“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Cesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.”
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world — Luke's precise imperial dating is the Gospel's most explicit connection between the Jesus story and world history. Caesar Augustus, the emperor who had brought the Pax Romana and styled himself as the divine bringer of universal peace, unknowingly serves the purposes of God's redemptive plan. The census that relocates a Galilean family to Bethlehem is the Roman instrument of the divine prophecy: Micah 5:2 required the Messiah's birth in Bethlehem of David.
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