Luke's Nativity story hinges on its `decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.' `Caesar Augustus' was the Roman Emperor, but if the Nativity took place in the reign of the King Herod the Great, the Jews were still Herod's subjects, members of a client kingdom, not a province under direct Roman rule.
You are somewhat mistaken here. It is true that Judea did not technically become a Roman province until 6 AD, but the facts prior to that indicate much tighter authority and control than your statement might lead one to believe. Rome did a military conquest before Herod the Great was even born. Pompey attacked Jerusalem and even invaded the Temple. was made a tributary (read: PAID TRIBUTE$) to Rome until Caesar defeated Pompey in Egypt around 48 BC. Herod the Great's dad had aided Caesar in that endeavor and so won the favor of Julius Caesar (and with it a procuratorship of, plus Roman citizenship and exemption from taxes.) Then in 47 BC, the daddy Herod appointed the son Herod to be governor of Galilee...still completely under Roman rule. He still had to be appointed tetrarch by Antony-- still a thrall, eh?!. He was also proclaimed 'king' by the Roman leaders (Octavius and Antony) in 40 bc--but he had to re-conquer the land from the Parthians, which he did in 37bc. As a 'client kingdom', they were still under the authority of Rome (all of the rulers, for example, were appointed--including ALL the Herods--and ratified by Rome.)
Actually, when I keep reading your paragraph, it sounds like you are calling Luke mistaken in referring to Rome as 'driving the issue' of the census. He is INDEED making that point, but HE is correct in that...The client-kings WERE still subject to Roman enrollment decrees. [see Blaiklock, The Century of the New Testament,(1962) and The Archeology of the New Testament (1970)]
The status of client-kings in the Roman Empire left them responsibility for their subjects' taxation.
Not decision-making authority--they couldn't say 'no', but local execution of the enrollment process-"yes".
Relations between the Emperor Augustus and King Herod had often been stormy and had even led to threats of Roman interference which Herod and his envoys had to avert. However, their conflicts never caused the removal of Herod's royal status, although this was the only way in which his kingdom could have been taxed on the Roman model in accordance with orders from the Roman Emperor. It is not just that Herod the Great never coincided with Quirinius the governor: he never coincided with a Roman taxing of."
The relationship between Augustus and King Herod had its ups and downs, indeed, but the argument that his Roman-granted title of king meant that his nation was exempt from taxes/tribute/census is just flat wrong. As I hinted at up above, it had become a tribute-paying tributary since its conquest by Pompey LONG BEFORE King Herod gets his title! (more below on this).
Augustus never issued a decree to tax the whole world.
Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, p. 29.
"It is even doubtful if the Emperor Augustus ever issued a decree to Rome's provinces that `all the world should be taxed.' Certainly, Romans did take censuses in individual provinces which were ruled directly by their governors. They were not, however, co-ordinated by an order from Augustus to all the world, at least so far as our evidence goes.
Read: argument from silence! (see below the points from Historian's Fallacies)
As that evidence extends through histories, local inscriptions and the papyrus returns of tax-payers in Egypt, it is immensely unlikely that a new edict of such consequence has escaped our knowledge.
Who are you trying to kid? You and I are looking at the same sources, no doubt, and there are HUGE, HUGE, HUGE gaps in the records! 'immensely unlikely'?!
In AD 6 we do know that Augustus was enacting a new tax on inheritance to help pay for his armies;
BTW, the taxation to support his army, is the main reason it is believed that Quirinius assisted in the taxing of 8-5 BC...his extended military maneuvers on the Pisidian highlands (dating from around 12 BC) would have required additional financing...
however, the tax affected only Roman citizens, not Jews of Nazareth, and there was no need for a worldwide census to register their names.
Remember, the census in AD 6 is NOT the one of Luke 2.2 (of 8-6 BC.)...but the census of AD 6 DID hit the Jews pretty heavily...at least 600 talents as a nation acc. to Josephus (Antiq. 17.320; Jewish War 2.97--cited in Jeremias' Jerusalem in the Times of Jesus: An investigation into the economic and social conditions during the New Testament period,Fortress: 1969). As a national tax, it DID effect the Jewish folk--loads like this are ALWAYS 'distributed to the people'(!) in addition to the already oppressive tax structure of the Herods...
And Luke does NOT place the 'worldwide census' at the time of the AD 6 tax...but rather puts it some time BEFORE the Syrian-based one in 7-5 BC...
But more accurately, Luke was probably not referring to a taxation census at all--simply a "registration". Registrations were normally associated with (1) taxation (above discussion); (2) military service (Jews were exempt) and (3) special government "ballots". We have conclusive evidence that an empire-wide (in decree, not necessarily execution, of course) registration occurred in the time frame described by Luke! Martin [CKC:89-90] summarizes the literary, archeological, and iconographic evidence for this:
" A sixth reason for placing the nativity of Jesus in 3 or 2 B.C. isthe coincidence of this date with the New Testament account that Jesus was born at the time when a Roman census was being conducted: "There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the IRoman] world should be registered" (Luke 2:1). Historians have not been able to find any empire-wide census or registration in the years 7-5 B.C., but there is a reference to such a registration of all the Roman people not long before 5 February 2 B.C. written by Caesar Augustus himself: "While I was administering my thirteenth consulship [2 B.C.] the senate and the equestrian order and the entire Roman people gave me the title Father of my Country" (Res Gestae 35, italics added). This award was given to Augustus on 5 February 2 B.C., therefore the registration of citizen approval must have taken place in 3 B.C. Orosius, in the fifth century, also said that Roman records of his time revealed that a census was indeed held when Augustus was made "the first of men"--an apt description of his award "Father of the Country"--at a time when all the great nations gave an oath of obedience to Augustus (6:22, 7:2). Orosius dated the census to 3 B.C. And besides that, Josephus substantiates that an oath of obedience to Augustus was required in Judea not long before the death of Herod (Antiquities I7:4I-45). This agrees nicely in a chronological sense with what Luke records. But more than that, an inscription found in Paphlagonia (eastern Turkey), also dated to 3 B.C., mentions an "oath sworn by all the people in the land at the altars of Augustus in the temples of Augustus in the various districts." And dovetailing precisely with this inscription, the early (fifth century) Armenian historian, Moses of Khoren, said the census that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem was conducted by Roman agents in Armenia where they set up "the image of Augustus Caesar in every temple.''. The similarity of this language is strikingly akin to the wording on the Paphlagonian inscription describing the oath taken in 3 B.C. These indications can allow us to reasonably conclude that the oath (of Josephus, the Paphlagonian inscription, and Orosius) and the census (mentioned by Luke, Orosius, and Moses of Khoren) were one and the same. All of these things happened in 3 B.C."
What this means is that we have very, very clear evidence of an empire-wide registration in the time frame required! (How much more data do you need?!)
In Judea under Quirinius, we know from Josephus's histories of something more appropriate, not a worldwide decree but a local census in AD 6 to assess Judea when the province passed from rule by Herod's family to direct rule by Rome. Although this census was local, it caused a notorious outcry, not least because some of the Jews argued that the innovation was contrary to scripture and the will of God. According to the third Gospel, the census which took Joseph to Bethlehem was `the first while Quirinius was governor of Syria.'
I have already pointed out that 'first while' is probably a mistranslation of the text -- 'before' is more in line with koine idiom (see the reference of N. Turner, above)
Quirinius's census was indeed the first, but it belonged in AD 6 when King Herod, the story's other marker, was long since dead."
A couple of concluding points:
That Augustus MIGHT HAVE issued a world-wide census decree (a record of which is only preserved in Luke's gospel) is ALTOGETHER reasonable and plausible. The data about Augustus' 'propensity' to count and tax is well known. For example, he documents, in his own records, how he counted the Roman nation some three times (Res Gestae Divi Augusti , 8--from Roman Civilization--SourceBook II: the Empire, eds. Lewis and Reinhold, p 12)., and increasingly levied detailed taxes throughout his reign--with the attendant increase in bribery and vice (see Gibbons' Rise and Fall). As vain as he was, it would not be surprising at all for this to have occurred.
It was also customary for the Roman empire to take a census when there was a change of local government (e.g. when Archelaus was deposed in AD 6, one of Quirinius' first tasks was to liquidate his estate and hold a census to determine the tribute load.) The implication of this pattern for our discussion is that when Varus became governor of Syria in 7 BC, one of his first acts would have been to take a census (the one which would have produced the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem for Joseph/Mary.)
We KNOW Augustus instituted a 14-year census-cycle for EGYPT in 10/9 BC...(SourceBook II, above, p. 388)...Not only does this give us more confirmation that Augustus was a "countin' sorta guy'" but it may reflect a local execution of a 'worldwide decree' of Augustus.
To assert that Augustus did not make such a decree is an affirmative historical statement. And, "the burden of proof, for any historical assertion, always rests upon its author" (Hacket, Historians' Fallacies, Harper: 1970, p 63.).
And to argue that Luke was wrong because there was NO worldwide decree (because we don't have a record of the specific decree) is to make a common mistake in historical method--arguing from 'slim' silence (some silence-arguments can be made to work, though). Hacket again:
"evidence must always be affirmative. Negative evidence is a contradiction in terms--it is no evidence at all. The nonexistence of an object [read: "worldwide decree"-gmm] is established not by nonexistent evidence [read: "we can't find the decree so far"-gmm] but by affirmative evidence of the fact that it did not, or could not exist [e.g. a document that says it did not happen--gmm]" (above, p62)
And, in spite of the above methodological and background problems, we DO HAVE CONCRETE EVIDENCE of an empire-wide Augustian registration--literary, archeological, iconographic.
To summarize this section on the 'the missing census of 7/5 BC': I HAVE affirmative evidence and good arguments for such a census--
Luke, a very, very, very reliable historian SAYS SO!
Augustus was this 'type of person' with repeated, known actions along this line.
These kinds of events occurred at major changes in ruling personnel--a situation that obtained in Palestine at the time Luke indicates.
Parallel events occurred in other Roman-controlled areas, in roughly the same time (i.e. Egypt 10/9 BC).
There is not a scrap of contrary data.
Quirinius' participation is such an event (along with Varus) is not only possible, but highly likely.
We have positive evidence of an empire-wide decree of Augustus within a year or two of the required date.
