Commenting on the problem of Luke 2 and the census of Quirinius, Gregory Boyd wrote:
[Even if it being a mistake is granted] wouldn’t warrant any negative conclusion about Luke’s general reliability. If he were generally unreliable, it is difficult to explain how he got so many other details in his narrative right. But secondly, given Luke’s otherwise demonstrable reliability, it seems appropriate to exercise some caution before concluding that Luke was here mistaken. This is not special pleading. It is the sort of courtesy extended to all historical documents that give us other reasons for placing any degree of trust in them.
There are two possible ways of accounting for this apparent error of Luke. First, we learn from Tacitus (Annals 3:48) and Florus (Roman History 2:31) hat Quirinius led large military expeditions in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, a decade before his holding the governor’s office in A.D. 6. He thus obviously held some significant leadership position at the time. It is not unlikely, therefore, that Luke, in using the general participle hegomoneuo is referring to this “governing” position, or possibly even to an official joint rule, at this time prior to his becoming formal governor in A.D. 6. Ramsey, in particular, was convinced that this was the case. Moreover, two Latin inscriptions, discovered by Ramsey, seem to suggest that Quirinius held some sort of joint office in Northern Syria while heading up his military expeditions.
A second possibility is to translate Luke 2:2 as “This census was before that which Quirinius, governor of Syria, held.” There is no doubt that Luke’s construction, prota geneto hagemoneuontos, can bear this meaning, though it is admittedly more awkward than the standard translation. Still, in light of Luke’s otherwise accurate record of official titles and reigns, it is not unreasonable to accept it, alongside the first explanation. (Gregory A. Boyd, Cynic Sage or Son of God? Recovering the Real Jesus in an Age of Revisionist Replies [Wheaton, Ill.: BridgePoint, 1995], 258-59, italics in original, comment in square bracket added for clarification)
For a discussion of the historical accuracy and reliability of Luke/Acts, see chapter 12, “Acts of Luke’s Mind or Acts of the Apostles? An Examination of the Trustworthiness of Acts,” pp. 247-66.
For those interested, a represtative criticism from a scholarly source of Luke 2 and the census would be the following from the Anchor Bible Dictionary
A great number of other arguments have been adduced at one time or another to reconcile Luke’s narrative with the facts of Roman history. All of them fail to answer four other basic objections to the historicity of Luke’s statement (HJP² 399–427). These are:
1. There is no other evidence for an empire-wide census in the reign of Augustus.
2. In a Roman census Joseph would not have been required to travel to Bethlehem, and he would not have been required to bring Mary with him.
3. A Roman census could not have been carried out in Herod’s kingdom while Herod was alive.
4. Josephus refers to the census of Quirinius in a.d. 6/7 as something that was without precedent in the region.
In the face of these objections, it is impossible to defend Luke’s dating of the Nativity. The easiest explanation for his error is that he wished to provide a synchronism between the birth of Christ and a famous event and so picked upon the census of Quirinius, which caused a great stir throughout the region, as Josephus makes plain. (Potter, D. S. (1992). Quirinius (Person). In D. N. Freedman (Ed.), The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (Vol. 5, pp. 588–589). New York: Doubleday.
