Luke 2:2 - Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria) - a very perplexing verse, inasmuch as Cyrenius, or Quirinus, appears not to have been governor of Syria for about 10 years after the birth of Christ, and the taxing under his administration was what led to the insurrection alluded to in Acts 5:37 (cf. Josephus, Ant. 18: 1. 1). That Augustus took steps toward introducing uniform taxation throughout the empire, has been proved beyond dispute (by Savigny, the highest authority on the Roman law); and candid critics, even of sceptical tendency, are forced to allow that no such glaring anachronism as the words, on the first blush of them, seem to imply, was likely to be fallen into by a writer so minutely accurate on Roman affairs as our Evangelist shows himself, in the Acts, to be. Some superior scholars would render the words thus: 'This registration was previous to Cyrenius being governor of Syria.' In this case, of course, the difficulty vanishes. But, as this is a very precarious sense of the word х prootee (G4413)], it is better, with others, to understand the Evangelist to mean; that though the registration was now ordered with a view to the taxation, the taxing itself-an obnoxious measure in Palestine-was not carried out until the time of Quirinus.