The question is – “Exactly when was Jesus born?” We have only two of the gospels giving any information about the birth of Jesus, Matthew and Luke. Mark, the oldest of the canonical gospels (between 85 and 105 CE***) makes no mention of it at all and neither does the “youngest” gospel John (probably 124 CE or later). Matthew has Jesus born during the reign of Herod the Great (73 – 4 BCE) and Luke has his birth during the Syrian governorship of “Cyrenius” (real name – Publius Sulpicius Quirinius) (6 – 9 CE), at least a 10 year difference exists between the dates reported by the two. There are several problems with this. First, the very fact that they don’t seem to agree is problem enough - after all, this is supposedly the “inerrant word of God”. Apologists have attempted to explain the 11 year (minimum) discrepancy between Matthew and Luke. One is that Cyrenius had two separate terms as Governor. The only problem with this is that we have a pretty good handle on Quirinius and know that there was no period that he could have been in Syria during any of the censuses ordered by Augustus (in his auto biography, Augustus stated that he ordered censuses only in 28 BCE, 8 BCE, 6 CE and 14 CE and Dio Cassius the historian confirmed the 6 CE census and explained why it was conducted (Roman History LV 25:5-6). Of the others, in 28 BCE he was a mere stripling of 17, in 8 BCE he was in Rome having completed his consulship, in 6 BCE he was dispatched to what is now Turkey to bring the Homonadensians under Roman control, this campaign lasted until 3 BCE and by 2 BCE he was back in Rome where he was honored with a Triumph. In 1 CE he was appointed rector to the heir apparent, Gaius Caesar; after the death of Gaius from wounds received in battle in Armenia (a province much contested between Rome and Parthia), he returned to Rome. In 6 CE, Quirinius was appointed Governor of Syria. As can be seen, there was very little time for another term as Governor of Syria in his busy career. If he had been Governor of Syria during the 8 BCE census, there would have been more problems with the biblical story than there presently is (more on this later). Other apologists have come up with an attempt to move Herod’s death from 4 BCE to 1 BCE based on Josephus’ report of a lunar eclipse when Herod died. Since both 4 BCE and 1 BCE had lunar eclipses, but unfortunately for that argument, Herod’s heirs date their ascension to power as 4 BCE! Even then, Jesus would have had to be born around 3 BCE, since Herod ordered that all male children under 2 years of age to be killed…plus we have no idea at what point in his reign that he gave this order since no historian (including the Herod-hating Josephus) mention this “Slaughter of the Innocents”.

Now, let’s look at the implications of each report. But first we need to set up a few parameters – Herod died in 4 BCE, John the Baptist is reported by Luke to have started his ministry in the “15th year of Tiberius” which is around 29 CE, Josephus implies that John the Baptist was executed around 35 CE (although Apologists want to say 32 CE), Cyrenius was governor from 6 CE to 9 CE and finally Pontius Pilate served in Judea from 26 to 36 CE. These parameters are recorded in history and are the anchors of the gospel stories.
Now let’s look at the facts of each gospel’s report and the ramifications of that. If Matthew is correct and Jesus was born during the reign of Herod (30 – 4 BCE), he would have been born no later than 6 BCE. This means (based on Lukes affirmation that Jesus was about 30 when he started his ministry) that he would have started his ministry around 24 CE or about 5 years before John the Baptist started his (no baptism by John) and have been executed around 26 CE (about 6 to 10 years prior to John’s death) and the same year as Pilate arrived in Judea (which would cause historical problems since at the very start Pilate, Herod and Caiaphas were not exactly friendly or cooperative, warming to each other several years later). This means that (1) Jesus would miss being baptized by John the Baptist (2) Jesus would have died before John the Baptist (instead of afterwards) by quite some time (3) Cyrenius would not have been Governor of Syria when he was born.
If Luke was right and Jesus was born during the term of Cyrenius, then he would have started his ministry in 36 CE, a year after John died, so there would have been no baptism by John and he would have died in 38 CE which means that Pilate would have been back in Rome for over 2 years. ) This would all mean that (1) Jesus would again have missed being baptized by John the Baptist (2) Jesus would have died 2 years after Pilate left Judea (3) Herod would not (as reported by Matthew) been alive when Jesus was born (4) This would also mean that Caiaphas had not been chief priest for 2 years (he served from 18 to 36 CE).
If the apologist advocating a later date of death for Herod was right, it would have no effect on the two scenarios that I have put forth other than changing the dates advocated by the Matthew version by 3 years. Worse case scenario, Jesus would have started his ministry only 2 years before John and only died 5 years before John. In other words same problems with no solutions.


These discrepancies are aggravated by the reports of two later Bishops of the early church, Irenaeus and Epiphanius. In Against Heresies, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (125-202 CE) stated: "From the 40th and 50th year a man begins to decline towards old age, which our Lord possessed while He still fulfilled the office of a Teacher, even as the Gospel and all the elders testify; those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, affirming that John conveyed to them that information. And he remained among them up to the times of Trajan. (reigned 98 to 117 CE)" This statement does several things, it shows a lack of knowledge of the gospels at a period they supposedly were being circulated, it intimates that Jesus lived well past middle age (and if you use the “accepted” year of birth, would have been over 100 years old when he died) and it shows a singular lack of knowledge of the physical existence of Jesus. Living less than a century after the supposed time of Jesus, you would think that a Bishop of the Church would be cognizant with the basic facts of the personage that he extolled as the Savior of the World, instead we find a gentleman that flies in the face of the gospels and reports a long life (no mention of crucifixion or resurrection) and journeys in Asia in the presence of the Apostle John!

The second bishop, Epiphanius of Salamis (310-403 CE) reported in Haer 29.3: “For with the advent of the Christ, the succession of the princes from Judah, who reigned until the Christ Himself, ceased. The order failed and stopped at the time when He was born in Bethlehem of Judaea, in the days of Alexander, who was of high-priestly and royal race …And this Alexander, one of the anointed and ruling princes placed the crown on his own head ...After this a foreign king, Herod, and those who were no longer of the family of David, assumed the crown." Now we have a bishop of a later period that would lead us to believe that Jesus was born at least 66 years prior to the “accepted” date. It seems at that even at that late a date the personal information on Jesus is not readily available, even to members of the hierarchy of the church! Since Salamis (an island just off the coast of Athens) was well inside the area supposedly evangelized by the Apostles, it would seem that this information would be readily available to laity and clergy alike! With these last two reports and that of the gospels of Luke and Matthews, the period of discrepancy has been opened from 10 years to well over a century or nearly 2 centuries, depending on how you look at it (Alexander Janneus ruled Judea from 103 to 76 BCE and Trajan ruled Rome from 98 to 117 CE)!

Now what does all this have to do with the “price of tea”? Good question! Have you ever noticed that one of the arguments for the validity of the gospels is that they came out so soon after the crucifixion? If you can’t pin point the date of birth and date of death of a character that is only reported in a small collection of theistic literature, with no supporting contemporary secular material, you can by no means state how soon after the execution these gospels were written. You might possibly be able to pinpoint when they were actually written (this is not possible at present, although evidence for a date later than most Christians want is strong), but you can’t say how close in time they were to the actual events! There were several Jesus characters in the preceding years before the currently held period of Jesus’ life that could be the very model or models that his persona was built on. One, Jesus ben Pandira is believed to have been the “Great Teacher” of the Essene sect of Judaism. It is entirely possible that Christianity is a mere spin off of the Essene sect, sanitized and modified for Gentiles and perpetrated by Paul and Peter.

Without a valid birth date and a valid contemporary and secularly supported date of death/execution, the very existence of Jesus is called into question. We actually know the traditional birth date of his closest competitor, Mithra. Mithra was born on Dec 25th 272 BCE of the virgin Anahita, in a cave in the Persian province of Sistan. We know the basic life information (Mithra ascended into heaven in 208 BCE) on this Savior that Christians deny, yet we have no real idea of when their Savior was born or died! With a singular lack of non-contradictory information from the early Christians and two gospels that do not mention his birth (only his death) and two that disagree by at least 10 years on when he was born, one might easily draw the conclusion that the true Christianity (Gnosticism) was cut out and replaced by a copy of the Mystery Cults so popular in the Roman Empire of that period! Does anyone wish to show us a valid birth date (agreeing with both gospels and history) and clear this all up?

***Traditional Christian scholars want a pre 70 CE date for Mark, but the reference of Legion (Mark 5:1-20) may very well be a thinly disguised reference to Legio X, the 10th Legion who occupied the Temple compound in 70 CE…the standard of Legio X was a boar. Hermann Detering, the German biblical scholar calls for an even later date than most unbiased scholars. He postulates that the “Abomination of Desolation” refers not to the occupation of the temple in 70 CE, but instead to the revolt of 135 CE, which resulted in the total defeat and complete elimination of Judea. This is based on the reference to False Christ’s in Mark 13:21-22 and he sees as a reference to Simon Bar Giora and other would-be Messiahs of that revolt. So, I am being liberal in my assignment of the dates that I give for Mark.

Initial thoughts:
Quirinius was consul for part of 12 BCE, so what was he doing in 8 BCE?
Luke does not specify what office Quirinius held. IIRC, he uses a word derived from hegemon which could be any sort of leader.

Since Consul was an elected office and it’s tenure was for one year (1 Jan to 1 Jan), Quirinius served as one of the two elected consuls (he served with C. Valgius Rufus) in the year 12 BCE. Because he was a patrician of consular rank, the only provincial position that tradition and imperium would allow him to accept and conversely would allow even the Emperor offer him would be that of Governor (Rector provinciae,). To offer him otherwise would, at this early stage of the Empire, have been met with a total rebellion of the Roman Senate because of the precedence it would set. Even then, the 8 BCE census was a census of Roman Citizens, one of three that Augustus ordered during his reign, not a census of a client state (which Judea was at that time – a client state being independent and allied to Rome, with it’s own ruler, own laws and own CENSUS)
Were we even to accept that Quirinius was an unrecorded Rector provinciae of Judea in 8 BCE and that the 8 BCE census was “world-wide”, you would have the problem that Jesus would be starting his ministry in 22 CE and would be executed in 24 CE, missing both John the Baptist and Pontius Pilate. As you can see, Quirinius as Rector provinciae in 8 BCE does more damage than help to the question!