Bible Lexicons

It is hardly necessary to observe that a very large number of the papyri are census papers, and that by their aid a fourteen years’ period has been established during the Imperial age : the discovery was first made by Wilcken, Hermes xxviii. p. 230 ff. (1893). The oldest certainly dated census paper is one of A.D. 34, published in Philologus lxxi. p. 24 ff. : ἀπογράφομαι εἰς τὸ ἐν [εσ ]τὸς κ ̄ ἔτος Τιβερίου Καίσαρος Σεβαστοῦ. The editor, S. Eitrem, remarks that P Oxy II. 254 probably belongs to A.D. 20. See Grenfell and Hunt’s long introduction to that document, discussing the argument of Sir W. M. Ramsay in his Was Christ Born at Bethlehem? (1898); and note that they think P Oxy II. 256 might even go back to A.D. 6. For the κατ᾽ οἰκίαν ἀπογραφή of the Ptolemaic period, see P Petr III. 59 (d), a very early example. They were made every year, and included the name of the owner and other occupants of each house, then the total number of inhabitants, and the number of males. In later times we find in the ἀπογραφή a return of property, as in P Oxy I. 72 (A.D. 90),—of a slave, as ib. 73 (A.D. 94), and of sheep and goats, etc., as 74 (A.D. 116)—the two latter are examples of the annual registration. See Wilcken, Grundzüge I. p. 175 f., and for the Imperial census pp. 192 f. and 202 f. He accepts P Oxy II. 254 and 255 as belonging to the census of A.D. 19–20 and 47–8 respectively; and agrees with Grenfell and Hunt that ";this census was established in B.C. 10–9 or A.D. 5–6."; In favour of this is the fact that the new λαογραφία, poll-tax, which was closely connected with the census, was in operation in B.C. 19–8. Wilcken’s points must not be repeated here, for we cannot spare room for the Realien. He shows that the purpose of the census was to determine the total population of Egypt, and each person according to his residence, ἴδια : this is specially brought out by the edict of Vibius Maximus (P Lond 904 = Selections no. 28), in which the Prefect orders all to return to their homes for the census of A.D. 104. (See further on this Wilcken’s introduction to the document in Chrest. I. 202, p. 235 f., and Deissmann LAE p. 268 f. There seems to be an unnoticed reference to this requirement in the late iii/A.D. document, P Oxy VIII. 1157 : the writer asks his sister to register him in his absence if possible, and if not to let him know, that he may come and do it.) Wilcken shows that personal attendance to the duty of εἰκονισμός (cf. P Oxy VII. 1022) was necessary, and brings into connexion the story of Luke 2:1-52. The only thing he does not explain is his own use of the term ";legend"; (l. c. p. 194). The deduction so long made from Luke’s shocking blunders about the census apparently survives the demonstration that the blunder lay only in our lack of information : the microbe is not yet completely expelled. Possibly the salutary process may be completed by our latest inscriptional evidence that Quirinius was a legate in Syria for census purposes in B.C. 8–6 (see Expositor VIII. iv. pp. 385, 481 ff.).