When was Jesus born, and who ruled then?

Question

Accepted Answer

Jesus was born a few years before the start of the Christian era: most scholars place the birth between about 6 and 4 BC, in the last years of Herod the Great, king of Judea under the emperor Augustus; a minority, dating Herod's death to 1 BC, place it in 3–2 BC; the map uses 5 BC as a conventional point. Matthew says: "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem", and Luke also opens "in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea". Herod had taken Jerusalem in 37 BC and died after a lunar eclipse and before Passover, as Josephus says; this is usually dated to 4 BC, by some to 1 BC. The birth therefore falls before Herod's death. Luke adds that John the Baptist began to preach in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, AD 28/29, and that Jesus was then about thirty years old, which fits roughly. The Christian era itself was fixed centuries later and set the birth a few years too late. Rome's emperor was Augustus (27 BC–AD 14), and Judea was a client kingdom of Rome. After Herod's death his sons divided the land: Archelaus took Judea, and Matthew says that Joseph, afraid of Archelaus, settled in Galilee, which Herod Antipas ruled. Luke's census under Quirinius is a known difficulty: Josephus dates Quirinius's census to AD 6, when Judea became a Roman province, and how this fits the reign of Herod is debated, so the map does not tie the birth to it.