Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/1849

 number of the year 567, to which the accompanying xv. indictio corresponds, for 567 + 3 = 570; and 570/15 has no remainder. XV is therefore the indiction of the year 567, which more accurately belongs to the year from 1st Sept. 566 to 31st Aug. 567. And since the day of the month is mentioned in the inscription, it is the 25th July 567 that is indicated. For it appears to me undoubted that the indictions, according to the usual mode of computation among the Greeks, begin with the 1st Sept. 312. Thus a Sidonian inscription of dec. 642 a.d. has the I indiction (Corp. Inscr. Gr. 9153)....” Thus far Prof. Piper's communication. According to this satisfactory explanation of its date, this inscription is perhaps not unqualified to furnish a contribution worth notice, even for the chronology of the life of Jesus, since the Ghassinides, under whom not only the inscription, but the Monastery itself 300 years earlier, had its origin, dwelt in Palestine, the land of Christ; and their kings were perhaps the first who professed Christianity. The “festival of the Monastery of Job,” which, according to Kazwînî's Syrian Calendar, the Christians of the country celebrated annually on the 23rd April, favours the pre-Muhammedan importance of the Monastery. This festival in Kazwînî's time, appearing only by name inf the calendar, had undoubtedly ceased with the early decline of Christianity in the plain of Hauran, for the historically remarkable Exodus of a large portion of the Ghassinides out of the cities of Hauran to the north of Georgia had taken place even under the chalifate of Omar. The Syrian Christians of the present day celebrate the festival of Mâr Gorgius (St. George), who slew the dragon (tennîn) near Beirût, on the 23rd April. A week later (the 1st May, oriental era) the Jews of Damascus have the sôm Êjûb (the fast of Job), which lasts twenty-