Publius Sulpicius Quirinius (c. 51 BC – AD 21) was a Roman aristocrat. After the banishment of the ethnarch Herod Archelaus from the tetrarchy of Judea in AD 6, Quirinius was appointed legate governor of Syria, to which the province of Iudaea had been added for the purpose of a census.
Born into an undistinguished family in the neighborhood of Lanuvium, a Latin town near Rome, Quirinius followed the normal pathway of service for an ambitious young man of his social class. According to the Roman historian Florus, Quirinius defeated the Marmaridae, a tribe of desert raiders from Cyrenaica, possibly while governor of Crete and Cyrene around 14 BC, but nonetheless declined the honorific name “Marmaricus”. In 12 BC he was named consul, a sign that he enjoyed the favour of Augustus.
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Author: Wikipedia
Keywords: Cyrenius, Quirinius, governor of Syria
Bible reference(s): Luke 2:2
Source: This article uses material from the Wikipedia article “Quirinius,” which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
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