Christmas Joy

In a world of doubters

It’s Christmas day again! Second to the resurrections, Christians all around the world gather to celebrate this day of birth for the Lord. We each have our own traditions, foods, songs, and ways of gathering, but always a special cheer for remembering the birth of God.

Many of us at this point are not surprised to see the line up of doubters, haters, scoffers, and the yearly usuals of spiteful dust. We’re told it’s Saturnalia! then such voices fall silent when the Orthodox celebrate it in two weeks time. We’re told we don’t know when Jesus was born! True, but neither do you. So why not celebrate the Light inn the Beginning when light is rarest in the cold North? Every year brings the same jeers, and every year I pick one topic to tackle for my entertainment. This year was the Census of Quirinius.

The doubters declare, “How can this be? The census was 6 years after Christ was born!” The doubters forget, census takes time. In the US, the last Census to be done prior to the introduction of tabulation machines was in 1880. This census took 7 years to complete without mechanical aid, in 1887. It was the prolonged nature of this census that motivated the US to adopt mechanical aids, in fact. At that time, the population of the US was some Fifty Million people. With railroads, telegraphs, and the best the industrial age could offer, it still took Seven years to count Fifty million people. The population of First Century Syria is thought to have been something in the range of Six to Twelve Million, one of the more populous areas of the Roman World. Also worth mentioning, the population of Anatolia would have been some eight million people. Why bring that up too? Shh, wait.

Quirinius lived a most amazing life. Between the years Twelve through One BC, he was campaigning in Asia Minor where he possible became legate and later elected Duumviri of Pisidia. Of which one of his roles would have been censor. It is likely here that he conducted his first census of a population: the newly conquered peoples in Asia Minor. Following this, he became the personal tutor of Emperor Augustus. For five years he played the game of court politics, marrying and divorcing various roman aristocratic women to work his way up the ladder, until eventually being called to the legate of Syria. There, he once again returned to the role of censes taker, this time in Syria. This is the Syrian Census often attributed to in the Bible. There he stayed until Twelve AD, until he returned to Rome, living there for a few years before his death.

Even if we assume the same speed of census taking that the United States had in Eighteen Eighty, it would have taken him some Year and a half to conduct each census. Of course, we know they did not have the efficiency of the United States. They did not have railroads. They did not have telegrams. They didn’t have standard forms to send to each address nor a unified postal service to organize this service. They did not have typewriters. They didn’t even have printing presses. No, for dear old Quirinius he had to do things the old fashioned way. The really old fashioned way. He had to go to each village, set up an announcement in the center, and organize it all on a family-by-family basis. Modern man is quick to forget the labor and time that goes into such an undertaking.

So how long would a Roman Census take in the year 0? Legally, they were supposed to conduct a census every 5 years, called a lustrum. Practically, many years were skipped either due to war or other challenges. For example, there does not seem to have been a census between 8 BC through 14 BC with regards to actual Roman Citizens. But naturally, they continued taking a census for foreigners for tax purposes.

By the time of Christ, a different format had been adopted on account of the growing size of the empire and the growing bureaucratic nightmare of counting tens of millions of people. This new format, called the Indictio, was a 15 year cycle which included the lustrum but revamped it for the practical realities of governing tens of millions.

The exact starting year of the Indictio is not at all clear. Tradition holds that Julius Caesar started the cycle some time around Forty Eight BC, with sporadic evidence of it in by Claudius’ Forty Two AD declaration, Nero’s in Fifty Seven AD, Vespian’s declaration in Seventy Three AD, Trajan’s One Hundred and Two AD, and Hadrian’s Indictio of One Hundred and Eighteen AD. The fifteen year range appears to have been a forthcoming development as the new Participate system of governance codified itself into existence. The Birth of an Empire, unsurprisingly, takes time.

But from this, we can calibrate the census of Quirinius as likely occurring in one of these spans. His first census likely being in Anatolia, and his second in Syria, then perhaps being part of either the same Indictio, or perhaps different ones. Either way, that census is going to take a few years to take. And being seven or so years off for a five year expectation is not that glaring a contradiction to me anymore.

On that little bit of autism, I do wish you a Merry Christmas. And a Happy New Year.