured his own Gospel to interlock with the Gospel of Mark. There also is evidence that he was consciously supplementing Luke’s Gospel. Whether he was aware of and supplementing Matthew is less clear.

However, it is clear that John expects his readers to know the Synoptic tradition and that he is supplementing it.

 

John’s Gospel and the Last Supper

John is not as explicit about the Last Supper as the Synoptics. However, a first century reader of John—like normal readers ever since—have naturally understood that the Last Supper is also a Passover meal in John.

Since the Synoptics record Jesus eating a very important Passover meal with the disciples on the night he was arrested, and John records Jesus eating a very important meal with the disciples on that night, the natural inference is that it was the same Passover meal described by the Synoptics.

That would have been the obvious inference for John, it would have been the obvious inference for his first century readers, and it has been the obvious inference for the vast majority of readers for two thousand years.

Only very compelling evidence could overturn this. John would have to do something pretty dramatic to block this inference.

Instead, as he is about to introduce the Last Supper, he says this:

Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end (John 13:1).

John thus introduces the subject of Passover and indicates that—before this it arrived—Jesus had done two things (1) he had realized that his hour to leave the world was coming and (2) he had loved his disciples (and continued to love them to the end).

Having raised the subject of Passover and indicated these things that occurred before it, John immediately proceeds to the Last Supper:

And during supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and tied a towel around himself.

Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him (John 13:2-5).

This strongly suggests that the supper in question was a Passover meal:

1. 1. John has indicated Passover was approaching.
   2. The Passover festival begins with a special meal.
   3. John then records Jesus eating a special meal with the disciples before his arrest.
   4. John knows and is supplementing the Synoptic tradition, which he expects his readers to also know.
   5. The Synoptics also indicate that the special meal Jesus ate before his arrest was a Passover meal.

The logical inference is that John is telling us about that Passover meal!

And there are additional reasons to identify it as one. Andrew Steinmann writes:

There are several indications in John that it was a Passover meal:

It was held in Jerusalem, although Jesus was staying in Bethany for the festival (John 12:1). Jesus and his disciples did not return to Bethany that evening—it was required that the Passover night be spent within the ritual limits of the city.

Jesus’ statement that those who have washed need only their feet cleaned implies that the disciples had washed before the meal (John 13:10). This would have been a ceremonial cleansing to prepare for the Passover meal.

The disciples thought that Judas left the meal to buy (additional?) provisions for the feast or to donate money to the poor. It was customary to donate to the poor on Passover night.

Thus, there are good reasons to believe that John was depicting a Passover meal, and there is no compelling reason to believe that he was depicting any other type of supper [From Abraham to Paul].

In view of all this, the logical conclusion is that John understands the Last Supper to be a Passover meal—unless he does something very compelling in the text to indicate otherwise.

So: What have skeptics raised in that regard?

 

When the Lambs Were Being Slaughtered???

It is commonly claimed that John—who depicts Jesus as “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29, 36)—also depicts him as being sacrificed on the Cross at the same time the Passover lambs were being sacrificed at the temple.

As common and as poetic as this idea may be, it has absolutely no foundation in the text.

John may refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God, but he refers to Jesus as the Lamb “who takes away the sins of the world” (v. 29), but taking away sin was not the function of the Passover lamb.

The Passover lamb’s blood was to mark the doorposts of the Israelites as God’s people and to serve as a meal for the journey of Exodus they were about to undertake. It was not a sin offering.

The natural understanding of a lamb as taking away sin would be in connection with ordinary sin offerings—not Passover.

So, John’s depiction of Jesus as the Lamb of God is to be understood in terms of his serving as a sin offering, with paschal associations being secondary.

However, more fundamentally, John nowhere refers either to the Passover lambs or to their being slain. The only “lambs” he does refer to are Jesus’ disciples (John 21:15).

John simply does not say anything about Passover lambs, much less that they were being killed while Jesus was on the Cross.

You might infer that that was happening, but John does not claim this.

As a result, the inference is no stronger than the textual evidence that could be produced in its favor.

 

“The Day of Preparation of the Passover”

One verse that is sometimes appealed to is John 19:14, which states:

Now it was the day of preparation of the Passover; it was about the sixth hour. He [Pilate] said to the Jews, “Here is your King!”

This identifies the day Jesus was taken before Pilate—and thus the day of the Crucifixion—as “the day of preparation of the Passover.”

Some have taken this to mean that it was the day before Passover, so that the lambs would be killed that afternoon, in preparation for the Passover meal after sundown.

This is an exegetical mistake. It erroneously assumes that the term “Passover” in this verse is referring to the day of Passover.

However, as we saw earlier, “Passover” also was used as the designation of a week-long feast and “the day of preparation” was an idiom for Friday.

The logical inference is that John 19:14 states Jesus appeared before Pilate on the Friday of Passover week—which is exactly what the Synoptics indicate.

Further, John twice uses the phrase “the day of preparation” in the same chapter, and in both cases, he is referring to Friday, the day before the sabbath:

Since it was the day of preparation, in order to prevent the bodies from remaining on the cross on the sabbath (for that sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away (John 19:31).

Here the day of preparation is identified as the day before the sabbath, and while every sabbath was a high day, this particular sabbath was even more so, as it was the sabbath falling in Passover week.

John then says:

Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid. So because of the Jewish day of preparation, as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.

Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb (John 19:41-20:1).

This is the same pattern that we see in the Synoptics:

• • Jesus is crucified on Friday, “the day of preparation”
  • But he is hurriedly buried, because the sabbath is about to begin at sunset
  • And then he rises on “the first day of the week”

John even notes that he was hastily buried “because of the Jewish day of preparation” (i.e., because no work could be done the next day) and “the tomb was close at hand.” In other words, there would not have been time to take him to a more distant tomb before the sabbath began at sundown.

So, once again, these are the weekly day of preparation (Friday) and the weekly sabbath (Saturday) because they precede “the first day of the week.”

John’s use of the phrase “day of preparation” for Friday twice in the same chapter indicates that 19:14 means “the Friday of Passover week”—not “the day before Passover.”

 

“That They Might Eat the Passover”

An additional passage to which people have appealed to argue that John presents Jesus as being crucified on Passover. In John 18:28, we read:

Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the praetorium. It was early. They themselves did not enter the praetorium, so that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.

From this, it is reasoned that—since the Jewish authorities had not yet eaten the Passover meal, the Passover festival must not have begun yet.

All of the rest of the data we have—including data from John—indicates that it had begun, so how should we understand this individual data point?

Multiple interpretations have been proposed.

 

Some Possibilities

Andrew Steinmann summarizes several proposals:

There have been many attempts to reconcile the Synoptics and John on this point.

[1] Perhaps the most radical was the suggestion that Jesus and his disciples followed the calendar of Jubilees, which always placed the Passover on Tuesday. Jesus’ accusers, however, followed the traditional calendar according to this theory.

[2] Another theory proposes that Jesus and his disciples reckoned days from sunup instead of sundown. However, Jesus’ accusers reckoned days from sundown. This would make for a half-day difference in the Passover and could be used to explain why Jesus and his disciples ate the Passover meal an evening earlier than Jesus’ accusers.

[3] Still another theory proposes that when Jesus’ accusers did not enter the Praetorium in order to be able to “eat the Passover” what was meant was that they wished to be able to eat the sacrifices offered during the Passover or the sacrifices for the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread on 15 Nisan (Num 28:18–23).

One problem with this theory is that Jesus’ accusers included not only priests, but also lay members of the Sanhedrin, and those laymen would not have been eligible to eat the sacrifices under any circumstances.

The first proposal does not succeed, for as we have seen, all four of the Gospels indicate that the Last Supper was held on a Thursday, not a Tuesday.

The second proposal is possible but unlikely. We do not have evidence that Jesus was using a different time reckoning system than the authorities, and it would only be necessary to propose this if we lack better explanations, and we don’t. There are better solutions.

The third proposal is possible. I don’t find the objection that Steinmann makes to it persuasive.

It does not matter if some of the Sanhedrin were laymen. Many members were priests—including the high priest himself—and if the group went as a body to Pilate’s praetorium and the high priest and other priests stopped outside, the laymen would have stopped also.

It thus is possible that the group—as a body—stopped outside the praetorium so that the priests would be ritually pure and able to eat the sacrifices that would be offered that day.

 

The Khagigah

The Hebrew term for a sacrifice offered during a feast is khagigah (sometimes spelled chagigah), and there is a tract in both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud by that name which deals with festal sacrifices.

Numbers 28:16-19 explains that, on the day after Passover, a set of these sacrifices was to be offered:

On the fourteenth day of the first month [Abib/Nisan] is the Lord’s Passover.

And on the fifteenth day of this month is a feast; seven days shall unleavened bread be eaten.

On the first day there shall be a holy convocation: you shall do no laborious work, but offer an offering by fire, a burnt offering to the Lord: two young bulls, one ram, and seven male lambs a year old; see that they are without blemish . . .

These offerings were also referred to using the term Passover. Alfred Edersheim explains:

And here both the Old Testament and Jewish writings show, that the term Pesach, or ‘Passover,’ was applied not only to the Paschal Lamb, but to all the Passover sacrifices, especially to what was called the Chagigah, or festive offering (from Chag, or Chagag, to bring the festive sacrifice usual at each of the three Great Feasts).’

According to the express rule ([b.]Chag. 1.3) the Chagigah was brought on the first festive Paschal Day.

It was offered immediately after the morning-service and eaten on that day—probably sometime before the evening, when, as we shall by-and-by see, another ceremony claimed public attention.

We can therefore quite understand that, not on the eve of the Passover, but on the first Paschal day, the Sanhedrists would avoid incurring a defilement which, lasting till the evening, would not only have involved them in the inconvenience of Levitical defilement on the first festive day, but have actually prevented their offering on that day the Passover, festive sacrifice, or Chagigah (The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah 2:568).

It is thus quite possible that the Jewish authorities didn’t enter the praetorium because they wanted to be ritually pure to eat the sacrifices to be offered on the 15th of Nisan, which also were called “the Passover.”

 

Other Food of the Passover Festival

Indeed, the term Passover seems to have been used to refer to other food eaten during the days of unleavened bread. In Deuteronomy 16:1-3, we read:

Observe the month of Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God; for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night.

And you shall offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord your God, from the flock or the herd, at the place which the Lord will choose, to make his name dwell there.

You shall eat no leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction.

This tells us that the Passover sacrifice shall not be eaten with unleavened bread. But then the text says that “seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread.”

This cannot refer to the lamb killed for the Passover meal itself, because it had to be consumed the night of the meal.

It was expressly prohibited to keep any of the Passover lamb until the next morning (Exod. 34:25, Num. 9:12), so “it” could not be eaten for seven days.

And yet the text does describe “it” being eaten for seven days with unleavened bread, indicating that food consumed during the week-long feast could also be referred to as “the Passover.”

It’s thus possible that the Jewish authorities did not want to enter the praetorium in order to be ritually clean and so able to eat some other kind of (special?) food that day, since it was the Passover season.

 

When Did They Have Time?

Another possibility emerges when we revisit the initial deduction that—since the authorities hadn’t yet eaten “the Passover”—the Passover had not yet begun.

But who says? If we take “the Passover” to refer to the Passover meal itself, all we can infer with certainty is that the authorities had not yet eaten this meal.

Why might that be?

Maybe because they simply hadn’t had time to do so.

 

Jesus’ Covert Arrangements

Twice as he is preparing for his passion, Jesus does something very strange.

As he is approaching Jerusalem, he tells two of his disciples:

Go into the village opposite you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat; untie it and bring it.

If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately’ (Mark 11:2-3).

Tied up in the street is not the normal place to leave an unridden colt, suggesting it has been put there on purpose for the disciples to find.

This is confirmed by the message he says to give them: “The Lord has need of it.” A random colt owner (cf. Luke 19:33) would not know who this refers to and wouldn’t have reason to trust whoever this “Lord” was.

It appears as if Jesus—without informing the core disciples—has sent word ahead and arranged for the colt to be left in the street for his use and the owners already know who he is and are expecting the disciples to collect it.

The reason Jesus would engage in this subterfuge is straightforward: He’s planning to ride the colt during the Triumphal Entry by which he publicly fulfills Messianic prophecy (Matt. 21:4-5).

This would reveal him as the Messiah of Israel—a seditious act that the authorities (Jewish and Roman) might interfere with, and so he keeps the arrangements secret.

Jesus does something similar a few days later:

And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?”

And he sent two of his disciples, and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the householder, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is my guest room, where I am to eat the Passover with my disciples?”

“‘And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us” (Mark 14:12-15).

Again, we see evidence of Jesus having made secret arrangements in advance. The upper room will be “furnished and ready”—indicating that the householder has advance knowledge that Jesus will be using it.

And fetching water was considered women’s work rather than men’s, so it would be unusual to see a man carrying a jar of water—making it a usable sign for the disciples to identify who they need to follow.

Why would Jesus make these arrangements without telling the disciples in advance? Why not just say, “We’ll be eating the Passover meal at the house of John son of Simon”?

The logical answer is because Jesus knows Judas is going to betray him. He plans to use the Passover meal in a very special way (including instituting the Eucharist), and he very much wants to eat it with his disciples (Luke 22:15).

He thus does not want Judas letting the authorities know where he could be found for the Passover meal, and so he keeps Judas—and the other disciples—in the dark about the location until the very last minute, giving Judas no time to betray him.

Once the supper was underway, Judas learned that—as he had previously—Jesus would be going to the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:29, John 18:1-2), and so he left the Last Supper and let the authorities know where they could intercept Jesus and arrest him.

 

From the Viewpoint of the Authorities

Now let’s look at this situation from the viewpoint of the Jewish authorities.

They’ve hired Judas to betray Jesus, and they’re waiting for Judas to inform them about where he will be.

The Passover lambs have been slaughtered, and the authorities go home to wait for word from Judas.

But the Passover meal involves drinking multiple cups of wine, and it could be difficult to stay awake after the meal—as the disciples themselves discovered (Matt. 26:40-45, Mark 14:37-41, Luke 22:45-46).

And the authorities needed to organize a crowd, including soldiers and the high priest’s servants, to go and arrest Jesus and to have this arresting party ready to act as soon as word from Judas came. That also couldn’t be done in the middle of a meal.

So, the authorities decide to wait to eat the Passover meal until Jesus has been taken into custody. (Or perhaps they began it but were interrupted by the arrival of Judas, so they were unable to complete the ritual.)

When Judas arrives, he says they need to intercept Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane, and they send the arresting party out—late in the evening.

When Jesus is brought before them, they conduct a lengthy set of interrogations in the early morning hours. The rest of their households have gone to sleep. And they’re planning to take Jesus before the Roman governor first thing in the morning.

It’s thus quite possible that the Jewish authorities—or at least key individuals among them, such as the high priest—had not yet eaten the Passover meal and hoped to do so after a quick meeting with Pilate to authorize the execution, which could still leave them time to eat (or complete) the meal before dawn.

 

Andrew Steinmann’s Elaboration

Andrew Steinmann provides further discussion of this scenario:

Note that two of the three Synoptic Gospels as well as John state that Jesus was brought to Pilate early in the morning at the end of the fourth watch of the night, that is, after about 4:30 am.

Jesus’ accusers had been busy all night long. They had gathered a crowd to arrest Jesus, had put him on trial during the night, and confined him while they contemplated their next move—taking him to Pilate.

Unlike Jesus and his disciples, they had not yet had time to eat the Passover meal, which had to be eaten before dawn (Exod. 12:10; 34:25; Deut. 16:4; cp. Exod. 23:18; 29:34; Lev 7:15).

They were hoping to remain undefiled so that they could eat it after Pilate gave them permission to crucify Jesus.

Jesus’ accusers apparently expected a quick ruling from Pilate.

However, their refusal to enter the Praetorium may have actually delayed Pilate’s ruling, as a close reading of John’s portrayal of the events suggests.

At first, Pilate did not see a capital offense in their accusations but told Jesus’ captors to judge him by their laws (John 18:29–31).

They insisted, however, that Jesus had committed a capital crime, so Pilate took Jesus into the Praetorium and interviewed him.

Although Jesus claimed a kingship, Jesus’ responses denied that he was an insurrectionist (John 18:33–36).

Moreover, Pilate appears to be convinced that Jesus was some type of philosopher whose concern was for truth, hardly making him a threat to Roman interests (John 18:37–38).

Hoping that flogging Jesus would mollify the crowd, Pilate presented him as innocent (John 19:1–5).

They were not mollified, but demanded Jesus be executed (John 19:6).

When the chief priests and Sanhedrin accused Jesus of making himself the Son of God, Pilate again interviewed Jesus in the Praetorium (John 19:7–11).

Jesus’ ultimate answer that acknowledged Pilate’s authority convinced the Roman prefect of Jesus’ innocence, and he tried to find a way to release him (John 19:12a).

Only when the crowd played their trump card—that if Pilate released Jesus, the prefect would not be a friend of Caesar’s—did Pilate hand Jesus over to be crucified.

Thus, Jesus’ accusers did not enter the Praetorium, hoping for a quick decision from Pilate so that they could eat the Passover meal before sunrise.

However, they would end up missing the Passover meal, since the cautious and thorough Pilate did not give them permission until sometime around dawn (John 19:14).

John is subtle—but very effective—in showing that Jesus’ captors were not in charge of the flow of events.

By a comparison of John 18:28 and John 19:14 the reader is led to conclude that Jesus’ life is not being taken from him, but he is laying it down willingly (John 10:17–18).

Moreover, John is also using irony to demonstrate that by rejecting Jesus, his accusers were placing themselves in a position of bearing the guilt of their own sin instead of having Jesus bear it for them.

Had they entered the Praetorium and become defiled, they could have eaten the Passover meal one month later than usual (Num 9:6–12).

However, if a person was clean, but did not eat the Passover meal, that person was to be excluded from God’s people and would bear his own sin (Num 9:13) (op. cit.).

 

Conclusions

Despite the claim that John’s understanding of the chronology of Holy Week is in conflict with the Synoptic Gospels, this is not what we find.

All four of the Gospels are in agreement on the days of the week and what happened on them:

• • On the fifth day of the week (Thursday), Jesus held the Last Supper with the disciples
  • On the sixth day of the week (“the day of preparation”/Friday): Jesus was brought before Pilate, was crucified, and was buried
  • On the seventh day of the week (“the sabbath”/Saturday): the disciples rested, Jesus laid in the tomb, and guards were set to watch it
  • On “the first day of the week” (Sunday): Jesus rose from the dead, and his tomb was found empty

Neither do we find any conflict between the Synoptic Gospels and John with regard to when Passover occurred:

• • The Synoptics make it abundantly clear that the Last Supper was a Passover meal eaten on the evening of the fifth day of the week (Thursday)
  • John—who is supplementing the Synoptics—implies that the Last Supper was a Passover meal
  • And the statement that on Friday morning the Jewish authorities wished to remain pure to “eat the Passover” may refer to (1) the sacrifices offered that day which were also referred to as eating “the Passover,” (2) to other food eaten in Passover season, or (3) to the fact that they simply hadn’t had time to eat the Passover meal, given the late word from Judas and everything that had been going on.

The Gospel of Luke describes the timing of Jesus’ birth as follows (Luke 2:1-6):

¹ In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled.

² This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

³ And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city.

⁴ And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, ⁵ to be enrolled with Mary his betrothed, who was with child.

⁶ And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered (RSV).

Skeptics have claimed that this passage reveals historical error on Luke’s part. It has been claimed:

• • Augustus never instituted a worldwide census.
  • Quirinius conducted his census in A.D. 6, but Jesus was born around 7-6 B.C., meaning Luke is off by a decade.
  • People were not required to go to their ancestral cities in Roman censuses—much less the city where an ancestor like David had lived a thousand years earlier.

Each of these claims has straightforward answers. In fact, there are multiple answers.

The problem is not knowing how to respond, because we have an embarrassment of riches here in the form of numerous responses. The actual challenge is figuring out which of the many possible answers are the most likely.

Here we will look at only some of the responses that have been proposed. There are numerous others.

 

Did Augustus ever decree a worldwide enrollment?

How should we understand Luke’s statement that “a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled”?

“All the world” means the Roman world—i.e., the Roman empire.

And many take Luke’s statement to mean that there was a single legal document issued by Augustus that commanded a worldwide enrollment, and this is possible.

As we will see below, there is evidence of a worldwide enrollment occurring in 3/2 B.C.; it just wasn’t a tax census.

On the other hand, the term that the RSV translates “decree” (Greek, dogma) can also mean things like “decision” or “command” (cf. BDAG, s.v. dogma).

Understood in this way, Luke would not be referring to a single legal document but just to a decision or command issued by Augustus. In other words, Augustus decided the whole empire needed to be taxed, and so it needed to be enrolled for those purposes.

This would tell us nothing about how the decision was implemented, just that the decision was made.

And this corresponds to the historical facts as they are known to us. Historian Paul L. Maier writes:

The three celebrated censuses conducted by Augustus in 28 B.C., 8 B.C., and A.D. 14—Achievement No. 8 in his Res Gestae—are apparently enrollments of Roman citizens only, although they may have involved censuses in the provinces also, since some Roman citizens certainly lived outside Italy.

Luke rather intends here a provincial census of noncitizens for purposes of taxation, and many records of such provincial registrations under Augustus have survived, including Gaul, Sicily, Cilicia, Cyrene, and Egypt. Among these were client kingdoms such as that of Herod the Great; for example, Archelaus (unrelated to Herod), client king of Cappadocia, instructed a subject tribe “to render in Roman fashion an account of their revenue and submit to tribute.”

Provincial enrollments are also well attested in Dio Cassius (53:22) and Livy (Epistles 134ff.; Annals 1:31, 2:6). There is also an epigraphic mention of a census by Quirinius at Apamea in Syria (an autonomous “client” city-state).

In view of such provincial enrollments, Mason Hammond concludes that Augustus began “a general census of the whole Empire for purposes of taxation” in 27 B.C.

It thus may be a mistake to suppose that Luke is referring to a single legal document issued by Augustus rather than a general policy established by Augustus to enroll the empire.

The latter better corresponds with the facts as they are known.

 

How Long Did Enrollments Take?

The Roman empire was a big place, and the Romans did not have rapid transportation or communication by today’s standards. As a result, censuses took time.

They often were performed in stages, the first stage being known as the descriptio prima (Lat., “first enrollment/registration”), which involved getting a list of everybody that needed to be taxed and their resources.

The taxation itself would come at a later stage, which added time to the process.

Subjects of the Roman empire also didn’t like being taxed—especially since so many of them were living in conditions of poverty—and Roman censuses often met with resistance, including violent uprisings.

Putting down these uprisings or otherwise getting stubborn locals to comply with the census process further added time to the procedure.

This could result in a census taking much longer than you might expect. Today, the United States conducts a population census once every ten years, with the survey period occupying a year.

However, we know of one case in this period when a Roman census in Gaul (France) took 40 years to complete! (I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke at 2:3).

Consequently, if the enrollment of Jesus’ birth was a tax census, Luke could be referring to an early phase of it—such as the descriptio prima—occurring at the time of his birth, but the census itself may have stretched into the first decade A.D., leading it to become associated with the later administration of Quirinius.

 

What year was Jesus born/What year did the enrollment occur?

Both Matthew and Luke agree that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. A common view is that Herod died in 4 B.C., and since Matthew indicates that Jesus was born up to two years before this (Matt. 2:16), it has been common to date Jesus’ birth in 7 or 6 B.C.

Despite its popularity, this view is inaccurate. As recent scholarship has indicated, Herod the Great actually died in 1 B.C. (see Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology [2nd ed.], Andrew E. Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul).

Consequently, Jesus was not born in 7 or 6 B.C. but in 3 or 2 B.C., as multiple early sources indicate.

We thus should look for the enrollment occurring in 3/2 B.C.

 

What was the nature of the enrollment?

Many people assume that the enrollment was a census. Historically, censuses have been used for a variety of purposes.

Today in America, they are used for determining things like the apportionment of government representatives and funding. However, in history they were used for other purposes, like assessing the size of an army one could muster or raising tax revenues.

Many interpreters have assumed that the census Luke is referring to was a tax census, and this is possible.

However, it is not the only alternative, since he does not say that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world be taxed. Instead, he says that the whole world should be “enrolled” and that an “enrollment” occurred.

The Greek word Luke uses for the act of enrollment—apographô—does not mean specifically “to take a census.” It is more general than that and means “to enroll,” “to transcribe,” “to inventory,” “to list,” “to register.”

So, any kind of empire-wide registration in 3/2 B.C. might be in view.

And it so happens that we know of one.

 

An Enrollment of Loyal Subjects?

There is an inscription composed by Augustus known as the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (Latin, “Acts of the Divine Augustus”), in which he states:

In my thirteenth consulship the senate, the equestrian order and the whole people of Rome gave me the title of Father of my Country (Res Gestae 35).

Augustus’s thirteenth consulship was in 2 B.C., and as the people of Rome were scattered over the empire, declaring him Father of the Country involved an empire-wide enrollment.

The historian Orosius states:

[Augustus] ordered that a census be taken of each province everywhere and that all men be enrolled.

So at that time, Christ was born and was entered on the Roman census list as soon as he was born.

This is the earliest and most famous public acknowledgment which marked Caesar as the first of all men and the Romans as lords of the world, a published list of all men entered individually. . . .

From the foundation of the world and from the beginning of the human race, an honor of this nature had absolutely never been granted in this manner, not even to Babylon or to Macedonia, not to mention any lesser kingdom (Seven Books of History Against the Pagans 6:22).

Josephus appears to refer to this enrollment, stating that a group of more than six thousand Pharisees refused to swear the loyalty oath to Augustus:

When all the people of the Jews gave assurance of their good will to Caesar, and to the king’s government, these very men did not swear, being above six thousand; and when the king [Herod the Great] imposed a fine upon them, Pheroras’s wife paid their fine for them (Antiquities 17:2:4[42]).

For this to work, records would have had to have been kept for who did and did not swear goodwill toward Augustus, meaning an enrollment was made of those who did swear.

Since the proclamation of Augustus as Father of the Country by “the whole people of Rome” occurred in 2 B.C.—coinciding with Jesus’ birth—it is possible that the attestation of loyalty to him was the enrollment to which Luke refers.

 

What is the relation of the enrollment to Quirinius?

Luke 2:2 contains a clarifying comment to help the ancient reader identify which enrollment Luke is referring to. The RSV renders the verse this way:

This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria

This statement contains two parts, the first of which says it was the “first” enrollment and the second relates it to the Roman official Publius Sulpicius Quirinius.

 

“First” or “Before”?

The RSV translates the initial part of the clarification as “This was the first enrollment.”

If that is the correct understanding, Luke may be indicating that the enrollment taking place when Jesus was born took place earlier than some later enrollment.

Such a later enrollment would presumably be more famous, and so Luke may be specifying that this was the first one to keep his readers from confusing it with the later, better-known one.

However, there is another option. Some commentators have pointed out that the word that the RSV translates “first” (Greek, prôtê) also could be rendered “before.”

In this case, the passage would be rendered “This was the enrollment before Quirinius was governing Syria.”

Consequently, Luke would again be contrasting the enrollment of Jesus’ birth with a later, better known one.

On the other hand, it also has been suggested that Luke’s phrase apographê prôtê (“first enrollment”) may be a translation of the Latin phrase descriptio prima, which was a technical term for an initial registration of people prior to taxation.

In that case, Luke would be clarifying that it was a preliminary listing of the population to get them on the books for later taxation.

 

Was Quirinius Governor of Syria at This Time?

The RSV translates the second part of Luke’s clarification as “when Quirinius was governor of Syria.”

However—as commentators have widely noted—this is not a literal translation of the Greek.

The Greek noun hêgemôn can be used as a technical term for a Roman prefect. It also can be used in a more general sense to mean “ruler” or “governor,” without indicating a specific rank.

However, Luke does not use a noun in this verse. Instead, he uses the participle hêgemoneuontos, which would be translated “ruling” or “governing.”

As a result, commentators have pointed out that a more literal translation of Luke’s statement would be “Quirinius being in charge of Syria” (J. A. Fitzmyer, Anchor Bible, The Gospel According to Luke (1-9) at 2:2).

This means that the text does not tell us that Quirinius was specifically the prefect of the Roman province of Syria but just that he had some important governmental function there at the time of the enrollment.

 

When Was Quirinius Governor of Syria?

Like many Roman officials, Publius Sulpicius Quirinius had a long and varied career, in which he held many different positions.

And, unfortunately, we do not have a complete account of what he was doing in each year of it. I. Howard Marshall provides a summary of what historians generally believe to be the case:

After holding a military command against the Marmaridae (in N. Africa?), Publius Sulpicius Quirinius became consul in 12 BC. At some point during the next 12 years he subjugated the Homonadenses, a race of brigands on the south border of Galatia. He acted as guide and supervisor of the young prince Gaius Caesar in Armenia, AD 3–4, and he was legate of Syria, AD 6–9; he died in AD 21 (The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text at 2:2).

As you can see from this, we don’t know a great deal about what Quirinius was doing in the first decade B.C., when Jesus was born. We know that he subjugated a group of brigands at some point, but that’s it.

It also is generally thought that he was legate (governor) of Syria in A.D. 6, but Roman officials could hold posts more than once, and historian Jack Finegan gives the following as “the usually accepted sequence of governors of Syria” (Handbook of Biblical Chronology [2nd ed], §519):

10-9 B.C.	M. Titius
9-6	C. Sentius Saturninus
6-4	P. Quintilius Varus
3-2 (?)	P. Sulpicius Quirinius
1 B.C.-A.D. 4	C. Caesar
A.D. 4-5	L. Volusius Saturninus
6-7	P. Sulpicius Quirinius

This table is based on the work of historian Emil Shurer, and it includes an initial period in which Shurer concluded that Quirinius likely served as governor of Syria in 3-2 B.C.—the time when we know on other grounds that Jesus was born.

In his History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, Shurer writes:

During the period B.C. 3-2 there is no direct evidence about any governor of Syria. But it may be concluded with a fair amount of probability from a passage in Tacitus, that about this time P. Sulpicius Quirinius, consul in B.C. 12, was appointed governor of Syria. . . .

Quirinius led the war against the Homonadensians as one who had been consul. Now, one who had been a consul was never sent to a praetorian province, which was administered by one who had been a praetor. The only conclusion then that remains is that Quirinius at the time of the war with the Homonadensians was governor of Syria.

But since this governorship belongs to the period before the year A.D. 3, that is, to the period before he had been appointed counsellor to C. Caesar in Armenia, it cannot be identical with the one of A.D. 6, referred to by Josephus. The only date, therefore, that we can assign it to is the interval between Varus and C. Caesar, that is, B.C. 3-2 (1:1, p. 351-353).

We thus have reason to think that Quirinius was governor of Syria twice, and the first occasion coincides with the correct time frame of Jesus’ birth.

 

Was There a Census in A.D. 6?

The common claim that Quirinius performed a census in Roman-occupied Palestine in A.D. 6 is based on statements by the Jewish historian Josephus.

However, there is a problem with the data in Josephus. As historian Andrew E. Steinmann notes in his book From Abraham to Paul:

There is another approach that is more likely—that Josephus misdated Quirinius and the census. This argument was made a century ago by Zahn, Spitta, Weber, and Lodder and has most recently been revived by Rhoads. . . .

In close proximity with Quirinius’ presence in Judea, Josephus also noted a rebellion led by a man named Judas. In fact, in Antiquities Josephus recounts three rebellions led by an insurgent or insurgents named Judas.

The details of these three rebellions overlap in ways that suggest Josephus is actually giving three different accounts of the same event.

However, they occur at different points in Josephus’s narrative, suggesting either (1) that Josephus was bringing together multiple sources that dated the rebellion differently, or (2) that Josephus misunderstood what his sources were saying, or (3) that Josephus changed his mind about when the event should be dated and later re-inserted it into his narrative. Based on this, Steinmann concludes:

In summary, it is likely that Josephus misplaced the arrival of Quirinius in Judea and, therefore, misdated the census. The initiation of the census in Judea should be dated to the spring or summer of 3 BC. That census prompted Judas’ rebellion. Once again the date of Jesus’ birth must have been sometime in late 3 BC or early 2 BC.

The entire basis of the objection to Luke 2’s accuracy thus may result from a confusion on the part of Josephus.

 

Did enrollments require people to go somewhere special?

Luke 2:3 says that, in response to Augustus’s mandate, “all went to be enrolled, each to his own city.”

Some have questioned whether this would really have happened. Did people need to go someplace special to be enrolled?

The answer is not difficult to see: If you were already in your “own city,” you didn’t need to go anywhere. You were already there.

Luke is referring to the situation of people who—for one reason or another (travelers, merchants, migrant laborers, people with more than one home)—were away from their place of legal residence.

This is not unexpected, as many processes historically have required people to be in their place of residence. Until very recently, people in America were required to be in their place of legal residence in order to vote, and people still need to file their state and property taxes where they live.

With modern mail and the internet, we have more flexibility, but those didn’t exist in history, and people needed to be in a stable place—such as their place of legal residence—in order to participate in various enrollments.

Thus, in A.D. 104, the Roman governor of Egypt, Gaius Vibius Maximus, issued a decree in which he stated:

Since registration by household is imminent, it is necessary to notify all who for any reason are absent from their districts to return to their own homes that they may carry out the ordinary business of registration and continue faithfully the farming expected of them (lines 20–27; in Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, 268).

Returning to one’s place of residence was especially significant if one owned property there, because the property one owned needed to be assessed for purposes of taxation.

 

Why did Joseph go to Bethlehem?

Luke 2:4 states that “Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David.”

This tells us that Joseph was staying in Nazareth but traveled to Bethlehem for the enrollment, and thus that Bethlehem has a claim as his primary residence for purposes of the enrollment.

Luke then adds the comment that this was “because he was of the house and lineage of David.”

If the enrollment was for purposes of taking a loyalty oath to Caesar, Josephus may have been specially required to go to Bethlehem because of his Davidic descent.

It was well known that Jews regarded the descendants of David as the stock from which legitimate Jewish kings must come—and that from them would come the hoped-for Messiah.

It could make sense for the authorities to demand that, as part of the enrollment, all the descendants of David come to Bethlehem—David’s own city—and there swear loyalty to Caesar.

This would be a dramatic act to head off future rebellions, both because the descendants themselves had sworn allegiance to Caesar and because the fact that they had done so (in Bethlehem itself!) would deter others from following them in a rebellion, as they could be viewed as Roman collaborators who had sullied the memory of David.

On the other hand, Joseph likely regarded Bethlehem as his legal residence anyway, for other reasons.

Keeping land within tribes and families was especially important in Israel. In fact, land was not supposed to be sold to outsiders. Instead, it could be effectively leased, but the legal title reverted to the family every fiftieth year in the Jubilee celebration (see Lev. 25).

It is not at all unlikely that Joseph had property in Bethlehem as a result of such arrangements. He may have even grown up in Bethlehem before moving away for work.

And so, although he was a carpenter in Nazareth for his income, his natural pride in his Davidic ancestry—and his being part- or full-owner of property in the clan’s ancestral home in Bethlehem—may have naturally led him to think of the latter as his proper legal residence, with Nazareth being a residence of economic convenience.

This could be the case whether the enrollment was for purposes of a loyalty oath or whether it was a tax registration.

If it was the latter, the fact Joseph owned property in Bethlehem would make his presence there necessary for purposes of assessment. (He also may have been assessed in Nazareth if he owned property there as well.)

And we have independent evidence of Joseph owning property in Bethlehem, for Matthew records that, as much as two years later, Joseph and Mary were living in a house in Bethlehem when the magi arrived (cf. Matt. 2:16).

 

Conclusions

We have surveyed only some of the responses that scholars have proposed to the challenges made regarding Luke 2:1-6.

Factors we have seen include:

• • While Augustus did not (so far as we know) issue a single legal document mandating a tax census of the empire, Luke does not say that he did; all the text requires is that Augustus made a decision to tax the empire, and he definitely did that.
  • The enrollment that Luke speaks of may not have involved a tax census but a loyalty oath, and we have evidence pointing to such an oath being administered empire-wide in 3/2 B.C., the year of Jesus’ birth.
  • Luke in some way relates the enrollment to Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, but Luke’s language is ambiguous: (1) he may say this was the “first” enrollment, before the more famous one later performed by Quirinius, (2) he may say that this enrollment occurred “before” the later, famous one by Quirinius, and (3) he may have indicated this was the “first registration” (Lat., descriptio prima) that preceded the actual taxation later carried out by Quirinius.
  • Luke does not say that Quirinius was the governor of Syria but that he had some kind of leadership role there, and Quirinius’s career is only partially known from our surviving sources.
  • There is evidence that Quirinius governed Syria twice—in 3-2 B.C. and again in A.D. 6-7.
  • And the timing of Quirinius’s census is uncertain because Josephus either changed his mind about when it was to be dated or because he was combining different sources, resulting in him referring to the events at three different places in his narrative.
  • Roman subjects who were away from their place of legal residence could be required to return there for registrations, as in the Egyptian census of A.D. 104.
  • And Joseph returned to Bethlehem because he regarded it as his primary legal residence in view of his Davidic heritage and the fact he owned property there. He may have even been specially required to go there, because of his Davidic descent, in order to swear loyalty to Caesar.

Which of these options (and there are others we haven’t mentioned) are the exact ones Luke has in mind is difficult for us to determine, given the state of our surviving historical sources.

However, Luke is referring to events that were publicly known in the first century. That’s his point. He’s helping his first century readers understand the timing of Jesus’ birth based on public events they would have known about. They lived in the first century, and this was still recent history for them. They also had access to numerous sources now lost.

Given the state of our sources today, it’s hard for us to know which precise things Luke is referring to, but he and his audience would have known which ones were under discussion—even if the particulars are hard for us to ascertain two thousand years later.

As Darrell Bock concludes:

In light of this and the various possibilities, it is clear that the relegation of Luke 2:2 to the category of historical error is premature and erroneous (Luke 1:1-9:50, 909).

The Jewish historian Josephus is an extraordinarily important author. Without his writings, we would know little about several centuries of Jewish history.

His works provide valuable insights for both Old and New Testament scholars. And he provides the earliest discussions of outside the New Testament of figures like Jesus, John the Baptist, and James the Just.

Josephus was born in A.D. 37 into a priestly family, and he served as a general in the Jewish War of the 60s, went over to the Roman side, and began a literary career after the war. He died around 100.

 

Josephus’s Works

As a historian, Josephus is known principally for two works—a seven-volume history known as The Jewish War, which provides an eyewitness account of the conflict in which he served, and Antiquities of the Jews, a twenty-volume history of the Jewish people.

He also wrote a two-volume apologetic work called Against Apion and a one-volume autobiography known as the Life of Flavius Josephus.

Given his importance, a question naturally arises: How reliable is he when he tells us something?

The answer is more complex than you might suppose. Josephus is not totally accurate, as quickly becomes clear if you read him in-depth rather than looking at isolated passages.

It could be tempting to dismiss him altogether, but that would be a mistake. Serious scholars of all persuasions recognize that—despite his flaws—Josephus is an extremely valuable source.

 

Josephus Gets Defensive

So, what are the limits of his reliability? One of the first things a reader of Josephus discovers is that he is extraordinarily defensive, and about two things: his people and himself.

He’s defensive about his people because he was living in an ethnically tense world, with friction between different groups in the Roman empire. Jewish people, in particular, were viewed as arrogant and standoffish because they did not participate in many Gentile practices. And their reputation only declined after the disastrous war of the A.D. 60s.

Why is he defensive about himself? The fact his Gentile readers knew Josephus to be a Jew would be enough, but he’s also acutely aware that his fellow Jews regarded him as a traitor.

After serving as a general in Galilee, Josephus was captured and managed to survive by allying himself with the Romans. He was even given Roman citizenship and—as was customary—took the name Flavius in honor of the emperor who granted it to him (Titus Flavius Vespasianus).

Consequently, two of Josephus’s overarching themes in his writings are making his people look good and making himself look good. There are passages where his desire to do this is so palpable that the reader realizes he’s either exaggerating or lying.

 

Josephus the Wonder Child

For example, in his Life, Josephus begins by stressing the nobility of his priestly family and the fact he had royal blood from the Hasmonean dynasty that sprang from the Maccabees. This was a way of silencing Jewish critics by cowing them with his dual lineage, which was both sacred and royal.

He’s undoubtedly telling the truth about this. These facts were too well known and confirmable for his critics to deny them. But then Josephus starts making self-aggrandizing claims that strain credulity.

He writes: “While still a mere boy, about fourteen years old, I won universal applause for my love of letters; insomuch that the chief priests and the leading men of the city used constantly to come to me for precise information on some particular in our ordinances” (Life 2:9).

Really? The chief priests and civic leaders used to consult a 14-year-old boy to find out the precise details of Jewish law? And they did that constantly? Josephus may have been a studious lad, and maybe someone having trouble remembering something ask him a question occasionally, but at a minimum this claim involves exaggeration.

So does his next set of claims: “At about the age of sixteen I determined to gain personal experience of the several sects into which our nation is divided” (2:10). He then began studying the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. “I thought that, after a thorough investigation, I should be in a position to select the best. So, I submitted myself to hard training and laborious exercises and passed through the three courses” (2:11).

(Notice that this would suggest that the chief priests and leading men were regularly consulting him about finer points of Jewish law even before he acquired a technical knowledge of how the Law was interpreted by the three schools. Yeah, right.)

As part of his training, Josephus began living in the desert with a hermit named Bannus and undertaking ascetical practices. “I became his devoted disciple. With him I lived for three years and, having accomplished my purpose, returned to the city. Being now in my nineteenth year I began to govern my life by the rules of the Pharisees” (2:12).

If Josephus came back to the city and decided to be a Pharisee at age 19, after living with Bannus for three years, then he must have begun his desert sojourn at age 16. But that’s the same age he said he started “hard training and laborious exercises” in the three Jewish schools of thought.

So, which was it? Was he living with a hermit in the desert or getting a thorough training in the thought of three different sects during this period?

Josephus probably did live with a hermit for a while, but he probably only gained a passing familiarity with the thought of the three sects—and it’s possible that all the training he got in their beliefs came from a single guy: Bannus. The account of studies of the sects is at least exaggerated.

 

Josephus: “I’m not a traitor! No! Really!”

When it comes to his wartime activities, Josephus portrays both himself and the wise leaders of the Jewish people as opposing the outbreak of the rebellion, and he lays the blame for it at the feet of certain younger hotheads.

One strongly suspects that both Josephus (a general!) and various Jewish leaders were rather more willing to rebel than he makes out and that he’s minimizing this to counter their warlike reputation in Gentile eyes—as well as relieving himself of responsibility for the disastrous outcome of the war for his Jewish readers.

After Josephus was captured by the Romans, he was in danger of being put to death, and at this point he announced that he’d received a divine revelation and told the Roman general Vespsian that he and his son Titus would become emperors.

At the time, Rome was engaged in a series of civil wars, and Vespasian was a respected general who could plausibly become emperor.

But “to this speech Vespasian, at the moment, seemed to attach little credit, supposing it to be a trick of Josephus to save his life” (War 3:8:9[404]). And that’s exactly what most commentators have concluded. Josephus didn’t receive a revelation but made the prediction as a desperate gamble.

And the gamble paid off, because when the legions acclaimed Vespasian emperor, Josephus’s fortunes rose dramatically!

These examples let us identify the main situations when we should be skeptical of what Josephus says. When he lies or exaggerates, it’s for defensive reasons. He’s either defending himself—like preserving his life or reputation—or he’s defending his people by seeking to rehabilitate them in the eyes of Gentiles.

But how reliable is he in other situations? That’s what we’ll look at next time.