Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/820

 CHRONOLOGY

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CHRONOLOGY

if Herod died in the year 4 b. c, we should be taken to 6 or 7 B. c. as the year of the Nativity.

But a difficulty is raised as to the date of the Na- tivity in connexion with the Roman census mentioned in the second chapter of St. Luke. The Nativity took place after a decree had gone forth from Caesar Au- gustus that the whole Roman Empire should be en- rolled. The words. ' ' This enrolling was first made by Cyrinus, the governor of Syria" (verse 2), or, more correctly, "This first census was taken whilst Qui- rinius was governor of Syria", are the source of the difficulty. For we know that Publius Sulpicius Quirinius was governor of Syria, and that a census was made in A. d. 7, about eleven years after Herod's death, and it is not denied that Cyrinus was Quirinius. Schtirer, in "The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ" (Div. I, Vol. II, 105-143), endeavours to prove that the statement is an inaccuracy on the part of St. Luke, and, with more or less emphasis, practi- cally all the critical school takes up the same attitude. But prima facie we are not disposed to accept the contention that St. Luke was in ignorance on such a very elementary subject. C. H. Turner, in Hastings' "Dictionary of the Bible", thinks he may have been misinformed, since "his acquaintance with Palestine was perhaps limited to the two years' imprisonment of St. Paul in Caesarea". Such an idea seems most unlikely. St. Luke had made careful inquiry about the facts he relates in his Gospel; he had "diligently attained to all things from the beginning", and that too from those who "were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word" (i, 2, 3). For such a man it seems in- credible that he should not have taken the trouble to inquire, not as to some petty Jewish custom, but as to such a public and important event as a Roman census, and to have made himself acquainted with the name of the Roman governor at the time.

At the same time it is not clear what the explana- tion of the note about Quirinius is. Some suggest that irpuiTTi has, as it undoubtedly has sometimes in classical Greek, the force of irpbrepa, so that the sense of the passage would be: "This census was held before that which took place when Quirinius was governor of Syria". But there is another explanation. It is true the writer of the article on Chronology in Cheyne's " Encyclopaedia " says, with characteristic positive- ness, that "any census in Judea before the well-known one in the year A. D. 7, is impossible". But on the other hand, Turner, in Hastings' "Dictionary", thinks that there is no inherent improbability in the hypothesis of a census in Judea somewhere within the years 8-5 b. c. There is very little doubt, from an 'inscription found at Tivoli in 1764, that Quirinius was twice governor of Syria; once, as is well known, from A. d. 6-11, but also once at an earlier period. Not at the time of Herod's death, for Quinctilius Varus was then governor; and before him came Sen- tius Saturninus from 9-6 b. c, before him Titius. But there is no reason why Quirinius should not be placed after Varus. In that case Saturninus would have been the one to begin the census; it would have been suspended for a time, on account of the death of Herod, and then continued and completed under Qui- rinius, so that his name would have been associated with it. Perhaps this may explain why Tertullian speaks of a census made by Sentius Saturninus under Augustus (Adv. Marcionem, iv, 19); but it is hardly likely, ii he had found another and, apparently, a wrung name in St. Luke, that he would not have taken any notice, or given any explanation of it.

From the evidence it seems that the date of the Nativity given by Dionysius Exiguus is not the right one, for it is after Herod's death. Tertullian and Irrna'iis are nearer to I he trut Ii with the years 2 or 3 B. <'.; but it must be placed still further back, and probably the year 7 b. c. will not be found to be much astray.

(10) Date of the Beginning of the Ministry. — There is reason to suppose that the early Fathers (such as St. Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian) and later writers (as Dionysius Exiguus), in trying to fix a date for the Nativity, argued back from the synchron- isms connected with the beginning of Our Saviour's public life, joined with St. Luke's statement, "And Jesus himself was beginning about the age of thirty years" (iii, 23; — atirbs ?iv 'ItjaoOs apxbp-cvos oiatl iruiv rptdKovra); for they took that passage to mean that Jesus Christ had not completed thirty years, but was in the beginning of his thirtieth year (cf . Epipha- nius, "Haer.", Ii, 16). But dpxbp-evos does not bear such a meaning here; it is not immediately connected with the phrase o>ael iruiv rpidKoma, which means "about thirty years", and might without any strain- ing of its sense be used for a year or two more or less than thirty. So that, to determine the date of Our Lord's baptism from this passage, we should have to add on about thirty years to the date of the Nativity (about 7 years B. a), which would leave us with the indefinite result that it might have taken place any- where between A. d. 23 and 27. But in the Gospel of St. John (ii, 20), shortly before the Pasch, and after the miracle of Cana, Jesus cast the buyers and sellers out of the Temple; and the Jews in upbraiding Him used the words, reaaapaKovra icai ?£ irztnv i^Ko5op.-q8t] 6 vadi ovtos (Six and forty years has this temple been a-building), meaning, that at that time the Jews had been forty-six years at work building the Temple. In that passage is contained a clear mark of time. For though Josephus tells us in one place (Bell. Jud., I, xxi, 1), that the Temple was begun in the fifteenth year of Herod, and in another (Ant., XV, ii, 1) in the eighteenth, still in all probability, as Turner says in Hastings (p. 405), the former is a correction of the latter date, and the fact is that the Temple was begim in the eighteenth year of Herod's de facto reign (which began in 37 b. a), or in other words, that it was begun in 19 b. c. We should thus arrive at the year A. d. 27, for the date of the Pasch following Our Saviour's baptism. Again, St. Luke (iii, 1), assigning a date to the beginning of St. John the Baptist's mission, says it was "in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tibe- rius Caesar". The fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar would be A. n. 28, and would make it necessary for us, if correct, to alter the date fixed for Our Saviour's baptism. But Professor Ramsay (St. Paul the Trav- eller, p. 3S7) thinks the fifteenth year of Tiberius is reckoned from a. n. 12, when he was associated with Augustus in the government of the empire. That would take us to A. d. 6 for the beginning of St. John's ministry, and would allow enough time for the baptism of Our Lord in A. D. 27.

(11) Duration of the Ministry. — Various periods have been defended for the length of Christ's min- istry. St. Irenaeus (Haer., II, xxii, 3-6) goes so far as to suggest a period of fifteen years. On the other hand, many of the early Fathers, as well as many writers of our own time, confine the public life of Jesus to one year. Thus von Soden. in Cheyne's •■ Encyclopaedia", says, "The evidence here points on the whole to one year". The difference of opinion is based, for the most part, upon the different accounts given by St. John and the Synoptists of Christ's pub- Be life." Whilst the Fourth Gospel indicates three or even more paschs, it is not so easy to deduce even two from the Synoptist narrative. It would be possible to interpret St. John's Gospel so as to fit in with t he theory of there being only one year's ministry, pro- vided we could omit, with Westcott and Hurt, the words t6 Trdcrxa from the passage (vi, 4), Jjv Si fyyi' t6 irdffxa V iopr^ ru>v 'lovSalwv (Now the pasch, the festival day of the Jews, was near at hand). But even the great names of these two textual critics can- not outweigh the fad thai all the MSS. and versions, and nearly all the Fathers, contain tA ird<rxa.