Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene,
All of the provincial affairs of the empire were in the hands of Tiberius from the date 11 A.D.; and, as Robertson noted, "Luke would naturally use the provincial point of view."[3] This dates the emergence of John the Baptist and the beginning of the ministry of Christ, the latter being in 26 A.D., and John's ministry having been prior to that, with the two overlapping somewhat, as detailed in John's Gospel.  This harmonizes with a date of April 6,30 A.D. for Jesus' crucifixion, as recently determined scientifically through computer studies.[4] It is further corroborated by Matthew's Gospel, which definitely placed the birth of Christ prior to the death of Herod the Great (4 B.C.).  The calculation based on  John 2:20, where Jesus' enemies affirmed that the temple had been under construction for forty-six years, also confirms this.  "The temple was begun the year the emperor came to Syria; and this was in 20 or 19 B.C."[5] Adding the forty-six years brings us to the year 26 A.D. in which the first passover of our Lord's ministry occurred.  Any more exact determination of the date would appear to be impossible at this time, as the many contradictory opinions of great scholars indicate.