There has been much discussion about the text of v.^, but the right reading is certainly aiiT-ij dircTYpatprj trpumj iyivcro rpfip-oviijovro^ ttjs 2i'p/as Kupi)fiov: 'This took place as a first enrolment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria.' t And this remark is made in order to distinguish this census from the one in A.D. 6, 7, when Q. certainly v-as governor and conducted the census (Ac i}^\ Jos. Ant. XVIII. i. 1, ii. 1). But it is hard to see how Q. could be governor when Herod died in B.C. 4. From B.C. 9 to 6 Sentius Saturninus was governor ; J from B.C. 6 to 4 Quinctilius Varus. After that nothing is clear till A.D. 6, when P. Sulpicius Quirinius succeeds and holds the census of Ac 5". Bergmann, Mommsen, Zumpt, and others have shown that this governorship of Q. was probably not his first, but that he was in otlice during part of the interval between B.C. 4 and A.D. 6, viz. B.C. 3, 2. But it stilt remains as in- credible as ever it was that Q. was governor be/ore the death of Herod ; and until that is established we must admit that Luke is at least a year wrong in his chronology. Even Zahn, who denies the later governorship of Q., and asserts that only one census was taken, viz. in B.C. 4 to 2 (to which he refers both Lk 2- and Ac 5^), is obliged to place the census after Herod's death. No help on this
Soint is obtained from the oft-quoted testimony of ustin Martyr, who in three passages places the birth of Christ iirl Ku/n^Wou, and in one of them says that the birth at Bethlehem may be learned ^k tCiv itroypatpuii' tCiv yevofUviav iirl Kvptjpiov tqD vficr^pov iv '\oviai(f irpwTou ytvoiUvov iiriTpiwov (Apol. i. 34, 46 j
• If the wind In (his awe hwl been anti-cyclonic (which ia probable) the direction would have changed from N.F^ to E. »nd trom E. to .S.E. and from tliis to S. and S.W., which would have driven the ship into the sea of Adria.
t The name is Quirinius, not Quirinus ; see Fumeaux on Tac. ^nn, ii. 30. 4; and xyiu^ttiUtrot may^'waJl commanding' an army (but ft. the use of the word in Lit 8').
t Tertullian {ado. Marcion, Iv. 10) says that the census was token by Saturninus; yet he himself places the birth of Christ •.a 3 {.adv. Jud. 6%
Dial. 78). But it should be noted that Justin calls Q. iTlTpoiros, prociirafnr, not legatus, as he was in A.D. 6. The word which Ltike uses is indefinite (■rryeiJLoveviji), and might be employed of any kind of ruler ; but in the only other pla(^e in Avhich he uses it (3') it is of the promrator I'ontius Pilate. L'ntil Judaja became a Roman provin"e in A.D. 6 there would be no procurator in the strict sense j but Q. may have had some military position in Syria even before the death of Herod, and also have been concerned with the census. Ami this is perhaps Luke's meaning ; he may not be giving a mere date. In any case Christians who were inventing an ex-
filanation of the birth at Bethlehem would not be ikely to attribute it to Roman and heathen causes. The error, if there be one, has probably foundation in fact ; and, moreover, is not the result of confusion with the later census A.D. 6, 7, which Luke himself notices Ac 5".
The general result is that if a mistake has not been proved, neither has it been disproved. \i the accuracy of Luke in many other details were not so conspicuous, one would say that there probably is some mistake. But the error would not be great, if Q. held some ollice in Syria B.C. 3, 2, and helped to complete a census which was begun before the death of Herod. And there is no error, if Christ's birth is to be placed B.C. 6 (vol. i. p. 405), and Q. was in command in Syria then, whicn would be the right time for the first of .a series of enrolments, of which that in Ac 5" was the second.*
LiTKRATtTRE. — See the commentaries of Farrar and Godet : the Lives of Christ by Andrews, Didon, Edersheini, Keiin, and B. Weiss; the articles 'Cyrenius' in .Smith, Dl>-, and 'tinhatzun^ 'in Hci-zofr; tlie niunographs ni Zumpt on ' DiiatJeburtsjahrChnsti,' 18«1) (llibl. .S'rt<-ra, 187(1), and of Zahn, ' Pie Syr. .Stnttlialterschaft und d. Schat/.unif des Quirinius,* in Neue Kirchl. Zt»jt. 18!»3 ; and above all, Schiirer, hlJ P I. ii. 105 ff., and Itamsay, H'a« Christ born at Bethtchemi 1898. See ako Haverfield in Class. Rev., July 1000, p. 309. A. PLUMMER.
QUIT is both an adj. and a verb. 1. The adj., as Skeat shows, is oldest. It comes from Old tr. quite (mod. quitte), which is the Lat. guietu-t in its late sense of free from obligation. This is the meaning of the word in AV, where it occurs : Ex 21" ' If he rise again, and walk abroad upon his stafl', then shall he that smote him be quit ' (npji) ; 2r-», .Jos 2^ (both Vi). Cf. Udall's Erasmus' Paraph, ii. 279, ' But he that sticketh his brother with the darte of a venemons tongue, although he be quitte by mannes lawes from the crime of man- slaughter, yet by the law of the gospel he is giltie of manslaughter ' ; Jer 25''" Cov. ' ye shall not go quyte."