Κυρήνιος (Lachmann Κυρινος (Κυρεῖνος Tr marginal reading WH marginal reading (see εἰ, ἰ))), Κυρηνίου, ὁ, Quirin(-i)us (in full, Publius Sulpicius Quirinus (correctly Quirinius; see Woolsey in Bib. Sacr. for 1878, pp. 499-513)), a Roman consul A. U. C. 742; afterward (not before the year 759) governor of Syria (where perhaps he may previously have been in command, 751-752). While filling that office after Archelaus had been banished and Judaea had been reduced to a province of Syria, he made the enrolment mentioned in Act 5:37 (cf. Josephus, Antiquities 18, 1, 1). Therefore Luke in his Gospel 2:2 has made a mistake (yet see added references below) in defining the time of this enrolment. For in the last years of Herod the Great, not Quirinius but Sentius Saturninus was governor of Syria. His successor, A. U. C. 750, was Quintilius Varus; and Quirinius (who died in the year 774) succeeded Varus. Cf. Winers RWB, see under the words, Quirinins and Schatzung; Strauss, Die Halben u. die Ganzen (Berl. 1865), p. 70ff; Hilgenfeld in the Zeitschr. f. wissensch. Theologie for 1865, p. 480ff; Keim, i., 399f (English translation, ii. 115); Schürer, Neutest. Zeitgeschichte, p. 161f; Weizsäicker in Schenkel see p. 23ff; (Keil, Comm. üb. Mark. u. Luk., p. 213ff; McClellan, New Testament etc., i., p. 392ff; and Woolsey in B. D. American edition, under the word , and at length in Bib. Sacr. for Apr. 1870, p. 291ff).