How Incomplete is Our Knowledge of 1st-Century Rome?

Factual Questions
1

This question is motivated by the declaration by Maeglin in the GD “BC/AD vs. BCE/CE” thread that he is a professional Roman historian. It is something that I have long wanted to ask an expert.

There are at least two major events in the birth narratives of Jesus that seem significant enough to have been reported by secular historians, but were not (to our knowledge).

The most obvious is the worldwide census of Luke, chapter 2. He claims that in the year Jesus was born, Augustus Caesar decreed that a census of all the world be taken, and that people had to travel to their ancestral homes for the purpose.

Even assuming he meant only the Roman Empire, there are many problems with this passage. Given the extent of the Empire, travel to ancestral homes, say for a legionnaire stationed in Spain whose ancestors were from Syria, might take over a year for the round trip, and it makes little sense that a man whose land, cattle, and slaves are located in one place should go somewhere else to have them assessed. Luke also names Quirinius as the governor of Syria during the census, which is about ten years too late for Jesus to have been born during the reign of Herod the Great. There is evidently no record of this census outside of Luke.

In Matthew 2, Herod is alleged to have perpetrated the Slaughter of the Innocents, in which every male child under two years old who lived in “Bethlehem and its environs” was murdered. Again, there is no record of this outside of Matthew.

It seems impossible to me that there could be no surviving records of an Empire-wide census. Covering up a local massacre seems more plausible, but since Herod ruled at Roman sufferance, it seems likely to me that someone would have complained to Rome, and that Herod’s enemies, at least, would have made it notorious.

But neither incident appears in secular history, or even the other Gospels. Apologists claim that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” because our records from 2000 years ago are not complete.

To avoid getting this moved to GD, I acknowledge that some people claim that the stories are not intended to be historical. If anyone believes that they are allegorical, or that they are intended to tell a “higher truth” than mere facts, that’s fine, but that’s not my question.

My question is strictly historical, and intended for experts on first-century Roman or Jewish history: Is it plausible that accounts of these incidents, if they occurred as described, would be lost to us?

2

It’s not likely an empire wide census happened in the way that the author of the Gospel of Luke described it. Cyrenius, the governor of Syria, we’re told by Josephus, conducted a census of Syria and Judea in 6-7 CE, and that’s probably the one that Luke is referring to. In fact, Luke specifically says that the census happened “in the days that Quirnius was governor of Syria”. (Quirnius is another transliteration of Cyrenius).

Here’s Josephus, from Antiquities:

Note, that the Gospel of Luke doesn’t say that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. It says that John the Baptist (who had apparently been conceived but not yet born when Jesus was conceived), was born “in the time of Herod king of Judea”, but that could just as easily refer to Archelaus.

3

Then why have to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem?

4

Luke needed a way to get Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem so that Jesus could be born there so that Luke could reinforce that Jesus is descended from King David, and thereby the possible messiah?

5

Herod the Great was the last king of Judea. Archelaus was an ethnarch. And Matthew clearly states that Jesus was born when Herod the Great was king, up to two years before the Massacre, plus an indeterminate time spent in Egypt after the Massacre, until Herod died.

6

One of the common cotention about Quirinus, the census, and his governorship is that the phrase “hegemoneuontos tes Syrias Kyreniou” doesn’t mean he was the governor but that he was “governing”, not a legatus but an hegemon.

7

Right. But Matthew doesn’t have the census. Luke has the census but not the flight to Egypt or the Herod dies.

In Matthew, Joseph and Mary already live in Bethlehem to start with, and then Jesus is born, the magi show up, Herod gets pissed, they flee to Egypt, Herod kills all the babies in Bethlehem, and then he dies, and then Joseph hears that Archelaus took over in Judea after his father, so moves to Nazareth.

In Luke, John the Baptist is conceived “when Herod is king of Judea”, Mary is told by an angel she’s going to have a baby, visits Elizabeth, then Quirinus has the census, Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem, Jesus is born in a stable because the inns are full, a bunch of shepherds are told by angels to visit him, and they do.

Two different stories, over two different time periods. Jesus is born earlier in Matthew than he is in Luke.

8

That’s all great, and I encourage you to start a thread in GD to explore it. But I want to keep this in GQ, and my question is about the quality of our sources for Roman history, and not about the harmony of the Gospels. Thank you.

9

We have a primary source written at the time (Res gestae divi augusti) listing all Augustus Census (called a Lustrum) and they were only concerned with Roman Citizens and took place in 28BC, and 8BC and then 14 AD.

(point 8)

It doesn’t seem plausible to me that Augustus own summary of his own deeds would fail to mention any global census around 4BC considering the he considers three censuses of Roman citizens to be important enough to list individually together with the totals obtained.

Incidentally, 4.9 million Roman citizens in 14AD… Learn something new every day…

10

One possibility is that there had been a census like Luke described but he got the name wrong. A previous Roman official, Saturninus, had conducted a census in 8 BC. So when Luke was writing down the story several decades later, he might have confused Gaius Sentius Saturninus’ census of 8 BC with Publius Sulpicius Quirinius’ census of 6 AD.

11

I’m not talking about the harmony of the Gospels. I’m saying that Josephus says that Quirnius had a census (that caused riots) in 6-7 AD. Luke says that there was a census when Quirnius was governor of Syria, but doesn’t specify the date. Those are our two main sources for a census taken by Qurnius.

(And actually, Straightdope Advisory Board Member and SDMB administrator Dex talks about the census mentioned in Luke here:

12

Thanks very much for the link. Scholars seem to think that this was prepared and updated well in advance of his death, so the only plausible reasons I can think of for omitting something as important as a worldwide census, either senility or a too-hasty compilation, don’t seem to apply.

The document clearly states that the census was only of Roman citizens, which the subjects of Herod were not. So even if the date of 8 BCE falls in the extreme range of possible dates for the birth of Jesus, it seems to refute either a worldwide census that included non-citizens, and anything to do with Quirinius. And of course, the illogical requirement of traveling to ancestral homes is not mentioned.

So the census question is settled in my mind. Does anyone have any insights on whether the Massacre could have gone unremarked in the secular sources available to us?

13

As long as Herod’s massacre was limited to his own people, the Empire probably wouldn’t care in the least. Were Roman citizens among the victims, the situation would likely have been very different.

14

At a basic logical level, it’s pretty likely this was a result of agglomeration, condensation, and some exaggeration. I.E., Luke says the whole world was enrolled vs. having various census reports being compiled over some years under sundry imperial directives. Likewise, if Herod (heck, any of the Tertrarchate) thought that the Messiah was being born, or simply that some people thought the Messiah was being born, it would be completely plausible for them to arrange some “accidents”. It’s highly implausible that Herod carried out a wide massacre, however.

15

Bethlehem was a small town. It may have had fewer than a dozen children under the age of two years. By Roman and Herodian standards, that would have been utterly insignificant. If it happened at all, it could easily have gone unrecorded.

In my opinion, the Massacre was a literary device to make Jesus’ story as dramatic as Moses’ story. But the absence from the secular records is plausible, so it is not conclusive proof one way or another.

16

Let us start with the first- the census. Clearly Luke got some details wrong, but in general Josephus backs him up in that there was a local accounting in Syria, of which Judea was then part of. It’s possible Luke was right, but it’s doubtful.

Next The Massacres of the Innocents. That would be the killing of maybe 20 babies. Macrobius actually mentioned this as an aside ( several hundred years alter, but note Macrobius was a pagan) , quoting Emperor Augustus. Herod was known to be a murderous rat-bastard who happily killed many of his kin. Killing 20 babies was hardly a blip. Quotes about Herod outside the NT : “a madman who murdered his own family and a great many rabbis" "prepared to commit any crime in order to gratify his unbounded ambition”. So yes, there is a brief off hand mention of it to wit :"Cum audisset inter pueros quos in Syria Herodes rex Iudaeorum intra bimatum iussit interfici filium quoque eius occisum, ait: Melius est Herodis porcum esse quam filium”

As to why we have no period records of this? *We have almost no period historical records of anything from that period. *Period historical records might fill a bookshelf.

Until just recently we had no archeological proof of the existence of Pontius Pilate. * Not a single document ever written by him, not a single order, not a tax receipt- NADA.* Only the new testament, a few lines from Josephus and an offhand and wrong in details mention by Tacitus. Now, this was a important politician, prefect of Judaea for ten years, and until we found a single stone in the 1960’s with a short and damaged inscription we had nothing that proved he was real. In fact for decades, some skeptics thought the NT made him up too. Still- think of it- *important politician for a decade and not a single official record of anything he did during that times exists other than about 30 letters on a block of stone. *And the Romans were nuts for record-keeping. Pilate must have generated tonnes of docs.

But the parchment was scraped and re-used, lost, burned, eaten by worms, etc. Pilate is not unique either. Pretty much we depend heavily on Josephus and Tacitus. *Of Tacitus, he was a popular and much copied Historian. He wrote extensively. Maybe 10-20% of his works survive today. * For example, from wiki “The Annals is Tacitus’ final work, covering the period from the death of Augustus Caesar in 14 AD. He wrote at least sixteen books, but books 7–10 and parts of books 5, 6, 11 and 16 are missing.”

So, it’s not in any way shape or form “impossible that there could be no surviving records”, just the opposite. It’s a miracle we have what survived.

It’s not only “plausible that accounts of these incidents, if they occurred as described, would be lost to us” **it’s much more likely than not. **

17

Our sources for this period of Palestinian history are essentially Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews and the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (since the remainder of the New Testament sources don’t really kick in until the commencement of Jesus’s ministry). The Antiquities was intended to cover the entire history of the Jews, so it wouldn’t be too surprising if one little massacre got left out. As for Matthew and Luke, they tell such radically different versions of the birth story that obviously at least one is fictional. So no, I don’t think it’s too significant that the massacre is not recorded outside of Matthew (although it’s my personal belief that both birth stories are fictional, so I don’t think it happened).

18

Yes, including the date, the scope, and the ridiculous requirement that people had to travel to where their ancestors had lived 1000 years earlier. It would be like me claiming that WW2 was concluded by single combat between Lincoln and Napoleon in 1920. I’d have only the fact that Lincoln presided over a war to keep it from being wrong in EVERY detail — just as Luke has only the fact that Quirinius did preside over a local, and evidently conventional, census.

I think you must mean Philo, rather than Tacitus. And I don’t find it surprising at all that we have no original documents from or about Pilate, but IMO the ink he gets from Josephus and Philo is more than adequate to establish his historicity. Of course I would want more evidence if they had claimed anything extraordinary about him, but they didn’t.

But your larger point is well taken. If there are no surviving Roman documents about Pilate, then it’s completely plausible that there would be no surviving documents about a complaint from a small village in a client kingdom.

And there may have been no documents to lose. Obviously the Bethlehemites could not appeal to Herod, so they would have to finance a journey to Rome, and that may have been beyond their means. Even if not, even modest bribes from Herod would probably have been adequate to see that they were never heard by anyone of importance.

So I conclude that it is possible that the Massacre occurred, generated no notice from Rome, and escaped the attention of Josephus.

It’s impossible to reconcile with the birth narrative of Luke, but that’s for another thread.

19

How can a person who was “governing” not be a governor? The term “governor” can mean two things - one is a person who governs (in a practical sense - i.e. that is what they do), and the other is a person who holds a formal title of Governor or a title that is commonly or officially translated as “governor”.

For example, the Governor General of Canada does not meaningfully “govern” on a day to day basis and their position is basically formal and ceremonial, but the person is described as such because that is their title. On the other hand, if California passes a law that officially changes the title of the Governor of California to “The Super-Buddy Leader Guy of California, Dude” and people go to the polls to elect the next super-buddy leader guy, that doesn’t change the fact that he still is a governor. Basically this is the rose by any other name argument.

20

And when the lt gov is acting as gov? Is he the gov? No. He is acting as gov, he is governing without actually being the gov.

Roman political terms have no exact correlation, anyway.