Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/342

 332 Journal of Philology. originally obtained by taking the fixt, Julian equivalent for the 1 1 Tybi of 15 Tiberius, supposed to belong to the moveable year. The year to which the most ancient writers usually assign the Crucifixion of our Lord is the 15th of Tiberius, Coss. cluobus Geminis = a. d. 29. In the Western Church, the consent to this year is all but general. In the Eastern Church, the same year is either named or implied in the two earliest extant testimonies, that of Clement in our passage, and that of Julius Africanus. This has been abundantly shown elsewhere, and it is needless to repeat the evidence. But if the year was a. d. 29, the day, being 14 Nisan, would be either 16 April, which, however, was a Satur- day, or 18 Mar. which was a Friday, and so verifies the con- ditions. The early Latin writers place it a week later, Friday 25 Mar., a date originally obtained by the use of faulty paschal cycles, but recommended by its coincidence with the day (as received in the early centuries of our era) of the Vernal Equinox: but that the genuine paschal date 18 Mar. was known and received at an earlier period is shown (1) by the fact that in the Canon of Hippolytus (a. d. 221) the paschal terminus was set at 18 March, (2) that in Epiphanius's time there were copies of the so-called Acta Pilati, in which the Passion was assigned to 15 kal. April. =18 Mar., though most of the copies exhibited the date 8 kal. April. = 25 Mar. (Hwr. i. 420). It should also be premised, that, according to a statement preserved by Origen (Horn, in Jer. xiv. and c. Cels. iv. 22) and often repeated by later writers, the interval from the Passion to the destruction of Jerusalem (mistakenly assigned to a. d. 71) was forty-two years. It is pro- bable that a period of exactly that length was intended, namely, from the passover-day on which our Lord suffered, to the day on which the siege of Jerusalem began with the appearing of Titus and the Roman armies under the walls of the city, which day according to Joscphus was "the very day of the Passover" (the interval from a d. 29, just 41 Jewish years*). 18 or 19 vSept. B.C. 3, in which year the mystical considerations alxive ;ini signed to the days of autumnal equinox the more correct cycles which were in and Bummer solstice, of Christ to the use in the fourth century. And this vernal equinox and winter solstice. arrangement was recommended by the * The interval was made forty -1 v. o