The times of our Savior's manifestation among men
EUSEBIUS' ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
D The times of our Savior's manifestation among men (1) AFTER THE NECESSARY PRELIMINARY to the Ecclesiastical History which we have proposed to write, it now remains that we commence our course, invoking God, the Father of the word, and Jesus Christ himself, our revealed Savior and Lord, the heavenly Word of God, as our aid and fellow laborer in the narration of the truth.
(2 (3) This census was mentioned by Flavius Josephus, the distinguished historian among the Hebrews, who also added another account respecting the sect of the Galileans which arose about the same time, of which mention is made by our Luke in his Book of Acts, in the following words: "After this man arose Judas of Galilee, in the days of the taxing
[assessment], and drew away much people after him, he also preached; and all, even as many as obeyed him were dispersed" (Acts 5:37). (4) The aforesaid author, agreeing with this statement in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities, adds the following: "But Quirinius, who belonged to the senate, and having enjoying other offices, advanced through all the grades of office to the consulship, a man also of great dignity in other respects, by the appointment of Caesar, came to Syria, with a small force, and with judicial power over the people, to take a valuation of their property."
(5) A little after he said, "But Judas, the Gaulonite, sprung from the town called Gamala, together with Sadducus, a Pharisee, headed a revolt of the people, saying that the assessment had nothing else in view but manifest slavery; and they exhorted the people to assert their liberty."
(6) He also wrote in the second book of the history of the Jewish War concerning the same man: "About this time a certain Judas of Galilee stimulated the inhabitants to revolt, urging it as a reproach, that they endured paying tribute, and that they who had God for their master, suffered mortals to usurp the sovereignty over them." Thus far Josephus.