CHRONOLOGY, fourteen years’ census which the evidence of papyri has lately established for Egypt, at least from a.d. 20 onwards. Reckoning back from a.d. 20, the periodic census should fall in 9 B.C., but Ramsay alleges various causes for delay, which would have postponed the actual execution of the census till 7 B.C., and supposes that Quirinius was an imperial commissioner specially appointed to carry it out. The truth seems to rest midway between these extremes. St Luke’s statement of a general census is in all probability erroneous, and the introduction of the name Quirinius .appears to be due to confusion with the census of a.d. 6. But the confusion in question would only be possible, or .at any rate likely, if there really was a census at the time •of the Nativity; and it is no more improbable that Herod should have held, or permitted to be held, a local census than that Archelaus of Cappadocia in the reign of Tiberius (Tacitus, Ann. vi. 41) should have taken a census of his own native state “after the Roman manner.” But St Luke’s account, when the name of Quirinius is subtracted from it, ceases to contain any chronological evidence. (c) Evidence of Tertullian.—Strangely enough, however, the missing name of the governor under whom the census of the Nativity was carried out appears to be supplied by an author who wrote more than a century after St Luke, and has by no means a good reputation for historical trustworthiness. Tertullian, in fact (adv. Marcionem, iv. 19), employs against Marcion’s denial of the true humanity ■of Christ the argument that it was well known that Sentius Saturninus carried out a census under Augustus in Judaea, by consulting which the family and relationships of Christ could have been discovered. This Saturninus was the middle one of the three governors of Syria named above, and as his successor Varus must have arrived by the middle of 6 b.c. at latest (for coins of Varus are extant of the twenty-fifth year of the era of Actium), his own tenure must have fallen about 8 and 7 B.c., and his census cannot be placed later than 7 or 7-6 B.c. The independence of Tertullian’s information about this census is guaranteed by the mere fact of his knowledge of the governor’s name; and if there was a census about that date, it would be unreasonable not to identify it with St Luke’s census of the Nativity. The traditional Western day for the Christmas festival, 25th December, goes back as far as Hippolytus, loc. cit.; the traditional Eastern day, 6th January, as far as the Basilidian Gnostics (but in their case only as a celebration of the Baptism), mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, loc. cit. 2. The interval between the Nativity and the Baptism. Evidence of St Luke’s Gospel (iii. 23).—At the time of His baptism Jesus was apyo/xevos wcrei krdv rpiaKovra, of which words two opposite misinterpretations must be avoided: (i.) dpyo/xevos does not mean (as Valentinian interpreters thought, Iren. II. xxii. 5 [xxxiii. 3]; so also Epiphanius, Hair. li. 16) “beginning to be thirty years” in the sense of “not yet quite thirty,” but “at the beginning of His ministry,” as in Luke xxiii. 5, Acts i. 22, x. 37 (ii.) were! erwv rpiaKovra does not mean “ on attaining the full age of thirty, before which he could not have publicly taught,” for if there was by Jewish custom or tradition any minimum age for a teacher, it was not thirty, but forty (Bab. Talm. ed. 1715, fob 19 5; Iren. loc. cit.). St Luke’s phrase is a general one, “about thirty years old,” and cannot be so pressed as to exclude some latitude in either direction. 3. The date of the Baptism. (a) Evidence of St Luke’s Gospel (iii. 1): a terminus a quo for the Baptism is the synchronism of the commencement of the Baptist’s public ministry with the fifteenth year of the rule (r/ye/xovta) of Tiberius. Augustus died on
BIBLICAL
81
19th August, a.d. 14, and, reckoned from that point, Tiberius’s fifteenth year might be, according to different methods of calculation, either a.d. 28, or 28-29, or 29. None of these alternatives would be at all easy to reconcile with the results yielded by other lines of investigation in this article, and the choice seems to lie between the following views : (i.) The years of Tiberius are here reckoned from some earlier starting-point than the death of his predecessor—probably from the grant to him of co-ordinate authority with Augustus over the provinces made in a.d. 11 (see, for the parallel with the case of Vespasian and Titus, Ramsay, St Paul the Roman Traveller, p. 387), so that the fifteenth year would be roughly a.d. 25; or (ii.) St Luke has made here a second error in chronology, caused perhaps in this case by reckoning back from the Crucifixion, and only allowing one year to the ministry of Christ. (6) Evidence of St John’s Gospel (ii. 13, 20) : a terminus ad quern for the Baptism is the synchronism of the first Passover mentioned after it with the forty-sixth year of the building of Herod’s Temple. Herod began the Temple in the eighteenth year of his reign, probably 20-19 B.c., and the Passover of the forty-sixth year is probably that of a.d. 27. While too much stress must not be laid on a chain of reasoning open to some uncertainty at several points, it is difficult to suppose with Loisy, Revue d’histoire et de litterature religieuses, 1900, p. 536, that the number was intended by the evangelist as purely figurative, and is therefore destitute of all historical meaning. On the whole, the Baptism of Christ should probably be placed in a.d. 26-27; and as the Nativity was placed in 7-6 B.c. (at latest), this would make the age of Christ at His Baptism to be about thirty-two, which tallies well enough with St Luke’s general estimate. 4. The interval between the Baptism and the Crucifixion, or, in other words, the duration of the public ministry of Christ. (a) Evidence of the Synoptic Tradition and of St Mark’s Gospel (ii. 23, vi. 39, xiv. 1). The order of events in the pi’imitive synoptic tradition appears to be faithfully reproduced in St Mark; and if this order is chronological, Christ’s ministry lasted at least two years, since the plucking of the ears of corn (April-June) marks a first spring; the feeding of the five thousand when the grass was fresh green (yAwpds: about March), a second and the Passover of the Crucifixion a third: and these three points are so far removed from one another in the narrative that the conclusion would hold, even if the general arrangement in St Mark were only roughly, and not minutely, chronological. On the other hand, it may be true that an impression of a briefer period of ministry naturally results, and in early generations did actually result, from the synoptic account considered as a whole. (b) Evidence of St Luke’s Gospel (ix. 51-xix. 28 compared with iv. 14-ix. 50; iv. 19). Still stronger is the impression of brevity suggested by St Luke. The second and larger half of the narrative of the ministry is introduced at ix. 51 with the words, “It came to pass as the days of His assumption were coming to the full, He set His face firmly to go to Jerusalem,” under which phrase the evangelist cannot have meant to include more than a few months, perhaps not more than a few weeks ; so that even if the earlier and shorter half of the account, which describes a purely Galilean ministry (“Judaea” in iv. 44, if it is the true reading, means J udaea in the sense of Palestine), is to be spread over a longer period of time, the combined narrative can hardly have been planned on the scale of more than a single year. St Luke himself may have understood literally, like so many of his readers in ancient times, the reference which he records to the S. III. — 11
