Quirinius, census of

The statement of St. Luke (2'"') as to how tlie birth of Clirist came to take place at Bethlehem rather than at Nazareth, has produced an amount of discussion of wliicli tlie world is rather wear}'. We should have had less of this, if apologists had not been ready to admit, and opponents eager to maintain, that to prove that the evangelist has here made a misstatement, is to imperil, if not demolish, the authority of his Gospel as an inspired writing. Notliinj; of the kind Is at stake. We have no right to a-ssume that inspiration secures infallible chronology ; and St. LuKe bases his claim to be heard, not on inspira- tion, but on the excellence of his information and his own careful imiuiry (Lk l'""). Yet even well- infomied and careful wTiters sometimes make mistakes, and he maj- have done so here. There is no serious diliiculty about the statement that Augustus ordered that there should be a general census throughout the Roman Empire (2'). It is true that there is no direct evidence, inde- pendent of Luke, of any such decree ; and we know that in some provinces no census was held during the reign of Augustus. Nevertheless there is evidence that jieriodic enrolments were made in EgjMit {Clas. Ri'.i: Mar. 1803) ; and a Roman census in Judaea at the time indicated, in consequence of general orders issued by Augustus, is not improb- able (Suet. Aug. 28, 101, Cal. 16 ; Tac. Ann. i. 11. 5, 6 ; Plin. Nat. Hist. iii. 2. 17). The real difficulty is about the parenthetical remark in v.''. There has been much discussion about the text of v.^, but the right reading is certainly aiiT-ij dircTYpatprj trpumj iyivcro rpfip-oviijovro^ ttjs 2i'p/as Kupi)fiov: 'This took place as a first enrolment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria.' t And this remark is made in order to distinguish this census from the one in A.D. 6, 7, when Q. certainly v-as governor and conducted the census (Ac i}^\ Jos. Ant. XVIII. i. 1, ii. 1). But it is hard to see how Q. could be governor when Herod died in B.C. 4. From B.C. 9 to 6 Sentius Saturninus was governor ; J from B.C. 6 to 4 Quinctilius Varus. After that nothing is clear till A.D. 6, when P. Sulpicius Quirinius succeeds and holds the census of Ac 5". Bergmann, Mommsen, Zumpt, and others have shown that this governorship of Q. was probably not his first, but that he was in otlice during part of the interval between B.C. 4 and A.D. 6, viz. B.C. 3, 2. But it stilt remains as in- credible as ever it was that Q. was governor be/ore the death of Herod ; and until that is established we must admit that Luke is at least a year wrong in his chronology. Even Zahn, who denies the later governorship of Q., and asserts that only one census was taken, viz. in B.C. 4 to 2 (to which he refers both Lk 2- and Ac 5^), is obliged to place the census after Herod's death. No help on this Soint is obtained from the oft-quoted testimony of ustin Martyr, who in three passages places the birth of Christ iirl Ku/n^Wou, and in one of them says that the birth at Bethlehem may be learned ^k tCiv itroypatpuii' tCiv yevofUviav iirl Kvptjpiov tqD vficr^pov iv '\oviai(f irpwTou ytvoiUvov iiriTpiwov (Apol. i. 34, 46 j • If the wind In (his awe hwl been anti-cyclonic (which ia probable) the direction would have changed from N.F^ to E. »nd trom E. to .S.E. and from tliis to S. and S.W., which would have driven the ship into the sea of Adria. t The name is Quirinius, not Quirinus ; see Fumeaux on Tac. ^nn, ii. 30. 4; and xyiu^ttiUtrot may^'waJl commanding' an army (but ft. the use of the word in Lit 8'). t Tertullian {ado. Marcion, Iv. 10) says that the census was token by Saturninus; yet he himself places the birth of Christ •.a 3 {.adv. Jud. 6% Dial. 78). But it should be noted that Justin calls Q. iTlTpoiros, prociirafnr, not legatus, as he was in A.D. 6. The word which Ltike uses is indefinite (■rryeiJLoveviji), and might be employed of any kind of ruler ; but in the only other pla(^e in Avhich he uses it (3') it is of the promrator I'ontius Pilate. L'ntil Judaja became a Roman provin"e in A.D. 6 there would be no procurator in the strict sense j but Q. may have had some military position in Syria even before the death of Herod, and also have been concerned with the census. Ami this is perhaps Luke's meaning ; he may not be giving a mere date. In any case Christians who were inventing an ex- filanation of the birth at Bethlehem would not be ikely to attribute it to Roman and heathen causes. The error, if there be one, has probably foundation in fact ; and, moreover, is not the result of confusion with the later census A.D. 6, 7, which Luke himself notices Ac 5". The general result is that if a mistake has not been proved, neither has it been disproved. \i the accuracy of Luke in many other details were not so conspicuous, one would say that there probably is some mistake. But the error would not be great, if Q. held some ollice in Syria B.C. 3, 2, and helped to complete a census which was begun before the death of Herod. And there is no error, if Christ's birth is to be placed B.C. 6 (vol. i. p. 405), and Q. was in command in Syria then, whicn would be the right time for the first of .a series of enrolments, of which that in Ac 5" was the second. LiTKRATtTRE. — See the commentaries of Farrar and Godet : the Lives of Christ by Andrews, Didon, Edersheini, Keiin, and B. Weiss; the articles 'Cyrenius' in .Smith, Dl>-, and 'tinhatzun^ 'in Hci-zofr; tlie niunographs ni Zumpt on ' DiiatJeburtsjahrChnsti,' 18«1) (llibl. .S'rt<-ra, 187(1), and of Zahn, ' Pie Syr. .Stnttlialterschaft und d. Schat/.unif des Quirinius, in Neue Kirchl. Zt»jt. 18!»3 ; and above all, Schiirer, hlJ P I. ii. 105 ff., and Itamsay, H'a« Christ born at Bethtchemi 1898. See ako Haverfield in Class. Rev., July 1000, p. 309. A. PLUMMER. QUIT is both an adj. and a verb. 1. The adj., as Skeat shows, is oldest. It comes from Old tr. quite (mod. quitte), which is the Lat. guietu-t in its late sense of free from obligation. This is the meaning of the word in AV, where it occurs : Ex 21" ' If he rise again, and walk abroad upon his stafl', then shall he that smote him be quit ' (npji) ; 2r-», .Jos 2^ (both Vi). Cf. Udall's Erasmus' Paraph, ii. 279, ' But he that sticketh his brother with the darte of a venemons tongue, although he be quitte by mannes lawes from the crime of man- slaughter, yet by the law of the gospel he is giltie of manslaughter ' ; Jer 25''" Cov. ' ye shall not go quyte." 2. The verb came from Old Fr. quiter (mod. quitter), a derivative of Lat. quictare. In AV it IS used only refiexively, ' quit yourselves like men' (IS 4"'"', Heb. oV;!;'? vn), 'quit you like men ' (1 Co 16", Gr. ivSpli«j0(). To 'quit oneself is to discharge one's obligations ; on every man lie the obligations of a man. Cf. Milton, Savuon Agon. i. 1709 — ■ Samson hath quit himself Like Samson.' J. Hastings. QUIVER represents more than one Heb. word. 1. Gn 27" for •'71? tHt [Samar. n-Vn tHith (?)], a fliraf \ty. meaning literally, if a genuine Heb. word, ' that which is hung,' either a quiver (LXX [<pap{Tpa.\ pseudo-Jon.) or a sword or /cnife {Onk., Pesh., Abulwalid). 2. Usually for idy'n 'a.<)hpah, perhaps a loan-word from Asiyr. iSpatu, literal meaning unknown. The quiver was a very conspicuous part of the equipment of the Eastern warrior ; on the Assyr. • Perhaps the possibility of a slip of the pen, Ki/mmW foi K«ciTiA.oi/, like 'Barachiah for 'Jehoiada' (Alt 239^), is Just worth mentioning. 18i QUOTATIONS QUOTATIONS reliefs in the Hritish Museum tlie Assyr. soldier is alwaj's an arclier, and £/(//« his foe regularly bears the (jniver (Is '2'2!'). The famous mounted archers of the East are perhaps alluded to in Job 39-^ ' the quiver rattleth upon him' (UVm), i.e. ujwn the horse, and the terror caused by them is vividly portrayed in Jer 5'" ' Their quiver is as an open sepulchre'; cf. Jer 6^ 'They ride upon horses.' The Lord Himself has a quiver in which He hides His chosen instruments (Is 49-). When the moment comes for the execution of His judgments, His arrows lly suddenly to the mark (Ks 04'). There is a parallel for these metaphors in the speech of al-Hajjaj, the Khalifa Abd al-Melik's go\-ernor, to the disallccted inhabitants of Cufa (A.II. 75) ; 'The Prince of the Believers has spread before him the arrows of his quiver, and has tried every one of t'lem by biting its wood. It is my wood that he has found the hardest and the bitterest, and I am the arrow which he shoots against you' (Stani.slas Guyard, 'Mohammedan- ism,' \nEncycl. Brit. xvi. 571). Another metaphor in the OT is that a man's home circle (?) is his quiver, and his sons, born while he himself is still j-oung, are his arrows (Ps 127'); cf. La 3", where, conversely, arrows are called ' sons of the quiver ' (RVm). 3. In the Pr. Bk. version Ps IP reads ' [They] make ready their arrows within the quiver ' (nn; 7y 'al yct/u-r). This translation, though supported by LXX (e^s (papirpav) and Vulg., is wrong. AV and IIV (so Pesh.) have rightly ' upon the string.' 4. Ancient authority is strong for translating n-^h::) shdatiin, ' shields ' (EV) as 'quivers' (2 S 8' = rCh IS', 2K ll'<'=2 Ch 239, (j^ 4^ Jer 51", Ezk 27"). The latter rendering suits Jer 51" ' fill the quivers,' but it is more probable that in all these passages D'aV;f' has the more general meaning, 'arms, equipment' (cf. Expository Times, x. (1898) 43 ff.). W. Emery Barnes.