Gospel LK 2:1-14
In those days a decree
went out from Caesar Augustus
that the whole world
should be enrolled.
This was the first
enrollment,
when Quirinius was
governor of Syria.
So all went to be
enrolled, each to his own town.
And Joseph too went up
from Galilee from the town of Nazareth
to Judea, to the city of
David that is called Bethlehem,
because he was of the house
and family of David,
to be enrolled with Mary,
his betrothed, who was with child.
While they were there,
the time came for her to
have her child,
and she gave birth to her
firstborn son.
She wrapped him in
swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger,
because there was no room
for them in the inn.
Note:
Augustus's
reign laid the foundations of a regime that lasted, in one form or another, for
nearly fifteen hundred years through the ultimate decline of the Western Roman
Empire and until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Both his adoptive surname,
Caesar, and his title Augustus became the permanent titles of the rulers of the
Roman Empire for fourteen centuries after his death, in use both at Old Rome
and at New Rome. In many languages, Caesar became the word for Emperor, as in
the German Kaiser and in the Bulgarian and subsequently Russian Tsar (sometimes
Csar or Czar). The cult of Divus Augustus continued until the state religion of
the Empire was changed to Christianity in 391 by Theodosius I.
There is a
reference to Quirinius in the Gospel of Luke chapter 2, which links the birth
of Jesus to the time of the Census of Quirinius, although this appears to
contradict the time of Jesus birth given in the Gospel of Matthew. Quirinius served as governor of Syria with
authority over Iudaea until 12 AD, when he returned to Rome as a close
associate of Tiberius. Nine years later he died and was given a public funeral.
