In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This census took place first while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) (Luke 2:1,2.)

Now why is this a problem? Well, Luke also says that Jesus was born in the reign of Herod the Great - who died in 4 B.C. But Quirinius was not governor of Syria until 7 A.D. Has Luke made a massive, crashing mistake?

(It's often added that Augustus made no such demand for a universal census. Now if Luke had got that wrong, none of his readers would have taken him seriously; we're talking about events which were within the lifetime of many of his first audience, and a universal census from Augustus would have been big news right across the Empire. What Luke is probably referring to is the fact that Augustus began registering the peoples of all of his territories, in a way that no earlier Emperor had attempted. And that in Judea a census was begun to comply with the Emperor's wishes.)

In fact, although we don't know the answer, there isn't necessarily a problem. There are at least two possible reasons for the seeming contradiction:

• The verse may mean `This was the first census carried out by Quirinius...' In other words, Quirinius was in post in Syria twice; and there was a census on both occasions. This is the solution adopted by the influential NIV Study Bible: `This official was possibly in office for two terms, first 6-4 BC and then AD 6-9. A census is associated with each term. This is the first; Ac 5:37 refers to the second.'
• The verse may mean `This census was first completed when Quirinius was governor...' This solution was strongly argued by Alfred Edersheim in his classic Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. His book dates from 1883, but the points it makes are still valid. He says:
  • It is clear from Acts 5:37 that Luke knew all about the census in 7 AD, so he's not likely to have been confused about it
  • The mention of Cyrenius in Luke 2 isn't necessary for Luke's story, and so `the writer must have intended thereby emphatically to mark a certain event. But an author would not be likely to call special attention to a fact, of which he had only indistinct knowledge'.
  • Since Luke would have been easily able to determine the date of the taxation (having done his research in Judea!), he's unlikely to have blundered over something so simple
  • We know that Augustus `made registers' of the peoples of his empire; it's entirely reasonable to expect that Herod, who wanted to be friends with the Emperor, would initiate a registration even if Rome hadn't insisted on it; and also that Herod would conduct it in the Jewish way rather than the usual Roman method, to defuse the hostility that Jews would feel about the whole thing. Hence the instruction for citizens to return to their ancestral home towns.
  • The census then `first [really] came to fruition when Quirinius was governor of Syria'. Herod started it, but his sudden death ended the scheme temporarily. Quirinius built on the earlier work to complete the census when Judea had become a Roman province a few years later. The word egeneto, used for `took place' or `came to fruition', has precisely this sense in Acts 2:28, which talks about the fulfilment of something which had been predicted a few years before.