THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 From the collection of 
 Julius Doerner, Chicago 
 Purchased, 1913. 
 

* 
 
 
DISSERTATIONS 
 
 UPON AN 
 
 HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS. 
 
DISSERTATIONS 
 
 UPON 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES 
 
 AND 
 
 ARRANGEMENT 
 
 OF AN 
 
 HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS. 
 
 EDWARD GRESWELL, B. D. 
 
 FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 SECOND EDITION, 
 IN FOUR VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. 1. 
 
 OXFORD, 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 MDCCCXXXVII. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/dissertationsupo01gres_0 
 
(% ’SiocL £ 
 
 V.l 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 IN reprinting the Dissertations on the principles 
 and arrangement of an Harmony of the Gospels, 
 published at the University Press in 1830 ; it has 
 been considered adviseable to adopt a larger type, 
 and to depart from the order of the first edition, 
 so far as to transfer to the Appendix some entire 
 Dissertations, and either to the Appendix or to 
 the notes parts of others, which might be convex 
 niently removed from their former situation in the 
 body of the work ; and to number the Disserta- 
 tions consecutively through the several volumes, 
 as far as the Appendix ; the Dissertations assigned 
 to which are still separately numbered as before. 
 In other respects, excepting only verbal alterations 
 or corrections of the style, which the Author has 
 freely made, it will be found that little, if any 
 thing, forms a part of the first edition, which is not 
 included in the second. 
 
 The contents of the supplementary volume, 
 published at the University Press in 1834, are in- 
 corporated in this Edition ; the Dissertations, in 
 the Appendix, and the Notes, in their proper places 
 in the body of the work. Fresh matter has been 
 added to the notes in various instances ; and four 
 integral Dissertations now stand in the Appendix, 
 
 a 3 
 
 4-69855 
 
VI 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 which have never before appeared in print — the 
 Supplement to Appendix, Dissertation xi; the Sup- 
 plement to Dissertation xv. and Appendix, Dis- 
 sertation xix; and the two Supplements to Appen- 
 dix, Dissertation xxvii. which conclude the work. 
 For an account of each of these the reader is re- 
 ferred to the synopsis of the Appendix, or to the 
 tables of contents of the third and fourth volumes 
 respectively. 
 
 Among the Tables, at the end of the fourth vo- 
 lume, there is one which will shew the order and 
 place of the Dissertations in the first edition, and 
 in the supplementary volume, as they are now ar- 
 ranged in the second ; another, which accommodates 
 the references to the first edition of the Disserta- 
 tions, in the Harmonia Evangelica, to the second ; 
 and a third, which does the same for the references 
 to the first edition, or to the supplementary volume, 
 in the Exposition of the Parables, by the same 
 Author, and published in 1834 and 1835. 
 
 In the tables of dates, and other chronological 
 statements, references have been added to the 
 places in the Dissertations, where the statements 
 in question will be found to be verified. Each of 
 the four volumes is provided with a much more 
 circumstantial table of contents than before ; and 
 the whole with a general index of matters, which, 
 whether as complete as it might have been made 
 or not, will be found, it is hoped, sufficiently copious 
 to be useful for all ordinary purposes. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 Vll 
 
 The fourth volume, from the size which it was 
 found to have attained in comparison of the pre- 
 ceding, has been necessarily divided into two 
 parts ; the second part beginning with the Twenty- 
 seventh Dissertation of the Appendix, and the 
 numbering of the pages running on, so that it may 
 still be bound up in one volume with the first part, 
 or separately, as the purchasers of it may prefer. 
 
 Lastly ; no pains have been spared to render 
 this second edition as accurate as possible, and as 
 safely to be depended upon as the judgment of 
 the Author was competent to make it. There is no 
 statement in it, from first to last, it may almost be 
 said upon any point, and certainly upon any point 
 of importance, which has not been considered and 
 reconsidered, before it was allowed to stand : there 
 is not a fact alleged, or an authority appealed to, 
 which has not been carefully examined afresh, to 
 satisfy the Author of its truth, or that it would fairly 
 justify the use which had been made of it : there is 
 not a quotation of any kind, which has not been 
 collated with the original ; nor a reference, with 
 one or two exceptions, which has not been verified 
 by the Author and Editor of the work himself, 
 as it was passing through the press. 
 
 Errors or oversights may possibly have escaped 
 him, notwithstanding all this care to guard against 
 them ; but he trusts that they are few, and after 
 this explanation, that, even if detected, they will be 
 entitled to indulgence. And though he has disco- 
 
 a 4 
 
Vlll 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 vered from experience that much of these pre- 
 cautions was superfluous, and might have been 
 dispensed with, without detriment to the character 
 of the work ; he can never regret that they have 
 been taken, or think any degree of labour ill-be- 
 stowed to acquit himself in the most satisfactory 
 manner of the responsibility of the Author, and 
 the duty of the Editor of a work, devoted to a 
 subject, the importance and dignity of which it 
 is not easy to overrate — and emanating from a 
 Press, the well established reputation of which 
 would be compromised by the inaccuracy of any 
 of its productions — and once more laid before 
 the public, through the liberality of its Board of 
 Delegates. 
 
 C. C. C. OXFORD, 
 
 Feb. 20, 1837. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO 
 
 THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 1 HE advantages of Harmonies of the Gospels have 
 been acknowledged and illustrated even from so re- 
 mote a period as the time of Tatian, the contemporary 
 and reputed disciple of Justin Martyr; so that to 
 expatiate upon them, at the outset of the present work, 
 may justly be considered superfluous. The number of 
 the Gospels, which are four distinct compositions, the 
 community of the subject to which they relate, the 
 vast importance of the Gospel history itself, the very 
 differences, or apparent differences, which exist in the 
 several accounts, seem partly to invite, and partly to 
 require, their comparison and adjustment. No one 
 can study them with that attention which they de- 
 serve, or with that sense of personal interest in them 
 which they are calculated to excite, without endea- 
 vouring to harmonize them, in some manner or other, 
 for himself : he cannot be content to peruse what one 
 of the Evangelists has written, without feeling a wish 
 to contrast his statements with those of another : he 
 cannot consider the general structure and economy of 
 one Gospel, without examining, or desiring to examine, 
 what relation the plan of that one bears to the consti- 
 tution of the rest. 
 
 The pains bestowed upon the composition of Har- 
 monies, as well as the zeal and assiduity with which 
 every other department of sacred literature has been 
 cultivated, are, however, almost an exclusive charac- 
 teristic of modern times. The Harmony, or Diates- 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE TO 
 
 saron, of Tatian, and the Canons of Ammonius, are 
 not merely the earliest, but perhaps the only, speci- 
 mens of the kind which appear to have been produced 
 for many centuries after the Christian era ; but the 
 number which might be cited as the fruit of modern 
 diligence and application would not fall much short of 
 two hundred. This fact is sufficient to prove both the 
 interest which has been taken in the subject of Har- 
 monies, and the difficulty, not less than the supposed 
 necessity, of such compositions. 
 
 It is an obvious inference from the same fact that, 
 with so many in existence, it is scarcely to be ex- 
 pected that another should now be constructed, and by 
 its originality be capable of recommending itself to 
 that fastidious appetite for novelty which, upon ordi- 
 nary subjects, is too apt to reject with disgust the re- 
 petition of what is old or familiar. It is possible, how- 
 ever, that many things may be original, as concerns a 
 particular work, which are not so, perhaps, in them- 
 selves. But upon the subject before us, the desire of 
 change or novelty is least of all things to be gratified 
 from choice, and out of deference to the taste of 
 readers. We cannot be perpetually labouring to frame 
 new systems of Harmonies, and so far overthrowing 
 old, without running the risk of exciting doubts and 
 scruples, which otherwise might never have arisen. 
 The necessity of repeating the same attempt so often 
 would seem, at first sight, to authorize the inference 
 that we cannot even enter upon it with the prospect 
 of success. The difference of opinion which prevails 
 among commentators upon Scripture, the great variety 
 and incompatibility between their several modes of re- 
 conciling the same accounts, would be calculated, with 
 some minds, to operate reflexively against the belief of 
 the truth or the consistency of those accounts them- 
 
THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 xi 
 
 selves. This evil is unquestionably liable to result 
 from the multiplication of Harmonies ; and it should 
 be some ground of discouragement against any preci- 
 pitate and unadvised endeavour to compile more in ad- 
 dition to those which are already in being. 
 
 If, however, it is not in the nature of things impos- 
 sible for the four Gospel narratives to be satisfactorily 
 reduced to one, it is not in the nature of things impos- 
 sible for a perfect Harmony to be composed : but as 
 only one method of reconciling those accounts can be 
 absolutely just and true, so only one Harmony, such as 
 should be founded altogether on the principle of that 
 method, would be absolutely just and perfect. As 
 every method, which should differ from that one, would 
 be false in the principle, so it would necessarily lead to 
 erroneous results in the application ; and every scheme, 
 which should be constructed upon such a principle, 
 would be radically faulty, and unavoidably fail of its 
 effect. If a particular harmonist has not been fortu- 
 nate enough to discover the principle in question, it is 
 no wonder that his peculiar system should be defective 
 in itself, though unlike any other ; that Harmonies, in 
 short, should be almost infinitely numerous, and yet 
 all more or less imperfect. To {yap) a/xapraveLv i ro\\a- 
 ecrr/*. . .to Se KaropOovv /j.ovayws. 
 
 Perhaps, then, neither the number nor the diver- 
 sity of the Harmonies in circulation is justly to be 
 imputed to the obscurity or the inconsistency of the 
 Evangelical narratives themselves : they are presump- 
 tive proofs of nothing except of this, viz. that many 
 among these systems must differ widely not only from 
 each other, but also from the truth. The renewal of 
 the same attempt by one is but a confession of its 
 failure in the hands of another ; for if any Harmony 
 had yet been constructed which the judgment of the 
 
Xll 
 
 PREFACE TO 
 
 learned might have pronounced complete, it must have 
 superseded all the less perfect productions of the same 
 kind which had preceded, and would have left no room 
 for innovation or improvement afterwards. The very 
 number, then, of the Gospel-harmonies in existence 
 may, perhaps, be pleaded in justification of one more : 
 for as long as there is reason to confess that we do 
 not yet possess a correct and sufficient Harmony, so 
 long it is not only excusable, but perhaps even neces- 
 sary, that we should still continue to frame Harmonies, 
 in the hope that one such may be produced at last. 
 
 The best apology, however, which I can offer in be- 
 half of the present work, is a candid statement of the 
 circumstances out of which it arose. I was previously 
 engaged upon an inquiry of a different nature, though 
 connected, it is true, with sacred literature 51 , which ne- 
 cessarily required me to examine, more narrowly than 
 I had ever done before, into the relations of time and 
 place, affecting the order and succession of events 
 throughout the different portions of the Gospel history. 
 In the course of this examination, during which I had 
 to consult some of the most popular Harmonies, I could 
 not but observe in them such remarkable inconsis- 
 tencies as were abundantly sufficient to convince my 
 own mind that the principles, upon which they had 
 proceeded, could not be right. The dissatisfaction pro- 
 duced by this discovery determined me to lay them 
 aside, and to take the four original narratives, and 
 nothing more, into my hands, with a view to frame 
 out of them, for myself, a system which, if it possessed 
 no other merit, might at least avoid such difficulties 
 as had appeared so glaringly and so palpably in the 
 cases alluded to. 
 
 a The work to which I allude is an Exposition of the Gospel 
 Parables. 
 
THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 xiii 
 
 The result of this endeavour is the ensuing Har- 
 mony, in the shape and form under which it is now 
 submitted to the public ; a shape and a form very dif- 
 ferent from that idea of it which its author had con- 
 ceived before he proceeded to the execution of his pur- 
 pose. Had he fully comprehended, indeed, the true 
 nature and extent of his undertaking, and into how 
 wide a field of research and disquisition he would in- 
 sensibly be led, he must have shrunk back from the 
 attempt with a well-founded distrust of his ultimate 
 success : and perhaps he may consider it a fortunate 
 circumstance that he was too inextricably involved in 
 the task, and too deeply interested in its completion, 
 to be able or disposed to recede from its prosecution, 
 when experience had convinced him of its magnitude 
 and its difficulty. 
 
 When I conceived the design of the following com- 
 position, I determined to adopt a rule, to which I have 
 rigidly adhered throughout, and for adhering to which 
 I have hitherto had no reason to blame myself. This 
 was that, in discussing any question, or solving any 
 difficulty, which might present itself, I would trust as 
 much as possible to my own researches, and with the 
 help only of the Gospel narratives, and of such other 
 collateral resources as are open to the learned world in 
 general, would endeavour to reason and to decide for 
 myself. For I was persuaded that, with a mind dis- 
 engaged from preconceived opinions or attachment to 
 particular systems, a moderate share of ability would 
 be sufficient to guide an enquirer ; nor did I see by 
 what other means, than by carefully avoiding all ad- 
 mixture of borrowed matter, I could compose, upon a 
 subject which has been so repeatedly handled, any 
 thing of an original character. 
 
 It is one consequence of this rule, that I have been 
 
XIV 
 
 PREFACE TO 
 
 spared what would have been the most unpleasant 
 part of my task, much dispute and controversy ; for 
 there is scarcely an opinion, connected with the ques- 
 tions requiring to be discussed, which has not some 
 adversary or other. It has rarely happened, therefore, 
 that I have openly entered the lists upon any point, or 
 against any opponent ; or that, even where I had par- 
 ticular opinions to combat, I have not been satisfied 
 with stating the most competent arguments on my 
 own side of the question, without proceeding to notice 
 what might be urged in favour of the contrary. Had 
 I not done this, I must have enlarged the present work 
 to twice its legitimate extent. 
 
 It is another consequence of the same rule, that 
 the following Harmony, and whatever else is prepa- 
 ratory to it, whether they agree or disagree with the 
 opinions already on record upon the same subjects, 
 may equally be called my own. It was not, indeed, to 
 be expected that upon topics like these, which have 
 employed the attention of the learned world for so 
 many centuries, any thing could now be proposed 
 which should possess the recommendation of being al- 
 together new ; and I am prepared to find that I may 
 have been anticipated in many things. But, on the 
 other hand, I am also aware that no one has yet written 
 upon the subject of the Gospel Harmony, with whom 
 it will be seen that I agree throughout : and there- 
 fore that, regarded as a whole, the Harmony, which I 
 offer to the public, may still be considered unlike any 
 other. 
 
 So far, however, as it will be found to have deviated 
 from the principles of former Harmonies, I trust the 
 reader will ascribe the motives of the deviation to no 
 desire of change for its own sake, or disposition to find 
 fault with the labours of my predecessors, whose learn- 
 
THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 xv 
 
 ing, industry, and services to the cause of religion, de- 
 served rather to be made the fit models of my emula- 
 tion, than the objects of my censure. I have already 
 asserted that the origin of this work was the conse- 
 quence of an undertaking of a different description ; 
 and could I have met with any Harmony which was 
 not apparently fraught with more difficulties than it 
 was intended to remove, most gladly would I have ac- 
 quiesced in its use. 
 
 Upon questions indeed which concern profane his- 
 tory or profane chronology, a larger indulgence is due 
 to the freedom of discussion ; for the utmost latitude 
 of conclusion, consistent with the nature of historical 
 evidence, may be allowed in such cases. On these 
 points, then, I do not consider an explanation to be re- 
 quisite for differences between myself and others. And 
 with regard to questions of a graver character, if I 
 have asserted any independence of opinion, it has been 
 simply upon matters of fact, and such as directly con- 
 cerned the proper business of a Gospel Harmony; and 
 wherever I have departed from received positions, it 
 has not been without apparent reason at least, nor 
 without a good effect by illustrating more clearly, or 
 establishing more firmly, the truth and consistency of 
 the Gospel accounts. It will be found, too, that such in- 
 stances concern, after all, the number of dStdcfyopa , upon 
 which, independent of their uses in the above respects, 
 every one may claim an equal liberty of thought and 
 judgment, without any compromise of his orthodoxy. 
 
 If, however, it was not everywhere in my power to 
 elicit new truths, I have yet frequently been able to 
 confirm old or doubtful positions by fresh, and perhaps 
 more convincing, arguments ; while there are parts of 
 the Gospel history into which I may be admitted to 
 have introduced decided improvements. This is more 
 
XVI 
 
 PREFACE TO 
 
 particularly true of the last, the most interesting, and 
 the most eventful, period of all, viz. the six months of 
 our Saviour’s personal history, prior to the resurrec- 
 tion, or perhaps the ascension. There was no period 
 which had been more confused than this ; nor conse- 
 quently where more still remained to be done, with a 
 view to the proper distribution of its contents. In the 
 accounts of the resurrection especially, notwithstand- 
 ing the labour which had been peculiarly bestowed 
 upon them, there was yet one stumblingblock, the re- 
 moval of which, in my opinion, was of the utmost con- 
 sequence to the full proof of the truth and consistency 
 of those accounts ; but which no harmonist, so far as I 
 knew, had succeeded in removing. If I had cleared 
 away this remaining difficulty, or shewn in what way 
 it was to be got over, and had thereby placed the foun- 
 dation of that corner-stone of Christianity on a still 
 surer footing than before, I should not think it neces- 
 sary to apologize for the present work : the Christian 
 world would acknowledge that it had not been un- 
 serviceable to the cause of Christian truth. 
 
 The same remark will apply to the exposition of the 
 prophecy of the Seventy weeks. I shall not stop to 
 point out here the connexion of that exposition with 
 the business of a Harmony of the Gospels ; for that 
 will be seen in due time. I shall observe only that 
 the exposition itself, however new it may appear, and 
 different from the expositions most commonly adopted, 
 possesses at least the merit of being unstrained and 
 inartificial : it is the natural result of the most simple 
 and obvious construction of the prophecy; and it is 
 confirmed by the evidence of as complete and exact a 
 coincidence between the prediction and its fulfilment, 
 as we should have a right to expect from a prophecy 
 which certainly came from God, and was actually veri- 
 
THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 XVII 
 
 fied by the event. On this subject, then, I shall say 
 no more here, except that the consideration of the pro- 
 phecy in question led me step by step into a much 
 wider range of discussion, than could have been ori- 
 ginally contemplated in a work which professed to be 
 merely a Harmony of the Gospels : for I was obliged 
 to examine the chronology of the whole of the Acts, 
 and (as included within such a review) that of St. 
 Paul’s Epistles. A similar necessity in a former in- 
 stance required me to consider the chronology of the 
 two Epistles of St. Peter ; so that, with the exception 
 of the Epistles of St. John, of St. James, and of St. 
 Jude, respectively, and of the book of the Revelations, 
 the proper business of these Dissertations, preliminary 
 to a Harmony of the Gospels, has insensibly involved 
 me in enquiries relating to the entire canon of the New 
 Testament. The same business in another instance 
 compelled me to discuss, though as briefly as the 
 nature of the case would allow me, the whole of the 
 history of the Old Testament, from the creation to the 
 Exodus from Egypt, and from the Exodus to the re- 
 turn from captivity. That these enquiries, however 
 much like irapepya and foreign to my proper purpose 
 they may at first sight seem, were not, under the cir- 
 cumstances of the case, irrelevant to it, every candid 
 censor, I think, will hereafter allow ; and, meanwhile, 
 if the results to which they have led are in any degree 
 satisfactory, whether the enquiries themselves were 
 irrelevant or not, I shall never regret that I entered 
 upon them. 
 
 As the three volumes are all preliminary to the 
 Harmony, so is the first of the three preparatory in 
 some sense to the two last. The questions which it 
 discusses are certainly connected with the subject of a 
 Harmony — but, in comparison of those which are 
 
 vol. I. b 
 
XVlll 
 
 PREFACE TO 
 
 treated of in the second and the third volumes, they 
 are only remotely connected with it. Among these 
 questions some there are, which have exercised the in- 
 genuity of learned men, without their arriving at any 
 satisfactory conclusions, ever since the revival of letters : 
 nor am I vain enough to suppose that they have been 
 settled by my own individual attempts. It will not 
 be laid to my charge, however, that what could rea- 
 sonably be expected from the exertions of one person 
 has not been performed to the utmost ; that I have 
 not endeavoured to sift every question to the bottom ; 
 that the pains and labour of the investigation have not 
 been commensurate to the difficulty or importance of 
 the end proposed. If I have erred, it has been on the 
 score of an over-anxious diligence to render my Dis- 
 sertations even tediously scrupulous and elaborately 
 minute, rather than leave them perfunctory or super- 
 ficial. Perhaps, too, there are some of these contro- 
 verted instances, in which I may be considered to have 
 approximated to the truth as nearly as, under the cir- 
 cumstances of the case, was practicable ; for, if the re- 
 sults of the speculations of learned men upon such 
 questions are not every where final and decisive, the 
 cause must be ascribed to a defect for which no inge- 
 nuity nor industry can compensate, the defect of data. 
 In the course of my researches, it has more than once 
 fallen to my lot to observe that very great names, in 
 every department of sacred literature, have lapsed into 
 mistakes, and mistakes which frequently might have 
 been avoided : nor do I mention this as if to claim any 
 merit to myself for discovering errors into which they 
 had fallen, much less to put myself on a footing of 
 equality with them, but that I may plead the failures 
 of more competent and more learned persons in exte- 
 nuation of my own ; and that the reader may see the 
 
THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 xix 
 
 reasonableness of extending the same indulgence to the 
 defects of the present work, wheresoever they may be 
 discovered, which its author has always been ready to 
 extend to those of others. 
 
 Before I take my leave of the reader, I am anxious 
 to acknowledge my obligations to the Delegates of the 
 University Press, for their readiness in undertaking 
 the publication of this work. 
 
SYNOPSIS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE DISSERTATIONS. 
 
 IT is perhaps an objection to the form of a work, 
 which consists of a series of distinct Dissertations, that 
 it must appear at first sight irregular and unconnected. 
 There is, in reality, an intimate relation between the 
 several subjects of the ensuing treatises, and the order 
 in which one follows or precedes another. But it will 
 facilitate the comprehension of their mutual coherency, 
 and give the reader a clearer perception of the number 
 and variety of the topics hereafter discussed, if we pre- 
 mise, at the outset, a general account of the object or 
 purpose of the Dissertations, both those in the body of 
 the work, and those of the Appendix ; independent of 
 the more particular analysis of each which will be pre- 
 fixed in the Tables of Contents. 
 
 The general body of the work consists of Forty-three 
 Dissertations ; each of them devoted to some question, 
 or more, directly connected with the proper business 
 of an Harmony of the Gospel history. The first 
 three are subservient to the fundamental principle of 
 the work ; which is rested on the truth of the fol- 
 lowing propositions: I. That the last three Gospels 
 are regular compositions : II. That St. Matthew’s Gos- 
 pel is partly regular and partly irregular : III. That 
 each of the Gospels was written in the order in which 
 it stands : IV. That the Gospels last written in every 
 instance were supplementary to the prior. It is the 
 
 b 3 
 
XXI! 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF 
 
 object of the first Dissertation to confirm these propo- 
 sitions by a mode of reasoning, which assumes nothing 
 but the existence of the Gospels themselves : of the 
 second, by the consideration of the historical testimony 
 to the times and order of the Gospels : and of the 
 third, by the examination of St. Matthew’s Gospel in 
 detail, compared with the accounts of the rest. 
 
 It is the object of the fourth Dissertation to ascer- 
 tain the true date of the Passover, John ii. 13, the 
 most cardinal date in the whole of the Gospel history, 
 by ascertaining the sense of John ii. 20. The verifi- 
 cation of this date gives birth to the fifth and sixth 
 Dissertations : the former intended to determine the 
 rule by which Josephus invariably computes the years 
 of the reign of Herod : and the latter, to shew that 
 neither the evidence of the coin of Herod Antipas, 
 nor the supposed time of the eclipse before the death 
 of Herod, is inconsistent with the date of that death, 
 established in Dissertation v. 
 
 The Table of Passovers, or of other Jewish feasts, 
 in the seventh Dissertation, is designed for the sake of 
 reference to the times of such feasts, between certain 
 limits ; allusions to which could not but be perpetually 
 recurring in the course of a work like the present. 
 
 It is the object of the eighth and ninth Dissertations 
 respectively, to reconcile the testimony of St. Luke, as re- 
 gards the fifteenth year of the r/ye/xovla of Tiberius Cae- 
 sar, or the beginning of the government of Pontius Pi- 
 late, with the cardinal date established in Diss. iv. 
 
 The tenth Dissertation determines the interval be- 
 tween the beginning of the ministry of John the Bap- 
 
THE DISSERTATIONS. 
 
 XXlll 
 
 tist, and the close of the ministry of Jesus Christ ; or 
 the whole length of time embraced by them both in 
 conjunction, as well as the particular duration which 
 must be assigned to each of them separately. 
 
 The eleventh Dissertation proposes to determine the 
 true age of our Lord at his baptism, by determining 
 the exact import of the words of St. Luke, at iii. 23. 
 
 The object of the twelfth Dissertation is substan- 
 tially to confirm the following propositions : That the 
 true year of the Nativity was U. C. 750. B. C. 4 : 
 That the time of the year was the spring: That the day 
 of the Nativity was probably the tenth of the Jewish 
 Nisan, and the fifth of the Julian April. 
 
 It is the object of the thirteenth Dissertation to con- 
 firm the conclusions, previously established, by the 
 citation of testimonies from the writings of the most 
 ancient Christians : especially with regard to the time 
 of the year when our Lord was born, to the length of 
 his personal ministry, and to the year of the Roman 
 emperor in which it terminated. 
 
 The fourteenth Dissertation has it in view to de- 
 monstrate that the census at the Nativity must have 
 been held when Saturninus was governor of Syria : 
 and thence to deduce the true sense of Luke ii. 2. 
 which assigns it apparently to the presidency of Cyre- 
 nius, Quirinius, or Quirinus. 
 
 The object of the fifteenth Dissertation is to com- 
 plete the argument in Dissertation tenth, as well as to 
 confirm many other previous conclusions, by the right 
 exposition of the prophecy of the Seventy weeks : the 
 
 b 4 
 
XXIV 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF 
 
 consideration of which necessarily involves the question 
 of the chronology of the first twelve chapters of the 
 Acts of the Apostles. 
 
 It is the object of the sixteenth Dissertation to ex- 
 plain and to reconcile the two genealogies, on the sup- 
 position that St. Matthew’s is the genealogy of our 
 Lord’s reputed father, and St. Luke’s the genealogy of 
 his real mother. 
 
 It is the object of the seventeenth Dissertation to 
 establish such a personal distinction between those who 
 are called in common the ’A SeXcpol of Christ, as will 
 reconcile the Evangelical accounts about them, and no 
 longer leave any difficulty on this point. 
 
 The eighteenth Dissertation, which treats of the visit 
 of the Magi, endeavours to prove that the time of this 
 visit was thirteen months posterior to the first ap- 
 pearance of the star, and four months posterior to the 
 birth of Christ ; and thence to infer that the star 
 appeared twice , once at the Incarnation, and again at 
 the Nativity. 
 
 It is the object of the nineteenth Dissertation to 
 harmonise and arrange the particulars of the ministry of 
 John : and, preliminary to this, to determine the true 
 nature and design of his ministry itself. This Disser- 
 tation also is connected with the general argument of 
 Dissertation x : and its chief purpose is to establish a 
 necessary, but clear, distinction between the proper 
 office and character of John, in which he agreed with 
 those of Jesus Christ, and the truth of his personal 
 relation to Jesus Christ, in which he differed from 
 him. 
 
THE DISSERTATIONS. 
 
 XXV 
 
 The twentieth Dissertation endeavours to shew that, 
 though St. Matthew’s account of the order of the Temp- 
 tation may be the true, St. Luke’s is not inconsistent 
 with it. 
 
 The twenty-first Dissertation carries forward the 
 series of the Gospel history, and at the same time 
 strictly exemplifies the supplementary character of the 
 Gospel of St. John, by shewing that, beginning his 
 narrative precisely where the other Evangelists had left 
 off theirs, he conducts it regularly down to the point of 
 time where St. Luke, in particular, had begun his again. 
 To this Dissertation the twenty-second is attached, with 
 a view to confirm a statement in the Dissertation itself, 
 involving the question of the computation of sab- 
 batic years : one of which is shewn to have actually 
 coincided with the first year of our Saviour’s ministry. 
 
 The twenty-third Dissertation, which is divided into 
 four parts, is designed to give a general preliminary or 
 prospective survey of the whole course of our Saviour’s 
 ministry, both in Judaea, and out of it. The first part 
 is devoted to the consideration of the ministry in Judaea; 
 and its object is to prove that, as St. John alone has 
 given any account of this ministry, so he has given a 
 complete account of it. Each of the last three parts is 
 devoted to a separate year, down to the middle of the 
 third year in particular, where the review will be found 
 to stop short : and the common purpose of all is not 
 merely to give the student of the Gospel history a clear 
 view of the course and connection of his subject before- 
 hand, but to contribute to the general design of the 
 work, by shewing with what facility the Evangelical 
 accounts, duly arranged, may be made to fill up the 
 periods of time allotted to them — to supply in a great 
 
XXVI 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF 
 
 many instances the most distinct proofs of the accom- 
 modation of the later to the prior narratives — and to 
 prepare the way for the discussion of particular ques- 
 tions by a better understanding of the grounds on which 
 they proceed. 
 
 The Dissertations, which follow from the twenty- 
 fourth to the twenty-ninth inclusive, are accordingly all 
 devoted to the discussion of such questions : the twenty- 
 fourth being designed to prove the conclusion that the 
 miraculous draught of fishes, in St. Luke, is no Trajec- 
 tion : the twenty-fifth, that the feast which ensued on 
 the call of Levi is no Anticipation : the twenty-sixth, 
 that the sermons from the mount were distinct, and 
 may be related each in its proper place : the twenty- 
 seventh proposing to reconcile St. Matthew’s account 
 of the time and manner of our Saviour’s interpret- 
 ing the first of his parables with St. Mark’s, or St. 
 Luke’s : the twenty-eighth, to adjust St. Mark’s ac- 
 count of the question concerning eating with unwashen 
 hands to St. Matthew’s : the twenty-ninth, to inves- 
 tigate the proximate cause of the disputes among the 
 disciples concerning precedence, and at the same time 
 to establish a luminous instance of the supplementary 
 relation of St. Mark in particular to St. Matthew. 
 
 It is the object of the thirtieth and thirty-first Dis- 
 sertations respectively, to prosecute the subject discussed 
 in the twenty-third ; and to exhibit another clear and 
 decisive proof of the critical accommodation of St. 
 John’s Gospel to the first three Gospels in general, and 
 of St. Luke’s to the first two in particular. 
 
 The thirty-second Dissertation has it in view to de- 
 termine the locality of the village of Martha and Mary, 
 
THE DISSERTATIONS. 
 
 XXVll 
 
 so far at least as to prove that it was not Bethany : 
 and by way of corollary to this disquisition to explain 
 and illustrate the circumstances of the unction at 
 Bethany. 
 
 It is the business of the thirty-third Dissertation to 
 compare the account of the dispossession in St. Luke 
 with the similar account of St. Matthew ; the result of 
 which comparison is to prove that neither of them is a 
 transposition. 
 
 The object of the thirty -fourth Dissertation is to point 
 out the many critical indications of time, which occur in 
 the twelfth chapter of St. Luke, and which all converge 
 upon one and the same conclusion, that the chapter 
 belongs to the last period of our Saviour’s ministry. 
 
 The object of the thirty-fifth Dissertation is to render 
 it probable that the destruction of the Galileans, alluded 
 to, Luke xiii. 1 . was a recent event, and a consequence 
 of the sedition of Barabbas. 
 
 The object of the thirty-sixth is to harmonize the 
 accounts of St. Matthew and St. Mark, in reference to 
 the question concerning divorce : and the object of the 
 thirty-seventh is, by the simple consideration of later 
 and supplementary accounts, to remove every difficulty 
 connected with the miracles at Jericho. 
 
 The business of the remaining Dissertations is to 
 harmonize the several accounts of the Gospel history, 
 from the time of the arrival at Bethany before the last 
 Passover, to the day of the Ascension into heaven. 
 This object is effected through six consecutive Disser- 
 tations, from the thirty-eighth inclusive to the forty- 
 
xxviii SYNOPSIS OF THE DISSERTATIONS. 
 
 third inclusive — of which the thirty-eighth ascer- 
 tains more particularly the true date of the arrival at 
 Bethany, and the true date of the procession to the tem- 
 ple : the thirty-ninth, the time of the cleansing of the 
 temple: the fortieth, the order and succession of events 
 on the last day of our Lord’s public ministry, and the 
 time of the unction at Bethany : the forty-first, the time 
 of the last supper : the forty-second, the course and suc- 
 cession of events from the evening of Thursday to the 
 evening of Saturday, in Passion-week : and the forty- 
 third harmonizes the accounts of the resurrection itself. 
 The particular purposes, which each of these Disserta- 
 tions also embraces, are too many and various to be 
 comprehended under any general statement ; and will 
 be sufficiently evident from the Table of Contents. 
 
SYNOPSIS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE APPENDIX. 
 
 THE Appendix consists of twenty-seven Disserta- 
 tions, and four Supplements ; or thirty-one Disserta- 
 tions in all : each of these Dissertations, with one or 
 two exceptions, being directly connected with some 
 one or more of those which have preceded in the body 
 of the work. The particular object or use of each 
 may be stated as follows : 
 
 The first of them supplies an answer to one among 
 other objections to the assumption of those supple- 
 mentary relations of the Gospels, which the Au- 
 thor laboured to establish in his first Dissertation ; 
 that even supposing the Gospels to have been written 
 in the order in which they stand — and the later in 
 point of time to have been intended as supplementary 
 to the earlier — still there was no means of knowing, 
 from their own intimations at least, where the one 
 were defective, and the others were supplementary. 
 
 The second Dissertation considers in brief the prin- 
 ciple of classification, on the assumption of which, as 
 the law of narration in the Gospel of St. Luke in parti- 
 cular, it has been attempted to account for the pecu- 
 liarities of its structure, without supposing it written 
 in a regular historical order. 
 
XXX 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF 
 
 In the third Dissertation, a number of facts and tes- 
 timonies are brought together from various quarters ; 
 the joint tendency of which is to imply, that not only 
 Palestine, but almost every other region of Upper or 
 of Lower Asia, which possessed an aboriginal dialect 
 before the introduction of the Greek language among 
 its inhabitants, continued to retain that dialect even 
 after that event. If this point could be sufficiently 
 well established, it seemed to the Author of the pre- 
 sent work a just inference, that a Gospel, like St. 
 Matthew’s, written for native converts belonging to the 
 church of Jerusalem, would be written in the native or 
 vernacular language of Palestine, much more probably 
 than in Greek. 
 
 The fourth Dissertation is intended to verify a state- 
 ment of Josephus, alleged in the fifth general Disser- 
 tation, respecting the length of the Maccabaean or As- 
 monaean dynasty, from the first of Judas Maccabaeus 
 to the capture of Jerusalem by Herod and Sosius, and 
 the death of Antigonus, the last of the Maccabaean 
 princes. 
 
 In the fifth Dissertation, the Author has endeavoured 
 to investigate the precise date of the admission of the 
 two adopted sons of Augustus, Caius, and Lucius Cae- 
 sar respectively, to the privilege of being present at 
 the public deliberations in the senate, or at the privy 
 councils of Augustus. The decision of this question is 
 of use in determining the just construction of the lan- 
 guage of Josephus, with regard to that consultation 
 upon the will of Herod, before Augustus, and Caius 
 Caesar, by which Arclielaus was confirmed in the go- 
 vernment of Judaea, not many months after his father’s 
 death. 
 
THE APPENDIX. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 The authority of Dio Cassius has induced many 
 chronologers to place the removal and banishment of 
 Archelaus, U. C. 759, A. D. 6. But Josephus has in- 
 formed us, that sometime before this removal and ba- 
 nishment he was married to the widow of Juba, king 
 of Mauritania ; and it is capable of being proved with 
 an high degree of probability, that Juba himself did 
 not die before U. C. 759. The details of this proof 
 are given in the sixth Dissertation. If the statement 
 of Dio is disproved thereby, it will follow that the pre- 
 cise date of Archelaus’ removal cannot be earlier than 
 the latter half of the 37th year from the battle of Ac- 
 tium, the first half of U. C. 760, A. D. 7. The pre- 
 cise date of his accession to the throne, and conse- 
 quently of his father’s death, as the spring or Pass- 
 over of U. C. 751, B. C. 3 : and from that fact, the 
 time of our Lord’s Nativity as the year before, U. C. 
 750, B. C. 4 ; may be shewn to follow, as corollaries, 
 from this conclusion, either necessarily or with an 
 high degree of probability. 
 
 The perusal of such of the works of Ovid, as were 
 written after his banishment to the Pontus, will shew 
 that at, and after, a point of time, which coincides 
 with U. C. 765, A.D. 12, allusions occur in them not 
 only to the fact of a triumph , celebrated sometime by 
 Tiberius, but to that of his being in possession of a de- 
 gree of rank, authority, or preeminence, acknowledged 
 in all parts of the empire, which virtually placed him 
 on a par with Augustus. Now U. C. 765, A. D. 12, 
 is the date to which, upon other authorities, the fact of 
 Tiberius’ being invested with proconsular authority — 
 from which investiture St. Luke might calculate the 
 years of his riye/xovla , supremacy, or government — was 
 
XXXll 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF 
 
 to be assigned. This argument is drawn out at length, 
 in the seventh Dissertation. 
 
 Repeated occasions occurring in the course of the 
 work, on which it was necessary to take into account 
 the rate of travelling in ancient times ; and more espe- 
 cially the interval requisite for a communication to 
 pass to and fro, between Judaea and Italy; the eighth 
 Dissertation is devoted to this question ; and by as 
 large an induction of particulars as may suffice for 
 that purpose, establishes the following conclusion, that 
 not less than six weeks in summer, nor than five or 
 six months in winter, would be necessary for the com- 
 munication in question. 
 
 If any means or data could be discovered for decid- 
 ing the controverted question, What was the probable 
 duration of our Lord’s personal ministry ? which would 
 require nothing but the Gospel narratives themselves 
 to supply them, and from the nature of the case might 
 be as easily judged of, and reasoned from, by the most 
 unlearned as the most learned of their readers — such 
 data, it must be confessed, would be of all others the 
 most desirable. Now data of this description are ac- 
 tually furnished by a variety of natural notes of time, 
 incidentally mentioned in the course of the Gospel his- 
 tory. To point these out, and to argue from them se- 
 parately and in conjunction, is the business of the 
 ninth Dissertation : and it is shewn, as the result of 
 this mode of discussing the question, that the length of 
 our Saviour’s personal ministry could not have been less 
 than three years in all, though it might have been more. 
 
 The close of the public ministry of John Baptist by 
 
THE APPENDIX. 
 
 xxxm 
 
 his imprisonment being placed in the spring quarter 
 of A. D. 27, the thirteenth of Tiberius Caesar ; it is 
 the object of the tenth Dissertation to shew that this 
 date of the imprisonment of John is not inconsistent 
 with the date of the fact to which the Scriptural ac- 
 count of his imprisonment refers that event ; viz. the 
 marriage of Herod and Herodias : as there is every 
 reason to believe, from the most careful consideration 
 of the accounts of Josephus with reference to the same 
 thing, that the contract of marriage between Herod 
 and Herodias was actually formed, and John Baptist, 
 in consequence of his denunciation of it, imprisoned, at 
 this very time, before Herod’s departure to Rome. 
 
 The eleventh Dissertation, which must be regarded 
 as strictly supplementary to the twelfth of the general 
 Dissertations, has for its object to render the conclu- 
 sion, respecting the day of our Saviour’s birth, which 
 that Dissertation laboured to establish, still more pro- 
 bable, by making it appear that our Lord was born, 
 in the fulness of time, on the tenth of the Jewish Ni- 
 san and the fifth of the Julian April, B. C. 4, because 
 at the time of the institution of the Passover, and the 
 Exodus from Egypt, the tenth of the Jewish Nisan 
 and the fifth of the Julian April, coincided with the 
 date of the Vernal Equinox : and there were many 
 reasons to render it probable a priori that the date of 
 the Vernal Equinox would be the date of our Sa- 
 viour’s nativity. The particular year, in which April 5 
 as truly represented the date of the Vernal Equinox, 
 as March 24 in the year of the nativity, was B. C. 
 1560 : and the ensuing discussion is directed to shew, 
 that B. C. 1560 was the true date of the Exodus 
 from Egypt — that Nisan 10 in that year coincided 
 with April 5 ; and both with the seventh day of the 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 c 
 
XXXIV 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF 
 
 week ; as they had previously been shewn to do in 
 the year of our Saviour’s birth. 
 
 The details of this proof in the eleventh Dissertation, 
 involving the chronology of the kingdoms of Judah 
 and Israel ; the twelfth Dissertation is devoted to the 
 discussion of this question ; and beginning with the 
 first of Rehoboam and the first of Jeroboam, by an in- 
 duction of particular instances through every succes- 
 sive reign, to the dissolution of the kingdom of Israel, it 
 establishes the general principle that the synchronisms 
 of reigns of Judah and Israel with each other are de- 
 termined by one rule, and the actual lengths by another. 
 The whole of the purposes, however, to which this Dis- 
 sertation and the preceding are devoted, cannot well 
 be enumerated in brief ; the chronology of the Old 
 Testament, from the Creation to the return from capti- 
 vity, directly or indirectly, coming under review in one 
 or other of them ; and there being none of its leading 
 or cardinal dates, and very few of its particular and 
 subordinate ones, which there has not been occasion to 
 consider. 
 
 The chronological value of the note of time at Da- 
 niel x. 13. has never been duly appreciated ; commen- 
 tators, generally speaking, having been content to un- 
 derstand it of x. 2. just before ; the last thing, in the 
 opinion of the Author of this work, at least, to which it 
 was intended to refer. The Supplement annexed to 
 Dissertation xii. is designed to vindicate it from this 
 misconstruction ; and to shew that it was always in- 
 tended to be understood of the interval between the 
 death of Belshazzar, and the accession of Darius at Ba- 
 bylon. The importance of this conclusion to the chro- 
 nology of the kings of Babylon is self-evident. In 
 
THE APPENDIX. 
 
 XXXV 
 
 the course of this discussion, the chronology of the Book 
 of Daniel, and the order and connection of his several 
 visions or prophecies, are necessarily called into ques- 
 tion. There is occasion, too, to consider the opinion of 
 Bishop Horsley with respect to the prince of Persia 
 and the prince of Grecia, alluded to in this same chap- 
 ter of Daniel ; and in stating the objections to that 
 opinion, to say something of the disclosures of Scrip- 
 ture on the subject of the invisible world ; of the scrip- 
 tural mode of describing and designating the angels ; 
 and of the scriptural doctrine of archon or ruling, in 
 opposition to guardian or tutelar, angels. 
 
 The thirteenth Dissertation consists of supplemen- 
 tary matter relating to the opinions and testimonies of 
 the Fathers, produced in the thirteenth general Disser- 
 tation, from the earliest period to the fifth century. 
 Under this head, the reader will find a variety of addi- 
 tional particulars concerning Justin Martyr, Irenseus, 
 Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, Origen, Hippolytus 
 Portuensis, and many others, whose names it is not 
 necessary to specify at present : and lastly, a minute 
 investigation of the probable date of the death of the 
 apostle St. John, and of his age at the time of that 
 event. 
 
 Some apology, at first sight, may be thought neces- 
 sary for devoting the fourteenth Dissertation to the 
 discussion of the question of the date of the battle of 
 Pharsalia. Not but that such an inquiry, connected 
 as it is with a variety of classical associations, may 
 justly be supposed to have an interest for classical 
 readers : and if we reflect upon the important conse- 
 quences entailed by this battle, in laying the foundation 
 of the imperial form of Roman government, and pre- 
 
 c 2 
 
XXXVI 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF 
 
 paring the way for that political state of things in the 
 civilized world, in the midst of which it was always 
 designed by the Divine Providence that Christianity 
 should be ushered into being — it cannot be absolutely 
 destitute of interest even for the student of the Gospel 
 history. But the truth is, the Author of the present 
 work had his attention forcibly directed to the consi- 
 deration of this question, because it involved a diffi- 
 culty very much the same in appearance as that which 
 is connected with St. Luke’s date of the fifteenth year 
 of the government of Tiberius. What St. Luke has 
 called the fifteenth, the common reckoning of the years 
 of Tiberius would call the thirteenth. In like manner, 
 what one class or description of testimonies would 
 shew to be the date of the battle of Pharsalia, Septem- 
 ber 22 or 23, another would shew to be August 9- It 
 is possible to reconcile these dates with each other, 
 however much at variance they seem at first sight : 
 and the useful practical inference which we may draw 
 from the fact of such a reconciliation is this, that no 
 two historical statements, each of them resting on a 
 competent authority, however much opposed to each 
 other they may appear, ought hastily to be prejudged as 
 contradictory or inconsistent. St. Luke’s exactness and 
 fidelity are abundantly sufficient to vouch for the fact, 
 that if he asserts U. C. 780 to have been the fifteenth 
 of Tiberius, it was so, in some sense or other ; and yet 
 it is equally certain that the same year was his thir- 
 teenth. Instead of pronouncing either of these state- 
 ments inconsistent with, or contradictory to, the other, 
 we ought rather to sit down and inquire whether there 
 might not be two such modes of reckoning the years of 
 Tiberius, that what would be his thirteenth according 
 to the one, would be his fifteenth according to the other; 
 just as with respect to the date of the battle of Pharsalia, 
 
THE APPENDIX. 
 
 XXXVll 
 
 there were two such modes of reckoning it, that what 
 was August according to the one, was September 22 
 or 23, according to the other. 
 
 The subject of the fifteenth Dissertation is the cen- 
 sus orbis at the Nativity ; more especially so far as the 
 fact of some such event seems to be implicitly deduci- 
 ble from the testimony of Suidas. In this recurrence 
 to the subject of that census, and in the additional 
 observations supplied by this Dissertation, the Author 
 has not ventured upon so wide a field of speculation 
 as the probable amount of the population of the empire 
 under Augustus ; but he has endeavoured to arrive, 
 if possible, at a just idea of the magnitude and num- 
 ber of the inhabitants of the city of Rome, in his 
 reign, and for some time after it : in order to shew, 
 that as the passage in Suidas is read at present, his 
 numbers are almost as much in excess to represent the 
 results of a census urbis , as they would be in defect 
 for those of a census orbis , in the time of Augustus ; 
 and, therefore, retaining the rest of the passage as it 
 stands, to give a colour of probability to the conjec- 
 tural emendation of its numbers in particular; viz. 
 that of S j luvpiaSe?, instead of vi imvpidSe?. 
 
 Upon this question, the Author embraces the present 
 opportunity to observe, that as the principal objection 
 to the simple and prima facie construction of Luke 
 ii. 1, which implies that the census at the nativity was 
 strictly a census of the empire in general, and not of the 
 small province of Judaea in particular, is taken from the 
 silence of contemporary history about the fact of any 
 such enrolment of the empire in the reign of Augustus; 
 it seemed to him a very satisfactory answer to this ob- 
 jection to shew that a measure, much the same in prin- 
 
 c 3 
 
xxxviii SYNOPSIS OF 
 
 ciple, equally complicated in the execution, and alike 
 important both in a public and a private point of view 
 — was begun and completed in the reign of Augustus, 
 about which nevertheless there is the same silence in 
 the general history of the times. He means a geome- 
 trical survey or measurement of the empire ; to the fact 
 of which, under the auspices of Augustus, we have the 
 most positive testimony in the Rei Agrariae Auctores, 
 in Cassiodorus, and in others ; but not an hint or allu- 
 sion to it, in Dio Cassius, Suetonius, Tacitus ; and 
 nothing but the most obscure and indefinite intima- 
 tions of it even in the Geographica of Strabo. The 
 reader will find this testimony in a note to the four- 
 teenth general Dissertation, vol. i. p. 537. 
 
 The sixteenth Dissertation exhibits the two princi- 
 pal dates of the Jewish year, the 15th of Nisan, and 
 the 15th of Tisri, in their corresponding Julian dates, 
 through the first eight years of the Jewish war under 
 Vespasian. The accuracy of this calendar is confirmed 
 in repeated instances by various circumstantial coin- 
 cidences : and among the collateral questions arising 
 out of it, besides the chronology of the reigns of Nero, 
 Galba, and Qtho, one is the determination of the true 
 date of the death of Vitellius ; upon which depends 
 the decision of the question, whether Tisri in the year 
 of his death, and consequently Nisan, consisted of 29 
 days or of 30. A decision of no slight importance to 
 another question, whether Nisan in the Jewish year 
 consisted always of 29 days or always of 30. 
 
 The precise date of the Historia Naturalis of Pliny 
 is of so much importance to fix the true date of the 
 close of the first Jewish war, according to Josephus ; 
 and that date, to the exposition of the prophecy of the 
 
THE APPENDIX. 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 Seventy Weeks ; that the Author has judged it worth 
 while to bring all, or nearly all, the notices of its own 
 time, furnished by that work, under one point of view, 
 in the seventeenth Dissertation. In other respects, 
 the interest possessed by this Dissertation, for the 
 classical reader, will perhaps be derived from that part 
 of it which relates to the time of the death of Virgil ; 
 and upon the authority of Pliny, ventures to alter the 
 received date of that event, U. C. 735, to one five years 
 later, U.C. 739, or U. C. 740. 
 
 Some apology might perhaps be wanted for the 
 eighteenth Dissertation, which treats of the second 
 Jewish war, in the time of Hadrian ; if the connexion 
 of this war with the former, and thereby with the 
 exposition of the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks, 
 did not, in some measure, justify the introduction of 
 this collateral topic into the same work which has 
 treated so largely of the other. And, indeed, if those 
 coincidences between the circumstances of the two 
 wars, for which the Author contends, are founded in 
 fact ; nothing can more strikingly exemplify the won- 
 derful dealings of Providence in all its dispensations, 
 whether for good or for evil, towards this singular 
 people. 
 
 The nineteenth Dissertation of the Appendix is 
 strictly supplementary to the fifteenth general Disser- 
 tation ; being intended to shew that the chronology of 
 the Acts, from the thirteenth chapter to the end, is not 
 inconsistent with that arrangement and distribution of 
 the twelve preceding chapters, which had been already 
 given in explanation of the prophecy of the Seventy 
 Weeks. To give a summary of the various purposes 
 to which this Dissertation is subservient, would scarcely 
 
 c 4 
 
xl 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF 
 
 be practicable ; the whole of the history of St. Paul, 
 from the time of his second circuit to the Gentiles — the 
 chronology of all his Epistles — and the history of St. 
 Peter, from the point of time when he w r as last men- 
 tioned in the fifteenth general Dissertation, to his 
 death — and many other questions, connected with these 
 topics, being necessarily comprehended in it. 
 
 The Dissertation which follows next in order is 
 added as a Supplement to the nineteenth Dissertation 
 of the Appendix, and the fifteenth of the general work: 
 and like them is devoted to the discussion of the pro- 
 phecy of the Seventy Weeks — having for its object the 
 explanation and confirmation of those principles, on 
 which the proof of the fulfilment of the prophecy had 
 previously proceeded. To enter upon an account of 
 those principles here, would be to anticipate the Dis- 
 sertation itself. It is hoped that the reader will see no 
 reason to disapprove of this resumption of the subject, 
 as foreign to the proper business of a Gospel Harmony 
 —which is more directly concerned in the right un- 
 derstanding of this prophecy, than harmonists in gene- 
 ral seem to have imagined. 
 
 The twentieth Dissertation discusses the time of 
 Trajan’s Oriental expedition, because of its connexion 
 with the reputed date of the martyrdom of Ignatius, 
 and of Simon, son of Cleopas ; and through that, with 
 the decision of the further question. Who are meant 
 by the a$e\<po't , or brethren of Christ. Subjoined to 
 this Dissertation there is another, upon the Chronology 
 of the Epistles of Pliny — a question, arising out of the 
 former, but too minute to have been introduced into 
 the body of the preceding Dissertation. This inquiry 
 will possess an interest for the Christian student, be- 
 
THE APPENDIX. 
 
 xli 
 
 cause it leads to the determination of the probable date 
 of Pliny’s persecution of the Christians of Bithynia. 
 
 The twenty-second Dissertation condenses and brings 
 together, under one point of view, the various coinci- 
 dences which have been established in former parts of 
 the work, with respect to sabbatic years ; all conspiring 
 to confirm that system of the chronology of the Old 
 Testament which had been before proposed : and taken 
 in conjunction with the twenty-second Dissertation of 
 the general work, it may be considered to have establish- 
 ed a regular series of sabbatic years, from the year of 
 the division of the lands, to the time of the destruction 
 of the temple. In the course of this discussion, the 
 chronology of the kings of Tyre, from Hiram contem- 
 porary with the building of the temple, to Pygmalion 
 contemporary with the foundation of Carthage — the 
 date of the foundation of Carthage — the date of the 
 first of Darius Hystaspis — the date of the accession of 
 Xerxes — and the degree of authority to which the Ca- 
 non of Ptolemy is fairly entitled — and various other 
 topics, are necessarily brought into question. 
 
 A calculation of the population of Judaea in the time 
 of our Saviour, could that be determined with any de- 
 gree of exactness, would serve a variety of useful pur- 
 poses. First, it would conduce to shew among what 
 number of moral and responsible agents, the brethren 
 of the Son of God according to the flesh, his personal 
 ministry, for the duration of his sojourn with men, was 
 transacted ; how many consequently were tried by that 
 ministry ; how many were eyewitnesses of his mi- 
 racles ; earwitnesses of his discourses ; and in the 
 facts of his history had an opportunity of comparing 
 from their own observation the prophecies previously 
 
xlii 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF 
 
 on record concerning the Messiah, with their fulfil- 
 ment in the person of Jesus Christ. Secondly, it 
 would enable the reader of the Gospel narrative to 
 enter fully into the force of those descriptions which 
 so repeatedly occur therein, shewing our Saviour, 
 wherever he was, and wheresoever he was going, and 
 even when purposely studious of privacy, to be fol- 
 lowed by multitudes , surrounded by multitudes , disco- 
 vered by multitudes , and often by multitudes in prodi- 
 gious quantities. Thirdly, it would supply an answer 
 to a question which probably has arisen in reflecting 
 minds, upon reading the accounts of the daily per- 
 formance of miracles by our Lord, and frequently 
 miracles in great numbers, but always miracles of a 
 certain kind, requiring the same description of sub- 
 jects — the sick, the infirm, the possessed of devils, the 
 lunatic, the leprous, the blind, the lame, the deaf, the 
 dumb, the maimed or mutilated — whence could such 
 subjects be supplied in sufficient numbers for such mi- 
 racles every day to be taking place? The dense and 
 crowded population of Palestine, in all parts, during 
 our Saviour’s personal ministry, was competent to sup- 
 ply them. Fourthly, it would also shew, that if the rate 
 of the population of a particular country at different 
 periods of its history is any criterion of the amount of 
 public or private happiness for the same periods, never 
 could the nation of the Jews have enjoyed a larger 
 measure of temporal prosperity, because never was 
 it more populous, than during the period of the 
 Christian ministry. This calculation of its numbers, 
 and the data on which it proceeds, are given in the 
 twenty-third Dissertation. 
 
 A short Dissertation is devoted, in the next place, 
 to the consideration of the civil computation of diurnal 
 
THE APPENDIX. 
 
 xliii 
 
 and nocturnal time, among the Romans ; both be- 
 cause the same method of dividing the hours of day 
 and night was in use among the Jews at the Gospel 
 era, and also with a view to correct an inaccuracy 
 into which Dr. Townson, when professedly treating 
 upon this subject, if the Author of the present work 
 has not mistaken his meaning, had inadvertently 
 fallen. 
 
 The twenty-fifth Dissertation is devoted to the par- 
 ticular consideration of St. Paul’s last journey to Jeru- 
 salem, recorded in the Acts ; chiefly because of the 
 objection which has been made to the scriptural ac- 
 count of it — that it could not have been performed 
 within the time supposed. The reader will find the 
 contrary to be the case ; and every day satisfactorily 
 accounted for, from the day when St. Paul left Phi- 
 lippi, Monday, March 27, to the day when he was put 
 on his trial before Felix, Sunday, May 21. 
 
 The twenty-sixth Dissertation treats of the question 
 of the rate of a day’s journey, or the distance which 
 may be ordinarily supposed to have been travelled 
 over, in the allusion to a day’s journey on foot — both 
 from its connection with other parts of the present 
 work, and more especially with the Gospel account of 
 the last journey of our Lord to Jerusalem, when after 
 crossing the Jordan out of Peraea, in the morning of 
 the day, and passing through Jericho — he stopped 
 with Zacchaeus for the night, before his arrival at 
 Bethany. 
 
 The origin of the twenty-seventh Dissertation may 
 be thus explained. Those who have read the Au- 
 thor’s work, are aware that he places the Passion on 
 
xliv 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF 
 
 the Julian April 5, A. D. 30 : which, if correct, implies 
 that the Julian April 5, A. D. 30, coincided with a 
 Friday. But, according to the cycle of the dominical 
 letter, the Julian April 5, A. D. 30, coincided with a 
 Wednesday. In the opinion of the Author of this 
 work, the cip-^rj of this cycle is two days behind the 
 truth : in which case, the Julian April 5, A. D. 30, 
 would actually coincide not with Wednesday, but with 
 Friday. 
 
 Now among other arguments which may tend to shew 
 that April 5, in the Julian year, A. D. 30, actually 
 fell on Friday, one is, to reason as follows. It appears 
 from independent historical testimony that in such and 
 such years, at a certain distance of time from April 5, 
 A. 13. 30, such and such Julian dates of days of the 
 month fell on such and such days of the week. Sup- 
 posing the Julian April 5, A. D. 30, actually to have 
 coincided with Friday, and the computation of time, 
 according to the Julian year, to have gone on uninter- 
 ruptedly ever after, would these things actually be the 
 case ? 
 
 The Author has applied this method of reasoning to 
 three cases in point, the Julian date of the martyrdom 
 of Polycarp, the Julian date of the martyrdom of Pio- 
 nius, and the Julian dates of certain of the martyr- 
 doms of the martyrs of Palestine — uniformly with a 
 similar result. 
 
 But independent of the final object for which these 
 inquiries were instituted, he feels convinced that none 
 of his readers will be uninterested in such a topic, as 
 that of the time and circumstances of the martyrdom 
 of the apostolical bishop of Smyrna, the venerable Po- 
 
THE APPENDIX. 
 
 xlv 
 
 lycarp. To fix the year of this event with the neces- 
 sary exactness, he has investigated, and as he hopes 
 determined, the order and succession of the Roman 
 presidents of Asia Proper, for the first ten years of the 
 reign of Marcus Aurelius, in conjunction with Lucius 
 Verus : chiefly by the help of the extant remains of 
 the sophist of Hadriani or Hadriano -Therse, and citi- 
 zen of Smyrna, Aristides, a contemporary of Poiycarp. 
 By the light too, which these inquiries have contri- 
 buted to throw upon the distinctive character of this 
 whole period, in relation to the history of the church — 
 as a ten years’ period of more or less of suffering from 
 persecution, affecting in a special manner the churches 
 round about Ephesus — he trusts he has cleared up the 
 meaning, and shewn the fulfilment of Revelation ii. 10, 
 in the Epistle to the Church of Smyrna : which 
 commentators heretofore have thought it sufficient to 
 refer to an event more than two hundred years dis- 
 tant when the prophecy was delivered — the great per- 
 secution under Diocletian. 
 
 The two concluding Dissertations are both supple- 
 mentary to the twenty-seventh. The first of them 
 arises out of the allusion to the Paschal controversy, 
 which is brought under discussion in the preceding 
 Dissertation ; and it has for its object to investigate 
 the rule by which the observance of Easter was regu- 
 lated before the council of Nice — among those Chris- 
 tians more particularly, who agreed therein with the 
 rule of the Jews in the observance of the Passover. It 
 is the effect of this investigation to lead to the infer- 
 ence that the Jewish rule in the observance of the 
 Passover, at this time, was diametrically opposite to 
 the same rule in the time of our Saviour ; and so to 
 suggest that it must have been purposely changed 
 
xlvi 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF 
 
 meanwhile. The second is devoted to the question of 
 the coincidences between Julian days of the month, 
 and the corresponding days of the week, and the dis- 
 crepancy, in this respect subsisting, between the indi- 
 cations of the solar cycle, and the conclusions other- 
 wise established in the course of the present work ; and 
 it has for its object the decision of this whole contro- 
 versy, by pointing at once to the true source of the 
 difference in question, the fact of a correction of the 
 style, amounting to two days exactly, which there 
 seems to be almost demonstrative reason to suppose 
 must have been made by the council of Nice ; but which 
 has been hitherto overlooked. 
 
 The remainder of the Appendix consists of Tables, 
 Indexes, &c. of which it is not necessary to give any 
 particular account in this place. The Author will ob- 
 serve only that some of these tables may be found of use 
 to the readers of Josephus, as well as to the student of 
 the Gospel history ; especially the third, which gives the 
 names and succession of the presidents of Syria, from 
 the time when Syria was reduced to a Roman pro- 
 vince, U. C. 691, B. C. 63, to the close of Josephus’ 
 History of the Jewish War, U. C. 828, A. D. 7 5 : the 
 fourth, which enumerates the Procurators of Judaea, 
 from the time of the reduction of Judaea to a Roman 
 province, U. C. 760, A. D. 7, to the close of the 
 Jewish war, as before, U. C. 828, A. D. 75 : and the 
 fifth, which exhibits the high priests of the Jews, from 
 the first of the number appointed by Herod, in the 
 first year of his reign, dated from the capture of Jeru- 
 salem, U. C. 717, B. C. 37, to the destruction of the 
 temple, and consequent dissolution of the religious 
 polity of the Jews, U. C. 823, A. D. 70. On each of 
 these tables the Author has bestowed all the care and 
 
THE APPENDIX. 
 
 xlvii 
 
 pains in his power, to render it as exact as pos- 
 sible : yet from the nature of the case, the dates as- 
 signed in repeated instances, though probably not far 
 from the truth, are after all, and must be, only con- 
 jectural*. 
 
 * A list of such editions of to specify, will he found in 
 authors, quoted in the course of Table XII. among the above, 
 the work, as it was necessary 
 
Works by the same Author. 
 
 AN EXPOSITION OF THE PARABLES, AND OF OTHER 
 PARTS OF THE GOSPELS. Five Volumes, in six. Ox- 
 ford, printed by S. Collingwood, printer to the University, for 
 J. G. and F. Rivington, 1834 and 1835. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS UPON THE PRIN- 
 CIPLES AND ARRANGEMENT OF AN HARMONY OF 
 THE GOSPELS. In one Volume. Oxford, at the University 
 Press. 1834. 
 
 HARMONIA EVANGELICA, SIVE QUATUOR EVANGELIA 
 GREECE, PRO TEMPORIS ET RERUM SERIE, IN PAR- 
 TES QUINQUE DISTRIBUTA. Editio secunda. Oxonii, e 
 Typographeo Academieo. mdcccxxxiv. 
 
 JOANNIS MILTONI FABULiE, SAMSON AGONXSTES ET 
 COMUS, GREECE. Oxonii, excudebat S. Collingwood, Acade- 
 mic typographic, mdcccxxxii. Veneunt apud J. H. Parker, &c. 
 
THE CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 DISSERTATION I. 
 
 On the regularity of the Gospels, and on their Supplemental 
 relations to each other i — 79 
 
 Necessity of both these questions to a Gospel Harmony — A 
 Gospel regular, which "contains no Anticipations or Trajections — 
 Definition of these terms 1 
 
 Regularity of the Gospels distinct from their continuity — Regularity 
 of a particular Gospel to be determined by the comparison of the 
 details of that one with those of the rest — Means of this compa- 
 rison, a priori, to be expected 1 — 2 
 
 Regularity of each of the Gospels more agreeable to antecedent pro- 
 bability than the contrary — Simple history naturally observant of 
 the order of time — No exception to this rule but for particular 
 reasons — The Gospels not memoirs of Jesus Christ, but histories 
 of the rise and progress of the Christian Dispensation 3 — 4 
 
 St. Matthew’s Gospel partly regular and partly irregular — Gospels 
 of St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John, regular throughout — Proof 
 of the first of these assertions — No proper instance of a trans- 
 position in the order of events discernible in St. Mark or 
 St. John 4 — 6 
 
 Proof of the assertion with respect to St. Luke’s Gospel, a priori — 
 Preface premised to the Gospel — Proposal of the writer to write in 
 order — Proper signification of TraprjKoXovdrjKon , aWde v, and KaOe^ijs 
 — Regularity of the Acts, considered as the second part of the 
 Gospel 6 — 10 
 
 Proof of the assertion, a posteriori — Gospel of St. Luke regular for 
 von. 1. d 
 
1 
 
 THE CONTENTS. 
 
 an integral portion of its contents — Summing up of the history of 
 the Baptist, though an anticipation, a proof of its regularity — Cases 
 of supposed transposition in St. Luke, after this point of time, on 
 examination seen to be no such thing 10 — 12 
 
 Distinction of similar and identical accounts — Events liable to be 
 mistaken for the same which are not even similar — Advantages of 
 distinguishing between similar events, to the credibility of the 
 Gospel history — A priori probable that many things in the Gospel 
 history would happen more than once — Events of this description 
 not twice related in the same Gospel — Difficulties attaching to 
 the received methods of reconciling distinct Gospel accounts, sup- 
 posed to be the same — Importance of similar but not identical 
 events, to the filling up of the Gospel history — Much in the Gospels 
 the same, which might be considered distinct 12 — 15 
 
 Supplemental relations of the Gospels — Order of the Gospels as 
 they stand, uniform, with what exceptions — Probably the order 
 in which the Gospels were written — Internal evidence in St. Mat- 
 thew’s that it was the first, and in St. John’s that it was the 
 last 15 — 1 6 
 
 Argument of the order of the Gospels, independent of testimony, 
 deducible from their supplemental relations to each other — State- 
 ment of the case, and inference from it — Double conclusion of 
 the method of reasoning in question — Distinct from the argu- 
 ment from verbal coincidences, though leading to the same re- 
 sult j6 — 18 
 
 Application of the principle to the Gospel of St. John, in its relation 
 to the first three Gospels 18 — 20 
 
 Application of the principle to the Gospel of St. Luke, in its relation 
 to those of St. Matthew and St. Mark 20 — 22 
 
 Inference from the argument not to be evaded in the case of St. Luke, 
 while it holds good in that of St. John — Objection that the same 
 relations would apparently hold of St. Luke, though St. Matthew 
 and St. Mark had both written after him — Actual references in 
 St. Luke, to St. Matthew or St. Mark — Circumstantial propriety of 
 the accounts of St. Luke in the most disputed part of his Gospel — 
 An argument of the truth of their position as they stand . . 22 — 27 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 li 
 
 Application of the principle to the Gospel of St. Mark, in its relation 
 to St. Matthew’s — A priori difficulty of determining whether 
 St. Mark wrote after St. Luke, or St. Luke after St. Mark — Rea- 
 soning of Griesbach on this question inconclusive — St. Mark not 
 the abbreviator of St. Matthew — Omissions in St. Matthew sup- 
 plied by St. Mark, and other peculiarities of their relations, to shew 
 that St. Mark’s Gospel throughout is accommodated to St. Mat- 
 thew’s — Omissions in St. Mark compared with St. Matthew, imply 
 the same thing — Verbal coincidences between St. Matthew and 
 St. Mark much more numerous and striking, than between either 
 and St. Luke — Idioms peculiar to St. Matthew and St. Mark, but 
 not to St. Luke 27 — 34 
 
 General observations on the preceding statements — Proper force of 
 the argument not perceptible from this mode of stating it — Con- 
 sistency of the conclusions thus obtained with each other, and with 
 other things before or after them 34 — 36 
 
 Supplementary relations of the Gospels, the best answer to the hypo- 
 thesis of npoiTevayyekiay or common documents, anterior to any of the 
 Gospels — Supplementary relations inexplicable upon that principle 
 — Mere statement of the hypothesis, a sufficient proof of its impro- 
 bability — Absurd to suppose the Gospels might be indebted to 
 common documents, and yet not have seen each other — Common 
 documents inconsistent with the inspiration and independent au- 
 thority of each 36 — 40 
 
 Objections to the supplementary relations of the Gospels, and answers 
 to them — First ; supplementary Gospels would have contained 
 nothing in common 40 — 42 
 
 Secondly j supplementary Gospels would have avoided all appearance 
 of contradiction or difference 42 — 46 
 
 Thirdly ; supplementary Gospels would have observed the arrange- 
 ments of each other 46 — 49 
 
 Fourthly 3 Gospels which had taken any thing from one another 
 would have named their authority 49 — 5 1 
 
 Fifthly ; if a later Evangelist had transcribed from an earlier, he would 
 
 have transcribed without alteration 51 — 61 
 
 d 2 
 
lii THE CONTENTS. 
 
 Specimens of coincidences between passages of St. Luke and passages 
 in St. Matthew, which are recurrences, yet agree almost verbatim 
 together — Various readings of the text of the Lord’s Prayer, in the 
 time of Origen 55 — 61 
 
 Supplementary relations of the Gospels, an answer to the question 
 why we have four Gospels, and neither more nor less than four 
 — Reasons assigned by the Fathers' for this fact fanciful — This 
 question distinct from the other, why one Gospel might not have 
 sufficed, or why each of the four Gospels was not originally com- 
 plete — Distinct later Gospels both point out deficiencies in pre- 
 ceding, and supply them — Answer to the further objection, that any 
 Gospel, however defective, combined with oral teaching, might 
 have sufficed for its proper purpose — Oral teaching of con- 
 temporaries by contemporaries, sufficient without any written 
 Gospel at all — Written Gospels a provision against the time when 
 oral teaching should no longer be possible 62 — 69 
 
 General conclusion from the above premises — Relations in question, 
 if matter of fact, either supplementary provisions, designedly 
 made, or resolvable into accident — Supplementary provisions, if 
 designedly made, either made unconsciously to the authors of the 
 Gospels, or by themselves 69 — 71 
 
 Verbal coincidences in the Gospels not to be explained on the prin- 
 ciple of supposed oral teaching become habitual, and at length 
 reduced to writing 71 — 73 
 
 Credibility of the Gospels, individually, not impaired by the admis- 
 sion of these relations, and collectively, increased — Gospels alluded 
 to by St. Luke — Canonical Gospels not comprehended in this 
 description — These Gospels distinct from apocryphal, properly so 
 called — Gradual completion of the body of Christian historical 
 evidence — Cumulative testimony resulting from successive supple- 
 mentary Gospels — Principal use of a Gospel Harmony to set forth 
 this testimony — Outline of the Gospel history, so compiled, com- 
 plete and continuous, however deficient the details — Proper basis 
 for a Gospel harmony St. Matthew’s in conjunction with St. 
 Mark’s 73 — 79 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 liii 
 
 DISSERTATION II. 
 
 Historical investigation of the Times and the Order of the first 
 three Gospels 80 — 193 
 
 Difference of dates assigned to the four Gospels — Testimony more 
 uniform to the order of the Gospels, than to the times — Order 
 of the Gospels according to the Hypotyposes of Clemens Ale- 
 xandrinus — Hypotyposes probably a spurious work 80 — 81 
 
 Dates of the Gospels anciently, conjectural — Date of Theophylact for 
 the Gospel of St. Mark a case in point — First three Gospels in 
 being before the destruction of Jerusalem — Limitation of the in- 
 quiry to the dates of these three — Lateness of the Gospel of St. 
 John — Porches at Bethesda might be in being after the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem — Tomb of Helena — Age of Pausanias — Tomb 
 of James the Just — Pool of Bethesda — Past sense of the present 
 participle in Greek 81 — 84 
 
 Personal history of the authors of the several Gospels — Neither St. 
 Mark nor St. Luke one of the seventy — Catalogues of the seventy 
 before and after the time of Eusebius — St. Luke not an eyewit- 
 ness, from his use of the word naprjKoKovOrjicas 84 — 86 
 
 Mark the Evangelist distinct from John Mark, nephew of Barnabas 
 — St. Luke a medicus or surgeon — Surgeons or medici of anti- 
 quity, slaves — St. Luke, whether a freeman or a slave, if a me- 
 dicus, probably a Greek — Examples of medici anciently Greeks or 
 slaves, or both — St. Luke, whether a native of Antioch — St. Luke 
 probably a convert, and certainly a companion of St. Paul — Gospel 
 of St. Luke the Gospel of St. Paul — Coincidences between the 
 Gospel and the Epistles, or other statements, of St. Paul — St. Luke 
 probably converted at Troas — St. Luke not the same with Lucius 
 of Cyrene — Name of Lucas contracted from Lucanus, not Lucius 
 or Lucilius — Boves Lucaj or Lucanae — Lucan us a Roman cogno- 
 men, Lucilius a Roman nomen — St. Luke probably an inhabitant 
 of Philippi — Mode of designation applied to Philippi in the Acts 
 — Divisions of Macedonia — Ancient name of Philippi — Title and 
 meaning of n pcorrj as applied to cities — Philippi a colony of Julius 
 or Augustus Caesar — Roman names of the Greek inhabitants of 
 Roman colonies — Names of patrons assumed by freedmen — Set- 
 tlers in colonies often composed of libertini — Paul and Silas Ro- 
 man citizens — St. Luke implied to be a Greek by his use of the 
 
 d 3 
 
liv 
 
 THE CONTENTS. 
 
 phrase ol ftapfiapoi, of the inhabitants of Melite or Malta — Possible 
 connection of St. Luke with Troas also — Alexandria Troas an- 
 ciently Antigonia 86 — 96 
 
 St. Mark a Jew, and St. Luke not — St. Luke before his conversion 
 probably one of the ev<re( 3 els, or devout men, among the Gentiles 
 — St. Luke not ignorant of the ancient SS. in their own lan- 
 guage 96 — 98 
 
 Internal evidences of the Gospel of St. Mark that its author was a 
 Jew, and probably a native Jew — St. Mark the young man alluded 
 to in his Gospel, at the time of our Saviours apprehension — In- 
 ternal evidences of the Gospel, that the writer was a convert of 
 St. Peter, or intimately connected with him 98 — 102 
 
 Uniform ancient testimony that St. Mark’s Gospel was written at 
 Rome, upon occasion of St. Peter’s visit there — St. Mark his com- 
 panion in his previous tour — Question of the date of St. Mark’s 
 Gospel, reducible to that of the time of St. Peter’s first visit to 
 Rome, and both to that of the date of the First Epistle of St. Peter, 
 if Babylon, in that Epistle, be understood of Rome . . 102 — 103 
 
 Investigation of the date of the First Epistle of Peter, on this supposi- 
 tion — Epistle, addressed to Gentile converts as well as to Jews — 
 Peter the same with Cephas — Arrival of Peter, and preaching, at 
 Corinth — Foundation anew of Corinth and Carthage — Corinth the 
 thoroughfare between Asia and Italy — Meeting of Peter and Paul 
 at Antioch — Sense of the words Kareyvaapevos r/v — Date ot the 
 commencement of St. Peter s evangelical circuit, the spring quarter, 
 A. D. 52 — Date of his arrival at Corinth — Date of his arrival at 
 Rome 103 — 1 14 
 
 Probable duration of the stay of St. Peter at Rome — Peter no longer 
 at Rome after the middle of Nero — Parallelism of the history of 
 St. Peter and St. Paul — Testimony of Lactantius — Testimony of 
 the Catalogus Pontificum Romanorum — Silvanuswith St. Paul be- 
 fore, and with St. Peter after, what time 1 14 — 1 17 
 
 Traditionary visit of Peter to Rome in the second of Claudius — 
 Traditionary contest of Peter and Simon Magus at Rome — Possi- 
 ble visit of Simon Magus to Rome in the reign of Claudius — 
 Attempts to fly in the reign of Nero — Meeting of Peter and Philo 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 lv 
 
 Judaeus at Rome — Motive to these traditions probably what — 
 Christianity by whom introduced into Rome and Antioch first — 
 Christianity at Rome in the seventh of Claudius — Household of 
 Narcissus — Pomponia Graecina 1 1 7 — 1 2 1 
 
 Resulting conclusion of the date of the Gospel of St. Mark — Internal 
 evidence of the Gospel, to confirm that conclusion — First sentence 
 and last, of the Gospel — Latin terms or phrases in the Gospel — 
 2? T6Kov\dra)p — KpaPfiaTos — Oval — No objection that aGospel written 
 at Rome should be written in Greek — Alexander and Rufus, sons 
 of Simon of Cyrene — Alexander of Cyrene — Catullus, governor of 
 the Pentapolis 121 — 125 
 
 Gospel of St. Matthew originally written in Hebrew — Early loss of 
 the Hebrew original — Gospel according to the Ebionites, or ac- 
 cording to the Nazarenes, neither of them St. Matthew’s genuine 
 Hebrew Gospel — Similar uncertainty about the origin of the Greek 
 translation — Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew not likely to survive 
 beyond what time — Objection that St. Matthew’s present Greek 
 exhibits no marks of a translation 125 — 128 
 
 Testimony of Papias — Proves both that St. Matthew’s Gospel was ori- 
 ginally in Hebrew, and that a Greek translation had superseded 
 it in his time — Proper sense of epprjvevarai — No objection that Papias 
 had not seen the original — Testimonies of later times not resolv- 
 able into this of Papias — Discovery of the Hebrew Gospel in India 
 by Pantsenus — Age of Pantsenus — Judgment of Eusebius on the 
 capacity of Papias — Founded on a difference of opinion upon the 
 subject of the millennium 128 — 133 
 
 Early disappearance of the original Hebrew, prima facie an argu- 
 ment that it never existed — Probable that an Hebrew Gospel 
 would not survive an Hebrew church in Palestine itself — Desola- 
 tion of Judaea by the war of Vespasian, and that of Hadrian— Loss 
 of the Hebrew original of St. Matthew’s Gospel only parrallel to 
 that of the iitterce authenticce of the rest of the Christian SS., and 
 of the Hebrew Epistle to the Hebrews 133 — 133 
 
 That Greek might be known or spoken in Palestine, no argument that 
 a Gospel designed for an Hebrew church would not be written in 
 Hebrew — Greek version of the Old Testament never superseded 
 the Hebrew in Palestine — Hebrew and Greek edition of the War 
 
 d 4 
 
lvi 
 
 THE CONTENTS. 
 
 of Josephus, as designed for the two classes of his countrymen — 
 Meaning of the term Hellenist, to describe a Jew of the Disper- 
 sion, in opposition to the Jews of the Mother Country — Hebrew 
 generally known and studied by the Jews of the Dispersion — Dia- 
 lect of Galilee as such, and dialect of Judaea as such — Native 
 languages in the East never superseded by the Greek. . . . 135 — 141 
 
 Hypothesis of a double edition of his own Gospel by St. Matthew 
 in Hebrew and in Greek, gratuitous — Contradicted by the internal 
 evidence of the Gospel itself 141 — 143 
 
 Date of St. Matthew’s Gospel, eight years after the ascension — Coin- 
 cident with the conversion of Cornelius — Time of the composition 
 of the first Gospel necessarily connected with the question of the 
 time when the Apostles would first quit Judaea — Limits within 
 which that time must be fixed — None of the Apostles but Peter 
 and James and John left in Judaea after A.D. 42 ; and none but 
 James after A.D. 52 — Traditional division of countries among the 
 Apostles, when preparing to quit Judaea — Roman empire in parti- 
 cular, assigned to whom — Testimony of various kinds to the scenes 
 of the labours of the Apostles, their deaths, or the like — Date of 
 the final departure from Judaea, of Peter — Date of the departure 
 of the other Apostles previously — Reputed time of the death of 
 the Virgin Mary 143 — 152 
 
 Resulting date of the Gospel of St. Matthew — Testimony of Irenaeus 
 — Difficulty connected with its prima facie construction — Means 
 of solving it to suppose that St. Matthew’s Gospel was translated 
 into Greek, and published at Rome, along with his own, by St. 
 Mark — Advantages of this supposition both to explain what there 
 is peculiar in either Gospel, and to account for the accommodation 
 of the one to the other, as well as in other respects. . . . 152 — 157 
 
 Resumption of the hypothesis that St. Peter’s First Epistle was 
 written from Rome — Objections to this hypothesis — Allusions to 
 the First Epistle in the Second — Time of the Second Epi- 
 stle 157 — 160 
 
 Babylon, in the First Epistle, Rome, a purely gratuitous supposition — 
 Babylon in the Epistle, not Babylon in Mesopotamia — State of 
 Babylon in Mesopotamia, in the time of St. Peter — Babylon in the 
 Epistle, Babylon in Egypt — History of Babylon in Egypt before 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 lvii 
 
 and after the time of St. Peter — Conclusion in question confirmed 
 bv tradition, with respect to the history of St. Mark — -Mark the 
 first bishop of Alexandria — Date of his death in that capa- 
 city 160 — 165 
 
 Christianity in Egypt in the time of Apollos — Number of Jews of 
 Egypt — St. Mark constituted bishop of Alexandria by St. Peter — 
 Time when the Apostles began to consecrate bishops, the close 
 of their ministry — Confirmation of these conclusions by various 
 considerations 165 — 168 
 
 Time and order of the Gospel of St. Luke, independent of historical 
 testimony, as deducible from its internal evidences — 'An dpxrjs — 
 Apocryphal Gospels — Personal, antecedent history of St. Luke — 
 No proof that he was with St. Paul during his imprisonment — 
 Present at Caesarea at the close of it — Probable mode of his em- 
 ployment meanwhile — Gospel written at the same time with the 
 Acts — No part of the Acts written before the reign of Nero — De- 
 signation of Caesar, as applied to the emperor absolutely — Contem- 
 porary characters, alluded to in the Acts — Gallio the oldest of the 
 family of Seneca the Father — Names of Gallio before and after his 
 adoption — Date of his death and Seneca’s — Lucan the poet — 
 Gallio the father or orator — Banishment of Seneca, and dates of 
 some of his treatises — Theophilus in the Gospel and Acts, a real 
 personage — Name of Theophilus in common use anciently — Ab- 
 surdly confounded with the high priest Theophilus, son of Annas 
 — Geographical peculiarities of the Gospel and Acts, a proof that 
 they were written for one a stranger to Judaea, but well acquainted 
 with Italy — Gaza and its history, before and after the time of St. 
 Luke — Synagogue of the Jews at Thessalonica — Proseucha, or 
 oratory at Philippi — Rivers near Philippi — Resort of the Jews to 
 the sea-shore, or to river sides, for the purpose of prayer — Caesarea 
 Philippi, or Neroneas 168 — 182 
 
 Theophilus probably a freedman of Nero, and a recent convert — 
 Geographical allusions in the account of the voyage of St. Paul to 
 Rome — Melite — Islands or places of that name — Melite of St. 
 Paid, the modern Malta, not the ancient Melita — Direction of the 
 wind which assailed St. Paul — 'H — Name of the wind, and 
 
 various readings — Cycles or divisions of the winds, anciently — Evpa- 
 kvAo> v analogous to evpovoros — Writers and authorities on the sub- 
 ject of winds — Proper name of the wind in question, Cgecias or 
 
Iviii 
 
 THE CONTENTS. 
 
 Hellespontias — Setting in of that wind, what — ’AS pias, as applied 
 to the Mediterranean 182 — 188 
 
 Allusions to places in the neighbourhood of Rome — Appii Forum, 
 and Tres Tabernae — Relative position of these places — Tres Ta- 
 bernae in the time of Constantine — Journey of Horace from Rome 
 to Brundisium — Canal through the Pomptine marshes, and mode 
 of travelling along it from Tarracina to Appii Forum, or vice versa 
 — Lucan’s description of Caesar’s approach to Rome — Pomptine 
 marshes paved by Trajan 188 — 190 
 
 Remarkable terms in the Acts, crovbapLa and o-ifwdvQia — Resulting 
 conclusion of the date and place of the Gospel of St. Luke — Va- 
 riety of opinions on the latter point — Tradition that it was written 
 in Achaia — Traditionary history of St. Luke after the composition 
 of his Gospel — Translation of the bones of St. Luke and others 
 from Achaia to Constantinople — Paintings of our Lord and the 
 Virgin ascribed to St. Luke — Theophilus, whether governor of Achaia 
 — Epaphroditus, the friend of Josephus — Gospel of St. Matthew 
 quoted by St. Peter, and Gospel of St. Luke, by St. Paul. . 190 — 193 
 
 DISSERTATION III. 
 
 On the irregularities of St. Matthew" s Gospel 194 — 238 
 
 Course and succession of events in St. Matthew’s Gospel, from the 
 beginning, to the time of the passage of the Lake to Gadara — 
 First seven chapters regular — Cure of the leper regular — Cure of 
 the Centurion’s servant regular — Identity of this miracle in St. 
 Matthew with that in St. Luke — Classical use of nais — Circum- 
 stances of difference in the two accounts explained .... 194 — 198 
 
 First instance of irregularity, the cure of Peter’s wife’s mother, and 
 miracles of healing the same day 198 — 199 
 
 Course of events from the time of the passage of the Lake, to the 
 time of the return to Capernaum — Incidents on the way to the 
 Lake, peculiar to St. Matthew — Similar incidents on record else- 
 where in St. Luke — Probable that these incidents happened more 
 than once, rather than that they are related out of their place by 
 either — Profession and rank of Scribe among the Jews — Command 
 to let the dead bury their dead, supposed to have been addressed 
 to Philip 199 — 203 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 lix 
 
 Passage of the Lake in St. Matthew regular as to what goes before — 
 Identity of this passage in each of the accounts — Motive of our Lord 
 to the passage — Storm on the Lake — Miracle on the other side 
 of the Lake — Nature of the eastern coast of the lake — Graves or 
 tombs in caves or rocks — Site of Tiberias — Monuments or tombs 
 the resort of demoniacs — Circumstances which identify the mira- 
 cle in each of the accounts — Peculiar character of this case of 
 possession — Probable final end of the permission to the devils to 
 enter into the swine 203 — 206 
 
 Reconciliation of the accounts of the passage in the three Evangelists 
 — Reconciliation of the accounts of the miracle — Peculiar charac- 
 teristic conciseness of St. Matthew — Country of the Gergesenes, as 
 contradistinguished to that of the Gadarenes — Various reading of 
 Gergesenes, Gerasenes, Gadarenes — Testimony of Origen to the 
 existence and site of Gergesa — Number of demoniacs in the seve- 
 ral accounts — Why St. Mark’s or St. Luke’s might be confined to 
 one of the number — Distinction of the subjects of the miracle 
 explains the language ascribed to the demoniacs in the different 
 accounts 206 — 2 1 1 
 
 Cure of the paralytic — Identity of this miracle in the several accounts 
 — Second instance of irregularity in St. Matthew’s Gospel, the cure 
 of the paralytic 21 1 — 213 
 
 Course of events from the time of the return to Capernaum to the 
 time of the mission of the Twelve — Sitting at meat after the re- 
 turn regular — Raising of the daughter of Jairus regular — Recon- 
 ciliation of the accounts of this miracle — Application of Jairus to 
 our Lord not made on the sea side — Terms of the address of Jai- 
 rus to Jesus in St. Matthew and St. Mark respectively — Made 
 up in St. Matthew of the words actually used by Jairus, and of the 
 message received by the way — Terms of the address in St. Matthew 
 accommodated from the first to the change in the nature of the 
 miracle, produced by the death on the way — Pipers at funerals 
 among the Jews — Circumstantiality of St. Mark’s account 213-2 1 7 
 
 Events next in succession in St. Matthew regular — Circuit of Galilee 
 regular — Mission of the Twelve regular — Identity of the mission 
 in each of the accounts — Communication of miraculous power to 
 the Twelve now first made — Limited to miracles of a peculiar de- 
 scription — Power so communicated ever after retained 217 — 220 
 
lx 
 
 THE CONTENTS. 
 
 Charge which preceded the mission — Division of the account in St. 
 Matthew — Identity of the first of these divisions with the account 
 in St. Mark and St. Luke — First portion of the charge limited to 
 the occasion of the present mission, the second not — Probable that 
 the whole was delivered at once, as recorded by St. Matthew, but 
 such parts as were not intended to apply to the first mission of 
 the Apostles, were purposely omitted by St. Mark and St. 
 Luke 220 — 227 
 
 Third instance of irregularity in St. Matthew’s Gospel, the message 
 of John — Identity of this message with that in St. Luke — Compa- 
 rison of the accounts — Miracle of the widow’s son implicitly re- 
 cognised previous to the message, even in St. Matthew — Death of 
 John Baptist after the message, yet before the mission of the 
 Twelve — Hearing of Jesus by Herod the tetrarch — Retirement 
 of Jesus to Bethsaida, and its place relative to the news of the 
 death of John, and to the return of the Twelve from their mis- 
 sion 227 — 232 
 
 Remainder of the Gospel of St. Matthew, with what exceptions regu- 
 lar — Summary of the preceding survey — Strictly irregular portion 
 of St. Matthew, what — To what causes this irregularity is due — 
 Reasons which might have produced the irregularity in each of 
 these instances 232 — 235 
 
 Use and design of the two chapters interposed between the strictly 
 irregular and strictly regular division of the Gospel — Comprehen- 
 sive division of St. Matthew’s Gospel, founded upon these distinc- 
 tions- — Double apxn of the Gospel, and double law of narration so 
 resulting — Intimated by its own evidence 235 — 236 
 
 General observations — St. Matthew’s Gospel not safely to be assumed 
 as the basis of an Harmony — Order of St. Matthew not necessarily 
 regular, because that of an eyewitness — Irregular Gospel a pre- 
 sumptive argument of an early Gospel — Principle of classification 
 more applicable to St. Matthew than to St. Luke — Structure of all 
 the Gospels anecdotal — Especially so in St. Luke and St. John — 
 Memorable epochs or events in the history of our Saviour’s minis- 
 try, specified by St. Matthew with more precision than by the 
 rest 236 — 238 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 lxi 
 
 DISSERTATION IV. 
 
 On the date of the Passover , John ii. 13 239 — 246 
 
 Sense of the words John ii. 20. and date of the passover deduc- 
 ible from it — Understood by Chrysostom,, apparently, in that 
 sense 239 — 240 
 
 Date of the commencement of the rebuilding of the temple by Herod, 
 and date of its completion 240 — 241 
 
 Calculation of the 46 years in question, from the date of the rebuild- 
 ing of the temple to the Passover, John ii. 13 241 
 
 Corollary from this conclusion, that our Saviour was baptized in the 
 first half of the thirteenth of Tiberius Caesar 242 — 243 
 
 Explanations of the text by the ancient commentators — Admission 
 of Origen of the difficulty presented by it — Building of the first 
 temple, by David and Solomon — Reference of the text by He- 
 racleon, and the Evangelium Nicodemi, to the first temple — 
 By Methodius, to the second — Erroneous account of Eusebius 
 of the building of the second temple — Exposition of Theo- 
 dorit, Theophylact, Chrysostom, Julius Pollux, and Augustin — 
 Mystical reference of the text to the numeral value of Adam in 
 Greek — Simplicity of the true explanation in comparison of all the 
 above — A forty-six years’ interval between the beginning and com- 
 pletion of the second temple, directly at variance with the truth 
 of the fact — Interval recognised by Josephus only twenty-five 
 years — Interval in question appears first in Christian writ- 
 ers 243 — 246 
 
 DISSERTATION V. 
 
 Verification of the Date of the Passover , John ii. 18 . . 247 — 282 
 
 Nicety required by the calculations necessary for this verification — 
 Double date of Josephus for the beginnning of the reign of He- 
 rod — Date uniformly followed by him the later of the two, B. C. 
 37, not the earlier, B. C. 40 — Proofs 247 — 260 
 
 Dates of the duration of the Asmonsean dynasty — 'H vqcrrda or iop- 
 tt) tt)s vrjo-rdas, absolutely, to be understood of what — Nqo-rcia of 
 the Tarentines — Capture of Jerusalem by Pompey — Length of the 
 
Ixii THE CONTENTS. 
 
 siege by Herod and Sosius — Marriage of Herod and Mari- 
 amne 248 — 250 
 
 Date of the interval from the appointment of the first high priest by 
 Herod, to the destruction of the temple — Ananelus — Aristobulus, 
 brother of Mariamne — Lysanias — Armenian expeditions of Antony 
 
 — Date of the appointment of Aristobulus 250 — 251 
 
 Battle of Actium — Years of Herod dated from the spring ....251 
 
 Date of the foundation of Caesarea, referred to the years of Herod’s 
 reign — Date of its completion — Proper sense of the word 7 rpode- 
 KTfila — Prefects of Egypt — Cornelius Gallus, yElius Gallus, Petro- 
 nius — War of Petronius and ‘Candace — Arabian expedition of 
 iElius Gallus — Ancyran monument — Embassy of Candace to Au- 
 gustus at Samos — Precise duration of the Arabian expedition of 
 Gallus — Allusions to Augustus’ eastern expeditions in the poets — 
 Resulting conclusion of the order of the first three governors of 
 Egypt — Date of the administration of Petronius, as deducible from 
 Josephus — Droughts and other physical calamities from the thir- 
 teenth to the seventeenth of Herod — Coincidence of this period 
 with a Sabbatic year — Petronius governor of Egypt during the 
 period of greatest pressure — Rise of the Nile in the administration 
 of Petronius — Ordinary rise of the Nile — Cubits on the coins of 
 Egypt — Resulting conclusion of the true date of the building and 
 completion of Caesarea 251 — 258 
 
 Date of the rebuilding of the temple in the 18th of Herod so deter- 
 mined — Date of the War in the 15th — Confuted by the context of 
 the War itself — Date in question, an average statement of the time 
 of Herod’s principal works 258 — 260 
 
 Inversions of facts in these two chapters of the War — Numerical or 
 other statements in the Antiquities and the War in general, at va- 
 riance with each other — Mistake, in reference to Hyrcanus Second 
 — Birth and death of Herod, and his age U. C. 707 — Phasaelus 
 — Marriage of Herod and Doris — Marriage of Antipater and Cy- 
 prus — True year of the birth of Herod 260 — 263 
 
 Years of Herod dated by Josephus from the spring — Current years 
 reckoned by Josephus as complete — Reigns of the kings of Israel 
 traditionally referred to Nisan or the spring 262 — 264 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 lxiii 
 
 Completion of the vaos of the temple in 18 months, and coincidence 
 of the completion with the anniversary of Herod’s appointment 
 to be king — Investigation of the date of that fact 264 
 
 Invasion of the Parthians, U. C. 714, and departure of Herod to 
 Rome — Misconstruction of the sense of x eL l JL ^ vos — Caesar and 
 Antony at Rome — Peace of Brundisium — Time of this peace — 
 Journey of Horace from Rome to Brundisium — Not referable to 
 proceedings in U. C. 717, and not in U. C. 714 — Determination 
 of the time of the presence of Caesar and Antony at Rome, after 
 the peace — Resort of the ancients to Baiae, in the spring of the 
 year — Disturbances at Rome over, before the arrival of Herod — 
 Feast of Tabernacles U. C. 714 and U. C. 735, coincident with 
 the date of Herod’s appointment 264 — 269 
 
 Objection to the above conclusions, from the silence of Josephus on 
 more than two winters or campaigns, between Herod’s appoint- 
 ment and his capture of Jerusalem — Second of these winters, next 
 after the siege of Samosata — Investigation of the date of that 
 siege 269 — 271 
 
 Motions of Antony from U. C. 714 to U. C. 716 — Victories of Ven- 
 tidius over the Parthians, U. C. 715, and U. C. 716 — Fragments 
 of Cornelius Gallus — Date of the defeat and death of Crassus — 
 Arrival of Antony, and siege of Samosata — Winter after that, the 
 third year of Herod’s appointment — Return of Herod to Judaea 
 from Rome, the spring of U. C. 715 Tbid. 
 
 Date of the capture of Jerusalem, U. C. 716 — Motions of Antony, 
 U. C. 716 to U. C. 718 — Antony at Antioch, on his way into 
 Parthia, U. C. 718 — Antigonus put to death by him there — Tes- 
 timony of Africanus, in unison with the above statements — Olym- 
 piads of Africanus, leap years 271 — 273 
 
 Date of the death of Herod, and length of his reign deducible from 
 the above premises — Consistency of these conclusions with every 
 other note of time to be met with in Josephus — Age of Herod at 
 his death, about the Passover — Census of Quirinus, and its date 
 in the years of the battle of Actium — Different statements of the 
 length of the reign of Archelaus, and mode of reconciling them — 
 Difference in the number of ears of corn in the dream of Arche- 
 laus, to be explained on the same principle — Date of the death of 
 
lxiv 
 
 THE CONTENTS. 
 
 Philip the tetrarch, and first of his reign, deducible from it — 
 Foundation of Caesarea Philippi, and era of that event as determined 
 from its coins — Philip at Rome, at the time of the decision on the 
 will of his father — Disturbances in Judaea, and suppression of 
 them by Varus — Era of the coins of Caesarea, the first year of 
 Philip — Coins of Ascalon, and double date exhibited by them — 
 Rarity of double dates on coins — Disposal of Ascalon, before and 
 after the death of Herod — Enmity of the people of Ascalon, to the 
 Jews — Reference of the double date in question, both to the year 
 of the death of Herod, and to the time of the presence of Gabi- 
 
 nius in Syria, U. C. 696 or 697 273 — 281 
 
 Calculation of the interval anew, from the date of the rebuilding of 
 the temple, to the date of the Passover, John ii. 13 282 
 
 DISSERTATION VI. 
 
 On the time of the deposal of Herod Antipas , and on the 
 eclipse before the death of Herod 283 — 314. 
 
 Description of the coin of Herod Antipas, bearing date in the forty- 
 third of his reign — Question of its date, restricted to U. C. 792 
 and 793 283, 284 
 
 Date of the banishment of Herod Antipas, determinable from the 
 date of the appointment of Herod Agrippa by Caius to his te- 
 trarchy — Length of the reign of Herod Agrippa according to Jo- 
 sephus — Part, spent under Caius, and part, under Claudius — Do- 
 minions of Herod Antipas conferred upon him four years before 
 his death — Agrippa, according both to Philo and Josephus, in 
 possession of the tetrarchy of Antipas in the last year of Caius, 
 U.C. 793 284—286 
 
 History of the journey of Herod Antipas to Italy, which led to his 
 banishment — Return of Herod Agrippa to Judaea, in the summer 
 or autumnal quarter of U. C. 791 — Envy of Herodias, wife of An- 
 tipas, at the good fortune of Agrippa — Preparations of Herod 
 Antipas, and departure to Rome— Mission of Fortunatus, freed- 
 man of Agrippa, to defeat the object of Antipas — Caius at Baiae, at 
 the time of the arrival of both 286 — 287 
 
 Investigation of the times when Caius might be found at Baiae — 
 Death of Drusilla — Birthday of Drusilla — Family of Germanicus 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 Ixv 
 
 and Agrippina, and order and times of their birth — Bridge of Caius 
 from Puteoli to Bauli — Visit of Caius in the spring of U. C. 792, 
 too early for the arrival of Antipas : visit in the summer of U. C. 
 793, too late — Possible that Herod Antipas would not arrive in 
 Italy before the end of summer, U. C. 792 ; nor Fortunatus be 
 able to leave for Judaea, before the spring of U. C. 793. . 287-292 
 
 Reasons, notwithstanding, for supposing that Herod was deposed at 
 Lugdunum in Gaul, not at Baiae in Campania — Caius at Lugdunum, 
 Jan. 1, U.C. 793 — Gallic or German expedition of Caius — Caius at 
 Rome, at the birth of his son by Caesonia — Instances of extant coins 
 struck within short periods of time — Arrival of Herod Agrippa in 
 Italy, after his appointment to the dominions of Antipas — Enmity of 
 Herod Antipas and Vitellius — Attempt of Caius to erect his statue in 
 the temple at Jerusalem — Petronius, governor of Syria — Reconcilia- 
 tion of Philo and Josephus — Accounts of Josephus take up the thread 
 of the history, where the narrative of Philo broke it off — Proceedings 
 in Judaea with Petronius — Particulars of the account in Philo — 
 Time of the mission of Philo from Alexandria to Rome — Proceed- 
 ings before the emperor at Puteoli — Arrival of Agrippa — Letter of 
 Agrippa to Caius — Proceedings in Josephus laid at Ptolemais : in 
 Philo, at Sidon — Caius in Campania, U. C. 792, according to 
 Suetonius and Pliny also — The remora or sucking fish — General 
 conclusion from the above premises 292 — 302 
 
 Argument for the date of the death of Herod, from the lunar eclipse 
 supposed to have preceded that event — Impossible for the events 
 to have come to pass, which are recorded between the eclipse and the 
 death of Herod, if that was the eclipse, Marchi3, U.C. 750. . 303-305 
 
 True date of the commencement of the sickness of Herod, the time 
 of the conviction of Antipater — Time necessary for a communica- 
 tion to pass to and from Judaea and Rome in the summer or the win- 
 ter season — Cases in point in proof of this assertion, in the time 
 taken up by the receipt of the letter of Petronius, and the arrival of 
 the last orders of Caius in answer to it, an interval of five or six 
 months — Resulting conclusion of the true date of the time when 
 Herod wrote to Augustus, and of the true time when he received 
 his answer 305 — 309 
 
 Attempt on the eagle, an event in the early stages of Herod’s sick- 
 ness — Date of the attempt could not be later than December or 
 vol. 1. 
 
 e 
 
lxvi 
 
 THE CONTENTS. 
 
 January, before Herod’s death — Tenth of Tisri, which preceded the 
 attempt — Attempt not made at the time of any feast — Herod in 
 Jerusalem at the time of the attempt, not at Callirrhoe or Je- 
 richo 309 — 31 1 
 
 No mention of any eclipse in theWar — 2 <£dX/uara of Josephus, and case 
 in point, in his account of Mithridates, king of Parthia 31 1,31 2 
 
 Eclipse in U. C. 750, the year before, and U. C. 752, the year after 
 the death of Herod — Eclipse of U. C. 752 altogether such as 
 Josephus would imply to have followed the execution of the so- 
 phists — Date of the eclipse U. C. 752, might be confounded by 
 Josephus with U. C. 751 313, 314 
 
 DISSERTATION VII. 
 
 Computation of Jewish passovers, or other feasts . 315—333 
 
 Feast of the Passover restricted to the same time of the year, and the 
 same time of the month — Passover restricted to the fourteenth of 
 Nisan — Fourteenth of Nisan preceded the full of the moon — 
 Testimonies — Philo Judaeus, Josephus, the Agathobuli and Aristo- 
 bulus — Age of Aristobulus — Limits of the fourteenth of Nisan, with 
 respect to the fourteenth of the moon, as so determined..^ 15-320 
 
 Neomenia of Nisan, determinable neither by the physical conjunc- 
 tion, nor by the phasis, exclusively — No w^Brifiepov of a Jewish 
 month divisible between two months — Months of the Jews cavi 
 and pleni alternately — Nisan cavus, or a month of twenty-nine days 
 — Solemnity of the new moons restricted to the first of the 
 month — Greek evij kcu vea or rpiaicas, inapplicable to Jewish 
 months — Tricesima sabbata of Horace — Definition of the Neome- 
 nia by Philo — Phasis of the moon in Judaea, within eighteen 
 hours of the conjunction — Rule of the Jews, founded on this fact 
 — Testimony of Horapollo to the same fact in Egypt — Book of 
 Enoch, and division of a day and night into eighteen parts, impli- 
 citly founded on the same 320 — 324 
 
 Rule by which the Neomenia of Nisan admitted of being regularly 
 determined — Illustration of this rule by the testimony of Philo, 
 and the Liber Enoch 324 — 327 
 
 Time of the year to which the Passover was restricted, the vernal 
 equinox — True date and Julian date of the vernal equinox at the 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 lxvii 
 
 birth of Christ — Equinoctial and tropical points placed in octavispar- 
 tibus of their respective signs — Dates of the Passover in the acts of 
 Pilate — Paschal terms or limits, March 18 and April 16.. . 327-329 
 
 Construction of a table of feasts, on the principles thus laid down — 
 Paschal full moon, the full moon between March 18 and April 16. 
 — Pentecost and Tabernacles both determinable from the Pass- 
 over — Eclipses before and after the birth of Christ, calculated by 
 Pingr£ — General accuracy of the conclusions in question — Import- 
 ant Passovers only what — Table of feasts in question. . 329 — 333 
 
 DISSERTATION VIII. 
 
 On the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar 334 — 344 
 
 Difficulty arising from the literal construction of Luke iii. 1. and 
 Luke iii. 23 — 'Hye/zoi/ia of Tiberius Csesar not necessarily his sole 
 and undivided supremacy — Difficulty removed, if it can be proved 
 that Tiberius was bona fide associated in the empire with Augustus, 
 two years before his death — Fifteenth of Tiberius, dated from 
 that association, could not be called by St. Luke, his thir- 
 teenth 334—336 
 
 Investigation of the date of the association in question — Date of 
 the proconsular empire of Tiberius connected with the date of his 
 triumph — Course and particulars of events from the adoption of 
 Tiberius, June 27, U. C. 757, to the date of the triumph, Ja- 
 nuary 16, U. C. 765 336 
 
 Campaigns of Tiberius in Germany, U. C. 757 to U. C. 760 — Revolt 
 of Pannonia, and campaigns U. C. 760 to U. C. 762 — Date of the 
 destruction of Varus, and time of the year, U. C. 762 — Campaigns 
 in Germany, U. C. 763, 764 — Decree of the senate, investing Ti- 
 berius with proconsular empire, according to Paterculus before 
 the triumph, Jan. 16, U. C. 765 — Law of the consuls, investing 
 Tiberius with proconsular empire, according to Suetonius, after it — 
 Reconciliation of this difference, by considering the decree preli- 
 minary to the law, and the law the final or complete act — Date of 
 this law, U. C. 765, spring or summer 336 — 341 
 
 Confirmation of the above conclusions by circumstantial evidence of 
 various kinds 341 
 
 Commendation of the senate to Tiberius, by Augustus, U. C. 765 — 
 
lxviii THE CONTENTS. 
 
 Games or festivities U. C. 765, out of course — Tiberius recog- 
 nised as equal to Augustus, by the senate, U. C. 766 — Tiberius 
 proved to be already Princeps, U. C. 765, by a comparison of Sue- 
 tonius, Pliny, Seneca, and Tacitus — Coins of Antioch, which give 
 Tiberius the title of Augustus two years before Augustus’ death — 
 Computations of the reign of Tiberius, which recognise it as of 
 more than twenty-two or twenty-three years’ length. . . . 341 — 344 
 
 DISSERTATION IX. 
 
 On the beginning of the government of Pontius Pilate. 
 
 345—352 
 
 Procurators of Judaea, appointed by Tiberius — The first year of Pi- 
 late the thirteenth of Tiberius 345 
 
 Arrival of governors in their provinces, under ordinary circumstances 
 the spring or summer quarter of the year — Rule of Tiberius — 
 Rule of Claudius — Date of the arrival of Gratus — Date of the ar- 
 rival of Pilate — Pilate already in office, when John entered on his 
 ministry, U. C. 779 or A. D. 26 345 — 347 
 
 Length of the administration of Pilate, and date of his removal from 
 office — Oversight of Dr. Lardner, in fixing his removal to the 
 twenty-first of Tiberius — Transactions in the East, between Vitel- 
 lius and Artabanus, and place in the accounts of Josephus, rela- 
 tively to the removal of Pilate — Rescript of Claudius respecting 
 the pontifical robes, and mistake of Josephus in reference 
 to it 347—35° 
 
 Procurators of Judaea, from U. C. 760 — 767, and average time of the 
 office of each — Rufus continued one year after the death of Au- 
 gustus, why — Time of Pilate’s administration not less than ten 
 years — Time when the Samaritan deputies would find Vitellius 
 at Antioch — Pilate, if removed in the autumn, would not arrive at 
 Rome until the spring, when Tiberius would be dead.. . 350 — 352 
 
 DISSERTATION X. 
 
 On the united , and the separate, duration of the ministry of 
 John the Baptist , and of Jesus Christ 353 — 366 
 
 The mission and ministry of John, subordinate to those of Jesus 
 Christ — Hence the commencement of the latter, either actually or 
 virtually the close of the former 353 — 354- 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 lxix 
 
 Proofs of the position that the true date of the beginning of the min- 
 istry of Jesus Christ is the true date of the termination of that of 
 John 354 — 35 6 - 
 
 Double commencement of the ministry of our Saviour, first in Ju- 
 daea, and again in Galilee — True date of its commencement, the 
 former, at the Passover, John ii. 13 — True date of the close of 
 the ministry of John, consequently, the same 356 — 359 
 
 Corollary from this conclusion — Beginning of the ministry of John 
 the feast of Tabernacles, in the thirteenth of Tiberius preceding — 
 Confirmed by the fact that the ministry of John, whensoever it 
 began, was destined to be only of six months’ duration — Beginning 
 of John’s ministry critically determined by the date of Pilate’s ad- 
 ministration before it, and the age of the temple, after it. . 359-361 
 
 Collateral arguments in support, of the same conclusion — Incon- 
 sistent with the subordination of John to Christ, to suppose his 
 personal ministry as long as that of Christ — Incredible that 
 John’s ministry could have gone on, unmolested, three years or 
 upwards — Deputation of the sanhedrim, as one of the last events 
 in his public ministry, inconsistent with a three years’ duration 
 previously — Details of the ministry of John inadequate to fill up 
 a period of three years or more — History of our Lord and John 
 six months asunder in other respects — A personal ministry of 
 John and of Jesus Christ of three years and an half, but no more, 
 necessary to the fulfilment of prophecy — A duration of three years 
 and an half implied by the parable of the fig-tree — Tradition of 
 the Jews with reference to the shechinah — Three years and an 
 half a stated period, in the language of prophecy, for events con- 
 nected with the Christian economy, &c 361 — 366. 
 
 DISSERTATION XI. 
 
 On the age of our Lord at his baptism 367 — 380 
 
 Construction and rendering ofLukeiii. 23 — Definition of the age 
 thereby intended, whether under thirty or above — Idiom of St. 
 Luke in the use of oxret, to express something under rather than 
 above a given limit — Measure of the defect in the present in- 
 stance, probably less than a fourth part of a year 367 — 369 
 
 Age ol our Lord at his baptism not more than three months, though 
 
 e 3 
 
Ixx 
 
 THE CONTENTS. 
 
 it might not be less than two months before he was thirty — Testi- 
 monies of the ancients to this construction — Time of the year 
 when he was baptized, thence resulting — Agreeableness of this 
 conclusion to ancient tradition, which places the baptism in the 
 month of January — Date of the baptism according to Basi- 
 lides 369 — 371 
 
 Answer to the objection, that the baptism is thus placed in the win- 
 ter — Ministry of John providentially cast in the autumnal and 
 winter quarter of the year, which was the rainy season in Judaea — 
 Baptism in Judaea practicable at all times of the year — Severity of 
 the winter restricted to what period — Mildness of the rest of the 
 winter season, and forwardness of the productions of nature in 
 Judaea accordingly 371 — 374 
 
 Age of John at the commencement of his ministry, resulting from 
 these premises — Commencement of the ministry of John forecast 
 with reference to the subsequent one of Christ’s — True character of 
 John the Baptist not that of a Levite but a priest — Essential dis- 
 tinction of priests and Levites among the Jews — Age of office, 
 originally prescribed for the Levites, thirty — Subsequent prescrip- 
 tion of twenty-five, not inconsistent with that — Age of office of 
 the Kohathites, for their peculiar duty — The tabernacle, a type of 
 the body of Christ — Age of office of the priests, necessarily im- 
 plied in that of the Levites — Ages of high priests in later times no 
 just ground of objection to this rule 374 — 377 
 
 'Akixtj, or maturity of human nature, fixed by the ancients to the age 
 of thirty — Testimonies — Age of thirty recognised in the same 
 capacity among the Jews — Age of our Lord, at the commencement 
 of his ministry, thirty, as essential to the integrity of his human 
 nature, as to the fulfilment of legal righteousness — Resulting con- 
 clusion, that his age at his baptism must have been a little under 
 thirty, because his age at the commencement of his ministry was 
 to be exactly thirty 377 — 380 
 
 DISSERTATION XII. 
 
 On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 381 — 437. 
 
 Conclusion resulting from the above premises, of the time of the year 
 when our Lord was born 381 
 
THE CONTENTS. Ixxi 
 
 Recent introduction of the vulgar or common date of the Nativity 
 into the Greek church, in the age of Chrysostom — Grounds on 
 which its reception is placed, and the fallacy of each — Date of the 
 Nativity in the Greek church previously, what 381 — 383 
 
 Course of Abia in office, U. C. 748. B. C. 6, between the sixth and 
 thirteenth of Tisri — Divisions and rotation of the courses of the 
 priests — Regularity of the succession of courses from U. C. 748 
 to U. C. 823 — Resulting date of the time of the return of Zacha- 
 rias home, and the probable conception of John 383 — 385 
 
 Objection to the vulgar date of the Nativity, from the fact of shepherds 
 tending their flocks by night at the time — Vulgar date at the middle 
 of winter, not so wide of the truth, as the date of the autumnal equi- 
 nox — Feast of tabernacles distinguished by no preeminence in the 
 analogy of the Christian history — Ceremony of the day of atonement 
 not so applicable to the analogy of the Christian sacrifice, as that of 
 the Passover — Circumcision andthe Passover, both institutions prior 
 to the law, and both institutions which have survived the law — 
 Requisition peculiar to the daily sacrifice, and to the sacrifice of the 
 fourteenth of Nisan, to be made with a lamb of one year old, 
 and why — Proper sense of ct/xi/os in Greek — Tenth of Nisan the 
 day prescribed for taking up the lamb for the Passover, probably 
 because it was destined to be the day of our Saviour’s birth — 
 Resulting period of the birth of John, the tenth of Tisri pre- 
 ceding 3 8 5—39o 
 
 Coincidences of various kinds, leading to the presumption that our 
 Saviour either was or would be born in the spring season of the 
 year — Custom of the Jews, with regard to the taking up and turn- 
 ing out of flocks — Arrival of the Magi — Length of the residence 
 in Egypt, and analogy of that fact to the sojourn of the Israelites 
 in the same country, from the descent to the Exodus — Analogy of 
 the birth of Moses — Analogy of the birth of Samuel — Other ana- 
 logies of remarkable things or persons in the Old Testament — Isaac 
 — Pharez — Deliverance of the Israelites — The material tabernacle 
 — Saul — David — Solomon — Rebuilding of the temple . . 391—396 
 
 Visit of our Lord to Jerusalem at the Passover, Luke ii. 42, an ar- 
 gument that he was born just at or before the Passover, rather 
 than any other feast — Age of puberty among the Jews — Ceremony 
 undergone by children, at twelve years old, among the Jews, ana- 
 
 e 4 
 
Ixxii 
 
 THE CONTENTS. 
 
 logons to confirmation — That Jesus was taken up for that purpose, 
 proved by the circumstances of the account — Age of Samuel, when 
 he began to prophesy — Date of the visit to Jerusalem in question 
 — Argument of the probable year of the Nativity from the recorded 
 age of Anna at the time — Age of marriage of females, from four- 
 teen to seventeen — Coincidence of the widowhood of Anna with 
 the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey, B. C. 63, and probability 
 that her husband perished at that time 396 — 401 
 
 Julian date of the tenth of Nisan, in the assumed year of the Nati- 
 vity, B. C. 4. April 5 or April 6 — Precise time of the Nativity, the 
 evening or midnight 401 — 403 
 
 Julian dates of the tenth of Nisan in the three years of our Saviour’s 
 ministry, A. D. 27, A. D. 28, A. D. 30: and coincidences between 
 his nominal or his real birthday, and remarkable facts in the 
 Christian history — The day of the Passion — The day of the pro- 
 cession to the temple — The first cleansing of the temple — The day 
 of Pentecost — The first miracle of feeding — The birth of Christ, 
 and his resurrection — The circumcision — The presentation in the 
 temple — The birth of John Baptist — The beginning and the length 
 of his ministry — The visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was twelve 
 years old 403 — 412 
 
 Confirmation of the above conclusions by other similar coincidences — 
 Date of the Passover, U. C. 823 — Date of the cessation of the 
 daily sacrifice, U. C. 823 — Date of the conflagration of the tem- 
 ple, U. C. 823 — Date of the destruction of Jerusalem, U. C. 
 823 412, 413. 
 
 Hypothesis on which these conclusions proceed, that April 5, U. C. 
 783, fell upon Friday — Place of the same day according to the 
 solar cycle — Tables of this cycle liable to errors of excess or de- 
 fect — Hypothesis of Mr. Mann — Errors of the Passovers calculated 
 by him — Coincidence between the destruction of the first temple 
 and the second — Ninth of Ab an erroneous date for the destruc- 
 tion of either — Date of the desecration of the temple, B. C. 168, 
 by Antiochus Epiphanes, and date of the dedication of the altar, 
 by Judas Maccabaeus, B. C. 165 — Capture of Jerusalem by Pom- 
 pey, and assertion of Dio that it was taken on the Sabbath — 
 Tenth of Tisri, U. C. 691, a Friday — True date of the destruction 
 of Jerusalem, U. C. 823 413 — 422 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 lxxiii 
 
 Details of the expedition of Cestius Gallus against Jerusalem, U. C. 
 819, and proof therefrom that Hyperberetseus 25, or Hyperbere- 
 taeus 24, fell on the Saturday, October 3 or October 2. . 422 — 430 
 
 Dates of Josephus’ History of the War, which agree with the above 
 assumptions — Proceedings in Caesarea and Jerusalem, U. C. 819 
 — -The Xylophoria — Seizure of Jerusalem by Manahem — Death of 
 Ananias — Capture of the Roman garrison — Death of Manahem — 
 Errors in the numbers of Josephus — Siege of Jotapata — Capture 
 of Gamala and Gischala, U.C. 820 430 — 434 
 
 Correction of the calculation when Abia was in office, U. C. 748, 
 the year before the birth of John — Joarib in office, Saturday, Au- 
 gust 12, and Abia, Saturday, September 30, U. C. 748. . 433 — 437 
 
 Table of Errors and Corrections of the solar cycle, from U. C. 748 — 
 U. C. 823 437 
 
 DISSERTATION XIII. 
 
 On the opinions of the most ancient Christians upon the 
 preceding topics 438 — 465 
 
 Nativity placed by the early Christians at one of the seasons, the 
 vernal equinox, or the vulgar era — Duration of our Lord’s ministry 
 repeatedly fixed at one year — Peculiar to that year, to be the fifteenth 
 or sixteenth of Tiberius — Consequent probable origin of the opin- 
 ion, the testimony of St. Luke, taken along with that of the acta 
 of Pilate 438 — 439 
 
 Application of the prophecy of the acceptable year of the Lord, to the 
 same fact — Disputed existence of the acta of Pilate — Forged acta 
 in the time of Diocletian's persecution — An implicit argument of 
 the existence of true — Date of the Passion according to these 
 spurious acta — Acts or proceedings of governors in the provinces 
 transmitted to the emperors — Institution of the public post — Tes- 
 timonies to these facts — Acta of Pilate recognised by Justin Mar- 
 tyr, Tertullian, Epiphanius, &c. — Motion of Tiberius, founded on 
 the report of the acta concerning Christ — Tertullian misconstrued 
 by Eusebius — Testimony of Melito, bishop of Sardis. . . 439 — 444 
 
 Failure of the motion of Tiberius traditionally ascribed to the oppo- 
 sition of Sejanus — Ill-will of Sejanus to the Jews, according to 
 
lxxiv 
 
 THE CONTENTS. 
 
 Philo— Treatise of Philo, Adversus Flaccum — Date of the persecu- 
 tion of the Jews of Egypt by Flaccus Aquilius, and length of his 
 administration previously — Governors of Egypt from the death of 
 Augustus to the death of Tiberius, Rectus, Strabo, Vetrasius 
 Pollio, Severus, and Flaccus — Vetrasius Pollio the husband of the 
 sister of Helvia, mother of Seneca — Date of the downfall of Seja- 
 nus — Acta of Pilate in the above tradition implied to be prior to 
 the downfall of Sejanus — Anachronisms of Eusebius on this sub- 
 ject — Designs of Sejanus against the Jews, recognised by Philo, 
 De Virtutibus — Implicit testimony of Seneca to the same fact — 
 Juventa of Seneca, what — Rescript of Tiberius in favour of the 
 Jews after the downfall of Sejanus — Dedication of the shields at 
 Jerusalem by Pilate — Family of Herod, and which of them then 
 alive and present in Jerusalem — Letter of Herod Agrippa to 
 Caius 444-45 c 
 
 Passage of Josephus relating to Christ — Place in his history an 
 argument that the ministry of Jesus Christ was believed to belong 
 to what period of the government of Pilate 450 — 45 1 
 
 Testimonies of Christian writers — I. Ignatius and Melito. . 451 — 452 
 
 II. III. Justin Martyr — Date of the first Apology 452 — 453 
 
 IV. V. VI. Irenseus, Origen, Epiphanius, and Tertullian — Date of 
 the Ad Nationes 453 — 455 
 
 VII. Clemens Alexandrinus 455 
 
 VIII. Tertullian, Lactantius, Augustin, Prosper — Various readings 
 of Tertullian’s Adversus Marcionem, with respect to the age of 
 our Lord at the Passion — Dates of the Adversus Judseos, and Mar- 
 
 cionem respectively 455 — 458 
 
 IX. Origen — Change of his opinions on the length of our Saviour’s 
 ministry — Date of the Contra Celsum 458 — 459 
 
 X. Apocryphal letters of Christ and Abgarus — Name of the kings 
 of Edessa — Abgarus a real contemporary character. . . . 459 — 460 
 
 XL Computus Paschalis, ascribed to Cyprian — XII. Julius Afriea- 
 nus — Creation placed by the ancient Christian and Jewish chro- 
 nologers in the spring 460 — 461 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 lxxv 
 
 XIII. Hippolytus Portuensis — Acta of Romanus, apud Prudentium — 
 XIV. Apollinarius Laodicenus, Prosper, and Jerome — XV. Epi- 
 phanius 461 — 463 
 
 XVI. Sulpicius Severus — XVII. Quintus Julius Hilario, Chrysostom, 
 and Theophylact 463 — 465 
 
 DISSERTATION XIV. 
 
 On the census of Cyrenius, or the meaning of Luke ii. 2. 
 
 466—549 
 
 True date of the Nativity resulting from the conclusions establish- 
 ed 466 
 
 Consequent length of our Lord’s ministry, and date of the Passion — 
 Eclipse of Phlegon — No proof that according to Phlegon himself, 
 this eclipse was reported to have happened at the full of the moon 
 — Testimonies — Epistle to Polycarp of Dionysius the Areopagite — 
 Eclipse ofPhlegon probably that of Sept. 1 2, A. D. 33.. . 467 — 469 
 
 Tradition of the closing of the temple of Janus at the Nativity — 
 Closings of the temple on record — Third closing by Augustus 
 doubtful — General tranquillity of the period from U. C. 748 to 
 U. C. 752 — Hiatus in the history of Dio for this period — Expedi- 
 tion of Caius Caesar, U. C. 753 468 — 471 
 
 Date of the census before the Nativity, U. C. 749 — Analogy of the 
 census of Quirinus, U. C. 760 — Place of the census in the account 
 of St. Luke — Supplemental relation of the accounts of St. Luke 
 to those of St. Matthew — Census going on when the holy family 
 were at Bethlehem — Arrival of the decree in the province pro- 
 bably in the autumn, and the execution probably in the ensuing 
 spring 47 i — 473 
 
 Inductive proof from Josephus, that something like a census was 
 already in contemplation in Judaea at the feast of Tabernacles, 
 U. C. 749, by tracing back the course of events from the death of 
 Herod, March, U. C. 751, to the proceedings, September or Oc- 
 tober, U. C. 749 473— 477 
 
 Quinctilius Varus president of Syria at the time of the trial of Anti- 
 pater, September, U. C. 750 — President of Syria before Varus, 
 U. C. 749, C. Sentius Saturninus — Census at the Nativity ascribed 
 by Tertullian to Saturninus 477 — 478 
 
Ixxvi 
 
 THE CONTENTS. 
 
 Investigation of the time when Saturninus came in and went out of 
 office — Saturninus not yet president at the time of the restitution of 
 the standards — Investigation of the timeofthis restitution. . 478-479 
 
 Restitution of the standards distinct in point of time from the sur- 
 rendry of the hostages by Phraates, coupled with it — Reduction 
 of Armenia by Tiberius, coincident with the restitution, but not 
 the surrendry of the hostages — Allusions to the former of these to- 
 pics in the contemporary poets, Horace, Propertius, Ovid. . 479-482 
 
 Standards restored to Augustus in person at Antioch, hostages 
 delivered up to Titius — Motive to the surrendry of the hostages, 
 according to Velleius Paterculus — Armenian expedition of Tibe- 
 rius — Allusions to it in the contemporary poets — Succession of 
 kings of Armenia, according to Tacitus, the Ancyran monument, 
 and other authorities — Motive to the surrendry, according to the 
 Ancyran monument — Motive, according to Josephus — History of 
 Thermusa and Phraates — Date of the death of Phraates, and suc- 
 cession of subsequent kings down to Vonones — Coin of Augustus, 
 which ascertains the date of the surrendry of the hostages to be 
 U. C. 746 — Subsequent history of the hostages, shewing it does 
 not admit of an earlier date — Vonones, Phraates, Tiridates, 
 Meherdates — Hostage from Phraates, U.C. 724 — Hostage brought 
 by Tiridates, U.C. 731 — Allusion in Horace to this or contem- 
 porary events — Coin of Augustus above mentioned, not referable 
 to the children of Germanicus 481 — 490 
 
 Saturninus in office, at the time of the council of Bervtus — Investi- 
 gation of the date of this council 489 — 490 
 
 Marriage of Herod and Mariamne — History of Aristobulus and 
 Alexander, their children — Date of their marriage, the year before 
 the visit of Agrippa to Jerusalem, U. C. 739 490 — 492 
 
 Offspring of each of these marriages — Order and dates of the birth 
 of the children of Aristobulus and Bernice — Age of Herodias the 
 youngest, when betrothed in marriage soon after her father’s death 
 — Age at which females were espoused or married anciently — 
 Resulting conclusion of the date of the death of her father, U. C. 
 749 49 2 ~ 494 
 
 Arrangement of intermediate events, between the marriage of Herod s 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 lxxvii 
 
 two sons, U. C. 738, and their death, U. C. 749 — Mission of An- 
 tipater to Rome, U.C. 740 — First visit of Herod to Rome, U.C. 741 
 — Dedication of Caesarea, U.C. 742 — Rescripts from the fifth to the 
 sixth chapter of Antiquities xvi. and their dates — Titius in office as 
 president of Syria, U. C. 745 — Second visit of Herod to Rome, U.C. 
 746 — Movements of Augustus to and from Rome, U. C. 737 to U.C. 
 74 t, and U.C. 744 to U. C. 746 — Quarrel of Herod and Svllaeus, 
 U. C. 746 — Rupture with Augustus thence arising, and course of 
 proceedings connected with it, U. C. 747 and U. C. 748 — Resump- 
 tion of the history of Herod’s two sons, and reconciliation of Au- 
 gustus to Herod, U. C. 748 — Letter of Augustus, authorizing the 
 council of Berytus, U. C. 748 exeunte — Council of Berytus, and 
 condemnation and death of Herod’s two sons, U.C. 749. . 494 — 504 
 
 Duration of the term of office, allowed by Augustus to the gover- 
 nors of provinces — Rule of Augustus with respect to the interval 
 between serving the office of consul or praetor at Rome, and the 
 government of a province abroad — Division of the governors of 
 provinces — The Kkripoaroi or proconsular, commonly annual ; the 
 aiperol or imperial, not — Speech of Maecenas to Augustus, U.C. 725 
 — Term of office under Augustus, from five years to three — Proofs 
 of the existence of this rule, by cases in point, of procurators of 
 Egypt, procurators of Judaea, and presidents of Syria . . 505 — 51 1 
 
 Resulting conclusion from these premises, that Saturninus would 
 succeed to Titius, U. C. 746, and Varus to Saturninus, U. C. 
 750 — Coins ascribed to Varus, which militate against that con- 
 clusion — Coins in question cannot shake either of the conclusions 
 established, that Titius did not go out of office, nor Saturninus come 
 into it, before U. C. 746 ; and that Saturninus was president at the 
 time of the council of Berytus 51 1 — 5 1 4 
 
 Proof from Josephus that Saturninus was actually in office, not only 
 at the time of the council, U. C. 749, but at the beginning of 
 U. C. 750 — Details of the seven months’ interval, between the 
 mission and return of Antipater to and from Rome, U. C. 750 — 
 Place of St. Matthew’s narrative of the visit of the Magi, in this 
 account 5 14 — 5 18 
 
 Eras of the coins of Antioch — iEra Seleucidarum — iEra Caesarea, 
 and iEra Actiaca — Date of the battle of Pharsalia — Nominally 
 
Jxxviii 
 
 THE CONTENTS. 
 
 Sept. 22, really August 9 — Mra Caesarea the true era of the 
 coins of Antioch — iEra Actiaca began and expired with Augustus 
 — iEra Actiaca not yet adopted before U. C. 734 .... 518 — 524 
 
 Coins of Varus, referred to the proper A Era of Antioch, the iEra 
 Caesarea, would bear date from U. C. 729, to U. C. 731 or 732 — 
 Proof from Josephus, in the history of the grant of the tetrarchy 
 of Lysanias or Zenodorus to Herod, that Varro was president 
 of Syria between these years — Name of Varro capable of 
 being confounded with Varus — Probability thence resulting that 
 the supposed coins of Varus are really coins of Varro — Presidents 
 of Syria from U. C. 723 to U.C. 727 — Didius, Messala Corvinus, 
 and Varro — History of Messala in particular, and testimonies from 
 Tibullus — Varro not necessarily superseded by the mission of 
 Marcus Agrippa into the East, U. C. 73 1 — Testimony of Eckhel to 
 the difficulties sometimes presented by coins 524 — 534 
 
 Resumption of the census at the Nativity — Providential coincidence 
 of the event itself — Date of the grant of the censorian power to 
 Augustus, and of subsequent renewals of it — Censuses held by 
 him — Chasm in the history of Dio, from U. C. 747 or U. C. 748 — 
 Probable allusion to the census in Suidas — Objection to the fact 
 of the census, from the silence of contemporary history, equally 
 applicable to the fact of a measurement of the empire under Au- 
 gustus — Proofs of this measurement from various testimonies — 
 Census of the empire naturally connected with a geometrical survey 
 and measurement of it 534 — 540 
 
 Census at the Nativity not confined to Judaea, but general over the 
 empire — Proper sense of oiKovpevq — Census at the Nativity not a 
 proper Roman census — Distinction of d7roypd<pecr6cu and anon- 
 pacrOai — Census at the Nativity an enrolment per capita, but nothing 
 more — Census of Quirinus or Quirinius, U. C. 760, the first pro- 
 per Roman census to which the East had yet been sub- 
 ject 539—544 
 
 Possible versions of Lukeii. 2 — Objection to that which would make 
 it the first of Cyrenius — Objection to that which supposes it to 
 have first come to pass under Cyrenius — History of Quirinus be- 
 fore and after U. C. 749 — Expedition of Cains Caesar — M. 
 
THE CONTENTS. 
 
 lxxix 
 
 Lollius — Lepida — Census at Apamea by Quirinus, U. C. 
 
 7 6 ° 544 — 54 6 
 
 True construction of Luke ii. 2, what — Use of the superlative for the 
 comparative in Greek — Especially of npooros for 7 rporepos — Tlparos, 
 adverbially for npo or nporepov — Requires the participle of the 
 verb of office with the article — Examples of these construc- 
 tions 546 — 549 
 
HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS. 
 
 DISSERTATIONS. 
 
 DISSERTATION I. 
 
 On the regularity of the Gospels, and on their supplemental 
 relations to each other. 
 
 There are two questions which necessarily concern 
 the Harmony of the Gospels, and therefore will deserve 
 to be considered at the outset of the present work ; one, 
 how far any of the Gospels is a regular history — and 
 the other, how far any one of them is supplemental to 
 the rest. 
 
 Now, any of the Gospels would be regular which 
 should contain no transpositions in the order of events ; 
 but every transposition must be either an Anticipation, 
 or what I shall hereafter call, by way of distinction, a 
 Trajection, of something: and these terms are the re- 
 verse of each other. An Anticipation is the relation of 
 a fact before its proper time and place ; and a Trajec- 
 tion is the relation of a fact after them. 
 
 The first observation, therefore, which we may make 
 is this ; that the regularity of any of the Gospels in this 
 sense, does not concern either its integrity or its con- 
 tinuity ; for regular order is not necessarily uninter- 
 rupted or continuous ; and an history may be defective 
 in parts, that is, may exhibit omissions in the detail of 
 
 VOL. i. B 
 
Dissertation First . 
 
 2 
 
 intermediate events, which yet relates nothing out of its 
 order upon the whole. If the regularity of the Gos- 
 pels were not to be thus distinguished from their con- 
 tinuity, not one which we possess could be considered 
 a regular account. 
 
 In the next place, the regularity of a particular Gos- 
 pel concerns the details or succession of a certain nar- 
 rative at one time, compared with the details or suc- 
 cession of the same narrative at another. It might 
 not then be possible, by the help of that single Gospel, 
 to determine whether its order were regular or not ; for 
 unless it had itself premised to each of its accounts such 
 notes of time, or of sequence, as would infallibly have 
 ascertained their relation to the whole or to each other, 
 no one could have undertaken to decide what parts 
 were given out of their place, and what were not. It 
 is, consequently, by a comparison with the rest of the 
 Gospels that this regularity is to be determined con- 
 cerning one of them : a comparison, however, which is 
 not practicable, except when that one goes along with 
 some one or more of the rest, and their several accounts 
 coincide. 
 
 Now this coincidence, to a greater or a less extent, 
 was naturally to be expected from them ; for as they all 
 begin upon the whole alike, and all end with the same 
 point of time, and all profess to give an account of what 
 was transacted between these extremes, their general 
 outline must be the same ; and they could scarcely fail 
 to contain much common matter, or to touch upon nu- 
 merous passages in the same succession of events : and 
 the more complete or continuous any one of them might 
 be in itself, the more frequently would it be likely to 
 coincide with the rest. In all these instances, the order 
 of one is necessarily a check upon the order of another; 
 and the inversions of one, if any such exist, are ren- 
 
Regularity of the Gospels. 
 
 3 
 
 dered both liable to be discovered, and capable of being 
 rectified, by the more precise and definite arrangements 
 of another. 
 
 Thirdly, though the regularity of none of the Gos- 
 pels is to be determined by a priori considerations, but 
 solely by the examination of its own structure, and by 
 the juxta-position of the rest, yet, I think, it will be ad- 
 mitted, that antecedent probability, independent of any 
 such examination and comparison, is entirely in favour 
 of the presumption that every one of the Gospels will 
 be found upon inquiry to be a regular account. They 
 cannot be regarded in any light but that of simple 
 histories ; and no history as such, whatever be the 
 subject to which it relates, can, consistently with its 
 own nature and purposes, disregard the order of time. 
 It would be altogether a false conception of the nature 
 of the Gospels, to consider them as mere memoirs of 
 the life and actions of our Saviour : or though they 
 might be so considered, yet the antecedent expectation 
 would not be invalidated thereby ; for simple bio- 
 graphy is still a species of history, and is, or should 
 be, naturally as observant of regularity as history. 
 
 There may be exceptions to this rule in each depart- 
 ment ; that is, occasions when, for particular reasons, 
 both biographists and historians may choose to excuse 
 themselves from the strict observance of order in their 
 accounts ; which is the case with the Lives of the 
 Caesars by Suetonius, and with the Roman History by 
 Florus. No such writer, however, could do this as 
 matter of course, or without acknowledging the gene- 
 ral rule, even when he was deviating from it; much less 
 could he be at liberty to deviate from it, if he had ex- 
 pressly promised, and so far bound himself, to observe it. 
 Of Suetonius at least, and of Florus, it is the fact that 
 they do not allow themselves the liberty in question, 
 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 without apprising their readers beforehand of the plan 
 which they propose to adopt — and as it were apolo- 
 gizing for it a . 
 
 On what principle, however, can the Gospel ac- 
 counts be regarded as simple memoirs of Jesus Christ, 
 two of which, St. Mark’s and St. John’s, contain not a 
 word of his personal history before the last three years 
 of his life ? and a third, St. Luke’s, for a considerable 
 part of the whole, may just as reasonably be considered 
 a memoir of the life of John the Baptist? The truth 
 is, they are each what their name of Gospels, or Fyay- 
 7 e\ia 9 implies them to be — an history of the rise and 
 progress of the Evangelical, that is, the Christian, dis- 
 pensation — which each supposes to have been first for- 
 mally begun by the ministry of John the Baptist, and 
 each carries forward through the ministry of Jesus 
 Christ, and all conduct downwards to the ministry of 
 the apostles. Nor is any one of them, even in this 
 sense, a separate or independent account ; but, like the 
 subject to which they each relate, they are so connected 
 together, that the entire history of this one entire 
 scheme, is that which is made up of them all. 
 
 These considerations being premised, I affirm that 
 the Gospel of St. Matthew is partly regular and partly 
 irregular, but that the part which is regular, is more 
 than seven times as great as the part which is not so ; 
 and that the Gospels of St. Mark, of St. Luke, and of 
 St.John are regular throughout. The proof of the 
 first assertion, which maintains the irregularity of one 
 of these Gospels, though only in part, is so far the most 
 important ; but as it cannot be fully made out, except 
 by a long and elaborate examination of St. Matthew’s 
 Gospel, I have reserved it for consideration by itself. The 
 proof of the second, which affirms the regularity of the 
 
 a Suet. Aug. 9. Florus, i. Prooem. 5. Cf. ii. 19, 5. 
 
Regularity of the Gospels . 
 
 5 
 
 remaining Gospels, would be supplied by the inspection 
 of the Harmony merely ; to which I might conse- 
 quently refer. 
 
 But with regard to the first of the number, St. Mark’s, 
 I shall here observe that, if any instances which appear 
 like deviations from regular order, are to be found in 
 his accounts, these, as it may be shewn, are either no 
 such deviations, or justified by the necessity of the 
 case. The most remarkable, if not rather the only 
 examples of this kind, are the account of the death of 
 the Baptist, and the account of the unction at Bethany; 
 neither of which is properly a transposition. There is 
 not in general much, which this Evangelist relates in- 
 dependently of St. Matthew or of St. Luke ; and even 
 that is so connected, by proper notes of time and of 
 succession, with what goes before or follows after it, as 
 to leave no doubt concerning its position. It is in par- 
 ticulars, not in generals, that he differs most from the 
 other two ; so that the question of his regularity is 
 seldom to be distinguished from the question of theirs : 
 and yet, with a view to the determination of this ques- 
 tion under any circumstances, it is much oftener that 
 we must have recourse to St. Mark, than to either 
 St. Matthew or St. Luke. Indeed, so definite, exact, 
 and regular is he throughout, that, but for the com- 
 parative defect in the outline which his Gospel exhibits, 
 none could more deservedly be assumed as the basis of 
 arrangement for the rest. 
 
 The same kind of remark may be made upon the 
 Gospel of St. John ; the order of which being affirmed 
 or distinctly implied all along, there can scarcely be a 
 shadow of reason to dispute its regularity from first to 
 last. The account of the unction at Bethany is the 
 only point on which a question can be raised, whether 
 it is regular or not : and if that account is irregular in 
 
 B 3 
 
6 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 the other Evangelists, it must be regular in St. John. 
 If, then, this Evangelist is not so fitly to be selected 
 for the basis of an Harmony, as some one of the rest, it 
 is owing to the peculiarity of his Gospel in a very dif- 
 ferent respect ; the nature of which is to be discovered 
 from its supplemental relations to the rest. 
 
 With regard to the Gospel of St. Luke, as there is 
 no Gospel, not even St. Matthew’s, which has been and 
 is still more generally reputed to be irregular, I shall 
 enter upon the proof of my former assertion, somewhat 
 more at large : stating both such reasons as may tend 
 to raise the presumption of its truth a priori , and such 
 as contribute to confirm this presumption a posteriori; 
 the former, shewing what was to be expected from the 
 Gospel in question ; and the latter, appealing to what 
 is actually the case with it. 
 
 I. The Gospel of St. Luke possesses a preface, which 
 is not the case with any other of the Gospels ; and 
 that a preface strictly so called — a model of concise- 
 ness, and yet of sufficiency ; asserting, in the most 
 compendious form, whatsoever an introductory admo- 
 nition might be expected to assert — the motive which 
 induced the author to undertake his work — his own 
 qualifications for its execution — the method which he 
 proposed to observe in the details of it — and the end 
 which he had in view by it. Now prefaces of this kind 
 are not commonly premised except to regular histories ; 
 and if St. Luke’s Gospel is seen to agree at the outset 
 with any formal and methodical history, this is some ar- 
 gument that it will be found to agree with such an 
 history, in the subsequent arrangement and distribution 
 of the work. 
 
 II. It is his own declaration that he proposed to 
 write in order , and, consequently, to observe the 
 course of time and succession in the detail of events ; 
 
Regularity of the Gospels. 
 
 7 
 
 for I know not what other meaning can be put on the 
 words in question I e'So^e icapol TraptjKoXovOrjKorL avcoOe v 
 Tratriv aKpLpw? KaOe^fi<s <joi ypa^jrai, KpaTicrre SeoepiXe a — • 
 which may be rendered literally as follows : It hath 
 seemed good to me also, who have carefully attended 
 to the course of all things from the beginning, to write 
 of them in order for thee, most excellent Theophilus*. 
 
 * As far as concerns the pre- 
 sent argument, the important 
 terms in this text of St. Luke 
 are, naprjKoXovOrjKOTi, avooBev, and 
 KaOegrjs : upon the last I shall 
 speak by and by, and on the 
 first, in the next Dissertation. 
 But, as to the middle term, it 
 occurs thirteen times in the 
 New Testament, (vide Schmidtii 
 Concordantiam,) and never in 
 more senses than one of these 
 two, either of from above, in the 
 sense of from heaven ; or of 
 from above, in the sense of from 
 the top, from the first, from the 
 extreme point, or beginning, of 
 any thing; in which last it is 
 almost synonymous with an ap - 
 \ijs. The instances of its use in 
 the former sense are, John iii.31. 
 xix. 11. James i. 17. iii. 15, 17. 
 No one will suppose that St. 
 Luke’s use of avooBev here, is to 
 be classed among this number : 
 his junction of it with the verb 
 napaKokovOrjcrai, in the sense of 
 to go along with any thing, to 
 investigate a subject, to conduct 
 or prosecute an inquiry , must 
 effectually bar this construction* 
 The instances of the latter sense, 
 under which I class what is 
 hardly to be distinguished from 
 it, the sense of afresh or anew , 
 are Matt, xxvii. 51. Mark xv. 
 
 38. John xix. 23. iii. 3. 7. Gal. 
 iv. 9. Acts xxvi. 5. and this of 
 Luke i. 3. The instance at Acts 
 xxvi. 5. is exactly a parallel in- 
 stance to this ; npoyivdoaKOvris pe 
 dvcoBev, which was expressed just 
 before by ttjv... filoocriv pov rrjv i< 
 veorrjTOs, rrjv an apfi/s yevopivrjv 
 iv tS eBvei pov : and it is so much 
 the more important, because it 
 is an instance of the use of the 
 word in such a sense there, by 
 the same writer who uses it 
 here. 
 
 I have noted repeated exam- 
 ples of its occurrence in a simi- 
 lar manner in Josephus — out of 
 which I shall produce only these 
 three : rjv ecrx°v vnep rjpd> v avooBev 
 oi Kparovvres : A. xvi. vi. I — oV 1 
 ndo-ris ripr/s avooBev eniTvyxdvovres : 
 A. Xvi. vi. 8 — dvbpas avooBev (f)L- 
 Xovs avra, or perhaps, avra: A. 
 xvi. viii. 3. So also, in other 
 writers of this period : ov 
 Ka\ nparjv, aXX ’ avoodev Ka\ apxr/s 
 ovcrav: Aristides, Orat. liv. 673. 
 I.17 • — *nel . . . (rvyKeKXrjpcopivov acr- 
 nev avcodev exopev. Ibid. 69 1 . 8 — 
 aXX ai nepl Becov do£ai, ap^apevai 
 avoodev, dLand<rr]<: (piXoaocfoias rjXOov: 
 Maximus Tyrius. Diss. x. 3. 
 
 In all these cases, it has only 
 one and the same meaning, that 
 of marking out some extreme 
 point backward ; the furthest 
 
 c Chap. i. 3. 
 
 B 4 
 
8 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 These words, it is true, have been often cited, and 
 as often considered decisive, or not decisive, upon the 
 question at issue, as the opinions of harmonists have 
 previously espoused this or that side of the debate ; 
 but their natural and obvious construction, apart from 
 such prejudices, is clearly to convey the promise of a re- 
 gular account. No account, however, can be considered 
 a regular, that is, a methodical and orderly account, 
 which contains such transpositions as have been freely 
 supposed in St. Luke’s Gospel ; transpositions consist- 
 ing of anachronisms, and vo-repa 7rp6repa or the con- 
 trary, of every possible extent ; and instead of order 
 and method, exhibiting only confusion and perplexity. 
 The assertion of the writer’s personal qualifications 
 for his undertaking, which appears in the same decla- 
 ration, was doubtless intended to prepare the reader 
 for the expectation of a regular account. One who 
 had thoroughly investigated a certain subject, was 
 competent to write upon it in order ; for he must have 
 investigated it in order: and, if the subject was his- 
 torical, it would be as natural and as easy to trace 
 things down from their source, as up to it. The me- 
 thod of the historian would be only the reverse of 
 the method of the inquirer, and the one as regular as 
 the other. 
 
 The use of the terms and KaOe^s is peculiar to 
 St. Luke, in whose Gospel and in the Acts, conjointly, 
 each of them occurs five times, sometimes as descriptive 
 of the course and succession of time — at other times of 
 
 point at which it is necessary to 
 begin, and to pursue thencefor- 
 ward, any series or course of 
 things : it means, therefore, not 
 only, from the first , as such, or, 
 from the beginning , simply, but, 
 from the first, and thencefor- 
 
 ward; from the beginning down- 
 ward. In order to describe the 
 course of an historical investiga- 
 tion, this is its most natural and 
 appropriate sense ; and in this 
 sense it is, as I think, used by 
 St. Luke in his preface. 
 
Regularity of the Gospels. 
 
 9 
 
 the course and succession of events — yet always as 
 descriptive of a direct, continuous, and orderly succes- 
 sion only. There is one instance, in particular, where 
 he employs the word, as in his preface, to describe the 
 course of a certain narrative, which is plainly a regu- 
 lar one: ap^a/uevos Se 6 lUrpos e^erlOero avrois Ka6e^fj$ c . 
 Nor can the import of the term in either case be better 
 illustrated than by the parallel passage from Thu- 
 cydides ; yeypacpe 8e teal ravra 6 avro ? OovkvSI '8*1$ ’A Orj- 
 vaios e^fj$, to? eKacrra eyevero^. It seems, then, that to 
 write e£fj$, and to write cog eKacrra eyevero, in the estima- 
 tion of Thucydides, were synonymous phrases. Why 
 not, therefore, in the estimation of St. Luke * ? 
 
 III. The regularity of the Acts of the Apostles, con- 
 sidered as the second part, or the continuation, of the 
 same history of which the Gospel is the first part, and 
 the commencement. This connection between the two 
 
 * Cf. also Thucydides, ii. 1 : 
 yeypairrai be e£fjs as eKacrra eyL 
 yvero. Numerous examples of 
 the use of the synonymous term 
 egrjs or ecpegrjs, might be pro- 
 duced from 1 classical writers, 
 shewing that it always denotes 
 order , regularity, continuity, and 
 the like. Thus, brjacrot rracrav 
 rrjv yrjv avrav icj)e£f}s, that is, as it 
 follows immediately after, £we- 
 X&s: Xen. Hell. iv. vi. 4. 5 — rj 
 pev npooTT] ra rav fiacriXeav, eirra 
 yevopevav, epya, ecpe^rjs airavra e(f) 
 eavrav, ws eyevero : Appian, Prsef. 
 ad Histor. 14 — el top re %po vov 
 an apxrjs, Kal ras npageis ras rijs 
 noXeas etyegqs die\6oipev : Isocra- 
 tes, Orat. iv. 26 — rlvos irparov 
 pvrjcrda, Kal nolov devrepov’ to yap 
 e<pe£rjs pe Xeyeiv bianecfievyev : Id. 
 Orat. XV. 148 — Iv eepe^s, Kal Kara 
 
 piKpov, 7 Tpos eKacrra rav Karrjyopt]- 
 pevav aTroXoyrjcrapai : iEschines, 
 Orat. ii. 26 — ovdev TrapaXeinav , 
 aXX ’ i<pe£rjs airavra viropipvrjcrKav : 
 Id. Ibid. 28 — rL irparov del iroieiv 
 rovs avridedaKoras, Kal rl devrepov, 
 Kal raXXa S’ ecpe^rjs : Demosthenes, 
 Orat. xlii. I — pera be. ..eire£rjs ira- 
 crecov neipacrdai : Herodotus, ii. 
 Ill — 7 rpos rovs eCpegtjs rav Xoyav, 
 Kal ervvexeis, Kal br] rper\ropai : Ari- 
 stides, Orat. xiii. 239. 1 . 23 — 
 67TC od£ei be ov Kara to e^rjs, aXXa 
 irapdXnrav dvo rjpepas : AClian, de 
 Natura Animalium, v.32. Lastly, 
 oi be ( 3 ovXopevoi ra yevopeva emde'i- 
 £cu as £ vve( 3 rj eKacrrov, ovras array- 
 yeXXovcri, to irparov , irparov , Kal to 
 devrepov, devrepov' Kal raXXa e(f)e£rjs 
 opoias: Dio Chrysostom, Orat. 
 xi. 316. 35. 
 
 c Acts xi. 4. 
 
 d Lib. v. 26. 
 
10 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 is ascertained by the preface, prefixed to the Acts also ; 
 which is not merely addressed to the same Theophilus, 
 but expressly refers to the Gospel, as the first part of a 
 continuous account. If the Gospel, already written, is 
 thus called the first part, the Acts, about to be written, 
 must be the second. Now the Acts are a regular his- 
 tory ; so much so, that no ingenuity of criticism would 
 be able to establish the fact of a single transposition 
 therein. On the principle, then, that there should be an 
 unity of plan and execution, where there is evidently 
 an unity of subject and design, the same regularity 
 which predominates in the second, is clearly to be ex- 
 pected from the first part of the same work : unless it 
 should be contended, that the history of our Saviour’s 
 ministry did not admit of an orderly narration, while 
 the history of that of the apostles did ; or that St. Luke 
 had reasons for regarding the course of time and suc- 
 cession in the latter — contrary to those which com- 
 pelled him to disregard it in the former. 
 
 IV. For an integral period of the Christian history, 
 and through an integral portion of its own contents, 
 the Gospel of St. Luke is regular, and consistent with 
 the professions contained in the preface. For first, 
 proposing to deduce that history from its earliest point 
 of time, he begins with the conception and the birth of 
 the Baptist, and afterwards passes to the conception 
 and the birth of Jesus Christ; that is, he begins with 
 the private history of each, before he proceeds to the 
 public. Secondly, as far as was practicable, without 
 actually violating the order of events, he manifests a 
 strict anxiety to separate the private history of the 
 Baptist from the private history of Christ. There 
 were some circumstances connected with the concep- 
 tion, which preceded the birth of Christ, but followed 
 upon the conception of John: these he has related, as 
 
Regularity of the Gospels. 
 
 11 
 
 historical precision required, between the two. But 
 after the birth of John, when there was nothing in his 
 private history any way connected with the private 
 history of Christ, he dispatches that history once for 
 all ; summing up in a single sentence — The child grew, 
 and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till 
 the day of his shewing unto Israel e — the substance of 
 thirty years, before he proceeds to the account of the 
 birth of Christ. Why was this done, except that the 
 course of the history might be left free to begin, and 
 to continue, in like manner the account of the birth, 
 the infancy, and the domestic privacy of Christ? all 
 which are next related, and in a strictly methodical 
 order. 
 
 Again, being arrived at the point of time when the 
 public ministry of both the Baptist and Jesus Christ 
 was about to commence, he begins with the ministry 
 of John, and dispatches, as before, the ministry of John, 
 before he says a word about the ministry of Christ : 
 of which distinction there cannot be a clearer proof 
 than that, after a regular account of the preaching, the 
 teaching, and the testimonies of John, he concludes the 
 whole by the history of his imprisonment, before he re- 
 lates even the baptism of Christ. This was to introduce 
 an anachronism of probably four months in extent ; 
 but it is manifestly an anachronism introduced on pur- 
 pose, to keep the unity of his next and his principal 
 subject unbroken ; that so the history of our Saviour’s 
 ministry might begin and be continued from his bap- 
 tism forward, without any admixture of the history of 
 John. In this case, then, the exception, instead of 
 weakening, serves rather to confirm our assertion. 
 
 V. From the time of the commencement of the history 
 
 e Chap. i. 80. 
 
Dissertation First. 
 
 U 
 
 of this ministry, to the end of the Gospel of St. Luke, 
 there is no instance of a supposed transposition, which, 
 upon a fair and dispassionate examination, will not 
 turn out to be quite the contrary. The merits of the 
 examination in all these cases, I must leave to the judg- 
 ment of others ; but if the argument in each of them 
 can be sufficiently made out, it will manifestly be deci- 
 sive upon the present question. There can be nothing 
 irregular in this Gospel, if what has been hitherto re- 
 puted so, is in reality no such thing. 
 
 I will observe, however, that the eviction of such a 
 conclusion upon one occasion, becomes the ground of 
 some presumption in its favour upon another ; and its 
 eviction in a plurality of instances, by determining so 
 far the character or plan of the work, amounts to a 
 moral certainty of its general truth. Hence even the 
 more doubtful examples might be defended by appeal- 
 ing to the implied testimony of the more unimpeach- 
 able ; for the better it has been ascertained that trans- 
 positions have never occurred, the less likely it must be 
 considered that they will still be found to occur. 
 
 Nor ought it to be objected, that by introducing 
 distinctions like these, we multiply the number of iden- 
 tical events ; for, in the first place, no two events can 
 be identical, which are not exactly the same ; and 
 many may be similar, which yet are really different. We 
 need not have recourse to the principium indiscernibi - 
 lium ; however true it may be, that if two things agree 
 in ninety-nine points, and yet disagree in one, they can- 
 not be absolutely the same : especially as the very re- 
 verse of this supposition is more frequently the case ; 
 viz. that the things in question, about whose identity 
 we are inquiring, differ in ninety-nine points, and agree, 
 perhaps, in one. 
 
 This leads me to observe in the next place, that 
 
Regularity of the Gospels. 
 
 13 
 
 some of these events are falsely reputed to be the 
 same, and are not even similar : others are proved by 
 the testimony of the same Gospel to have happened 
 more than once : and as to them all in common, it is 
 better, far better, on every principle, that, whether ac- 
 tions or discourses, they should be considered to have 
 occurred again, provided they can thereby be kept dis- 
 tinct, than that the Gospel historians should be set at 
 variance, and their mutual credibility be seriously en- 
 dangered, by obstinately pronouncing such accounts to 
 be the same. There is no risk of any mischievous con- 
 sequence, and but little antecedent improbability, in 
 the former case, while there is the utmost hazard to the 
 cause of Christian truth in the latter. In a ministry 
 of three years’ duration, every day of which, upon the 
 whole, w r as similarly employed, it must be allowed that 
 a great deal of historical matter might, and even 
 would, come over again : the same incidents in general 
 would frequently transpire ; similar, and almost identi- 
 cal miracles would often be performed ; the same dis- 
 courses, in the way either of general or of special admo- 
 nition, would be repeatedly delivered. It will be allowed 
 too, that any one Evangelist, who had recorded such 
 things in one such instance of their occurrence, might 
 pass them over, for that very reason, in another ; while 
 a different Evangelist, who had not mentioned them 
 before, might think fit to relate them afterwards. And 
 this is precisely the state of the case in respect to 
 such supposed identical events ; that they are not found 
 twice over in the same Gospel, nor at corresponding 
 points of time in different Gospels. But we cannot 
 conceive that inspired historians should differ so widely 
 in their account of the same things, as, on a contrary 
 supposition, they must differ — and yet retain their title 
 to inspiration, and consequently to infallibility. The 
 
14 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 most gratuitous assumptions are necessary upon this 
 principle, to explain away their differences, and to recon- 
 cile them with each other ; assumptions, which are war- 
 ranted by no rules of sound and sober interpretation ; 
 and which, in any other case, where the question might 
 concern the authority of profane historians, would ap- 
 pear revolting to men’s common sense, and would not 
 be tolerated for a moment ; assumptions, consequently, 
 which must be received with blind submission, or, if 
 any one presumes to call them in question, which no one 
 will be able to establish. 
 
 I trust that when I am making these remarks, I 
 shall not be suspected of being actuated by any ambi- 
 tion of novelty, any supercilious disdain of received 
 opinions, or absurd affectation of paradox. Much less 
 would I be suspected of a desire to deal precipitately 
 and rashly with so grave and important a subject as 
 the credibility of the Gospel history ; which depends 
 upon the fidelity and mutual consistency of the Gospel 
 historians. I am but expressing that which, to my own 
 feelings and apprehensions, appears the real state of the 
 case ; that, according to most of the received systems 
 of harmonizing the Evangelists, a man must surrender 
 up his powers of judgment and discrimination, before 
 he can be satisfied with their results. Nor does this im- 
 ply any reflection on the Evangelists themselves ; who 
 ought not to be made responsible for the mistakes of 
 those who may have dealt injudiciously with them ; and 
 whose separate or common authority, instead of being 
 impaired, may in reality be further strengthened and 
 confirmed, by pursuing a different course. If such and 
 such parts of their respective narratives are not actually 
 the same, it is in vain to attempt to make them so, 
 without submitting these several accounts to a kind of 
 torture like that of the bed of Procrustes. The wisest 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 15 
 
 and safest proceeding is to give up what is unten- 
 able, and to stand only upon what admits of defence. 
 There is sufficient, in all such instances, justly to im- 
 ply that the subjects of comparison are different from 
 each other, but there is far from sufficient to prove 
 that they are the same ; there is not that agreement 
 which we should have a right to expect to meet with 
 in the account of identical events. 
 
 Besides, it is not duly remembered in these cases, 
 that the Gospel history, as we possess it, is at the 
 utmost a very incomplete history, and far from being 
 adequate to fill up the period which it must he supposed 
 to have occupied. By distinguishing between merely 
 similar events, we contribute to remove this defect ; 
 but by confounding those which were really distinct, 
 we abridge still more what was previously too short. 
 Nor yet, while I contend that there is much in the 
 Gospels, really different, which may appear to be the 
 same, would I contend, on the principle of Osiander, 
 that nothing is the same in them, which might be 
 thought to be distinct. St. Matthew’s Gospel exhibits ir- 
 regularities, which I am entirely disposed to admit : yet 
 even these will not be found to constitute four chapters 
 out of twenty-eight ; and still less will the order of nar- 
 ration, even in these, be found affirmed to be the order 
 of succession. And having said thus much, at present, 
 on the question of the regularity of the Gospels, I 
 shall proceed to that of their supplemental relations to 
 each other. 
 
 We possess the Gospels arranged in a determinate 
 order, which, having been from time immemorial the 
 same, it may be presumed was not originally adopted, 
 except for sufficient reasons. The only deviation from 
 the general rule is in the order of the Italic versions, 
 and of one Greek manuscript, the Codex Bezae, which 
 
16 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 in other respects bears an affinity to those versions. If the 
 Gospels were written by the authors whose names they 
 bear, this arrangement could not have been produced 
 by any personal regard to the authors themselves, as 
 partly apostles, and partly apostolical men ; for in that 
 case the two middle Gospels would necessarily have fol- 
 lowed after the two extreme ones — as they do, and most 
 probably for this reason, in the instances of exception 
 just mentioned. Nor yet could the same arrangement 
 have been determined, as the order of the Epistles 
 may, in some measure, have been determined, by any 
 like regard to the parties for whom they were written ; 
 because, not being addressed, except in the case of 
 St. Luke’s Gospel only, to any person or persons in 
 particular, the Gospels would not appear to be designed 
 but for the Christian world in general. The most pro- 
 bable supposition, therefore, is, that the order, in which 
 they have been always arranged, is the order in which 
 they were originally written : and, independent of ex- 
 ternal testimony to the truth of this conclusion, it is so 
 far confirmed by internal evidence, that St. Matthew’s 
 Gospel, the first of the number, exhibits plain indica- 
 tions that it was composed expressly for an Hebrew 
 community of Christians, and in Palestine, and very 
 probably, early in the Christian history ; while St. 
 John’s, the last of the number, shews that it was writ- 
 ten neither for Jews, nor in Judaea, nor until late in 
 the same history : and with regard to the intermediate 
 two, there is similar evidence that neither of them was 
 written for Jews, or among Jews — nor so early in the 
 Gospel history as St. Matthew’s, though earlier than 
 St. John’s. 
 
 These indications I shall point out, as they fall in 
 my way hereafter ; and waiving for the present, the 
 consideration of the historical testimony either to the 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels . 
 
 17 
 
 dates or to the order of the Gospels, I shall confine my 
 attention to a single argument, applicable in some de- 
 gree both to their times and to their order conjointly, but 
 more especially to their order ; which it is in the na- 
 ture of an harmony to bring more immediately into view, 
 and of the most perfect harmony, to exhibit most ef- 
 fectually. This argument is the simple statement of 
 what one Evangelist is seen to have done in the way 
 of supplying, connecting, or filling up another. If it 
 appears that wherever the accounts of one were imper- 
 fect or defective, there the accounts of another come in 
 with additional matter, and so far fill up the omission ; 
 and if this adaptation of one to another is perceived to 
 hold good not merely here and there, or in single instances, 
 but almost every where, and through the whole of a 
 Gospel ; and not in parts of each, where both or where 
 all possess any thing in common, only, but then more 
 especially when the supplemental Gospel, and that 
 which it supplies, in other respects stand most alone, 
 and detached from each other ; I think every one must 
 allow that the supplemental Evangelist wrote not only 
 after, but with an express relation to the more defec- 
 tive ; and, therefore, that he had seen and was ac- 
 quainted with his Gospel. It is utterly inconceivable 
 that in four distinct and independent histories, each of 
 which was composed apart from the rest, any such 
 clear and decided coincidences should be found to hold 
 good : nothing but design and the direct accommoda- 
 tion of one, and consequently a later, to another, and 
 consequently a prior account, could be adequate to 
 produce them. This method of reasoning, therefore, 
 demonstrates a double conclusion ; viz. not merely 
 which Gospels were later than which, but which Gospels 
 were written with the knowledge of which : and it is 
 manifestly different from that other mode of argument 
 VOL. i. c 
 
18 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 r^? 
 
 with a view to the same result, which does not proceed 
 upon the collation of one Gospel with another, or of 
 large and integral portions of one with those of an- 
 other, both being considered in respect to the order of 
 the narrative, or to the succession and connection of 
 the particulars recorded in each — but upon the com- 
 parison of detached and isolated passages, tending to 
 the eviction of verbal coincidences between them, 
 and consequently relating to the letter of the accounts. 
 Nor is it merely a different mode of reasoning from 
 that, but, for reasons which will appear elsewhere, 
 perhaps a stronger and more conclusive also ; though 
 even those verbal coincidences, where they are too 
 numerous, too close, and too continuous, to be ex- 
 plained on any principle but that of design, would so 
 far lead to the inference that one Evangelist must 
 even have transcribed another. Both the modes 
 of argument, it is true, coincide together in one result, 
 as well as with the direct conclusion presumptively de- 
 ducible from the order of the Gospel-arrangement : 
 and whatever weight the latter in particular may 
 possess, an harmony, which necessarily brings most of 
 those parallel passages into juxta-position, and enables 
 every one to judge of them for himself, has a natural 
 tendency to exhibit that weight also in its full force. 
 
 To begin, therefore, with that Gospel, which has always 
 been the last in the order of arrangement, the Gospel 
 of St. John : and to specify its adaptation to the rest. 
 
 I. From the time of the commencement of the per- 
 sonal ministry of the Baptist, to the time of the bap- 
 tism of Jesus Christ, when John first became acquainted 
 with the person of Christ — there was little or no hiatus in 
 the former accounts ; but from the time of that bap- 
 tism to the commencement of the ministry in Galilee, 
 posterior to the termination of the ministry of John, if 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 19 
 
 we except only the forty days’ fast, there was. The 
 extent of this hiatus I shall endeavour to determine 
 in its proper place ; and I hope to shew it to have been 
 so critically filled up by St. John, that his account be- 
 gins where the former accounts had left off, and leaves 
 off for a time, where those had been resumed. 
 
 II. After the commencement of the ministry in Gali- 
 lee, a casual expression, even in the former Gospels, 
 might have intimated that a passover was just over, 
 and that Jesus had probably been up to Jerusalem in 
 attendance upon it. But St. John’s Gospel alone ascer- 
 tains the allusion, relates the visit, and determines the 
 time of the passover in question to the beginning of 
 our Lord’s second year. 
 
 III. Each of the former Evangelists had given an 
 account of the first instance of the miraculous feeding : 
 but none had specified the time when it happened, nor 
 the particulars of the memorable discourse to which it 
 gave occasion. St.John has specified both. 
 
 IV. The course of events, as recorded by these Evan- 
 gelists, from the time of that miracle to the next event 
 after the last return of our Lord to Capernaum which 
 they mention, will establish the fact of an hiatus in the 
 accounts of St. Matthew and St. Mark, of six months 
 at least in extent, and in St. Luke’s, of four ; which 
 four, if they are supplied at all, are supplied entirely 
 by St. John, and with the same critical adaptation both 
 to the point where all three had left off, and to the 
 point where St. Luke in particular had begun again, 
 as was before mentioned under Article I. 
 
 V. From the period of the arrival at Bethany, before 
 the last passover, to the time of the resurrection ; and 
 from this time, to the conclusion of the Gospel history ; 
 it is capable of proof that St. John’s Gospel is alto- 
 gether supplemental to the rest, and no where more so 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 than in the account of the celebration of the last sup- 
 per, and in that of the proceedings on the morning of 
 the crucifixion. 
 
 Now in these five Articles the whole of this Gospel 
 is comprised ; and all these being supplementary, it fol- 
 lows that the whole of this Gospel is supplementary ; 
 it has scarcely an integral sentence, and certainly con- 
 tains no integral fact or discourse in general, which is 
 not embolimaic ; which does not stand by itself, while 
 it connects and supplies the rest. The proof of our po- 
 sition, then, with regard to the last in the order of the 
 Gospels, is complete and satisfactory. Let us now ap- 
 ply the same criterion to the next to that, St. Luke’s : 
 the Gospels prior to which would be St. Matthew’s and 
 St. Mark’s. 
 
 I. Each of these Gospels had omitted the private 
 history of John the Baptist before the commencement 
 of his public: St. Mark’s had omitted the private his- 
 tory of Christ before the same period ; and St. Mat- 
 thew’s had related no more of it than what may be 
 proved to have been subsequent to the third or fourth 
 month after the conception, and not later than the 
 return from Egypt ; that is, no more than was com- 
 prehended within six months before, and twelve months 
 after the nativity. Each of these omissions, as far as it is 
 supplied by any Gospel, is entirely supplied by St. Luke’s. 
 
 II. Neither St. Matthew nor St. Mark had specified 
 the time when the Ministration of the Kingdom was 
 begun by the first appearance of John ; nor the age of 
 our Lord at his baptism ; both which were points of 
 importance, and both are defined by St. Luke. St. Mat- 
 thew had not given the natural genealogy of our Lord, 
 a point of still greater importance ; and St. Mark had 
 given no genealogy at all : St. Luke has supplied this 
 defect. 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 21 
 
 III. Neither St. Matthew nor St. Mark had men- 
 tioned the first visit to Nazareth ; though this might 
 have led in its consequences even to the choice of Ca- 
 pernaum, which the former does mention : St. Luke 
 has supplied this omission. 
 
 IV. St. Matthew and St. Mark had related the call 
 of the four individuals, Andrew and Peter, James and 
 John, to be disciples ; but not the miracle which pre- 
 ceded their ordination to be apostles. This also is 
 supplied by St. Luke. 
 
 V. St. Matthew had omitted altogether both the or- 
 dination of the Twelve, and the sermon which ensued 
 upon it ; St. Mark had related the former, but omitted 
 the latter : St. Luke has related both. 
 
 VI. St. Matthew and St. Mark had each omitted the 
 second general circuit of Galilee ; an omission of some 
 months in extent : St. Luke has filled it up. 
 
 VII. St. Matthew and St. Mark, after the last return 
 to Capernaum which they record, had not resumed the 
 thread of their accounts, until Jesus, in the course of 
 his final journey to Jerusalem, was passing out of Pe- 
 rsea into Judaea ; an omission, as I stated before, of at 
 least six months in extent. St. Luke has largely sup- 
 plied this defect; beginning with the commencement of 
 that last progress, and conducting it up to Jerusalem 
 through a period of probably two months, and a part of 
 his Gospel which reaches from ix. 51. toxviii.14. (that is, 
 through almost one half of the whole) entirely by itself. 
 
 VIII. After the reunion of the three accounts, which 
 is on the way from Jericho to Jerusalem — the miracle 
 on one blind man before the entrance into Jericho ; the 
 visit to Zaccheeus ; the parable of the minse ; many 
 circumstances in Passion-week, before the last supper ; 
 many circumstances at that supper ; at the agony in 
 the garden ; at the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrim ; 
 
 c 3 
 
22 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 at his examination before Pilate ; on the way to Cal- 
 vary ; on the morning and evening of the day of the 
 resurrection ; are peculiar to St. Luke, and include 
 large and integral portions of his account. The same 
 argument then, which applied so strongly to St.John, 
 is proportionally applicable to St. Luke : for, if all 
 which his Gospel possesses independent of St. Matthew 
 and of St. Mark, were to be collected together by itself, 
 it would amount to more than two thirds of the whole. 
 
 Nor is it possible to evade this reasoning with re- 
 spect to St. Luke, while it is acknowledged to hold 
 good with respect to St. John. It might be said, per- 
 haps, that if St. Matthew and St. Mark had both writ- 
 ten after St. Luke, and had both purposely omitted all 
 those particulars of his narrative, which consisted of mat- 
 ter not found in them, his Gospel would still have ap- 
 peared, in all these respects, as supplementary to their’s 
 as before : and this argument would admit that St. Mat- 
 thew and St. Mark must each have seen and each have 
 written after St. Luke, though St. Luke had not seen, 
 or not written after them. If the argument, however, 
 were of any avail to prove that St. Matthew and St. Mark 
 had both written after St. Luke, it must also prove that 
 St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, had all written 
 after St. John ; for the cases are precisely parallel ; and 
 if the argument is palpably absurd as applied in the 
 latter case, it ought to be considered no better as ap- 
 plied in the former. It was even more probable, a 
 priori , that the three first Evangelists, writing after 
 St. John, would purposely omit almost every thing re- 
 corded by St. John, than that St. Matthew and 
 St. Mark, writing after St. Luke, would omit so much 
 of what was recorded by St. Luke. The particulars 
 contained in the Gospel of St.John might have been 
 omitted, without inconvenience, by a subsequent Gos- 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 23 
 
 pel. The Gospel of St. John is altogether independent 
 of the rest, and relates almost entirely to scenes and 
 occasions in our Saviour’s ministry, to which there is 
 nothing correspondent in them. But the very reverse 
 is the case with the subject matter of the three first 
 Gospels respectively. The accounts of St. Matthew 
 and St.. Mark are every where interwoven by some 
 proper community of relation, with the accounts of 
 St. Luke ; so that they could not be, without great 
 violence to them all, detached asunder. 
 
 The supposition itself, however, especially when con- 
 trasted with the state of the case in reference to St. Mat- 
 thew's Gospel, is preposterous and unnatural. It is di- 
 rectly contrary to the ordinary course of improvement, 
 which under all circumstances is to advance, and not to 
 retrograde ; to proceed from less perfect to more so ; 
 and particularly in a second, as opposed to an original 
 attempt ; where a certain model of excellence being al- 
 ready before the mind, it is not necessary both to con- 
 ceive and to execute for the first time. It was conse- 
 quently possible and probable, that a later Gospel might 
 be found to improve on a former, and to introduce 
 order instead of disorder, completeness instead of defi- 
 ciency, if such blemishes were perceptible in prior ac- 
 counts ; but, if it was not impossible, it was highly im- 
 probable, that it would be found to do just the reverse : 
 which yet St. Matthew, and even St. Mark, must have 
 done, if they wrote after and with the knowledge of 
 St. Luke ; substituting perplexity for orderly arrange- 
 ment, obscurity for clearness, defectiveness and indis- 
 tinctness for fulness and precision. 
 
 Moreover, there are references in St. Luke’s Gospel 
 to some prior one, which must have been either St. Mat- 
 thew’s or St. Mark’s : and there are similar references 
 in St.John’s throughout to all these three — and in one 
 
 c 4 
 
24 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 instance particularly there is a reference, which can 
 scarcely be disputed, to St. Luke’s. Nor is it a greater 
 objection to this last Evangelist, that he omits much 
 of what is related by the other two, than it would be 
 to St. John, that he omits almost every thing supplied 
 by the former three. Besides which, for all these 
 omissions in St. Luke a very sufficient reason may be 
 discovered ; viz. either that he knew the same particu- 
 lars would come over again, where he proposed to re- 
 cord them ; or that they resembled what he had re- 
 corded elsewhere already ; or that they expressly con- 
 cerned the Jews, and did not interest the Gentiles ; or 
 that they implied something derogatory to the apostles ; 
 or that they had been related, and amply related, by 
 his predecessors. Of these reasons, the most uniform 
 are the first and the last, one of which will account for 
 almost every instance of his omissions ; and the last is 
 as certain as the first : since even where he goes along 
 with St. Matthew and St. Mark, it is still a character- 
 istic of St. Luke to be more concise than the latter, but 
 more circumstantial than the former. 
 
 The references in question will be occasionally pointed 
 out hereafter ; at present I shall specify no more than 
 two, one of them reflexive, and the other prospective ; 
 the former to St. Matthew’s Gospel, the latter to 
 St. Mark’s ; but each of them, as it seems to me, a cri- 
 tical reference, and capable of standing with such a re- 
 lation, only where St. Luke has placed it. The first is, 
 Luke xvii. 4. and the second, Luke xii. 41, 42. In the 
 former our Lord alludes to the question of St. Peter at 
 Matt, xviii. 21. and in the latter declines to answer the 
 very question, which he virtually answers at Mark xiii. 
 37. It will be allowed at least, that Mark xiii. 
 37. furnishes exactly the answer to the question which 
 was asked at Luke xii. 41. And what confirms the 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. £5 
 
 supposed coincidence in each of these cases, is the prox- 
 imity of the time, as well as the agreement of the sense ; 
 for Matt, xviii. 21. was less than six months prior to 
 Luke xvii. 4. and Luke xii. 41. was only a few weeks 
 earlier than Mark xiii. 37. Nor could we infer that 
 St. Mark’s Gospel was posterior to St. Luke’s, because 
 the answer is found in the former and the question in 
 the latter, anymore than that St.John’s Gospel was 
 later than St. Luke’s, because the reference to the mi- 
 racle at Capernaum is found in St. Luke, at iv. 23. but 
 the account of the miracle only in St. John, at iv. 46-54. 
 All this period in the Gospel history of St. Luke is a 
 blank in that of St. Matthew and St. Mark. 
 
 There is another prospective allusion in St. Luke to 
 both St. Matthew and St. Mark in conjunction, which 
 also deserves to be mentioned. The parable of the 
 barren fig-tree, found in his Gospel, chap. xiii. 6-9. 
 but omitted in theirs, serves to prepare the way for the 
 account of the malediction judicially inflicted on a 
 similar tree, and for a similar fault, which they do 
 record ; St. Matthew, xxi. 18, 19- and St. Mark, xi. 13, 
 14. These different accounts mutually illustrate each 
 other ; for the moral of the parable, which is a pro- 
 phetical allegory, and the end of the malediction in- 
 flicted upon the tree, which was purely symbolical, it 
 might be shewn, conspire together, and are in fact the 
 one the completion of the other. The fig-tree on mount 
 Olivet, and the fig-tree in the parable, bear the same 
 typical relation ; and the curse pronounced upon the 
 former is but the execution of the sentence, which had 
 been already passed upon the latter, and only for a 
 time suspended. 
 
 We should do an injury to the most perfect charac- 
 ter which ever existed, were we to doubt whether the 
 conduct of our Saviour was uniformly wise and con- 
 
26 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 sistent ; whether he could do or could say at one time, 
 what would better have been said or done at another. 
 We should expect thus much under any circumstances 
 even from ordinary wisdom and prudence ; much more 
 from such wisdom and such prudence as his. Now 
 these qualities of his conduct are discoverable only 
 from the corresponding qualities of his actions ; and 
 those qualities of his actions are to be judged of only 
 from their place in his history ; that is, from their 
 reference to times and occasions. It has been often 
 remarked that our Lord’s actions or discourses were 
 frequently determined by particular conjunctures of 
 circumstances which had transpired already : it may 
 be said with equal truth that they were as frequently 
 determined by conjunctures still to come. In all these 
 cases it would produce equal confusion to detach either 
 of the two things from its proper correlative ; to place 
 that first in the order of arrangement, which should 
 come last in the order of succession ; or the reverse. It 
 is essential also to the 6iuoio7rd6eia of his common na- 
 ture, that when he was placed in circumstances calcu- 
 lated to excite certain feelings or emotions, he should 
 have felt, and acted under his feelings, as another man 
 would have felt and acted. 
 
 In no part of the Gospel history do these incidental 
 references to times and occasions, and these traits of 
 nature and propriety, appear more strikingly or with an 
 happier effect, than in the portion comprehended be- 
 tween Luke ix. 51. and xviii. 14: yet there is none 
 which the dubious arrangements of harmonists have 
 more disordered and obscured. If each of these particu- 
 lar narratives is regarded as it stands, and simply in its 
 relation to another, and to the course of events before 
 and after it — I would challenge any one to point out a 
 position where any of them would have appeared so natu- 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 27 
 
 ral and appropriate, as where St. Luke has already placed 
 them : and I urge this manifest congruity of the parts, 
 as the best argument of the right chronological dispo- 
 sition of the whole. Next to positive indications, which 
 admit of no question, it is to these indirect notices, 
 which are scarcely less satisfactory than the positive, 
 that every harmonist ought to attend. His duty would 
 consequently be very inadequately discharged, who 
 should not observe and should not profit by them ; 
 though even his merit, who should do both, would be 
 the merit only of an accurate observer, and of a faithful 
 reporter of his observations. The business of an har- 
 monist, in these respects, is much like that of one who 
 has to arrange a cabinet of pictures : the qualities of 
 the pictures in all situations will be the same, but the 
 due perception of those qualities will not be possible, 
 except from their proper point of view. The taste and 
 the judgment of the arranger are legitimately called 
 into exercise here : it is his duty to find out this pro- 
 per point of view, and to dispose of his pictures accord- 
 inglj'. 
 
 With regard to the second Gospel, it would be much 
 more difficult to decide whether St. Mark’s Gospel was 
 written before St. Luke’s, or vice versa , if each were to 
 be referred to the other only, than as both admit of 
 being referred to St. Matthew. But the evident ac- 
 commodation of St. Mark’s to St. Matthew’s, proofs of 
 which will be pointed out by and by, demonstrates that 
 St. Mark had seen St. Matthew’s ; and the evident ac- 
 commodation of St. Luke’s to both demonstrates that he 
 had seen both : for such is the accommodation in the 
 former case, that St. Luke could not have been supple- 
 mentary to either without being supplementary to the 
 other. The mode of reasoning, therefore, which has 
 been adopted by Griesbach, and by others after him ; as 
 
Dissertation First. 
 
 28 
 
 the result of which, by an elaborate comparison of these 
 three Evangelists together, it is intended to shew that 
 St. Mark does not contain more than twenty verses 
 which he might not have taken either from St. Mat- 
 thew or from St. Luke — though, for argument’s sake, 
 we were to concede its premises — would still be insuf- 
 ficient to warrant the conclusion which is grounded upon 
 them. It is impossible that St. Mark’s Gospel should agree 
 with St. Luke’s, where St. Luke’s also does not exhibit 
 any symptoms of agreement with St. Mark’s ; and this 
 appearance of agreement between them would be pro- 
 duced alike, whether St. Luke copied from St. Mark, 
 or St. Mark copied from St. Luke. The question then 
 which concerns their order must be determined on very 
 different principles. 
 
 Again, it would be a great mistake to regard St. 
 Mark as the mere abbreviator of St. Matthew, though 
 this mistake would concede the question of time : for, 
 not to mention what he supplies independent of St. 
 Matthew, his original and his equal authority as an 
 historian, appears from his rectification of the order of 
 St. Matthew, where that was inverted and irregular ; 
 from the changes, omissions, additions, explanations, 
 allusions, which are discoverable even in their common 
 accounts, in reference sometimes to things, sometimes 
 to persons, sometimes to words ; all which distinguish 
 his narrative from St. Matthew’s, and all, or most of 
 them, are adapted to a very different class of readers. 
 How little the character of a mere abbreviator applies 
 to him is placed beyond a question by a predominant 
 and palpable mark of discrimination, which runs 
 through the whole of his Gospel, and which any one 
 may judge of, at first sight ; viz. that where St. Mat- 
 thew, the supposed original, is notoriously concise 
 and defective, St. Mark, the supposed abbreviator, is al- 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 29 
 
 ways the most plenary and diffuse, and vice versa. 
 Nothing of this kind would be characteristic of an 
 abridgment. 
 
 Again, St. Matthew’s Gospel being taken in conjunc- 
 tion with St. Mark’s, there are clearly omissions in the 
 former which are as plainly supplied by the latter. Of 
 this number, I shall specify the following. 
 
 I. Omissions which concern integral facts ; as the 
 first instance of our Saviour’s teaching, after the com- 
 mencement of his ministry in Galilee, and followed by 
 the miracle on the demoniac in the synagogue at Ca- 
 pernaum ; the account of a circuit, in the neighbour- 
 hood of the lake of Galilee ; that most important event, 
 the ordination of the twelve apostles ; one additional 
 parable, among those which were first delivered ; two 
 miracles performed at Bethsaida, in Decapolis ; and 
 three personal manifestations of our Lord alive, after 
 his resurrection : all which things the Harmony will 
 exhibit in their places hereafter. 
 
 II. Besides those instances where a concise account 
 of St. Matthew’s is expanded into a circumstantial de- 
 tail by St. Mark, the latter is frequently so accommo- 
 dated to the other as to end where he begins, or, vice 
 versa , to begin where he ends. Mark ix. 33-50. con- 
 cludes where Matt, xviii. 1-35. begins : Mark vii. 25. 
 takes up Matt. xv. 24. Mark vii. 32—37- comes in ex- 
 actly between Matt. xv. 29- and xv. 30. Mark viii. 12. 
 concludes Matt. xvi. 1—4. Mark viii. 19, 20. follows 
 on Matt. xvi. 10. and, what is among the most strik- 
 ing instances of all, Mark xvi. 5-8. in his account of 
 that event, begins precisely where Matt, xxviii. 6. in 
 his account just before, had made an end. 
 
 III. In such cases, and especially where one of the 
 narratives continues or is continued by the other, 
 that one, it is manifest, presupposes the accounts of 
 
30 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 the other, and without that supposition would 
 scarcely be intelligible; of which Mark viii. 12. is a 
 remarkable instance ; for it passed altogether in pri- 
 vate, after the answer to the demand, as recorded by 
 St. Matthew, xvi. 1-4. had been returned in public. 
 It is clear that the exordium of the narrative at Mark 
 iii. 22. presupposes the fact of a recent dispossession, 
 and without that would be almost inconceivable ; yet 
 this dispossession is related by St. Matthew only, xii. 22. 
 
 IV. Even in their common accounts, something is 
 often supplied by St. Mark, critically explanatory of 
 something in St. Matthew. Mark iii. 21. serves this 
 purpose for Matt. xii. 46. and Mark iii. 22. and iii. 30. 
 by ascertaining the fact of a double blasphemy, one 
 against the Spirit, and the other against our Saviour, 
 serve it still more so for Matt. xii. 21. and xii. 31-37. 
 which last is directly founded upon that distinction. 
 Mark iv. 10. explains the circumstances under which 
 Matt. xiii. 18—23. was delivered; and Mark x. 35. 
 compared with Matt. xx. 20. explains Matt. xx. 24. 
 which without that would not be so apparent. The 
 same observation would hold good of numerous pas- 
 sages besides, if my limits would permit me now to cite 
 them. 
 
 V. Closely as St. Mark adheres to St. Matthew, one 
 object is still kept in view by him throughout; viz. to 
 rectify his historical transpositions ; to ascertain what 
 he had left indefinite ; and to fill up his numerous cir- 
 cumstantial omissions. No two Gospels in all these 
 respects can be more the avTio-TOLya of each other, 
 while in the general outline they are absolutely avrl- 
 arrpocpa l 
 
 hac in re scilicet una 
 
 Multum dissimiles, at cetera paene gemelli f . 
 
 f Hor. Epp. i. x. 2. 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 31 
 
 VI. The very deficiencies in St. Mark, or the consi- 
 deration of what St. Matthew possesses which is not to 
 be found in St. Mark, by implying a tacit reference to 
 the Gospel of St. Matthew, confirm, rather than invali- 
 date, the same conclusion. There is one such omission 
 relating to their common accounts of the resurrection 
 and of the manifestations of Christ, viz. the account of 
 the manifestation in Galilee ; which is almost the only 
 one related by St. Matthew, and must have been inten- 
 tionally omitted by St. Mark. In preparing for this 
 manifestation, up to a certain point they go along with 
 each other, which is sufficient to prove that St. Mark 
 was aware of the fact of it, as much as St. Matthew; 
 and, consequently, that his silence as to the ultimate re- 
 sult, is not to be resolved into ignorance. The fact of 
 the manifestation itself is all which is wanting to 
 complete the account of it in St. Mark. St. Matthew has 
 added this, St. Mark has omitted it, clearly for no 
 reason so probably as because it might be known from 
 St. Matthew. 
 
 But his most regular omissions are in the account of 
 our Saviour’s discourses ; in which a Gospel, composed 
 as his was, for the instruction of Gentile converts, and 
 especially in the account of our Lord’s moral discourses, 
 it was, a priori , to be expected would have been the 
 most full. There are numerous occasions upon which 
 he specifies the fact that our Saviour taught the people ; 
 there is not one, if we except the teaching in parables, 
 which was itself a deviation from the ordinary mode of 
 his teaching, upon which he specifies what was taught. 
 On two occasions, a comparison first with St. Matthew, 
 and again with St. Luke, will shew that, unless he 
 had purposely avoided it, the course of the narrative 
 alone must have led him to give more or less in detail 
 an account of instances of teaching more solemn and 
 
32 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 more instructive than usual ; which were the two ser- 
 mons from the mount, one at the close of the first cir- 
 cuit of Galilee, the other at the ordination of the apo- 
 stles : both, events related in their place by St. Mark. 
 Perhaps his omission of this second sermon might be 
 excused on account of its omission in St. Matthew also, 
 to whom, in the general outline of his narrative, he 
 adheres throughout. But no reason can account for 
 the omission of the first, except that it had been re- 
 corded by St. Matthew, and that St. Matthew’s Gospel 
 would go along with St. Mark’s ; in which case, to 
 have repeated so large a portion of what had been 
 fully related in that, would have been absolute tauto- 
 logy. There are similar omissions in the history of 
 the teaching in parables ; of the apostolic charge ; and 
 of the prophecy on the mount ; besides many others 
 which might be pointed out ; all defensible on the 
 same principle, but on that only. There is one re- 
 markable occasion when, as St. Matthew shews, St. 
 Mark stopped short on the verge of a long and in- 
 teresting parable, subjoined by our Lord in explana- 
 tion of that very sentence, which is the last thing he 
 does records. 
 
 VII. The verbal coincidences which are found in 
 the text of these two Evangelists, are so numerous, 
 that in an harmony duly arranged they may be disco- 
 vered in every page ; and were I to exhibit them now 
 in detail, I must transcribe almost the whole of St. 
 Mark, and more than half of St. Matthew. What is 
 most to be observed, they appear in the simply narra- 
 tive part, where, a priori , they were least to be ex- 
 pected ; as well as in the account of discourses, where 
 there was greater likelihood of their occurrence. Two 
 persons, giving an account of what was said or spoken 
 
 g Mark x. 31. Matt. xx. 1. 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 33 
 
 by another, might be expected to fall more or less into 
 the same phraseology; but in merely historical parti- 
 culars, the very same things substantially might have 
 been recorded, though not a word of the accounts had 
 been the same. Yet the mind of St. Mark was so 
 thoroughly imbued with the sentiments and the lan- 
 guage of St. Matthew, that he falls into his ideas and 
 his expressions, as matter of course, almost every 
 where. It is observable also, that these verbal coinci- 
 dences, as a general characteristic of any two of the 
 Gospel accounts, are much more perceptible between St. 
 Matthew and St. Mark, than between either of them and 
 St. Luke ; the best proof of which is, that even where 
 all three are accompanying each other, St. Mark may 
 still be found adhering verbatim to St. Matthew, when 
 St. Luke departs from both. Among the number of 
 words and phrases, peculiar to the Gospels or not pe- 
 culiar, novel or familiar, which constitute the material 
 of their respective compositions, (if any one, by the 
 help of a good concordance and a careful perusal, will 
 take the trouble to examine them in detail,) such as 
 are common to St. Matthew and St. Mark will be found 
 to be many times as considerable in amount, as those 
 which are common to St. Matthew and St. Luke. Nor 
 can I discover any very striking idiom of St. Matthew, 
 which may not be found also in St. Mark. The use of 
 Kal ISov is one such idiom ; but it occurs once in St. 
 Mark ; and ISov, without the Ka\, occurs ten times. Kcd 
 i$ov 9 it is true, is repeatedly to be found in St. Luke. 
 But, on the other hand, ’l$e 9 which is more peculiar 
 than ISou, occurs six times in St. Mark, and four times 
 in St. Matthew ; but not once in St. Luke. The use 
 of cvOecog in rather a singular and redundant manner, is 
 reckoned a peculiarity of St. Mark : but this use of it 
 is not perceptible after the first two chapters ; and as 
 VOL. I. D 
 
34 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 to the employment of the term an rAco?, though St. Mark 
 has it forty times, St. Matthew has it fifteen ; and 
 even St. Luke, who is as much attached to the use of 
 7rapa^f)3]jULa instead of it, has it eight. It is a common 
 idiom too of St. Matthew and St. Mark, which is far 
 from being equally predominant in St. Luke, to em- 
 ploy in historical narration the present tense ; and not 
 the past. They say, Jesus calleth, where St. Luke says, 
 Jesus called ; or Jesus saith, where he has, Jesus said ; 
 and so in numberless instances. It is another, that 
 they are found to use phrases which are not classically 
 pure, promiscuously with others of like kind, which are; 
 whereas St. Luke is more uniformly correct. Thus, ov /nrj 
 
 TeXecrrjre ov /nr] a? roXecrr] — ov /nrj TL/nrj(Tr] ov /nrj ecrrai — 
 
 ov /nrj yevo-covTai — oil /nrj airapvr/voinai, occur indifferently 
 in them ; but in St. Luke the same construction is, ov 
 /nrj 'yevcrovTCu — ov /nr] a7roXecrei — oil /nrj iroirjcrei — and the 
 like. It is true, the same promiscuous usage is observ- 
 able also in St. John : but surely these, and the other 
 circumstances which I have mentioned, must establish 
 the fact of a closer verbal connection between St. Mat- 
 thew and St. Mark, than between either and St. Luke : 
 and, perhaps, even for this connection a reason may be 
 assigned hereafter, which will make it cease to appear 
 surprising. 
 
 I am well aware that the inference deducible from 
 these analogies, as I am obliged to state them at pre- 
 sent, does not come with half the force which the na- 
 ture of the premises would warrant. It depends upon 
 minute comparisons ; on critical accommodations of one 
 text to another ; on nice and delicate points of omis- 
 sion and supplement, indefiniteness and definiteness, 
 implication and statement ; which can never be fully 
 appreciated until they are exhibited in their proper 
 place, and with their mutual relations, by the text of 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 35 
 
 the Gospels themselves. The reader, therefore, is at 
 liberty to suspend his judgment, with respect to the 
 above assertions, until I can unfold my proofs of them 
 more particularly. 
 
 It must be observed, however, once for all, that in 
 most of these instances, whatever be the point under 
 discussion, the conclusions at w 7 hich we arrive, over 
 and above their connection with that point, and besides 
 the proper arguments by which they are established, 
 are confirmed also by some relation, reflexive or pro- 
 spective, to something else ; by their agreement with 
 other conclusions, before established or coming to be 
 afterwards established ; which yet it is not always in 
 my power to point out. This general argument in fa- 
 vour of the whole, resulting from the mutual harmony 
 and congruity of the parts, must be observed and ap- 
 plied by the reader, as he goes along, for himself : and, 
 notwithstanding it must be thus collected, it is among 
 the most decisive criterions of truth. It is impossible 
 that in a merely artificial system, which was not found- 
 ed in truth, any such congruity of distinct and distant 
 particulars should every where hold good : we might 
 as reasonably expect that the atoms of Epicurus, by 
 mutual collision, would be shaken up into organized 
 worlds, as that the parts of the four Gospels, through 
 a period of three or four years’ duration, should by any 
 arbitrary arrangements be made so consistent with each 
 other, that no flaw nor disproportion would be visible 
 in the integrity and symmetry of the whole. The cri- 
 terion of a just hypothesis is to solve all the pheno- 
 mena to which it can be applied ; to account for the 
 least things as well as for the greatest : and no har- 
 mony can be perfect which is not consistent with itself 
 from first to last ; or with a general appearance of con- 
 sistency, will not bear the test of a particular exa- 
 
 D 2 
 
3(5 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 mination. The cement which consolidates the materials 
 of a building is as important to its strength and its in- 
 tegrity as the stones or the bricks ; and in the distribu- 
 tion of the parts of an harmony, the minuter and less 
 prominent analogies are those which must ultimately 
 connect and confirm the whole. 
 
 It is this supplementary relation of the three first 
 Gospels to each other, which furnishes the best and 
 most fatal objection to a favourite hypothesis of the 
 German school ; an hypothesis invented principally to 
 account for the verbal coincidences between the Gos- 
 pels ; assuming the existence of some TrpwreuayyeXior, 
 or primary document, whence, though unknown to 
 each other, the authors of them all derived the materials 
 of their histories in common. The reception of this hy- 
 pothesis might account for verbal agreements ; but it 
 would not account for the supplemental arrangement of 
 facts. The material relations might have held good, 
 even though the verbal coincidences had not existed ; 
 and, on the same principle, the material relations are 
 not necessarily explained, even when those coincidences 
 are accounted for. It would be a moral impossibility 
 that St. Mark, compiling an independent Gospel from 
 any document, though the same might have been used 
 by St. Matthew, should be found in the choice and 
 collocation of his facts to be thus exactly accommo- 
 dated to St. Matthew ; or that St. Luke, while doing 
 the same, should be thus critically accommodated to 
 either. No combination of chances, no random or lucky 
 coincidences, nothing but premeditation and design, 
 could have produced this conformity. The use of com- 
 mon materials would account for no instance of mate- 
 rial agreement, which was not an absolute and an en- 
 tire agreement ; and of such absolute and entire agree- 
 ment there is not an instance in any two out of the 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 37 
 
 four Gospels. Detached passages in St. Mark are not 
 identical with detached passages in St. Matthew, but 
 at the utmost only similar and supplementary to them; 
 and supplementary relations, while they necessarily 
 possess some agreement with prior and defective, pos- 
 sess necessarily some disagreement also. Nor is it the 
 parts only which are supplementary to the parts ; but 
 the wholes which are supplementary to the wholes : 
 which while it enhances the degree of the coincidence, 
 increases in the same proportion the difficulty of account- 
 ing for it on any principle but that of design. 
 
 Yet the supposition of this 7rpoorevayyeXtor is but an 
 inadequate contrivance, even for the purpose which it was 
 intended to serve. I will state the theory of the most in- 
 genious among its advocates, the translator of Michae- 
 lis ; not with a view to controvert it, but to exhibit the 
 shifts and expedients to which, before his system is re- 
 duced to a feasible shape, its author is obliged to have re- 
 course. After demonstrating the insufficiency of every 
 other supposable case to explain the phenomena both of 
 congruity and of incongruity in the three first Gospels, 
 he proceeds to subjoin an hypothesis of his own, which he 
 conceives would be capable of accounting for every thing f . 
 
 He supposes, 1 st, an original Hebrew document, con- 
 taining solely a narrative of facts ; which he denomi- 
 nates . 2 dl y, A version of this document into Greek ; 
 which he denotes by tt. 3dly, The same Hebrew docu- 
 ment, but with additions either to the circumstances of 
 its former accounts, which he distinguishes by + a 
 + /3 + 7 ; or of entirely new accounts, which he calls 
 N + A + B + T; or of both incorporated with each other ; 
 the various forms of which conjunctions cannot be 
 otherwise expressed than by the various combinations 
 of a + /3 + 7 and A + B + F with K. 4thly, A supple- 
 
 t Michael. Introd. Dissertation on the Origin of the three first Gospels, chap. xv. 
 
 D 3 
 
38 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 mentary Hebrew document, which he denotes by 2, 
 called a TvcoiuoXo’yla ; that is, a narrative no longer re- 
 stricted to facts, but containing a collection of Precepts, 
 Parables, and other Discourses : and of this document 
 also he supposes a double edition, each comprising some 
 things peculiar to itself, besides what they both had in 
 common. All these documents, it is necessary to as- 
 sume, existed before the composition of a single canon- 
 ical Gospel ; the two first, N and x, both in Hebrew 
 and in Greek ; the last, by a singular anomaly, though 
 very essential to the author’s argument, in the Hebrew 
 only, and not in the Greek. I call this a singular ano- 
 maly ; for if the document H, by itself, was speedily 
 translated into Greek, the same document, with the 
 supposed additions, however many those might have 
 been, ought to have been as speedily translated also. 
 But this would not serve for the hypothesis of the au- 
 thor, which requires that St. Luke and St. Mark should 
 have something to translate for themselves from He- 
 brew into Greek ; and should not merely copy or tran- 
 scribe from the existing Greek. 
 
 These several documents put together, it is easy to 
 conceive, might exhibit the whole of the facts, and the 
 whole of the discourses, which the Gospels possess in 
 common. Yet even these assumptions are purely pre- 
 liminary ; they provide the materials only for the fu- 
 ture Gospels. It still remains to shew how St. Matthew, 
 using exclusively the Hebrew; St. Mark and St. Luke, 
 independent of each other, embodying in their narra- 
 tives the Greek ; the translator of St. Matthew, by 
 taking St. Mark and St. Luke along with him, and 
 where the Greek text of St. Mark was sufficiently close 
 to the Hebrew of St. Matthew, transcribing from St. 
 Mark ; where the Greek text of St. Luke agreed with 
 the Hebrew of St. Matthew, copying from St. Luke ; 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 39 
 
 and where St. Matthew himself had made alterations in 
 his original documents, making corresponding altera- 
 tions in the versions obtained from St. Mark or from 
 St. Luke ; all together might ultimately exhibit each 
 of the three Gospels in its present state. 
 
 A series of assumptions such as these, every one of 
 which is purely gratuitous, is only a concatenation of 
 improbabilities ; the difficulty of which increases with 
 every succeeding step. The existence of any one, much 
 more of all, of these documents is as much a matter of 
 fact as that of the philosopher’s stone, or of the quinta 
 essentia of Aristotle ; and the theories which have been 
 or may be built upon the assumption of it, are as well 
 founded as the cosmogonies of the ancient philosophers ; 
 to which, in their mutual incompatibility, and in the faci- 
 lity with which they are set up and pulled down, they 
 bear no unfit resemblance. Yet such is the system of 
 contrivances to which the masters of learning have re- 
 course, in order that one Evangelist may be kept in the 
 dark as to the existence of another ; and yet fall una- 
 wares into an agreement with him. To say nothing 
 of any other objection to such systems, it must surely 
 be the height of inconsistency to suppose that each of 
 the Evangelists might be largely indebted to some 
 common documents, and yet none of them indebted to 
 each other ; as if it made any difference whether St. 
 Mark had copied from St. Matthew, and St. Luke from 
 St. Matthew and St. Mark, or all three from some i rpcor- 
 evayyeXiov in common : or as if the former were a less 
 sufficient, or a less satisfactory means of accounting 
 for the resemblances between them, than the latter. In 
 short, it must be confessed that in the assumption of this 
 hypothesis, and in the purposes to which it has been ap- 
 plied, scepticism and credulity have gone hand in band. 
 If we believe in the inspiration of the Gospels, (and I 
 
 D 4 
 
40 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 will venture to say there is no one fact in the Gospels 
 themselves which can invalidate that belief,) the sup- 
 posed existence of fountains or sources, from which the 
 Evangelists derived their materials, is not more pre- 
 carious than unnecessary. St. Paul was doubtless well 
 informed in every circumstance of the Gospel history ; 
 yet that information was conveyed to him by imme- 
 diate inspiration. St. Luke affirms that he possessed 
 a perfect knowledge of his subject, that is, that he had 
 accurately investigated it, from the first ; and the pe- 
 rusal of his Gospel confirms the assertion : for that 
 exquisite nicety of arrangement ; that skill with which 
 the plan of his work was forecast ; (a skill which ap- 
 pears as strikingly in what he omits as in what he 
 relates ;) and that scrupulous regard to accuracy, even 
 in the smallest matters, which may be discovered 
 throughout it, are proofs both of his entire mastery of 
 his task, and of a religious veneration for truth. And 
 as to the phenomena, both of agreement and of dis- 
 agreement, about which so much is said, they may all 
 be otherwise accounted for. 
 
 I have met with no arguments against the supposi- 
 tion that one Evangelist might have seen another, 
 which did not appear to me either to be of no weight 
 in themselves, or to be founded in an ignorance of 
 the actual relations of the several Gospels to each 
 other. Nor can I imagine any which may be urged a 
 pj'iori against this supposition, and the consequent 
 supplementary character of the Gospels, except some 
 one of the following; which I shall proceed to set down 
 and to examine individually. 
 
 I. A Gospel, which was supplementary to another, 
 would have contained nothing in common with that ; 
 would have consisted entirely of fresh matter. 
 
 Now one Gospel is known to be supplementary to 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gosjiels. 
 
 41 
 
 another from its internal relations to that other : and 
 no work could be known, from the evidence of such 
 relations, to be in any manner accommodated to another, 
 which did not possess something in common with it. 
 It was a possible case that St. Luke, though writing 
 after St. Mark, might have incorporated in his ow 7 n 
 Gospel the whole of St. Mark’s ; inserting only in their 
 proper places the matters omitted by St. Mark : by 
 which means he would have composed a Gospel con- 
 taining the Gospel of St. Mark, and yet unquestionably 
 supplementary to it. This possible case in part is an 
 actual case. A portion of St. Mark is incorporated 
 with St. Luke ; and a portion of St. Matthew with 
 St. Mark : yet, notwithstanding what they all con- 
 tain in common, the latter in each case may still be 
 supplementary to the former. There is no necessity 
 that a later Gospel, in order to stand in such a relation 
 to a prior, should be altogether independent of it. It is 
 enough for our argument, that the one should be clearly 
 supplementary to the other in parts ; and in parts where 
 supplements were both possible and proper : and even 
 while it serves to connect or to fill up another, it may 
 possess a connection and an integrity of its ow 7 n. 
 
 If we except, however, the events of Passion-week, 
 which, from their immense interest and importance, it 
 was justly to be expected would be related more or less 
 by all the Evangelists ; there is in reality scarcely an 
 integral period of our Saviour’s ministry, during which 
 they go along with each other, or can be said to contain 
 any thing in common. The Gospel of St. John consists 
 entirely of independent matter ; and what St. Mark’s 
 possesses, akin to St. Matthew’s, abounds in so much 
 more of detail, compared with that, that even in their 
 common narrations, his Gospel may be said to proceed 
 by itself. Nor was it possible for this Evangelist to 
 
42 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 rectify the transpositions of his predecessor, or to sup- 
 ply his historical deficiencies, without going over the 
 same accounts ; though in a different order of succes- 
 sion, and with a greater distinctness of circumstances. 
 And with regard to St. Luke, if the same incidents or 
 discourses occurred more than once in our Saviour’s 
 ministry, and he is found to relate them on the later, 
 where the others had related them on the prior occa- 
 sions ; these cannot in justness be considered examples 
 of matter in common between him and them. Yet in 
 those passages which are strictly such, it may be ob- 
 served that in more than one instance St. Luke is in- 
 tentionally concise ; avoiding as much as possible the 
 unnecessary repetition of what had been sufficiently 
 said before ; and even in common accounts, abounding 
 in supplementary matter. His narrative of the minis- 
 try of John the Baptist, compared with St. Matthew’s 
 or St. Mark’s, is a striking illustration of this truth. In 
 short, I have already observed that no one Gospel could 
 be known to be either defective, or supplementary, of 
 itself. When we contrasted, indeed, the paucity of 
 particulars related in each, with the length of the pe- 
 riod which each must be supposed to occupy, we might 
 conjecture that each must be defective somewhere : 
 but we should not have been certain that it was so, 
 much less should we have known where, had we not 
 possessed other accounts to compare with its ; and 
 unless the result of this juxta-position had been not 
 merely to detect hiatuses in the continuity of one, 
 but to exhibit also the supplement of those hiatuses in 
 another. 
 
 II. If one Evangelist had seen the Gospel of another, 
 he would have avoided all appearance of contradiction 
 or difference between that and his own. 
 
 Now, though for argument’s sake we were to admit 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 43 
 
 that such differences may be presumed to exist, still, as 
 the lesser of two evils, we might reckon it a fortunate 
 circumstance. The adversaries of Christianity have 
 laid hold of these seeming discrepancies, and magnified 
 them much beyond the truth ; and so far they may 
 have been productive of evil. But had the state of 
 the case been apparently the reverse ; had the Gospel- 
 accounts, in the immense variety of particulars which 
 they record, been uniformly harmonious, smooth, and 
 consistent ; they would have been laid open to the 
 charge of collusion : a much more serious objection. 
 The charge of contradiction we are able to rebut ; the 
 suspicion of collusion, under such circumstances, it 
 might not have been so easy to remove : the antece- 
 dent probability makes for us in the one case ; in the 
 other it would have made against us. It is possible 
 that the testimony of witnesses may be too close, and 
 too literally in unison, to seem altogether the testimony 
 of independent witnesses ; and it is a good sign in 
 favour of the truth and the honesty of the whole 
 of an account, that there are points of difference be- 
 tween its parts — if those points affect circumstan- 
 tials, not essentials — the subordinate particulars, but not 
 the principal facts ; which is the true description of 
 apparent Gospel discrepancies. Hence it is far from 
 being worthy of regret, that there are seeming diffi- 
 culties in the several Evangelical accounts ; that a 
 nice attention to every particular, an accurate consider- 
 ation and comparison of statements, the allowance of 
 neither more nor less than those statements will war- 
 rant, the juxta-position of long and circumstantial pas- 
 sages, touching upon each other in numerous points, 
 and a critical accommodation of one narrative to an- 
 other, are necessary to discover how they agree together. 
 The result is the perception of an admirable harmony 
 
44 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 in them all, which, under such circumstances, can be the 
 effect of truth alone ; which no ingenuity of contriv- 
 ance on their part, no latitude of construction on ours, 
 could uniformly elicit from falsehood and fiction. 
 
 And this leads me to observe, that the actual exist- 
 ence of differences is a gratuitous assumption, which 
 ought to be well established, before any argument is 
 founded upon it. In none of those instances where 
 one Evangelist appears to contradict another, is it 
 capable of proof that he actually does so ; however 
 frequently harmonists and commentators have as- 
 sumed, and reasoned from the assumption of, the con- 
 trary. Where this misconstruction of the case has 
 arisen from confounding together distinct, though in 
 some respects similar events, the blame ought in jus- 
 tice to attach not to the ambiguity of the Evangelists, 
 but to the hallucination of the critic : and even in 
 those accounts which are indisputably the same, and 
 at points of their narratives which indisputably coincide 
 together, I can discover no other source of an apparent 
 contrariety but this ; viz. that one Evangelist is less 
 explicit than another ; that one omits, another supplies ; 
 one defines, another leaves indefinite, in relation to the 
 same things. The whole amount of difference in such 
 instances is reducible to an excess of something on one 
 hand, and a defect of the same on another ; which no 
 candid judge will confound with contradiction. For 
 contradiction must surely be understood of what any 
 two possess, or any two assert, in common ; not of 
 what the one possesses or the one asserts, but not the 
 other. Tried by this rule, their accounts will never 
 clash ; none will affirm that which is met directly by the 
 denial of another. As to implied contradictions, or 
 such as would result from assuming that one Evan- 
 gelist says so and so, and thence inferring that he is 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 45 
 
 at variance with another, who says differently, we 
 might imagine them ad libitum; but they would all be 
 imaginary, and each, in the given instance, a petitio 
 principii , or the begging of the point in question. 
 
 For example ; St. Luke sayss that, when our Lord’s 
 parents had made an end of ra Kara tov vo/aov Kvplov, 
 they returned to Nazareth : where, if I assumed that 
 he says they returned immediately, I should make him 
 contradict St. Matthew, who shews that they remained 
 for a time longer at Bethlehem ; and even went down 
 into Egypt. But this would be to beg the question, 
 which turns in this instance on the very point, whether 
 St. Luke means that they returned immediately, or not. 
 St. Mark and St. Luke relate the cure of only one de- 
 moniac at Gadara : if, therefore, I assumed that only 
 one was cured, I should make them contradict St. Mat- 
 thew, who relates the cure of two. But this also would 
 be a begging of the question. St. Matthew relates the 
 cure of two blind men, after he has related the passing 
 of our Lord through Jericho ; if, therefore, I assumed 
 that he asserts also the cure of both after that passage, 
 either I should make him contradict St. Luke, who as- 
 serts the cure of one blind man before that passing, or 
 I should be obliged to suppose a triple miracle. But 
 this also would be to beg the question, which turns 
 upon the point whether St. Matthew does assert the 
 fact of his two cures after the passage, or not. The 
 basis of all these seeming contradictions is overthrown 
 by the admission of supplemental Gospels ; and by the 
 supposition that the later necessarily accompanied 
 the prior. By these means, what appears to be contra- 
 diction is seen to be really explanation ; and instead of 
 confusing and perplexing, clears up and ascertains. 
 The writers of these common accounts were too well 
 
 S Chap. ii. 3 9. 
 
46 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 aware of their ultimate agreement and consistency, to be 
 afraid of the effect of an apparent collision: they neither 
 apprehended it themselves, nor supposed it would be 
 objected to them by others. In all such instances they 
 either borrow light, or they communicate it ; they are 
 as critically adapted to each other in what they omit, 
 as in what they supply : sometimes presupposing the 
 circumstances already on record, preliminary to their 
 own accounts ; at other times connecting, separating, 
 and defining the old, by additional particulars of their 
 own. That they have done this, without professing to 
 be doing it, ought to be no objection ; for what they 
 have done still proves as clearly why it was done, as if 
 the reason of the act had been premised to it. 
 
 III. If a later Evangelist had seen an earlier, espe- 
 cially if St. Mark had seen St. Matthew, he would not 
 have ventured, in the arrangement of his facts, to de~ 
 part from the order of St. Matthew. 
 
 There are two assumptions, each of them precarious, 
 on which this argument, if it is entitled to any weight, 
 must proceed : first, that a later Evangelist, like St. 
 Mark or St. Luke, could not be an original and inde- 
 pendent authority, as well as a prior, like St. Matthew ; 
 secondly, that the order of a prior, like St. Matthew, 
 must necessarily be chronologically exact. With respect 
 to the first of these, those in particular who suppose a 
 common document, the basis of the three first Gospels, 
 are obliged to admit that St. Mark and St. Luke were 
 as much aware what was true, or what was false in 
 this common document ; where it might be trusted, and 
 where it could not ; as St. Matthew himself. Now 
 whence did they derive their information ? Certainly 
 not from St. Matthew ; at least from no written account 
 by St. Matthew. But if they derived it from any source 
 distinct from St. Matthew, so far they were independ- 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 47 
 
 ent of St. Matthew ; and so far their authority was as 
 original as his. Much more, if we suppose St. Mark 
 the disciple of St. Peter, and St. Luke the disciple 
 of St. Paul ; teachers, whose authority was equal to 
 that of St. Matthew ; whose testimony was as original 
 as his. 
 
 They, who deny the coequal and coordinate authority 
 of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, are bound to shew 
 what rank or authority the two latter are entitled to at 
 all. If, out of three Gospels which we possess, one only 
 is original and independent, of what use are the other 
 two ? and why have we three Gospels, and not one 
 alone ? and what authority can any historian retain, 
 whose order and arrangement, however exactly deter- 
 mined by himself, maybe disturbed ad libitum ; whose 
 assertions are not to be received, without distrust, on 
 the plainest matters of fact ? Venerable as is the name 
 of an apostle of Jesus Christ; and great as is the au- 
 thority of an eyewitness and an earwitness of the Gos- 
 pel ; the next degree of regard, even humanly speak- 
 ing, would be due to their eyewitnesses and to their 
 earwitnesses also ; to the first converts and disciples of 
 apostles, though not apostles themselves. 
 
 Whatever St. Matthew affirms, is entitled to belief on 
 St. Matthew’s responsibility; and what St. Mark or 
 St. Luke affirm, is entitled to belief on his. St. Mat- 
 thew may require no confirmation by St. Mark or by 
 St. Luke ; and yet he may receive it from him. One 
 unexceptionable witness is sufficient to decide a certain 
 question, and yet he may be supported by more ; none 
 of whom is necessary to the credibility of the former 
 witness, though all may contribute their share to the cre- 
 dibility of the thing attested. To suppose that St. Mark 
 contradicts St. Matthew, or St. Luke contradicts either ; 
 or to argue in the former case that because St. Matthew 
 
48 
 
 Dissert a tion Firs t . 
 
 was an eyewitness, and St. Mark was not, St. Matthew 
 must be right, and St. Mark must be wrong ; is fortun- 
 ately to suppose or to argue from a case which does not 
 exist. But, until this case can be made out, it is just 
 and reasonable, and necessary to the joint authority of 
 all, that we should allow to each a separate and an 
 equal weight. Admit their common inspiration, and we 
 have no other alternative. The consequence of a com- 
 mon inspiration is a common infallibility ; and in a 
 common infallibility, there can be no difference of de- 
 gree or variety of kind : all inspired writers must be 
 infallible alike, or none can be so. 
 
 With regard to the second assumption ; it is no 
 necessary consequence, that because a prior Evangelist 
 was an eyewitness or an earwitness of what he re- 
 corded, therefore he would give an account of it in a 
 strict chronological order : no more than that one, who 
 was not an eyewitness or an earwitness, would do the 
 contrary. It is clear that this question, in a given 
 instance, is never to be determined by a priori reason- 
 ings ; but by an appeal to the matter of fact. We 
 might consider it probable, for such and such reasons, 
 that St. Matthew would be a regular historian ; but 
 we could not be satisfied that he was so, without ex- 
 amining his history itself : nor would it be possible to 
 examine it properly, without a comparison with some 
 other accounts ; nor could we take those accounts 
 along with St. Matthew’s, except as of equal authority 
 to St. Matthew’s, and as competent to decide, in doubt- 
 ful instances, even upon the regularity of St. Matthew 
 himself. This investigation and comparison will be 
 the business of a separate dissertation ; and the re- 
 sult of both, I trust, will be to demonstrate that, ac- 
 count for them as we may, there are transpositions, of 
 each description, in the Gospel of St. Matthew, from 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels . 
 
 49 
 
 which a later Evangelist would be at liberty to depart ; 
 and which may be admitted without injury to the credi- 
 bility of St. Matthew, but can scarcely be denied without 
 some degree of danger to the authority of St. Mark, or of 
 St. Luke. 
 
 IV. If one Evangelist had taken any thing from an- 
 other, it is to be presumed that he would have named 
 his authority. 
 
 But, first, for what purpose, may we ask, must he 
 have named it? To give weight and support to his 
 own ? Now an original and independent authority 
 would not need, with this view, to quote any other ; 
 or if he did so, it would be ex ahundanti. If St. Mark 
 was inspired as well as St. Matthew, he could not be 
 required to refer to St. Matthew, even when he fol- 
 lowed St. Matthew ; and though he might borrow from 
 St. Matthew, he would not derive his acquaintance with 
 what he borrowed, from him. If St. Mark wrote under 
 the auspices of St. Peter, then, even when he was follow- 
 ing St. Matthew, unless St. Peter’s teaching had been 
 different from St. Matthew’s, he would not be obliged 
 to quote St. Matthew. And what would hold good of 
 St. Mark, in reference to St. Matthew, would hold good 
 of St. Luke, in reference to both. 
 
 Secondly, St. Mark nowhere appeals by name even 
 to his own teacher St. Peter ; nor St. Luke to his own 
 teacher St. Paul. Thirdly, It is not the practice of 
 one canonical writer to refer to the compositions of 
 another, though contemporary with his own and known 
 to himself. The writer of the Acts could not be igno- 
 rant of the ten Epistles, which St. Paul had written 
 within the period of time embraced by the Acts ; yet 
 he nowhere alludes even to their existence. There is such 
 an allusion to them in the Second Epistle of St. Peter 11 ; 
 
 h Chap. iii. 15, 16. 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
50 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 but it is to St. Paul’s Epistles in the complex, and to 
 none by name in particular. The author of the Epistle 
 of Jude quotes from this Epistle of St. Peter 1 ; but 
 he does not specify the name of St. Peter. Fourthly, 
 The silence of St. John, concerning any former Gos- 
 pels, though he was acquainted with the three in be- 
 ing before his own, and in order to the due connection 
 and explanation of his own accounts presupposes their’s, 
 is a case in point. 
 
 Fifthly, If St. Matthew’s Greek Gospel was pub- 
 lished along with St. Mark’s ; if the one accompanied 
 the other from the first ; and both together were al- 
 ways supposed to constitute one work ; the objection 
 from the silence of St. Mark falls to the ground : it 
 never could be unknown, whether it was professed 
 or not, what relation his Gospel bore, and was ori- 
 ginally intended to bear to the Gospel of St. Matthew. 
 And if this objection falls to the ground with respect 
 to St. Mark, it ceases to be of any weight with respect 
 to St. Luke. The example of St. Mark was a prece- 
 dent for St. Luke to follow ; and it might both produce 
 and justify his silence, with respect to each or to either 
 of his predecessors. 
 
 Lastly, The argument from the verbal coincidences, 
 and from the material relations of the several Gospels, 
 remains the same ; and never can be affected by any 
 silence of the authors themselves. To establish the 
 reality of these accommodations of one to another, it 
 is not necessary that they should be expressly called 
 such ; no more than that a likeness or copy, to be 
 what it is, should bear externally the name of its 
 original. A likeness is no likeness, which requires any 
 notification of what it is, but a visible resemblance to 
 the original. Let the picture be placed by the side of the 
 
 i Jude 17, 18. 2 Pet. iii. 3. 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels . 
 
 51 
 
 original, and if it is faithfully taken, any one ought to 
 be able to judge of its resemblance to that. St. Mat- 
 thew’s Gospel serves as the prototype with respect to 
 St. Mark’s ; and both their Gospels do so, with respect 
 to St. Luke’s : and we must first shew that the features 
 of resemblance, on the one side, have no counterpart to 
 answer to them on the other ; or that the features of 
 resemblance, in the one case, might have been pro- 
 duced independently of any counterpart in the other ; 
 before we can reasonably doubt whether one of them 
 is the original, and the other a copy from it. 
 
 V. If a later Evangelist had seen and transcribed 
 an earlier, he would have retained his text throughout ; 
 what he transcribed he would have transcribed entire, 
 without any verbal alterations whatever. 
 
 Now this argument also assumes that a later 
 Evangelist could not be as much an independent 
 writer — rejecting or retaining matter at his own discre- 
 tion — as an earlier: concerning which enough has been 
 said already. It assumes also, that two distinct writers, 
 even when both were giving an account of the same 
 things, could not express the same sense either in per- 
 fectly different words, or in words partly the same, 
 and partly different : phenomena, each of which may 
 be exemplified at any moment, by comparing together 
 two or more different versions of a given author, into 
 the same language. 
 
 We must distinguish, however, between the bearings 
 of the argument in general. As applied to the purely 
 narrative parts, common to two Gospels or more, no 
 one will suppose it to be of any force : and as applied 
 to the accounts of words spoken, in which accounts 
 the most remarkable verbal coincidences, intermixed 
 with differences, are observed to hold good ; it is as 
 little worth. There was no more reason, a priori* why 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 fresh matter might not be introduced into the account 
 of discourses, than into the account of facts ; and as 
 little, why the same original matter, as recorded in 
 one Gospel, might not be somewhat differently ex- 
 pressed in another. 
 
 Such an antecedent possibility of change or differ- 
 ence would be precluded only by this supposition ; viz. 
 that a prior Gospel, in every instance, had recorded first, 
 the whole of what was said, and, secondly, the whole 
 exactly as it was said ; in which case, a later Gospel 
 could neither have introduced fresh matter, nor per- 
 haps have altered the terms of a former account. But, 
 of these suppositions, we can never be sure that the 
 first in any instance holds good ; and we may have 
 presumptive reason in many instances to be sure that 
 it does not : and as to the second, unless it could be 
 proved that all the discourses, or accounts of words 
 spoken, recorded in the Gospels, were spoken in the 
 language in which they are recorded, that is, in Greek, 
 we may be sure that in no one instance does it hold 
 good. Every account of such a discourse, on record 
 in the Gospels, is a translation of what was actually 
 said : and in the terms of a translation, alterations af- 
 fecting the language but not the sense, might be freely 
 made. If St. Matthew’s Gospel was written in the lan- 
 guage which our Saviour, while he was conversant in 
 his ministry among the Jews, may most reasonably be 
 supposed to have spoken, it is possible that it might 
 often have retained the very words which he spoke. 
 But in the present Gospels there are only three pure 
 and unmixed instances, of which this assertion would 
 hold good; Talitha cumi k , Epphatha 1 , and, Eli, Eli, 
 lama sabachthani m . If St. Mark, then, retains the 
 language of St. Matthew in some respects, and deviates 
 
 k Mark v. 41. 1 Mark vii. 34. m Matt, xxvii. 46. Mark xv. 34. 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 53 
 
 from it in others ; it must be remembered that he 
 deviates from a translation of what was actually 
 spoken ; and whether in so doing he approaches 
 nearer to, or recedes further from the original, no 
 one now can undertake to say. The same would be 
 true of St. Luke, who, in such instances, where he 
 differs from St. Mark, differs from St. Matthew also. 
 
 Yet among these examples of occasional verbal dif- 
 ferences amidst remarkable verbal agreements, it is 
 easy to discover that, while the sense remains the 
 same, some new beauty, some force or propriety, is in- 
 troduced by the change : in which case it is hardly to be 
 considered an objection that the original, in certain mi- 
 nute respects, was not previously so perfect — so elabo- 
 rated ad umbilicum ; that it could admit of no improve- 
 ment from the copy. Thus, in the address of John 
 the Baptist to the multitude, including Scribes and 
 Pharisees, it was indifferent whether he had said, ac- 
 cording to St. Matthew, /cal prj Sofyre ; or according to 
 St. Luke, /cal prj apfyorOe* 1 : yet the latter is the more 
 appropriate of the two ; for it is implied that they 
 were not to think , that is, to begin , to say so and so, 
 in answer to this very address of John ; and in vindi- 
 cation of themselves under his stern rebuke. When 
 St. Matthew says, izoL-ncrw vpas aXieis av6pco7rcov 9 St. Mark 
 says, 7 roirjcrcD vpas yevecrOai aXieis av0pco7rcov ° ; which is to 
 the same effect as the former, but evidently softens the 
 harshness of the metaphor. When St. Mark says, prj 
 Svvavrai ol viol tov vvp<pcovo 9 .... vrjcrTeveiv, St. Luke 
 says, pr] SvvacrOe tovs viovs tov vvp<p(£vo9 . . . 7roirjcrai vrj- 
 o-rcveii/ P; a more appropriate answer to those, whose 
 question and exception were intended to make our 
 Lord’s disciples fast. When St. Mark says, eirlfiXrjpa 
 
 n Matt. iii. 9. Luke iii. 8. o Matt. iv. 19. Mark i. 17. P Mark ii. 19. 
 Luke v. 34. 
 
54 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 I oolkovs aryvdifiov, St. Luke says, 67 rl/3\t]fj.a i/marloo kgllvov ^ 
 both, synonymous forms of expression, but the latter 
 plainer and simpler, and, as opposed to i/adriov i raXaiov, 
 the more dvrlarToiyov of the two. When St. Matthew 
 says, Ka\ yap eycv dvOpcoiros el/uu virb e^ovarlav, St. Luke 
 adds, raaro-ofievo ? r ; which both ascertains the meaning 
 much more clearly, and might have been actually said. 
 Where St. Matthew had said, ^ 'jre eo-Olwv, /arjTt irlvcov, 
 St. Luke expresses it, (but in the first instance only,) 
 /lyre aprov ecrOlcov, /arjire oivov n rtvoov s ; the propriety of 
 which addition is obvious. At the close of the pa- 
 rable of the sower, St. Matthew places the result in the 
 descending series ; o /aev e/carov — o St e^rjKOvra — o Sei-pia - 
 Kovra : St. Mark, in the ascending, ev rpiaKovra — Kal tv 
 e^rjKovra — /cal ev tKarov 1 : where, while the sense is still 
 the same, the arrangement has an happier effect. 
 
 It would not be possible for me, however, at present, 
 to examine in detail all the instances, such as these, 
 which might be cited ; the intelligent reader will notice 
 them hereafter for himself. It is sufficient to observe, 
 that by far the greatest part of the variations in ques- 
 tion are resolvable into the principle of ellipsis, or of the 
 supplement of fresh matter, (which yet might actually 
 have been spoken,) over and above what was before re- 
 corded : many are purely synonymous ; many, the effect 
 of mere compendium of speech ; others, on the con- 
 trary, of amplification: none should create any difficulty, 
 since even where the difference is greatest in words, 
 there is still an agreement in the sense. 
 
 In short, it cannot be denied that the Gospel of St. 
 Matthew exhibits the evidence of two facts, one, that of 
 great scantiness of detail in the purely narrative parts ; 
 the other, that of great circumstantiality in the account 
 
 q Mark ii. 2i. Luke v. 36. r Matt. viii. 9. Luke vii. 8. s Matt, xi. 18, 
 19. Luke vii. 33, 34. t Matt. xiii. 8. Mark iv. 8. 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 55 
 
 of discourses. In the former, then, there was clearly 
 room for supplementary matter ; but in the latter, ex- 
 cept on one supposition, (viz. that much, of what had 
 been so minutely related by him once, at a certain time 
 and place, came over again at another,) there was little 
 or none. Now, in favour of this supposition, it is a 
 remarkable coincidence, first, that all those parts, or 
 nearly all, in the Gospel of St. Luke, about the iden- 
 tity of which with corresponding parts in St. Matthew’s, 
 a question is commonly raised, are the accounts of dis- 
 courses ; secondly, that they all, or nearly all, occur in . 
 places of the Gospel of St. Luke, the corresponding pe- 
 riods to which, in the Gospel of St. Matthew, are total 
 blanks. But where was matter, omitted by St. Matthew 
 because of its resemblance to what he had recorded 
 before, so likely to be found omitted, as there? and what 
 reason was so likely to produce the blanks in his Gos- 
 pel in question, as this, viz. that such matter did occur 
 and might best be omitted there ? where, too, on the 
 other hand, was a supplementary Gospel so likely to 
 abound in fresh matter, as there ? 
 
 I shall illustrate each of these positions by the fol- 
 lowing specimens of coincidences in parts of the Gos- 
 pel of St. Luke, either with what St. Matthew had re- 
 corded previously, or with what he would record after- 
 wards ; both because they are specimens of unquestion- 
 able recurrences, and, consequently, could not have 
 been brought together by any Harmony rightly dis- 
 posed ; and chiefly, because they all belong to a period 
 in St. Luke, of which it may be demonstrated that it is 
 absolutely without any thing to correspond to it in the 
 Gospel of St. Matthew or of St. Mark. 
 
 I. Matthew xi. SI — S3. I. Luke x. 13 — 15. 
 
 Oval croc, 'Kopa(lv’ Oval ctol, X.opa£lv 
 
 oval aoi, BrjOaa'ibaV oval ctol, Br]0crdibd * 
 
 E 4 
 
56 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 Matthew xi. 21 — 23. 
 on et ivTvptpKal SiboovL iyevovro 
 at bvv&pteLs at yevoptevaL iv vpuv, 
 iraXaL av iv <raKK(p Kal cnrobio 
 
 fJL€T€V01](raV. 
 ttXtjv Xiyo) vpuv' 
 
 T Vptp Kal '2lb(OVl aveKTorepov 
 ecrrat, iv rjpiipq Kptaecas, 
 rj vpuv. 
 
 Kal av, Kairepvaovp 
 7] ecos rov ovpavov v^oiOeiaa, 
 ecos abov KaTa(3L/3aa-drj(T7}. 
 
 Luke x. 13 — 15. 
 
 ort et ivTvpip KalSib&viiyivovTO 
 at bvvdpi€is at yevop,evaL iv vpuv , 
 nakai av iv (tclkkg) Kal <nrob(p 
 Kadripteva i, 
 pterevorjcrav. 
 tt X rjv . . . . 
 
 T vp(p Kal xZtbiavL aveKTorepov 
 earat , iv rfj KpCaet, 
 
 •K ? a 
 
 rj vpuv. 
 
 Kal av. Kart epvaovpt, 
 rj ecos tov ovpavov ^ cofletcra , 
 ecos abov KaTa^L^aorOrjap. 
 
 II. Matthew xi. 25 — 27. 
 
 ’ E^ojuoAoycwjuat trot , irarep, 
 Kvpie tov ovpavov Kal rrjs yrjs, 
 otl OLTieKpv^ras ravra 
 airo cro(p( 0 V Kal cr vverQv, 
 
 Kal ai reKakoxf/as avra vrjirtoLS . 
 vat’ 6 Tiarrip * 
 on ovrcos iyevero evboKta 
 eptTrpoarOev crov. 
 
 Travra ptot irapeboOr ) 
 vtto tov irarpos ptov 
 Kal ovbels i'ntytvdxTKeL 
 tov vibv , 
 et ptr} 6 rrarrip * 
 
 ovb\ tov rrarepa rts emyt ^ cocr / cet , 
 et ptrj 6 vlos, 
 
 Kal <o iav ( 3 ov\r]TaL 6 vlos 
 cvnoKaXv^at. 
 
 II. Luke x. 21, 22. 
 
 * E^optoXoyovpLat crot, tt arep 9 
 Kvpie tov ovpavov Kal rrjs yps, 
 otl aTTeKpvyjsas ravra 
 aTrb o-o(f)(t)v Kal crvveT&v, 
 Kal a/neKoXv^ras avra vpiriots. 
 vat’ 6 TTarrjp' 
 otl ovto) s iyevero evboKta 
 eptirpocrOev crov. 
 iravra irapebodp ptoL u 
 in to tov irarpos ptov' 
 
 Kal ovbels yLvcoaKei 
 rts icrTLV 6 vlos, 
 el ptr] 6 Traripp' 
 
 Kal rts icrrLV 6 TTarrjp , 
 
 5 \ e c\ 
 
 fJLT] O VLOS , 
 
 Kat <0 iav (3ov\rjTaL 6 vlos 
 a7TOKaXv\jfaL. 
 
 III. Matthew vi. 9 — 13. 
 Ildrep fjpL&v, 
 
 6 iv rots ovpavois, 
 
 * I have given the text of the 
 Lord’s prayer according to. St. 
 
 u lioi 
 
 III. Luke xi. 2 — 4 *. 
 
 Ildrep rjpiOiv , 
 
 6 iv rots ovpavoLS , 
 
 Luke’s Gospel, as it stands in 
 Mill’s edition. It must be ob- 
 
 ipe 860 i}. 
 
57 
 
 Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 Matthew vi. 9 — 13. 
 
 aycaadijTco to ovopa aov’ 
 ekOcTco rj /3aorA.eta aov' 
 yevrjQrjTca to Oekrjpa aov, 
 as ev ovpava, kcll em Trjs yi )s' 
 tov apTov rjpav, tov emovaLov, 
 bos rjpTv arjpepov' 
 
 Kal acpes rjpiv 
 tcL ofyeLkrjpaTa rjpav, 
 o)S kcu rjpeTs d<pUpev 
 tols ocpeLk eVats rjpav’ 
 kcu per} elaeveyKrjs rjpas 
 els TreLpaapov 
 akka pvaaL rjpids 
 airo tov 'irovrjpov. 
 
 Luke xi. 2 — 4. 
 ayiaaOrjTto to ovopd aov' 
 ekOeTco rj (3aaike(a aov' 
 yevrj6ijT(0T0 Oekrjpa aov, 
 as ev ovpava, Kal enl tjjs yrjs * 
 tov apTov rjpav, tov €77 tovaiov, 
 bibov rjpuv to kcl 0 ’ rjpepav' 
 KCLL acf)€S rjpuv 
 tcls apapTias rjpav' 
 kcll yap avToX acplepev 
 TTaVTL 6cf)€Lk0VTL rjpiV' 
 
 Kal pr) elaeveyKrjs rjpas 
 els TreLpaapov' 
 akka pvaaL rjpas 
 CLTIO tov TTOvrjpov . 
 
 IV. Matthew vii. 7 — 11. 
 AItcltc' kcll boOrjaeTaL vpTv' 
 (rjT€LTe' KaX evprjaeTe' 
 KpoveTe’ KaX avoLyrjaeTaL vplv. 
 rras yap 6 airo ov, kap(3aveL' 
 
 Kal 6 (rjTcov, evplaKeL' 
 
 KaX r<3 KpovovTL, avoLyrjaeTaL. 
 rj tls eaTLV e£ vpav avOparros, 
 ov eav alTrjarj o vlos avTov apTov, 
 prj ktOov eirLbioaeL aur<3; 
 
 KaX eav lyOvv cuTrjarj , 
 prj oc^lv eiTLbtoaeL aura) ; 
 
 el ov v vpeis , 'novrjpol ovtcs, 
 
 served, however, that in the 
 time of Origen (Opera, i. 226, 
 227- de Oratione, 18: 240. C— 
 D. 256. C. de Oratione, 26, 
 29.) several parts were wanting 
 in that text, (as they still are in 
 many MSS.) which at present 
 appear there. Such are the 
 words, 6 iv tois ovpavois : the in- 
 tegral petition, yevrjOrjrco to 6t- 
 
 IV. Luke xi. 9 — 13. 
 AItcltc' kcll boOrjaeTaL vplv' 
 (rjTe'LTC’ Kal evprjaeTe' 
 KpoveTe' Kal avoLyrjaeTaL vplv. 
 rras yap 6 ahav, kapfiaveL' 
 kcll o (rjT&v, evplaKCL' 
 
 Kal no KpovovTL , avoLyrjaeTaL . 
 TLva 8 e vpav , tov 77 aTepa, 
 alTrjacL 6 vlos apTov ; 
 prj klOov CTTLbcaaeL avTut ; 
 el Kal lyOvv, 
 
 prjavTl IxOvos d(f)LV €TTLb(baeLavT<2; 
 7 ) KaX eav ahijarj 00 ov, 
 prj eiubcbaeL avra aKopirtov ; 
 el ovv vpeis , Trovrjpol virdpxpvTes, 
 
 \rjpd aov, cos ivovpavco, kcu cttX rrjs 
 yrjs: and that at the end, a\\d 
 pvaaL rjpas airo tov rvovrjpov. As to 
 the text of the same prayer in 
 St. Matthew’s Gospel, it stood 
 in Origen’s time almost pre- 
 cisely as it stands at present in 
 the Greek Vulgate, with the ex- 
 ception of the doxology at the 
 end. 
 
58 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 Matthew vii. 7 — 11. 
 oibare bopLaTa aya0a bibovai 
 rots tckvois vp&v, 
 
 7ro(r(p pakkov 6 Trarrjp vp&v, 
 
 6 ev rots ovpavo'is , 
 b(6<T€L ayaOa 
 rots air ova lv avTov ; 
 
 Luke xi. 9 — 13. 
 
 o’tbaTe aya6a bopaTa bibovai 
 TOW TeKVOLS Vp&V, 
 
 7 tocto) pakkov 6 tt aTrjp, 
 
 6 e£ ovpavov, 
 boocrei uvevpa ayiov 
 rots ahovenv avTov ; 
 
 V. Matthew x. 26 — 33. 
 Ovbev yap £otl KeKakvppevov, 
 6 ovk aiTOKakv(f)dricr€Tai’ 
 
 KCLL KpVTTTOV, 
 
 6 ov yv(t>cr0rjo-€Tai. 
 o kiyo) vpuv ev rfj cncorta, 
 €t7rare ev r< 3 (purr 
 
 Kal o eis to ovs aKOveTe , 
 
 V. Luke xii. 2 — 9. 
 
 Oiidez; 8e ervy KeKakvppevov ecrTiv , 
 6 ovk aTTOKakv(\)0ricreTai‘ 
 
 Kal KpVTTTOV , 
 
 o ov yv(s)aOr]creraL. 
 av0 ’ <Sr ocra ez> r$ ctkotlcl et7r are, 
 ev ra> <p(aTl aKOvaQr\<TeTai * 
 
 Kat o 7rpos ro oos ekakr/aaTe, 
 ev rots ra/xetots. 
 
 KT]pvgaT€ eiTL T&V bo)p6.TO)V. 
 
 KrjpvxOrjaeTai errt raiz; bcopdTcov. 
 keyco Se vpuv rots <£tA.ots pov' 
 
 Kal prj (PoftrjOrjTe 
 
 p,7) (poftrjdrjTe 
 
 duo t&v aTTOKTtLVovTow to crw/xa, airo t&v CLTioKTeLVovTtoV to craipa. 
 
 TTjv be xJ/vxrjv 
 prj bvvapevcov a'noKTe'ivai. 
 
 Kal pLeTa TavTa 
 
 piT] e^ovTcov TrepLcrcroTepov tl ttol- 
 
 <po(3rf0r]T€ be pakkov tov 
 
 rjaaL. 
 
 inrobeigw be vpuv , rtVa (pofinjOriTe * 
 c pofirjOrjTe tov, pera ro airoKTeivat, 
 
 bvvapevov kcll y\rvyj]v Kal a&pa e^ovaiav eyovTa 
 
 aTrokecrai ev yeevvrj. 
 
 ep(3akeiv ets rrjzj yeevvav. 
 val, key co vpiv’ tovtov <po/3r]0r]T€. 
 
 ovyl bvo crTpovdCa 
 acrcrap'iov 'jrcoke'LTai ; 
 
 Kal ev e£ avTcov 
 ov Trecretrat e 7 rt ttjv yrjv, 
 dvev tov iraTpos vpa>v. 
 vp&v 8 e Kal at rptyes r? js 
 K€(pakr] s 
 
 Trao-at r)pL0prjpevaL elai. 
 prj ow cpofirjOrjTe’ 
 
 ovyl TtevTe aTpovOta 
 7 ra)Aetrat ao-aapLcav bvo ; 
 
 Kal ev ef avTcav 
 ovk ecrTiv ernkekijcrpevov, 
 ev&Tuov tov Qeov. 
 akka Kal at rpt^es rr)s 
 Ketyakrjs vpS>v 
 iracraL ripL0pr]VTaL. 
 pr} ovv (po{3eLcr0e’ 
 
 7rokkd>vcrTpov0LO)vbia(pepeTevpeLS. irokk&v arpovd tW bcacpepeTe. 
 . . . . A.e'yw de vpiv' 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 59 
 
 Matthew x. 26 — 33. Luke xii. 2 — 9. 
 
 tt as ovv oorts opoAoyrjcreL kv kpol mis os av bpoAoyr\Gr\ kv kpol 
 
 ep7rpoa0ev tS>v av0p(b tto)v, 
 opoAoyrjcra) Kayo > 
 kv avr<3 
 
 epirpo(j0ev tov Trarpos pov, 
 tov kv ovpavols. 
 oorts ft av apvrj(rrjTai pe 
 kpTTpoaOev t&v av0pd> ttohv, 
 apvr\cropaL avrov Kayo) 
 epTrpoa0ev tov Trarpos pov, 
 tov kv ovpavois. 
 
 €pTTpoa-0€V TO) V aV0p(OTTCt)V, 
 Kal 6 vlos tov av0p(OTTOv opoAo- 
 yrio-eL kv avr<p 
 kpTrpo(T0€v t&v ayykAoiV 
 tov Qeov. 
 
 6 be apvqcrdpevos pe 
 kvtoTUOV TO)V CLV0p(OTTO)V, 
 aTrapvr]0r\(TeTaL 
 kvtoinov t&v ayyiAo)v 
 tov Oeov. 
 
 VI. Matthew vi. 25 — 33. 
 
 Ata tovto Akyo) vplv * 
 py] pepipvare tt} yfrvyf] vpa>v, 
 tl (f)dyriT€, Kal tl TrlrjTe' 
 prjbe rc5 ac opart vp&v, 
 tl kvbvar](T0e. 
 
 ovyl 7] yjsvyr] rrAeiov kern rrjs 
 rpo(j)r}$, 
 
 Kal to crcopa tov kvbvparo s ; 
 kp^Akyj/are 
 
 ets ra TrereLva tov ovpavov, 
 otl ov cnrelpovcrLV, ovbe 0epl£ovaLV, 
 ovbe avvayovenv ets aTro0r\Kas’ 
 Kal 6 TTaTrjp vpa>v, 6 ovpavios, 
 
 TpkfpCL aVTCL" 
 
 ovy vpels paAAov btaepepere 
 avr&v ; 
 
 rts 8e kg vp&v, pepLpv&v, 
 bvvara i 7Tpocr0eLvaL 
 kirl tt]v rjAiKiav avrov Trrjyyv eva ; 
 
 feat 7T€pl kvbvparos tl pepLpvare ; 
 Karapa0ere ra Kptva to v aypov 
 mos avgaveL' 
 
 OV KOTTLCL , ovbe Vlj0eL' 
 
 Akyo) be vpiv' otl 
 
 VI. Luke xii. 22 — 31. 
 
 Ata tovto vplv Akyoy 
 prj pepLpvare rfj yj/vyri vp&v, 
 tl (payrjTe' 
 prjbe rep crco/xart, 
 
 TL kvbij(TY](T0e. 
 
 V isvyr) ttAclov eort njs 
 Tpo<prjs, 
 
 Kal to a&pa tov kvbvpaTos. 
 KaTavorfo-are 
 rovs KopaKas, 
 
 otl ov (nrelpovaLv, ovbe 0epl{ovo'LV' 
 ohoi)K earn rapelov , ovbe cnro0riKr]' 
 Kal o 0eos 
 rpk(f)€L avrous' 
 
 7rbcr(p paAAov vpels bLacpkpere 
 T(bv reretzw ; 
 rts be kg vptbv, pepLpv&v, 
 bvvaraL Trpoa0eLvaL 
 eirl TTjv rjALKLav avrov t rrjyvv eva\ 
 el ovv ovre kAdyjL(YTov bvvacr0e, 
 tl irepl rb)v AoLTrbiv pepLpvare ; 
 KaTavorprare ra Kpiva 
 mws avgaveL • 
 ov Koma, ovbe vrj0e f 
 Akyo) be vplv * 
 
60 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 Matthew vi. 25 — 33. 
 ovbe Sokopcov, kv Tracy rfj bogy 
 amov, 
 
 TT€pl€l3a\€TO b)S €V TOVTLOV. 
 ei be tov xoprov, 
 tov aypov crypepov ovra, 
 
 Kal aijpLov els KkCfiavov (3akko- 
 pevov, 
 
 6 ©60S OVT(i)S ap<plkvW(TLV, 
 ov 7roAA<3 pakkov vpas, 
 oXiyoTncrroL ; 
 
 py ovv pepLpvycyTe, kkyovTcs' 
 Ti (fyayapev ; y m tl Trtwpev ; 
 fp tl irepLfiak&peOa ; 
 
 Travra yap Tama ra eOvy 
 
 kiriCyrei' 
 
 olbe yap 6 iraryp vp&v 9 6 ovp&VLos, 
 otl XPTlC €T€ t °vt(i)v auavruiv. 
 (yrdre be 7T p&rov Tyv fiaaikdav 
 
 TOV &€OV, 
 
 Kal Tyv bLKaioavvyv amov , 
 Kal rama t ravTa irpocTeOyceTaL 
 Vp.LV. 
 
 Luke xii. 22 — 31. 
 
 ovbe hokopayv, kv irAcry Ty bo£y 
 amov , 
 
 TrepLefi&keTo a>y kv TovTtav. 
 
 el Se tov yopTov, 
 kv t<3 ayp& ary pepov ovTa, 
 
 Kal avpLov els KkC(3avov /3 akko- 
 pevov, 
 
 6 ©eoy ovtcos apcpLevwcL, 
 TToato pakkov vpas, 
 
 dkLyOTTLCTOL J 
 Kal VpeLS py (yT€LT€ 
 tl (j)ayyT€, y tl TrlyTC 
 
 Kal py peT€(OpL(€C0€. 
 
 Tama yap t ravTa ra eOvy 
 tov Kocrpov 
 klTL^yTeL’ 
 
 vpatv be 6 iraTyp olbev 
 otl XPTlC €T€ tovtov. 
 irkyv £yT€LT€ Tyv j3acnkeLav 
 tov 0eov, 
 
 Kal rama iravTa TrpocTeOycreTaL 
 vpTv. 
 
 VII. Matthew xxiv. 45 — 51 
 Tty apa ka-Tlv 
 
 6 TTLCTOS bovkos Kal (frpOVLpOS, 
 ov KaTecTycrev 6 KvpLos amov 
 km Tys 6 e pane ias amov , 
 tov fabovaL amoLS 
 Tyv Tpo<pyv kv Kaip& ; 
 paKapLos 6 bovkos kKeivos, 
 ov kkQtov 6 KvpLos amov 
 evpyceL TroLovvTa ovtms. 
 apyv keya) vplv’ otl 
 km TracL tols virapyovaLv amov 
 
 VII. Luke xii. 42 — 46. 
 
 Tty apa karTiv 
 
 6 mcrbs OLKOvopos Kal <ppovLpos, 
 ov KaTacrTyceL 6 Kvpios 
 km Tys Oepaireias amov, 
 tov bLbovaL 
 
 kv Kaipto TO CLTOpeTpLOV ; 
 paKapLos o bovkos eKelvos, 
 ov kkOiov 6 KvpLos amov 
 evpyaei iroLovvTa om<os. 
 akyO&s keya> vplv’ otl 
 km iracL tols m rapyovcriv amov 
 
61 
 
 Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 Matthew xxiv. 45 — 51. 
 Karao-rijcret avrov. 
 eav emy 6 kclkos bovXos esecvos 
 ev rrj Kapbca avrov' 
 XpOVL{€L 6 KVpLOS pOV kXSeiV' 
 Kal apgrjraL rvirreiv 
 TOVS CTwbovXoVS, 
 eaOUiv 5e Kal TiCveiv , 
 pera r&v peOvovrwv, 
 rj£ei 6 KvpLos rov bovXov eKelvov 
 ev rjpepa, fj ov TTpoo-boKa i, 
 
 Kal ev (opa, fj ov yivaxTKeL, 
 
 Kal bvypropricreL avrov, 
 
 Kal to pepos avrov 
 pera r&v viroKpirtov dr/crei. 
 
 Luke xii. 42 — 46. 
 Karaarr]o-eL avrov. 
 eav be eLTrrj 6 bovXos Zk€lvos 
 ev rrj Kapbtq avrov' 
 XpovC{ei 6 KvpLos pov epyecrOae 
 Kal ap^rjrai rvirrecv 
 rovs TTa'tbas Kal ras rraLblcrKas, 
 eaOleiv re Kal rriveiv, 
 
 Kal pedvcrKeo-Oat, 
 rj£eL 6 KvpLos rov bovXov eKelvov 
 ev r/pepa , fj ov TTpoaboKa , 
 
 Kal ev topa, fj ov yiV(6crKei , 
 Kal biypropr](reL avrov , 
 
 Kal to pepos avrov 
 pera rG>v aTricrraiV Orp ret. 
 
 Zk€ l ecrrai 6 KXavdpos , . . . . 
 
 #cat 6 fipvypos r&v obovreav . 
 
 It would be easy to multiply these extracts, by the 
 production of similar passages ; but, for our present 
 purpose, these may suffice ; since there is sufficient in 
 any of them to prove that St. Luke must have seen 
 St. Matthew, and yet that he did not transcribe him 
 slavishly, or ad litteram ; and though he made certain 
 changes in his text, yet he made none without some rea- 
 son. Nor shall I now argue the question whether our Sa- 
 viour, on these later occasions, actually repeated verba- 
 tim , what he had said on the former. If what he said 
 upon each of two occasions was substantially the same, 
 and as said upon either had been already accurately 
 reported by St. Matthew; I think this would be 
 enough to induce St. Luke to make St. Matthew’s text 
 the basis of his own ; and, adhering to that upon the 
 whole, to alter its arrangements or its terms, only 
 where some change was necessary, to adapt what was 
 said afterwards, to what had been said before, or what 
 was said before, to what would be said again. 
 
62 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 VI. The same supplementary relation of one Gospel 
 to another furnishes the best answer (if any answer is 
 conceived to be requisite) to the question why we have 
 four Gospels, and neither more nor fewer than four. 
 Without searching for mystical and fanciful reasons, 
 such as some of the Fathers have imagined in explana- 
 tion of this fact # , let us only suppose that a prior 
 Gospel was incomplete, and a later one was designed 
 to bring it nearer to perfection, both being considered 
 as the history of a certain period and course of things, 
 in common ; and we account for the fact. The first 
 three Gospels relate almost solely to the ministry of our 
 Lord in Galilee, the last almost solely to that in Ju- 
 daea ; but in the ministry in Galilee, and in the minis- 
 try in Judaea, severally, the complex of the Christian 
 ministry collectively was necessarily comprised. When, 
 therefore, the account of each of these ministries, in 
 particular, had been added to the Canon of Scripture, 
 the account of the Christian ministry, on the whole, 
 might be considered complete ; so that, after the Gos- 
 pel of St. John in addition to the three former Gospels, 
 though any other Apostle had still survived, who might 
 have written a fifth Gospel, yet a fifth Gospel was not 
 to have been expected. 
 
 As to the further question, why one Gospel might 
 not have sufficed, or why the first and original Gospel 
 did not contain by itself as much as all the four in 
 conjunction ; this is an unreasonable question, and 
 certainly a very different one from the former. Admit 
 that on any account, St. Matthew’s Gospel was not a 
 
 * Vide Irenaeus, adv. Haere- 
 ses, lib. iii. cap. xi. p. 220.I. 24 — 
 223.2 1 — Hieronymus, Opera, iii. 
 702. ad. med. : iv. Prolegomena 
 in Matthaeum — Theophylact, O- 
 
 pera, i. 2. A — D: 173. C — 174. 
 B — Arethas, in Revelat. iv. 6. 
 apud (Ecumenium, ii. 691. A 
 — D. 
 
63 
 
 Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 complete history of the Christian ministry, and we 
 explain the^origin of St. Mark’s : admit that even both 
 were not complete, and we assign a reason for St. 
 Luke’s : admit that all the three were more or less 
 defective, and we account for the addition of St.John’s. 
 The four Gospels thus successively composed, as to the 
 outline and general connection of their subject, became 
 at length complete ; and, with respect to the details, 
 if what has been omitted was still the same in general 
 with what has been recorded, this was a conceivable 
 omission ; unless, according to the strong language of 
 St.John, by recounting every thing which Jesus said 
 or did, and by omitting nothing, the whole world were 
 to have been filled with Gospels. 
 
 And, hence, if any one should be disposed to object, 
 that with three Gospels already in being, a fourth was 
 not to be expected — or with two in being, a third ; 
 the reply to the objection would be obvious. On the 
 principle of such an objection, either one Gospel only 
 was to be expected, or, if there must be more than 
 one, there might be any number. If even three Gos- 
 pels stood in need of a supplement, they might receive 
 it from a fourth ; much more if two of them stood in 
 need of a supplement, might they receive it from a third. 
 The matter of fact is undeniable ; viz. that the fourth 
 Gospel was written after the first three, and, in all 
 probability, the third after the first two ; and to ad- 
 mit that they were written after them, but to deny that 
 they were added to them, would be palpably absurd 
 with respect to St. John’s, and a plain begging of the 
 question with respect to St. Luke’s. It is self-evident 
 that the four Gospel accounts, when all laid together, fur- 
 nish a much more comprehensive and complete history 
 than any three, and much less any one or any two, of 
 them, could have furnished without the rest ; it is 
 
64 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 an equally certain, and a much more critical circum- 
 stance, that each being taken as it stands, those 
 which contribute most to the integrity and com- 
 prehensiveness of the whole, are those which come last 
 in the order of succession, and not those which come 
 first. Who then will maintain that this is no indica- 
 tion of a progressive advancement towards perfection ; 
 nor the natural result of a number of concurrent, but 
 successive, attempts to bring the Gospel history nearer 
 and nearer to a final state ? 
 
 Nor is it of any avail to reply, that the first three 
 Gospels are something communis generis, but the last is 
 of a character peculiar to itself ; for they are all histories 
 of one and the same ministry, and so far must be classed 
 together. What passed in Judsea was as much a part 
 of this ministry as what passed in Galilee. The times 
 and occasions, when our Saviour was employed on the 
 one, fill up the proper periods, and supply the proper 
 links, in the continuity of the whole, as well as those 
 when he was employed on the other. The history of 
 the one by itself would necessarily exhibit hiatuses, 
 which could be filled up only by the history of the 
 other ; and even the history of either, as narrated by 
 one, or by more, of the Evangelists, might exhibit 
 hiatuses which could be filled up only by later and 
 additional accounts. In short, it is absurd to pretend 
 that, whereas we have actually four Gospels, we had 
 no occasion for more than three : or, whereas we had 
 three, we did not want more than two. It is a reflec- 
 tion upon the Gospels themselves, and derogatory to 
 the wisdom and spirit, under the suggestion and with 
 the guidance of which we believe them to have been 
 written, that any of them should be considered super- 
 fluous. Nor is it more derogatory in these respects, 
 than contrary to the matter of fact ; for if the several 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 65 
 
 Gospels be duly arranged, and each of them be ex- 
 amined in its order, both as what it is in respect to itself, 
 and as what it is in respect to the rest, it will then be 
 seen whether any of them, independently of the in- 
 trinsic value of its own contents, can be pronounced 
 superfluous ; or may be dispensed with as unnecessary 
 to the rest. 
 
 This very consideration, however, of the wisdom and 
 inspiration with which, and under which, the Evan- 
 gelists must be supposed to have written, may be con- 
 verted into an argument that any one of them in par- 
 ticular might be expected to have sufficed for its proper 
 purpose, without the assistance of the rest. Nor do I 
 deny the general position, that each of the Gospels 
 must have sufficed for its proper purpose : but if in 
 this position it is implied, that the proper purpose 
 of any one of them was to be complete and suffi- 
 cient, independently of the rest, it assumes the point at 
 issue ; for this proper purpose may have been just the 
 reverse ; viz. to be complete along with the rest ; and 
 not to be independent of them, but to presuppose them : 
 and either of these cases, a priori , was just as possible 
 as the other. No one could undertake to say for what 
 particular use and purpose any one of the Gospels was 
 written, unless this use and purpose had been pre- 
 viously declared by the Gospel itself ; which is actually 
 true of St. Luke’s Gospel only, and virtually of none 
 but St. John’s besides. 
 
 I have repeatedly had occasion to observe that it is 
 only by the possession of four distinct Gospel-histories, 
 all relating to a common subject — and by the com- 
 parison of one of them with another ; that we are en- 
 abled to discover deficiencies in any of the number. 
 We might have suspected the existence of deficiencies 
 even with one Gospel ; but we could not have detected 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 it except with more. The length of time, for which 
 our Saviour’s ministry must have lasted, admits, in 
 my opinion, of being presumptively collected even 
 from one of the four Gospels, aided by such data as 
 are independent of them all ; and this length of time 
 being once determined, it would follow of necessity 
 that no one Gospel, as it stands, could be complete or 
 continuous, throughout ; they must all be interrupted 
 and defective somewhere. It is the natural and proper 
 effect of later and supplementary Gospels to detect 
 these deficiencies, as well as to fill them up, in prior. 
 They shew us in what parts of the common history 
 their predecessors stood in need of completion or con- 
 nection, while they complete and connect them also. 
 And hence we may anticipate another objection, which 
 some one perhaps may desire to see answered. 
 
 VII. The most defective written Gospel, combined 
 with the oral teaching either of its author, or of any 
 others who were competent to have orally supplied its 
 defects, would have been as sufficient for the purposes of 
 a Gospel as the most complete. I admit this; but solely 
 because oral teaching, under such circumstances, must 
 have been abundantly sufficient for all the purposes, 
 which could have been contemplated by a written Gos- 
 pel ; though with no written Gospel whatever. The 
 eyewitnesses, or earwitnesses, of our Saviour’s personal 
 history were competent to have made it known to 
 others by word of mouth, without resorting to written 
 accounts : and on the same principle, these eyewit- 
 nesses, or earwitnesses, were competent to have orally 
 supplied at any time the defectiveness of such ac- 
 counts. 
 
 But this method of compensating for the imperfec- 
 tions of written Gospels, by actual recurrence to oral 
 communications, would be confined to the lifetime of 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 67 
 
 the original witnesses ; and be accessible to those only, 
 who were their contemporaries, and had the benefit of 
 their personal instructions. And hence it is, that so 
 long as the Apostles themselves were still resident, 
 and still employed in teaching, among a particular 
 church, no written Gospel, perhaps, was yet to be ex- 
 pected ; and the historical testimony to the producing 
 cause of any written Gospel, and more especially of 
 the two first, St. Matthew’s and St. Mark’s, by repre- 
 senting them as first and properly intended by way of 
 substitutes for personal and oral teaching, does so far 
 confirm this expectation. The same consideration 
 furnishes the best account of the lateness of St. John’s 
 Gospel in particular ; which, as compared with the 
 dates of the rest, would otherwise be something extra- 
 ordinary: for as St.John’s Gospel was certainly the 
 last of the Gospels, so was its author the last, or among 
 the last of the Apostles, who survived to the period of 
 its composition. While a single Apostle was still left, 
 the possibility of supplying the defects of written 
 accounts by personal and oral communication with 
 original witnesses, was not yet precluded : but when 
 he also was dead, it was probably cut off for ever. 
 And hence it may justly be regarded as a providential 
 coincidence, that the Gospel, which completed the ca- 
 non, and while it recognised and sanctioned the rest, 
 added what w T as still most indispensably necessary to 
 the integrity of the Gospel history ; was written not 
 only many years after the former, but, if testimony is 
 to be believed, at the close of the life of St. John. 
 
 Are we, however, to suppose that, in the composi- 
 tion of written Gospels at first, the necessities of con- 
 temporary Christians, or those of the church in all 
 ages, would most properly be consulted ? Were written 
 Gospels originally left defective, because while the 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 first witnesses and teachers of Christianity were still 
 alive, it was indifferent whether they were defective or 
 complete ? I cannot acquiesce in this conclusion, which 
 appears to me to derogate more from the wisdom and 
 inspiration, under which the Gospels were written, 
 than any thing which has yet been considered. On 
 the contrary, it is much more reasonable to assume, 
 that the necessities of later ages would be immediately 
 consulted in the composition of written Gospels, be- 
 cause written Gospels would be every thing which 
 later ages could have to depend on. The first con- 
 verts to Christianity were instructed in Christian facts 
 and doctrines by word of mouth ; and might derive, as 
 the occasion required, confirmation, explanation, or 
 supplement from the testimony of original witnesses : 
 the Christians of all succeeding times have had no 
 other authentic source of instruction in either, but 
 the Scriptures which these witnesses have left behind 
 them ; and as these are more or less complete in them- 
 selves, in the same proportion are the necessities of the 
 church adequately or inadequately supplied now, in 
 comparison of then. It is extremely objectionable in 
 the principle, to consider the final end of any of the 
 Gospels as purely temporary; and not less erroneous 
 in the application, to account for its structure upon 
 that ground. The very reverse is more probably the 
 case : and we ought to consider not what any of the 
 Gospels might have been once, so as to have fulfilled 
 its proper use at the time ; but what it ought to have 
 been originally in order to be serviceable afterwards. 
 On this principle, either each of the Gospels, as it 
 came from the hands of its proper author, ought to 
 have been complete in itself ; or if any prior Gospel 
 was originally incomplete, sometime or other it was to 
 be presumed, it would be supplied, and made complete, 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 69 
 
 by a later. Oral communications might compensate 
 for deficiencies at first ; nothing but additional written 
 accounts could compensate for them ultimately. 
 
 And, for this reason, it may justly be contended 
 that, though a particular Gospel might be written for 
 a particular purpose, (as St. Luke’s for the instruction 
 of a certain convert, Theophilus,) still this would not in- 
 validate the possible truth of its supplementary relation 
 to other Gospels : for it never can be proved, that a par- 
 ticular purpose, as concerned one, might not be com- 
 bined with a general purpose, as concerned many more ; 
 nor that the instruction of a contemporary, and the 
 perpetual benefit of future ages, might not both be 
 consulted in the same provision. For this reason also, 
 though Theophilus might have been already acquaint- 
 ed with St. Matthew’s Gospel, or with St. Mark’s, 
 (which, however, is a gratuitous assumption, and al- 
 lowed by me only for argument’s sake,) still, if those 
 two Gospels stood in need of supplement, St. Luke 
 might address to him a third Gospel, supplementary to 
 them both. Nor would it make any difference whether 
 Theophilus was acquainted with these Gospels, or only 
 St. Luke ; whether Theophilus was aware that they 
 were deficient, or only St. Luke. If St. Luke’s Gospel 
 was designed in any way as supplementary to their’s, it 
 would retain this relation — it would still be supple- 
 mentary to them, under all these circumstances alike. 
 
 I see no mode, then, of explaining away the percep- 
 tible relations to each other in the structure of the 
 four Gospels, or of obviating the inference from them, 
 except by denying that these relations are supplemen- 
 tary, or by resolving the relations into accident. With 
 respect to which modes of explanation, the first either 
 begs the question, or contradicts the matter of fact ; it 
 begs the question, if, admitting the relations, it denies 
 
 F 3 
 
70 
 
 Dissertation First . 
 
 that they may be supplementary; it contradicts the mat- 
 ter of fact, if, admitting that they may be, it denies that 
 they are so. And with respect to the second ; to al- 
 low that the relations are supplementary, and yet to 
 question whether they were designed, is the extrava- 
 gance of scepticism, and the height of credulity, at the 
 same time ; of scepticism, in shutting the eyes to the 
 plain and natural inference from such coincidences — of 
 credulity, in endeavouring to account for them by 
 what is infinitely more improbable. Design might 
 both produce and explain these relations : accident, we 
 may justly suspect, never could have produced them; 
 and we may still more confidently maintain, never can 
 satisfactorily explain them. 
 
 But, if we must resolve them into design of some 
 kind or other, and yet still refuse to believe that the 
 authors of the Gospels, so related, were acquainted 
 with each other’s compositions ; there is but one alter- 
 native left ; the authors of the later Gospels must have 
 been supernaturally controlled — and in the selection, 
 disposal, and circumstantial narration of their respec- 
 tive accounts, must have been, unconsciously to them- 
 selves, adapted in this critical manner to one another, 
 by the direction of the Holy Ghost. This supposition 
 would serve for the purposes of our argument as well 
 as any other ; for if the later Gospels are actually sup- 
 plementary to the prior, it is indifferent to the Har- 
 mony of their contents, how they came to be so. But 
 who would deliberately acquiesce in this solution, 
 rather than in the simple and natural alternative, op- 
 posed to it? which, with no violence to antecedent 
 probability ; with no risk to the infallibility or credi- 
 bility of the Evangelists ; without denying their com- 
 mon inspiration, yet without the interposition of this 
 principle needlessly, or straining it to a degree which 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 71 
 
 is the utmost it can bear ; will account for the same 
 effect just as well. 
 
 VIII. Having said thus much upon the material re- 
 lations, I shall conclude with a few more observations 
 upon the verbal coincidences, perceptible in the Gos- 
 pels. 
 
 I have heard it asserted that these coincidences 
 might be explained, without supposing the Evangel- 
 ists to have seen, or consulted, each other ; upon the 
 following principle. If the Apostles had long been 
 conversant in oral teaching, and daily in the habit of 
 reciting more or less of the Gospel history, before any 
 of the Gospels had been written ; it is a possible result 
 that by degrees they would fall into an uniformity of 
 style and manner ; which at last would become habit- 
 ual, and might shew itself in their written accounts. But 
 that this explanation will not account for the coinci- 
 dences in question, appears to me almost self-evident. 
 The force of habit, or the natural tendency of constant 
 repetition, to produce uniformity in the language, or 
 the details, of particular accounts, might explain the 
 uniformity of oral teaching, but not necessarily of 
 written ; it might produce an uniformity in the oral 
 teaching of any one Apostle as compared with itself, 
 but not necessarily as compared with that of others ; 
 it might account for the teaching of one person, at 
 one time, being perhaps even, verbatim , the same 
 with his teaching at another, but not for his teach- 
 ing, and that of many others, being, verbatim , the 
 same at all times alike. Different individuals, how- 
 ever constantly employed in the relation of the same 
 things substantially, would yet fall into different styles 
 and modes of relating them — each into his own; which 
 might be rendered by habit familiar to him, but would 
 not become so to the rest. 
 
 F 4 
 
72 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 Besides, it is a precarious assumption, though neces- 
 sary to the very foundation of this argument, that the 
 same passages in the Gospel history should be consi- 
 dered to have so repeatedly come over again, that, by 
 relating them every day, an habit would be formed of 
 uniformly relating them alike. Nor can it ever be sa- 
 tisfactorily proved, that the oral teaching of the Apo- 
 stles was confined to any one language ; or, if it was, 
 that, for many years after the commencement of their 
 Gospel ministry, this language was not Hebrew, ra- 
 ther than Greek. But the written teaching of the 
 Apostles, such at least as it has come down to us, has 
 never been in any language but Greek ; which must 
 add to the difficulty of accounting for the verbal coin- 
 cidences in the Gospels : for on this principle, the writ- 
 ten teaching of the Apostles, as it has come down to us 
 in the Gospels, is not a mere copy, but a translation, of 
 their oral. 
 
 Moreover, the phenomenon, for which we have to 
 account, is not why two or three persons should, ver- 
 batim, have taught alike, but why two or three persons 
 should, verbatim , have written alike : not, why the 
 writing of one certain person should have agreed, ver- 
 batim, with his oral teaching, but, why the writings of 
 two or three different persons should have agreed, ver- 
 batim, with the oral teaching of as many more ; not, 
 why the teaching of the same person, whether by writ- 
 ing or by word of mouth, should have always agreed 
 with itself, but why the oral teaching of three different 
 persons, St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, if not, St. 
 Matthew, St. Peter, and St. Paul, separately represented 
 in writing, should be, vei'batim, the same in each case. 
 
 In short, the principle in question would not account 
 for more than the following supposition, which yet is 
 not the actual state of the case ; viz. that any one 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 73 
 
 Christian Evangelist, after having preached the Gos- 
 pel in a certain language, and for an adequate length 
 of time, by word of mouth, should at last have com- 
 mitted his teaching, in the same language still, to 
 writing : in which case, his oral and his written teach- 
 ing might be expected to agree ; that is, the latter 
 would be only a transcript of the former. But even 
 of this agreement none would be able to judge, who 
 had not first heard the oral, and afterwards read the 
 written : that is, only the contemporaries of the 
 teacher and writer himself. 
 
 If, indeed, it could be seriously maintained, that the 
 credibility of either of the two later Evangelists was im- 
 mediately endangered, by supposing him to have seen 
 St. Matthew’s Gospel; I should be among the first to 
 subscribe to the hypothesis of the German school, or to 
 any other which might be contrived to solve the existing 
 phenomena, and yet keep them in the dark with respect 
 to each other. This danger, however, is least of all 
 things to be apprehended by those, who believe the 
 Evangelists, in the composition of their several Gos- 
 pels, to have consulted the same documents, or made 
 use of the same materials. They would be bound, on 
 their own principles, to admit that they might safely 
 have consulted each other : and it would be better, on 
 every account, to refer St. Mark to St. Matthew, and 
 St. Luke to both ; which would be to refer them at 
 once to a known and accredited authority ; than to re- 
 fer all three, perhaps to unreal and imaginary, and cer- 
 tainly to uninspired and unauthoritative documents, 
 the composition of persons totally unknown. 
 
 It is considered no objection to the credibility of 
 St. John, even when he accompanies the first three 
 Gospels, that he had seen and was acquainted with 
 them ; and I would inquire of those who feel any alarm 
 
74 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 on this score, whether, if they knew that St. Mark had 
 repeatedly heard or conversed with St. Matthew, they 
 would think him, on that account, less competent to 
 write a Gospel. Instead of this, they must say he 
 would be more so. I would inquire again, then, what 
 difference there could be between hearing and convers- 
 ing with St. Matthew, and reading his work ? Would 
 not the one be as good, and as authentic a source of 
 information as the other? Is the credibility of St. Mark 
 increased, the more of the original eyewitnesses and 
 earwitnesses of the Gospel he had personally seen and 
 heard ? is it all at once impaired, if he perused a Gos- 
 pel by any of them ? The truth is, unless every one of 
 the three first Gospels was composed at the same time, 
 and in different places, (concerning which question more 
 will be said hereafter,) it would be a moral impossibility 
 that St. Matthew’s Gospel could actually be in exist- 
 ence, before St. Mark wrote his, and yet not be known 
 unto him ; and equally so, that, if known unto him be- 
 fore he wrote his own, it could be deliberately disre- 
 garded by him, when he was writing it. The same 
 impossibility will hold good of St. Luke ; so that, ex- 
 cept on the supposition before mentioned, we could not, 
 however much we might consider it necessary, keep a 
 later Evangelist in ignorance of the existence of a prior. 
 But, in fact, the whole basis of this imaginary danger 
 is overthrown by the supplementary relation of the 
 later Gospels. It is peculiar to that relation, both to 
 imply the existence of prior Gospels, and yet not to bor- 
 row authority from them. 
 
 The preface of St. Luke speaks of Gospels in being 
 before his own, which he must, consequently, have 
 seen ; and the existence of which he urges as an argu- 
 ment for undertaking his own : which may be consi- 
 dered a proof that he commended the design, though 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 75 
 
 he did not vouch for the merits of the execution, of such 
 productions. These Gospels, it is true, were the compo- 
 sition of persons who had derived their information from 
 the air ap-^rj^ avro7rrai , and the a it ap^yj^ viryjperai, of the 
 Word ; and this being a description of the original wit- 
 nesses and ministers of the Gospel, it implies that their 
 authors in particular were not such, but some of those 
 who had been converted by them. Hence the Gospel 
 of St. Matthew, as the composition of an Apostle him- 
 self, is clearly excluded from the number; and the 
 Gospel of St. Mark, as virtually the composition of 
 St. Peter, and as, at least, only one Gospel, whereas, 
 these Gospels are spoken of as mamy ; can hardly be 
 included in it. 
 
 Now it would be too much to assume, that, what- 
 ever mixture of false or erroneous matter might also 
 be blended with them, even these histories did not 
 contain something authentic : yet St. Luke had seen, 
 and was acquainted with them, or, we may justly pre- 
 sume, he would not have referred to them. It is a 
 fortiori , therefore, to be supposed, that he had seen 
 and was acquainted with the canonical Gospels, at 
 least if any such were then in being : for surely apocry- 
 phal ^ Gospels, the work of uninspired and fallible, how- 
 
 * Though I have applied the 
 denomination of apocryphal to 
 these Gospels alluded to in the 
 preface of St. Luke, I think it 
 but right to observe, that I am 
 far from supposing they were 
 snch compositions as would now 
 be understood to be meant by 
 that name ; the titles and frag- 
 ments of which, together with 
 the similar remains of many like 
 productions, are collected in the 
 Codex Apocryphus of Fabricius, 
 &c. Such compositions as these, 
 of which so many in the course 
 
 of time came to be palmed on 
 the Christian world, under the 
 title of a Gospel, according to 
 one authority, or Acts, &c. ac- 
 cording to another, in all proba- 
 bility were none of them as yet 
 in being. The precise time of 
 the fabrication of such works 
 in the greatest number, as far as 
 I have seen reason to conclude, 
 was the end of the first, and the 
 beginning of the second cen- 
 tury. 
 
 The histories alluded to by St. 
 Luke were, in all probability, as 
 
76 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 ever well-meaning, men, were not to be read and exa- 
 mined in preference to these. Nor, though this had 
 been the case, was it to be expected that St. Luke, in a 
 reference of this kind, would be found alluding to those 
 which were canonical, along with those which were not. 
 For in the first place, this would have been to confound 
 the canonical with the apocryphal ; to degrade the one 
 and to advance the other; as if there were no difference 
 between the works of Apostles, or of apostolic men, 
 and the compositions of ordinary historians : and, se- 
 condly, to have paralleled the conception of his own Gos- 
 pel by the example of St. Matthew or of St. Mark, and 
 not rather by that of well-meant, though uninspired, 
 productions, would not have become the humility and 
 meekness of profession and purpose, which are espe- 
 cially characteristic of the Christian Evangelists. 
 
 It would seem, then, that the body of historical tes- 
 timony, on which the material truths of our religion are 
 mainly founded, was not completed, nor ever designed to 
 be completed, at once. The foundation of it might be laid 
 
 honest and faithful as historical 
 compositions in general are ; and 
 no doubt were written and pub- 
 lished by their several authors in 
 their own names and persons. 
 They were merely uninspired 
 productions, containing about as 
 much of truth, and withal about as 
 much of error and imperfection, 
 as ordinary human histories in 
 general. Gospels of this descrip- 
 tion, if we may call them by that 
 name, were such as the Christian 
 world were likely to have pub- 
 lished and circulated among them 
 first ; and being mere human 
 productions, however serious and 
 well meant, it is no wonder that 
 after the composition and gene- 
 ral diffusion of the several ca- 
 nonical Gospels, they gradually 
 
 fell into disuse and oblivion ; so 
 that their very recollection might 
 pass away, and no mention of 
 them be perpetuated in ecclesias- 
 tical history. Epiphanius’ asser- 
 tion that St. Luke alludes to 
 apocryphal gospels, strictly so 
 called, the work of Cerinthus or 
 Merinthus, as he styles their au- 
 thor, is unsupported by proof 
 from testimony, is confuted by 
 the reason of the thing, and ir- 
 reconcilable with the date of the 
 age when Cerinthus in particular 
 must be supposed to have flou- 
 rished, or to have become noto- 
 rious as an heresiarch : which 
 date is not earlier than the end 
 of the first century, long after 
 the composition of St. Luke’s 
 Gospel. 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 
 
 77 
 
 early, and on the scene of the birthplace of the Gos- 
 pel ; but the superstructure was not finished until late, 
 and in far distant regions. The first and original 
 Gospel, the only true TrfxjoTeva'yyiXiov , was St. Matthew’s. 
 Around this, as their common centre, the rest were 
 compiled in their turns ; and, like diverging but con- 
 centric expansions, each succeeding embraced a wider 
 sphere than the preceding. St. Mark, in a strictly 
 historical sense, includes more than St. Matthew; 
 St. Luke, than St. Matthew and St. Mark ; and St. 
 John, than all the three : because each, in addition to 
 his proper narrative, adopts, and virtually incorporates 
 with his own, the narratives in existence before it. It 
 is this mutual relation which, instead of impairing 
 the credibility of any one, wonderfully enhances the 
 joint authority of all. The evidence of four competent 
 witnesses, all converging upon the same point, is better 
 than the evidence of any one by himself : and if, be- 
 sides what each supplies in particular, St. Mark recog- 
 nises St. Matthew, St. Luke recognises both, and St. 
 John recognises all the three ; we are put in posses- 
 sion of a cumulative amount of testimony, so much 
 the stronger and more indissoluble, because it is cumu- 
 lative, and not single. 
 
 To exhibit this cumulative and progressive evidence 
 in its natural dimensions and its full force, is the most 
 legitimate purpose, and the most appropriate result of a 
 well constructed Harmony; and in whatever degree this 
 design may be successfully effected, the praise should 
 be ascribed to the nature of the case, and not to the 
 merit of the harmonist. It is another result of the mu- 
 tual relation of the Gospels, and, consequently, another 
 advantage of an harmonized system which proceeds 
 on those relations, that though the detail of particulars 
 in the Christian history may still be partial and incom- 
 
78 
 
 Dissertation First. 
 
 plete, the general outline of facts will be found to be dis- 
 tinct and continuous. The individual events of our Sa- 
 viour’s ministry, at the individual points of its duration, 
 may be very imperfectly related ; and that is a defect 
 which no Harmony can supply : but the manner in 
 w r hich it was employed on the whole ; the account of 
 what was doing at any of those periods, in general ; 
 it might be supposed, a priori, we should always be able 
 to ascertain — the Gospels, however concise, must have 
 supplied data for thus much. And in possessing even 
 this outline of three years and an half ; in being able to 
 discover, and to appreciate, how it was filled up on the 
 whole ; we should possess, perhaps, as much as it 
 might concern us to possess : we should be able to 
 discover and appreciate enough, if not for our curi- 
 osity, yet at least for our sober conviction. The details 
 in each of the Evangelists are the details of detached 
 events ; and, if we except St. John, the events, which 
 each does relate, may be related as specimens of those 
 which are suppressed ; or may have been selected for 
 special reasons, from the great body of facts sup- 
 pressed. There is no reason, but one of these two, 
 which can be assigned, why so little should actually 
 have been left on record, where so much more might 
 have been recorded : and the second appears to me 
 much the more generally applicable. We do not pos- 
 sess the most incalculably small part of what might 
 have been related of our Saviour’s miracles ; and for 
 every special relation of such a miracle, a special 
 reason, I think, may be discovered, sufficient to have 
 produced it. The same thing is true of his discourses : 
 every thing there is even more special. Deduct from 
 the sum of the discourses on record, all the parabolic, 
 which are one extraordinary class ; all the prophetical, 
 which are another ; all the controversial, which are a 
 
Supplemental Character of the Gospels. 79 
 
 third ; and all the moral or didactic, which were de- 
 livered pro re nata; and what remains in the shape 
 of regular, formal, and systematic instruction, such as 
 constituted our Lord’s daily employment, and is always 
 implied when he is said to have taught the people, but 
 the two sermons on the mount ? And even these have 
 been considered the same. 
 
 Lastly, it is an obvious remark, and not inapplica- 
 ble to the nature of our present discussion ; that, out 
 of four distinct works, all relating to a common sub- 
 ject, and three of them possessing certain supplemental 
 relations to each other, and to the first ; if any one 
 could be properly selected as the basis of an arrange- 
 ment for the rest, this would seem to be most naturally 
 the first. If all the rest were ultimately formed or 
 collected about the first, this first must be the centre 
 of union to the rest. St. Matthew’s Gospel, then, 
 would seem to have the best right to be made the 
 basis of an Harmony : and if St. Matthew’s Gospel had 
 been uniformly regular, like St. Luke’s or St. Mark’s, 
 this right could not have been disputed. But so long 
 as there are irregularities in a particular historian ; 
 whatever precedence he may claim in point of time, 
 until those irregularities are corrected, he cannot be 
 implicitly trusted as an historical criterion for others. 
 These last must not be accommodated to the first ; but 
 the first must be rectified by the last. St. Mark’s Gospel 
 performs this service for St. Matthew’s ; and St. Mark’s 
 Gospel is so closely adapted to St. Matthew’s, as to 
 make up almost one work with that : which being 
 the case, St. Matthew’s Gospel, along with St. Mark’s, 
 is the true and proper basis of an Harmony for St. 
 Luke’s, or St. John’s : within which, and about which, 
 there is nothing in either of them that may not na- 
 turally and conveniently find its own place. 
 
DISSERTATION II. 
 
 Historical investigation of the Times and the Order of the 
 first three Gospels. 
 
 There are few things in the study of Biblical An- 
 tiquities more extraordinary than the difference of 
 dates which we find assigned to the four Gospels ; so 
 much so as almost to obtrude the conviction that con- 
 cerning the true time of their composition nothing was 
 ever known for certain ; or what might once have 
 been known was speedily lost and forgotten. In the 
 midst of such contradiction and perplexity, the only 
 safe course which is left us at the present day, is that, 
 which assuming merely an unquestionable fact, the 
 existence of the Gospels themselves, argues from their 
 observable relations to each other in the manner, and 
 with the effect, stated in the preceding Dissertation : 
 and there is this reflexive proof of the wisdom and the 
 certainty of that course, that as far as testimony is 
 clear, determinate, and consistent with itself, so far the 
 results which we obtain from that course, are corrobo- 
 rated by testimony also. 
 
 For the purposes of an Harmony the question of the 
 order is a more important one than the question of the 
 times of the Gospels : nor is it merely the more im- 
 portant, but generally speaking the more capable, on 
 the strength both of internal and external evidence, of 
 a satisfactory solution. The language of the Fathers, 
 however much at variance upon the latter point, is 
 sufficiently uniform upon the former : since with one 
 exception only, which regards the testimony of Cle- 
 mens Alexandrinus, considered as the author of the 
 'YTroTVTrtocreis — Papias, Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Tertul- 
 
Times and Order of the first three Gospels. 
 
 81 
 
 lian, the Latin Presbyter of the second century a sup- 
 posed to be Caius, — Pantaenus, Origen,Epiphanius, Eu- 
 sebius, Chrysostom, Jerome, and a multitude of others, 
 if it were necessary to specify them by name ; do all 
 either actually or impliedly affirm that the Gospels were 
 written in the order in which they stand. Nor is any 
 great weight to be attached to that single testimony of 
 Clemens, which is much too vague and indefinite to be 
 set in opposition to a cloud of witnesses on the other 
 side ; and besides, with a possible mixture of error, 
 does actually contain some truth. For one of the 
 Gospels, which exhibit a genealogy, was unquestionably 
 written before the rest : and this being an acknow- 
 ledged fact, it was amply sufficient for the foundation 
 of so general an assertion, delivered eV i rapaSoo-ew tmv 
 aveKaOev 7rpe(r/3vTepcov , as that which Eusebius b ascribes 
 to him ; viz. that the Gospels which contain the genea- 
 logies were written first*. 
 
 There is scarcely a date of the age of any of the 
 Gospels upon record, which, if it were worth the while, 
 might not be shewn upon good grounds to be purely 
 conjectural ; and, consequently, entitled to little or no 
 regard. I shall exemplify this truth in one instance 
 only ; the date which Theophylact, and others as well 
 as he, assign to the Gospel of St. Mark ; pera Seica errj 
 The date of the ascension, as assumed 
 
 * It is but due to the reputa- 
 tion of Clemens Alexandrinus 
 to observe, that there is good 
 reason to suspect the Hypoty- 
 poses not to have been his pro- 
 duction : and consequently to 
 conclude that he is not answer- 
 able for every statement which 
 they are said to have contained. 
 Vide Photii Bibliotheca, Codex 
 
 1 09 and hi. Compare also 
 Codex 106, which gives an ac- 
 count of another work, bearing 
 the same name, though in seven 
 books, not in eight — ascribed 
 to Theognostus of Alexandria ; 
 which seems to have very much 
 resembled this reputed work of 
 Clement’s. 
 
 a Rel. Sacrae, iv. 3. b E. H. vi. xiv. 216. A. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 G 
 
Dissertation Second. 
 
 by them, being the eighteenth of Tiberius, U. C. 785, 
 the tenth year from that date exclusive, is U. C. 795. 
 Now U. C. 795. was the second of Claudius; and in 
 the second of Claudius St. Peter was currently sup- 
 posed to have first visited Rome. This date, then, 
 was probably assumed from the conjunction of an- 
 other fact with that ; viz. that St. Mark was at Rome 
 at the same time with St. Peter ; and that St. Mark 
 wrote his Gospel there, while they were both there to- 
 gether. 
 
 Yet no date is or can reasonably be assigned to the 
 first three Gospels, which would not prove that they 
 were all in existence before A. D. 70, the year of the 
 destruction of Jerusalem : nor any, except the date of 
 Theophylact, (thirty-two years after the ascension,) be 
 assigned to the last, which would not prove it to have 
 been written long after that event : and were we to 
 substitute, in the terms of this date, for the ascension, 
 the destruction of J erusalem, that also might be an 
 exact measure of the truth. 
 
 With respect, indeed, to the Gospel of St.John; I 
 wish it to be understood that none of the observations, 
 which will be made in this Dissertation, is intended 
 to be applied to that. The lateness of the composition 
 of this Gospel I consider to be an incontrovertible 
 point ; and that little credit or advantage would now 
 be gained by disputing it. The preponderance both of 
 internal and external evidence is here altogether upon 
 one side ; and even those, who maintain the hypothesis 
 of an early date, are obliged to confess that the allu- 
 sion to the pool and the porches at Bethesda, John v. 
 2, is the only presumptive argument in their favour, 
 which the Gospel itself furnishes. Now, according to 
 Pausanias c , who was writing in the reign of Marcus 
 
 c Arcadica, viii. 16. 
 
Tunes and Order of the first three Gospels. 8J 
 
 Aurelius, the tomb of Helena, the queen of the Adia- 
 benes, whom Josephus also proves to have been buried 
 within three furlongs of Jerusalem d , was still existing 
 in his time, though Hadrian had razed the city to the 
 ground*. It is equally possible that the porches of 
 Bethesda might have survived until the beginning of 
 the reign of Trajan. In any case, the pool, a natural 
 spring, would still be in existence ; and Eusebius and 
 Jerome, in their chorographia of Judaea, do both al- 
 
 lude to it accordingly!. 
 
 * The monument of queen 
 Helena was still extant at a 
 much later period ; viz. in the 
 time of Eusebius and Jerome. 
 Vide Eusebius, E. H.ii. xii^o.A. 
 and Hieron. Operum iv. Pars ii da 
 673. ad med. Epitaphium Paulse 
 Matris. The tomb of James the 
 Just, near the temple, is said by 
 Hegesippus, (apud Eus. E. H. 
 ii. xxiii. 65. C.) and by Jerome. 
 De SS. Eccles. ii. to have ex- 
 isted to the time of Hadrian. 
 
 With regard to the testimony 
 of Pausanias, the precise time 
 when he was writing, was late in 
 the reign of Marcus Aurelius, so 
 that the tomb of Helena was 
 extant even then. 
 
 I incline to the opinion that, 
 in the time of St. John, the 
 porches of Bethesda were actu- 
 ally still in existence ; and that 
 this is the reason why he speaks 
 of them accordingly. If we have 
 no direct testimony to the truth 
 of this supposition, yet neither 
 is there any to the contrary. 
 We know nothing exactly of 
 the local situation of the pool. 
 It might be within the walls of 
 Jerusalem itself; and the lan- 
 
 guage of St.John (e<rrt Se’EN rot? 
 'I epoo-oXv/iois) favours that sup- 
 position : in which case it would 
 be the more likely to survive 
 the destruction, produced by the 
 siege of Titus. Ireneeus thought 
 it the same with the pool of Si- 
 loam, (Opera, 305. 1 , 13. Adv. 
 PIser. iv. xix.) and so Prudentius 
 (i. 344. Apotheosis, 680) : but 
 probably with no more reason 
 than Tertullian, who always 
 speaks of Bethesda by the name 
 of Bethsaida : as for instance, 
 Operum iv.191. De Baptismo, 5. 
 There is no reason to suppose 
 that the ancient Jerusalem did 
 not in a great measure survive 
 the first siege ; especially the 
 part on the west and south, the 
 most remote from the temple. 
 The new city, the site of which 
 was different from that of the 
 old, arose in the reign of Ha- 
 drian. 
 
 t The words of the original, 
 Tvevre crroas e'xovcra, it is known to 
 scholars, would bear to be ren- 
 dered, Which had (fris elx ev ) 
 five porches ; as well as. Which 
 has ( jjris e'x«) five porches. This 
 use of the present participle in 
 
84 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 If, then, there is any uncertainty as to the order of 
 the Gospels, it concerns the first three only ; and, of 
 those three, the two last rather than the first. And 
 the uncertainty which concerns even these may pos- 
 sibly be owing to the proximity of their respective 
 times : since, though the Gospel of St. Luke were actu- 
 ally written later than the Gospel of St. Mark, it could 
 not, as we shall see hereafter, have been written much 
 later. And this is the most remarkable circumstance 
 in the dates of Theophylact ; viz. that he makes the 
 Gospel of St. Mark only two years later than the Gos- 
 pel of St. Matthew ; and the Gospel of St. Luke only 
 five years later than the Gospel of St. Mark : both 
 which statements, or at least the latter of them, in one 
 sense may be true. 
 
 In order to any solution of the present question, 
 even as thus restricted, it would manifestly be neces- 
 sary that we should know something of the personal 
 history of the Authors of the Gospels ; more espe- 
 cially, when, and where, they were first converted : 
 on which points, however, as every one may be con- 
 vinced by consulting Cave or Lardner, we are almost 
 totally in the dark. The tradition which makes St. 
 Mark and St. Luke both to have been disciples of our 
 Lord, and even members of the Seventy, is absolutely 
 childish and absurd. If the Mark who is spoken of, 
 
 the sense of the imperfect tense, 
 which would be justifiable in 
 any author, is especially com- 
 mon in St. John. Thus, And 
 no man hath gone up into hea- 
 ven, only he who came down 
 from heaven, the son of man 
 who was (6 a>v) in heaven e . He 
 
 who came (6 epx^^vos) from 
 above is over all things : he who 
 was (6 a>v) of the earth is of the 
 earth, and speaketh of the earth*. 
 He was the candle which did 
 burn and shine (6 Kaionevos kcil 
 (fiaiveovg). To which instances 
 many more might be added* 1 . 
 
 e John iii. 13. 
 xi. 17. 31. xii. 20. 
 
 f iii. 31. 
 
 « v. 35. 
 
 hv S- 'i. 33-46. 50 - i*. 8. 
 
Times and Order of the first three Gospels. 85 
 
 1 Pet. v. 13, was Mark the Evangelist, he is spoken 
 of there as the son of Peter ; which in the language of 
 the Apostles means one whom they themselves had 
 converted. St. Luke in his preface clearly distinguishes 
 himself and Theophilus from such as had been original 
 eyewitnesses, and original ministers, of the Word ; and 
 he must possess a peculiar sagacity for such discoveries, 
 who can divine from the account relating to the two 
 disciples at Emmaus, Luke xxiv. 13-35. that one of 
 these was St. Luke, the writer of the Gospel. No tra- 
 dition of this kind can go further back than the time 
 of Papias : yet Papias distinctly affirms of St. Mark at 
 least, that he had been neither an hearer nor a follower 
 of the Lord, before he wrote his Gospel 1 ; and the 
 Roman Presbyter referred to above, who was contem- 
 porary with Pius, the tenth Bishop of the church of 
 Roine k , affirms the same thing of St. Luke*. 
 
 * Rel. Sacrae, iv. p. 3. 1 . 9: 
 by the author of the fragment 
 in question, St. Luke is called 
 medicus, and St. Paul’s com- 
 panion: but (1. 13.) he is said 
 not to have known the Lord in 
 the flesh : which sufficiently 
 proves that he did not consider 
 him to be one of the Seventy. 
 
 Neither did Tertullian con- 
 sider St. Luke to be one of the 
 Seventy ; as he supposes him to 
 have derived his knowledge of 
 the Gospel from St. Paul, and 
 to have become a disciple later 
 than him : Operum i. 1 88. Con- 
 tra Marc. iv. 2. 
 
 No catalogue of the names of 
 the Seventy had come down to 
 the time of Eusebius (E. H. i. 
 xii. 30. C. D.) : which is enough 
 to prove that the extant cata- 
 
 logues of them were either un- 
 known to him, or considered by 
 him to be unworthy of credit. 
 The most ancient of these is 
 that ascribed to Hippolytus Por- 
 tuensis. And as to those, whom 
 he mentions from the Hypo- 
 typoses, Liber v ; Barnabas, 
 Sosthenes, (the dp^avvayaiyos 
 of Corinth,) Cephas, Thad- 
 dseus, James, the brother of Je- 
 sus — the two last were apostles ; 
 Cephas was only another name 
 for St. Peter ; Sosthenes was 
 converted by St. Paul at Co- 
 rinth ; aud Barnabas, as it ap- 
 pears from the Acts, could not 
 have been a believer before the 
 day of Pentecost. Of the whole 
 number, thus mentioned tradi- 
 tionally, the only two who are 
 likely to have been of the Se- 
 
 i Euseb. E. H. iii.xxxix. 1/3. A. k Ibid. iv. xi. 124. A. Rel. Sacrse, iv. 5.I. 21. 
 
 G 3 
 
86 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 It is much more necessary to observe that Mark, 
 the reputed convert of St. Peter, and the author of the 
 Gospel, cannot have been the same person even with 
 Mark, the nephew or sister’s son of Barnabas : for 
 this Mark is mentioned, Col. iv. 10. Philem. 24, as the 
 companion and fellow-labourer of St. Paul in Rome 
 at a time when, if he had been there, he must have 
 been the companion and fellow-labourer of St. Peter ; 
 and, what is yet more decisive, he is still mentioned in 
 
 verity, are Matthias and Justus, 
 the two persons, pitched upon 
 before the day of Pentecost to 
 succeed to the place of Judas 
 Iscariot. The abstract of the 
 lives and ministry of the apo- 
 stles, and other evangelists, pre- 
 fixed to (Ecumenius, in Novum 
 Testamentum, quotes the same 
 book of the Hypotyposes, for 
 the above traditions, and others 
 to a like effect. Cf. also, i. 86. 
 B. in Acts ix. io: where Ana- 
 nias is said to have been of the 
 Seventy: and i. 731. A. B. in 
 Galat. ii. 1 1 : where Eusebius’ 
 authority is cited, that Cephas, 
 there mentioned, was not Peter 
 the apostle, but another person 
 of the same name. 
 
 It has been argued that St. 
 Luke was an eyewitness of the 
 facts which he records in his 
 Gospel, because he speaks of 
 himself at the outset as 7 raprjKo- 
 \ovdr]K(bs avcodev nacriu aKpifiws. 
 Nor would I deny that irapaKo - 
 \ov6elv } used absolutely, may 
 stand for the actual observation 
 of an eyewitness. It is so used 
 by Josephus, Contra Ap. i. 10. rj 
 
 TraprjKoXovdrjKOTa rols yeyovocriv, rj 
 Trapa T(bv eldoToov nvvdavopevov. 
 But it is much more frequently 
 used to describe the process of 
 an historical inquiry. Mrjd' oVa 
 
 enadov 'Pcopaioi . . . r/ edpacrav rjpas, 
 7rapa.Ko\ov6r](ras : Jos. Vit. 65. p. 
 98 — pera 7 Tdarjs aKpifielas rols r)ps- 
 repois ypappacn napaKoXovdeiv: Con- 
 tra Ap. i. 23. 
 
 It is to be observed that St. 
 Luke says he had attended in 
 this sense to all things avaOev, 
 or, from the first : and if this be 
 understood of his having been 
 actually an eyewitness of them ; 
 since he begins his accounts so 
 far back as even the birth of 
 John the Baptist, thirty years 
 before the commencement of his 
 public ministry, at least ; it will 
 follow, on this principle, that he 
 was a spectator or eyewitness 
 even of the birth of John the 
 Baptist ; and of what he next 
 relates, consecutively upon that. 
 The truth is, though 7 rapaKoXov- 
 6eiv may be used to describe the 
 observation of an eyewitness, 
 napaKokovOelv d/cpiftoSs, which is 
 the phrase employed by St. 
 Luke, can be used only for the 
 researches of an inquirer. No 
 one could be said to have fol- 
 lowed up, or to have attended 
 carefully, to what he had been 
 merely present at ; nor except 
 he had formed from the first a 
 design of committing it to writ- 
 ing : which cannot be supposed 
 the case with St. Luke. 
 
Times and Order of the first three Gospels. 
 
 87 
 
 the same capacity, 2 Tim. iv. 11, at a time when, as 
 we shall see hereafter, St. Mark the Evangelist was 
 either not alive, or not at least in Asia. Besides 
 which, the Mark of the Acts had a proper Jewish 
 name ; which proves that he bore the name of Mark 
 merely as a surname ; but whether the same thing is 
 true of Mark the Evangelist is not so certain. 
 
 With regard to St. Luke, we know no more of his 
 antecedent history than what may be collected from 
 Col. iv. 14 : viz. that he was by profession a surgeon 
 or physician : and hence may have arisen the tradition 
 that he was also a manumitted slave. It was unques- 
 tionably the practice among the Greeks and Romans 
 of this time, to educate some of their domestics in the 
 science and practice of medicine or surgery, which 
 were then synonymous ; to whom, for particular ser- 
 vices, they often gave their liberty as a reward. Au- 
 gustus’ celebrated physician, Antonius Musa, was a 
 freed-man 1 : the same thing would appear of Anti- 
 stius, the surgeon of Julius Caesar; and of Glyco, the 
 surgeon of the consul Pansa m ; and the fact in general 
 is clearly proved by the references in the margin 11 . 
 
 It does not follow, however, because many who pro- 
 fessed medicine had been, or were still, slaves, that 
 therefore none who professed it was free-born. We 
 can infer no more than this ; viz. that if St. Luke, 
 whether a slave, a freed-man, or free-born, professed 
 the science of medicine, he was probably a Greek. Al- 
 most all such professors in the city of Rome were fo- 
 reigners — which means Greeks: Omnesque medicinam.. 
 professos . . civitate donavit 0 — Tqv re ciTeXeiav Kai eavrcp 
 Kai tol<s o/jLOTe'xyoLs .... eXafiev p — Peregrinosque ornnes, 
 
 1 Dio. liii. 30. m Suet. Jnl. Caes. 82. Aug. 11. Ciceron. Ep. ad Brut. vi. 
 
 n Suet. Jul. Caes. 4. Cai. 8. Nero. 2. Plin. Ep. x. iv. v. vi. Sen. de Benef. iii. 
 24. o Suet. Jul. Caes. 42. p Dio. liii. 30. 
 
 G 4 
 
88 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 exceptis medicis et praeceptoribus...urbe expulisset^ : 
 and Pliny the elder distinctly affirms as much : Solam 
 hanc, (sc. medicinam) artium Graecarum nondum ex- 
 ercet Romana gravitas in tanto fructu : paucissimi 
 Quiritium attigere, et ipsi statim ad Graecos transfugae r . 
 In the time of Strabo there was a celebrated school of 
 medicine near Laodicea in Phrygia ; and a little before 
 his time there had been a similar school at Smyrna s . 
 And hence it is that the names of medical men, such as 
 occur in contemporary history, are manifestly the 
 names of Greeks : as of Charicles, the physician of Ti- 
 berius ; Alcyon, the physician of Caius ; and Xeno- 
 phon, the physician of Claudius* 1 . 
 
 Eusebius, followed by Jerome, would imply that St. 
 
 * Plin. H. N. xxv. 38 : Inve- 
 nit et patrum nostrorum aetate 
 rex Juba, quam appellavit Eu- 
 phorbiam, medici sui nomine, 
 frater is fuit Musse — Juliani 
 Opera, 207. C. D. Oratio vii : 
 
 6)(77 rep, oipai, tu>v larpcov oi pev e- 
 \evOepoi to beov iniraTTOvcnv’ iav Se 
 apa tis olKerrjs yevrjTcu rrjv tvx^v, 
 kcu rrjv rexvrjv larpos, 7T pay para 
 KoXaKeveiv apa ku'i Oepairev- 
 ( iv tov hecrTTOTrjv avaym^opevos — 
 In his address Ad Sen. Populum- 
 que Atheniensem, 2 77. C. he 
 speaks of one of his confiden- 
 tial servants as his physician. 
 Cicero, Oratio Pro Rege Deio- 
 taro, 198. 1: the commentator has 
 it : Deiotarus . . . legatos mi- 
 serat Romam Hieram, &c. . . 
 quibus servum suum Phidippi- 
 cum medicum adjunxerat — Cf. 
 Veil. Pat. ii. 70 : Valerius Max. 
 i. vii. 1.2: Plutarch, Jul. Caesar, 
 34 : Cato Minor, 70 : Antonius, 
 59: Dio, lxviii. 15. Gallicani 
 
 Cassius, 10. Apuleius, ii. 38. 
 De Magia Oratio: also p. 52 
 — Philostratus, Vita Apoll. Ty- 
 an. viii. 3. 404. A: *aXa> tovs la- 
 rpovs pdprvpas. eiod S’ ovtoi, 2eXeu- 
 kos re 6 €K Kv£l icov, ical 'SrpaTOKXrjs 
 6 '2 l$g)VLOs . . . Kal paOrjTal S’ av- 
 roly vi rep tovs TpiaKovTa einovTO : 
 which is supposed to pass at 
 Rome, in the time of Nero and 
 Domitian. Tunc corpore sano | 
 Advocat Archigenem , onerosaque 
 pallia jactat. — Juven. vi. 234. Cf. 
 xiv. 252. 
 
 The fact is that the first work 
 on medicine, published at Rome, 
 was a translation of the medical 
 works of Mithridates, byLenseus 
 the freedman of Pompey, about 
 A. D. 63: just as one of the ear- 
 liest on husbandry, or the Res 
 Rustica , was translated from the 
 Punic of Mago, the Carthagi- 
 nian : Plin. H. N. xxv. 3. A. 
 Gellius, xvii. 16. 
 
 q Suet. Aug. 42. r H. N. xxix. 8. s xii. vii. sect. 20. 245. 
 Ann. vi. 50. xii. 67. 61. Jos. Ant. xix. i. 20. 
 
 t Tac. 
 
Times and Order of the first three Gospels. 89 
 
 Luke was a native of Antioch 11 ; and there is a reading 
 in the Codex Cantabrig. at Acts xi. 28. o-vveo-TpajuLiuLevcov 
 Se rnxwv 9 which, if genuine, would make him a member 
 of that church, prior even to the first mission of St. 
 Paul to the Gentiles. But this manuscript abounds in 
 unauthorized readings : nor is it countenanced in this 
 instance by other and better testimonies. The first in- 
 timation that he was already a convert, and already at- 
 tached to St. Paul, and already an active partner in the 
 work of propagating the Gospel, occurs as in the vul- 
 gate text at Acts xvi. 8-10. in the account of St. Paul’s 
 second mission ; and when he was arrived at Troas. 
 
 That St. Luke was devotedly attached to St. Paul 
 (an attachment reciprocal on the part of the Apostle) 
 appears not only from the History of the Acts, but 
 from Col. iv. 14. and Philem. 24 ; and especially, at a 
 time when that history had ceased, and the close of 
 St. Paul’s ministry itself by his martyrdom, was at 
 hand — from 2 Tim. iv. 11. when, as he tells us, Only 
 Luke was with him. It is a natural inference from the 
 proofs of this mutual regard, that he was either his 
 convert, or a favourite disciple. The tradition of Ec- 
 clesiastical history is uniform to this effect, and even 
 further than this ; to the effect that the Gospel of St. 
 Luke is virtually the Gospel of St. Paul ; that, when 
 he alludes to his own Gospel, he means the Gospel of 
 St. Luke. I confess, however, that with respect to this 
 last fact, we have no sufficient proof of it ; at least 
 from the testimony of St. Paul. We know no more 
 from the Acts and the Epistles in conjunction, than that 
 for seventeen years, or longer — from the middle of the 
 ninth of Claudius to the end of the twelfth of Nero ; 
 
 u E. H. iii. iv. 73. C. Hieron. Operum iv. Pars i. Proleg. in Matt. 3. 4. Pars 
 iia. 104. De SS. Eccles. 7. Cf. the argument prefixed to the Acts, apud CEcume- 
 nium in Novum Testamentum. 
 
90 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 St. Luke was known to, and the companion of, St. 
 Paul. 
 
 Moreover, if any one will compare the account of 
 the Sacramental ordinance in both its parts, as given 
 by St. Luke, with the same account, as given by St. 
 Paul v ; he will perceive that the former is literally con- 
 formable to the latter : and there is a similar coinci- 
 dence between Luke iii. 15, 16. and Acts xiii. 25. part 
 of a speech of St. Paul, with respect to a fact in the 
 ministry of John the Baptist, which would lead to the 
 same conclusion ; viz. that the writer of the Gospel of 
 St. Luke had been taught and instructed by the Apostle 
 St. Paul. It is manifestly probable, then, that St. Luke 
 was his disciple ; and it is possible that he might be 
 his convert also : nor should I consider it an objection 
 that he is no where expressly so called by him, or re- 
 cognised in the apostolic relation of his Son. The 
 same thing is observable of others who were unquestion- 
 ably converts of the Apostle ; as of Titus, if not of 
 Timothy. Though St. Paul often alludes to the former 
 in others of his Epistles, he no where, except when he 
 is writing to him expressly, calls him his Son. Now 
 we have no Epistle from St. Paul to St. Luke ; and, 
 therefore, we do not know whether he would not have 
 addressed him also to the same effect as either of them. 
 Onesimus is the only convert besides, (and that simply 
 when he is writing in his behalf to his master Phile- 
 mon,) whom St. Paul denominates his Son. 
 
 If the personal history of St. Luke first becomes in- 
 terwoven with that of St. Paul at Troas, Acts xvi. 8— 
 10 ; the prima facie inference from this fact would be, 
 that he first became known to him at Troas ; and, 
 therefore, was probably first converted there. It is un- 
 doubtedly his practice, at those points of time when he 
 
 T Luke xxii. 19, 20. 1 Cor. xi. 23 — 25. 
 
Times and Order of the first three Gospels. 91 
 
 was actually in the company of St. Paul, to write in the 
 first person ; and as there is no such occasion when he 
 does not so write hereafter, it is reasonable to con- 
 clude, there could have been none when he would not 
 have so written before. And this consideration alone 
 should suffice to prove that he is not the same person 
 with Lucius of Cyrene ; mentioned at Acts xiii. 1. and 
 probably at Rom. xvi. 21. From Acts xx. 1-6. it may 
 be collected that St. Luke was not with St. Paul 
 when he left Ephesus, to pass through Macedonia into 
 Greece ; nor yet when he retraced his steps from Greece 
 into Macedonia : but that he joined him first only at 
 Philippi ; though he accompanied him thence. Now 
 the Epistle to the Romans was written while St. Paul 
 was still at Corinth ; or on the eve of departing thence, 
 to pass into Macedonia. The name of St. Luke, then, 
 could not have appeared among the salutations in that 
 Epistle : and, consequently, Lucius, a name which does 
 appear there, is not another name for Luke. 
 
 Besides which Lucas, as a contraction for Lucius, 
 cannot hold good. Nor even as one for Lucilius ; but 
 simply and solely as one for Lucanus : just as Silas 
 stands not for Silius, but for Silanus or Sylvanus. Lu- 
 cas, at least, for Lucanus, would be of classical author- 
 ity : for so Lucretius, speaking of elephants w , 
 
 Inde boves Lucas, turrito corpore, tetros — 
 
 and Pliny x : Boves Lucas appellavit, in Lucanis visos. 
 Now Lucanus was a Roman cognomen ; as the name 
 of Lucan the poet is sufficient to prove*: Lucilius, on 
 the contrary, was a Roman nomen ; and such as would 
 be called a nomen gentilitium : with respect to which, 
 
 * Plin. H. N. xxxv. 33 : Pin- atque in publico exponi ccepta 
 gi autem gladiatoria munera, a C. Terentio Lucano. 
 
 w v. 1301. 1338. * H. N. viii.6. Cf. Solini Polyhistor, xxv. 15. Vegetius, de 
 
 Re Militari, iii. 24. 
 
92 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 there was an edict of the Emperor Claudius to this 
 effect?: Peregrinae conditions homines vetuit usurpare 
 Roinana nomina, duntaxat gentilitia. And while this 
 edict was in force, St. Luke, if he was really a fo- 
 reigner, could not commonly bear the name of Luci- 
 lius ; hut he might still' bear that of Lucanus. 
 
 If we may advance a conjecture where there is a to- 
 tal absence of positive information to direct us ; St. 
 Luke, though he might first become acquainted with 
 St. Paul, and might even be converted, at Troas, I 
 think, was a native, or an inhabitant, of Philippi. 
 I ground this opinion, first, upon his peculiar mention 
 of Philippi, when the course of the subject leads him 
 first to allude to it ; for this is such a peculiarity as 
 appears in his mention of no other city, and might na- 
 turally be produced by the mention of his native city*. 
 
 * ’E KeiOev re els ^iXlmrovs, fjris 
 earl npcoTT] rrjs pepidos rrjs MciKebo- 
 vias no\is, Kokoovia. Acts xvi. 12 . 
 There is so much variation in 
 the readings of this text, that 
 Griesbach is of opinion the 
 words rrjs peplbos should be for- 
 sitaii , and the rrjs before McuceSo- 
 vlas should be probabiliter, eject- 
 ed : with which corrections it 
 would stand thus : ’E/cetdeV re els 
 ^iXlnnovs, tJtis e’crri 7rpu>rr] Ma/ceSo- 
 vias noXis, Kokavia. There is no 
 authority, however, from manu- 
 scripts for reading irpcorr^s; though 
 that would be an obvious conjec- 
 ture, and though the division of 
 Macedonia into four regions, 
 called from their order, 7rpd>Trj, 
 Sevrepa, rplrr], and TerdpTrj, after 
 the time of iEmilius Paulus, by 
 whom Macedonia was first re- 
 duced to a Roman province, is a 
 well authenticated fact, attested 
 by both historians and coins. 
 
 Vide Livy, xlv. 20. Diodorus 
 Sic. Fragm. xxvii. Operr. x. 226 
 — 232. Eckhel Doct. Numm. 
 Vett. vol. ii. 63. 
 
 In the first of these ; or the 
 region comprehended between 
 the river Strymon on the west, 
 and the river Nessus, Nestus, or 
 Mestus, on the east ; Philippi, 
 anciently called Crenides, (Cf. 
 Scylax Caryandensis, Periplus, 
 Thracia, (Geographi Min. i. 27.) 
 Diodorus Sic. xvi. 3. 8 : Strabo, 
 Excerpta, vii. 16, 17. 489: The- 
 ophrastus, De Causis Plantarum, 
 v. 20. 346.) was situated. And, 
 on this principle, the received 
 reading may be defended with- 
 out giving up rr]s p epibos : for 
 this expression is equivalent to 
 the one part ; and the one part 
 of any thing necessarily implies 
 that there are more parts of it. 
 
 The title of npcorr] or 7rpa>Toi, 
 npQiTrjs or Trpwro)!/, is repeatedly 
 
 y Suet. Claud. 25. 
 
Times and Order of the first three Gospels. 
 
 93 
 
 Secondly, upon the appearance of a closer connection 
 between St. Luke and Philippi, than between St. Luke 
 and any other place. 
 
 It is certain that on the first occasion of their meet- 
 ing, he accompanied St. Paul from Troas to Philippi ; 
 but when St. Paul departed thence, he did not accom- 
 pany him any further. We may presume, therefore 
 that he stayed behind at Philippi. It is certain also, 
 that on the next occasion of their meeting, St. Paul, on 
 his way to Jerusalem for the last time mentioned in 
 the Acts, was joined by St. Luke at Philippi ; but had 
 not been joined by him before. I know that these coin- 
 
 to be met with upon coins ; as 
 applied by cities, of any note or 
 distinction, to themselves, in re- 
 lation to the rest of the country 
 where they were situated. In 
 one instance, even the rank of 
 the e/ 3 So/iot rrjs * Aalas is so claim- 
 ed by a particular community ; 
 that of the Magnesians ad Mse- 
 andrum, (Eckhel, vol. ii. 527.) 
 In all these cases the word is 
 used with, or without the arti- 
 cle, indiscriminately, but more 
 frequently without than with it. 
 These considerations may incline 
 us to think that nparr) is so used 
 here in reference to Philippi : 
 which being the case, the text 
 asserts in its favour the primatus 
 or primacy either of Macedonia 
 in general, or of Macedonia n pa- 
 rr) in particular. Concerning the 
 primatus in question, the reader 
 may consult Eckhel, vol. iv. 282 
 —288. It will be seen, that, 
 however much an object of the 
 ambition or rivalry of particular 
 cities, it was after all, nominis 
 umbra : a titular preeminence, 
 but nothing more. It is, conse- 
 quently, the more remarkable 
 
 that St. Luke should speak in 
 such terms of Philippi ; and it 
 serves to countenance the con- 
 jecture that he had a particular 
 interest in that place ; that he 
 speaks of it as one of its citi- 
 zens, and not as a perfect stran- 
 ger to it. 
 
 The capital of Macedonia 
 Prima, it is true, was originally 
 Amphipolis : but, while Amphi- 
 polis had since lost in splendour 
 and dignity, (of which its cur- 
 sory mention even at Acts xvii. 
 1. is some proof,) Philippi had 
 gained in the same respects : 
 and from the time that it be- 
 came a Roman colony, (which its 
 proper style and title, as exhi- 
 bited on its coins — COL. AVG. 
 IVL. PHILIP. — prove to have 
 been under Julius and Augustus 
 Caesar,) it might also begin to 
 aspire at the primatus. Hime- 
 rius, a contemporary of Julian, 
 Oratio i. §. 1 3.346. speaks of it, as 
 the nparij of Thrace (or rather 
 Macedonia) in his time : 7 to\is 
 pev ovv QpaKav rjpiv rj irparr), <I>iAi7r- 
 1 rov rov ftao-iXtas enavvpoc. 
 
94 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 cidences are not conclusive ; but they must go some 
 way as presumptive arguments ; nor can they be so 
 naturally accounted for on any supposition as on this, 
 viz. that if St. Luke had a residence any where, he had 
 one at Philippi. That he should nevertheless have been 
 first found by the Apostle at Troas — when we consider 
 the proximity of Troas to Macedonia, and the possibi- 
 lity that St. Luke had been upon a journey into Asia, 
 and was returning home again — ought to be no objec- 
 tion : nor yet that when St. Paul was at Philippi, he 
 remained part of the time in the house of Lydia 2 : for 
 this was after her conversion only, and out of deference 
 to her urgent request. But he had been there some 
 time before that a ; and this interval, which is specified 
 as an interval of some days, might have been spent in 
 the house of St. Luke. 
 
 Now Philippi was a Roman colony; and it was 
 usual for the inhabitants of such colonies, even though 
 they were not Romans by extraction, yet, upon acquir- 
 ing the privileges of Roman citizens, to assume a 
 Roman name. Of this there is an instance in the 
 case of Caius Avianus Philoxenus ; who, being en- 
 rolled among the citizens of Novocomum, a colony 
 established by Julius Caesar; though a Greek by 
 birth, took the name of Avianus from his friend 
 Flaccus Avianus, a Roman of rank, well known to Ci- 
 cero, the writer of the letter b . I think this is the 
 best account of the origin of St. Luke’s Roman name, 
 without having recourse to the unaccredited hypothe- 
 sis that he was a manumitted slave, who in addition 
 to his proper name, had assumed as usual that of his 
 Patron * : though it must still be confessed that persons 
 
 * That manumitted slaves as- well known. Artemidorus, Onei- 
 su med the name of their Patron is rocritica, i. 47. observes, olda dc 
 
 z Acts xvi. 15. a xvi. 12. b Epp. ad Fam. xiii. 35. vide also 36. 
 
Times and Order of the first three Gospels . 95 
 
 lihertini generis were frequently enrolled among colo- 
 nies ; of which the colonization of Corinth in the time 
 of Julius Caesar furnishes an instance c f . 
 
 It is some confirmation of the same account that Si- 
 las, another of the companions of St. Paul at Philippi ; 
 if we may reason from the obvious sense of St. Paul’s 
 own declaration relating to himself and him, avOpdnrovs 
 'P oo/malovs v7rap^ovra9, corroborated by the historical re- 
 mark directly afterwards, cucovcravres on 'Fco/Aaiol eicri d ; 
 was a Roman citizen as well as St. Paul : and the 
 name of Silas, for Silvanus, is clearly analogous to that 
 of Lucas, for Lucanus. It is a still more remarkable 
 confirmation of it, that when Paul and Silas were thus 
 treated at Philippi, St. Luke was not. It might not 
 be known that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens ; 
 but if St. Luke was a native or an inhabitant of the 
 place with such a privilege, it could not but be known 
 what he was. And this knowledge would be sufficient 
 to produce the distinction of his treatment in parti- 
 cular. 
 
 Yet the inhabitants of Philippi, a Macedonian city, 
 would still be Greeks ; and among the circumstances 
 which are characteristic of a Greek, as such, by exem- 
 plifying the modes of thinking and of speaking pecu- 
 
 tlvci os rpla €\eiv aldoia, 8ov- 
 
 Xos on> } teal eyevero ikevdepos, Kai 
 dv& kvbs dvoparos rpia ecr^e, 8vo tov 
 aTrikivOepwaavTOs npoaka^tov ovo- 
 para. Cf. Lib. v. Somnium 92. 
 The names in question were the 
 prcenomen , and cognomen , not 
 the nomen. 
 
 t Crinagoras, a poet contem- 
 porary with the reign of Augu- 
 stus, seems to allude to this cir- 
 
 cumstance in particular, in the 
 following epigram, Anthologia 
 ii. 132 : xx. O lovs dv6 ’ otW oIktj- 
 ropas, to ekeeivrj, | evpao. <f)ev peyd- 
 krjs 'EXXaSo? dppopirjs. | avrUa Kai 
 7TOVTOV xOapakoorepr) eWe, K opivOe, | 
 KeiaSai, Kai AifivKrjs tyappov eprj- 
 porkpr), | rj tolols 8ia nacra nakip- 
 nprjTOia-t dodelaa | Bklfieiv dp^aicov 
 ocrea BaKxiadcov. 
 
 c Strabo, viii. vi. sect. 23. 280. 
 
 d Acts xvi. 37, 38. 
 
96 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 liar to Greeks ; we may specify the phrase at Acts 
 xxviii. 2. 4. of ol fiapfiapoi, used absolutely to describe 
 the inhabitants of the island Melite. No one but a 
 Greek would have so expressed himself concerning 
 those who were not Greeks ; as the inhabitants of this 
 island certainly were not. Nor is the term intended 
 by way of disparagement, but simply of distinction ; 
 just as at Rom. i. 14. 1 Cor. xiv. 11. and Col. iii. 11 ; 
 where Greek and Barbarian are used for the complex 
 of the civilized world ; for the more refined, and for 
 the less ; for those who spoke a language known to 
 Greeks, and for those who spoke any different from 
 their’s. It is used, in short, by St. Luke, as Thucydi- 
 des has remarked upon its use in his own time e ; an use 
 not yet established in the time of Homer ; when even 
 the use of its opposite, f 'E Wvjv or Greek, was not yet 
 generally diffused *. 
 
 But whatever may be thought of these conjectures, 
 it will scarcely, perhaps, be disputed that St. Mark 
 was a Jew ; and that St. Luke most probably was not. 
 The very circumstance that St. Mark was a convert, 
 and a favourite convert, of St. Peter, the great Apostle 
 of the Circumcision, would be a strong argument to 
 
 * If any city can be supposed 
 to have possessed a nearer rela- 
 tion to St. Luke than another, 
 next to Philippi, this would 
 seem to be Troas ; where he is 
 first seen to have joined St. 
 Paul. 
 
 This city was originally called, 
 from its founder Antigonus, by 
 the name of Antigonia : the 
 name of Alexandria was given 
 to it after his death. And by 
 this name, as that of the city, 
 with the addition of Troas, to 
 specify the region where it was 
 
 situated, is it commonly called 
 in subsequent allusions to it \ as 
 by Polybius, v. iii. B. C. 216 
 or 217 : Livy, xxxv. 42. B. C. 
 J 94- 
 
 St. Luke’s manner is to call it 
 an \S)s Troas : and so uses Phi- 
 lostratus also ; Vitse Sophista- 
 rum, ii. Herodes Atticus, 547 A. 
 
 Yet this city likewise was a 
 colony both in Strabo’s and in 
 Pliny’s time ; so that a native or 
 a resident of that place also 
 might be a Roman citizen, and 
 bear a Roman name. 
 
 e Lib. i. 3. 
 
Times and Order of the first three Gosjjels. 97 
 
 that effect in his behalf : and if St. Luke stood in a si- 
 milar relation to St. Paul, the great Apostle of the Un- 
 circumcision, that would imply the contrary of him. 
 This conclusion is further confirmed by the nature of 
 his profession ; for we may take it for granted that no 
 Jew could practise as a physician except among Jews ; 
 whereas St. Luke must have so practised among Gen- 
 tiles. Whether he was also a proselyte, before his con- 
 version to Christianity, would be a more difficult ques- 
 tion to decide, if St. Paul, Col. iv. 10 — 14. did not 
 himself expressly distinguish Luke, and Epaphras, and 
 Demas, (both the last, persons whose names would 
 prove them to be Greeks, if the rest of their history 
 did not,) and probably Aristarchus (of whom the same 
 fact seems to be implied by Acts xxvii. 2. xx. 4. xix. 
 29.) from Mark, the nephew of Barnabas, and from 
 Jesus surnamed Justus — (the same neither with the 
 Justus, or Joseph, mentioned Acts i. 23. nor yet with 
 the Justus mentioned Acts xviii. 7.) — as persons who 
 were not of the Circumcision, from others who were. 
 A proselyte who had received the Jewish law in toto 9 
 and consequently had been circumcised, could not after- 
 wards have been thus distinguished. 
 
 It has been conjectured that one of the parents of 
 St. Luke, as in the case of Timothy, might be a Gen- 
 tile, and the other a Jew; but I know not on what 
 foundation this conjecture can be shewn to rest. It 
 seems to me more probable that he belonged before his 
 conversion simply to that class of persons, who are some- 
 times mentioned in the Acts, in conjunction with the 
 Jews, and yet must be distinguished even from prose- 
 lytes; under the appropriate title of the evcre/3eig , or o-e/36- 
 n-evoi tov 0eoy, among the Gentiles. Nor will any one, 
 I should imagine, subscribe to the sentiment recorded 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
98 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 by Jerome f : Licet plerique tradant Lucam Evangeli- 
 stam, ut proselytum, Hebraeas litteras ignorasse — and 
 again s : Evangelistam Lucam tradunt veteres Eccle- 
 
 siae tractatores magis Graecas litteras scisse quam 
 
 Hebraeas. No assumption can be more gratuitous : 
 for the perusal of his Gospel and of the Acts must sa- 
 tisfy every impartial reader that he was as well versed 
 in the Hebrew as in the Greek ; and, so far as we can 
 judge, did not derive his acquaintance with the Scrip- 
 tures of the Old Testament even from the Alexandrine 
 version. 
 
 The internal evidence of the Gospel of St. Mark is 
 altogether in favour of the presumption that the writer 
 of this Gospel in particular must have been a Jew; 
 and whether a Jew of Palestine, or not, yet intimately 
 acquainted with the language, the topography, the 
 idioms of Palestine ; and familiar with the habits 
 and associations of a native Jew. And the argument 
 derived from this evidence, is rendered so much the 
 stronger, because in all or most of those respects which 
 characterize a native Jew, St. Mark agrees with St. 
 Matthew and St. John, who were unquestionably native 
 Jews ; and differs from St. Luke, who was unques- 
 tionably not a native Jew. Among these discriminat- 
 ing circumstances I shall specify the following: OaXao-o-a 
 Trj9 r aXiXalag, or, OaXacraa, (d7rXd>9) — to i repav, or, to 7 re- 
 pav Trjs OaXda-arrjg — 6\jr/af, oVe eSv 6 tjXios — tcc? Kco/u.o7r6Xei$* 
 — Hoavepyes’ o eo-riv’ viol (dpovT ^ — tov K avavirrjv — ra- 
 
 * The towns of Judaea, popu- profane writers. See Strabo, xii. 
 lous as they were, might well be iii. §. 31. p. 128: vi. §. 1. p. 
 called by this name. Yet the 185. 
 word occurs in contemporary 
 
 { In Gen. xlvi. 26. Operum ii. 544. ad princip. g In Is. vii. Operum iii. 63. 
 ad calcem. Cf. iii. 237. ad calcem : iv. Pars i a 148. ad princip. Pars ii a 104. De SS. 
 Eccles. vii. 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel. 
 
 99 
 
 Ai0a kov/uu — K oivais yepcri tovt ecrTiv * avlirTOis — Koirwcai 
 — €(p(paOa — pa/3/31 — pa/3/3ovl — B ap-rliiaio^, via? Ttfiaiov 
 — cocravva — waavva ev T 019 u\| /-l(ttol9 — to 7racr^a, kcl\ to. 
 aCv/xa — YeOorrj/JLavrj — to opo9 twv ’EAcucoi/ — a/3/5a* 6 iraTrjp 
 — FoA'yoda* o ecrn . . Kpaviov toVo? — eXcoi, eX cot, Xa/jL^a cra- 
 /3a^6avl — irapacncevri' o eWr 1 rpocrdfifiaTOv — Kopfiav' o earn' 
 Soopov - — o V 109 tov evX oyrjTOv — rj9 ei^e to OvyaTpiov avTtjs — 
 
 07T0V i'jKOVOV OTL CK€L €<JTIV €L SoOlJCTeTai CrrHJ.€LOV OVK (XV 
 
 ecrwOrj 7 rdcra crdp<~ — oia ov yeyove ToiauTt] — 2 vpocpolvicrcra 
 — rd imepr] Aa\/JLavovOd — 7r\oidpiov — <TVfjL7rd<jia, av/j-iroaLa 
 
 T-pao-ia), irpaerial — ovo, Svo — dir ctp^yjs ktI<t€co9 7ra<7t] 
 
 Trj ktlctci — diro t ?]9 'Idouju.ala9- — f H pooSiavot — dprrev kcu OrjXv 
 
 — [3di\vy{Aa rrj<s eprjfjuioorecos — 'Tt]V yrjv YevrjcrapeT AeKairo- 
 
 A 19 — airo ^ApL[ia6ela9 — r. A. 
 
 These are by no means all the instances which might 
 be produced ; but they are sufficient to characterize a 
 native Jew, or one only not a native : and they are not 
 to be found in St. Luke : whose cautiousness in avoid- 
 ing the use of the same expressions even where he re- 
 tains the sense ; or in substituting equivalent, and ge- 
 nerally speaking more intelligible, phrases in their 
 stead — is truly remarkable, and proves indisputably 
 that he wrote neither for Jews, nor with the long con- 
 firmed habits and associations of a Jew. That St. Mark 
 also did not write for Jews, nor for persons previously 
 acquainted with Judaea, is not less apparent from the 
 character of his Gospel compared with St. Matthew’s : 
 but that he himself was a Jew, or intimately familiar 
 with Judaea, does not admit of a question. 
 
 The same conclusion is confirmed by his own testi- 
 mony ; if, as I conjecture, the young man, alluded to h 
 at the time of our Saviour’s apprehension, was St. Mark 
 the Evangelist; though not yet a convert to the Gos- 
 pel. For, on no principle except that of the personal 
 
 h Mark xiv. 51, 52. 
 
 H 2 
 
100 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 connection of this anecdote with the history of the 
 writer, can we conceive a reason sufficient to have 
 caused its introduction into the body of a narrative, 
 with which it would otherwise have absolutely nothing 
 to do. What use, may we ask, is made of this fact, 
 either before or after ? How came it, then, to be asso- 
 ciated with our Saviour’s apprehension ; and why was 
 a circumstance apparently so trifling, and, certainly, 
 so irrelevant, inserted in the midst of so grave an ac- 
 count ? If the young man was the writer of the ac- 
 count, and an eyewitness of the transaction at the time ; 
 partly implicated himself in the danger of our Saviour ; 
 mistaken for a follower or disciple, when not really 
 such ; afterwards converted to the faith ; and finally, 
 St. Mark the Evangelist : I think he might naturally 
 look upon this as the most interesting circumstance 
 in his life ; and its introduction into the rest of the ac- 
 count under such circumstances becomes any thing but 
 foreign or irrelevant. If he does not mention his own 
 name, this is an omission which may be defended on 
 the principle of a Christian humility ; and has an ex- 
 ample in the similar silence of St. John. It is observ- 
 able, however, that he calls this individual eh to vea - 
 vlo-Kog : a term, which implies that he was under thirty, 
 but more than twenty, years of age : and so, five and 
 twenty years, or more, before the First Epistle of St. 
 Peter was written, St. Mark, we might reasonably sup- 
 pose would be*. 
 
 * The conjecture proposed 
 above, concerning the young 
 man in question, was first, I be- 
 lieve, advanced by Dr. Townson, 
 in his Discourses on the Four 
 Gospels : to him, therefore, if 
 there is any truth in it, the cre- 
 dit of it is originally due. 
 
 Chrysostom’s Expositio in Psal. 
 
 xiii. 4. v. 562. B. (if really his) 
 makes this young man St. John. 
 Theophylact, in Marc.xiv. Oper- 
 um i. 253* Ik w*s Se (pacri tovtop 
 (the young man in question) ’la- 
 Kcoftov elvai top ade\(j)66eop } top eVi- 
 K\r)0ePTa diieaiop. ovros yap ip\ Trepi- 
 fioXaia) iicexprjTO Truer ap ttjp avrov 
 £a>r)P' os Ka\ top Opopop to>p ‘I epoero- 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel. 
 
 101 
 
 There are numerous indications in the Gospel of St. 
 Mark, which imply a closer connection between the 
 writer of this Gospel and St. Peter, than any other of 
 the Apostles. His mention of the name of Simon, in 
 a peculiar manner ; as at i. 16. 29. 30. 36 : the absence 
 in his narrative of the name of Peter, until it was ac- 
 tually bestowed upon him at his ordination as an Apo- 
 stle : the modest and indirect way in which it places him 
 at the head of the apostolic catalogue : the place as- 
 signed in this catalogue to the name of his brother An- 
 drew, which is after James and John : the circumstan- 
 tiality of all those details at which St. Peter was ob- 
 viously present ; as the cure of the demoniac at Ga- 
 dara ; the raising of Jairus’ daughter, preceded by the 
 miracle of the issue of blood ; the cure of the epileptic 
 demoniac, after the transfiguration ; and the like ; the 
 omission of the fact of Peter’s walking on the sea : the 
 omission of his memorable blessing, and the insertion 
 of his no less memorable reproof ; which things are 
 the reverse of each other in St. Luke : the mention of 
 the first dispute of the Apostles concerning precedence, 
 in which Peter doubtless took an active part : the omis- 
 sion in St. Mark of the splendid promise, recorded by 
 St. Matthew, xix. 28 — made indeed to the Twelve in 
 common, but directly in answer to a question from St. 
 Peter : the notice of his presence along with Andrew, 
 
 Xvpcov Trap a tcov aTvoaroXcov e\a(3e 
 pera rrjv tov Kvplov dvaXr]\fnu. 
 
 The common explanation of the 
 introduction of this circumstance 
 into the body of the narrative of 
 our Lord’s apprehension, & c. 
 viz. that it gives an air of simpli- 
 city and circumstantiality to the 
 account, which renders it so 
 much the more probable, is not 
 satisfactory. If every casual 
 occurrence, connected with this 
 
 transaction, was fit to be men- 
 tioned, and would have contri- 
 buted its share to the effect in 
 question ; why was this only left 
 on record, among the many con- 
 comitant particulars, which may 
 be easily imagined to have made 
 part of such an event as the seiz- 
 ure of so extraordinary a person 
 as our Lord, at such a time and 
 place, when the city was crowd- 
 ed with strangers, &c. ? 
 
 H 3 
 
Dissertation Second. 
 
 102 
 
 James, and John, at the time of the delivery of the 
 prophecy on the mount : the renewal of the conversa- 
 tion respecting the curse pronounced on the fig-tree ; 
 which was owing to St. Peter : the omission of his 
 name as one of the two disciples employed to prepare 
 the last supper : the peculiarly distinct and definite ac- 
 count which St. Mark in particular has given both of 
 the prediction, and of the fulfilment of the prediction, 
 of his denials of Christ : the omission of the epithet 
 7 riKpcos, at the end of the account, to describe the bit- 
 terness of his repentance, which is found both in St. 
 Matthew and St. Luke : the express mention of the 
 name of Peter in the message sent by the angels, on 
 the morning of the resurrection, to the Apostles in 
 common : all these, and more which might be men- 
 tioned, are circumstances in a great measure peculiar 
 to St. Mark’s Gospel ; and such as might naturally be 
 expected in the work of a companion or disciple of St. 
 Peter in particular. 
 
 The presumption concerning the relation of its au- 
 thor to St. Peter thus established, is confirmed by his- 
 torical tradition : the uniform tendency of which is to 
 place the composition of this Gospel at Rome, after the 
 arrival of St. Peter there on his first visit ; and in con- 
 sequence of his preaching in that city. If so, the Evan- 
 gelist St. Mark must have accompanied him to Rome, 
 or have been found there by him ; the former of which 
 suppositions is much the more probable, both for the 
 reasons urged already ; and because the salutation at 
 1 Peter v. 13. compared with the outset of the Epistle, 
 demonstrates that he must have been known to the 
 converts in the regions before recited ; and, conse- 
 quently, must have accompanied St. Peter in his visits 
 to those regions at least. The main fact in the above 
 tradition, that St. Mark’s Gospel was written at Rome* 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel. 103 
 
 and when he was there in company with St. Peter ; is 
 attested by a cloud of witnesses, among whom for many 
 centuries there is scarcely a dissentient voice 1 : and as 
 to the minor circumstances, such as whether it was writ- 
 ten with or without the knowledge of St. Peter ; whe- 
 ther it was sanctioned and approved of, or only tacitly 
 admitted, by him ; whether it was at the request of the 
 Roman converts, and solely with a view to place on re- 
 cord the substance of his preaching at Rome, and 
 among them : it seems to me of little importance what 
 opinion we pronounce upon them. The truth of the main 
 fact remains the same ; and the question of the time of 
 St. Mark’s Gospel becomes reducible to the question 
 of the time of St. Peter’s first visit to Rome ; which, if 
 Babylon, 1 Pet. v. 13. as many commentators have sup- 
 posed, is to be understood figuratively of Rome, becomes 
 virtually the question of the time of this Epistle. And 
 though I think there is good reason to doubt of the 
 truth of this hypothesis ; I shall argue for the present, 
 and shall endeavour to fix the time of the Epistle, upon 
 the supposition of its truth. 
 
 I. From 1 Peter iv. 16. compared with Acts xi. 26 : 
 when the name of Christian first became the received 
 denomination for believers in Christ, and long before 
 Acts xxvi. 28. when that denomination must have been 
 now a familiar one — it follows that the Epistle could 
 not have been written before the point of time which 
 answers to Acts xi. 26 : that is, as I shall shew else- 
 where, not before the second of Claudius, U. C. 795. 
 and A. D. 42. 
 
 II. From 1 Peter i. 1. it appears that the Epistle was 
 written to the converts in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, 
 Asia, and Bithynia : and though these should be sup- 
 posed to be converts from the Circumcision exclusively, 
 
 i Lardner, Credibility, vol. xv. chap. 7 . 
 
 H 4 
 
104 
 
 Dissertatio?i Second. 
 
 yet, if at Acts xi. 19, SO. a point of time not later 
 than the first of Claudius, U. C. 794. A. D. 41. the 
 Gospel, even as preached to the Jews, who were not of 
 the Dispersion, had travelled no further from Judaea 
 than Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch ; it must be con- 
 sidered morally impossible that it could by the first 
 of Claudius have pervaded the whole extent of Asia 
 Minor. 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, the received opinion to 
 the contrary, I am persuaded that the Epistle was ad- 
 dressed neither to Jewish, nor yet to Gentile, converts 
 exclusively ; but to a church composed alike of each : 
 which being the case, it will follow that it could not, 
 under any circumstances, have been written before the 
 point of time implied at Acts xiii. 2 ; viz. the time of 
 St. Paul’s first circuit to the Gentiles : which I shall 
 prove hereafter was the fourth of Claudius, U. C. 797. 
 A. D. 44. 
 
 This conclusion appears to me to be placed beyond 
 a question by the texts annexed in the margin k ; all 
 of which in general, and some of them more especially, 
 contain such sentiments as could be applicable to no 
 converts except from among the Gentiles. If, how- 
 ever, the Second of Peter was addressed to the same 
 description of persons as the First, (which iii. 1 . of 
 that Epistle seems to prove,) then i. 1 . of that Epistle 
 is almost decisive that the writer was addressing Gen- 
 tiles. For, what would be the meaning of the phrase 
 toi 9 icroTi/uLov rjij.lv Xa-^oucri 7 t'lcttiv, if it is not to be un- 
 derstood of the communication of the privileges of the 
 Gospel to Gentiles, as well as to Jews*? The word 
 
 * There is an emphasis, as it word laonjiov ; which serves to 
 appears to me, in the use of this imply that St. Peter was not 
 
 k i Peter i. 8. io. 14. 18. 25. ii. 10. 12. 25. iii. 6. iv. 3. 4. v. 9. 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel. 
 
 105 
 
 fipiv, which opposes the writer, and such as the writer, 
 in some capacity or other, to those addressed, can 
 oppose him in no capacity different from that of a 
 Jew, in contradistinction to Gentiles, except that of 
 an Apostle, in contradistinction to the rest of the 
 Christian world : and had that been the opposition 
 intended, then both the usage of St. Peter 1 , and the 
 usage of St. Paul in many parts of his Epistles, as 
 well as the reason of the thing, would have required 
 it to be qualified accordingly by toF? a7ro<7To'Xot?, in ad- 
 dition to fjuiv. Nor is it any objection that they are 
 designated at the outset of the Epistle as e/cXe/crol, 
 Ti-apeTTiSruuLOL Siaairopag : and at ii. 12. appear to be dis- 
 criminated from the Gentiles. They are so discrimin- 
 ated there only as a part of a certain whole might be 
 discriminated from the remainder; viz. as believers 
 among the Gentiles, from unbelievers. As to the other 
 passage, there are but two instances more, where the 
 word Siacr7ropa occurs, in the New Testament m ; and 
 in both it stands clearly for the Dispersion ; but in 
 both it is preceded, as when so employed it necessarily 
 requires to be preceded, by the article : which is not 
 the case here. The truth is, the phrase is purely an 
 Hebraism ; which literally rendered means elect , so- 
 journers of dispersion ; and rendered according to our 
 own idiom would mean elect , dispersed and sojourn- 
 
 opposing himself, and others 
 like himself, to the parties 
 whom he was addressing, as 
 those who were already Christ- 
 ians, or had long been so, might 
 be opposed to such as were not 
 yet believers, or only recently 
 converted. Like precious faith 
 —faith of equal value and es- 
 timation, whether in the sight 
 of God, or for the salvation 
 l 2 Pet. iii. 2. 
 
 of such as professed it, can 
 scarcely be understood except 
 of those, who after being for so 
 many ages aliens and outcasts 
 from God, were now, by virtue 
 of a common faith in Christ, 
 adopted into his family, and 
 made as much his people as the 
 Jews. Now these would pro- 
 perly be the Gentiles. 
 
 m John vii. 35. James i. 1. 
 
106 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 ing ; a very pertinent introduction to a general Epistle, 
 designed for so wide a circulation as almost the whole 
 of Asia Minor. Yiapeiri^rujioi Sia(T7ropd$ then, here, and 
 7rctj ooiKoi tea) irapeiTL^rjiJioi, ii. 11. are equivalent to each 
 other ; and either, to Ephes. ii. 19. kcl\ 7rapoiKoi , 
 in a similar address of St. Paul’s. 
 
 It follows, therefore, that the Epistle could not have 
 been composed before the second circuit of St. Paul to 
 the Gentiles ; that is, as I shall shew elsewhere, be- 
 fore the ninth of Claudius, U. C. 802. A. D. 49. 
 Christianity had been established in Galatia before the 
 Epistle was written : but it had not been established 
 there before Acts xvi. 6. the time of the circuit in 
 question. Nor is this all. Christianity had been es- 
 tablished in Pontus, Bithynia, and Asia, (which means 
 the Roman proconsular province of Asia,) as well as 
 in Galatia, before the Epistle was written : but, from 
 Acts xvi. 7. we may perceive that it was not estab- 
 lished in Bithynia by St. Paul even upon this circuit in 
 the ninth of Claudius ; and from xvi. 6. xviii. 19. that it 
 had not yet been established in Asia, three years later 
 as I shall shew hereafter; nor was so before xix. 1. 
 when St. Paul took up his residence at Ephesus, in 
 the thirteenth of Claudius at the earliest. The use of 
 the preposition Kara, to imply that persons travelling 
 came towards, or went in the direction of a certain 
 place, without entering into it, is very common in the 
 account of journeys both by land and by sea 11 : and it 
 is clearly so employed Acts xvi. 7- If we consider 
 also what St. Paul 0 asserts as his peculiar boast, that 
 he had never sought to preach the Gospel where the 
 name of Christ was already professed, or to build on a 
 foundation already laid ; it will not appear too much 
 to conclude that when he attempted to enter, first into 
 
 n Acts xxvii. 7. 0 Rom. xv. 20. 2 Cor. x. 12 — 16. Cf. 1 Cor. iii. 6. 10. 
 
Time and Order of St. Maries Gospel. 107 
 
 Asia, and afterwards into Bithynia, Christianity could 
 not yet have been planted by any one, in either : and 
 if lie was forbidden by the Spirit to preach the Gospel 
 there, no reason is so likely to have produced the pro- 
 hibition, as that the work of evangelizing those parts 
 was reserved for the future agencyof some other min- 
 ister of the Gospel, (which the Epistle alone proves to 
 have been St. Peter,) either exclusively, or in conjunc- 
 tion with others. 
 
 Nor, though the Epistle might not have been writ- 
 ten before the ninth of Claudius, could it have been 
 written between that year and the end of his eleventh : 
 first, because, when the Epistle was written, Silvanus 
 was with Peter p ; but until the end of the eleventh of 
 Claudius, it may be proved that he was the com- 
 panion of St. Paul elsewhere and at Corinth : secondly, 
 because, from Gal. ii. 1-10. compared with Acts xviii. 
 18-22. both which relate to the same visit, I hope to 
 demonstrate hereafter that at the end of the eleventh, 
 and at the beginning of the twelfth, of Claudius, St. 
 Peter himself was in Jerusalem ; and neither at Baby- 
 lon, nor at Rome. 
 
 III. From the texts which are marked in the margin 1 ’, 
 it maybe safely collected that between Acts xviii.l. in the 
 ninth or tenth of Claudius, when St. Paul left Athens, 
 and came to Corinth ; and the time when the Epistle was 
 written, three Evangelists had preached the Gospel at 
 Corinth, in the following order : first, St. Paul ; se- 
 condly, Apollos ; and lastly, Cephas ; whom John i. 43. 
 
 1 Cor. ix. 5. Gal. ii. 7, 8, 9. 1 Cor. xv. 5. Luke xxiv. 
 34. compared together, demonstrate to be the same 
 with St. Peter*. I shall shew elsewhere that St. Paul 
 
 * Few modern commentators, question the identity of Cephas 
 perhaps, will be disposed to and Peter ; though, anciently, 
 
 p i Pet. v. i2. a Acts xv. 40. xviii. 5. 1 Thess. i. 1. 2 Thess. i. 1. 
 
 2 Cor. i. 19. r 1 Cor. i. 12. iii. 4. 5. 6. 10. ir. 22. iv. 6 . 15. ix. 1. 2. 
 
108 
 
 Dissertation Second . 
 
 left Corinth about the end of the eleventh of Claudius, 
 U. C. 805. A. D. 52: and that Apollos was still there 
 at the beginning of the thirteenth, U.C. 806. A. D. 53; 
 but that he had left it, and returned to Ephesus, be- 
 fore St. Paul wrote the first of his Epistles to the Co- 
 rinthians ; the time of which was in the first of Nero, 
 U. C. 808. I shall also shew that Apollos first went 
 to Corinth sometime in the twelfth of Claudius, U. C. 
 805. and nearer to its end than to its beginning : in 
 which case, it is not likely he would have left it again 
 much before the end of the thirteenth. It will follow 
 therefore, that Cephas or Peter, if he came to Corinth 
 after Apollos left it, came there after the thirteenth, or 
 not before the fourteenth, of Claudius : and the fact of 
 such a visit in general is established by the testimony 
 of Dionysius s ; a very early bishop of the church of 
 Corinth. 
 
 an opinion was entertained that 
 they were distinct persons. Je- 
 rome, (in Galatas ii. Operum iv. 
 Pars i a . 244. ad med.) observes: 
 Alterius nescio cujus Cephse 
 nescire nos nomen, nisi ejus qui 
 et in Evangelic, et in aliis Pauli 
 epistolis, et in hac quoque ipsa, 
 modo Cephas modo Petrus scri- 
 bitur. non quod aliud significet 
 Petrus, aliud Cephas : sed quod 
 quam nos Latine et Graece pe- 
 tram vocemus, hanc Hebraei et 
 Syri propter linguae inter se vi- 
 ciniam, Cepkan nuncupent. 
 
 The testimony, however, of 
 Clemens Romanus is the testi- 
 mony of an unexceptionable wit- 
 ness, upon this occasion. In his 
 first Epistle to the Corinthian 
 church, cap. 47, he reminds the 
 Corinthians how St. Paul, at the 
 beginning of the Gospel, of a truth 
 
 had written to them spiritually 
 concerning himself, and Cephas, 
 and Apollos ; because that even 
 then they had begun to form 
 partialities to one teacher above 
 another: which partialities, how- 
 ever, in these instances, were not 
 so much to blame ; because they 
 were in favour of Apostles, pepap- 
 rvprjiievois , and of a man approved 
 of with them. Now as there can 
 be no doubt that by the man, 
 thus distinguished from apostles 
 as such, Clemens means Apol- 
 los ; so by apostles , as such, op- 
 posed to him, he must intend 
 Cephas and Paul. If so, Cephas 
 was an apostle as well as Paul ; 
 which being admitted, every 
 one, I should suppose, will a- 
 gree that he must be the same 
 with St. Peter. 
 
 s Eus. E. II. ii. xxv. 68. A.B. 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel. 
 
 109 
 
 Now both Corinth and Carthage, after having been 
 laid waste in the same year 1 , U. C. 608. B. C. 146. 
 were restored by Julius Caesar in the same year u , 
 U. C. 710. B. C. 44. From that time forward, the 
 former through its two ports ; Lechaeum, on its wes- 
 tern, and Cenchreae, on its eastern side v ; was the re- 
 sort of merchants, and of travellers between Italy and 
 Asia If this visit, then, of St. Peter’s to Corinth 
 was preparatory to a visit to Rome, or in the way of 
 a journey to Italy; it would be no more than con- 
 sistent with the usual practice (as I have little doubt 
 was the case) that he should have come on the same oc- 
 casion to Corinth — though after both St. Paul and Apol- 
 los had left it ; and having preached there for some 
 time, should have passed from thence to Rome. And all 
 these conclusions, I think, may be finally confirmed 
 by the date of the visit to Antioch, recorded Gal. ii. 11; 
 when St. Peter was reproved by St. Paul. 
 
 There is no instance, besides this, of any occasion 
 on which both these Apostles are known to have been 
 at Antioch together : and the time of this meeting coin- 
 cides, in my opinion, with the time of that departure 
 of St. Paul’s from Jerusalem to Antioch, mentioned 
 Acts xviii. 22, 23 ; of which, as I have observed above, 
 
 * Ilia Corinthiacis primum 
 mihi cognita Cenchris j Fida 
 manet • trepidse duxque comes- 
 que fugse — Ovid. Trist. i. Elegia 
 ix. g. Aut, postquam bimarem 
 cursu superavimus Isthmon ; | 
 Alteraque est nostree sumta Ca- 
 rina fugcE. — Ibid. Elegia x. 5 — 
 Aristides, Oratio iii. 38. 1. 5. 
 de Corintho : vnode^Tai yap inravas 
 fi? eavrrjv, Ka'i npo7rip.nei tvoXiv i£ 
 
 avrrjs, Kal KOivrj navrcou earl Kara- 
 fpvyrj' KaOdnep tis 68os Ka'i du^odos 
 anavnov av6pu>7roov, k , r. X. 
 
 So long as Corinth lay in 
 ruins, the island of Delos was 
 the favourite resort of strangers 
 and merchants in its stead. 
 ’Ey Ka\(d yap Keirai rot's it c rrjs ’ira- 
 Xtas Ka'i rrjs ‘EXXdSos ds rrjv ’ Aaiav 
 nXiovaiv: Strabo, x.v. §.4.322. Cf. 
 Pausanias, iii. 23. and viii. 33. 
 
 t Veil. Pat. i. 12 . 13. u Dio, xliii. 50. Strabo, xvii. iii. §.13. 676: viii. vi. §. 23. 280. 
 Cf. Diodorus Sic. Fragm. lib. xxxiii : Operum x. 69. Plutarch, Julius Ca;s. 57 : 
 Pausanias, lib. ii. 1. v Strabo, viii. vi. §. 22. 271. Plin. H. N. iv. 5. Philo, in 
 Flaccum, Operum ii. 539. 1 . 42. Pausanias, lib. cit. Acts xviii. 18. Rom. xvi. 1. 
 
110 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 it will be proved hereafter that it was Claud ii xii. U. C. 
 805. ineunte. St. Paul, as we shall see, left St. Peter at 
 Jerusalem when he went down from thence to An- 
 tioch ; and he spent some time at Antioch, before he 
 again departed thence. In the interval of this resi- 
 dence, I suppose St. Peter to have come thither : and, 
 while they were both there together, the reproof in 
 question to have taken place. 
 
 The context alone must suffice to prove that the 
 meeting took place sometime or other after the pre- 
 sence of both the parties in Jerusalem, Gal. ii. 1-10 ; 
 the time of which, as before observed, was U. C. 805. 
 ineunte. And this argument from the context may 
 be further confirmed by the internal evidence of the ac- 
 count of what passed at the meeting itself. 
 
 For I. The very nature and occasion of the rebuke 
 are demonstrative that no such incident could have oc- 
 curred, before the question concerning the observance 
 of the Mosaic ritual by Gentile converts had begun to 
 be agitated. No such incident, then, could have oc- 
 curred before the close of St. Paul’s first mission to the 
 Gentiles : nor, before Acts xv. 1 — 30. later even than 
 that: which is, as we shall see elsewhere, between 
 Claudii iv. U. C. 797. and Claudii vii. or viii. U. C. 
 800. or 801. 
 
 II. In the use of the phrase on Kareyvcorr/uievog rjv, to 
 describe the conduct of St. Peter, there is a reference to 
 what had passed, at the meeting in Jerusalem, not long 
 before. I do not think these words can be properly 
 rendered, Because he was to be blamed ; a sense which 
 would have required oti KarayvcocrTo? or Karayvcocrreo? 
 rjv. Their meaning is rather ; Because he had changed 
 his opinion ; Because he had retracted some former 
 concession ; Because he had passed, as it were, a sen- 
 tence of disapproval on himself. They are equivalent 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel. J 1 1 
 
 in short to otl KareyvcoKcos rjv (tl) eavrov , or simply to 
 otl KareyvcoKoos rjv ; just as at Acts xiii. 47» evreraXTai is 
 * put for evreraXicev *; and at Acts XX. 13 . outgo yap rjv Sia - 
 TerayiuLevos is put for outgo Sierera^ei, or rjv SiareTa^cog. Jo- 
 sephus, in a similar instance, expresses himself of Ces- 
 tillS Gall US thus — eyvGO icaO ’ eavrov . . . fipaSuvas ; which will 
 bear the sense of KaTeyvoocOr] / 3 pa$uvas w j*. 
 
 It is unquestionable that the words charge Peter with 
 some inconsistency or other; which inconsistency the 
 context demonstrates to be nothing else but the implied 
 disapproval of his own conduct just before at Jerusalem, 
 as contrasted with his conduct now at Antioch ; in re- 
 ference to the very same thing. Before, having openly 
 maintained that there was no longer any distinction 
 between Jews and Gentiles ; having eaten and drunk 
 with Gentiles, as a thing indifferent ; having given the 
 right hand of fellowship, in the name of the Circumci- 
 sion, to Barnabas and Paul, the apostles of the Uncir- 
 cumcision — he was now beginning to hold back, and to 
 separate himself from the Gentiles ; which was appa- 
 rently to retract, if not to prevaricate ; to acknowledge 
 
 * So Herodian, i. 28: ravra 
 Kcu rov 7 varepa evreraXdai prjp.a<JLV. 
 Directly after, oi s rovro evrera\ro } 
 in the passive. 
 
 t Dio Cassius, xxxvii. 36: 
 <0 are Kai rcov irporepcov nvas <ara- 
 yvwvai. Aristides, Oratio viii. 
 8 1 . line I I : ivioav be ras apxas el- 
 novres TO \onvov d(j)l]K.aV, OtO-TVep 
 
 Karayvovres. In both these in- 
 stances the verb denotes a 
 change of mind •, a condemna- 
 tion of some former purpose or 
 opinion : and had the passive 
 voice been employed in them, 
 as it is by St. Paul, no two 
 
 modes of expression could have 
 been more similar both in form 
 and in meaning. But this in- 
 terchange of the passive with 
 the active is too common to be 
 urged as an objection against 
 the present construction. Plu- 
 tarch, Antonius, 6, has it, el prj 
 ravra tv aXai eyvcoaro nparreiv , 
 where eyvi oa-ro stands for eyva>, or 
 eyvdxei : and in Sophocles, Ajax, 
 717, evre y ae'Xnroov | A car p.e- 
 raveyvcoo-dri | 6 vp.ov ’ Arpelbais p.eya- 
 \<av re veiKeeov, I should under- 
 stand p-eraveyvoacrdri to be put for 
 peraveyvta. 
 
 w B. ii. xix. 7. 
 
112 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 the antiquated distinctions, as if still in being ; and, 
 what is more, to condemn or to contradict his own 
 practice and professions previously. 
 
 III. Barnabas was now at Antioch, as well as St. 
 Peter and St. Paul ; and the account of the visit to 
 Jerusalem, just before, shews that he had been there 
 also. It is nothing incredible that when St. Paul left 
 Jerusalem to go down to Antioch, he also might do 
 the same. But, what is a still more critical coin- 
 cidence ; St. Paul took up Titus with himself, on the 
 occasion of the visit to Jerusalem ; which renders it 
 morally certain that he would take him to Antioch 
 likewise ; and that from Antioch, when he set out to 
 Galatia, he would take him to Galatia also. Accord- 
 ingly, when we come to consider the date of the Epi- 
 stle to the Galatians, I hope to make it appear that this 
 was actually the case. 
 
 IV. When St. Paul departed after this from An- 
 tioch, and went over Galatia and Phrygia ; he went 
 over them, as the Acts inform us x , eV/o-T^p/^, strength- 
 ening or confirming, anew, all the disciples. The ne- 
 cessity of such fresh strengthening must be evident 
 both from what is seen to have previously transpired 
 at Jerusalem y ; and, more especially, from this very in- 
 cident which afterwards occurred at Antioch. 
 
 Now the result of the meeting at Jerusalem, as 
 summed up by Gal. ii. 9 ; or, in other words, the com- 
 pact entered into between Paul and Barnabas on the 
 one hand, and Peter, and James, and John on the • 
 other ; %va fj/ueh eh tol eOvf], avrol Se eh rrjv 'TrepiTOiu.rjv, 
 (the meaning of which is. That we should go to the 
 Gentiles, but they to the Circumcision ;) is such a re- 
 sult, and such a compact, as would fitly and properly 
 apply to a state of the case like this : viz. that at this 
 
 x Chap, xviii. ^3. y Gal. ii. 1 — 10. 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel . 113 
 
 very conjuncture, when Paul and Barnabas were about 
 to set out on a renewed mission to the Gentiles, Peter 
 and John at least, if not James, were preparing to set 
 out upon an Evangelical circuit to the Circumcision. 
 And if, as regarded Peter, this circuit was such an one 
 as he must have described before the writing of his 
 first Epistle ; a circuit beginning in Pontus, and con- 
 tinued in order, through the whole extent of Asia 
 Minor, until it terminated at Rome ; it is morally 
 certain he would pass, in the first instance, through 
 Antioch, on his way. 
 
 I persuade myself, therefore, that with the time of 
 that visit to Antioch, we have the precise beginning 
 of this great Evangelical circuit marked out ; which 
 would thus be in the spring of the twelfth of Claudius, 
 U. C. 805. A. D. 52 . The twelfth and the thirteenth 
 of Claudius might well be taken up either wholly or 
 in part by such a circuit, before the arrival at Corinth ; 
 and St. Peter having preached there some length of time, 
 might afterwards proceed thence, before the middle of 
 the fourteenth, to Rome. If his first Epistle, then, 
 was subsequently written from Rome, it could not 
 have been written before the fourteenth of Claudius at 
 least ; and, probably, not until some time later than 
 that. Nor, if St. Mark accompanied him on this visit, 
 could his Gospel also have been written before the same 
 time. And though St. Peter’s First Epistle might not 
 have been written, after all, from Rome ; still the time 
 of his first arrival there, upon which the date of the 
 Gospel must ultimately depend, remains ascertained as 
 before. The object of our previous reasonings was to 
 fix that time : and even the date and place of the Epi- 
 stle, as we shall see hereafter, are so far in unison with 
 these conclusions, that if it was not written actually 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
114 
 
 Dissertation Second . 
 
 from Rome, still it was not written actually before St. 
 Peter had been there. 
 
 The length of his stay at Rome may also be pre- 
 sumptively determined. 
 
 The First Epistle to the Corinthians was written 
 sometime before the passover in the first of Nero ; and 
 the Epistle to the Romans, about the time of the pass- 
 over in the second. When the former was written, 
 Peter was no longer at Corinth : and when the latter 
 was written, he was no longer at Rome. He had left 
 Corinth, then, before the middle of the first of Nero ; 
 and he had left Rome before, or by, the middle of the 
 second. 
 
 The first of these facts, for the reasons stated above, 
 we may infer with great certainty : and the second, 
 for a reason which I shall mention presently, we may 
 infer, if not with certainty, yet with a degree of pro- 
 bability which approximates to it. 
 
 In the salutations appended to the Epistle to the 
 Romans, xvi. 1-16; which are more numerous and 
 more particular than those in any Epistle besides, or 
 rather, in all the Epistles put together ; the name of 
 Peter, or of Cephas, nowhere occurs. But this would 
 surely not have been the case, had Peter, or Cephas, 
 been still in Rome ; or still known to St. Paul to be 
 there, when he was writing the Epistle. Nor, in ex- 
 planation of this omission, can it be said that the salu- 
 tations are addressed to the members of the Roman 
 church as such : for, though the names which follow 
 from the eighth verse downwards may be the names 
 of such members ; yet those which precede from the 
 third downwards, and are put at the head of the rest, 
 are manifestly not such. And on the same principle 
 that as the names of persons, more generally illustrious 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel. 115 
 
 in the church, or more endeared on any account to 
 St. Paul, these precede the rest ; the name of Peter, 
 had he also been in Rome, would doubtless have pre- 
 ceded even these. 
 
 It follows, therefore, that Peter did not come to 
 Rome much before the middle of the fourteenth of 
 Claudius, nor remain there longer than the middle of 
 the second of Nero ; that is, from U. C. 807. medio , 
 to U. C. 809. ineunte. The duration of his visit 
 might still have been more than a year, and, certainly, 
 could scarcely have been less ; though as the time for 
 which St. Paul resided there after him, even as a 
 prisoner and in confinement, was only two years, this 
 duration of it may justly be considered long enough. 
 The history of these two chief among the Apostles 
 runs parallel in a remarkable manner — a fact which is 
 well expressed in the testimony of Dionysius, referred 
 to above ; but so that in most of the leading steps the 
 history of St. Peter takes precedence of that of St. Paul. 
 They both together, or within a short time of each 
 other, planted the church in Corinth : they both to- 
 gether, or soon after each other, visited Italy, and 
 preached in Rome : and they both together, or soon 
 after each other, closed their career by martyrdom, on 
 the same spot. And as St. Peter might first come to 
 Rome in the fourteenth of Claudius, and leave it in 
 the second of Nero ; so did St. Paul, as we shall see, 
 come thither in the fifth of Nero, and leave it again in 
 the seventh. 
 
 The proof of this position, with respect to St. Paul, 
 is supplied, and will be considered hereafter, in the 
 Acts : nor is it destitute of support from external tes- 
 timony in the case of Peter. Lactantius, a Roman 
 Christian of the third century, or whoever was the 
 author of the treatise De Mortibus Persecutorum, as- 
 
 i 2 
 
116 
 
 Dissertation Second . 
 
 cribed to him, places his arrival at Rome, Cum jam 
 Nero imperaret z ; and after the Gospel had been 
 preached, per annos xxv — dated from the ascension ; 
 usque ad principium Neroniani imperii. This author’s 
 date of the ascension is the consulate of the Gemini, 
 U. C. 782 : five and twenty years from which bring 
 us actually to U. C. 807. just before the beginning of 
 the reign of Nero, or in the first half of the fourteenth 
 of Claudius ; the very time to which the course of our 
 preceding reasonings has made it necessary to refer the 
 first arrival of St. Peter at Rome. 
 
 The time of his departure from thence, as in the 
 second of Nero, seems to be confirmed in like manner 
 by a remarkable mistake in the Catalogus Pontificum 
 Romanorum, a document as ancient as the time of 
 Liberius, who was contemporary with the emperor 
 Constantius 3 . The martyrdom of Peter and Paul is 
 there placed in the consulate of Nero and Vetus b ; the 
 former being supposed to have sate at Rome previ- 
 ously, twenty-five years, one month, and nine days, 
 dated from the consulate of Vinicius and Longinus ; 
 which is the true year of the ascension, U. C. 783. 
 Nero and Vetus were consuls together U. C. 808 ; but 
 at no other period of his reign. This very mistake 
 must prove thus much ; that Peter was known, or 
 reputed, to have been at Rome in or before, but not 
 after, the second of Nero ; and tradition might con- 
 found the year of his departure with the year of his 
 death ; adding to this death that of St. Paul, because 
 it was always currently believed that both St. Peter 
 and St. Paul suffered at Rome, and under Nero ; and 
 
 z De Mortibus Pers. ii. 844. a Cf. Ammianus Marcellinus, xv. 7 : 91. 92 : 
 Sulpicius Severus, ii. 54, 55. b Bucherius, de Doctrina Temp. 269. Cf. 
 
 Chronicon Paschale, ii. xvii. 198. The date thus assigned to the martyrdom of 
 Peter and Paul being June 29, U. C. 808. it implies that the ascension took place, 
 May 20. U. C. 783. And it actually took place, May 16 in that year. 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel. 
 
 117 
 
 the one either at the same time, or nearly at the same 
 time, with the other. 
 
 I shall mention no more, then, in reference to the 
 time of this visit, than the following coincidence. 
 
 When St. Peter and St. Mark were at Babylon or 
 Rome, Silvanus was with them b . When St. Paul was at 
 Corinth, Acts xviii. 5. Silvanus was with him. But this 
 was from the end of the ninth to the beginning of the 
 twelfth of Claudius. When Paul in the last of these 
 years, Acts xviii. 18 - 22 . went up to Jerusalem, Sil- 
 vanus, it is reasonable to presume, would go up with 
 him also: and as the church of Jerusalem was that to 
 which he had originally belonged, there is no reason 
 to suppose he would necessarily accompany St. Paul to 
 Antioch, and might not, on the contrary, attach him- 
 self to St. Peter ; in whose company, and in St. Mark’s, 
 he might afterwards make the journey which rendered 
 them both known to the converts of Asia Minor, in the 
 places visited by St. Peter. 
 
 The tradition of a visit of St. Peter’s to Rome in the 
 reign of Claudius, at any time prior to the last year of 
 that reign ; and, more especially, of a visit in the se- 
 cond of Claudius ; rests on too precarious a foundation 
 to overthrow the preceding reasonings. Dionysius, the 
 Bishop of Corinth, and not many years younger than 
 St. Peter himself, knew nothing of this tradition ; nor 
 of any journey of St. Peter’s either to Rome, or to Co- 
 rinth, which did not coincide in general with the simi- 
 lar visits of St. Paul. It is certain, both from the Acts, 
 and from the two Epistles to the Corinthian church, 
 that Christianity had not been introduced into Corinth, 
 nor even into Achaia, before St. Paul’s first visit, in the 
 ninth or the tenth of Claudius, to the peninsula of 
 Greece : but had St. Peter passed through it on his 
 
 b i Pet. v. 12, 
 
 I 3 
 
118 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 way to Rome, before the same time, it would doubtless 
 have been introduced into it before that time. There 
 is no countenance for the tradition in any ecclesiastical 
 writer earlier than the time of Eusebius, or the begin- 
 ning of the fourth century ; after which any such as- 
 sertion becomes entitled to little regard. It is part of 
 the same tradition, to combine the fact of this visit by 
 St. Peter with the fact also of the presence of Simon 
 Magus in Rome at the same time ; and of the Apostle’s 
 
 fabulous contest with that 
 tyr, who repeatedly asserts 
 to Rome, no where asserts 
 along with him # . No such 
 
 * Irenaeus, adversus User. i. xx. 
 94. 1 . 7. asserts, as well as Justin, 
 that Simon was honoured atRome 
 by Claudius, or in his time, with 
 a statue ; but he says nothing 
 about his contest with Peter. 
 Nor yet Tertullian, though, 
 (Opera, ii. 43. De Praescrip. 
 Heereticorum, 33.) he alludes to 
 liis rebuke by St. Peter ; and (v. 
 39. Apologeticus, 13.) he also 
 mentions his statue ; and in va- 
 rious other parts of his works, 
 has occasion to speak of him ge- 
 nerally — viz. iii. 193. De Fuga 
 in Persecutione, 12: iv. 157. De 
 Idololatria, 9: Ibid. 205. De 
 Baptismo, 18: 287. De Anima, 
 34 : 331. Ibid. 57. The same 
 remark is to be made upon his 
 mention by Clemens Alexandri- 
 nus, (Operum ii. 899. line 1. 
 Strom, vii. 17.) Even Eusebius, 
 (E. H. ii. xiii. xiv. 50-52.) while 
 he speaks of his being followed to 
 Rome by St. Peter, says nothing 
 about any contest between them 
 there : though Jerome, (De SS. 
 Ecclesiasticis, i. iv. Pars ii a . 10 1.) 
 supposes the object of Peter’s vi- 
 sit to Rome (which he places in 
 
 impostor : yet Justin Mar- 
 the visit of Simon Magus 
 the presence of Peter also 
 visit was known to Origen; 
 
 the second of Claudius) to have 
 been ad expugnandum Simonem 
 Magum. 
 
 I would not be understood to 
 dispute the fact of Simon Magus’ 
 coming to Rome, early in the 
 reign of Claudius ; which would 
 be very possible, if what hap- 
 pened in Samaria between him 
 and Peter, happened in the first 
 of Caius. It is to be observed, 
 however, that some ancient au- 
 thorities speak of his attempting 
 to fly, without ascribing its fail- 
 ure to the instrumentality of St. 
 Peter. Vide the Constitutiones 
 Apostolicae, ii. 14. 158. A: Epi- 
 phanius, Operum L59.A. Contra 
 Simonianos, 5 : Chrys. Spuria , 
 viii. 76. C. De Pseudoprophetis. 
 Theodorit, Operum iv. 286, 287. 
 Haereticarum Fabularum i. 1. 
 and the Constitutiones Aposto- 
 licae, vi. 8, 9. give the common 
 account. 
 
 If we except the author or 
 authors of the Constitutiones 
 Apostolicae, Arnobius, as far as 
 I know, is the earliest Christian 
 writer, who distinctly asserts the 
 fact in question : Viderant enim 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel . 
 
 119 
 
 though when alluding to some mistake of Phlegon’s, 
 who had confounded Peter with Jesus c , he had natu- 
 rally an opportunity of mentioning it. The Presbyter 
 Caius was aware of no visit of St. Peter, which did not 
 almost coincide with some visit of St. Paul cl ; whom no 
 one ever supposed to have come to Rome earlier than 
 the reign of Nero. As little regard is due to the simi- 
 lar tradition e which would make Philo Judaeus to have 
 met and conversed with St. Peter at Rome. If the oc- 
 casion of Philo’s presence there was that dispute be- 
 tween the Jews and the Greeks of Alexandria, which was 
 referred to the emperor in the third of Caius, but not 
 decided before the first or the second of Claudius ; and is 
 related in part by himself f , and in part by Josephus s ; 
 the two traditions amount to the same thing*. 
 
 currum Simonis Magi et quadri- 
 gas igneas Petri ore difflatas, et 
 nominato Christo evanuisse : 
 Adversus Gentes, ii. 50. line 27. 
 Arnobius’ age is U. C. 1050. 
 A. D. 297. His scholar Lactau- 
 tius, however, does not repeat 
 the assertion after him. 
 
 It is historically related of the 
 reign of Nero, that persons did 
 undertake to fly in his time. See 
 Dio Chrys. Oratio xxi. 504. 23— 
 26: Suet. Neron.12, 6: Juvenal, 
 iii. 79, 80. But it is plain, from 
 the two last authorities, that the 
 person whom they mean, was a 
 Grceculus quis, and no Samari- 
 tan, like Simon. 
 
 * The origin of this apocry- 
 phal visit is manifestly due to 
 the vanity of making it appear 
 that the introduction of Christi- 
 anity into Rome was the work 
 of the two great Apostles, St. 
 Peter and St. Paul. The same 
 
 vanity is observable in a similar 
 endeavour with respect to An- 
 tioch in Syria ; which, next to 
 Rome and Alexandria in Egypt 11 , 
 was justly reputed the most con- 
 siderable city of the Roman em- 
 pire. Yet nothing can be plainer 
 than it is from the Acts, that the 
 first preaching of the Gospel in 
 Antioch, was due to the Hebrew 
 converts whom the persecution, 
 begun with the martyrdom of 
 Stephen, had scattered abroad ; 
 while the Twelve still continued 
 in Jerusalem : and that the con- 
 solidation of the church there, af- 
 terwards, was the work of Bar- 
 nabas and of his fellow-labourer 
 Saul : whereas, with regard to 
 St. Peter ; but for the intima- 
 tion which occurs at Gal. ii. 
 1 1 . we should not have known 
 that he was ever in Antioch at 
 all. It is not impossible, indeed, 
 that he might have gone down 
 
 c Contra Cels. ii. 14. Operum i. 400. E. (l Eus. E. H. ii. xxv. 67. D. e Ibid, 
 ii. xvii. 53. D. f De Virtutibus et de Legatione. Operum ii. 545. 8 Ant. 
 
 xviii. viii. 1. xix. v. 2, 3. h Jos. 15 . J. iii. xi. 4. Strabo, xvi. ii. §. 5. 304. 
 
120 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 That Christianity had reached Rome in the reign of 
 Claudius, appears from Suetonius k : that it had been 
 established there as early as the ninth of Claudius will 
 appear, as we shall see hereafter, from Acts xviii. 2. 
 compared with Romans xv. 23. And, if Andronicus 
 and Junias, the kinsmen of Paul ; mentioned Rom. xvi. 
 7- as converted before himself ; had long been members 
 of the Roman church, it might have been established 
 there even before that year. It seems to be implied 
 by Tacitus 1 : Et quia externae superstitiones valescant: 
 Are beginning to prevail: that Christianity was making 
 some progress there even in the seventh of Claudius : 
 for no foreign superstition, we may presume, could so 
 far be beginning to prevail, as to cause the ancient sci- 
 ence of the haruspices to fall into decay, except either 
 Judaism, or, what could not at that time be distin- 
 guished from Judaism, Christianity : and Judaism had 
 long been more or less prevalent at Rome ; Christianity 
 might only be beginning to be so. It is certain, at least, 
 that some of the household of Narcissus the freedman 
 of Claudius 151 , must have been converted before his death, 
 which happened within thirty days after the accession 
 
 to Antioch, when, upon his mi- 
 raculous deliverance from prison, 
 he is said to have gone to another 
 place '. But I confess it does 
 not appear to me probable that 
 this place was Antioch ; for, had 
 it been so, there is no conceiv- 
 able reason why St. Luke should 
 not have mentioned it ; and more 
 than one such reason why he 
 should. The year of this deli- 
 verance was the year of the death 
 of Herod Agrippa, in the third 
 of Claudius, U.C. 796 ; at which 
 time the Gospel had not yet be- 
 gun to be preached (even by St. 
 
 i Chap. xii. 17. k Claud. 25, 12. 
 
 Paul’s first mission) to the Gen- 
 tiles ; much less could it yet 
 have reached Rome : and after 
 this, at Acts xv. 7 ; a point of 
 time, which as I shall shew else- 
 where, comes between the fourth 
 and the ninth of Claudius ; St. 
 Peter was again in Jerusalem. 
 It is probable he would re- 
 turn thither from his place of 
 concealment, as soon as the death, 
 or even the departure, of Herod 
 made it prudent to do so : and 
 neither of these events was long 
 after his deliverance itself. 
 
 1 Ann. xi. 15. 
 
 m Rom. xvi. 1 1 . 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel. 121 
 
 of Nero, U. C. 807 n : and from the case of Pomponia 
 Graecina : Insignis femina...ac superstitionis externae 
 rea°: (which, I have very little doubt, means the charge 
 of being a Christian) — the Gospel, we may conclude, 
 must have advanced there considerably by the third or 
 the fourth of Nero ; and before the arrival of St. Paul. 
 
 The result of these considerations is to render it pre- 
 sumptively certain that, if the Gospel of St. Mark was 
 composed or published at Rome, in consequence of the 
 first visit of St. Peter ; it was composed or published 
 between the fourteenth of Claudius, and the second of 
 Nero : U. C. 807. ineuntem , and U. C. 808. exenntem ; 
 A. D. 54. and 55. The internal evidence of the Gos- 
 pel itself, as far as it goes, is in unison with this pre- 
 sumption. 
 
 For first, if the first sentence of the Gospel, and the 
 last, be compared together, it will appear that the com- 
 pass or scope of this Gospel in particular is much 
 greater than that of St. Matthew’s or of St. Luke’s : it 
 is, in fact, equivalent, though more concisely so, to 
 either of these, and the Acts of the Apostles, in con- 
 junction. It could not have been said with truth that 
 the Apostles — having been commanded to go forth 
 into all the world, and to preach the Gospel to the 
 whole creation ; went forth accordingly, and preached 
 every where , while their preaching was still confined 
 to Judaea : nor when it had taken in merely Samaria : 
 nor yet when it was but beginning to address the Gen- 
 tiles : nor, in short, before it was an historical fact that 
 it had pervaded tijv okovimevtiv : or at least the extent of 
 the Roman empire : which our Saviour had predicted p 
 would be the case not long before the destruction of 
 
 n Seneca, Ludus de Morte Claudii Caes. xiii. i. iv. 406. Dio lx. 34. Tac. Ann. 
 xiii. 1. 0 Ibid. 32. l* Matt. xxiv. 14. Mark xiii. 10. 
 
122 
 
 Dissertation Second . 
 
 Jerusalem; and which St. Paul shews was not the 
 case before the middle of the second of Nero. 
 
 Secondly ; not to specify such remarkable passages 
 in this Gospel, as contrasted with similar passages in 
 St. Matthew’s, would imply it to have been expressly 
 written for Gentile believers as such ; the frequency 
 of Latin terms or phrases, clothed in Greek, (scarcely 
 any of which occur in the Gospel of St. Luke, and not 
 so many in the Gospel of St. Matthew, and still fewer 
 in the Gospel of St.John,) would prove it to have been 
 designed for Roman converts in particular. Of this 
 kind are, Acyeoji / — aireKOoXaTcop * — Krjva-o<z — KO^pavr ^ — 
 \eirra Svo * o earn KoSpavrrjs — ( ppayeWcocras — av\r}g' o 
 ecTTi irpaiTwpLOv — KevTvpiwv — /ul€<tovvktiov 9 as a division 
 of time — Kpa/3l3aTO$ j* — ovai (vak !) — 7rai8io6ev' a pu- 
 evo — ; Tvaarrmiov — vo/uuo’/j.a tov Krjvuov , in St. Matthew ; 
 explained simply by Srjvapiov, in St. Mark — air eye i, 
 sufficit — aXeKTopocpwvla, as a division of time answer- 
 ing to gallicinium — a/uupoSos , || analogous to ambi- 
 
 * 27 TeKovXdrtop — that is, Spe- 
 culator, not spiculator. Vide 
 Suet. Aug. 74: Claud. 35 : Galb. 
 18 : Otho, 5 : Tac. Histor. i. 24, 
 25 ; ii. 33 : Seneca, De Bene- 
 ficiis, iii. 25. Operum iv. 119. 
 
 t Vide Pollux, Onomasticon, 
 lib. x. cap. 7. whence, though it 
 may appear that the word was re- 
 cognised in Pollux’ time, yet that 
 it was comparatively vox barbara, 
 in the opinion of the more classical 
 Greeks, may be very plainly col- 
 lected even thence, and from 
 what Sozomen relates, E. H. i. 
 xi.416. D. of Spyridon, bishop of 
 Trimythus, and Triphyllius, bi- 
 shop of Ledra in Cyprus. 
 
 f Ovai : Arriani Epictet. iii. 
 23. p. 479. 1 . 12 . 6 t 7 TC flOl , ova . , 
 Kai, Oav/iaartos : 482, 5. iva croi 
 ova (pcoariv — SS. Deperditi, ii. 
 231. Excerpta e Dione, cxvi : 
 
 ova KaXrj aov rj/JLepa rrjs o-rjfxe- 
 pov. ova koXcov /SacriAeW : whence 
 it appears that oval, ova or ova, 
 ( vah ), is not necessarily an ex- 
 clamation of reproach, but might 
 express delight and satisfaction ; 
 and in that sense would answer 
 to some such word as bravo , well 
 done, &c. Cf. Dio, lxiii. 20. 
 
 || Artemidorus, Oneirocritica 
 ii. 73 : Kal to 7 re pi tovs Kepap-ovs 
 L7TTaadai, Kal ray oIklos, <al ra ap(p- 
 08a , k , t. X. Cf. Pollux, Ono- 
 
 Rom. xv. 19. 
 
123 
 
 Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel . 
 
 vilWl — aXa? avaXov , insulsurtl — cnroXa/BecrOai, seor- 
 
 sum recipere — eoyarax e^eiv, in extremis esse — /meyi- 
 araves' magnates — peOopia' confinia , k\ t. X. — Perhaps 
 the two explanations, Xe7 rra Svo * o eo-Tt KoSpdvrrjs * — and, 
 avXtjs' o 6 <ttl 7 rpaiTtopioi ’ — are the most decisive of all i 
 for they are manifestly intended to render something 
 intelligible ; and intelligible, as it would seem, only to 
 the ideas of Romans. Nor does any thing like them 
 occur in the other Gospels f . 
 
 Thirdly, among the salutations in the Epistle to the 
 Romans, the following occurs ; Salute Rufus, the elect 
 in the Lord, and his mother and mine 1 ; which ren- 
 ders it certain that, in the second of Nero, there was 
 one Rufus with his mother, living at Rome, and a 
 member of the Roman church. Now, Mark xv. 21. 
 Simon of Cyrene is further described as the father of 
 Alexander and Rufus : and, beyond all question, what 
 
 masticon, ix. cap. 5. who shews 
 that in the sense of ayviai, parts 
 within the walls of cities, or 
 streets, the word occurred in 
 Aristophanes and Hyperides. 
 
 * Plutarch, Ciceron. 29 : to 
 Se Xenrorarov rov ^aX/cov vopiapa- 
 ros Kovadpavrrjv eicakovv. Artemi- 
 dorus, (Oneirocritica, ii. 63 .) ob- 
 serves, ra pev \e7TTa Kai ^ctA/cea 
 vo/xicrpaTa — Cap. 64 : eOeaadfirjv 
 ipavrov iv cnrvpidi e^ovra Xcnrci <ep- 
 paria. 
 
 f It is no objection that a 
 Gospel, though written at Rome, 
 was nevertheless written in 
 Greek. The hypothesis, which 
 supposes St. Mark’s Gospel to 
 have been originally published 
 in Latin, is unnecessary, as well 
 as untenable. The Epistle to 
 the Romans furnishes a case in 
 point ; for that also was written 
 in Greek : and such was the 
 
 prevalence of this language, al- 
 most every where, at present, 
 that even in Gaul r the law pro- 
 ceedings were carried on in 
 Greek; bargains of every kind 
 were indited in Greek : and the 
 Roman Satirist could say, Nunc 
 totus Graias nostrasque habet 
 orbis Athenas, | Gallia causidi- 
 cos docuit facunda Britannos, | 
 De conducendo loquitur jam 
 rhetore Thule s . It is much to 
 be doubted whether the Latin 
 language, even in the Roman 
 dominions, (with some particu- 
 lar exceptions ; as for instance, 
 in Spain,) was ever so generally 
 in use : in which case, both the 
 perpetuity and the utility of a 
 Gospel though composed at 
 Rome, were best provided for 
 by composing it, not in Latin, 
 but in Greek. 
 
 r Strabo, iv. i. §. 5. 14. s Juv. Sat. xv. no 
 
 t xvi. 13. 
 
124 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 is added, under such circumstances, by way of designa- 
 tion to any thing else, must be clearer than the thing 
 defined, and stand in no need of explanation itself. 
 Hence though St. Mark’s readers might not have 
 known who Simon was, as identified by his relation to 
 Cyrene merely ; they would know who he was, as 
 mentioned in conjunction with Alexander and Rufus: 
 and this would obviously be the case if, when St. 
 Mark was writing his Gospel, and writing it at Rome, 
 Rufus in particular was a member of the Roman 
 church, and personally known to his readers as such ; 
 along with his mother, if not his father, also. As to 
 Simon himself, the silence of St. Paul proves either 
 that he was not alive ; (a very possible event in the 
 second of Nero, U. C. 809. twenty-six years after the 
 sixteenth of Tiberius, U. C. 783.) or not a convert; or 
 not resident at Rome ; when St. Paul wrote the Epistle 
 to that church *. 
 
 * But who, it may be demand- 
 ed, was Alexander also ? I can- 
 not answer this question except 
 by conjecturing that he was ei- 
 ther the same person, who is 
 mentioned by Josephus u as an 
 illustrious Jew, and a native of 
 Cyrene, like Simon, in the time 
 of Catullus, who was governor 
 of the African Pentapolis, about 
 U. C. 828. the fifth or the sixth 
 of Vespasian ; or else with the 
 Alexander mentioned by St. 
 Luke, Acts xix. 33. This last 
 Alexander was certainly a Jew; 
 but whether a friend of St. 
 Paul’s, or not, may be consider- 
 ed doubtful. The former might 
 be inferred from the circum- 
 stance of his attempting to de- 
 fend himself, when put forward 
 to the people at Ephesus ; the 
 
 u B. Jud. vii. xi. 2. 
 
 latter, from the fact of his being 
 put forward by St. Paul’s ene- 
 mies in particular, the Jews. It 
 is clear, indeed, from the way in 
 which his name is mentioned by 
 St. Luke, that he was somebody 
 known to the readers of the 
 Acts ; whom they would recog- 
 nise, even from the mention of 
 his name only. He may be the 
 same Alexander whom . St. Paul 
 alludes to v , as one who had for- 
 merly been a Christian and or- 
 thodox ; but had afterwards 
 fallen into some great error ; 
 which error, it is perceived by 
 a comparison with 2 Tim. ii. 17, 
 18. concerned the denial of a re- 
 surrection to come. Yet from 
 this error itself, there is no rea- 
 son to suppose, that Alexander 
 individually might not have been 
 
 v 1 Tim. i. 20. 
 
Time and Order of St. Matthew's Gospel. 
 
 125 
 
 Fourthly, if St. Matthew’s Gospel was the first and 
 the original Gospel ; composed in Palestine, and in the 
 vernacular language of Palestine, for the use of the 
 original and mother church ; the present Greek copy 
 of it must have been a translation of this Hebrew ori- 
 ginal. The premises, upon which this conclusion is 
 founded, are so well supported by both internal and 
 external evidence, that no matter of fact, which rests 
 upon the faith of testimony, can be considered certain, 
 if these facts are not so. There is the same unvarying 
 uniformity of attestation to this point, as to the fact 
 that St. Mark’s Gospel was written at Rome : and if 
 ancient ecclesiastical tradition, on the score of its dis- 
 tinctness, consistency, and regularity is any where to 
 be implicitly trusted ; it is upon these two points. 
 Suffice it to say, that no modern commentator or critic 
 would ever have called it in question, if the Hebrew 
 original had not long since been lost : and if it was 
 not just as difficult to account for the substitution of 
 the Greek copy in its stead, as for the speedy extinc- 
 tion of the original. 
 
 The extinction of the latter was early an unquestion- 
 able fact : and even the Gospel according to the Ebion- 
 ites, otherwise styled the Gospel according to the Naza- 
 
 recovered ; for, in the second al- 
 lusion to it, it is no longer Hy- 
 menaeus and Alexander who are 
 mentioned, but Hymenaeus and 
 Philetus. The death of Catul- 
 lus too, as related by Josephus w , 
 is such a death as seems to have 
 befallen, k ar the persecu- 
 
 tors of Christianity, as such. 
 But be this as it may ; if Alex- 
 ander was at Ephesus, Acts xix. 
 33. at a point of time as late as 
 the midsummer of the first of 
 
 Nero ; it is very possible he 
 might still be absent from Rome 
 not ten months afterwards ; a- 
 bout the middle of the second. 
 I confess, however, I should in- 
 cline to the conclusion that this 
 Alexander in the Acts might be 
 the son of Simon ; but not, like 
 his mother, and his brother Ru- 
 fus, a convert to the Gospel. It 
 is possible, he might be even 
 Alexander the coppersmith, men- 
 tioned 2 Tim. iv. 14, 15. 
 
 w B. Jud. vii. xi. 4. 
 
126 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 renes ; which was translated into Latin by Jerome, and 
 is repeatedly quoted by him * ; cannot be considered 
 the authentic production of St. Matthew ; though it 
 may very probably have been founded upon some such 
 production. The uncertainty as to the origin of the 
 Greek translation was just the same anciently as now. 
 Various authors of it have been named by the later 
 Fathers, as St. James, by some; St.John, by others; 
 whose assertions, however, no one will regard except 
 as mere conjectures. The confession of Jerome that 
 nobody knew any thing about it ; Quis postea in Grae- 
 cum transtulerit, non satis certum est x ; is both the 
 truest, and the most sincere. It is observable, how- 
 ever, amidst all this liberty of conjecture with respect 
 to others, that no ancient commentator appears to have 
 suspected it was the work of St. Matthew himself. 
 
 Whatever difficulty there may be upon this point, 
 the question, considered strictly on its own merits, is 
 simply this ; whether there is sufficient reason to be- 
 lieve an Hebrew Gospel did once exist ; not, how it 
 might afterwards have been lost, or been superseded 
 by a Greek. And with respect even to this further 
 question ; on one supposition, viz. that the authority of 
 the translation, whosoever was its author, was known 
 and acknowledged from the first, as equal to the au- 
 thority of the original ; that is, that the Hebrew Gos- 
 pel, as it came from St. Matthew, was rendered into 
 Greek either by some other of the Apostles, or by 
 some companion and disciple of the Apostles, himself 
 inspired, or writing under the direction of an inspired 
 
 * Cf. Hieronymi iii. 821. ad 102. De SS. Eccles. ii. iii. : 533. 
 calc, in Ezech. xviii : iv. Pars i a . ad med. Lib. iii. Adversus Pela- 
 47. ad calc, in Matt, xii: 135. gianos, where two quotations 
 ad med. in Matt, xxvii : 1 39. ad from the work in question are * 
 calc. : in Matt, xxviii : Pars ii a . given, at some length. 
 
 x Catalogus SS. Ecclesiast. iii. Operum iv. Pars iia. 102. 
 
Time and Order of St. Matthew's Gospel . 127 
 
 and infallible guide ; the loss of the original would be 
 a natural consequence of the translation. It might 
 survive for a time in Judaea ; so long, perhaps, as the 
 succession of Hebrew Bishops was kept up in the 
 Jewish church ; and, consequently, while the Hebrew 
 or mother church could still be externally distinguished 
 from the Gentile. But this was not longer than the 
 eighteenth of Hadrian ; within little more than sixty 
 years after the first destruction of Jerusalem y. 
 
 It is the weakest of all arguments, as opposed to 
 the unanimous suffrage of antiquity — to contend that 
 St. Matthew’s Greek Gospel exhibits no marks of a 
 translation, and, therefore, must be an original. I 
 wonder what marks of a translation it should be ex- 
 pected to exhibit. It furnishes a multitude of proofs 
 that it was composed or translated by a Jew ; and 
 why a Jew, translating from Hebrew into Greek, 
 should acquit himself in a different manner from a 
 Jew, composing originally in Greek, is what I could 
 never comprehend. If the objection is designed to im- 
 ply that the Greek of St. Matthew’s Gospel is not He- 
 braistic Greek ; it might just as well be contended that 
 the Septuagint version of the Old Testament is an 
 original. But if it assumes that the translator of St. 
 Matthew’s Hebrew Gospel has every where as faith- 
 fully and accurately rendered his meaning into Greek, 
 as St. Matthew himself could have done ; surely what 
 constitutes the object of every translation, and is the 
 peculiar excellence of the best translations, must be a 
 strange ground for maintaining that the present Greek 
 can be no translation. This phenomenon is merely a 
 proof that the translator of St. Matthew’s Gospel fully 
 understood his original ; and was, therefore, fully qua- 
 lified for his task : and, beyond question, a Jew would 
 
 y Dio. lxix. 12-15. Euseb, E.H. iv.vi. 1 18. B. Eckhel. Doct. Numra. Vett. vi. 482. 
 
128 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 be best qualified to understand a Jew ; and an Apostle, 
 or an Apostolical man, to understand an Apostle, and 
 to translate the composition of an Apostle. 
 
 The testimony of Papias, the hearer and disciple of 
 Aristio, and of John, the Presbyters ; and almost con- 
 temporary with St. Matthew himself ; as recorded by 
 Eusebius z , is peculiarly clear and positive : Mcn-dcuo? 
 fj.ev ovv 'E j 3 pa‘iSi SiaXeKTO) tcl \ 6 yia o’vve'ypd'^saTO' tipu-rj- 
 vevue Se avra c 09 rj^vvaro eKauro 9. In the time of Papias, 
 therefore, and, consequently, at so remote a period as 
 the age of Papias, though it was known that St. 
 Matthew had been the author of a Gospel ; it was 
 neither known, nor suspected, that this was any but an 
 Hebrew Gospel. The same testimony, rightly inter- 
 preted, proves another fact. The words above recited 
 being quoted by Eusebius as the very words of Papias ; 
 it may justly be inferred from them that a Greek ver- 
 sion in his time, had already supplanted the Hebrew 
 original. Matthew, says he, composed his oracles , 
 which means his Gospel, in Hebrew; and every one 
 translated them as he was able. The word ep/jLrjvevco> 
 here employed, does not mean, to explain or to inter- 
 pret; but to translate , to render from one language 
 into another: and, in this instance, where Papias is 
 speaking of an Hebrew document as read or perused by 
 persons such as himself, viz. by Greeks ; it means a 
 translation from Hebrew into Greek. I should consi- 
 der it a waste of time seriously to confirm this asser- 
 tion, by the production of instances. Yet the character 
 of Papias has been unjustly made to suffer by suppos- 
 ing that the word is used by him in the sense of, inter- 
 pretation. Let it suffice to refer in general to 1 Cor. 
 xii. 30. xiv. 5. 13. 27. 28. Acts ix. 36. John i. 39. 43. 
 ix. 7. Hebr. vii. 2. 1 Cor. xii. 10. xiv. 26 ; in all which, 
 
 z E. H. iii. xxxix. 1 13. B. 
 
Time and Order of St. Matthew's Gospel. 129 
 
 the verb should be rendered, to translate ; and the 
 cognate nouns, by translator , or, translation. 
 
 Now Papias speaks of all this historically; as what 
 had once been the case, but was so no longer. He 
 does not say, Matthew composed his Gospel in He- 
 brew, and every one translates it as well as he is able ; 
 as well as his knowledge of Hebrew will permit him ; 
 but, Matthew composed his Gospel in Hebrew, and 
 every one translated it as well as he was able ; as well 
 as his knowledge of Hebrew woidd permit him. Does 
 it follow, then, that, because St. Matthew’s Hebrew 
 Gospel was no longer translated by every one for him- 
 self, as well as he was able, a 'Gospel by St. Matthew 
 was no longer in being ? By no means. It follows 
 only that that Gospel, which every one translated for 
 himself, was no longer in being ; but some Gospel is 
 recognised as still in existence ; and, consequently, a 
 different Gospel from that. St. Matthew’s oracles were 
 still in being, but not in their original Hebrew form : 
 they were still to be read and understood ; but not, as 
 every one was enabled by his knowledge of another 
 language. They existed, therefore, in a Greek trans- 
 lation. 
 
 It is, consequently, of little moment that Papias 
 does not declare himself to have seen this Hebrew ori- 
 ginal. If it was not in being in his time, he could not 
 have seen it : and if, as there is reason to believe, he 
 did not himself understand Hebrew ; if he had seen it, 
 he could not have judged of it. His testimony is still 
 to be received as an adequate testimony to the opinion 
 of his times. It is not even implied by Eusebius that 
 he asserts this fact — as he states him to have asserted 
 many other things — <09 e/c i rapaSoo-ew: he asserts it as 
 no hearsay report, but as the general belief ; and, upon 
 questions of this kind, the general belief is the strongest 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
130 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 proof. The decision of all disputes, relating to ancient 
 works, which concern their reputed authors, their au- 
 thenticity, or the like ; in the absence of positive inti- 
 mations from the books themselves, must ultimately be 
 referred to general belief. Particular testimonies are 
 but the echo of this belief. And, hence, it would not 
 invalidate the strength of this testimony of Papias, 
 though it could be proved that the long line of author- 
 ities to the same effect, which come after him, might 
 all be traced up to the influence of his single opinion. 
 The testimony of Papias would still represent the opin- 
 ion of his age ; and the opinion of his age would still 
 be an adequate testimony to the matter of the fact. 
 
 Yet the assumption of this influence is a precarious 
 assumption. None of the authors of these testimonies, 
 later than the time of Papias, can justly be considered 
 dependent upon him : they do not appeal to him ; nor 
 refer their statements back to him : they give their 
 testimony to the same effect, but entirely as a testi- 
 mony of their own. It is much to be questioned whe- 
 ther even the opinion of Irenaeus ; though he was un- 
 doubtedly familiar with the works of Papias ; was in 
 any way affected by his : there are differences in their 
 respective statements, which shew that the later were 
 not derived from the earlier. The testimony of Pan- 
 taenus at least ; who discovered the Hebrew Gospel of 
 St. Matthew, at the end of the second century, in India 
 or ^Ethiopia, whither it had been taken by the Apostle 
 Bartholomew ; must have been altogether independent 
 of the influence of Papias*. 
 
 * Cf. EllS. E. H. V. X. 175. C. serves: rovrcdv 6 pev int rr/s 'EX- 
 Hieronym. iv. Parsii a : 112. De \d80s, 6 ’I winds' ot 8e iiri rrjs pe- 
 SS. Eccles. xxxvi : also 656. ad ydXrjs 'EAAaSos* rrjs Koi\rjs Barepos 
 med. Epist. lxxxiii. Clemens A- avrw Svpias rjv' 6 8e air Alyvirrov' 
 lex. i. 322. 7 - Strom, i. I. speak- aAAoi 8e ava rrjv avaroArjv' Ka\ rav- 
 ing of his oAvn preceptors, ob- rrjs 6 pev rrjs rw ’A (ravp'iW 6 8c 
 
Time and Order of St. Matthew's Gospel. 131 
 
 Nor is there any just reason to call in question the 
 fact of this discovery. It will hardly be denied that 
 Pantaenus went on an Evangelical mission into India ; 
 and, while that is admitted, the fact of the discovery 
 which he made there is not reasonably to be treated 
 as a fable. The report of such a discovery at least 
 must be conceded : and even the report of such a dis- 
 covery, on such an occasion, and in such a quarter, 
 if it had not originated in the matter of fact — would 
 be inconceivable. They, who disbelieved the tradition 
 in this instance, would be bound to shew how the two 
 things came to be associated ; a journey of a Christian 
 Evangelist into India, and the discovery of an Hebrew 
 Gospel by St. Matthew, there. The authentic He- 
 brew Gospel of St. Matthew it has been attempted to 
 confound with the spurious, or at least corrupted, and 
 depravated, Hebrew Gospels, ascribed to the Ebionites, 
 or to the Nazarenes : but w r hat connection could there 
 be between either of these Gospels, and the Gospel 
 discovered, or reputed to have been discovered, by 
 Pantaenus ? Will any one maintain that the Ebionite 
 or Nazarene Gospels, which were never to be met 
 with out of Palestine ; had travelled, or were supposed 
 to have travelled, into India ? Yet even these Gospels 
 were composed in Hebrew, and professed to be the 
 original Gospel of St. Matthew : and this very profes- 
 sion, as assumed by a counterfeit, must itself be a 
 proof that there once existed a similar authentic ori- 
 ginal. 
 
 The observation of Eusebius concerning Papias : 
 cr(po$pa . . cr/uuKpos coV tov voxjv .... (palverai l has very 
 
 eV naXatcrrti/J7 'E ( 3 paios avitcaBev. SS. Propheticorum Eclogse, lvi. 
 va-rdrco 8 e TvcpLTv\a>v' dwapei 8 e line 40. Photius., Biblioth. Cod. 
 ovtos npcoTos rj v ' avenavaaprjv, iv 1 1 8. p. 92, line 31 ad dextram , 
 Aiyu7TTo> 6 rjpd<ra<t XeXrjdoTa. He makes Pantaenus an hearer even 
 means Pantaenus. Cf. ii. 1002. of some of the Apostles. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 unjustly been converted into an handle for undervaluing 
 his testimony. The observation was intended of his 
 abilities as a commentator upon, or as an interpreter 
 of scripture ; and what have these to do with his com- 
 petency as a witness to a plain matter of fact? On 
 such a question as whether any Gospel was known or 
 believed to be St. Matthew’s, except a Gospel, which 
 once existed in Hebrew, and, at that time, existed in 
 Greek ; a person of the meanest capacity, who was 
 sufficiently honest and sincere, would be as fit to give 
 evidence, and as deserving of credit, as a person of the 
 profoundest understanding. Papias, according to his 
 own account of himself, was of an inquisitive turn ; and 
 was so far from being credulous, or disposed to acqui- 
 esce in the first report concerning things, that he could 
 not be satisfied until he had traced them up to some 
 authentic source. The extract which Eusebius has 
 given us from his writings, short as it is, exhibits good 
 sense, and an ardent love of truth : and, with regard 
 to the criticism which is passed on his abilities as 
 an interpreter of scripture ; we ought to have the 
 whole of his works before us, in order to judge of its 
 merits for ourselves. It is clear to me that the criti- 
 cism was influenced by the prejudices of its author: 
 it comes in in such a manner that it can be accounted 
 for only by this fact ; viz. that Papias was a believer 
 in the Millennium, and Eusebius was not ; and that 
 the former had understood literally, what the latter 
 thought should be understood only figuratively. But 
 on this principle, Justin Martyr — Irenaeus — Tertul- 
 lian — Lactantius — and many others — whose works 
 would demonstrate that they were far from being per- 
 sons of mean capacity ; must be included in the same 
 censure. And as to this particular point of difference 
 between them ; there may be many sound divines at 
 
Time and Order of St. Matthew's Gospel. 133 
 
 the present day, who would be inclined to think that 
 the simplicity of Papias in this respect proved a better 
 director to the sense of scripture, than the acumen of 
 Eusebius. It would be absurd, however, to suppose 
 that one who really entertained so mean an idea of 
 another, would take his opinions, on any nice or diffi- 
 cult subject, implicitly from him ; yet Eusebius asserts 
 the Hebrew original of St. Matthew’s Gospel as plainly 
 as Papias himself. 
 
 The early disappearance of this original would cer- 
 tainly be, prima facie , an argument for doubting whe- 
 ther it had ever existed ; and the strength of this 
 argument would be best appreciated by the collectors 
 of books, or the collators of manuscripts, among the 
 ancients ; especially by those, whose collections of 
 books, or collations of manuscripts, had one object 
 only in view — viz. to illustrate sacred criticism ; to 
 settle the canon, or to ascertain the text, of Scripture. 
 Such were Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome, in particu- 
 lar : all of whom, with one voice, acknowledge the 
 Hebrew origin of St. Matthew’s Gospel, while they 
 admit that no genuine Hebrew copy of it was to be 
 found. Nothing but the clearest conviction could ac- 
 count for this acknowledgment, where the presumptive 
 evidence was so strongly against it. 
 
 A Gospel, which was composed in the native dialect 
 of Palestine, and designed for the benefit of the native 
 church, would never travel into general circulation out 
 of Palestine: and a Gospel, so composed and so in- 
 tended, published first at Jerusalem ; in the midst of 
 a society which for a time was the only Christian so- 
 ciety in Judaea, and around which, as the metropolitan 
 or mother church, all the subordinate Christian socie- 
 ties in Judaea, in Samaria, or in Galilee, seem to have 
 been ultimately concentrated ; would probably never 
 
 K 3 
 
134 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 be multiplied by copies out of Jerusalem, even in Pa- 
 lestine itself. If, then, we consider the ruin and desola- 
 tion which, within thirty-three years of the earliest date 
 which can be assigned to this Gospel, overspread that 
 country, and particularly the metropolis ; a visitation 
 attended by the temporary dispersion of the Hebrew 
 church ; it is very conceivable that few copies of St. 
 Matthew’s Gospel would survive in the general de- 
 struction of property, both public and private, which 
 then ensued. Still more conceivable is this contin- 
 gency after the next, and perhaps more calamitous, 
 rebellion of the Jews, partly in the reign of Trajan, 
 and partly in that of Hadrian ; when, in addition to 
 the second erasure of Jerusalem, or to the more com- 
 plete destruction of the vestiges of the ancient city, 
 nine hundred and eighty-five Kw/mai ovo/naarTorarai , ac- 
 cording to Dio a , were taken and laid waste in Pale- 
 stine alone. The meaning of this assertion is, that 
 the whole country was desolated, and emptied of towns 
 and villages ; for it will be shewn elsewhere, by a com- 
 parison with Josephus, that this number of inhabited 
 places is the sum total of all which Palestine contained. 
 The integrity of the Hebrew church itself, which the 
 former war had not impaired, was permanently broken 
 by this event ; and from that time forward the succes- 
 sion of Hebrew bishops ceases, and the native church 
 of Judaea becomes merged in the churches of the Gen- 
 tiles. It would be strange if any number of copies 
 of an Hebrew Gospel ; in the preservation of which 
 an Hebrew community of Christians alone would be 
 interested ; had survived so many dangers. The hosti- 
 lity of the Jews themselves, so long as they possessed 
 the power to injure, would add considerably to the 
 risks which it would have to encounter. In the per- 
 
 * Lib. lxix. 12 — 14. 
 
135 
 
 Time and Order of St. Matthew' 1 s Gospel . 
 
 secutions of Christianity by the J ews, the sacred books 
 of the Christians, (if any such existed,) which might 
 fall into their hands, would not be spared. 
 
 Nor is it, perhaps, more extraordinary that all traces 
 of a genuine Hebrew Gospel should so speedily have 
 been obliterated, than that the same fate should have 
 attended the litterce authenticce of the rest of the 
 Christian Scriptures ; that so little should have been 
 known, even in the earliest times, of their history ; or 
 of the history of their authors. There is an example 
 of the same thing in the original of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews ; the present Greek of which, if the Epistle is 
 rightly ascribed to St. Paul, could scarcely have been the 
 writing of St. Paul ; for the same person, who wrote the 
 Greek of his other Epistles, could scarcely have written 
 the Greek of that. If St. Paul, therefore, wrote this 
 Epistle, he wrote it, not in Greek, but in some other 
 language ; most probably the language of the parties 
 to whom it was written ; and some other person trans- 
 lated this original into the present Greek. After which, 
 the original must have speedily perished ; and have 
 been obliterated even more completely than St. Mat- 
 thew’s Hebrew Gospel. There were Hebrew Gospels 
 in the time of Origen or of Jerome, which professed 
 to be this Gospel of St. Matthew ; there was no Epi- 
 stle to the Hebrews, which professed to be this Epistle 
 of St. Paul’s in Hebrew. In short, it is an undeniable 
 fact, that from the earliest period the deepest obscurity 
 always did envelope both the personal history, and the 
 history of the writings, of the first propagators of 
 Christianity; and, until new and unexpected disco- 
 veries shall be made of fresh data in addition to the 
 information which has come down to us, always will 
 continue to envelope it. 
 
 The labour which has been employed to prove 
 
 K 4 
 
136 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 that the Greek language was understood in Palestine ; 
 however successful it may have been in confirmation of 
 that position ; can never render it available to the de- 
 cision of the point in question. The Greek language 
 might be well understood, and commonly spoken, in 
 Palestine : but, unless Palestine had no native dialect 
 of its own, it must still be more probable that a Gos- 
 pel, written expressly for a Palestinic community, 
 would be written in the native language, than in any 
 other. That St. Matthew’s Gospel was written for that 
 purpose, I think must be universally admitted : or, if 
 any were to dispute it, they would be convicted of 
 their error by the internal evidence of the Gospel itself ; 
 especially as compared with St. Mark’s and St. Luke’s. 
 A Gospel which differs from tlieir’s in so many cha- 
 racteristic respects ; all indicating the class of readers 
 for whom it was intended ; could not have been cal- 
 culated for a society composed exclusively of Gentiles, 
 or of Gentiles in conjunction with Jews ; but solely 
 of Jews. 
 
 The Acts of the Apostles, as we shall see hereafter, 
 will shew that until the time of the conversion of Cor- 
 nelius (the date of which event was U. C. 794. A.D. 41 ) 
 not merely had the Gospel not yet been thrown open 
 to the Gentiles, but it had not begun to be preached 
 abroad even to the Jews of the Dispersion. It was 
 altogether confined both at home and abroad to the 
 native Jews as such ; with this difference only, that 
 the Jews of the Dispersion, who resorted to Jerusalem 
 at the time of the feasts, might hear, and be converted 
 to, the Gospel there, and so become members of the 
 church of Jerusalem ; but no where else, nor of any 
 other church. If St. Matthew’s Gospel was written at 
 this time, as one of its dates supposes, it is morally cer- 
 tain it would be written in Hebrew : and neither at 
 
Time and Order of St. Matthew'' s Gospel. 1 37 
 
 this time, nor at any later period, will it admit of a 
 question which of the two, the native Jews, or the 
 Jews of the Dispersion, composed the more numerous 
 body in the church of Jerusalem. These last were at 
 all times merely incorporated among the former, and 
 never divided the ascendancy in the church with them ; 
 much less monopolized it, to their exclusion. The dis- 
 pute which is alluded to as having arisen, Acts vi. 1. and 
 given occasion to the appointment of Deacons, is a proof 
 of this : and the many myriads who are mentioned as 
 believing, at a still later period, Acts xxi. 20. were 
 doubtless myriads of native Jews. All these were still 
 zealous for the Law : and, with that feeling as strong 
 as ever, their very prejudices would not have endured 
 a Gospel in any language but the language of the Law ; 
 or, what was the nearest approximation to it, the lan- 
 guage spoken in our Saviour’s day. 
 
 Those, who contend for the prevalence of the Greek 
 tongue in Palestine, ought to prove that the Greek 
 version of the Old Testament ever superseded there, in 
 popular favour and estimation, the original Hebrew ; 
 after which, we might justly be called upon to con- 
 cede that St. Matthew might well write his Gospel in 
 Greek. The example of Josephus is a parallel case. 
 His original History of the War ; as designed for the 
 Jews his countrymen even of the Dispersion ; was 
 written, as he tells us, rfj irai-plco yXwo-crrj b * : as in- 
 tended for the Greeks and Romans, was translated into 
 Greek ; for which purpose, and for the composition of 
 his other works, he learned the Greek language him- 
 
 * Ant. Jud. also, Prooem. sect. reference to himself and to his 
 2. Josephus speaks of the Greek countrymen, 
 language as aXXodanr] iccii £ €vrj , in 
 
 k De Bello i. Prooem. i. 2. 
 
138 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 self (which proves that he had not acquired it before) 
 and engaged the services of learned Greeks besides c . 
 At the same time he gives us clearly to understand 
 that the study of the Greek language was no part of 
 the education of his countrymen ; who still valued no 
 literature but their own ; leaving the Greek, and every 
 other branch of profane learning, to their slaves. 
 
 Much stress has been laid on the term Hellenist ; 
 and, as I think, much more than it will bear. The 
 import of this term, at least in the Acts of the Apo- 
 stles, is to be judged of not according to its primary, 
 but according to its secondary, signification. In its 
 primary sense, it would mean one who spoke the 
 Greek language, properly out of Greece * : in its se- 
 condary, it means only a Jew of the Dispersion : and, 
 though many of the Jews of the Dispersion might be 
 such as spoke the Greek language, because they were 
 the Dispersion of the countries in which the Greek 
 language was predominant, it is certain that all were 
 not ; for instance, the Dispersion of Upper Asia ; Ar- 
 menia, Babylonia, Parthia, and India. That this is 
 the true sense of the word in the New Testament, I 
 think cannot be questioned : for, as r/ E\A>?y is there 
 employed for the Gentiles of every name and nation, so 
 is e ~E\\rjvL(TTi ]9 (which denotes one who, eXA ijvlQi, or 
 uses the language of an "E Wr/v) for the J ews dispersed 
 among them. They were Hellenists, in the strictest 
 sense of the word, who were assembled at J erusalem on 
 the day of Pentecost, Acts ii. 5 — 11 ; for they are 
 
 * The signification of the C°> v M Karop 6 oir) y dXV ovrco \iyoi 
 verb eWrjvL^eiv, is illustrated by ra ovopara, d )s oi fiapftapoi, oi el(r- 
 the following passage from ayopevoi els to v eXKrjvicrpbv , ovk 
 Strabo : aWr] §e ns ev rfj t] peri pa Icrxvovres apncTTopelv , c os ov& rjpeis 
 dicikeKTa ave(f)dvr) KaitocrTopia, Ka\ iv rais eKeivcov fkaXeKTOis : Lib. xiv. 
 otov fiapfiapoaTopia, ft ns eXXrjvi- I. §. 28. 647. 
 
 c Ant. Jud. xx. xi. 2. Contra Apion. i. 9. 
 
Time and Order of St. Matthew's Gospel . 
 
 139 
 
 all called Jews in common : yet they are distinguished 
 both from proselytes, and from natives of Judaea ; and 
 they are all represented as having their own speech or 
 language, in which they had been severally born and 
 bred up ; to discriminate them asunder. The same is 
 true of the Hellenists as opposed to the Hebrews, Acts 
 vi. 1. though each were members of the church alike : 
 an opposition between them which would be nugatory, 
 if it did not imply either a difference of language, or a 
 difference of country, or both : for as to supposing that 
 these Hellenists might be Gentiles, it would be the 
 height of ignorance and absurdity. 
 
 There is more reason in my opinion to believe that 
 the language of Palestine (at least, if that was a dia- 
 lect of the primitive Hebrew) was every where better 
 understood by the Jews of the Dispersion, than, vice 
 versa , the Greek language by the Jews of Palestine. 
 The example of Josephus must prove this. It is known 
 that the Jews of the Dispersion made a point of teach- 
 ing their children Hebrew, and even sent them to be 
 educated at Jerusalem itself ; of which the Antiquities 
 of Josephus and the Acts of the Apostles both furnish 
 an instance d * : but we have just seen that the native 
 Jews of Palestine did not think of teaching their chil- 
 dren Greek ; which, consequently, if they learnt at all, 
 they would learn only by an oral intercourse with 
 Greeks. And this intercourse, we may justly pre- 
 
 * Theodorit, i. 73. Quse- 
 stiones in Genesim x. Interr. lxi; 
 roiyaproi tcov aXXcov anavTcov Kara 
 Tr]v rto v idvcov, iv ois av yevvydcocri, 
 (f)deyyopevcov (pcovrjV kcu tcov pev iv 
 ’iraXia TucTopivcov, rfj 'iraXcov Kexprj- 
 pevcov' tcov be iv rrj 'EXXaSt, rrj 
 'EWrjvcov' kcu rtov iv Hepcibi, Ty 
 Hepaav' Kcii tcov iv AtyvTrrco, rfj 
 
 d Ant. xx. iii. 4 . 
 
 AlyvTTTL(ov’ ra ‘E ftpaieov iraibia ov 
 rrj c E/3paia)i/ iarivevpeiv evdvs Ke^py- 
 peva <fi( 0 vf} , aXXa rfj i<elvo3v 7 rap’ oh 
 iyevvrjOrjaav' eira peipaKia yevopeva 
 bibatTKerai roov ypapparoav tovs \a- 
 paKrypas’ pavOavei be bia tcov ypcip- 
 pdro3V rrjv OeLav ypatprjv, rrj 'Efipatbt 
 yeypappevy v (f)c ovy. 
 
 Acts xxii. 3 . xxvi. 4 . 
 
140 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 sume, could never be so close and lasting in the case of 
 every individual Jew, as to make the faculty of speak- 
 ing or of understanding Greek an universal accom- 
 plishment. There might be many, therefore, in the 
 native church of Jerusalem, who did not understand 
 Greek ; but there was probably none who did not 
 understand the vernacular Hebrew. 
 
 It is certain, I think, from Mark xiv. 70. and Acts 
 
 1. 19. that even Galilee had a dialect of its own, dis- 
 tinct from that of Judaea; and the same thing is true 
 of Samaria. And though it may be implied, Acts xxii. 
 
 2. that the people of Jerusalem would have understood 
 St. Paul, if he had spoken in Greek ; it is also implied 
 that they either understood him better, or they liked 
 him much better, because he spoke in Hebrew : and 
 Josephus supplies an instance to the same effect e . The 
 inscription over our Saviour’s cross was written in 
 Hebrew, Greek, and Latin : the pillars in the temple, 
 defining the limits beyond which aliens were not to 
 pass f ; and wanted in order to admonish such persons 
 merely ; were inscribed with Greek and Latin : the 
 voice, which addressed St. Paul at the time of his con- 
 version, addressed him in the native Hebrew ; and was 
 understood by him, though not by those who were 
 with him & ; (for these were probably not Jews them- 
 selves, but a band of Roman soldiers :) the question of 
 Lysias to St. Paul, eWtiviarr'i. yivcoo-Keis 11 , supposing him 
 to be an Egyptian, implies also that an Egyptian could 
 not necessarily speak Greek : the employment of Greek 
 orators, by Jewish authorities, to plead causes of im- 
 portance before a Roman tribunal : (as of Nicolaus of 
 Damascus regularly, by Herod ; of Irenseus, by Herod 
 Antipas 1 ; and of Tertullus, by the High Priest Ana- 
 
 e B. Jud. vi. ii. i. 5. Cf. vii. 2. f lb. v. v. 2. vi. ii. 4. g Acts xxvi. 14. 
 xxii. 9. h Acts xxi. 37. * Ant. Jud. xvii. ix. 4. 
 
Time and Order of St. Matthew'' s Gospel. 141 
 
 nias, and the Jewish Sanhedrim 1 :) all these are proofs 
 that the native Jews, even those of rank and quality, 
 either did not understand the Greek language at all, 
 or understood it very imperfectly. How much more, 
 then, the common people. 
 
 The native dialect in the time of Strabo was still 
 the same, both within and beyond the Euphrates, as 
 it had always been ; Ka\ t rj<s SioXcktov Se /u-expi vvv Siape- 
 vovartjg Trjs avTrjs, tois tc e/cro? tov Ei '(pparov, Ka\ tols ev- 
 ro? k : yet the Greek language, we may take it for 
 granted, was always more generally prevalent in Syria 
 and in Egypt, than it ever could be in Judaea. Nor 
 did this prevalence of the Greek prevent but that even 
 the Greek Gospels, and the other Scriptures, were 
 speedily translated into Syriac, for the use of Syrian 
 Christians ; and into Coptic, for the use of Egyptian. 
 Such is the essential vitality of language ; and so 
 tenacious are the common people of their aboriginal 
 tongues. And, indeed, if the Greek alone would have 
 sufficed every where, out of Palestine, as the vehicle 
 of a popular^address ; what necessity for the gift of 
 any other language ? and if the Greek was understood 
 even in Palestine, what necessity even there, for the 
 gift of that ? 
 
 The hypothesis of a double Gospel by St. Matthew ; 
 one in Hebrew, and another in Greek ; or of a double 
 publication of the same Gospel ; once in Hebrew, and 
 again in Greek ; which has been invented as calculated 
 to meet every difficulty — to save the credit of testi- 
 mony, which is exclusively in favour of an Hebrew 
 Gospel, and yet to account for the origin of the Greek, 
 which must have superseded it — is far from producing 
 these effects. It is clearly gratuitous ; for testimony 
 gives it no countenance whatever : besides which, it 
 
 k ii. cap. i. page 225. 1. 9. 
 
 i Acts xxiv. 1. 
 
Dissertation Second. 
 
 142 
 
 supposes what is even more improbable than an ori- 
 ginal Gospel in Greek. If both these Gospels were 
 equally intended for Jews, it seems inconceivable that 
 the same work, designed for the same persons, should 
 have been composed in two different languages ; or trans- 
 lated from one language into another. The hypothesis, 
 I believe, does not assume the publication of two such 
 Gospels at once, but at different times ; which is only 
 to increase the difficulty. For if St. Matthew had 
 already published an Hebrew Gospel, it must have 
 been because an Hebrew Gospel was sufficient ; and if 
 so, there could be no necessity for another in Greek. 
 Those who would have required a Greek Gospel could 
 not have wanted an Hebrew : and those who required 
 one in Hebrew, could not have wanted one in Greek. 
 In any case, no more than a single Gospel, and in a 
 single language, was to be expected for the benefit of 
 the same church. Besides which, they who would 
 have required a Greek Gospel, would have required 
 also such explanations as even St. Matthew’s Greek 
 Gospel has nowhere given ; and they who would have 
 required no such explanations, would not have re- 
 quired a Gospel in Greek. And this appears to me 
 the most fatal objection to the hypothesis in question. 
 It is the same thing whether we suppose an original 
 Gospel in Greek ; or a translation, by the author him- 
 self, of an original Hebrew Gospel into Greek. A 
 Greek Gospel would be requisite for those only to 
 whom an Hebrew Gospel would have been useless ; and 
 these we may take it for granted would be none but 
 the Gentiles as such : in which case, it is morally cer- 
 tain that St. Matthew’s Greek Gospel, whether an 
 original, or a translation from the Hebrew by the au- 
 thor of it himself, would have borne as indubitable 
 marks of the description of readers for which it was 
 
Time and Order of St. Matthew's Gospel. 143 
 
 intended, as either St. Mark’s, or St. Luke’s, or St. 
 John’s does. 
 
 The date which is assigned to this Gospel : pera ertj 
 oktco ai /aAjjxjseM? : eight or nine years after the as- 
 
 cension : may be the best supported by ancient au- 
 thorities of any : and, perhaps, upon one supposition 
 (for which we shall perceive hereafter there is some 
 reason), viz. that the Gospel was actually composed 
 at twice, it may be true. It is possible, however, 
 that, like many others, it was originally conjectural, 
 and founded upon the following coincidence. Eight 
 or nine years after the ascension — referred to the 
 eighteenth of Tiberius, U. C. 785; bring us to U. C. 
 794. Now this year was the year of the conversion 
 of Cornelius ; the first overt step in the dispensation 
 of the Gospel to the Gentiles, and preliminary to the 
 promulgation of Christianity, by the ministry of the 
 Apostles, in other countries besides Judaea. If it was 
 assumed, then, that they quitted Judaea, for this pur- 
 pose, either at this time, or shortly after ; it would be 
 inferred, as a natural consequence, that St. Matthew’s 
 Gospel must have been written either now, or a little 
 before it : for it would be obvious that until the whole 
 of the original witnesses and ministers of the word 
 were about to leave the mother church to itself, or 
 under the care of one of their body only ; no written 
 Gospel either would be wanted, or might be expected 
 to be supplied for its use. 
 
 This date, however, I would not be understood ab- 
 solutely to reject or impugn : for it may after all be 
 true. It must, nevertheless, be admitted, that, with 
 regard to the determination of the date of the first 
 Gospel, a knowledge of the exact time when the Apo- 
 stles quitted Judaea, to preach in other countries, is of 
 cardinal importance ; and yet there is no question 
 
144 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 which is more difficult to be decided. It would be 
 much easier for us to say after what period they were 
 no longer there, than when they first left it ; and be- 
 fore what time they would probably not quit it, than 
 at what time they actually did so. For instance ; it is 
 not likely that any of them would leave Judaea before 
 the conversion of Cornelius ; that is, as I shall shew 
 hereafter, before the end of the first twelve years after 
 the ascension; U. C. 795. A.D. 42. Again, it is not 
 likely that any of them, except St. James, would be 
 left there still, after St. Peter had set out upon his 
 Evangelical circuit ; that is, as we have seen already, 
 after the twelfth of Claudius ; U. C. 805. A. D. 52. 
 It would seem, then, that the Apostles, all but St. 
 James, must have left the mother country between U.C. 
 795. and U.C. 805. A.D. 42. and A. D. 52. But, 
 whether they all left it at once ; or, when some went 
 abroad, others might not stay for a time longer at 
 home ; must still be an uncertain point : and for the 
 decision of this, it is to be lamented that we possess no 
 sufficient data. 
 
 I should be disposed to admit that all the Apostles 
 were at Jerusalem, at the time which is specified Gal. 
 i. 19 - and answers to Acts ix. 26-30. with the return of 
 St. Paul from Damascus, Claudii 1°. ineunte ; U.C. 794. 
 and A.D. 41. All or some of them, too, might still be in 
 Jerusalem at the point of time denoted by Acts xiii. 
 31 : which is the year of St. Paul’s first mission to the 
 Gentiles ; and soon after that had commenced. But I 
 see no proof that they were all still there, Acts xv. 1— 
 30. at the time of the council in question ; which was 
 after the return of St. Paul to Antioch from his first 
 mission, U. C. 797 . and before his departure thence, 
 upon his second, U. C. 802 ; and, probably, nearer to 
 the latter than to the former. I say that there is no 
 
Time and Order of St. Matthew's Gospel. 145 
 
 proof of this : for, notwithstanding the mention of the 
 Apostles, simply , which repeatedly occurs in the course 
 of this account; if we compare it with Acts xxi. 18- 
 25. when James was the only Apostle still present in 
 Jerusalem, that letter is there ascribed to James and 
 the elders, which in the first instance was ascribed 
 to the Apostles, and the elders, and the rest of the 
 church in conjunction. Moreover, upon the previous 
 discussion, Acts xv. 6-21. the only speakers were Peter 
 and James ; and their speeches were clearly the 
 speeches of persons in authority, that is, of Apostles ; 
 but as speeches of the only such persons present, and 
 addressed to those who were not Apostles. I should 
 infer, then, that Peter and James were the only Apo- 
 stles at that time present in Jerusalem : I see no abso- 
 lute or conclusive reason to suppose that even St.John 
 was then present likewise : though he was so on the 
 next occasion. 
 
 The same conclusion would follow from Gal. ii. 
 1-10. the time of which, as we have seen already, 
 answers to U. C. 805. ineunte , A. D. 52. Peter and 
 James and John alone, out of the eleven Apostles, 
 would not be called cttvXoi , or pillars of the church 
 of Jerusalem at this time, in particular, if the other 
 eight had been present in Jerusalem as well as they. 
 It would seem, then, that soon after U. C. 795. A. D. 
 42. the close of the twelfth year from the ascension, 
 U. C. 783. A. D. 30 ; none of the Apostles was left in 
 Judaea, except Peter and James and John: and after 
 U. C. 805. A. D. 52. the close of the twenty-second 
 year from the same date — none, in all probability, but 
 James. And this agrees with 1 Cor. ix. 5. the time 
 of which, as I shall shew hereafter, was three years 
 later than U. C. 805. the close of the year in question. 
 
 VOL. i. L 
 
146 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 I am aware that these words of St. Paul apply pro- 
 perly only to the married Apostles ; or to those who 
 were leading about at the time, a wife who was a 
 sister. I am aware, too, that among these married 
 Apostles, none seem to be specified except the brethren 
 of the Lord , and Cephas. These brethren of the Lord 
 I do not believe to have been of the Twelve ; but Ce- 
 phas certainly was so : and all, whether of the Twelve, 
 or not, were doubtless Apostles of the Circumcision ; 
 whose ministry for a time had been confined to the 
 Jews of Judsea. And if Peter, a married man, was 
 now travelling about in company with his wife ; a 
 fortiori , the rest of the Apostles, whom we do not 
 know to have been married men, but who, we may 
 take it for granted, would not stay in Judaea, after he 
 was gone abroad, would be doing the same. 
 
 If we may draw any general conclusion from such 
 scattered notices in reference to the fact, as have been 
 preserved by tradition ; the Apostles did not proceed 
 at random, when they set out from Judaea to preach the 
 Gospel in other countries. And this conclusion is so 
 agreeable to the reason of the thing, and so naturally 
 to have been expected from the solemnity of the occa- 
 sion, and the importance of the end in view ; that tra- 
 dition, so far, may be implicitly trusted. It would 
 appear that they divided the world among them, and 
 selected each his peculiar region ; or, what is equally 
 probable, and only agreeable to what they had before 
 done in the lifetime of their Master himself, they went 
 forth, in different directions, but in companies of two 
 together. Amidst this distribution of provinces, it is 
 observable that the Roman empire, as such, is tradi- 
 tionally assigned only to Peter and John : the lot of 
 the rest of the Apostles is uniformly cast in countries 
 
Time and Order of St. Matthew's Gospel. 147 
 
 more or less independent of that; in ^Ethiopia, Scythia, 
 Parthia, Babylonia, or India *. Now, we shall see, 
 hereafter, that the time of St. Paul’s first mission to 
 
 * According to Ilippolytus 
 7 repl t5>v i/ 3 \ aTrocrToXcov (Operum 
 ii. 30.) Andrew preached in Scy- 
 thia and Thrace: Philip in Phry- 
 gia : Bartholomew in India : 
 Matthew in Parthia : Thomas 
 in Upper Asia and India : Jude 
 in Edessa and Mesopotamia a . 
 
 According to Origen (ii. 24. 
 A— B. Selecta in Gen. tom. iii — 
 or Euseb. E. H. iii. i. 71. A. B.) 
 Thomas preached in Parthia : 
 Andrew in Scythia : John in 
 Asia, dying at Ephesus : Peter 
 in Pontus, &c. : Paul in Asia, 
 Macedonia, Greece, &c. 
 
 Eusebius, Dem. Evang. iii. v. 
 112.D: KrjpvTTeiv 8' els navras to 
 tov ’ lrj(rov ovofxa, Ka\ ras 7 rapado- 
 £ovs npa^eis avrov Kara re aypovs 
 Kai Kara noXiv diddaiceiv, Kai tovs 
 pev avrSiV ttjv 'Pcopalatv ap^rjv, Kai 
 avrrjv 8e ttjv /3 aaiXiKcoTaTrjv noXiv 
 velpaadac, tovs 8e ttjv Hepaeov, rovs 
 8e rrjv * Appevicav , erepovs 8e to Ildp- 
 6oiv edvos, Kai av naXiv to ’2kv6g>u , 
 TLvas 8e r}8r) Kai eir avra ttjs oIkov- 
 pevrjs iXOelv ra aKpa, evri re rrjv ’lz/_ 
 8S)v (f)8d(Tai yoapav, Kai erepovs vnep 
 tov ’ZlKeavov irapeXBelv enl ras ku- 
 Xovpevas BpeTTaviKas vr]<rovs, Tavra 
 ovk %t eycoye K , r. X. Cf. vii. 355. 
 A. and ix. 458. A. 
 
 If Eusebius refers here to the 
 tradition of any Apostle’s visit- 
 ing Britain, and preaching the 
 Gospel there, it is most probably 
 to one concerning St. Paul. Yet 
 Origen, iii. 858. B. C. in Matt. 
 Comm. Series secundum veterem 
 interpretem, cap. 39 : denies that 
 
 Britain had received the Gospel 
 in his time : Non enim fertur 
 prsedicatum esse evangelium a- 
 pud omnes iEthiopas, maxime 
 apud eos, qui sunt ultra flumen : 
 sed nec apud Seras, nec apud 
 Orientem audierunt Christiani- 
 tatis sermonem. quid autem di- 
 camus de Britannis, aut Ger- 
 manis, qui sunt circa Oceanum, 
 vel apud Barbaros, Dacos, et 
 Sarmatas, et Scythas, quorum 
 plurimi nondum audierunt evan- 
 gelii verbum, &c. By Tertullian, 
 on the contrary, ii. 290. Adv. 
 Judaeos, 7, among the countries 
 which professed the faith of 
 Christ in his days are reckoned, 
 Hispaniarum omnes termini, et 
 Galliarum diversse nationes, et 
 Britannorum inaccessa Romanis 
 loca, Christo vero subdita, &c. 
 
 Hieronymus, iii. 103. ad calc. : 
 Inlsaiaexi: Tradunt Ecclesiasti- 
 cs historise quod Apostoli in toto 
 orbe dispersi Evangelium praedi- 
 carint : ita ut quidam Persas 
 Indosque penetrarent ; et ^Ethi- 
 opia daret manus suas Deo ; et 
 trans flumina iEthiopise inde 
 Christo munera deferrentur. Ib. 
 279. ad calc.: In Isaise xxxiv : 
 Et spiritus* illius congregaverit 
 eos, dederitque eis sortes atque 
 diviserit, ut alius ad Indos, alius 
 ad Hispanias, alius ad Ulyricum, 
 alius ad Graeciam pergeret : et 
 unusquisque in Evangelii sui at- 
 que doctrinae provincia requie- 
 sceret. 
 
 Hieronymus, iv. pars i a 167. ad 
 
 8 Thomas, indeed, is reputed to have preached in Edessa, as well as Jude ; 
 and there is no reason, why both should not have preached there. There was a 
 Martyrium or Basilica, there, dedicated to St. Thomas, A. D. h 7 ® : see Socrates 
 E.H. iv. xviii. 228. B ; used as a church, and the principal place of resort, for 
 that purpose, in the city. 
 
 ii 2 
 
148 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 the Gentiles, in concert with Barnabas, was dictated 
 by the Holy Ghost ; and that the time so dictated was 
 
 princ. : Epistola ad Marcellam : 
 Erat igitur (sc. verbum Dei) 
 uno eodemque tempore et cum 
 Apostolis quadraginta diebus, et 
 cum Angelis, et in Patre . . . cum 
 Thoma in India ; cum Petro 
 Romse ; cum Paulo in Illyrico ; 
 cum Tito in Creta ; cum An- 
 drea in Achaia, cum singulis 
 Apostolis et Apostolicis viris, in 
 singulis cunctisque regionibus. 
 
 Chrysostom, In Duodecim 
 Sanctos Apostolos,Operum (* Spu- 
 ria) viii.i i. B. C. supposes An- 
 drew to have preached in Greece; 
 Simon among the barbarians ; 
 Thomas in ^Ethiopia; John at 
 Ephesus ; Peter at Rome ; Paul 
 in all the world ; Bartholomew 
 in Lycaonia ; Philip at Hiera- 
 polis ; that is, in Phrygia. 
 
 Socrates, Ecclesiastica Histo- 
 ria, i. xix. 50. B. says, the apo- 
 stles, when they set out on their 
 evangelical errand, divided the 
 world among them ; that Tho- 
 mas was allotted Parthia, Mat- 
 thew ^Ethiopia, Bartholomew In- 
 dia, and the like. 
 
 Theodorit, i. 900. in Ps. xlv. 
 5 : 6 pev yap edpape n pos ’ll 'dovs, 
 6 de 7 rpos ’l<T7 ravovs' Kal 6 pev rr)V 
 A’tyvnrov, 6 de rrjv 'EXXaSa Kare- 
 Xafie’ Kal erepoi pev rrji > ’I ovdaiav 
 enicTTevdrjo'av apdeiv, erepoi de 2 u- 
 plav Kal KiXiKiav , aXXoi de dXXoov 
 eOvcov rrjv yecopytav evexeipicrOrjcrav. 
 
 Cf. ibid. 1061. Ps. xlvii. 13: 
 1424. Ps. cxvi. 1 : ii. 255. in 
 Isaige xi. 14. 
 
 Theodorit, i. 1425. Ps. cxvi. 1 : 
 
 ovrcos 6 ’ic oavvrjs 6 navv rrjv * Aeriav rr/s 
 7 rporepas rjXevdepcocrev acrefieias’ ov- 
 Toos 6 Oeaneaios ’A vdpeas rrjv ‘EX- 
 Xada rats rrjs Oeoyvooaias aKrlai Kar- 
 rjvyacrev' ovrcos 6 Oeioraros &iXin- 
 7ros <&pvycov eKarepcov rr/v nXdvqv 
 dirjXey^eV ovrcos 6 peyas Uerpos 
 an 6 rrjs * lepovaaXrjp pexpi rfs ‘Pfo- 
 paias edpape noXecos, k, r. X. 
 
 Operumiv.928. Grsecorum Af- 
 fectuum Curatio, Disp. ix : ol de 
 rjperepoi aAiels, Kal ol reXcovai, Kal 6 
 CKVToropos, anacriv avdpconois rovs 
 evayyeXiKovs npoarevr)voxa(ri vopovs. 
 Kal ov povov * Pcopaiovs , Kal rovs vno 
 rovrois reXovvras, aXXa Kal ra "2 kv - 
 Bikcl , Kal ra 'ZavpopariKa edvrj, Kal 
 ’lvdovs, Kal AlOionas, Kal Hepcras, 
 Kal 2?ipas, Kal 'YpKavovs, Kal BaKrpi- 
 avovs, Kal Bperravovs, Kal Kipj3povs, 
 Kal Teppavovs , Kal ana^anXcos nav 
 eOvos Kal yevos avOpoonoov, degaaOai 
 rov crravpcodevros rovs vopovs ave- 
 nenrav. 
 
 The abstract prefixed to QE- 
 cumenius in Nov. Testamentum, 
 of the lives and labours of the 
 several Apostles — supposes An- 
 drew to have preached to the 
 Scythse, Sogdiani, Sacse, &c. k 
 and ultimately to have suffered 
 martyrdom under iEgeas, pro- 
 consul of Achaia, and been bu- 
 ried at Patras — Philip to have 
 preached in Phrygia, and been 
 buried at Hierapolis — Bartho- 
 lomew to have preached to the 
 Indians, surnamed evdaipoves, 
 and delivered them the Gospel 
 according to St. Matthew, and 
 to have died in Armenia Magna 
 
 k In the same work, i. 4 to. D. on Romans xvi. 15. it is observed of Philolo- 
 gus, mentioned in that text, that he was traditionally said to have been the first 
 bishop of Sinope; having been ordained by Andrew. Andrew might ordain a 
 Philologus bishop of Sinope — yet not the Philologus of the Epistle to the Ro- 
 mans : but if he ordained any bishop there, he preached of course, and founded 
 churches, in that quarter. Cf. Chron. Paschale ii. viii. 127. 
 
Time and Order of St. Matthew's Gospel. 149 
 
 U. C. 797. the beginning of the fifteenth year from the 
 ascension, U. C. 783. It would appear also from the 
 subsequent history of these two Apostles, that the scene 
 of their ministry likewise was destined to be the Ro- 
 man empire : there is no proof that either of them 
 preached in the east. It would appear, therefore, that 
 their ministry in respect to the Gentiles, if parallel to 
 the ministry of any of the Twelve with respect to the 
 Circumcision, was more especially so to the ministry 
 of Peter and John. All four, in particular, laboured 
 in the same regions, and among the same people. But 
 it would appear that the ministry of Paul and Bar- 
 nabas took precedence of the ministry of Peter and 
 John ; for the former began U. C. 797 ; but it cannot 
 
 Indica — Thomas to have preach- 
 ed to the Parthians, Medes, Per- 
 sians, Carmanians, Hyrcanians, 
 Bactrians, and to have died 
 in India 1 — Matthew to have 
 written his Gospel in Hebrew, 
 and died at Hierapolis of Par- 
 thia — Lebbseus, Thaddeeus, or 
 Jude, to have preached in Edes- 
 sa and Mesopotamia; and to 
 have died and been buried at 
 Berytus — Matthias to have 
 preached and died in Ethiopia, 
 &c. Cf. Chron. Paschale ii. viii. 
 J 37 - 
 
 Photius, Bibl. p. it 7. Codex 
 170, describes a work (of whose 
 author, however, he knew no 
 more than that he lived at 
 Constantinople, later than the 
 reign of Heraclius, A. D. 641.) 
 in one part of which, says 
 he, the writer ‘iLfipaiiccov Ae- 
 £e<x>v eKTideTcu arjpacrias, Kai twv 
 
 anoa-ToXcov eKaaros ev 6 a re to aco- 
 rrjpiov eKrjpvtje pa6r]pa, Kai iv <u 
 T07TW TWV d.V@pa>7riV(DV 7T OVCOV aV€- 
 
 ivavcraTo. As this work consist- 
 ed of paprvpiaL and XPW* LS from 
 every description of writer, sa- 
 cred or profane, bearing upon 
 the truth of Christianity ; and 
 appears to have been the com- 
 position of a diligent and inqui- 
 sitive person ; it doubtless con- 
 tained much valuable informa- 
 tion : the loss of which cannot 
 be too much regretted. 
 
 We know little of the per- 
 sonal exit of most of the apo- 
 stles, on any early authority, 
 further than what Clement of 
 Alexandria, Strom, iv. 9. 595. 
 line 30, quotes from Heracleon, 
 that Matthew, Philip, Thomas, 
 Levi, and many others, died a 
 natural death. 
 
 1 Arethas, in Rev. xxi. 16 — 21. apud CEcumenium, ii. 827. A — 829. C. explain- 
 ing the twelve stones of the twelve apostles, makes the Beryll significant of Tho- 
 mas, especially of, t b paKpobaivls rrjs dizocrToX^s, p-ixP LS Kai 5 ia 6a\d(ra"ir]s, 
 
 tfcTeA.eo'fleiVTjs. In like manner, he explains the Chrysoprasus, of Thaddaeus, 6 
 rtp Avya p(p PcuriAt? 5 E8 eVirrjs rr/v t ov Xpiarou nicrriv evayytAio’dp.ei'os. 
 
 L 3 
 
150 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 be proved that the latter began before U. C. 805. 
 between seven and eight years later : and before this 
 time, while Paul and Barnabas were actively engaged 
 among the Gentiles, we have seen reason to believe that 
 Peter and John were still in Judaea. Yet we saw 
 that when St. Paul, in his second journey, would have 
 entered into the province of Asia, and afterwards into 
 Bithynia, the Spirit would not permit him ; from 
 which we inferred that the business of evangelizing 
 those parts first was reserved for some other Apostle ; 
 which Apostle there is reason to believe was St. Peter, 
 and, perhaps, St. John. With regard to these two 
 regions in particular, we do not know that St. Paul 
 was ever in Bithynia ; but we know that St. Peter 
 was : we do not know that he ever preached in the 
 province of Asia out of Ephesus, during his three 
 years’ residence in that city m ; but we do know that 
 St. John must have preached there some time or other, 
 either before or after him*. Nor did St. Paul’s resi- 
 dence at Ephesus begin before U. C. 806. A.D. 53; 
 which is a year after St. Peter, and, probably, after St. 
 John had left Jerusalem. 
 
 I would infer, then, from these facts, that, in the 
 business of propagating the Gospel, the Apostles acted 
 under an higher direction than their own wills ; that 
 they set out at such times, and on such commissions, 
 as the Spirit prescribed to them. This is certain 
 with respect to the first and original mission of Paul 
 and Barnabas ; and I think it is presumptively certain 
 
 * We know that St. Paul, churches, which lay round about 
 notwithstanding his residence at Ephesus, and to which epistles 
 Ephesus, never personally visit- are addressed in the Book of 
 ed Laodicea, Hierapolis, or Co- Revelation, must have been per- 
 losssc ; and we have every rea- sonally known to St.John, 
 son to believe that the six 
 
 m Acts xx. lS. 31. xix. 2*>. 
 
Time and Order of /St. Matthew's Gospel. J 51 
 
 with respect to that of Peter and John. Though these 
 two Apostles might be expressly designed to cooperate 
 with the former ; yet the time of their ministry was 
 not arrived either U. C. 797. when St. Paul’s first cir- 
 cuit began, or U. C. 80S. when he set out on his se- 
 cond ; but U. C. 805. when they all four met at Jerusa- 
 lem, and afterwards departed, with a common under- 
 standing that two of them should go, eh rrjv n repiToiarjv, 
 the other two, eh ra eQvtj : and that was probably the 
 reason why they continued until then in Jerusalem. But 
 this reason, which originated in the future destination 
 of these two Apostles in particular, would apply exclu- 
 sively to them. What, then, may we ask, had been 
 the disposal of the remaining eight ; whose Evan- 
 gelical commission, we have had occasion to suppose, 
 took them into parts of the world widely remote from 
 the Roman empire ? It seems to me the most probable 
 conjecture, either that when the Holy Ghost prescribed 
 to Paul and Barnabas the time and occasion of their 
 first mission to the Gentiles, it suggested to these also 
 the time and occasion when they should leave Judaea, 
 upon their respective missions into the east ; or that, 
 after the conversion of Cornelius, and the accession of 
 the first-fruits of the Gentile church ; (accompanied, 
 as it was, by the beginning to preach the Gospel to 
 Jews of the Dispersion, out of Judaea ;) had intimated 
 the arrival of the time for the publication of the Gos- 
 pel much more indiscriminately, and on a much wider 
 scale, than before ; they had already received such di- 
 rections to go abroad ; and that all the Apostles, 
 except Peter, and John, and either James, were actu- 
 ally employed among the Circumcision in foreign parts, 
 before St. Paul was sent upon any circuit, as such, to 
 the Gentiles. 
 
 The time, then, of their departure from J udaea would 
 
 L 4 
 
152 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 coincide either with the date of St. Paul’s first circuit 
 to the Gentiles, A. D. 44. the beginning of the fifteenth 
 year after the ascension ; or with some time between 
 that, and the year of the conversion of Cornelius, A. D. 
 41. Other reasons for fixing upon one of these dates 
 will appear hereafter ; at present I shall observe only 
 that they derive some countenance even from tradi- 
 tion. The Virgin Mary, whom our Lord committed 
 to the care of St. John, at the time of his crucifixion, 
 A.X). 30. is reported to have lived with that Apostle 
 fourteen or fifteen years afterwards, until the time of 
 her death; before he left Palestine 11 . The time of 
 her death would thus coincide with A. D. 43. or 44. 
 The reputed time of the death of the Virgin might be 
 the real time when the first of the Apostles left Ju- 
 daea ; which would, consequently, be about A. D. 43. 
 or 44. 
 
 If St. Matthew was among the number of those who 
 departed at that time; it may be taken for granted that 
 his Gospel was not written after A. D. 44 : yet there 
 is no reason to suppose it would be written long be- 
 fore it: and if we place its composition between the 
 time of the conversion of Cornelius, A. D. 41. and the 
 time of St. Paul’s first circuit to the Gentiles, A. D. 44. 
 and even in A. 13. 42. itself ; we may not be far from 
 the truth. It will follow, therefore, that it was pro- 
 bably written nine or ten years after the ascension, 
 referred to the eighteenth of Tiberius ; but eleven 
 or twelve years after it, as referred to his sixteenth : 
 and it had been about ten years in existence when St. 
 Peter set out upon his Evangelical circuit, A. 13. 52: 
 the connection of which conclusion with the history 
 
 n Wetsten, Prol. to the Gospel of St. John. Lardner, Credibility, vol. xv. 
 chap. q. p. 373. Vide Arethas, in Rev. vii. 4. apud CEcumenium, ii. 713. D — 
 714. A. 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel. 153 
 
 of St. Mark’s Gospel may be further explained as fol- 
 lows. 
 
 The testimony of Irenaeus °, which, without denying 
 that St. Matthew’s Gospel was written first, and writ- 
 ten for the Hebrew church in their own language, yet 
 makes it to have been written when Peter and Paul 
 were preaching, and founding the church , 6e/j.e\iovvTcov 
 t*i v eKKXrjarlav, at Rome ; and without denying that St. 
 Mark’s was written next to St. Matthew’s, supposes it 
 to have been written, uera rbv tovtwv l£o<W, that is, as 
 I have no doubt was the meaning of Irenaeus, after their 
 death P; unless it be understood with very considerable 
 latitude, asserts facts which could not possibly have 
 been the case. St. Peter and St. Paul were never at 
 Rome in conjunction on any occasion but the last, (if 
 even then,) either in the eleventh or in the twelfth of 
 Nero ; at which time it would be absurd to talk of 
 their founding a church, the foundation of which, as the 
 Epistle to the Romans alone would prove, had been laid 
 at least nine or ten years before. We shall see, here- 
 after, that there was a church at Rome as early as the 
 ninth of Claudius. Besides, in the eleventh or the 
 twelfth of Nero, there was no Apostle left in Judaea, 
 by whom an Hebrew Gospel might have been written : 
 the Hebrew church itself had been, for a time, dis- 
 persed ; for the Jewish war was then beginning or be- 
 gun. And as to St. Mark, instead of surviving the death 
 of St. Peter or St. Paul, he died, as we shall see by and 
 by, before them both. And though the word e£o<W should 
 be understood in the sense of departure 9 ; this would 
 make no difference ; for when St. Peter left Rome, it 
 may be proved that St. Mark left it along with him. 
 
 But instead of considering the difficulties connected 
 
 o Adv. Haer. iii. i. 198. 1 . 30. Cf. Fragm. 471. 1 . 28. 
 2 Pet. i. 15. *1 Cf. Heb. xi. 22. 
 
 P Cf. Luke ix. 3 1 . 
 
154 
 
 Dissertatio?i Secotid. 
 
 with the literal acceptation of this testimony, it is bet- 
 ter that we should endeavour to account for the mis- 
 apprehension which might have produced it ; that is, 
 to separate the truth, which it may possibly contain, 
 from the erroneous matter mixed up with it : and the 
 conjecture which will separate them, I think, is this: 
 viz. that St. Mark translated the Hebrew Gospel of 
 St. Matthew, and wrote his own supplementary to it, 
 either both at Rome, or both about the same time. 
 
 The discovery of St. Matthew’s Gospel in India, or 
 as some think in Ethiopia, referred to above r , is a 
 proof that when the Apostles set out upon their re- 
 spective missions they took with them copies of this 
 Gospel ; of which no translation might be wanted for 
 the Jews of tJpper Asia ; but of which one would ne- 
 cessarily be wanted for Christian converts in Lower 
 Asia, or in Rome. In this case, St. Peter and St. 
 Mark might bring the same Gospel to Rome — or 
 whithersoever they had previously gone ; which St. 
 Mark either had translated already, or might translate 
 after they came there. No supposition is better calcu- 
 lated to explain whatever there is in St. Mark’s Gos- 
 pel, peculiar to it, as compared with St. Matthew’s, 
 and yet what there is in common in both ; in what it 
 agrees with his, and in what it differs from his ; 
 their verbal coincidences, both in the historical and in 
 the discursive parts, throughout ; the deviation of St. 
 Mark’s order from that of St. Matthew in the arrange- 
 ment of some detached facts, with an absolute coinci- 
 dence between them in the general outline of the whole ; 
 the circumstantiality of detail in the history of mi- 
 racles, and the conciseness in the report of discourses, 
 which are the reverse of each other in each ; the omis- 
 sion of nothing by St. Mark, recorded by St. Luke, 
 
 r Vide supra page 1 30. 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel . 155 
 
 which is not omitted by St. Matthew also; the very 
 supplementary relation of St. Mark’s Gospel to St. 
 Matthew's : all which things are critically character- 
 istic of one Gospel as adapted to another ; of St. 
 Mark’s Greek as adapted to St. Matthew’s, and that 
 by a common hand, the author of the one, and the 
 translator of the other ; and as forming both toge- 
 ther, and as always designed to form, neither more 
 nor less than one work. If there is any difference be- 
 tween them in certain proprieties of idiom, confined to 
 either, respectively; this, as we have seen, is trifling, 
 and may be explained on the principle that, in his 
 own Gospel, St. Mark would write in his natural cha- 
 racter ; but in translating St. Matthew, he would be 
 restricted to that of his original. The same conjec- 
 ture solves the problem concerning the origin of the 
 Greek Gospel of St. Matthew more satisfactorily than 
 any which has yet been advanced ; and brings Ire- 
 nseus’s testimony, which is venerable for its antiquity, 
 as near as possible to the truth. It accounts also for 
 a remarkable assertion of Papias s , viz. that St. Mark 
 wrote his Gospel, ov /xcVro* ra£a. If this means, as the 
 context proves it to mean, without regard to order ; 
 the assertion would not be true of St. Mark’s Gospel 
 in particular, which is as observant of order as any of 
 the rest. But if St. Matthew’s was translated at the 
 time when St. Mark’s was written ; it would be true to 
 a certain extent of that, considered as his work also. 
 
 In a word, it is superfluous to observe that the trans- 
 lator of an Hebrew Gospel must himself have been ac- 
 quainted with Hebrew : it is more to the purpose to 
 remark that the translator of St. Matthew’s Hebrew 
 Gospel into Greek must have been some one of equal 
 authority to St. Matthew himself ; otherwise his 
 
 s Eus. E. II. iii. xxxix. 113. A. 
 
156 
 
 Dissertation Second . 
 
 translation would never have superseded the original. 
 The translator of St. Matthew’s Hebrew Gospel, too, as 
 it may be inferred not merely from the great variety of 
 Hebrew words or phrases, simply clothed in Greek, 
 which the translation exhibits ; but from certain iso- 
 lated expressions more remarkable than others, which 
 may be cited from it ; shews plainly that, in translat- 
 ing from Hebrew into Greek, he was translating from 
 a language, which was his own, into a language, which 
 was not. Thus, Matt. v. 22. 'Pa/ca — M cope — both He- 
 brew words ; would not have been suffered to remain 
 in their original form by any but a native Jew ; 
 or one fully acquainted with the native language : 
 nor, Matt, xxiii. 15. tv\v fypd v have been opposed, by 
 way of discrimination, to rrjv OdXao-o-av, except under 
 the same circumstances. No Greek, translating He- 
 brew, would have transferred this idiom into his own 
 language ; when he might so easily have written rhv 
 yyv. 
 
 The Latin terms which occur in the Gospel of St. 
 
 Matthew, as KoSpdvrrjS — / u\lov — Krjvcros KOvuTOjSla — 
 
 irpaiTtopiov Xeyewv — /uloSios Stjvdpiov — ctcrcrdpiov — 
 
 though they are not all peculiar to it, and might have 
 become current wherever the Roman empire had been 
 established; may yet be a presumptive argument that it 
 was translated, as St. Mark’s was composed, at Rome : 
 and the coincidence between both the Gospels in the 
 use of such remarkable words as ayyapevcrai — cppayeX- 
 \wo-ai — KoXof3wcrai — and the like — serves equally to 
 render it probable that the translator of the one, and 
 the author of the other, were the same person. Nor is 
 it an improbable conjecture that this same person, be- 
 sides being a Jew, and intimately familiar with Judaea, 
 was also a Roman citizen, or one of the order of Li- 
 bertini ; numbers of whom were resident at Rome. 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel . 157 
 
 This supposition is in unison with the name of St. 
 Mark ; which at least is Roman, and not Jewish. 
 
 I have argued hitherto on the hypothesis that the 
 First Epistle of St. Peter was written at Rome : and 
 with respect to the question of the date of St. Mark’s 
 Gospel, the truth or the falsehood of that hypothesis, 
 as we have seen, was alike indifferent to the result. 
 There are no more than two visits of St. Peter to 
 Rome, any more than of St. Paul, on record ; the one, 
 as we have shewn, not earlier than the fourteenth of 
 Claudius, and the other, as it will be shewn hereafter, 
 not earlier than the eleventh of Nero ; after one or the 
 other of which the Gospel must have been written. It 
 could not have been after the second ; for, according 
 to Eusebius and Jerome t 9 St. Mark himself died in the 
 eighth of Nero, and, therefore, could have composed 
 no Gospel after the eleventh. It must have been, con- 
 sequently, after the first visit ; and this, even on the 
 evidence of the Epistle, is manifestly possible : for 
 if St. Mark was with St. Peter when he wrote the 
 Epistle ; then, if he wrote it at Rome, and before the 
 second of Nero, St. Mark was with him at Rome, be- 
 fore the second of Nero : if he wrote it, after he had 
 been at Rome, from any other quarter, St. Mark, who 
 was still with him in this other quarter, we may pre- 
 sume must have been with him previously at Rome. 
 
 In the further prosecution, however, of our present 
 subject, it becomes necessary to state the objections to 
 this hypothesis ; which are as follows. 
 
 I. The Second Epistle of St. Peter, by referring 11 to 
 the First, proves that it was written after the First ; 
 and by quoting, or referring to v , the Epistle to the 
 Romans, proves that it was written after the Epistle 
 
 t E. H. ii. xxiv. 66. D. Hieronymus, Catalogus S.S. Eccles. viii. Operum 
 iv. Pars ii a . 104. « iii. 1. v iii. 15. 16. 
 
158 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 to the Romans also. The fact of such a reference I 
 assert with confidence : because, this very doctrine that 
 the longsuffering of God is designed to bring men to 
 repentance, coupled, moreover, with the assurance of a 
 judgment to come ; which is referred to as contained 
 in the writings of St. Paul ; occurs p^rwg at Rom. ii. 
 3-10. but nowhere, in his Epistles, besides : and that 
 St. Peter is referring to some one of St. Paul’s Epistles, 
 in particular, appears from his mentioning, directly 
 after, the rest in the complex. Nor is it any objection, 
 that he speaks of what St. Paul had written primarily 
 to the Romans, as written to them also whom he is 
 addressing ; viz. the churches of Asia Minor. The 
 words eypayp-eu ujuliv imply, Wrote for you, as much as, 
 Wrote unto you; and, 1 Thess. v. 27. Col. iv. 16. 
 alone would suffice to prove, if so plain a truth can 
 stand in need of proof, that an inspired composition, 
 such as any of the Epistles of St. Paul, was considered 
 to be written for the benefit not merely of the church 
 to which it might originally be addressed, but of the 
 Christian world at large. Had not this been the case, 
 no single Epistle could ever have claimed, or obtained, 
 reception, beyond the pale of the church where it 
 was first put into circulation : nor could what was 
 written so long ago to Corinthians, Romans, or any 
 others, be regarded as binding upon Christians 
 now. 
 
 Moreover, when this allusion to the Epistles of St. 
 Paul was made, St. Paul, as the very terms of the 
 allusion, 6 aycnrrjTog fiimdov a$e\<pos ncwAo?, would prove, 
 must have been alive. A deceased Christian, and 
 especially one who had finished his course by martyr- 
 dom, would doubtless have been called, 6 /uLcucdpiog 
 aSe\(po? 9 6 fJLe/JLaprvprj/jievos r/^cov aSe\(po 9 , or, as Ignatius 
 expresses himself, in a like case, concerning St. Paul, 6 
 
Time and Ch'der of St. Mark's Gospel. 159 
 
 ayiao’fj.evo? o pepapTvprjiJievo^ o a^iojuaKapLcrro? * w . 
 
 ’AycnrrjTog is a term of endearment, which could be 
 properly addressed only to the living: and SoOelo-av, 
 which follows directly after, meaning, According to 
 the wisdom which hath been given unto him, not, 
 Which was given unto him x ; leads to the same con- 
 clusion. 
 
 The time of the Second Epistle of St. Peter must, 
 consequently, be placed between the time of the Epi- 
 stle to the Romans ; which was the middle of the second 
 of Nero ; and the time of the death of St. Paul ; which 
 I shall shew hereafter was probably the latter half of 
 the twelfth. This time, we may presume, approaches 
 nearer to the latter than to the former ; if, for no 
 other reason, at least for this; viz. that, i. 13-15. the 
 time of the death of St. Peter also, who suffered about 
 the same period with St. Paul, was at hand when the 
 Epistle was written. The words in question, rayivn 
 ecrTiv f) ai roOearig rod orKrjvM/jLciTos pov, cannot imply less 
 than that. The date of the Epistle, then, could not be 
 much prior to the time of the death of St. Peter ; and, 
 consequently, to the twelfth of Nero, at the latest. If, 
 therefore, the Second Epistle was written soon after 
 the First, (which is a much more probable supposition 
 than the contrary would be,) the Second not having been 
 written much before the twelfth of Nero, the First 
 never could have been written before, or in, the se- 
 cond. In this case, if St. Peter was not at Rome after 
 the second of Nero, his first Epistle, as written after 
 
 * The Scholiast on the Persse this distinction would imply, was 
 of JEschylus, ad vers. 632. in- scarcely to be expected from the 
 deed, observes, lernov 8 e on pa- writers of the Greek of the New 
 Kaplrrjs 6 reOvecos, pampios 8 e 6 Testament. Cf. Theocritus, I- 
 C S>v . But that degree of preci- dyll. ii. 70, and the Scholia in 
 sion in the use of words, which loc. 
 
 w Epist. ad Ephes. xii. PP. Apost. 856. E. 
 
 x Rom. xii. 3. 6. xv. 15. Gal. 
 
160 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 that year at least, could not have been written at 
 Rome, but in some other quarter. 
 
 II. In St. Paul’s address to the elders of the Ephe- 
 sian church ; the time of which, as I shall shew here- 
 after, comes between the Passover, and the Pentecost, 
 of the second of Nero ; he speaks of Grievous wolves, 
 who should enter into the flock after his departure 7 , 
 and, consequently, had not entered into it before. 
 Nor, under this description, does he mean Christians 
 in any sense ; because he opposes them, directly after, 
 to such as should arise from among the Ephesians 
 themselves, Speaking perverse things, to seduce the 
 disciples after them. He must mean, therefore, per- 
 secutors either Jewish, or heathen, in the strictest 
 sense of the term. No persecution of the church of 
 Asia, then, had yet taken place, by the middle of the 
 second of Nero : and, yet it is predicted that something 
 of the kind should take place, after it. St. Peter’s First 
 Epistle is directed to this church, as well as to the 
 rest: and, to whomsoever it was addressed, persecu- 
 tions, strictly so called, we may collect from it z , had 
 both begun, and been some time going on, both among 
 them and in the rest of the Christian world a ; before 
 it was written. It could not, therefore, have been 
 written before the middle of the second of Nero, nor 
 until some time afterwards, at least. 
 
 III. The opinion that it was written from Rome, is 
 founded entirely on the assumption that Babylon, the 
 name of the place from which it was written, is figura- 
 tively put for Rome. But this assumption, though 
 certainly of great antiquity, is the most unnatural, 
 uncritical, and unsound imaginable. Had the Epistle 
 been actually written from Rome, it is impossible to 
 
 y Acts xx. 29. z i Pet. i. 6. 7. ii. 12. iii. 14. 16, 17. iv. 1. 12 — 19. 
 
 a 1 Pet. v. 9. 
 
Time and Ordw of St. Marie's Gospel. 161 
 
 assign any plausible reason, much less any satisfactory 
 explanation, why it should profess to have been written 
 from Babylon. We might conceive some such reason 
 in the case of a prophetical, and highly allegorical 
 production, like the Apocalypse of St. John ; but none 
 which would apply to a simply doctrinal and moral 
 composition, like the First of St. Peter in particular. 
 Nor, even in the Revelation, is Rome personified by 
 the image of mystical Babylon, without such additional 
 marks of distinction, as leave no difficulty to discover 
 what that Babylon must mean : and, though, after the 
 Revelation had been made public, we were to suppose 
 that the usage of the Revelation, in this one respect, 
 might determine the name of Babylon, in any subsequent 
 Christian Scriptures, almost of necessity to the sense 
 of Rome, yet on what principle of construction could it 
 have been so determined in the time of St. Peter ; when 
 the prophecy of the Revelation was not yet in being? 
 
 In short, there is no motive, which might have in- 
 duced this Apostle, when writing an Epistle from 
 Rome, to suppress, or to disguise, the real name of 
 the place ; which would not have required St. Paul, 
 when writing an Epistle to Rome, (as the Epistle to 
 the Romans,) or one, or more than one, Epistle from 
 Rome, (as his several Epistles to the Ephesians, to 
 the Colossians, to the Philippians, to Philemon, to 
 Timothy, respectively,) to do the same thing : or St. 
 Luke, when giving an account of St. Paul’s journey 
 thither, or otherwise alluding to it, in the Acts, to call 
 it by any name but its own. No one, whose mind was 
 not prepossessed by an hypothesis, when he was reading 
 that part of the Epistle where the reference to the 
 church in Babylon is met with, w T ould suspect that 
 this was a reference to a figure, or to something scarcely 
 
 VOL. i. M 
 
162 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 to be distinguished from a figure ; instead of a local 
 habitation, and a literal name. 
 
 Yet is it by no means implied on this account, that the 
 Epistle was written from Babylon in Mesopotamia : a 
 city, of which there is good reason to suppose few, or no 
 vestiges, in the time of St. Peter, were still in existence ; 
 and a quarter of the world in general, which there is still 
 more ground for supposing was never visited by him. 
 In the age of Jerome, Mesopotamian Babylon was no 
 more than a park or chase, where the kings of Persia 
 took the recreation of hunting* : and long before the 
 time of Jerome, Strabo describes it as follows b : d>W’ 
 
 €7r auT*}? w av oicvtjcrai tivcl ei7reiv 9 07ref) e<prj ri9 tcov kco/ju- 
 kgov C7r } tcov MeyaXoTroXiToov Too v ev ’Ap/caSta’ 
 
 ^'Eprjfiia peyaXrj ’ crrlv rj MeyaXr) 7 toXis. 
 
 Durat adhuc ibi Jovis Beli templum .... cetero ad 
 
 * Didicimus a quodam fratre 
 Elamita, qui de illis finibus egre- 
 diens, nunc Jerosolymis vitam 
 exigit Monachorum, venationes 
 regias esse in Babylone ; et om- 
 nis generis bestias murorum ejus 
 tamen ambitu coerceri : Hierony- 
 mus, Operum iii. 111. ad med. 
 In Isaiae xiv. 
 
 Denique usque hodie urbis 
 Babylonis reliquiae tantum ma- 
 nent. et posuit illam Dominus 
 in solitudinem sempiternam, et 
 implevit omnia verba quae in 
 istius ipsius Prophetae volumine 
 continentur : Ibid. 647. ad calc. 
 in Jerem. xxv. 
 
 So likewise Theodorit : Oper- 
 um ii. 617. In Jerem. 1 . 39: /cat 
 TervxrjKev apcporepa Tveparos' ovre 
 yap cdKo8op,r)6r 7, aXX’ iarep-qrai Ttov 
 nepifioXotv ptXP L Ka ' L Trjpepov, /cat 
 eVt nXelarov aoiKrjTOs epeive. 
 
 Maximus Tyrius, Diss. xxii. 
 6 : kclv eVt tov * larpov tis eX0rj 9 
 Kav tov Tayyrjv ’Ibrj, Kav ns avTo- 
 7TTTJS yevrjrai BafivXmvos Keipevrjs. 
 Diodorus Sic. ii. 9 : /cat yap avrrjs 
 rijs BaftvXcovos vvv (ipa^y rt pcpos 
 olnelrai, to de 7rXeiorov evros ret - 
 Xovs yeoopyelrai. According to 
 Pausanias, i. 16, Seleucus, when 
 he founded Seleucia, left only 
 the walls and the temple of Be- 
 lus standing in Babylon ; and, 
 viii. 33, these two were all that 
 remained of it in his time. What 
 Philostratus, therefore, asserts, 
 (Vita Apoll. Tyan. i. capp. 18, 
 19,) viz. that it was a viceregal 
 residence, or seat of government, 
 in the reign of Bardanes, a con- 
 temporary of Claudius Caesar, 
 can scarcely be entitled to cre- 
 dit. 
 
 Lib. xvi. 1. § 5. 252. 
 
Time and Order of St. Marti s Gospel. 
 
 163 
 
 solitudinem rediit, exhausta vicinitate Seleucise, ob id 
 conditae a Nicatore c . Yet even this temple also in the 
 time of Diodorus Siculus had fallen into decay d . The 
 name of Babylon, as that of a place still in existence 
 and inhabited, occurs once or twice, indeed, in the long 
 account, given by Josephus, concerning the misfortunes 
 which befell the Jews of those parts, about the beginning 
 of the reign of Caius e . Nearda, Nisibis, Seleucia, and 
 Ctesiphon, all cities actually in existence, and not very 
 remote from each other, are repeatedly mentioned ; 
 but not Babylon. Nor can there be much question 
 that whensoever the name of Babylon occurs in the his- 
 torians of these times, it must be understood mra- 
 Xprio-TiKw ; for the region of Babylon as such ; which 
 still retained its ancient appellation. 
 
 There is no reason, then, to suppose, that any church 
 ever existed in Mesopotamian Babylon. But there 
 was another Babylon — Babylon in Egypt — founded 
 by Cambyses, at the time of his reduction of Egypt f , 
 B. C. 525 # : and described accordingly by Strabo, as 
 
 * Diodorus Siculus, i. 56, 
 supposes Babylon in Egypt to 
 have been founded by Sesostris ; 
 which of course, would be a 
 clear proof of its high antiquity. 
 Josephus’ statement on the other 
 hand, derives some countenance 
 from Theodorit, ii. 929. in 
 Ezech. xxx. 4, 5 : (frcuri de kcu tt)v 
 AlyvnTiaicrjv Ba/3vAc3i/a tovtov x < *P lv 
 ofioji >vp.ov rrj UepaiKfj yeveaOai, a is 
 Tlepacov avTrjv aicrjKOTCOv — which 
 likewise implies that it was still 
 in being in his time. 
 
 It is possible that both Se- 
 sostris and Cambyses might be, 
 at different times, the one the 
 founder, the other the restorer 
 of it. Ptolemy gives it a place 
 
 in his Geographica, iv. cap. 5. p. 
 1 24 ; and Eustathius, ad Dionys. 
 Periegetem, 251, Geographi Mi- 
 nores,iv. 44. enumerates it among 
 the seven cities, which com- 
 posed the Heptapolis of Egypt. 
 It was a place of importance in 
 the reign of Claudius, A. D. 
 268 or 269, when Probus the 
 general of that emperor, occu- 
 pied it and the mountain near 
 it, to cut off the retreat of the 
 troops of Zenobia into Syria : 
 see Zosimus, lib. i. page 40. 
 Nay, in Arethas, Commentaria 
 in Rev. xviii. 18. apud CEcume- 
 nium, ii. 801. C., it is classed 
 even with Alexandria, Rome, 
 and Constantinople : ovk eo-riv 
 
 c Plin. H. Nat. vi. xxx. d Lib. ii. 9 . e Ant. xviii. ix. f Jos. Ant. Jud. ii. xv. 1 . 
 
 M 2 
 
164 
 
 Dissertation Second . 
 
 a place existing in his own time s, and one of the mi- 
 litary stations of the Roman government in Egypt ; 
 which proves it to have been a place of some conse- 
 quence. The Epistle in question might be written 
 from this Babylon : the situation of which was almost 
 in the centre of Egypt, and therefore as convenient 
 for such a purpose as the composition of a circular Epi- 
 stle there, and its mission thence, as any. We have only 
 to suppose that St. Peter did some time visit Egypt ; and 
 the circumstance of his writing an Epistle to the con- 
 verts in Asia Minor from any place in Egypt what- 
 ever, will cease to appear surprising. Babylon might 
 be that place as well as any other : and if it was that 
 place, there would naturally be a church there, to join 
 in the salutations of the writer ; and that, whether 
 Babylon was considerable, or inconsiderable, or the 
 church itself consisted of many members, or of few : 
 for this was clearly indifferent to the fact of an Epistle’s 
 being written, and dispatched elsewhere, from thence. 
 Tradition, as far as it extends, confirms this supposition, 
 by representing St. Mark to have been the first bishop 
 of Alexandria in Egypt h , but after the composition of 
 his Gospel, on the one hand, and before his death, in the 
 eighth of Nero, on the other *. St. Mark would not 
 
 aWrjv no\iv evpelv, on pr]8e SWov 
 brjpuovpyov, pr)8e aWov Kocrpov. 
 BaftvXaiva 8e aXXrjv nal iv Alyvnrco 
 tfcrriv evpelv, kcu Tavrrj upoiav iv 
 avrfj (leg. rfj avrfj) Alyvnrco, Kara 
 to 'HpaKkecoTiKov NetXou oro/za 
 y A\e£av8peiav, kcu Kar ’Evpconrjv 7 repl 
 ra 8vriK<brepa kcu apKrcpa, ' Pcbprjv , 
 Kai Kara ra dvaToXiKoorepa, rrjv ini 
 B v^avTLoo, rr) v KtovaravTivov inoivv- 
 pov. 
 
 * Eusebii Chron. Armenio- 
 Latinum ad annum Abrah. 2057. 
 
 Claudii 1 : Marcus Evangelista, 
 interpres Petri, Aigyptum et A- 
 lexandriam profectus, uncti Do- 
 mini verbum annuntiat. Ibid, ad 
 ann. 2077. Neronis 7: he is 
 supposed to be succeeded by 
 Ananius: which, however, is a 
 year too soon, as the Ecclesias- 
 tical History itself shews, ii. 
 xxiv. 66. D. : and that is further 
 confirmed by the statement, iii. 
 xiv. 87. D. that Annianus died 
 in the fourth of Domitian, U. C. 
 
 g Lib. xvii. 1. §. 30. 561. h Eus. E. H. ii. xvi. 53. C. Hieron. De SS. Ec- 
 cles. viii. Operum iv. Pars ii a . 104. 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel. 
 
 165 
 
 be appointed to this station except by St. Peter ; who 
 also must, consequently, have visited Alexandria : and, 
 as St. Mark was clearly present with St. Peter at Ba- 
 bylon, when he wrote the Epistle ; if he wrote the 
 Epistle in Egyptian Babylon, they were both present 
 in Egypt together. 
 
 The case of Apollos 1 may serve to imply that, 
 though the Gospel might have reached Alexandria be- 
 fore the twelfth of Claudius, it must have reached it 
 imperfectly ; or that none of the Apostles at least had 
 yet preached there in person ; just as the instance of 
 the twelve disciples, directly after, implies the same 
 thing of Ephesus. Egypt, according to Philo k , con- 
 tained more than a million of Jews ; and Alexandria 
 in particular, as we may collect from Josephus, con- 
 tained perhaps more than one hundred thousand * \ 
 No scene, therefore, could have been a more appro- 
 priate one for the labours even of an Apostle of the 
 
 837,'having sat twenty-two years, 
 though the Chron. loc. cit. makes 
 him sit twenty-six. If this be 
 true, he must have succeeded St. 
 Mark, U. C. 815, in the eighth 
 of Nero. 
 
 Nicephorus (apud Syncell. 
 i. 778. 10.) supposes St. Mark 
 to have sat only two years ; 
 which would agree sufficiently 
 well with our assumed date of 
 the Epistle, the fifth or sixth of 
 Nero. 
 
 The Chronicon Paschale, i. 47 1 . 
 line 4, and Dorotheus, bishop of 
 Tyre, suppose St. Mark to have 
 suffered martyrdom in the reign 
 of Trajan ; a supposition which 
 we need not hesitate to reject as 
 totally unworthy of belief. 
 
 * Ant. Jud. xii. ii. 3 : if the 
 
 Pseudo-Aristseus is to be be- 
 lieved, the number of Jewish pri- 
 soners or slaves in Egypt in the 
 time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, 
 B. C. 284, amounted to 100,000. 
 And in like manner, if credit is to 
 be given to the author of the third 
 book of Maccabees, they were 
 so much augmented within less 
 than one hundred years, by the 
 time of the reign of Ptolemy 
 Philopator ; that though all are 
 supposed to have been assembled 
 at Alexandria, or about it, in 
 order to be numbered, and this 
 census of them to have conti- 
 nued for forty days without in- 
 termission ; it was obliged to be 
 abandoned at last. The people 
 were too numerous to be count- 
 ed : Ch. iv. 14-21. 
 
 i Acts xviii. 24. 25. k Adv. Flaccura. Operum ii. 523. line 30. 1 B. Jud. 
 
 ii. xviii. 7. 8 ; vii. viii. 7. p. 1 1 14. 
 
 M 3 
 
166 
 
 Dissertation Second . 
 
 Circumcision merely, not to say of the Gentiles also : 
 nor could the ten years of St. Peter’s ministry, between 
 his departure from Rome in the second of Nero, and 
 the probable time of his death in the eleventh or 
 twelfth, have been more fitly employed, in part at 
 least, than in reaping the spiritual harvest of so popu- 
 lous a region. It is nowise improbable that he con- 
 stituted St. Mark Bishop of Alexandria ; just as St. 
 Paul constituted Timothy Bishop of Ephesus, and 
 Titus Bishop of Crete : for these converts stood in a 
 similar relation to the two Apostles, respectively : nor, 
 as we shall see elsewhere, did the Apostles begin to 
 appoint Bishops any where, in such a general capacity 
 as this, before the eighth or the ninth of Nero. 
 St. Mark had not been appointed when St. Peter wrote 
 his First Epistle ; for he was still with the writer in 
 Babylon : but, if tradition be true, he must have been 
 appointed before the eighth of Nero ; when he died 
 and was succeeded by Annianus. It is not likely that 
 St. Peter would appoint him to preside over the 
 Egyptian church until he was about to leave Egypt 
 himself ; nor that he would leave Egypt himself, until 
 after two or three years’ residence there at least. 
 
 It is probable, then, that the Epistle was written 
 about the fifth or the sixth of Nero ; and, what is 
 a much more certain supposition, we may conclude 
 that it was written from Egypt. The former of these 
 points must always be the most doubtful : but they 
 are both confirmed in some degree by the evidence of 
 the First Epistle compared with the Second ; or by 
 other considerations — as follows. 
 
 First, the Second Epistle was very probably written 
 from Rome, and that, after the eighth of Nero at 
 least ; and in the Second Epistle no mention occurs of 
 St. Mark. After the eighth of Nero, though St. Peter 
 
Time and Order of St. Mark's Gospel. 
 
 167 
 
 might be at Rome, St. Mark was either in Egypt, or 
 dead. Again, the First Epistle itself was written 
 when St. Peter was an old man m : and the time of his 
 old age had been specified, as the time of his death, in 
 that prediction n to which, as we saw, he probably 
 alluded in the Second. Thirdly, the order in which 
 the names are recounted at the outset of the Epistle — 
 Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia — 
 makes in favour of the supposition that it was a circular 
 letter, sent from Egypt by the medium of a messenger 
 who would have to travel by land in the usual route 
 through Antioch, along the whole extent of Asia Minor 
 from east to west. In such a letter, if dispatched 
 from Rome and travelling from west to east, the order 
 would have been just the reverse*. Fourthly, none of 
 the Apostles, as we have seen, appeared to be present 
 in Jerusalem at St. Paul’s last visit, Acts xxi. 18. (a 
 point of time answering to the Pentecost of U. C. 809. 
 A. D. 56. in the second of Nero,) except James. It 
 was no longer James and the Apostles; but James 
 and simply the elders — who were then alluded to as 
 receiving him. St. James, as the Bishop of Jerusa- 
 lem, would be permanently resident in Judaea; but 
 Peter, in particular, who was neither there, nor in 
 Rome, and yet, as we may suppose, somewhere in the 
 Roman empire ; and who had only recently made the 
 circuit of Asia Minor ; was most probably in Africa, 
 or in Egypt. If he was not in Upper Asia, which 
 
 t Compare Hieronymus, Ope- quum me Thracia, Pontus, atque 
 rum. iv. pars ii a . 2. ad med. Epi- Bithynia, totumque Galatiae et 
 stola i : where he is actually Cappadociae iter ; et fervido Cili- 
 speaking of the course of a jour- cum terra fregisset aestu, Syria 
 ney from Rome, through Asia, by mihi velut fidissimus naufrago 
 land, to Judaea. Tandem in in- portus occurrit. 
 certo peregrinationis erranti, 
 
 n John xxi. 18, 19. 
 
 M 4 
 
 m 1 Pet. v. 1 . 
 
168 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 we do not know that he ever visited ; nor in Spain or 
 Gaul, about which there is the same uncertainty; we 
 can scarcely conceive where he could be besides. 
 Fifthly, a comparison with Philippians 0 ; the time of 
 which is the first half of the seventh, or the last half 
 of the sixth of Nero, U. C. 813. A. D. 60 : and, still 
 more, with the Epistle to the Hebrews p, the time of 
 which, as I shall shew elsewhere, was not before the 
 eighth of Nero, U. C. 815. A. D. 62 ; will demonstrate 
 that the same persecutions to which, as going on in 
 Asia Minor and elsewhere generally, distinct allusions 
 occurred in the First of Peter, were going on in Phi- 
 lippi, (that is, in Macedonia,) and in Judaea, also. It 
 is probable, therefore, that, like the events to which 
 they refer, these Epistles were nearly synchronous ; 
 bearing date from the fifth to the ninth or tenth of 
 Nero. The Epistles to the Philippians and to the 
 Hebrews do certainly come within these extremes ; and 
 so, may we presume, did the First of Peter. And 
 having arrived at this conclusion we will proceed to 
 the Gospel of St. Luke. 
 
 The historical testimony which makes it the third 
 in the order of composition, as it stands, has been con- 
 sidered already ; nor does any thing remain at present, 
 except merely to shew that the internal evidence of the 
 Gospel, and such other considerations as may deserve 
 to be adduced, are most in unison with this conclu- 
 sion, and with the consequent date to be assigned to 
 its publication. 
 
 I. When St. Luke speaks, in his preface, of the facts 
 of the Christian history as handed down by those who 
 had been, cnr’ apxrjg, the eyewitnesses and ministers of 
 
 o i. 28 — 30. P Hebr. ii. 1.2.3. 6. 12. 13. 14 — the end. iv. 1. 11. 16. 
 
 v. r 2 — end. vi. 4 — 12. vi. 19. x. 25 — end. xi. throughout, xii, 1 — 13. 18 — 29. 
 xiii. 3. 7. x. 32. 
 
Time and Order of St. Lake's Gospel. 
 
 169 
 
 the Word, it may justly be supposed that he specifies 
 a point of time many years prior to his own conver- 
 sion, or to the date of his Gospel. The same expres- 
 sion is twice used in the Acts : once, for a point of 
 time eleven years before % and again, for one still 
 greater r . The phrase ev apxfi T °v evayyeXlov occurs 
 also, Philipp, iv. 15. to denote a point of time eleven 
 years before ; viz. U. C. 802 ; whereas the Epistle was 
 written in U. C. 813. In the First Epistle of St. John 
 the same phrase is repeatedly met with ; and to ex- 
 press a much greater length of time. 
 
 II. When he speaks in the same place of apocry- 
 phal, though probably well meant. Gospels ; known 
 to Theophilus, or at least to himself ; and at the same 
 time is speaking of them to one, whom his name 
 proves to have been a Greek ; there can be little 
 doubt that he is alluding to the productions of Greeks 
 as such ; of whom, and not of the Romans, and much 
 less the Jews, the cacoethes scribendi was the character- 
 istic propensity : a propensity, which the marvellous 
 and interesting nature of the subject, in this instance, 
 was much more likely to inflame than to diminish. But 
 what such Gospels could be written by Greeks, before 
 the Gospel had begun to be preached to the Gentiles ; 
 or rather, before St. Paul’s second circuit, nineteen years 
 after the ascension, when it was first carried into 
 Greece ? And even after that, some more time would 
 be necessary, in order to produce, to multiply, and to 
 circulate such compositions, as they must have been 
 produced, and multiplied, and circulated by the time 
 of Theophilus, and of St. Luke. 
 
 III. If the personal history of St. Luke first be- 
 comes interwoven with the personal history of St. Paul 
 at Troas s , in the ninth of Claudius — then those, who 
 
 *1 xi. > 5 - r xxvi. 4. s Acts xvi. 8 — 18. 
 
170 
 
 Dissertation Second i 
 
 subscribe to the opinion that he wrote his Gospel after 
 he became known to St. Paul, and derived his acquaint- 
 ance with the facts of the Christian history chiefly from 
 St. Paul, will readily acknowledge that he could write 
 no Gospel before the ninth of Claudius ; nor be quali- 
 fied to write one, until some time after. 
 
 IV. From Acts xvi. 12. it is seen that St. Luke 
 accompanied St. Paul, in his second circuit, as far as 
 Philippi : but, from xvi. 40. it does not appear that he 
 accompanied him thence. Nor after this, does he speak 
 of himself again, or write in the first person, before 
 Acts xx. 5 ; when St. Paul, after leaving Philippi, came 
 once more to Troas, in the second of Nero, on his 
 way to Jerusalem for the last time mentioned in the 
 Acts. Between this time, and the ninth of Claudius, 
 there was a seven years’ interval. Are we to con- 
 clude, then, that St. Luke was absent from St. Paul 
 for the whole of this ? By no means : for we shall see 
 hereafter, that he was probably present at Ephesus with 
 him during part of it at least, viz. between Acts xix. 1. 
 and 23 ; but at times, when the regular course of the 
 history did not require his presence to be mentioned, or 
 during which it is possible to conjecture in what way 
 he might have been employed elsewhere. We may infer, 
 however, that at no period during this interval was 
 he very long stationary in the company of St. Paul, or 
 at leisure to have composed a Gospel. He was too 
 actively engaged, under his directions, elsewhere. 
 
 V. From Acts xxi. 18. it is certain that he attended 
 St. Paul up to Jerusalem ; and that until Acts xxi. 27 , 
 the very day of St. Paul’s apprehension, he remained in 
 his society still. After this, however, the first person 
 occurs not again before xxvii. 1, where the account of 
 St. Paul’s voyage to Rome is begun. There is, con- 
 sequently, no proof that he accompanied St. Paul to 
 
Time and Order of St. Luke's Gospel. 171 
 
 Caesarea, as there is, that he accompanied him to 
 Rome : nor, indeed, as St. Paul was first sent thither, 
 could anyone have accompanied him at the time. His 
 friends, it is true, might follow him thither : and, per- 
 haps, from Acts xxiv. 23. it may be justly concluded 
 that they did : nor would I deny that St. Luke might 
 be among the number. But there is no proof that he 
 was with St. Paul all this time ; as there is, that he 
 was with him all the time of his imprisonment at 
 Rome ; and, if he was at Caesarea at the close thereof 
 only, he might still have been employed meanwhile, as 
 before, on errands to the various churches. That he 
 was there at the close in question is presumptively im- 
 plied, among other things, by the very particular and 
 lively description of St. Paul’s final examination before 
 Festus, as well as before Agrippa t : which is so full of 
 animation, and of what the Greeks would call evapyeia , 
 that it may justly be considered the description of an 
 eyewitness. 
 
 The situation of St. Paul at Caesarea, in the Praeto- 
 rium of Herod, was certainly not so favourable to his 
 own personal convenience, or to that of his friends, as 
 a residence in his own hired house or lodging at Rome. 
 What reason, then, would there be to conclude that a 
 Gospel would be written by St. Luke, at this time and 
 on this spot, for the instruction of a recent convert like 
 Theophilus ? a Greek, but no native of Caesarea ; be- 
 cause, as the Gospel clearly supposes, ignorant of the 
 language, the customs, the topography of Palestine it- 
 self. But, if it was not written during this interval, it 
 could not possibly have been written before St. Paul’s 
 arrival at Rome. St. Luke was no prisoner at Caesarea, 
 as St. Paul was ; nor so far distant from what had been 
 the scene of St. Paul’s ministry previously, when he 
 
 t Acts xxv. xxvi. 
 
172 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 was in that city, as when he was at Rome. Nor did 
 he accompany St. Paul at last to Rome, as a prisoner 
 also ; but, like Aristarchus of Thessalonica, rather as 
 a friend and follower ; who, without being obliged, 
 had yet voluntarily determined, to share the fortunes 
 of St. Paul. 
 
 VI. If the Acts of the Apostles were written by the 
 same person who composed the Gospel of St. Luke, no 
 one will hesitate to consider them merely consecutive 
 parts of a common history ; begun and completed toge- 
 ther, but in their natural and relative order. The in- 
 ternal evidence of the two works confirms the infer- 
 ence : for, it will be clear to any one who will care- 
 fully peruse them in this relative order, that, consi- 
 dered merely as a distinct composition, but of the 
 same person who wrote the Gospel, the Acts are a 
 more perfect work — the Acts exhibit more of the hand 
 of a master, and of that ease, correctness, and facility 
 which are acquired by practice, than the Gospel. 
 There is no reason whatever, why familiarity with 
 the use of the pen, (which would be the natural effect 
 of the previous composition of the Gospel,) and the 
 fortunate contingency of having to describe in the 
 later work, scenes and events which the author had 
 more or less witnessed himself, might not improve the 
 talents, or facilitate the task, even of an inspired histo- 
 rian. The time of writing the Acts, then, would be 
 but a little later than the time of writing the Gospel : 
 and the Acts, which conclude with the end of St. Paul’s 
 two years’ imprisonment at Rome, could not have been 
 written, or at least finished, before the expiration of 
 the same time. Therefore, neither could the Gos- 
 pel. 
 
 VII. It may be questioned, indeed, whether any 
 part of the Acts could have been written before the 
 
Time and Order of St. Luke's Gospel. 
 
 173 
 
 reign of Nero. For, speaking of the famine, Acts 
 xi. 28, the author is observed to say ; Which came to 
 pass also in the time of Claudius Caesar. No one 
 would have expressed himself thus, who had not 
 written after the close of that reign at least. The 
 same inference is deducible, though not with equal 
 strength, from Acts xviii. 2. I observe also, that at a 
 point of time ; which may be proved to have coincided 
 with the beginning of the reign of Nero ; where the 
 reference is to the reigning Emperor, it is simply to 
 Caesar, without any mention of his proper name u ; 
 which name, if the work was written in the reign of 
 Nero, it would be readily understood was Nero’s. For, 
 according to Dio, and also to Josephus, this was their 
 common style and title : i rao-i to/s* to tcov 'Paj/xa/W Kpa- 
 r 09 Xa/JL/3avovcriv rj irpocrrjyopia aurr] eKveviKtjKev — /cal oi 
 *Pa)/xatW Se avroKparope ?, e/c y ever*}? air a\\u>v ^p/y/xa- 
 Ticravres ovofxaTinv^ K alarapes KaXovvrai v . 
 
 The abrupt allusion also to Agrippa the king ; to 
 Bernice ; and, before that, to Drusilla as the wife of 
 Felix, the Roman procurator of Judaea, yet a Jewess ; 
 and even to Felix, and to his successor Festus, them- 
 selves ; are allusions to persons who, in the reign of 
 Nero, were contemporary characters ; most of them alive 
 not only during it, but long after — and well known at 
 Rome, where Agrippa, in particular, had been brought 
 up under Claudius ; and in the first of Nero, had been 
 made king over part of Judaea, if not to the same ex- 
 tent as his father Herod. 
 
 There are more indications of the same sort, all 
 leading to the inference that the work is that of a 
 contemporary historian, and relating to contemporary 
 events, but after the beginning of the reign of Nero : 
 
 u Chap. xxv. 8. jo. ii. 12. 2i. xxvi. 32. xxvii. 24. xxviii. 19. v Dio, 
 
 xlvi. 47. Jos. Ant. Jud. viii. vi. 2. 
 
174 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 some of which will be pointed out hereafter. The 
 mention of Gallio, Acts xviii. 12, leads to a similar 
 conclusion : for this also is plainly the mention of a 
 well known and contemporary person. Junius Gallio 
 was the brother of Seneca, and the uncle of Lucan the 
 poet : a celebrated orator of his day — distinguished by 
 his wit, his agreeable temper, and the politeness of his 
 manners. Without entering upon the particulars of his 
 history here, all which I shall remark upon it, at present, 
 is this ; viz. that from the fifth to the seventh year of 
 Nero, (between which dates I believe St. Paul to have 
 been at Rome, and Seneca, the brother of Gallio, was 
 still in favour with the Emperor,) Gallio must have 
 been well known in the court of Nero. But we are 
 told by Dio b , that when Seneca was put to death in 
 consequence of the conspiracy of Piso against Nero, in 
 the eleventh year of his reign, his brothers, including 
 Gallio, were put to death also. He could not, there- 
 fore, have been a living, or well-known character after 
 the eleventh of Nero ; that is, from U. C. 817. to U. C. 
 818. medium *. 
 
 * Seneca, Consolatio ad Hel- 
 viam Matrem, cap. 2, 4: Caris- 
 simum virum tuum, ex quo ma- 
 ter trium liberorum eras, ami- 
 sisti. Epigramm. viii. 1. (Ope- 
 rum iv. 368 :) Sic mihi sit fra- 
 ter, majorque, minorque, super- 
 stes, | Et de me doleant nil, nisi 
 morte mea. Whence it appears 
 that the three sons of Seneca 
 the father were born in the fol- 
 lowing order : Annaeus Novatus, 
 Annaeus Seneca, Annaeus Mella : 
 which last was the father of Lu- 
 can the poet. See also the Con- 
 troversiae of Seneca the father, 
 in the prefaces to the several 
 books passim. And this may be 
 
 one reason why Seneca in allud- 
 ing to Novatus, after he had 
 changed his name, so generally 
 calls him Dominum : viz. that 
 he was his elder brother. 
 
 The name of Novatus in full, 
 after he passed into another 
 family, was Lucius Junius Gal- 
 lio. Under this name he may 
 be found referred to, Dio, lx. 
 35. and by that of Junius Gallio, 
 or Gallio, Dio,lxi. 20: Tac.Ann. 
 xv. 73. xvi. 17: Columella, De 
 Re Rustica, ix. 16: Seneca, De 
 Vita Beata, 1 : Nat. Quaestion. 
 iv. Praef. 9 : v. xi. 1 : Epist. civ. 
 1 : Eusebii Chronicon, &c. 
 
 It may be collected from Ta- 
 
 b Dio, lxii. 25. Cf. Tac. Ann. xv. 73. xvi. 17. 
 
Time and Order of St. Luke's Gospel. 
 
 175 
 
 VIII. Both the Gospel and the Acts of St. Luke are 
 dedicated to the same person, whom he designates in 
 
 citus, Ann. xv. 60. 53. 74. that 
 the death of Seneca coincided 
 with the period of the Ludi Ce- 
 reales, that is, from April 12 to 
 19, U. C. 818. If he died about 
 the same time with Lucan his 
 nephew, the death of the latter, 
 according to the old author of his 
 life, was Pridie Kalendas Mai- 
 as. But it does not agree with 
 this statement, that he is said to 
 have been then in his twenty- 
 seventh year. For he was born 
 according to the same authority, 
 iii Nonas Novembres, U. C. 792 : 
 consequently Pridie Kalendas 
 Maias, U. C. 81 8, he would still 
 be only in his twenty-sixth 
 year. Cf. Tac. Ann. xv. 56. 70. 
 
 Gallio, the person who adopt- 
 ed Annaeus Novatus, is properly 
 known as Gallio the orator. In 
 that capacity he is often men- 
 tioned by contemporary or later 
 writers. Seneca the elder re- 
 peatedly alludes to him ; as for 
 example, Suasoriarum, lib. i. 3 a . 
 p. 28. Scripsit de eadem ma- 
 teria . . . nonnihil Pater Gallio : 
 Quintilian, Institt. Orat. iii. 1, 
 2 1 . Remissius, et pro suo in- 
 genio, pater Gallio: ibid. ix. 2, 
 9T. Malim...quam calamistros 
 Maecenatis, aut tinnitus Gallio- 
 nis : Tacitus, De Causis Cor- 
 ruptae Eloquentiae, 26. And 
 though this last allusion con- 
 veys an oblique censure upon 
 him, as an orator more distin- 
 guished for sound than sense, 
 yet Jerome, Operum iii. 207. 
 Praef. ad lib. viii. in Isaiam, 
 classes him with Cicero, Quin- 
 tilian, and others, the most il- 
 
 lustrious names in eloquence or 
 rhetoric. 
 
 Tacitus, Ann. vi. 3. Dio, lviii. 
 r8. mention a Junius Gallio as 
 incurring the displeasure of Ti- 
 berius, U. C. 785 : who was 
 doubtless Gallio the father. One 
 of Ovid’s epistles De Ponto, 
 viz. iv. xi. which was written 
 after the death of Augustus, is 
 addressed to a certain Gallio — 
 who was probably the same per- 
 son with Gallio the father. It 
 appears to have been written to 
 condole with him on the recent 
 loss of his wife. Non ita Dis 
 placuit, qui te spoliare pudica | 
 Conjuge crudeles non habuere 
 nefas — De Ponto, iv. xi. 7. But 
 though he might have lost his 
 wife thus early, yet he certainly 
 did not adopt Annaeus Novatus 
 until long after. Seneca’s trea- 
 tise De Ira, is addressed to the 
 latter before he had assumed the 
 name of Gallio ; and it may be 
 inferred from i. 16, 30. of that 
 treatise ; Non puto parum mo- 
 menti hanc ejus vocem ad inci- 
 tandum conjuratorum mentes 
 addidisse ; that it was not writ- 
 ten before the death of Caius 
 Caesar at least. Vide also ii. 33, 
 3. iii. 18, 3. 19, 1. 22, 1. which 
 shew it to have been written be- 
 tween the death of Caius, and 
 Seneca’s banishment in the first 
 of Claudius, U. C. 794 : Dio, lx. 
 8. Cf. Consolatio ad Helviam, 
 2, 5. and. Ad Polybium, 32, 
 2. which was written during his 
 banishment, and so early as the 
 third of Claudius. Polybius, 
 (Dio, lx. 29. 31.) was himself 
 
176 
 
 Dissertation Second . 
 
 each by the name of Theophilus ; and whose existence 
 as a real personage, and not as a symbolical or imagin- 
 ary character, as referred to in either, is proved not 
 merely by the absurdity of the contrary supposition, 
 but by the title of respect prefixed to his name : for 
 that is such a title as never is, nor ever could be, be- 
 stowed on any but a real character. The name of 
 Theophilus is no uncommon one. Josephus mentions 
 a Jewish high-priest, a son of Annas, who bore it at 
 this very time : Strabo, an ancestor of his own, contem- 
 porary with Mithridates of Pontus : Cicero, a freed- 
 man of M. Marcellus, consul in U. C. 703 : and Suidas, 
 a Greek comedian ; all called by it also x . 
 
 In each of these instances, except the first, it is 
 clearly the name of Greeks ; and whosoever is denoted 
 by it in the Gospel or the Acts of St. Luke, there can 
 be little question that he also was a Greek. No hypo- 
 thesis, at least, can be more improbable, than what 
 some critics have proposed ; viz. that he might be 
 the same with the Jewish high-priest above mentioned, 
 the son of the Annas of the Gospels, and, as I hope to 
 shew hereafter, the high-priest who put St. Stephen to 
 death, and sent St. Paul on his persecuting errand to 
 Damascus. Independent of the intrinsic improbability 
 of that hypothesis ; it is clearly incompatible with the 
 difference of manner between the style of writing in 
 the Gospel, and that in the Acts ; especially with re- 
 put to death U. C. 800. or not. Yet a daughter of his is 
 sooner. mentioned, called Novatilla, cap. 
 
 Nor does it exactly appear 16, §. 15, who was almost of a 
 even from this treatise Ad Hel- marriageable age, and had re- 
 viam Matrem, whether Novatus cently lost her mother, 
 had then changed his name or 
 
 x Jos. Ant. Jud. xviii. v. 3. Cf. xvii. iv. 2. Strabo, xii. 3. §. 33. 13 1. Ciceron. 
 Epp. ad Fam. i. iv. 9. Suid. ®e 6 (J>i\os. Cf. Tac. Ann. ii. 55. 
 
Time and Order of St. Luke's Gospel. 177 
 
 gard to geographical notices, or other similar explana- 
 tions ; for this difference is such as to prove that, 
 whosoever was the person to whom each of these 
 works was addressed in common, he was as well ac- 
 quainted with the topography of Asia Minor, Mace- 
 donia, Greece, and Italy, or Home, as he was ignorant 
 of that of Judaea or Galilee. 
 
 It was not indeed to be expected that opportunities 
 for such explanations, whether geographical, or of any 
 other kind, as might be wanted by a stranger to Ju- 
 daea, would occur as frequently in the Acts, as in the 
 Gospel : yet there are some to be met with even there, 
 which seem to me to be deserving of mention. Of these 
 I will produce the following as specimens : 
 
 I. 31 AyyeXos Se Ki >plov eXc iXrjcre irpo 9 ^IXiTrirov Xeyoov’ 
 ’ Avd(TTt]6i , Ka\ 7 ropevov Kara /aecrr]pl3p[ar f e7rl rrjv oSov, rrjv 
 Kara/3alvov<Tav ajro 'lepovcraXrjp els Taj^av. avrrj ecrriu 
 
 €pr]/ULOS W . 
 
 The difficulty which has arisen from referring these 
 last words to Gaza, and supposing that that was now 
 desert, never has been, nor can be, removed. The 
 history of Gaza is this*. After having been more 
 
 * Hieronymus, Operum iii. 
 299. ad princ. in Isaise xxxix: 
 Gaza autem lingua Persarum 
 divitise nuncupantur : nec est 
 Hebraeus sermo sed barbarus. 
 Cf. 986. ad med. in Ezek. xl. 
 and Servius, ad -Eneid. i. 119: 
 according to whom it received 
 its name in the reign of Cam- 
 byses, quod in ea. . .cum Egy- 
 ptiis bellum inferret, divitias suas 
 condidit. It was always, how- 
 ever, one of the five lordships of 
 the Philistines. 
 
 Polybius, xvi. 40, gives us 
 
 the history of Gaza in brief, up 
 to the time of Antiochus Ma- 
 gnus, B. C. 198. Diodorus Sic. 
 xvii. 48, 49 : it was first taken by 
 Alexander, after a two months’ 
 siege, B. C. 332 exeunte : xix. 
 59 — it was again taken by storm 
 by Antigonus, B. C. 315: xix. 
 80 — 86. 93 — it was the scene of 
 a celebrated battle between Pto- 
 lemy Soter, Seleucus, and De- 
 metrius, the son of Antigonus, 
 B. C. 31 2, from which the .Era 
 Seleucidarum bears date. After 
 the battle, it fell into the power 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 w Acts viii. 26. 
 N 
 
178 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 than once laid waste by the ravages of war, it had 
 been finally rebuilt, along with many other cities in 
 its neighbourhood, by order of the Roman proconsul 
 and governor of Syria, Gabinius x ; whose occupation 
 of Judaea cannot be placed earlier than the year after 
 his consulship, U. C. 697, and by Dio? seems to be 
 placed, U. C. 699- In the year after the reduction of 
 Egypt, U. C. 724, it was attached by the Emperor 
 Augustus to the dominions of Herod z : but, at his 
 death, it was made part of the province of Syria a . 
 
 There is no account of any destruction of Gaza, 
 from that time to the time of the conversion of the 
 eunuch, which was U. C. 790. On the contrary, there 
 are coins of it still extant, and struck between these 
 periods b ; which demonstrate it to have been a flourish- 
 ing city. It is true, that U. C. 819, in the twelfth of 
 Nero, both Gaza and Ascalon are said to have been 
 
 of Ptolemy ; but in the course 
 of the same year, on the defeat 
 of his general Cilles, and the 
 approach of Antigonus to the 
 assistance of Demetrius, it was 
 again evacuated, after being pre- 
 viously laid waste, along with 
 Ace or Ptolemais, Joppa, and 
 Samaria. 
 
 Simon Maccabaeus reduced it 
 once, about B. C. 143 or 142: 
 and Jonathan Maccabaeus, B. C. 
 T45 or 144, destroyed its sub- 
 urbs : 1 Macc. xi. 6 r . xiii. 43 — 
 48. Alexander Jannaeus, after 
 a year’s siege, reduced and le- 
 velled it with the ground, not 
 long after the beginning of his 
 reign: Ant. Jud. xiii. xiii. 3. 
 B. Jud. i. iv. 2. At this time. 
 
 it was sufficiently rich and flou- 
 rishing to have a senate of 500 
 members. B. C. 63, U. C. 691, 
 or B. C. 62, U. C. 692, along 
 with many other cities on the 
 sea-coast, or the confines of Ju- 
 daea, it was first annexed by 
 Pompey the Great to the pro- 
 vince of Syria ; at which time 
 it is spoken of as being more or 
 less in a ruinous condition — 
 Ant. Jud. xiv. iv. 4. B. 1. vii. 7 : 
 thougli presently afterwards it 
 was restored by Gabinius. Stra- 
 bo, xvi. 2. §.30. 349, speaks of 
 it as continuing desolate in his 
 time ; a statement contradicted 
 by its extant coins, if it be not 
 understood of the remains of 
 the ancient city. 
 
 x Joseph. De B. Jud. i. viii. 4. Ant. xiv. v. 3. y Lib. xxxix. 56. 60. 
 
 2 Joseph, de B. Jud. i. xx. 3. Ant. xv. vii. 3. a De B. ii. vi. 3. Ant. xvii. 
 xi. 4. b Eckhel, Doctr. Numra. Vett. iii. 452, 453. 
 
Time and Order of St. Luke's Gospel. 179 
 
 laid waste by the Jews, at the very outset of the war, 
 and in revenge for the massacre of their countrymen 
 at Caesarea 0 : nor have there been wanting writers 
 who would refer the notice in the Acts to that desola- 
 tion, and argue from it that the Acts could not have 
 been composed before the twelfth of Nero, U. C. 819. 
 
 I do not deny that by the rules of construction, avrrj 
 might be referred to Ta^ai/: but, by the same rules, it 
 might also be referred to TepovrraXruj. : the absurdity of 
 which would be evident. The truth is, that it was 
 intended to be referred to neither. The whole of the 
 predicate, ty\v KaTafialvovaav ai to TepovcraXri/JL els Ta^av, 
 stands in lieu of a single adjunct to one subject, rrjv 
 oSov ; which only is the proper antecedent of the rela- 
 tive avrt]. The remark is a remark of the writer’s, 
 and no part of the words of the angel ; and the whole 
 might be rendered thus : 
 
 Now an angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, 
 Arise, and take thy journey southward, till thou comest 
 to the way which goeth down from Jerusalem to Gaza. 
 This way is desert. 
 
 The whole of this dispensation, as the narrative 
 proves, was a special interposition in favour of one 
 individual, the Ethiopian eunuch ; who, having been 
 up to attend some feast at Jerusalem, was naturally 
 returning home, when Philip was sent upon this 
 errand on purpose to fall in with him. The road to 
 Ethiopia lay through Egypt ; and the road to Egypt, 
 from Jerusalem, lay through Ascalon, and by Gaza. 
 Almost the whole of this road might justly be described 
 as desert ; and certainly that part of it which remained 
 to be travelled after leaving Gaza, and before arriving 
 in Egypt. The tract of country between Raphia (or 
 at least Rhinocorura, on the extreme border of Pales- 
 
 c De B. Jud. ii. xviii. I. 
 
 N 2 
 
180 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 tine) ; and Pelusium, the frontier town, on that side of 
 Egypt (a tract of three days’ journey in extent) was a 
 perfect desert d . The great desert of Arabia, which 
 extended as far as the Red sea, is made by Strabo to 
 begin at Gaza # d ; and certain parts of this desert it- 
 self, into which the scape goat used to be carried on 
 the day of the atonement, were not twelve miles dis- 
 tant from Jerusalem, nor above five or six distant from 
 Bethlehem e . So that even the road from Jerusalem to 
 Gaza also, for more or less of its extent, might be 
 described as desert. 
 
 II. Trj re fj/mepa rcov crafifiaTUiv e^XSo/ae v e^co rrjs n ro- 
 Xecos 7 rapa ir OTa/uov, ov evofil^cro irpotjev^rj elvai . — 
 
 A LoSevcravTes Se Ttjv , A./m(pL 7 roXiv Ka.} , A. 7 roXXcovlav, 
 rjXOov els QecraraXoviKrjv * oirov rjv *] crwaycoyr] tcov Tou- 
 Sataov f . 
 
 It is clear from the account of St. Paul’s journeys in 
 general that he made no long residence in any quarter, 
 where there was not a synagogue of the Jews ; and it 
 is clear from the second of these passages, that there 
 were not such synagogues every where. In this in- 
 stance, there was none at Amphipolis, nor at Apollo- 
 nia ; nor until he came to Thessalonica : and there 
 the very language of St. Luke implies that there was 
 one : Now when they had passed over, or rather , tra- 
 velled through, Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came 
 to Thessalonica ; where was the synagogue of the 
 
 * Arrian, Expeditio Alexan- Gaza : Quod ea urbs suggestu 
 dri, ii. 26 : eo-xarr] de aKelro (17 ardua, harenis circa perpingui- 
 rd£a) ids eV A lyvnrov $ oivUrjs bus, ut humectis satis subsidiis, 
 
 lovri, evil - # apxfl T V S tprjuov. Alex- vallaretur. 
 andri Itinerarium cap. 45. De 
 
 d Herod, iii. 5. Strabo, xvi. §. 32. 352. §. 30 . 349 . Jos. B. Jud. iv. xi. 5. Ant. 
 xv. vi. 7. B. i. xx. 3. e Jos. Ant. Jud. v. ii. 8. Just. Mart. Apol. i. 55. 1. 9. 
 Hieronymus, Operum iii. 1370. Praef. in Amos. 1 Sam. xvii. 28. Maimonides, 
 de Solemni die Expiationis, cap. iii. art. 7. 1 Acts xvi. 13. xvii. 1. 
 
Time and Order of St. Luke's Gospel . 181 
 
 Jews. Thessalonica was the capital of Macedonia Sco- 
 re pa * : and the synagogue of the Jews in those parts 
 collectively was, it seems, established there. Here, 
 then, St. Paul stayed some time ; three or four weeks 
 at least. Before this he had made a similar stay at 
 Philippi ; whence we might infer that the Jews had a 
 synagogue there also. But no such synagogue is men- 
 tioned : what, then, was there in its stead ? 
 
 The first of the passages, just quoted, informs us 
 that there was a place of prayer ; that is, a Proseu- 
 cha, or Oratory, by the side of a river, where prayer 
 was wont to be made. That this served for the pur- 
 pose of a synagogue is manifest from the numbers 
 assembled there, at St. Paul’s first visit to it, which 
 was on the Sabbath ; and from his daily resort to it 
 afterwards : on one of which occasions he ejected the 
 demon from the Pythoness s. Now, that Philippi was 
 situated in the neighbourhood of some river may be in- 
 ferred from its ancient name, which was Crenides, or 
 e7r! Kprjvai ? h ; and from the fact that a river, called 
 Zygactes, which is mentioned by Appian, was some- 
 where near it \ That the Jews, sometimes from ne- 
 cessity, but more frequently from choice, were accus- 
 tomed to assemble for the purpose of prayer, that is, to 
 establish oratories, on the sea-shore, or on the banks 
 
 * In an extant epigram of An- Xovlktj | prjrrjp rj 7rd<Trjs triple Ma/a 7 - 
 tipater of Thessalonica, a poet dovlrjs, k, t. X. Anthologia ii. 98. 
 contemporary with the reign of Antipatri Thess. xiv. Cf. Socra- 
 Augustus, it is called the me- tes, E. H. ii. xvi. 93. B : vii. xliv. 
 tropolis of all Macedonia. It is 388.B : Theodorit, E. H.y. xvii. 
 addressed to the Roman Piso. 2 19. C: and GEcumenius in Nov. 
 2 ot pe , QprjiKirjs CTKoX^ope, Qeacra- Test. ii. 171. C. in I Thess. iv. 10. 
 
 e Chap. xvi. 1 6 — 18. h Cf. Theophrastus, De Causis Plantarum, v. 20. 
 
 Another river, called Gangas, or Gangites, was not two miles distant from Philippi. 
 There seems also to have been access up to it, by the Strymon, for ships, from the 
 sea. Cf. Appian, B. C. iv. 106. i Strabo, Excerpta Lib. vii. 16, 17. 490. 
 
 Appian, B. C. iv. 105. 106. 128. 
 
 N 3 
 
182 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 of rivers, is a well attested fact* k . Such oratories were 
 equivalent to synagogues 1 : and there was one of them 
 established at Philippi. But to return from this di- 
 gression j\ 
 
 It appears to me a probable conjecture that Theo- 
 philus was one of the freedmen of Nero, or some other 
 personage about the court of that Emperor, to whom, 
 among others, St. Paul may allude in the Epistle to 
 the Philippians, first, when he speaks of his bonds 
 having become manifest, ev o\w tw i rpaiTtoplw, as well 
 as, rots \0nr019 ifd(TL m ; which proves that he had made 
 converts in the imperial palace, as well as in the rest 
 of Rome ; and again, when he tells them, that All the 
 saints, and especially they of the household of Caesar 
 saluted them n . When he wrote to the Romans, there 
 is no reason to suppose that any converts had yet been 
 made in this quarter ; or that those who are recog- 
 
 * Tertullian, Operum ii. 422. 
 Adversus Psychicos, 16: Judai- 
 cum certe jejunium ubique cele- 
 bratur, cum omissis templis per 
 omne litus, quocunque in aperto 
 aliquando jam precem ad ccelum 
 mittunt. Idem, Operum v. 154. 
 Ad Nationes, lib. i. 13 : Judaei 
 enimfesti, sabbata, et ccena pura, 
 et Judaici ritus lucernarum, et 
 jejunia cum azymis, et orationes 
 litorales, quae utique aliena sunt 
 a diis vestris. 
 
 t While I am upon this sub- 
 ject, I will mention one more 
 circumstance, though it applies 
 rather to the two first Gospels 
 than either to the Gospel or to 
 the Acts of St. Luke. In each 
 of those two Gospels, the name 
 of Caesarea Philippi occurs once. 
 
 which proves that it was yet 
 known by no other appellation. 
 One or two years, however, be- 
 fore U. C. 819. the first year of 
 the Jewish war, it was consider- 
 ably enlarged and beautified by 
 Agrippa the younger ; who, out 
 of compliment to Nero, changed 
 its name from Caesarea to Nero- 
 nias°: a name which subsequent- 
 ly appears on its coins P, and 
 shews that it actually came into 
 vogue. This, then, is one pre- 
 sumptive argument, among o- 
 thers, that the first two Gospels 
 were each written before Cae- 
 sarea Philippi was yet known 
 by any other name, and, conse- 
 quently, before U. C. 815. or 
 8i 6. at least. 
 
 k Ant. Jud. xiv. x. 23. Philo in Flacc. Operum ii. 535. 1 . 4. 1 Jos. Vita 
 
 54. Philo, de Virtutibus. ii. 565. 1 . 2: 1 . 18: 566. 1 . 3: 568. 1 . 32. m Phil, 
 i. 13. n lb. iv. 22. 0 Ant. Jud. xx. ix. 4. v Eckhel, Doctr. Numm. 
 
 Vett. iii. 343. 
 
Time and Order of St. Luke's Gospel. 183 
 
 nised in that capacity here, were not actually converted 
 by St. Paul, or by some of those who accompanied 
 him to Rome. It makes in favour both of this suppo- 
 sition, and of the presumption that Theophilus was one 
 of the number, that as the Acts of the Apostles must 
 have been written after his conversion, and after, or 
 during, the term of St. Paul’s residence in Rome also ; 
 so the Epistle to the Philippians, which may by impli- 
 cation allude to him, was written, as I shall shew here- 
 after, in the last year of St. Paul’s imprisonment, and, 
 perhaps, in the last half of that year. The conversion of 
 Theophilus, which, if he was one of Nero’s household, 
 had but just taken place when the Epistle was writ- 
 ten, had taken place in that year ; and, consequently, 
 the Acts of the Apostles, and, therefore, the Gospel, 
 could not have been written before that year; but 
 might have been written in it, or directly after it. At 
 this time Timothy, as the exordium of the same 
 Epistle to the Philippians proves, had recently joined 
 St. Paul ; and, consequently, from this time forward 
 he might become known at Rome : but, probably, was 
 not so before. The allusion to him, therefore, histo- 
 rically in the Acts °, if the Acts were now written, 
 would be significant and just. That Theophilus was 
 a recent convert, or had been only just instructed in 
 the facts and doctrines of Christianity, when the Gos- 
 pel was written, appears, I think, plainly from the 
 language of the preface — -Iva eiri'yvug irep\ wv KaT^rjOr/g 
 Xoycor Trjv acrcpaXeiav : That thou mayest be assured of 
 the certainty of the things, concerning which thou hast 
 received the first instruction. 
 
 It is, however, in the account of St. Paul’s voyage 
 to Rome, and especially when he was approaching to 
 his journey’s end, that the internal evidence of the 
 
 ° xvi. 1—3. 
 
 N 4 
 
184 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 narrative implies most clearly that, whosoever The- 
 ophilus was, he was somebody familiar with Rome, 
 and its environs ; with Italy, and the neighbouring 
 regions, in particular. The allusion to the island, on 
 which St. Paul was cast, is one proof of this — And 
 thus it came to pass, that all escaped unto the land : 
 and, when they had escaped, then they discovered that 
 the island is called Melite. The precise import of the 
 allusion is much impaired by the existing division of 
 chapters ; for all this is spoken historically, of the rest 
 of the crew, not of the writer ; and refers to what was 
 said before at xxvii. 39? that until they got to land, 
 they did not know where they were ; but having 
 escaped to shore, they recognised the island to be Me- 
 lite ; they found they had got upon Malta. The name 
 of Malta, which was an island of some consequence 
 anciently as well as now p, would be as familiar to a 
 Roman or Italian of former times, as it is to those 
 of present. And that Malta, and not some other island 
 off the coast of Illyricum between Corcyra and Epi- 
 daurus hodie called Melede, was the island on which 
 St. Paul was shipwrecked, appears to me for the fol- 
 lowing reasons indisputable. 
 
 First, The people of Melite, or Malta, might pro- 
 perly be called fiapfiapoi ; as not being of Grecian, but 
 of African or Punic extraction : but of the people of 
 
 * Appian, De Rebus Illyricis, 
 i 6 , tells us that Augustus re- 
 moved the inhabitants of this 
 island, off the coast of Illyricum, 
 sometime in his reign. We find 
 it noticed in the Periplus of 
 Scylax, apud Geographos Mi- 
 nores, i. 8 . Nested. The father 
 
 of the poet Oppian, if not Op- 
 pian himself along with him, 
 according to the author of his 
 life, was banished thither also, in 
 the reign of Severus. Besides 
 thisMelite, mention occurs in 2E- 
 lian, De Natura Anim. xi. 17 . 
 of another in Egypt. 
 
 P Diod. Sic. v. 12. Strabo, vi. 2. §. i j. 283. Pliny, H. N. iii. 14. 
 H. N. iii. 30. Steph. de Urbibus. Antonini Itinerarium. 
 
 q Pliny, 
 
Time and Order of St. Luke's Gospel . 
 
 185 
 
 Melede this is not so certain. Secondly, Malta lies 
 much nearer to Crete, than Melede ; and it was from 
 Crete that St, Paul was sailing when he was over- 
 taken by the storm which ultimately carried him to 
 Malta. Thirdly, It was with a south wind that he 
 set out from Crete ; but this was speedily changed 
 into the tempestuous wind called Euroclydon, the 
 very name of which proves that it came from the 
 east or the north-east. Now no east or north-east 
 wind would carry a ship from Crete up to the very in- 
 terior of the Sinus Hadriaticus — directly to the north- 
 west : but it might carry one, from the same quarter 
 to Malta ; which would be right to the west or the 
 south-west Fourthly, a ship of Alexandria had 
 
 * The direction of the wind 
 is incontestibly proved by the 
 following fact. When they had 
 passed the small island of Clau- 
 da, (frofiovfievoi prj els rrjv 'Evpnv 
 cKTrecroocri, they are said to have 
 struck sail, or let down the mast 
 of the ship, and so left her to 
 take her course r . It is not the 
 most correct version to render 
 these words. Lest they should 
 fall into the quicksands ; since 
 the meaning is, Lest they should 
 be driven upon the quicksand ; 
 that is, upon the Syrtis of Afri- 
 ca. There was no 17 2 vpns but 
 that ; the distance of which too 
 from Clauda, or from the island 
 of Crete, was nothing consider- 
 able, while its direction or bear- 
 ing referred to the same islands, 
 (with which we are chiefly con- 
 cerned,) is exactly such as might 
 be expected in order to justify 
 this mode of speaking. The 
 
 Syrtis Major is that which is 
 meant : and if any one will look 
 at its position on the maps, he 
 will see that it lies almost ex- 
 actly south-west of Crete ; and 
 especially of that part of it where 
 the haven of Phcenice, and the 
 small island of Clauda, are to be 
 placed. 
 
 'H xa\e7r6rr)s be, says Strabo, Kai 
 TavTTjs T7]s Svprecos Kai rrjs piKpas, 
 oti 7 roXXa^oG revayabrjs eariu 6 
 / SvOos , Kara ray apnooTeis Kai ras 
 7r\r)ppvpidas avpfiaivei ncriv ep.- 
 TTLTTTCLV els TO. (Upa^T) Kai Kadl(eLV’ 
 (TiravLOV S’ eivai to mo^opevov o-ku- 
 (pos. btoTvcp TToppatOev rbv napd- 
 7r\ov v noiovvTai , <£ vkaTTopevoi , prj 
 ip,7T€(TOl€V els TOVS Ko\7TOVS, vtf d.V€- 
 pcov acpvXaKToi X^Oevres s . Now 
 
 a wind, which was likely to have 
 carried the ship of St. Paul in 
 a direction due south-west of 
 Crete, must have come from the 
 north-east: and this is among 
 
 r xxvii. 17. s X vii. 3. §. 20. 687. Vide also Lucan, Pharsalia, ix. 304 sqq. : 
 Strabo ii. 5. p. 327. xvii. 3. §.17. 681. Pliny, H. N. v. 4: Pomponius Mela, i. 7: 
 Dio Chrys. Orat. v. 190. 1 . 22. Sulpicii Severi Dialog, i. 2. Solini Polyhistor, 
 cap. 2 7. 
 
186 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 wintered in Melite ; which was very possible of the 
 island of Malta, situated as that was midway in the 
 
 the strongest reasons why, in 
 the name of that wind, instead 
 of EvpoKXvdcw, we should read 
 with many old versions, Ev- 
 pouKvXoov, or EvpaicvXoov : though 
 Griesbach, on the authority of 
 manuscripts, inclines rather to 
 EvpvKXvdcov ; which differs from 
 both. 
 
 According to Aulus Gellius, 
 whose account agrees, upon the 
 whole, with that of Aristotle t ) 
 the three winds, which blew di- 
 rectly from the three points of 
 the heavens where the sun rises 
 at the three cardinal points of 
 the year — the summer solstice 
 — the vernal equinox — and the 
 winter solstice — respectively ; 
 were called in Greek Boptas, 
 
 ’ A7rr)XiwTr)s or Evpoy, and Evpovo- 
 ros : in Latin Aquilo, Subsola- 
 nus, and Vulturnus. Now as 
 this last wind, Evpovoros or Vul- 
 turnus, was so called because 
 it was partly an east and partly 
 a south wind, something between 
 Evpov Kai Noroi/, Subsolanum et 
 Austrum; so might another wind, 
 composed partly of an east and 
 partly of a north, as lying be- 
 tween Evpov kol Bopeav, Subso- 
 lanum et Aquilonem, be called 
 by a name composed of both — 
 EvpaKvXoav. For Aquilo express- 
 ed in Greek would be expressed 
 by ’AkvXcov. In like manner the 
 wind opposed to this, and blow- 
 ing from the point in the hea- 
 vens between the meridian and 
 the winter Occident, was called 
 Libonotus. 
 
 There is extant an octagonal 
 tower at Athens, the work of 
 
 Antigonus Cyrrhestes, and re- 
 presenting the eight principal 
 winds. (Vide the books of tra- 
 vels in Greece.) Philargyrius, 
 ad Virg. Georg, iv. 298 : Omnes 
 autem venti praeter enchorios, id 
 est region ales, sunt duodecim : 
 Subsolanus, Eurus, Fcenix, No- 
 tus, Libonotus, Africus, Zephy- 
 rus, Argestes, Thracias, Apar- 
 ctias, Boreas, Csecias : which ac- 
 count is somewhat different from 
 that of Aulus Gellius or Ari- 
 stotle. The chief writers upon 
 winds, according to Posidonius, 
 a contemporary of Pompey the 
 Great, B. C. 63, as quoted by 
 Strabo, were Aristotle, Timo- 
 sthenes, and Bion the astrono- 
 mer. If the reader is curious 
 to see, what ancient authorities 
 have to say upon this subject, 
 he will find very similar ac- 
 counts, Aristotle, Meteorologica, 
 ii. vi. p. 56. 1 . 3 — Theophra- 
 stus, De Ventis, p. 415 : Seneca, 
 Nat. Qusest. v. 16. 17: Pliny, 
 H. N. ii. 46 — 48. xviii. 76, 77 : 
 Apuleius, De Mundo Liber, 
 Operum ii. 258 — 261) : Agath- 
 emerus, Geographi Minores, 
 ii. lib. ii. cap. xii. 52. 53 : Geo- 
 ponica, i. 1 1 : Vitruvius, De 
 Architectura, i. 6 : Vegetius, De 
 Re Militari, v. 8 : Strabo, i. 2 . 
 p. 77. 78 : Ptolemsei Mathema- 
 tica Compositio, vi. 1 1 : Achilles 
 Tatius in Phenomena Arati, 
 157, D — 158, C: Laurentius, 
 De Mensibus, iv. 76. p. 278. : 
 Liber Enoch, lxxv. Ixxvi. 1 — 4. 
 Cf. also xxxiii — xxxv : Dama- 
 scenus, De Orthodoxa Fide, Lib. 
 ii. capp. 23. 26. 
 
 t Noctes Att. ii. 22. 
 
Time and Order of St. Luke's Gospel. 187 
 
 course of the navigation pursued by ships of burden 
 or merchantmen t , sailing from Egypt to Italy, by the 
 aid of the trade winds, called Etesian — which blew 
 part of the year from the north, and part from the 
 south ; the former in the summer, the latter after the 
 autumnal equinox. The supposition, on the other 
 hand, of an Alexandrian ship’s having to winter in 
 Melede would be utterly incongruous and absurd. 
 Fifthly, when the voyage was renewed the next spring, 
 the first port which they made was Syracuse ; the next 
 to that, Rhegium ; the next, Puteoli ; and so on : all 
 which were directly in the line of navigation from 
 Malta, or even from Egypt u , towards Rome. But 
 had the voyage set out from Melite, near Illyricum, 
 the first port, according to the usual mode of sailing 
 from the continent of Epirus to Italy — would have 
 
 The proper name of the wind 
 encountered by St. Paul, I con- 
 sider to have been Kaidas, which 
 Aristotle describes as follows: 
 6 8e icaiKias koivos airrfkitoTov Kcii 
 ftopeov : Meteorolog. ut supra, 
 p. 57. 1 . 20: and again, KaiKias 
 fie v .... 81a to koivos eivcu (Bopeov 
 Kal evpov: Ibid. 58. 1 . 3 1. An- 
 other name for it was Helles- 
 pontias, as blowing from that 
 quarter of the ACgean sea ; kcu- 
 <las , ov eWrjanovTLav evioi Ka\ov- 
 
 cri: Ibid. 58. 1 . 24: Csecian ali- 
 qui vocantHellespontiam: Pliny, 
 H. N. ii. 46. This name is bor- 
 rowed, and applied metaphori- 
 cally, by Himerius, Ecloga xxxvi. 
 Sect. i. 308 : ot/V<»> to eap axfrOr) kcu 
 X eipoiv eKkrfdivovTLOs npoo’fiakidv rrjv 
 y l / ‘ v XV v Trrjywo-iv. The wind which 
 caused the shipwreck of the fleet 
 of Xerxes, B. C. 480, off the 
 
 Magnesian coast of Thessaly, is 
 accordingly so named by Hero- 
 dotus, vii. 188, though the sea- 
 son of the year when this hap- 
 pened, being nearer to Midsum- 
 mer than the autumnal equinox, 
 the storm in question was earlier 
 than in the case of St. Paul. 
 
 According to Pliny, the time 
 when this wind from the north- 
 east set in, which he calls the 
 season Aquilonis hyberni, mul- 
 tumque sestivo illi (that is, the 
 Etesian winds) dissimilis, was 
 hi. Id. Novembris, November 
 1 1 : and it may be proved, as it 
 will appear hereafter, that this 
 was about the time when St. 
 Paul and his companions, on 
 leaving Crete, encountered the 
 storm which wrecked them upon 
 Malta. 
 
 t Philo Jud. De Virtutibus. ii. 583. 1. 21. 
 
 u Jos. Ant. Jud. xix. ii. 5. 
 
188 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 been Dyrrhachium : the next Brundisiuni : and so 
 on *. 
 
 The cursory and familiar allusions to Syracuse — to 
 Rhegium — to Puteoli — which next occur, are all impli- 
 citly to the same effect ; and the mention even of so 
 minute, and yet so natural, a circumstance as that of 
 the brethren from Rome hearing of the approach of St. 
 Paul, and coming to meet him as far as Appii Forum, 
 and the Tres Tabernse, is still more remarkable. St. 
 Paul was coming by sea ; yet the brethren were pro- 
 ceeding to meet him by land ; and they expected to 
 join him at the points in question. Appii Forum, and 
 the Tres Tabernae, were places well known to travel- 
 lers ; as lying on one of the great high-roads to and 
 from Rome. Thus Cicero dates one of his letters to 
 Atticus, Ab Appii Foro, bora quarta ; and tells him 
 also he had written to him, Paulo ante a Tribus Ta- 
 bernis b f : and Horace, describing his journey to Brun- 
 
 * The only objection to the 
 conclusion which we have thus 
 arrived at, supplied by the nar- 
 rative itself, is this ; viz. that 
 the sea, in which St. Paul and his 
 companions were tossed for four- 
 teen days and nights, is described 
 by r < 5 ’A bp'ia z : which properly ap- 
 plies only to the Hadriatic Gulf. 
 It is sufficient to answer this ob- 
 jection that Seneca, in his Epi- 
 stles, and Josephus, in Vita 3 -, ap- 
 ply the same name, under appa- 
 rently similar circumstances, to 
 the same part of the Mediterra- 
 nean in general. J osephus’s ac- 
 count of the shipwreck which 
 befell himself, U. C. 817. on a 
 
 voyage to Rome, ought by all 
 means to be compared with this 
 of St. Paul’s in the Acts ; and 
 that his voyage also was begun 
 in the summer quarter of the 
 year, towards its close, appears 
 from the fact that he did not re- 
 turn home again until about the 
 same time U. C. 818. 
 
 f Epp. ad Atticum, i. 13 : 
 Quam Tribus Tabernis, ut opinor, 
 ei dedisti. Cf. ii. 13. Suetonius, 
 Tiber. 2, 6: Claudius Drusus sta- 
 tua sibi cum diademate ad Appii 
 forum posita,Italiam per cliente- 
 las occupare tentavit. The Tres 
 Tabernae are mentioned by Zosi- 
 mus. Lib. ii. p. 80. in his account 
 
 z Acts xxvii. 27. a Jos. Vita, 3. Seneca, Epp. lxxxix. 19. Lib. ii. 10. 
 Cf. Ibid. 12. 
 
Time and Order of St. Luke's Gospel. 
 
 189 
 
 disium from Rome, having mentioned Aricia as his 
 first stage, mentions Forum Appi as the next c . 
 
 of the death of the Caesar, Seve- 
 rus, seized there byMaxentius, as 
 he was on his way from Ravenna 
 to Rome, A. D. 307. Zosimus 
 calls them the rpia KanrjXe'ia. Tres 
 Tabernae, was also the name of a 
 place of some importance, on the 
 frontiers of Gaul and Germany, 
 A.D. 357. See Ammianus Mar- 
 cellinus, xvi. 1 1 . 137. and xvii. 1. 
 
 * 55 - 
 
 It may be collected from Ci- 
 cero, locis citatis, that the Tres 
 Tabernae lay between Appii Fo- 
 rum and Rome : which is the 
 reason why the Christians of 
 Rome, expecting St. Paul, are 
 said to have been waiting for him 
 at Appii Forum and Tres Ta- 
 bernae : not vice versa. It ap- 
 pears also, that Tres Taber- 
 nae was the point where the 
 high road from Antium to Rome, 
 and probably other roads, passed 
 into the Via Appia. 
 
 The Via Appia, like all the 
 great high roads besides, set out 
 from Rome itself : so that a per- 
 son might certainly have travel- 
 led along it all the way to or 
 from Rome and Brundisium re- 
 spectively, without once depart- 
 ing from it. 
 
 It appears, however, from the 
 journey of Horace before refer- 
 red to, that at Forum Appii, the 
 first stage from Rome, to those 
 who did not stop at Aricia, it 
 was usual to quit the high road, 
 and to sail to Anxur or Tarraci- 
 na, along a canal, in boats drawn 
 by mules. As the distance from 
 Aricia to Appii Forum might be 
 readily accomplished in an ordi- 
 
 nary day’s journey, it would com- 
 monly happen that travellers a- 
 long the Via Appia, from Rome, 
 would reach the head of the ca- 
 nal at nightfall ; and if dispatch 
 was any object to them, or if it 
 was otherwise more convenient, 
 they would have an opportunity 
 of continuing their route along 
 the canal by night : which we 
 perceive to have been the case 
 with Horace, who was landed at 
 Feronia, three or four Roman 
 miles from Tarracina, in the 
 morning. 
 
 The canal in question was cut 
 through the Pomptine marshes, 
 in order to lay them dry ; a work 
 projected most recently by Julius 
 Caesar, (Dio, xliv. 5. Plutarch, 
 Julius Cses. 58.) but completed 
 only by Augustus (Dio, xlv. 9.); 
 in allusion to which, Horace com- 
 pliments him, De Arte Poetica, 
 65. Sterilisque diu palus, apta- 
 que remis | Vicinas urbes alit, 
 et grave sentit aratrum. Cf. the 
 Scholiast in loc. who tells us also 
 that the drain, so made, discharg- 
 ed itself ad quadragesimum milli- 
 arium ; which is about the dis- 
 tance of Anxur or Tarracina from 
 Rome. Appian, B. Civ. iii. 12. 
 calls it 400 stadia. 
 
 Strabo, v. 3. §.6. 161. illus- 
 trates Horace’s and St. Paul’s 
 journey, by telling us that the 
 Via Appia passed through or 
 near to Tarracina ; and that the 
 canal in question at one of its 
 extremities did the same ; being 
 intended for the convenience of 
 such as were travelling like St. 
 Paul, by the Via Appia towards 
 
 c Sermonum Lib. i. v. 1. 3. 
 
190 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 There are two remarkable terms peculiar to the 
 Acts of the Apostles — a-ovSapia and on/uaKivOia f — which 
 must have been borrowed from the Latin, and might 
 have been chosen on purpose to express their meaning 
 intelligibly to a Roman apprehension ; or to one fami- 
 liar with Roman usages and terms*. Without saying 
 
 Rome : 7r\r)criov 8e rrjs TappaKivrjs 
 (3a.dtCovTi enl rrjs *P ooprjs, k ,t. A. St. 
 Paul was coming along this high 
 road — from Puteoli ; and his 
 friends appear to have waited for 
 him at Appii Forum and Tres 
 Tabernse, that whether he should 
 continue his route by land, or 
 take advantage of the canal, they 
 might in either case be ready to 
 receive him. It is probable, that 
 all persons who travelled by this 
 canal, whether to or from Rome, 
 did so by night, (Strabo as well 
 as Horace implying this 3 -,) in 
 order to land, and continue their 
 journey by day, from Appii Fo- 
 rum in the one case, and from 
 Tarracina in the other, 
 
 Lucan, Pharsalia, iii. 84. gives 
 very much the same account of 
 the course taken by Caesar in his 
 approach to Rome ; which, how- 
 ever, was by land. Jamque et 
 praecipites superaverat Anxuris 
 arces, | Et qua Pontinas via 
 dividit uda paludes — that is, 
 from Anxur or Tarracina the 
 road passed to the head of the 
 canal through the marsh, at Ap- 
 pii Forum : Qua sublime nemus, 
 Scytliicae qua regna Dianae — that 
 is, (cf. vi. 74, 75,) it passed from 
 Appii Forum to Aricia, or the 
 Aricinum nemus: Quaque iter 
 est Latiis ad summam fascibus 
 
 Albam: | Excelsa de rupeprocul 
 jam conspicit urbem, &c. From 
 Aricia to the Mons Albanus — 
 and so on to Rome. 
 
 Dio, lxviii. 1 5, about U. C. 
 860, in the reign of Trajan, a 
 paved road was made through 
 the Pomptine marshes ; whence 
 we may suppose there was no 
 such thing before : and that this 
 was the reason why all travellers 
 whether to or from Rome, for 
 that part of their route, preferred 
 proceeding by the canal. 
 
 * Nam sudaria Setaba ex 
 Iberis | Miserunt mihi mune- 
 ri Fabullus | Et Verannius . . . 
 Catullus, xii. 14. Sudariumque 
 Setabum, catagraphosque Thy- 
 nos — Id. xxv. 7. Ac sudarium 
 ad os applicaret : Suetonius, 
 Nero. 25, 7 — Ante faciem ob- 
 tenso sudario : Ibid. 48, 1 — Ac 
 protinus sudario, quod forte in 
 manu habebat, &c. Valerius 
 Max. ix. xii. 7. &c. 
 
 Theophylact, Operum iii. 144. 
 D. in Acta, xix. 11, 12: (Cf. 
 GEcumenius, in Ibid. i. 145. A. 
 both, no doubt, from Chryso- 
 stom:) aovhapia nai aipudvdia \ivo- 
 adrj elcnv apfporepa ’ 7r\r)V ra pev crov- 
 8apia eVt rrjs K«paXrjs e7ri(3dWeTcu. 
 ra 8e cripudvBia iv tcus Report nare- 
 
 Xovaiv Tvpos to anopaTTe- 
 
 crdac ras vyporrjTas tov npoacanov, 
 
 f Acts xix. 12. a nXetrai de paXiara vvKTcap, war epfiavTas eep’ eairepas 
 
 tufiaiveiv nputas, teal fiadi^eiv rb Aoiirbv t rj ofitp t rj ’Ainria' aWa nal peQ' rjpepai' 
 pvpov\KeiTai 5t’ ypdvuv. Strabo, loc. cit. 
 
Time and Order of St. Luke's Gospel. 
 
 191 
 
 more, however, on this subject, if it has been rendered 
 probable that neither the Acts, nor the Gospel of St. 
 Luke was composed before the arrival of St. Paul at 
 Rome : then, St. Paul, it may be proved, arrived there 
 about the middle of the fifth of Nero, U. C. 812, A. D. 
 59. St. Luke, as it may be shewn from the Epistles 
 written during his imprisonment, compared with the 
 Acts, was with him at the beginning, at the middle, 
 and at the end of his two years’ residence there. What 
 would be more probable, then, than that both these works 
 were composed within this period ; and when the au- 
 thor had, apparently, so much time and leisure for their 
 composition ? If they were not composed at this time, 
 they could not be composed until after it : but whether 
 they were composed now, or afterwards, they could 
 not be composed until the author had both visited 
 and resided some time on the spot where St. Mark’s 
 Gospel, and perhaps St. Matthew’s Greek, only two or 
 three years before, had first been published. In this 
 case (which is what we are principally concerned with) 
 it would be morally certain that both the latter must 
 have been seen by St. Luke. 
 
 With regard to the place where the Gospel was 
 written, there are not fewer than ten different opin- 
 
 olov l8p5)Tas, TTTviKov , baKpvov, kcu 
 tci X otna. This account makes 
 the semicinctua handkerchiefs, 
 and the sudaria a kind of hood, 
 or cowl. But the sudarium was 
 more properly the handkerchief 
 — and the semicinctua, as intend- 
 ed by St. Luke, were in all pro- 
 bability a kind of aprons ; or 
 some such covering of the body 
 from the waist downwards, as a 
 person would require, who la- 
 boured at a mechanical employ- 
 ment, like St. Paul’s. The term 
 
 occurs in Martial and in Petro- 
 nius Arbiter, in the sense of a sash 
 or belt; but of smaller dimensions 
 than the zone or girdle, usually 
 folded about the body to coniine 
 the dress. Pollux, Onomasticon 
 vii. cap. 16. gives the name of 
 crovbapLov , to what was called in the 
 writers of the middle comedy, 
 Ka\j/i8pa>Tiov, and by Aristophanes 
 (Plutus, 729.) rjpuTvfiiov. Cf. the 
 Scholiast on the Plutus, in loco. 
 This word denotes a napkin, or 
 towel. 
 
192 
 
 Dissertation Second. 
 
 ions ; though I do not think it necessary to mention 
 them : among which the name of Rome in particular 
 is not without its advocate. All these opinions are 
 purely conjectural ; and must be received accordingly. 
 The tradition, which makes the Gospel to have been 
 composed in Achaia or Boeotia^, is as ancient as any; 
 but, as I suspect, as conjectural as the rest. It relies 
 on no better a foundation than the precarious assump- 
 tion either that St. Luke, after the close of the Acts of 
 the Apostles, or at least of the life of St. Paul, finished 
 his course in Greece ; or that Theophilus, to whom 
 the work was dedicated, was some Greek of quality ; 
 or some Governor of Achaia in particular # . The 
 
 * Epiphanius, i. 433. C. A- 
 logi xi. supposes St. Luke to 
 have preached in Dalmatia, 
 Italy, Macedonia, and especially 
 in Gaul ; applying to him St. 
 Paul’s words, 2 Tim. iv. 10. 
 “ Crescens to Galatia and 
 quoting them as Crescens iv 
 t ft TaXkia : for so he contends 
 the text should be read. Cf. 
 Theodorit, iii. 694. in Sec. ad 
 Tim. iv. 10. 
 
 Another reading in Jerome, 
 loc. cit. : makes St. Luke’s Gos- 
 pel to have been published in Bi- 
 thynia. Operum iv. Pars ii. 104. 
 De SS. Eccles. 7. he tells us the 
 bones of St. Luke and of St. 
 Andrew were translated, as we 
 may suppose, from Achaia to 
 Constantinople, in the twentieth 
 of Constantius : Ibid. 282. ad 
 calc. Adv. Vigilantium, he adds 
 to the remains of these two, 
 those of Timothy also. Cf. Doro- 
 theum, apud Theophyl. Operum 
 i. 266. B. Hippolytus, nep't too v 
 ifi . anodToXoov, supposes Andrew 
 to have been crucified at Patrae 
 
 in Achaia. Dorotheus, loc. cit. 
 makes St. Luke to be buried at 
 Ephesus. Symeon Metaphra- 
 stes, if his authority is worth 
 quoting, makes Luke a native of 
 Antioch ; a disciple of our Lord, 
 and one of the two who con- 
 versed with him in the way to 
 Emmaus. He says he left paint- 
 ings of our Lord and his mother, 
 Krjpca not xpwpaai ( 3 d\jsas, still ex- 
 tant 11 ; that he preached in Africa 
 and Egypt, during St. Paul’s 
 imprisonment at Rome — and 
 tells of the translation of his 
 bones from Thebes in Boeotia, 
 those of Andrew from Patrae in 
 Achaia, and those of Timothy 
 from Ephesus, by Constantius, 
 to Constantinople, where they 
 were deposited in the Church of 
 the Apostles, and where they re- 
 ceived fresh honours from Justi- 
 nian in after-time. See the life 
 of St. Luke, from Symeon, ap- 
 pended to CEcumenius in Nov. 
 Test. ii. 853, &c. For the trans- 
 lation in question, cf. Philostor- 
 gius. Hist. Eccles. iii. 2. 476. C. D. 
 
 h Cf. Theodori 
 
 g Hieronymus, Prol. in iv. Ev. Operum iv. 3. ad princip. 
 Lect. E. H. 551. C. 554. A. 
 
Time and Order of St . Luke’s Gospel. 
 
 193 
 
 same kind of argument would prove that Josephus 
 also wrote his Antiquities, and most of his other ex- 
 tant works, in Greece. For he dedicates them to Epa- 
 phroditus, whose name proves him to have been a 
 Greek ; and with the same title of respect ( Kpario-re 
 avSpoov ’I?nra(j)p6$iT€ h ) which St. Luke applies to Theo- 
 philus. Who this Epaphroditus was, I shall have oc- 
 casion to inquire elsewhere. 
 
 Lastly; it is a singular coincidence that St. Peter in 
 his Second Epistle 1 , and St. Paul in his First to Ti- 
 mothy k , (both written after the seventh of Nero, when 
 St. Matthew’s Greek Gospel, St. Mark’s and St. Luke’s 
 Gospels respectively, as I suppose, were all in being,) 
 quote the former, Matt. xii. 45, and the latter, Luke 
 x. 7. The first of these is too remarkable a coinci- 
 dence, both of sentiment and of expression, not to have 
 been designed ; and the second is ushered in by the 
 clearest marks of a quotation from Scripture, yet is 
 found no where either in the Old or in the New Tes- 
 tament except at Luke x. 7. Nor can it surprise us 
 to find the Apostles quoting the Gospels, any more 
 than to find them quoting each other. Yet St. Peter, 
 as we have seen, refers to the Epistles of St. Paul ; 
 and St. Jude, 17, 18, clearly does the same to 2 Peter, 
 iii. 2, 3. 
 
 and Theodore Lector, ii. 567. D. 
 who dates the translation of the 
 relics of Timothy, June 24, and 
 of those of Andrew and Luke 
 March 3 : though the fact is not 
 mentioned in Theodorit, Socra- 
 tes, or Sozomen. The time, ac- 
 cording to Symeon, compared 
 with Ammianus Marcellinus, 
 would be between A. D. 355. and 
 
 A. D. 359, most probably A. D. 
 357. It is singular, that accord- 
 ing to Procopius, De Aiklificiis, i. 
 iv. 14. C. D. the existence of 
 these relics in the church of the 
 Apostles at Constantinople/ was 
 not known, or had been for- 
 gotten, in the reign of Justi- 
 nian, when they were disco- 
 vered there. 
 
 h Vita, 76. Cf. Ant. Jud. Lib. i. Prooem. 2. i ii. 20. k v . 18. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 O 
 
DISSERTATION III. 
 
 On the irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 
 
 I SHALL now enter upon the consideration of the ir- 
 regularities of St. Matthew’s Gospel ; for which pur- 
 pose it will be necessary to begin, and for a time to 
 proceed, with its history in order. 
 
 From the commencement of this Gospel to the begin- 
 ning of our Lord’s ministry in Galilee ; and from the 
 time of that beginning to the account of the sermon on 
 the mount ; there is no appearance of any irregularity 
 in it whatever. How far the account of this sermon 
 may deserve to be considered such, is a question, 
 which I purposely reserve for discussion elsewhere : 
 but if this discussion, as I apprehend it will, shall be 
 found to verify the order of St. Matthew in this in- 
 stance, then, through the first seven chapters of his Gos- 
 pel, and as far as the first verse of the eighth, whatever 
 omissions there may be in the continuity, there will be 
 no irregularity in the collocation, of its accounts. 
 
 The next transaction is the cure of the leper a — 
 which St. Mark and St. Luke, who both relate the 
 first circuit of Galilee as well as St. Matthew, place 
 after its close as well as he. St. Luke, in particular, 
 records likewise between the circuit and this miracle 
 the draught of fishes ; which must have taken place 
 on the lake of Gennesaret ; and, consequently, if it is 
 not a transposition, supposes the circuit to be over, and 
 Jesus returned to Capernaum. The cure of the leper, 
 then, which is placed in St. Matthew also after the 
 sermon on the mount, as this sermon is either during 
 or after the first circuit of Galilee ; referred to every 
 thing which precedes it, is strictly a regular event. 
 
 a Matt. viii. 2 — 4. 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gosjiel. 
 
 195 
 
 The account of the miracle in St. Matthew differs 
 from the same account in the two others, only as a 
 more concise might be expected to differ from a more 
 circumstantial one. It is the first instance, therefore, 
 of that characteristic distinction between him and 
 them, which was asserted in the first dissertation. The 
 mode of supplying his omissions from what is fur- 
 nished, over and above, by St. Mark, or by St. Luke, 
 will appear in the Harmony ; and is the most simple 
 and natural imaginable. 
 
 The next event is the cure of the Centurion’s servant b : 
 which also, if it be the same with the miracle recorded 
 by St. Luke c , as referred to all which St. Matthew 
 has hitherto related, will be a regular event. And 
 though it should not be the same with that ; still if, as 
 there is reason to believe, and as I shall argue more at 
 large elsewhere, the miracle immediately preceding it 
 was not performed in Capernaum, nor in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Capernaum, but somewhere else; it would 
 not follow that the cure of the Centurion’s servant was 
 irregularly placed in St. Matthew’s Gospel, where it is. 
 For, unless it had followed directly after the sermon 
 on the mount, it would not necessarily be irregular in 
 coming after the cure of the leper : our Saviour might 
 have been in the vicinity of Capernaum at the time of 
 the sermon, but not at the time of the cure of the 
 leper. But, in fact, if this miracle in St. Matthew 
 must be supposed the same with that in St. Luke, yet 
 the sermon on the mount in St. Matthew, not the same 
 with the sermon on the mount in St. Luke, this alone 
 should be a convincing argument that the account of 
 the miracle in St. Matthew is no Trajection. The im- 
 probability that two distinct miracles, so nearly alike 
 in their circumstances, should have transpired one after 
 
 b Matt. viii. 5 — 13. c Luke vii. 1 — 10. 
 
 o 2 
 
196 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 each of these discourses, respectively, would be greater 
 than any reasonings could surmount. 
 
 Jesus has just entered Capernaum in both : the ap- 
 plicant to him is a centurion, and a centurion resident 
 in Capernaum, in both : his very designation, (not to 
 say our Lord’s declarations,) and the particulars of the 
 narrative, in both, prove him to have been a Gentile. 
 But that a Gentile, and a Roman officer, should be 
 found residing in one of the cities of Galilee, was a 
 circumstance not very likely. In Jerusalem, or in Cae- 
 sarea, it might not have been surprising : but in Caper- 
 naum, it would be something extraordinary. And if one 
 such inhabitant of that place was, a priori, not to have 
 been expected, how much less two l The subject of the 
 cure is the servant of the centurion in both : for it 
 would be in vain to contend that i rats in St. Matthew, 
 as applied to him, means a different thing from SovXos 
 in St. Luke. The Centurion himself, even in St. Mat- 
 thew, calls him by this name also ; for I consider the 
 words rw SovXw /moo at verse 9, to relate to this servant 
 in particular. The classical use of iz at? in such a sense 
 is too well known to require illustration*: and from 
 Matt. xii. 18. xiv. 2, it may be collected that the writer 
 employed it here, as he employs it there, by choice and 
 out of preference to SovXos. For the term as so ap- 
 plied was originally a term of endearment ; and the 
 high value, which his master is seen to have set on 
 this servant, accounts naturally for his speaking of him 
 in the most affectionate language. The complaint of 
 the servant is the palsy, a species of sickness, in St. 
 Matthew; and some sickness or other is implied in the 
 kgikcos eyoov of St. Luke. His extreme danger is still 
 
 * Pollux, Onomasticon, lib. iii. 7 rpeo-ftvTcpoi. And so puer in La- 
 cap. 8. Kokovi/rai de ical naidcs ot ti n. 
 
 80CX01, 7 xapa rots * Attikois , <av wai 
 
197 
 
 Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 
 
 more clearly attested by the Seivcos fiaaravifyiuevos of the 
 former, and by the ^eXXe reXevrav of the latter. The 
 address of the centurion, so remarkable for its humility, 
 its faith, and its just notions of the divine omnipre- 
 sence and omnipotence ; is either in terminis the same, 
 or most easy to be adjusted together in both : the sur- 
 prise of our Saviour is similarly described in each, and 
 the reflections which he founds on the address are simi- 
 larly directed to those who followed him, in each. 
 
 The only circumstances of difference are, first, that 
 St. Matthew ascribes the application to the centurion 
 St. Luke to the elders of Capernaum, in his stead ; a 
 difference, which is readily to be explained, partly on 
 the principle of St. Matthew’s characteristic conciseness 
 in all merely historical details ; and partly on the 
 principle of the familiar usage of the Jewish Scrip- 
 tures, and, indeed, of all compendious narrations what- 
 ever — by which what is done through the mediate is 
 attributed to the final cause ; since except for the sake 
 of the latter even that would not have been done by 
 the former. If the centurion did not go himself, he 
 must have requested the elders to go ; and, Qui facit 
 per alium, facit per se — and, Legatus sustinet per- 
 sonam allegantis ; are maxims both of Roman and 
 Jewish law alike. Now, having begun his account in 
 this manner, St. Matthew, on the mere principle of 
 consistency, proceeds with it accordingly : represent- 
 ing every thing as passing between Jesus and the Cen- 
 turion in person, which might actually have been trans- 
 acted with his messengers. Hence what would have 
 been incongruous to this supposition, Sio ovSe e/iavrov 
 ijQcocra 7rpo9 ere e\0eiv d 9 (words, which clearly come in 
 parenthetically, and might be left out without preju- 
 dice,) he omits. Hence, also, he represents our Lord 
 
 d Luke vii. 7. 
 
 o 3 
 
198 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 to say, as to the centurion at last, V7raye * Kal w? ii r/- 
 o-revo-a<s yevrjOrjroy <roi : when, perhaps, he said really, as 
 to his messengers, vi rayere’ kgu eiTrare tcq air ocrTeiXavTi 
 v/Jids' or, tw Kvplw vfJLwv’ to? €7r l err ever as •yevrjSrjTCO croi. For 
 this was to say the word, as the centurion had besought 
 him : and the anticipated effect ensued accordingly : 
 IdOrj 6 irals avrov ev rrj copa eKelvrj. 
 
 Secondly, St. Luke has omitted Matt. viii. 11, 12. — 
 the reason of which is partly, and perhaps chiefly, that 
 a similar declaration occurs hereafter Luke xiii. 28, 29; 
 and partly, because he may well be supposed to have had 
 no further object in his account of the present miracle, 
 than to rectify the order of St. Matthew; and to supply 
 his omissions where they required to be supplied, but no 
 where else. Now this part of the narrative was what 
 St. Matthew had related the most fully of any. In like 
 manner, though he mentions no speaking of the word, 
 yet by summing up the whole account with the words 
 of verse 10, a fact which St. Matthew had not ex- 
 pressed, he clearly presupposes it. 
 
 The next events are, first, the cure of Peter’s wife’s 
 mother ; and, secondly, after sunset the same day, the 
 performance of sundry miracles of healing, or of dis- 
 possession e . The allusion to the time of these last 
 miracles is a proof that theij happened on the evening 
 of the Sabbath ; and, therefore, that the former hap- 
 pened on the Sabbath. Hence, these two events, first, 
 as miracles of the same kind, and performed on the 
 same persons ; secondly, as miracles performed on the 
 same day ; are the events which we find on record, 
 Mark i. 29-34. Luke iv. 38—41 ; prior in both to the 
 first circuit of Galilee ; and with no more difference in 
 the several accounts compared together, than may be 
 easily explained, as in the former instance. 
 
 e Matt. viii. 14 — 17. 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. J 99 
 
 Here, then, unless we should give up the joint testi- 
 mony of two Evangelists, because it appears to mili- 
 tate against the testimony of one ; or, unless we should 
 run into the absurdity of supposing that all these 
 events, the very counterparts of each other, happened 
 more than once ; we must acknowledge that St. Mat- 
 thew’s order is irregular ; and the irregularity, in this 
 instance, is a Trajection, that is, the relating of such 
 things after others, as even in his own narrative ought 
 to have come before them. Not that he affirms this 
 order : for there is no note of time or of sequence which 
 indissolubly associates these particulars either with 
 what precedes, or with what follows. Our Lord now , as 
 well as then , is at the utmost merely supposed to be 
 in Capernaum ; for Peter’s house, the scene of each of 
 these events, was certainly in that city : and though 
 this circumstance would not prove that they all hap- 
 pened, as they are all related, together ; it might yet 
 be one reason for relating them all together. 
 
 The next event is the passage of the Lake of Gali- 
 lilee ; which we may divide into the incidents on the 
 way to the Lake ; the incidents upon the Lake ; the 
 incidents on the other side ; and the return : all so 
 connected together as to form one entire narrative from 
 Matt. viii. 18. to Matt. ix. 1, the parts of which con- 
 sequently will be regular, whatever the whole may be. 
 
 The incidents on the way to the Lake, as here re- 
 lated, are peculiar to St. Matthew : but the same inci- 
 dents, or something very like them, are found also, 
 Luke ix. 57, to the end — at a very different time, and 
 on a very different occasion. These incidents, in St. 
 Matthew, are the request of a certain scribe to follow 
 our Saviour ; and the petition of one, who was a dis- 
 ciple, for leave to go and bury his father : to which 
 St. Luke adds a third, of a nature akin to the last. 
 
 o 4 
 
200 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 The occasions to which these distinct accounts belong 
 respectively, are palpably the most different imaginable; 
 our Lord in St. Matthew being about to cross the Lake, 
 and in St. Luke being on a journey through Samaria. 
 If, therefore, the distance of time between them was, 
 as we shall see hereafter, something very considerable; 
 this becomes an argument that events so purely anec- 
 dotal, so entirely detached from consequences before 
 and after, could never have been arbitrarily inserted ; 
 much less so widely transposed, before or after their 
 proper time, merely to be arbitrarily inserted — in either 
 of these Gospels. With regard at least to St. Luke’s, 
 such a Trajection would be a singular circumstance, 
 and altogether at variance with his extreme accuracy, 
 and his scrupulous regard to historical precision. 
 
 Nor, in fact, can any thing be more natural and 
 pertinent than the manner in which he relates them, 
 and the place which they occupy in his narrative. 
 Our Lord had just been refused admittance into one 
 village of the Samaritans, and, therefore, he was neces- 
 sarily obliged to journey on to another. And it came 
 to pass, says the Evangelist, while they were journey- 
 ing : who would not conclude that he means while 
 they were journeying accordingly? Again; if the 
 rudeness of his reception at this village was still fresh 
 in the memory of the hearers ; what reply could be 
 more just or more impressive, than the terms of verse 
 58 ? which, besides setting forth the general hard- 
 ships and difficulties of the Christian vocation, must 
 have been strikingly illustrated in the particular case 
 of Christ, driven away at the ordinary season of rest 
 and refreshment from one village, to seek the same 
 precarious hospitality in another. Besides which, the 
 note of sequence, imera Se ravra , Luke x. 1, has clearly 
 nothing to refer to, except the general substance of 
 
201 
 
 Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 
 
 chapter ix. and especially from verse 51. to the end. 
 As certainly, then, as the mission of the Seventy 
 followed on those things in general, so must these 
 things in particular have preceded the mission of the 
 Seventy ; the time of which I shall establish else- 
 where. Moreover, the mission of the Twelve before 
 this time, and the mission of the Seventy, afterwards — 
 each for the same purpose of preaching, or proclaim- 
 ing, the advent of the kingdom of God — determines a 
 period in our Saviour’s ministry, at which or after, but 
 not before it, he had begun to employ the instrument- 
 ality of coadjutors in the proper work of his ministry 
 itself. And it is clear that both the disciples, Luke 
 ix. 60. and 62, were wanted for a purpose like that. 
 On this account, more especially, I am persuaded that 
 these three incidents in St. Luke all happened as he 
 has related them ; upon that occasion at least. 
 
 With regard, however, to the same incidents in St. 
 Matthew ; it must still be considered unlikely that 
 they are related by him in anticipation of their proper 
 time and place, as determined by St. Luke, where the 
 anticipation would be so unaccountable. It is more 
 reasonable to suppose, that his two of the number, or 
 at least his first, happened twice. Such declarations of 
 the willingness of individuals to become disciples might 
 often be made ; especially at the outset of our Saviour’s 
 ministry ; and, if they were the effect of a forward or 
 mistaken zeal, they might as often by him be re- 
 pressed. Besides, St. Matthew calls his applicant a 
 Scribe, and makes him style our Lord, Master ; St. 
 Luke calls his merely a certain person ; who addresses 
 Jesus by the common title of respect, Kvpie. Now the 
 rank or profession of Scribe among the Jews was 
 much more considerable than we are apt to imagine ; 
 and the readiness of one of that order to have become 
 
202 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 a disciple of Jesus was a still more remarkable event ; 
 and St. Luke, I am persuaded, had the nature of the 
 case required it, (especially in the last year of our 
 Lord’s ministry, when the Scribes and Pharisees 
 almost universally had determined upon his rejection,) 
 would not have failed to designate him accordingly. 
 Capernaum was not so contiguous to the Lake, but 
 that such an incident as this in St. Matthew might 
 have transpired by the way ; and, if our Saviour was 
 proceeding thither, as we shall see elsewhere, expect- 
 ing to pass the night upon the water, his answer as 
 now returned, would be just as pertinent and as pathe- 
 tic, as the same answer when returned some time after. 
 
 The second incident in St. Matthew concerns one, 
 who was a disciple already ; but the similar incident 
 in St. Luke, one, who was then called for the first 
 time ; and there is also this further difference between 
 them, that in the one our Lord is made to reply 
 merely, aicoXovQei /ior /ecu acpes tov<s veKpov? Ga^ai tovs 
 kavTwv veKpovs' but not, crv Se a7reX0wv SiayyeXXe rr\v 
 /3acri\etav rou Oeov : in the other he is represented as 
 saying, not, olkoXovOcl /uoi — but, a(pe$ tovs veKpovs 6a- 
 tov9 eavrcov veKpovs’ crv Se ai reXOcor SiayyeXXe rrjv 
 /3acriXelav rod BeoL The former, therefore, might have 
 passed between our Lord and one of his Apostles, 
 that is, even at this period of his ministry, one of his 
 stated followers already; the other must have passed 
 with one, who was previously not even a disciple ; and 
 at a time which could not be before the Twelve at 
 least had been sent out to assist their Master. 
 
 Accordingly; though from what source the information 
 was obtained is not mentioned ; the former is clearly 
 supposed by Clement of Alexandria to have passed be- 
 tween our Lord and Philip. To£ K vplov . . Xeyovrog rw 
 <$>iXl7nru )* a(pe$ tov 9 veicpovs Oa^ai tou? eavroov veKpovs’ av 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 203 
 
 Se ciKoXovOei poi f . All the Apostles had been ordained 
 before this time, and Philip was one of their number. 
 To proceed, then, with the sequel of the account. 
 
 St. Mark and St. Luke have each given s an history 
 of a passage of the Lake, attended with similar inci- 
 dents ; the latter of which is clearly ascertained to be 
 the same with the former : and this is fixed by the 
 account itself to the evening of the day when our 
 Lord began to teach in parables. Now this he did, as 
 we learn from St. Luke, posterior to a second circuit 
 of Galilee ; and that, a circuit undertaken after the 
 cure of the centurion’s servant. The beginning to 
 teach in parables St. Matthew records, xiii. 1 : the 
 cure of the centurion’s servant he recorded, viii. 5. 
 The passage of the Lake, then, between the two, may 
 be regular as to what goes before, but it is irregular as 
 to what follows after. Nor is there any means of 
 evading this conclusion, except by rejecting the author- 
 ity of St Mark, whose note of time, iv. 35, fixes the 
 passage to the evening in question ; or, by contending 
 that his passage, or St. Luke’s, was a different event 
 from St. Matthew’s. But that this cannot be the case, 
 may be inferred from certain particulars common to 
 the accounts of all, and of so critical a nature as neces- 
 sarily to characterize only the same event. These are 
 first, the motive which induced our Lord to cross the 
 Lake ; secondly, the storm upon the Lake ; thirdly, 
 the miracle at the other side of the Lake. 
 
 I. The motive St. Matthew expressly attributes to 
 the presence of the multitude ; IScov Se 6 toXXovs 
 
 o^Xovs 7rep\ avrov , eiceXevcrev cnreXOeiv eh to 7repav. The 
 same thing is implied by St. Mark, when, at the time 
 of our Lord’s embarkation, he shews him to have been 
 
 f Stromatum iii. 4. Operum i. 522. 1 . 12. 
 
 22—39. 
 
 g Mark iv. 35 — v. 20. Luke viii. 
 
204 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 surrounded by the multitude ; and purposely to have 
 dismissed them either before or by his embarkation : 
 cKpevi-es tov o^Xov. The events of the day preceding, 
 it will be seen hereafter, had been such as might 
 account for each of these effects ; both why the people 
 should have been more than usually anxious to press 
 around our Saviour ; and why he should have been 
 more than usually desirous to escape from their im- 
 portunity. 
 
 II. The passage is followed in each of the Evange- 
 lists by a storm of wind ; which fixes it, as I appre- 
 hend, to an equinoctial quarter of the year ; and, con- 
 sequently, is another critical coincidence. In each, 
 likewise, before the storm, it is implied that our Lord 
 was sleeping; and in each, that after a while, but 
 not until the danger had become imminent, he was 
 awakened. These are particulars which must identify 
 the storm in all the accounts. It was evening, or after 
 sunset, either at the autumnal or at the vernal equinox, 
 when they embarked : the day before had been full of 
 incident and exertion : what more natural, then, than 
 that with the first opportunity of privacy and of rest, 
 if not in the night-time, Jesus should be asleep? I hope 
 to make it appear elsewhere, that he actually passed 
 the night upon the Lake ; and neither landed at 
 Gadara, nor returned to Capernaum, before the fol- 
 lowing morning: in which case the coincidence be- 
 comes the stronger. 
 
 III. The eastern side of the Lake of Galilee is 
 known to be rocky and cavernous; and its rocks and 
 caverns are known to have been employed of old as 
 catacombs for the dead. The practice of burying in 
 caves, hewn out of rocks, was in fact very ancient 
 among the Jews h . Tiberias, situated at the south- 
 
 h Is. xxii. 16. Vide also John xi. 38. Matt. xxvii.6o. 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew'' s Gospel. 205 
 
 west extremity of the Lake, and close to the water’s 
 edge, was built on a site which had been an extensive 
 cemetery { . Epiphanius, speaking of this neighbour- 
 hood, writes thus I ev tol 9 TrXrjcriaiTepov tviul /3 ol 9 * 7ro\v- 
 avSpia. $e ecTTLV , ovrco 9 ev rrj irarpl^L KaXov/uieva, crTrrfkaia ev 
 7 rcTpaig opvicTa Kareo-Kevacriueva k . It is known also, (and 
 it was no more than probable it would be so,) that 
 such places were the resort of demoniacs, or of insane 
 persons, who had been left at large, or were inca- 
 pable of being kept under restraint ; and Epiphanius 
 gives us the following information concerning their 
 habits in his own time : 1u.cuv61u.ev09 Se T19 rjv ev rfj 7 ro\ei 9 69 
 *yviJ.v69 Trjv 7 to\lv 7 repirjei, <prjju.\ Se ev r Ti( 3 epiaSi 9 kcu 7 roX- 
 \6 kl 9 evSiSucnc 6 iu.€V 09 Trjv ecrQrjTa Sieppqyvvev, 009 e 0 o 9 T019 
 TOLOVTOL 9 h 
 
 It may be said, then, that if our Lord had often 
 visited this shore, such miracles as the dispossession of 
 demoniacs on such a spot, and under similar circum- 
 stances, might often have been wrought. But our 
 Lord had never visited this shore before ; and there are 
 three circumstances in the miracle now performed all pe- 
 culiar to it — yet all specified by each of the accounts, 
 and, consequently, proving it to be the same miracle in 
 each ; viz. first, the strength and ferocity of the demo- 
 niacs, which are not only extraordinary features of 
 their case in general, but expressly insisted on accord- 
 ingly : secondly, the vicinity of an herd of swine, and 
 the petition of the demons to enter into that, with its 
 effects on the swine : thirdly, the unanimous request 
 of the inhabitants of the country, produced by both 
 events, that Jesus would leave their coasts ; and his 
 immediate departure. To these we might have added, 
 as’ not the least remarkable among the features of re- 
 
 i Jos. Ant. Jud. xviii. ii. 3. Vita, 59. 
 naei, viii. 1 Ibid. x. 134. A. 
 
 k Adv. Haereses, i. 132. A. Ebio- 
 
20 6 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 semblance, had it been found in St. Matthew also, as it 
 is in St. Mark and in St. Luke, the peculiarity of the 
 name Xeyecov. 
 
 In every other instance on record, demoniacs appear 
 to have been helpless, rather than dangerous ; sufferers 
 in some distressing way themselves ; but in nowise for- 
 midable to others. No doubt the distinction in the pre- 
 sent case was due to the number and the proper dispo- 
 sition of the demons, by whom these men in particular 
 were actuated. Their number is indicated by the 
 name Legion itself ; their peculiar disposition — as 
 more than usually delighting in mischief — as mali- 
 ciously or ferociously inclined, above even the ordinary 
 inclination of devils — appears from their request, when 
 about to be ejected from the men, to be permitted to 
 enter into the swine ; and from the effects of this per- 
 mission when granted, upon the swine ; which they 
 immediately urged into the sea, and destroyed. And, 
 perhaps, to exemplify this property of the diabolical 
 nature, or to shew his disciples to what lengths, when 
 freed from restraint, in the destruction of life, for de- 
 struction’s sake, and in the doing of evil, for evil’s 
 sake, whether to men, or to brutes, or to any other of 
 the works of God, it was disposed to carry them ; 
 might be one and possibly the chief reason, why our 
 Saviour allowed them to enter first into the swine, in- 
 stead of sending them away at once to their proper 
 abode ; called in this account the afivcro-os, or bottom- 
 less pit. 
 
 On these several grounds, we might safely conclude 
 that the passage of the Lake must be the same in each 
 Evangelist : and even the differences, further observ- 
 able in their accounts, will confirm, rather than invali- 
 date, this conclusion. For first, in relation to the 
 storm, the historical part of St. Matthew is merely 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 207 
 
 more concise than that of St. Mark, or of St. Luke. 
 The chief distinction is, that he makes the disciples say, 
 Kvpie, crwarov diroXXviaeOa — St. Mark, SiSaoricaXe , ov 
 
 geXei aoi otl air oXXvpeQa ; But St. Matthew is im- 
 plicitly confirmed by St. Luke ; emcrTara , emcndra , 
 diro\\viu.e6a : and, indeed, this abrupt, unconnected 
 form of ejaculation in each, so expressive of fear and 
 agitation, carries with it the evidence of its own truth. 
 As, however, the act of awakening our Lord was 
 ascribed to the disciples in common, so the exclama- 
 tion, which accompanied it, is ascribed to them all in 
 common : in which case, these different modes of ex- 
 pression might each have been actually employed, but 
 by different persons among them ; or their actual ad- 
 dress might have been made up of the whole : Kvpie , 
 o'ooa'ov rj/Jids' ov lueXei croi otl cnroXXviuLeOa \ 
 
 As to the sequel, St. Matthew is express that Jesus 
 reproached them with their want of confidence, before 
 he arose and rebuked the storm : St. Mark as well as 
 St. Luke, that he did so afterwards. Nothing would 
 be more natural than that he should have done both ; 
 the one in allusion to the overweening fear and con- 
 sternation, under which they had aroused him from 
 sleep, and even reproached him with an indifference to 
 their safety ; the other, when by having allayed the 
 storm he had taught them how little they had to fear. 
 Describing the effect which ensued, they all use the 
 same and that the most appropriate expression, eyevero 
 ' yaXrjvri : and if there is any diversity in the language 
 with which the witnesses of the effect give vent to 
 their surprise, (a diversity which affects only St. Mark 
 and St. Luke,) these are as before the expressions of a 
 number, venting their feelings to each other ; and 
 both these and others of the same kind might actually 
 have been used. 
 
208 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 In the account of the ensuing miracle, the compara- 
 tive conciseness of St. Matthew, which is peculiarly 
 striking, must go far to explain every discrepancy 
 between him and the rest. Yet, notwithstanding this, 
 no material fact is omitted in his narrative. He dif- 
 fers from the two others in the detail only, not in the 
 outline ; in circumstantials, not in essentials. Nor 
 does it any where appear more satisfactorily that the 
 later Evangelists had seen his account ; and wrote 
 mainly to supply its observable omissions. 
 
 The circumstances of distinction amount in reality 
 to two alone ; first, that St. Matthew lays the scene of 
 the miracle in the country of the Gergesenes, and they 
 in the country of the Gadarenes. But they all lay it 
 in the region over against Capernaum ; that is, on the 
 same part of the eastern side of the Lake. St. Luke 
 makes our Saviour land, avmrepav ri?? TaXiXalas; 
 St. Mark makes him sail, elg to irepav rrjs 6a\d<rcrr ]$ ; 
 St. Matthew, in this instance, takes him els to n repav ; 
 and ix. 1. when he returned, brings him to Capernaum 
 again at the other side. The country of the Gerge- 
 senes, then, and the country of the Gadarenes, we 
 must have concluded, were both the same part of De- 
 capolis — opposite to Galilee ; the latter, a name most 
 intelligible to Gentiles, and the former, one more ap- 
 propriate for J ews, that is, for the natives of the coun- 
 try itself. 
 
 But with respect to this difference generally ; in the 
 time of Epiphanius and Theophylact, there were copies 
 of St. Mark’s Gospel extant, which the latter calls aicpi- 
 fieo-repa, containing the reading tw v Tepyeo-tjpcov, instead 
 of toov TaSaprjvcov™, as well as St. Matthew’s*; and what 
 
 * St. Luke’s Gospel, too, as Epiphanius, read ra v Fepyearj^ 
 well as St. Mark’s, in the time of veov : Epiphanius, loco citato. 
 
 m Epiphanius, Operum i. 650. B. Theophylact, Operum i. 195. A. Comm, in 
 Marc. v. 
 
Irregularities of St . Matthew's Gospel . 
 
 209 
 
 the meaning of the former would be in each, will be 
 explained by a reference to Origen’s Commentaries 
 upon St. John. Speaking of the existence of erroneous 
 readings in the various copies of the Gospels, he illus- 
 trates this position by a case in point. 
 
 'H irep\ tovs V7ro too v Saipovloov KaTaKptjpv i^o per ov$ 9 icai ev 
 rfj OaXavay cvpirvLyopevov*; yolpovs ohovopla avayeypaTTai 
 yey ovevai ev Trj yoopa toov Yepacrrjvoov * . Yepacra Se t >/9 
 ’A|Oa/3/a9 €(tt\ 7ro\i9> oure OaXacro-av, ovre Xipvrjv 7rXr]<TLOV 
 eyovva. Dein I eire\ Se ev oXlyois evpopev , eh ty\v yoopav 
 toov YaSaptjvoov, kcu n rpos TOVToXeKTeov. YaSapa yap i roXis 
 pev eaTL Trj$ ’I ovSaias, irep\ rjv ra SiafiorjTa Oeppa Tvyyavei, 
 Xlpvrj Se Kprjpvoh Trapatceipevrj ovSapoos ecTiv ev avTrj , r] 
 OaXaucra. aXXa Yepyetra , a(p ’ *79 01 Yepyecraioi , ttoXis 
 apyala 7 ~ep\ Trjv vvv KaXovpevrjv Yi/3epiaSa Xipvrjv , 7rep'i rjv 
 Kprjpvos, Trapatceipevo? Trj Xlpvrj, a(p ’ ov SeUvvTai tov$ yol- 
 pov 9 vi to toov Saipovoov KaTa/3e/3Xrjo'0aL n . 
 
 Nor is it to be supposed that St. Matthew, bora 
 and educated in Capernaum, or at least in Galilee, 
 should not have known the names current among his 
 countrymen for every region in the vicinity of the 
 Lake. It is, at least, plainly implied in all the ac- 
 counts, but especially in St. Luke’s °, that the scene of 
 the miracle was the neighbourhood of some city, which 
 must have bordered on the Lake ; and, consequently, 
 could be neither Gerasa nor Gadara ; each of which 
 was one or two days’ journey distant ; but might be 
 Gergesa, which would be upon the spot. 
 
 * The reading, toov Tepyevrjvcov, 
 was not uniform even in St. Mat- 
 thew’s Gospel. Some copies had, 
 and still have, tcd v TabaprjvSv, or 
 the reading alluded to by Origen, 
 rcov Yepacrqvutv. This reading, in- 
 deed, is seen from Griesbach, to 
 have been the most common va- 
 
 riation of all, in each of the three 
 Gospels. It appears inTertullian, 
 iv. 267. De Anima, 25: Et legio- 
 narii numeri, ut in Geraseno. Al- 
 so in Prudentius, Apotheosis, 
 414. Ecce Gerasenos legio ruit 
 effera porcos : Operum i. 33 1. 
 
 “ Operum iv. 140 D — 141 A. In Joh. tom. vi. 24. o Matt. viii. 33, 34. 
 
 Mark v. 14. Luke viii. 27. 34. 39. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 P 
 
210 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 The second circumstance of difference is the num- 
 ber of demoniacs, which St. Matthew makes to have 
 been two ; St. Mark as well as St. Luke one : a dis- 
 tinction amounting at the utmost only to an omission, 
 but not to a contradiction ; for which, too, the very 
 reason in the later Evangelists may have been that 
 there was no such omission as that, but another of 
 greater importance, in the prior account. If St. Mat- 
 thew’s object was simply to specify the actual effect 
 of the miracle, and nothing more; he could not discri- 
 minate between its subjects, the case of one of whom 
 was the case of the other ; the cure of one of whom 
 was the counterpart of the cure of the other : and, 
 therefore, he would mention them summarily in con- 
 junction. But if there was any difference in the moral 
 effect of the miracle on the subjects; and consequently 
 if the moral uses, which might be proposed by the re- 
 lation of the miracle, would not have been equally an- 
 swered by the nature of this effect upon either indiffer- 
 ently; then it was possible, and it might even be neces- 
 sary, to separate the accounts from each other ; to re- 
 late the cure of one as altogether independent on the 
 cure of the other. Now one of the demoniacs was un- 
 questionably grateful for his cure, and anxious to have 
 acknowledged it by becoming a disciple of Christ : but 
 it does not appear that the other was. This may ex- 
 plain the difference between the accounts. St. Matthew 
 might have it in view to represent merely the physical 
 effect of the miracle ; that is, to shew, in one of the 
 most remarkable instances, the power and authority of 
 Christ over evil spirits : St. Mark and St. Luke might 
 propose the moral ; that is, to exhibit in its proper 
 light the natural and amiable impression produced by 
 the miracle on one of the patients in particular. The 
 same person might be also the more considerable of 
 the two. The efforts made to reclaim him, or at least 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 211 
 
 to preserve him from bodily harm, are a proof that he 
 had friends or relations who were interested in his 
 safety. He might afterwards have become a Chris- 
 tian ; and his case may be specified now, on the same 
 principle on which it is probable that St. Mark speci- 
 fies elsewhere the case of Bartimaeus — and describes, 
 as we have seen, Simon of Cyrene, by his relation to 
 Alexander and Rufus. The true reason, however, ap- 
 pears to be supplied by Luke viii. 27, in the fact that 
 this one demoniac was an inhabitant, and probably a 
 native of Gergesa ; but not the other. Hence it is 
 that, at the end of the account, after relating the fact 
 of our Lord’s command to him, that he should return 
 home , and tell what God had done for him, St. Luke 
 adds? that he departed, proclaiming throughout all the 
 city what Jesus had done for him. Nor does it follow 
 from this that he might not proclaim it in other parts 
 of Decapolis also ; only that he began to proclaim it 
 in his own city first. The assertion of St. Mark % 
 then, would still be true in itself ; as well as consistent 
 with, though not so specific as St. Luke’s. 
 
 Be this however as it may; the difference itself is 
 so far useful, that it enables us to explain one slight, 
 and perhaps the only remaining, discrepancy between 
 St. Matthew and the other two. On the first address 
 of the demoniacs to Jesus, lie makes them say, ri r\piv 
 Kal <tol 9 ’ Irjuov , vie rod 0 eov ; ij\6e$ to$e i rpo icaipov /3acra - 
 vlvai rjfxd 9 ; they make them say, tl epol Kal <roi , ’I rjo-ov, 
 vie tov Oeov tov v^lcttov ; op/cit^a) are tov Qeov, or, Seojmai 
 crov, prj pe f3ao-avlo-rj$. If there were two demoniacs, 
 both speaking by the same influence of possession ; 
 each of these modes of address might actually have 
 been used. 
 
 The next event is the cure of the paralytic ; and 
 
 P Chap. viii. 39. 
 
 q Mark v. 20 . 
 
212 
 
 Dissertation Third . 
 
 consequent upon that the call of Matthew r , which was 
 clearly a consecutive event, and happened on the same 
 day. For, after the account of the cure, it follows, 
 Ka\ yrapaycov 6 ’I rjcrov^ eiceiOev : where in eiceiOev the re- 
 ference is to the house which had been the scene of 
 the miracle ; and in 7rapdya)v to our Lord’s quitting it, 
 and passing somewhere else s . This part, then, of St. 
 Matthew is regular, considered by itself ; whatever it 
 may be relatively to the rest of the same chapter, or 
 to the chapter before it. 
 
 Now in St. Mark and in St. Luke t 9 there is an ac- 
 count of a similar cure, followed by a similar call ; of 
 which, if the first be the same as St. Matthew’s, the 
 latter cannot be different from his ; and consequently 
 the individual called in each instance, must be the 
 same person, and have borne the name both of Levi 
 and of Matthew, (as others also of the Apostles bore 
 two names,) indifferently. It is a critical circumstance 
 to the same effect, that he is described by each as called 
 while sitting at the receipt of custom : for this receipt 
 was probably near the Lake ; and wheresoever it was, 
 it is not likely that Capernaum would possess more 
 than one such place. 
 
 With respect, then, to the cure of the paralytic ; 
 though St. Matthew inserts it here, he does not affirm 
 its order here : the phrase Kat ISov , premised to his 
 account of it, is never a note of time or sequence, 
 but merely an admonition, which draws the attention 
 of the reader to something about to be related, as 
 something memorable and worthy of attention. Nor 
 does his account of the miracle, however concise, con- 
 tain any thing in common with the other two, which 
 is not almost verbatim the same in all : a coincidence 
 
 r Matt. ix. 2 — 9. 
 Luke v. 18 — 28. 
 
 s Vide Matt. ix. 27. John ix. 1. 
 
 t Mark ii. 3 — 14. 
 
213 
 
 Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 
 
 particularly remarkable in the address of our Lord to 
 the paralytic, and in his defence of himself against the 
 suspicion of blasphemy; which yet extend to some 
 length. Two such circumstances which St. Matthew 
 has in common with St. Mark and St. Luke, of so cri- 
 tical a nature as to identify his miracle with their’s, 
 may be pointed out in his narrative : first, without 
 mentioning that our Lord was in some house at the 
 time, much less how he was beset in that house, that he 
 presupposes both, in the words, ISoov 6 ’I rja-ovs Trjv ttlcttlv 
 avrwv ; a distinct allusion to some display of faith, greater 
 than ordinary, the nature of which is at once explained 
 by the parallel accounts : secondly, that he notices the 
 presence of the Scribes, which St. Luke u shews to have 
 been something on this occasion different from usual ; 
 and much more numerous or more general. This cir- 
 cumstance accounts also for that variation in the terms 
 of the construction put by them on our Saviour’s words 
 to the paralytic : some might say, as in St. Matthew, 
 ovrog /3\acr(prjiuL6i — others, as in St. Mark or in St. Luke, 
 tl ovros ovrco \a\ei /SXacrcprj/uLia s ; or, tls eo-riv ovtos os 
 XaXel f3\a<r<priiuLlas ; and as to what follows in each of 
 these last, t Is Svvarai a(pievai djULaprlas el /ml] eh, that is, 
 novo?, 6 Geos ; either it was part of the same observa- 
 tion, and spoken by the same persons, or St. Matthew 
 with his usual conciseness, has merely omitted it. This 
 miracle, then, with its circumstances, is the same in 
 all ; and if so, St. Luke’s order demonstrates it to have 
 been prior to the cure of the centurion’s servant ; St. 
 Mark’s, as well as St. Luke’s, to have been prior to the 
 passage of the Lake ; after both of which however it 
 is related by St. Matthew ; and consequently as it 
 stands in his Gospel, it is a Trajection. 
 
 The next event is the entertainment in some house. 
 
 u Chap. v. 1 7. 2i. 
 
 P 3 
 
21 4 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 when exception was taken against our Lord’s conde- 
 scension in eating with publicans and sinners ; and 
 when the question concerning fasting was put by 
 the disciples of John. Both these facts, or something 
 very like them, occur in St. Mark and in St. Luke v 
 also ; and the question of their agreement or disagree- 
 ment in these instances with St. Matthew will be dis- 
 cussed in its proper place elsewhere. 
 
 With regard, however, to St. Matthew’s account w , 
 its regularity, at least as it stands and in reference to 
 the events which follow next, is established by its own 
 testimony. Jesus was still speaking to the disciples of 
 John, when the application of Jairus was made to him. 
 A comparison of his account with St. Mark’s and St. 
 Luke’s x , will prove in like manner that it is not irregu- 
 lar with regard to the events which preceded, dated at 
 least with the return from Gadara. The miracle in 
 behalf of Jairus is recorded by all the three ; and 
 could the identity of the miracle in each be reasonably 
 called in question, still all doubt about this would be 
 removed by the critical interposition of another miracle 
 in the midst of it, recorded also by each ; the staunch- 
 ing of the issue of blood. 
 
 Now the miracle in question is placed by St. Mark, 
 and by St. Luke, consecutively upon the return from 
 Gadara ; and, therefore, St. Matthew’s account of it, 
 which also is posterior to that return, is so far a re- 
 gular account. They omit, it is true, the intermediate 
 facts recorded by him ; probably, and perhaps solely, 
 because they had occurred and been already related 
 before. The application of Jairus, therefore, was na- 
 turally the first circumstance, which they could parti- 
 cularize after the return. But they do not imply, 
 
 vMarkii. 15 — 22. Luke v. 29 — 39. w Matt, ix, 10 — 17. x Mark v. 21, 22. 
 Luke viii. 40, 41. 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew’s Gospel. 215 
 
 much less affirm, that this application to Jesus was 
 made directly upon his return. It is the people, not 
 Jairus, whom they affirm that our Lord found waiting 
 for him on his return. He had gone away, as we saw, 
 the evening before ; and had passed the night on the 
 Lake : the people had seen whither he set out, and they 
 were the more anxious about his return, because this 
 was in all probability the first time that he had paid a 
 visit to the opposite side of the Lake : they were now 
 looking, then, in the same direction for his coming 
 again. All which circumstances are duly specified by 
 St. Mark and by St. Luke : A great multitude, says 
 the one, had been brought together unto him, and was 
 by the sea-side : The multitude received him, says the 
 other ; for they were all waiting for him. 
 
 The characteristic conciseness of St. Matthew is no 
 where, perhaps, in any narrative of equal length, more 
 remarkable than in the account which follows next. It 
 is scarcely possible that so great a variety of circum- 
 stances could have been more summarily expressed. 
 Such conciseness ought to account for every difference 
 between him and the other two ; and it certainly may 
 account for that which is the chief ; viz. that Jairus, 
 in St. Matthew, speaks of his daughter, as then dead — 
 whereas it appears from them, and from the course of 
 the event, that she was only in extremis , or at the point 
 of death. This discrepancy may be explained in vari- 
 ous ways. 
 
 First, St. Mark says, that Jairus besought our Lord 7roX- 
 \a — in many words , as well as with much earnestness. 
 He might have said, then, My daughter, ear^crra)? e^ei, or 
 even, apTL eTeXevrrja-ev — among other expressions to the 
 same effect. He knew in what condition he had left her, 
 and that humanly speaking she could scarcely survive 
 until his return ; and had he conjectured that, even 
 
 p 4 
 
216 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 then, when he was speaking, she might possibly be 
 dead, the conjecture would have been verified by the 
 event. The words, apn ireXevTtjo-e, therefore, in St. 
 Matthew, strictly interpreted will be only expressive 
 of a father’s fears ; and mean no more than St. Mark’s 
 ecr^ctTft)? 
 
 Secondly, they may imply that she was in the mor- 
 tal agony ; that he left her dying ; in a deliquium — 
 senseless — or with every symptom of approaching 
 death : but not that she was actually dead*. Had 
 this been the case, Jairus would not have ventured to 
 apply to our Lord at all : no one ever did apply, or as 
 far as we know, ever thought of applying to him, to 
 work such a miracle as the raising of a dead body to 
 life. And though three such miracles are on record, 
 it is clear from the account of each, that they were all 
 unsolicited, all unexpected, and all consequently the ef- 
 fect of our Lord’s free will. The same fact is insinuated 
 in the language of Jairus itself; But come, lay thine 
 hand upon her; /cal fyo-erai — and she shall live. Had 
 the anticipated effect been, in his apprehension, an ab- 
 solute restoration of extinct life, and not the recovery 
 merely of health ; the sense would have required, kol 
 avaCriarei , she shall revive ; not simply, she shall live. 
 
 Thirdly, the death of the patient, which occurred by 
 the way, (a fact not mentioned by St. Matthew,) was 
 
 '* Theophylact, in loc. Opera, 
 i. 44. B : TeTeXevTvjKevat de Xeyei 
 (sc. Jairus) rrjv OvyaTcpa, kcUtoi 
 tov Aov<a Xeyovros cos ovttoo rere- 
 \evrr]K€ v, fj a>s CTTOxa^opevos, did to 
 iv eV^arais avcmvoais avrrjv afpeivcu, 
 rj avi-avcov rrj v avpcfoopav, cos els 
 eXeov iXtcvacu tov Xpiarov. 
 
 The truth appears to me to 
 be, that the address, ascribed to 
 Jairus by St. Matthew, is made 
 
 up of the words which he ac- 
 tually used in his application to 
 our Lord, at first, and of those 
 of the message received from his 
 house, by the way ; that is, it 
 consists of the latter part of the 
 former, and of the first part of 
 the latter 5 as may be collected 
 from the comparison of the other 
 two accounts with St. Mat- 
 thew’s. 
 
m 
 
 Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 
 
 such as to change in toto the character of the intended 
 miracle ; and to render it a much more wonderful 
 event. St. Matthew knew that this change did ulti- 
 mately take place ; and from his usual conciseness on 
 the one hand, and his regard to the course and the issue 
 of things on the other, while he omits to specify the in- 
 termediate step which produced the change, he accom- 
 modates, from the first, his account of proceedings pre- 
 viously to the supposition of it. In other respects, it is 
 easy to reconcile him to St. Mark. The address of our 
 Lord to the inmates of the house is obviously to be col- 
 lected from both; avay^copeiTe' tl 6opv/3ei<r6e, Kal /cAa/ere; ov 
 yap aireOave to Kopacnov , aWa KaOevSei. There is one inci- 
 dental particular also in his narrative, critically explain- 
 ed by St. Mark. After Jesus was come into the house, 
 St. Matthew still tells us?, that he entered in and took 
 hold of the hand of the damsel ; which was literally 
 the case. The pipers, (whose attendance upon this occa- 
 sion was perfectly in accordance with the Jewish usages 
 even of our Saviour’s day 2 ,) and the rest of the com- 
 pany, were in one part of the house, and the dead 
 body a in another: our Lord spoke to the former as he 
 first came in ; he proceeded to the chamber where the 
 body lay, after they had been put out. St. Mark’s ac- 
 count of each of these miracles is, in fact, much the 
 most circumstantial ; and, if he received it from an 
 eyewitness of each, St. Peter, this would be nothing 
 extraordinary. 
 
 The next events are the cure of the two blind men, 
 and the dispossession of the dumb demoniac 11 ; both pe- 
 culiar to St. Matthew, and both regular, as they stand. 
 The former was directly consecutive on the raising of 
 Jairus’ daughter; and the latter, upon the former. 
 
 y Ch. ix. 25. z Cf. Jos. B. Jud. iii. ix. 5. Matt. xi. 17. Luke vii. 32. 
 
 Hieronymus, Operum iii. 575. ad calc. In Hierem. ix. a Acts ix. 37. 39. 
 
 b Matt. ix. 27—34. 
 
218 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 The house to which our Lord returned (v. 28.) can- 
 not be different from that which he had just before 
 left (10. 19.) : nor did he defer the performance of the 
 miracle until he had entered this house again, except 
 that so it might be performed with less publicity. As 
 to the dispossession, it must have ensued almost when 
 the blind men were going out; for the avruv Se e^epyo- 
 /mevcov (v. 32.) can be understood of none but them. 
 
 The next event is manifestly a general circuit, and 
 that, a circuit of Galilee 0 : the words of the narrative 
 here can imply no less. This circuit, then, if it came af- 
 ter the return from Gadara, is regular where it stands : 
 and in St. Mark d also, immediately after the raising of 
 Jairus’ daughter, there is an account of a visit to Na- 
 zareth ; and, after that visit, of a circuit of Galilee ; 
 which I assume to be the same with this. Notwith- 
 standing, therefore, the omission by St. Matthew, of 
 the intermediate visit to Nazareth here, (the visit in 
 fact being related elsewhere,) the position of the cir- 
 cuit, as it stands, will not be out of order. 
 
 The next event is the mission of the Twelve, which 
 also is recorded by St. Mark after the abovementioned 
 circuit, and by St. Luke, notwithstanding the omission 
 of the intermediate facts, after the raising of Jairus’ 
 daughter at least e ; so that this part of St. Matthew 
 likewise f will be unquestionably regular as it stands. 
 The identity of the mission in all these Evangelists it 
 would be absurd to dispute. The Twelve had never 
 been sent out, before this time, nor were they ever sent 
 out again, after it; nor, indeed, to judge from the course 
 of events subsequently to this mission, could they ever 
 have been sent out again ; and not always have conti- 
 nued in attendance on our Saviour. The mission of 
 
 c Matt. ix. 35. d Ch. vi. i — 6. e Mark vi. 7. Luke ix. 1. f Ch. ix. 
 
 36— x. I. 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 219 
 
 the Seventy too, which is characterized as the mission 
 of others also%, can be so opposed only in reference to 
 this mission of the Twelve ; nor can any but this be 
 adverted to on the night of the paschal supper h . It is 
 no objection that St. Matthew assigns a specific reason 
 for it, which St. Mark and St. Luke do not : the same 
 reason is assigned by St. Luke for the after-mission of 
 the Seventy. Still less is it an objection, that St. Mat- 
 thew recites the names of the Apostles for the first time 
 upon this occasion ; which they had recited before. He 
 omitted altogether in its proper place the account of 
 their ordination, when their names would most naturally 
 have been enumerated ; and next to the time of this or- 
 dination, no period was more appropriate for their enu- 
 meration than the period of this mission ; when the 
 name of Apostles itself, proleptically bestowed upon 
 them at first, was actually verified by the event. 
 
 If any argument, indeed, were requisite to prove so 
 clear a point, it would be supplied by these two consi- 
 derations ; first, that the power of working certain mi- 
 racles was now first communicated to the Twelve ; se- 
 condly, that this power was ever afterwards retained ; 
 both of which are facts attested by each of the accounts. 
 The formal communication of such power only now, de- 
 monstrates that it could not have been communicated 
 previously : yet the power, even now communicated, 
 was limited to the simplest kind of miracles ; disposses- 
 sion, and the cure of diseases. Each Evangelist is ex- 
 press that no more than this was communicated before 
 the mission ; and that no more than this was exer- 
 cised upon it : and St. Luke in particular shews also 
 that no more than this was either communicated be- 
 fore, or exercised upon, the subsequent mission of the 
 Seventy ; who yet, both in the design and in the effect 
 
 S Luke x. i. h Luke xxii. 35. 
 
220 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 of their commission, were the counterparts of the 
 Twelve. 
 
 And that the power, whatever it was, now commu- 
 nicated was afterwards retained, appears first, from 
 the case of the demoniac ; cured after the transfigura- 
 tion, and attested by each of the first three Evangel- 
 ists ; and, secondly, from the reproof of the stranger, 
 who was attempting to cast out devils in the name of 
 Christ ; attested by St. Mark and by St. Luke. That 
 demoniac was brought to the Apostles first ; whose very 
 attempt at the dispossessing of him, though it did not 
 succeed, proves that they believed beforehand they were 
 able to dispossess him ; nor was their failure more sur- 
 prising to others than to themselves. The rebuke of the 
 stranger was produced by a jealousy that any one, who 
 was not an Apostle, should pretend to the exercise of a 
 power, which they considered or wished to be considered 
 the exclusive privilege of Apostles. Both the retention, 
 and also the limitation, for the rest of our Saviour’s min- 
 istry, of this original power, are further intimated by 
 the petition, Lord, add to us faith 1 . That faith was 
 the miracle-working faith ; and the petitioners must 
 have possessed some portion of it even then, or they 
 could not have asked simply for an addition to it. 
 
 In each of the Evangelists the mission of the Twelve 
 is preceded by a charge, the account of which in St. 
 Matthew is very different from the same account in St. 
 Mark, or in St. Luke — not as disagreeing with that, so 
 far as both run parallel together ; but as continuing 
 by itself, long after that has ceased. The question, 
 then, which presents itself here, is whether St. Matthew 
 has recited more, or they have recited less, than was 
 actually now delivered : with a view to the discussion of 
 
 i Luke xvii. 5. 
 
221 
 
 Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel . 
 
 which, I shall distribute St. Matthew’s account into two 
 natural and obvious divisions, x. 5-15. and x. 16-42. 
 
 With respect to the first of these ; allowance being 
 made for the omissions of the other two, and for the 
 evident difference of their manner in this instance, com- 
 pared with St. Matthew’s ; it contains substantially the 
 very same matter as Mark vi. 8-11. and Luke ix. 3-5. 
 For first; a large part of the whole k is altogether 
 omitted by them ; unless St. Luke may be said to have 
 expressed in the oblique, at verse 2, or 6, what St. 
 Matthew, at verse 7, expresses in the direct. Secondly; 
 their general manner, in this instance, is the manner 
 of a studied conciseness ; which did not propose to 
 record all that might have been said, nor exactly as it 
 was said, on this occasion, but only summarily and in 
 part. Thus verses 9 and 10, which are direct in St. 
 Matthew, are historical in St. Mark ; and are a recapi- 
 tulation in substance of what was directly said, in St. 
 Luke : and as to the remainder ; St. Luke is strictly 
 accommodated to St. Mark, and by the mere addition 
 of what is found over and above in the latter, may be 
 reduced to a literal harmony with him : while St. Mark, 
 in verse 11, the last sentence which he records, agrees 
 almost verbatim with verse 15 of St. Matthew ; and 
 in verse 10, the sentence before that, he is merely the 
 historical repeater of that one particular direction, (Matt, 
 x. 11,) for that particular purpose; and no more. 
 
 Thirdly ; if we except a single verse which it con- 
 tains, the whole of this first division is such as might 
 have been expected, a priori , in reference to a mission 
 like the present : or if there were any doubt of this, it 
 would be removed by comparing it with the substance 
 of the subsequent charge, delivered to the Seventy, be- 
 fore their departure ; which is the same with this, not 
 
 k Verses 5 — 8. 
 
222 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 merely in the sense throughout, but frequently even in 
 the expressions 1 . Yet our Lord, it is certain, must 
 have been then repeating on a later, what he had said 
 before on a former occasion : nor can we better account 
 for the cursory notice which St. Luke in particular has 
 taken of the present charge, than by supposing that he 
 knew it would come substantially over again ; and in 
 a part of the Gospel history which he also knew to be 
 a total blank in the preexisting narratives. 
 
 Were we to select any precept common to both 
 these charges, but more decisive of their identity, and 
 of their coincidence with a point of time anterior to 
 the formal propagation of the Gospel, than another — 
 we could fix on none more critical than the i ropevo/ievoi 
 $e Krjpvo’O’eTe , Xeyovre?' otl rj'yyiicev rj /3a<riXela twv ovpa- 
 vwv — of St. Matthew ; and the Xeyere avrois' tjyyiKev e(p 9 
 xj/mds h fiacriXela tov OeoO — -of St. Luke : which are clearly 
 equivalent to each other. A precept like this, as I shall 
 make it appear hereafter, would be just as incongruous 
 in either case to the supposition of a charge which ap- 
 pointed and commissioned the Apostles for their proper 
 office, after the termination of the ministry of Christ, 
 as it would be congruous and pertinent to any such 
 supposition, at any period before. The Apostles might 
 have been sent out for this purpose in our Saviour’s 
 lifetime ; but they never could have been after his 
 death. 
 
 Fourthly, the single verse above alluded to is this ; 
 aerOevovvTas Oepcnrevere, Xeirpovs Ka0api<^ere 9 veicpovs eyeipere, 
 SaijuLovia eK/3dXXeTe m . The miraculous powers, conceded 
 to the Twelve previous to this commission ; and to the 
 Seventy previous to the next; extended, as we saw, only 
 to the first and the last of the instances here enumer- 
 ated ; that is, to the simplest degree of such powers. 
 
 l Luke x. 1 — 12. 
 
 m Matt. x. 8 . 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 
 
 223 
 
 It is implied, however, that they were also to cleanse 
 lepers ; and to raise dead bodies. Now this would be 
 the utmost degree of miraculous power : they who 
 were to work these miracles, might work any miracle. 
 To cleanse the leper, and to resuscitate the dead, were 
 such signs as, on more accounts than one, none but 
 our Saviour, while he was still on earth ever did, or 
 ever could, perform : and though for argument’s sake, 
 we should suppose that the Apostles, either on this 
 occasion, or hereafter, performed such miracles as the 
 former, is it credible that they ever performed such as 
 the latter? Either the command, then, as now given 
 was nugatory, or we must conclude that both the 
 charge and the commission, of which it forms an inte- 
 gral member, contained a double reference ; one to the 
 present occasion, when the Twelve were first sent out 
 on a partial errand and with limited powers ; another 
 to some future occasion, when they should go forth 
 with a mandate to the whole creation, and with power 
 unlimited to carry it into effect. 
 
 Fifthly ; this conclusion seems to be placed beyond 
 a question by the remaining division. It is not neces- 
 sary to enter distinctly on the analysis and examina- 
 tion of its contents, in order to prove that a series of 
 admonitions, directions, exhortations like these, could 
 apply to nothing, and could be verified by nothing in 
 the case of the Apostles at present, while they were 
 still attending upon our Saviour; but would be literally 
 applicable and punctually verified when they should 
 enter on their office by themselves hereafter. For then 
 it would be, that they would go forth as sheep into the 
 midst of wolves ; and would need as much the cunning 
 of the serpent as the simplicity of the dove: then, that 
 they might well be cautioned to beware of the men of 
 that generation in particular ; and would be brought 
 
224 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 in due succession before sanhedrims, governors, and 
 kings : then, that they would require the inspired, ex- 
 temporaneous eloquence of Christian advocates or apo- 
 logists, answering for themselves and for their religion: 
 then, that the difference of creeds, and the persecuting 
 spirit of bigotry, would set families at variance, and la- 
 cerate the tenderest and closest ties of natural, or of ac- 
 quired endearment : then, that the prudential lesson of 
 avoiding persecution in one city, by fleeing to the next, 
 could first be possibly observed : then, that the obloquy 
 which had begun with the Master would be transfer- 
 red to the Disciples, and the name of Christian would 
 become a proverb of reproach : then, that the proper 
 arguments for the support of the Confessor or of the 
 Martyr would only too often be wanted in order to 
 the encouragement of suffering Christians : then, that 
 the lamentable perversion of the natural tendencies of 
 the Gospel of peace would become evident from the 
 result, by setting the world in arms, and kindling a 
 fire on earth : then, that the Apostles or emissaries of 
 Christianity would go forth truly in the dignified cha- 
 racter of the representatives of Jesus Christ, and 
 through Jesus Christ of the Father ; that all who 
 should receive them, whether as Apostles or as Pro- 
 phets, or as simple Believers 11 , out of regard to their 
 relation to Christ — and all, who should render them the 
 least good office for the sake of promoting their Chris- 
 tian labours, would by no means lose their reward. 
 
 It follows, therefore, either that St. Matthew has 
 arbitrarily transferred to this, what was actually said 
 on some later occasion ; or that St. Mark and St. Luke 
 have purposely omitted, in their account of what was 
 said now, all that St. Matthew’s contains over and 
 
 “ i Cor. xii. 28. Ephes. iv. 11. 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 225 
 
 above their’s : and this conclusion is much the more 
 probable of the two. 
 
 I. Because the sentiment, Behold, I am sending you 
 forth as sheep in the midst of wolves, which forms a 
 part of this discourse, verse 16, occurs also Luke x. 3, 
 in the charge to the Seventy. 
 
 II. Because the historical fact alluded to, verse 25, If 
 they have called the master of the house Beelzebub — is 
 critically consistent with Matthew ix. 34. For that 
 the ruler of the demons and Beelzebub were convert- 
 ible terms, is proved by Matt. xii. 24. Mark iii. 22. 
 and Luke xi. 15. 
 
 III. Because the sequel of the charge has all the 
 appearance of the continuation of the same discourse ; 
 and if it was not actually delivered now, it would not 
 be easy, or rather it would be impossible to say when 
 it was pronounced. For as to conjecturing that it 
 might have been delivered on some one or other of 
 those occasions, posterior to the resurrection and prior 
 to the ascension, when Christ met and conversed with 
 the Apostles; this would be altogether a gratuitous 
 hypothesis. 
 
 IV. Because the eighth verse, in the first division, 
 cannot without great absurdity be supposed no part of 
 the context where it stands ; yet that verse in particu- 
 lar would be just as inapplicable to the present mission, 
 as the whole of this second division in general. 
 
 V. Because it was exceedingly probable that, when 
 addressing the Apostles on the subject of their present 
 mission, our Saviour would gradually pass to the sub- 
 ject of their future. We are not to restrict the scope 
 of his discourses, no more than the compass of his pre- 
 science, to the present and passing occasion : nor would 
 this be the only instance in which he may be seen ad- 
 dressing his disciples at great length, with a special 
 
 VOL. I. Q 
 
226 
 
 Dissertation Third . 
 
 regard not to what they were at the time, but to what 
 they would become afterwards. Nor were they called 
 as disciples originally, or ordained as Apostles subse- 
 quently, with a view to their present mission alone ; 
 but much more with a view to their future ministry 
 in propagating the Gospel. Yet their present mission 
 was a natural prelude to their future one; and the 
 ministry, on which they were employed now, was 
 something analogous to the business which they were 
 to discharge hereafter. One circumstance, at least, in 
 their present mission, seems to have been expressly 
 designed for the sake of their future. They were com- 
 manded to make no provision either against the journey, 
 or upon the way ; solely because they were to trust in 
 the providence of Christ : and this reliance, as Luke 
 xxii. 35. is sufficient to prove, was destined not to be in 
 vain. Much greater reason would there be to rely on the 
 same providence and cooperation hereafter ; and the 
 experience that these had attended and supported them, 
 on this occasion, would be so far a voucher for their 
 attendance and support on any other. 
 
 VI. Because the whole of this present charge, even 
 as relating to the future propagation of the Gospel, 
 concerns it only as designed to be propagated among 
 Jews. This conclusion, I think, is demonstratively 
 certain from the two special precepts, 6 $e Wo selvas els 
 TeXos , ovtos (TOdQricreTai — and, orav Se Sicokoxtiv vjuds ev Trj 
 7 roXei Tavrr], (pevyere els ty\v aXXrjv. a/aqv yap Xeyoi v/uliv, 
 ov [xrj TeXe<jr]Te tcls 7 roXeis tov ’I crparjX, ecos av e'XOy 6 vlos 
 tou avQpwTrov. These two declarations can be applica- 
 ble to nothing except to the case of Jews, engaged 
 upon the work of Evangelists among and in behalf of 
 Jews. The present mission of the Apostles, partial 
 and temporary as it was, was similarly restricted at 
 the outset ; els o$ov eOvcav /u.rj an reXOijre, Kai els 7ro\iv 2a- 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew'' s Gospel. 
 
 227 
 
 fjiapeiTwv fj.r] eicreXOrjre’ 7 ropevecrOe Se /ULaXXov i rpos ra i rpo- 
 /3ara ra onroXcoXora o’ikov ’ lcrparfX . And this would be 
 an additional reason why the topics of the charge, in 
 relation to that mission, might gradually have been 
 mixed up with topics, relating to the Evangelical one : 
 while the connection of both together in St. Matthew’s 
 Gospel, and in that exclusively, is an equally strong 
 argument that his Gospel alone was written for and 
 among the Jews ; and at a time when the preaching 
 of Christianity was either still confined to them, or 
 only on the point of comprehending the Gentiles. 
 
 VII. Because, however much might now have been 
 said applicable solely to the Evangelical commission of 
 the Apostles ; much, unquestionably, was also said ap- 
 plicable only to their first mission. These different 
 portions might be known asunder, and separated ac- 
 cordingly in the later Gospels : for which separation, 
 the circumstance that they had been conjoined in the 
 earlier Gospel would perhaps be a sufficient reason ; 
 with this additional inducement in the case of St. Luke, 
 that almost every thing which he omitted here, occurred 
 again either in ter minis, or in substance, where it might 
 be recorded by him. 
 
 This point, then, being presumptively established, it 
 follows that Matthew x. is regular throughout : and 
 consequently Matthew xi. 1. which by declaring how 
 Christ himself was employed, while the Apostles were 
 absent on their mission, carries forward the order and 
 course of events consecutively upon it. 
 
 The next event is the message of John 0 ; to which 
 no note of time is prefixed. A similar message, how- 
 ever, is recorded by St. LukeP, at a period of time which 
 may be proved to have been earlier than the mission 
 of the Apostles. If so, and the message was the same 
 
 o Ch. xi. 2 — 30. P Ch. vii. 18 — 35. 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 in both instances, St. Matthew’s account of it here is 
 a complete Trajection. But that it was the same 
 in both, it seems scarcely possible to doubt. In each 
 of the Evangelists, whensoever the message occurred, 
 it was sometime during the imprisonment of John: 
 St. Matthew says expressly, it was sent by John from 
 prison; and St. Luke, when he mentioned John last, 
 left him shut up in prison. The improbability that 
 more than one such message should have been sent 
 by him, (especially if the cause of the message was 
 either a wavering in his own faith, or a feeling of 
 impatience under his imprisonment,) after the answer 
 which had once been returned to it, would be insur- 
 mountable : and it is a critical circumstance that in 
 each of the accounts the bearers of the message were 
 two of his disciples, and neither more nor less than 
 two ; and that in each our Lord was found, at the 
 time, similarly employed on the performance of mi- 
 racles of a very extraordinary kind. But, in fact, 
 though the nature of the event itself were not such as 
 to establish its identity in both accounts, the agreement 
 of the two narratives of it would do so. 
 
 In the merely historical part St. Matthew, as usual, 
 is less circumstantial than St. Luke ; but in the account 
 of what our Saviour said, he is equally minute with him, 
 or more so. Compare Matt. xi. 4-6. and Luke vii. 22, 
 28 : their agreement extends even to the words. The 
 same is true of Matt. xi. 7-11. and of Luke vii. 24—28. 
 The only coincidences, not verbal, reside in the expres- 
 sions, oi ra /uaXaica (popouvres, of the one, and, ol ev 
 l fj.a,T lct fj.(p evSo^ia kcu rpvcprj inrdpyovTe'i , of the Other : with 
 respect to which, it is very possible that our Lord 
 might actually have said, lSov 9 ol to. /aaXaKa <popovvTe$ 9 
 Kai ev lfxaTL<j^.Q> evSo^w Kai rpvcprj vi rapyovres — or, at least, 
 ol ra fiaXaKa (popovvres, Kai ev Tpvcpfj v7rdp^ovr€9 *. for, 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 229 
 
 as to ev IfjLaTKT/jLw evSo^w vi rap^eiv, it is clearly synony- 
 mous with ra /aaXaica (l/iana) (popeiv. In the sequel, 
 St. Luke omits Matt. xi. 12, 13, because a similar decla- 
 ration occurs in his own Gospel elsewhere <i; and, Matt, 
 xi. 14, probably because it related to an expectation 
 purely Jewish : while Luke vii. 29, 30, which is not 
 found in St. Matthew, is obviously not an account of 
 any thing said by our Saviour, but a remark of the 
 Evangelist’s, historically inserted. Matt. xi. 16-19, 
 and Luke vii. 31-35, are too nearly akin in terms, to 
 require reconciliation together ; and Matt. xi. 20-24. 
 25-27. is omitted by St. Luke for the same reason as 
 before ; because it would recur elsewhere in his Gospel, 
 either substantially or literally ; as it does chapter x. 
 13-15. 21, 22. 
 
 Now the account of the message in St. Luke is im- 
 mediately subjoined to the miracle of the widow’s 
 son ; and this miracle he himself proves to have been 
 performed on the day after the cure of the centurion’s 
 servant. If so, the same account in St. Matthew, so 
 long after its place in St. Luke, is an instance of a Tra- 
 jection ; for it should have come before even the pas- 
 sage of the lake to Gadara. The internal evidence of the 
 account itself confirms this conclusion. For first ; St. 
 Matthew also ascribes the message to the report of the 
 works of Christ, which had reached John in prison ; an 
 allusion to his miracles, as every one will agree, much 
 more naturally to be understood of some one recent 
 and special miracle, more extraordinary than the rest 
 — such as St. Luke shews to have preceded in the 
 raising of the widow’s son, the first instance, which 
 had yet taken place, of any raising of the dead to life 
 — than to the miracles in general which our Saviour, 
 since the commencement of his ministry, must have 
 
 q Chap. xvi. 1 6. 
 
230 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 been daily performing. It is true that St. Matthew 
 does not specify any such miracle ; and that may be 
 the very reason why St. Luke does : but he specifies 
 no miracles whatever ; and yet some miracles he 
 clearly presupposes, as the producing causes of the 
 message. His account, then, was so far defective ; and 
 (unless we assume that it was written for those, and 
 among those, whose personal knowledge of the facts, 
 to which he alludes, might in some degree clear up 
 its obscurity by supplying this omission) it was even 
 obscure. 
 
 Again ; it is superfluous to observe that when John 
 sent this message, he was still alive : yet when the 
 Twelve were dispatched on their errand, there is rea- 
 son to conclude that he was dead ; and, consequently, 
 he could have sent no such message after or before 
 their return. We may infer this fact, not because the 
 mission of the Twelve would have been more necessary, 
 or better timed, on the supposition of his death than 
 otherwise; (for, since the imprisonment of John, it is 
 manifest that his ministry must have been altogether 
 at an end ; and his imprisonment, as we shall see r , 
 took place at least a year before his death ;) but simply 
 because in consequence of the mission of the Twelve, 
 and in consequence of the fame of Jesus, multiplied and 
 extended by the report of the miracles performed upon 
 this mission, in his name, Herod the Tetrarch first 
 heard of Jesus, and could not account for what he 
 heard, except by supposing that he was John the Bap- 
 tist, risen from the dead. And out of this historical 
 allusion to the death of John arises the digression, 
 which, in St. Matthew and in St. Mark, without being 
 a proper Trajection, suspends the thread of the narra- 
 tive to interpose the account of his death. The argu- 
 
 r Vide tlie Appendix. 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 231 
 
 ment, therefore, will stand as follows : Herod first 
 heard of Jesus sometime after the death of John; but 
 Herod heard of Jesus in consequence of the mission of 
 the Twelve : John, then, was dead at the time of the 
 mission of the Twelve. If so, he could not have sent 
 his message either during or after their mission ; and, 
 consequently, he must have sent it before. As placed, 
 then, in St. Matthew, this message is a Trajection. 
 
 It is true, St. Matthew says that the disciples of 
 John, after taking up and burying the body of their 
 master, went and informed Jesus of his death ; and 
 that Jesus, having heard of it, retired from where he 
 was, in a ship, to a desert place apart. But this retiring 
 was with the Twelve, immediately after their return ; 
 and from Capernaum ; (because it was to the desert of 
 Bethsaida, on the opposite shore ;) and with a view to 
 rest and refreshment for himself and for them. For, as 
 says St. Mark, they that were coming, and they that 
 were going, were many ; and they had not time so much 
 as to eat. Now Herod certainly heard of the fame of 
 Jesus before the return of the Twelve ; and John, ac- 
 cording to St. Matthew himself, was certainly dead when 
 he heard of it. Either, then, the disciples of John did 
 not tell Jesus of his death until some time after his 
 burial ; or St. Matthew, who says nothing of the return 
 of the Twelve, nor in fact of any thing between their 
 departure and their return, at least in its proper place, 
 has with his usual conciseness joined the results of the 
 two accounts in one : both what the disciples of John 
 did, in consequence of the death and burial of their 
 master, and what Jesus himself did, in consequence of 
 the return of the Twelve. 
 
 There will still be no inconsistency, on this principle, 
 in his narrative. He does not say that Jesus withdrew 
 to Bethsaida solely or immediately in consequence of 
 
 Q 4 
 
282 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 the news of John’s death, but simply after it : and this 
 would still be true, if he went thither any time after it ; 
 and nothing was recounted meanwhile. There is a still 
 more remarkable connection of strictly consecutive, but 
 compared with what immediately precedes, very distant 
 events, at Matt. xix. 1. and Mark x. 1. And if we 
 were to suppose that John was put to death a little be- 
 fore the mission of the Twelve, and the news of his 
 death was brought to our Lord soon after their de- 
 parture and while he was still alone; then, the with- 
 drawing in question would be the first thing done after 
 both this information and the return of the Twelve : 
 and if a prudential motive, such as is implied by St. 
 Matthew, cooperated with the other, such as is implied 
 by St. Mark, it might be ascribed indifferently to either. 
 But unless the death, and the news of the death of 
 John ; and Herod’s hearing of the fame of Jesus ; and 
 the return of the Twelve ; had been all synchronous 
 events, our Saviour could not, even in St. Matthew’s 
 account, have both been told of the death of John, and 
 also retired with the Apostles to Bethsaida, exactly at 
 the same time. 
 
 After this account of the message of the Baptist, 
 which takes up the whole of Matt, xi, I consider it un- 
 necessary to carry the present examination any further : 
 because, with three exceptions only, (two instances of 
 Anticipation, and one instance of Trajection,) each of 
 them noticed in its place hereafter, and each of them 
 very defensible, the rest of his Gospel, from the twelfth 
 chapter forwards, would be found to be regular ; and, 
 however much it might omit, to relate nothing out of 
 its order. I shall pause, therefore, here, for the sake 
 of some necessary observations on the above review ; 
 and then conclude this dissertation. 
 
 I. From Matt. i. to Matt. viii. 18, there was no ap- 
 
233 
 
 Irregularities of St. Matthew'' s Gospel. 
 
 pearance of irregularity in the train of events before — 
 and from Matt. xii. to Matt, xxviii. there would be no 
 proof of any irregularity afterwards. The strictly ir- 
 regular part of the Gospel, then, is comprehended be- 
 tween these extremes, from viii. 14. to xii. 1, amount- 
 ing, as we elsewhere asserted, not quite to four entire 
 chapters out of twenty-eight ; that is, not to one 
 seventh part of the whole. 
 
 II. In the eleven chapters hitherto considered, it will 
 be seen hereafter, is comprehended the history of two 
 years, out of three, of our Saviour’s ministry ; during 
 which there were three general circuits of Galilee — one 
 in the first and two in the second year. Each of these 
 circuits would be a cardinal point in the course of his 
 ministry; and each was distinguished by one event 
 more memorable than any other belonging to it ; the 
 first, by the sermon on the mount ; the third, by the 
 commission of the Twelve ; the second, by the mes- 
 sage of John: all which are recorded by St. Matthew, 
 and all except the last in their proper order relatively 
 to each other. 
 
 III. The irregularity of these eleven chapters, such 
 as it is, is due to three reasons only : first, the inter- 
 position of the cure of Peter’s mother-in-law, and of 
 the other miracles on the same day ; secondly, the in- 
 terposition of the cure of the paralytic, and of the call 
 of Levi ; thirdly, the interposition of the message of 
 John: each where it stands. But for these excep- 
 tions, the eleven chapters, referred to every thing which 
 they contain, would have been regular : and with re- 
 spect to each of these exceptions, something may be sug- 
 gested to account for it. 
 
 For the first ; first, community of place between the 
 scene of those two events, and of that which imme- 
 diately precedes or follows them, respectively; viz. 
 Capernaum — where the centurion’s servant was heal- 
 
234 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 ed, and from whence the passage was made to Gadara. 
 Secondly, reflexive relation to the circuit of Galilee last 
 mentioned ; which these miracles precede in St. Mark 
 and in St. Luke by only a single day ; and preliminary 
 to which, after the call of the four disciples, they were 
 almost all that remained to be related. Thirdly, order 
 of importance, specially in comparison of the two mi- 
 racles just before related ; one of which, the cure of the 
 leper, was probably the first of its kind, and the other, 
 the cure of the centurion’s servant, gave occasion to 
 the first distinct prediction of the rejection of the Jews, 
 and of the reception of the Gentiles in their stead. 
 
 For the second ; first, community of place as before; 
 the cure of the paralytic, the call of Levi, as well as 
 all that ensued upon the return from Gadara, having 
 taken place alike in Capernaum. Secondly, the prin- 
 ciple of association between the call of Levi, and what 
 occurred at the entertainment upon the return from 
 Gadara. If the same things had happened — however 
 long before — in consequence of the call of Levi ; the 
 entertainment would suggest the history of the call, and 
 that would require of necessity to be preceded by the 
 history of the paralytic. 
 
 For the third ; first, the connection of the death of 
 John with the time of the mission of the Twelve. If 
 their mission followed immediately after his death, 
 their mission might suggest the recollection of his 
 death ; the recollection of his death, his message — so 
 recently before his death ; and his message would be 
 the only circumstance necessary to complete his his- 
 tory, between his imprisonment and his death. Second- 
 ly, the place of this message itself, as one of the events 
 belonging to the second circuit of Galilee ; which cir- 
 cuit, because it followed directly on the ordination of 
 the Twelve, St. Matthew, who omits the ordination, 
 naturally omits also. Hence, if he any where recorded 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. £35 
 
 this single incident of the circuit, he could not fail to 
 record it as a detached event ; and either altogether 
 out of its place, or at least as something standing by 
 itself. Thirdly, order of importance ; not merely be- 
 cause this was an event belonging to a circuit omitted, 
 but also, because it was not so memorable, as in every 
 point of view an event belonging to a circuit not 
 omitted. The second circuit of Galilee, to which the 
 message belongs, being entirely passed over by St. Mat- 
 thew, the third circuit, as the next in order, would 
 naturally stand in his Gospel as the second : and that 
 circuit was distinguished by the charge and commis- 
 sion of the Twelve ; which, if they were sucli as we 
 endeavoured to prove them ; viz. designed for their 
 future much more than for their present office ; would 
 be the most interesting event in the history of the 
 Apostles, and the very warrant by which they acted, 
 when they proceeded to evangelize the world. 
 
 IV. Had the fourteenth chapter of St. Matthew fol- 
 lowed directly on the eleventh, his order would have 
 been regular, from the close of the eleventh chapter to 
 the end of his Gospel. What, then, is the use of the 
 two chapters which come between them ? They give 
 an account, in a regular order, of such particulars — 
 all belonging to the second year of our Lord’s min- 
 istry — as had been omitted until then ; and they con- 
 duct the course of affairs from the beginning of that 
 year, to where the fourteenth chapter takes it up. For 
 the first circumstance mentioned in chapter the twelfth, 
 was the earliest incident (upon record at least in the 
 three first Gospels) of our Lord’s second year ; and the 
 last event in the thirteenth was that visit to Nazareth, 
 which St. Mark in particular shews to have preceded 
 the third circuit of Galilee. 
 
 V. It would seem, therefore, that the Gospel of St. 
 
236 
 
 Dissertation Third. 
 
 Matthew is divisible into two great sections ; one, 
 from chapter the first to chapter the eleventh inclu- 
 sive, the other, from chapter the twelfth to the end ; 
 during the former of which, the order of events (at 
 least of the principal events) is determined by some- 
 thing like a regard to their relative importance, or to 
 their respective connection with the circuits of Gali- 
 lee ; and the course of succession is not strictly regular, 
 nor yet absolutely irregular ; but rather regular than 
 otherwise : during the latter, with three very excusable 
 exceptions, the order of the narration is also the order 
 of the events, and the history is regular throughout. 
 It would appear, then, that while each of these divi- 
 sions has a proper apyr\ of its own, the whole Gospel 
 has a kind of double one ; for both a new order of 
 things and a new law of narration begin at the twelfth 
 chapter, with the commencement of our Lord’s second 
 year. And indeed this fact seems to be insinuated by 
 the very notice, ev eKelvcp rw icaipw, premised to that 
 chapter itself ; a notice which it would be as absurd 
 in this instance, as in other instances like this s , to 
 refer to what immediately goes before ; and which 
 must therefore be referred to what comes immediately 
 after in the same account. 
 
 It cannot, then, now be doubted whether St. Mat- 
 thew’s Gospel is safely to be made, throughout, the 
 basis of an Harmony for the rest. The reasoning of 
 those learned men, who contend that because he wrote 
 as an eyewitness, he would write the most regularly 
 of all, however plausible in theory, appears to be com- 
 pletely inconsistent with the matter of fact. Nor, in- 
 deed, is it difficult to retort the argument ; for one, like 
 St. Luke or St. Mark, who though not an eyewitness of 
 the events recorded by St. Matthew, yet proposed to write 
 
 * Matt. iii. i. xiv. i. 
 
Irregularities of St. Matthew's Gospel. 237 
 
 an account of them, it might naturally be supposed, even 
 humanly speaking, would take so much the greater 
 pains to remedy this defect ; both by acquiring a per- 
 fect knowledge of his subject, and by verifying in 
 every instance the order of his facts. Meanwhile, if 
 St. Matthew in particular, though he must have writ- 
 ten as an eyewitness, has yet written at all irregularly ; 
 this may be a good presumptive argument that he must 
 have written early, and while the recollection of the 
 facts, which he records, was still unimpaired : in other 
 words, that he must have written among and for eye- 
 witnesses as well as himself; whose own knowledge 
 or possibilities of knowledge might supply the omis- 
 sions, and rectify the transpositions perceptible in his 
 accounts. Whether his Gospel was written first or 
 not, I think there can be little doubt ; but whether it 
 was all written at once, and not at different times in 
 the order of the two leading divisions just pointed out, 
 may very reasonably bear a question. 
 
 Those, also, who contend that the principle of classi- 
 fication is the characteristic distinction of St. Luke’s 
 Gospel, are not less mistaken : for while St. Luke is 
 uniformly attentive to historical precision, this con- 
 structive tendency by which facts, though really dif- 
 ferent in the order of time, are yet brought together out 
 of deference to certain principles of association, and 
 related consecutively, is rather the predominant cha- 
 racteristic of St. Matthew. The structure of all the 
 Gospels, indeed, as far as they enter into details, is anec- 
 dotal ; that is, they consist of a selection of particular 
 passages out of a much larger and a more continuous body 
 of events : the effect of which structure is necessarily 
 that each particular stands in a great measure by it- 
 self, and has little or no connection with either what 
 precedes or what follows it. It rarely happens that 
 
238 
 
 Dissertation Third . 
 
 even the occurrences of a single day are found to be 
 related in order ; and then only by a comparison of 
 one narrative with another. The history of the pro- 
 ceedings in Passion-week would be the sole material 
 instance to the contrary. 
 
 This anecdotal arrangement is a different thing from 
 the principle of classification ; and even this is only so 
 far peculiar to St. Luke, compared with St. Matthew or 
 with St. Mark, that without altering or disturbing the 
 order of their succession, he has communicated to the 
 particulars of his Gospel in many instances, the most 
 integral and independent shape, the most separate and 
 detached position, of any. St. John’s Gospel, from its 
 peculiar relation to the rest, could be nothing else but 
 a digest of remarkable passages ; which followed at 
 great intervals of time asunder, and were almost entirely 
 independent of each other : and the great vivacity, 
 minuteness, and circumstantiality of detail with which 
 he has invested all these accounts, are truly wonder- 
 ful, and among the strongest internal evidences of the 
 inspiration and the truth of a Gospel, which must have 
 been written so long after the events which it records, 
 and so late in the lifetime of its author. Yet St. Mat- 
 thew, notwithstanding his characteristic differences in 
 other respects, has defined with more precision than 
 any of the rest the times of certain memorable events ; 
 as when Jesus began to preach publicly ; when to 
 teach in parables ; when to predict his sufferings and 
 his death without disguise ; when the Apostles began 
 to dispute about precedency; and when Judas con- 
 ceived the design of betraying his Master. And this 
 also may be another proof that he wrote early, and as 
 an eyewitness of what he relates : not as one who had 
 obtained his information from others, and did not com- 
 mit it to writing until long afterwards. 
 
DISSERTATION IV. 
 
 On the date of the Passover , John ii. 13. 
 
 T HE several questions which concern the time of 
 the Baptist’s, or of our Saviour’s, birth ; the time, and 
 their age at the time, when they entered on their 
 respective ministries ; the duration of the ministry of 
 either ; the age of our Lord at his baptism ; and the 
 like ; however important or interesting they may 
 each of them he, are yet so connected together that 
 it would be impossible to consider any of them as 
 absolutely independent of the rest. For this reason, I 
 shall so far treat of them in conjunction as to devote 
 the present Dissertation, and a number of others which 
 will follow it, to a series of discussions, in which will 
 be comprised whatsoever I have to say on these sub- 
 jects. 
 
 First, then ; assuming only that the passover, John 
 ii. 13, was some passover posterior to our Saviour’s 
 baptism, I contend that the words which passed at that 
 feast ; TecrorapaKOVTa Kai eTecriv uiKoSo/uujOt] 6 vaos ovtos — 
 
 ii. 20 : determine it to have been the passover which 
 fell out in the thirteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, 
 U. C. 780. A. D. 27 : and none either before or after 
 that date. 
 
 For first; if these words had been intended to 
 mean, Forty and six years hath this temple been built 
 — the sense would have required, reo-o-apaKovra /cat 
 err] (pKoSo/urjOr], or, (picoS6iuLr]Tai , 6 veto? ovrog : secondly ; if 
 they had been intended to mean, In forty and six years 
 was this temple built — they would most probably have 
 been expressed, Tecro-apaKovra kcl\ erecnv (rKo^o/irjTo, or, 
 (vkoSo/j.€ito 9 6 va o? ovro 9 : but thirdly ; if they were in- 
 
240 
 
 Dissertation Fourth . 
 
 tended to mean, For forty and six years hath this temple 
 been building — the above is exactly the form of words 
 which such a sense would require. And it is needless 
 to add, that the reasoning of the Jews, founded upon 
 the literal acceptation of our Lord’s answer at verse 19? 
 and a genuine instance of elenchus , or the reductio ad 
 absurdum , will apply to no other sense, so well as to 
 this. Our Lord had just said, Destroy this temple, and 
 in three days’ time will I raise it up ; to which they 
 naturally reply, Forty and six years’ time hath this 
 temple been building — forty and six years hath it taken 
 to build this temple — nor is it yet completed : and wilt 
 thou in three days’ time raise it up ? 
 
 Among the ancient commentators, Chrysostom may 
 be thought to have understood the allusion in the text 
 aright a : TecrcrapaKOvra Se kcu e£ err} eXeyov, ty\v vcrrepav ol- 
 KoSojurjv SrjXovvTeS" rj yap 7rpoTepa ei? eitcocriv gtwv a'TrrjpTia'Or] 
 
 ypovov. This last assertion, if referred to the building 
 of the second temple after the return from captivity, is 
 strictly true. For that building was begun in the 
 second of Cyrus, B. C. 535, and finished in the sixth 
 of Darius, B.C. 515 or 5l6 b ; between which are twenty 
 years, either current or complete. Origen, however, 
 declares that he knew not how to explain it c ; while 
 others of the Fathers, and even Eusebius himself, in 
 their attempts to verify the assertion by computation, 
 agreeably as they conceived to the matter of the fact, 
 and to prophecy, (especially the prophecy of the Se- 
 venty weeks,) run counter to all historical testimony, 
 both sacred and profane d . 
 
 The truth is, that Herod the Great began to rebuild 
 the temple, U. C. 734. B. C. 20 e ; but it was not corn- 
 
 * Operum viii. 135. A. in Joh. Horn, xxiii. 2. b Ezra i. 1. iii. 8. iv. 24. 
 
 vi. 15. c Operum iv. 200. D. in Joh. tom. x. 22. <' Dem. Evang. viii. 
 
 cap. 2. 392. C. D. e Ant. Jud. xv. xi. 1. 
 
On the date of the passover , John ii. 13. 
 
 241 
 
 pleted until U. C. 818, A. D. 65, the year before the 
 Jewish war, when Josephus writes thus: <$e Tore 
 
 kcu to lepov erereXecrTo { I and, even then, something still 
 remained to be done, which the arrival of the war pre- 
 vented from being accomplished, but, in allusion to 
 which, as designed and yet not effected, it was said at 
 the time of the first account £, kcu tovto per Kara tov ? 
 NejOftH'O? Kcupous eire'yeipeiv eyvooKeipe v ; that is, And this 
 we had determined about the times of Nero to raise up 
 again, (when, as it is implied, the war intercepted the 
 design.) 
 
 At any period of the interval, then, between U. C. 
 734, and U. C. 818, an interval of eighty -four years, 
 it might be said with truth that the building of the 
 temple had been going on for such and such a time, 
 and was not yet completed. 
 
 The following calculations will demonstrate the strict 
 exactness of this statement, as referred to the passover 
 in the thirteenth of Tiberius ; and consequently its in- 
 accuracy, if understood of any passover before or after 
 that. 
 
 I. From the passover when Herod began the restor- 
 ation of the temple, to the passover when he died, were 
 xvn. years complete. 
 
 II. From the passover when Herod died, to the death 
 of Augustus Caesar, were xvi. years and vi. months 
 complete. 
 
 III. From the death of Augustus Caesar, to the pass- 
 over in the thirteenth of Tiberius Caesar, were xii. 
 years and vi. months complete. 
 
 IV. These sums being added together, from the 
 passover when Herod began to rebuild the temple, to 
 the passover in the thirteenth of Tiberius, were xlvi. 
 years complete. 
 
 f Ant. xx. ix. 7. Cf. B. v i. 5. £ Ant. xv. xi. 3. 
 
 VOL. I. 11 
 
242 
 
 Dissertation Fourth. 
 
 If, then, the passover in question had thus been proved 
 to belong to the thirteenth and not to the fourteenth, 
 and much less to the fifteenth or the sixteenth, of Ti- 
 berius Caesar ; and if it were only some passover pos- 
 terior to the baptism of our Saviour ; it would have 
 been proved that our Saviour was baptized in the thir- 
 teenth of Tiberius Caesar, and in the first half not in the 
 second of that year itself. For as the years of Tibe- 
 rius bear date from the month of August, the passover 
 posterior to the last half of his thirteenth would be 
 the passover belonging to the first half of his four- 
 teenth : which would be contrary to the conclusion 
 established. 
 
 It would have been proved at least, that he could 
 not have been baptized later than the first half of Ti- 
 berius’s thirteenth : but it would not have been proved, 
 it might be said, that he could not have been baptized 
 earlier — as, for instance, in the last half of his twelfth. 
 To this, however, I reply, first ; that if his baptism was 
 preparatory to the commencement of his ministry, and 
 his ministry was actually begun at this passover, (both 
 which assumptions will be established hereafter,) it 
 would be palpably at variance with the final end of the 
 baptism that it should have taken place six months, or 
 more, before the passover ; it is utterly inconceivable 
 that Christ should have been formally consecrated to 
 his ministry, and yet have continued so long inactive. 
 Secondly ; the time of the commencement of the min- 
 istry of John, which must have been prior to the bap- 
 tism of Christ, and though placed at the very begin- 
 ning of the thirteenth of Tiberius, would still be ap- 
 parently contradictory to Luke iii. 1, which places it 
 in his fifteenth, becomes, as we shall see hereafter, 
 absolutely incompatible with the testimony of that 
 text, if it is placed in any year before his thirteenth. 
 
On the date of the passover, John ii. 13. 
 
 243 
 
 With respect, then, to this objection, these answers 
 may suffice for the present : and having stated this 
 first and, as I consider it, this palmary argument for 
 determining the year when our Lord entered upon his 
 ministry — on which determination many other conclu- 
 sions will hereafter be found to depend — I shall pro- 
 ceed to review and to confirm the data upon which it 
 is grounded *. 
 
 * Origen, Operum iv. 200. 
 Comm, in Joh. tom. x. 22 : nS)s 
 
 TecrcrapaKOvra Kal ereaiv cokoSo- 
 prjcrOai (fxuri tov vaov oi ’lovbaloi 
 X eye iv ovk e^o/xe v, el rfj icrTopia nar- 
 aKoXovOrjo-aipev. He then quotes 
 the Book of Kings, to shew that 
 the building, and preparation for 
 the building, of the first temple 
 took up only eleven years at 
 most ; viz. from the first to the 
 eleventh of Solomon ; unless in- 
 deed the latter should be sup- 
 posed to bear date from the fifth 
 of David; at which time he con- 
 siders it possible that David 
 might first have conceived the 
 design of building the temple. 
 Cf. 2 Samuel vii. 2. ’Eai/ ovv bvvrjOjj 
 anobel£ai rrjv dpxrjv Trjs n epl tov vaov 
 Kara(TKevr)s yeyovevai o-vvayovTOs av- 
 tov rrjv eniTr)beiov vXrjv , ano tov 
 e . xpovov Trjs ftaaiXeias avrov, bvv- 
 j)creTai ( 3 iaarap.evos ( riff ) 7 xepl twv 
 pr . era rv ehrelv. 
 
 It is honestly enough that 
 Origen admits this would be a 
 forced explanation ; but it hap- 
 pens unfortunately for it, forced 
 as it is, that so far from David’s 
 having begun to make prepara- 
 tion for the building of the tem- 
 ple in the fifth year of his reign, 
 it is much more probable he did 
 not seriously set about it, until 
 between his thirty-seventh and 
 his fortieth. See 1 Chron. xxii. 
 1 — xxvi. 31 — xxix. 23. 
 
 Origen proceeds : dXXos be tis 
 epei tov beiKvvpevov prj tov vtto 2 o- 
 XoparvTOS (pKoboprjpevov elvai ’ eKei- 
 vov yap KaTeaTpdcfiOai koto tovs Trjs 
 alxpakaxrias XP° V0VS ’ dXXa tov eVt 
 ’E abpd o'lKoboprjOevTa’ nepl ov ovk 
 exopev Tpavcos tov tojv Terro-apaKovTa 
 Kal e£ €T(bv dnobel^ai dXrjdevopevov 
 Xoyov. eoiKe be Kal koto, tci MaKKa~ 
 fiaiKa ttoXXtj tis aKaTaaraaia yeyo- 
 vevai nepl tov Xaov Kal tov vaov, Kal 
 ovk oiba e’i ttotc dvarKoboprjOr] tocov- 
 tois eTecriv 6 vaos. 
 
 The candour of Origen, in 
 frankly and explicitly declaring 
 his inability to explain the his- 
 torical fact asserted in the text, 
 is deserving of all praise. Nor 
 can there be a question but that, 
 under such circumstances, the 
 words of the text must have 
 been supposed by him to con- 
 tain a very serious difficulty. 
 
 Heracleon, a Valentinian com- 
 mentator on St. John, of great 
 antiquity, whom Origen has fre- 
 quent occasion to notice, boldly 
 CUt the knot : 6 pevTo iye e H pa- 
 KXeoav, continues he, prjbe emorTr ]- 
 (T as Trj IcrTopia, (prjcrl tov SoXopcovTa 
 Tecro-apaKovTa Kal ef- erecri KaTecrKev- 
 aKevai tov vaov, eiKova rvyxdvovTa 
 tov 2a>Trjpos, k , r. X. So also the 
 Evangelium Nicodemi, cap. iv. 
 Vide the Latin version in the 
 Codex Apocryphus, i. 247. and 
 the Greek, in the Auctarium 
 Codicis Apocryphi, cap. iv. p. 27. 
 
244 
 
 Dissertation Fourth. 
 
 Likewise the Narratio of Joseph 
 of Arimathea, Auctarium, 1 86. 
 
 Methodius, bishop and martyr 
 in the reign of Decius, and con- 
 sequently a contemporary of Ori- 
 gen’s, explained the interval in 
 question as taken up by the im- 
 pediments offered to the building 
 of the second temple : e'lpyovTo 
 yov v V7TO T(i>v aXXoeOvoov 7roXXdicis, 
 ohcodoprjo-cu deXrjcravTes tov vaov * 
 o6e v Ka\ ev p . avrov Ka\ y’. erecrt 
 poXis r)8vvr)dr)(rav beipaaOai. Photii 
 Bibliotheca, Codex 234. p. 300. 
 line 25 ad dextrarn. 
 
 Eusebius either adopted this 
 opinion from Methodius, or was 
 led to it of himself. Dem. Evang. 
 viii. 2. 392. B : where he has oc- 
 casion to explain the prophecy 
 of the seventy weeks, he places 
 the return from captivity in the 
 first of Cyrus, and the first of 
 Cyrus (393. B. 394. C.) 01 . 55.1. 
 B.C. 560. The rebuilding of the 
 temple being then begun, dXX’ eVi- 
 a^eOivTos tov epyov vno tcov nepi- 
 olkoov, ai 7T pcbrcu 67 TTa efidopdbes ra>v 
 irSbv, ai did tov rrpo(f)r)Tov drjXovpe- 
 vai, ervpnepaiovvTai, KaO ' as areXes 
 biepeive to epyov tt)s tov vaov oIko- 
 8opr)s. And this he supposes to 
 be the reason of the division of 
 the prophecy into the first of its 
 periods, that of seven weeks : 
 
 67rrd yov v ano K vpov, Ka\ eVi ttjv 
 a’vpnXrjpooaiv Tr/s tov iepov ohcodo- 
 pr/s, e(38opdbes ercov evplarKovTai. ev- 
 6ev oppdtpevoi tco Secrr) pi fjpcov eXe- 
 yov oi ’I ovSaloi, TecraapaKOVTa na'i e£ 
 erecriv coKodoprjOr] 6 vuos ovtos. 
 
 He proceeds : dXX’ ovroi pev 
 TecraapaKovra #cai e£ eTecriv coko8o- 
 prjcrOai tov vaov ecpaaav. rocrafra 
 yap arro 7T pcoTOV K vpov fiaaiXeias, 
 os TTpwTos avrjice tt)s BafivXoovos tovs 
 ftovXopevovs T(bv ’lot ibaicov els ttjv 
 oiKeiav yrjv enavievai, eVi to cktov 
 eros Aapeiov ftacnXelas avvayeTai , 
 KaS' bv to rrav epyov tt)s obcobopr/s 
 
 TeXos e’tXr)<fiev. 0 ye prjv e£ ‘'Efipalcov 
 * l<bar]7ros k at aXXov Tpierr) xpovov els 
 ttjv T(bv e£co6ev, twv dpcfil tov vaov, 
 KaTacTKevacrpaTcov avpTvXr]p(o<Jiv e<prj- 
 crev, k , t. X. 
 
 True it is, that from B.C. 560, 
 the supposed first of Cyrus, to 
 B. C. 516, the sixth of Darius, 
 there were forty-five current 
 years, if we take in the first and 
 the last : but not forty-six. And 
 as to the returning of the Jews, 
 and the beginning to rebuild the 
 temple, B.C. 560 ; it is an opinion 
 that requires no refutation. I 
 shall observe only, that where 
 Eusebius affirmed, though the for- 
 ty-six years ended with the sixth 
 of Darius, yet there was another 
 three years before every thing 
 was completed, for which he 
 quotes Josephus — I suppose he 
 referred to Ant. Jud. xi. iv. 7. 
 which places the completion on 
 the twenty- third of Adar in the 
 ninth of Darius : and that he 
 took occasion from the difference 
 of that statement, and what oc- 
 curs at Ezra vi. 1 5 ; viz. that all 
 was completed on the third of 
 Adar in the sixth of Darius — to 
 suppose one kind of completion 
 in the sixth, and another in the 
 ninth, of the reigning king. But 
 Josephus makes no such distinc- 
 tion. And though the reading in 
 his text, of the ninth of Darius, 
 be supposed to be correct, as I 
 believe it to be ; still we may 
 contend it was founded on an 
 apocryphal or erroneous lection 
 of 1 Esdras vii. 5: a book whose 
 accounts he follows in this part 
 of the Antiquities, rather than 
 those of the canonical Book of 
 Ezra. Even there, the comple- 
 tion of the work is placed on the 
 twenty-third of Adar, it is true ; 
 but in the sixth of Darius. 
 
 Eusebius’ exposition is adopt- 
 
On the date of the passover, John ii. 13. 
 
 245 
 
 ed by Theodorit, or a similar 
 one is proposed by him, Operum 
 ii. 976, 977 : In Ezek. xxxiv. 3 1 : 
 and 1580, 1581. In Aggseum, 
 Prooemium. 
 
 Theophylact, while he admits 
 that the building of the first 
 temple took up only twenty 
 years at the utmost, boldly as- 
 serts that the construction of 
 the second, from Cyrus to Ar- 
 taxerxes, took up forty-six : 
 Operum i. 537. D. E. in Joh. ii. 
 As most of the statements of 
 this commentator are borrowed 
 from Chrysostom ; it is not quite 
 certain that he did not take this 
 from Chrysostom also. It is as- 
 serted at least, in Chrysostom’s 
 commentary on Ps. 126. ad prin- 
 cip. that the building of the se- 
 cond temple occupied forty-six 
 years. Operum v. 355. B. 
 
 Julius Pollux, the author of 
 the Chronicon first published 
 anonymously, at Bononia,in 1729, 
 and subsequently under the name 
 of the author, at Leipsic, by 
 Hardt, 1 792, also gives Euse- 
 bius’ exposition, or one like it ; 
 page 143. 
 
 Augustin’s explanation of the 
 numbers in question may be 
 found, Operum vi. 25. E. F : Li- 
 ber de diversis quaestionibus : 
 Quaestio lvi. 
 
 Operum iii. 36, Pars i a : De . 
 Doctrina Christiana, Lib. ii. 42: 
 he observes, Nam et per Olym- 
 piadas, et per Consulum nomina 
 multa saepe quaeruntur a nobis, et 
 ignorantia consulatus, quo natus 
 est Dominus, et quo passus est, 
 nonnullos coegit errare, ut puta- 
 rent quadraginta sex annorum 
 aetate passum esse Dominum, 
 quia per tot annos aedificatum 
 templum esse dictum est a Ju- 
 daeis, quod imaginem Dominici 
 
 corporis habebat. 
 
 Operum iii. Pars ii da . 3 73 , 3 74 . 
 In Joh. ii. Tract, x. 12. he ex- 
 plains the forty-six years on the 
 principle of a mystical reference 
 to the numeral value of Adam 
 in Greek characters : the amount 
 of which is exactly forty-six : a 
 notion which occurs also in the 
 two treatises, appended to the 
 works of Cyprian, De Monte 
 Sina et Sion, p. 36. and De 
 Paschate Computus, p. 68. 
 
 These examples are sufficient 
 to prove what difficulties the 
 most learned and judicious of 
 the ancient commentators were 
 reduced to, in explaining a sim- 
 ple historical statement, the truth 
 of which becomes so palpably 
 clear and demonstrative, when 
 it is known that the process of 
 rebuilding the temple began at 
 the Passover, U.C. 734, and was 
 only just over at the Passover, 
 U.C. 819 ; and that the words 
 in question were spoken at the 
 Passover of U.C. 780. And on 
 any other principle but this, I 
 will venture to say it will be 
 found as inexplicable to the in- 
 genuity of modern commenta- 
 tors, as to that of ancient. 
 
 With regard to the supposi- 
 tion that some such thing as the 
 idea of a forty-six years’ interval 
 between the beginning and the 
 completion of either temple, 
 though not founded in history, 
 might yet have been tradition- 
 ally current among the Jews of 
 our Saviour’s time ; it would be 
 a pure conjecture, without a 
 shadow of testimony in favour of 
 its truth. Photius, indeed, seems 
 to assert that Josephus supposes 
 this interval for the building of 
 the second temple ; (Codex 238. 
 p. 3 1 3. line 31, 32 ad dextram ;) 
 
 R 3 
 
246 
 
 Dissertation Fourth. 
 
 but I have never yet met with 
 the passage in his works, which 
 does. And it is clear from the 
 comparison of Ant. xi. i. i : ii. 2 : 
 
 iii. 1,2: that from the first of Cy- 
 rus, in which he places the re- 
 turn from captivity and the foun- 
 dation of the second temple, he 
 supposes a nine years’ interval 
 to the first of Cambyses, when 
 the progress of the work was 
 suspended — and another nine 
 years’ interval to the second of 
 Darius, during which it conti- 
 nued suspended — and (Ant. xi. 
 
 iv. 7 :) a seven years’ interval, 
 from the second to the ninth of 
 Darius, within which it was re- 
 sumed and completed. The 
 whole interval, then, between 
 the first foundation, and the fi- 
 nal completion of the temple. 
 
 supposed by Josephus, is twen- 
 ty-five years and no more. In 
 like manner. Contra Apion. i. 2 1 : 
 the whole interval between the 
 destruction of the first temple 
 in the eleventh of Zedekiah, and 
 the foundation of the second in 
 the first or second of Cyrus, is 
 reckoned by him at fifty years, 
 or else at fifty-four. Certainly 
 not at forty-six. In short, the 
 idea of a forty-six years’ inter- 
 val is one which appears first 
 in Christian writers ; and was 
 doubtless excogitated, in defi- 
 ance of history, solely because 
 of the necessity which they felt 
 of some explanation of this state- 
 ment in St. John ; and yet their 
 inability to explain it satisfacto- 
 rily in any other way. 
 
DISSERTATION V. 
 
 Verification of the date of the passover, John ii. 13. 
 
 The validity of an argument, which depends on so 
 slight an aberration from the truth as an excess or a 
 defect of a single year, requires that the calculations, 
 on which it proceeds, should be ascertained with the 
 utmost exactness : and this I shall endeavour to do in 
 the present dissertation, and in those which follow it. 
 
 Assuming, then, the correctness of the statement a 
 that Herod began to rebuild or enlarge the temple in 
 the eighteenth year of his reign — I observe that Jose- 
 phus assigns two periods to the duration of this reign; 
 one of thirty-four ; the other of thirty-seven years : 
 the former, dated from the time when Herod became 
 sole king, by the capture of Antigonus ; the latter, 
 from the time when he was first declared king by 
 Mark Antony, Caesar Octavianus, and the Roman se- 
 nate. The former he places in the consular year of 
 Agrippa and Gallus, U.C. 717- Ol. 185. B.C.37; which 
 notes of time agree together : the latter, in the con- 
 sular year of Calvinus and Pollio b , U.C. 714. Ol. 184. 
 B.C. 40; which also agree together ; except that the 
 year of this last Olympiad must be understood as made 
 up of the last half of Olymp-184. 4. and the first half 
 of Olyrnp. 185. 1 ; both which together make up the 
 consular year, U.C. 714, and answer to B.C. 40. 
 
 Between these dates there is a difference of three 
 years, either current or complete. Yet it may be 
 shewn to a demonstration that the former, and not the 
 latter, is uniformly the date from which Josephus com- 
 putes the years of Herod’s reign. 
 
 b lb. xiv. xiv. 5. xvi. 4. 
 
 31 4 
 
 a Ant. Jud. xv. xi. 1. 
 
248 
 
 Di sserto tion Fifth . 
 
 I. Being himself descended from the Asmonaean 
 family 0 , whose title to the throne of Judaea was un- 
 questionably prior to Herod’s, he would naturally date 
 the commencement of the new dynasty only from the 
 time of the absolute extinction of the old; that is, from 
 the capture and death of Antigonus ; whom he recog- 
 nises as still king of Judaea when Herod was besieging 
 Jerusalem d ; and speaking long after of the wife of 
 Antipater, the daughter of this Antigonus, he describes 
 him by a similar title : avrrj Se rjv n yevo/mevt] ’A vnyovw 
 Trctis tw 7 T |00 'HjOco^ou ’I ovSalwv /3e/3a<ri\evic6Ti e . 
 
 II. Wheresoever he has occasion to specify the 
 length of Herod’s reign as such, he puts this number 
 before the other f , or he specifies this and not the 
 other 
 
 III. He dates the expiration of the Asmonaean dy- 
 nasty, after a duration of one hundred and twenty-six 
 years, with the capture of Jerusalem and of Antigonus 
 by Herod and Sosius h *. This same duration is stated 
 by Herod himself at one hundred and twenty-five 
 years 1 ; between which and the other statement there 
 is no further difference than between current years 
 and complete. The capture of the city took place, rfj 
 eoprrj r/;? vrj(TTe'ia<s , which means on the tenth of Tisri ; 
 U.C. 717. B. C. 37. The Asmonaean dynasty, there- 
 fore, expired on the tenth of Tisri, U. C. 717- B.C. 37. 
 But it began in the hundred and fiftieth year of the 
 ./Era Seleucidarum k ; that is, between Oct. 1. U.C. 591. 
 B. C. 163. and Oct. 1. U.C. 592. B. C. 162. when An- 
 tioehus Eupator made peace with Judas Maccabaeus. 
 
 * Contra Apionem, ii. 1 1. the which of course is in round num- 
 duration of the Asmonaean dy- bers merely, 
 nasty is estimated at 1 20 years ; 
 
 c Ant. Jud. xvi. vii. i. Vita, t. d Ant. xiv. xvi. i. 2. e lb. xvii. v. 2. 
 f lb. xvii. viii. 1. B. Jud. i. xxxiii. 8. S Ant. Jud. xv. x. 5. h lb. xiv. 
 xvi. 4. i lb. xvii. vi. 3. k lb. xii. ix. r — 3 — 7. 1 Macc. vi. 2 p — 6i. 
 
On the date of the passover , John ii. 13. 
 
 249 
 
 This peace was concluded towards the close of that 
 year 1 ; and, therefore, the computation should strictly 
 begin with U.C. 592. B.C. 162. From the tenth of 
 Tisri, in that year, to the same time U.C. 717. B.C. 37. 
 there are one hundred and twenty-five years complete, 
 which is the computation of Herod ; and from the 
 tenth of Tisri, in the year before, U.C. 591. B.C. 163. 
 to the same time U.C. 717- B.C. 37. there are one 
 hundred and twenty-six ; which is the computation of 
 
 Josephus *. 
 
 * I am aware that, besides 
 the tenth of Tisri, there were 
 three other fasts at least in the 
 Jewish calendar 11 ; and I am also 
 aware that some eminent chro- 
 nologers have supposed this cap- 
 ture of Jerusalem to have fallen 
 out upon one of them. But no 
 day is ever spoken of anXtas as 
 r) vrjarela — the day of the fast 
 kcit egoxrjv — except the tenth of 
 Tisri ; the great day of the atone- 
 ment. It is in allusion to this 
 alone, that we meet with such 
 expressions as these : rjv ’Iou- 
 8aioi vijcrreiav ayovai — rpicri v eop- 
 rais .... Kai rfj vrjaTela — bia to kcu 
 ttjv vt) are lav rjhrj napeXrjXvdevai — 
 kcu oi iv rrj vrjcrrela 8e rpayoi 8vo 
 —els a ana £ tov eviavrov 6 peyas 
 lepevs elaepxerai rfj vrjareia Xeyo- 
 pivrj — ttjv yap Xeyopevrjv vrjCTelav 
 aKpa^ovTL rpvyrjTcp . . nporldevrai °. 
 Add to these, 8ia tov avpfioXov ra> v 
 iv rfj vrjcTTela npocr(f)epopev(ov rpa- 
 yc ov: Justin M. Dialogus, 373. 1 . 
 23 — tls de ttjv Xeyopevrjv vrjarelav 
 ov TeBrjne kol npoo-Kvvel • Philo Jud. 
 ii. 138. line 2. De Mose, lib. ii. 
 
 The Tarentines celebrated an 
 annual festival, called N^oreta : 
 
 1 B. Jud. i. i. 5. n Zech. viii. 
 
 vi. 4. xviii. iv. 3. Acts xxvii. 9. Justin 
 De Virtutibus. Plutarch, Symposiaca iv. 
 Jud. xiv. iv. 3. q Lib. xxxvii. 16. 
 t i. xviii. 2. v. ix 4. p. 898. u Ant 
 
 the cause of which is related by 
 iElian, Var. Histor. v. 20. 
 
 The phrase rrj eoprfj rrjs vrjarelas, 
 in the present instance, is clearly 
 to the same effect as rfj ttjs vrj- 
 cTelas rjpepa P, when Jerusalem 
 was taken by Pompey, Ol. 1 79. 
 in the consular year of Cicero 
 and Antony, U.C. 691. B.C. 63. 
 This fact is attested by Dio q ; 
 who agrees with Josephus in 
 placing the capture even on the 
 Saturday, that is, the Sabbath- 
 day ; for the tenth of Tisri when- 
 soever it fell was a Sabbath. It 
 is also not impliedly, but plainly 
 asserted by Strabo, a contempo- 
 rary writer ; who informs us that 
 Pompey took Jerusalem, rrjprjoras 
 ttjv rrjs vrjcrTelas rjpepav T . 
 
 The length of the siege is 
 reckoned in the Antiquities 3 at 
 three months, and in the History 
 of the War at five months, and 
 even at six*: between which com- 
 putations there is only this dif- 
 ference ; viz. that the latter ex- 
 presses the entire of the time, 
 the former a certain part of it. 
 Both the Antiquities and the 
 War u shew that Herod first in- 
 
 9. Ant. Jud. x. vi. 2. o lb. xvii. 
 
 Mart. Dial. 219. 1 . 2. Philo, ii. 591. 1 . 6. 
 
 Quaestio v. Gperum viii. 669. P Ant. 
 r xvi. 2. §. 40. 366. s xiv. xvi. 4. 
 
 xiv. xv. 14. B. i. xvii. 8. 
 
250 
 
 Dissertation Fifth. 
 
 IV. From the time of the appointment of the first 
 high priest by Herod, to the day when the temple and 
 city of Jerusalem were destroyed by Titus, was a 
 period of one hundred and seven years w . The date 
 of the destruction of the temple was the ninth or tenth 
 of the J ewish Ab or Lous ; and the date of the de- 
 struction of the city was the seventh or eighth of the 
 Jewish Miul or Gorpiaeus ; U. C. 823. A. D. 70. The 
 first high priest appointed by Herod was Ananelus x : 
 and the time of the appointment of Ananelus may be 
 thus determined. 
 
 The death of Aristobulus the brother of Mariamne y, 
 who superseded Ananelus soon after this appointment, 
 was certainly prior to the last Armenian expedition of 
 Antony # , if not to the death of Lysanias z . This ex- 
 pedition, which ended in the capture of Artabazes, is 
 placed by Dio a U. C. 720 ; and the death of Lysanias, 
 prior to that b , U. C. 718. The death of Aristobulus, 
 then, cannot be assigned to a later period than U. C. 
 719 He was put to death soon after a feast of Ta- 
 
 vested Jerusalem with the re- 
 turn of spring, in the third year 
 after his appointment to be king: 
 which would be the spring of the 
 consular year U.C. 7 1 7 ; but, hav- 
 ing done this, that he repaired 
 to Samaria, and celebrated his 
 nuptials with Mariamne. The 
 siege was going on in his ab- 
 sence, which might well occupy 
 the first two or three months : 
 and when he was come back to 
 resume the command in person, 
 the summer was already set in c . 
 The last three months must be 
 dated from this return ; and the 
 time of this return coinciding 
 
 with midsummer, or being even 
 later than it, U. C. 7 1 7, the city 
 might be taken, about the begin- 
 ning of the Tisri following. 
 
 * Plutarch, Antonius 40 : An- 
 tony’s first Armenian expedition 
 U. C. 718, was going on, pera 
 (f) 0 LvoTr(DpiVT)v Icrrjpeplav: 52. 53. 
 his next, U. C. 719: 56. his 
 third, U. C. 720. This is the 
 expedition alluded to by Jose- 
 phus. Yet Dio, xlix. 43. 44. 
 another expedition of his to the 
 East is spoken of, apparently 
 in U. C. 721. which may be 
 the third-mentioned one of Plu- 
 tarch. Cf. Antonius, 54. 
 
 w Ant. xx. 10. ad finem. x lb. xv. ii. 4. Y B. i. xxii. 2. Ant. xv. 
 
 iii. 3. z B. i. xviii. 5. Ant. xv. iv. 1 — 4. a. xlix. 33. 39. 40. lb. 32. 
 e Ant. xiv. xvi. 2. 
 
On the date of the passover, John ii. 13. 251 
 
 bernacles ; and he had held the priesthood one year c . 
 He was appointed, then, about the time of a feast of 
 Tabernacles, U. C. 718. He was seventeen years old 
 at the time of this appointment d ; he was seventeen 
 years old, therefore, about the middle of U. C. 718: 
 consequently he was sixteen years old about the same 
 time, U. C‘. 717. But Ananelus was already in office, 
 when Aristobulus was sixteen years old e . Ananelus 
 was consequently appointed in U. C. 717. From this 
 time to the middle of U. C. 823. there are one hundred 
 and seven current years. 
 
 V. The battle of Actium is placed in the seventh 
 year of Herod’s reign f . This battle was fought on 
 the second of September, U. C. 723 s. If Herod’s reign 
 is dated from the spring of U. C. 717. he had reigned 
 at that time six years and six months : hut if it is 
 dated from U. C. 714. he had reigned nine years and 
 six months. 
 
 VI. The commencement of the building of Caesarea 
 is placed after the thirteenth of Herod h . This thir- 
 teenth could not possibly be the thirteenth dated from 
 U. C. 714. but it might be the thirteenth dated from 
 U. C. 717 : for, at a previous period 1 , in the account 
 of Salome’s quarrel with Costobarus, the sons of Babas, 
 it was said, had been secreted by the latter ypovov evi- 
 avroov tjS*j SwS&ca — which twelve years were to be reck- 
 oned from the capture of Jerusalem, U. C. 717- 
 
 The same section states that the city was finished 
 in twelve years. But a later passage says it was 
 finished in ten years : SeKarw mev eVet 7 rpos re\o 9 e\ 6 ov- 
 <jt]s avTQ) Trjs 0X779 /caraa*/ceu? 9 , eKTrearovcrris Se rrj<s 7 rpoQe- 
 
 c Ant. Jud. xv. iii. 3. d B. Jud. i. xxii. 2. Ant. xv. iii. 3. 
 
 xv. ii. 4. 6. f B. Jud. i. xix. 3. Ant. xv. v. 2. & Dio, li. 1. 
 
 Jud. xv. ix. 1 — 6. i lb. xv. vii. 10. 
 
 e Ant. 
 h Ant. 
 
252 
 
 Dissert a t i on Fifth . 
 
 <T(J.L0.9 €19 Oy$OOV KCU CLKOCTTOV €T09 Ttj9 CTr’ ’0\vjUL7Tld- 
 
 $09 $evTepa9 tea] evevf]KO<TTr]9 7rpo9 Tai9 e/caror k . That this 
 was actually the case, in the first year of Olympiad 
 192. U. C. 712. B. C. 12. I shall make to appear else- 
 where. In the mean while there is no mode of recon- 
 ciling these statements together, except by attending to 
 the literal sense of 7rpo0ecriJ.la ; of which the following 
 are instances from Josephus himself : i rpoOear/ula $e e-^prj- 
 ctcito 'Pcoyuai/co) iroXe/mM — Trj ir poOeo-fila tov irep\ tov vaov 
 
 epyov $ie\6oucrrj9 $e t> 7 ? 7 rpo0ecriuila9 e(£>’ rjv tvv€T€tclkto 
 
 7 rpoOecr/uilav'. In all these passages the word implies a 
 preconcerted period of some kind or other. One of 
 the statements, therefore, will affirm that he originally 
 intended to complete the work in twelve years ; the 
 other, that he actually completed it in ten : and the 
 truth of this conclusion (both dates being referred to 
 the first year of the reign of Herod, U. C. 717.) m ay 
 be further confirmed as follows. 
 
 Ant. xv. ix. 2. Petronius is mentioned as the pre- 
 fect of Egypt ; and, xv. ix. 3. iElius Gallus, as carry- 
 ing on an expedition in the neighbourhood of the Red 
 sea. The first prefect of Egypt, in the reign of Au- 
 gustus, was Cornelius Gallus ; whom Dio shews to 
 have been recalled in U. C. 728 m . There can be little 
 question that Cornelius Gallus was succeeded at this 
 time by iElius Gallus, and iElius Gallus afterwards, 
 by Petronius ; for this very expedition of JElius Gallus 
 is recorded by Dio in U. C. 780. n at which time he 
 was governor of Egypt ; and U. C. 732.° a war, which 
 arose out of that expedition, was waged by Petronius, 
 in the same capacity, with Candace queen of the Ethi- 
 opians. 
 
 k Ant. Jud. xvi. 5. j. 1 lb. xv. y. 1. xi. 6 : xvi. ix. 2 . B. Jud. ii. xxi 8. 
 Vide also Ant. Jud. iii. xi. 5. Gal. iv. 2. n * li. 17. liii. 23. n lb. 29. 
 
 0 Hv. 5 . 
 
On the date of the passover , John ii. 13. 
 
 253 
 
 The testimony of Strabo, who was the contemporary 
 and friend of Gallus # , is still more decisive to the same 
 effect. He specifies the number of Herod’s auxiliaries 
 agreeably to the account of Josephus; and he proves 
 that the expedition must have lasted upwards of 
 eighteen months P. The first winter of the campaign 
 was spent in Albus Pagus, an emporium of Nabataean 
 Arabia ; and the final return to Alexandria was at 
 least nine months later than that. If the expedition 
 began, then, U. C. 730, it was not over before the 
 middle of U. C. 731. 
 
 Again, the same author shews ^ that the commence- 
 ment of hostilities by the Ethiopians was principally 
 due to the absence of the Roman forces under Gallus. 
 The war with Candace, therefore, arose out of this 
 expedition. The commander of the Romans in that 
 war was Petronius ; who must, consequently, have 
 now succeeded to Gallus : and if Gallus was super- 
 seded U. C. 731, this would be critically in unison 
 with Dio. The Ancyran monument, which speaks of 
 two expeditions, one against Arabia, and the other 
 against Ethiopia, as undertaken by command of Au- 
 gustus, eodem fere tempore , that is, one after the other, 
 but with a slight interval of time between them, agrees 
 with the same conclusion r . 
 
 The ambassadors of Candace, whom she sent the 
 second time to Petronius to negociate peace, were or- 
 dered by him to prefer their requests to Augustus ; 
 whom they are said to have found at Samos, prepar- 
 ing to proceed into Syria, and sending Tiberius into 
 
 * Vide Lib. ii. cap. 5. p. 313. Egypt, and of a voyage of Stra- 
 which speaks of his invasion of bo’s up the Nile, in his company. 
 Arabia, and his government of Cf. xvii. i.§. 46. 599. §. 50.608. 
 
 P xvi. 4. §.-22 — 24. 443 — 455. q xvii. i. §. 54. 615. r Tacitus, iv. 
 
 847. Vide also Pliny, H. N. xii.31. 
 
254 
 
 Dissertation Fifth. 
 
 Armenia : which proves that the arrival of this lega- 
 tion could not be earlier than U.C. 733, when Augustus 
 was wintering at Samos s ; nor later than U. C. 735, 
 when he again returned to Rome t . The prisoners, 
 therefore, which Petronius sent to the emperor before 
 this — vewcrT'i €k KavTa/3pGov %kovti — were sent at the close 
 of the third Cantabrian war, U. C. 732 or 733 u , not at 
 the close of the first, U. C. 729. v Augustus himself 
 was not in Spain, waging any such war in person, 
 after U. C. 729. 
 
 The order of the governors of Egypt, then, from 
 U. C. 724, and down to the conclusion of the war with 
 Candace, was this : viz. Cornelius Gallus, iElius Gal- 
 lus, and Petronius *. If Josephus, therefore, has placed 
 
 * It is quite clear from the 
 account of Strabo, xvi. locis cita- 
 tis, that the expedition of Ailius 
 Gallus lasted more than eighteen 
 months ; beginning in the spring 
 or summer of one year, and not 
 being over before six months, 
 and seventy* one days, at least, 
 after the winter of the next : 
 the six months having been 
 taken up by the march into the 
 interior, the seventy-one days 
 by the return to Myos Hormus 
 only. 
 
 The same expedition is al- 
 luded to generally by Pliny, H. 
 N. vi. 32. That more was me- 
 ditated by it than the reduction 
 of Arabia, will appear from a 
 reference to Horace, Carm. i. 
 xxix. xxxv : iii. v. 1 — 4: and to 
 Propertius iii. iv : each of which 
 can be understood of nothing else 
 but of this expedition, and its 
 objects. 
 
 Propertius iii. xii. and iv. iii. 
 both relate to the same subject, 
 
 s Dio, liv. 7. * Ibid. 9. 10. 
 
 and both profess to be a letter 
 from the lady of one of those 
 who had gone on the expedi- 
 tion, to her husband. This lady 
 is with reason supposed to be 
 ./Elia Galla, the sister of the 
 commander of the expedition 
 himself. 
 
 It is a curious coincidence, 
 that at the time of these mili- 
 tary movements, which appear 
 to have aimed at such consider- 
 able conquests in the East, Au- 
 gustus himself, as we have seen, 
 was in the neighbourhood of the 
 scene of action — at Antioch, or 
 on his way into the East. And 
 while he was still there, on the 
 same occasion, he received the 
 submission of the Indians and 
 Scythians also: Strabo xv. 1. §. 
 73. 154. E Nicolao Damasceno. 
 
 Strabo himself, xvii. i. §. 53. 
 614. enumerates the three first 
 governors of Egypt in the same 
 order as Josephus ; Cornelius 
 Gallus, Petronius, ASlius Gal- 
 
 11 Ibid. 5. v Dio, liii. 25. 26. 
 
On the date of the passover , John ii. 13 . 255 
 
 Petronius before iElius Gallus, he has made a great 
 mistake. But I am persuaded he has done no such 
 thing; and that his account is quite consistent with 
 itself. 
 
 About this year, says he w , which was the thirteenth 
 of the reign of Herod, the greatest sufferings befell the 
 country, partly from the effects of dearth, and part- 
 ly from those of pestilence ; the consequence of the 
 dearth. The first cause of the dearth was a succes- 
 sion of droughts, av^/mol Sir/ve/ceis ; the length of which 
 succession, though not exactly specified by him, is 
 shewn impliedly to have extended through three sum- 
 mers, before the country yielded any thing again. He 
 speaks of the failure of one harvest ; and then, of a 
 second , involving the loss of the seed, reserved even in 
 the former year ; before any steps were taken to im- 
 port supplies of corn from Egypt. These supplies, it 
 is manifest, were imported at the close of some year ; 
 for directly after, there is mention of the winter, and 
 after the winter, of the seed time of the following year ; 
 and lastly of the harvest, in due succession after that x . 
 
 If these droughts, then, set in in the thirteenth of 
 Herod, which would answer to U. C. 729. the country 
 had not recovered from them until the harvest of 733 ; 
 which would be in the seventeenth of his reign : and 
 
 lus : but he shews immediately he left a garrison there, with 
 after, §. 54. that ^Elius Gallus two years’ and upwards supplies 
 really preceded Petronius. of provisions. This w r as in or- 
 
 The ^Ethiopian expedition of der to secure possession of it 
 the latter is alluded to, and some against all attempts of the ene- 
 particulars of it are given, Pliny, my, until the expiration of his 
 H. N. vi. 35. That it was ac- term of office, U. C. 734, at 
 tually at an end, U. C. 732, may least. 
 
 be collected from Strabo loc. cit. To this ^Ethiopian war also 
 who tells us that when Petro- Horace alludes, iii. vi. 13 — 16. 
 nius took Premnis (in Pliny, and Propertius, iv. vi. 
 
 Primis) from the ^Ethiopians, 
 
 w Ant. Jud. xv. ix. i. 
 
 * Ibid. xv. ix, 2. 
 
256 
 
 Dissertation Fifth. 
 
 the period when it suffered most severely, and when 
 Herod took the most active and effectual measures for 
 the relief of its necessities, was exactly between U. C. 
 731. and U. C. 732 ; partly in the fifteenth, and partly 
 in the sixteenth, of his reign. 
 
 Now there are a few observations which we may 
 make upon this account. First ; no droughts would 
 be considered unnatural in Judaea, which did not set 
 in in the winter-half of the year. If these, then, be- 
 gan in the thirteenth of Herod, they began in the latter 
 half of U. C. 729- Secondly; Petronius might be 
 governor of Egypt in the latter half of U. C. 731 ; and 
 was certainly so in the first half of U. C. 732. Thirdly; 
 from a table of Sabbatic years, which I shall exhibit 
 hereafter, it will appear that from seed time U. C. 731, 
 to seed time U. C. 732, (the period during which the 
 people suffered most severely, and Herod imported the 
 supplies in question,) was actually a Sabbatic year : 
 and that one of these years of drought coincided with 
 such a year, might be inferred from Josephus himself ; 
 for he specifies it, among the effects of the droughts, 
 that the land not merely yielded no crops from the 
 seed committed to it, but did not produce even what it 
 was accustomed to bear of itself ; a circumstance of 
 distinction which could be applicable specially, only 
 to a Sabbatic year ; when the fields and the vineyards 
 lay fallow, and bore nothing except of themselves. 
 Fourthly ; it is a singular coincidence, that according 
 to Strabo during the whole of the administration of 
 Petronius, the Nile never rose to a greater height 
 than twelve cubits, and on one occasion only to eight ; 
 and yet Egypt was exceedingly fertile. It is clear 
 that the supplies of the Nile, as was naturally to be 
 expected, were affected by these constant droughts, 
 
 y Lib. xvii. i. §. 3. 480. 
 
On the date of the passover > John ii. 13 . 
 
 257 
 
 (which do not appear to have ceased in Judaea before 
 U. C. 733. at the soonest ;) and that one year in par- 
 ticular, when it seems to have sympathized with them 
 most, might be the very year when Petronius came 
 into office, U. C.731. or 732; after the droughts had 
 continued longest *. 
 
 The whole of this account, then, beginning with the 
 thirteenth of Herod, U. C. 729. was so connected toge- 
 ther, that Josephus very properly made an end of it, 
 before he noticed the expedition of iPlius Gallus ; the 
 time of which, viz. from U. C. 730. to U. C. 731; 
 was interposed exactly in the midst of it. After 
 this, however, the thread of the history is resumed 
 with the marriage of Herod to the second Mariamne ; 
 and the beginning of the building of Caesarea s ; the 
 time of both which events belongs to the same year, 
 
 * The ordinary or average 
 height of the Nile’s rise is stated 
 by Strabo z at fourteen cubits ; 
 by Pliny a at sixteen. Hence 
 it is, that upon the coins of 
 Egypt the Nile was often repre- 
 sented with sixteen little boys 
 playing around him ; which boys 
 denoted as many cubits b . El' nov 
 rov N elXov eldes y pacjyrj pepiprjpi- 
 vov , avrov pev Keipevov ini KpoKo. 
 beiXov nvos, rj Innonorapov, olov ol 
 7roXko\ ypa(f)ovcriv iv avrco’ piKpa di 
 riva naibia nap avrov na'i^ovra’ 
 nr}\eis avrovs ol Alyvnnoi KaXovcrc c , 
 k ,r.X. Ilept top NeiXov ol nrj\e is a6v- 
 povai, naudla, £vpperpa rco ovopan ‘ 
 Kal 6 NetXos avrols vne pyavvvrai, rd 
 re dXXa, Kal on Krjpvrrovo'iv avrov o- 
 cros Aiyvnriois npozxyOr). npoadyerai 
 
 ovv, Kal olov epx^rai avrd> e/c rov 
 vdaros ^plfprj anaXa Kal peiftioovra, 
 peri^iv 8e oipai avra Kal rov XaXov. 
 Kal ol pev rols a>pois avrov icfn^a- 
 vovctlv, ol 8e rwv nXoKapcov eKKpi- 
 pavrai, ol 8e rfj ayKaXp KadevBovcriv, 
 ol 8i Kcopd^ovcriv ini rov crripvov, 
 k ,r.X A. n r])(ei$ ol Alyvnnoi rr) v 
 av^rjaiv rov N eiXov npoaayopevovaiy 
 Kal pirpco perpovcn ra vdpara, Kal 
 navrjyvpis avrols 6 nr/xps yiverai e . 
 
 Strabo ascribes the fertility 
 in question, notwithstanding the 
 shallowness of the river, to the 
 cleansing of the drains and ca- 
 nals. And these, as Suetonius 
 will shew f , had been cleansed 
 as early as U. C. 724. or 725. 
 when Egypt was first reduced 
 by Augustus. 
 
 z Lib. xvii. 1. §. 3. 480. a H. N. v. 10. xviii. 47. Cf. Seneca, Nat. Qusest. 
 iv. ii.9 : Solini Polyh. xxxii. 15 : Aristides, Oratio xlviii. 445. line 10: 485. 1 . 
 15 : Plutarch, vii. 45 j, 452 : De Iside et Osiride : Ammianus Marc. xxii. 15. 
 335 * b Pliny, H. N. xxxvi. 11. Eckhel, Doct. Numm. Vett. iv. 38. c Lu- 
 cian, Rhetorum Praeceptor, vi. Operum iii. 6. line 12. cl Philostrati leones, 
 
 lib. i. 737. A. NetXos. e Himerius, Ecloga xv. sect. 1. 246. f Aug. 18. 
 * Ant. Jud. xv. ix. 3. 6. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 S 
 
258 
 
 Dissertation Fifth. 
 
 U. C. 733, the seventeenth of Herod ineunte. The 
 foundation of Caesarea, then, was begun U. C. 733: 
 the original 7rpo0ecriula for its completion extended to 
 U. C. 744, twelve years afterwards : its actual comple- 
 tion coincided with U. C. 742, two years sooner. The 
 former would answer to the twenty-eighth of Herod, 
 and the latter to his twenty-sixth ; and both to Olym- 
 piad 192 : which coincidences are further confirmed 
 by what is said at the beginning of the next chapter, 
 concerning the completion of the building of Sebaste*. 
 
 The rebuilding of the temple, therefore, which was 
 certainly undertaken after all these events, could not 
 have been commenced before the eighteenth of the 
 reign of Herod at the earliest ; and the eighteenth 
 dated from U. C. 717, alone. To this year according- 
 ly it is assigned in the Antiquities 0 : and I see no 
 reason why we should question the correctness of that 
 
 * The mission of Herod’s 
 two sons, Alexander and Aristo- 
 bulus, to Rome, which is related 
 in the same chapter S, cannot be 
 placed earlier than the founda- 
 tion of Sebaste, (which belongs 
 to U. C. 729 : Ant. xv. viii. 5. ix. 
 1 . x. 1 .) nor later than U. C. 733, 
 after which Augustus himself 
 was not at Rome. It is probable 
 that they were sent at the be- 
 ginning of U. C. 732, before the 
 emperor set out to Sicily, as he 
 did in the course of U. C. 733 h , 
 preparatory to a visit to the East: 
 at which time one of them might 
 be fourteen or fifteen, and the 
 other, twelve or thirteen years old. 
 
 The history of the tetrarchy 
 of Zenodorus also is connected 
 with this mission ; but, as I 
 shall have occasion to allude 
 
 to it elsewhere, I shall say 
 no more about it at present 
 than this ; that the first Actian 
 solemnity * as such, if dated from 
 U. C. 724, would be over in 
 U. C. 729 : and the first mission 
 of Agrippa, when Herod met 
 him at Lesbos k , took place, ac- 
 cording to Dio, U. C. 73 1 ; and 
 was terminated by his recall and 
 his marriage to Julia, the daugh- 
 ter of Augustus, in the consular 
 year 733 b The visit of Augu- 
 stus himself to the East, which 
 Josephus places in the seven- 
 teenth of Herod m , is shewn by 
 the same historian n to belong to 
 the beginning of the consular 
 year 734 ; which is the close of 
 the year of the city 733. when 
 Herod’s seventeenth year would 
 actually just have expired. 
 
 e Ant. Jud. xv. x. t. h Dio, liv. 6. i B. Jud. i.xx. 4. k Ant. Jud. 
 xv. x. 2. 1 Dio, liii. 32. liv. 6. m Ant. Jud xv. x. 3. n Dio, liv. 7. o xv. xi. 1. 
 
On the date of the passover , John ii. IS. 
 
 259 
 
 statement. If so, the rebuilding of the temple was 
 begun U. C. 734. 
 
 The date of the same undertaking which occurs in 
 the War p must, consequently, be understood with some 
 degree of latitude ; otherwise it is confuted not merely 
 by the contrary assertion of the Antiquities, but by the 
 History of the War itself. For the rebuilding of the 
 temple, even there, is placed after the visit of Augustus 
 to Syria ; and this visit to Syria ^ is placed in the 
 tenth year after a former visit, which is the visit re- 
 corded just before r , 'when Augustus was certainly in 
 Syria, and spending the winter at Antioch, subse- 
 quently to the reduction of Egypt, U. C. 724 s . The 
 tenth year from that date would still be current, in the 
 spring, U. C. 734 ; at which time, the emperor, as we 
 have seen, was actually again in Syria. 
 
 Now it was mainly in consequence of the favours 
 which were bestowed upon Herod at this visit, that he 
 was lifted Up ek /ici^ov (ppovtuua — icai to 7r\eov rrjg p. eya- 
 Xovolas €7reT€Lvev ek evcre/Beiav : that is, that he conceived 
 the magnificent design of renewing the temple. Hei/- 
 TeKaiSeKaTw yovv erei , k\ t. A. There can be no doubt 
 that the numbers ought to have stood, ’ OKTooKaiSeKarco 
 7 ovv erei : and if there has been no error of the copyists, 
 the only explanation which I can imagine of the state- 
 ment of Josephus is this — that as this chapter of the 
 War contains an account of Herod’s other great works 
 — the foundation of Sebaste, and of Caesarea in parti- 
 cular — all, after the mention of the rebuilding of the 
 temple ; the note of time, prefixed to the whole, must 
 be understood of the earliest, as well as of the latest : 
 in which case it will serve as a kind of average state- 
 ment between the thirteenth of Herod, the time of com- 
 
 P i. xxi. i. <1 i. xx. 4. r Ibid. 3. s Of. Dio, li. 18. 
 
 S 2 
 
260 
 
 Dissertation Fifth . 
 
 meriting the first, and his eighteenth, the time of com- 
 mencing the last of the works in question *. 
 
 * These two chapters, xxi. 
 and xxii. of the first book of the 
 War, are full of inversions in 
 the order of facts. The latter 
 of them concludes with the ac- 
 count of the death of Mariamne, 
 which, by a great oversight, is 
 placed at the same time with 
 that of Joseph, Herod’s uncle 
 (Ant. Jud. xv. iii. 5. 9.) U. C. 
 719, or 720, instead of that of 
 Soemus, (Ant. Jud. xv. vii. 4. 
 5.) U. C. 726. 
 
 The Antiquities were a later 
 production than the History of 
 the War ; and being written 
 with more care and precision, 
 they are entitled to greater cre- 
 dit of the two. This is not, 
 however, the sole instance (espe- 
 cially where numbers are con- 
 cerned) in which the one is at 
 vaiiance with the other : or ei- 
 ther with itself. I shall have 
 occasion to point out some of 
 these discrepancies hereafter : 
 and I will mention a few others 
 at present. 
 
 B. i. Prooem. 7: i. 1. also v. 
 ix. 4. p. 896 : Antiochus Epi- 
 phanes, it is said, kept posses- 
 sion of Jerusalem, and stopped 
 the daily sacrifice for three years 
 and six months — Ant. xii. v. 4. 
 vii. 6 : only for three years : viz. 
 from 25 Casleu, Mr. Sel. 145. to 
 25 Casleu, Mr. Sel. 148. And 
 this is confirmed by 1 Macc. i. 
 20. 29. 54. and iv. 52. 
 
 B. i. xix. 3 : the earthquake 
 in the seventh of Herod de- 
 stroyed 30,000 men — Ant. xv. 
 v. 2 : it destroyed about 10,000. 
 
 B. i. xxxiii. 9 : the body of 
 Herod was carried from Jeri- 
 
 cho, where he died, to Hero- 
 dium, the place where it was in- 
 terred, 200 stades — Ant. xvii. 
 viii. 3 : it was carried eight 
 stades. The reason of this mis- 
 take might be that there were 
 two Herodiums ; one sixty stades 
 from Jerusalem, the other much 
 further off r . 
 
 B. ii. vii. 3 : Archelaus is said 
 to have seen in his dream nine 
 ears of corn, and to have reigned 
 nine years — Ant. xvii. xiii. 3,2: 
 he is said to have seen ten ears, 
 and to have reigned as many 
 years. 
 
 B. ii. ix. 1 : the building of 
 Caesarea Philippi, and of Julias, 
 is placed in the first year of Ti- 
 berius — Ant. xviii. ii. 1 : it is 
 placed about the first year of Co- 
 ponius. 
 
 B. ii. x. 5 : the alarm excited 
 in Judaea, by the news of the 
 orders of Caius, lasted fifty days 
 — Ant. xviii. 8. 3 : it lasted 
 forty. 
 
 B. ii. ix. 5 : the length of the 
 reign of Tiberius is computed at 
 twenty-two years, six months, 
 and three days — Ant. xviii. vi. 
 10: at twenty-two years, five 
 months, and three days. 
 
 B. vi. iv. 5. 8 : Nebuchadnez- 
 zar set fire to the first temple 
 on the tenth of Lous — Ant. x. 
 viii. 5 : on the first. 
 
 Ant. xv. xi. 4 : the sacerdotal 
 robes were to be restored to the 
 custody of the Jews, one day 
 before every feast — Ant. xviii. 
 iv. 3 : they were to be restored 
 seven days before. 
 
 Ant. xx. i. 3 : the government 
 of the temple, and the right of 
 
 r Ant, Jud. xiv. xiii. 9 : xv. ix. 4 : B. Jud. i. xiii. 8 : xxi. 10. 
 
On the date of the passover, John ii. 13. 26 i 
 
 I think, then, it must now be admitted that the date, 
 which is followed by Josephus in his history of the 
 
 appointing the high-priests, en- 
 trusted by Claudius to Herod of 
 Chalcis, continued with his de- 
 scendants as long as the temple 
 lasted. But Ant. xv. xi. 4. xx. 
 viii. 8. even before the death of 
 this Herod, as well as after it, 
 it appears that this power was 
 vested in his nephew, Agrippa 
 the younger ; and was repeat- 
 edly exercised by him. 
 
 Ant. xv. vi. 4 : Hy reanus, 
 after his restoration by Pompey 
 U. C. 691, continued in the pos- 
 session of the high-priesthood, 
 err) reacrapaKOvra — Ant. XX. X : 
 
 he enjoyed it from the time of 
 this restoration to the time of 
 his next dispossession, U. C. 714, 
 only twenty-four years : and this 
 assertion upon the whole is cor- 
 rect. For as Hyrcanus was re- 
 instated in Tisri, U. C. 691, and 
 Antigonus, whom the Parthians 
 had substituted, U. C. 714, in 
 his stead, was dispossessed by 
 the capture of Jerusalem on the 
 tenth of Tisri, U. C. 7 1 7, three 
 years and three months after- 
 wards 5 ; it is manifest that Hyr- 
 canus had been in office until 
 three months before the tenth 
 of Tisri, U. C. 714 ; to which 
 time from Nisan U. C. 691, 
 there were twenty-four current 
 years. 
 
 Nor is it difficult to account 
 for this mistake. Hyrcanus was 
 made high-priest on the acces- 
 sion to the throne of his mother 
 
 queen Alexandra, U. C. 678, 
 exeunte, or U. C. 679. ineunte * ; 
 from the first of which dates, to 
 the time, U. C. 717, when An- 
 tigonus was finally deposed, there 
 were thirty-nine years complete ; 
 which might be stated in round 
 numbers at forty current years. 
 Josephus has, therefore, con- 
 founded the whole period, for 
 which he would have continued 
 high priest, had he never been 
 dispossessed, from his first ap- 
 pointment until the extinction 
 of the Asmonaean dynasty — with 
 the particular interval between 
 his first restitution, and his 
 second deprivation. 
 
 B. i. xxxiii. 1. Ant. xvii. vi. 1. 
 a short time before the death of 
 Herod, it is said he was almost 
 seventy. Concerning the year 
 of his death, something will be 
 said by and by : I assume, at pre- 
 sent, that it could not be later 
 than U. C. 751. exeunte. If so, 
 Herod was more than sixty- 
 nine, and almost seventy, U. C. 
 751. exeunte. Now, Ant. xiv. 
 ix. 2. at a time which the con- 
 text fixes to the year next after 
 the battle of Pharsalia,when Ju- 
 lius Caesar visited Syria, (which 
 was U. C. 707, about the end 
 of summer u , it is said he was fif- 
 teen years old : that is, he had 
 turned his fifteenth, and was in 
 his sixteenth year after midsum- 
 mer U. C. 707. If so, he would 
 be turned of seventy, and be in 
 
 * Ant. Jud. xx. x. t lb. xiii. xvi. 2. u It is clear from Dio, 
 
 xlii. 48. 55, that the time when Caesar rewarded Mithridates (and, we may pre- 
 sume, Antipater likewise,) for his services in the Alexandrine wax-, was the summer 
 of U. C. 707. That war was not ended befoi*e March in that year; nor did Caesar 
 himself take leave of Egypt before June or July afterwards. 
 
 s 3 
 
262 
 
 Dissertation Fifth. 
 
 reign of Herod, is the date of U.C. 717. But, which- 
 ever of the dates we adopt, the computation begins 
 
 his seventy-first year, before the 
 same time U. C. 762. But Jo- 
 sephus asserts he was about se- 
 venty, U.C. 751. It is impos- 
 sible, therefore, that both these 
 assertions can be correct. 
 
 If Herod, however, was about 
 twenty-six, that is, was turned 
 of twenty-five, but not yet 
 twenty-six, U. C. 707. medio , 
 he would be turned of sixty- 
 nine, but not yet seventy com- 
 plete, at the same time, U. C. 
 751. And this is all that Jose- 
 phus means ; whose expressions, 
 
 K(U yap 7Tep\ eros efidoprjKoaTOV rjv, 
 in the Antiquities, and, rjv pev 
 yap fjSrj o^eSoj/ eYa> v i^doprjKovra, 
 
 in the War, by no means imply 
 that he had completed his seven- 
 tieth year; but rather that he 
 had either not yet attained to it, 
 or was only just entered upon 
 it. He has a similar expression 
 with respect to himself u , nepl 
 rpiaKOcrrov yovv eroy V7rdpx<0v — 
 
 which, being understood of U. C. 
 820. ineunte, was when he had 
 entered on, but not completed, 
 his thirtieth year. Though, 
 therefore, the number fifteen is 
 recognized by Photius v , we 
 can scarcely doubt that it is a 
 mistake ; which possibly arose 
 on the part of the copyists, from 
 confounding the numeral note 
 (25 •) with u. (15.) 
 
 Phasaelus was the eldest son 
 of Antipater ; and Herod was 
 the next to him w : we may pre- 
 sume, therefore, that he was but 
 a year or two younger. When 
 Herod was retreating before the 
 
 Parthians, U.C. 7 14, about mid- 
 summer x , he had with him a 
 son of this Phasaelus, at that 
 time seven years old. He must 
 have been born, therefore, and 
 consequently Phasaelus must 
 have been married in, or before, 
 U. C. 707 : at which time, if 
 Herod was only just turned fif- 
 teen, Phasaelus was probably 
 but sixteen or seventeen. Is it 
 likely that he would be already 
 married at this age ? Besides, 
 when Herod himself was con- 
 tracted to Mariamne, his second 
 wife y, (which was certainly not 
 later than U.C. 711,) he had. 
 already been married to Doris, 
 his first wife. If he was twenty- 
 five in U. C. 707, this might be 
 the case ; but it would be very 
 improbable, if he was then only 
 fifteen. The truth is, that Pha- 
 saelus, at twenty-eight or twen- 
 ty-nine years old, was most pro- 
 bably married U. C. 706 or 7 07, 
 so as to have a son seven years 
 old U. C. 714: and Herod, when 
 about the same age, U. C. 709 
 or 7 1 o, was married to Doris ; 
 so as already to have had Anti- 
 pater born to him, before his 
 espousals to Mariamne. 
 
 It is true, that the marriage 
 of Antipater and Cyprus, the 
 parents of Herod, is first men- 
 tioned Ant. xiv. vii. 3. But it 
 is evidently mentioned out of its 
 place : for the same section men- 
 tions just before, the death of 
 Crassus, who was consul U. C. 
 699, and perished in Parthia 
 U. C. 701 z . 
 
 w B. Jud. 
 y Ant. xiv. 
 
 u Vita, 15. v Bibliotheca, Cod. 238. p. 315. 1 . 8, ad sinistram. 
 i. x. 4. Ant. xiv.ix. 12. x Ant. Jud. xiv. xiv. 1. B. i. xiv. 1. 
 xii. 1. B. i. xii. 3. z Dio, xl. 17. 
 
On the date of the passover , John ii. 13 . 
 
 263 
 
 from the spring; and so far proceeds by current years, 
 not by complete. There can be no doubt on this point 
 with respect to the shorter date : for the battle of Ac- 
 tium, which is stated to have happened in the seventh 
 of Herod, could not possibly have so happened, unless 
 this seventh be supposed to begin with U. C. 723. in - 
 eunte. The great earthquake, which is assigned to 
 the same year, is said to have taken place in the 
 spring a# . The seventh year of Herod, then, is neces- 
 sarily to be deduced from the spring. There is hardly 
 a date examined by us above, which does not exem- 
 plify this principle of Josephus’ mode of reckoning, by 
 
 It is said in the same place of 
 the Antiquities, as well as Bell. i. 
 viii. 9, that Antipater had deposit- 
 ed his children with the Arabian 
 (that is, with Aretas) while he 
 was engaged in this contest with 
 Aristobulus, the brother of Hyr- 
 canus : which contest ended in 
 the capture of Jerusalem byPom- 
 pey, U.C. 691.06 auctumno. This 
 assertion would not be true, un- 
 less Herod (and, consequently, 
 Phasaelus) had been committed 
 to the care of Aretas, by the 
 middle of this same year at least ; 
 and therefore unless Herod in 
 particular had been born before 
 or in that year. Let us sup- 
 pose that this last was the case. 
 If he was born U. C. 691. some- 
 where between the spring and 
 the midsummer, he would be 
 turned of fifteen U. C. 706. and, 
 consequently, of sixteen U. C. 
 70 j. medio. The statement, there- 
 fore, that he was only fifteen in 
 this year, would be inaccurate as 
 before ; but still it would be so 
 near the truth, that Josephus, 
 by a lapse of memory, might 
 
 unawares have fallen into it. 
 The true year of the birth of 
 Herod, if he died U.C. 751 or 
 750. and was in his seventieth 
 year when he died, could not 
 have been later than U. C. 682. 
 and might have been as early as 
 U.C. 681. But if Josephus for 
 the moment had forgotten this, 
 and confounded the true year of 
 his birth with U.C. 691. every 
 thing else would follow as matter 
 of course. 
 
 Lastly, B. i. ii. 8. the length 
 of the reign of John Hyrcanus 
 is computed at thirty-three en- 
 tire years; Ant. xiii. x. 7. at 
 thirty-one ; Ant. xx. x. at thirty. 
 All these dates may be recon- 
 ciled together ; but the first 
 alone, as dated from the death 
 of his father, is the true one. 
 
 * Ant. Jud. xv. v. 4. s : He- 
 rod’s victory over the Arabians, 
 obtained soon after this earth- 
 quake, was obtained in the sum- 
 mer season ; which also proves 
 that the earthquake happened in 
 the spring. 
 
 a B. Jud. i. xix. 3. 
 
 s 4 
 
264 
 
 Dissertation Fifth. 
 
 current years, much more frequently than by complete. 
 Besides which, if Reland is to be believed b , the prac- 
 tice of dating the reigns of their kings from the first 
 month in the sacred year, was familiar to the Jews : 
 Inde etiam anni regum Hebrseorum supputabantur ; 
 ita ut si quis rex in Adar regnaret, a Nisan alter an- 
 nus imperii ejus inciperet. 
 
 The work thus begun, as far as concerned the re- 
 building of the j/ao? in particular, was completed in 
 eighteen months’ time ; and the period of the comple- 
 tion coincided both with one of the feasts, and with 
 the anniversary of Herod’s appointment to be king c . 
 This anniversary could be nothing but the periodical 
 return of the day when, under circumstances so honour- 
 able, and so unexpected to himself, he was first de- 
 clared king. The year of this appointment was U.C. 
 714; and the time of the year may be determined as 
 follows : 
 
 First ; the irruption of the Partliians, which took 
 place U.C. 714 d , took place between the Passover and 
 the Pentecost of that year e : and consequently the de- 
 parture of Herod to Rome f , which was soon after the 
 irruption, was soon after the feast of Pentecost. The 
 time of his departure, therefore, was midsummer, U.C. 
 714*; and it agrees with the same conclusion, that when 
 
 * A great oversight is there- 
 fore committed by those critics, 
 who have confounded the time 
 of this departure with midwin- 
 ter. The mention of x ci ^ vos > 
 which occurs in the account of 
 his voyaged, implies nothing more 
 than stormy weather ; such as is 
 often encountered about the tro- 
 
 b Antiquitates Hebraicae. pars iv. cap. 
 cap. 17. c Ant. Jud. xv. xi. 6. 
 
 Jud. i. xiii. 1. 3. Ant. xiv. xiii. 3. 4. 
 e Bell. i. xiv. 2. Ant. xiv. xiv. 2. 3. 
 
 pical points of the year : of which 
 history furnishes various exam- 
 ples. Thus Polybius i. 37. the 
 great shipwreck, U. C. 499, in 
 the first Punic war, happened 
 fxera^i). ..Trjs'Slpicovos Kai K vvos im- 
 roXrjs : that is, about midsummer. 
 Cf. also Plutarch, Pyrrhus 15. 
 
 But the most apposite exam- 
 
 i. p. 203. Vide also Buxtorfii Syn. Jud. 
 d Dio, xlviii. 15. 24. 26. c Bell, 
 
 f Bell. i. xiv. 2. Ant. xiv. xiv. 2. 
 
On the date of the passover , John ii. 13 . 265 
 
 Herod left Egypt, the civil wars in Italy were known 
 to be at their height. 
 
 Again : when he arrived at Brundisium both An- 
 tony and Csesar were at Rome. But they were not at 
 Rome, U.C. 714. until after the peace of Brundisium, 
 concluded the same year. 
 
 Again : the time of this peace w T as late in the sum- 
 mer of U.C. 714: for the Ludi Apollinares, which be- 
 gan to be celebrated about the Nones of July, were 
 either over, or passing, before the war itself broke 
 out 1 . It was later also than the operations of Augustus 
 the same year in Gaul ; than the arrival of Antony at 
 Brundisium, from Asia (where he was in the spring) ; 
 than Augustus’ sickness at Canusium ; and than the 
 commencement of the siege of Brundisium, posterior 
 to all. 
 
 Again: the pacification which ensued was due partly 
 to the death of Fulvia k , and partly to the instrumen- 
 tality of Cocceius and Maecenas ; of which Appian has 
 given a particular account 1 . This fact is sufficient to 
 prove that the well-known satire of Horace 111 , which 
 describes his journey from Rome to Brundisium, was 
 composed a little before the pacification. It mentions 
 the meeting of Maecenas and Cocceius at Anxur 11 or 
 Tarracina : 
 
 Hue venturus erat Maecenas, optimus atque 
 Cocceius : missi magnis de rebus uterque 
 Legati, aversos soliti componere amicos. 
 
 pie is that of the storm which storm happened the year before, 
 befell the fleet of Augustus, from the same quarter, the south, 
 July i, or 3, U.C. 718, and con- and at the same season, midsum- 
 cerning which the same language mer. Ibid. 88 — 90.93.100. See 
 as that of Josephus, is used by another instance, Tacitus, Ann. 
 Appian, B. C. v. 97, 98 : dp*o- ii. 55. 
 f dvov nev tov xeifjicovos. A similar 
 
 i Dio, xlviii. 15 20. 28. 32. 34. Appian, B. C. v. 57. k Dio, xlviii. 28. 
 
 Appian, 13 . C. v. 59. 1 lb. 60 — 64. m Serm. i. v. n Verse 26. 
 
266 
 
 Dissertation Fifth. 
 
 And at verse 32 , it mentions also Fonteius Capito, an- 
 other friend of Antony’s ; 
 
 Antoni, non ut magis alter, amicus. 
 
 Now in this satire there are clear allusions to the 
 autumnal season, or to the approach of the autumnal 
 equinox 11 ; which prove that the peace was concluded 
 about that period of the year*. 
 
 Again : after this, Antony and Augustus went to 
 Rome to celebrate the nuptials of Octavia and An- 
 tony 0 : and the time of their presence there may be 
 thus determined. 
 
 First : it was after the usual period when the corn- 
 ships ought to have arrivedP; that is, it was not ear- 
 lier than the beginning of September. 
 
 * Some of the commentators 
 on Horace, it is true, seem to be 
 of opinion that the conference al- 
 luded to in this satire, took place 
 in the autumn of U. G. 717. 
 
 But the Scholiast on line 28, 
 appeals to Livy, cxxvii. in proof 
 of the fact of the meeting in 
 question, between Cocceius and 
 Maecenas, at Brundisium : and 
 Florus’ epitome of this book, 
 which is all that remains of it, 
 abundantly proves that it related 
 to events in U. C. 713 and 714, 
 only. 
 
 Plutarch, Antonius, 35. Mae- 
 cenas was certainly present at the 
 negotiations between Caesar and 
 Antony, U. C. 717: but at Ta- 
 rentum, not at Brundisium. In 
 like manner, Appian, B.C. v. 92, 
 mentions a mission of Maecenas 
 to Antony, U. C. 716. exeunte , or 
 U. C. 71 7. ineunte , (consequent- 
 ly on the same occasion, as ap- 
 pears further from the three next 
 
 n Verses 14. 95. 96. 
 
 Appian, B. C. v. 66. 67. 
 
 chapters :) but he mentions none 
 of Cocceius to Augustus. And 
 as to Fonteius Capito, he might 
 be in Italy with Antony, U. C. 
 
 717, it is true : but we have no 
 direct proof of it, except that, 
 Plutarch, Antonius, 36. U. C. 
 
 718, he was afterwards with 
 him in Syria. 
 
 Besides which, it is very doubt- 
 ful whether Antony himself was 
 still in Italy, so late as the au- 
 tumn of U. C. 71 7. Appian, 
 B. C. v. 97. 98. 93. 95 : at the 
 beginning of spring, he sailed 
 from Athens to Tarentum ; and 
 he was certainly in Italy till near 
 the first of July. But we know 
 that early in U. C. 71 8, he was 
 again in Asia: and though Dio’s 
 account of these things (xlviii. 
 54.) may imply that he was yet 
 in Italy U. C. 718. ineunte , this 
 is probably an oversight — or ra- 
 ther it is to be understood of 
 U. C. 7 17. exeunte. 
 
 P Dio, xlviii. 31. 
 
 o Appian, B.C. v. 64. 66. 
 
On the date of the passover, John ii. 13 . 
 
 267 
 
 Secondly : it was during the Hippodroinia or Ludi 
 Circenses ; that is, between September 15. and Sep- 
 tember 19 q . All these events, both the peace with 
 Antony ; the expected arrival of the corn-ships ; the 
 celebration of the games; and the news of the renewal 
 of hostilities by Sextus Pompeius ; are mentioned by 
 Dio and Appiari as nearly coincident. According to the 
 former r , the two parties were still at Rome on the last 
 days of the year : according to Appian, they went away, 
 apparently soon after their arrival, to Baiae. Yet he 
 supposes them to have returned again from Baiae to 
 Rome, after making peace with Sextus ; and then to 
 have set out, Caesar for Gaul, Antony for Greece, 
 where he spent the winter with Octavia at Athens s ; 
 whence it appears that this departure to Baiae, and 
 the peace concluded with Sextus, took place U. C. 715. 
 If so, the very mention of it, so soon after their arrival 
 in the city, proves that they could not have come to 
 Rome much before the end of the year # . 
 
 * It appears also from Dio, 
 xlviii. 32. 33 - 34-35-3 6 “ 3 8 ; that 
 the peace with Sextus, though 
 determined on, U. C. 7 1 4, could 
 not have been concluded before 
 U. C. 715 ineunte, at least. 
 
 And with respect to the visit 
 to Baiae, above alluded to, it may 
 perhaps be considered to furnish 
 some note of the time when it 
 happened, if we reflect that the 
 object of such visits was com- 
 monly to take the waters in the 
 spring. Every one is familiar 
 with Horace’s exclamation, De 
 Arte Poetica, 301 : O ego lae- 
 vus, | Qui purgor bilem sub ver- 
 ni temporis horam. And in a 
 fragment of Cicero’s oration in 
 P. Clodium et Curionem, iv. p. 
 
 73. it occurs; Primum homo 
 durus ac priscus invectus est in 
 eos qui mense Aprili aput Baias 
 essent : on which the commen- 
 tary is, Consuetudo erat multis, 
 ineunte verno, ad aquarum quae 
 sunt in Campania velut fomenta 
 salubria convenire. The visit in 
 question, then, most probably 
 took place in the spring. Cf. 
 Tibullus, Lib. iii. v. 1 — 4. Hor. 
 Epp. i. xv. and elsewhere. 
 
 There were other games, which 
 might be understood by the Hip- 
 podromia in question; called the 
 Ludi Circenses Plebeii; the time 
 of which was about the mid- 
 dle of November: and according 
 to the calendars, apud Foggini, 
 Nov. 15 — 17. But the Hippo- 
 
 3 2 - 
 
 <1 Dio, xlviii. 31. 
 
 r lb. 
 
 B. C. v. 69. 74 — 76. 
 
268 
 
 Dissertation Fifth . 
 
 Again: it appears from Dio 1 , that for a time after 
 their arrival, especially during the Ludi Circenses, 
 there were great disturbances at Rome ; by which the 
 life of Augustus himself was once seriously endan- 
 gered. Nor did these cease until the people had car- 
 ried their point ; which was to oblige Antony and 
 Augustus to make peace with Sextus Pompeius. I 
 think it is clear from the account of Josephus, that 
 these commotions were over at the time of the arrival 
 of Herod. If so, he did not arrive until after the Ludi 
 Circenses; that is, until after September 19. in this 
 year. Accordingly, about the third week in September 
 I place the precise time of his arrival : which would 
 thus coincide with the celebration of the Jewish feast 
 of Tabernacles ; for that began, U.C. 714. on Septem- 
 ber 14. And as he was detained only seven days in 
 all 11 , after his arrival and before his departure, the an- 
 niversary of his appointment would necessarily fall al- 
 most every year about the time of this feast*. 
 
 dromia anXcts can scarcely be un- 
 derstood of any thing but the 
 Ludi Circenses as such, or the 
 Ludi Romani in Circo : Sept. 
 15 — 19. Vide the Calendaria 
 in question. 
 
 Appian, B. C. v. 75. 76. sup- 
 poses Antony to have made He- 
 rod king at Athens, U.C. 715 : 
 where he proposed to winter : 
 which also is some proof that he 
 did not make him so at Rome, 
 until late, U. C. 7 [4. 
 
 * That it did so, at least, in 
 the year when he had done re- 
 building the temple, might be 
 collected from the allusion to 
 the feast itself; and may thus 
 be further proved. 
 
 By means of an eclipse of the 
 moon, U. C. 735. B.C. 19. June 
 25, which has been calculated in 
 Pingre’s Tables, it may be shewn 
 that the Jewish passover would 
 not be celebrated, the year when 
 Herod finished the temple, later 
 than March 28. In this case 
 the feast of Tabernacles, which 
 was six lunations or one hundred 
 and seventy-seven days exactly 
 after that, would not begin later 
 than Sept. 21. This is a very 
 critical coincidence; and must go 
 far to strengthen our inference 
 that Herod arrived at Rome, and 
 was appointed king, sometime 
 about the last week in Septem- 
 ber: for though the feast of Ta- 
 
 t Loc. cit. Vide also Appian, B. C. v. 68. Suetonius, Aug. 16. Veil. Pat. ii. 
 \ u Ant. Jud. xiv. xiv. 5. 
 
On the date of the passover, John ii. 13. 269 
 
 I think it is a striking confirmation of the same con- 
 clusion, that during the time of his absence the siege 
 of Masada was going on, not only through the heat of 
 the summer, but exactly until the recurrence of the 
 autumnal rains v * * * * ; the period of which in Judaea was 
 commonly about a month later than the feast of Ta- 
 bernacles*. 
 
 It is very true, that after Herod’s return to Judaea, 
 and the mention of his landing at Ptolemais w , there is 
 no reference made to more than two winters, or two 
 campaigns x ; before he was in possession of Jerusalem. 
 But the second of these winters was the winter pos- 
 terior to the siege of Samosata, in which Herod assisted 
 Antony Y: and the time of that siege may be determined, 
 independently of Josephus, as follows. 
 
 When Augustus Caesar had just reduced Perusia 2 , 
 (which, according to Suetonius, was before the Ides of 
 March, U.C. 714.) and while the Parthians were still 
 in possession of Judaea — Antony, says Dio, ev rfj A l- 
 yv7TT(p >qoa a . After he had at length been roused from 
 his lethargy, he left Egypt and sailed first to Tyre ; 
 thence, along the coast of Asia, to Greece ; and finally 
 to Italy: where he laid siege to Brundisium b . After 
 this, the events ensued which we have considered al- 
 ready. 
 
 From Brundisium, as soon as the peace was con- 
 cluded, according to Appian c , he dispatched Ventidius 
 
 bernacles had begun September once, as to fill the reservoirs of 
 21 , it would not be over until the besieged in a single night, 
 September 28 . Vide infra the could never have set in, in Ju- 
 Table of Jewish Feasts in Dis- daea, before the end of October, 
 sertation vii. or beginning of November. 
 
 * Rain in such quantities, at 
 
 v B. Jud. i. xv. 1. Ant. xiv. xiv. 6. w B. Jud. i. xv. 3. Ant. xiv. xv. r. 
 
 x Ant. xiv. xv. 3. 4. 11. 12 . 14. B. i. xv. 6. xvi. i. 2. xvii. 1. 3. 6. 8. y B. i. 
 
 xvi. 7. Ant. xiv. xv. 8. 9. 2 Appian, B. C. v. 34. Dio, xlviii. 15. 14. 
 
 Suet. Aug. 15. Veil. Pat. ii. 74. a Dio, xlviii. 24. b lb. 27. Appian, 
 
 B. C. v. 52. 56. c B. C. v. 65. 
 
270 
 
 Dissertation Fifth. 
 
 into Asia. Nor is this much at variance with Dio d , 
 who seems to place his mission in the following year, 
 U.C. 715, when Antony himself was at Athens. Both 
 Dio and Appian e shew that for the whole of U. C. 
 715. Antony was resident at Athens. They shew also 
 that at the beginning of U. C. 716. he either did meet, 
 or was to have met, Augustus again at Brundisium f . 
 
 In the mean while, Ventidius had gained several 
 victories over the Parthians — one, soon after his ar- 
 
 rival, U. C. 715, in which he slew Pharnapates, the 
 lieutenant of Pacorus ; the effect of which, among 
 other things, was the recovery of Syria and Palestine, 
 where Antigonus is spoken of as still king e : another 
 and a still more splendid one h in the following year, 
 U. C. 716, when he defeated and slew Pacorus him- 
 self. This success he was proceeding to follow up by 
 
 attacking Antiochus, the 
 when Antony arrived, and 
 army in person : the first 
 the siege of Samosata*. 
 
 * Ventidius gained in all 
 three victories over the Parthi- 
 ans, the two first, U.C. 7 1 5, over 
 Labienus and Pharnapates, near 
 mount Taurus, and Amanus, and 
 the Pylae Ciliciae, respectively : 
 the third, U. C. 716, over Paco- 
 rus, in the regio Cyrrhestica of 
 Syria : Dio xlviii. 39 — 41 : xlix. 
 19. 20. Plutarch, Antonius, 33. 
 34. Some further particulars, 
 relating to these several vic- 
 tories, are found, Strabo, xvi. 
 2. §. 8. 310: Florus, iv. 9: 
 Frontinus Strateg. i. 1, 6: ii. 2, 
 5- 
 
 The same successes must also 
 be alluded to in the following 
 
 king of the Commagenes, 
 took the command of his 
 operation after which wps 
 
 fragments, falsely perhaps as- 
 cribed to Cornelius Gallus, yet 
 not unworthy of their reputed 
 author. Non fuit Arsacidum 
 tanti expugnare Seleucen, | Ita- 
 laque ultori signa referre Jovi ; 
 
 | Ut desiderio nostri curaque 
 Lycoris | Heu ! jaceat menses 
 paene sepulta novem. Lines 1 — 
 4. Again, line 51 : Ulic bel- 
 lantum juvenum studiosa figu- 
 ras, | Atque audita levi prcelia 
 pingit acu. | Pingit et Euphratis 
 currentes mollius undas, | Vi- 
 ctricesque aquilas sub duce Ven- 
 tidio : | Qui nunc Crassorum 
 manes, direptaque signa | Vin- 
 dicat, Augusti Caesaris au- 
 
 d Dio, xlviii. 34. 39. e Dio, xlviii. 39. Appian, B. C. v. 76. f Dio, 
 
 xlviii. 43. 46. Appian, B. C. v. 78. 79. S Dio, xlviii. 40. 41. h Dio, xlviii. 
 
 43. xlix. 19 — 22. Cf. Ant. xiv. xv. 7. B. i. xvi. 6. 
 
On the date of the passover , John ii. 13. 
 
 271 
 
 It is manifest, therefore, that this siege could not 
 have been begun by Antony before the midsummer of 
 U. C. 716*; and, consequently, the winter after that 
 siege was the winter of U. C. 716. This winter both 
 the Antiquities and the History of the War 5 expressly 
 declare to be part of the third year since Herod’s ap- 
 pointment to be king at Rome. The third year, from 
 that appointment, dated September U. C. 714, would 
 expire with September U. C. 717. and begin with Sep- 
 tember U. C. 716. It is, consequently, evident that 
 Herod did not return to Judaea, or did not commence 
 any operations after his return, until the spring of 
 U. C. 715 : and if he was appointed only in the latter 
 end of September U. C. 714, it was impossible that, 
 by any degree of dispatch, he could have arrived in 
 Judaea from Italy, so as to take the field, before the 
 spring of the following year*. 
 
 spiciis. | Parthe, tumens animis, 
 et nostra clade superbus, | Hie 
 quoque, Romano stratus ab lioste, 
 jaces. Page 301. 302. 
 
 Now it is recorded as a re- 
 markable coincidence, that Pa- 
 corus was defeated and killed 
 by Ventidius on the very same 
 day of the month, U.C. 716, on 
 which Crassus had been defeated 
 and killed by the Parthian gene- 
 ral, Surena,U.C. 701. Dio,xl.2i: 
 Eutropius, vi. 5 : Plutarch, Cras- 
 sus 29 : and Dio, xl. 23 : would 
 prove that this was some day 
 about midsummer in general: 
 but the old Roman calendar, and 
 Ovid, Fasti, vi. 463. seqq. shew 
 it to be the feast-day of Vesta, 
 v Idus Junias, or June 9. Sci- 
 licet interdum miscentur tristia 
 laetis ; | Ne populum toto pe- 
 ctore festa juvent. | Crassus ad 
 Euphraten aquilas, natumque, 
 suosque | Perdidit : et leto est 
 
 ultimus ipse datus. | Parthe,quid 
 exsultas ? dixit Dea. signa re- 
 mittes: | Quique necem Crassi 
 vindicet ultor erit. 
 
 It is scarcely possible, then, 
 that the siege of Samosata could 
 have been begun before July at 
 the earliest, in the same year. 
 
 * Ant. Jud. xiv. xv. 10, 11 : 
 B. i. xvii. 1. 3: while Herod 
 was absent upon this expedition 
 to Samosata, his brother Joseph 
 was killed near Jericho, at a 
 time which it appears was corn- 
 harvest, iv aKfirj rod Oepovs. Yet 
 Herod heard of his death first 
 at Daphne, near Antioch, on his 
 return, as the context immedi- 
 ately after shews, just before the 
 winter season set in. 
 
 * After this, the assertion of 
 Dio, that Sosius and Herod took 
 Jerusalem, in the consulate of 
 Norbanus and Claudius, U. C. 
 716, is not to be implicitly re- 
 
 i B. i. xvii. 8. Ant. xiv. xv. 14. 
 
m 
 
 Dissertation Fifth. 
 
 These points, then, being previously established, the 
 year of the death of Herod is a necessary consequence. 
 
 ceived : no more than his asser- 
 tion that Antigonus, being made 
 prisoner, was put to death by 
 Sosius k . The siege of Samo- 
 sata itself was not over until near 
 the end of that year ; when it 
 was too late to commence opera- 
 tions against Jerusalem : and in 
 ascribing the execution of An- 
 tigonus to Sosius, Dio would be 
 contradicted by Strabo 1 , by Jose- 
 phus 111 , and by Plutarch 11 : be- 
 sides that he asserts that Anti- 
 gonus was crucified ; they, that 
 he was beheaded : not to men- 
 tion, that the execution of a king 
 even in this last manner, and by 
 one like Antony himself, being 
 an unexampled occurrence, it is 
 not credible that his legate So- 
 sius, on his own responsibility, 
 would venture to take such a 
 step as the putting Antigonus to 
 death, or otherwise ill-treating 
 him, in a much more igno- 
 minious way. 
 
 The truth is this. There was* 
 no further mention of Antony 
 in Dio, lib. xlviii. after cap. 46. 
 U. C. 71 6, when he was said to 
 have returned from Brundisium 
 to Greece ; until cap. 54, when 
 he is said to have come again 
 from Syria to Italy ; implying 
 that in the meanwhile he had 
 been in Syria : and from Italy 
 he is supposed to sail again into 
 Syria, to prosecute the Parthian 
 war ; and all this before the be- 
 
 ginning of the consular year 
 718°. At the beginning of U.C. 
 717, Appian also, as we have 
 seen, shews he was again at 
 Athens ; and soon after he 
 makes him set out from Taren- 
 tum to Syria, on another expe- 
 dition against the Parthians^. 
 
 In U. C. 716, towards the 
 close of the year, after having 
 made peace with Antiochus ; 
 and left Sosius to prosecute the 
 war in Judaea ; Antony himself 
 departed from Samosata to E- 
 gypt, and afterwards to Greece<l. 
 The whole of the next year, 
 U.C. 717, was taken up by him 
 in going to, and returning from, 
 Italy r ; while his lieutenant was 
 besieging Jerusalem. At the 
 beginning of U. C. 718. he re- 
 newed his operations against the 
 Parthians s ; and in the winter 
 of the same year he was forced 
 to retreat into Armenia 1 . On 
 his way from Egypt into the 
 East, he would pass through 
 Antioch ; and, while he was 
 there ; consequently, U.C. 71 8, 
 ineunte ; according to the cor- 
 rect account of Strabo, he put 
 Antigonus (at that time a pri- 
 soner and in confinement) to 
 death v . 
 
 Whatsoever weight is due to 
 the chronologer Africanus — with 
 regard to the points in dispute 
 — it is ail on the side of Jose- 
 phus. Vide the Reliquiae Sacrae, 
 
 k xlviii. 43. xlix. 22. 1 Ant. Jud. xv. 1. 2. xx. x. m B. i. xviii. 3. 
 
 Ant. xiv. xvi. 4. n Antonins, 36. 0 Dio, xlviii. 49. 54. p B. C. v. 93. 
 
 95. q. B. Jud. i xvii. 2. Ant. xiv. xv. 9. Plutarch, Antonius, 34. r Dio, 
 xlix. 22. 23. s lb. 17, 18. 24. t lb. 25 — 31. v It is not, indeed, 
 
 clear from the text of Dio, that his statements are after all at variance with those 
 of our other authox-ities. The putting Antigonus to death seems to be attributed 
 to Sosius ; but it will bear to be understood as the act of Antony. Dio’s concise- 
 ness, in this instance, is the source of all the confusion and seeming contradiction 
 in question. 
 
On the date of the passover , John ii. 13. 273 
 
 If the length of his reign be computed at thirty-seven 
 years* and it began U.C. 714, it ended U.C. 751: if it 
 be computed at thirty-four, and began U.C. 717. it 
 ended U.C. 751. If it is to be computed in either case 
 from the spring, it is to be computed from about the 
 passover : and it is certain that it terminated close to 
 the passover u . If so, the length of his reign was 
 thirty-seven or thirty-four years complete : and the 
 time of his death was the passover, U.C. 751. 
 
 This conclusion agrees with every other note of 
 time in reference to the same thing, which is to be 
 observed in Josephus. 
 
 First : if Herod at the time of his death was nearly 
 seventy, he must have been born in the spring or 
 
 ii. xlix. 177 — 182, or Syncellus, 
 i. 581— 584. 
 
 He supposes Herod to go to 
 Rome,whenhe wasmadeking, 01. 
 185: to reduce Antigonus, aid- 
 ed by Sosius, in three years, and 
 to reign thirty-four years after- 
 wards. Antigonus he supposes to 
 have been put to death by Antony 
 himself — at the time of one of 
 his Parthian expeditions ; and 
 all before, or early in Olympiad 
 186. 
 
 It is peculiar, however, to 
 the Olympiads of this chronolo- 
 ger, that they do not stand for 
 regular Olympic cycles, but 
 merely for leap years as such — 
 which agreed with the former 
 in recurring every four years : 
 and thence the denomination 
 of Olympiads, as applied to 
 them. 
 
 This appears from his saying 
 that the 1 88th Olympiad follow- 
 ed on the capture of Alexandria, 
 
 U.C. 724 or 725. The regular 
 i88th Olympiad would begin 
 U. C. 726, which was not a leap 
 year. But B. C. 29. U. C. 725, 
 was a leap year, the fourth in 
 succession from the first Julian 
 year, as such, U.C. 709, B.C. 45. 
 
 It appears, also, most plainly 
 from what is said of the 189th 
 Olympiad : rjv 6\vp7rias pnO' . fjns 
 7r po 5 - . KaXavdcov M apr'uov Kara *Av- 
 Tioxds k 8' . rfxOr] di rjs enl todv Idiav 
 opoov earrj 6 eviuvros. JEiYUG An- 
 tiochenae 24, coincided with 
 U.C. 728 — 729, B.C. 26—25, 
 the latter of which was bissex- 
 tile, being twenty years com- 
 plete, from U. C. 709, B.C. 45. 
 
 On this principle, Africanus 
 might truly place the death of 
 Cleopatra, Ol. 187. 4, or U.C. 
 724. B.C. 30. His 185th Olym- 
 piad, therefore, bears date, U.C. 
 713, B. C. 41 ; his 186th, U. C. 
 7 1 7, B. C. 37 ; his 187th, U. C. 
 721, B. C. 33, &c. 
 
 u Ant. Jud. xvii. viii. 1 — ix. 3. Bell. ii. i. 1 — 3. 
 
 VOL. I. T 
 
274 
 
 Dissertation Fifth. 
 
 summer : and if he was twenty-five complete, as we 
 have supposed, U. C. 707, he would have been seventy 
 complete U. C. 752; and therefore would be about to 
 enter on his seventieth year U. C. 751: and that very 
 possibly near the time of the passover itself. 
 
 Secondly : the census of Quirinius is placed in the 
 thirty-seventh year after the battle of Actium v ; and 
 in the same year as the deprivation of Archelaus w . 
 The thirty-seventh year from the battle of Actium ex- 
 pired September 1. U.C. 700. The census of Quirinius, 
 therefore, was held either in the last half of U.C. 759, 
 or the first half of U.C. 760; to determine between 
 which, besides a general reason which will appear 
 elsewhere, we must consider the exact period of the 
 deprivation of Archelaus. 
 
 By Dio x , his banishment is mentioned U.C. 759; 
 which, though an erroneous statement in itself, is some 
 proof that this event ought to be placed early U.C. 760. 
 The Antiquities place his disgrace in his tenth, the War 
 in his ninth, year^; to make which statements consist- 
 ent, we must suppose him to have reigned nine years 
 complete and part of a tenth ; or ten current years *. 
 
 * If the length of the reign of 
 Archelaus is computed in the 
 History of the War, from the 
 time of his appointment to the 
 throne by Augustus, and in the 
 Antiquities from the time of his 
 father’s death ; the two statements 
 will be perfectly in harmony to- 
 gether. The death of Herod 
 must have happened in the 
 spring ; but the ratification of 
 his will, by the Roman em- 
 peror, could not have taken 
 place until three or four months 
 afte . 
 
 On this principle, also,the differ- 
 ent accounts respecting the num- 
 ber of the ears of corn, which he 
 is said to have seen in his dream, 
 may be rendered consistent. 
 This number is stated in the 
 History of the War as nine , and 
 in the Antiquities as ten : and 
 by the number of the ears in 
 either, it is obvious that we are 
 to understand the number of 
 harvests, between the appoint- 
 ment and the deprivation of Ar- 
 chelaus, which he could be sup- 
 posed to have witnessed. The 
 
 v Ant. xviii. ii. t. 
 xiii. 2. Bell. ii. vii. 3. 
 
 w Ibid. xvii. xiii. 
 
 x lv. 25. 27. 
 
 y Ant. xvii. 
 
On the date of the passover , John ii. 13 . 
 
 275 
 
 If so, lie was deposed in the latter half of the thirty- 
 seventh year from the battle of Actium ; which was the 
 
 last harvest which he could have 
 witnessed in either case, was the 
 harvest of the year of his re- 
 moval. Let us assume that this 
 was the harvest of U. C. 760 : 
 and that Herod died in the 
 spring of U. C. 751. From the 
 spring of U.C. 751, to the mid- 
 summer of U.C. 760, there would 
 be ten harvests in all ; which is 
 the statement of the Antiquities : 
 but from the confirmation of 
 Archelaus by Augustus, (which 
 was three or four months later,) 
 to the same time, there could be 
 only nine : which is the state- 
 ment in the War. 
 
 The species of corn, which he 
 is supposed to have seen, is 
 wheat; and, therefore, the har- 
 vest implied in each instance is 
 the wheat-harvest, and not the 
 barley ; the time of which, in 
 Judaea,was never much later than 
 the feast of Pentecost. And it is 
 certain that it was not before 
 the feast of Pentecost, subse- 
 quent to the death of Herod, at 
 least, that Archelaus was con- 
 firmed in his government by 
 Augustus a . This Pentecost, U.C. 
 751, when the passover fell on 
 March 3 1 , as may be seen from 
 the Table of Feasts in Disserta- 
 tion vii, fell upon May 21. It is 
 certain, also, that within five 
 days after his dream, he received 
 the orders of the emperor to re- 
 pair to Rome b . 
 
 Now the arrival of Quirinius 
 in Judaea, one object of whose 
 coming was to confiscate the 
 property of Archelaus on the 
 
 * Ant. xvii. x. 2. to xi. 1 — 5. Bell. ii. 
 Bell. ii. vii. 3. 
 
 T 
 
 emperor’s account, having taken 
 place forthwith upon the depar- 
 ture of the deposed monarch; can- 
 not be placed either before, or 
 much after, the last of the harvests 
 which Archelaus had witnessed. 
 The last harvest, then, was the 
 harvest of the year when Qui- 
 rinius came into Judaea ; which 
 year Josephus himself makes the 
 thirty-seventh from the battle of 
 Actium. The harvest of this 
 year was the harvest of U. C. 
 760. The harvest of the year 
 before that would be the har- 
 vest of U.C. 759. Nor could 
 Quirinius have come into Judaea 
 after the harvest of U. C. 759, 
 unless he had come there in the 
 thirty-sixth year from the battle of 
 Actium ; or unless he had arrived 
 after the second of September, 
 U. C. 759, at least ; that is, in the 
 first half of the thirty- seventh : 
 against which supposition there 
 are these three objections ; first, 
 that there is no instance on re- 
 cord of any governor, whether 
 of Judaea or of Syria, arriving 
 in his province for the first time, 
 so late as the winter-half of a 
 given year : secondly, that Qui- 
 rinius having been sent to take 
 the census of certain regions, he 
 would be sent at the time most 
 convenient for this purpose ; 
 which would certainly be in the 
 summer : thirdly, he is said to 
 have been dispatched from Rome 
 to take the census of Syria as 
 well as of Judaea, besides secur- 
 ing the effects of Archelaus ; 
 whence we may conclude that, 
 
 iii. 1 — vi. 1 — 3. 
 
 2 
 
 b Ant. xvii. xiii 3. 
 
276 
 
 Dissertation Fifth . 
 
 first half of U.C. 760. The year U.C. 760, therefore, was 
 the tenth of Archelaus incomplete ; and, consequently, 
 U. C. 751. was his first. The same thing is implied 
 by the mention of a passover 2 so soon after his re- 
 moval from the throne. The census beginning to be 
 executed U.C. 760, medio , Archelaus had reigned nine 
 years and three or four months before it. 
 
 Thirdly : the death of Philip the tetrarch is placed 3 
 in the twentieth of Tiberius, and the thirty-seventh of 
 his own reign. The twentieth of Tiberius began Au- 
 gust 19, U. C. 786, and ended August 18, U. C. 787 ; 
 and the beginning of Philip’s reign is necessarily to be 
 dated from the spring. Hence if he died in the spring 
 of U. C. 787, and reigned 37 years complete, he began 
 to reign U.C. 750. ineunte ; which would make the 
 death of his father to have happened in the spring of 
 U. C. 750. If this cannot have been the case, Philip 
 had not reigned thirty-seven years complete, at the 
 time of his death : but he had reigned thirty-six years 
 
 though both these purposes are 
 specified as the object of his 
 mission conjointly, the former 
 was more properly so ; and, 
 therefore, that he was on the 
 spot already, when Archelaus was 
 ordered by Augustus’ messenger, 
 to Rome; and consequently would 
 come into Judaea himself as soon 
 as Archelaus left it. 
 
 To these considerations we 
 may add the following ; that 
 the census appears to have been 
 completed in the interim be- 
 tween two feasts : for the re- 
 moval of the high priest Joazar, 
 and the appointment of Ananus 
 in his stead, which is ascribed 
 to Quirinius, after the census 
 was overb, we may take it for 
 
 granted would be either pre- 
 paratory to a feast of Taber- 
 nacles, or not until one was 
 past. If Quirinius came into 
 the province about midsummer, 
 and with his accustomed dis- 
 patch of business finished the 
 census in four or five months’ 
 time ; the first of these supposi- 
 tions, which is the more proba- 
 ble of the two, might actually 
 have been the case. For the 
 census, being begun about the 
 Pentecost, U. C. 760, which 
 Pentecost fell that year upon 
 May 1 1 , would thus be com- 
 pleted by the time of the feast 
 of Tabernacles, which was about 
 September 15. Vide Disserta- 
 tion vii. 
 
 x Ant. Jud. xviii. ii. 2. 
 
 a Ant. Jud. xviii. iv. 6. 
 
 b Ant. xviii. ii. i. 
 
On the date of the passover, John ii. 13. 277 
 
 complete and part of a thirty-seventh. If so, his thir- 
 ty-sixth year expired with U. C. 787. ineunte : and, 
 consequently, his first began U. C. 751, ineunte. 
 
 Fourthly : both in the Antiquities and in the War 
 the foundation of Caesarea-Philippi is ascribed to the 
 tetrarch Philip ; and in both it is made to synchro- 
 nise with the foundation of Julias upon the Lake of 
 Galilee. In both, too, the former is implied or assert- 
 ed to have been founded in honour of Augustus, and 
 the latter in honour of Julia his daughter. Further 
 than this, however, the War and the Antiquities are 
 not in unison : the former placing the foundation of 
 each city about the time of the death of Augustus ; 
 and the latter, about the time of the removal of Ar- 
 chelaus e . In the midst of this uncertainty we are 
 bound to prefer the testimony of the Antiquities ; 
 which being understood of the time when these cities, 
 and especially the more considerable of the two, Cag- 
 sarea, after having been begun some years before, were 
 finally completed, may not be far from the truth. 
 
 The exact era of its foundation, however, which 
 Josephus has left indefinite, may be ascertained by 
 the help of its coins : and as so discovered, cardinal 
 Noris had fixed it to some year between U. C. 751. 
 and U. C. 7 55 f : but Eckhel, in his work De Doctrina 
 Numorum Veterum, shews that it must be confined 
 to still narrower limits ; and, in fact, is neither earlier 
 nor later than U. C. 751. s This is a strong presump- 
 tive argument that the reign of Philip, the founder of 
 Caesarea, is to be dated from that year ; and that year 
 only. 
 
 It is certain that he could not lay the foundation 
 of the city until after his father’s death, and his own 
 
 c Bell. ii. ix. i. Ant. xviii. ii. i. 
 §. iv. pp. 442—451. e iii. 342. 
 
 f De Anno et Epochis, Diss. iv. cap. iv. 
 
278 
 
 Dissertation Fifth. 
 
 confirmation by Augustus in the tetrarchy bequeathed 
 unto him ; and it is equally certain that, had he begun 
 to lay the foundation in any year before U. C. 751, 
 the coins of Caesarea would not have borne date from 
 U. C. 751. The presence of Philip as well as of Ar- 
 chelaus at Rome, before the decision of Augustus, and 
 at a time which the context proves to have been be- 
 tween the passover when Herod died, and the feast of 
 Pentecost next after it, when fresh disturbances broke 
 out at Jerusalem; is attested by Josephus* 11 . Philip, and 
 the deputation of the Jews, which Josephus mentions, 
 both must have set out together, and both before the 
 nation rose in arms ; that is, not only before Pentecost, 
 but soon after the departure of Archelaus. For it was 
 soon after this event that the Jews began to rebel 
 openly ; and this was the rebellion, news of which was 
 brought to Rome by letters from Varus ; and to suppress 
 which Varus went himself to Jerusalem, and left the 
 legion there. After the ensuing Pentecost, when he 
 was there again — in order to rescue Sabinus, and this 
 legion — and had crucified two thousand of the Jews, 
 and received the submission of the rest, the rebellion 
 was at an end. 
 
 Consequently, though the time of Augustus’ decision, 
 which was only a few days later than the previous audi- 
 ence of this deputation i , could not be earlier than the 
 feast of Pentecost in question ; still both Archelaus and 
 Philip must have been soon after that feast confirmed in 
 theirrespective possessions ; and in the course of the same 
 
 * We find it distinctly as- immediately after Varus was 
 serted, Bell. ii. vi. i. that the de- at Jerusalem for the first time, 
 putation of the Jews, there Now this was soon after Varus 
 mentioned, was sent to Rome and Archelaus met at Caesarea, 
 by permission of Varus, before when the latter was on his way 
 the revolt ; and consequently to Rome. 
 
 h Ant. xvii. x. i — xi. i — 4. Bell. ii. iii. 1 — vi. 1. 3. 1 Ant. xvii. xi.4. B. ii. vi. 3: 
 
On the date of the passover , John ii. 13. 279 
 
 summer would doubtless return home again. It would 
 be in the power of the latter, then, to lay the founda- 
 tion of Caesarea U.C. 751, before the autumnal quarter 
 of that year itself; in which case, the coins of this city 
 would naturally proceed from that date : though if 
 the foundation had been laid any time before the au- 
 tumn of U. C. 752, they would still do the same. 
 When we consider, indeed, how much later an original 
 Josephus appears to ascribe to it ; it becomes not im- 
 probable that its coins were meant to be referred to 
 the first year of the reign of its founder, as to the first 
 and proper epoch of its own existence : which, if the 
 first year of Philip and the foundation of Caesarea co- 
 incided together, would be in fact the same thing. 
 
 Fifthly : among the coins of Ascalon, there is one 
 described by Eckhel k , which exhibits a double date, 
 that is, 56 and 102. Now the occurrence of 
 double dates on ancient coins is so rare a circumstance, 
 that even from the elaborate work of this author, three 
 more only which exhibit the same peculiarity — one 
 a coin of Antioch in Syria, and the other two coins of 
 Gaza — can be produced, to compare with this of Asca- 
 lon 1 . It is an obvious conjecture, therefore, that the 
 double date on this coin must be an index of some- 
 thing peculiar ; and something which concerned As- 
 calon more especially. 
 
 The larger of the two dates is necessarily to be re- 
 ferred, as Eckhel demonstrates, to U. C. 650 ; which 
 being the case, it follows that the coin was struck be- 
 tween the autumn of U. C. 751, and that of U. C. 752. 
 Moreover, it has been shewn elsewhere 111 , that until 
 the time of the death of Herod, Gaza and the neigh- 
 bouring cities, among which Ascalon would naturally be 
 
 k iii. 446. 
 
 1 iv. 403. 
 
 T 4 
 
 m Supra, Diss. ii. 178. 
 
280 
 
 Dissertation Fifth. 
 
 included, were more or less subject to him, and part of 
 the territory of Judaea 11 : but that, upon his death, they 
 were attached to the province of Syria. Were the fact 
 of this attachment doubtful concerning any of the rest, 
 it would still be certain in the case of Ascalon : for 
 when Augustus decided on the will of Herod, while 
 he confirmed it in its other particulars, he sanctioned 
 it also in what related to Salome the sister of Herod ; to 
 whom her brother had left Jamnia, Azotus, and Pha- 
 saelis. In addition to this bequest, the emperor gave 
 her his palace in Ascalon 0 ; but, as he gave her only 
 this, the rest of the city was not made subject to her. 
 Nor yet was it given to Archelaus : it was assigned, 
 therefore, to none of the family of Herod ; but like 
 Gaza, Gadara*, and Hippos, contiguous cities, became 
 incorporated with the province of Syria ; or ceased at 
 least to be connected with the native authorities of 
 Judaea. 
 
 Now the people of Ascalon, as we are told by Philo 
 and Josephus p, were distinguished by a bitter ill-will 
 to the Jews ; nothing, then, was so likely to give them 
 pleasure as this change in their political relations, when 
 they were transferred from the dominion of Herod, or 
 of any of his family, to that of the Roman presidents. 
 It is probable, therefore, that the coin with the double 
 date was struck expressly to commemorate this change. 
 The minor number, in order to synchronise with the 
 greater, must be dated from the autumn of U. C. 696 : 
 and this year, as we have seen elsewhere was the 
 
 * Besides Gadara in Decapo- phanus, De Urbibus. 1 Macca- 
 lis, there was a Gadara on the sea bees xv. 28. 35. xvi. 1. 21. this 
 coast of Palestine. Vide Strabo Gadara is called Gazara. 
 xvi. 2. §. 29. 348: and Ste- 
 
 n Cf. B. Jud. i. xxi. 1 1. Ant. xvi. viii. 4, 5. o Ant. xvii. xi. 5. B. ii. vi. 3. 
 p Philo, ii. 576. 1 . 18 : De Virtutibus. Bell. Jud, iii. ii. 1. q Supra Diss. ii. 
 loc. cit. 
 
On the date of the jiassover, John ii. 13. 
 
 281 
 
 very year before U. C. 697, when Gabinius, after his 
 consulate, came into Syria ; and soon after which, it is 
 probable, he caused Gaza, Anthedon, Raphia, and other 
 towns, including, as we may suppose, Ascalon itself, to 
 be either rebuilt or repaired. 
 
 From the autumn of the year before U.C. 697 might, 
 consequently, be dated the first close and beneficial 
 connection of those parts with the Roman government; 
 the memory whereof the people of Ascalon might de- 
 sire to revive, by striking such a coin as this, when 
 they were finally transferred to that government in the 
 reign of Augustus. If so, this transfer, and, therefore, 
 the death of Herod, took place U. C. 751. It is pecu- 
 liar also to this coin that it makes one of a consecutive 
 series, before and after it ; bearing the dates AP. BP. 
 
 rp. 101. 102. 103. U.C. 750— 751. 751— 752. 752— 
 
 7 53. respectively. Had, then, the transfer of Ascalon 
 to Syria, and the death of Herod, taken place in the 
 first of these years, and not in the second, we should 
 have found a double date, on the first of these 
 coins ; if in the last, we should have found it, in 
 ^ , on the third *. 
 
 * No conclusion of any kind 
 can be drawn from the assertion 
 in the Antiquities, that within an 
 hundred years after the death of 
 Herod, almost all his posterity 
 had become extinct 2 . The Anti- 
 quities were composed in the 
 thirteenth year of Domitian a ; 
 that is, between September, U.C. 
 846, and September, U. C. 847. 
 The above assertion, then, might 
 still hold good, though Herod 
 had died either U. C. 749, or 
 U. C. 750, or U. C. 751. A 
 similar general statement occurs 
 
 z xviii. v. 3. 
 
 B. Jud. vii. viii. 4. at the time 
 of the capture of Masada, U. C. 
 826 : viz. that Herod had for- 
 tified it an hundred years be- 
 fore ; which literally understood 
 would be U. C. 726. But if 
 Herod designed this castle as 
 a place of refuge, in case of 
 danger, for himself, before the 
 death of Cleopatra ; it could not 
 have been fortified later than 
 U. C. 723 or 724. Josephus’ 
 expression is certainly qualified, 
 and will admit of being under- 
 stood to denote a few years less 
 
 a xx. xi. 2. 
 
282 
 
 Dissertation Fifth. 
 
 The result of our reasonings, hitherto, is to this 
 effect ; that the death of Herod cannot be placed either 
 earlier or later than the spring quarter of U. C. 751. 
 The building of the temple, therefore, which was begun 
 in his eighteenth year, and the completion of which, a 
 year and six months afterwards, coincided with the 
 annual recurrence of a feast of Tabernacles ; must have 
 been begun about the time of a feast of the Passover. 
 It was begun, then, about the time of the passover in 
 the eighteenth year of his reign: that is, U. C. 734 : 
 and the context of the account alone d is sufficient to 
 prove that the time, when Herod proposed to undertake 
 the work, was some time when the people were as- 
 sembled ; and, consequently, at one of the feasts. 
 From the passover U. C. 734, to the passover U. C. 
 751, there were seventeen years complete. The re- 
 mainder of the calculation originally proposed is too 
 simple to require any proof. The emperor Augustus 
 died on the nineteenth of August U. C. 767, and the 
 passover U. C. 780, was the middle of the thirteenth of 
 Tiberius. From the passover U. C. 734, to this pass- 
 over U. C. 780, there were forty-six years complete : 
 for the passover in the former year fell upon April 7, 
 and in the latter, upon April 9- Vide Diss. vii. 
 
 than one hundred, as well as pao-Kevrjs els rrjv vtto ‘Pa/iaiois aXco- 
 that number exactly, or even ariv, eKarov rjv xpovos eV< Sv. 
 more : Kairoi crxebov ano rrjs 7 ra- 
 
 ti Ant. Jud. xv. xi. i. 2. 
 
DISSERTATION VI. 
 
 On the time of the deposal of Herod Antipas , and on the 
 eclipse before the death of Herod. 
 
 There is in existence a coin of Herod Antipas, to 
 which, among other considerations relating to the time 
 of the death of his father, a reference is frequently 
 made ; and which, if the date of Herod’s deposal from 
 the tetrarchy of Galilee could be satisfactorily deter- 
 mined, would naturally be of great use in fixing the 
 beginning of his reign, and, consequently, the year of 
 the death of his father. But the question concerning 
 this date, like many others, is encumbered with diffi- 
 culties which it is not easy to remove. 
 
 The coin (a small one and of brass) exhibits on one 
 of its faces, within a crown of laurel, the characters 
 TAIQ. KA1CA. FEPM. CEB. Caio Caesari Germa- 
 nico Augusto : and on the other, a branch of palm, 
 surrounded by the inscription HPQAHC. TETPAP- 
 XHC. with the numeral character L.Mr. Herodes te- 
 trarcha, anno quadragesimo tertio a . It must have been 
 struck, then, sometime in the reign of Caius Caesar ; 
 that is, in some one of the years between March 16, 
 U. C. 790, and January 24, U. C. 794. Its date will 
 not apply either to the first two, or to the last of these 
 years ; and the question* which we have to discuss* 
 lies between the third and the fourth ; U. C. 792, and 
 U. C. 793. If the coin was struck U. C. 792, the first 
 year of Herod Antipas must have been U. C. 750 : if 
 it was struck U. C. 793, it must have been U. C. 751. 
 The last of these conclusions is entirely in unison with 
 the date of the death of Herod, which we have other- 
 
 a Eckhel, Doctrina Numm. Vett. iii. 486. 
 
284 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 wise established ; the first is at variance with it, and 
 antedates that death by at least one year. 
 
 According to Josephus, Herod Agrippa, who suc- 
 ceeded Antipas in his tetrarchy, died in the seventh 
 year of his reign ; four years of which he passed under 
 Caius ; and the remainder under Claudius : rerrapag 
 /me v ovv ei t\ Yaiov K alcrapog efiacr'iXevarev eviavTOvg — Tpeig Se 
 67ri\afi(jbv eir\ riy? K XavSlov K alarapog avrotcparopiag 
 For the first three of these years he was in possession 
 only of the tetrarchy which had belonged to his uncle 
 Philip : riy? <Yi\lirirov fiev Terpapylag els rpierlav ap^ag 
 In the fourth he received the accession of that of An- 
 tipas rip rerapTM Se kcu t^v 'HpcbSov irpoaeiX^cpcog 
 He was invested with the tetrarchy of Philip not 
 many days after the decease of Tiberius, March 16, 
 U. C. 790 c . The first year, then, of his three years’ 
 possession of this tetrarchy begins and proceeds from 
 U. C. 790 ; the fourth year, consequently, or that in 
 which he received the accession of the tetrarchy of 
 Antipas, begins and proceeds from U. C. 793. 
 
 Now, in the account of the disgrace of Antipas, the 
 tetrarchy of which he was deprived, together with 
 the rest of his possessions, is said to have been con- 
 ferred by Caius upon Agrippa : tv\v rerpap^lav a(pe\o- 
 fxevog avrov , 7rpoar0t]Kr]v rfj , A. r ypl'7T7rov fiao-iXela. 7roieirai d . 
 And it is clearly implied by the account, that these two 
 things were simultaneous — that the grant was made to 
 the one at the very time when his dominions were taken 
 from the other. If so, the banishment of Herod took 
 place in the fourth year after the appointment of 
 Agrippa to the tetrarchy of Philip ; (that is, in the 
 consular year 793;) at least: and this conclusion is 
 confirmed by the testimony of Philo, so far as to imply 
 
 b Ant. xix. viii. 2 . c Ant. Jud. xviii. vi. ro. Bell. ii. ix. 6. Dio, lix. 8. 
 a Ant. xviii. vii. 2 . 
 
Time of the deposed of Herod Antipas. 285 
 
 that in the last year of Cains, U. C. 793, (and about 
 the middle of the summer, as it will be proved by and 
 by,) Agrippa was already in possession of this addi- 
 tion to his original dominions. Toy peyicrrov k<jl\ evru- 
 yeuTarov iy ay0pu)7roi9 K:\rjpoy e^aplcrco poi, (BaaiXelay, 7ra\cu 
 /u'ey luuas \c opag, avOis Se ica'i krepa<s pel^oyos, Tr\v Tpa^w- 
 vltlv Xeyopey^y /ecu T^y TaXiXalay (roya^as e . Tracho- 
 nitis, it is true, had formerly belonged to Philip f , and, 
 therefore, must have been included in the original 
 grant Nor is it asserted that it was now first be- 
 stowed ; as it will appear from the version of the 
 words in question : The greatest piece of good fortune 
 which can fall to the lot of men, you graciously be- 
 stowed upon me, viz. a kingdom — as given me a good 
 while ago — over a single region ; and afterwards over 
 another, and a greater ; when you united together 
 Trachonitis, as it is called, and Galilee. It is implied, 
 then, that he was before in possession of Trachonitis, 
 but only of that ; whereas, by the recent extension of 
 his dominions, Trachonitis had been united to Galilee ; 
 and he had been put into possession of a kingdom, 
 which consisted of both. 
 
 Unless, therefore, we were to consider it probable 
 that the tetrarchy of Antipas might remain still undis- 
 posed of, for some length of time after his banishment ; 
 that is, unless Josephus, who makes his banishment and 
 the disposal of his dominions to have been coincident 
 events, is not entitled to implicit credit ; the year of 
 the grant of Galilee to Herod Agrippa was necessarily 
 
 * The'grant of the tetrarchy raios Kaicrap 'Aypinna rw 'H pa>dov 
 of Philip as such to Agrippa is (3acri\ecos vlava didaxri (BaaiKdav, 
 alluded^to by Philo, in the fol- rrjs nanneoas TpLrrjv poipav, 
 
 lowing words, Adversus Flac- fjv ^iXimros TeTpdpxqs, deios a>v 
 cum : Operum ii. 520. line 46: avr<p 7rpos narpos, inapirovTo. 
 
 * De Virtutibus, ii. 593. 1 . 37. 
 
 f Ant. Jud. xviii. iv. 6. Luke iii. 1. 
 
286 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 the year of the removal of Herod Antipas ; and neither 
 can be placed except in the fourth and last year of 
 Cains, U. C. 793. 
 
 We are informed by Josephus, that after the ori- 
 ginal appointment of Agrippa to the first portion of 
 his dominions, he did not revisit Judaea before the 
 second year of Caius, U. C. 791 g : and that the time of 
 his return was in the autumn of that year may be fur- 
 ther inferred from Philo h , who shews that, acting by 
 the advice of Caius and taking advantage of the Ete- 
 sian winds, he returned by way of Alexandria in 
 Egypt. The Etesian winds did not usually set in be- 
 fore the middle of July 1 : and, consequently, Agrippa 
 could not set sail for Egypt before the middle of July 
 or the beginning of August. The same thing is im- 
 plied in the course of the narrative subsequently, by 
 the allusion to the harvest in Egypt k , as over ; and 
 also to the birth-day of Caius \ that is, August 31 m , 
 as arrived or past about the time when Agrippa was 
 at Alexandria. And that all this was in the second 
 year of Caius appears from the fact that the mourning 
 for the death of Drusilla, the favourite sister of Caius, 
 was still a recent event n . Drusilla did not die before 
 the second of Caius °. The younger Tiberius, and 
 Macro, were also both dead p ; and neither had the 
 latter been put to death before the second of Caius 
 
 Now it was this return of Agrippa home, invested 
 with the insignia of royalty, and enriched by the grant 
 of his uncle Philip’s dominions, which excited the envy 
 of his sister Herodias, at that time the wife of Anti- 
 pas: who still remembered that he had been recently 
 a dependent on the bounty of her husband, whose 
 
 g Ant. xviii. vi. n. h Adv. Flaccum, ii. 521. 1. 3. i Pliny, H. N. ii. 47. 
 k Philo, Adv. Flaccum, ii. 526. 1. 34. l Ibid. 529. 1. 6 — 23. m Suet. Caius, 
 8. Dio, lix. 7. n Philo, Adv. Flaccum, 52J. 1. 34. o Dio, lix. 9. 10. 11. 
 13. Suet Cai. 24. P Philo, Adv. Flaccum, ii 520. 1. 22. Q Dio, lix. 10. 
 
Time of the deposed of Herod Antipas . 
 
 287 
 
 equal he was now become r . Her ambition, then, be- 
 ing stimulated in behalf of her husband,* she began to 
 urge him to go to Rome also ; and to solicit from Caius 
 the name and dignity of king ; if not an accession of 
 his kingdom. 
 
 If this account be correct, she could not have begun 
 to urge her suit before the second of Caius ; nor before 
 the end of that year at least. Josephus tells us s , that 
 Herod for a long time would not listen to her ; and 
 when he gave way to her entreaties at last, that he 
 did not set out except with great pomp and state ; 
 sparing no expense, but making all the preparation for 
 the success of his suit, in his power. On these prepa- 
 rations time would necessarily be spent : to which, if 
 we add the consideration of the delay before his mind 
 was made up to the journey, which must have taken 
 place previously — it will follow, that he could not have 
 set out from Judaea before the midsummer of U. C. 
 79^, the middle of the third of Caius, at the earliest. 
 
 Agrippa was aware both of his departure and of its 
 design ; and either at the time, or immediately after 
 the time, when Herod set out, he dispatched his freed- 
 man Fortunatus, to defeat his purpose : and both the 
 parties are said to have arrived so critically together, 
 that Caius had received and was reading the letter of 
 Agrippa, at the very time when he was giving an 
 audience to Antipas. Now Josephus makes them land 
 at Dicaearchia or Puteoli, and find Caius at Baiae, in its 
 immediate neighbourhood. And hence arises the chief 
 difficulty of the question ; for though Baiae, or Cam- 
 pania in general, was a favourite resort of Caius and 
 he might often be there in the course of his reign ; yet 
 (if we except the passing visit which he seems to have 
 
 r Ant. Jud. xviii. vii. 1. Bell. ii. ix. 6. 
 Caius, 37. 
 
 s Ant. xviii. vii. 2. 
 
 t Suet. 
 
288 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 made it, in the first paroxysm of his grief for the death 
 of Drusilla, and before even her funeral itself ; conse- 
 quently, in his second year, U. C. 791 #u ,) there are 
 only two occasions — and each in his third year — on 
 which we have distinct testimony that he actually was 
 there : the first, when he went into Campania, and 
 returned soon after to celebrate the birthday of Dru- 
 silla v , the second, when he was building the bridge 
 across the sea from Puteoli to Baise or Bauli f w . 
 
 * As it appears from Philo 
 (lib. cit. 525. line 34. compared 
 with 526.34.) that the mourn- 
 ing for Drusilla was going on at 
 Alexandria not long after the 
 time of corn harvest in Egypt, 
 viz. April and May; she could not 
 have died earlier than February 
 or March. The time of this 
 visit would be the same. 
 
 f Suetonius, Caii 1 4 : Caius, it 
 is true, paid a visit to the islands 
 in the neighbourhood of Cam- 
 pania, (though not to Campania 
 itself,) in June or July, U. C. 
 79°. 
 
 The birthday of Drusilla is 
 not exactly known ; but we may 
 infer with probability that it was 
 sometime in the spring of the 
 year ; perhaps about the period 
 of the Ludi Megalenses x . We 
 are told, indeed, by Suetonius Y, 
 that Agrippina, Drusilla, and 
 Livilla or Julia, the three sis- 
 ters of Caius, were born conti- 
 nuo triennio ; that is, in three 
 consecutive years. Agrippina, 
 who was the first married among 
 them z , we may conclude was 
 consequently the oldest ; and 
 Julia, we are informed by Taci- 
 
 tus a , was certainly the youngest. 
 The birth of Julia is fixed by 
 the context of Tacitus’ account 
 to some time in the first half of 
 U. C. 771, about midsummer: 
 the birthday of Agrippina, ac- 
 cording to the Kalendarium An- 
 tiatinum, was November 6, in 
 some year : which, on the im- 
 plicit construction of Suetonius’ 
 testimony, should be U. C. 769. 
 Hence the birthday of Drusilla, 
 the intermediate sister, on the 
 same construction,mustbe placed 
 somewhere in the year U. C. 770; 
 not earlier, according to the com- 
 mon course of nature, than Au- 
 gust or September in that year : 
 which circumstance would make 
 it almost to coincide with that 
 of Caius himself. 
 
 There is, however, some rea- 
 son to hesitate upon this point ; 
 and perhaps to call in question 
 the truth of Suetonius’ state- 
 ment, that these three children 
 of Germanicus and Agrippina 
 were born successively in as 
 many successive years. Agrip- 
 pina, the wife of Germanicus, 
 was with child, and not far from 
 the period of her delivery, at the 
 
 u Suet. Caius, 24. Vide also Seneca, Consolatio ad Polyb. xxxvi. 4. v Dio, 
 lix. 13. w lb. 17. Suet. Caius, 19. x Dio, lix. 24. 11. Suet. Caius, 24. 
 Tiberius, 5. y Caius, 7. z Tacitus, Ann. iv. 75. vi. 15. a Ann. ii. 54. 
 
Time of the deposal of Herod Antipas . 
 
 289 
 
 The bridge from Puteoli to Bauli must have been 
 completed before the thirty-first of August, the birth- 
 day of Caius ; when he was again in Rome z . In the 
 section of Dio just before, he is spoken of as then in 
 his twenty-seventh year a ; and he was twenty-five 
 
 time of the mutiny among the 
 Legions, U. C. 767k; which time 
 is fixed by the date of the eclipse, 
 also specified 0 , to the end of 
 September or the beginning of 
 October, in that year. I should 
 be of opinion that the child, with 
 which Agrippina was then preg- 
 nant, was Agrippina the sister 
 of Caius ; whose birth might 
 thus fall out on November 6 : 
 and, if she was then born, U. C. 
 767, she would be only fourteen 
 years of age when she was married 
 to Domitius Alienobarbus, the 
 father of Nero, U. C. 781, e'x- 
 eunte. Her sister Drusilla was 
 not married before U. C. 786, 
 ineuntern ; four or five years 
 later: and had she been born 
 U. C. 770, and her elder sister 
 U. C. 767, she would be three 
 years younger than Agrippina. 
 
 It is true, according to Sue- 
 tonius, that Agrippina, the con- 
 sort of Germanicus, was twice 
 brought to bed among the Tre- 
 viri d ; but it was at either time 
 of a daughter. One of these 
 daughters must have been born 
 after the mutiny, U. C. 767 ; 
 and this we may conclude was 
 Agrippina. For Germanicus her 
 father had nine children in all e : 
 six of whom are said to have 
 survived; and the rest, conse- 
 quently, did not survive. Now 
 these three who thus died in 
 their infancy are plainly sup- 
 
 z Dio, lix. 20. 
 
 44- c Ibid. 28. 
 b Ibid. 8. 
 
 VOL. 
 
 posed to have been boys. It 
 would seem, then, that Germani- 
 cus and Agrippina had no daugh- 
 ters except the three which we 
 have mentioned : two of whom 
 must have been born among the 
 Treviri ; and, consequently, one 
 of them (which I have little 
 doubt was Agrippina) in IT. C. 
 767 : the other, Drusilla, be- 
 tween that year and Germanicus’ 
 recall from Germany, U.C. 770. 
 
 Pliny also asserts that Agrip- 
 pina, the wife of Germanicus, 
 bore male children and female al- 
 ternately; and that novies f : an as- 
 sertion which can be understood 
 in one of two senses only ; either 
 that every other child of her’s 
 was a daughter, (which would 
 contradict Suetonius,) or that 
 her first six children were males, 
 and her three last were daugh- 
 ters; which would accord with 
 him. But itwouldalso imply that 
 all her male children were born 
 before the death of Augustus ; 
 and this fact is certain of the 
 older of those two whom Sueto- 
 nius stated to have died in their 
 infancy? ; a child born at Tibur, 
 about U. C. 763 or 764, and 
 called Caius h , as well as his 
 brother Caligula, who was born 
 U. C. 765, after his death. The 
 birthday of Drusilla, then, might 
 possibly have happened in the 
 spring. 
 
 Suet. Caius, 26. a Dio, lix. 19. b Tac. Ann. i. 40 — 
 d Caius, 8. e Ibid. 7. f 11 . N. vii. ii. t Caius, 7. 
 Eckhel, Doctrina Numm. Vett. Vi. 209. 
 
 I. U 
 
£90 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 complete, August 31, U. C. 790 *; so that he would be 
 twenty-seven complete, August 31, U. C. 792. 
 
 It would seem, then, that Caius was twice in Cam- 
 pania, within the first six months of U. C. 792 : once 
 sometime in the spring, and again during the summer. 
 He visited the suburbs of Rome also between these 
 periods 111 ; but whether he went into Campania like- 
 wise does not appear. Nor is any other journey of his 
 mentioned, except one to Mevania in Umbria 11 , before 
 his German expedition (> . But though this journey 
 might be in the same year, it was not to the same 
 quarter, as the previous visits to Campania. A visit 
 to Puteoli is ascertained by Philo P; which, however, 
 as we shall see, was U. C. 793 : and a visit to Cam- 
 pania in general, when he returned by sea from Astura 
 to Antium, is alluded to by Pliny % as the last visit 
 which he made it before his death ; and, consequently, 
 in U. C. 793 also. 
 
 It might be supposed, then, that Herod must have 
 arrived when Caius was at Baise on one of these se- 
 veral occasions : yet there would be great difficulty 
 connected with such a supposition as to any. The 
 first visit, or that in the spring of U.C. 792, would be 
 much too early: for Herod, at that time, could scarcely 
 have set out from J udaea. The last, or that in U.C. 793, 
 would be as much too late; for according to Philo, 
 Agrippa, who himself arrived at Puteoli not long after 
 Caius was gone thither on that occasion, had already 
 been put into possession of the tetrarchy of Antipas 
 before his arrival 1 '. The middle visit, or that in the 
 summer of U. C. 792, when Caius was employed upon 
 the bridge, would consequently appear to be the only 
 
 1 Dio, lix. 6. 7. Suet. Caius, 8. m Dio, lix. 16. n Suet. Caius, 43. o Dio, 
 
 lix. 31. Suet. Caius, 43. 44. P ii. 573. 1 . 1 1. De Virtutibus. Q H. N. xxxii. 1. 
 
 r ii. 584. 1 . 39: 593. 1 . 37. De Virtutibus. 
 
Time of the deposed of Herod Antipas . 
 
 291 
 
 one left : yet, though Herod might by that time have 
 arrived from Judaea, still, if he was deposed and his 
 tetrarehy was bestowed upon Agrippa, at one and the 
 same time; each of these events must have taken place 
 in the summer of U.C. 79£- in the third, and not in 
 the fourth, of Caius : which would both contradict 
 Josephus, and except on one supposition, render it, in 
 my opinion, impossible satisfactorily to explain the 
 origin of the coin. 
 
 This supposition is that, though Antipas had been 
 deposed and Agrippa appointed in his stead, both in 
 the summer of this year, the news of neither event 
 was received in Judaea before the spring of the next. 
 The conjecture is not improbable : for Caius, there is 
 reason to conclude, did not return from Campania, after 
 this visit, until after his birthday; that is, until after the 
 31st of August, at least: and if Herod, which is also 
 very probable, had not set out from Judaea before the 
 midsummer of the year, he might not have arrived in 
 Italy before the end of August. His father, upon a 
 former occasion, when he was journeying to Rome, 
 passed through Greece at the time of an Olympic fes- 
 tival 8 ; that is, about the second or third week in July, 
 when the Olympic games were commonly celebrated ; 
 and even then he was some weeks’ journey distant from 
 Rome. Herod Antipas, who w*as travelling on this 
 occasion with much more of pomp and state, would 
 consequently both set out later and travel slower. 
 
 In this case, it is possible that Fortunatus, the mes- 
 senger of Agrippa, might not be enabled to return 
 home from Italy, with the intelligence of his master’s 
 appointment to the dominions of Antipas, before the 
 middle or the end of September at the soonest : and 
 
 s Bell. Jud. i. xxi. 1 2. 
 
 u 2 
 
292 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 consequently, that he might not arrive in Judaea before 
 the spring of the ensuing year. It has been seen that 
 something like this was the case both with the arrival 
 in Italy, and with the return to Judaea, (before and 
 after his appointment,) of Herod the Great. If Fortuna- 
 tus was not actually back in Judaea earlier than the first 
 or second week in March ; a coin, bearing date in the 
 forty-third year of Antipas, might have been already 
 struck : for the years of his reign, as dated from his 
 father’s death, (if that happened, as we have supposed, at 
 the time in question, U. C. 751.) would begin and pro- 
 ceed from the month of March, in the consular year 
 751. The forty-third year from this date would begin 
 with the same month, in the consular year 793. 
 
 By this means, even on the supposition that Antipas 
 was deposed U.C. 792, the origin of a coin struck in 
 U.C. 793, might possibly be explained. Notwithstand- 
 ing, I am inclined to conjecture that in this one cir- 
 cumstance of his account, the circumstance of the place 
 where Antipas is said to have been received by Caius, 
 Josephus has made a mistake ; and that in reality his 
 reception, or at least his deprivation, took place not at 
 Baiae in Italy, but at Lugdunum in Gaul. It is no 
 objection to this supposition that he is represented as 
 landing at Puteoli ; for to land there in coming from 
 Asia or Egypt, or to set sail thence in going thither, 
 was equally matter of course t : and it may be further 
 supported by the following arguments. 
 
 I. Ant. xviii. vii. 3. it is said that Antipas was both 
 banished to, and appointed to reside in, Lugdunum : 
 Bell. ii. ix. 6. it is said that he was both banished to, 
 and lived ever after, as well as died, in Spain. These 
 
 t Philo, ii. 521. 1 . 12. Adv. Flaccum : 573. 1 . 11, 584. 1 . 39. De Virtutilms. 
 Joseph. Ant. xviii. vi. 4. Vita, 3. Acts xxviii. 13. Suet. Aug. 98. Titus, 5. Nero, 
 20. Joseph. Bell. ii. vii. 1. Seneca, Epist. lxxvii. 1 . Strabo, xvii. 1 .§. 7. 500. Pliny, 
 H. N. viii. 3. Statius, Silv. iii. ii. 21. seq. 
 
Time of the deposal of Herod Antipas. 293 
 
 statements are not consistent with each other ; and one 
 of them must consequently he incorrect. If, however, 
 he was actually sentenced at Lugdunum to banishment 
 into Spain, and went thither accordingly from thence, 
 we may account for the confusion between them ; and 
 the very mistake itself in this instance will so far 
 confirm our conjecture. 
 
 II. At the time of Caius’ third consulate, which he 
 entered upon January 1, and abdicated January 12, or 
 13, at Lugdunum, U.C. 793 u , Agrippa and Antiochus 
 are both said to have been with him, or at least were 
 reported at Rome to be with him, <Zcr7rep rives rupawo- 
 SiSao-KoXoi. This report, as far as concerned Antio- 
 chus, might be true or might be false : but as far as 
 concerned Agrippa, who had left Caius about the mid- 
 summer of U.C. 791, and did not revisit him, as we 
 shall see, before the midsummer of U.C. 793, it was 
 certainly false. Yet the report, though false, may na- 
 turally be accounted for in this instance also, if Fortu- 
 natus, the freedman of Agrippa, or if Herod Antipas, 
 who at that distance might easily be confounded with 
 Agrippa, had been or still was with Caius at Lugdu- 
 num, when he entered upon the consulate in question. 
 
 III. The German or Gallic expedition of Caius was 
 hastily resolved upon, and as hastily executed, after 
 the return U.C. 792, posterior to his birthday v ; and 
 it was over before the first of January U. C. 793. 
 Within thirty days, too, after this date he must have 
 been again in Rome ; for he married Caesonia, his last 
 wife, while he was still in Gaul w , only one month be- 
 fore her delivery; and when the child, with which she 
 was pregnant at the time of her marriage, was born, 
 he is said to have taken and placed it on the knees of 
 
 u Dio, lix. 22 . 24 . Suet. Caius, 17. 22 . 
 
 44—49. 39- w Dio > l ix - 
 
 u 3 
 
 v Dio, lix. 20 . 21 . Suet. Caius, 43, 
 
004 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 the statue of Jupiter in the Capitol x ; which proves 
 that it was born in Rome*. If Herod was banished 
 from Lugdunum, and at this time, it follows that he 
 could not be banished before the beginning of the con- 
 sular year 793 ; in which case, the news of his disgrace 
 could not reach Judaea under two or three months’ 
 time after ; when the mint of Tiberias, or wheresoever 
 else the coin was struck, might already have put forth 
 an issue of money, bearing date in the forty-third year 
 of his reign. Nor would it be surprising that some of 
 the coins so struck should have come down to us. 
 There is a still more remarkable contingency of this 
 kind with respect to a coin of Galba : which bearing 
 date, as it does bear, in his second consulship, must 
 have been struck between January 1, U.C. 822. when 
 he entered on that consulate, and January 15, in the 
 same year, when he diedfy. 
 
 IV. Herod Agrippa arrived at Puteoli z while Caius 
 was still in Campania, and at a time of the year which 
 the context demonstrates to have been the midsummer 
 of U.C. 793 ; and this was exactly the time when, if he 
 had received the news of his appointment to the do- 
 minions of Antipas, in March or April, and had left 
 Judaea directly after, he might be expected to arrive 
 in Italy. He came, as Philo says, Kara to elcoOos acnra - 
 or ojmevos Tollov: and no reason was more likely to have 
 
 * The first of January, there- 
 fore, alluded to by Suetonius, 
 cap. 42. must have been the first 
 of January of the ensuing year ; 
 U. C. 794 : though Dio, if not 
 Pliny, shews that contributions 
 were made to Caius, on the first 
 of January, U. C. 793, as well as 
 
 U. C. 794 : see Dio, lix. 24 : 
 and Pliny, H. N. xi. 73. 
 
 t Coins of Antoninus Pius 
 are still extant, bearing the date 
 Trib. P. xxiv. and consequently 
 struck between January 1. or 
 February 25. and March 7. See 
 Eckhel, vii. 27. 
 
 x Dio, lix. 28. 25. Suet. Caius, 25. 42. Joseph. Ant. xix. i. 2. y Eckhel, 
 Doctrina Nuram. Vett. vi. 298. z Philo, ii. 584. 1 . 39. De Virtutibus. 
 
Time of the deposed of Ilerod Antipas . 29 5 
 
 produced such a visit, than this recent instance of the 
 favour of Caius ; which his own letter, as we have 
 seen above, proves him to have already experienced a . 
 
 V. In a former passage of the Antiquities b , it is not 
 obscurely implied that the disgrace of Antipas was due 
 in part to the ill offices of Vitellius ; whose enmity 
 against him had been excited U.C. 789, in the twenty- 
 second of Tiberius, and had been secretly cherished 
 until the banishment of Antipas in the reign of Caius. 
 Vitellius, it is well known, was the most consummate 
 flatterer in the court of Caius c ; and it is implied in 
 the above allusion to him, that he was one of his para- 
 sites at the time of the disgrace of Antipas. The 
 question of this time, then, is connected with the ques- 
 tion when Vitellius was recalled from his government 
 of Syria, or when Petronius was appointed to succeed 
 him : and this question is intimately connected with 
 another; viz. when it was that Caius attempted to 
 erect his statue in the temple at Jerusalem. 
 
 We have two accounts of this attempt, one from 
 Josephus, the other from Philo ; agreeing in the main 
 facts, though differing apparently in some of the cir- 
 cumstances. One of these differences is that, accord- 
 ing to Josephus, Petronius was sent into Syria, and 
 consequently succeeded Vitellius, expressly to carry 
 the attempt into effect d : according to Philo, he was 
 already in office before he was commanded to make 
 the attempt e . It appears from the same account of 
 Philo’s that Petronius had been governor of Asia be- 
 fore he was appointed to Syria f : and the statement 
 of Philo is confirmed by a coin of Smyrna, which ex- 
 hibits a Petronius as proconsul of Asia in the reign of 
 
 a ii. 593. 1 . 37. De Virtutibus. b xviii. iv. 5. c Dio, lix. 27. Suet. 
 
 Vitellius, 2. Tae. Ann. vi. 32. d Ant. xviii. viii. 2. e ii. 576. 1 . 34. 
 
 De Virtutibus. f Ibid. 582. 1 . 22 — 27. 
 
 u 4 
 
29 6 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 Tiberius There can be little question that this was 
 the same person, Publius 11 Petronius Turpilianus, after- 
 wards prefect of Syria # . 
 
 The discrepancy, however, is otherwise of no great 
 moment ; and may be decided upon in favour of either 
 account without prejudice to the general truth of the 
 other. It will be more to the purpose to observe, 
 that, according to Dio, as well as to other authorities \ 
 Caius did not begin to aspire at divine honours, or 
 conceive the design of making himself to be every 
 where worshipped as a god, before the last year of his 
 reign, and before that return to Rome, which we have 
 shewn was within a month after his marriage to Cse- 
 sonia j*. Now the origin of this madness Suetonius k 
 distinctly ascribes to the abject servility of Vitellius ; 
 such as he began and continued to practise, from the 
 time of his recall home, and the commencement of his 
 personal attendance on Caius : which would imply 
 that he was not recalled perhaps before the last year 
 of Caius, and certainly not before the middle of his 
 third; that is, the summer quarter of U. C. 792. 
 Before this time, then, Antipas would not have found 
 Vitellius at the court of Caius ; but after it he might. 
 He would not have found him therefore at Baiae, when 
 Caius was building his bridge ; but he might do so at 
 Lugdunum, after the German expedition. 
 
 VI. The differences, observable in the account of 
 Josephus and of Philo respectively, may be satisfac- 
 torily adjusted by supposing that the one is a conti- 
 
 * Tac. Ann. vi. 45. Petro- t It agrees with this, that 
 nius was at Rome, U. C. 789: the attempt to remove the statue 
 and Dio, lix. 29. Suetonius of Jupiter Olympius was made 
 Caius, 57. Caius Cassius Longi- about February, or March, U. C. 
 nus was governor of Asia, U. C. 793 : Suet. Caius, 22. 57. Dio, 
 793. lix. 28. 
 
 g Eckhel, ii. 555. h Ant. xix. vi. 3. i Dio, lix. 25, 26. Suet. 
 
 Caius, 22. Jos. Ant. xix. i. 1. k Vitell. 2, 10. 
 
Time of the deposal of Herod Antipas. 
 
 297 
 
 nuation of the other; that the narrative of Josephus 
 begins where the narrative of Philo, which is mani- 
 festly abrupt and imperfect, had closed ; and relates 
 the sequel, as that had related the first part, of the 
 same history in general. On this principle, I can dis- 
 cover little or no inconsistency between them. They 
 both place the attempt in the last year of Caius ; and 
 yet with this critical distinction of the time, that what 
 Josephus says of it belongs exclusively to the last , 
 and what Philo says of it, belongs exclusively to the 
 first , half of this year ; as may thus be proved. 
 
 I. Petronius, in obedience to the orders of Caius, is 
 asserted to have moved his army to Ptolemais ; in- 
 tending with the return of spring to carry the measure 
 by force into effect. Here it is clearly implied that the 
 season of military operations for that year was past ; 
 and consequently that the autumnal quarter at least 
 was drawing to its close. Ant. xviii. viii. 2. Bell. ii. x. 
 1 , 2 . 
 
 II. Leaving his forces at Ptolemais, he himself re- 
 paired soon after to Tiberias ; where the Jews also, 
 who had begun to resort to him in great numbers at 
 Ptolemais, assembled in still greater multitudes ; and 
 where they are said to have continued in the neigh- 
 bourhood, neglecting the usual operations of the sea- 
 son, which was seed-time or approaching to seed-time, 
 for forty, if not for fifty days. Ant. xviii. viii. 2. 3. 
 Bell. ii. x. 3. 5. 
 
 III. When their importunity had at length prevailed 
 with Petronius, to try the effect of a representation to 
 Caius before he proceeded in the attempt, the seed- 
 rains, which had unaccountably held off until then be- 
 yond their usual time, immediately set in. The seed- 
 rains usually set in about the middle of the month 
 Marchesvan ; which would answer in that year to the 
 
298 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 last week in our October, or to the first in our No- 
 vember. Ant. xviii. viii. 6. Vide Diss. vii. 
 
 IV. To the representation made accordingly Caius 
 returned an angry answer, commanding Petronius in 
 no obscure terms — if he wished to avoid a worse kind 
 of death — to make away with himself. This answer, 
 it is said, was three months on the road ; and twenty- 
 seven days, or almost an entire month, before it ar- 
 rived, Petronius received news of the death of Caius \ 
 I believe, however, that Josephus has here made a mis- 
 take ; the nature of which will he explained by and by. 
 
 Now his death took place January 24, U. C. 794 m . 
 Petronius might hear of it in the following March or 
 April ; in which case the answer of Caius must have 
 been dispatched in January itself ; and very probably 
 not many days before the 24th. Consequently, the re- 
 presentation had been sent at least in the November 
 preceding. All these circumstances, as here detailed, 
 are manifestly in unison with each other; and con- 
 spire to place it beyond a question that the account 
 from first to last belongs to the last half of the fourth 
 of Caius; from the period of seed time U. C. 793, to 
 his death U. C. 794. 
 
 The reverse is true of the narrative of Philo. For, 
 first ; his account itself arises out of the history of the 
 mission, relating to the dispute between the Jewish 
 and the Greek inhabitants of Alexandria ; in which he 
 and four others represented the Jews, and Apion with 
 his colleagues were deputed for the Greeks". The 
 time of this mission was later first, than the death of 
 Macro, and of Silanus °, and the passage of Agrippa 
 through Alexandria p ; each in the second of Caius ; 
 and secondly, than the beginning of the German expe- 
 
 1 Bell. ii. x. 5. Cf. Ant. xviii. viii. 8, 9. m Suet. Caius, 58. n Ant. Jud. 
 xviii. viii. 1. Philo, li. 600. 1 . 17. De Virtutibus. o Ibid. 554. 1 25 — 555. 1 . 18. 
 P Ibid. 572. 1 . 16 — 21. 
 
Time of the deposal of Herod Antipas. 
 
 299 
 
 dition q , undertaken in the middle of his third ; and 
 thirdly, it coincided with the winter posterior to that r ; 
 which was the winter of U. C. 793. The deputies, 
 therefore, arrived at Rome in the spring; and when 
 they arrived Caius was there also s . They arrived, 
 therefore, U. C. 793, ineunte , when he was recently 
 returned from Gaul. In a short time after he went to 
 Puteoli, and they were obliged to follow him thither t ; 
 and while all the parties were still there, Agrippa too 
 arrived from Judaea 11 . 
 
 From the time of the departure to Puteoli, but not 
 before it, the history of the attempt relating to the 
 statue begins to be interwoven with the history of the 
 Legation ; for the deputies first heard of the attempt 
 there v . It is now that we meet with the mention of 
 letters or instructions, as only just sent to Petronius w ; 
 and conveying the original commands of Caius : 
 and what follows next, relating to the conduct of 
 Petronius, relates to his conduct upon their receipt. 
 These instructions, if sent now, were sent early in the 
 spring of U. C. 793: Petronius would consequently 
 receive and prepare to act upon them first about the 
 time of wheat-harvest : and it is at this time that, 
 when the nature of the orders became known, the 
 effects which they produced in Judaea are described to 
 have taken place *. When Agrippa landed at Puteoli, 
 
 * Philo, De Legatione, ii. vovs, eOadas de koi to>v Kara ras 
 583. 7 ; as the corn, it is said, odoinoplas eniropcov, these might 
 was iv dupf}, when Petronius re- arrive at Rome by midsummer ; 
 ceived Caius’ first commands; and so 584. 37. they must have 
 he received them a little before done, if it could be conjectured 
 either the Passover, or the Pen- there by the time of their arri- 
 tecost. Moreover, ibid. 41. as val, that the harvest as such, 
 he is said to have dispatched his which includes the harvest of 
 first reply by messengers ev£d)- both kinds, was over in Judaea. 
 
 q Ibid. 598. 1 . 20. r ibid. 573. 1. 40—44. s ibid. 572. 1 . 26; 597. 1 . 22 
 
 ■“♦y* 7 b ; d - 573 1 - 11 — 15. * Ibid. 584. 1 . 39 * v Ibid. 573 - 1 . 15 — 3 1 * 
 
 w Ibid. 576. 1. 32 — 41 . 
 
300 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 he was still ignorant of the intentions of Caius, or of 
 the orders which he had transmitted to Petronius ; 
 and so he might well be : for he must have set out 
 from Judaea at the very time when these orders were 
 dispatched from Rome. 
 
 On this occasion also it is said that the governor 
 wrote to the emperor x , excusing himself for not 
 having immediately executed his commands, on the 
 score of the certain destruction of the harvest — of the 
 general famine which would be consequent upon that 
 and of the emperor’s personal inconvenience, in his 
 projected voyage to Alexandria, if the supplies of pro- 
 visions for himself, and for his train, should by this 
 means be impaired. Caius also is described as reply- 
 ing to Petronius, repeating his orders, and obviating 
 the former objections, by telling him that the harvest, 
 before the receipt of this second letter would necessa- 
 rily have been gathered in and no further danger 
 was to be apprehended on that account. 
 
 The details of what passed in Judaea are here sus- 
 pended by Philo : the arrival of Agrippa took place at 
 this juncture ; and the next particular related is one 
 which followed immediately upon that ; viz. the mis- 
 sion of his supplicatory letter to Caius. The result 
 of this letter is said to have been that Caius promised 
 to desist from his purpose ; and gave orders to counter- 
 mand his last instructions to Petronius 7 . It is mani- 
 fest, however, as the narrative proceeds to inform us, 
 that he was not sincere in this concession ; or that he 
 shortly repented of it* a ; which being the case, though 
 
 * T i de o(f)e\os ; i lttoi tis av' npo fJUKpov fanvpwv imOvpiav, k ,t.A. 
 ovde yap rjpfpovvrwv 6 Tacos ijpepei’ which shews, that the emperor 
 pcTavowv ini rfj % dpiri fjdrj, Kal ttjv did speedily change his mind, 
 
 x «• 577- h 3— 5 82 - h 4°- y Ibid. 583. 1. 41—584. L 38. 
 
 1. 39—595- h IO - a Ibid - !• 1 °— >3- 
 
 z Ibid. 584. 
 
Time of the deposed of Herod Antipas. 
 
 301 
 
 the account breaks off here; that is, about midsummer 
 U. C. 793 ; it states enough to prepare us for what 
 Josephus, as we have seen, (from a point of time almost 
 consecutive on this,) begins to relate as taking place in 
 Judaea*. 
 
 To revert, then, to our original subject. If I have 
 
 giving orders for a statue to be 
 constructed at Rome, which Pe- 
 tronius was to cause to be erect- 
 ed in the temple by stealth, or 
 unawares to the people : Philo, 
 ii. 595. i°. 
 
 * There is this further dif- 
 ference between Josephus and 
 Philo, which has now been satis- 
 factorily explained ; that Jose- 
 phus begins with laying the 
 scene of transactions at Ptole- 
 mais ; Philo lays -it at Sidon. 
 They could not have done other- 
 wise respectively ; for what was 
 transacted in Sidon belonged to 
 a much earlier point of time than 
 what was transacted at Ptolemais. 
 There is this agreement, how- 
 ever, also ; that in both it is dis- 
 tinctly implied, though neither 
 at the beginning nor at the end 
 of the affair, could Herod An- 
 tipas have been any longer te- 
 trarch of Galilee, yet that 
 Agrippa, his successor, was not 
 present in Judaea. 
 
 It is very possible, therefore, 
 that what Josephus relates fur- 
 ther of the conduct and beha- 
 viour of Agrippa, Ant. xviii. 
 viii. 7. 8, may be consistent with 
 what Philo related, 584. 1 . 39 — 
 594. 1 . 18: the latter must have 
 referred to Cams’ original at- 
 tempt ; the former might refer 
 to his renewed ; and there is 
 obviously this difference between 
 them, that the time of the one 
 must have been near the outset, 
 and that of the other near the 
 
 close, of the attempt. Nor is 
 the account of Josephus liable 
 to any objection on the score 
 of an alleged absurdity ; viz. 
 that he speaks of seed-time, or 
 preparation for the next year’s 
 harvest, at the beginning of a 
 sabbatic year. In this supposi- 
 tion, as it will be seen hereafter, 
 Josephus is right. From seed- 
 time in U. C. 793, to seed-time 
 in U. C. 794, was not a sabbatic 
 year ; but from seed-time in 
 U. C. 794 to seed-time in U. C. 
 795, was. Lastly, as it is proved 
 by Philo, that from spring to 
 midsummer U.C. 793, Caius was 
 actually in Campania ; so is the 
 same thing implied by Sueto- 
 nius,Caius, 49; especially as com- 
 pared with the passage before 
 recited from Pliny. If he cele- 
 brated the ovation for his suc- 
 cesses in Germany, on his birth- 
 day, Aug. 3 1, it must have been 
 in this year, U. C. 793 : and it 
 is in this year that the Fasti 
 Triumphales exhibit it. But as 
 it was so late in the year, and 
 only five months before his 
 death, it must have been pre- 
 viously to the ovation that he 
 was returning from Astura to 
 Antium, upon his last visit to 
 Campania, when his ship is said 
 to have been detained by the 
 remora or sucking-fish : a fish 
 which, in allusion to that event, 
 Pliny calls auspicalis ; one that 
 might furnish an omen of the fate 
 which awaited the emperor. 
 
302 
 
 Dissertation Sixth . 
 
 rendered it probable that Antipas was really deposed 
 and sent into banishment at Lugdunum, and not at 
 Baiae, there is little or no difficulty with respect to his 
 coin. He must have been deposed at the beginning of 
 the consular year 793 : in which case, before the 
 tidings of his removal could reach Judaea, where no 
 event would be less expected, his forty-third year elated 
 from U. C. 751, inclusive, would have already set in ; 
 and a number of coins, one of which has come down 
 to us, might be struck accordingly. If I have not 
 succeeded in rendering this probable, we have no alter- 
 native left except to embrace the solution proposed 
 above : which yet may possibly suffice. I shall con- 
 clude, therefore, with one or two observations more ; 
 but upon another subject. 
 
 The opinions of learned men concerning the time 
 of the death of Herod the Great have not much fluc- 
 tuated, except between U. C. 750, and U. C. 751. In 
 favour of this latter date there are yet some strong 
 arguments which might be urged ; such as the succes- 
 sion of the contemporary presidents of Syria, and the 
 time of the council of Berytus ; both which, however, 
 I am obliged to reserve for future consideration. The 
 time of the council in question, as it may be shewn 
 almost to a demonstration, could not have been earlier 
 than the spring quarter of U. C. 749 : which being the 
 case, it is absolutely impossible that the death of Herod 
 could have happened so soon after it, as the passover of 
 U.C. 750 : it could not have happened before the pass- 
 over of U. C. 751, at the earliest. It is not, however, 
 my intention to reckon up all the objections which might 
 be produced against the date in question, and to shew 
 how insuperable they would be : I have noticed, or 
 shall notice, only the two most plausible of the argu- 
 ments in its favour ; the testimony of the coin of An- 
 
Eclipse before the death of Herod . 
 
 303 
 
 tipas, which we have hitherto been considering, and 
 the supposed time of the lunar eclipse, which Josephus 1 ’ 
 proves to have preceded the death of Herod. 
 
 The testimony of the coin, I think, I have now 
 shewn either to be implicitly in favour of the con- 
 trary opinion, or at least to be neutral : and as to the 
 supposed date of the eclipse, though the principles of 
 all astronomical calculations, rightly conducted, may 
 justly be considered too fixed and immutable to allow 
 their results to be lightly called into question ; yet 
 there are not wanting instances where the most pro- 
 found mathematicians, in the determination of ancient 
 eclipses, are seen to have arrived at very different con- 
 clusions. I will suppose, however, that the calcula- 
 tion of Kepler, or of Petavius, in this instance is 
 right ; and that an eclipse of the moon actually took 
 place, as they discovered, March 13, U. C. 750: still 
 it may be contended that this cannot be the eclipse 
 which Josephus mentions before the death of Herod. 
 A rigid calculation of the time between that eclipse 
 and his death will prove this assertion to a demonstra- 
 tion. 
 
 If there was an eclipse of the moon at the full, 
 March 13, U. C. 750, it must have happened exactly 
 one lunar month before the Jewish passover, the time 
 of which would be necessarily (and in fact is calcu- 
 lated accordingly to have been) the time when the 
 moon was next at the full ; that is, not later than 
 April 11, in the same year c . All the events, then, 
 recorded by Josephus, between the eclipse and the en- 
 suing passover, must have come to pass within the 
 space of one month at the utmost ; but the events be- 
 tween the eclipse and the death of Herod, which hap- 
 
 b Ant. xvii. vi. 4. 
 
 c Vide Diss. vii. 
 
304 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 pened after the one and before the other, must be 
 comprehended in a much shorter time. 
 
 For after the death of Herod, we have mention made 
 in Josephus d first, of the seven days’ mourning for his 
 death, before Archelaus presented himself in the temple, 
 as completely over : secondly, of that presentation, 
 which could not be earlier than the day after the 
 close of the period of mourning : thirdly, of the com- 
 mencement of the disturbances in the temple, on the 
 evening of that day : fourthly, after these had con- 
 tinued some time, of the influx of the people from the 
 country against the feast of the passover ; an influx, 
 which could not begin later than four days before the 
 passover, and might begin earlier ; for there is an in- 
 stance on record, when it had begun and was going on 
 before the eighth of Nisan e : and lastly, of the disper- 
 sion of the people by violence on the day of the pass- 
 over itself. The death of Herod, then, could not have 
 happened less than fourteen days before the passover ; 
 that is, not less than fourteen days before April 10 f , nor, 
 consequently, more than fourteen days after March 
 13. 
 
 All the events between the eclipse and the death of 
 Herod, on this principle, must be comprehended within 
 fourteen days at the utmost. The death of Antipater 
 is one of these events ; and Antipater was put to death 
 five days before the death of Herod s. The events, 
 then, between the eclipse and the death of Antipater, 
 must have all come to pass within the space of nine 
 days at the utmost. Now what were these events ? 
 First, the progressive advancement of Herod’s dis- 
 order ; which was slow and lingering, and began to 
 grow worse only after the eclipse itself ; until it ar- 
 
 <1 Ant. xvii. viii. 4 — ix. 3. Bell. ii. i. 1 — 3. ii. 5. e Bell. vi. v. 3. Vide 
 also John xi. 55. i I)iss. vii. g Ant. xvii. viii. 1. Bell. i. xxxiii. 8. 
 
Eclipse before the death of Herod. 
 
 305 
 
 rived at its crisis: secondly, a journey from Jericho 
 to the warm baths at Callirrhoe, in the vicinity of the 
 Lake Asphaltites, when the disease was at its highest; 
 the time taken up by his continuance there, trying the 
 effect of the waters ; and the return to Jericho again: 
 thirdly, after this return the mission of orders, through- 
 out all his dominions, to the principal men every where, 
 to repair to Jericho ; and in obedience to these orders, 
 their assembling in Jericho accordingly: fourthly, the 
 arrival of Augustus’ answer from Rome, and the in- 
 terval between that arrival and the death of Antipater, 
 which was the next event * h . 
 
 It is not possible that all these particulars could 
 have come to pass, in the order here recited, between 
 the 13th and the 27th of March ; which yet they must 
 have done, if the eclipse on the 13th of March was 
 the eclipse which immediately preceded the death of 
 Herod. 
 
 The truth is, the sickness of Herod, such as it was, 
 is said to have first attacked him very soon after the 
 conviction of Antipater before Varus, and the two com- 
 munications sent to Rome, which arose out of that con- 
 viction 1 . This conviction and these communications 
 all took place, as I shall shew elsewhere k , in the month 
 of September before his death. The communications 
 in question were both answered by Augustus together ; 
 
 * The language of Josephus, 
 with respect to the order above 
 mentioned, is very strong, and 
 proves how general it was : T ovs 
 yap a(f) eKaaTrjs Koiprjs ema-rjpovs av- 
 Spas oXrjs ’I ovdaias arwayayoav h 
 A(j)ucop.€va>v, 7rpo<JTuypaTi ra> avrov, 
 lovdaioov avbptov iravros rod e'Svovs 
 onovnoTe a£io\oya>v m » 
 
 If the fact in question was real, 
 it would not take less than a 
 week to collect persons at Jeri- 
 cho from all parts of Herod’s 
 dominions, the most remote 
 from, as well as the nearest to, 
 that place: Cf. i Sam. xi. 3. 
 2 Sam. xx. 4. 
 
 h Ant. xvii. vi. 5, 6: vii: Bell. i. xxxiii. 5, 6 , 7. i Ant. xvii. v. 7 — vi. r. 
 Bell. i. xxxii. 5 — 7. k Diss. xiv. 1 Bell. i. xxxiii. 6. m Ant. xvii. vi. 5. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 X 
 
306 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 which proves that they had been sent, and been received 
 together, or the one very soon after the other : and 
 the answer, as we saw, was received by Herod about a 
 week, or perhaps somewhat longer, before his death. 
 Now, for the dispatch of his own letters to Augustus, 
 and for the transmission of the emperors answer to 
 him, an adequate length of time would evidently be 
 necessary ; and that adequate length of time, in the 
 present instance, would as evidently be nothing less 
 than twice the usual interval of time requisite for a 
 journey in the winter season, from Judaea to Rome; 
 or back again. 
 
 On no subject, perhaps, have more gratuitous sup- 
 positions been made, than as to the proper measure of 
 this requisite period ; which, as I shall prove by a 
 number of instances in a separate Dissertation n , is 
 not to be estimated, under ordinary circumstances, at 
 less than six weeks, or one month and an half, in the 
 summer season ; nor at less than twice that length of 
 time, or three months, in the winter *. The present 
 Dissertation itself has already supplied one example 
 to this effect. Petronius must have written to Caius 
 at the end of October, or the beginning of November ; 
 yet he did not receive his answer until twenty-seven 
 days, or almost an entire month, after he had previ- 
 
 * In the Opera inedita of 
 Fronto, Epp. ad Verum, lib. ii. 
 Ep. i a . p. 108, Verus himself 
 supposes that several months 
 must intervene before the an- 
 swer of Fronto to a letter of his, 
 could be received. Verus was 
 then in Syria, and Fronto in 
 Italy: and Verus, it must be 
 remembered, was emperor, whose 
 letters would of course travel 
 
 with more than ordinary dis- 
 patch. His words are. Tot in- 
 terea mensibus, dum meas litte- 
 ras accipis, dum ego tuas reci- 
 pio, &c. Cf. the same work, part 
 ii. 278 — 280, De Testamentis 
 transmarinis ; which also will 
 shew that it would be two 
 months before a person, who 
 was still in Asia, could be ex- 
 pected to arrive at Rome. 
 
 n Vide the Appendix. 
 
307 
 
 Eclipse before the death of Herod. 
 
 ously heard of his death. The death of Caius took 
 place January 24, U. C. 794: and his answer to Pe- 
 tronius had necessarily been dispatched before that 
 date. But the death of Caius was followed by a pe- 
 riod of considerable confusion and disorder, before 
 Claudius was firmly seated on the throne : and the 
 messengers, who brought to Petronius the news of 
 the death of Caius, were evidently sent to announce to 
 him, as governor of Syria, the accession of Claudius 
 also. The time when these were dispatched, it may 
 be conjectured from Josephus, was not earlier than the 
 anniversary of the Feralia °, which began about Feb- 
 ruary 17th ; for at that time first it was that the com- 
 motions at Rome were put an end to, and Claudius was 
 finally recognised as emperor p. 
 
 Now it is a critical circumstance that, between the 
 24th of January and the 17th of February inclusive, 
 there is just a five and twenty days’ interval ; and if the 
 ship, which was dispatched to Syria to notify the ac- 
 cession of Claudius, was dispatched two days after the 
 latter date ; or the ship, which carried the answer of 
 Caius to Petronius, was dispatched two days before 
 the former ; there might be, between the times of their 
 respective missions, just seven and twenty days’ inter- 
 val : which may lead to the conjecture, that Josephus 
 has made a mistake in saying that the second ship 
 arrived seven and twenty days before the first ; and 
 that the truth is, it arrived first, though it was dis- 
 patched seven and twenty days later. It was thirty 
 days, according to Dio , after Claudius had been de- 
 clared emperor, before he formally assumed the go- 
 vernment ; and met the Roman senate in public *. It 
 
 * Suet. Claudius, i o. 1 1 . there viously to the acknowledgment 
 was a biduum of deliberation pre- of Claudius, De mutando reipub- 
 
 Aut. xix. iv. 6. Cf. Ovid, Fasti, 565 — 570. p Suet. Claudius, 11, 9. a lx. 3. 
 
 x 2 
 
808 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 would, consequently, be about the same time before he 
 dispatched messengers to notify his accession in the 
 provinces. The assertion is not repeated in the Anti- 
 quities 1 *; but, on the contrary, the first ship is said to 
 have been dispatched only just before the death of 
 Caius ; and the second to have arrived only just before 
 the first. On this principle the first ship must have 
 been dispatched on or about the 22d of January, and 
 the second on or about the 17th of February. The 
 first ship was three months on the road, and there- 
 fore the second was two ; and they must both have 
 arrived about the middle of April : the second a 
 little before it, and the first a little after it. The first 
 ship must have sailed in the middle of winter ; the 
 second much nearer to the spring ; the first consequent- 
 ly was likely to have a longer, and the second a shorter 
 passage. 
 
 It seems, then, that in this instance, between the 
 sending of Petronius’ letter to Caius from Judaea, and 
 the arrival of his answer to it from Rome, there was 
 so long an interval as the time included between the 
 beginning of November, and the middle of April ; that 
 is, an interval of five months and an half ; two months 
 and one half of which were probably taken up by the 
 arrival of Petronius’ letter some time in January, not 
 many days before the 24th ; and the remainder by the 
 arrival of Caius’ answer to it. 
 
 On the analogy of the principle, thus established, 
 (which will be further confirmed hereafter,) no answer 
 was to be expected from Augustus, under five months’ 
 
 licae statu, which is also implied would be January 24 and 25. 
 by Dio, lx. 1. and may be col- Still the rpiaicoo-Tr) rjpipa of Dio, 
 lected from the account of J o- above alluded to, will bear to be 
 sephus. Ant. xix. iii. iv. This dated from January 24. 
 
 r xviii. viii. 9. 
 
Eclipse before the death of Herod. 309 
 
 time from the date of the dispatch of the letters of 
 Herod. Now such an answer was certainly received 
 not less than a week (and, perhaps, a little more than 
 that) before the death of Herod ; and consequently 
 Herod must have written to him not less than five 
 months before his death. The time of his death, on 
 the latest supposition, was at least a fortnight before 
 April 10 ; and therefore the time of the arrival of 
 Augustus’ answer was at least three weeks earlier than 
 that. It follows, therefore, that on the latest suppo- 
 sition he had not written to Augustus after the middle 
 of October ; and had not received his answer before 
 the middle of March. 
 
 Now the illness of Herod is so evidently supposed to 
 have begun about the time when he dispatched his se- 
 cond and last letter to Augustus 8 ; that if any assertion, 
 in the narrative, before or after this event, is to be 
 believed, this must be so ; and the attempt upon the 
 eagle, at the instigation of Judas and Matthias, is so 
 clearly placed in the first and earliest stages of the 
 illness, that we cannot hesitate to conclude the at- 
 tempt was made at no great distance of time after the 
 sickness had begun *. On this principle — and even 
 on the latest possible supposition of the time of the 
 death of Herod subsequently — it seems to me an in- 
 disputable point that the attempt on the eagle, and 
 consequently the execution of the Sophists, could not 
 have happened later than the December or the January 
 
 * Ant. Jud. xvii. ix. 5. at the ous and entire. Now, Ant. 
 close of the speech of Anti pater, Jud. xvii. vi. 1. 2: he made it 
 there recorded, it is said that just after he fell sick, on the one 
 Herod made his first will, viz. hand, and just before the at- 
 that in favour of Antipas, at a tempt on the eagle, upon the 
 time when his faculties both of other. Cf. also, Bell. ii. ii. 5, 
 mind and body were still vigor- and i. xxxii. 7 : xxxiii. 2. 
 
 s Ant. Jud. xvii. vi. I. Bell. i. xxxii. 7. xxxiii. 1. 
 
 x 3 
 
310 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 which preceded the death of Herod. It follows there- 
 fore that if any eclipse of the moon took place on the 
 night of their execution, the time when we ought to 
 look for it should be in one of these two months ; not 
 in March. 
 
 With regard to the precise time of the execution of 
 these Sophists, there is only one point which may be 
 assumed as presumptively certain ; viz. that it was 
 after the day of atonement, which preceded the death 
 of Herod. The fact which Josephus records of Mat- 
 thias (the high-priest at the time of the attempt of the 
 Sophists, and deposed in consequence of the attempt 
 itself 1 ) is a demonstrative proof that he was still the 
 high priest, and, consequently, had not been deposed, 
 at the time of the arrival of the preceding tenth of 
 Tisri. The attempt of the Sophists, then, was made 
 after the tenth of Tisri at least, in the year which pre- 
 ceded the death of Herod ; and that any time after the 
 month of October would be later than the tenth of the 
 Jewish Tisri, is sufficiently certain to require no proof. 
 
 I can discover nothing in the account of the attempt, 
 which implies that it was made at the time of any 
 feast; or when the people were assembled at Jerusalem 
 in greater numbers than usual ; but quite the contrary : 
 so that it must have happened in the interval between 
 two feasts ; either the feast of Tabernacles and the 
 Encaenia ; or the Encaenia and the feast of the Pass- 
 over; the latter of which suppositions is just as pos- 
 sible and as probable as the former. I observe, how- 
 ever, that at the time of the attempt followed by the 
 apprehension of the Sophists, Herod himself was in 
 Jerusalem 11 ; but the Sophists were sent to Jericho: nor 
 
 t Ant. xvii. vi. 3. 4. Cf. iv. 2 . which proves that he had been appointed only 
 just before the same feast of Tabernacles, after which he was now deposed, 
 u Ant. xvii. vi. 3. Bell. i. xxxiii. 3. 4. 
 
Eclipse before the death of Herod. 311 
 
 does it appear that he followed them thither, or that 
 what subsequently passed between himself and the 
 people on the subject of the attempt, did not take 
 place in Jerusalem. The theatre, in which he is said 
 to have addressed them, was built by him in Jerusa- 
 lem v . On this principle then, the execution of the So- 
 phists, which took place directly afterwards, took place 
 in Jericho, and while Herod was still at Jerusalem. 
 
 Now none of these things could have been the case, 
 if the Sophists were really executed on the night of the 
 12th of March, U.C. 750: only fifteen days, at the ut- 
 most before the supposed date of the death of Herod : 
 for it is morally certain that, more than fifteen days 
 before his own death, Herod was either at Callirrhoe, 
 beyond the Jordan ; or at least in Jericho, and not at 
 Jerusalem. Nor does it seem to me possible that, fif- 
 teen days before his death, and even though reclining 
 on a couch, he should still have been able to make a 
 speech to the people in public ; as he was certainly 
 able at the time of the attempt*. 
 
 We observe no mention of any eclipse, along with 
 the account of the death of the Sophists, in the parallel 
 place of the War ; though this part of that history in 
 other respects is as circumstantial as the contemporary 
 portion of the Antiquities. And Josephus has been 
 convicted of so many inaccuracies already, that were 
 we to suspect he had fallen into some mistatement 
 
 * Besides which, if the So- supposition, the execution of the 
 phists were executed on the night Sophists must have coincided 
 of the 1 2th of March, the 1 2 th of with the time of the feast of 
 March must have coincided with Purim ; which is a very impro- 
 the fourteenth or fifteenth of bable coincidence : for Herod 
 Adar, or Veadar ; that is, with would scarcely select that time, 
 one or other of the days kept as above all others, for their death, 
 the feast of Purim w . On this 
 
 v Ant. xv. viii. i. w Esther ix. 21. 27. Cf. 1. 13. 15. 17 — 19. 
 
 x 4 
 
312 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 here, the suspicion would not be unreasonable. It is 
 an ungrateful task, indeed, to enumerate the o-cpaXiaara 
 of a writer to whom we are otherwise so much in- 
 debted ; and were it not of paramount importance to 
 the present question that the truth should be plainly 
 stated, I would much rather throw a veil over them. 
 But an authority which has repeatedly been seen to be in 
 error, with respect more particularly to mistakes which 
 might be produced by haste and inattention, and by 
 the neglect of distinguishing between contiguous and 
 associated, but perfectly different, events, is not to be 
 implicitly trusted on every point *. 
 
 * What, for example, can be 
 a greater oversight than the al- 
 lusion to any Mithridates, as 
 king of the Parthians, about 
 the close of the reign of Herod, 
 when there was no such king 
 but Phraates, both at that time, 
 and for some years afterwards ? 
 Yet, unless the text be corrupt, 
 this allusion occurs in the Anti- 
 quities x . The same remark is 
 applicable to the statement re- 
 specting Thermusa, the concu- 
 bine of this Phraates ; that she 
 was presented to him by Julius, 
 not by Augustus Caesar y. Phra- 
 ates did not come to the throne 
 of Parthia, before U. C. 7 1 7 ; and 
 Julius Caesar was assassinated 
 U. C. 7 1 o, at the very time when 
 he was meditating an expedition 
 against the Parthians ; and had 
 he lived four days longer, would 
 actually have set out upon it z . 
 At this period Orodes was still 
 king ; and among the sons of 
 Orodes the next in dignity to 
 
 his father, and the heir presump- 
 tive to his throne, was Pacorus ; 
 who perished, as we have seen, 
 U. C. 7 1 6. Until his death, how- 
 ever, no mention occurs of Phra- 
 ates ; and Orodes had thirty 
 children besides Pacorus and 
 him. What motive, then, could 
 Julius Caesar have for singling 
 out Phraates as the object of any 
 particular distinction ? But, in 
 fact, the very idea of an inter- 
 change of civilities between the 
 Roman and the Parthian govern- 
 ments, at any time in the life- 
 time of Julius Caesar, between 
 U. C. 706. (so soon after the 
 destruction of Crassus) and 
 U. C. 710, is ridiculous and ab- 
 surd. Nor would I have men- 
 tioned this circumstance except 
 for the sake of illustration, in 
 reference to the present sub- 
 ject ; and on account of its con- 
 nection with what will require to 
 be discussed elsewhere a . 
 
 x xvi. viii. 4. y xviii. ii. 4. z Appian, B. C. ii. in. a It is an- 
 other proof of the inaccuracy of Josephus, that he supposes Phraates to have been 
 reigning U. C. 714. when Hyrcanus was brought from Judaea to Parthia by Bar- 
 zapharnes and Pacorus : Ant. xv. ii. 1. 2. 
 
Eclipse before the death of Herod. 
 
 313 
 
 It is a singular fact that the death of Herod, if it is 
 rightly assigned to the month of March, U.C. 751, fell 
 out between two years, U.C. 750 and U.C. 7 52, each 
 of which was distinguished by a peculiar eclipse ; 
 the former by this eclipse on the 13th of March, the 
 latter by an eclipse, calculated originally by Scaliger, 
 and exhibited in the Tables of Pingre b upon January 
 20. Both these eclipses would be visible at Jerusa- 
 lem ; and had the latter fallen out U.C. 751, instead 
 of U. C. 752, it would be as appropriate in all respects 
 to the context of Josephus’ narrative, both before and 
 after the execution of the Sophists, as the eclipse on 
 March 13, U. C. 750, is incongruous to it. In parti- 
 cular it would accord with the fact that the friends or 
 relations of the sufferers, whose complaints at the time 
 of their execution had been stifled by the fear of Herod ; 
 and who had not dared to render even the customary 
 honours to their memory ; as soon as the tyrant was 
 dead, began to be loud and vehement in their outcries; 
 and were among the chief instigators of the disturb- 
 ances which afterwards ensued. The death of the 
 Sophists must, consequently, have been comparatively 
 a recent event. On this account, therefore, Scaliger 
 was induced to contend that this was the eclipse 
 which Josephus meant ; and to argue from thence that 
 the death of Herod was to be placed U. C. 752. I 
 cannot assent to this conclusion ; which errs as much 
 on the side of excess, as the other on the side of defect. 
 The true period of the death of Herod, as it seems to 
 me to be fixed by a multitude of concurrent circum- 
 stances, and as it will be further established in a fu- 
 ture Dissertation, was the middle of March, U. C. 751 : 
 seven or eight weeks after the 20th of January, and 
 
 15 Histoire de l’Acad^mie des Inscriptions, tome xlii. 150. 
 
314 
 
 Dissertation Sixth. 
 
 
 probably about as long also after the execution of the 
 Sophists. Now, if this execution happened at the same 
 time before the death of Herod, U.C. 751, as the eclipse, 
 January 20, did before the middle of March U. C. 752 ; 
 it is not impossible that Josephus might confound the 
 two things together ; and describe them as happening 
 in conjunction, though they really happened a year 
 asunder. It should be remembered that he composed 
 his Antiquities at Rome, in the thirteenth year of 
 Domitian ; almost an entire century after the period 
 to which this part of them relates. Nor is it at all 
 unlikely that many of the authentic records of the 
 reign of Herod, which might have survived up to the 
 twelfth of Nero, the beginning of the Jewish war, were 
 lost or obliterated afterwards. It is possible even that, 
 when Josephus made this observation in respect to the 
 eclipse, he did not exactly recollect that Herod actu- 
 ally died U. C. 751, and not U. C. 752 : in which case 
 he would naturally fall into the mistake of assigning 
 to U. C. 751. an event which really belonged to U. C. 
 752 *. 
 
 * There was another eclipse, 
 U. C. 750, besides that on the 
 13th of March; which maybe 
 traced forward in the Tables to 
 the time of the battle of Cre- 
 mona, fought A.D.69, U.C. 822, 
 between the armies of Vespasian 
 and of Vitellius ; at which time 
 its recurrence is attested by con- 
 temporary history c . But as 
 Pingre’s calculations exhibit this 
 eclipse (for the meridian of Pa- 
 ris) on September 5, exactly at 
 twelve at noon, it is manifest that, 
 at Jerusalem, the eclipse would 
 be over before the moon could 
 
 have risen and become visible. 
 The mean time, however, of the 
 next full moon, would be Octo- 
 ber 5, early in the morning : to 
 which day inclusive, from April 
 11. exclusive , there is exactly 
 one hundred and seventy seven 
 days’ interval. On both these 
 accounts, if the 15. Nisan had 
 previously fallen on April 11. 
 the 15. Tisri would subsequently 
 fall on October 5. The tenth of 
 Tisri, therefore, would coincide 
 with September 30. Vide supra 
 page 310. 
 
 c Dio, lxv. 1 1 . 
 
DISSERTATION VII. 
 
 Computation of Jewish passovers, or other feasts. 
 
 I HAVE already had occasion, in two or three in- 
 stances, to consider the time of certain Jewish pass- 
 overs, and I shall frequently have occasion to consider 
 the same thing hereafter : I have judged it advisable, 
 therefore, to premise, at this period of the work, a 
 Table exhibiting the times of the passover, or of other 
 feasts, in such years as concern my general argument ; 
 beginning with U. C. 714, B. C. 40, the year when He- 
 rod was appointed king of Judaea in place of Antigo- 
 nus, and extending at intervals to U. C. 823, A. D. 70, 
 the year of the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 
 In order to this computation, we must begin with 
 taking it for granted that the rule, which the Jews 
 observed in celebrating the passover, was something 
 invariable : and that the invariableness of the rule 
 consisted in fixing its celebration uniformly to the same 
 time of the year, and to the same time of the month. If 
 these two things therefore can be determined, the com- 
 putation of passovers will be matter of course. Each 
 of them will, consequently, require to be considered ; 
 but, as the latter is much the more difficult to be 
 settled, if not the more important of the two, I shall 
 begin with it first. 
 
 I need not remind the reader that, according to the 
 original appointment of the Law, the passover was 
 commanded to be sacrificed on the fourteenth day of 
 the first month in the sacred year — which was Abib, 
 Nisan, or Xanthicus — between noon and sunset ; and 
 to be eaten on the following evening, between sunset 
 and midnight, or at least before the morning. Next 
 
316 
 
 Dissertation Seventh. 
 
 to the testimony of the Law itself, there is no more 
 ancient, or more unexceptionable source of information 
 upon any point which concerns the ritual observances 
 of the Jews, especially in the time of our Saviour or 
 before it, than the testimony of Philo Judaeus, or of 
 Josephus ; together with some valuable fragments of 
 earlier Jewish writers, which have come down to us. 
 These testimonies I shall produce in their order. 
 
 I. T<S Si] lurjvl tovtco ( Nisan ), Trep\ recro-apeiTKaiSeKaTr]]/ 
 rjfxkpav^ /veXXovros tov creXrjviaKov kvkXov y IvecrOai TrXrjrri- 
 (paovs , ayerai to. Sia/Barr/pia, StjjuLoipavris eopry. Philo 
 
 Jud. De Mose, lib. iii. Operum ii. 169. line 16. 
 
 It is plain that this testimony, by fixing the celebra- 
 tion of the passover to the fourteenth of Nisan, is in 
 unison with the appointment of the Law : but it also 
 implies that the fourteenth of Nisan preceded the full 
 of the moon ; and therefore, that the passover was 
 celebrated before the full of the moon. And this con- 
 clusion is confirmed by the following passage ; which 
 ascertains the first day of the afy/ma, or the seven 
 days’ feast of unleavened bread. This feast was ap- 
 pointed by the Law to begin on the fifteenth day of 
 the month, directly after the passover: Trjs eoprrjs 
 
 Si^6/uLr]vo? apX €l (leg. *5 7 revreKcufieKciTr], /cad’ rjv 
 
 o-eXrjvrj 7rXrjcri(par]9 ylverai a . This statement also is in 
 unison with the appointment of the Law ; but this 
 likewise implies that the fifteenth of Nisan coincided 
 with the full of the moon ; and, consequently, as be- 
 fore, that the fourteenth of Nisan preceded it. The 
 reason which is assigned for this coincidence is to the 
 same effect : irpovoia tov /urjSer eivai ctkotos kolt itcelvqv 
 ty]v r/iuepav b , or as it is more fully expressed shortly 
 after, with regard to the first day of the feast of Ta- 
 bernacles, the fifteenth of Tisri, a case in point : wa 
 
 a Operum ii. 293. 1 . 19. De Septenario et Festis Diebus. b Ibid. 1 . 21. 
 
Computation of Jewish pass overs, or other feasts. 317 
 
 /at] pe& rjpepav p.ovov 9 aXXa /ecu vvKrcop , 7 rXrjprj? 6 Kocrpo? y 
 tov ircvyKaXov (pcoro?, rjXiov teal creXrjvrj? tear eKeivrjv rrjv 
 rjpepav aXXrjXoi? eiravareXXovTcov avyai? aSiaa-riKTOi?, at? 
 peOopiov 011 Siaicplvei <tkoto? c . At the full of the moon, 
 and the equinoctial points of the year in particular, 
 when the sun is setting the moon is rising ; and when 
 the moon is setting the sun is rising ; so that there is 
 literally no interval of darkness between day and 
 night. The passage implies that such an effect was 
 necessary upon the fifteenth of Nisan, the first day of 
 the feast of unleavened bread ; and if so, that the 
 moon must come to the full on, not before nor after, the 
 fifteenth of Nisan, the first day of the feast of unlea- 
 vened bread. In this case, as before, the fourteenth of 
 Nisan, the day of the sacrifice of the passover, pre- 
 ceded the full of the moon. 
 
 II. T(V Se prjv\ Tto SavOiKw, 09 Nicra^ Trap rjp.iv leaXei- 
 rai , /ecu tov 6 tov ? €( tt\v ap'xh, TecrcrapecrKaiSeKOLTr] Kara 
 TeXrjvrjv .... Kai Trjv Ovcrlav . . . Ilacr^a Xe<y opevrjv, Si* 
 erou? € kol<ttov Oveiv evopure. Ant. Jud. iii. X. 5. Cf. 
 Socrates, E. H. v. xxii. 284. D. 
 
 The phrase rearer apeo-KaiSeKarrj Kara ereXrjvrjv opposes 
 the fourteenth according to the moon, to the fourteenth 
 according to any other mode of reckoning: just as, in 
 classical writers, vovprjvla Kara ereXrjvrjv d , to mark the 
 precise day of an eclipse of the sun, opposes the first 
 day according to the moon, to the first day according 
 to any other purely civil mode of reckoning. If so, 
 the fourteenth according to the moon is necessarily the 
 fourteenth, dated from the change ; and the fourteenth 
 dated from the change is before the full of the moon ; 
 for the full of the moon is always on the fifteenth 
 dated from the change. The passover, then, as be- 
 
 c Ibid. 297. 1 . 44. 
 
 d Thucyd. ii. 28. 
 
318 
 
 Dissertation Seventh. 
 
 fore, if celebrated on the fourteenth according to the 
 moon, was celebrated before the full. 
 
 III. In an extract from the Paschal Canons of Ana- 
 tolius, bishop of Laodicea, and contemporary with 
 Eusebius, the former is seen to have cited the testimony 
 of the two Agathobuli, surnamed the Masters, and of 
 Aristobulus * ; which last is verbatim to this effect : 
 
 A oOelcrrjg re Trjg tcov SiafiaTrjplcov rj/mepa 9 T /7 Tecrcra- 
 peo-KaiSeKarr) tov imrjvbg //ed’ kcnrepav , kcTrjl^eTai /akv creX^vr] 
 Ttjv evavTiav Ka\ (leg. Kara) Sia/uLerpov tw rj\l(p crTacriv * 
 vocnrep ovv e^ecrriv ev raig 7rav<r envois opav’ ecrovTai Se 9 
 6 fAev Kara to eapivov icrruaepivov 6 %\iog T/Arj/ma, rj be ej~ 
 avayicrig Kara to (p0ivo7r(jopivbv lcrt]jAepivov b creXijvt]. Ecc. 
 
 Hist. vii. xxxii. 287. C. 
 
 In order to justify this description, it is absolutely 
 necessary to suppose that when the passover was cele- 
 brated — jaeO' kcnrepav — on the fourteenth day of the 
 month, the moon was at , or on the point of being at , 
 the full : it could not otherwise be diametrically oppo- 
 
 * Anatolius, as here quoted, 
 calls this Aristobulus, one of the 
 translators of the Septuagint, 
 E. H. vii. xxxii. 287. A, which is 
 a remarkable oversight ; inas- 
 much as the same person him- 
 self, being quoted by Clemens 
 Alexandrinus, Operum i. 410. 1 . 
 25. Strom, i. xxii. and by Euse- 
 bius, after Clemens, Prseparatio 
 Evang. ix. vi. 410. D. tells us 
 there had been versions of the 
 Law of Moses, older than the 
 time of Demetrius Phalereus ; 
 that is, than the Septuagint itself. 
 The truth is, he flourished in the 
 reign of Ptolemy Philometor ; 
 to whom he dedicated a work of 
 his, called by Eusebius, ttjv too v 
 Upav vo/xcov epprjveiav, that is, an 
 Interpretation, not a Transla- 
 
 tion, as the extract from it shews. 
 Prsep. vii. xiii. xiv. 323, 324. 
 Cf. E. H. vii. xxxii. 287. A. 
 
 Clemens Alexandrinus consi- 
 ders him to be the person alluded 
 to 2 Macc. i. 10, under the title 
 of the Master ; though he has 
 made a mistake in calling the 
 Ptolemy in question, Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus. Vide Operum ii. 
 705. 20. Strom, v. xiv. Per- 
 haps this might give occasion to 
 the mistatement of Anatolius. 
 Aristobulus is again referred to, 
 Operum i. 360. 12. Strom, i. 
 xv. and ii. 755. 32. vi. iii. Ori- 
 gen. Contra Celsum, iv. 51. 
 Operum i. 543. A. ranks him 
 merely among writers more an- 
 cient than Philo. 
 
Computation of Jewish pass overs ^ or other feasts. 319 
 
 site, in the region of the autumnal equinox, to the 
 sun, in the quarter of the vernal. This testimony, it 
 is true, is not so explicit as that of Philo or of Jo- 
 sephus ; but this also will imply that on the evening 
 immediately after the day of the passover, that is, on 
 the fifteenth of Nisan at least ; the moon would be at 
 the full. 
 
 Reasoning, then, from the plain import of all these 
 testimonies, which evidently speak the same language, 
 and are as consistent with the original appointment of 
 the Law, as with each other, I do not see that we can 
 come to any other conclusion than this ; The days of 
 the moon, as well as of a Jewish month, being both 
 expressed by w^Orj/uepa, or periods of one revolution of 
 the earth round its axis — the day of the paschal sacri- 
 fice, the fourteenth rv-^Orjiaepov of Nisan, must always 
 have preceded the fifteenth vv-^Orj/iepov of the moon : or 
 what is the same thing, on the fourteenth wyfrjv-epov 
 of Nisan, at the time of the paschal sacrifice, the moon 
 must not have arrived at the full, but only be on the 
 point of arriving ; and on the fifteenth w^Qrujiepov of 
 Nisan, the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, 
 she must have arrived at the full. If so, either the 
 fourteenth rv^Orumepov of Nisan must always have be- 
 gun and proceeded with the fourteenth w^Or/juLepor of 
 the moon ; and consequently, the fifteenth wx6r//j.epov 
 of Nisan with the fifteenth wyQrj^epov of the moon ; 
 or the fourteenth rv^Orj/mepov of Nisan never must have 
 begun and proceeded more than eighteen hours later 
 than the fourteenth w'xfruj.epov of the moon ; nor con- 
 sequently the fifteenth vvxOrjiuLepov of Nisan more than 
 eighteen hours later than the fifteenth iv^O^iuepov of 
 the moon. The moon arrives at the full almost in 
 eighteen hours exactly after her fifteenth w^Orj/j-epov is 
 begun ; so that in either of these cases the full of the 
 
320 
 
 Dissertation Seven th . 
 
 moon would coincide with the fifteenth wyO^epov of 
 the month : in the first case eighteen hours after that 
 fifteenth vvyPrjt^epov was begun ; in the other, at the 
 beginning of the wyOrj/uepov itself ; but in no other case 
 whatever. 
 
 It follows also, that the first wyQrj^pov of Nisan 
 always coincided with the first vvyOrji^epov of the moon; 
 or at the utmost did not begin more than eighteen 
 hours later than it. Now the first vvyOrj/mepov of Nisan 
 was the neomenia of Nisan ; and if we are right in 
 our own conclusions, the decision of the question whe- 
 ther the neomenia of Nisan was determined by the 
 physical conjunction of the sun and the moon, or by 
 the visible appearance of the new moon, is deducible 
 by way of corollary. It could not be regulated exclu- 
 sively by either ; and therefore was probably regulated 
 conjointly by both. The conjunction of the sun and 
 the moon might take place at any period of time dur- 
 ing the four and twenty hours ; but a Jewish vvyOy- 
 juepov always began and ended with sunset. How then 
 could the neomenia of the first month be invariably 
 dated from the physical conjunction of the sun and the 
 moon ? The same thing is true of the phasis ; so that 
 no neomenia could necessarily be always dated from 
 that. Besides which, the phasis of the moon would 
 be liable to obstruction from accidental circumstances. 
 It could not, under any circumstances, be discernible 
 within less than such and such a time from the change; 
 but it is no necessary consequence that it must become 
 visible even then. The neomenia of a month, if fixed by 
 so precarious a standard, must always be varying; and 
 might be many hours and even some days later in one 
 month, than it had been or it might be in another. 
 
 We may take it for granted, I think, that no Jewish 
 wyOrj/iepov could be divided in any proportion between 
 
Computation of Jewish passovers , or other feasts. 321 
 
 two months : and consequently that, at whatever pe- 
 riod of a given rv^O^/uepov the change of the moon 
 might happen, the whole of that rv^Or/imepov must be 
 assigned to one and the same month ; and be either 
 the last vvxfrjV-epov of the preceding, or the first w^Orj- 
 v-epov of the succeeding one. Hence it is, that every 
 Jewish month consisted of a number of complete 
 vv-^OrjiuLepci ; but alternately, of twenty-nine at one time 
 and of thirty at another : the former when the month 
 was cavus ; the latter when it was plenus . This 
 distribution of wyfruxepa was made to compensate 
 for the defect of the monthly lunations ; which are 
 completed in twenty-nine days and one half of mean 
 time, instead of twenty-nine or thirty days exactly : 
 so that those months, which contained only twenty- 
 nine vv-fcOrj/Aepa, were supposed to begin either with the 
 new moon exactly, or within twelve hours afterwards. 
 Now Nisan was one of those months which (as I think 
 it exceedingly probable) always consisted of twenty- 
 nine days and nights; (especially in the Jewish year 
 at the time of the Christian era ;) and certainly fre- 
 quently did so d ; as for instance, whensoever the year 
 had been intercalated, or Nisan was preceded byVeadar: 
 but Jar, the next month to Nisan, was one which in 
 such cases contained thirty: and between the two were 
 comprised two lunations. Moreover Nisan was the 
 beginning of the year, and at the head of the calendar 
 for the rest of the months : and it is inconsistent, gene- 
 rally speaking, with that relation, that it should have 
 begun with a fraction of lunar time ; or in other 
 words, that the neomenia of Nisan, and the first vvyfrj- 
 /uLepov of the moon of Nisan, should not, generally speak- 
 ing, have begun and proceeded together. 
 
 The solemnity of the new moons, or the necessity of 
 
 f l Vide Selden, de Anno Civili Vett. Jud. 
 
 Y 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
322 
 
 Dissertation Seven th . 
 
 keeping holy the beginning of every month, was due 
 to the ritual observances appointed for such times by 
 the law, in the addition of certain sacrifices to the daily 
 sacrifice ; and consequently either at morning or even- 
 ing sacrifice, or at both e . It is manifest that these 
 must take place in the course of some w^Orj/aepov or 
 other ; and that they could take place so properly in 
 the course of none, as in that of the first vv^Oruuepov of 
 the month. What could be more foreign to the spirit 
 of the ritual injunction, than that the ceremony pre- 
 scribed should take place on the last w^Orj/uLepov of the 
 month ? the solemnization of the new moon, on the 
 last day of the o/r/? It is in vain to allege, in extenua- 
 tion of this anomaly, the evrj kou vea, the Greek rpiaica<s, 
 or thirtieth day of a lunar month. What evrj /cal vea , 
 or thirtieth day, could those Jewish months have, 
 which consisted of twenty-nine days? and what evri 
 Ka\ vea , or thirtieth vv^O^iaepov of the moon, could be 
 observed as the Jewish neomenia, and solemnized by 
 additional sacrifices at morning and evening service, 
 unless the thirtieth w^Ov/aepov of the moon had begun 
 before sunset on one day — the conjunction of the sun 
 and the moon had taken place before sunrise on the 
 next — and the Jewish neomenia had been determined 
 by that conjunction, and begun the evening before ? It 
 is in vain also to allege the 
 
 tricesima sabbata : vin’ tu 
 
 Curtis Judaeis oppedere? 
 
 of Horace f : for whatever be meant here by the expres- 
 sion tricesima sabbata , it is manifest the allusion is to 
 a sabbath, strictly so called; that is, to some time when 
 the Jews, and such as did not care to offend the Jews, 
 made a point of doing nothing. Now there is no rea- 
 son to suppose the new moons were observed as sab- 
 
 e Nnmb. xxviii. n — 15. f Sermonum Lib. i. Sat. ix. 69. 
 
Computation of Jewish passovers , or other feasts. 323 
 
 baths ; there is not a word in the law to that effect. 
 The scholium of Acron, then, Tricesima sabbatha dici, 
 quando calendis occurrit sabbath um, may be the true 
 explanation of the passage ; but it supposes the day in 
 question to be the first and not the last of the month, 
 or to be equally divided between both. 
 
 The definition of the ritual neomenia, according to 
 Philo, is as follows : rj pera crvvofiov, Trjv Kara riva cre- 
 Xrjv^v rear, I'eoprjvla^: which however a little further on, 
 he describes more explicitly first, as ap-^ prjvos ; se- 
 condly, as that day, KaO 9 rjv ovSev acpcoricrrov ev ovpavw ; 
 thirdly, /cad’ fjv apteral (pcori^eiv aicrOrjTw (peyyei TeXijvrjv 
 rjXios, rj $e to iSiov icaXXos ava(palvei roig opcoori h . These 
 criterions seem to place it beyond a question, that the 
 true legal neomenia was not merely some day, Kara 
 aeXrjvrjv, consequent on the conjunction as such — and 
 ap^f prjvos, or beginning of the month — but also, when 
 the moon had begun to be visible. In the pure climate 
 of Judsea the phasis of the moon may take place in 
 eighteen hours after the conjunction*; for even in our 
 climate it has been known to do so : and if this was 
 
 * Geminus, vii. Uranologicon, 
 39. B : orav 8e irapaXXagrj fj <re- 
 Xrjvrj npbs top rjXiov n ept ttjv vov- 
 prjviav, Tore prjvoeibr/s r] aeXrjvr] 6e- 
 apeirai. Ibid. E : prjvoet8rjs pev 
 ov v yiverai irep\ ras ap\as ra>v prj- 
 veov. Ibid. 40. A : ra^iVr^ pev 
 yap (f)aiveTai rj (reXrjvrj prjvoei8r]S rfj 
 vovprjvia, (5pa8vTa.Tr] 8e rfj rpirr]. 
 
 That the moon usually be- 
 came visible, in the climate of 
 Judsea, or the neighbouring coun- 
 tries, as for instance Egypt, in 
 less than three days’ time from 
 the conjunction — may be infer- 
 red from the following passage 
 of the Hieroglyphica of Hora- 
 
 pollo — himself an Egyptian ; 
 where he is describing the hiero- 
 glyph! cal symbol for the month : 
 prjva 8e ypafpovTes, creXrjvrjs crx^j- 
 p a, KaSo Ka\ npoKciTai (he refers 
 to cap. 10. supra) e'xov eiKocn ical 
 oktco rjpepas larjpepivas povas, e£ 
 eiKoaiTecro-apcov a>pa> v rfjs rjpepas 
 vTvapxovo-rjs , faypacftovai, KaO '* as 
 <ai avareXXet’ Tads 8e Xoi7rais 8vo , 
 ev 8v(T€l eari. Lib. i. cap. 66. 
 By avareXXci here is meant, is 
 visible to the eye; and by ev 
 8vaei earl, is invisible : and this 
 state of invisibility is reckoned 
 to be two days out of the thirty, 
 not more. 
 
 S Opemm ii. 278. 1 . 19. 
 1. 3—10. 
 
 De Septenario et Festis Diebus. 
 
 Y 2 
 
 h Ibid. 292. 
 

 Dissertation Seventh. 
 
 the case, a phasis of the moon might always be ex- 
 pected within that distance of time from the change. 
 Upon the regularity of this fact was founded a rule in 
 use among the Jews of later, and therefore probably 
 derived from the Jews of earlier times ; which was to 
 count backwards from the time of the phasis eighteen 
 hours, to bring them to the time of the change*. Con- 
 sequently, if the time of the change could be foreseen, 
 the time of the phasis also could be foreseen ; and if 
 the time of the phasis could be foreseen, the neomenia 
 of Nisan (which is what we are here concerned with) 
 might be fixed accordingly. 
 
 Now a constant necessity, for nearly two thousand 
 years, of attending to the phenomena of the moon in 
 particularf, must have made any people, however 
 
 * In the Liber Enoch, which 
 I shall have frequent occasion to 
 refer to, as the production of a 
 native Hebrew, the sum total of 
 the parts of a day and a night 
 together, that is, of a wxOrjpepov 
 as such, is estimated at eighteen : 
 of which, it is said, at the equi- 
 noxes they have each nine, at 
 the summer solstice the day has 
 twelve, and the night has six; 
 at the winter solstice they have 
 each just the reverse. Vide cap. 
 lxxi. 
 
 On this principle, each of these 
 parts contained one hour and 
 twenty minutes of equinoctial 
 time ; and the longest day, for 
 the meridian of the writer, would 
 contain sixteen hours in all : a 
 supposition, which if we reckon 
 from twilight to twilight, might 
 agree sufficiently well to the 
 meridian of Jerusalem. 
 
 Why, however, should this 
 author have adopted so peculiar 
 a division of the parts of a day 
 and a night collectively, at all 
 
 times, except for some such rea- 
 son as this; viz. that the sun 
 and the moon being in conjunc- 
 tion on the jirst day of the new 
 year, (see lxxiii. 13,) the latter 
 became visible to the eye in Ju- 
 dsea, at the distance of eighteen 
 hours afterwards ? That the 
 moon did become visible some 
 time on the first day as such, 
 that is, in the second twelve 
 hours after the conjunction, is 
 plainly implied in this verse : 
 lxxvii. 14: On the first day it is 
 called the new moon; for on 
 that day, light is received into 
 it : (that is, it first becomes vi- 
 sible.) 
 
 t There would be this neces- 
 sity, whether we suppose the 
 civil year of the Jews to have 
 been lunar from the first, or not. 
 The sacred year was lunar from 
 the first ; and that would be 
 sufficient to oblige the Jews to 
 attend to the motions of the 
 moon from the first. 
 
Computation of Jewish passovers, or other feasts. 325 
 
 ignorant of astronomy in general, practically and ex- 
 perimentally at least acquainted with such facts as 
 these, of the mean length of a lunation between one 
 conjunction and another; of the age of the moon at 
 the full ; and of the natural and stated time after the 
 conjunction within which she might be expected to 
 become visible. But with this knowledge, assuming 
 the mean length of a lunation to be twenty-nine days 
 and twelve hours, and the interval between the con- 
 junction and the phasis to be eighteen hours; the Jews 
 were manifestly at liberty to fix the neomenia of Nisan 
 by the following rule — which, it appears to me, will 
 accord under all circumstances with the fact already 
 substantiated from Philo, Josephus, and others; viz. 
 that the fourteenth wyfruxepov of Nisan, the day of the 
 paschal sacrifice, was always bound to precede the full 
 of the moon ; the fifteenth w^Orujiepov of Nisan, the first 
 day of the feast of unleavened bread, was always to 
 happen upon it. 
 
 A w^OrjiuLepor of Nisan being divided into four and 
 twenty equinoctial hours, twelve of the evening and 
 twelve of the morning ; and those four and twenty 
 into four quarters, containing six hours each ; if it 
 could be calculated, and therefore foreseen, that the 
 conjunction of the sun and the moon would take place 
 any time within the first of these quarters, the neo- 
 menia of Nisan was fixed to the beginning of the same; 
 if, during any part of the last three quarters, it was 
 deferred until the expiration of them all. In the first 
 case, the fourteenth vv^Oruaepov of Nisan either coin- 
 cided with the fourteenth vv^Orj/aepor of the moon, or 
 preceded it at the utmost by only six equinoctial hours; 
 and the full of the moon still took place on the fifteenth 
 wyQrmepov of Nisan : in the latter case, the fourteenth 
 vv^Ofoepov of Nisan either coincided for three-fourths 
 
 Y 3 
 
326 
 
 Dissertation Seventh. 
 
 of its duration with the fourteenth vv^Orj/uLepov of the 
 moon, or at the utmost was only eighteen hours later 
 than it ; and the full of the moon coincided with the 
 fifteenth w^Orj/uLepov of the month, as before. It is 
 manifest, that this case would happen three times as 
 often as the former ; and it is also manifest that, in 
 either case, but especially in the latter, the phasis of 
 the new moon, under ordinary circumstances, would 
 always coincide with the day which was kept to com- 
 memorate it. 
 
 I think the rule, thus supposed, is strikingly con- 
 firmed by another passage of Philo’s. Speaking of the 
 gradual increase and decrease of the moon, as proceed- 
 ing by periods of sevens, he observes; 6 Se yei /vtjOelg dpi- 
 6/uos airoKaTacrraTiKO ? earn ceXrjvris, a(j )’ ov tjp^aro or^fia- 
 to? Xa/Jifidveiv av^tjcriv aicrOrjTcos, els eKelvov Kara /aeioocriv dva- 
 
 Ka/UL7TT0V<Jt /?. avj~6TGU fJL€V •yctj 0 Ct7TO Tr]9 irp(J0TY]S /UirjVOeiSoVS €7Tl- 
 
 Xd/uyjsew?, d%pi Sr^oro/mov, fj/Aepais eirra' eiO ’ erepais Tocrav- 
 Tai<$ irXrjcrnparjs ylveTai’ kcu irdiXiv V7rocrTpe(pei, SiavXoSpo- 
 I aovcra tv\v avTrjv oSov, diro /uev Trjs irXrjcrKpaovs eir\ ty] v Si- 
 yoTO/ULOv eirra iraXiv fjfjLepcu<z, err’ dir o ravrYjs eir\ rrjv /ulyji/o - 
 eiSij raf? ’icon's e£fj<s 6 Xe^Oeis dpiO/mos crv[J.ireirXr] pcorai k 
 This is a very just description ; for if the moon begins 
 to be visible eighteen hours after the conjunction, she 
 ceases to be visible eighteen hours before the conjunc- 
 tion ; she is invisible, therefore, for thirty-six hours in 
 all, or one rv-^O^iuepov and an half; and she is visible for 
 twenty-eight w^Ori/nepa exactly : in the first half of 
 which she is proceeding from the crescent to the full, 
 and in the last half she is proceeding back again, from 
 the full to the crescent*. Nor is it at variance with 
 
 * The author of the Book of to the same effect : lxxii. lxxiii. 
 Enoch, before referred to, de- The light of the moon, when 
 scribes the course of the moon full, being supposed to amount 
 
 i Operum i. 24. 1 . 21. De Mundi Opificio. 
 
Computation of Jewish passovers, or other feasts. 327 
 
 another passage in the treatise De Somniis, Lib. ii. 
 which by implication makes the lunar revolution two 
 clays and an half less than thirty days k . For the con- 
 text proves that this must be understood of the moon’s 
 periodic, not its synodic, revolution ; and as the latter 
 is twenty-nine days and one half in length, so the for- 
 mer is two days and some hours less than that. 
 
 With respect to the second subject of consideration, 
 the time of the year when the passover was to be cele- 
 brated, there can be no question that this time was the 
 vernal equinox. The passages, which I have produced^ 
 demonstrate that ; and with these we may further com- 
 pare Philo, De Mundi Opificio : o d’ qyepwv ^/xepas 
 tjXios, Slrrag, /cad’ eKacrrov eviavrov , airoTeXddv icrqiaepla?, 
 eapi Kal /neTOireopcp' ty\v V-cv eapivrjv ev K pica, rrjv /aero- 
 iritipivriv ev Zivy(p’ erapyeorraTrjv irapeyerai itlcitiv tov 7rep\ 
 Trjv ej3S6/ur]v deo7TjOe7rou9. eicarepa yap toov lcrr]jaepicov €/3S6/ulu) 
 
 to fourteen times as much as it 
 possesses, when it first becomes 
 visible, we are told, lxxii. 8, 9, 
 that “ on that night when it 
 “ commences its period, previ- 
 “ ously to the day of the month,” 
 (the first day as such,) “ it sets 
 “ with the sun, and is dark in 
 “ its fourteen portions ;” that 
 is, in both its quarters (of seven 
 portions each). But “ it rises 
 “ on that day” (the first day as 
 such) “ with one seventh portion 
 “ precisely (which means, in 
 this instance, one seventh of a 
 quarter, or one fourteenth of the 
 half). So likewise lxxvii. 5 : 
 “ When the moon rises” (for 
 the first time) “ it appears in 
 “ heaven, and the half of a se- 
 “ venth portion of light is all 
 “ which is in it.” One seventh 
 of the whole would be two four- 
 
 teenths ; and the half of that is 
 one fourteenth. 
 
 This author, then, supposes, 
 that from the time when the 
 moon becomes visible, she re- 
 ceives equal increments of light 
 for fourteen days; she experi- 
 ences equal decrements for four- 
 teen more ; and, consequently, is 
 more or less visible for twenty- 
 eight days in all. But he supposes 
 a lunar revolution from conjunc- 
 tion to conjunction to be twen- 
 ty-nine days and an half ; or 
 thirty-six hours more than twen- 
 ty-eight days : which thirty-six 
 hours must be made up of two 
 periods of eighteen hours — just 
 before, and just after the change ; 
 at the end of the latter of which 
 the moon first becomes visible, 
 and at the end of the former, 
 first ceases to be so. 
 
 k Operum i. 673. 1. 35—43- 
 
 Y 4 
 
328 
 
 Dissertation Seventh. 
 
 ylverou KaO ’ a? /ecu eoprdXeiv Sielpijrai vo/jlco tci? pe- 
 
 ylarras kcu Sr/poreXeardrag eoprag^. 
 
 The time of the vernal equinox, however, must be 
 understood with some latitude. The true date of this 
 equinox, about B. C. 4, was March 22 or 23 : but its 
 nominal date, so long after as the time of Pliny the el- 
 der, was still a. d. viii. kal. Aprilis, March 25. It was 
 enough for the Jews, notwithstanding, in order that the 
 equinox might be considered as arrived, if the sun was 
 within such and such limits of the first point of Aries; 
 for the measure of which I refer to iEgidius Bucherius, 
 De Paschali Judaeorum Cyclo* 1 . The seventh Paschal 
 Homily ascribed to Chrysostom, which was written 
 after the council of Nice had fixed the vernal equinox 
 to March 21 , charges the Jews with still celebrating 
 the passover before the vernal equinox or after it, ac- 
 cording as they might have intercalated a month or 
 not, indifferently m ; and the various dates assigned, on 
 the authority of the supposed acts of Pilate, to the day 
 of our Lord’s passion, (all which must be conceived to 
 have coincided with the time of the passover, and the 
 fourteenth of the Jewish Nisan,) imply the same thing. 
 For these are, viii. kal. April. March 25: x. kal. April. 
 March 23: xm. kal. April. March 20: xv. kal. April. 
 March 18. Of these, the last but one, xm. kal. April. 
 March 20. is Epiphanius’ own date". 
 
 * The equinoctial and the 
 tropical points were all placed 
 in octavis partibus of their re- 
 spective signs. Vide Geminus, i: 
 Cleomedes, De Sublimibus, i. 6 : 
 Vitruvius,, De Architectural. 2 : 
 Columella, De Re Rustica, ix. 14: 
 
 Pliny, H. N. ii. 1 7: xviii. 59. 74: 
 Vegetius, De Re Militari, v. 9: 
 Fragmenta incerti auct. apud 
 Censorinum, ii : Julianus, Ora- 
 tio iv. 156. A — C: Servius, ad 
 Georg, i. 100. 205 : Scholia ad 
 Arati Phenomena, 499. 510: & c. 
 
 k i. 28. 1 . 26. 1 Doctrina Temporum, cap. iii. 342 — 350. m Operum 
 
 viii. ( Spuria ) 277. €. cap. 2. « Adv. Haereses, i. 420. A.B. Tessares- 
 
 caedecatitae, i. 
 
Computation of Jewish passovers, or other feasts. 329 
 
 The paschal limits, then, as fixed by Bucherius, are 
 March 18, before which the passover could not be an- 
 ticipated on the one hand, and April 16, after which it 
 could not be celebrated *on the other. The passover 
 might be kept on the 18th of March, but not on the 
 17th; and on the 16th of April, but not on the 17th. 
 The rule consequently, which I propose to follow in 
 computing such passovers as I am concerned with, will 
 be this : first, to ascertain the time, on the principle of 
 the mean lunar motions, when the moon was at the 
 full in any year, between March 18, and April 16 ; 
 which will determine the paschal full moon : and se- 
 condly, to assume that the Jewish ^ immedi- 
 
 ately prior to this, was the fourteenth vv^Orjuiepoi/ of 
 Nisan, and consequently, the day of the passover ; but 
 on no account to assume that this day of the passover 
 was the day when the moon was at the full. 
 
 The determination of the paschal day will enable us 
 to determine the day of Pentecost, and the beginning 
 of the feast of Tabernacles. The fifty-second day (reck- 
 oned from the fourteenth of Nisan, in any year, inclu- 
 sive) is the day of Pentecost in the same year; and six 
 mean lunations, or 177 days, reckoned from the time 
 when the moon was at the full in the month of Nisan 
 exclusive, will bring us to the time of the nominal full 
 moon again in the month of Tisri. This l?7th day 
 will coincide with the 15th of Tisri. 
 
 The determination of the paschal full moon may be 
 effected by means of eclipses; of which there is a large 
 and accurate table in the Art de verifier les Dates, 
 tome i. p. 53 ; to which I refer the reader. Where this 
 table, which begins with A. D. 1 only, would be of no 
 service to us, a similar table, calculated by Pingre, and 
 extending for one thousand years back before the Chris- 
 
330 
 
 Dissertation Seventh. 
 
 tian era, abundantly supplies the defect. This table 
 also may be found in the forty-second volume of the 
 Histoire de l’Academie Royale des Inscriptions et 
 Belles-Lettres. But if in a particular year, as is some- 
 times the case, these tables exhibit no eclipse, the dif- 
 ference of the length of the lunar and the solar year, 
 abstracted from the time of the mean full moon at the 
 requisite period, in the year before, will shew the time 
 of the mean full moon, at the same period again, in 
 the year after.- 
 
 The time of each of these eclipses is the time of the 
 true opposition — which must be the precise time of the 
 full moon as such, and not of the mean ; the opposition 
 being reckoned on the actual orbit of the moon, not 
 on the plane of the ecliptic. The time is calculated 
 primarily for the meridian of Paris ; but if we add to 
 this time two hours and eleven minutes more, it will 
 give the corresponding time for the meridian of Jeru- 
 salem. These times I shall express, whenever it is 
 necessary, by the quarters of the Jewish wyOrjv-epov, 
 upon which they happen to fall ; observing only that 
 the first of these quarters begins, and the last ends, 
 with sunset; the time of which, between March 18, 
 and April 16, the paschal terms, may be considered ei- 
 ther 6 p. m. according to our reckoning, or about one 
 hour later than that. It is not necessary to take all these 
 circumstances, in every instance, strictly into account. 
 There are but three passovers, those of U. C. 750, B.C. 
 4 ; and U. C. 780, A. 1). 27; and of U. C. 783, A. D. 
 30 ; where it is essentially important that we should 
 be exact to a day: and I think that, with respect to 
 all of these, the conclusion is sufficiently clear and 
 certain ; especially with respect to the first, as deduc- 
 ible from the eclipse, March 13, in that year, which 
 
Computation of Jewish passovers, or other feasts. 331 
 
 Petavius calculated expressly for the meridian of Jeru- 
 salem 0 . The magnitudes of the eclipses, though these 
 also are determined, it was altogether unnecessary in 
 any instance, to take into account; for the times of 
 the full moons, with which only we are concerned, are 
 not dependent on the quantity of the immersions, but 
 solely on the fact of the eclipses. 
 
 Table of certain Jewish passovers, or other feasts, from U. C. 
 
 714, B. C. 40, to U. C. 823, a! D. 70. 
 
 U. C. 714, B. C. 40. Paschal full moon, March 21, second 
 quarter. Passover, March 20. Pentecost, May 10. Taber- 
 nacles, September 14. 
 
 U. C. 717, B. C. 37. Paschal full moon, April 15. Taber- 
 nacles, October 9. Day of Atonement, October 4. 
 
 U. C. 734, B.C. 20. Paschal full moon, April 7, first 
 quarter. Passover, April 7. 
 
 U. C. 735, B. C. 19. Paschal full moon, March 28, fourth 
 quarter. Tabernacles, September 21. 
 
 U. C. 748, B. C. 6. Paschal full moon, April 4. Taber- 
 nacles, September 28. 
 
 U. C. 749, B. C. 5. Paschal full moon, March 23. Ta- 
 bernacles, September 16. 
 
 U. C. 750, B.C. 4. Paschal full moon, April 11, fourth 
 quarter. Passover, April 10. 
 
 U. C. 751, B.C. 3. Paschal full moon, March 31, first 
 quarter. Passover, March 31. Pentecost, May 21. 
 
 U.C. 760, A. D. 7. Paschal full moon, March 22, third 
 quarter. Passover, March 21. Pentecost, May 11. Taber- 
 nacles, September 15. 
 
 U. C. 761, A. D. 8. Paschal full moon, April 9, second 
 quarter. Passover, April 8. 
 
 0 Doctrina Temporum, Pars Prior, Lib. viii. 820. 21. 
 
Dissertation Seventh. 
 
 339 
 
 U. C. 7 62, A. D. 9. Paschal full moon, March 99, first 
 quarter. Passover, March 99- 
 
 U. C. 779, A. D. 26. Paschal full moon, March 91, first 
 quarter. Passover, March 91. Tabernacles, September 15. 
 
 U. C. 780, A. D. 97. Paschal full moon, April 9, first 
 quarter. Passover, April 9. Pentecost, May 30. Taber- 
 nacles, October 4. 
 
 U.C. 781, A. D. 98. Paschal full moon, March 99, first 
 quarter. Passover, March 99. Pentecost, May 19. Taber- 
 nacles, September 93. 
 
 U. C. 789, A. D. 99- Paschal full moon, April 16, first 
 quarter. Passover, April 16. Pentecost, June 6. Taber- 
 nacles, October 11. 
 
 U.C. 783, A.D. 30. Paschal full moon, April 6, third 
 quarter. Passover, April 5. Pentecost, May 96. 
 
 U. C. 786, A. D. 33. Paschal full moon, April 3, fourth 
 quarter. Passover, April 9. 
 
 U. C. 790, A. D. 37. Paschal full moon, March 90, fourth 
 quarter. Passover, March 19. Pentecost, May 9. Tabernacles, 
 September 13. 
 
 U.C. 791, A.D. 38. Paschal full moon, April 8, fourth 
 quarter. Passover, April 7. 
 
 U. C. 793, A. D. 40. Paschal full moon, April 15, fourth 
 quarter. Tabernacles, October 9. 
 
 U. C. 794, A. D. 41. Paschal full moon, April 4, first 
 quarter. Passover, April 4. Pentecost, May 95. 
 
 U. C. 796, A. D. 43. Paschal full moon, April 13, second 
 quarter. Passover, April 19. Pentecost, June 9. 
 
 U.C. 797, A. D. 44. Paschal full moon, April 1, second 
 quarter. Passover, March 31. Pentecost, May 91. 
 
 U.C. 809, A. D. 49. Paschal full moon, April 6, fourth 
 quarter. Passover. April 5. Pentecost, May 96. 
 
 U. C. 803, A. D. 50. Paschal full moon, March 97, third 
 quarter. Passover, March 96. 
 
Computation of Jewish passovers , or other feasts. 333 
 
 U. C. 804, A. D. 51. Paschal full moon, April 15, second 
 quarter. Passover, April 14. 
 
 U. C. 805, A. D. 52. Paschal full moon, April 4, second 
 quarter. Passover, April 3. Pentecost, May 24. 
 
 U. C. 809, A. D. 56. Paschal full moon, March 20, third 
 quarter. Passover, March 19- Pentecost, May 9- 
 
 U. C. 811, A. D. 58. Paschal full moon, March 28, fourth 
 quarter. Tabernacles, September 21. 
 
 U. C. 815, A. D. 62. Paschal full moon, April 12, fourth 
 quarter. Passover, April 11. Tabernacles, October 6. 
 
 U. C. 819, A. D. 66. Paschal full moon, March 29, fourth 
 quarter. Passover, March 28. Tabernacles, September 22. 
 
 U. 0. 823, A. D, 70. Paschal full moon, April 14, third 
 quarter. Passover, April 13. Pentecost, June 3. Tabernacles, 
 October 8. 
 
DISSERTATION VIII. 
 
 On the fifteenth year of Tiberius Ccesar. 
 
 If the time of the death of Herod was truly the 
 spring of the year U. C. 751, B.C. 3, the difficulty con- 
 nected with the literal construction of Luke iii. 1 , com- 
 pared with Luke iii. 23, becomes apparent. To make 
 the most favourable supposition w T hich we can ; viz. 
 that John began his ministry, and that our Lord was 
 baptized, in the first half of Tiberius’ fifteenth ; yet if 
 this fifteenth be dated from the death of Augustus, 
 August 19, U. C. 767, and our Lord was thirty years 
 old at his baptism, he was thirty years old in the latter 
 half of U. C. 781 : in which case he must have been 
 born in the latter half of U. C. 751 ; six months at 
 least after the death of Herod. On the other hand, if 
 he could not have been born less than six months be- 
 fore the death of Herod, he could not have been born 
 later than the last half of U. C. 750 ; in which case 
 he would be thirty-one years old in the latter half of 
 U. C. 781. 
 
 In explanation of this difficulty, which is after all 
 more seeming than real, we must have recourse in the 
 first place to the literal construction of the words of 
 St. Luke; according to which, the fifteenth year of the 
 vye/uovla of Tiberius Caesar can never be shewn to de- 
 note the fifteenth year of his sole and exclusive supre- 
 macy, as bearing date only from the death of his pre- 
 decessor Augustus — but would be just as applicable to 
 the possession and continuance of an authority which 
 had begun a certain length of time before. It will not be 
 contended that the word tye/novla alone must necessarily 
 convey that meaning ; and not be as pertinent to the 
 
On the fifteenth year of Tiberius Ccesar. 335 
 
 description of a divided, as of an undivided supremacy 
 of any kind. If it is not impossible for two persons to 
 be at the head of an empire at once, it is not impos- 
 sible for two persons to be enjoying the same riyeyovla 
 at once : and the years of this ^yeyorla in either might 
 be dated by an historian accordingly. The difficulties, 
 which have been raised on this question, have arisen 
 principally from not attending to this distinction. 
 
 If it can be made out by adequate testimony, that 
 two years before the decease of Augustus, Tiberius was 
 actually associated with him, not verbo or nomine te- 
 nus , but in the bona fide administration of the em- 
 pire ; with the same power and privileges which he 
 possessed himself ; I know not from what date, but 
 that of this association, an evangelical historian who 
 was duly careful of historical exactness in his state- 
 ments, could possibly deduce the years of his reign : or 
 why it should be considered an instance of inaccuracy 
 that the thirteenth of Tiberius, as dated from the death 
 of Augustus, should be called his fifteenth, as dated 
 from this association. The matter of fact would still 
 be undeniable, viz. that the rjye/uLovla, the bona fide and 
 actual sovereignty — but in no sense of the term the 
 sole and undivided sovereignty — of Tiberius Caesar had 
 lasted so long : that he had been declared emperor at 
 Rome, he had been received and acknowledged in the 
 provinces, and had exercised the functions of govern- 
 ment, whether with or without a colleague, for that 
 length of time. 
 
 There is no need, then, to defend the assertion of 
 St. Luke on the score of the national prejudices or 
 national recollections whether of Jews or of Asiatic 
 Greeks ; though it may be capable of proof that almost 
 at every period of the several Dynasties which succes- 
 sively governed the east ; among Assyrians, Egypt- 
 
336 
 
 Dissertation Eighth. 
 
 ians, Persians, Greeks # , the Israelites of old, and the 
 Parthians a of that very day ; the association of the 
 children of the reigning rnonarchs in the empire, with 
 their fathers, was no new or unexampled occurrence. 
 I would defend it solely on the ground of that scrupu- 
 lous regard to truth in the least matters as well as in 
 the greatest, which we should have a right to expect 
 from an inspired historian ; and which is the predo- 
 minant characteristic of St. Luke. Speaking, there- 
 fore, of the duration of Tiberius’ government, (which 
 by no means implied his sole government,) he could 
 not deliberately call that year his thirteenth , which he 
 knew to be really his fifteenth . 
 
 The only question, then, which we have to discuss, 
 is this ; whether the fact or the time of such an ad- 
 mission, can be determined with sufficient exactness. 
 The fact, I think, may be considered as clearly ascer- 
 tained by the authority of two competent witnesses — 
 Velleius Paterculus b and Suetonius c . The time may 
 require to be a little more minutely considered. 
 
 The date of Tiberius’ proconsular empire is inti- 
 mately connected with the date of his triumph ; up to 
 which I shall endeavour to conduct the train of events 
 from some known point previously assumed. 
 
 I. On the v. kal. of July, in the consular year of 
 Catus and Saturninus, U. C. 757, Tiberius was adopted 
 by Augustus — invested with the Tribunician authority 
 for ten years f — and shortly after dispatched into 
 Germany d . 
 
 * * AttiOl npos * Avrioxov to v 2eXeu- Operum vii. 344. Cf. Dio, liii. 
 kov , npos i Apra^ep^r)v tov Kvpov a- T 7 : Appian, De B. C. i. 103. 
 SeA<jE>oV aneAOe npos UroXepcuov tov f Tacitus also, Ann. vi. 51, 
 &i\ddik(pov’ (Keivovs favres oi nare- virtually places the adoption in 
 pes fiao-iXc'is avr/yopevcrav : Plutarch, question in the eleventh year be- 
 De Fortuna Alexandri Magni, fore U.C. 767; that is, in U.C. 
 
 a Dio, xlix. 23. Tacitus, Ann. ii. 3. b ii. 121. e Tiberius, 21, 1. 
 
 41 Veil. Pat. ii. 103. Dio, lv. 13. Cf. 12. 22. 
 
337 
 
 On the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar. 
 
 II. When three years of the campaigns in Germany 
 were over and the fourth year was at hand, Pannonia 
 revolted ; and Tiberius was dispatched thither. This 
 war began consequently U. C. 760 e . 
 
 III. After this, there is mention in Velleius of one 
 summer, the summer of U. C. 760. (cap. 112.) ; of the 
 winter after that (113.); of a second summer, the 
 summer of U. C. 761. (114.); of the autumn of the 
 same year (114.); of another summer, the summer of 
 U.C. 7 62, when operations were transferred into Dal- 
 matia (115.) ; and of the close of the war the same 
 year ; consequently, U. C. 762 (117.) * 
 
 IV. Within five days’ time s from the conclusion of 
 this war, the news was received of the disaster which 
 befell Varus in Germany. The precise date of this 
 disaster is mentioned by no ancient historian ; and it 
 is a mistake, on the supposed authority of Florus h , 
 who warrants no such conclusion, to place it upon the 
 same day with the battle of Cannae, which was iv. non. 
 Sextiles ; August 2nd 1 . The year, however, was un- 
 questionably U. C. 762.f 
 
 757. The Amiternine calendar 
 (p. 1 10.) dates it June 26, one day 
 earlier than Velleius Paterculus. 
 
 Dio, lv. 13. lvi. 28: Tibe- 
 rius was again invested with 
 the Tribunitia Potestas, for ten 
 years, U. C. 766 : which proves 
 that the first investiture, for the 
 same term of years, had been 
 U.C. 757. 
 
 * Dio’s account of this war in 
 Pannonia and Dalmatia, begin- 
 ning U. C. 760, (see lv. 29. 30,) 
 and ending U.C. 762, (lv. 33. lvi. 
 1 — 16. Cf. 10, 11,) is not incon- 
 
 sistent with that of Velleius. 
 Both begin and end alike : and 
 Dio also attests that the disaster 
 of Varus happened immediately 
 after its close. See lvi. 18. 
 
 f This date agrees with the 
 account of Tacitus k , who shews 
 that it was Sextum post cladis 
 annum — in the seventh year 
 after their destruction — that 
 Germanicus, U. C. 768, about the 
 middle of the year or later 1, 
 paid the last honours to the re- 
 mains of the Legions. It agrees 
 also with another note of time, 
 
 e Veil. Pat. ii. 104 — 109. no — 11-2. Dio, lv. 30. 33. Suet. Tiberius, 16. 
 K Veil. Pat. ii. 117. Suet. Tiberius, 17. h iv. 12, 35. i Aulus Gellius, 
 Noc. Att. v. 17. If Ann. i. 62. 1 lb. 63. 70. 
 
 VOL. I. Z 
 
338 
 
 Dissertation JEig/i t It . 
 
 That the time of the year, likewise, was the close of 
 the summer, may be very probably collected from 
 Dio i J ; the two former of which testimonies imply that 
 the autumnal equinox was at hand ; the latter, that 
 the Ludi Circenses, in the due course of things, would 
 have fallen out soon after the event which suspended 
 them for the present. 
 
 V. The misfortune in Germany delayed for a time the 
 celebration of Tiberius’ Triumph, due to his successes in 
 Pannonia. It is shewn by Suetonius * that he returned 
 to the city the same year in which this event happened, 
 and, consequently, U. C. 7 62 ; and that he departed 
 again soon after, to take the command of the frontiers 
 against the Germans. The same thing is implied by 
 Dio also r ; who after mentioning Tiberius’ departure 
 to Dalmatia, yet without noticing his return to Rome, 
 shews that he was again there subsequently to the 
 destruction of Varus. But there is no proof, even in 
 Suetonius, that he undertook any expedition into Ger- 
 many, or renewed hostilities, before the next year ; 
 and indeed, it was too late in U. C. 762, when the 
 misfortune was sustained, for this to be the case. 
 
 VI. There is mention in Paterculus s of one cam- 
 
 U.C. 8 1 1 . exeunte m — Quinqua- 
 ginta annorum obsequio ; as re- 
 ferred to the same date. The 
 fiftieth year current from U. C. 
 762, was U. C. 81 1. There is 
 another passage to the same 
 effect, which belongs to U. C. 
 803 : Aucta lsetitia, quod quos- 
 dam e clade Variana quadrage- 
 simum post annum servitio ex- 
 emerant n . Quadragesimum post 
 annum means in the forty first 
 year : and forty-one added to 
 
 m Ann. xiii. 55. n Ibid. xii. a;, 
 
 q Tiberius, 17. 1 8. r lyi. 12. 23. 
 
 762, brings us to 803. The same 
 thing is implied by the state- 
 ment respecting the length of 
 the reign of Arminius; which 
 Tacitus makes twelve years from 
 the time of the liberation of 
 Germany by the destruction of 
 Varus, to the time of his death". 
 This death is placed apparently, 
 U. C. 772: and probably hap- 
 pened U. C. 773 : whence, to 
 U. C. 762, there were twelve 
 years inclusive of both. 
 
 O Ibid. ii. 88. p lvi. 20. 21. 24. 
 
 * ii. 120. 
 
On the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar. 339 
 
 paign of Tiberius in Germany, and of his return into 
 winter quarters ; which is consequently the campaign 
 of U. C. 763, passed over by Dio in silence, with no 
 further mention than that of the dedication of the 
 Temple of Concord by Tiberius, tm erei 1 : which 
 Suetonius u on the contrary places U. C. 765 # . 
 
 After this there was another campaign x , which was 
 that of U. C. 764, when, according to Dio, Lepidus 
 and Taurus were consuls, and Tiberius remained in 
 Germany, y-exP 1 T0 ^ ycT07rcopov, as late even as the ix. 
 kal. of October, September the 23d ; the birthday of 
 Augustus - v . 
 
 VII. The next circumstance, according to Velleius 2 , 
 was the decree of the senate, which conveyed to Ti- 
 berius the imperial authority in question : Cum .... 
 et senatus populusque Romanus, postulante patre ejus, 
 ut sequum ei jus in omnibus provinces exercitibusque 
 esset quam erat ipsi, decreto complexus esset : which 
 decree, as being posterior to the close of this campaign, 
 it would be unreasonable to suppose was past before 
 the latter half of U. C. 764, or rather the beginning 
 of U. C. 765, at the soonest. 
 
 VIII. Lastly, there is an account of Tiberius’ Tri- 
 umph, which Suetonius a , by placing post biennium , 
 that is, two full years, (according to his usage in other- 
 instances, and the necessary import of the context in 
 this instance,) after the return U. C. 762, proves to 
 have been celebrated U. C. 765 ; which Velleius him- 
 self was witness to, nine years after Tiberius’ mission 
 
 * The Prsenestine Calendar here an hiatus in Dio. The con- 
 places it January 16, Dolabella sulship of Dolabella and Silanus, 
 et Silano Coss. U. C. 763. It is contrary to his usage, is not so 
 probable, however, that there is much as mentioned by him b . 
 
 t lvi. 1. 25. u Tiberius, 20. x Veil. Pat. ii. 12 1. y Ivi. 25. 30. z ii. 12 1. 
 a Tiberius, 20. b lvi. 1. 25. Cf. the Fasti Verrii Flacci, page 1. and 105. 
 
 z 2 
 
340 
 
 Dissertation Eighth. 
 
 into Germany, U. C. 757, inclusive of that year b ; and 
 which the course of events hitherto shews could not 
 have been celebrated earlier. 
 
 IX. It is true that Suetonius, even after the men- 
 tion of this Triumph, has the following statement with 
 respect to Tiberius’ proconsular empire 0 ; Ac non multo 
 post lege per consules lata, ut provincias cum Augusto 
 communiter administraret, simulque censuin ageret, 
 condito lustro in Illyricum profectus est. This last 
 census is placed by Eusebius, in Chronico, in the fifty- 
 fifth of Augustus, U. C. 765. The Ancyran monu- 
 ment proves it to have been concluded, or the lustrum 
 conditum esse, U. C. 767 d ; in which case, the census 
 could not well have begun later than U. C. 766 in - 
 eunte , or U. C. 765 exeunte . It was begun therefore 
 U. C. 765 ; but it was not completed and the lustrum 
 conditum , until U. C. 767 ; about one hundred days 
 or three or four months, before the death of Augus- 
 tus e . This, then, was likewise the time when Tibe- 
 rius set out for Illyricum ; before the conclusion of 
 which journey he was recalled by the news of the 
 sickness of Augustus f . 
 
 There is consequently some difference between Vel- 
 leius and Suetonius ; one of whom seems to place Tibe- 
 rius’ admission to an equality with Augustus before 
 his Triumph, and the other after it. But they both 
 assert the fact of the admission itself : which is what 
 we are chiefly concerned with. The difference between 
 them affects only the circumstance of the time : nor 
 is this difference, as it appears to me, irreconcilable. 
 Both the statements may be consistent with one another. 
 I observe no mention in Velleius of any law as such — 
 any particular agency of the consuls in office — or any 
 
 b ii. 104. c Tiberius, 2 1 . ‘l Tacitus, iv. 840. e Suet. Augustus, 97. 
 
 Dio, lvi. 29. f Tacitus, Ann. i. 5. Suet. Tiberius, 21. Dio, lvi. 31. 
 
On the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar. 341 
 
 allusion to the holding of a census, as well as govern- 
 ing the armies and provinces : nor on the other hand, 
 any mention in Suetonius of a request of Augustus, or 
 decree of the senate. I think therefore that Velleius 
 refers to a prior occasion, and Suetonius to a later ; upon 
 the former of which a senatus decretum only was past, 
 and upon the latter a regular law. The former then 
 was preliminary to the latter : which being the more 
 solemn and regular measure of the two ; the ratifica- 
 tion and even enlargement of the other ; it is from the 
 date of the latter that Tiberius’ proconsular empire 
 must begin and proceed : and this date, as we have 
 seen, was U. C. 765, nearer perhaps to the middle 
 than to the beginning of it. There is no reason to sup- 
 pose that Tiberius was at Rome when the decree was 
 passed ; but he was certainly there when the law 
 was 
 
 There are two or three allusions in Dio, belonging 
 to the period in question, which seem to imply that 
 some such event as this advancement of Tiberius had 
 recently taken place. 
 
 I. During the consulate of Gennanicus, Augustus, 
 
 * The assertion of Dio that 
 Germanicus, who had previously 
 been with Tiberius in Germany, 
 before his consulship,^’ oXov avrov 
 rov erovs ov npos tt)v a^Loocnv .... 
 
 g, relates to his conduct in 
 office — quod civiliter se gesse - 
 rit — not to the time for which 
 he held it : and therefore can- 
 not prove that either he or Ti- 
 berius was in Rome so early as 
 the first of January, U. C. 765. 
 The latter had not triumphed 
 before the decree, but he had 
 triumphed before the law ; and 
 
 the most probable supposition 
 is, that the decree was prepara- 
 tory to his triumph ; and passed 
 at the beginning of the consular 
 year, U. C. 765, itself. Perhaps 
 this conclusion is confirmed by 
 the true date of his triumph, 
 which the Prsenestine Calen- 
 dar, as quoted by Eckhel h , 
 places on the sixteenth of Ja- 
 nuary, U. C. 765. The law, 
 on the other hand, might be 
 passed a few months later : the 
 consuls, by whom it was passed, 
 being Germanicus and Capito. 
 
 & lvi. 26. h Doctrina Numm. Vett. vi. 186. Cf. the Fasti Verrii Flacci, p. 1. 105. 
 
 z 3 
 
342 
 
 Dissertation Eighth. 
 
 on the plea of his own infirmities, excused himself 
 from any longer attendance upon public business ; but 
 recommended Germanicus to the senate, and the senate 
 to Tiberius 1 . 
 
 II. There was this year, while the Tiber was over- 
 flowing the Circus, iravriyvpi^, k'^co rwv vevo/uueriuLevcov^. The 
 time of this extraordinary celebrity is determined to 
 the spring, by the mention of ra ,r A peia, or the Ludi 
 Martiales, which ensued about the same period. The 
 old Roman calendar fixes the time of these games to 
 iv. id. Maias, that is, May 12 : the place where they 
 were held being the Circus. These were the games of 
 Mars Bisultor, or Twice the Avenger; instituted or 
 revived by Augustus after the recovery of the stand- 
 ards U. C. 734 1 . These extra festivities, then, would 
 be about the time of Tiberius’ association in the em- 
 pire ; and might commemorate that event itself. 
 
 III. At the close of this year — because at the begin- 
 ning of the consular year of Silius and Plancus, U. C. 
 766, when Augustus’ fourth decennium expired, and 
 his fifth began 111 — there is such a mention of Tiberius, 
 as would imply his equality to the emperor himself. 
 Augustus had requested from the senate a privy- 
 council of twenty members, who were to act with him 
 through the year ; instead of the council of fifteen, 
 which he was before accustomed to renew every six 
 months 11 . The senate conceded the request; decree- 
 ing, over and above, that whatsoever should be ordered 
 by Tiberius, by this council, and the consuls for the 
 time being, the consules designate and any others 
 whom Augustus might choose to consult, in conjunction 
 with himself — should be of the same authority as if 
 sanctioned by all the senate 0 . 
 
 i Dio, lvi. 2 6. k lb. 27. 1 lb. hv. 8. Ovid, Fast. v. 595 — 598. 
 
 Cf. the Maffaean Calendar, p. 109. ni Dio, lvi. 28. Cf. liii. 2. 16. liv. 12. lv. 
 6. 12. n lb. liii. 21. Suet. Augustus, 35. o Dio, lvi. 28. 
 
On the fifteenth year of Tiberius Ccesur. 
 
 343 
 
 Again, there is a remarkable statement in Suetonius 
 and Pliny, who are confirmed also by Seneca?; which, 
 being compared with another in Tacitus demon- 
 strates that Tiberius was already Princeps , and exer- 
 cising the functions of royalty, by disposing of offices 
 of patronage and trust, U. C. 765 itself. Lucius Piso, 
 prefect of the city, died U. C. 785 ; and as the context 
 proves, after 785 medium : having held his office pre- 
 viously viginti per annos. If so, he was appointed 
 after U. C. 765, medium. But his appointment is 
 unanimously attributed by the abovementioned au- 
 thorities to Tiberius; and to Tiberius already Prin- 
 ceps; and by Suetonius in particular, to Tiberius In 
 ipsa publicorum morum correctione ; that is, when a 
 census was going on. If so, Tiberius was both Prin- 
 ceps and Censor U. C. 765. At the same time, accord- 
 ing to Suetonius, he either made, or promised to make, 
 Pomponius Flaccus propraetor of Syria : and this pro- 
 mise must some time have been performed ; for Pom- 
 ponius died in office there, U. C. 786 * r . 
 
 * By referring to Eckhel, De 
 Doctrina Numorum Veterum s , 
 it will be seen that there is some 
 reason to believe in the exist- 
 ence of two coins of Antioch, 
 which bear date 43 and 44, as 
 referred to the Actian era of 
 U. C. 723 ; and exhibit the head 
 of Tiberius, with the title of 
 2EBA2T02, or Augustus. Each 
 of these coins must have been 
 struck before the death of Au- 
 gustus, U. C. 767 : the former 
 between the autumn of U. C. 765, 
 and the autumn of U. C. 766 ; 
 the iatter between the autumn 
 of U. C. 766, and the autumn 
 of U. C. 767. 
 
 If these coins were genuine, 
 they would be demonstrative upon 
 the question whether Tiberius 
 was associated with Augustus, 
 and recognised in the provinces 
 as emperor, before the first half 
 of U. C. 766, at the latest: and 
 though Eckhel is inclined to 
 doubt of their actual existence, 
 I confess that his reasons appear 
 to me unsatisfactory ; and that 
 there is still some ground for 
 believing them real. They are 
 produced on the authority of 
 Andreas Morellius, to whose ge- 
 neral accuracy the highest tes- 
 timony is borne both here and 
 elsewhere, (vol. i. civ.) They 
 
 P Suet. Tiberius, 42. Pliny, H. N. xiv. 28. Sen. Epist. 83. §. 12, 13. Q Ann. 
 vi. 10, 11. Vide also Veil. Pat. ii. 98. r Tacitus, Ann. vi. 27. s iji. 276. 
 
 z 4 
 
344 
 
 Dissert a tion Eig/t tfi . 
 
 The fact, then, of Tiberius’ association in the empire 
 with Augustus, seems to be too well attested to admit 
 of being called into question ; and the time requires, 
 with great reason, to be placed either U. C. 765, in - 
 eunte, or not later than U. C. 765, medio. The fifteenth 
 year of his reign, as deduced from either of these be- 
 ginnings, would necessarily coincide, either wholly or 
 in part, with his thirteenth, as deduced from the 
 month of August, U. C. 767. And this being the case, 
 it would be abundantly sufficient both to explain and 
 to verify the computation of St. Luke. 
 
 coincide critically with the pe- 
 riod by which there is reason, 
 on other and independent testi- 
 mony, to presume that Tibe- 
 rius would be recognised in the 
 provinces as the colleague and 
 equal of Augustus ; and conse- 
 quently as entitled in his own 
 right to the name of 2 e^aaros, as 
 well as he. Nor is it any insu- 
 perable difficulty, that the first 
 coin of Tiberius, after the death 
 of Augustus, exhibits the mo- 
 nogram A ; and the third, from 
 the same date, the monogram T * ; 
 though these monograms might 
 be intended to denote the first 
 and third years of his reign, 
 dated from the death of his pre- 
 decessor, respectively. These 
 characters appear on none other 
 of his coins ; and therefore they 
 were speedily laid aside; whence, 
 we may conjecture they were 
 
 purposely placed on these two, 
 to mark the beginning of Tibe- 
 rius’ sole reign, and the years 
 which proceeded from that point, 
 in contradistinction to the two 
 which had already been passed 
 with Augustus, and made the 
 two last of the reign of that em- 
 peror, as well as the two first of 
 the succeeding one. 
 
 Lastly, there must have been 
 calculations of the length of 
 Tiberius’ reign, which made it 
 more than twenty-two, or twen- 
 ty-three years; the utmost length 
 which can be assigned to it, as 
 bearing date from the death of 
 Augustus. Clemens Alexan- 
 drinus mentions this latter 
 statement of its duration, and 
 another, which reckoned it at 
 twenty-six years, six months, 
 and nineteen days. Opera, i. 
 406. 1 . 1 and 13. Strom, i. 21. 
 
 t Eekhel, iii. 278. 
 
DISSERTATION IX. 
 
 On the beginning of the government of Pontius Pilate. 
 
 We are informed by Josephus a that, for the first 
 twenty-two years of his reign, the emperor Tiberius 
 appointed only two procurators of J udaea ; the first of 
 whom was Valerius Gratus h , and the second was Pon- 
 tius Pilate. Gratus continued eleven years in office, 
 and Pilate ten c : both together consequently were in 
 office twenty-one years in all ; and the last year of 
 their united administration coincided with the twenty- 
 second of Tiberius. The last year of Pilate therefore 
 was the twenty-second of Tiberius ; and consequently 
 his first was the thirteenth. The truth of this con- 
 clusion may be more fully evinced as follows. 
 
 The predecessor of Gratus was Annius Rufus ; ap- 
 pointed indeed under Augustus, but continued in office 
 (for reasons which will appear hereafter) one year after 
 his death. The first year of Gratus then would coin- 
 cide with the second of Tiberius ; and consequently 
 his eleventh with the twelfth. The first year of Pi- 
 late, therefore, would coincide with the thirteenth. 
 
 There is no instance in contemporary history, of a 
 journey’s being undertaken, or of a governor’s being 
 dispatched, under ordinary circumstances, into any of 
 the transmarine provinces, except in the spring or the 
 summer of the year ; but many instances to the con- 
 trary. The Acts of the Apostles supply one example 
 in the case of Festus, and Josephus another, in the 
 case of Albinus, of procurators of Judaea in particular, 
 who arrived in the autumn, and therefore must have 
 set out in the spring. Cicero, U. C. 703, set out to 
 
 * Ant. xviii. vi. 5. lr xviii. ii. 2 . c xviii. iv. 2. 
 
346 
 
 Dissertation Ninth. 
 
 his province, which was Cilicia Aspera , on the kalends 
 of May; and arrived in it on the last day of July d . 
 The younger Pliny, in the reign of Trajan, arrived in 
 his province, Bithynia, only xv. kal. Octobres e ; though 
 that was somewhat later than usual. Tacitus also has 
 many cases in point ; as, for instance, the mission of 
 Germanicus and Piso f , U. C. 770 and 771. 
 
 The truth is that Tiberius, U.C. 768, issued a gene- 
 ral order, that all governors of provinces should repair 
 to their destinations, that is, set out from Italy, before 
 the first of June£: which general order the emperor 
 Claudius, U.C. 795, limited to the first of April h : and, 
 U. C. 796, finding that that was too early, extended to 
 the middle of April 1 . We may take it for granted 
 therefore that neither Gratus, nor Pilate, nor any other 
 procurator of Judsea, in the regular course of things 
 would be dispatched to take possession of his govern- 
 ment, except in the spring or summer quarter of the 
 year. And this is one reason why Rufus continued in 
 office a year after the death of Augustus ; for, as this 
 event had happened on the 19th of August, U. C. 767, 
 no successor could well be dispatched before the spring 
 of U. C. 768 ; though the military commotions in Pan- 
 nonia and Germany, by which the rest of the pre- 
 ceding year was occupied, had permitted the emperor 
 to send one. Negotium magnum est navigare, atque 
 mense Quintili, says Cicero, writing to Atticus k : and, 
 according to Philo 1 , after the autumnal equinox, except 
 unto such as must venture to sail at all hazards, the 
 sea was as good as shut up. 
 
 Upon this principle, the arrival of Gratus would be 
 about the middle of summer, U. C. 768, in Tiberius’ 
 
 d Epp. ad Fam. et ad Atticum, passim. e Epp. x. 28. f Ann. ii. 41. 43. 
 53. 55. & Dio, lvii. 14. h lx. 11. 10. i Ibid. 17. k Lib. v. xii. 
 
 ' Operum ii. 548. 1 . 14 — 19. De Virtutibus. 
 
On the beginning of the government of Pontius Pilate. 347 
 
 second year ; and the arrival of Pilate, about the same 
 time in U. C. 779 , Tiberius’ twelfth. After the feast of 
 Tabernacles, then, U. C. 779 , or even before it, in the 
 thirteenth of this emperor’s reign, when John the Bap- 
 tist entered on his ministry, Pilate, as St. Luke as- 
 serts 8 , would actually be already in office. The feast 
 of Tabernacles, U. C. 779 , began about September 15, 
 and expired about September 22 t . 
 
 When, therefore, it is said in the Antiquities v , that 
 Pilate, Setca erecriv Siarpl^a 9 e7r l ’lovSalas? — for ten years 
 having continued in Judaea — was at length dismissed 
 by Vitellius, and sent to Rome, to answer before Tibe- 
 rius for his conduct towards the Samaritans ; in the 
 first place, the words imply that he had been ten full 
 years in Judaea ; and, consequently, if he was deposed 
 in the autumn of Tiberius’ twenty-second year, that 
 he arrived by the autumn of his twelfth. Secondly, 
 before he arrived at Rome Tiberius was dead ; that is, 
 he did not arrive before the 16th of March in Tibe- 
 rius’ twenty-third year ; and consequently, he had to 
 travel from Judaea to Italy in the winter season: in 
 which case he would be three or four months at least 
 on the road, as it will be shewn by a number of ex- 
 amples in a future Dissertation ; and he might be more. 
 
 I am aware, indeed, that Dr. Lardner w seems to 
 consider it almost a certain fact that Pilate was re- 
 moved in the twenty-first of Tiberius ; whence it is 
 plain that this careful and judicious critic had over- 
 looked the passage referred to above x ; which proves 
 that Pilate’s last year of office, and the twenty-second 
 of Tiberius, began and expired together. In other re- 
 spects also the arguments in favour of his opinion are 
 of little weight. 
 
 s iii. i. t Diss. vii. v xviii. iv. 2. w Credibility, book ii. chap. 3. 
 §. 3. 1. 840 — 855. * Ant. Jud. xviii. vi. 5. 
 
348 
 
 Dissertation Ninth. 
 
 Josephus’ account of the transactions in the East 
 between Vitellius and Artabanus, though posterior to 
 the removal of Pilate, is not related as the narrative of a 
 series of events consecutive upon that ; for on that prin- 
 ciple the death of Philip the tetrarch must be related as 
 consecutive upon the removal of Pilate; and this removal 
 must be placed before the twentieth of Tiberius, or not 
 later than U. C. 786 exeunte , at the latest. The account 
 of these transactions in Josephus? coincides with Taci- 
 tus, Ann. vi. 31 — 44. beginning with the end of U.C. 
 787, and ending with the summer of U. C. 789; and 
 comprising 2 , either wholly or in part, the particulars 
 of two campaigns # . With the time of the final retreat 
 of Tiridates the Antiquities come in a to complete the 
 account of Tacitus. Tiberius’ orders, that Vitellius 
 should make peace with Artabanus, could not have 
 been issued before the termination of the attempt to 
 place Tiridates on the throne of Parthia; that is, before 
 the summer of U. C. 789. at least; and then , I appre- 
 hend, they were transmitted, and executed accordingly. 
 If so, their execution would coincide with the autumn 
 of U. C. 789 ; the very time of the removal of Pilate : 
 and it was this coincidence between the two events, 
 which most probably induced Josephus to pass directly 
 from the one to the other. 
 
 All the notice which Dio has taken of the same 
 events, lies between the year U. C. 788, and the begin- 
 ning of the consular year 789; and it ends with Ar- 
 tabanus’ recovery of Armenia by the help of the Scy- 
 thians b . It is manifest therefore that it leads to the 
 
 * Josephus, indeed, gives the time of which, however, belongs 
 first part of the history of Arta- to U. C. 769. Cf. Tacitus, Ann. 
 banus. Ant. Jud. xviii. ii. 4: the ii. 1 — 4. 58. 68. 
 
 y Ant. xviii. iv. 4. 5. 
 
 z Ann. vi. 38. 
 
 a xviii. iv. 5. 
 
 b lviii. 25. 26. 
 
On the beginning of the government of Pontius Pilate. 349 
 
 same conclusion ; viz. that the orders of Tiberius could 
 not have been transmitted before U. C. 789. ineuntem. 
 There are other circumstances, however, related by 
 him, in which he is confirmed by Suetonius 0 , which 
 manifestly belong to some year ensuing, in the reign 
 of Caius, but while Vitellius was still governor of Sy- 
 ria: which therefore could not be later than U. C. 792 ; 
 and, as I shall shew hereafter, was most probably 
 U.C. 790. 
 
 The argument of Lardner from the Antiquities, xv. 
 xi. 4, is perhaps the least conclusive of all. For Josephus 
 has there committed a mistake in another instance, 
 which is sufficient to discredit his testimony as to any 
 thing else there stated : viz. in supposing the rescript of 
 Claudius concerning the custody of the pontifical robes 
 to have been directed to Vitellius ; as if Vitellius was 
 then still president of Syria. Vitellius was never pre- 
 sident later than the third of Caius, when he was su- 
 perseded by Petronius : and the presidents after Pe- 
 tronius, until past this period in the reign of Claudius, 
 were Marsus, Longinus, and Quadratus. The rescript 
 in question was transmitted to one of these last d ; and 
 as I believe, to Longinus. 
 
 If the account, however, is to be trusted in one re- 
 spect, it is to be trusted in another : and it states ex- 
 pressly that, if Vitellius wrote to Tiberius at all, he 
 wrote from Jerusalem ; and consequently on one of the 
 two occasions, when he is seen to have been present 
 there; viz. either at the passover e next upon the re- 
 moval of Pilate, or else at the ensuing feast f ; which 
 the very time of the year, as the season chosen for mili- 
 tary operations, and the fact of the death of Tiberius, 
 which happened in March (not quite two months be- 
 
 c Dio, lix. 27. Suet. Caius, 14. Vitellius, 2. d Ant. Jud. xx. i. 1. 2. e xviii. 
 iv. 3. f xviii. v. 3. 
 
V 
 
 350 Dissertation Ninth. 
 
 fore it), would prove to be a Pentecost ; and in this 
 instance the Pentecost of U. C. 790, the first of Caius. 
 The death of Tiberius happened March 16 in that 
 year, and the Jewish passover was celebrated March 
 19 g . It was impossible therefore that the news of his 
 death could have been received in Judaea by the feast of 
 the passover, only three days after it happened. But it 
 might have been received by the Pentecost next ensuing; 
 which would be May 9 ; fifty-four days later. 
 
 If Vitellius wrote from Jerusalem on the first of 
 those occasions, he would write to Tiberius as still 
 alive; but his letter would find him dead; and if any 
 answer was returned to it, it would be returned by his 
 successor. It is possible then that the letter, which 
 communicated the petition of the Jews, might be writ- 
 ten to Tiberius ; but that the permission about which 
 they wrote was conceded by Caius ; in whose court 
 Herod Agrippa was present and high in favour at the 
 time. The rescript of Claudius 11 , however, supposes 
 the permission to have been given exclusively by Vi- 
 tellius : and this I believe to have been the case ; for 
 the presidents of Syria possessed sufficient authority to 
 grant or to withhold the privilege in question, at their 
 own discretion. 
 
 Between U. C. 760 and U. C. 767, there were three 
 procurators of Judaea ; Coponius, Ambivius, and Ru- 
 fus ; all in the lifetime of Augustus 1 . Now none of 
 these could have been in office less than a single year : in 
 which case, some one or some two of them must have 
 been in office much longer. I shall make it appear 
 hereafter that Augustus was accustomed to continue 
 such governors as these, upon an average, three years 
 in office. In this case, Rufus would come into office 
 
 K Diss. vii. 
 
 h Ant. xx. i. 2. 
 
 i Ant. xviii. ii. 2. 
 
On the beginning of the government of Pontius Pilate. 851 
 
 U. C. 766; and he could not have been more than a 
 year in office when Augustus died : so that his being 
 continued in office another year, before he was super- 
 seded by Gratus, was nothing unreasonable. It has a 
 parallel case in the continuation of Silanus, who was 
 governor of Syria, at the time of the death of Augus- 
 tus, for three years after that event k ; and of iEmilius 
 Rectus, the procurator of Egypt, for one year posterior 
 to it at least 1 . The first year of Gratus would thus 
 bear date from U.C. 768 ah (estate , and the first of Pi- 
 late from U. C. 779 ah (estate : and this is the year to 
 which Eusebius, in Chronico, accordingly assigns it m . 
 
 With regard to the length of his administration after- 
 wards, I am persuaded that the statement of Josephus is 
 rather under than above the truth : that he passed at 
 least ten full years in his province, and was removed 
 some time in his eleventh year. The Samaritan deputies 
 found Vitellius at Antioch when they brought their 
 complaints against Pilate ; from Antioch soon after he 
 went to Jerusalem, when it was about the time of the 
 passover; and from Jerusalem he returned to Antioch 
 again n . Now, until he had met with Artabanus at 
 the Euphrates and concluded peace with him °, he 
 could not have been found at Antioch : nor had this 
 peace been concluded before U. C. 789 medium , at the 
 earliest. At the time of the return to Antioch after 
 the passover ; which would thus be in the spring, U. C. 
 790 ; he might receive the orders of Tiberius to make 
 war upon Aretas ; and he would naturally be upon his 
 march at the Pentecost next ensuing, to execute these 
 orders, when he was stopped by the news of the em- 
 peror’s death. 
 
 k Tacitus, Ann. ii. 43. 1 Diss. xiii. infra. Cf. Dio, lvii. 10. m Cf. E. H. 
 
 i. ix. x. n xviii. iv. 2, 3. o Ibid. 5. 
 
Dissert at i on Nin th . 
 
 352 
 
 If then Pilate had been in office ten years and two 
 or three months, Josephus, according to his practice in 
 many other instances, might drop the two or three 
 months : and the interval of time between his removal 
 and the death of Tiberius, which would not exceed 
 three or four more, might easily be accounted for by 
 the duration of a voyage, in the winter season, from 
 Syria to Rome. But as to supposing that though 
 removed at least eighteen months before the death 
 of Tiberius, and ordered instantly away to Rome, he 
 did not arrive there until the emperor was dead ; this 
 is an assumption which exceeds the bounds of credi- 
 bility. Nor is there any reason whatever to suspect 
 Josephus of a mistake, as to the time of the arrival 
 of Pilate at Rome, or to the close of his history in 
 general ; while he is considered entitled to belief as to 
 the preceding part of it. I have said enough to prove 
 that, in the whole of this account, Josephus is con- 
 sistent with himself; and so far from being charge- 
 able with mistakes, that he shews he was perfectly 
 acquainted with his subject, and asserts nothing which 
 is not both a possible and a probable statement 
 
DISSERTATION X. 
 
 On the united , and the separate , duration of the ministry of 
 John the Baptist , and of Jesus Christ. 
 
 In whatever point of view we may regard the mis- 
 sion of John the Baptist, it must still be considered 
 something subordinate to the mission of Jesus Christ: 
 in which case, the beginning of the ministry of the 
 latter would be, either actually or virtually, the close 
 of the ministry of the former. The nature of the 
 office of John — the very character which he supported 
 in relation to Christ — rendered it a necessary conse- 
 quence that, as soon as our Lord himself began to 
 preach, the purpose of John’s mission was accom- 
 plished ; the character which he had supported, and 
 the part which he had discharged, until then, could no 
 longer be supported and discharged as before. 
 
 If John was merely the herald or harbinger of 
 Jesus Christ; no herald or harbinger could continue 
 with propriety to announce the approaching advent of 
 a certain person, when that person was actually come : 
 if he was his fellow-labourer in a certain common 
 work, as well as his predecessor in it — differing from 
 him in the order, but not in the nature of his part — 
 no predecessor as such could continue to serve in his 
 vocation when his successor was engaged upon the 
 same. The character of the inferior, under such cir- 
 cumstances, must be eclipsed by that of the superior ; 
 and the part sustained until then by the secondary 
 agent, must be merged in the part which would thence- 
 forward be sustained by the principal. 
 
 It is well observed by Theophylact in reference to 
 VOL. i. 
 
 a a 
 
354 
 
 Dissertation Tenth . 
 
 the death of John a , o?imai Se Ka'i rrjv reXevrriv ’ looavvov 
 Sia tovto o-wy-fccoprjOrjvai Ta^crTtjv yeverOai, coo-re rrracrav rrjv 
 too ir\rjOov<s SiaOeonv e7ri rov Xpiorrov /ULereXOeiv , Ka'i imrjKeTL 
 rais irepi a/afporepcov, ’looavvov Kal Xpio-rov, o"^l^eaOai yvco- 
 mai $ : and the principle of the remark is applicable to 
 the termination of his ministry also. It was not pos- 
 sible, if the one was in any sense the predecessor and 
 the other the successor, that our Lord and the Baptist 
 could enter on their personal ministry, respectively, at 
 once : and if it was not impossible, it was yet on many 
 accounts inexpedient, that w T hen the personal ministry 
 of each had been begun, they should have gone on long 
 together. It was therefore wisely ordained by Provi- 
 dence, that when the ministry of Christ had formally be- 
 gun, the ministry of the Baptist should speedily cease. 
 
 Into the nature and purposes of the mission of John 
 I shall inquire more at large hereafter : and all that 
 I shall do at present, will be to lay before the reader 
 the most prominent of the arguments, which may con- 
 tribute to the proof of this position ; if indeed such a 
 position requires any proof ; viz. that the true date of 
 the commencement of the personal ministry of our 
 Saviour is the true date of the termination of the per- 
 sonal ministry of John the Baptist. 
 
 The matter of the fact ; viz. that one actual com- 
 mencement of the ministry of Christ ; the ministry in 
 Galilee ; was actually posterior to the imprisonment, 
 and therefore to the close of the ministry of John. 
 
 The course of the Gospel narrative ; which begin- 
 ning with the personal ministry of John, and for a 
 time confining itself to that, passes to the personal 
 ministry of Christ ; and ever after confines itself to the 
 personal ministry of Christ. 
 
 a Operum i. 547. C. Comm, in Joh. iii. Cf. Chrys. Operum viii. 165. B. in 
 Joh. iii. 22 . Homilia xxix. where the remark first occurs. 
 
Ministry of John the Baptist, and of Jesus Christ . 355 
 
 The declarations of Scripture ; which assign the 
 Baptist a specific office in reference to Christ ; an 
 office, to be discharged only before the personal ap- 
 pearance of Christ ; and which speak of the individual 
 ministry of Christ as not merely following upon that 
 of the Baptist, but following in a direct order of 
 time ; taking it up just as it had ceased, and continu- 
 ing it thenceforward ; and so, by the precise period of 
 its own commencement, determining the exact time 
 when the other had ceased. 
 
 Kou aoro? irpoeXevcrerai evtoi nov avrov ev irvevyan Kai 
 Swayei ’H \lov. Luke i. 17. 
 
 Kai crv, 7 raiSlov, 7rpo(prjrri9 v^rlcrrov KXrjQrjrrj' 7 rpo 7 r op every 
 yap 7 r po 7 rpocr(j 07 rov Kvplov, eroiyacrai oSovg avrov. Luke 
 
 i. 76. 
 
 TlpoKrjpv^ctvrog ’ Iwavvov 7rpo 7rpocr(joirov rrjg eicroSov avrov 
 foairr kt ya yeravolag it avri rep Xa<p. Acts xiii. 24. 
 
 A ei ovv rcov arvveXOovrtov rjy.iv avSpcov ev iravri ^ povw , ev 
 w elo-rjXOe Kai e^rjXOev e(p ’ rjyag 6 K vpiog T rjcrovg, ap^ayevog 
 diro rot) {3a7rrl<ryarog ’ loyavvov , ecog rrjg rjyepag fig aveXrjipOrj 
 a<p' rj/u-oov, yaprvpa rrjg avacrracretog avrov yevecrOaL ervv rjy.iv 
 eva rovrtov. Acts i. 21, 22. 
 
 T ov Xoyov ov cnrecrreiXe roig vioig T<rpa»JA vyeig o’l - 
 
 Sare to yevoyevov prjya KaO ’ oXrjg rrjg T ovSalag, ap^ayevov 
 airo rrjg YaXiXalag , yera ro f^dirrirya o eierjpv^ev T wdvvrjg. 
 
 Acts x. 36, 37. 
 
 In the third of these passages, the entrance of Christ 
 on his office is called to 7rpo<jto7rov rrjg eicroSov avrov : and 
 in the fourth and the fifth, by the baptism of John in 
 particular is meant the complex of his ministry in 
 general. To (^aimerya ’Icoavvov i roOev rjv \ — To /3a7rrtcrya 
 ’Io oavvov e£ ovpavov rjv, tj e£ avOpcortov ; — To /3 aimer ya To>- 
 
 avvov 
 
 ej~ ovpavov ?jv, rj ej~ avOpto 
 
 toirtov 
 
 ’Ex, 
 
 icrrayevog yovov 
 
 ro fidirrujya ’ Icoavvov — EX' ro ’I todvvov fiairncrya b — in 
 
 b Matt. xxi. 25. Mark xi. 30. Luke xx. 4. 
 
 A a 2 
 
 Acts xviii. 25. xix. 3. 
 
356 
 
 Dissertation Tenth. 
 
 all which texts the word /3a7rTi(riuLa is to be understood 
 of the mission and ministry of John, generally. 
 
 To sum up, therefore, these testimonies. The gene- 
 ral purpose of the mission of John was to go before 
 Christ, as his predecessor in some capacity or other : 
 the entrance of Christ on his own office was the termi- 
 nation of the office of John : the public discharge of 
 our Saviour’s ministry, the period of time for which 
 he went out and came in to his disciples, was compre- 
 hended between the cessation of the ministry of John 
 on the one hand, and the day of the ascension on the 
 other : the word which, beginning from Galilee, had 
 been preached throughout all Judaea, was begun when 
 the baptism or ministry of John was over, and imme- 
 diately after it was over ; but not before. The proof 
 of our position then is now sufficiently complete. 
 
 With respect, however, to the date in question, our 
 Lord’s ministry had one commencement in Judaea, and 
 another in Galilee ; which neither were, nor could be, 
 coincident. The beginning of his ministry, therefore, 
 and so far the close of the ministry of John, admits of a 
 double date ; between one of which and the other the 
 only difference will be this ; viz. that what was actually 
 the case at the one was virtually the case at the other. 
 The commencement of the ministry in Galilee was 
 later than the commencement of the ministry in Judaea ; 
 yet not so far later than it, but that the commencement 
 of the ministry in Galilee was still the prosecution of 
 what had been begun in Judaea. The character of our 
 Lord’s agency in Galilee was not essentially, but spe- 
 cifically, affected by the time of its commencement. He 
 began, and thenceforward continued to do on an en- 
 larged scale — in a new field of exertion — in a more 
 public, and formal, and systematic manner, what he had 
 begun to do, and been employed in doing, though some- 
 
Ministry of John the Baptist , and of Jesus Christ. 357 
 
 what more partially, and in a more reserved manner, 
 before. The commencement of the ministry in Judaea 
 is specified by St. John alone ; the beginning of the 
 ministry in Galilee by the rest of the evangelists : and 
 as the latter is made to consist in that return to Galilee, 
 which was after the imprisonment of John, so the for- 
 mer is to be placed in the visit to Jerusalem, at the 
 passover belonging to the thirteenth of Tiberius ; when 
 it is certain John was yet at large. 
 
 For what are the criterions of the proper commence- 
 ment, or of the discharge of the proper functions, of our 
 Saviour’s ministry — in every respect but that one spe- 
 cific feature, by which it was designed to be assimilated 
 to John’s ; and the absence of which feature, at this 
 time, is clearly resolvable into the fact that John was 
 still at liberty, and still engaged in that one department 
 himself — if they are not to be discovered in what took 
 place at this visit? At this first passover, by the re- 
 markable act of cleansing the temple, Jesus assumed 
 and exercised an authority, which he never assumed or 
 exercised again, until the same occasion before the last; 
 whereby he may justly be considered to have stamped 
 this first passover with an importance, in the order of 
 his ministry, scarcely inferior to that of the last. He 
 predicted, at this early period, his death and resurrec- 
 tion, with a degree of significancy which he did not 
 employ in alluding to them again until the last year of 
 his ministry itself; and the words which he uttered now 
 were remembered and produced against him, three years 
 afterwards. He wrought miracles now in the sight of 
 all who attended the feast, both Jews and Galilaeans; 
 though a little before, he had declined to work a miracle 
 in private at Cana in Galilee. That hour therefore, which 
 was not come then> must have been arrived now ; and 
 that evidence of his glory, with its effects in making 
 
 A a 3 
 
358 
 
 Dissertation Tenth . 
 
 him disciples, which had before been confined to his 
 immediate friends, was now published to all the world. 
 He held a discourse with Nicodemus on some of the 
 most abstruse points of Christian doctrine. When he 
 left Jerusalem, he began to baptize somewhere in Ju- 
 daea ; by the hands, at least, of his disciples ; and to 
 make converts in such numbers as to eclipse the fame 
 of John, and to divert the eyes of the Pharisees from 
 John towards himself. And finally, when he returned 
 into Galilee, he declared himself more openly to the 
 woman of Sychar than he ever declared himself after- 
 wards, on any occasion but the last, when he stood 
 before the sanhedrim, or Pilate. 
 
 It seems impossible, therefore, to deny that the open 
 assumption of the character of the Messias, and the 
 beginning to act thenceforward in that character; 
 which are in one sense the formal commencement of 
 our Lord’s ministry ; must be dated from the pass- 
 over, John ii. 13. If this be the case, however, the 
 commencement of the ministry in Galilee was no abso- 
 lute first beginning of what had never been attempted 
 already, but only the continuance of a former, com- 
 bined with the assumption of a new office and charac- 
 ter, the nature of which will more fully appear here- 
 after. And as it cannot be questioned that John’s min- 
 istry was actually over at the date of the latter event, 
 which was the return of our Lord into Galilee poste- 
 rior to John’s imprisonment ; so it is as little to be 
 questioned that it was virtually over at the date of the 
 former, which was the passover, John ii. 13. The dis- 
 course in the third chapter of St. John’s Gospel, between 
 the Baptist and his disciples, came after the one, but 
 before the other ; and it must be evident that John 
 speaks there officially, as it were, for the last time : he 
 describes his own ministry as more than antiquated, and 
 
Ministry of John the Baptist , and of Jesus Christ. 359 
 
 as almost superseded. His own joy was now fulfilled ; 
 his proper part and province in a common work had 
 been discharged, and were therefore to cease : Christ 
 was to increase, and to go on increasing, while he was 
 to decrease, and to dwindle, in comparison of him, to 
 nothing. And his predictions, as we shall see here- 
 after, were speedily fulfilled by the event. 
 
 The substance, then, of our present argument 
 amounts to this. The first and proper date of the 
 beginning of the ministry of Jesus Christ was also the 
 first and proper date of the end of the ministry of John : 
 but the first and proper date of the commencement of 
 the ministry of Jesus Christ was the passover, John ii. 
 13 : therefore the first and proper date of the end of the 
 ministry of John was the passover, John ii. 13. This 
 passover we have proved to be the passover belonging 
 to the thirteenth of Tiberius Caesar ; and that it was the 
 passover next after our Saviour’s baptism, was too ob- 
 vious to require any proof. St. Luke’s testimony also 
 has shewn that the ministry of John began some time 
 in the fifteenth of Tiberius Caesar ; which rightly un- 
 derstood was meant of his thirteenth, and being taken 
 in conjunction with what was also asserted, that the 
 same ministry began when Pilate was procurator of 
 Judaea, implied that it began soon after the commence- 
 ment of the thirteenth, rather than just before the end 
 or nearer to the middle of the twelfth. The date of 
 Tiberius’ sole reign coincided with the nineteenth of 
 August ; and the date of the Jewish feast of Taber- 
 nacles, in his thirteenth year, coincided with the fif- 
 teenth of September 0 . This feast, then, would fall that 
 year something less than a month after the beginning 
 of the corresponding year of Tiberius : the ministry of 
 John, therefore, which could not have begun later than 
 
 c Supra, p. 332. Diss. vii. 
 
 A a 4 
 
360 
 
 Dissertation Tenth. 
 
 the very end of the twelfth, or the very beginning of 
 the thirteenth of Tiberius, could not have begun much 
 earlier, or much later, than the time of the feast of 
 Tabernacles. 
 
 But this is not all. If we had arrived merely at the 
 conclusion that the ministry of John began somewhere 
 in a certain year between the feast of Tabernacles and 
 the feast of the Passover in particular ; the analogy 
 of times and purposes — the character of John — the 
 nature of his ministry itself in one most important 
 respect, which will appear more fully hereafter — all 
 would conspire to suggest the inference, that it must 
 have begun nearer to the former feast than to the 
 latter. But if we had further arrived at the conclu- 
 sion that the ministry of John, whensoever it began, 
 was only of six months’ duration ; the inference, which 
 before was presumptively probable, would now become 
 almost demonstratively certain. For we could not 
 allow less — though the necessity of the case might not 
 permit us to allow more — to the personal, prior, and 
 single ministry of the Baptist, before it was super- 
 seded by the ministry of Christ, than this interval of 
 time at least. Hence, if the commencement of the lat- 
 ter were to be dated from the passover ensuing, the 
 commencement of the former must be dated from the 
 feast of Tabernacles preceding. 
 
 Contrasted with inveterate prepossessions, this re- 
 sult of our reasonings, with respect to the duration of 
 the ministry of John the Baptist, may naturally appear 
 surprising. But it is the genuine conclusion from the 
 premises previously established ; and those premises, I 
 trust, are too well grounded on chronological and his- 
 torical testimonies to be lightly shaken. Between the 
 fact that Pilate was already in office when John entered 
 upon his commission, on the one hand, and the fact 
 
Ministry of John the Baptist , and of Jesus Christ . 361 
 
 that the temple had been forty-six years in building, 
 on the other — the inference becomes irresistible, that 
 John could not have entered on his ministry earlier 
 than the last half of the twelfth , nor later than the first 
 half of the thirteenth of the reigning emperor. Before 
 the one, Pilate would not have been in office : and after 
 the other, the building of the temple would have been 
 going on forty-seven years or more. 
 
 It is this last fact which we may justly consider the 
 corner stone of our argument ; for every supposition, 
 which agrees the more completely with the other, dif- 
 fers only the more from this. If we placed the com- 
 mencement of the ministry of John in the last half of 
 the thirteenth, and much more, if in any part of the 
 fourteenth of Tiberius ; however certain it might be 
 that Pilate must then have been in office, it would be 
 only the more certain that the temple could not have 
 been merely forty-six years in building. 
 
 Nor is this conclusion so destitute of support from 
 independent, collateral arguments, as not to be more 
 probable than any other. 
 
 For first ; those who should maintain that the min- 
 istry of John lasted three years — and much more, they 
 who should contend that it lasted three years and an 
 half — would be bound to consider how they exalted the 
 dignity and importance of the character and the agency 
 of John, to the prejudice of those of Christ. John was 
 but the servant and harbinger of Christ ; and as we 
 observed before, the design of his personal ministry in 
 particular, whether more or less analogous to that of 
 the mission of Christ, was still subordinate to it. It is 
 inconsistent with this subordination that the ministry 
 of the one should be supposed to have lasted as long as 
 the ministry of the other. If Christ himself was person- 
 ally employed on his office only three years, could John 
 
362 
 
 Dissertation Tenth. 
 
 have been employed on his three years and an half? 
 Was the authority of John at any time as great as the 
 authority of Christ, that even in the promotion of a 
 common work, the same prominence should be assigned 
 to his agency, or the same success to his labours, as to 
 those of Christ? The period of six months may not be 
 too little for the ministry of the servant, if the period 
 of three years only is to be allotted to that of the Mas- 
 ter ; though I would not maintain it is too much. 
 
 Again ; it is morally impossible that the ministry 
 of John, which even on the supposition of a six months’ 
 duration, was still prematurely terminated by a violent 
 imprisonment and an equally violent death, could have 
 gone on with safety and undisturbed, for three years and 
 an half before its close. The hostility of the Scribes 
 and Pharisees, which was so early excited against our 
 Saviour, had been as speedily directed against his pre- 
 decessor ; and they had long made up their minds to 
 reject the testimony of John, before they determined 
 to reject the testimony of Christ. 
 
 Again ; the deputation sent to him, as recorded by 
 St. John, was a formal act of authority on the part of 
 the Jewish sanhedrim ; and whether justly exerted or 
 not, it was expressly designed to inquire into the cha- 
 racter and pretensions of John: and it is manifestly 
 almost the last memorable event in his public history. 
 It is not credible then that this character, and these pre- 
 tensions, should have been three years or more before 
 the eyes of men, and the sanhedrim should not have 
 begun to inquire about them until now ; that he should 
 have been three years or more engaged in baptizing and 
 making converts, and they should have thought of ask- 
 ing him, by what right he was doing so, only now. On 
 the contrary, the general expectation of the Messias — 
 the novelty of the appearance of John — the singularity 
 
Ministry of John the Baptist , and of Jesus Christ. 363 
 
 of his habits and demeanour — his undoubted assumption 
 of the name and the authority of a divinely-commis- 
 sioned teacher — all would conduce to draw their atten- 
 tion towards him from the first, and to render such an 
 interrogation as this one of the earliest circumstances 
 in his history. 
 
 Again; the details of the ministry of John are so 
 few and scanty, that to suppose them, in any sense, 
 the particulars of a number of years, appears to me 
 the height of absurdity. They cannot be the particu- 
 lars (at least in a continuous order) of even a few 
 months. The scene of his ministry also seems to have 
 been, from first to last, one and the same — the Aulon, 
 or Peri chorus of Jordan — Bethabara, iEnon, and Sa- 
 lem : which might be possible in a ministry of six 
 months’, but would be very unlikely in one of several 
 years’ duration. 
 
 Again ; the history of our Lord, up to the period of 
 the commencement of his ministry, runs parallel to 
 that of the Baptist ; with this distance of time between 
 them. The conception of Christ is announced six 
 months after that of the Baptist — the birth of Christ 
 takes place six months after the birth of the Baptist. 
 There is equal reason to conclude that they would 
 each enter upon their respective ministries at the same 
 age ; but the one six months after the other. 
 
 Again ; in addition to the passover John ii. 13, two 
 more — and as I hope to make it appear a third — are 
 distinctly to be recognised in the course of the Gospel 
 history: during all of which our Lord’s personal min- 
 istry was going on as usual. Now four consecutive 
 passovers include exactly three years : all which, on 
 this principle, must have been taken up by the per- 
 sonal ministry of Christ. It was necessary however 
 to the fulfilment of prophecy— more especially of the 
 
364 
 
 Dissertation Tenth. 
 
 famous chronological prophecy of Daniel — that by the 
 personal ministry of John, succeeded and perpetuated 
 in a common work by the personal ministry of Christ, 
 should be occupied in all the half of a week of years — 
 or the period of three years and six months. The proof 
 of this position, I trust, will be fully made out here- 
 after d . Deduct from this sum the three years of the 
 ministry of Christ ; and there will remain six months 
 for the ministry of John. 
 
 The same thing is implied by the parable of the 
 barren fig-tree e : for in that parable, three years of the 
 trial of the tree, which trial began with the ministry 
 of John, are supposed to be past ; and a fourth, which 
 coincide with the last year of our Saviour, and with 
 the last six months of that year, to be still going on. 
 Deduct as before the three years of the ministry of 
 Christ, and there remain, as before, six months for the 
 ministry of John. 
 
 Again ; there is a singular tradition of the Jews, in 
 allusion to the ten migrations of the Shechinah, which 
 is in unison with the same conclusion f : Shecinain, 
 (R. Jonathan loquitur ,) tres annos et dimidium ha- 
 bitasse in monte olivifero, ut videret an non converte- 
 rentur Judaei ad Deum : et clainasse, Redite ad me 
 filii, redibo ad vos : et quum nihilo minus Judaei ali- 
 eni essent a Deo, ivisse Shecinam ab hoc monte ad 
 locum suum. This tradition is applicable to the length 
 of time for which our Lord, and his precursor the Bap- 
 tist, were personally labouring to produce the conver- 
 sion of the Jews: and when he himself was personally 
 removed from the earth, it was, as the tradition sup- 
 poses, from the mount of Olives that he ascended. 
 
 The period in question is in fact a stated period — 
 
 Dissertation xv. 
 vol. iii. 336 — 400. 
 
 e Luke xiii. 6 — 9. Vide the Exposition of the Parables, 
 f Reland, Pal. i. cap. Iii. 337. 
 
Ministry of John the Baptist , and of Jesus Christ. 365 
 
 more especially for the economy of events connected 
 with the personal history of Christ, and with the 
 scheme of human redemption. There is none which 
 occurs more repeatedly in the prophetical parts of 
 Scripture, or with a clearer reference to the purposes 
 in question, than this ; either as a time, times, and an 
 half ; or as forty and two months ; or as twelve hun- 
 dred and sixty days ; or as three days and an half s ; 
 all which in the language of prophecy are equivalent 
 expressions, and stand or may be supposed to stand for 
 the same length of time of three years and an half. 
 
 Those also who delight in the discovery of typical 
 analogies, may perceive in the length of the united 
 periods of the two ministries of the Baptist and of 
 Christ respectively, as conspiring to a common result, 
 the spiritual antitype of those three years and an half of 
 judicial barrenness, which afflicted the land of Israel in 
 the days of Elijah h : and in the gracious dew of doc- 
 trine and manna, which was daily distilling during 
 the one, the spiritual counterpart of that natural 
 drought and dearth, which prevailed during the other. 
 They may perceive, too, in the three days of interval 
 and preparation, after the Israelites in the time of 
 Joshua had been apprized that they were to cross the 
 Jordan, but before they crossed it 1 , something analo- 
 gous to the three years of the personal and separate 
 ministry of Christ, before he suffered for our redemp- 
 tion at last *. 
 
 Lastly ; when the precise relation of the ministry of 
 
 * Cf. also Lev. xix. 23, 24 : tion of the first fruits of the 
 a precept of the Law, which, humanity , by the reception of 
 typically or anagogically under- Jesus Christ into heaven, in the 
 stood, may point to the consecra- foiirth year of his ministry. 
 
 B Dan. vii. 25. xii. 7. Rev. xi. 2. 3. 9. 11. xii. 6. 14. xiii. 5. h Luke 
 
 iv. 25. James v. 17. 1 Kings xviii. i. i Josh. i. 11. ii. 16. 22. iii. 2. 5. iv. 19. 
 
366 
 
 Dissertation Tenth. 
 
 John to that of Christ comes to be hereafter consi- 
 dered, the shortness of the term for which the former 
 lasted, though no more than six months, will cease to 
 appear surprising : for the functions and purposes even 
 of the ministry of John, it will be seen, were still 
 carried on and doubtless were still promoted by the 
 personal ministry of Jesus Christ. 
 
DISSERTATION XI. 
 
 On the age of our Lord at his baptism. 
 
 jyai aero? rjv 6 ’ \y](tov<s ware\ ircov rpiaicovTa. apyopevos. 
 
 Luke iii. 23. 
 
 These words were intended to notify the age of our 
 Lord at his baptism ; the time of which was neces- 
 sarily posterior to the commencement of the ministry 
 of John, on the one hand, and to the passover John 
 ii. 13. on the other; and consequently was somewhere 
 between the beginning and the middle of the thir- 
 teenth of Tiberius in general. Upon the right con- 
 struction of this text depends the further question both 
 of the age of John at the commencement of his min- 
 istry, and of the time of the year when our Saviour 
 was born. 
 
 The genius and syntax of the original language, as 
 well as the reason of the thing, will agree in my opin- 
 ion to no arrangement of the terms, nor to any inter- 
 pretation of the words so arranged, but this : 
 
 Kai 6 T rjcrovs airro? nv tocrei apyopevos erco v TpiaKOvra i 
 
 that is, And Jesus himself was as it were beginning to 
 be thirty years of age. 
 
 The received translation with a slight correction ; 
 And Jesus himself was about beginning to be thirty 
 years of age ; approximates to the same sense ; and I 
 shall shew elsewhere in its proper place that the Greek 
 Fathers, who must have understood their own lan- 
 guage best, never took these words to mean any thing 
 else. 
 
 Now, by as it were beginning to be thirty years of 
 age, no more can possibly be intended, than that Jesus, 
 at the time of his baptism, was either a little over or a 
 little under the exact age of thirty ; but in either case 
 
368 
 
 Dissertation 'Eleventh. 
 
 with so slight an excess or a defect, that he might be 
 considered neither more nor less than thirty. The 
 time of the year, when he was baptized, remains in 
 each case the same ; but the time of the year when he 
 was born is differently affected by one of these suppo- 
 sitions in contradistinction to the other. If he was 
 somewhat less than thirty, he was baptized before his 
 birthday : if he was somewhat more, he was baptized 
 after it. In order then to decide between these two 
 suppositions we must reason as follows. 
 
 To say that a certain person was, as it were, begin- 
 ning to be thirty, who had actually reached or passed 
 beyond his thirtieth year, is almost a contradiction in 
 terms ; and an highly unnatural mode of speaking. It 
 is not conceivable how any one could be merely begin- 
 ning to do what, upon this supposition, must have been 
 some time done already. The case is different with 
 the idea of beginning as it were to do already, what 
 would actually be done in a short time afterwards. 
 A man might truly be said to be almost beginning to 
 be thirty, who was much more than twenty-nine ; 
 though not exactly thirty. 
 
 This use of the particle ao-ei occurs so frequently 
 in the Gospel of St. Luke, as to constitute one of its 
 idioms. But it is in a majority of instances, as we are 
 able to demonstrate, and probably might be shewn to 
 be in all, if we had more express data to argue from 
 — in the same qualifying sense of a little under , and 
 not a little above a certain limit *. 
 
 * First, i. 56: Mary abode 
 with Elizabeth tocrel /i^as rpely ; 
 which, as she went to her six 
 months after the conception of 
 John and yet returned before 
 his birth, denotes something less, 
 and not something more than 
 three entire months. 
 
 Again, ix. 28 : Now there en- 
 sued, after these words, oxrei fjpe- 
 pai dura), about an eight days’ 
 time. St. Matthew and St. Mark 
 make the same interval six, or at 
 the utmost seven days : which a- 
 lone must prove that St. Luke in- 
 tended by it something less than 
 
On the age of our Lord at his baptism . 
 
 369 
 
 With regard then to the measure of the defect in 
 the present instance ; St. Luke’s extreme accuracy and 
 scrupulous adherence (even in the minutest particulars) 
 to strict historical truth — of which this very idiom is a 
 proof — are, in my opinion, convincing reasons that in 
 specifying the age of any person, which required to be 
 calculated by parts of years, as well as by years, had 
 there been six, or even four months difference between 
 the real and the assumed date; he would not have said 
 he was beginning in any sense to be thirty, who wanted 
 still an half or a third part of an entire year, before he 
 would be of that age complete. But if the difference 
 were less than the fourth part of a whole year at the 
 utmost, every one will allow that something of this 
 kind might both truly and properly be said of him. 
 
 It will follow, then, that the age of our Lord at his 
 baptism, as being thus described, was not more than 
 three , though it might be more than two months less 
 than the full age of thirty : that he was at least 
 
 eight, though more perhaps than 
 seven full days. 
 
 Again, xxii. 41 : Jesus with- 
 drew from them, toaei \L6ov (3 o- 
 \rjv : which being understood of 
 a stone’s cast from a sling, the 
 necessity of the case requires it 
 to mean a little less, and not a 
 little more than this exact dis- 
 tance t. 
 
 Again, xxii. 59 : ical Staorao-qs 
 ojo-6 i c opas fua? — which being com- 
 pared with Mark xiv. 70. kcu 
 fiera piKpov tvclKiv — >and with Mat- 
 thew xxvi. 73. pera pucpov 8e — it 
 will be concluded, must define 
 something less, not something 
 more than one hour. 
 
 Again, xxiii. 44 : rjv 8 e axm 
 a>pa €kty) : which, as the cruci- 
 fixion took place at the third 
 hour a , is more probably some- 
 thing before, than something 
 after that hour. 
 
 Again, viii. 42 : trap da>- 
 
 daca : which being the age of the 
 daughter of Jairus, whom the 
 very term Kopaaiop applied to her. 
 Matt. ix. 24, 25, Mark v. 41, 42, 
 shews to have been yet a girl, and 
 not arrived at the age of puber- 
 ty — that is, at what in females 
 among the Jews would be the 
 age of twelve complete — implies 
 that she was something more 
 than eleven, but less than twelve.. 
 
 *j- Uluc cursus erat : nec longius abfuit inde 
 
 Quam quantum novies mittere funda potest. 
 
 Ovid, Fast. iii. 583. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 a Mark xv. 25. 
 
 B b 
 
370 
 
 Dissertation Eleventh. 
 
 twenty-nine years and nine months old, though he 
 might not be twenty-nine years and ten *. The time 
 of his baptism, in general, we have seen was somewhere 
 in the first half of Tiberius’ thirteenth ; and if it is 
 reasonable to suppose that he would be baptized nearer 
 to a feast of the passover — when his own ministry was 
 to commence — than to a feast of Tabernacles, when 
 the ministry of John had begun — it will follow that he 
 was baptized between two and three months before 
 the feast of the passover belonging to Tiberius’ thir- 
 teenth ; the feast of the passover, John ii. 13. It has 
 happened accordingly, either from the transmission of a 
 well authenticated tradition to that effect ; or from the 
 palpable evidence of the Gospel narrative, which was 
 too clear to admit of any other construction ; that the 
 date of the baptism of Christ, from the earliest times, 
 has been placed in the winter season ; about two or 
 three months before the Jewish passover. IIpo 6\l- 
 yoov apa fj/uepcov tov t racrya efiairTLcraTO b — Aid Se tov 
 ehreiv 6 Eivayye\i<TTr}<s otl rjv eyyvg to 7ra<x^a, Sehcvvo'iv 
 otl oil 7 rpo ttoAXcoi/ tj/aepcov tov iracrya e/3a7rTLcraTO c 
 
 * Reliquiae Sacrae, iii. 460 : 
 Concilii NeocaesariensisCanones, 
 Canon xi : npeo-ftvTepos npo tcov 
 
 TpiaKOVTa ird>v prj x.eipOTovei(x6(0 . . . 
 
 6 yap K vpios ’I rjo-ovs Xpicrros iv r q> 
 rpiaKocrrS erei effiodricrdr), Ka\ fjpijaTo 
 
 Siddcr kciv. So likewise the Canons 
 of the sixth General Council A. D. 
 680. Ibid. 473. 1. Canon xiv. 
 They understood, therefore, St. 
 Luke’s phrase, rjv irav TpiaKOVTa 
 dpxdpevos, to mean, that our Lord 
 was more than twenty-nine, but 
 less than thirty, complete. 
 
 Tertullian, iv. 78. De Patien- 
 tia, 3 : Nasci se deus in utero 
 patitur matris, et exspectat, na- 
 
 l> Chrysostom, Operum viii. 133. A. i: 
 lact, Operum i. 536. A. Comm, in Joh. 
 Joannem, tom. x. 2. 
 
 tus adolescere sustinet, et adul- 
 tus non gestit agnosci, sed con- 
 tumeliosus insuper sibi est, et a 
 servo suo tingitur. The proper 
 sense of adolescere and adultus , 
 implies the age of thirty : as ap- 
 pears from a variety of passages 
 which might be cited. To the 
 same effect Lactantius, Divina- 
 rum Institt. iv. 15. 354: Cum 
 primum coepit adolescere, tinctus 
 est a Joanne propheta in Jor- 
 dane flumine. 
 
 t Origen, Operum iii. 357. D : 
 in Ezech.Hom. i. 4. Novus an- 
 nus imminet jam Judaeis, et pri- 
 mus mensis apud eos a novi anni 
 
 1 Joannem Horn, xxiii. 1. c Theophy- 
 
 i. Vide also Origen, Operum iv. 162. in 
 
On the age of our Lord at his baptism. 
 
 371 
 
 And if St. John’s Gospel, as I shall shew hereafter, 
 from the day of the baptism, (or at least the close of the 
 temptation, directly consequent upon it,) takes up the 
 narrative of the former three, and brings it down to the 
 passover next ensuing ; a computation of little more 
 than two months is the utmost required for the trans- 
 action of every thing between. 
 
 If, therefore, it should be objected that our Lord’s 
 baptism, on this supposition, would happen in the 
 depth of winter ; I answer it would happen in the 
 depth of our winter, but not in the depth of the Jew- 
 ish. If the objection has any force, it applies to the 
 ministry of John in the complex ; of which the prin- 
 cipal and proper duration was cast in the winter half 
 
 numeratur exordio . . ab hoc 
 anno numera mihi quartum men- 
 sem ; et intellige baptisatum 
 Jesum in quarto mense novi 
 anni. eo enim mense qui apud 
 Romanos Januarius nuncupatur, 
 baptismum Domini factum esse 
 cognoscimus, qui est mensis 
 quartus ab anno novo juxta sup- 
 putationem Hebraeorum. 
 
 Hieronymus, Operum iii. 699. 
 ad calc, in Ezech. i. 1 : Illud 
 quoque intelligendum, quod in 
 tricesimo setatis suae anno Do- 
 minus ad baptisma venerit : in 
 quarto mense, qui apud nos vo- 
 catur Januarius, et est in anni 
 primus exordio, praeter Nisan 
 mensem novorum, in quo Pascha 
 celebratur. apud Orientales enim 
 populos, post collectionem fru- 
 gum, et torcularia, quando de- 
 cimae deferebantur in Templum, 
 October erat primus mensis, et 
 Januarius quartus. quintam au- 
 tem diem mensis adjungit, ut 
 significet baptisma, in quo aperti 
 sunt Christo coeli, et Epipha- 
 niorum dies hue usque venera- 
 
 bilis est : non ut quidam pu- 
 tant natalis in carne : tunc enim 
 absconditus est, et non apparuit. 
 
 In the time of Clemens Alex- 
 andrinus, A. D. 194, the fol- 
 lowers of Basilides still cele- 
 brated some the eleventh and 
 others the fifteenth of Tybi (Ja- 
 nuary 6 or 1 o.) as the date of the 
 Baptism : Operum i.407. 1 . 21 — 
 408. 1 . 5. Strom, i. 2 1. The great 
 antiquity of Basilides intitles his 
 opinions concerning facts to re- 
 spect ; particularly as he is said 
 to have been a disciple of Glau- 
 cias, whom Clemens calls rbv Ile- 
 rpov epprjvea: ii. 898. 1 . 12. Strom, 
 vii. 17. Be this as it may, Ba- 
 silides is uniformly made con- 
 temporary with the reign of 
 Hadrian ; and the close of the se- 
 cond Jewish war. Vide Clemens 
 Alex. loc. cit. : Ireneeus, i. xxii. 
 xxiii. Eusebius, E.H.iv. vii. 1 20. 
 A. Epiphanius, i. 62, B.68. A.C. 
 Basilidiani. i. Jerome, de SS.Ec- 
 cles.xxi. Operum iv. Pars ii a . 109. 
 Theodorit, iv. 289 — 293. Ilaere- 
 ticarum Fabb. i. capp. ii — iv. 
 
 B b 2 
 
372 
 
 Dissert a ti on Eleven tli . 
 
 of the year : and what, as so applied, might be urged 
 as an objection, is in fact a proof of the wisdom and 
 even the necessity of such a dispensation. From the 
 time of the cessation, to the time of the recurrence, of 
 the annual rains, called the first and the latter rain 
 respectively — which was a period of nearly six months 
 — Judaea was destitute of rain ; and excepting the 
 largest streams, such as the Jordan, and the supplies 
 laid up during the rainy season in reservoirs dug into 
 the earth ; or hewn out of the rock ; or formed on the 
 tops of the houses ; it was entirely destitute of water. 
 And if the want of water was ever the greatest, it was 
 so after the drought of a whole summer ; just before 
 the recurrence of the autumnal rains ; which did not 
 commonly, if ever, set in until after the feast of Taber- 
 nacles. With reason then was the period assigned by 
 the Divine providence to the ministry of John, (a min- 
 istry Kar of immersion or baptism,) the winter 
 
 half of the year ; during any part of which abundance 
 of water might be found ; and with equal reason, on 
 the same principle, would his ministry begin after the 
 feast of Tabernacles, rather than before it. 
 
 The necessity of bodily ablutions, which the Law 
 might impose at any period of the year ; the daily 
 system of such ablutions, to which the priests were 
 subject in the temple service ; the sect of the Hemero- 
 baptists, with whom it was a point of conscience to 
 practise dipping every day, ev eapl re ical /uLeroTrwpw, 
 
 Utovi re Ka\ Oepei d , alike; the example of Banus the 
 Eremite, in the time of Josephus e ; are all demonstra- 
 tive that in Judaea the winter season would be no 
 impediment to the reception of baptism. The truth is, 
 that the months of January and February, in that coun- 
 try, were as mild and warm as the months of April or 
 
 d Epiphanius, Adversus Ha'r. i. 37. A. See also i. 53. D. e Vita, 2 . 
 
On the age of our Lord at his baptism. 
 
 373 
 
 May with us. The productions of nature were pro- 
 portionally then more in advance ; the barley harvest 
 wanted but a month or two of its maturity ; and every 
 description of fruit-trees was not merely bursting into 
 bloom, but preparing to ripen its fruits. The proper 
 time for taking the tithe of such trees, for the year to 
 come, was Sebat ; which began with the end of our 
 January : and along with the fresh barley, at the feast 
 of the passover, the first fruits of certain trees were 
 required to be presented also f . Diodorus Siculus 
 speaks of the sycamine as bearing fruit all the year 
 round in Egypt; and Josephus, of the fig and the 
 vine, on the western region of the Lake of Genne- 
 saret, as supplying fruit for ten months out of the 
 twelve ; which ten extended from March to Decem- 
 ber * 
 
 * Mr. Harmer, Obs. vol. i. 18. 
 chap. i. Obs. v. cites from the 
 journal of Dr. Russell at Alep- 
 po, several particulars relating 
 to the weather and the seasons 
 there, which are not less true of 
 Judsea. For example. 
 
 That the severity of winter 
 begins about Dec. 12, and lasts 
 forty days, viz. until Jan. 20 : 
 that even then when the sun is 
 shining, and the air is still, it is 
 warm, nay even hot, out of 
 doors : that ice is seldom seen 
 strong enough to support a 
 man, or snow to last more than 
 a day : that narcissuses flower 
 all this time, hyacinths and vio- 
 lets before its close: (Cf. vol. 
 iv. chap. vii. Obs. cxxiii.14, 15.): 
 that before the end of February 
 the country is all covered with 
 verdure, grain, and flowers : that 
 
 trees in general are all in leaf ; 
 the almond, the apricot, and 
 peach, are in blossom before the 
 same time. Compare Obs. viii. 30. 
 
 The productions of the spring 
 are at least two months for- 
 warder in Judaea, than with us ; 
 as is proved by the fact that the 
 rose and jessamine flower in Jeru- 
 salem in March or April : not 
 to mention the ripeness of bar- 
 ley in some years at the pass- 
 over. See Harmer, vol. iii. p.35. 
 37. Obs. x. 
 
 There is, also, an interval of a 
 determinate length, between the 
 close of the severity of winter, in 
 Judaea, and the recurrence of the 
 spring rains as such ; during 
 which the weather is dry and se- 
 rene. This would begin ordina- 
 rily speaking about the last half 
 of January. I should think our 
 
 f Maimonides, De Ratione Intercalandi, iv. §. 2. 3. g Diodorus Sic. i. 34. 
 Bell. Jud. iii. x. 8. 
 
 B b 3 
 
874 
 
 Dissertation Eleventh. 
 
 If our Lord at the time of his baptism, two or three 
 months before a passover, wanted two or three months 
 of the age of thirty ; at the time of the passover he 
 would be full thirty : and consequently John, who was 
 six months older than he, would be thirty at the feast of 
 Tabernacles before it. Hence if he began his ministry 
 at this feast, he began his ministry at thirty : and if 
 our Lord entered upon his at the ensuing passover, he 
 also entered upon his at thirty. 
 
 Now neither the age of John, nor the period of the 
 year when he entered upon his ministry, was of his 
 own appointment. The word of God which came to 
 him in the wilderness determined both : and this alone 
 suffices to prove that each was chosen with the strict- 
 est regard to propriety. I have no doubt that the age 
 of John, as well as the time of the year in question, 
 were forecast accordingly, in reference solely to the 
 ministry of Christ. As our Lord’s ministry was to 
 begin at the passover next ensuing, John’s was to 
 begin at the feast of Tabernacles immediately preced- 
 ing : as our Lord was to be thirty when he entered 
 upon his , John was to be thirty when he entered upon 
 his; and therefore was to enter upon it six months 
 before our Lord entered on his. 
 
 Those who maintain the longer duration of th£ 
 ministry of John are too apt to regard him as a simple 
 Levite ; than which there cannot be a more gross mis- 
 take. The son of Zacharias was a priest, and the son 
 of a priest ; by each of his parents he was lineally 
 descended from the founder of the priesthood ; and he 
 
 Saviour’s baptism happened at tion which might otherwise be 
 that time. brought against the supposition 
 
 The rain which falls in Ju- that John the Baptist’s ministry 
 
 daea during the rainy season w r as confined exclusively to this 
 
 commonly falls at night. This period of the year. The rain 
 
 circumstance removes an objec- would not interfere with it. 
 
On the age of our Lord at his baptism. 375 
 
 was capable to have represented the Levitical high 
 priest himself 11 . It can hardly be necessary to observe 
 that the sacerdotal order, among the Jews, was en- 
 tirely distinct from the Levitical: their origin was 
 different ; their duties and privileges were altogether of 
 a superior rank ; and, what is more, were incommunica- 
 ble to others : so that to degrade a priest to the level of 
 a Levite would be as great a presumption as to raise a 
 Levite to the degree of a priest. The priests were the 
 lineal progeny of Aaron : the twenty-four courses, 
 which embodied them all, were entirely derived from 
 Eleazar and from Ithamar; the only two sons of 
 Aaron who survived after the death of Nadab and 
 Abihu 1 . The Levites were descended from the rest 
 of the family of Levi ; Merari, Gershon, and (except- 
 ing only the particular family of Aaron) Kohath. The 
 strictness of the law, for the preservation of the line of 
 the priesthood, is well described by Josephus k . No Jew 
 would have thought of confounding such distinct classes 
 of men as the priests and the Levites h 
 
 But though John had been a simple Levite ; yet if 
 he came to discharge what could be considered a Le- 
 vitical office ; (and the administration of baptism was 
 always regarded as such ;) the age of office prescribed for 
 the Levites in particular was thirty : and though the 
 age of twenty-five is also mentioned 01 , yet according to 
 Maimonides n , this was no appointment contrary to 
 that ; but consistent with it. From twenty-five years 
 old the Levites were to be occupied in learning the 
 duties of their office : on which they were not actually 
 to enter before thirty. Besides which, if the particular 
 
 h Philo Jud. ii. 229. 1 . 30. De Monarchia, lib. ii. i Exod. xxviii. 1. Numb, 
 iii. 2 — 4. 10. xvi. xvii. xviii. 1 — 7. xxvi. 60. 61. 1 Chron. vi. 4 — 15. xxiv. 3 — 19. 
 
 1 Macc. vii. 14. k Contra Apionem, i. 7. ii. 8. Vide also 2 Chron. xxxi. 
 
 t6 — 19. Ezra ii. 62. 1 Philo Jud. ii. 161. 1 . 26 — 37. De Mose, lib. iii: 
 
 Ibid. 236. 1 . 28 — 30. De Proemiis Sacerdotum : Ibid. 420. 1 . 23 et sqq. De Prce- 
 miis et Poems. m Numb. viii. 24. n De Apparatu Templi, iii. 7. 
 
 B b 4 
 
376 
 
 Dissertation Eleventh. 
 
 service assigned even to the first order of the Levites, 
 the order of the families of Kohath 0 ; but not before 
 the age of thirty ; was the service of carrying the 
 Tabernacle ; and if the Tabernacle, as both our Lord 
 and St.John and St. PaulP have clearlv intimated, was 
 only a type of the body of Christ ; then the very ad- 
 ministration of baptism, by the hands of John, on the 
 person of Christ, would strictly require the fulfilment 
 of the legal condition, before this ceremony could pro- 
 perly take place between them. 
 
 If the age of office, requisite for the priesthood, is 
 not specified in the Law, as distinctly as that for the 
 Levites ; the reason may be because, in the apposite 
 language of Philo, too v i rep] TO v ve<x>v Xeiroupyioov bvo 
 Taj~€i$ etVfV rj fev Kpelcrcraw lepecov , q be eXarrcov veooKopcw' 
 rjcrav §e, Kar etceivov tov y^povov, rpeis ju.ev lepeis, vewicoponv Se 
 n roKkai yCkiabes^. The lesser number therefore was so 
 far merged in the greater ; and what had been made 
 binding even on the Levites, could not be destitute of 
 force on the posterity of Aaron : that is, if thirty was 
 not too early an age for the inferior , much less could 
 it be so for the superior order. 
 
 I am aware that, according to Maimonides, the chief 
 priest might enter on his office as soon as he had ar- 
 rived at man’s estate r ; and Josephus supplies an in- 
 stance, in the time of Herod, of an high priest only 
 seventeen years old s . Yet even there, Herod vindi- 
 cates the previous appointment of Ananelus, on ac- 
 count of the youth of Aristobulus*; and the same rea- 
 son is assigned elsewhere why Jesus, the brother of 
 Onias, succeeded the latter in the high priesthood ; 
 instead of his son u . Great liberties had been taken 
 
 ° Numb. iii. 27 — 31. iv. 3. 34. 35. p John ii. 19 — 21. i. 14. Heb. 
 
 viii. 2. ix. ti. x. 20. q Operum ii. 177. 1 37. De Mose, lib. iii. r De 
 Apparatu Templi, v. 15. s Ant. Jud. xv. iii. 3. t xv . ii. 7. u xii. v. 1. 
 
On the age of our Lord at his baptism. 
 
 377 
 
 before this time with the Law, and with the original 
 usages of the Jews ; especially where nothing had been 
 specified farco?. But it is next to impossible that at 
 first, while the priesthood descended from father to 
 son, and when a numerous offspring and length of 
 days were the peculiar privilege of a virtuous priest- 
 hood, any such anomalies could have happened. Je- 
 rome was well versed in Jewish antiquities; and yet 
 he writes thus : Unde et in Numerorum volumine 
 juxta Hebraeos, non ut in LXX. continetur, a vicesimo 
 quinto aetatis anno, sed a tricesimo, incipiunt Sacerdotes 
 in Tabernaculo ministrare. in quod signum praeces- 
 sit et Joseph, quando in iEgypto esurienti populo fru- 
 menta largitus est ; et Johannes Baptista venit ad flu- 
 enta Jordanis, praedicavitque baptismum poenitentiae. v * * * * 
 
 $e to per ctcga an ro tcov TpiaKovra erco v peyjpi 
 tgov 7r evre teal TpLcucovTa x * — Primo gradu usque ad an- 
 num xv. pueros .... secundo, ad xxx. annum ado- 
 lescentes .... in tertio gradu, . . . usque xlv. annos, 
 juvenes ... in quarto, .... adusque lx. annum se- 
 niores .... inde usque finem vitae .... senes L 
 
 Trj dc. TerapTr) nds ns iv efidopatf ianv apiaros 
 Icr'xyv, oi r avftpes arjpar e^ova^ dperrjs 7 -. 
 
 Quinta (hebdomas) omne virium, quantae inesse uni- 
 cuique possunt, complet augmentum : nulloque modo 
 
 * Hippocrates, as quoted by 
 Pollux, Onomasticon, Lib. ii. 
 cap. i. divided human life into 
 seven ages of seven years each, 
 7) pev npu>TT], naibiov, rj devrepa 
 nais, rj rpiTrj peipaKiov, rj Terdprr] 
 veavl(TK.os , rj nepnrr] avrjp , rj ckti] 
 yepcov, f) tfidopr) npeafivTrjs. The 
 
 subject was naiMov till seven 
 years old, nais until fourteen, 
 peipaKiov until twenty-one, veavi- 
 (tkos until twenty-eight, avrjp 
 until thirty-five, yepcov until for- 
 ty-two, npeo-fivTijs from forty-two 
 to forty-nine, or rather to the 
 end of his life. 
 
 v Operum iii. 669. ad princip. In Ezech. i. 1. Cf. Origen, Operum ii. 65. 
 
 B. C. in Genesim Homilia ii. 5 : iii. 357. D. in Ezech. Homilia i. 4: 406. E. F. 
 
 in Ezech. Selecta, i : 895. F. Comm, in Matt. 78 : 9 66. A. B. in Lucam Homilia 
 
 xxviii. x Aristotle, Rhet. ii. 14. §. 4. y Varro, apud Censorinum de Die 
 
 Natali, 14. z Poet* Minores Graeci, i. 336. Solonis Frag. xiv. 
 
378 
 
 Dissertation Eleventh. 
 
 jam potest quisquam se fortior fieri 3 — Dominus atque 
 Salvator, qui triginta annos natus venit ad baptismum, 
 quae in homine perfecta aetas est b — Primo, quia jam 
 et Dominus triginta annorum erat : numquid juvenis, 
 si jam triginta annorum sit, adhuc crescit c ? — Quia au- 
 tem triginta annorum aetas prima indolis est juvenis 
 .... oinnis quilibet confitebitur d — T piaKovra ercov dov 
 /SonTTL^erai, e7re) avri] n rjXiKia Several irdvra to. djuap- 
 Tn/maTa. Dein , dve/ueivev ovv r avrrjv rrjv fjXiKiav, e lva 
 Sid 7racrddv rcov fawidiv 7rXt]pcbarr] top vo/uiov, koi dyiaerrj 
 
 r ^ p* 
 
 * Aristotle, Politica, vii. xiv. 6 : 
 816 ras pev apporrei nep\ rrjv oktco- 
 KaideKa ercov ffkiKiav av£evyvvvai, 
 rods S’ enra Kai rpiaKovra, rj piKpov. 
 He is speaking of the fittest age 
 for marriage in males and fe- 
 males respectively. Hrec bona 
 non* prim re tribuit natura ju~ 
 ventre, | Qure cito post septem 
 lustra venire solent. Ovid, de 
 Arte Amandi, ii. 693. Galen, O- 
 perumix: rcov veavicrKcov rj'Kiida Kara 
 ttjv 7repnrr)v e(38opd8ci nepiypacfie- 
 rcu . . . f] yap exopevr) rcov veavi- 
 ctkcov rjXiKia rais e<fie£rjs e(38opdcri 
 8 vo TrapeKreiverai — Philo Judreus, 
 De Mundi Opificio, i. 25. 1 . 3 : 
 
 8iX a ^ Tcoy elprjpevcov evapyecrrara 
 7rapicrrdcri rrjv reXeacpopov dvvapiv 
 e(38opdbos Kal ai ck /3 pecpovs dxpi 
 yrjpcos avOpcorcov rjXiKiai, perpovpevai 
 Tavrrj . . . page 26. 1 . 14. Cf. ii. 
 59. 1 . 38-42. De Josepho. Also, 
 Basilii Opera, i. 3 1 t . D — 3 1 2. B. 
 in Ps. cxiv : ev rpi&i yap eftdopdaiv 
 ercov . . . irapa rods npore'povs — Ser- 
 vius, ad ALneid. v. 295 : Aitates 
 omnes Varro sic dividit: Infan- 
 tiam, pueritiam, adolescentiam, 
 
 juventam, senectam. hre ta- 
 men, sicut etiam de temporibus 
 supra iii. 8. diximus, singulre tri- 
 fariam dividuntur, ut sit prima , 
 viridis, prceceps. 
 
 Plutarch, vii. 636. De Oracu- 
 lorum Defectu : dXX* oi pev fjftcbv- 
 ros avayivoocTKOvres, errj rpiaKovra 
 noiovcri rrjv yevedv lead* ‘Hpa/cXetroi/* 
 ev co XP° VC P yevveovra napex^i rov 
 efj avrov yeyevvrjpevov 6 yevvrjcras — 
 Censorinus, De Die Natali, xvii : 
 Quare qui annos triginta srecu- 
 lum putarunt, multum videntur 
 errasse. hoc enim tempus yevedv 
 vocari Heraclitus auctor est, 
 quia orbis retatis in eo fit spatio: 
 orbem autem vocant retatis, dum 
 natura humana a sementi ad se- 
 mentem revertitur. Cf. Servius, 
 ad ASneid. viii. 508 : Pliny, H. 
 N. xvi. 95 : Laurentius, De Men- 
 sibus, iii. 10. p. 109. 
 
 Hieronymus, iii. 11 8. ad calc. 
 in Isai.xv: Sicut enim tricesimus 
 annus in hominibus, ita in pe- 
 cudibus ac jumentis tertius ro- 
 bustissimus est. Ibid. 986. ad 
 med. in Ezech. xl. : V el certe 
 
 a Macrobius, Somnium Scip. i. 6. p. 39. b Hieronymus, Operum iii. 669. 
 loc. cit. c Augustin, iii. pars ii a . 401. E. in Johan. Tract, xiv. 4. d Irenaeus, 
 adv. Haer. ii. 39. 16 1. 1. 16. e Theophylact, Operum i. 19. A. in Matt. iii. Cf. 
 Ibid. 296. D. E. In Lucam iii : 524. D. in Johann, i. Vide also Chrysostom, 
 Operum vii. 139. E. 140. A. in Matt. Homilia x. 
 
On the age of our Lord at his baptism. 
 
 379 
 
 Among the Jews in particular the same opinion is 
 distinctly expressed. Filius triginta annorum ad ro- 
 bin* .... Filius sexaginta annorum ad senectutemb 
 The age of thirty was considered by them so essential 
 to the integrity of the faculties both of mind and body, 
 that Jerome in his preface to Ezekiel writes as fol- 
 lows Nam nisi quis apud eos aetatem Sacerdotalis 
 ministerii, id est, tricesimum annum impleverit, nec 
 principia Geneseos, nec Canticum Canticorum, nec liu- 
 jus voluminis exordium et finem legere permittitur : 
 ut ad perfectam scientiam, et rnysticos intellectus, ple- 
 num humanae naturae tempus accedat *. 
 
 The ministry of our Lord, as well as the ministry 
 of John, if it began when he was thirty years of age, 
 would fall exactly within the period which the observ- 
 ation of antiquity, and the matter of the fact, then as 
 much as now, assigned to the acme , or manhood, of hu- 
 man nature : and if the same coincidence was requisite 
 to the fulfilment of legal righteousness also, there needs 
 no other reason to prepare us, a priori , for the event. 
 It is consequently with equal truth and propriety, that 
 St. Luke describes his age at his baptism accordingly. 
 For if his baptism at the hands of John was a neces- 
 sary preliminary to entering on his own ministry, it 
 must take place some time between the commencement 
 of the ministry of John, and the beginning of his 
 
 thalami . . . ostendunt sponsi ad- 
 ventui cubicula praeparata, quae 
 fuere triginta numero ut perfe- 
 ctam aetatem habitantium demon- 
 strarent. Idem, ii. 740. ad calc : 
 Comm, in Ecclesiasten : He- 
 braeus meus, cujus saepe facio 
 mentionem, quum Ecclesiasten 
 mecum legeret, haec Baracibam, 
 quern unum vel maxime admi- 
 
 rantur, super praesenti loco tra- 
 didisse testatus est : Melior est 
 interior homo, qui post quartum 
 decimum pubertatis annum (that 
 is, at 29.) in nobis exoritur, ex- 
 teriore homine qui de matris al- 
 vo natus est. 
 
 * Cf. Origen, Operum iii. 26. 
 C — E : in Canticum Cantico- 
 rum Prologus. 
 
 f Mishna, iv. 482. 2 1 . 
 
 e Operum iii. 698. 
 
380 
 
 Dissertation Eleventh. 
 
 own ; nearer to the one than to the other. The pub- 
 lic baptism of Christ, followed by the testimony of 
 John, and still more by the voice from heaven, was an 
 act not far short of the public assumption of his cha- 
 racter as the Messias : only that our Lord himself 
 was rather passive than active throughout it. There 
 might then be a proper age for the one as well as for 
 the other ; or rather, the proper age for the one must 
 determine the proper age for the other : and if that 
 was to be full thirty, this would require to be (what 
 St. Luke has shewn that it was) a little less than thirty. 
 
DISSERTATION XII. 
 
 On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 
 
 If our Lord at the time of his baptism, two or three 
 months before the passover, was two or three months 
 less than the age of thirty, it follows that at the pass- 
 over he would be full thirty ; and consequently that 
 he must have been born about the vernal equinox ; and 
 neither in the month of December, at the commonly 
 reputed time of the nativity, nor about the autumnal 
 equinox, which many would substitute in its stead. 
 
 In the age of Chrysostom, the vulgar opinion re- 
 specting the date of the nativity was only of ten years’ 
 standing, at least in the Greek or Eastern Church*; 
 and he urges its reception among them at so late a 
 period as one of the arguments of its truth. The 
 grounds of the opinion are detailed in his Homily 
 upon the nativity a : and if these grounds were suffi- 
 ciently certain, the inference to which they lead would 
 become irresistible. They may be comprised in three 
 propositions ; first that Zacharias, the father of John 
 the Baptist, was the high priest for the time being : 
 secondly that the vision of the angel, announcing the 
 
 * The common or vulgar date 
 of the nativity was introduced 
 into the Greek or Eastern 
 church, from the west ; where 
 Chrysostom supposes it had al- 
 ways been known, because of 
 the records of the census at 
 which Christ was born, there 
 preserved, and at all times to be 
 seen. 
 
 Still even in Chrysostom’s 
 time, there were persons at An- 
 
 tioch, who professed to doubt of 
 the truth of a discovery made 
 so late in the history of their 
 church. What day was observed 
 in the eastern church, as the 
 supposed date of the nativity, 
 before the adoption of the 25 th 
 of December from the Latin 
 church, does not appear from 
 Chrysostom’s homily : though we 
 know from other quarters it was 
 most probably January 6. 
 
 a Operum ii. 354 — 366. It is the opinion of Chrysostom’s editors that this homily 
 was delivered A. D. 386. 
 
382 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth . 
 
 future birth of John, took place on the tenth of Tisri ; 
 thirdly that the conception of John followed immedi- 
 ately on the return of Zacharias home. 
 
 With respect to the first of these positions, it is 
 quite enough to observe, first, that the high priest, as 
 such, belonged to no particular course ; secondly, that 
 the high priest, as such, was bound to reside in Jeru- 
 salem, or wherever the ark was situate b ; thirdly, that 
 the high priest, as such, was never assigned his part 
 in the service (especially in the service of the great 
 day of atonement) by lot. According to Josephus c , 
 he took no part in the service at any time, except on 
 the sabbaths, new moons, and during the feasts. 
 Fourthly, that from a point of time, which as we have 
 shewn answers to U. C. 733, to a point of time, which 
 we shall see hereafter answers to U. C. 750, Simon, the 
 son of Boethus and father of the second Mariamne, 
 was the acting high priest d ; and after him, in the 
 course of the latter year also, Matthias the son of 
 Theophilus e ; and then Joazar the brother-in-law of 
 Matthias f ; both before the death of Herod. And Joa- 
 zar continued in office at least until after the accession 
 of ArchelausS. 
 
 With regard to the second and the third positions ; 
 the vision of the angel, and the return of Zacharias to 
 his own house, might both have taken place in the month 
 of Tisri ; and yet the conception of John might not 
 ensue until some time afterwards. This is clearly com- 
 patible with St. Luke’s assertion : /uera Se ravras Tct? 
 jj/uepas crvv€\a/3ev ’E \i<jafier rj yvvrj avrov h . The concep- 
 tion of John was altogether out of the course of na- 
 ture ; and both that, and the time of his birth, were 
 
 Lev. xxi. 12. i Kings ii. 26, 27. c Bell. Jud. v. v. 7. d Ant. Jud. 
 
 xv. ix. 3. xvii. iv. 2. e lb. xvii. iv. 2. f lb. xvii. vi. 4. g lb. xvii. 
 
 xiii. 1. h Ch. i. 24. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 383 
 
 determined beforehand with reference to the conception 
 and the birth of Christ. For if Christ was to be born 
 about the vernal equinox, six months after John, John 
 was to be born about the autumnal, six months before 
 Christ. 
 
 I apprehend, therefore, it will not endanger the drift 
 of our present line of argument, if it can be made to 
 appear, (as far as such a conclusion can be made to 
 appear,) that, in the year before the birth of John, 
 which I shall assume to be U. C. 748, B. C. 6 ; be- 
 tween the sixth and the thirteenth of Tisri, the course 
 of Abia including Zacharias was actually in office. It 
 will thus be seen that, even for the most erroneous 
 traditions respecting the facts of the Gospel history, 
 there may yet have been some foundation in truth. 
 
 For the account of the twenty-four courses of priests, 
 both before and after the captivity, I refer in general 
 to the places in the margin 1 2 . Joarib was always the 
 first of them, and Abia the eighth and every course 
 served from one sabbath to another j; coming in at 
 noon, and going out at noon. In 168 days therefore 
 every course would have been once in rotation : and 
 on the 169th Joarib would be again in office. Now, 
 according to the tradition of the Jews k , on the ninth 
 of the Jewish Ab, U. C. 823, when the temple was 
 destroyed by Titus, the week was the week of Joarib. 
 Between the ninth of Ab, U. C. 748, and the ninth of 
 Ab, U. C. 823, there are 75 Julian years: or if we 
 calculate by days, 27,393 days, and a fraction of one 
 
 * The course of Abijah is actually mentioned by name, Nehe- 
 miah xii. 1 7. 
 
 i 1 Chron. ix. 22 — 34. xxiv. 1 — 19. 2 Chron. xxix. 25. Neh. xii. 1 — 26. 
 Ant. Jud. vii. xiv. 7. xii. vi. 1. Jos. Vita, i. 38. Bell. iv. iii. 8. Contra A- 
 pionem, i. 7. ii. 8. 23. 1 Macc. ii. 1. 1 Chron. ix. 25. 2 Chron. xxiii. 8. Mai- 
 
 monides, De Apparatu Templi, iii. 9. iv. 3. 4. 11, &e. j 1 Chx*on. ix. 25. 32. 
 
 2 Kings xi. 5. 7. 9. 2 Chron. xxiii. 8. k Mishna, iii. 298. 3. Annott. 
 
384 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 more ; which number is divisible by 168, with a re- 
 mainder of 9*. 
 
 If then, we may assume that the twenty-fourth 
 course of the priesthood was actually in office on or 
 about the ninth of Ab, U. C. 748, it would come again 
 into office on or about the first of Ab, U. C. 823 ; 
 and go out of office on or about the eighth : so that 
 Joarib, according to the above tradition, might be 
 actually in office on or about the ninth, when the tem- 
 ple was taken. On the strength of this coincidence, 
 therefore, we may reason as follows : 
 
 U. C. 748 . B. C. 6. Ab, a month of f thirty days 1 . 
 
 Course XXIV. was in office about the 9 . 
 
 I. Joarib 16 . 
 
 II 23 . 
 
 Ill 30 . 
 
 * It is a remarkable circum- 
 stance, and very important to the 
 result of the calculation about to 
 be proposed, that for the seventy- 
 five or seventy-six years in ques- 
 tion, reckoned whether back- 
 wards or forwards, such was the 
 general tranquillity of the times, 
 there is not the least reason to 
 suppose the order, rotation, or 
 succession of the courses could 
 once have been interrupted, by 
 a war, by a siege of Jerusalem, 
 or any like occurrence. Not so, 
 for the period included between 
 the commencement of the Mac- 
 cabaean dynasty, B. C. 163, and 
 U. C. 748, B. C. 6. During this 
 interval, there were four sieges 
 of Jerusalem, the dates whereof 
 respectively can easily be as- 
 certained and each of some 
 
 months’ duration. While these 
 lasted, it was scarcely possible 
 that one order or course of 
 officiating ministers could regu- 
 
 larly relieve another. The sieges 
 in question were by Antiochus 
 Eupator, B. C. 162: by Anti- 
 ochus Sidetes, B. C. 134: by 
 Pompey, B. C. 63 : by Herod 
 and Sosius, B. C. 37. 
 
 Should it be objected that the 
 ninth of Ab, A. D. 70, the date 
 from which our computation pro- 
 ceeds, was late in the course of 
 the siege of Titus — I answer, the 
 siege began at the passover, pre- 
 viously : the army of Titus found 
 the Jews all assembled at Jeru- 
 salem, to celebrate that feast— 
 the sacerdotal order among the 
 rest — and shut them all up in 
 the city, as in a trap. The suc- 
 cession of courses, then, would 
 go on even during the siege — 
 within the city, up to the last 
 day of the existence of the tem- 
 ple — as much as in a time of 
 profound peace. 
 
 t It is indifferent to the re- 
 sult of the present calculation 
 
 1 Maimonides, De Ratione Intercalandi, viii. 5. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 385 
 
 U. C. 748. B. C. 6. Elul, a month of twenty-nine days. 
 
 Course IV. was in office about the 7. 
 
 V 14. 
 
 VI 21. 
 
 VII 28. 
 
 The next course then ; which would be the course 
 of Abia or Abijah ; would come into office about the 
 sixth of Tisri, and go out about the thirteenth. As all 
 the courses, however, were obliged to attend at the 
 great solemnities, and (without interfering in the 
 regular rotation, which went on as before) to minister 
 in common; it may be assumed as certain that Zacharias 
 would not return home at least before the twenty- 
 third of Tisri, the day after the close of the feast of 
 Tabernacles ; which answered in that year to about 
 the sixth of our October 111 . The conception of John 
 then even in this case, however soon it might follow 
 on his return, could not take place before the middle 
 or the end of October in this year ; nor his birth be- 
 fore the same time in July in the next. 
 
 There are other difficulties to which the received 
 opinion is liable : of which the fact that shepherds, at 
 the time of the nativity, were tending their flocks by 
 night, and in the open air, would not be the least. It 
 is certain, indeed, that Bethlehem lay upon the con- 
 fines of the great desert 11 ; where, when the season 
 permitted and pasture was to be had, flocks were 
 
 what number of days, whether 
 thirty or twenty-nine, we sup- 
 pose the month Ab to have con- 
 tained. The calculation here 
 given is not proposed as strictly 
 exact ; and I shall have an op- 
 portunity of exhibiting a more 
 
 correct one hereafter. I wish 
 this to be received as an ap- 
 proximation merely to the truth. 
 I will assume, therefore, accord- 
 ing to the general notion, that 
 Ab Contained thirty days, and 
 Elul twenty-nine. 
 
 "i Supra, p. 331. Diss. vii. n j Sam. xvii. 28. Hieronymus, Operum iii. 
 1369. 1370. Prcefatio in Amos. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 C C 
 
386 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth . 
 
 accustomed to be fed in great numbers. It is probable 
 also that the nativity took place either in the night- 
 time, or on the evening of some day. It is morally 
 certain, however, that in the month of December, nei- 
 ther men nor cattle would be out all night in the open 
 air. 
 
 Yet notwithstanding these objections, the vulgar 
 date of the nativity is perhaps not so wide of the 
 truth, as that of the autumnal equinox. With respect 
 to this period in particular, as contrasted with the pe- 
 riod of the vernal equinox, and as both are referred to 
 the facts of our Saviour’s history in general ; the argu- 
 ment from analogy is altogether in favour of the latter, 
 and against the former. All the cardinal points, in the 
 transaction of our Lord’s own part in the Christian 
 scheme, are determined to the vernal, not to the au- 
 tumnal quarter of the year ; or what is the same thing, 
 to the passover and not to the feast of Tabernacles. No 
 special distinction was conferred during his life-time 
 on any feast but the passover ; nor after his resurrec- 
 tion on any but the feast of Pentecost. The feast of 
 Tabernacles, in particular, has nothing to render it me- 
 morable before or after the resurrection. Our Lord be- 
 gan his ministry at one passover and he ended it at an- 
 other : and if he ever visited Jerusalem at stated times, 
 it was at the passovers between. It is just as probable 
 that he would be born at one passover, as that he 
 would suffer at another : and if the paschal lamb was 
 the most expressive type, furnished by the symbolical 
 sacrifices of the Law, of the great Christian sacrifice ; 
 it was not less agreeable to the analogy of this type, 
 that the true Paschal Victim should be born at one 
 passover, than that he should suffer at another. 
 
 The presumed congruity between the ceremonies 
 of the great day of atonement, and the purpose for 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 387 
 
 which Christ came into the world, is the only plausible 
 argument a priori, in favour of the contrary opinion. 
 But the fact of the same congruity is equally per- 
 ceptible of the ceremonial of the passover. The blood of 
 every sacrifice under the Law possessed its proper aton- 
 ing virtue : nor is this more true of the sacrifice of the 
 tenth of Tisri, than of the sacrifice of the fourteenth 
 of Nisan. Besides, the supposed analogy between the 
 former sacrifice and the death of Christ fails in a very 
 important point ; which failure is fatal to the analogy 
 itself. The one was fixed to the seventh, the other 
 came to pass in the first month of the sacred year : 
 the former was restricted to the tenth of Tisri — the 
 latter was accomplished on the fourteenth of Nisan. 
 
 But the blood of the sacrifice of this day possessed, it 
 may be said, that general efficacy which we attribute in 
 like manner to the sacrifice of the death of Christ. This 
 must be admitted ; but only as under the Law, and for 
 the expiation of legal guilt ; and what was its most pro- 
 per use and purpose, in behalf of offences committed in 
 ignorance ; which consequently neither had, nor could 
 have been already expiated by their own piaculum 0 . 
 The appointment of a kid indeed seems under all cir- 
 cumstances to have been intended for a similar purpose: 
 epKpov Se, €7ri 7r apairr/creariv ajuapraScov, ei t l Kara XqOrjv ye- 
 volto p. But the blood of the paschal victim was already 
 possessed of its efficacy, prior to the Law itself ; and 
 therefore had a power of atoning, from the first, for 
 some other guilt than that which could be considered 
 in any sense the legal. 
 
 There were two ceremonies, each of them an inte- 
 gral part of the Jewish ritual, yet each of them in 
 being before any part of the Law; which consequently 
 though the Law might adopt or reinforce, it cannot be 
 
 ° Lev. xvi. 5 — end. p Ant. Jud. iii. x. i. 
 
 c c 2 
 
388 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 said to have instituted. The first was the ceremony 
 of circumcision ; which our Lord himself tells us 0 ! was 
 not of Moses, but of the Fathers : the second was the 
 ordinance of the passover-— regulated , prescribed, and 
 observed at least fifty-two days before the arrival at 
 Sinai ; and almost an entire year before the erection 
 of the tabernacle, and the commencement of the Levi- 
 tical service. These two ceremonies then are justly to 
 be regarded as something sui generis ; and must not be 
 lightly confounded with the ritual observances of the 
 Law in general. They were the sacraments, /car’ v 9 
 of the Jewish church; and having been retained in the 
 Christian, the one as baptism, the other as the supper 
 of the Lord, with no other change than the typical 
 nature of either made indispensable, they have shewn 
 that as they had a being before the Law, so they have 
 survived the Law. While every other ritual observ- 
 ance (excepting, perhaps, that of the sabbath) was 
 perishable and transitory, these only were immutable 
 and permanent. 
 
 The two sacrifices under the Law ; the daily sacri- 
 fice of morning and evening, and the sacrifice of the 
 fourteenth of Nisan ; which were unquestionably the 
 liveliest emblems of the sacrifice of Christ — the one of 
 its perpetual , the other of its universal efficacy — were 
 both required to be made with a lamb, or at least in 
 the case of the passover, with a kid instead of a lamb. 
 Concerning this requisition Maimonides observes: Ubi- 
 cunque a Lege agnus agnaque dicitur, aut in multitu- 
 dine agni, annuos esse oportebat r : and the Mishna, 
 still more to the purpose : Agni sunt anniculi, arietes 
 biennes ; omnes vero de die in diem : (that is, from a 
 certain day in one year to the same day in another.) 
 
 *1 John vii. 22 . 
 
 r De Ratione Sacrificiorum, i. 14. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was horn. 389 
 
 Tredecim menses natus, inidoneus est, sive sit aries, 
 sive agnus : as not old enough for the former, and too 
 old for the latter s . This requisition was not peculiar 
 to other sacrifices, numerous as they were : nor would 
 it be easy to assign a reason why it should have been 
 peculiar to the two most evangelical of the legal ordi- 
 nances, except by supposing that Christ, as soon as in the 
 integrity of our nature and substance he came into the 
 world, was virtually the true evSeXexy? Ovcrla of morn- 
 ing and evening prayer, and the true spiritual antitype 
 designed by the paschal victim. And Christ when he 
 came into the world came as a child : and though he 
 suffered as a man, yet in all those qualities, which ren- 
 dered his sacrifice of himself acceptable to God, and 
 which especially were adumbrated by the properties of 
 the typical victim — in meekness, simplicity, and inno- 
 cence — he continued ever a child. 
 
 At the original institution of the passover, it was com- 
 manded that the lamb which was to be offered on the four- 
 teenth , should be taken up and set apart for that pur- 
 pose on the tenth of the same month ; four days before 
 its sacrifice. The reason of this provision does not ap- 
 pear : but if we were to conjecture that, in the fulness 
 of time, the birth of our Saviour was to happen on the 
 tenth of Nisan, as it is certain that his death was to 
 do so on the fourteenth, we should assign a reason 
 which would explain it at once, and be entirely in 
 unison with what has been proved respecting the pe- 
 riod of the nativity in general. In the transaction of 
 such a business as the scheme of Human Redemption, 
 
 s Vol. vi. 270. 3. It appears indeed from Suidas, voce a/xvhu, that this word, so 
 regularly applied to our Saviour, (especially John i. 29. 36.) properly denotes, rbv 
 iviavaiov apua : for which he quotes, ''larpos eu reus 5 A ttikcus (sc. A e£eaiv)‘ &pva, 
 e?ra ap.vhv, elra apveibv, elra hnroyvci>iAOva, &c. Eustathius, ad Odyss. 1 . as cited 
 by Kuster, repeats the statement. Cf. also Suidas, ad a fivol robs rp6novs. 
 
 c c 3 
 
890 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 by the voluntary Incarnation, Nativity, and Passion 
 of the Son of God, whatever there might be elsewhere, 
 there can be no room for the supposition of accidental 
 or fortuitous causes ; and he who should doubt whether 
 the day of our Lord’s birth ; the precise duration of his 
 ministry on earth ; the time, the place, the mode of his 
 sufferings ; the day of his Resurrection ; and the day of 
 his return to the Father ; were foreknown and forecast 
 from eternity; would not deserve to be argued with as 
 a sane person. 
 
 I advance it therefore as a conjecture which to pious 
 minds may not appear improbable ; (though it must 
 still be received as a conjecture ;) that the true day of 
 our Saviour’s birth, and consequently the true date of 
 the nativity, was the tenth of the Jewish Nisan. The 
 Paschal Chronicon assigns this date to the fact of the 
 Annunciation 1 ; and tradition in this instance as well 
 as in others, may so far have blended error with truth, 
 as to have confounded the day of the birth with the 
 day of the supposed conception of Christ. It will fol- 
 low that the Baptist, who was born six months before 
 Christ, might be born on the tenth of Tisri, or about 
 the feast of Tabernacles ^ which however must be re- 
 ceived as even a more conjectural date than the former. 
 Yet there would be occasion, from that coincidence also, 
 to admire the economy of the Divine Providence, in or- 
 daining that one, who was designed by his office not 
 merely to be the precursor of the Messias, but a preacher 
 of repentance and righteousness — one who by coming 
 and acting, ev oSw Sikcuoct vvrjs 11 , was not only to preach, 
 but also to practise the lessons of his preaching — should 
 be born at that season of the year in general, if not on 
 that day in particular. 
 
 t Vol. i. 375. 1 . 8—20. 
 
 u Matt. xxi. 32. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 391 
 
 There is no fact in the subsequent history of our 
 Saviour, whether earlier or later in its occurrence, which 
 is not altogether consistent with our assumption of this 
 first and cardinal point in the whole ; viz. that he was 
 born about the vernal equinox. I have proved this 
 of the time of the commencement and of the time of 
 the close of his ministry ; and of his age at the first of 
 those periods, and of the duration of his ministry previ- 
 ously at the other. I shall endeavour to prove it at 
 present of the particulars connected with his birth itself ; 
 or with his infancy and his early history afterwards. 
 
 First ; from the pastoral habits of Judaea, it was to 
 be expected that in the spring season of the year, shep- 
 herds would be every where tending their flocks in the 
 open air, both by day and by night # . In the depth of 
 summer, and also in the middle of winter, though the 
 weather had allowed of the turning out of flocks or herds, 
 the country would have been too bare of pasturage to 
 admit of the grazing of cattle. In consequence how- 
 ever of the vernal rains, and until after the passover 
 was past, there was abundance of grass to be had ; but 
 from that time until after the autumnal equinox at 
 least, there was none. With the beginning of the 
 autumnal rains, the flocks and herds were brought 
 home. 
 
 Again ; I shall shew elsewhere that the visit of the 
 Magi took place some time in the fifth month after the 
 
 * Accordingly, Mr. Harmer 
 mentions from Doubdan, the 
 fact of his falling in with Arab 
 shepherds, on the road from 
 Jaffa (Joppa) to Rama, who were 
 watching their flocks by night 
 (though with fires) on March 
 28, N. S. Nabal’s sheep were 
 so tended in the spring, in the 
 time of David. 1 Sam. xxv. 4. 
 
 c c 
 
 7. 15, 16. Harmer’s Obs. vol. iii. 
 p. 31. Obs. ix. 
 
 Oi (piXoTTOvoi tcov noipevoav (says 
 Chrysostom) eneidai/ diap,aKpoi>xet— 
 pco vos iScacri Xapnpav aKrlva, KcuOep- 
 porepavyevopevrjv rjpepav, rrjspdvdpas 
 etjayayovres r a TTpoftara, rrpos ras 
 avvrjdeis ayovai vopas. Operum ii. 
 688. A. De Sancta Droside 1. 
 
 4 
 
392 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 birth of Christ ; and consequently that the flight into 
 Egypt, which followed upon it, happened in the mild- 
 est season of the year, when both the facilities of tra- 
 vel, and the means of subsistence in a strange land, 
 were likely to be the greatest. Nor is this incom- 
 patible with the expectation of that special Providence, 
 which it may justly be supposed would watch over the 
 infancy of the Christ. 
 
 Again ; the residence in Egypt, posterior to this 
 flight and prior to the ensuing passover, when Herod 
 died and Joseph was admonished to return ; would be 
 a residence of about seven months in duration, like 
 that of the ark among the Philistines in the days of 
 Samuel x : and this is a much more probable interval 
 of time than a residence either of less than six months 
 on the one hand, or of more than a year on the other. 
 
 Again ; St. Matthew by applying to this residence 
 the text of Hosea, Out of Egypt have I called my son?; 
 has shewn that the sojourning of the children of Israel 
 there was in some respect or other typical of this of 
 Christ. Now the Israelites came up from Egypt at 
 the passover ; and so it is manifest did the Holy family, 
 if they returned shortly after the death of Herod. The 
 descent of the Holy family into Egypt took place about 
 the close of the summer ; and so, I think, it may be 
 proved, did the descent of the Israelites also*. 
 
 * For first ; that present of 
 the fruits of the land, which ac- 
 companied the second visit of 
 J oseph’s brethren, was most pro- 
 bably a present of the fruits of 
 that very season 2 . The disco- 
 very of Joseph which followed 
 on the second mission of his 
 
 brethren ; was made in the se- 
 cond year of the famine a : but 
 that mission did not take place 
 until after the corn brought from 
 Egypt on the first was consum- 
 ed t*; whence, whether both mis- 
 sions took place in the second 
 year, or one in the first and the 
 
 x i Sam. vi. i. 
 b xliii. 2. 
 
 y Matt. ii. 15. Hos. xi. 1. 
 
 z Gen. xliii. 11. 
 
 a xlv. 6. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was horn. 393 
 
 Again ; Moses, the greatest prototype of Christ in 
 the Old Testament, was certainly born in the spring. 
 
 other in the second, yet the last 
 in particular must have been af- 
 ter the usual time of harvest in 
 the second year. Accordingly, 
 at the time of his discovery to 
 them, Joseph says to his breth- 
 ren, There shall neither be earing 
 nor harvest c ; implying that har- 
 vest time was over, and earing 
 time at hand. His brethren also 
 say to Pharaoh soon after, Thy 
 servants have no pasture for their 
 flocks d ; which would be said in 
 the summer time only. 
 
 It is probable at least, from 
 Gen. xii. 4 — 10. that the call of 
 Abraham into Canaan took place 
 in the spring, and his first visit 
 to Egypt in the autumn of the 
 same year. Joseph himself was 
 certainly sold into Egypt at this 
 time of the year ; for the pit in- 
 to which he was let down, was 
 empty of water ; and the com- 
 pany of Ishmaelites were carry- 
 ing at the time spicery, balm, and 
 myrrh e ; all, it is probable, the 
 productions of that same season. 
 
 Now the sojourning of the Is- 
 raelites, after this descent, is to 
 be reckoned at 2 1 5 years r ; and 
 if a day be put for a year, as at 
 Numbers xiv. 34. and Ezek. iv. 
 6, the residence of the Holy fa- 
 mily might be of the same dura- 
 tion. Hierosolymis per Ascalo- 
 nem diebus octo, aut etiam eo 
 citius itur ad iEgyptumS — Igi- 
 tur inde digressus Bethlehem 
 oppidum petii, quod ab Hiero- 
 solymis sex millibus disparatur ; 
 ab Alexandria autem sedecim 
 
 mansionibus abest h . If the Holy 
 family then resided in Alexan- 
 dria ; (which is most probable ;) 
 it would take them a fortnight 
 to arrive there. If they set out 
 to Egypt, therefore, at the be- 
 ginning of the Jewish Elul, and 
 set out thence again about the 
 fourteenth of the Jewish Ni- 
 san ; the actual length of their 
 residence, calculated by Jewish 
 months of alternatelytwenty-nine 
 and thirty days each, might be 
 as nearly as possible 2 15 days. 
 
 For if the birth of our Lord 
 took place at the beginning of 
 April U. C. 750 ; then it may be 
 rendered extremely probable 
 that the Magi arrived in Jerusa- 
 lem at the beginning of the fol- 
 lowing August : and consequent- 
 ly we may presume that the 
 flight into Egypt could not be 
 delayed much beyond the middle 
 of the same month. The pass- 
 over was celebrated the next 
 year on March 3 1, (vide the Ta- 
 ble in Dissertation vii.) about a 
 fortnight after the death of He- 
 rod ; and that Herod was dead 
 before the Holy family was in- 
 structed to return home again, 
 is indisputably clear from Matt, 
 ii. 20. But this is not all. 
 
 It is a singular fact that in the 
 year after his birth, when Christ 
 the true passover was absent in 
 Egypt ; there was strictly speak- 
 ing no passover celebrated as 
 usual in Judaea: a circumstance 
 almost unexampled in the pre- 
 vious history of the Jews. The 
 
 c Gen. xlv. 6. A xlvii. 4. e xxxvii. 24, 25. f Exod. xii. 40. S Mai- 
 monides, De Ratione Intercalandi, v. 10. Vide also Jos. Bell. Jud. iv. xi. 5. 
 h Sulpicius Severus, Dialogus i. cap. 4. 
 
394 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 For he was three months old when he was exposed 1 ; 
 and he was exposed before the river had begun to rise; 
 that is, he was exposed before the summer solstice # ; 
 and consequently had been born at the vernal equinox. 
 And as he was born about this time, so he died about 
 this time. Josephus places his death on the first of 
 
 Adar ; when he was, as the 
 old°. 
 
 cause of this unusual occurrence 
 was the disturbances which en- 
 sued upon the death of Herod ; 
 and which, by the time of the 
 arrival of the paschal day, had 
 attained to such an height, that 
 Archelaus was obliged to disperse 
 the people by force of arms, in the 
 very midst of the sacrifices them- 
 selves. Whether this violence, 
 under the circumstances of the 
 case, was a justifiable act or not, 
 
 I do not inquire ; but there can 
 be no question that such an out- 
 rage upon the religious preju- 
 dices of the nation, and especi- 
 ally at the beginning of the new 
 reign, would render its author 
 exceedingly unpopular ; and gain 
 him the reputation of tyrannical 
 and cruel. 
 
 Now we may collect, I think, 
 from Matt. ii. 22, 23, that it was 
 not long after this occurrence ; 
 and consequently when the of- 
 fensiveness and odium of the late 
 severity were likely to be great- 
 est ; that Joseph received the 
 command to return into his own 
 country. No reason is so likely 
 as this, to have produced his he- 
 sitation about taking up his a- 
 bode again at Bethlehem, in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of Ar- 
 chelaus j which seems to have 
 been his first intention, before he 
 was admonished to retire to Na- 
 i Exod. ii. 2. o Ant. iv. viii. 49. Dent, 
 
 Scripture shews, 120 years 
 
 zareth. We may infer then, 
 that the return from Egypt, 
 U. C. 751, was not earlier than 
 March 31. in that year at least; 
 to which time inclusive, from the 
 end of August exclusive, there 
 are seven months ; or two hun- 
 dred and twelve days. 
 
 For the same reasons in gene- 
 ral also, we may infer that it was 
 not later than May 21, the day 
 of the ensuing Pentecost ; at 
 which time the disturbances, be- 
 gun at the passover, were re- 
 newed with greater violence than 
 ever. Nor were they finally sup- 
 pressed, except by force of arms 
 on the part of the president of 
 Syria, Varus; and with the loss 
 of some thousand lives to the 
 Jews themselves. 
 
 * Cf. Callisthenes, apud Athe- 
 naeum, ii. 89: Diodorus Sic. i. 36: 
 Strabo, xvii. 1 . §.4, 5. 480 — 493. 
 Philo Jud. ii. 98. 1 . 35 — 39. De 
 Mose, i: Pliny, H.N. xviii. 47 : 
 Solini Polyh. xxxii. 12: Lu- 
 can, Phars. x. 225 : Plutarch, 
 De Iside et Osiride, vii. 444, 
 445 : Aristides, ii. 437. seqq. 
 Oratio xlviii : Ammianus Mar- 
 cellinus, xxii. 15. 334, 335 : A - 
 chilles Tatius, De Clitoph. et 
 Leuc. Amoribus, iv. 1 2 : Helio- 
 dorus, iEthiopica, ix. 22. Clau- 
 dian, Eidyllia, iv. Nilus, 27, et 
 sqq: Herodotus, ii. 19. 
 xxxi. 2. i. 3. xxxiv. 7. 8. Josh. iv. 19. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 39 5 
 
 The same tiling appears to me to be true of Samuel 
 also ; the first of the prophets as such, and next to Mo- 
 ses, so far the most eminent type of Christ. The yearly 
 sacrifice, mentioned 1 Sam. i. 3. 7. 21, can be understood 
 of nothing but the sacrifice of the passover ; for no sa- 
 crifice, which every individual Jew was required to of- 
 fer, could be called the yearly sacrifice, but that. Now 
 it is clear from 1 Sam. i. 19 — 21, that Samuel was 
 conceived just after one of these yearly visits, and was 
 born just before another. If so, he was born about the 
 
 passover*. 
 
 * To the above we may add 
 the following remarkable coinci- 
 dences also. 
 
 I. If Isaac was conceived after 
 the appearance of God to Abra- 
 ham, Gen. xviii. i, he was con- 
 ceived in the summer, and born 
 in the spring : for Abraham was 
 then sitting at the door of his 
 tent, during, as it is said, the 
 heat of the day ; which is pro- 
 bably a description of summer. 
 The same thing is implied in the 
 account of the destruction of So- 
 dom P. It follows then, that the 
 set time spoken of xvii. 2 1 . xviii. 
 14, and xxi. 2, was the time of 
 spring ; and that Abraham also, 
 if he was then just ninety-nine 
 years oldl, was born in the spring. 
 Moreover, if the weaning of I- 
 saac took place about his birth- 
 day ; it is clear from the account 
 of the dismissal of Ilagar and 
 Ishmael, that they were sent a- 
 way in the summer 1 *. 
 
 II. Pharez was conceived a- 
 bout midsummer s ; and conse- 
 quently was born in the spring. 
 
 P Ch. xix. 1. 2. 14. 15. 23. 27. 30. 
 
 13 — 24. t Ruth, i. 22. iii. 15. 
 
 Numb, xxxiii. 3. x Exod. xix. 1. 11 
 iii. viii. 4. z Exod. xxxiv. 28. 
 
 As Ruth also was married to 
 Boaz about the time of barley 
 harvest 1 ; that is, soon after the 
 passover ; Obed was probably 
 born in the spring. 
 
 III. The deliverance of the 
 Israelites from Egypt was begun 
 about midsummer, that is, after 
 wheat harvest, in one year v ; 
 and completed at the time of the 
 passover in the next w . 
 
 IV. The material tabernacle, 
 which was the type of the body 
 of Christ ; began to be prepared 
 within one hundred and ten days 
 from the tenth of Nisan in one 
 year, and was set up on the first 
 of Nisan in the neoct x . Josephus 
 indeed says, 6 be nas xpovos eh to 
 epyov birj\ 6 e fxrjvau euraY : which 
 he makes to expire with the 
 month Xanthicus, as before, in 
 the second year. But this com- 
 putation is dated from the expi- 
 ration of the second forty days 
 and nights 2 , which were spent 
 by Moses on the mount; to 
 which expiration there were 
 from the Exodus 50 plus 80, or 
 
 Q xvii. 24. r xxi. 8 — 19. 8 xxxviii. 
 v Exod. iii. 1. v. 12. w Exod. xii. 
 16. xxiv. 16. 18. xl. 2. y Ant. Jud. 
 
396 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth, 
 
 But to revert from this digression. Our Lord was 
 taken up at the feast of the passover, Luke ii. 42, when 
 he was twelve years old ; and clearly for the first time 
 either to that or to any other feast. Nor does it ap- 
 pear that he was taken up then to attend the feast ; 
 for a paschal company could not be composed among 
 others of pueri impnberes* : and the age of puberty in 
 males was not earlier than fourteen s ; or at least than 
 thirteen years and a day. As neither was it in fe- 
 
 130 days, at least ; that is, four 
 months and ten days’ interval ; in 
 other words, five current months. 
 
 V. The first king of Israel, 
 Saul ; if Josephus is to he be- 
 lieved ; was appointed about the 
 passover : for his second inaugu- 
 ration, which 1 Sam. xii. 17, 
 proves to have been about the 
 feast of Pentecost, is placed by 
 Josephus something more than 
 one month after his first a . 
 
 VI. David, another great type 
 of Christ, died at seventy b . 
 And he had reigned previously 
 forty years 0 . He had been made 
 king therefore at thirty. The 
 length of his reign, however, as 
 may be collected from 2 Sam. v. 
 4, 5. 1 Chron. iii. 4 : Jos. Ant. 
 Jud. vii. xv. 2. and 1 Kings ii. 
 1 1 . was in reality forty years 
 and six months ; seven years and 
 six months in Hebrop, and thir- 
 ty-three years in Jerusalem. 
 Now Saul certainly died in the 
 summer d ; therefore David’s 
 reign began in the summer : and 
 if it lasted forty years and six 
 months afterwards, it must have 
 expired, and Solomon’s also have 
 begun, in the spring. 
 
 VII. From 2 Sam. xi. i — 5. 
 27. xii. 1 5. 24. 26, it may be in- 
 ferred that Solomon was proba- 
 bly conceived in the summer, 
 and born in the spring ; and if 
 at 1 Chron. xxix. 20. 21, the 
 morrow there mentioned was the 
 morrow after the passover, that 
 too would be a proof that he be- 
 gan to reign and that David died 
 in the spring. Moreover, if Da- 
 vid was an even number of years 
 old at his death, he also must 
 have been born in the spring. 
 
 VIII. From Ezra iii. 1. 6, 
 compared with iii. 8, and con- 
 firmed by Josephus e , we may 
 infer that the return of the Jews 
 from captivity took place before 
 the second month in the sacred 
 year ; and seven months before 
 the feast of Tabernacles. The 
 second month in the sacred year, 
 when they began to rebuild the 
 temple, was some month also in 
 their second year, after they had 
 left Babylon. They must have 
 left it, therefore, before or in 
 the second month of the sacred 
 year ; and very possibly they 
 left it in the first, about the time 
 of the feast of the passover. 
 
 a Ant. vi. v. 1 — 6. b Ant. vii. xv. 2. c x Chron. xxix. 27. d 1 Sam. 
 
 xxviii 2 Sam. i. e Ant. xi. iv. 1, 2. f Maimonides, De Sacrificio Pas- 
 
 chali, ii. 4. Mishna, ii. 166. 7. g Cf. Jos. Ant. Jud. xii. iv. 6. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was horn. 397 
 
 males than twelve years * and a day: at which times 
 too, but not before, respectively both males and females 
 became subject to the other Jewish ordinances ; as the 
 obligation of the vtjtrrela , or fast of the tenth of Tisri h . 
 Had this then been the object of our Saviour’s going, it 
 would have implied that he was arrived at the legal 
 age of puberty ; in which case St. Luke must have de- 
 scribed him as thirteen, and not merely as twelve years 
 old. 
 
 Maimonides however tells us that Omnis puer im- 
 pubes, cum primum poterat, parentis apprehensa manu, 
 gradi usque ab urbe Hierosolymae ad montem sedis, in 
 templum apparendi causa erat a patre adducendus qui 
 sacris initiaretur 1 : agreeably to the divine mandate at 
 Exod. xxiii. 14. 17- xxxiv. 23. This age, in children 
 who lived in the remotest part of Galilee, could not be 
 earlier than the age of twelve — the age immediately 
 bordering on puberty : at w 7 hich time also, according 
 to the Mishna k , a male child, and at the age of eleven 
 complete, a female became capable vota nuncupandi. 
 It is an instance to the point that the numbers, who re- 
 turned from captivity, are reckoned by Josephus 1 from 
 twelve years old and upwards. 
 
 That this was the purpose, for which our Lord was 
 now taken up ; viz. not to celebrate the passover, but 
 to appear, as one of the male Israelites, at a stated 
 time of such appearing before the Lord ; to be made 
 in short a disciple of the Law, and to undergo a cere- 
 mony something like to our confirmation : is presump- 
 
 * Tertullian, iii. 24. De Vir- duodecim annis, masculum vero 
 ginibus Velandis, 1 i : Tempus a duobus amplius ad negocia 
 etiam ethnici observant, ut ex mittunt, pubertatem in annis, 
 lege naturae jura sua aetatibus non sponsalibus aut nuptiis de- 
 reddant. nam feminas quidem a cernentes. 
 
 h Mishna, ii. 254. 4. Commentaiius. i De Sacris Solemnibus, ii. 3. Cf. 
 Mishna, ii. 413. 1. k i. 201. 3. 1 Ant. xi. iii. 10. Cf. 1 Esdras v. 41. 
 
398 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 tively to be collected even from what is recorded of his 
 mode of employment in the temple ; when he was found 
 sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them 
 and asking them questions; and astonishing those who 
 heard him by his understanding and answers. I think 
 that Josephus had his eye upon this ceremony, and on 
 the age of the party when it was usually undergone, 
 where he tells us that Samuel, an eminent type of 
 Christ, began to prophesy — 7re7rX>7joa>/cw9 ero? ScoSe- 
 koltov m . He cannot mean the age of puberty, for that 
 would have required Ito? §&/ rpio-KaiSeKarov ; and though 
 it is certain from 1 Sam. iii. 1. 19, that Samuel was 
 comparatively still young when the word of the Lord 
 was first revealed to him, we are not told he was only 
 twelve years old. 
 
 It follows then, and this is what we are bound 
 chiefly to attend to, that our Saviour was twelve at 
 the passover ; or that the passover was the first feast, 
 after he became twelve years old, to which he could 
 be taken up. If Maimonides is to be relied on, it 
 must be demonstratively certain that, had he been of 
 the same age at the feast of Tabernacles, he would 
 have been taken up first to that in particular, above 
 any other". No feast was, otherwise, better calcu- 
 lated for such a ceremony and such a purpose, than 
 the feast of Tabernacles. It appears to me a certain 
 inference that Jesus was not twelve at the feast of 
 Tabernacles, before he was taken up; and was twelve 
 at the feast of the passover, when he was taken up : 
 and if so, that he was born after a feast of Tabernacles, 
 and before a feast of the Passover, at least*. 
 
 * If our Lord was born some- time U. C. 762. In that year 
 time U. C. 750, the twelfth year the passover was celebrated on 
 of his age complete was the same March 29 : the fourteenth of 
 
 m Ant. v. x. 4. n De Sacris Solemnibus, iii. Vide also Ant. Jud. iv. viii. 12. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was horn. 399 
 
 The knowledge of the actual day, on which the na- 
 tivity took place, may be ranked among the mysteries 
 
 Nisan, therefore, coincided with 
 March 29 : and if our Lord was 
 born on any day prior to the 
 fourteenth of Nisan according 
 to the Jewish reckoning, though 
 posterior to the 29th of March 
 according to the Julian; it might 
 still be said with truth, accord- 
 ing to the Jewish mode of reck- 
 oning, that he was already twelve 
 years old by the 29th of March. 
 
 According, however, to the 
 same mode of reckoning, a per- 
 son would be said to be twelve 
 years old, who had just com- 
 pleted his eleventh year, and 
 was barely entered on his twelfth. 
 It is not improbable that this is 
 what St. Luke means here ; and, 
 consequently, that the passover 
 of U. C. 761. is the passover in 
 question, not that of U. C. 762. 
 This passover was celebrated on 
 April 8 : the superior advan- 
 tages of which date will appear 
 more fully by and by. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that 
 a probable argument in favour 
 of the year of our Saviour’s birth 
 might be derived from what is 
 related, Luke ii. 36, 37, of the 
 history of Anna, the daughter 
 of Phanuel ; that she was about 
 84 years old — which I under- 
 stand to mean in her 84th year 
 — at the time when our Lord was 
 presented in the temple ; that 
 she had lived seven years with an 
 husband, from her virginity ; and 
 had been a widow ever since. 
 
 If she was in her eighty-fourth 
 year, at our assumed date of the 
 nativity, B. C. 4, she was born 
 B. C. 87. If we knew at what 
 age she was afterwards married, 
 we should know at what age she 
 
 lost her husband. It is capable 
 of proof, however, that females 
 were commonly married from 
 fourteen to seventeen years of 
 age. ‘ilpaios be ywaiKa reov 7 rori 
 olkov dyeaOat, | prjre rpirjKovTeov 
 irecov paXa 7 rdXX’ anoXeinatv, j prjr 
 eniOeis paXa noXXa' ydpos be toi 
 aptos ovros. | 17 be yvvrj rerop 
 f](3cooi, nepnreo be yapoiro. He- 
 siodi Opera et Dies, 693. Which 
 means at fifteen or sixteen. 
 
 Aristotle, Politica, vii. xiv. 6, 
 as we have seen,considered eight- 
 een the fittest age of marriage 
 for women, and thirty-seven for 
 men. 
 
 Epicteti Manuale, xl : ai yv- 
 vaiices evdvs anb recraapeaKaibeKa 
 era) v vno twv dvbputv Kvpiai KaXovv- 
 tcu. 
 
 Xenophon, (Economica, vii. 5: 
 icai tl av, €<prj, a ’2 g>k pares, enarra- 
 pevqv avrrjv 7 rapeXafiov, rj err] pev 
 ovnco nevreKaibeKa yeyovvia rj\6e 
 7 rpos epe ; 
 
 Demosthenes, Oratio xxix. §. 
 5 i . xxvii. §. 4, reckons his sister 
 of a marriageable age, at fifteen. 
 So also some other female, xl. 
 §.4.21. 
 
 Dionysius Hal. Ant. Rom. xi. 
 30. line I 2 : ev be rots pera^v xpbvois 
 ovk eXarrovcov , fj nevreKaibeKa, bie- 
 XrjXvdoroav eroov : which is spoken 
 of the age of Virginia, at the 
 time when she was betrothed to 
 Icilius. 
 
 Quintilian, Institt. Orat. vi. 
 Prsef. 4 : Erepta mihi prius eo- 
 rundem matre, quse nondum ex- 
 pleto setatis undevicesimo anno 
 duos enixa filios, quamvis acer- 
 bissimis rapta fatis, felix decessit. 
 
 Antliologia, i. 173: Leoni- 
 dse Tarentini lxxi. T is, rlvos 
 
400 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 or secrets which are known, for certain, to God alone. 
 Nevertheless I have advanced a conjecture that it 
 
 ovcra, yvvai , TLaplrjv vno klovcl Kei- 
 aai ; | Tlprj^a) K aXXireXovs. Kai 
 no8anrj ; Sapirj. | T is 8i ae Kai Kre- 
 peiije ; QeoKpiros, a> pe yovrjes | e’£- 
 eboaav. QvqcrKeis S’ eK t'ivos ; ’Ek 
 TOKerov. | E vcra nocrcov irecov ; A vo 
 KeiKocriv. ’H pa y areKVOs ; | Ovk' 
 aXXa Tpierr) KaXXtreX^y eXinov. k , 
 t. X. 
 
 Cf. Ibid. ii. 30. Antipatri Si- 
 donii lxxxv. lxxxvi. 
 
 Ibid. i. 253. Dioscoridis xxxii. 
 ’ApxeXea pe bapapra UoXv^eivijv, 
 OeodeKTov | 7 raiSa Kai alvonaOovs 
 evvene ArjpaperrjS, | bcnrov in a >81- 
 (Tiv Kai prjripa * naida 8e halpcov \ 
 e<p6a(rev, ovdi avrov e Uoaiv rjeXtoav. | 
 OKTcoKaibeKeris 8’ avrr) 6avov, apri 
 reKovo-a, | apri 8e Kai vvp<prj, navro- 
 Xiyoxpovios. 
 
 Ibid. ii. 5. Persis vi. ’'QAeo Sj) 
 
 npo yapoio, QiXaiviov, ovdi ae pa- 
 rrjp | IlvOias topaiovs rjyayev els 6 a- 
 Xapovs | vvp(j)lov m dXX’ iXeeiva Ka- 
 ra 8 pvy\racra napeias | recrcrapaKatbe - 
 Kenv r< 58 ’ eKaXv\J/e rafpco. 
 
 Cf. also iii. 207. Juliani JE- 
 gyptii lvi. and lvii. both, epi- 
 taphs to the memory of a young 
 woman, who died at sixteen, the 
 year after her marriage : and iv. 
 38. Agathiae xciv. an epitaph to 
 a young woman, who died at 
 fourteen, on the eve of her mar- 
 riage. Ibid. 273. 'Adianora, 
 DCCXVI b .an epitaph to a young 
 married woman, who died at 
 nineteen; 278. DCCXXIX. an- 
 other, to a female of the same 
 description, who died at twenty. 
 Cf. also, Procopii Historia Ar- 
 cana, cap. v. 16, C. 
 
 Galeni et Hipp. Opera, ix. 
 252. D. 253. A. yvvalKa . . . re- 
 Kovaav ye to npiorov . . . rjXiKir] nepi 
 erea i£ . 
 
 Phalaridis Epp. xix. §. 85. KXe- 
 
 aplo-Trjv . . a.8eX<j)i8riv ov yeypaipa- 
 pev Kai yvvaiKa, eKKaideKa crvvetj]- 
 KViav err], rpiaKoarov 8e £q<ra(Tav. 
 
 Chrysostom, Operum i. 340. 
 A. B ; Ad viduam juniorem 2 : 
 Chrysostom’s mother lost her 
 husband at twenty : at which 
 time he himself was some years 
 old. Vide Ibid. 363. De Sacer- 
 dotio, lib. i. 5 . 
 
 I think it, then, no impro- 
 bable supposition that Anna 
 might be married at seventeen, 
 that is, B. C. 70 : in which case, 
 she would lose her husband, se- 
 ven years afterwards, B. C. 63. 
 
 Now it is worthy of remark 
 of this year, that it was one of 
 great trouble and confusion in 
 Judsea ; being the very year in 
 which Pompey, first by his ge- 
 neral Scaurus, and afterwards 
 by himself, reduced Judaea, but 
 not without violent opposition 
 on the part of the Jews, and a 
 long siege of Jerusalem. It 
 would be nothing extraordinary, 
 if by one of the many accidents 
 of war, the husband of Anna 
 had met at this time with a pre- 
 mature death. The circum- 
 stance that he survived their 
 marriage so short a time, is a 
 presumptive argument of some- 
 thing of that kind — unless, what 
 we do not know to have been 
 the case, there was originally so 
 great a difference in the age of 
 the parties respectively, as to 
 make it nothing extraordinary 
 that the one should die in seven 
 years’ time, and the other should 
 survive so long afterwards. Be- 
 sides which, their place of resi 
 dence seems to have been Jeru- 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord teas born. 401 
 
 might possibly be the tenth of the Jewish Nisan ; and 
 I have somewhat still to say in support of this con- 
 jecture, which I have purposely reserved for the last. 
 
 The tenth day of any month in a lunar year, as re- 
 ferred to a solar, is necessarily liable to vary ; and can 
 never fall out in two successive years alike. Between 
 the corresponding day to this in one solar year, and 
 the corresponding day to it in another, there never can 
 be less than eleven days’ interval ; and in the case of 
 the tenth of Nisan, there might be considerably more. 
 The tenth of Nisan in a Jewish year, immediately 
 before an intercalation, would be twenty days ear- 
 lier than the same day in a year immediately after 
 one. It is manifest, then, that the tenth of Nisan in 
 the year when our Saviour was born ; if he was born 
 on that day ; might express for that year the actual 
 day of his birth ; but the tenth of Nisan in any other 
 year, and for any year when the tenth of Nisan might 
 fall on the same day again, would be only his nominal 
 birthday : his true birthday, ever after the year of his 
 birth, would be that day in a solar or a Julian year, 
 which coincided with the tenth of Nisan in the year of 
 his birth. If this day can be determined, then, on the 
 supposition that he was born on the tenth of Nisan, 
 the date of his birth, which will express it ever after, 
 will be so far determined likewise. 
 
 Now the year of our Saviour’s birth I assume to be 
 U. C. 750, B. C. 4 ; and it has been proved elsewhere 0 
 that the passover was celebrated in that year on April 
 
 salem : and it is very likely that dow’s being always night and 
 the husband of Anna was one day in the temple;) which adds 
 either of the priests or of the to the probability that her hus- 
 Levites ; (so at least we may band met with his death there, 
 infer from the fact of his wi- B. C. 63. 
 
 ° Supra p. 331. Diss. vii. Cf. also p. 303. Diss. vi. 
 
 VOL. I. D d 
 
402 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 10 : that is to say, the fourteenth of Nisan, 
 
 on which the passover was always slain, coincided 
 with the interval between sunset April 9, and sunset 
 April 10. If so, the tenth w^O^fiepov of Nisan, which 
 began and expired four days before the fourteenth, 
 began at sunset April 5, and expired at sunset April 
 6. The tenth of Nisan, then, U. C. 750, coincided 
 partly with April 5, and partly with April 6. April 
 
 5, therefore, or April 6, must express the day of our 
 Saviour’s birth ; the former, if he was born on the 
 evening of the tenth of Nisan ; the latter, if he was 
 born on the morning. 
 
 Now from the narrative of St. Luke, who only of 
 the Evangelists has given any account of the circum- 
 stances of our Saviour’s birth ; especially from ii. 8, 9, 
 11, though the fact is not expressly asserted, yet I 
 think it is plainly to be inferred, that the Nativity 
 took place on the evening of some Jewish day; either 
 in the night-time as such, or after sunset at least *. 
 Sunset, on April 5 or 6, U.C. 750, thirteen or fourteen 
 days later than the vernal equinox, would not take 
 place earlier than 6. 30. in the evening ; and the tenth 
 of Nisan, which began with sunset, would begin with 
 
 6. 30. in the evening. If our Saviour then was born 
 in the evening of a Jewish day, and born on the tenth 
 of Nisan ; he was born on the night of April 5, or the 
 morning of April 6 : if he had been born in the even- 
 ing and born on the sixth of April, he would have been 
 
 * Tertullian, i. 41 1. Contra 
 Marcionem, v. 9 : Nos edimus 
 Evangelia, de quorum fide ali- 
 quid, utique jam in tanto opere, 
 istos confirmasse debemus, no- 
 cturna nativitate declarantia do- 
 minum, ut hoc sit ante lucife- 
 rum, et ex Stella Magis intel- 
 lecta, et ex testimonio angeli, 
 
 qui nocte pastoribus annuntiavit, 
 natum esse cum maxime Chri- 
 stum : et ex loco partus : in di- 
 versorium enim ad noctem con- 
 venitur. fortasse an et mystice 
 factum sit, ut nocte Christus 
 nasceretur, lux veritatis futurus 
 ignorantise tenebris. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was horn. 403 
 
 born on the eleventh of the Jewish Nisan. It may be 
 difficult to decide between these two dates ; each of 
 which apparently possesses an equal right to be pro- 
 nounced the true birthday of Christ : for the evening 
 of the same Jewish day coincided in part with both. 
 I assume however for the present that the date of our 
 Saviour’s birth, if it was Nisan the tenth in a lunar 
 Jewish year, answering to U. C. 750, was April 5 in 
 the solar or J ulian, answering to the same year ; on 
 which the tenth of Nisan at that time began. For sub- 
 sequent years, therefore, the tenth of Nisan will express 
 the nominal, and the fifth of April the actual birthday 
 of Christ ; but the tenth of Nisan will never express 
 the actual date of the Nativity, unless it coincides with 
 the fifth of April also. 
 
 Let us now consider on what days in subsequent 
 years ; more especially in the three years of our Lord’s 
 personal ministry ; this tenth of Nisan would fall. 
 These days may be immediately obtained from the 
 Table of passovers referred to above p. 
 
 I. U. C. 780, A. D. 27, the fourteenth vvyOrniepov of 
 Nisan began at sunset April 8, and expired at sunset 
 April 9 ; and consequently the tenth i w^Orj/mepov of 
 Nisan began at sunset April 4, and expired at sunset 
 April 5. 
 
 II. U. C. 781, A. D. 28, the fourteenth vv^SrjiuLepou of 
 Nisan began at sunset March 28 , and expired at sunset 
 March 29 : and consequently the tenth w^riyepov of 
 Nisan began at sunset March 24, and expired at sun- 
 set March 25. 
 
 III. U. C. 782, A. D. 29, the fourteenth vv^Ojiyepov 
 of Nisan began at sunset April 15, and expired at sun- 
 set April 16 : $hd consequently the tenth vvyfrnnepov of 
 
 P Supra p. 332. Diss. vii. 
 
 ]) d 2 
 
404 Dissertation Twelfth . 
 
 Nisan began at sunset April 11, and expired at sunset 
 April 12. 
 
 IV. U. C. 783, A. D. 30, the fourteenth w^Ornuepov 
 of Nisan began at sunset April 4, and expired at sun- 
 set April 5 ; and consequently the tenth vv^Orj/j-epov of 
 Nisan began at sunset March 31, and expired at sunset 
 April 1. 
 
 It appears, then, that U. C. 780, the year when our 
 Lord began his ministry, the tenth of Nisan and the 
 fifth of April, that is, his nominal and his real birth- 
 day, coincided together ; as they had done in the year 
 of his birth : but in no other year of his ministry be- 
 sides. 
 
 It appears also, that U. C. 783, the year when he 
 concluded his ministry, the fourteenth of Nisan, the 
 day on which our Saviour suffered, coincided with 
 April 5, the day upon which he was born : that is to 
 say, it was so ordered by Providence that the day 
 when the purpose, for which he had originally come 
 into the world, was consummated thirty-three years 
 after , was the very day on which he had been born, 
 with a view to that purpose, thirty-three years before. 
 I shall make no comment on this coincidence ; which, 
 if I am right in the principles upon which it is found- 
 ed, exceeds any comment that I could make upon it : 
 but I shall leave the pious reader, who cannot fail 
 to perceive in it the clearest proof of the wisdom and 
 providence of God, to meditate upon it for himself. 
 
 Nor is this all. If the day of the month, on which 
 our Saviour suffered, was the fourteenth of Nisan, and 
 the day of the week was Friday ; (both which facts, 
 I think, admit of no question ;) then in the year when 
 he suffered, the fifth of April coincidectewith Friday in 
 Passion-week : and if so, the first of April coincided 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 405 
 
 with Monday. But the first of April was the morning 
 of the tenth of Nisan : and consequently the morning 
 of the tenth of Nisan coincided with Monday in Pas- 
 sion-week. Now in its proper place hereafter I shall 
 prove, I think, demonstratively, that on the afternoon 
 of Monday in Passion-week ; and not as it is com- 
 monly supposed of Sunday ; ' our Saviour went in pro- 
 cession from Bethany to the temple ; there to present 
 himself before God in quality of the paschal sacrifice, 
 now ready to be offered up ; and four days (as the Law 
 had originally appointed concerning the taking up of 
 the lamb for the passover) before in that capacity he 
 actually suffered : that is, as our Saviour suffered on 
 his actual birthday, the fifth of April, four days after 
 this procession to the temple, so did he present him- 
 self, as ready to suffer, on his nominal birthday, the 
 tenth of Nisan, four days before he suffered. The 
 coincidence is even more critical than this ; for as he 
 actually expired at the ninth hour on the Friday, so is 
 there every reason to suppose he did enter the temple 
 about the same time on the Monday. 
 
 Again; if the fifth of April, U. C. 783, fell on the 
 Friday, the ninth of April, U. C. 783, fell on the Tues- 
 day ; whence, if we reckon backwards and allow for 
 the intermediate leap-year, U. C. 781, it follows as a 
 necessary consequence that the ninth of April, U. C. 
 780, fell on a Friday also : and therefore that the fifth 
 fell on a Monday. The ninth of April that year was 
 the morning of the fourteenth of Nisan ; and the fifth 
 of April was the morning of the tenth. Our Lord 
 began his ministry the same year ; and by the same 
 act of cleansing the temple that year, which he re- 
 peated in his third and last : whence, if we may as- 
 sume only one particular, viz. that he began his min- 
 istry in the first year by cleansing the temple, at the 
 
 D d 3 
 
406 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 same distance of time from the first passover, at which 
 he presented himself in the temple before the last; it 
 will follow that he began his ministry on a day when 
 his nominal and his actual birthday coincided to- 
 gether : the tenth of Nisan, in his first year, fell on 
 the same day of the week as the tenth of Nisan, in his 
 last ; and the passover, in his first year, on the same 
 day of the week as the passover in his last ; and be- 
 tween this, and the day of his commencing his ministry 
 in his first year, and the day of his presenting himself 
 in the temple before its conclusion in his. last, there 
 was the same interval of time respectively ; three days 
 exclusive of each extreme in both cases. 
 
 Again ; if the fourteenth of Nisan, U. C. 780, when 
 our Lord commenced his ministry, fell on the Friday, 
 the sixteenth fell on the Sunday ; and consequently 
 the fiftieth day after the sixteenth inclusive, the day of 
 the feast of Pentecost, fell on the Sunday likewise. 
 The same fact held good of the day of Pentecost, U. C. 
 783. At the feast of Pentecost, U. C. 783, the Apo- 
 stles began their ministry; that is, the Dispensation 
 of formal Christianity was first commenced : and at the 
 feast of Pentecost, U. C. 780, I shall prove hereafter 
 that our Saviour began his ministry also, by succeed- 
 ing to the place of John : which he had not done be- 
 fore. I shall endeavour to prove also, that between the 
 ministry of our Saviour, thus begun in U. C. 780, and 
 that of the Apostles, begun in U. C. 783, there was 
 this connection of ends and purposes, that the former 
 began at the one to notify as futtire , what the latter 
 began at the other to announce as come. 
 
 Again ; if the fifth of April, U. C. 780, fell on a 
 Monday, the fifth of April, U. C. 782, fell on a Thurs- 
 day ; and the sixteenth fell on a Monday. The six- 
 teenth of April, U. C. 782, was the day of the Jewish 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord tvas horn . 407 
 
 passover ; and consequently the day of that passover, 
 which, according to the Gospel of St. John, vi. 4, must 
 have ensued next upon the first instance of the mira- 
 culous feeding. The time of this miracle is marked 
 out by two criterions ; one that there was much grass 
 at the time; the other that the passover was near at 
 hand 4 : and both these concur to the beginning of the 
 month of Nisan, which in this instance was the begin- 
 ning of the month of April. I have already had occa- 
 sion to observe that the period, during which grass 
 was most abundant in Judaea, was from the first of 
 Adar to the middle of Nisan ; which being understood 
 of a rectified year would be, as in the present instance, 
 from the beginning of March to the middle of April. 
 At the beginning of April then in any year, it is mo- 
 rally certain that there would be abundance of grass ; 
 especially in the places devoted to pasture, such as the 
 desert in the neighbourhood of Bethsaida, where this 
 miracle took place: and yet the passover, as in the pre- 
 sent instance, might still be to come. And this coinci- 
 dence is a strong presumptive argument that the pass- 
 over of the year in question is rightly to be assigned 
 to the sixteenth of April ; and not to any earlier date. 
 To fall on any earlier day, it must have fallen on the 
 seventeenth or eighteenth of March. 
 
 If now the sixteenth of April, or the fourteenth of 
 Nisan, fell this year on the Monday, the twelfth of 
 April, or the tenth of Nisan, fell on the Thursday ; 
 and we may take it for granted that the miracle, how- 
 ever near to the passover it might have been wrought, 
 could not have been wrought so near to it as the tenth 
 of Nisan. If so, the miracle could not have been 
 wrought on Thursday the twelfth of April. But it 
 might have been wrought a week before that; that 
 
 q John vi. 4. 10. 
 
 D d 4 
 
408 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth . 
 
 is, on Thursday the fifth of April : and if it was 
 then wrought, it would be wrought on the day of our 
 Saviour’s birth. The bread, with which the people 
 were at that time fed, was typical of the spiritual food 
 which his own body and blood was to supply to the 
 souls of mankind ; and if the people were fed this year 
 with the one , as the other was sacrificed for the 
 whole world in the next, on the same day — and that, 
 the day of the birth of Christ — the correspondence of 
 the type and the antitype becomes so much the more 
 enhanced. 
 
 One thing at least is certain; viz. that the people were 
 fed on this day in the year U. C. 782, exactly at the 
 same time on which Christ expired in the next; viz. 
 between the first Jewish evening and the second ; the 
 middle point of which is the ninth hour of the day. 
 It makes in favour of the same conclusion that, as the 
 people were fed at Bethsaida in the evening or after- 
 noon of this day, so they are seen to have rejoined our 
 Saviour in Capernaum on the morning of the day but 
 one after r . Now when they rejoined him, it was in 
 the synagogue ; whence we may reasonably infer it 
 was also on the sabbath day. If so, they had been fed 
 on the Thursday before ; and consequently either upon 
 Thursday the fifth of April, or Thursday the tenth of 
 Nisan. But it could not be on Thursday the tenth of 
 Nisan ; it must therefore have been on Thursday the 
 fifth of April. 
 
 It follows also, on the principle of the solar cycle, 
 which is completed in twenty-eight years exactly, that 
 if April 9, U. C. 780, fell on the Friday, April 9, U.C. 
 752, fell on a Friday also; and consequently April 9, 
 U. C. 750, fell on a Wednesday. If so, April 5, U. C. 
 750, fell on a Saturday ; and therefore in part at least, 
 
 r John vi. 22. 25. 59. 
 
On the time of the year ivhen our Lord was horn. 409 
 
 on the Jewish sabbath. But the birth of our Saviour 
 took place, as we have seen, in the evening ; and con- 
 sequently if it took place on the evening of April 5, it 
 took place not on the Jewish sabbath, but according 
 to their reckoning on the first day of the week. Here 
 then is another coincidence ; for our Saviour would 
 thus be born, as he rose from the dead, on the first 
 day of the week ; and if his birth, like his resurrection 
 from the dead, was the beginning of a new creation, 
 they would both coincide with the liveliest prototype 
 of each ; the beginning of the old creation. Moreover, 
 our Saviour’s resurrection from the dead is termed, in 
 one sense, his being begotten or born anew ; and if 
 both his birth and his resurrection happened on the 
 same day in the week, the propriety of the metaphor 
 becomes so much the more apparent. If also he was 
 both born and rose again from the dead on the first 
 day of the week, and not on the seventh ; the first day 
 of the week might, with so much the stronger reason, 
 take the place of the seventh in sanctity, and religious 
 estimation at least among Christians : that is, our Sun- 
 day might be consecrated by each of these coincidences 
 to supersede the Jewish sabbath. 
 
 It will follow likewise that if the birth of our Lord 
 took place on the first day of the week, his circumcision 
 would take place, eight days after, on the first day of 
 the week also ; which is not only a striking coinci- 
 dence, if we consider the spiritual import of the rite of 
 circumcision itself, and the connection of this import 
 with the final end of the birth, the death, and the 
 rising again of our Saviour ; but saves the further dif- 
 ficulty whether, in administering this necessary rite 
 upon the body of our Lord, it was requisite to dispense 
 with the sabbath. 
 
410 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 Moreover, if the day of our Saviour’s birth coincided 
 with the first day of the week, the fortieth day, reck- 
 oned from the day of his birth, according to the usage 
 of the Jews, inclusive , coincided with the fifth, or fell 
 on the Thursday. The forty-first therefore, which was 
 the day after the purification of the Virgin Mary was 
 complete 8 , and consequently the day of the presentation 
 of our Lord in the temple, when he was manifested to 
 Simeon and to Anna, coincided with the sixth day of 
 the week, or Friday: that is, our Lord’s presentation 
 in the temple after his birth at first, coincided with the 
 same day of the week on which he suffered at last. 
 
 It follows, also, that if John the Baptist was just six 
 months older than our Saviour, and those six months 
 be reckoned either by calendar months, or by the half 
 of a Julian year; then in either case, if our Lord was 
 born April 5, U. C. 750, John was born October 5, 
 U. C. 749 *. for from October 5, exclusive , U. C. 749, 
 to April 5, inclusive , U. C. 750, there are six calendar 
 months, or 182 days, the half of a Julian year, indif- 
 ferently*. Besides this, the coincidence is still more 
 striking; for if April 5, U. C. 750, was the close of 
 one week according to the Jewish reckoning and the 
 beginning of another ; that is, coincided with the first 
 day of the week ; October 5, U. C. 749, must have 
 done the same. For from October 5, U.C. 749, exclu- 
 sive, to April 5, U. C. 750, inclusive , there are just 
 twenty-six weeks complete. 
 
 * Clemens Alex. Operumii. 8 1 o. rjKovra npos rais 8vo xat rjpio-ei, 
 1. 34 — 8 I 1 . 1 . 5. Strom, vi. 16: cos iaropel noXvfiios piv 6 larpos, 
 (pad Be Kai to epftpvov anapri^e- iv rat 7repl OKTaprjvcov, ’ApuTTOTeXrjs 
 orQai npos aKptfieiav prjvl rat €ktg>, Be 6 (fn\oao(j)os iv to > i repl (f)vo-ea)s , 
 TovriaTLV, eKarov fjpepcus Kai oybo - k, t. X. 
 
 s Lev. xii. 2 — 6. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 411 
 
 On the strength of this coincidence we may, perhaps, 
 assume as confidently that October 5, U. C. 749, was 
 the true date of the birth of John, as that April 5, 
 U. C. 750, was the true date of the birth of Christ. 
 The circumstances of the birth of John may be consi- 
 dered to imply that, both at his birth and at the time 
 of his circumcision also, the feast of Tabernacles was 
 either not arrived, or already past ; and this is suffi- 
 cient to prove that he could not have been born on the 
 tenth of Tisri, as our Saviour may have been on the 
 tenth of Nisan. Now, U. C. 749, when the fifteenth 
 of Nisan coincided with March 23 or 24 t , the fifteenth 
 of Tisri coincided with September 16 or 17 ; the feast 
 expired, and Zacharias would be at liberty to return 
 home after September 23 or 24 : and if John was born 
 October 5, and circumcised October 12 , there can be 
 little question that his father would then be at home, 
 as well as his friends and relations of the male sex ; as 
 the Gospel narrative shews that they were. In the 
 year U. C. 779, A. D. 26, when the fifteenth of Nisan 
 fell on March 21 or 22, the fifteenth of Tisri fell upon 
 September 14 or 15, and the feast expired on September 
 21 or 22 : whence, if John entered upon his ministry, 
 as our Saviour entered upon his, on the day after he 
 completed his thirtieth year, viz. October 5, he en- 
 tered upon it thirteen or fourteen days after the expi- 
 ration of the feast of Tabernacles, and about the same 
 length of time before the rainy season would begin. 
 And if April 5, U. C. 780, when our Saviour entered 
 upon his ministry, was Monday, so was October 5, 
 U. C. 779, when John might enter upon his. 
 
 Again ; if April 5, U. C. 750, fell on the Saturday, 
 it would fall on the Saturday again U. C. 761. The 
 passover was celebrated that year upon April 8, and 
 
 t Pingre’s Tables, and Diss. vii. p. 331. 
 
412 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 the tenth of Nisan fell upon April 4; and April 4 on 
 the Friday. I observed not long since that this might 
 be the year, and consequently this the feast of the 
 passover, in which and at which our Lord was first 
 taken to Jerusalem, when he is said to have been twelve 
 years old v . If so, it fell out in this year that the day of 
 the week, on which he completed his eleventh year, was 
 the day on which he afterwards suffered ; and the day 
 when he entered on his twelfth was the day on which he 
 had been born. If his parents too came to Jerusalem be- 
 fore or on the tenth of Nisan, rather than after it ; the 
 first day on which they could have an opportunity of 
 presenting him in the temple, at a time when he could, 
 be considered in any sense as twelve years old, would 
 be either the nominal day of his birth, the Friday, or 
 the real, the Saturday*. 
 
 * Besides which, we may ob- 
 serve, that the passover being 
 celebrated on Tuesday, April 8, 
 our Lord’s parents would not 
 leave Jerusalem before Wednes- 
 day, April 1 6 ; the day after the 
 close of the feast : they would 
 find the young Jesus missing on 
 Thursday, April 1 7 : they would 
 return to Jerusalem, after one 
 day’s search for him among their 
 kinsfolk and acquaintance, on 
 Friday, April 18 : and they 
 would find him, on the third 
 day, after he became missing, 
 Saturday, April 19. And as they 
 found him at last in the temple, 
 this alone would be presump- 
 tively an argument that they 
 found him there on a sabbath. 
 Cf. Luke ii. 41 — 50. 
 
 There are other coincidences 
 of a truly singular and surpris- 
 ing nature; which I shall pro- 
 ceed to mention. 
 
 v Supra p. 399. 
 
 I. If the fifth of April U. C. 
 7 83 . fell on the Friday, the fifth 
 of April U. C. 81 1, exactly 28 
 years afterwards, fell on the Fri- 
 day also; and March 28. fell 
 on the Thursday : whence it is 
 easily calculated, that U. C. 819, 
 A. D. 66, in the first year of the 
 Jewish war, March 28. fell on 
 the Sunday, and March 29. on 
 the Monday. Now March 28, 
 U. C. 819, or March 29, was the 
 day of the Jewish passover, and 
 therefore the fourteenth of Ni- 
 san 11 : upon which point more 
 will be said by and by. 
 
 II. If the fifth of April U.C. 
 783. happened on Friday, the 
 thirteenth happened on Satur- 
 day ; consequently U.C. 811. 
 April 13. happened again on Sa- 
 turday ; and U. C. 823, A. D. 
 70, it happened on Sunday. 
 Now U.C. 823. April 13. was 
 the day of the Jewish passover ; 
 
 u Diss. vii. 
 
On the time of the year ivhen our Lord teas horn. 413 
 
 The greater part of these conclusions, it is true, de- 
 pend on our original assumption ; viz. that April 5, 
 U. C. 783, fell upon Friday; and if the passover is 
 rightly calculated to that day, there can be so far little 
 question but that it did. For the passover, at the time 
 
 and therefore was the fourteenth 
 of Xanthicus or Nisan : and on 
 the day of the Jewish passover, 
 the fourteenth of Xanthicus or 
 Nisan, U. C. 823, did Titus in- 
 vest Jerusalem v * * * * . The siege of 
 the city then began that year on 
 the Sunday. 
 
 III. If the fourteenth of Ni- 
 san U. C. 823. fell on a Sunday, 
 the seventeenth of Panemus or 
 Thamuz fell on the Sunday also; 
 for from the fourteenth of Nisan, 
 exclusive, to the seventeenth of 
 Thamuz, inclusive, (the months 
 between Nisan a and Thamuz 
 being reckoned first at thirty, 
 and then at twenty-nine, days 
 each alternately,) there are 91 
 days, or 13 weeks, exactly ; 
 whence, if the fourteenth of Ni- 
 san was a Sunday, the seven- 
 teenth of Thamuz was a Sunday 
 also. Now on the seventeenth 
 of Panemus, which answers to 
 Thamuz, the daily sacrifice ceas- 
 ed w ; that is, the daily sacrifice, 
 the prototype of Christ, ceased 
 on the first day of the week ; as 
 Christ, the antitype of that, was 
 born, and rose again from the 
 dead, on the first day of the 
 week. 
 
 IV. If the seventeenth of Pa- 
 nemus, July 13, was a Sunday, 
 
 the twenty-fourth of Panemus, 
 July 20, was a Sunday also: 
 and on the twenty-fourth of Pa- 
 nemus, U. C. 823, consequently 
 on the first day of the week, fire 
 was set to the outermost courts 
 of the temple x . 
 
 V. If tine twenty-fourth of 
 Panemus, July 20, was a Sun- 
 day, the eighth of Lous or Ab, 
 the next month, August 3, was 
 a Sunday also ; and on the 
 eighth of Lous, August 3, con- 
 sequently on the first day of the 
 week, fire was first set to the 
 innermost court of the temple y. 
 And on the fifteenth of Lous, 
 August 1 o, according to the La- 
 tin version of Rufinus, (which 
 was also a Sunday,) in the after- 
 noon of that day, the temple was 
 burnt to the ground 2 . 
 
 VI. If the fifteenth of Lous, 
 August 10, was a Sunday, the 
 twenty-second and the twenty- 
 ninth, August 17. and 24, were 
 Sundays also ; the seventh of 
 Gorpiseus or Elul, the month after 
 Lous, August 3 1, was therefore a 
 Sunday ; and on the seventh of 
 Gorpiseus, August 31, and in 
 the evening of that day, Jerusa- 
 lem was set on fire ; and the 
 siege the next day, September 
 1, was brought to an end 3 . 
 
 v Jos. Bell. Jud. v. iii. 1. xiii. 7. a U. C. 823. A.D. 70. if the passover 
 
 fell on April 13, the year was intercalated, and Nisan was consequently cavus, or 
 contained only twenty-nine days ; (which, indeed, it is probable it always did ;) 
 and Jar, the next to Nisan, contained thirty ; Sivan twenty-nine; Thamuz thirty ; 
 
 Ab twenty-nine, and so on. This year also, if Nisan 14. answered to April 13. 
 
 Thamuz or Panemus 17. answered to July 13, and July 13. was Sunday. 
 
 w Jos. Bell. Jud. vi. ii. 1. x lb. vi. ii. 9. y lb. vi. iv. 1.2. z lb. vi. iv. 
 
 4. 5. 6. a vi. viii. 4. 5. 
 
414 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 when our Saviour suffered, immediately preceded the 
 Jewish sabbath ; and therefore if the passover that 
 year fell upon April 5, April 5 immediately preceded 
 the Jewish sabbath. The tables, however, adapted to 
 the solar cycle, according to certain calculations b , make 
 April 5, U. C. 783, A. D. 30, to fall on the Wednesday; 
 which is two days before the time I suppose. But the 
 accuracy of such calculations is not so implicitly to be 
 trusted, that the fifth of April may not still be sup- 
 posed to have fallen on the Friday ; and Dr. Hales ob- 
 serves upon a case in point 0 , (where March 27, A. D. 
 31, on which day he supposes the passover to have 
 been celebrated in his year of the passion, is made by 
 him to have been Thursday — but in the calculations 
 of Newton, Ferguson, Lamy, and Bacon is made to be 
 Tuesday ,) that these calculations of the days of the 
 week vary from each other sometimes by one day, and 
 sometimes by two : so that it would still be possible 
 that March 27 , A. D. 31, might be Thursday. On the 
 same principle, April 5, A. D. 30, though exhibited by 
 these schemes as a Wednesday, might still have fallen 
 on a Friday. 
 
 Mr. Mann, in his work De Annis Christi, Natali et 
 Emortuali d , has given a table of Jewish passovers, 
 from U. C. 779, A.D. 26, to U. C. 788, A. D. 35, in- 
 clusively, with a view to shew (as others indeed had 
 attempted to shew before him) that there were but two 
 years in the course of this period, U. C. 779. and U.C. 
 786 — the twelfth and the nineteenth of Tiberius Caesar 
 respectively — in which the Jewish passover fell on the 
 sixth day of the week. And this is one great reason 
 why he fixed upon the first as his year of the passion ; 
 and why others before him had fixed upon the last. 
 
 h Art (le verifier- les Dates, vol. i. xxix. and Calendrier Solaire, p. 9. 
 
 c Analysis of Chronology, i. 174. d De Anno Emort. xxiv. 239. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 415 
 
 Now I will venture to say that it is absolutely impos- 
 sible, consistently with the Gospel narrative, to place 
 the passion of our Lord either U. C. 779- or U. C. 786: 
 and if this be the case, then either he did not suffer 
 on the Friday in the year when he did suffer, if he suf- 
 fered on the Jewish passover day ; or if he suffered on 
 the Friday in the year when he did suffer, he did not 
 suffer on the Jewish passover day : and each of these 
 suppositions is liable to equal difficulty. If however 
 the calculations of the days of the week, which this ta- 
 ble and which similar tables exhibit, labour under an 
 error of defect, and that an error amounting to two 
 days ; there are two other years, A. D. 27 . and A. D. 
 30, (in which Mr. Mann also supposes the passover to 
 have fallen on April 9- and April 5. respectively,) when 
 the day of the passover coincided with the sixth day of 
 the week ; that is, fell upon Friday in each case. 
 
 The truth is, that if any one will consult the table 
 appended to Dissertation the seventh, he will see that 
 U. C. 779, or A. D. 26 , the passover fell on March 21 , 
 which, according to the tables, would be on the Thurs- 
 day ; and U. C. 786, A. D. 33, it fell on April 2 , which 
 also was a Thursday. There can be no doubt, I think, 
 of these facts, if the eclipses, from which I deduced 
 the computation — the one Feb. 20 , at seven in the 
 morning, the other April 3, at three in the evening — 
 have been rightly calculated. With respect to the 
 former; the inoon would be at the full again after 
 that eclipse, at 7. 44. in the evening of March 21 . cal- 
 culated for the meridian of Paris ; and at 9. 56. in the 
 evening calculated for the meridian of Jerusalem : so 
 that it does not admit of a question that the fifteenth 
 wyQriiJ-epov of Nisan could not be dated later than from 
 the sunset of the evening of March 21 ; in which case, 
 the passover would be sacrificed the afternoon before. 
 
416 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 In fact, Mr. Mann himself is obliged to admit this d . 
 With respect to the second ; the full moon on April 3, 
 at three in the evening, must have been the full moon 
 of Nisan itself ; which, on the same allowance for the 
 meridian of Jerusalem as before, would take place at 
 5. 12. in the afternoon, more than an hour before the 
 close of a Jewish day. The fifteenth of Nisan must 
 have coincided with the time of this full moon ; and 
 therefore the passover was sacrificed the day before. 
 
 It is calculated by Mr. Mann, as well as by myself, 
 that the passover U. C. 823, A. D. 70, fell on the thir- 
 teenth of April ; but he supposes this thirteenth of 
 April to have been Friday e . Now if the thirteenth of 
 April coincided this year with the fourteenth of Nisan, 
 and both with a Friday ; then the eighth of Lous or 
 the Jewish Ab would coincide with a Friday also ; 
 and the ninth would coincide with a Saturday. For 
 from the fourteenth of Nisan exclusive , to the eighth 
 of Ab inclusive , there are 112 days, or 16 weeks, 
 exactly. Accordingly, it is a tradition of the Tal- 
 mud, which I have had occasion to mention already, 
 that the temple was destroyed on the ninth of Ab ; 
 and that the ninth of Ab was a sabbath : the same 
 tradition added that the week was the week of Jo- 
 arib. But this tradition is directly at variance with 
 Josephus, whose Greek text distinctly affirms that 
 the temple was burnt on the tenth of Lous or Ab ; 
 and whose Latin text affirms that it was burnt on the 
 fifteenth ; but neither of them that it was burnt on 
 the ninth. Whichever of these statements be the 
 truth, the destruction of the temple, according to nei- 
 ther of them, happened on the sabbath. If the ninth 
 of Lous was a sabbath, the tenth was a Sunday, and 
 the fifteenth was a Friday. 
 
 (1 De Anno Emort. xxiv. 241. 
 
 e Ibid. xxii. 229. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 417 
 
 Now that which Josephus insists on as most remark- 
 able in the destruction of the temple is this ; viz. that 
 it was destroyed by Titus in the same month, and on 
 the same day of the month, on which it had been 
 destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar f . The time of this 
 destruction is placed both by the Book of Kings and 
 by Jeremiah in the same month, viz. Ab ; but by the 
 former it is placed on the seventh of that month ; by 
 the latter, upon the tenths'. These statements may be 
 consistent with each other ; for it is not as plainly af- 
 firmed by the one that the temple was destroyed on the 
 seventh, as it is by the other that it was destroyed on 
 the tenth. It is to be collected from both together that 
 the work of destruction could not have begun before the 
 seventh, nor been consummated later than the tenth : 
 and if so, that it was begun and completed between 
 the two. Now how critically does this fact in the 
 destruction of the first temple accord to that which 
 I have just pointed out in the destruction of the se- 
 cond, that the temple w T as first set on fire on the eighth, 
 and was burnt to the ground on the tenth ! Whether 
 the seventh of Ab, in the year of the first destruction, 
 coincided with a sabbath, it may not be possible to 
 determine ; but if the ninth of the former month 
 (on the night of which Zedekiah attempted to escape 
 from Jerusalem 11 ) was a sabbath, the seventh of the 
 ensuing was a sabbath also ; and the eighth coincided 
 with Sunday : which would bring the analogy between 
 the two events to a degree of proximity truly wonder- 
 ful # . 
 
 * 4 If the year of the first de- logy assumes it to have been, 
 struction of the temple was then, in Pingre’s Table of E- 
 B. C. 588 , as the Bible Chrono- clipses, I find an eclipse in the 
 
 f Bell. Jud. vi. iv. 5. 8. S 2 Kings xxv.^8. Jer. Hi. 12. h 2 Kings 
 
 xxv. 3. 4. Jer. lii. 6. 7. xxxix. 1. 2. 
 
 VOL. I. E e 
 
418 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 The tradition then of the Jews, that every thing 
 happened in the destruction of the second temple, 
 
 year of the Julian period 4126, 
 which corresponds to B. C. 588, 
 on January 19, at four in the 
 morning, for the meridian of 
 Paris ; and consequently, at 6. 
 12. in the morning, for the me- 
 ridian of Jerusalem. Add three 
 mean lunations, or eighty- eight 
 days, fourteen hours, twelve 
 minutes to this date, and we 
 obtain a mean full moon, April 
 17, 8. 24. in the evening. I 
 will assume that this date coin- 
 cided with the fourteenth of 
 Nisan. The question is, on what 
 day of the week, April 1 7, B. C. 
 
 588, may be supposed to have 
 fallen. 
 
 Now, according to the Tables, 
 April 17, A. D. 1, is made to 
 have fallen on Sunday ; and, 
 according to my own mode of 
 reckoning, it must be made to 
 fall on Tuesday. The number 
 of years between April 1 7, B.C. 
 588, inclusive, and April 17, 
 A. D. 1, exclusive, is exactly 
 588 ; and the number of days, 
 calculated not by mean Julian, 
 but by mean solar or tropical 
 years may be determined as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 
 days 
 
 hours 
 
 min. 
 
 500 solar 
 
 or tropical years =182,621 
 
 3 
 
 55 
 
 80 ... . 
 
 
 9 
 
 16 
 
 8 . . . . 
 
 — 2,921 
 
 22 
 
 31 
 
 588T.. 
 
 II 
 
 to 
 
 £ 
 
 ^-1 
 
 Q\ 
 
 to 
 
 1 1 
 
 42 
 
 Reduced to weeks these = 
 30,680 weeks, 2 days, 1 1 hours, 
 42 minutes ; or, if we drop the 
 fraction of a day, 30,680 weeks, 
 and two days over. 
 
 Hence if B.C. 588, April 17 
 had fallen on Sunday, then, 
 
 A. D. 1, April 15 would fall on 
 Sunday also ; and April 16 
 would fall one day in advance 
 of Sunday, viz. on Monday, and 
 April 1 7 (as I calculate it did) 
 would fall on Tuesday. 
 
 Let it be supposed, then, that 
 
 B. C. 588, Nisan 14, coincided 
 with April 17, and both with 
 Sunday. 
 
 From Nisan 14, exclusive to 
 Ab 8 inclusive, there are 1 1 2 
 days, or 1 6 weeks exactly. Hence 
 if Nisan 14 fell upon the Sun- 
 day, Ab 8 fell on the Sunday 
 also. And though we were to 
 
 allow for the fraction of time 
 above mentioned, and to sup- 
 pose it equivalent to 1 2 hours, 
 or a day as such ; this would 
 make no further difference than 
 that the 17th of April, B. C. 
 588, in that case must have 
 fallen on Saturday, in order 
 that the 17th of April, A. D. r, 
 might fall on Tuesday. On this 
 principle the 8th of Ab would 
 fall on Saturday. And even this, 
 if true, would be a degree of 
 coincidence abundantly sufficient 
 for our purpose. We shall see 
 reason, however, hereafter, to 
 consider the former supposition, 
 or that which drops the super- 
 fluous hours, as not the least 
 correct : in which case the coin- 
 cidence becomes critically exact 
 and complete. 
 
 While I am upon this subject, 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was horn. 419 
 
 which had happened in that of the first, may have been 
 founded in fact ; but we must go for the proof of the 
 
 there is another circumstance to 
 which I shall take the liberty of 
 alluding. The desecration of 
 the temple by Antiochus Epi- 
 phanes, Casleu 25, JEree Seleu- 
 cidarum 145, which answers to 
 B. C. 168,. and the dedication of 
 the altar by Judas Maccabaeus, 
 Casleu 25, JErae Seleucidarum 
 1 48, B. C. 1 65, just three years 
 afterwards, are memorable events 
 in Jewish history; to which from 
 their affinity to the subject under 
 discussion some attention may 
 naturally be directed. In the 
 account of either of them, as 
 given by the First of Macca- 
 bees, i. 54. 59. iv. 52. 54, I can 
 discover nothing which can just- 
 ly be considered to identify the 
 25 th of Casleu with a sabbath ; 
 but rather every thing to imply 
 the contrary. The 25 th of Cas- 
 leu, B. C. 165, seems to have 
 been purposely chosen for the 
 day of the restitution of the 
 temple service, and the dedica- 
 tion of the altar, because the 
 25 th of Casleu, B. C. ]68, had 
 been the day of its desecration. 
 Now the 25th of Casleu, B. C. 
 7.68, possesses not the slightest 
 claim to be considered a sab- 
 bath ; but rather, instead of that, 
 the 15 th of Casleu, when the 
 abomination of desolation was 
 
 For 100 solar or tropical 
 
 5 ° 
 
 8 
 
 158 
 
 first set up. I should conjecture 
 that the 15 th of Casleu was se- 
 lected as the day of this profan- 
 ation, because it was either the 
 Jewish sabbath, or the first day 
 of the week. 
 
 Now, according to Pingr^’s 
 Table, there was an eclipse of 
 the moon, B. C. 168, June 21, 
 at 7. 45. in the evening, for the 
 meridian of Paris, or 9. 57. in 
 the evening, for the meridian of 
 Jerusalem. If we reckon back- 
 wards from this date three mean 
 lunations,eighty-eight days, four- 
 teen hours, twelve minutes, we 
 obtain a mean full moon, March 
 25, 7. 45. in the morning. But 
 this mean full moon is probably 
 too early for the true , which 
 might actually fall March 25, 
 in the evening, or March 26, in 
 the morning. In either of these 
 cases, Nisan 15 would coincide 
 with March 26, and, therefore 
 Tisri 15 with September 19; 
 and Casleu 25 (which is neces- 
 sarily the sixty-ninth day inclu- 
 sive from Tisri 15 exclusive ) 
 with November 2 7. 
 
 Now between November 27 
 B. C. 168, inclusive , and No- 
 vember 27, B. C. 10, exclusive , 
 there are exactly 158 tropical 
 or solar years, and 57,708 days, 
 6 hours, or 8,244 weeks. 
 
 days hours min. 
 years = 36,524 5 35 
 
 . . . . = 18,262 2 47 
 
 . . . . = 2,921 22 31 
 
 = 57,7o8 6 53 
 
 in which number of days, if we 
 drop the odd hours, there is an 
 exact number of weeks, 8,244. 
 Hence, if B. C. 168, Novem- 
 
 ber 27, had fallen on Wednes- 
 day. B. C. 10, it ought to have 
 fallen on the same day also. 
 Now, B. C. 10, when the year 
 
 E e 2 
 
¥20 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 coincidence to the contemporary authorities — to the 
 writers of the Old Testament for the one, and to Jo- 
 sephus for the other — and not to the Rabbins ; who 
 have mixed up in this instance, as in many others 
 which might be mentioned, fable with truth. They 
 tell us that the destruction of the first temple, as well 
 as of the second, took place on the ninth of Ab ; which 
 is directly contrary to the sacred history ; for the tem- 
 ple was destroyed either on the seventh or on the 
 tenth. There is no mention whatever of the ninth. 
 
 The statement also, that Joarib was in course on the 
 ninth of Ab, U. C. 823, if the ninth of Ab was a sab- 
 bath, appears to me to carry with it its own refuta- 
 tion ; but not if the ninth of Ab was the second day 
 
 of the cycle was 28, and the 
 Dominical letter A, the Tables 
 exhibit November 27 on Mon- 
 day : which, according to my 
 principles, would be on Wed- 
 nesday. We may conclude, then, 
 that B. C. 168, if Casleu 25 
 coincided with November 27, it 
 fell on the Wednesday ; in which 
 case Casleu 15 must necessa- 
 rily have fallen on the Sunday. 
 
 Again, there is another eclipse 
 in Pingre’s Table, for B.C. 165, 
 on April 21, at o. 30. in the 
 morning, for the meridian of 
 Paris, or at 2. 42. in the morn- 
 ing, for the meridian of Je- 
 rusalem. The last mean full 
 moon before this must have 
 fallen March 22, 1. 58. in the 
 afternoon ; and this, we may 
 safely conclude, was the actual 
 full moon of Nisan. The 15th 
 of Nisan therefore, B. C. 165, 
 coincided with March 22, and, 
 consequently, the 15th of Tisri 
 with September 1 5, and the 25 th 
 of Casleu with November 23. 
 Deduct from B.C. 165, as be- 
 
 fore, 158 : the remainder is B. C. 
 7, when November 23, accord- 
 ing to the Tables, fell upon 
 Monday, and as I reckon it fell 
 upon Wednesday. The same 
 then was the case B. C. 165. 
 The coincidence, then, between 
 the time when the temple had 
 been desecrated, B. C. 168, and 
 the time when the temple ser- 
 vice was restored, B. C. 165, 
 which the First of Maccabees 
 insists on as something extra- 
 ordinary, is thus very strikingly 
 demonstrated. For not only 
 the nominal date of either, the 
 25th of the Jewish Casleu, was 
 the same in each case, but the 
 actual date of the one, the 27th 
 of November, approximates as 
 nearly to a coincidence with the 
 actual date of the other, the 
 23rd of November, as the same 
 date in the same Jewish month, 
 at the distance of three years 
 asunder, could have approxi- 
 mated ; and as to the day of the 
 week, it was actually the same in 
 both cases. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was horn. 421 
 
 of the week. It is a certain fact that every course 
 came in on a sabbath, and went out on a sabbath ; the 
 courses relieving one another at noon, or the middle of 
 the day. It appears also from the account of Jose- 
 phus that the temple was set on fire at noon, or soon 
 after the fifth hour of the day. Now, under these cir- 
 cumstances, what course could be said to be in office? 
 a course might have just gone out, but none could 
 have just come in : the destruction of the temple took 
 place critically in the interval between the two. If 
 however the temple was destroyed on the tenth, and the 
 tenth was the third day of the week, a course of some de- 
 nomination or other would have been, or ought to have 
 been, two or three days in office; which course, we 
 have seen elsewhere, might possibly have been Joarib. 
 But, indeed, after the cessation of the daily sacrifice on 
 the seventeenth of Panemus, twenty-three days before, 
 it is superfluous to talk of courses. The succession of 
 courses and the temple service were both at an end, 
 and the priests could have nothing to do. 
 
 No more regard is due to the assertion of Dio that 
 Jerusalem was destroyed on the Saturday #i . The 
 assertions of this writer, with respect to Jewish his- 
 tory, are almost always loose and inaccurate. He 
 asserts the same thing of the day when Jerusalem was 
 taken by Pornpey, U. C. 691 : which day was the tenth 
 of Tisri, and consequently a sabbath ; but not neces- 
 sarily a Saturday. It may be proved that U. C. 691, 
 B. C. 63, the fifteenth of Nisan fell upon April 3 ; and 
 
 * This assertion occurs also in fact, Josephus’ date. Suetonius, 
 Frontinus,Strategematum ii.cap. Titus, 5, tells us Titus took it 
 1 . §. 1 7. The Pseudo-Hegesippus on his daughter Julia’s birthday ; 
 places the destruction of Jerusa- but what that birthday was is 
 lem on Gorpieeus 8, which is, in not known. 
 
 i lxvi. 7. 
 
 E e 3 
 
422 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth . 
 
 therefore the fifteenth of Tisri on September 27- In 
 this case, the day of atonement coincided with Septem- 
 ber 22 : and September 22, U. C. 691? B. C. 63, when 
 the year of the solar cycle was 3, and the Dominical 
 letter was D, according to the tables, fell upon Tues- 
 day ; and according to my reckoning, fell upon Thurs- 
 day ; but in neither case did it fall on the Saturday: 
 and yet the latter computation brings it nearer to the 
 Saturday than the former. It is possible indeed, that 
 the fifteenth of Nisan, B. C. 63, might have coincided 
 with April 4, though it could not have fallen earlier 
 than April 3 ; in which case the tenth of Tisri might 
 coincide with September 23, and could not be earlier 
 than September 22. Neither would this make it fall 
 on the Saturday ; yet it would bring it nearer to Sa- 
 turday, and even account for the mistake of Dio, by 
 making it fall on the Friday. 
 
 It is quite enough then to have produced the same 
 mistake in this instance also, if the city was really 
 taken and set on fire the day after the sabbath ; which, 
 if the seventh of Gorpiaeus or Elul, August 31, when it 
 was taken and set on fire, was, as I have endeavoured 
 to prove, the first day of the week, must actually have 
 been the case. The silence of Josephus with respect 
 to any such coincidences as these, when he notices so 
 many others (which are not more remarkable than 
 these would have been, if true,) ought to be a strong 
 presumptive argument that they never took place. Had 
 the temple or the city been actually destroyed on the 
 sabbath, either in this instance or in the former, I think 
 he would not have failed to mention it. 
 
 He has given us, however, if I am not mistaken, the 
 means of determining the day of the month on which 
 a certain sabbath fell, U. C. 819, A. D. 66 : which will 
 be found to square exactly with the preceding deduc- 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord ivas horn . 423 
 
 tions. This day was the day when Cestius Gallus, U.C. 
 819, at the outset of the Jewish war, arrived with his 
 army at Gabao, within fifty stades of Jerusalem k . The 
 Jews attacked him there immediately upon his arrival; 
 and the day when they attacked him is expressly de- 
 clared to have been a sabbath : e^eTnjScov €7r\ ty\v y.a^yv 9 
 fxrj^e rrjs apytjs €/3Soiu.a8o$ evvoiav \aj36vre<s. rjv yap Srj to 
 fiaXicTTa Trap ’ avroi 9 Optjo'Kevo/ULevov (rafifiaTOV^. The rest 
 of the narrative enables us to demonstrate that it was 
 also the twenty-fifth of Hyperberetseus or Tisri ; and 
 this being established, that the twenty-fifth of Hyper- 
 beretaeus or Tisri, U. C. 819, fell upon the sabbath, if 
 April 5, or Nisan 14, U. C. 783, fell on the Friday, it 
 will be seen, will follow as matter of course. 
 
 It is necessary, with this view, to observe that be- 
 tween the date of the arrival of Cestius at Gabao, and 
 the time of his final discomfiture, there is an interme- 
 diate period distinctly specified, when the Roman ge- 
 neral first made an attack on the city ; viz. the rpiaKag 
 or last day of Hyperberetaeus m ; up to which the detail 
 of events is conducted previously, and down from which 
 it is conducted subsequently. The notes of time, by 
 which the detail is characterized in each instance, must 
 be understood either as current days, or as complete ; 
 and if they cannot be understood as the latter, they will 
 require to be understood as the former : which, I may 
 remind the reader, is also more agreeable to the usage 
 of Josephus than the contrary would be. 
 
 Now, it is impossible that the notes in question for 
 the latter and the longest part of the detail (viz. the 
 period between the first attack on the city and the final 
 discomfiture of Cestius) can be understood of com- 
 plete days, and not of current, without making Jose- 
 phus contradict himself at last. For that attack was 
 
 1 ibid*. 2. 
 
 E e 4 
 
 k Bell. ii. xix. 1. 
 
 m Ibid. 4. 
 
424 
 
 Dissei'tation Twelfth. 
 
 made on the last day of Hyperberetaeus, and this 
 final discomfiture is placed on the eighth of Dius 11 ; be- 
 tween which, inclusive of both, there ought to be only 
 nine days’ interval in all : and this, as we shall see by 
 and by, may have been the case. But, beginning with 
 the last day of Hyperberetaeus, and every day which 
 is afterwards mentioned being understood of a day 
 complete, the specified notes of time would amount to an 
 eleven or twelve days’ interval at least ; and terminate 
 with the tenth or eleventh, and not with the eighth or 
 ninth of Dius. Throughout the whole of this account 
 then, it is reasonable and even necessary to conclude 
 that Josephus, where he does not himself affirm the 
 contrary, reckons by current days, not by complete . 
 On this principle, assuming that the account begins 
 with the twenty-fifth of Hyperberetaeus or Tisri, I will 
 shew how easily it is to be conducted downwards to 
 the eighth of Dius ; which, I think, will render it as 
 probable that Cestius arrived at Gabao on the twenty- 
 fifth of Tisri, as it is certain that he met with his 
 defeat at last on the eighth of Dius. 
 
 Cestius marches from Bethoron to Gabao, Tisri 25, 
 and is attacked by the Jews on his arrival. Bell. ii. 
 xix. 1. 2. 
 
 Being arrived, he remains rpio-'iv rj/uepats, (which is 
 now to be understood of the day of his arrival, of the 
 next to that, and of part of a third besides, viz. from 
 Tisri 25 to Tisri 27, inclusively,) before he advances 
 to Scopus. Ibid. 2. 
 
 On the third day (Tisri 27.) he marches to Scopus, 
 within seven stades of the city. Here, also, he remains 
 inactive rpto-'i v rjimepais more ; viz. from the day of his 
 arrival, Tisri 27, to the day before he attacks the city, 
 Tisri 29, inclusive. Ibid. 4. 
 
 n Bell. ii. xix. 9. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was horn. 425 
 
 On the fourth day, which is specified as the last day 
 of Hyperberetaeus, that is, Tisri, he attacks the city. 
 
 The subsequent contest lasts five days in all before 
 Cestius begins his retreat ; the first of which must be 
 understood as the day of the attack, the last day of 
 Hyperberetaeus, and the fifth as the fourth, exclusive of 
 that, viz. Dius 4. Ibid. 5. 
 
 h riovo-rj, that is, on the fifth of Dius, after renew- 
 ing the attack on the temple, he suddenly recalls his 
 troops and retreats to Scopus. Tfj eirLova-ri , consequently 
 on Dius 6, he continues his retreat to Gabao, where he 
 is said to have staid 8vo rj^epag ; the first of which it is 
 absolutely necessary to understand of the day of his arri- 
 val, Dius 6 ; and the second will consequently be Dius 
 7. Ibid. 5—7. 
 
 T fj rplrri , and therefore Dius 8, he resumes his re- 
 treat, and with difficulty reaches Bethoron before the 
 night. It was now that he experienced his chief loss ; 
 and therefore this was the day of his discomfiture as 
 such. Ibid. 7. 8. 
 
 The same night, consequently the night of the 
 eighth of Dius, he renews his retreat unobserved by 
 the Jews ; and though pursued by them in the morn- 
 ing (consequently on the ninth of Dius) as far as Anti- 
 patris, he is not overtaken. Ibid. 9. 
 
 It is clear then that the day of his defeat, properly so 
 called, was the day before this pursuit ; the day of the 
 retreat from Gabao to Bethoron, when he lost 5,300 of 
 his infantry and 380 of his cavalry. The date of this 
 loss is specified as the eighth of Dius: ravra fiev ovv 
 €i rpa-^Ot] Alov /jl^vos oySoy, ScdSeKara) crei t rj$ Nqowyo? rjye- 
 fAovias. The above detail of particulars confirms the 
 truth of this conclusion, if the eighth of Dius be under- 
 stood of the day of the defeat in question ; but no de- 
 tail will prove it to be correct if it be understood of the 
 
426 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 day when the Jews pursued Cestius, which must have 
 been the ninth of Dius. 
 
 It remains, then, still to prove that the twenty-fifth 
 of Hyperberetseus or Tisri fell out this year on the 
 sabbath. 
 
 By referring to the table of Jewish feasts in Disser- 
 tation vii. it will be seen that U. C. 819. A. D. 66. the 
 paschal full moon fell upon the fourth quarter of March 
 29 ; whence it was easy to infer that the mean full 
 moon of Tisri would fall on the fourth quarter of Sep- 
 tember 22. The same conclusion follows if we reckon 
 forward three mean lunations, or eighty-eight days, 
 fourteen hours, twelve minutes, from June 26. when 
 the moon was eclipsed at half-past one in the morning, 
 for the meridian of Paris, or forty-two minutes after 
 three, for the meridian of Jerusalem. The third full 
 moon after this fell out at fifty-four minutes after five in 
 the afternoon of September 22 : and this full moon was 
 necessarily the full moon of Tisri. It is farther con- 
 firmed by the coincidence that between March 29. ex- 
 clusive, and September 22. inclusive , the number of 
 days is 177 ; and between Nisan 15. exclusive , and 
 Tisri 15. inclusive , (whether we reckon the month Ni- 
 san itself as cavus or plenus , and every other interme- 
 diate month accordingly,) there is just the same. The 
 fifteenth of Tisri, then, must have coincided with Sep- 
 tember 22 ; that is, September 22. was the first day of 
 the feast of Tabernacles, which began on the fifteenth 
 of Tisri : and September 29. or Tisri 22. was the last. 
 This feast was going on when Cestius advanced upon 
 Jerusalem 0 ; but there is no reason to suppose it was 
 in its midst, and might not even then be just over. It 
 is not, indeed, certain whether he marched from Anti- 
 patris to Bethoron in one day’s time or two ; but the 
 
 o Bell. ii. xix. i. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 427 
 
 latter is much the more probable; for the former 
 would have been a forced march ; and Cestius was not 
 making forced marches. Bethoron was ten or twelve 
 miles distant from Jerusalem ; and Antipatris forty- 
 two or three p. It is highly probable then, that if Ces- 
 tius was at Bethoron on the twenty-fifth of Tisri, he 
 was at Antipatris, and by parity of reason at Lydda or 
 Diospolis, ten miles off from Antipatris % on the twenty- 
 third or twenty-second ; at which time it is morally 
 certain that the male part of the inhabitants of Lydda 
 would still be absent at the feast of Tabernacles in Je- 
 rusalem. 
 
 Now, if U. C. 783, A. D. 30, April 5 fell upon the 
 Friday, September 22, that same year, would fall on 
 the Sunday ; for from April 5 exclusive to September 
 22 inclusive , there are one hundred and seventy days, 
 or twenty-four weeks and two days over exactly. The 
 last of the number, then, September 22, would fall two 
 days in advance of Friday ; that is, on Sunday. If 
 so, U. C. 811, A. D. 58, after the revolution of one 
 solar cycle, September 22 would fall again on the Sun- 
 day ; and therefore, U. C. 819, A. D. 66, at the end of 
 the eighth year of a second cycle, it would fall not on 
 the Sunday, but on the Wednesday. The fifteenth of 
 Tisri, U. C. 819, A. D. 66, was consequently a Wed- 
 nesday ; and therefore so was the twenty- second. The 
 twenty-fifth, then, was a Saturday ; which was what I 
 undertook to prove. 
 
 According to the other mode of reckoning it would 
 have been a Thursday. But had Cestius marched from 
 Bethoron to Gabao on the Thursday, how could the 
 Jews be said to have attacked him on the sabbath? 
 The language of Josephus implies that they attacked 
 
 P Reland, Palaestina, lib. ii. cap. ix. p. 444. 447. 
 cap. iv. p. 41 7. 
 
 '1 Ibid. cap. iii. p. 406. 
 
428 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth . 
 
 him on the ordinary sabbath ; for that only could be 
 called the e/^oyua? as such. It is therefore of little 
 avail to reply that he arrived and was attacked on the 
 last day of the feast of Tabernacles, which was by 
 appointment an extraordinary sabbath. That last day 
 fell in this instance on a Wednesday, the fourth day and 
 not the seventh of the week, as I compute the days of 
 the week ; and on a Monday, the second day and not 
 the seventh , as the other reckoning computes them. Be- 
 sides which, if Cestius was attacked by the Jews on 
 the last day of the feast of Tabernacles, he was at- 
 tacked on the twenty-second of Tisri or Hyperbe- 
 retaeus ; between which day, though reckoned exclu- 
 sively, and the day when he himself assaulted the city, 
 reckoned also exclusively, the most liberal construc- 
 tion which we can put on Josephus’ notes of time will 
 not make out more than six days’ interval. On this 
 principle, if Tisri contained thirty days, he must have 
 assaulted the city on the twenty-ninth, not on the 
 thirtieth. 
 
 With regard to my own detail of these transactions, 
 if there is any uncertainty, it affects, I think, only the 
 following point ; whether Cestius arrived and was 
 attacked the same day ; or arrived on one day and 
 was attacked on the next. Josephus is express that 
 the day of the week when he was attacked was the 
 sabbath ; and I think it has been proved that the day 
 of the month when he arrived could not be later than 
 the twenty-fifth. But it might have been as early as 
 the twenty-fourth : and it is indifferent to our argu- 
 ment on which we place it. If Cestius arrived and 
 was attacked on the same day, he arrived and was 
 attacked on the twenty-fifth ; if he arrived on one day, 
 and was attacked by the Jews on the next, he arrived 
 on the twenty-fourth, and was attacked by them on 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 429 
 
 the twenty-fifth. His arrival would thus be on the 
 Friday ; but the attack would still fall on the Satur- 
 day : and though he had both arrived and been at- 
 tacked on the Friday, yet if, as is manifestly a pro- 
 bable supposition, he arrived after a day’s march, on 
 the evening of that day, the attack of the Jews, poste- 
 rior to his arrival, could not have been made before 
 the sabbath. Though made in the evening of the Fri- 
 day, it would still be made on the sabbath. 
 
 It is possible also (and this conjecture is much more 
 probable than the former) that U.C.819, the fifteenth of 
 Nisan, coincided actually not with March 29, but with 
 March 30. For three mean lunations between June 
 26 and March 29 in that year would exceed by some 
 hours the length of the three actual lunations, which 
 must have intervened : and if even three mean luna- 
 tions, as deduced from June 26, would not make the 
 paschal full moon fall earlier than March 29, fourth 
 quarter, it is manifestly possible that it actually fell 
 somewhat later, viz. March 29, first quarter, or March 
 30, second quarter. In either of these cases the fif- 
 teenth of Nisan would coincide with March 30; and, 
 by parity of consequence, the fifteenth of Tisri with 
 September 23 : and September 23 would be Thursday. 
 The twenty-third of Tisri would therefore be Friday ; 
 and the twenty-fourth of Tisri would be Saturday. 
 
 Now if Cestius advanced upon Gabao on the twenty- 
 fourth of Tisri, he would pass from Antipatris to 
 Lydda on the twenty-second or twenty-third : at which 
 time, it is perfectly certain he would find the inha- 
 bitants absent. And if he came to Gabao on the twen- 
 ty-fourth, then the note of time, rpifiv r/yepaig, which 
 marks the length of his stay there, before he moved 
 forwards to Scopus, need not be understood inclusive- 
 ly, except at one of the extremes, the day of the arri- 
 
430 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth . 
 
 val at Gabao. The day of his march to Scopus would 
 be the fourth day from that date inclusive, and Tisri 
 27, as before : nor will there be any alteration in the 
 rest of the detail subsequently. I confess, this is that 
 account of things in which I would ultimately acqui- 
 esce. The fifteenth of Tisri must have coincided with 
 September 22 or 23 ; that is, with Wednesday or 
 Thursday in the week in question : and whichever of 
 the two suppositions we adopt, that Cestius arrived 
 and was attacked on the sabbath day, either Tisri 25 
 or Tisri 24, seems to me to be alike incontrovertible*. 
 
 There are yet some other notices of time, belonging 
 to the history of the first year of the war, which I think 
 it incumbent upon me to point out ; for they will be 
 found to confirm the present argument, and not to inva- 
 lidate it. For example, Bell. ii. xv. 2, mention is made 
 of the sixteenth and the seventeenth of the month 
 Artemisius or Jar, the next to Nisan ; in such a man- 
 ner as clearly to imply that neither of them was a sab- 
 bath. U. C. 819, when the fifteenth of Nisan, if that 
 was March 30, fell on the Tuesday, the sixteenth of 
 Artemisius fell on the Thursday, and the seventeenth 
 
 * There is another question 
 too on which, however, I shall 
 not enter at present ; and that 
 is, whether the month Tisri or 
 Hyperberetseus should be con- 
 sidered a month of thirty, or a 
 month of twenty-nine days in 
 length. I shall find an oppor- 
 tunity of discussing this point 
 elsewhere ; in the mean time I 
 shall observe only that the use 
 of the word rpiaKas, as applied 
 to the last day of the month, is 
 not decisive upon either side. 
 For whatever this word may 
 denote primarily , there is no 
 question that it may be used se- 
 
 condarily for the last day of a 
 month as such, whether that last 
 be the twenty-ninth or the thir- 
 tieth. It will not affect the 
 above detail whichever opinion 
 on this subject we may adopt. 
 If the last day of Tisri was truly 
 the twenty-ninth, Cestius ar- 
 rived at Gabao on the twenty- 
 fourth, and advanced against 
 Jerusalem on the twenty-sixth ; 
 if it was really the thirtieth, 
 he might arrive on the twenty- 
 fourth, though we need not sup- 
 pose he advanced to Scopus be- 
 fore the twenty-seventh. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was born. 431 
 
 on the Friday. I think also it is possible to shew that 
 the sabbath alluded to, xiv. 5, was the eleventh of Ar- 
 temisius, which actually fell on a sabbath : for between 
 that day and the day which is mentioned in section 8, 
 as rfj vcrrepala ; that is, the day after the arrival of 
 Florus at Jerusalem from Sebaste or Samaria, (which 
 was one day’s journey distant ;) and which day, cap. 
 xv. 2, implies to have been the sixteenth of Artemi- 
 sius ; only four days can well be understood ; viz. from 
 the twelfth to the fifteenth of Artemisius ; which would 
 thus be from the Sunday to the Wednesday inclusive. 
 I think also that the day alluded to, xv. 4, 5, when the 
 Jewish priests, and the rest of the inhabitants of Jeru- 
 salem, are said to have met the Roman troops, as they 
 were coming up from Caesarea, was either the nine- 
 teenth or the twentieth of Artemisius ; and could not 
 possibly have been the eighteenth. For those troops 
 were probably sent for on the day after the arrival of 
 Florus from Sebaste, Artemisius 16 ; when he found 
 himself in danger from the resistance of the people. 
 The case of St. Paul in the Acts proves that a detach- 
 ment of soldiers from Jerusalem, even by a forced 
 march, could not reach Caesarea before the second day 
 after they set out : the troops from Caesarea therefore 
 might begin their march on the eighteenth, and reach 
 Jerusalem on the nineteenth ; but they could not well 
 arrive sooner. Now the eighteenth of Artemisius 
 would be Saturday; but the nineteenth would be 
 Sunday. 
 
 In like manner, Bell. ii. xvii. 5. there is mention of 
 seven days’ continued fighting between the faction of 
 Eleazar in one part of the city, and the opposite body 
 in the other. The last of these seven days is determined 
 by sections 6. and 7. to the thirteenth of Lous ; the day 
 before the fyXocpopia. It is a reasonable conjecture 
 
432 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 from the peculiarity of the number of days in question, 
 that the contest lasted an exact week ; beginning after 
 one sabbath, and terminating for a time on another ; 
 and this would be the case if it began after the sixth, 
 and ended on the thirteenth, of Lous : for both those 
 days were Saturdays. 
 
 Again, Bell. ii. xvii. 8, the day, when Manahem with 
 his partisans seized on Jerusalem, is specified as the 
 sixth of Gorpiaeus ; and the day after, when Ananias 
 the high priest was taken and put to death by them, 
 was the seventh. Neither of these days appears to be 
 described as a sabbath : the very reverse seems to have 
 been the case : and accordingly I calculate the sixth to 
 have fallen on Sunday, and the seventh to have coin- 
 cided with Monday. Between the seventh consequently, 
 and the next sabbath, there would be only five days’ 
 interval ; and this coincidence is so far critical that it 
 was on the sabbath, ii. xvii. 10. that the Roman garri- 
 son commanded by Metilius was put to the sword ; 
 and as the context clearly implies, it was on the sabbath 
 next after the death of Manahem ; whose assassination 
 could not have been earlier than the eighth or the ninth 
 of Gorpiaeus; that is, than the Tuesday or the Wed- 
 nesday at the earliest*. 
 
 * The sixth of Gorpiaeus seems 
 to have been the day on which 
 Philip the son of Joachim, com- 
 mander of the /3acriXtKoi or forces 
 of Agrippa, was in danger of be- 
 ing put to death by the followers 
 of Manahem (Vita Josephi, n.) 
 notwithstanding the terms of ca- 
 pitulation allowed to him in par- 
 ticular. On the fifth day after, 
 (Vita, loc. cit .) he made his es- 
 cape : which would thus be on 
 the Thursday, probably the day 
 after the death of Manahem. 
 
 His escape is mentioned in the 
 War, ii. xx. i, as later than the 
 defeat of Cestius ; a statement 
 inconsistent with the account in 
 Vita; and probably an oversight. 
 Cf. Vita, 1 1. with Bell. ii. xviii. 
 
 6. i. 
 
 There are similar notices in 
 the subsequent books of the War; 
 which, if my limits would allow 
 of my examining them in detail, 
 would corroborate the above con- 
 clusions. Besides, however, the 
 length of time for which I have 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord ivas born. 435 
 
 These points being presumptively established, we 
 possess perhaps data sufficient to correct an error. 
 
 dwelt on this subject, there is 
 another reason why I should pro- 
 ceed with it no further ; viz. that 
 the numbers in the text of Jose- 
 phus are often exceedingly cor- 
 rupt ; and therefore it becomes 
 frequently a difficult question to 
 determine what reliance can be 
 placed on his dates. I shall il- 
 lustrate this assertion by a case 
 in point ; which is the true date 
 of the most memorable event in 
 the course of the Avar, next to 
 the siege of Jerusalem; viz. the 
 siege of Jotapata. 
 
 The siege of Jotapata lasted 
 forty-seven days, and the place 
 was captured on the forty-eighth. 
 Bell. iii. vii. 33. 34. and viii. 9. 
 compared together place this fact 
 beyond a question. This forty- 
 eighth day was also the vovfxrjvia or 
 first of Panemus, see cap. vii. 36; 
 and the mention of the tAventy- 
 seventh of Daesius in §. 32, so 
 soon before the allusion to the 
 forty-seventh day of the siege in 
 §. 33 ; and of the fourth of Pa- 
 nemus, ix. 1. so soon after the 
 capture ; confirms this inference. 
 The intermediate time is account- 
 ed for by comparing vii. 36. viii. 
 1 and ix. 1 . together. Let us sup- 
 pose that Daesius was a month 
 of twenty-nine days ; and con- 
 sequently Artemisius a month of 
 thirty. If the forty-eighth day 
 of the siege synchronised Avith 
 Panemus 1 . the nineteenth syn- 
 chronised with Daesius 1 ; and 
 therefore the first with Artemi- 
 sius 12 or 13. The printed text 
 of Josephus, however, (vii. 3.) 
 makes it synchronise with Arte- 
 misius 21. There can be no 
 question, then, that this is an 
 error of the text ; and was due 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 some time or other to a mistake 
 of the copyists ; who must have 
 confounded the numeral notes 
 for twelve or thirteen, 1 $ or iy, 
 with those of twenty-one or 
 tAventy-tAvo, k a or k/3'. It is too 
 gross to have come from Jose- 
 phus himself. The correction 
 of this error is so much the more 
 important, because if the Paschal 
 full moon, U. C. 820, (as I think 
 it may be proved,) fell on March 
 19 ; March 19 was a Saturday ; 
 and consequently the fifteenth 
 of Nisan coincided Avith Satur- 
 day. In this case, if Ave allow 
 only tAventy-nine days to Nisan, 
 the twenty-first of Artemisius 
 also would fall on the Saturday. 
 Now it was from the day after 
 Josephus threAv himself into Jo- 
 tapata, that he dated the begin- 
 ning of the siege. If therefore 
 he arrived on the twenty-first of 
 Artemisius, he must have tra- 
 velled from Tiberias to Jotapata 
 (a distance of several miles) on 
 the Saturday : Avhich some per- 
 haps would justly consider a dif- 
 ficulty. But if he did it upon 
 the twelfth, the difficulty is ob- 
 viated ; for the tAvelfth of Arte- 
 misius Avould be Thursday. 
 
 I11 like manner, the twenty- 
 second of Hyperberetaeus, the 
 day before the capture of Gama- 
 la, (which was Hyperberetaeus 
 23,)Bell.iv.i. 9,10. is manifestly 
 described as not a sabbath. The 
 twenty-second of Hyperberetae- 
 us I calculate to have coincided 
 with September 19 ; and both 
 with a Monday. Directly after, 
 cap. ii. j . 3, when Titus laid siege 
 to Gischala, there is mention 
 made of a sabbath as such. This 
 could not be more than a very 
 
 F f 
 
434 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 which the nature of the case obliged me to admit at the 
 commencement of the present discussion. This error re- 
 gards the order and succession of the courses of the 
 priests, from the beginning of the Jewish Ab, to the mid- 
 dle of Tisri, U.C. 748; as deduciblefrom the fact that Joa- 
 rib was in office on the ninth of Ab, U.C. 823. It is now 
 in my power to exhibit that succession more correctly ; 
 the effect of which will be to shew that the course of 
 Abia in particular, U.C. 748, the year before the birth 
 of John, did not come into office on the sixth of Tisri, 
 and go out on the thirteenth ; but in all probability 
 came in on the seventeenth, and went out on the twen- 
 ty-fourth : and with the proof of this position I shall 
 conclude. 
 
 If the course Joarib was actually in office when the 
 temple was taken and destroyed, U. C. 823 ; and if 
 the temple was first set on fire on the eighth of Ab or 
 Loiis, (which was a Sunday ;) and was finally burnt 
 down on the tenth, (which was a Tuesday ;) Joarib must 
 have come into office on the seventh of Ab ; which was 
 a Saturday. Now in the year of the destruction of Je- 
 rusalem, when the fourteenth of Nisan answered to 
 April 13, it has been seen, upon calculation, that the 
 seventh of Ab answered to August 2. It has been seen 
 also that, in that year, if April 13 fell on the Sunday, 
 August 2 fell on the Saturday. 
 
 Assuming then this datum, viz. that U.C. 823, Joarib 
 came into office on Saturday, August 2 ; we may rea- 
 son, as before, that seventy-five years previously, U. C. 
 748, it must have been in office on August 12. For 
 between August 12, U. C. 748 inclusive , and August 
 
 few days after the reduction of ty-fourth of Gorpiaeus, when Ga- 
 Gamala. The twenty-seventh mala revolted, was no sabbath, 
 of Hyperberetaeus, September I calculate it accordingly to have 
 24, was a Saturday. It is im- fallen on Monday, 
 plied also, iv. i. 1 o, that the twen- 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord was horn. 435 
 
 12, U. C. 823 exclusive , there are 27,393 days, 18 
 hours ; or 27,394 days : a number divisible by 168, 
 with a remainder of ten. Hence if the first course or 
 any other had come into office, U. C. 748, B. C. 6, on 
 August 12, then, if the succession of courses had gone 
 on uninterruptedly, (and there is no reason to question 
 that fact,) the same course would come again into office 
 ten days before August 12, on the 27,385th day (or, 
 what is the same thing, at the end of the 163d revo- 
 lution of all the courses) afterwards ; viz. upon August 
 2, U.C. 823, A. D. 70. Conversely, therefore, if Joarib 
 or any other course was in office, August 2, U. C. 823, 
 A. D. 70, Joarib or that same course must have been 
 in office, August 12, U.C. 748, B. C. 6. It confirms this 
 inference that both August 2, U. C. 823, and August 12, 
 U. C. 748, according to my distribution of the days of 
 the week, fell on the Jewish sabbath ; though the tables 
 exhibit each of them on the Thursday. And that any 
 two days, on which the same course or any two differ- 
 ent courses came into office, must necessarily be each 
 of them sabbaths, requires no proof. 
 
 The order of the courses then, from August 12, U.C. 
 748, to the time of the feast of Tabernacles in that 
 year, will stand as follows : 
 
 Course I. Joarib, came into office on August 12. a Saturday. 
 
 II 19. 
 
 III 26. 
 
 IV September 2. 
 
 V 9. 
 
 VI 16. 
 
 VII 23. 
 
 — VIII. Abia, 30. 
 
 — IX October 7. 
 
 Now from an eclipse of the moon, U. C. 748, Sep- 
 tember 27, 11. 30. a. M. as calculated for the meridian 
 
 F f 2 
 
436 
 
 Dissertation Twelfth. 
 
 of Paris, and September 27, at 1. 42. P. M. for the 
 meridian of Jerusalem ; there can be little danger in 
 concluding that the full moon, when this eclipse hap- 
 pened, was the full moon of Tisri ; especially as the 
 Paschal full moon, before this, had fallen on the fourth 
 of April. If the fifteenth of Tisri coincided with the 
 day of this full moon, September 27 answered to Tisri 
 15 ; if it was the day after it, September 28 coincided 
 with Tisri 15. And this is the more probable suppo- 
 sition ; for from Nisan 15 exclusive , to Tisri 15 in- 
 clusive, there could not be less than one hundred and 
 seventy-seven days’ interval ; and from April 4 (which 
 answered in that year to Nisan 15) exclusive , there is 
 just the same number of days to September 28 inclu- 
 sive. I conclude, then, that U. C. 748, B. C. 6, Sep- 
 tember 28 answered to Tisri 15. If so, September 
 30 would answer to Tisri 17, and October 7 to Tisri 
 24. The time therefore, for which the course of Abia 
 would be in office, was from Tisri 17 to Tisri 24, 
 that is, from September 30 to October 7, both of 
 which fell upon the Jewish sabbath ; the latter being 
 only two days later than the close of the feast of 
 Tabernacles, Tisri 22, October 5. Zacharias might 
 return home on the first day of the week, October 8, 
 Tisri 25 : and if John was born October 5, U. C. 749, 
 it is clear that all these things must have happened 
 about a year before his birth. Nor if we were to con- 
 jecture that even the vision of the angel, (which must 
 have happened while Zacharias was still ministering 
 in the order of his course*,) might possibly have hap- 
 
 * The vision of the angel to 
 Zacharias, could not have hap- 
 pened on the last day of his 
 course, or it would not be said, 
 Luke i. 22, 23, that even after 
 it, he continued to be dumb, 
 and when the days of his min- 
 
 istering were fulfilled, went 
 home. This surely implies that 
 one or two days, at least, were 
 still requisite, even after the 
 vision, to complete his term of 
 service. 
 
On the time of the year when our Lord ivas horn . 437 
 
 pened on the very day in this year, on which John was 
 to be born in the next, viz. October 5, or Tisri 22 itself, 
 would there he any absurdity in the supposition. 
 
 I shall conclude this Dissertation by exhibiting in a 
 single table the principal statements, with respect to 
 the days of the week on which particular days of the 
 month have been supposed to fall, which involve any 
 discrepancy between the tables of the solar cycle, 
 and the results to which I myself have come. It 
 will be seen that the difference in every instance 
 amounts to an excess of two days, on the one hand, and 
 to a defect of the same, on the other : with regard to 
 which, whether I am in the right or in the wrong I 
 shall leave the reader to judge for himself : calling, 
 however, the defect (as I think I may now presume to 
 call it) the error, and the excess the correction. 
 
 U.C. 748. B. C. 6. 
 
 Cycle 4. 
 
 Dom. Lett. C. ERR0R - correction. 
 
 August 12 
 
 
 Thursday. Saturday. 
 
 U.C. 749 . B.C.5. 
 
 5- 
 
 B. A. 
 
 October 5. 
 
 
 Thursday. Saturday. 
 
 U.C. 750. B. C. 4. 
 
 6. 
 
 G. 
 
 April 5. 
 
 
 Thursday. Saturday. 
 
 U.C. 751. B.C.3. 
 
 7- 
 
 F. 
 
 March 3 1 . 
 
 
 Sunday. Tuesday. 
 
 U.C. 761. A. D. 8. 
 
 1 7 * 
 
 A. G. 
 
 April 8. 
 
 
 Sunday. Tuesday. 
 
 U.C. 779. A. D. 26. 
 
 7 - 
 
 F. 
 
 October 5. 
 
 
 Saturday. Monday. 
 
 U.C. 780. A. D. 27. 
 
 8. 
 
 E. 
 
 April 9. 
 
 
 Wednesday. Friday. 
 
 U.C. 781. A. D. 28. 
 
 9 - 
 
 D. C. 
 
 March 29. 
 
 
 Monday. Wednesday. 
 
 U.C. 782. A. D. 29. 
 
 TO. 
 
 B. 
 
 April 5. 
 
 
 Tuesday. Thursday. 
 
 U.C. 783. A. D. 30. 
 
 II. 
 
 A. 
 
 April 5. 
 
 
 Wednesday. Friday. 
 
 U.C. 786. A. D. 33. 
 
 14. 
 
 D. 
 
 April 2. 
 
 
 Thursday. Saturday. 
 
 U.C. 819. A.D.66. 
 
 ig. 
 
 E. 
 
 March 30. 
 
 
 Sunday. Tuesday. 
 
 U.C. 823. A. D. 70. 
 
 * 3 - 
 
 G. 
 
 April 13. 
 
 
 Friday. Sunday. 
 
 F f 3 
 
DISSERTATION XIII. 
 
 On the opinions of the most ancient Christians upon the pre- 
 ceding topics. 
 
 If any weight is to be allowed, in the discussion of 
 purely historical questions, to the testimony of anti- 
 quity ; some notice is due to the opinions of the early 
 Christians upon the above points, either all, or at least 
 the most important of them. With respect to these 
 opinions, we may observe first, that as to the time of 
 the year, at which the nativity was to be placed, there 
 seems never to have been more than two suppositions ; 
 one, which assigned it to the vernal equinox, and another, 
 which assigned it to the date of the vulgar era: se- 
 condly, that with regard to the duration of the min- 
 istry of Christ, though there is no hypothesis which, 
 with the evidence of the Gospel accounts before us, 
 we ought to consider more irrational and more inde- 
 fensible, than that which confines this duration to the 
 period of a single year ; still it cannot be denied that 
 such an opinion was seriously entertained in ancient 
 times, any more than that it has been entertained in mo- 
 dern likewise. But to say that it was ever, anciently, the 
 current and undoubted opinion of the church, would 
 be as false as to say that it has been so since ; and as 
 great an affront to the understandings of mankind 
 formerly, as to their common sense still. Nor is it 
 to be supposed that the objections to such an opinion 
 were not as discoverable in ancient times as in modern. 
 It is to be remarked, however, that most if not all of 
 those who maintain it, make this one year’s duration 
 to have fallen out critically in the fifteenth or the six- 
 teenth of Tiberius ; which may perhaps enable us to 
 conjecture the origin of the opinion itself. 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians . 
 
 439 
 
 The express testimony of St. Luke had apparent- 
 ly fixed the beginning of the ministry of John, 
 which must have been earlier than the commence- 
 ment of the ministry of Christ, to the fifteenth of 
 Tiberius Caesar; and uniform historical tradition, 
 either grounded upon or supported by the Acts of Pi- 
 late, had fixed the close of our Saviour’s to the six- 
 teenth. There was no means of reconciling these 
 things together, except by supposing that Christ was 
 baptized in the fifteenth, and terminated his ministry 
 in the sixteenth of the reign in question. I am per- 
 suaded that, during the first two centuries, no Chris- 
 tian doubted of the fact that our Lord suffered in one 
 of those years ; and the nearer we ascend to the apo- 
 stolical times, the clearer and stronger does the evidence 
 of that belief become. It does not however follow 
 that all, who maintained one of those opinions, main- 
 tained the other also ; that is, though all, who sup- 
 posed the ministry of Christ to have lasted but a single 
 year, supposed it to have ended in the sixteenth 
 of Tiberius ; yet all, who supposed it to have ended 
 then, did not therefore suppose it to have begun in 
 his fifteenth. 
 
 I am aware, indeed, that a different account of this 
 opinion may be given ; viz. in the alleged fulfilment 
 of prophecy ; as if that acceptable year of the Lord a , 
 to preach or proclaim which our Saviour declared him- 
 self sent, necessarily implied that his ministry would 
 last but one year : and the prophecy is certainly so ap- 
 plied by Clement of Alexandria 1 *, one who maintains 
 the opinion in question. But this mode of applying 
 the prophecy does not so much explain the origin of 
 the opinion, as corroborate or attest the fact of it. It 
 
 a Isaiah lxi. 2 . Luke iv. 19. 
 
 668. 1 . 20 — 23. Strom, v. 6. 
 
 b Operum i. 407. 1 . 7 — 9. Strom, i. 21 : ii. 
 
 F f 4 
 
440 
 
 Dissert a t i o n T h irteen t/i . 
 
 being assumed that the ministry of Christ lasted one 
 year, the prophecy was assigned as implicitly fulfilled 
 in this event. There is no mention in the prediction 
 of only a single acceptable year ; nor would it be less 
 applicable to a ministry of two or of three years’ dura- 
 tion, than to a ministry of one year’s. Every year in such 
 a ministry might be called the acceptable year alike. 
 Epiphanius, however, with much greater reason a pri- 
 ori, applies it to that one and the first year in the 
 order of the whole, which the fact itself proves to have 
 been employed by our Lord in preaching the gospel, 
 before the Jews had as yet determined on its rejec- 
 tion ; or what amounts to the same thing, had begun 
 upon system to go about to kill our Lord* c . 
 
 I am aware also that the existence of the Acts of 
 Pilate is a controverted point. But there never was a 
 question about it except in modern times. In the se- 
 cond and in the third century after Christ, it was taken 
 for granted both by the enemies and by the friends of 
 Christianity. The very attempt, in the time of the Dio- 
 cletian persecution, to impose on the Christian world by 
 spurious Acts, bearing the same name as the true; (an at- 
 tempt which emanated from the imperial council itself ;) 
 must be decisive as to the supposed existence of real ; 
 for no adversary of Christianity would have thought 
 of counterfeiting what until then had never been con- 
 
 * Cf. Epiphanius, i. 449. C. 
 Alogi, xxvii : ii. 136. B. Ana- 
 cephalseosis, cxxiii. 
 
 The Valentinians appealed to 
 the prophecy in question, in sup- 
 port of their opinion concern- 
 ing the length of our Saviour’s 
 ministry : to which Irenseus an- 
 swers ; Annus autem Domini 
 
 acceptabilis, tempus hoc, in quo 
 vocantur ab eo hi qui credunt 
 ei,et acceptabiles fiunt Deo: hoc 
 est omne ab adventu ejus tem- 
 pus usque ad consummationem, 
 in quo, utfructus, eos qui salvan- 
 tur acquirit : Adversus Heer. ii. 
 xxxviii: Operum 159. line 18: 
 cf. Ibid. 160. line 8. 
 
 c Operum i. 48. D. Herodiani, ii : 447. B. Alogi, xxv. 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians. 
 
 441 
 
 sidered genuine, or of setting forth a fictitious imitation 
 of what was not yet believed to have a real existence : 
 or if he had, no friend of the truth was likely to be 
 deceived by it. Nor is it a little remarkable that these 
 very Acts, as we learn from Eusebius d , placed the 
 passion in the seventh of Tiberius ; that is, before not 
 after his sixteenth. For, in the time of Eusebius, who 
 was contemporary with the attempt, the opinion that 
 our Lord was crucified after not before this date, was 
 fast coming into vogue ; and this is the opinion which 
 he espoused himself. Let it be supposed that the true 
 date, on the authority of the genuine Acts, was the six- 
 teenth of Tiberius; and that popular opinion, at the 
 time, was inclined to place it in the eighteenth ; where 
 was a forgery, whose object was expressly to injure 
 Christianity, by confounding the authentic records of 
 its most important facts, so likely to place the date of 
 the Passion as before the sixteenth at least # ? 
 
 The custom of the Roman empire, by which reports 
 of proceedings in the provinces were regularly trans- 
 mitted to the proper authorities, is too agreeable to the 
 nature of things, and too well attested to be called into 
 question. To facilitate this communication, Augustus 
 established posts e . Secretaries, or notaries, who kept a 
 journal of the Acta of the prefects, constantly attended 
 upon them f . Almost the whole of the tenth book of 
 
 * In the defence of Lucian 
 the presbyter, who suffered at 
 Nicomedia, under Maximinus, 
 A.D.3 1 2. (Eus. E.H.viii.13. 307. 
 D. ix. 6. 351. C. D :) which Ru- 
 finus inserts in his version of the 
 ninth book of the history, loc. 
 cii. : we meet with an allusion to 
 these Acta as recently put forth, 
 
 which shews that they represent- 
 ed our Lord to have suffered as 
 a malefactor : Non ut ista, quae 
 nunc falso conscribuntur, conti- 
 nent Acta Pilati, sed innocens, 
 immaculatus, et purus ad hoc 
 solum mortem suscepit, ut earn 
 vinceret resurgendo. Cf. Reli- 
 quiae Sacrae, iii. 285. 286. 1 . 22. 
 
 d E. H. i. 9. 27. C. ix. 5. 350. C. D. 7. 352. A. e Suet. Augustus, 49, 7, 
 f Philo, Operum ii. 536. 1 . 21. et seqq. Adversus Flaccum. 
 
442 
 
 Dissertation Thirteenth. 
 
 the Epistles of Pliny the younger consists of the cor- 
 respondence, relating to the affairs of his government, 
 which passed between himself and Trajan ; and the 
 example of Festus, in the Acts *, previous to the mis- 
 sion of St. Paul to Rome, is a case in point. IlaAouou 
 kck parr] kotos eOovs tols tcov eOvcbv apyovcri, tcl i rapct crCpLcri 
 KaivoTO/uLOv/ULeva tw Trjv fiacrlXeiov apyrjv eir iKparovvTi crrjfjLal- 
 veiv 9 cos av /uLrjSev avTov cnroSibpacrKOi tcov yivo/uLevcov Cor- 
 ripuit consulares, exercitibus praepositos, quod non de 
 rebus gestis senatui scriberent [ ; that is, to the senate , 
 and not to himself. T rj fev TOLLS V7ro/JLvijfJLaTiKais eCprj/JLe- 
 phriv, as airo Trjs ’AXe^avSpeias Sie7r€juL'7rovTO Tives, 7 rpoare- 
 yeov' rjSicrTOV /u.ev yap rjv avdyvcocriua tovto avTw^ — TldvO’ 
 oca Sid tcov v7rdp^cov ireixireTai /xeTa crirovSriS , aw7rep0eTOV 
 e^ei ty]v Trap vjj.lv Siayvcoanv h The commentaries and 
 acts of Tiberius, which must have included the pro- 
 vincial transactions, as well as the urban, were in ex- 
 istence in the time of Domitian * m . Some report or 
 
 * Et tamen hsec tangent ali- 
 quando Csesaris aures. | Nil il- 
 ium toto quod fit in orbe latet. 
 Ovid, De Ponto, iv. ix. 125. 
 The reigning emperor was then 
 Tiberius. Tanquam et diversis 
 partibus orbis | Anxia praecipiti 
 venisset epistola pinna. Juvenal, 
 iv. 148. 
 
 Si victoriae nunciabantur, lau- 
 rus in epistola figebatur {it a 
 leg.) si autem aliquid adversi, 
 pinna figebatur. Scholiastes, in 
 loc. 
 
 *A AX’ evpapeia noXXrj <a6rjpevco 
 (the Roman emperor) naaav ayew 
 TTjV oiKOvptvrjv 81 enKTToXrjs. al 8 e 
 piKpov (f)0dvov(Ti ypafaicrai, Kai nap- 
 cktiv aicrnep vno nrrjvwv (pepopevai. 
 Aristides, Oratio xiv. 336. line 9. 
 
 In Eusebius, E.H.vii. 1 1. 258. A: 
 we have a specimen given, from 
 the letter of Dionysius, bishop of 
 Alexandria, during the persecu- 
 tion under Valerian, about A. D. 
 257, of the way in which the 
 Acta Publica, or records of ju- 
 dicial proceedings before the ma- 
 gistrates in the provinces, were 
 kept. Procopius too, Historia 
 Arcana, cap. xxx. 85. B — D. 
 describes the Public Post — or 
 provision made by the emperors, 
 before the time of Justinian, for 
 speedy communication with all 
 parts of the empire. Aurelius 
 Victor, cap. xiii. De Trajano, 
 seems to ascribe the institution 
 of the Post in question to 
 that emperor. The same his- 
 
 g xxv. 20 — 27. h Eus. E. H. ii. 2 . 40. C i Suet. Tiberius, 32. k Philo, 
 ii. 570. line 17. De Virtutibus. 1 ldem > «• 53 1. line 47. Adversus Flaccum. 
 m Suet. Domitianus, 20. 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians. 443 
 
 other therefore of the proceedings in Judaea every 
 year, during his administration, would certainly be an- 
 nually transmitted by Pilate to Tiberius. 
 
 Justin Martyr is the earliest Christian writer who 
 affirms the fact in the present instance ; unless we 
 should except the Marty rium of Ignatius, where a 
 reference occurs to the Acts of Pilate, as follows : Kcu 
 ravra ( deest fbrscin Trpo ?) rravpov vi to ILAaroi/ /caraicpi - 
 Oivra Kai Oavarov, w? ra irep'i avrov SiSao’KOvo’iv vro/uLv^/uLara 11 
 — yet this Martyrium is later than the age of Irenaeus 0 . 
 
 Kai ravra on yiyove, SvvacrOe maOeiv e/c rear in Ilovriov 
 IliAa-rov y evopivinv a/crow?. "On re ravra iiroiYirev, iie 
 rcov in Tlovrlov IKAarou y evop.ivw>v avrw (lege a/crcop) 
 /aaOeiv SvvacrOe^. 
 
 Tertullian’s testimony, which is quoted by Eusebius 
 also, is found in his Apologeticus r . Tiberius ergo, 
 cujus tempore nomen Christianum in seculum introivit, 
 annunciatum sibi ex Syria Palaestina, quod illic verita- 
 tem illius divinitatis revelaverat, detulit ad senatum 
 cum praerogativa suffragii sui. senatus, quia non ipse 
 probaverat, respuit^. Caesar in sententia mansit, com- 
 
 torian loc. cit. tells us of Trajan, 
 that as one of the consequences of 
 his successes in Parthia, an high 
 road was constructed from the 
 remotest part of the east almost 
 as far into the west ; Inter ea iter 
 conditum per feras gentes, quo 
 facile ab usque Pontico mari in 
 Galliam permeatur : a fact not 
 mentioned, I believe, by any 
 other historian of his reign. 
 
 * Eusebius, E.H. ii. 2.40.D.4T. 
 C. appears to have misunder- 
 stood this passage of Tertullian. 
 The senate did not reject the 
 motion because its own pleasure 
 
 had not been consulted, but be- 
 cause, in fact, the emperor had 
 not commanded it. He had left 
 it to their discretion — intimating 
 merely that if they thought pro- 
 per to approve of it, he was 
 ready to do so too : for this I 
 consider the meaning of, cum 
 praerogativa suffragii sui. Con- 
 sequently his own favourable 
 opinion of Christianity, or of 
 the divinity of Christ, if he had 
 really conceived any, was not 
 likely to be changed by the 
 event. 
 
 Scriptorum Deperditorum Va- 
 
 n Patres Apostolici, 992. D Martyrium Ign. iii. o Ibid, ioor, D. cap. xxvi. 
 P Apologia Prima, 56. 1 . 17. <1 Ibid. 71. 1 . 17. r Operum v. 16. Apologeticus, 5. 
 
444 
 
 1) isserta tion T h irteen th. 
 
 minatus periculum accusatoribus Christianorum — Ea 
 omnia super Christo Pilatus, et ipse jam pro sua con- 
 scientia Christianus, Caesari, turn Tiberio, nunciavit s . 
 Requirite in annalibus vestris ; invenietis temporibus 
 Pilati, Christo patiente, fugato sole interruptum tene- 
 bris diem 1 . But the testimony of Epiphanius, though 
 somewhat the latest, is not the least express". \A7r0 
 tcov 5, A ktcov SrjOev ITfXarou avyovvi ty\v a.Kpl/3eiav evprjKevai , 
 ev oh ejuLCpeperai rfj 7 rpo oktw KaXavScdv ’ AirpiWiwv tov 
 'EcoTrjpa TreirovQevcu — gtl Se eupo/mev avTiypacpa e/c tcS v 
 (lege ’'Aktcov) ILAarou, ev oh cni/ualvei 7rpo $€K(X7revTe kcl- 
 \avScov ’ AirptWlcov to iraQo<s yeyevrjo-Oai . raXtiOrj $e, c 0 ? 
 ck 7 roWrjs ctKpiftelas eyvoo/Lev, ev rrj 1 rpo SeKarpicov KaXavScov 
 ’At rpiWlcov tov ^MTv/pa irei rovOevcu KaTei\y<fiafJLev v . 
 
 Along with this traditional testimony to the fact of 
 Pilate’s report, another is found combined, with refer- 
 ence to the failure of the emperor’s motion ; viz. that 
 it was mainly the effect of the opposition of Sejanus. 
 Praecipue cum et Sejanus, praefectus Tiberii, suscipi- 
 endae religioni obstinatissime contradiceret x . Eusebius 
 also virtually affirms the same thing, when, after 
 having given an account of the report and the motion^, 
 
 ticana Coll. ii. 246. Post Dionem 
 Excerpta, cxxix: onTifiepios avr\y- 
 yeWev eV'i rrjv avyKXrjrov, wore tov 
 Xpicrrov rpiaicaide Karov 6eov eivai ‘ 
 r] 8e avyKXrjTOs ovk anede^aro, docrre 
 kuL riva aareievopevov elne'iv, on 
 TpMTKcude Karov ov de^ecrde, kcu npco- 
 ros epxercu. 
 
 Rel. Sacrae, i. rn.l.3; Melito- 
 liis Apologia : (pvXaaacov rr/s fiaai- 
 Xeias rrjv avvrpocpov Kai crvvap£a- 
 pevrjv Avyov(rra> (pi\oao(f>iav' f/v 
 
 Kal oi npoyovoi (rov tv pos rais aAXcus 
 0pTj(TK€Laii irippaav : whence, it 
 has been argued, and, I think, 
 with reason, that some ancestor of 
 Marcus Aurelius, (consequently 
 either Tiberius or Hadrian,) had 
 placed the Christian religion on 
 a footing of equality with the 
 other modes and forms of wor- 
 ship tolerated throughout the 
 empire. 
 
 s Tertullian, v. 59. Apologeticus, 21. t Lucianus Mart. Rel. Sacrae, iii. 287. 
 1. 6. u Adversus Haer. i. 420. A. Tessarescaedecatitae, 1. v Vide also Chry- 
 sostom, Operum viii. 277. C. cap. 2. Spuria. Cf. the Codex Apocryphus, i. 298. 
 Nicodemi Evangelium, ad calcem. * Orosius, Histor. vii. 4. y E. H. ii. 2. 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians. 
 
 445 
 
 he proceeds to subjoin, on the testimony of Philo Ju- 
 daeus, a summary, toov ana re Kai ovic ei9 /ui aK pov, twv 
 K ara tov XpicrTov TeToX/JLrjncvwv ev&cev, ’I ovSalois wnfiefir)- 
 koto) v z : the first instance of which was Sejanus’ at- 
 tempt at their entire destruction in Rome ; and the 
 second was Pilate’s profanation of the temple at Jeru- 
 salem. 
 
 That Philo does indeed assert the ill-will of Sejanus 
 towards his countrymen, and the fact of some deep- 
 laid designs of his for their destruction, appears from the 
 exordium of his narration Adversus Flaccum : Sevrepos 
 fjLera ^rjiavov ^Xclkkos ’ Aoi//’XXto? SiaSe^erai Kara tow 
 ’ lovSaicov €7Ti{3ov\ijv‘ (rviXTrav n'ev aSiKyjo-ai to eOvos, oicrirep 
 eKeivos , ov SwrjOels, k\t. X. a And that he took up this 
 enmity soon after the death of Sejanus appears from 
 what follows I e^aeTLav yap Tr\v eirLKpaTeiav X«/3co v, ttcvtc 
 /lev cty\ to. TrpooTa, j£a)VT09 Tifieplov K aivapos, Trjv T€ eiprjvqv 
 
 <he(pv\a%e /c',r.X b . Five years before the death of Tiberius, 
 U. C. 790 ineunte , would bring us to U. C. 785 ineunte , 
 (which is about the middle of the eighteenth of Tibe- 
 rius,) as the time of the appointment of Flaccus ; not 
 six months later than October 18, U.C. 784, in the same 
 year, the date of the downfall of Sejanus # c . If so, the 
 
 * The six years in question 
 require to be understood as six 
 years complete. The recall of 
 Flaccus did not take place be- 
 fore the death of the younger 
 Tiberius (Philo, ii. 518. 48): 
 nor before that of Macro (519. 
 38) : nor before Agrippa’s re- 
 turn to Judaea, through Alexan- 
 dria, by favour of the Etesian 
 winds (520. 46) : nor before the 
 death of Cams’ sister, Drusilla 
 (525. 35) : nor before corn -har- 
 
 vest in Egypt was over (526. 
 34) : nor before Cams’ birthday 
 (August 31.) was past (529. 6 
 — 23): nor lastly, before the 
 recurrence of the Jewish Feast 
 of Tabernacles, and the begin- 
 ning of winter, or at least the 
 arrival of the autumnal equinox: 
 (534- 13—16: 535- 25.) 
 
 These events could not all have 
 happened before the middle of 
 Caius’ second year, U.C. 791: 
 and this being the sixth year of 
 
 Z E. H. ii. 5. 44. B. 
 c Tacitus, Ann. vi. 25. 
 
 a Operum ii. 517. 1. r. 
 
 b Ibid. 518. 1 . 31. 
 
446 
 
 Dissertation Thirteenth. 
 
 measures of Sejanus against the Jews, could neither 
 have been conceived, nor executed, later than the se- 
 venteenth of Tiberius. 
 
 Flaccus complete, U. C. 785, the 
 beginning of Tiberius’ nine- 
 teenth, or end of his eighteenth, 
 must have been his first. 
 
 Flaccus Aquilius may be the 
 prefect of Egypt, mentioned by 
 Josephus, Ant. Jud. xix. v. 2. 
 in the rescript there quoted, un- 
 der the name of ’A^Xas. 
 
 According to Dio, the gover- 
 nor of Egypt, before the down- 
 fall of Sejanus, was Vetrasius 
 Pollio ; whose decease, in office, 
 he places apparently, U. C. 785, 
 and calls his successor , "ifiripovTiva 
 Kcucrdpeiov, lviii. 1 9. 1 7 . 20. Either 
 this successor, or the immediate 
 predecessor of Flaccus, is called 
 by Philo, (ii. 517.I.13.) Severus; 
 whence Lipsius, in Senecse Con- 
 sol. ad Helviam, xvii. 4. 6. pro- 
 poses to correct the text of Dio, 
 by reading 2<z(3rjpov. It appears 
 from the same passages of Se- 
 neca, that Vetrasius Pollio was 
 very probably the person, of 
 whom he speaks as having been 
 sixteen years in office ; and 
 whom Lipsius thence concludes 
 to have succeeded ^Emilius Re- 
 ctus, U.C. 768 or 769. But Dio, 
 lvii. 19, speaks of Strabo, the 
 father of AClius Sejanus, as go- 
 vernor of Egypt sometime after 
 Rectus ; which I should suppose 
 to be, U. C. 768 or 769. Taci- 
 tus, Annales,i. 7. 24. Sejanus and 
 Strabo were both associated at 
 Rome in the command of the 
 Praetorian guard, September or 
 October, U. C. 767 : notwith- 
 standing which the latter might 
 be sent to Egypt in a year or 
 
 two afterwards, and the former 
 left in command by himself. See 
 Dio, lvii. T9. If Severus actually 
 came between Vetrasius and 
 Flaccus, and Vetrasius was actu- 
 ally sixteen years in office ; we 
 cannot suppose the latter to have 
 come into office later than U. C. 
 770, though his sixteen years be 
 understood of current years, and 
 not of complete. 
 
 Seneca, Consolatio ad Hel- 
 viam, ii. 4: Avunculum indul- 
 gentissimum, optimum ac for- 
 tissimum virum, quum adven- 
 tum ejus (sc. ab Egypto) ex- 
 spectares, amisisti. Also xvii. 3: 
 Clarissimum virum amiserat, 
 avunculum nostrum, cui virgo 
 nupserat, in ipsa navigatione : 
 whence it appears, that if Ve- 
 trasius is the person here spoken 
 of, the husband of Helvia’s sis- 
 ter, Seneca’s aunt, he did not 
 die in office, but on his passage 
 homewards. 
 
 Severus was governor a very 
 short time ; so that Flaccus 
 might still be in office, after 
 both him and Vetrasius, by the 
 autumnal quarter of U.C. 785. 
 His death, as asserted by Phi- 
 lo, while he was in office, and 
 also his relation to Tiberius, as 
 one of his freed-men, appear to 
 me to be recognised by Pliny. 
 Remisit et Tiberius Caesar He- 
 liopolitarum caerimoniis reper- 
 tam ibi in haereditate ejus qui 
 praefuerat iEgypto, Obsidianam 
 imaginem Menelais. 
 
 After this account of the 
 succession of the governors of 
 
 S H. N. xxxri. 67. 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians. 
 
 447 
 
 Without arguing therefore the question whether it 
 is credible, or incredible, in itself, that such a proposal 
 as this of the deification of Christ, should have ema- 
 nated from Tiberius, or been rejected by the senate ; 
 yet thus much we may contend for ; They, who con- 
 nected this tradition with the former relating to the 
 Acts of Pilate, could not suppose those Acts to have 
 been transmitted later than the downfall of Sejanus ; 
 which if they placed in its proper year, would not be 
 later than the end of the seventeenth of Tiberius. Nor 
 could the injuries, which Sejanus brought or endeavour- 
 ed to bring on the Jews, be considered, in any sense, a 
 punishment for the national guilt, unless that guilt 
 was known or supposed to have been contracted before 
 those injuries had been inflicted ; that is, before the 
 seventeenth of Tiberius at least. It is accordingly ob- 
 servable, that Eusebius places these designs of Sejanus 
 in the twentieth, because he places the Passion in the 
 eighteenth of Tiberius 11 : by doing which, while he 
 avoids one inconsistency, he falls into another much 
 greater ; which is, that he contradicts Philo, Josephus, 
 Tacitus, and every other contemporary historian. Oro- 
 sius is more cautious : Deinde, anno ejusdem septem- 
 decimo cum Dominus Jesus Christus voluntarise quidem 
 se tradidit passioni, &c. 
 
 In this part of his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius 
 professes to follow the authority of Philo, De Legatione 
 
 Egypt, from the death of Au- 
 gustus to the death of Tiberius ; 
 the two instances of oppressive 
 severity alluded to by Philo in 
 other parts of his works, dis- 
 tinct from the treatise Adversus 
 Flaccum, or De Legatione ad 
 Caium — the first, De Specialibus 
 
 Legibus,ii.325. 1.47—326.I. 30. 
 the second, i. 674. 1. 52 — 676. 
 1 . 12. De Somniis, lib. ii — must 
 have been exerted either by Re- 
 ctus or Pollio, Severus or Flac- 
 cus ; the first, probably by Re- 
 ctus, and the last equally so by 
 Flaccus. 
 
 h Chronicon Armeno-Latinum, p. 267, where Sejanus is supposed to be still 
 alive, Tiberii 21 : and Pilate’s report to Tiberius to be made, Tib. 22. 
 
448 
 
 Dissertation Th i rteenth . 
 
 ad Caium or De Virtutibus ; a work which in its present 
 state is manifestly incomplete 1 , but in the time of Euse- 
 bius consisted of five books * k . Yet even in this extant 
 work enough is asserted to prove that Sejanus had both 
 conceived and acted upon the designs in question, and 
 that at a time which must have coincided with the acme 
 of his conspiracy against Tiberius ; that is, with Tibe- 
 rius’ sixteenth or seventeenth. Kcu kn Tifieplov /xei >tol 
 to v avrov rpoirov , kolltoi toov ev ’I raXla i rapaKivrjOerrcov, 
 fjviKGL IZrjiavos ecrKevdopei rijv ei rlOe<Tiv. eyvco yap, evQecos eyvco, 
 jaera rrjv eicelvov reXeurrjv, (id est, Tib. xviii.) on ra Karri - 
 y oprjOevra rcov (pKrjKorcov rrjv ’I ouSalcov \J revSeis rjcrav 
 
 Sia/3o\a \ , 7 TXacr/aara S^iayou, to eOvos avap7raarai OeXovros, 
 07rcp rj /jlovov , rj /uLaXurra, rjSei fiovXals avorlois Ka\ 7 rpa^ecriv 
 avn/3rj(T6jaevov , V7T ep rod 7rapa<T7rov$r]Qijvai KivSvvevcravros av- 
 TOKparopo9 ] . 
 
 I think it is to this fact, and not to some earlier oc- 
 casion of the same kind that Seneca alludes m : In Ti- 
 berii Caesaris principatum juventae tempus inciderat : 
 alienigena turn sacra movebantur ; sed inter argumenta 
 superstitionis ponebatur quorundam animalium absti- 
 nentia f. 
 
 Philo proceeds to assert that, after the downfall of 
 
 * The work against Flaccus 
 begins abruptly. The substance 
 of it is incorporated also in the 
 work De Legatione. Perhaps 
 Eusebius comprehended both of 
 them in the five books men- 
 tioned by himself. 
 
 t It is the opinion of Lipsius, 
 De Vita et Scriptis Annaei Sene- 
 cae, cap. viii. that he was about 
 sixty-three years old when he 
 was put to death, U. C. 8 t 8 me- 
 dio: on which supposition he 
 must have been born about U.C. 
 
 755. By his juventa he cannot 
 mean a time of his life when he 
 was less than twenty or twenty- 
 five ; and he may mean a time 
 when he was as much as thirty. 
 If he was born U. C. 755, he 
 was twenty U.C. 775, and twen- 
 ty-five U. C. 780 ; each of which 
 periods is much too late for the 
 first expulsion of the Jews, in 
 the reign of Tiberius, U.C. 772; 
 but the last would coincide with 
 the acme of the influence of Se- 
 janus. 
 
 i Vide ii. 600. 1 . 35. k E. H. ii. 5. 43. B. 1 Philo, ii. 569. 1 . 28. De Vir- 
 tutibus. m E pistol*, 108. §. 22. 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians. 449 
 
 Sejanus, Tiberius sent instructions to the governors of 
 provinces not to molest the J ews, but to protect and en- 
 courage them, as a loyal and peaceable people ; a fact 
 which, if true, in point of time, and in regard to the spirit 
 of such instructions, would almost coincide with the me- 
 morable rescript, by which he commanded that Chris- 
 tianity (not to be distinguished at this period from Ju- 
 daism) should no where be obstructed. In the course 
 of the same narrative an allusion occurs to the attempt 
 of Pilate, concerning the dedication of the shields in 
 the praetorium at Jerusalem 11 ; an attempt which must 
 not be confounded with the introduction by him of the 
 military ensigns, bearing the image of Tiberius ; as re- 
 corded by Josephus 0 . The circumstances of the ac- 
 count demonstrate that this event must have occurred 
 late in his administration. If Philip the tetrarch was 
 one of the four sons of Herod, whose joint intercession on 
 the occasion is mentioned, it must have occurred before 
 the twentieth of Tiberius at least ; and that he was so, 
 may be inferred from the language of Philo : irpoo-rr}- 
 (rajxevoL rovg re ftaariXecos vieis Terrapas, ovk cnroSeovra? to 
 re a^ico/b ta Kai ra? Tvyas tu>v (Bao-iXecov P. This language 
 implies that these four were all the sons of Herod who 
 were then in being ; besides that the rest of his descend- 
 ants are mentioned, as distinct from them, directly after. 
 The stemma of the family of Herod, if I had time to draw 
 it out, would prove incontestably that, at any period in 
 the administration of Pilate, five sons of Herod the 
 First alone could either be alive, or in the vicinity of 
 Jerusalem : viz. Herod, his son by the second Mari- 
 amne; Herod Antipas, one of his two sons by Mal- 
 thace ; Herod and Philip, his two sons by Cleopatra 
 of Jerusalem ; and Phasaelus, his son by Pallas 3. The 
 
 n ii. 5S9. line 41. efe seq<j. o Ant. Jud. xviii. iii. r. p Philo, ii. 590. 
 
 1 . 5 — 7. De Virtutibus. q Bell. Jud. 1. xxviii. 4. Ant. xvii. 1. 3. 
 
 G g 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
450 
 
 Dissertation Thirteenth. 
 
 description of their rank and dignity at the time im- 
 plies that some of them were kings, or in the next de- 
 gree to kings ; in which case, Antipas the tetrarch of 
 Galilee, and Philip the tetrarch of Trachonitis were 
 necessarily among the number. 
 
 Herod Agrippa is the person who addresses Caius in 
 this letter of Philo’s ; and it is clear, that he himself 
 was not in Jerusalem at the time, though his brother 
 Aristobulus might be : each of which things, as will be 
 shewn more fully elsewhere, would be probable after the 
 sixteenth of Tiberius 1 '. Nor is the indignation, pro- 
 duced in Tiberius by the act, so likely to have been 
 occasioned by any thing as the violation of his own 
 orders, posterior to the death of Sejanus, if that also 
 was implied in the act ; and what is not less probable, 
 if the act itself was not originally designed to flatter 
 the enmity of the favourite against the Jews ; and con- 
 sequently did not take place before his downfall, or be- 
 fore it was known in the provinces. 
 
 The celebrated passage in the same chapter of Jose- 
 phus 55 , where mention occurs of our Saviour ; and con- 
 cerning the genuineness of which, indeed, there is suf- 
 ficient reason to doubt, though even if an interpola- 
 tion, it must have been one of very great antiquity : 
 places the ministry of Christ between the beginning 
 and the end of the government of Pilate, and directly 
 after the two acts of his, the introduction of the standards 
 and the sequestration of the corban, which Eusebius 
 considered to be judgments on the Jews. In the next 
 section but one, there follows an account of the expul- 
 sion of the Jews from Rome ; which Tacitus 1 places 
 U.C. 772. Tiberii vi°. Now it is the custom of Josephus 
 not to observe the strict order of succession in his ac- 
 counts ; but to bring together events, on the principle 
 
 r See the Appendix. s xviii. iii. 3. t Ann. ii. 85. Suet. Tiberius, 36. 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians . 
 
 451 
 
 of some association, the dates of which do not always 
 take up what goes before, or follows after them imme- 
 diately. The author of the interpolation, if it is one, 
 was aware of this peculiarity ; and he knew moreover 
 that the appearance and ministry of Jesus Christ be- 
 longed to the middle of the reign of Tiberius, and to 
 the first half, not the last of the government of Pilate : 
 where he has inserted them accordingly. 
 
 To come, however, to the testimony of Christian 
 writers. 
 
 I. T pel? SeicdSas ercov TroXLTevcrdiAevos e^arTLcrOr] vi ro 
 
 ’Icoavvov' Kai rpeis eviavrovs Ktjpv^as to evayyeXiov 
 
 ,.J(TTavpco6r). Ignatius, ad Trallian. x. PP. Apost.898.E. 
 
 Trjv /aev OeoTtjTa avrov bia rcov <jr}iAeiwv ev rfj r pier la rrj 
 fJLerd to /3a7rTicriuLa , rrjv Se avOpcoirornra avrov, ev rots rpia- 
 Kovra xpovois rols 7rpo rov ^airrlcrfxaTog. Melito, apud 
 
 Rel. Sacras, i. 115. line 18. 
 
 Of these two noble testimonies, it has been usual to 
 consider the first an interpolation ; but whether on suf- 
 ficient grounds, I am not prepared to say. Its spirit 
 and design, as taken in conjunction with the context, 
 are entirely in unison with the tenor of numerous other 
 passages in the same Epistles of Ignatius, acknow- 
 ledged to be genuine, and levelled in common against 
 the various forms of ancient heresy, which denied the 
 reality of our Lord’s personal existence and history 11 ^. 
 To condemn it, as containing a testimony at variance 
 with the sentiments of the age of the writer, would be 
 clearly to beg the question ; and not less directly con- 
 trary to the similar testimony from Melito ; whose age 
 
 * See the whole passage, quot- liani, in the Chronicon Paschale, 
 ed from the Epistle to the Tral- i. 416. 5 — 21. 
 
 u Vide ad Ephesios, vii. 855. D. also xviii. 858. A. B : Ad Magnesianos, xi. 
 86 r. E : Ad Trallianos, ix. x. 864. 865 : Ad Smyrnaeos, i — iv. 872. J) — 873. E. 
 
 G g 2 
 
452 
 
 Dissertation Thirteenth . 
 
 is placed by Lardner A. D. 177 ; but as I believe was 
 much nearer to the middle of the second century. 
 
 On both passages, then, we might argue in common, 
 that if our Lord was believed to have preached three 
 years before his crucifixion, and after his baptism, he 
 was believed to have begun to preach at a Passover : 
 if he was thirty years old at his baptism, he was 
 thirty-three years old at his death : and if he was both 
 baptized and crucified at or about a Passover, he must 
 have been born at or about a Passover. 
 
 II. Tlpo erco v eKaTOv TrevTriKovTa yeyevvijcrOai tov Xpi- 
 crrov \eyeiv h ri K vprjvlov. Justinus Martyr, Apo- 
 
 logia i a . 69. line 14-16. 
 
 This first Apology, which the opening sentence 
 proves to have been presented to the emperor Anto- 
 ninus Pius, the Fasti of Cassiodorus w assert to have 
 been presented Coss. Grato et Seleuco ; which consuls 
 answer, in the Paschal Chronicon x , to Severus and Veri- 
 nus ; and in the Fasti Anonymi, annexed to the Chroni- 
 con, to Clarus and Severus L Of this there can be little 
 doubt ; as the succession of consuls from U. C. 891, 
 
 A. D. 138, when Hadrian the predecessor of Antoni- 
 nus died on the tenth of July, through a period of 
 eight years afterwards, down to these two, is the same 
 in each of those documents. The consulate of Clarus 
 and Severus belongs, therefore, to U. C. 899, A. D. 146. 
 The time of presenting the first Apology was, conse- 
 quently, in the same year : and if so, the alleged date 
 of the birth of Christ, one hundred and fifty years be- 
 fore that, was either U. C. 749, B. C. 5, or U. C. 750, 
 
 B. C. 4 : the former, if the one hundred and fifty years 
 are to be understood exclusively of the year of the 
 consulate in question ; the latter, if they are to be 
 understood inclusively of it. That the census of St. 
 
 w Chronicum, Opemm p. 8. x i. 478. 1 . 16. 7 ii. xii. *6i. ad ann. P.C.’N. 146 . 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians. 
 
 453 
 
 Luke is meant by the allusion to Cyrenius, appears 
 from this passage in the Dialogus : aTroypacprjs ovcrrjg 
 ev rrj ’I ovSala Tore 7rpwrr]9, exi Kvprjvlov. 30 6. line 3. 
 
 III. K a\ TpiaKOVTa errj % xAe/om, rj Ka\ eXacrcrova , /xet- 
 vas, jue-^pig ov 7rpoe\y\v0e v ’I coavvtjg' .... Kai Tore e\0ov- 
 TO? TOU ’I tJUOV €7Tl TOV ’lopSdvrjV 7rOTafJLOV , K, T. A. DialO- 
 
 gus, 331. line 3-9. 
 
 This testimony may leave it in doubt whether our 
 Lord was exactly thirty at the time of his baptism ; 
 but it cannot leave it in doubt whether he was more 
 or less than twenty-nine; nor whether the first ap- 
 pearance of John was much before or much after he 
 also arrived at the age of thirty. 
 
 IV. Propter quod dicunt triginta annorum Domi- 
 num ad baptismum venisse. Irenaeus, contra Valen- 
 tinianos ; Adversus Haer. ii. 13. 132. line 4. 
 
 Kai oti tw ScoSckcltm fujvl eiraOev* eviavTw yap evi 
 /3ov\ovTai avT ov /aera to ^dirTiTjaa aurov KeKrjpv^evai. Ibid. 
 Lib. i. cap. 5. §. 1. p. 16. line 23. 
 
 Nor does Irenaeus differ with them on the first of 
 these positions, but solely on the last. 
 
 V. Ad baptismum enim venit nondum qui triginta 
 annos suppleverat, sed qui inciperet esse tanquam tri- 
 ginta annorum. ita enim, qui ejus annos signiticavit, 
 Lucas posuit; Jesus autem erat quasi incipiens tri- 
 ginta annorum , cum veniret ad baptismum. Ibid. Lib. 
 ii. cap. 39. p. 161. line 7. Compare with this the fol- 
 lowing from Epiphanius 2 . 
 
 A to Kara to Aexro^ ra irdvTa Snjyov/ULevoi oi ayioi Eu- 
 ayyeXio-Tai aKpi/3o\oyova’i. /cai (pvcrei 6 Aovkois, co? axo 
 (tow) kcltcoOcv exi Ta avco avaCpepcov t^v Siavoiav, (paTKer 
 fa $€ (6) T rjcrovs dp'^o/aevos eivai to? ctcov TpiaicovTa * that is, 
 (see cap. xvi. 439- B.) fa yap TW /ulcv ovti eiKOTievvea ctcov 
 
 z Adversus Haer. i. 432. C. Alogi, x. 
 
 G g 3 
 
454 
 
 Dissertation Th irteen tli . 
 
 Ka\ /utjvoov $€Ka .... TpiaKovra /uev erwv, aXX’ ov 7r\t]pri<s. 
 8 10 \eyei' o^o/uevog w? ercov Tpioucovra *. 
 
 These two authorities alone must suffice to justify the 
 construction which we elsewhere put upon this text. 
 
 VI. Natus est enim Doininus noster circa primum et 
 quadragesimum annum Augusti imperii. Irenaeus, Ad- 
 versus Haer. iii. 25. 256. line 16. 
 
 Videamus, autem, quoniam quadragesimo et primo 
 anno imperii Augusti .... nascitur Christus, Ter- 
 tullian, Adversus Jud. cap. 8. Operum ii. 297. 
 
 In this passage Tertullian reckons the reign of Au- 
 gustus at fifty-six years: which, if his reign expired 
 with the middle of U. C. 767, supposes it to have 
 begun with the middle of U. C. 711, the time of Au- 
 gustus’ first consulate. The forty-first year from this 
 date would begin U. C. 751. Josephus, however, will 
 shew that, according to one computation, which dated 
 the beginning of the reign of Augustus from the death 
 of Julius Caesar, U. C. 710, its length might be reck- 
 oned at fifty-seven years and six months b . In this 
 case, its forty- first year would begin U. C. 750 ineunte . 
 Whether of these computations was intended by Ire- 
 naeus does not appear : but in any case, his expression 
 circa is more guarded than Tertullian’s, and admits of 
 a more liberal interpretation than that j*. 
 
 '* Origen, Operum iii. 357. D : 
 in Ezech. Homilia i. 4: Et Domi- 
 nus Jesus Christus incipiens erat 
 quasi triginta annorum, secus 
 fluvium Jordanem, &c. Ibid. 406. 
 E. in Ezech. Selecta: eVirov’Iop- 
 davov, ore * Irjaovs rjv ap^o/ievos eocret 
 irS)V TpiaKovra. Cf. Clemens Al. 
 i. 21. 407. 6. 
 
 Epiphanius, i. 155. C: Ebi- 
 onaei, xxix : rjv de ’I rjaovs apxp- 
 
 pt-vos elvai cos eroov TpiaKovra, cov 
 vios , cos evopi&TO, 'lcocrr)(f), k , r. X : 
 433. A. Alogi, xi : rjv ov v coy 
 ircov X': Cf. 444. B. Alogi, xxii. 
 
 f Principe Augusto nomen 
 hoc ortum est: Tiberio, disci- 
 plina ejus inluxit : sub Nerone 
 damnatio invaluit .... igitur ae- 
 tati nostrae nondum anni ccl : 
 Tertullian, Ad Nationes, i. 7: 
 Operum v. 136. 
 
 Ant. Jud. xviii. ii. 2. 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians. 
 
 455 
 
 VII. f H jueu yap tov K vpiov Kara Trjv irapovcrlav SiSa- 
 (TKaXla an to Avy ovottov koi Ti/3epL0V YLalcrapos ap^a/uevyj, 
 /U€<TOvvT(iOv twv Avyovcrrov (T i(3eplov) Xj ooroor, reXeiovrai. 
 Clemens Alex. Stromatum vii. cap. 17. page 898. 1. 3. 
 
 The middle of the times of Tiberius, understood as 
 freely as it may, cannot imply later than his fifteenth 
 or his sixteenth, at the utmost. 
 
 The same writer demonstrates 0 that in his own time, 
 which was A. D. 194, there was only one opinion re- 
 specting the period of the nativity ; (and that, assign- 
 ing it to the spring;) with which he at least was ac- 
 quainted. 
 
 It is true that Clement, both here and elsewhere* 1 , 
 makes the length of our Lord’s ministry one year only. 
 His computation of the interval between the Passion, 
 and the destruction of Jerusalem, viz. forty-two years 
 and three months, or rather forty-two current years e ; 
 implies the same thing. Forty-two current years be- 
 fore U. C 823 ineuntem begin U. C. 782 ineunte ; that 
 is, with the middle of the fifteenth of Tiberius. 
 
 VIII. Quae passio hujus exterminii intra tempora lxx 
 hebdomadarum perfecta est sub Tiberio Caesare, consuli- 
 bus Rubellio Gemino et Rufio (Fusio) Gemino, mense 
 Martio, temporibus paschae, die viii Calendarum Apri- 
 lium, die prima azymorum, quo agnum ut occiderent ad 
 
 Ut supra edidimus aetatis no- 
 strae nondum anni trecenti, &c.: 
 Ibid. io. 142. 
 
 This work was apparently 
 composed soon after Severus’ 
 reduction of Niger and Albi- 
 nus : Apologeticus, 35. Operum 
 v. 86: and ad Nationes, i. 17. 
 Ibid. 159: that is, not earlier 
 than U. C. 947 on the one hand, 
 when Niger was killed, nor than 
 U. C. 950 on the other, the year 
 
 of the death of Albinus. 
 
 Unless, therefore, the above 
 numbers are corrupt in each in- 
 stance, I should understand them 
 to be referred to the beginning 
 of the reign of Augustus, U. C. 
 7 1 1 ; in which case, it might 
 justly be said not to be yet 250 
 years, that is, not to be yet U. C. 
 961, in the time of the writer ; 
 who was living until that year, 
 at least. 
 
 c Stromatum i. 21. i. 407, 408. Strom, v. 6. i. 668. 1 . 20 — 23. vi. 11. 783. 
 
 line 40. Cf. i. 21. i. 407. 1 . 7 — 12. e Strom, i. 21. i. 407. 1 . 12 — 14. 
 
 G g 4 
 
456 
 
 Dissertation Thirteenth. 
 
 vesperam, a Moyse fuerat praeceptum. Tertullian, ii. 
 300 : Ad versus Judaeos, 8. 
 
 Exinde tetrarchas habuerunt usque ad Herodem, 
 qui fuit sub imperio Tiberii Caesaris ; cujus anno 
 quinto decimo, id est duobus Geminis consulibus, ante 
 diem septimam Calendarum Aprilium Judaei Christum 
 cruci affixerunt — Lactantius, Divin. Institt. iv. 10. 336. 
 Cf. 14. 3 52. Idem, De Mortibus Persecutorum, 2. 843 : 
 Extremis temporibus Tiberii Caesaris, ut scriptum legi- 
 mus, Dominus noster Jesus Christus a Judaeis cruciatus 
 est post diem decimum Kalendarum Aprilis, duobus 
 Geminis consulibus. 
 
 Mortuus est ergo Christus duobus Geminis consulibus, 
 octavo Kalendas Aprilis — Augustin, De Civitate Dei, 
 xviii. 54. Operum vii. 538. C. Cf. also Operum vi. 25. 
 E — Quidam putant Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum 
 quintodecimo anni regni Tiberii Caesaris, id est, duobus 
 Geminis Consulibus, crucifixum, quo anno, secundum 
 indubitabilem Lucae Evangelistae auctoritatem, bapti- 
 zatum eum esse manifestum est, et Evangelium regni 
 caelorum praedicare coepisse : Prosperi Chronicum, Ope- 
 rum 702. C. D. 
 
 These testimonies all imply that our Lord suffered in 
 the consular year, which bore date from the first of Janu- 
 ary, 782 h ; but in the year of the city, which would bear 
 date from April 19, 20, or 21, 1 the Roman Palilia, 781. k 
 The last year of our Lord’s ministry was the year of 
 the city 782 : and the true date of his Passion was the 
 beginning of the consular year 783, coss. Quartino et 
 Longino ; Tib. xvi°. medio. Nine months of this last 
 year, however, would nominally belong to the Gemini ; 
 and this may have been the reason of the current tra- 
 dition that he suffered consulibus Geminis. It is cer- 
 tain at least, that if the ministry of John was supposed 
 
 h Cf. Tacitus, Ann. xiii. 10. i Ovid, Fastor. iv. 801 — 863. k Veil. Pat. 
 
 i. 8. Suet. Caius, 16. Censorinus, De Die Natali, 21. Pliny, H. N. xviii. 66. §. 1. 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians. 4 57 
 
 to have begun, and the ministry of our Lord to have 
 ended in the same year, Tiberii xv°; the fifteenth of 
 Tiberius must have been dated from the spring, and 
 not from the autumn, of U. C. 781 : or the ministry both 
 of John and of our Saviour could not be considered to 
 have lasted one entire year. 
 
 With regard, however, to Tertullian ; in another 
 passage of the same work, he writes thus: Hujus (sc. 
 Tiberii) quinto decimo anno imperii passus est Chri- 
 stus, annos habens quasi triginta cum patereturl; which 
 words Jerome, professing to quote ad litter am, exhibits 
 as follows 111 : Hujus imperii decimo quinto anno patitur 
 Christus, annos habens quasi triginta tres cum patere- 
 tur. In his copy therefore of this work of Tertullian’s, 
 Jerome must have read triginta tres, not triginta. 
 Now, adversus Marcionem n , Tertullian himself ob- 
 serves, At nunc quale est, ut Dominus a xn. Tiberii 
 Caesaris revelatus sit, substantia vero ad xv. jam Se- 
 ven imperatoris nulla omnino comperta sit. The reign 
 of Severus began either March or June, U. C. 946 ; so 
 that his fifteenth began U. C. 960, A. D, 207: which 
 alone must prove that this work against Marcion was 
 one of the last of Tertullian’s productions ; and there- 
 fore may be supposed to contain his mature opinions. 
 By Christ’s being revealed a duodecimo Tibei'ii less 
 cannot be meant than the commencement of his own 
 ministry, or at least of John’s, from the twelfth of 
 Tiberius forward ; and therefore in the thirteenth. 
 There was certainly a time when Tertullian believed 
 this revelation to have begun in the fifteenth ; but 
 when he wrote against Marcion, he had seen reason to 
 change this opinion : and if he corrected his former 
 works agreeably to this change, Jerome might read. 
 
 1 ii. 299. Adversus Judaeos 8. 
 n Lib. i. cap. 15. Operum i. 26. 
 
 m Operum iii. 1 1 1 6 ad med. in Dan. ix. 
 
458 
 
 Dissertation Thirteenth. 
 
 Annos habens quasi triginta tres, in some copy, where 
 we now read, Annos habens quasi triginta. The same 
 change would imply that Tertullian saw reason to 
 place the Passion in the sixteenth, not in the fifteenth : 
 for if Christ was of Quasi triginta annos, when he was 
 revealed, and of Quasi triginta tres, when he suffered 
 — if he was revealed a duodecimo , and therefore in the 
 thirteenth of Tiberius, he suffered a decimo quinto ; 
 and therefore in the sixteenth*. 
 
 IX. The opinions of Origen, being judged of by the 
 testimony of Pamphilus 0 , and from his own Commenta- 
 ries on the Gospels, would imply that he thought the 
 length of our Lord’s ministry was one year, and a few 
 months over. But, Contra Celsum, a work which he 
 composed when he was more than sixty years old, not 
 nine years before his death p — and which, consequently, 
 
 * It appears from the exordi- 
 um of the first book against Mar- 
 cion, and from that of other 
 books of the same treatise, that 
 the present treatise in Latin was 
 a second edition of a work which 
 had been previously published ; 
 and as we may conjecture, in 
 Greek. 
 
 Hieronymus, iii. 1455 : Praef. 
 in Abdiam : In libris quoque 
 contra Marcionem Septimius 
 Tertullianus hoc idem passus 
 est : et Origenes in Cantico Can- 
 ticorum, &c. : that is, they had 
 seen occasion to renounce some of 
 their former opinions : of which 
 this, in the case of Tertullian, 
 might be one, that whereas he 
 once supposed our Lord’s minis- 
 try to be of one year’s duration, 
 beginning in the fifteenth of Ti- 
 berius, he afterwards thought it 
 a ministry of three years’ dura- 
 
 tion, beginning in the thir- 
 teenth. 
 
 As the Libri ad versus Marcio- 
 nem were certainly not compos- 
 ed before A. D. 207 or 208 : so 
 according to Pamelius, the trea- 
 tise Ad versus Judaeos was writ- 
 ten A. D. 1 Q9 : the former, there- 
 fore, was one of the latest, the 
 latter was among the earliest of 
 the works of Tertullian, the date 
 of which admits of being proba- 
 bly determined. There is consi- 
 derable uncertainty, it is true, 
 with respect to the exact time 
 of many of his treatises ; and 
 the Liber adversus Judaeos may 
 be among the number. It bears 
 internal evidences, however, of 
 being one of the first of his writ- 
 ings, and not the most careful or 
 elaborate ; the contrary to which 
 is the case with the Libri adver- 
 sus Marcionem. 
 
 o Reliquiae Sacrae, iv. 314. p Hieronymus, Catalogus SS. Eccles. liv. Operum 
 iv. Pars ii a . 117. Photius, Codex 118. p. 92. 1 . 19 — 22 ad dextram: Eusebius, 
 E. H. vi. 36. vii. 1. 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians. 
 
 459 
 
 contains his mature sentiments — he expresses himself 
 differently ; 6 Se ’I ovSas irapa TW ’I rjo-ou. ovSe rpla Sierpi- 
 \jsev err}^. This cannot affirm less than that Judas was 
 with Jesus more than two, though perhaps not quite 
 three years. 
 
 X. The apocryphal correspondence between Christ 
 and Abgarus, the king of Edessa ; which king, or one 
 of the same name descended from him, Tacitus proves 
 to have been a contemporary character r , U. C. 802 ; is 
 placed in the three hundred and fortieth year of the 
 JEra Seleucidarum s , that is, U. C. 782. A.D. 29 — after 
 the ascension. The author of this forgery, therefore, 
 was one of those who placed the Passion, U. C. 782 in - 
 eunte , Tib. xv. medio. The name of Abgarus or Ac- 
 barus, or as Dio expresses it Augarus 1 , was a common 
 one for the kings of Edessa*. If an Abgarus was sup- 
 posed to be alive, and reigning in Edessa, U. C. 782. 
 it is nothing improbable that he might still be alive 
 and reigning U. C. 802 : so that the correspondence, 
 though spurious and apocryphal in itself, would yet be 
 attributed to a real and contemporary character in Ab- 
 garus on the one hand, as well as in our Saviour on 
 the other f. 
 
 * Vide Dio, xl. 20. Herodian, 
 iii, 27. Capitolinus, Antoninus 
 Pius, 9: Spartian, Severus, 17. 
 The name itself is written, indif- 
 ferently, both "A fiyapos in Greek, 
 and A vyapos. Cf. Suidas in ’'A/3-ya- 
 pos and A vyapos. See a particular 
 account of this Abgarus, and the 
 correspondence in question, Pro- 
 copius, De Bello Persico, ii. 12. 
 Cf. also Evagrius, E.H. iv.xxvii. 
 400 B. C. Joannes Damascenus, 
 De Orthodoxa Fide, Lib. iv. 93. 
 ad Jinem. 
 
 t Eusebius tells us (E. H. i. 
 xiii. 32. B. 35. B.) that the ori- 
 ginals of these letters, in the Sy- 
 rian character, were preserved in 
 the archives of Edessa ; where 
 any one might see them. But 
 he does not say that he had seen 
 them himself, or that he knew 
 any one who had : and it is suf- 
 ficiently apparent that the Greek 
 translation itself is the original ; 
 the composition of some one 
 who had read St. John’s Gospel 
 — and borrowed from it such 
 
 1 Operum i. 397. E. F. Contra Celsum, ii. 12. r Ann. xii. 12. s Eus. 
 E. H. i. 13. 35. B. 1 lxviii. 21. Cf. Suidas, I/ E5e<r<ra, ’EAA .ofiia, 'hctrevpa, &c. 
 
460 
 
 Dissertation Thirteenth. 
 
 XI. The treatise, De Computo Paschali, appended to 
 Bishop Fell’s edition of the works of Cyprian, (which 
 the editor considers either to be actually Cyprian’s, 
 or at least contemporary with him,) has these words : 
 Cujus nativitatis tempus cognoscere desiderantes, ipsos 
 annos mdxlviii. ab Exodo .... dinumeremus, et ad 
 diem nativitatis ejus perveniemus. qui dies, sexta Se- 
 decennitate, in tertio decimo versu invenitur, v. kal. 
 April, feria iv. u (Wednesday, March 28.) — Ecce iterum 
 jam vere credamus quod v. kal. April, secundum carnem 
 natus sit Christus v . This writer, then, knew of no opi- 
 nion respecting the birth of Christ, which did not refer 
 it to the spring. The Passion he places in the sixteenth 
 of Tiberius : Sextodecimo autem die, sicutin anno sex- 
 todecimo imperii Tiberii Caesaris — Inventi sunt anni 
 triginta : quibus suppletis, Dominus Jesus a nativitate 
 sua baptizatus est a Johanne anno quintodecimo im- 
 perii Tiberii Caesaris : cujus anno sextodecimo passus 
 est, et resurrexit — Hi sunt Apostoli, quorum sermoni- 
 bus aedificati recognovimus Dominum nostrum anno 
 sextodecimo imperii Tiberii Caesaris passum, cum 
 esset ipse annorum xxxi — A quo tempore, id est a pas- 
 sione, usque ad annum quintum Gordiani, Arriano et 
 Papo consulibus, suppleti sunt anni ccxv. 
 
 This reckoning places the consulship of Arrianus 
 and Papus U. C. 998. which the Fasti shew U. C. 
 996. 
 
 XII. Julius Africanus, in his exposition of the Se- 
 venty weeks, places the Passion in the sixteenth of Ti- 
 berius ; and, consequently, supposes the ministry of 
 Christ to have lasted but one year w . The same chro- 
 
 sentiments as these : *A/3y ape, pa- ecopaKoras pe prj -mar ever eiv poi , iva 
 Kapios €i, 7 ncTTevcras iv epoi, pr] eo>- oi pr) ecopaKores, avro\ nia-Tevaooai 
 pciKoas pe (John xx. 29 ): and a- Kal £r)cravrai: John ix. 39 . 
 gain, yeypanrai yap irepl epov, rovs 
 
 u Pag. 69. v Pag. 70. " Rel. Sacr. ii. 1 . 183 — 192. 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians. 
 
 461 
 
 nologer placed the nativity A. M.5500, and the Passion 
 and resurrection A. M. 5531 : whence we may infer 
 that he believed our Saviour to have been born in the 
 spring 54 *. 
 
 XIII. Ab Alexandro usque ad Christum Olympiades 
 lxxx. quod sunt anni cccxx — Hippolytus, Opera, 
 Chronicon, sectio xiii. 56. 
 
 Alexander died 01. 114. 1. B. C. 324A The birth of 
 Christ then is placed, B. C. 4. U. C. 750 ineunte. For, 
 as the years or generation of Christ are reckoned from 
 the passover, Hippolytus must have concluded that he 
 
 * This date of the birth of 
 Christ supposes that he was born 
 A. M. 5500 exeunte : for the ob- 
 ject of so placing the birth was 
 that it might exactly divide the 
 sixth millennium, or fall criti- 
 cally between A. M. 5500 exeunte, 
 and A. M. 5501 ineunte. Hence, 
 at whatever time these ancient 
 Christian chronologers conceived 
 the world to have been created, 
 at the same time they were bound, 
 upon their principles, to fix the 
 nativity. Now many of them 
 certainly believed the world to 
 have been created in the spring. 
 Cyrillus Hierosolym. 192. line 1: 
 Catechesis xiv. 5: 6 be Kcupos eanv 
 ovros 6 prjv 6 Trap 'Efipaiois irporros, 
 ev a> rj eoprrj rov 7 rao^a, rov irpore- 
 pov TVTTLKOV, vvv be dXrjdivov’ ovtos 
 6 KaLpos rrjs tov K.oo’p.ov brjpiovpyias. 
 Such was the opinion also of 
 Philo Judaeus : rrjv eapivrjv larjpe- 
 piav dneLKovurpa re leal piprjpa crvp- 
 fteftrjicev elvai rrjs dpxqs eKeivrjs icaO* 
 fjv obe 6 Koapos ebrjpiovpye'iro — eVrei 
 ovv earriv rj iapcvr/ eoprrj rrjs rov ko- 
 apov yeveaeas vnopvrjpa , k , r. X.: 
 Operum ii. 293 . 1. 1 1 and 45 : De 
 Septenario et Festis. The Mon- 
 tanistse placed the creation of 
 
 the sun and moon on the 2 2d of 
 March, the assumed date of the 
 Vernal Equinox, in Sozomen’s 
 time, the end of the fourth cen- 
 tury: see Sozomen, vii.xviii. 733. 
 B — D. Cf. Chrysostom, viii. 
 Spuria , 268. A. C. De Pascha 
 vi. 3: 275. C. 279. C. De Pa- 
 scha vii. Also the anonymous 
 Christian writer, quoted by Sui- 
 das, in avrrj : who places the cre- 
 ation of the w r orld on the day of 
 our Lord’s resurrection. 
 
 For Africanus’ dates, Cf. Eu- 
 sebius, Demonstratio Evang. lib. 
 viii. 389. B — 391. A: Hierony- 
 mus, Operum iii. mo .ad princ. 
 — 1 1 1 1 .ad med. (who, however, 
 does not quote him aright, when 
 he reckons only to the 1 5th of 
 Tiberius) : Svncellus, i. 609. 16 
 — 614. 4: 615. 14: 616. 20: 
 Photius, Codex 34. p. 7. 
 
 Rel. Sacrae, ii. 181. 17, Afri- 
 canus placed the capture of 
 Alexandria and the death of 
 Cleopatra, A. M. 5472. This year 
 answered to U.C. 7 24; and there- 
 fore A. M. 5500 on his principles, 
 corresponded to U. C. 752 : and 
 A. M. 5531, to U. C. 783. 
 
 x Rel. Sacr. ii. 362. Cf. Ibid. x. 132. 1 . 192. and Syncellus, i. 31. 1 . 15. 615. 
 1 . 14. 616. 1 . 20. y Diodorus Sic. xvii. 113. 117. Josephus, Contra Apion. i. 
 22. 1 187. 
 
462 
 
 Dissertation Thirteenth . 
 
 was born in the spring. This follows also from his 
 placing the nativity exactly at the end of A. M. 5500 7 \ 
 for the reason assigned under the last article. It would 
 be proved, however, most clearly by the fragment refer- 
 red to as his, in the Rel. Sacrse, if that were genuine; 
 where the beginning of our Lord’s ministry is placed 
 A. M. 5530, and his Passion, A. M. 5533, with exactly 
 three years, from passover to passover, between*. 
 
 XIV. Tricesimo enim juxta Evangelistam Lucain 
 anno setatis suae coepit in carne Dominus Evangelium 
 praedicare ; et juxta Johannem Evangelistam, per tria 
 paschata duos postea implevit annos : et exinde sex Ti- 
 berii supputantur anni — Apollinarius Laodicenus, apud 
 Hieronymum in Dan. ix. Operum iii. 1114—15. This 
 writer then placed the Passion U. C. 784 ineunte ; or 
 Tib. xvii 0 . medio . 
 
 Secundum vero Joannis Evangelium, festivitati 
 Paschae Judaeorum ter Dominum interfuisse cognosci- 
 mus : ut appareat tertium fuisse illud Pascha, quod ve- 
 
 rus agnus suo sanguine consecravit Prosper Aqui- 
 
 tanus, Chronicum, 702. D. 
 
 Et est sensus : antequam annus Domini acceptabilis 
 prsedicationis ejus adveniat, imo duo anni, de quibus 
 in Cantico Habacuc juxta Hebraicam legimus : In me- 
 dio duorum temporum cognosceris, seminate vobis in 
 
 * Nunc dogma nobis Christia- 
 num nascitur, | Post evolutos 
 mille demum consules | Ab urbe 
 Roma : ne retexam Nestoras. 
 Prudentius, i. 235. n epiore^d- 
 va>v , x. 406. Again, Si res no- 
 vellas respuis, nil tarn recens : 
 
 | Vix mille fastis implet hanc 
 aetatulam | Cursus dierum con- 
 ditore ab Augure. Ibid. 613. 
 
 This is a poetical version of 
 the Acta Romani Martyris : 
 
 and, if he suffered in the perse- 
 cution under Decius, A. D. 249 
 — 25 1, his date for the birth of 
 Christ wiould be U.C. 75 o or 75 1; 
 on which principle Romanus’ 
 own time, 250 years afterwards, 
 would be just U. C. 1000. It 
 must be admitted, however, that 
 Prudentius himself supposes his 
 martyrdom to have happened in 
 the persecution under Galerius. 
 
 z Chronicon, 55. 56. Sectio xii. and xiii. Cf. the Rel. Sacrae, i. 136. Annott. 
 in Melitonis Fragm. p. 1 15. 1 . 18. 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians. 463 
 
 lacrymis, ut metatis in gaudio. scriptum est in Evan- 
 gelic) secundum Johannem, per tria pascha Dominum 
 venisse in Jerusalem, quae duos annos efficiunt : Hie- 
 ronymus, Operum iii. 245 ad med. in Is. xxix. 
 
 In his work De SS. Ecclesiasticis a , capp. v. and ii. 
 Jerome places the death of St. Paul in the fourteenth 
 of Nero, and the thirty-seventh after the Passion : and 
 the death of James, the first bishop of Jerusalem, in 
 the seventh of Nero, and the thirtieth after the Pas- 
 sion : and in his commentary on Dan. ix. (iii. 1114. ad 
 principium ,) he approves of the opinion, which com- 
 puted thirty-five years between the Passion and the be- 
 ginning of the Jewish war. 
 
 All these notes of time, consequently, must concur to 
 place the Passion, U. C. 784 : Tiberii xvii. 
 
 Veteres revolvamus Historias ; et inveniemus usque 
 ad vicesimum octavum annum Caesaris Augusti, (cujus 
 quadragesimo primo anno Christus natus est in Judaea,) 
 in toto orbe terrarurn fuisse discordiam : Hieronymus, 
 iii. 23. ad med. in Isaiae ii. This date was probably 
 quoted memoriter from Irenaeus or Tertullian, though 
 otherwise it is not inconsistent with the above date of 
 the Passion. 
 
 XV. The testimony of Epiphanius has been antici- 
 pated. But though in his work Adversus Haereses 
 he places the nativity in the forty-second of Augustus, 
 yet in his Ancoratus, (at least if the text be genuine,) 
 reckoning the reign of Augustus at fifty-six years and 
 six months, he places it in his fortieth b ; which would 
 thus be U. C. 750 or 751. The length of the ministry 
 of Christ he makes two years and some months. 
 
 XVI. Sub hoc Herode, anno imperii ejus tertio et 
 xxx. Christus natus est, Sabino et Rufino Consuli- 
 bus, viii. kal. Januarias — (December 25.) — Sulpicii 
 
 a Opemm iv. Pars ii a . 102. 103. 
 
 b Operum ii. 63 A. cap. lx. 
 
464 
 
 Dissertation Thirteenth. 
 
 Severi Sacrae Hist. ii. 39- Sabinus and Rufinus, or 
 Rufus, were consuls U. C. 750: and Herod’s reign, 
 according to Sulpicius c , bears date from the capture of 
 Jerusalem, by Herod and Sosius, U. C. 717. The 
 Passion he places Fusio Gemino et Rubellio Gemino 
 Consulibus d ; that is, U. C. 782 : consequently, in the 
 thirty-second year of our Saviour’s age *. 
 
 XVII. Ex istius namque Consulatu, ( nempe Lucii 
 Licinii Luculli,) annos jam (consules) requirentes; inve- 
 nimus usque ad passionem Domini nostri Jesu Chri- 
 sti, usque ad annum xvi. imperii Tiberii Caesaris f, 
 clxxix. annos esse completos : ac per hoc a fabrica 
 mundi usque ad passionem Christi Salvatoris nostri, 
 sunt V. M. dxxx — Quintus Junius Hilario, De Mundi 
 Duratione e . Lucius Licinius Lucullus was consul 
 U. C. 603 : from which year exclusively of both ex- 
 tremes one hundred and seventy-nine years bring us 
 to U. C. 783, the middle of the sixteenth of Tiberius. 
 Again — A passione Domini, in consulatum Caesaris 
 ( Ccesarii ) et Attici, die ix. kal. Aprilis, anni trans- 
 ierunt 0 CCLXix. f Caesarius and Atticus were consuls 
 A. D. 397- g or according to Hilario’s reckoning, 399, 
 which determines his age. He places the Passion, 
 then, ix. kal. April, U. C. 783, and A. M. 5530. Now, 
 he supposes the world to have been created vm. kal. 
 April h : and he must have supposed our Saviour was 
 thirty years old at his death. He must have supposed, 
 
 * The age of Sulpicius was must have supposed that he sur- 
 A. D. 399, the year before the vived the birth of Christ four 
 consulate of Stilicho. years. See cap. 39. 
 
 He says that Herod reigned t Hilario placed the Passion 
 thirty-seven years in all j yet he in the sixteenth of Tiberius, in 
 makes his thirty-third year co- his treatise De die Paschae, also, 
 incide with U. C. 7 50: and his See Gallandi Bibliotheca Pa- 
 first, with U. C. 717. If so, he trum, viii. 748. 14. 
 
 c ii. 38. d Ibid. 16. 40. e Bibliotheca Patrum, tom. vii. 282. A. 
 
 f Ibid. B. S Chronicon Paschale, ii. xii. 172. h Bibliotheca Patrum, vii. 278. B. 
 
Testimonies of the ancient Christians. 465 
 
 then, that he was born A. M. 5500, on the day before 
 the world was created, A. M. 1. 
 
 After this, it seems needless to adduce any more au- 
 thorities : yet from a just deference to the illustrious 
 name of St.John Chrysostom, and of his abbreviator 
 Theophylact, I shall produce the following. 
 
 'O yap ei9 avSpav eXOwv, ical ovrm airo rcov Oav/iarcov 
 
 ov Toh ev ’ lovSala yvcopiarOeh /ulovov ical ravra ev 
 
 rpiar\v erecri /jlovov Tavra ireiroirjKcos, /uaWov <$e ovSe rwv 
 rpiwv tovtcov Ser/Oeh eh to Sei eavrov. k\t. X. Homilia, 
 xxi. in Johannem, cap. 2. Operum viii. 121. E. 
 
 ’I rjcrovs Se ei ri T ifieplov K alcrapog (3acri\evovT09 , rpia- 
 Kovraerrjg yevo/aevos, air e/caAv\fse rrjv eavrov Oeorrjra eirl 
 rov 9 /uLaOrjras, Ka\ eirl rovroh rpla eireKrjpv^e' iravrayov 
 yap ri/uLia rj rpLa.9' Sio rpla Krjpv^as errj , tm oKTOOKaiSeKaro) 
 erei T i/3eplov airavra eh to iraOos *, Chrysostom, Ope- 
 rum ii. 803. C. D. cap. 2. 
 
 T peh eviavrovg cr^eSov KrjpvTTOvros rov K vplov. k , t . X. 
 Theophylact, Operum i. 464. B. in Luc. cap. xxi. K«/ 
 tol irepi 7 rov rpiaKovra Ka\ rpla errj Tore yeyovora. Ibid. 
 630. C. in Joh. cap. viii. 
 
 ’Et€Y0»/ /u.ev yap 6 Kupto?, /cadco9 oi y^povoi SrjAovcriv, eir\ 
 Avyovcrrov Ka/c rapog’ aireOave Se /nera X/3 ' err] erl T i/3e- 
 plov Avy ovarrov. Operum iii. 172. E. in Acta xxv. 15. 
 
 * Yet, Operum iii. 95. C. in 
 Principium Actorum iv. Chry- 
 sostom reckons it 40 years and 
 upwards between the Passion 
 and the destruction of Jerusa- 
 lem : which supposes the Passion, 
 U. C. 783, in the sixteenth of 
 Tiberius, not in the eighteenth. 
 
 It is however to be observed, 
 that the Homily above referred 
 to, is considered by Saville and 
 others not genuine, though the 
 Benedictine editors do not un- 
 dertake to pronounce it spuri- 
 ous. 
 
 II ll 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
DISSERTATION XIV. 
 
 On the census of Cyrenius , or the meaning of Luke ii. 2. 
 
 If our Lord was exactly thirty years of age at the 
 beginning of U. C. 780, the middle of the thirteenth of 
 Tiberius Caesar ; it follows that he was born at the 
 beginning of U. C. 750. This, therefore, I assume as 
 the true date of the nativity, answering to B. C. 4, 
 to the year of the Julian period 4710, and if the 
 principles of the Bible chronology be correct, (as I 
 shall endeavour to prove elsewhere that they are,) to 
 A. M. 4000 exeunte , or 4001 ineunte. 
 
 The data from which this memorable conclusion is 
 deduced, are such as I apprehend cannot easily be 
 shaken. It must be certain at least, that if our Sa- 
 viour was born before the death of Herod, he was born 
 before the end of U. C. 750 : and if those circumstances 
 are all matters of fact which either St. Luke or St. Mat- 
 thew in particular, shews to have transpired between 
 these two events ; he must have been born before the 
 middle of that year at the latest: for we could not on 
 any supposition allow less than an interval of six 
 months, for the purification and the presentation, for 
 the arrival of the Magi, and for the residence in 
 Egypt, posterior to the nativity of Christ, and prior 
 to the death of Herod. But the age of our Lord at 
 his baptism, and the corresponding year of the reign- 
 ing emperor, being once determined, the year of his 
 birth follows as matter of course. 
 
 It follows also from the same premises, that if our 
 Saviour’s ministry began U. C. 780 ineunte , A. D. 27, 
 and lasted three years afterwards ; the year of the 
 Passion was U. C. 783 ineunte ?, A. D. 30 ; the middle 
 of the sixteenth of Tiberius. No attention is due to 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 467 
 
 the tradition which, upon the authority of the eclipse 
 of Phlegon, fixes the date of the Passion to the middle 
 of the nineteenth, U. C. 786, or A. D. 33 : and that, 
 without calling in question the fact of the eclipse it- 
 self. Eusebius, who has quoted the words of Phle- 
 gon a , says nothing about its happening when the moon 
 was at the full ; which only would prove it to be a 
 preternatural event. The same is true of the allu- 
 sion to it by Origen b . Africanus alone 0 asserts the 
 contrary ; in which assertion he is confuted by Phle- 
 gon himself ; not to mention that the latter is said 
 to have referred the eclipse to Ol. 202 . 4, the nine- 
 teenth of Tiberius ; whereas Africanus on his own 
 principles d ought to have referred it to the sixteenth, 
 Ol. 202 . 2 , in which he placed the Passion 
 
 * Operum iii. 923. C. Comm, 
 in Matt. 134. Origen plainly 
 admits that Phlegon made no 
 mention of the full of the moon 
 in his eclipse. But in a frag- 
 ment Comm, super Matt. (Bib- 
 liothecae Gallandianae Appendix 
 Posthuma,) it is said that he as- 
 serts the contrary. Vide the 
 Rel. Sacrae, ii. 336, 337. 
 
 Syncellus also, i. 610. 14, 
 quoting from Africanus, has the 
 words, <&\ey(ov iaropel eVt Tt/ 3 e- 
 piov Kaiarapos iv Tvav(T€kr)VG> K,r. X. 
 
 There can be little doubt, 
 however, that this additional 
 circumstance is not rightly at- 
 tributed to Phlegon. The Arme- 
 nian version of Eusebius’ Chro- 
 nicon, (Pars ii a 265,) though pro- 
 fessing to quote the very words 
 of Phlegon, is silent about it ; 
 and merely says, Nox hora sexta 
 facta est. The same is true of 
 the testimony of Eusebius, Chron . 
 
 Epitome, apud SS. Deperdit. 
 Novam Coll. vol. i. p. 2. E. 3. B. 
 
 This version places the eclipse 
 in question Ol. 203. 4, which 
 must be a mistake for Ol. 202. 
 4. Vide the Greek of Phlegon, 
 or of Eusebius, in loco, apud 
 Syncellum, i. 614. 14: and the 
 Chronicon Paschale, i. 412. 
 1. 9 — 15. Ol. 202. 4. answers 
 to Tib. 19. medio, A. D. 33 ; in 
 which year (according to the 
 Chron. -Armeno-Lat. ut supra) 
 Eusebius apparently places the 
 Passion ; though the Greek of 
 the passage (apud Syncellum) 
 has the eighteenth ; which too, I 
 should consider to be Eusebius’ 
 real date for it, inasmuch as he 
 places it three years after the 
 fifteenth of Tiberius — upon the 
 supposed testimony of St. John’s 
 Gospel. 
 
 Africanus’ Olympiads, it must 
 be remembered, are cycles of 
 
 a In Chronieo. b Operum i. 414. B. C. Contra Celsum, ii. 33 : Cf. Operum 
 i, 432. A. Ibid. ii. 59. c Rel. Sacrae, ii. l. 184. 1 . 6 . d Ibid. 188. 1 . 3 — 5. 
 
 H h 2 
 
468 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 As little regard is due to another tradition ; viz. 
 that the year of the nativity coincided with a year in 
 
 leap years. The second year of 
 Olympiad 202, regularly under- 
 stood, as dated from A. D. 29, 
 would be A. D. 31, in the se- 
 venteenth of Tiberius ; but as 
 dated from A.D. 28, the last pre- 
 ceding leap year, would be A.D. 
 30, Tiberii 16 medio; the year 
 in which there is no doubt that 
 Africanus placed the Passion. 
 
 The well known tradition re- 
 specting Dionysius the Areopa- 
 gite, and his supposed observa- 
 tion of this eclipse, at Heliopo- 
 lis in Egypt, and his construc- 
 tion of the cause of so unusual 
 an event — imply that in the 
 opinion of the authors of this 
 tradition it could not have hap- 
 pened at any time but the full 
 of the moon ; otherwise it would 
 have been no extraordinary e- 
 vent, nor have given occasion to 
 any such remark as that which 
 Dionysius is reported to have 
 founded upon it. See Suidas, 
 ’AveKaOev and Aiovvaios, and Di- 
 onysii Areop. Opera, ii. 213. ad 
 medium. Cf. i. Maximi Prolo- 
 gus, xxxvii. In fact, it is dis- 
 tinctly stated, in Dionysius’ own 
 supposed letter to Polycarp, that 
 it was not the time of the con- 
 junction, that is, the new moon, 
 when this eclipse happened, but 
 just the reverse. 
 
 The whole of this Epistle 
 of the Pseudo - Dionysius to 
 Poly carp, in reference to this 
 eclipse, and to the two mira- 
 cles, of a similar preternatural 
 kind, in the time of Joshua, and 
 of Hezekiah, respectively, is a 
 singular document ; more espe- 
 cially that part of it, in which 
 the author explains the ratio- 
 
 nale of these miracles, or by what 
 change and inversion of the na- 
 tural course of things, the pre- 
 ternatural effect itself, in each 
 instance, was brought about. 
 Vide Dionysii Opera, ii. 88 — 92. 
 Epp. vii. and the Scholia of Ma- 
 ximus, upon this Epistle, 93-97, 
 which throw much light on the 
 obscurity of the original. These 
 Scholia end with citing the tes- 
 timony of Phlegon, and Africa- 
 nus, to the fact of the eclipse, as 
 follows: ptpvrjTai pev Kai QXtyoov 
 6 'EXXtjvikos xpoi/oypa^oy tv rpia- 
 KcudeKara) Xpovoypa<fiia>v, tv rfj try’ 
 ’OXvp7nd8i, rrjs tKXefyeoas ravrrjs, 
 irapa to elcodos avrr/v Xtyoov yeve- 
 crdcu, ov prjv tov rponov avtypayfse. 
 Kai * A<ppiKavos 8e 6 rjptrepos tv 
 7rep7TTO) Xpovoypacju d>v, Kai Evert- 
 (3ios 6 II ap(\)iXov tv rais avrais 
 pepvrjTai rrjs avrrjS tKXefyecos. Ma- 
 ximus also, we observe here, 
 read the 203 Olympiad in Phle- 
 gon : but his assertion respect- 
 ing Phlegon’s remark upon the 
 eclipse, if that means that he 
 described it as happening at an 
 unnatural time, for the reasons 
 stated above, must be mistaken. 
 Perhaps Phlegon observed no 
 more about it, than that it was 
 an unusually large eclipse. The 
 tables exhibit one eclipse of the 
 sun, A. D. 32, April 28, at 7^ in 
 the morning, which was small, 
 though visible in part of Eu- 
 rope : and another, A. D. 33, 
 Sept. 12, at ioi morning, which 
 was central. This would begin 
 at Jerusalem as nearly as pos- 
 sible at 12 at noon, or the sixth 
 hour of the day. It would also 
 answer to Olymp. 203. 1. This 
 was most probably Phlegon’s 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 469 
 
 which the temple of Janus was shut. The temple of 
 Janus indeed was thrice closed by Augustus in the 
 course of his reign e ; the times of two of which closings 
 are ascertained by Dio — one in U. C. 725 f , the other 
 in U. C. 729 but the third occasion is left doubtful. 
 Orosius it is true places it in U. C. 752 or U. C. 753 h . 
 But this is clearly for the sake of establishing the co- 
 incidence between that event and the date which he 
 assumes for the nativity. We know no more concern- 
 ing it than this; that U. C. 744, sub finem , it was in- 
 tended to have taken place, but was delayed a little 
 longer by some unimportant commotions among the 
 Daci and Dalmatae *. The death of Drusus occurred 
 the next year k ; after which there ceased to be war 
 prosecuted even in Germany. The peculiar tranquil- 
 lity of the period from U. C. 748 to U. C. 752 or 753, 
 at least, may be collected from the hiatus during these 
 years which is perceptible in the LVth book of Dio : 
 so much so, that the mission of Caius Caesar into the 
 East, which really took place U. C. 753, appears to be 
 directly consecutive on U. C. 748 K We may conclude 
 
 eclipse — which, bearing date 
 Sept. 1 2, A. D. 33, U.C. 786, came 
 almost within the last quarter 
 of the nineteenth of Tiberius. It 
 does not appear that Phlegon 
 specified the day as well as the 
 year of the eclipse in question ; 
 and if he had merely said. An 
 eclipse of the sun happened in 
 such a year of Tiberius, (the 
 eighteenth or the nineteenth,) 
 at the sixth hour of the day, 
 this would be quite sufficient to 
 induce Christians of later times 
 to suppose he meant the eclipse 
 at the crucifixion. Maximus, 
 as it appears from page 1 80, (the 
 
 e Suet. Augustus, 22. 
 liv. 36. k lv. 1. 
 
 Scholia on the tenth Epistle of 
 the Pseudo-Dionysius, which 
 professes to be written to St. 
 John, at the time of his banish- 
 ment in the isle of Patmos,) 
 placed the passion in the eight- 
 eenth of Tiberius; supposing our 
 Lord’s ministry to have begun 
 in the fifteenth, and to have 
 lasted three years and a few 
 months over : as it would have 
 done, on that supposition, if its 
 apxri were dated from his bap- 
 tism, in the fifteenth, and its 
 close from his Passion, in the 
 eighteenth. 
 
 f li. 20. g liii. 2 6. h vi. 22. i Dio, 
 
 1 lv. 9. 11. 
 
 H h 3 
 
470 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 therefore that either Dio had nothing memorable to 
 record of this intervening period ; or that part of the 
 book in question has been lost ; which had it existed, 
 would perhaps have contained an account of the third 
 shutting of the temple of Janus, and probably have 
 assigned it to U. C. 748 or 749*. 
 
 * Plutarch, De Fortuna Roma- 
 norum, Operum vii. 2 76, 277, has 
 an account of the openings and 
 shuttings of the temple of Ja- 
 nus, from Numa downwards, to 
 the close of the Cantabrian war, 
 U. C. 729. Servius, ad iEneid. 
 i. 291, speaks of three shuttings 
 only as well known ; viz. that 
 in Numa’s time ; that after the 
 second Punic war ; and that 
 after the helium Actiacum. Ho- 
 race, Epp. ii. 1. 255, alludes pro- 
 bably to this last: Claustraque 
 custodem pacis cohibentia Ja- 
 num, | Et formidatam Parthis 
 te principe Romam. It conti- 
 nued shut, U. C. 729, so short 
 a time, that this instance of its 
 being closed might easily be 
 overlooked. 
 
 Eckhel, Doctrina Numm.Vett. 
 vi. 273 : the coins of Nero as- 
 certain the fact of one closing at 
 least, by him : which Suet. Ne- 
 ro, 13, 4 was after the visit of 
 Tiridates; consequently U. C. 
 819. Yet Orosius, vii. 3, on 
 the authority of Tacitus, asserts 
 that, after being opened for the 
 last time, sene An gusto , the 
 temple continued open to the 
 reign of Vespasian, who shut it 
 up (Orosius, vii. 9.) U.C. 824, at 
 the time of the triumph of Ti- 
 tus, after the Jewish war ; when 
 he began the building of the 
 temple of Peace. 
 
 It is the opinion of some 
 learned men indeed, that the 
 third closing of the temple of 
 Janus never actually took place 
 in the reign of Augustus 111 : and 
 though Suetonius, in the pas- 
 sage referred to, appears to im- 
 ply the contrary, yet the Ancy- 
 ran marble, which must be con- 
 sidered as an equal, if not a bet- 
 ter authority, seems to confirm 
 the opinion. For it does not 
 assert that the temple was actu- 
 ally thrice shut by Augustus, 
 but only that the senate had 
 commanded it to be thrice shut 
 by him 11 . It is an insuperable 
 objection to the supposition of 
 its being shut in the year U. C. 
 752, that this was the year when 
 the rupture between the Roman 
 and the Parthian governments, 
 respecting the disposal of Ar- 
 menia, took place. Such a rup- 
 ture was necessarily of too se- 
 rious a character to allow of the 
 temple of Janus’ being closed, 
 until peace had been restored ; 
 nor was this the case before 
 Phraates the Parthian king, and 
 Caius Caesar, had met upon the 
 Euphrates, U. C. 755 °. Though 
 however the words of the an- 
 gels P, on which this supposed 
 coincidence is ultimately found- 
 ed, were literally, and not spi- 
 ritually, to be understood ; still 
 if the nativity took place, as we 
 
 m Eckhel, Doct. Numm. Vett. vi. 89, 90. Suidas, voce^Iaros, has a fragment 
 which speaks of the opening of the temple before the departure of some one of the 
 Roman emperors into the East ; but which, is not specified. n Vide Taciti 
 
 Opera, vol. iv. 841. o Velleius Pat. ii. 101. p Luke ii. 14. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius, Luke ii. 2. 
 
 471 
 
 It follows also that U. C. 749 was probably the year 
 of the census which brought the Holy family, before 
 the birth of our Lord, from Nazareth to Bethlehem. 
 If we may reason from the analogy of other cases, the 
 edict, which enjoined this census, would arrive in the 
 provinces during the summer ; and its execution, if 
 begun immediately, would necessarily be going on in 
 the winter. The census of Judaea in U. C. 760, so far 
 as it resembled this, would be a case in point ; and 
 both the above conclusions appear to hold good of 
 that. But the census at the nativity might differ in 
 many respects from the census in the time of Quiri- 
 nius. The latter was certainly conducted by a Roman 
 president of Syria ; the former, in all probability, by 
 the native authorities of Judaea: the object of the lat- 
 ter might be such as to require it to be begun imme- 
 diately ; the nature of the former might be so far dif- 
 ferent, as to render dispatch unnecessary. 
 
 The place, which St. Luke assigns to the mention 
 of the census, is presumptively a proof that it had not 
 yet been commenced before either the close of Mary’s 
 visit to Elizabeth, or the birth of John. The visit 
 was made in the sixth month, dated from the concep- 
 tion of John ; and, as it lasted not quite three months, 
 it was concluded some time in the ninth. The Virgin 
 returned to her own horned; that is, as verse twenty- 
 sixth proves, to Nazareth ; and soon after this return, 
 the course of proceedings, which was there suspended 
 by St. Luke, begins to be taken up by the narrative of 
 St. Matthew #r . 
 
 have assumed it did, U. C. 750 said that at that time, there was 
 ineunte, there is no period, in peace upon earth. 
 the whole reign of Augustus, of * Mary had been almost three 
 which it might more truly be months secluded in the family 
 
 Q Luke i. 56. r i. 18. 
 
 H h 4 
 
472 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 It does not distinctly appear at what period, in the 
 course of the census, the nativity took place. We can 
 infer nothing with certainty, except that, when the 
 Holy family repaired to Bethlehem, the census was 
 either begun, or in preparation ; and that Mary was 
 more or less advanced in her pregnancy. The fulness 
 of the inn, indeed, implies that many strangers were at 
 Bethlehem as well as they ; and consequently that the 
 census could not yet be over : and perhaps that it was 
 only just begun. If this was the case, it was just 
 
 of Elizabeth ; and it seems not 
 improbable 8 that the conception 
 of our Lord had taken place 
 before she arrived there. Her 
 pregnancy would first become 
 visible upon her return to Na- 
 zareth ; and until Joseph was 
 admonished by the angel of its 
 true cause, it might naturally 
 give occasion to those reflections 
 which the discovery is said to 
 have produced in his mind. 
 
 It is clear, then, that St. Mat- 
 thew presupposes here the par- 
 ticulars related by St. Luke; 
 and it is not less clear that when 
 St. Luke shortly after resumes 
 the thread of his account, he 
 presupposes the particulars re- 
 lated by St. Matthew t . The 
 very term napakafieiv, employed 
 by the latter, shews that the 
 marriage union between Joseph 
 and Mary was still incomplete ; 
 or that the Virgin was living by 
 herself as before, when Joseph 
 was commanded to take her 
 home ; and the description ap- 
 plied to her by the former — rfj 
 fiepvrjorTevfjLevr) avTut yvvaiKL — Who 
 
 had been espoused unto him, as 
 his wife ; that is, was still con- 
 sidered only espoused, though 
 she was now publicly recognised 
 as his wife — is just as strong a 
 proof that, though he had al- 
 ready taken her home, and so 
 far declared her his wife, he was 
 still waiting for the birth of 
 Christ, before their union could 
 be duly completed. It is no 
 difficulty that they are said to 
 have been espoused before the 
 annunciation. There was no 
 maximum, though there might 
 be a minimum, to the length of 
 espousals among the Jews. It 
 could not be less than one 
 month u , but it might be any 
 time greater than that v : and the 
 same rule held good at Rome w . 
 Concedunt virgini duodecim 
 menses, ab eo tempore quo earn 
 requisiverit maritus, ad paran- 
 dum seipsam x : which twelve 
 months the commentaries of 
 Bartenoras and of Maimonides 
 both shew to have been distinct 
 even from the time of espou- 
 sals. 
 
 s Luke i. 43. t Luke ii. 1 — 5. Cf. the Codex Apocryphus, i. 36. Evan- 
 gelium De Nativitate Mari*, cap. x. u Cf. Jos. Ant. Jud. xvi. vii. 3. v Vide 
 xvii. 1. 2. w Dio, liv. 16. x Mishna, iii. 72. 2. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 473 
 
 beginning in the spring ; and, consequently, at a time 
 of the year, when it might a priori be expected that 
 a measure (which required every one to leave his own 
 home, and to repair to quarters with which he might 
 have little or no connection) would be found to begin. 
 Nor does it follow, even on this principle, that the 
 first intention of the measure had been conceived only 
 now ; or that preparations for its execution might not 
 have been going on for some time before. The first 
 intention of the measure might have been conceived 
 in the autumn of one year ; its execution might be 
 purposely reserved for the spring of the next. 
 
 Let us suppose that the decree of Augustus, alluded 
 to by St. Luke?, arrived and was made known in the 
 eastern provinces of the empire, about the midsummer 
 of U. C. 749. It would arrive and be made known in 
 Judaea not long before the annual recurrence of the 
 feast of Tabernacles ; which may be proved to have 
 fallen that year on or about September the l6th z : 
 almost as early as it could. The recurrence of this 
 feast would collect the whole nation of the Jews in 
 Jerusalem ; and the collection of the nation on the 
 spot would afford the best opportunity for making 
 known to them all at once the intention of a measure, 
 in which all were concerned alike. Accordingly, there 
 is evidence in Josephus that something was done about 
 the month of September, U. C. 749, which concerned 
 the nation at large, and could be done only when they 
 were assembled together ; and, consequently, at the 
 time of some feast : which something, as we may 
 reasonably presume, was either the direct effect of the 
 orders received from Augustus, or a necessary pre- 
 liminary to their execution. The proof of this position 
 
 y ii. 1. z Supra p. 331. Dissertation vii. 
 
474 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 may be easily made out ; but we must trace the course 
 of events in the history for a time backwards. 
 
 First ; the answer of Augustus, empowering Herod 
 to dispose of his son Antipater, (whose treasonable 
 designs against his father’s life had been fully dis- 
 covered,) in any way he pleased, was received by him 
 probably about a week before his own death a ; that 
 is, it was received, as we have shewn elsewhere, about 
 the first week in March, U. C. 751. 
 
 Secondly ; Herod had written to Augustus on the 
 very day of his son’s conviction b ; which conviction 
 took place the day after his arrival at Jerusalem c , upon 
 his return from a journey to Rome. 
 
 Thirdly ; before the answer of Augustus could be 
 received in Judaea, it was necessary that messengers 
 should both go to, and return from, Rome between the 
 time of the conviction of Antipater, and the first week 
 in March ; for which effect in the winter season, and 
 when there was no very urgent reason for dispatch, we 
 cannot allow less than five months’ time. I assume, 
 then, that the return of Antipater from Rome did not 
 take place later than the month of September, in the 
 year before the death of Herod ; that is, U. C. 750. 
 
 Fourthly ; between the time of that return and the 
 discovery of the treason of Antipater, there was an 
 interval of seven months d ; which interval Josephus 
 appears to restrict to the time of the death of Herod’s 
 brother Pheroras, (out of which arose the whole train 
 of the subsequent inquiries, which terminated in the 
 discovery of the treason of Antipater e ,) on the one 
 hand — and to the time of Antipater’s return, on the 
 other ; but which, as I shall shew hereafter, is really 
 
 a Ant. Jud. xvii. vii. viii. I. Bell. i. xxxiii. 7. 8. b Ant. xvii. v. 7. Bell. i. 
 xxxii. 5. c Bell. i. xxxii. 1. Ant. xvii. v. 2. 3. d Ant. xvii. iv. 3. Bell. i. 
 xxxi. 2. e Ant. xvii. iii. 3. Bell. i. xxx. 1. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 475 
 
 meant of the whole period of the absence of Antipater*. 
 If the return then of Antipater coincided with some 
 time in the month of September, his departure coin- 
 cided with some time in the month of March — U. C. 
 750. Now he was sent to Rome at the recommenda- 
 tion of Herod’s friends there ; and this recommenda- 
 tion had been instigated by himself, in letters written 
 expressly from Judaea. On the same principle then, 
 as before, and on the supposition that his departure 
 took place soon after their answer had been received ; 
 he must have written to these friends some time in the 
 October preceding, and received their answer in the 
 February or the March ensuing. This October would 
 be the October of U. C. 749. 
 
 Fifthly ; at the time when he wrote to that effect, 
 Pheroras and his wife were in disgrace with Herod, 
 because the latter had paid a certain fine, imposed 
 
 * The two measures of time, 
 in fact, might be coincident ; for 
 the death of Pheroras ensued 
 not long after Antipater’s de- 
 parture, and probably five or six 
 months before his return. It is 
 the usage of Josephus, in almost 
 all such instances of reckoning 
 as these, to express himself by 
 current months. There is a re- 
 markable example of this pecu- 
 liarity, in the assertion f that 
 Jerusalem was taken by Herod 
 and Sosius, r< 5 rplrcp prjvl, as 
 compared with another just be- 
 fore g, which shews that it was 
 taken in forty days plus fifteen, 
 or about fifty-five days in all ; 
 that is, at the end of one month 
 complete and in parts of two 
 months more ; which might be 
 called upon the whole the third 
 current month. 
 
 It is another instance of the 
 same mode of speaking that. 
 Ant. Jud. iii. ii. 5 , the arrival 
 of the Israelites at mount Sinai, 
 which was really within fifty 
 days of the Exodus, is placed iv 
 rpiprjvco pera rrjv Alyvnrov KLvrj- 
 (riv. Parts of three successive 
 months had certainly elapsed 
 since that time ; but nothing 
 more. It is true, however, that 
 the book of Exodus itself speaks 
 the same language. 
 
 On this principle, if the death 
 of Pheroras happened at the end 
 of one month, and the return of 
 Antipater took place at the be- 
 ginning of another, and there 
 were only just five months com- 
 plete between — Josephus would 
 yet call it an interval of seven 
 months. 
 
 f Ant. xiv. xvi. 4. 
 
 S lb. 2. 
 
476 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 upon the Pharisees as a punishment for their conduct 
 on some occasion, when, 7 ravros rov ’I ovSaiKov fteftaicocrav - 
 to? Si opKicv rj jxr\v evvoijarai K alcrapi, kcu to?? /3acriXeco ? 
 7rpdyiui.a(Ti, they only had refused to take the oath in 
 question h . Whatever be the occasion here referred to 
 — if it was something which happened just before An- 
 tipater wrote to his friends at Rome, it was something 
 which happened about the end of September, or the 
 beginning of October, U. C. 749. The mention of the 
 whole Jewish nation, and of the Pharisees, (whom 
 Josephus makes six thousand in number and upwards,) 
 in contradistinction to them — of the former as taking, 
 and of the latter as refusing to take the same oath, 
 and at the same time — is a presumptive proof that 
 both the one and the other were then assembled in 
 Jerusalem ; which they would be in every year at any 
 of the feasts in general, and in the month of September, 
 U. C. 749, as we have shewn, would be so at the feast 
 of Tabernacles in particular. 
 
 Moreover, there is a great resemblance between the 
 language of Josephus in describing this oath, and the 
 manner in which the contemporary historian Dio 
 speaks of the usual oath of allegiance to the reigning 
 emperor ; as renewed on the first of January in every 
 year : rd re 7 rpa^Oevra vr avrwv, kcu to, 7rpa^0t](r6iuieva 9 
 v7ro tw v dei ^covrcov opKois ncr} /3e/3aiovcr0ai’ 1 — rd re irpa - 
 yOevra vir ’ avrov ravra ev avrfj rrj rov ’ lavovaplov vov/JLrjvia 
 opKOi9 €j3e/3ai(jocravTO^ — ev re T /7 vovjJLrjvia dpKOV<s d fiovXrj) 
 /3ej3aLOv<Ta to? 7 r panels avrov , €7 rolrjcraro*. 
 
 It is not improbable, then, that the edict of Augus- 
 tus had been recently received ; and the Jews being 
 soon after assembled at the feast of Tabernacles, that 
 it was followed by this public act, to express the readi- 
 
 h Bell. Jud. i. xxix. 2. Ant. xvii. iii. 1. 2. ii. 4. * lvii. 8. k li. 20. 
 
 1 liii. 28. 
 
On the census of Cy remits, Luke ii. 2. 477 
 
 ness of the nation to submit to his commands. The 
 oath unquestionably was administered by the authority 
 of Herod ; and if this was the first occasion of the 
 kind, as the resistance of the Pharisees is sufficient to 
 prove, all his authority might be requisite to oblige 
 them to give their consent to the measure ; or to ac- 
 cept an oath of allegiance to the Roman emperor. The 
 same period would coincide with the anniversary of 
 his own reign, which bore date from the last week in 
 September, U. C. 714: and, therefore, comes in here 
 critically to account for the mention of himself in the 
 terms and purport of the oath, along with Caesar. It 
 follows, then, that the edict relating to this great state 
 measure having been about this time made known, 
 and the consent of the nation to its peaceful exe- 
 cution having been provided for ; the census, such 
 as it was designed to be, might begin either then, or 
 at the most convenient time as soon afterwards, as pos- 
 sible. The spring of the year would be on all accounts 
 more eligible than the winter ; and early in the spring, 
 that is, in three or four months’ time afterwards, it 
 might accordingly be carried into effect. 
 
 At the time of the trial of Antipater, Quintilius 
 Varus (the same person who afterwards perished in 
 Germany) was at Jerusalem ; and he was there as the 
 President of Syria 111 . But he had been invited thither 
 by Herod in expectation of his son’s return ; and con- 
 sequently after that letter from Antipater, if not his 
 own reply to it, which we shall see by and by he had 
 not long before received. Josephus speaks of Varus 
 in such a manner as strongly implies that he had been 
 only just appointed to his government, and had not as 
 yet visited even Antioch itself ; and had he arrived 
 the same summer, and landed at Caesarea, proposing to 
 
 m Ant. Jud. xvii. v. 2. 7. Bell. i. xxxi. 5. xxxii. 5. 
 
478 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 travel from thence to Antioch, this might manifestly 
 be the case. If so, any census in U. C. 749, conducted 
 by a Roman magistrate, would be conducted by his pre- 
 decessor in office ; which predecessor was C. Sentius Sa- 
 turninus, a man of consular dignity, as the attendance 
 of his three TTpeo-fievrai or legates alone would imply 11 ; 
 whom the Consular Fasti exhibit as consul U. C. 735, 
 and whom Josephus expressly styles as such. 
 
 Accordingly, by Tertullian the census at the nativity 
 of Christ is distinctly ascribed to this president ° : Sed 
 et census constat actos sub Augusto nunc in Judaeam 
 per Sentinm Saturninum , apud quos genus ejus inqui- 
 rere potuissent. And, whatsoever some learned men 
 may have thought of this assertion, I am one of those 
 who believe it to be founded in fact ; and a singular 
 proof of Tertullian’s accuracy; at least in his latest 
 productions. 
 
 In proof of this opinion I had endeavoured to ascer- 
 tain the succession of the Governors of Syria, from the 
 time of the battle of Actium, U. C. 723, to the time of 
 the death of Augustus, U. C. 767. But on comparing 
 the results of these investigations with the statement of 
 that succession, as exhibited by Cardinal Norisius, in his 
 Cenotaphia PisanaP, I found we agreed so nearly to- 
 gether, that to represent the series in detail would be 
 merely actum agere . I shall coniine myself therefore, 
 on this subject, to such considerations only as more 
 immediately concern my present purpose ; one of which 
 is the determination of the precise time when Satur- 
 ninus may be supposed to have come into office ; and 
 consequently, when Titius his predecessor must be sup- 
 posed to have gone out of office. 
 
 That Titius was sometime president of Syria is 
 
 n Ant. Jud. xvi. xi. 3. Strabo, iii. cap. 4. p. 444. 445. Dio, liii. 14. o Adversus 
 Marcionem, iv. 19. Operum i. 261. P Dissertatio ii a . 
 
On the census of Cyrenius, Luke ii. 2. 
 
 479 
 
 proved by both Josephus and Strabo L The period of 
 time to which the allusion to him in Josephus belongs 
 will be considered hereafter. The mention of the name 
 of Titius in Strabo is coupled with two other facts, the 
 restoration of the standards, and the surrendry of the 
 hostages ; both by Phraates king of Parthia, and both 
 to the Roman emperor Augustus. These two facts 
 are mentioned in conjunction in another passage also 1 ’; 
 but the name of Titius, and the statement of the num- 
 ber and the names of the hostages, as four of the sons 
 — two of them with their wives — and four of the 
 grandsons of Phraates, occur only here. Now, it is 
 no unusual thing in Strabo to find remote events al- 
 luded to by him in conjunction. Nor is this any im- 
 peachment of his accuracy, but a natural consequence 
 of the character of his work, which is not properly 
 historical, but geographical. There is a good instance 
 of this mode of writing, where he mentions the fate of 
 Syllseus s ; to whose perfidy the failure of the Arabian 
 expedition under iElius Gallus was principally due. 
 That expedition was over U. C. 731, and Syllseus was 
 not put to death before U. C. 750: nor was he then 
 put to death on account of his treachery in U. C. 731: 
 yet his death is alluded to as if it happened directly 
 after the expedition, and in consequence of it. 
 
 We cannot infer, then, upon the authority of Strabo, 
 that Titius was in office at the date of the first of the 
 two facts in question ; especially if there was any in- 
 terval between them : but only that he was in office at 
 the time of the second. The restitution of the stand- 
 ards is attested by Dio also^ and is confirmed by a 
 variety of coins and inscriptions 11 ; all which concur to 
 place it U. C. 734: but by none of these authorities, 
 
 <1 Ant. Jnd. xvi. viii. 6. Strabo, xvi. i. §. 28. 297. r Lib. vi. 4. §. 2.314. 
 s Lib. xvi. 4. §. 23. 445 — §. 24. 455. t ]iv. 8. u Eckhel, Doctrina Numm. 
 Vett. vi. 93 — 99. 128. 
 
480 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 except Strabo’s, is it coupled with the fact of the sur- 
 rendry of the hostages. Each of the same events is 
 alluded to on the Ancyran monument, and in Sueto- 
 nius’s Life of Augustus ; but as perfectly distinct from 
 the other v . One other fact only is commonly found 
 combined with that of the standards ; viz. the fact of 
 the reduction of Armenia by Tiberius : and that was 
 strictly synchronous with it ; for both of them hap- 
 pened U. C. 734. The contemporary poets are full of 
 allusions to one or the other of these topics ; which 
 proves how flattering to the pride of Augustus they 
 were considered to be : but there is no where to be 
 met with in them any mention of the surrendry of the 
 hostages ; which, nevertheless, it might be supposed, 
 would have been equally agreeable to him. The na- 
 tural inference from this distinction is that, at the 
 time when they were writing, one of these events had 
 taken place, the other had not 
 
 * It may not be disagreeable 
 to my reader to see a few of 
 these passages collected together. 
 Thus : 
 
 I. Et signa nostro restituit 
 Jovi, | Derepta Parthorum su- 
 perbis | Postibus, et vacuum du- 
 ellis | Janum Quirinum clausit. 
 Horace, iv. xv. 6. The time of 
 this ode is ascertained by Dio, 
 liv. 8. 
 
 II. Jam mari terraque ma- 
 nus potentes | Medus, Albanas- 
 que timet secures : | Jam Scy- 
 thee responsa petunt, superbi | 
 Nuper et Indi. Carmen Saec.5 3. 
 The secular games were cele- 
 brated by Augustus, U. C. 73 7*. 
 The allusions in this passage are 
 illustrated byDio, liv. 8, 9. and by 
 
 Strabo, xv. cap.T. §. 73. 154-15 7. 
 
 III. Cantaber Agrippae, Clau- 
 di virtute Neronis | Armenius 
 cecidit : jus imperiumque Phra- 
 ates | Caesaris accepit, genibus 
 minor : aurea fruges | Italiae ple- 
 no defudit Copia cornu. Epist. i. 
 xii. 26. Agrippa finally reduced 
 the Cantabri U. C. 734 or 735. 
 Dio, liv. 6 — 1 1 . 
 
 IV. Sub duce qui templis Par- 
 thorum signa refigit | Nunc, et 
 si quid abest Italis adjudicat 
 armis. Ibid. i. xviii. 56. Vide 
 also Carm. i. xii. 53 — 56. i. xxvi. 
 5. compared with Dio, liii. 33. 
 (which shews it to belong to 
 U. C. 731,) and ii. ix. 18 — 24. 
 The Arabian expedition, U. C. 
 730, is twice alluded to by Ho- 
 
 v Tacitus, Opera, iv. 849. 852. Suet. Augustus, 21. * Marmor Ancyr. 
 
 Tac. iv. 845. Eckhel, Doctrina Nuram. Vett. vi. 102. Dio, liv. 18. 
 
481 
 
 On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 It is certain, indeed, that the standards were restored 
 to Augustus in person, who was himself at Antioch 
 
 / 
 
 / 
 
 j r 
 
 race, Carm. i. xxix. and i. xxxv. 
 29 — 32. Compare Dio, liii. 22. 
 25. 29. 
 
 Horace, according to his own 
 account Y, was forty-four years 
 old, U. C. 733, when Lollius and 
 Lepidus were consuls : and he 
 was born vi. id. Decern . in the 
 consulship of Cotta and Torqua- 
 tus, U. C. 689. These notes of 
 time agree together : and as he 
 died at fifty-seven years old, 
 about the same time with Mae- 
 cenas, viz. U. C. 7462, in the 
 consulship of Censorinus. timi 
 Gallus, perhaps we hav^nothing 
 from his pen, the d^fe of which 
 can be satisfactorily determined, 
 later than Crarminum iv. xiv. 
 which lin^g 34 — ^8 prove to 
 have be^ft composed U. C. 738 
 or 39 ’^mfteen years after the re- 
 duction 0 f Egypt, U. C. 724: 
 anc YCarminum iv. ii.and iv. which 
 34^—36 of the former, and 17, 
 *8? of the latter, compared with 
 -y)io, liv. 22, shew could not have 
 een written before U. C. 739. 
 
 V. Jam negat Euphrates equi- 
 tem post terga tueri | Partho- 
 rum, et Crassos se tenuisse do- 
 let. | India quin, Auguste, tuo 
 dat colla triumpho, | Et domus 
 intactae te tremit Arabiae. Pro- 
 pertius, ii. x. 13. Vide also iii. 
 iv. and xii. 
 
 VI. Ille paludosos memoret 
 servire Sygambros, | Cephe- 
 am hie Meroen, fuscaque re- 
 gna, canat: | Hie referat sero 
 confectum feedere Parthum : | 
 Reddat signa Remi ; mox dabit 
 ipse sua. | Sivealiquid pharetris 
 
 y Epist. i. xx. 28. Cf. Epod. xiii. 6. 
 Strabo, iv. 6. §. 9. 86. vii. 1. §. 4. 3 26. 
 613 — §. 54.620. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 Augustus parcet Eois, | Diffe- 
 rat in pueros ista tropaea suos. 
 
 | Gaude, Crasse, nigras si quid 
 sapis inter arenas ; ] Ire per Eu- 
 phraten ad tua busta licet. Idem, 
 iv. vi. 77. The final reduction of 
 the Sygambri was not prior to 
 U. C. 743 a ; and the mention 
 of Meroe alludes to the war 
 with the Ethiopians, U. C. 73 2. b 
 
 VII. Signa, decus belli, Par- 
 thus Romana tenebat, j Roma- 
 naea^ue aquilae signifer hostis 
 _ -ferat : | Isque pudor mansisset 
 adhuc, nisi fortibus armis | 
 Caesaris Ausoniae protegerentur 
 opes. | Ille notasveteres, et longi 
 dedecus aevi | Sustulit ; agno- 
 runt signa recepta suos. [ Quid 
 tibi nunc solitae mitti post terga 
 sagittae, | Quid loca, quid rapidi 
 profuit usus equi ? | Parthe ! re- 
 fers aquilas ; victos quoque por 
 rigis arcus : | Pignora jam no- 
 stri nulla pudoris habes. Ovid, 
 Fastorum v. 585. 
 
 The passage, which might be 
 quoted from the Ars Amandi, 
 lib. i. 1 77 — 226, alludes to the 
 projected mission of Caius Cae- 
 sar in U. C. 753 ; and not to 
 the restitution of the standards 
 in U. C. 734. 
 
 I know not too, whether the 
 epigram of Antipater of Thessa- 
 lonica, which occurs, Anthologia, 
 ii. IOO. XX. SreXXev in EvffiprjTrjv, 
 Zrjvos tckos' els ere yap fjdrj | rjaoi 
 Tlapdeov avTopo\ovai nodes. k,t. X. 
 may not be understood with 
 more propriety of the mission 
 of Caius, U. C. 753, than of 
 Augustus’ visit, U.C. 734, or U.C. 
 
 I 
 
 z Dio, lv. 7. a Dio, liv. 22. 32, 33. 
 b Dio, liv. 5. Strabo, xvii. 1. §. 53. 
 
482 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 U.C. 734; and not to any of his prefects: and it is 
 not less certain that the hostages, whensoever they were 
 delivered, were delivered to Titius ; who must conse- 
 quently have been the only person in authority present at 
 the time. And from this fact alone we might infer that, 
 whosoever was then president of Syria, they could not 
 have been surrendered before the second return of 
 Marcus Agrippa from the East ; that is, before the end 
 of U. C. 74)1. at least c *. 
 
 724. Antipater was a contem- 
 porary of this part of the reign 
 of Augustus ; as appears from a 
 variety of epigrams, addressed to 
 the Roman Piso, Lucius Piso, 
 upon the subject of his recent 
 successes in Thrace ; which Dio, 
 lv. 34. Velleius Pat. ii. 97. 98. 
 shew to have been obtained U.C. 
 743 — 745. Vide Anthologia, ii. 
 97 — 99. Antipatri, x — xvii. 
 
 * According to Velleius Pater- 
 culus, the surrendry of the hos- 
 tages by Phraates was a conse- 
 quence of the appointment of 
 Artavasdes to the throne of Ar- 
 menia ; and, therefore, happened 
 about the same time with that d . 
 There is no authority, except 
 that of mere conjecture, for 
 reading Tigranes in this passage 
 of Velleius, and not Artavasdes. 
 It is true, that he attributes the 
 appointment of this Artavasdes 
 to Tiberius ; which is the chief 
 reason, indeed, for concluding 
 that he has confounded him with 
 Tigranes. The instrumentality 
 of Tiberius in placing a Tigranes 
 on the throne of Armenia is at- 
 tested on all hands ; but the as- 
 sertion that he was similarly em- 
 ployed, in the appointment of 
 Artavasdes, rests on the single 
 authority of Velleius. As to the 
 history of Dio, there is no period 
 c Dio, liv. 28. Jos. Ant. Jud. xvi. iii. 3. 
 
 of time between U. C. 740. and 
 U. C. 748. during which it can 
 be probably collected from it that 
 Tiberius was any where engaged 
 in. the East. In U.C. 741. he was 
 consul, and Agrippa returned 
 from the East : at the beginning 
 of the next year Agrippa died, 
 and Tiberius w'&s espoused to 
 Julia, and soon sent into 
 
 Pannonia : in U. C. 7 43- h e was 
 married to her; and the sk^e year 
 he was still employed in 
 and Pannonia: in U.C. 74^ he 
 was commanding in Gaul: intl-C. 
 745, when Drusus died, he 
 sent by Augustus to attend lN s 
 body from Germany b On thr^ 
 point, then, the assertion of Vel-* 1 
 leius must be received with dis- 
 trust : but if the fact itself, that 
 an Artavasdes was sometime 
 placed on the throne of Arme- 
 nia, between the appointment 
 of Tigranes and the time of the 
 delivery of the hostages, be suf- 
 ficiently well attested, it is indif- 
 ferent by whose instrumentality 
 it was effected. There are allu- 
 sions, in the contemporary poets, 
 to some triumph of Tiberius over 
 Armenia, along with other e- 
 vents much later than the time 
 of the restitution of the stand- 
 ards ; which will be so far in ac- 
 cordance with Velleius. 
 
 d ii. 94. i Dio, liv. 25 — 36. lv. 2. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius, Luke ii. 2 . 
 
 483 
 
 Though the motive, which induced Phraates to de- 
 liver up the hostages, is ascribed by Velleius to the in- 
 
 Among these, we might quote 
 the following epigram of Crina- 
 goras, a contemporary Poet : 
 Anthologia, ii. 1 3 2. xviii.’Ai/roXicu, 
 8vaies, Koa-fxov perpa. a\Ad Nepcovos 
 J epya 81 ap(f)oT€pcov inero yrjs 7 re- 
 parcov. | ? ]\ios ’Appevirjv avicov vno 
 dape'io-av | Keivov, Teppavirjv 
 8’ el8e Karepxopevos. | 8i<ra6v aet- 
 8ecr6(o noXepov Kparos’ oi8ev ’Apagr]? 
 
 | ical *P rjvos 8ov\ois tflvecri mvope- 
 voi. For indications of the date 
 of this epigram, see Epigram 
 xxviii. of the same author — 
 which celebrates the successes of 
 Germanicus in Germany ; and 
 compare Epigram xxii. with the 
 former, and Epigram xxix. with 
 the latter. 
 
 I. Nunc tibi Pannonia est, 
 nunc Illyris ora domanda : | 
 Rhaetica nunc praebent, Thracia- 
 que arma, metum. | Nunc petit 
 Armenius pacem : nunc porrigit 
 arcus | Parthus eques, timida 
 captaque signa manu. Ovid, 
 Tristium ii. Elegia i. 225. 
 
 II. Rhenus, et Alpinae valles, 
 et sanguine nigro | Decolor in- 
 fecta testis Itargus aqua ; | Da- 
 nubiusque rapax, et Dacius, orbe 
 remoto, | Apulus a huic hosti per 
 breve Pontus iter ; j Armeniusque 
 fugax, et tandem Dalmata sup- 
 plex, | Summaque dispersi per 
 juga Pannonii : | Et modo Ger- 
 manus Romanis cognitus orbis. 
 Consolatio ad Liviam, 385. This 
 elegy was written U. C. 745. 
 in the year of the consulate and 
 the death of Drusus, the brother 
 of Tiberius : as appears from the 
 following passages. Consul init 
 fractis mcerentem fascibus ur- 
 bem. | Quid faceret victus, sic ubi 
 
 victor eat? Line 177. Accipient 
 juvenem Germanica signa feren- 
 tem | Consulis imperio, conspi- 
 cuumque decus. Line 335. The 
 reduction of Armenia is thus al- 
 luded to, along with the defeat 
 of the Rhseti and Vindelici, U.C. 
 739. and the reduction of Dal- 
 matia and Pannonia, U. C. 743. 
 Dio, liv. 22. 31 — 34. 
 
 Accordingly Eusebius, in 
 Chronico,(Pars ii a . 259.) specifies 
 the fact of a triumph of Tiberius 
 in the thirty-eighth year of the 
 reign of Augustus, which he dates 
 from U.C. 71 1 : and, consequent- 
 ly, U. C. 748 : in the following 
 order, De Ariis, (lege Rhsetis,) 
 Armeniis, Vindelicis, et Panno- 
 niis. It can hardly be supposed 
 that for successes obtained over 
 the Armenians in particular, 
 U.C. 734, Tiberius would be ce- 
 lebrating a triumph in U.C. 748. 
 
 In whatever way the different 
 accounts, above referred to, are 
 to be reconciled together, per- 
 haps Dio gives some countenance 
 to Velleius, first, by speaking of 
 the affairs of Armenia as begin- 
 ning to be unsettled so early as 
 U. C. 748, the year in which 
 Tiberius retired to Rhodes; and 
 secondly, by alluding to one Ar- 
 tabazus, (who may have been the 
 same person with Artavasdes,) as 
 possessing or lately having pos- 
 sessed Armenia, in U. C. 755, 
 when Caius made peace with 
 Phraates : lv. 9. 1 1 . 
 
 Tacitus’ account of the kings 
 of Armenia, (Annales, ii.3, 4,) and 
 of the order in which they suc- 
 ceeded one another, is as follows. 
 First, Artavasdes ; whom Dio, 
 
 a This word is corrupt. The line should, perhaps, be written, Additus huic 
 hosti per breve Pontus iter: or, Qua patet huic hosti, &c. 
 
 I i 2 
 
484 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 timidation produced by the successes of Tiberius, in the 
 neighbouring country of Armenia ; the Ancyran mo- 
 
 Josephus, Plutarch, (Compara- 
 tio Antonii et Demetrii) call 
 Artabazes or Artabazus : en- 
 trapped by Antony and made 
 prisoner, U. C. 720. In this, he 
 is supported by Paterculus, ii. 82 : 
 Strabo, xi.13, §. 9.588. §.10.589. 
 §.15.600. Plutarch, Antonius,3 7, 
 &c. The Artavasdes in question 
 was the son and successor of Ti- 
 granes, reduced by Pompey, U.C. 
 690. Cf. Strabo, loc. cit.: Dio, xl. 
 1 6. U.C. 7 00 : Cicero, ad Familia- 
 res, xv. 2. U. C. 700 and 703. 
 
 The next in order was Arta- 
 xias, whom Tacitus calls the son 
 of Artavasdes : then Tigranes, 
 appointed by Augustus through 
 Tiberius : then an Artavasdes, 
 also appointed by command of 
 Augustus: then Ariobarzanes, ap- 
 pointed by Caius Caesar : then 
 the queen Erato : then Vonones. 
 
 The Ancyran monument : 
 (Taciti Opera, iv. 847 :) Arme- 
 nian! majorem interfecto rege 
 ejus Artaxia, m. posse ... in 
 potestatem Tigranis regis per 
 Ti. Neronem diademate ejus 
 capiti imposito transtuli. Ar- 
 menian! gentem postea inquie- 
 tam gentem et rebellantem, do- 
 mitam per Caium filium meum, 
 regi Ariobarzani gubernandam 
 et frenandam tradidi, et post 
 ejus mortem, filio ejus Artava- 
 sdi, quodam jure Ariobarzane, 
 qui erat ex regio genere Arme- 
 niorum oriundus, in id regnum 
 deducto. 
 
 If by any accident the names 
 of Ariobarzanes and Artavasdes 
 have been interchanged in this 
 passage, the testimony of the mo- 
 nument will so far agree with the 
 statement of Tacitus. The con- 
 
 cluding observation with respect 
 to Ariobarzanes, seems to favour 
 this supposition ; especially as 
 he was no lineal descendant of 
 Tigranes, who immediately pre- 
 ceded either him or Artava- 
 sdes. Still the names in question 
 are mentioned in the same order 
 on the marble again ; page 853: 
 A me gentes Parthorum et Me- 
 dorum petierunt per principes 
 earum gentium, regesque per 
 eos acceperunt, Parthi Vononem 
 regis Phratis filium, regis Oro- 
 dis nepotem, Medi Artabanum 
 ...regis Artavasdis filium, regis 
 Ariobarzanis nepotem. If Ar- 
 tavasdes and Ariobarzanes here 
 mentioned are the same persons, 
 who were mentioned before ; the 
 former was the son of the lat- 
 ter. 
 
 To reconcile these accounts 
 with Tacitus, it is necessary to 
 suppose the omission of a name 
 in his statements, between Ario- 
 barzanes and Erato ; which must 
 have been that of another Arta- 
 vasdes, a son of Ariobarzanes. 
 
 Tigranes, the predecessor of 
 one or other of these, could not 
 have been the person so called, 
 the grandson of Herod by Alex- 
 ander and Glaphyra, daughter 
 of Archelaus, king of Cappado- 
 cia, (Jos. Ant. Jud. xviii. v. 4,) 
 who was sometime king of Ar- 
 menia, and being recalled from 
 his kingdom to Rome, died there 
 childless. The former Tigranes is 
 spoken of even in the Antiquities 
 (xv. iv. 3.) as restored by Tibe- 
 rius, and as the younger brother 
 of Artaxias. The latter Tigranes, 
 then, the grandson of Herod, 
 as well as his nephew or bro- 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2 . 485 
 
 nurnent gives a much more impartial account of it k ; 
 Rex Parthorum Phrates, (sic) Orodis filius, filios suos 
 nepotesque misit in Italiam, non bello superatus, sed 
 amicitiam nostram per hsec suorum pignora petens. 
 The true reason was probably a regard for his own 
 safety ; lest any of his family should conspire against 
 him, as he is said to have conspired against the life of 
 his father 1 ; and still more probably a motive assigned 
 by Josephus" 1 , distinct from all, yet perhaps the most 
 likely to be the real one of any. 
 
 The emperor Augustus some time or other pre- 
 sented Phraates with an Italian female slave, called 
 Thermusa ; who became his favourite queen, especially 
 after she had borne him a son ; whom Josephus deno- 
 minates Phraataces. In order to secure the accession 
 of this son to the throne of Parthia, and in the true 
 spirit of oriental jealousy, she made use of her influ- 
 ence over Phraates to remove from home the rest of 
 the blood royal ; who were likely to have been his ri- 
 vals. Now we may assume two things in reference to 
 this account ; first, that Augustus did not present Ther- 
 musa to Phraates before U. C. 731, when the restitu- 
 tion of the standards was first stipulated for n ; or be- 
 fore U. C. 734, when he himself was a second time in 
 the East. In U. C. 724, when he was there before 0 , 
 there was no particular exchange of civilities between 
 himself and Phraates, to make us suppose he presented 
 
 ther’s son, called Tigranes also, place U. C. 813,) were of course 
 (and made king of Armenia, in very different persons from 
 the reign of Nero: Ant. Jud. any of the same name, men- 
 xviii. v. 4 : Bell. ii. xi. 6 : an ap- tioned on the monument, or in 
 pointment which Tacitus, Ann. the passages of Tacitus which we 
 xiv. 26, shews to have taken have been considering. 
 
 k Tacitus, ut supra, 852. Dio, xlix. 23. Justin, xlii. 4. 5. Cf. Strabo, 
 
 xvi. 1. §. 28. 297. 298: where the motive of the act is so represented. ni Ant. 
 Jud. xviii. ii. 4. n Dio, liii. 33. Cf. Justin, xlii. 5. o Dio, li. 18. 20. 
 
 I i 3 
 
486 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 her to him then. Secondly, that Thermusa would not 
 conceive or execute any such scheme as this, until her 
 son was ten or twelve years old at least. The surren- 
 dry of the hostages, then, as the effect of such a scheme, 
 cannot be placed earlier than U. C. 7 45 or 746. There 
 was some interval even after their surrendry, and be- 
 fore the death of Phraates, during which Phraataces 
 continued to be brought up in the Parthian court, as 
 the heir presumptive of his father’s throne ; and it was 
 impatience of his father’s longevity, which induced him 
 at last to conspire against his life, and with the assist- 
 ance of his mother to put him to death. That he was 
 at this period arrived at man’s estate appears from the 
 fact that, both then and for some time after, he was 
 strongly suspected of a criminal intercourse with Ther- 
 musa herself. 
 
 Now there is extant a coin of Phraates, which is de- 
 scribed by Eckhel p, and bears the date A I T. that is, 
 311 : and being referred, as he shews it must be, to 
 U. C. 443 medio , demonstrates that Phraates was still 
 alive U. C. 754. In U. C. 7 55, we must place his 
 interview with Caius Caesar on the Euphrates'* ; but 
 in the year after, U. C. 756, the succession and history 
 of the subsequent kings, Phraataces, Orodes, and Vo- 
 nones, necessarily require us to place his death. The 
 accession of Vonones in particular, as it may be col- 
 lected from Suetonius r , was some time between U. C. 
 757 medium , when Tiberius was sent into Germany, 
 and U. C. 760, when the war was transferred into Pan- 
 nonia ; that is, it was about U. C. 759. Phraataces 
 was king before Orodes, and Orodes before Vonones ; 
 nor can we allow less than three years, viz. from U.C. 
 756 to U. C. 759, for the joint reigns of both. The 
 
 P Doctrina Numm. Vett. iii. 530. 
 r Tiberius, 16. 
 
 *> Velleius Pat. ii. 101. Dio, lv. 11. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 487 
 
 former then would come to the throne U. C. 756 ; and 
 if he was born U. C. 735, or U. C. 7 36, he would be 
 arrived at man’s estate U. C. 7 56*. 
 
 Lastly; the presumption, concerning the time when 
 the hostages were actually delivered, is wonderfully 
 supported, if it is not confirmed, by the testimony of a 
 coin of Augustus ; which also is described by Eckhel s . 
 It represents the emperor Augustus sitting upon a 
 kind of suggestus, that is, pro trihunali ; and giving 
 audience to another person, whose appearance and 
 dress are characteristic of a foreigner, and who is of- 
 fering him a little boy. This device is sufficient to 
 prove that the coin commemorates the surrendry of the 
 hostages. The time of the coin is ascertained by the 
 date on the obverse, Tr. Pot. xvi. The sixteenth of 
 Augustus’ tribunician authority began June 27, U. C. 
 746, and expired June 26, U. C. 747*: between these 
 extremes therefore the coin must have been struck. 
 The event which it commemorates was likely to at- 
 tract speedy notice, if what Suetonius relates concern- 
 ing it be true 11 : Quodam autem muneris die Partho- 
 rum obsides, tunc primum missos, per arenam mediam 
 ad spectaculum induxit, superque se subsellio secundo 
 collocavit. If then it commemorates the surrendry of 
 the hostages, and that at the time when it took place, 
 this surrendry could not have happened either earlier 
 or later than U. C. 746. It follows consequently, that 
 Titius was still in office as late as U.C. 746 ; a conclu- 
 
 * The epitomizer of the lost redditis. This would place the 
 books of Livy, in the argument restitution of the standards ten 
 for lib. 139. and in the year be- years beyond its proper time ; 
 fore the death of Drusus, U. C. viz. in U. C. 744, instead of 
 744, has these words ; Pax cum U.C. 734. The anachronism, 
 Parthis facta est, signis a rege however, may be accounted for. 
 eorum, quae sub Crasso, et post- if the hostages were given up 
 ea sub Antonio, capta erant about this time. 
 
 s vi. xio. t Eckhel, viii. 404. Dio, liii. 32. 17. « Augustus, 43. 
 
 I i 4 
 
488 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 sion which will be further confirmed by what will be 
 shewn by and by*. 
 
 * Nor can the time of the sur- 
 rendry be placed earlier than the 
 year in question, without involv- 
 ing us in difficulties arising from 
 the course of events, with re- 
 spect to the subsequent disposal 
 of the hostages; certain of whom 
 were afterwards reclaimed by the 
 Parthians, to be placed on the 
 throne of Parthia. It appears 
 from Strabo, ( locis citatis ,) that 
 they consisted in all of ten per- 
 sons, four of the sons, (two of 
 them with their wives,) and four 
 of the grandsons of Phraates ; 
 and the names of the sons were 
 Seraspadanes, Rodaspes, Phraa- 
 tes, and V onones. Of the two 
 first we meet with no mention 
 subsequently ; whence we may 
 infer that they died at Rome, 
 before any of them were restor- 
 ed a . But Vonones was sent back 
 by Augustus, upon the applica- 
 tion of the Parthians, about 
 U. C. 759 ; and he was alive 
 after that until U.C. 772, in the 
 reign of Tiberius v . Phraates 
 also was sent back by Tiberius, 
 U. C. 7 88 w : and both these 
 were sons of Phraates. 
 
 After however the death of 
 Phraates the younger, which oc- 
 curred in the same year, no men- 
 tion appears of any more of the 
 sons of Phraates the elder ; but 
 only of his grandsons. It is 
 manifest, therefore, that all the 
 
 sons of this Phraates were more 
 than arrived at man’s estate, 
 when they were sent to Italy ; 
 and two of them (one of whom, 
 as we shall see presently, was 
 Vonones) were married men. 
 Phraates himself came to the 
 throne U. C. 7 1 7 X * and if he 
 was thirty or forty years old at 
 that time, he might have one son 
 or more, who might be married 
 and have children, U. C. 746. 
 But their children then would 
 be comparatively infants ; and 
 this seems to have been actually 
 the case : for the next of the 
 hostages, whose restoration we 
 read of, was Tiridates, (not a son, 
 but a grandson of Phraates,) 
 between U.C. 788 and U.C. 789 ; 
 at the end of the reign of Tibe- 
 rius y. Tiridates was evidently 
 at that time arrived at man’s es- 
 tate ; and though he had been a 
 mere infant in U. C. 746, he 
 would still be forty-three or 
 four in U. C. 788. The next 
 whose name is mentioned is 
 Meherdates ; restored by Clau- 
 dius, U. C. 802, and called a 
 young man at the time 2 . This 
 Meherdates was a son of Vono- 
 nes, and therefore a grandson of 
 Phraates. The term which Ta- 
 citus applies to him will not al- 
 low us to suppose he was much 
 more than forty at least in U.C. 
 802 c ; and as he was the son of 
 
 a It is evident from Strabo’s language (xvi. 1. §. 28. 299.) that some of these hos- 
 tages were dead or restored before his time, U. C. 771 or 772. He says, rwv /. iev 
 olv Tralduv ocroi TrepUiaiv eV *P co/ur) dri/xoaia fZcunXiKws T'nfxsKovvTcu. v Tacitus, 
 Ann. ii. 1 — 4. 56. 58. 68. w vi. 31. 32. x Dio, xlix. 23. y Tacitus, 
 Ann. vi. 32. 37 — 44. z lb. xi. 10. xii. 10. 11 — 14. c Cicero, Philipp, ii. 46: 
 Defendi rempublicam adolescens , non deseram senex : yet Cicero was sixty-three, 
 U. C. 711, and forty-three, U. C. 691. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius, Luke ii. 2. 489 
 
 The first mention of Saturninus in Josephus occurs 
 Ant. xvi. ix. 1 ; the last, Ant. xvii. iii. 2. Bell. i. xxix. 3, 
 
 Vonones, and either brought to 
 Rome with his father, or born 
 in Rome, while he was still liv- 
 ing there, he could not have 
 been born later than the year 
 when Venones was sent to Par- 
 thia ; that is, about U. C. 759. 
 Even in this case he would be 
 forty- three years old, U.C. 802. 
 
 Augustus did indeed receive 
 from Phraates one of his sons, 
 as an hostage, in U. C. 724, 
 whom he carried accordingly to 
 Rome : Dio, li. 1 8. But this son 
 was sent back, U. C. 731. Dio 
 liii* 33 - 
 
 According to Justin also, (xlii. 
 5.) when Tiridates fled to Au- 
 gustus, he took with him the 
 youngest son of Phraates as an 
 hostage. But this he says was 
 when Augustus was waging war 
 in Spain : and Suet. Augustus, 
 26, he was at Tarraco in Spain on 
 the first of January, both U. C. 
 728 and 729. This son was, there- 
 fore, a different person from the 
 former : or even he, according 
 to Dio, loc. cit. must have been 
 restored, upon the application 
 of Phraates, U. C. 731. 
 
 I should refer Horace, i. xxvi. 
 3 : | Queis sub Arcto | Rex ge- 
 lidse metuatur orse, | Quid Tiri- 
 datem terreat, unice | Securus 
 
 [ to these transactions ; 
 
 U. C. 731. As also, iii. viii. 17. 
 Mitte civiles super urbe curas: | 
 Occidit Daci Cotisonis agmen ; | 
 Medus infestus sibi luctuosis | 
 Dissidet armis: | Servit Hispa- 
 nae vetus hostis orae | Cantaber, 
 sera domitus catena : | Jam Scy- 
 thae laxo meditantur arcu | Ce- 
 dere campis. 
 
 Maecenas was left urbis Prce- 
 
 fectns , when Augustus departed 
 for the East, and Agrippa was 
 sent into Spain to subdue the 
 rebellious Cantabri, U. C. 732 
 or 33 : which he speedily effect- 
 ed : Dio, liv. 5. 6. 11. 19. Cf. 
 Horace, iii. xxix. 25 — 28: iii.viii. 
 17: iii. vi. 13. 14: compared 
 with Dio, liv. 5,6. 3: which prove 
 the time referred to, to be U. C. 
 732 and 733. 
 
 A Cotiso is mentioned by Flo- 
 rus, iv. xii. 18, as king of the 
 Daci ; and the same, or another, 
 by Suetonius, Augustus, 63, as 
 king of the Getae. Those passages 
 of Horace imply that there must 
 have been some commotion a- 
 mong the Daci, not long before 
 U.C. 731 or 732, though contem- 
 porary history may be silent about 
 it — to which Virgil also possibly 
 alludes, Georgicwn ii. 497 : Aut 
 conjurato descendens Dacus ab 
 Istro. 
 
 On the other hand, Horace, ii. ii. 
 17. Redditum Cyri solio Phraa- 
 ten,j Dissidens plebi, numero be- 
 atorum | Eximit virtus, | is 
 most probably in reference to 
 the former contest between 
 Phraates and Tiridates, U. C. 
 724 : Dio, li. 1 8. 
 
 It is true, that Suet. Augustus, 
 34, a fact is recorded, which at first 
 sight might be supposed referred 
 to in the device of the coin pro- 
 duced above. But a little consi- 
 deration will shew that this is 
 impossible. Germanicus Csesar 
 was in his thirty-fourth or thir- 
 ty-fifth year, when he died at 
 Antioch, October 9, U. C. 772. 
 From Suet. Caius, 15, we may 
 collect that he was probably 
 born in September : consequent- 
 
490 
 
 Dissertation Fourteen th . 
 
 at a time when Antipater was at Rome. It follows, then, 
 that the sense of Ant. xvii. i. 1, even if it could be 
 thought to imply that Saturninus was at Rome before 
 Antipater’s departure, will be determined by the pa- 
 rallel place in the War a : o 7 ye /ur/v irepn 2 arovpvivov ev 
 2 vpia 7 rdvres eifKrja'Srjcrav tcov dir' avrov Scopewv. As this 
 was only just posterior to the close of the council of 
 Berytus, and the death of Herod’s two sons, the de- 
 cision of the present question is intimately connected 
 with another ; viz. the question of the time of that 
 council, or of that death ; on which I shall now enter. 
 The result of this inquiry will be, if I mistake not, 
 strongly to support our present conclusions. 
 
 The marriage of Herod and Mariamne was con- 
 tracted a little before the battle of Philippi, U. C. 711 
 or 712 b : but not completed until U. C. 717, the year 
 when Herod took Jerusalem 0 . One year after the 
 visit of Augustus to Antioch, U. C. 724, the year of 
 the reduction of Egypt — consequently U. C. 725 ex- 
 eunte , or U. C. 726 ineunte — he put her to death d . 
 They were married, therefore, only from U. C. 717 to 
 U. C. 726, that is, for nine years complete ; and in this 
 time she bore him five children ; three sons and two 
 daughters e . Of the sons, Aristobulus and Alexander 
 were the eldest. The youngest died at Rome ; these 
 two, being brought up there, survived to arrive at 
 maturity. 
 
 Having visited them there, and brought them back 
 from thence f , Herod disposed of them in marriage ; 
 contracting Aristobulus to Bernice, the daughter of 
 
 ly not earlier than U. C. 738. but eight years old. How then 
 Hence U. C. 746, he could be could he have had any children ? 
 
 a i. xxviii. i. b Bell. Jud. i. xii. 3. Ant. xiv. xii. 1. c Bell. i. xvii. 8. 9. 
 Ant. xiv. xv. 14. xvi. 1. d Ant. xv. vii. 3, 4. e Bell. i. xxii. 2. Ant. xiv. 
 xii. 1. i Ant. xvi. 1, 2. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 491 
 
 his sister Salome, and Alexander to Glaphyra, the 
 daughter of Archelaus king of Cappadocia. And when 
 he had done these things, as the next chapter informs 
 us, he heard that Mark Agrippa was come again into 
 Asia. Before the winter of the year set in, Agrippa was 
 sumptuously entertained by Herod, not merely in other 
 cities of his dominions, but also in Jerusalem; after 
 which he departed to Ionia, which means to Lesbos ; 
 for there, upon leaving Judaea again, he spent the 
 winter *. 
 
 With the spring of the ensuing year, Herod set out 
 from home to join him at Lesbos ; but found he was 
 gone to the Pontus. He followed him thither ; and 
 ultimately overtook him at Sinope. Now Agrippa 
 came into the East, on this second occasion, in U. C. 
 738, towards the close of that year h ; and he was at 
 the Pontus U. C. 740 *, where Herod assisted him in 
 military operations. The year, then, when he was 
 brought to Jerusalem was U. C. 739? the year between 
 these two f ; and consequently the time when Herod 
 
 * This visit of Agrippa’s to 
 Jerusalem is recognised by Phi- 
 lo k ; and the time of the year, 
 at which he places it, implicitly 
 agrees with Josephus. For it is 
 plainly to be inferred from his 
 account, that the period of the 
 visit coincided with one of the 
 feasts; which feast the rest of 
 the description ascertains to have 
 been the feast of Tabernacles. 
 This was the most imposing of 
 the Jewish solemnities; and the 
 high priest in particular had 
 more to do then, than on any 
 other occasion in the year. 
 
 t The account of Josephus 
 also, (Ant. xvi. ii. i.) implies 
 
 h Dio, liv. 19. 
 
 De Virtu tibus. 
 
 that the visit of Agrippa to Je- 
 rusalem, U. C. 739, was about 
 the period of some legal solem- 
 nity ; which must have been the 
 Scenopegia, because it was just 
 before the winter season set in. 
 
 Nicolaus Damascenus, De Vi- 
 ta Sua, page 6, gives us to 
 understand that Agrippa came 
 into the East late in the year ; 
 that Julia his wife followed in 
 the spring of the next year ; 
 that Herod accompanied Agrip- 
 pa from Amisus on the Pontus, 
 into Paphlagonia ; and that his 
 sons were at Chios and Rhodes 
 all the time. All this is in uni- 
 son with Josephus, xv. ii. 2 : 
 
 i lb. 24. k Operum ii. 588. 1. 28 — 30: 589. 1. 8 — 31. 
 
Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 492 
 
 matched his sons, which was just before, was U. C. 
 738 exeunte , or U. C. 739 ineant e. Nor is this time 
 otherwise than probable. For though they had been 
 the two eldest children of Mariamne, and born in suc- 
 cessive years, U. C. 718 and U. C. 719, one would be 
 only twenty, and the other only nineteen, U. C. 738. 
 
 The offspring of Aristobulus and Bernice were five 
 children 1 '; three sons, Herod, Agrippa, and Aristobu- 
 lus, and two daughters, Mariamne and Herodias. The 
 offspring of Alexander and Glaphyra were two sons 
 only ; Tigranes and Alexander. Of the sons of Ari- 
 stobulus, the first is known in Josephus as Herod of 
 Chalcis ; the second as Herod Agrippa ; and though 
 he has not been express on this point, I think there is 
 reason to believe they were born in the order in which 
 they are mentioned. The time of Agrippa’s birth we 
 are enabled to determine ; for he had not completed 
 his fifty-fourth year when he died 1 ; and he died, as we 
 shall see hereafter, in the third of Claudius, U. C. 796 : 
 that is, U. C. 796 was his fifty-fourth year incomplete, 
 and, consequently, U. C. 742 was his first year incom- 
 plete ; and he was born in U. C. 742 : and that in Jeru- 
 salem, as appears from his letter to Caius m . His 
 brother Herod of Chalcis then was probably born in 
 U. C. 740 ; and if his father was married U. C. 739, 
 this circumstance would confirm the conjecture that 
 Agrippa was next to him. For the births of the rest 
 of the family, three in number, it seems necessary to 
 
 especially in what he tells us at which the life of Julia, his wife, 
 the end, that Herod reconciled had been exposed, as Agrippa 
 Agrippa to the people of Ilium, thought through their negli- 
 with whom he was angry. Ni- gence, when she was crossing the 
 colaus informs us that this anger Scamander by night, 
 was excited by the danger to 
 
 k Bell. Jud. i. xxviii. I. Ant. xviil. v. 4. xvii. i. 2. 
 m Philo, ii. 587.!. 17 — 19. De Virtutibus. 
 
 1 Ant. xix. viii. 2. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius, Luke ii. 2. 
 
 493 
 
 allow five years at least ; in which case the birth of 
 the youngest would be U. C. 747, at the earliest. And 
 if Herod and Mariamne, in nine years’ time, had only 
 Jive children ; it was just as possible that Aristobulus 
 and Bernice in the same time would have no more *. 
 
 Now soon after the death of his sons, and before 
 Antipater was yet gone to Italy, there is an account 
 of Herod’s producing these children in the presence 
 of his friends ; and, after deploring the loss of their 
 fathers, making up prospectively certain matches for 
 them ; of which I shall mention those only which con- 
 cerned the two daughters of Aristobulus” 1 . One of 
 them he betrothed to the son of Antipater, the other 
 to his own son by the second Mariamne, Herod ; and 
 this latter being Herodias, the former must have been 
 Mariamne. And hence we may collect that Mariamne 
 was the older of the two ; for Antipater being at this 
 time the heir presumptive of his father’s throne, this 
 was the better match ; as further appears from the fact 
 that soon after it was changed for Antipater himself, 
 instead of his son. 
 
 Now it is quite clear that neither of these females 
 was of a marriageable age at the time ; and if Hero- 
 dias was the younger of the two, it is very probable 
 she was the youngest of Aristobulus’ family. I will 
 put it therefore to the judgment of my reader, if, when 
 
 * The family of Marcus A- 
 grippa, and of Julia the daugh- 
 ter of Augustus, supplies a case 
 in point to this. They were 
 married U. C. 733 n : and the 
 death of Agrippa occurred U. C. 
 742 °; which is an interval of 
 just nine years. In this time 
 Julia bore five children P, the 
 
 eldest in U. C. 734, the young- 
 est after his father’s death, in 
 U. C. 742 q. Herod Agrippa 
 also had five children only r ; be- 
 tween the birth of the eldest of 
 whom, who bore his father’s 
 name, and that of the young- 
 est, there was an interval of ten 
 years at least s . 
 
 m Bell. i. xxviii. 2. 3. 5. Ant. xvii. i. 2. n Dio, liv. 6. o Ibid. 28. 
 P Suet. Augustus, 64. q Dio, liv. 7. 8. 29. Of. 18. x Ant. Jud. xviii. v. 4. 
 s Ibid. xix. ix. 1. 
 
494 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 she became the subject of a scheme like this, she could 
 be under two years old *. I infer, then, that Herodias 
 was two years old at the time of her father’s death ; 
 in which case, if she was born in U. C. 747, her father 
 had been put to death in U. C. 749 : and we shall here- 
 after see, that even in the thirteenth of Tiberius, U. C. 
 780, she retained youth and beauty sufficient to capti- 
 vate the tetrarch of Galilee. 
 
 It is not an easy task to arrange all the intermediate 
 events, between the marriage and the death of the two 
 
 * There was an abuse of long 
 standing at Rome, until it was 
 corrected by Augustus, by which 
 females, from interested motives, 
 were sometimes affianced as in- 
 fants ; that is, at the age of one or 
 two years ; for none, even from 
 such motives, could be affianced 
 under it u . Julia was two years old, 
 when she was betrothed by Au- 
 gustus to Antyllus, a son of Mark 
 Antony v ; and Octavia was proba- 
 bly the same, when she was be- 
 trothed by Claudius her father, 
 in the first or second year of his 
 reign, to Silanus x . Drusilla, the 
 youngest daughter of Herod A- 
 grippa, was six years old at her 
 father’s death ; and Mariamne, 
 the next to her, was ten ; yet 
 both had been already betrothed, 
 the one to Julius Archelaus, the 
 son of Chelcias, the other to Epi- 
 phanes, son of Antiochus, king 
 of the Commagenes y. 
 
 Dio does not say expressly that 
 infants were affianced at the 
 tender age of one or two ; nor 
 yet Suetonius : though both im- 
 ply it ; and instances are not 
 wanting in which it is seen to 
 have been the case. Thus (Dio 
 xlviii. 31. 34. 54.) though (Deta- 
 il Dio, liv. 16, 1 7. Suet. Augustus, 34. 
 xii. 3. Dio, lx. 5. 8. 9, 10. y Ant. 
 
 via was married to Antony, only 
 U. C. 715 ineunte, yet a daugh- 
 ter of theirs was betrothed in 
 marriage, U. C. 717 exeunt.e. 
 Corn. Nepos, Atticus, 19: Hanc 
 Caesar vix anniculam Tiberio 
 Claudio Neroni, Drusilla nato, 
 privigno suo despondit. 
 
 A common age for marriage in 
 females was ten or eleven. Plu- 
 tarch, Comparatio Lycurgi cum 
 Numa, 4 : to>v be 'Poo/iaiW beobeKae- 
 reis Kcu vecorepas eKbibovTcov. Thus, 
 Tacitus, Ann. xiv. 64, Octavia 
 was in her twentieth year, when 
 divorced by Nero, U. C. 815 : to 
 whom, xii. 9, she had been es- 
 poused U. C. 802 : consequently 
 in her seventh: and, xii. 58, she 
 was married ta him, U. C. 806 
 ineunte : consequently in her 
 tenth or eleventh. 
 
 From Artemidorus also. Onei- 
 rocritica, i. 81, it appears that 
 the marriageable age of females 
 was immediately after ten ; that 
 is, eleven or twelve. The same 
 fact may be collected from Sui- 
 das, in cipKTos ev Bpavpcoviois, and 
 Harpocratio, in AeKareveiv. Many 
 instances in proof of the same 
 thing have been produced else- 
 where. 
 
 v Dio, xlviii. 34. 54. x Tacitus, Ann. 
 Jud. xix. ix. 1. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 495 
 
 young men : yet certain points of time may be deter- 
 mined with precision, and others with presumptive pro- 
 bability, which will agree to the above conclusions. 
 
 I. Antipater was recommended to Agrippa, about 
 the time of his returning to Rome z ; which return is 
 placed by Dio in U. C. 741 a . 
 
 II. Herod himself went to Rome, taking his two 
 sons with him b ; the time of which journey w r as prior 
 to Ol. 192. 1. U. C. 742, at least c ; as may thus be 
 proved. 
 
 When Herod arrived, Augustus was at Aquileia ; 
 and Dio shews that he was absent from Rome, and 
 that in or near to Gaul, U. C. 740 exeimte d . But he 
 must subsequently have returned, attended by Herod, to 
 Rome : for the mention of the games and the largesses e 
 points to the time which is specified by Dio ; viz. 
 about the birthday of Augustus — ix. kal. Oct. Sep- 
 tember 23, U. C. 741 f , when Augustus was at Rome. 
 And it confirms this coincidence, that there is no rea- 
 son to suppose, from the narrative of Josephus here, 
 that Agrippa was yet dead. But he died sometime after 
 the nineteenth of March in the consular year 742 £, 
 when the Ludi Quinquatria, called by Dio the Ilava- 
 Orjvaia , were going on. If this visit, then, had taken 
 place U. C. 742, Herod must have arrived at the time 
 of the death of Agrippa, or soon after it ; in which 
 case neither would Josephus have been silent about it ; 
 nor would spectacles and largesses have been going on 
 at Rome ; nor would Augustus have been found at 
 Aquileia, but in Campania; for there Agrippa fell sick 
 and died. 
 
 I place the visit, then, U. C. 741 medio , which is 
 
 z Ant. xvi. iii. 3. * liv. 28. b Ant. Jud. xvi. iv. 1. Bell. i. xxiii. 3. 
 
 c Ant. xvi. v. i. Bell. i. xxi. 8. d liv. 25. e Ant. Jud. xvi. iv. 5. 
 
 f liv. 25 — 28. « Ibid. 28. 
 
496 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 entirely in unison with Dio, who makes Augustus 
 return to Rome only U. C. 741, and that at a time 
 when the overflowing of the Tiber had filled the 
 theatre called after Cornelius Balbus, the dedication 
 of which was going on. Before this, it had been neces- 
 sary to settle affairs in Gaul and Germany ; so that it 
 seems scarcely possible he could have returned, before 
 the middle of the year at least. The consequent return 
 home of Herod would be U. C 742 ineunte ; at which 
 time the dedication of Caesarea might be ready to 
 begin h ; and would thus coincide with Olympiad 
 192 . 1 .* 
 
 III. The dedication of Caesarea, and the institution 
 of Herod’s quinquennial games, would coincide with 
 Olym. 192. 1, U. C. 742 k , and probably with the same 
 time of the year as the Olympiads in general. 
 
 IV. The first of the rescripts, which are brought 
 together in the following chapter 1 , among the other 
 titles of Augustus premised to it exhibits the title of 
 APXIEPEY2 ; that is, of the Pontifex Maximus. 
 
 * There is some difficulty, it 
 is true, with respect to the pre- 
 vious disposal of Antipater. It 
 is possible, however, that he 
 might be recommended to A- 
 grippa, and by him forwarded 
 to Rome, U. C. 740. But there 
 is no need to suppose that 
 Agrippa accompanied him ; nor 
 in fact any ground for imagining 
 that Agrippa was yet at Rome, 
 during any part of the time 
 when Herod was there. He was 
 sent into Pannonia, soon after 
 his return, at the beginning of 
 the consular year 742 which 
 
 proves that he did not return 
 until late in U.C. 741. 
 
 The northern wind which de- 
 tained Herod at Chios, Ant. Jud. 
 xvi. ii. 2. U.C. 740, which some 
 might suppose the northern mon- 
 soon, was more probably an ac- 
 cidental wind, much earlier in 
 the season. It would be possi- 
 ble, therefore, for him to return 
 to Judaea, not later than mid- 
 summer, U. C. 740, and to re- 
 commend Antipater to Agrippa 
 before the autumn of the same 
 year. 
 
 h Ant. Jud. xvi. v. i. i Dio, liv. 28. 
 xxi. 8. 1 Ant. Jud. xvi. vi. 2. 
 
 k Ant. Jiid. xvi. v. 1. Bell. i. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 497 
 
 When that edict was issued, Augustus was conse- 
 quently the chief pontiff. His predecessor in the office 
 was Lepidus m ; and Lepidus did not vacate it by his 
 death before U. C. 741 n . This edict, then, could not 
 have been issued before U. C. 741. But though Lepi- 
 dus died, and vacated the pontificate, U. C. 741, still 
 it is proved by Eckhel, on the authority of the ancient 
 Fasti quoted by him * °, that Augustus assumed the 
 title only the next year, or U. C. 742. The day of the 
 assumption is determined by Ovid, as pridie nonas 
 Martis p. The edict, then, could not have been issued 
 before the sixth of March, U. C. 742 ; and probably it 
 was a good deal later. The course of proceedings, 
 therefore, is regularly carried on from chapter the 
 fifth of this book of the Antiquities, to chapter the 
 sixth f. 
 
 * That is, the Maffsean and 
 Praenestine Calendars, apud 
 Foggini ; whence it appears that 
 he assumed the title on March 
 6, U. C. 742. 
 
 t At the end of the edict 
 there is an allusion to some 
 temple of Augustus, already- 
 built by the Koivov rrjs ’Aaias at 
 Ancyra ; upon a column of which 
 it appears that the edict was 
 afterwards written. Among the 
 coins of Augustus there is one 
 described by Eckhel % which 
 was struck in the fifth year of 
 his Tribunitian authority — that 
 is, U. C. 735 or 736 — to com- 
 memorate the foundation of a 
 temple to him by the Commune 
 Asiae. The situation of the tem- 
 ple is not mentioned. Eckhel 
 conjectures it was Pergamus ; 
 but this rescript preserved by 
 
 Josephus, which proves that a 
 temple in honour of Augustus 
 must have been built at Ancyra 
 before U. C. 742 at least, would 
 equally imply that it was An- 
 cyra ; the Ancyra, either of 
 Phrygia, which properly be- 
 longed to the province of Asia 
 - — or of Galatia, which was more 
 distinguished by the favour of 
 Augustus. It is true that Dio 
 speaks of the building of two 
 temples, or at least the conse- 
 cration of two certain places, to 
 Augustus, by his permission, one 
 of them at Pergamus in Asia, 
 the other at Nicomedia in Bi- 
 thynia; as early as U. C. 724 
 or 725 r . The former is alluded 
 to by Tacitus, in a speech of 
 Tiberius, U. C. 778 s . 
 
 I have said nothing of the rest 
 of the rescripts contained in the 
 
 m Suet. Augustus, 31. n Dio, liv. 27. o Doctrina Numm. Vett. vi. 107. 
 P Fasti, iii. 419. q Doctrina Numm. Vett. vi. 100. Vide also ii. 466. r li. 20. 
 Cf. lix. 28. s Annales, iv. 37. Vide also 55. 56. 
 
 K k 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
498 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 V. After Archelaus had succeeded in making up the 
 renewed quarrel between Herod and his two sons, the 
 former in gratitude reconciled him to Titius, at that 
 time the president of Syria * w . We may consider it 
 
 same chapter ; all of which ap- 
 pear to be brought together, in 
 conjunction with the first, more 
 as relating to a common subject, 
 than as belonging to a common 
 point of time. This is especially 
 true of the rescript of Julius An- 
 tonius*; at that time proconsul 
 of Asia. Julius Antonius was 
 consul in U. C. 744 ; and by 
 one of the standing rules of Au- 
 gustus’ government, he could not 
 be proconsul before U. C. 750. 
 U. C. 752, in consequence of the 
 disgrace of Julia, either he was 
 put to death by Augustus, or 
 he committed suicide 11 . His re- 
 script therefore was issued most 
 probably in U.C. 750. Norbanus 
 Flaccus was consul U. C. 730 : 
 hence, his rescript might have 
 been issued U. C. 736 ; but it 
 was probably much later. It is 
 not unlikely that he was pro- 
 consul of Asia in U. C. 742. 
 There is another of his rescripts 
 in section 6 ; and Philo Judseus 
 has preserved a third, distinct 
 from both the former, but is- 
 sued like them in obedience to 
 some orders of Augustus’, which 
 are recognised in them all alike, 
 and which Philo mentions just 
 before v . These orders were very 
 probably transmitted when he 
 issued the edict recited at the 
 head of the chapter. 
 
 Nor have I paid any attention 
 
 to the running titles prefixed to 
 the several books of the Anti- 
 quities ; for the periods em- 
 braced by these titles are not 
 uniformly exact. The seven- 
 teenth book ends with U. C. 
 760, the tenth year of the reign 
 of Archelaus ; and it is stated 
 to contain fourteen years. The 
 fifteenth begins with U.C. 717, 
 and is stated to contain eighteen ; 
 which is a correct computation : 
 for it extends to U. C. 734, the 
 year of the rebuilding of the 
 temple, and even to U. C. 735, 
 the year when it was partly 
 finished. On this principle the 
 next book ought to have begun 
 with U.C. 735 or 736; and one 
 of the first events mentioned in 
 it belongs, as we have proved, 
 to U. C. 737 or 738. It is stated 
 to contain twelve years; which 
 would make it end with U. C. 
 746 or U. C. 747. But in all 
 probability the true distribution 
 of time, originally, was id' or 
 fourteen years to this book, and 
 if, or twelve , to the next ; in 
 which case, the former would 
 end with U. C. 748 or 749, and 
 the latter with U. C. 760, as be- 
 fore. 
 
 * Dio, lvii. 17: Archelaus was 
 sometime accused to Augustus 
 by his subjects, and defended by 
 Tiberius, before the retirement 
 of the latter to Rhodes, U. C. 
 
 t xvi. vi. 7. u Velleius Pat. ii. 100. Dio, lv. 10. Tacitus, Ann. iv. 44. 
 
 Seneca, De Clementia, lib. i. 10 : De Brevitate Vitae, v. 4. v Operum ii. 592. 
 1 . 9 — 19. De Virtutibus. w Airt. Jud, xvi. viii. 6. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 499 
 
 probable that this event happened in the last year of 
 Titius, because in the next chapter, section first, with 
 little or no delay interposed, Saturninus and Volum- 
 nius are spoken of as already in office. This coin- 
 cidence would point to U. C. 745 at least ; and it will 
 be further confirmed by what follows. 
 
 VI. For, before Archelaus left him, Herod concerted 
 with him that he should himself go to Rome : and he 
 both went and returned accordingly x . The journey so 
 designed is first mentioned in the War, i. xxiv. 4 ; but 
 its execution is not there specified : and a similar de- 
 sign may be collected from i. xxv. 5, which would 
 coincide with this journey in the Antiquities ; and is 
 perhaps prospectively alluded to even at Bell. i. xxii. 1. 
 
 Now, when Herod on some occasion was journeying 
 to Rome, he passed through Greece at the time of an 
 Olympic celebrity ; over which he presided in person, 
 and before he departed, made provision for the better ce- 
 lebration of the games ever after v ; which circumstance 
 identifies this journey in the War with the occasion 
 alluded to, Ant. xvi. v. 3. I think enough has been 
 stated to prove that this Olympic year could not be 
 Olympiad 192. 1, at which time Herod was not journey- 
 ing to Rome, nor celebrating an Olympiad in Greece, 
 but dedicating Caesarea, and holding his own quin- 
 quennial games in J udaea. And this conclusion is con- 
 firmed by the context of the account, both in the War 
 and in the Antiquities ; that is, by the course and po- 
 sition of events, mentioned in common by each, before 
 and after the journey. 
 
 748. He might at this time it was U. C. 745 or 746, would 
 have the misunderstanding in be two years at least before 
 question with Titius ; which if U. C. 748. 
 
 x Ant. Jud. xvi. viii. 6 . ix. 1. 
 
 K k 2 
 
 y Bell. i. xxi. 12. 
 
500 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 But if it was not Olympiad 192. 1. it was some 
 Olympiad after that ; for no one will suppose it was 
 some Olympiad before it. No journey of Herod to 
 Rome could have coincided with any Olympiad before 
 that. His last journey prior to Olympiad 192. 1, U.C. 
 742, had been prior also to Olympiad 191. 1, for it 
 was prior to U. C. 738 z . It is certain at least, that 
 he had returned from Italy before Agrippa was sent 
 into the East ; and Agrippa was not sent into the East 
 until U.C. 738. Herod had concluded the marriage 
 of his sons before he heard of his arrival, and much 
 more before he brought him to Jerusalem ; both 
 which, as we have seen, were events which happened 
 in U. C. 739 *. 
 
 * Had Herod made any jour- 
 ney to Italy in U. C. 73 8, he 
 would have found Agrippa there; 
 for Agrippa was dispatched into 
 Asia from thence ; and instead 
 of hearing of his arrival the next 
 year, and posterior to his own 
 return home, Herod must have 
 accompanied him from Italy him- 
 self. Nor, if he had visited 
 Rome, U.C. 738, would he have 
 found Augustus there ; as it is 
 expressly said that he found him. 
 In U. C. 737, when Augustus 
 was celebrating the Ludi Saecu- 
 lares, he certainly was at Rome : 
 and this is the year in which 
 Herod’s visit, to bring back his 
 two sons, took place. But, U. C. 
 738, before he could have ar- 
 rived at Rome, the emperor was 
 gone into Gaul a ; nor did he 
 return to Rome again before the 
 occasion,already considered, U. C . 
 741. The return at that time 
 took place either in the spring or 
 in the autumn ; for it took place 
 
 z Ant. Jud. xvi. i. 2. 
 
 when the Tiber was overflowing 
 its banks. The mention of Au- 
 gustus’ birthday, in the next 
 chapter, determines that it was 
 in the autumn, and probably in 
 the month of August ; which is 
 the very time when Herod, 
 having arrived in Italy about 
 midsummer, and found Augu- 
 stus at Aquileia, might be ex- 
 pected to accompany him to 
 Rome. 
 
 Maternis laudor lacrymis, ur- 
 bisque querelis, | Defensa , et 
 gemitu Caesaris ossa mea. | Ille 
 sua nata dignam vixisse soro- 
 rem | Increpat : et lacrymas vi- 
 dimus ire deo. Propertius, iv. 
 xi. 57 — Vidimus et fratrem sel- 
 lam geminasse curulem, | Con- 
 sule quo facto tempore rapta 
 soror. Ibid. 65. 
 
 This elegy was written to 
 commemorate the death of Cor- 
 nelia, the wife of L. ABmilius 
 Paulus, and daughter of Scipio 
 and Scribonia the first wife of 
 
 a Dio, liv. 19. 21. 24. 25. 26. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 501 
 
 It follows, then, that this journey coincided either 
 with Ol. 193. 1, or with some date later than that. Now 
 Ol. 193. 1. answers to U. C. 7 46 ; and this coincidence 
 is so critically in unison with the fact that, just before 
 the journey, Titius was in office, and just after the 
 return, Saturninus ; as to place it beyond a question 
 that both the journey and the return took place U. C. 
 746, the former about the midsummer, the latter about 
 the autumn. 
 
 VII. It was not possible for Herod to have gone to 
 Rome upon this occasion, in U.C. 745; not merely 
 because his journey, on that principle, never could 
 have coincided with an Olympic year, but because it 
 is clearly implied by the narrative that, as he simply 
 went to Rome, and returned thence, so he found Au- 
 gustus there. But from the beginning of U.C. 745, 
 to the beginning of U. C. 746, Augustus was not at 
 Rome *. There is an inscription in Gruter which 
 
 Augustus, and the mother of his 
 daughter Julia. It may be col- 
 lected from it, that this lady died 
 in the year of her brother’s 
 consulship, U. C. 738*; and that 
 Augustus was most probably at 
 Rome, when she died and was 
 buried. But her death might 
 happen in the early part of the 
 year : and still Augustus might 
 be gone to Gaul, before Herod 
 arrived at Rome. His absence, 
 on that occasion, was long e- 
 nough to produce Horace, iv. v. 
 1 : Divis orte bonis, optime Ro- 
 mulae | Custos gentis, abes jam 
 nimium diu : | Maturum redi- 
 tum pollicitus Patrum j Sancto 
 concilio redi. Ei qnce sequuntur. 
 See in particular, lines 21— -23, 
 and compare them with Dio, liv. 
 16, U. C. 736, when the laws 
 relating to marriage were past. 
 
 They would be greatly mis- 
 taken, who should refer this 
 ode to the occasion of Augustus’ 
 absence on his visit to the East, 
 between U.C. 732 and U.C. 
 735 : when, to commemorate 
 his return in the latter year, the 
 Augustalia were instituted, and 
 the Ara forti fortunes was dedi- 
 cated October 12. Vide Dio, 
 liv. 16. and the Maffcean and 
 Amiternine Calendars. 
 
 The consecration of the Tern- 
 plum Quirini by Augustus, which 
 Dio, liv. 19, places U. C. 738, is 
 dated in the Calendars June 28 : 
 which certainly implies that he 
 was still at Rome, so late as June 
 28. But even this might be too 
 early for Herod’s arrival, if he 
 left Judfca only in April or May. 
 
 * Dio, liv. 36: Augustus was 
 absent from Rome for part of 
 
 K k 3 
 
502 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 proves that he was absent on the first of January, 
 U. C. 745 b ; and on the fourteenth of September in 
 the same year, according to the kalendariuin Antia- 
 tinuin, Drusus Ceesar died, and that in Germany 0 . 
 Augustus was then in the vicinity of Ticinum d ; nor 
 did he return to Rome even upon the occasion of his 
 funeral ; but still kept without the city e . He did not 
 finally return, so as after that time to be found in Rome, 
 before the beginning of the next year, U. C. 746 f . And 
 though, soon after the commencement of that year, he 
 is said to have marched against the Gauls or Ger- 
 mans, yet he did not leave Italy ; and he had returned 
 to Rome again by the month of August % ; about which 
 time it is probable that Herod found him there. 
 
 VIII. It follows that the quarrel between Herod and 
 Syllaeus, which led in its consequences to a temporary 
 rupture with Augustus ; and which began in the ab- 
 sence of Herod ; could not have begun before U.C. 746, 
 nor been succeeded by open hostilities 11 before the be- 
 ginning of U. C. 747. And this agrees with the fact 
 that Syllaeus was gone to Rome before those hostilities 
 broke out ; which we may suppose would not be the 
 case, except in the spring of the year. It follows, 
 therefore, that the intermediate events between Ant. 
 xvi. ix. 2, and ix. 4 : (including the transmission of 
 the news of these hostilities to Rome ; the angry re- 
 script of Augustus ; the mission of a first embassy in 
 his own defence by Herod ; the death of Obodas ; and 
 
 U. C. 744 also. Cf. Suet. Au- or Aquileia, during the Panno- 
 gustus, 20. for general allusions nian or German Avars in ques- 
 to his visits to Ravenna, Milan, tion. 
 
 b Page lxi. No. 1. c Suet. Tiberius, 7. Claudius, 1. Pliny, H.N. vii. 20. 
 Ovid, Consolatio ad Liviam, 139. 141 — 144. 199. 293. 457. d Tacitus, Ann. 
 iii. 5. e Dio, lv. 2. 4. f Ibid. 5. Cf. Gruter, lxi. 2. g Dio, lv. 6. 
 
 h Ant. Jud. xvi. ix. 1. 2. 3. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2 . 503 
 
 the accession of iEneas, under the name of Aretas ; the 
 increasing perplexities of Herod ; the numerous affronts 
 which he was obliged to bear ; the aggressions of the 
 Trachonitse, and of the Arabians — presuming on the 
 encouragement of the Roman emperor ; the mission of 
 a second embassy, at the head of which was Nicolaus 
 of Damascus :) could not possibly all have come to pass 
 before the spring of U. C. 748. 
 
 At this point of time the Antiquities, confirmed by 
 the War h , resume the history and progress of the 
 - domestic intrigues, which led to the death of Herod’s 
 sons ; down to the time when he sent Olympus and 
 Volumnius first to Cilicia, and then on to Rome 1 . This 
 time coincides with Bell. i. xxvii.l : and from the course 
 of circumstances in both accounts, it seems impossible 
 that it could have fallen out before U. C. 748, medium , 
 at the soonest. At the time of their arrival in Rome, 
 Nicolaus (dispatched as we supposed in the spring of 
 U. C. 748.) had just succeeded in reconciling Augustus 
 to his master ; who had already sent back Syllaeus to 
 make him reparation k , and was hesitating only about 
 the disposal of Arabia, when these second messengers 
 arrived, with the renewed accusations of Herod against 
 his sons. To these accusations the emperor replied by 
 empowering, or rather advising him to try them be- 
 fore a special council, which he was to summon at 
 Berytus # 1 : upon which advice he acted accordingly. 
 
 But this reply could scarcely be received before the 
 end of U. C. 748 ; nor, consequently, however speedily 
 
 * Berytus is here alluded to as 741: and by Eusebius, Cliron. 
 a Roman colony. It was planted, Arm. Lat. (Pars ii a . 259) it is 
 
 as Strabo, xvi. 2. §. 19. 331, dated accordingly, U. C. 738 or 
 
 implies, between U. C. 738 and 739. 
 
 h Ant. xvi. x. 1. Bell. i. xxvi. 1. i Ant. xvi. x. 7. k Ant. xvi. x. 8. 9. 
 
 Cf. Bell. i. xxix. 3. 1 Ant. xvi. xi. 1. Bell. i. xxvii. 1. 
 
 K k 4 
 
504 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 Herod might act upon it, could the council be sum- 
 moned before U. C. 749 ineuntem. The result of the 
 council is well known. Herod took the young men, 
 now condemned, first from Berytus directly to Tyre ; 
 afterwards from Tyre to Caesarea ; and ultimately he 
 sent them to Sebaste™. While he was still at Tyre, 
 Nicolaus returned from Rome, and joined him there ; 
 which also is an argument that the council could not 
 have taken place before midsummer, U. C. 749. For 
 Nicolaus must have been left at Rome when Augustus 
 (about U. C. 748 medium ) dispatched his answer to 
 Herod : nor was there any reason why he should set 
 off before the spring of the following year. Moreover 
 it is implied by Josephus 11 that between the condemna- 
 tion and the death of the young men, there was some 
 interval of time greater or less. Consequently, if the 
 one took place about midsummer, U. C. 749 s the other 
 might take place about the autumn in the same year. 
 I shall mention, therefore, one more circumstance of 
 coincidence only, which is this ; that Syllseus, who 
 had been sent from Rome to Judaea, to make satisfac- 
 tion to Herod, about U. C. 748 medium , was again 
 sent to Rome 0 , along with Antipater, not merely as 
 having failed to do what he was required, but with 
 fresh complaints against him in addition to the old. 
 This second journey was U. C. 750 ineunte ; and 
 every thing considered, it seems scarcely possible that 
 it could have taken place sooner. 
 
 These two conclusions, one of which respects the 
 time of the surrendry of the hostages, and the other 
 that of the council of Berytus, however exactly they 
 may harmonize together, have been obtained from 
 independent data ; which renders their agreement 
 
 m Ant. xvi. xi. 3 — 6. Bell. i. xxvii. 3 — 6. 
 xvii. iii. 2. Bell. i. xxix. 3. 
 
 n Ant. xvi. xi. 7. 
 
 o Ant. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius, Luke ii. 2. 505 
 
 with each other so much the stronger an argument of 
 the truth of both. Before I prosecute the subject any 
 further, I consider it necessary to make some ob- 
 servations on the probable duration of the term of of- 
 fice, which the presidents of Syria, in the reign of Au- 
 gustus, or any other of his governors, may be rea- 
 sonably supposed to have enjoyed : especially when I 
 find such writers as Eckhel confidently assuming, quod 
 Augustei moris non fuit , magistratuum imperia proro- 
 garev . 
 
 There was a law in the time of the Republic, that 
 none who had served the office of consul or of praetor, 
 should be sent into any province, 7r po ire^rov erovs i — 
 which its promulgation U. C. 701 proves to have 
 meant, n rpiv av i revre err) $ie\6r} r — the sixth year inclu- 
 sive of the year of office*. This law was reinforced 
 by Augustus, U.C. 7%7, in the year of the partition of 
 the provinces 8 ; and there is reason to believe it was 
 ever after strictly observed by him. But it was a law 
 which related solely to the disposal of the popular pro- 
 vinces ; that is, to the authorities who were entitled 
 sortiri provincias : it had nothing to do with the dis- 
 
 * It is doubtful, indeed, whe- 
 ther this was an ancient law, or 
 one only recently adopted. Yet 
 from Dio, xl. 56, the former 
 construction may perhaps be put 
 upon it. Cicero was consul U.C. 
 691, yet he had a province as- 
 signed him only U.C. 703. The 
 same is true of Bibulus, consul 
 with Julius Caesar, U.C. 695, 
 yet made governor of Syria, U.C. 
 701. Still Caesar, his colleague, 
 was dispatched into his province, 
 Gaul, in the very next year after 
 
 p Doctrina Numm. Vett. iii. 489. 
 liii. 2. 14. 
 
 his consulate, U. C. 696. 
 
 In fact, the law, in this pre- 
 sent instance, seems to have been 
 a special one, passed by the in- 
 fluence of Pompey, U.C. 701, 
 and reinforced by him, in his 
 consulate, U.C. 702. And it was 
 directly in the face of this law 
 for any one to be sent into Sy- 
 ria, U. C. 702 or 703. Still it 
 might be grounded upon ancient 
 usage; and Augustus’ subsequent 
 adoption of the rule in question, 
 implies that it was. 
 
 q Dio, xl. 30. 
 
 *• lb. 46. 
 
 s Dio, 
 
506 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 posal of the imperial provinces, or with the governors 
 in the nomination of the emperor ; whom Dio styles 
 tcw? atperov?, in opposition to the former, whom he 
 calls tov$ K\t]pcoTov 9 . Under the Republic also, so late 
 as the year 703, when Cicero was proconsul of Cilicia 
 Aspera, it was still the practice that every governor, 
 (unless for special reasons the term of his office had been 
 prolonged,) at the end of a year should be relieved by 
 a successor 1 ; and this rule likewise was enforced by 
 Augustus, except in favour of such as could plead the 
 prescription of being fathers of families, or at least 
 married men : or for other and peculiar reasons 11 . It 
 is considered therefore an extraordinary circumstance, 
 attributable wholly to the precarious state of the times, 
 that in U. C. 759, many governors, among the sortiti , 
 were continued two years in office v . In the reign of 
 Tiberius, partly from the peculiar policy of that prince, 
 partly from the effects of his cruelty, by which the 
 number of persons of such a description as might have 
 kept up the succession, was greatly diminished, these 
 governments were prolonged to very unusual lengths w . 
 Nor was it uncommon in the time of Claudius for the 
 term of office to be two years x# . The edict of Julius 
 Caesar, U. C. 708 y, seems in fact to have determined 
 the practice of succeeding emperors in this respect. 
 
 With regard however to the governors appointed by 
 the emperor, whose proper title was that of his pro- 
 praetors, their continuance in office depended absolutely 
 upon his beneplctcitum , or their own good behaviour 2 . 
 
 * Capitolinus, Antoninus Pi- seven years, others nine years, 
 us, cap. 5. Antoninus is said to in office, 
 have kept bonos presides some 
 
 t Epistolse ad Familiares, iii. 5, &c. ad Atticum, vi. 1. 2, &c. u Dio, liii. 13. liv. 
 16. 30. v Dio, lv. 28. vide also Suet. Augustus, 23. " Tacitus, Ann. 
 
 i. 80. Suet. Tiberius, 41. Jos. Ant. Jud. xviii. vi. 5. Dio, lviii. 23. x Dio, 
 
 lx. 25. 33. y Dio, xliii. 25. z Dio, liii. 13. lv. 28. lviii. 23. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 5 07 
 
 Whether, then, any settled rule to determine this conti- 
 nuance was observed by Augustus, in the absence of po- 
 sitive assurances must be left to presumptive inference: 
 yet such an inference is not without data to rest upon. 
 
 In the speech, which Dio has put into the mouth of 
 Maecenas, upon occasion of the supposed conference be- 
 tween him, Agrippa, and Augustus, in the year after 
 the reduction of Egypt, U. C. 725; and which, as we 
 may reasonably conclude, exhibits the outline of Au- 
 gustus’ policy, or the standing rules of his government 
 in general ; we find among other particulars, this 
 piece of advice in relation to the governors of pro- 
 vinces a I /cal ap^ercocrav /ur/re eXarrov ercov Tpiwv, ei fJLrj 
 tl ? aSiKijcreie n, /arjre it X eiov irevre. And such, as we may 
 presume, was upon the whole his practice ; viz. to re- 
 tain his governors between three years and five years 
 in office : perhaps, the governors of the more impor- 
 tant provinces, or of an higher rank, four or five ; and 
 those of the minor provinces, or of inferior dignity, not 
 more than three. It was part of the same advice of 
 Maecenas, to send into every province one person of con- 
 sular, and two of praetorian, dignity, with separate but 
 concurrent jurisdictions ; and this advice at least was 
 so far adopted by Augustus, that into the imperial pro- 
 vinces, along with one magistrate of consular, another 
 was frequently dispatched of praetorian, rank ; one of 
 them more properly the civil magistrate, and called <Wn- 
 oSorr ]? ; the other more properly the military, and called 
 (TTparo7reSdpx^ h \ in one of which capacities, while Sa- 
 turninus was present in Syria as governor, Volumnius is 
 seen to have been present also c . And it is some such 
 officer, distinct from the president of Syria as such, 
 whom Seneca describes in the reign of Tiberius, by Pa- 
 cuvius : Qui Syriam suam usu fecit d . 
 
 a lii. 23. b Strabo, iii. 2. 444 — 446. xvii. 3. §. 25. 705 — 709. c Ant. Jud. 
 xvi. ix. 1. Bell. i. xxvii. 2. d Epistolae, xii. §. 8. Cf. Tacitus, Ann. ii. 79. 
 
508 
 
 Dissert at i on Fourteen tli . 
 
 The observance of the rule in question may be actu- 
 ally demonstrated in a number of instances : and there- 
 fore may be justly supposed of the rest. 
 
 I. Cornelius Gallus, the first procurator of Egypt, 
 was appointed U. C. 724, and recalled U. C. 728, after 
 a four years’ government 6 . 
 
 II. JElius Gallus, the next procurator, superseded 
 Gallus U. C. 728. and was superseded himself by Pe- 
 tronius U. C. 731 e ; which implies a three years’ go- 
 vernment. 
 
 III. Petronius came into office U. C. 731 ; and he 
 was still in office U. C. 734 : hence, though he might 
 have been recalled U. C. 734 itself, he would yet have 
 been three years at least in office. It is no objection, 
 therefore, that some of the coins of Augustus, which 
 commemorate the restitution of the standards, exhibit 
 the name of Publius Petronius Turpilianus, as one of 
 the triumviri monetales, or masters of the mint, pos- 
 terior to that event f . No such coins could have been 
 struck before U. C. 734, or perhaps before U. C. 735 : 
 and though Petronius the monetal triumvir, and Pe- 
 tronius the procurator of Egypt may have been the 
 same person ; still he might have been in Egypt U.C. 
 734, and master of the mint at Rome, either in that 
 year, or in the next, notwithstanding. 
 
 IV. The term of office of the first three procurators 
 of Judaea, Coponius, Ambivius, and Rufus, extended 
 from U.C. 760, to U.C. 768 : which implies an average 
 of three years each to two of them, and of two years 
 to the third ; most probably the last of the number £. 
 
 V. The coins of Silanus, the last president of Syria 
 appointed by Augustus; which are eight in number, and 
 chiefly consecutive; shew him to have been five years at 
 
 e Supra, 252. Dissertation v. 
 g Supra, 350. Dissertation ix. 
 
 f Eckhel, Doctrina Nuram. Vett. vi. 98. v. 270. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 509 
 
 least in office 11 . The three first of these coins bear the 
 dates 4 > 2 . 43. 44. and the head of Jupiter; the remainder 
 are coins of Tiberius. Referred to the era of the battle 
 of Actium, the earliest of them proves that he was al- 
 ready in office by the middle of U. C. 765, at least: 
 and the last of them, that he had not been removed pos- 
 sibly before the middle of 770, at the earliest ; which 
 conclusion is confirmed by Tacitus 1 . 
 
 VI. If Quirinius came into office in U. C. 760, and 
 Silanus was already in office by the middle of U.C. 765, 
 we may reasonably suppose there was no other go- 
 vernor between them : in which case Quirinius must 
 have enjoyed a four or five years’ government. 
 
 VII. Let it be supposed that Varus came into office 
 U. C. 750. Between this date and the appointment 
 of Quirinius, there would be an interval of ten years ; 
 which must be acknowledged to be greater than could be 
 occupied by the administration of any one president, 
 and yet possibly not to be greater than might be divided 
 between two.' Now it is a critical circumstance that, 
 among the coins of Antioch, there is one which, though 
 solitary, demonstrates that, between Varus and Qui- 
 rinius, there was some other president ; whose name 
 it exhibits as Volusius Saturninus k . Such at least is 
 the natural construction of the legend, Em. 2 ATGP- 
 NINOT. OTOAO. The date of this coin is EA or 
 35 : which, referred as before to the era of the battle 
 of Actium, proves him to have been in office before the 
 middle of U. C. 758 *. 
 
 * The name of Volusius Sa- of Saturninus is mentioned by 
 turninus is not an uncommon Josephus also 1 ; who might bear 
 one; for it occurs in the Con- the nomen of Volusius, and very 
 sular Fasti, both U. C. 809 and possibly be at Rome, when his 
 U. C. 840 and 845. A brother brother Sentius was still in Sy- 
 
 h Eckhel, Doctrina Numra. Vett. iii. 276. i Annales, ii. 43. k Eckhel, 
 Doctrina Numra. Vett. iii. 275. 1 Ant. Jud. xvii. i. 1. 
 
510 
 
 Dissertation Fourteen th . 
 
 VIII. If Marcus Agrippa, as often as he was sent 
 into the East, is to be reckoned among the ordinary 
 governors of Syria ; then, as he did not return from the 
 East, on the last occasion, before U. C. 7 41 exeuntem, 
 the first year of Titius, if Titius succeeded to him in 
 the government of Syria in particular, would begin 
 with U. C. 742 ; from which time to that of the deli- 
 very of the hostages, there would still be an interval of 
 four years. 
 
 IX. Between the first return of Agrippa in U. C. 
 733, and his second mission in U. C. 738, there was 
 an interval of four or five years ; which must have 
 been occupied by some president or other, and not by 
 Agrippa in person. Now there is proof from Appian^ 
 that Cicero the younger ; (whom he makes consul 
 suffect at the time of the battle of Actium, consequent- 
 ly about August or September, U. C. 723, but Dio at 
 the time of the capture of Alexandria, consequently 
 about the month of August, U. C. 724 # r ;) was, some- 
 
 ria. The death of one Lucius 
 Volusius, who had sometime be- 
 fore been consul, is mentioned 
 by Tacitus, U.C. 773 m ; and that 
 of another, at the age of ninety- 
 three, in U.C. 809 n . This per- 
 son must consequently have been 
 born U.C. 716; and both his 
 death and his great age are no- 
 ticed by Pliny 0 . It is probable 
 that he was the president of Syria 
 in question. The most remarkable 
 circumstance however is this ; 
 that as Quinctilius Varus and 
 L. Volusius Saturninus appear 
 to have succeeded each other in 
 the government of Syria, so do 
 they in another instance before. 
 
 The coins of Achulla Byzacene, 
 in Africa, exhibit them both in 
 sequence after U. C. 74 iP. 
 
 * The Amiternine and Co- 
 pranican Calendars shew the con- 
 sulship of Augustus and Titius 
 at the time of the battle of 
 Actium. Pliny also, H. N. xxii. 
 6, confirms Dio : and Plutarch, 
 Vita Ciceronis, 49. 
 
 Seneca, de Beneficiis, iv. 30, 
 §. 1, alludes to this consulship in 
 general terms : and from M. 
 Ann. Seneca, Suasoriarum vii a . 
 page 5 7 . it appears that Cicero the 
 younger was likewise sometime 
 governor of Asia. 
 
 m Annales, iii. 30. n Ibid. xiii. 30. o H. N. vii. 12. 49. xi. 90. Cf. 
 Columella De Re Rustica, i. 7. P Eckhel, Doctrina Numm. Vett. iv. 133. 
 
 q De Beilis Civ. iv. 51. li. 19 .Cf. Orosius, vi. 19. Macrobius, Saturnalia, i. 12. 
 
0?t the census of Cyrenius, Luke ii. 2. 
 
 511 
 
 time or other after this consulate, appointed by Au- 
 gustus to the government of Syria. How appositely 
 this appointment would come in to fill up the vacuum 
 between U. C. 733 and U. C. 738, I need not observe. 
 I will remark only that as Augustus himself was in 
 Antioch for part of U. C. 734, we cannot suppose that 
 any regular president would be wanted, before the 
 middle of this year at the earliest. If Cicero was then 
 appointed ; from that time, until he was superseded 
 by Agrippa, he would continue four years in office. 
 
 On the principle of the general induction, which 
 might be derived from the particular instances here col- 
 lected, a four years’ term of government would be 
 nothing extraordinary, in the case of any of the pre- 
 sidents of Syria. I have shewn that Saturninus suc- 
 ceeded to Titius in U. C. 746; and Varus to Satur- 
 ninus in U. C. 750; so that the rule in these cases 
 strictly held good. It happens, however, that certain 
 of the coins of Antioch, which I have not yet men- 
 tioned, appear to militate against this conclusion. 
 These are the three coins attributed to Varus, and bear- 
 ing date in the consecutive years, EK. ^K. ZK. 25. 
 26 . 27 • which learned men, from the time .of cardinal 
 Norisius, who first examined them, are almost unani- 
 mous in referring to the Antiochean era, U. C. 723 s . 
 The difficulties, under which the reception of this 
 supposition would immediately place us, must be 
 intuitively obvious ; yet notwithstanding this, and at 
 the risk of appearing unnecessarily prolix and tedious, 
 such is the general validity of the argument deducible 
 from coins, and such the importance which is attached 
 to these three coins in particular, that I shall perhaps 
 be excused, if I state those difficulties in all their 
 force. 
 
 S Eekliel, Doctrina Numm. Vett. iii. 275. 
 
512 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 First, then, the evidence of these coins, however 
 justly they may be ascribed to Varus, cannot shake 
 the conclusion that Titius did not go out of office, nor, 
 consequently, Saturninus come into it, before the 
 middle of U. C. 746, at the earliest. If, therefore, the 
 first of the series, with which only we are chiefly con- 
 cerned, is both a coin of Varus, and to be referred to 
 the Actian era of U. C. 723 ; the coin must have been 
 struck, and Varus must consequently have been in 
 office, between the autumn of U. C. 747, and the au- 
 tumn of U. C. 748. Though the coin then should 
 have been struck in the first year of his government ; 
 still his government must have begun either in the 
 last half of U. C. 747, or in the first half of U. C. 748. 
 In the one case Saturninus could have been only one 
 year in office previously, and in the other only two 
 years ; both which suppositions are highly improbable ; 
 but especially the former. The term of one year’s go- 
 vernment, and even of two, we have seen, was the regu- 
 lar period allotted to the proconsuls themselves ; and 
 much more to the imperial legates. Besides which, 
 peculiar privileges were accorded to married men, and 
 especially .to fathers of families ; and among all the 
 presidents of Syria in the reign of Augustus, there is 
 none who had a greater claim to indulgence on this 
 score, than C. Sentius Saturninus. He was not onlv a 
 married man, but entitled to the jus trium liberorum ; 
 his three legati, who attended upon him in virtue of 
 his consular rank, being his three sons. No president 
 of Syria was more worthy of the office ; nor any so 
 little likely to misconduct himself in it, so as to pro- 
 duce his recall prematurely. 
 
 Again, let Varus have come into office when he may, 
 the evidence of his coins cannot shake the conclusion 
 that Saturninus was still president of Syria, at the time 
 
On the census of Cy renin s, Luke ii. 2 . 
 
 513 
 
 of the council of Berytus ; and let this council have 
 been held in what year it may, enough has been 
 done to prove that it must have taken place between 
 the spring and the midsummer of that year, at the 
 earliest. It follows, then, that if Saturninus, as go- 
 vernor of Syria, presided at the council, the council 
 was held either between the spring and the midsum- 
 mer of U. C. 747, or the spring and the midsummer of 
 U.C. 748. Now at the first of these periods, the young- 
 est child of Aristobulus (whom we have shewn to have 
 been two years old at the time of her father’s death) 
 was perhaps unborn ; and Herod, who must have been 
 still on his way to Rome so late as the third or fourth 
 week in July, if he attended the Olympic solem- 
 nity, U. C. 746, however speedily he might have come 
 back, could not have been six months returned to Ju- 
 daea*. At the second of the same periods, Varus, who 
 must have come into office before the autumn of U. C. 
 748, at the latest, might already have superseded Sa- 
 turninus ; and, at least, would necessarily do so imme- 
 diately after the council ; whereas it is certain from 
 Josephus that Saturninus was still in office not only 
 at the time of the council, but for some interval, more 
 or less considerable, after it. In short, if there was 
 any truth in the reasonings before instituted, or any 
 grounds for the data on which they were founded ; the 
 absurdity of placing the time of an event, which could 
 
 * It may be proved from an 
 eclipse of the moon, which is 
 calculated in Pingre’s table for 
 May 24.6. 15. in the morning, 
 B. C. 8, or U. C. 746, that the 
 first mean full moon after June 
 24, the supposed date of the 
 summer solstice, at which time 
 the Olympiads began to be ce- 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 lebrated ; did not fall in that 
 year before July 22 : that is, 
 almost as late as it could. The 
 full moon before that fell on 
 June 22 ; and that would have 
 been too soon. It must have 
 been at the time of the next full 
 moon, therefore, that Herod was 
 passing through Greece. 
 
 I, 1 
 
514 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 not have occurred before U. C. 749, at the earliest, in 
 U. C. 748 or U. C. 747, must be obvious without any 
 proof. 
 
 Between the death of Alexander and of Aristobulus, 
 and the departure of Anti pater to Rome, Josephus 
 relates many intermediate events ; as first, the steps 
 which were taken by Antipater to palliate the odium 
 of their death, in the presents he is said to have made 
 to Saturninus, or to those in the train of Saturninus 
 in Syria, as well as to his friends and connections at 
 Rome t . Secondly, the disposal of the children of Ari- 
 stobulus ; and about the same time the marriage of 
 Herod’s sister Salome with Alexas ; previous to which 
 (as her consent to this marriage was chiefly due to the 
 advice she received from Julia or Li via, the consort 
 of Augustus) it was necessary that a communication 
 should be made to and received from Rome u . Third- 
 ly, the settlement by Herod of Zamaris the Baby- 
 lonian, with his followers, in Batanaea ; which mea- 
 sure, being intended as a means of protection against 
 the Trachonitae, arose out of the war with that people, 
 recorded before, though it is placed by Josephus here ; 
 and could not consequently have been prior to Herod’s 
 reconciliation with Augustus v . Before this settlement, 
 Zamaris had been living in a quarter near Antioch, 
 called Valatlia ; which Saturninus is said to have as- 
 signed him : so that at the time of this settlement 
 Saturninus was still in office. Fourthly, the begin- 
 ning and the course of the intrigues between Anti- 
 pater and Pheroras, which included the affair of the 
 Pharisees, and determined Antipater, for the better 
 execution of his purposes, to retire for a while to 
 
 t Ant. xvii. i. i. Bell. i. xxviii. i. u Ant. xvii. i. T, 2. Bell. i. xxviii. 
 
 2 — C. v Ant. xvii. ii. i — 3. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 515 
 
 Rome w . Fifthly, his writing accordingly to his friends 
 at Rome ; and after waiting to receive their answer, 
 his departure thither x . 
 
 Now at the time of this departure, Syllaeus the Ara- 
 bian also was going to Rome?; and the departure of 
 both must have been coincident, for they went to op- 
 pose each other with regard to Herod’s particular suit 
 against Syllaeus ; and they were certainly both at 
 Rome together. It is clearly implied by the narra- 
 tive that Syllaeus, in going to Rome, acted of his own 
 accord ; whence it is manifest that nothing as yet had 
 come to light, which would seriously have endangered 
 his life. A plot of his, however, for assassinating Herod, 
 did sometime come to light; concerning which so much 
 is related, that the parties in it, viz. Corinthus one of 
 the king’s body guard, and two Arabians, one of them a 
 personal friend of Syllaeus, having been arrested upon 
 suspicion and tried before Saturninus, were by him 
 ordered away to Rome. This is sufficient to prove 
 that the plot came to light subsequently to the depar- 
 ture of Syllaeus ; and that he was not himself on the 
 spot Saturninus possessed the power to try even 
 him upon such a charge as this ; and if the principal 
 in the conspiracy had not been at Rome, he would not 
 have sent the accomplices thither. 
 
 The sequel of the history of Syllaeus confirms this 
 
 * Besides what is here urged, 
 we are told in the War that 
 Fabatus, the fiscal procurator 
 of Augustus, who betrayed this 
 plot to Herod, was accused to 
 Augustus by Syllaeus ; and in 
 revenge made known his con- 
 spiracy to Herod. This implies 
 that the information, relating to 
 
 w Ant. xvii. ii. 4. iii. 1. Bell. i. xxix. 
 xxix. 2. y Ant. xvi. iii. 2. Bell. 
 
 it, was given after Syllaeus was 
 gone to Rome : and it serves to 
 discredit the statement in the 
 Antiquities, xvii. iii. 2, that Syl- 
 laeus was accused to Augustus of 
 the murder of his servant, Fa- 
 batus : which, I think, is decid- 
 edly an oversight of Josephus 
 in the Antiquities. 
 
 1, 2. x Ant. xvii. iii. 2 . Bell. i. 
 
 i. xxix. 5. 
 
 L 1 2 
 
516 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 conclusion, and proves that he had been some time 
 gone, before the conspiracy was found out. We do 
 not know from Josephus that Augustus ever put him 
 to death ; but we do know that Antipater carried his 
 suit against hiin> : we may infer, then, that at this 
 point of time, which was just before the return of Anti- 
 pater back from Rome, the news of the additional 
 offence on the part of Syllaeus had not yet been re- 
 ceived in the city. We learn from Strabo that Au- 
 gustus did sometime actually put him to death ; a 
 resolution, to which the discovery of his plot against 
 the life of Herod would doubtless contribute, as much 
 as any thing. 
 
 It would seem, then, that Saturninus was still in 
 office not merely when Antipater set out to Rome, but 
 for one or two months at least afterwards. This con- 
 clusion establishes the fact that he was president of 
 Syria, not only in U. C. 749, at the time of the coun- 
 cil of Berytus, but at the beginning of U. C. 750 : nor 
 does it at all prevent but that he might still be super- 
 seded by Varus before the middle of the same year 
 
 * I asserted elsewhere z that 
 the seven months’ interval, be- 
 tween the return of Antipater 
 and the first suspicions of his 
 treachery, though dated appa- 
 rently from the death of Phe- 
 roras, expressed the whole in- 
 terval of his absence. And, in- 
 deed, as the train of inquiries, 
 which ultimately terminated in 
 the discovery of his guilt, began 
 to be instituted immediately 
 upon his uncle’s death ; and as 
 this death was the effect of a 
 very short illness, (it might al- 
 
 most be supposed of only two 
 or three days’ duration 3 ;) if that 
 death ensued soon after the de- 
 parture, the two intervals might 
 coincide. The assertion however 
 may be established by various 
 presumptive proofs. 
 
 I. Antipater had been dis- 
 patched to Rome on a special 
 mission, the object of which 
 might be speedily accomplish- 
 ed ; and consequently which 
 would not detain him long b . 
 
 II. From the language of 
 Josephus 0 , it might almost be 
 
 y Ant. xvii. iv. 3. v. 1. Bell. i. xxxi. 2 . z Page 474, 475. supra. a Ant. 
 xvii. iii. 3. iv. 1. Bell. i. xxix. 4. xxx. 1. Ant. xvii. iii. 2. iv. 3. Belt. i. 
 
 xxix. 3. xxxi. 2. xxxii. 3. c Ant. xvii. iii. 3. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2 . 
 
 517 
 
 What then shall we say to the evidence of the coins 
 in question ? Perhaps it may not be impossible to ac- 
 
 gathered that Pheroras fell sick 
 and died, even before his ne- 
 phew was supposed to have ar- 
 rived at Rome. 
 
 III. Before his departure An- 
 tipater had concerted with Phe- 
 roras the scheme of his father’s 
 death ; and, ignorant as yet of 
 his decease, he sent Bathyllus 
 his own freedman from Rome 
 with fresh poison ; to be ready 
 for use should the first have 
 failed of its effect. The arrival 
 of Bathyllus took place in the 
 midst of the inquiries produced 
 by the death of Pheroras d ; and 
 completed the discovery of his 
 master’s treason. 
 
 IV. Only one letter, laying 
 the foundation of future ac- 
 cusations against his brothers 
 Archelaus and Philip, who were 
 also at Rome ; was written by 
 his subornation from thence e . 
 This letter arrived at the same 
 time with Bathyllus. 
 
 V. Soon after each of these 
 things, he wrote to his father 
 himself, to say he was about to 
 return ; still ignorant, as it is 
 evident, of the death of Phero- 
 ras: for he wrote to his father 
 from Rome, but he heard of 
 that death at Tarentum f . 
 
 VI. This letter was followed 
 so speedily by his departure, 
 that though Herod answered it 
 without delay, he fell in with 
 the answer a little before he ar- 
 rived at Celenderis in Cilicia?; 
 where he was only within a 
 week’s journey of Judaea. 
 
 VII. The discovery of his 
 
 treason, even before the arrival 
 of Bathyllus, had been followed 
 by the divorce of his mother 
 Doris : yet he heard of that di- 
 vorce first in Cilicia. He heard, 
 in like manner, of the death of 
 Pheroras merely at Tarentum ; 
 when, it is evident, he was upon 
 his return. All these circum- 
 stances concur to prove that he 
 could not have been many months 
 absent from home. If he set out 
 at the beginning of March, U.C. 
 750, and was about six weeks 
 in arriving at Rome, and about 
 as many more in returning ; and 
 had been three or four months 
 employed in the transaction of 
 his business there ; he would be 
 about seven months absent in 
 all. Nor are there any of the 
 intermediate particulars which, 
 on this principle, do not admit 
 of being arranged accordingly. 
 There is one thing only to be ob- 
 served ; viz. that all communi- 
 cation between Antipater and 
 Judaea, upon the first excite- 
 ment of suspicion against him, 
 having been by the vigilance of 
 Herod purposely cut off ; the 
 death of Pheroras, however ear- 
 ly it might have happened, would 
 be for some time kept from his 
 knowledge. It would be very 
 possible, then, that this death 
 might have happened so early as 
 March or April, and yet Anti- 
 pater have known nothing of it 
 before July or August, U. C. 750. 
 
 The exact period of his re- 
 turn may be left to conjecture. 
 I have shewn, however, that it 
 
 d Ant. xvii. iv. 3. Bell. i. xxxi. 1. e Ibid, 
 xxxi. 2, 3. S Ant. xvii. v. 1. Bell. i. xxxi. 3. 
 
 L 13 
 
 f Ant. xvii. v. r. Bell. i. 
 
518 
 
 Dissert a turn Four teen t/i . 
 
 count for it, without exposing ourselves to the difficul- 
 ties above mentioned. 
 
 After the jEra Seleucidarum, which bore date from 
 
 must have been prior to the 
 feast of Tabernacles, or at least 
 to the day of Atonement h ; 
 when Matthias, who had super- 
 seded Simon the son of Boe- 
 thus, about the time of the 
 arrival of Batliyllus, was cer- 
 tainly still in office. That feast 
 of Tabernacles began October 5 : 
 and the day of Atonement pre- 
 viously fell upon September 30 : 
 and this is the time about which, 
 if Antipater returned at all, 
 U. C. 750, we might expect his 
 return. There is no reason to 
 suppose that, under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances, he would delay his 
 arrival in Judaea beyond the au- 
 tumnal equinox, September 24 ; 
 after which the sea was consi- 
 dered to be shut. If we assume, 
 then, that he did not return 
 later than the second or third 
 week in September, we may not 
 be far from the truth. At the 
 time of the return, Varus was 
 certainly in office : and though 
 he had superseded Saturninus 
 in the course of that very sum- 
 mer only, yet by the month of 
 September this would be the 
 case. 
 
 I shall therefore conclude these 
 details with one more observa- 
 tion. The account of the pro- 
 ceedings against Antipater, as 
 thus given by Josephus, may ap- 
 pear to be inconsistent with St. 
 Matthew’s narrative of the visit 
 of the Magi, and of its conse- 
 quences: but it is critically in 
 unison with it. For this visit, 
 as I shall shew elsewhere, hap- 
 
 pened in the fourth or fifth 
 month from the nativity ; that 
 is, in July or August, U. C. 750: 
 which is just after the point of 
 time when, the discovery of An- 
 tipater’s guilt being fully de- 
 veloped, the course of the in- 
 quiry had necessarily been sus- 
 pended in expectation of his re- 
 turn. It is a singular fact, how- 
 ever, that the well-known pas- 
 sage of Macrobius \ which so 
 far accords both with the Gos- 
 pel narrative and the history of 
 Herod, as manifestly to have 
 been founded in fact, makes 
 Augustus hear of the death of 
 the infants, and of the death of 
 Herod’s son, (who, on this prin- 
 ciple, must have been Antipa- 
 ter,) at once : and if both the 
 facts were really true, each hap- 
 pened within the last six or 
 seven months of Herod’s reign ; 
 and so near to one another, that 
 the same report might carry to 
 Rome the tidings of both. If 
 however the birth of our Sa- 
 viour is to be placed U. C. 749, 
 and in the spring of the year, as 
 before ; then the visit of the 
 Magi, four or five months after- 
 wards, would probably have co- 
 incided with the very time of 
 the council of Berytus ; and that 
 would involve us in no small 
 perplexity : for at the time of 
 this council, it would be certain 
 that Herod never could have 
 been found at Jerusalem. He 
 would necessarily have been in 
 Berytus, in Tyre, or in Cae- 
 sarea. 
 
 h Supra, page 310 and 314. Dissertation vi. 
 
 i Saturnalia, ii. 4. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius, Luke ii. 2. 
 
 519 
 
 the middle of U. C. 442, B.C. 312, had been laid aside 
 by the city of Antioch, the Mra Caesarea was adopted 
 in its stead. This era, as it is indisputably proved by 
 a coin of Pomponius Flaccus, struck in the reign of 
 Tiberius ; and by two coins of Mucian, one belonging 
 to the reign of Galba, and the other to the reign of 
 Otho k ; bears date from the middle of U.C. 705. These 
 two epochs appear to have been at different times the 
 only true and proper eras of the coins of Antioch ; but 
 besides these, and during the reign of Augustus in 
 particular, the iEra Actiaca, which bears date from the 
 middle of U. C. 723, was unquestionably in use 1 . 
 Many of the coins of Antioch, belonging to the reign 
 of Augustus, are characterised by the inscription erea 
 vLKrj<s 9 which must demonstrate of itself to what epoch 
 they were supposed to be referred : and even those, 
 which do not exhibit any such decisive criterion of 
 their own reference, are yet, on the principle of ana- 
 logy, and for other reasons, distinctly to be referred 
 to the same point of time ; and not to U.C. 724. There 
 is no coin which proves this more satisfactorily than 
 the coin which is characterised by the double, and 
 consequently synchronous date, < 7 A and AN, 36 and 
 54 : the larger number on which must be referred 
 either to the M ra Caesarea, U. C. 705, or to the date 
 of the battle of Pharsalia, U. C. 706 ; and there- 
 fore the smaller either to the date of the battle of Ac- 
 tium, U. C. 723, or to the date of the reduction of 
 Egypt, U. C. 724. The date of the battle of Pharsalia 
 would be quite unexampled in any other instance ; and 
 consequently so would the date of the reduction of 
 Egypt * 
 
 * The mention of the battle the following observations on its 
 of Pharsalia leads me to make date ; the length of which, I 
 
 k Eckhel, Doctrina Numm. Vett. iii. 279. 282. vi. 299. 307. 1 lb. iii. 272 275. 
 
 L 1 4 
 
520 
 
 Dissertation Fourteen th . 
 
 But the Actian era began and expired with the reign 
 of Augustus ; it is not to be found, at least, on any of 
 
 trust, the reader will be dis- 
 posed to excuse, both on other 
 accounts, and for the sake of 
 the subject itself. For there is 
 not perhaps in all ancient his- 
 tory a point, upon which his- 
 torical testimony is apparently 
 more at variance. The diffi- 
 culties connected with the ques- 
 tion of this date, as well as what 
 I consider the only practicable 
 method of solving them, I shall 
 take the liberty to specify in 
 their order ; but as concisely as 
 possible. 
 
 I. Pompey was assassinated in 
 Egypt, after the battle of Phar- 
 salia, either on the day before, 
 or on the day after, or upon his 
 birthday. Velleius Pat. ii. 53. 
 Dio, xlii. 5. Plutarch, Conviv. 
 Quacst. viii. 1. Operum viii. 863. 
 Pompeius, 79 : Camillus 19. Ap- 
 pian, B. C. ii. 86. 
 
 II. The birthday of Pompey 
 was pridie kalendas Octobris, 
 (September 30 in the Julian 
 year; September 29 in that of 
 Numa :) U. C. 648. Pliny, H. N. 
 xxxvii. 6. Cf. vii. 27. Velleius 
 Pat. ii. 53. 
 
 III. Between the battle of 
 Pharsalia and the death of Pom- 
 pey, which took place on the 
 day of his arrival at Pelusium 
 in Egypt, only three days are 
 actually specified, and not many 
 more are left to implication. 
 Caesar, De Bell. Civ. iii. 96-104. 
 Dio, xlii. 2, 3. Appian, B. C. ii. 
 83-86. 88, 89. Plutarch, Pom- 
 peius, 73-77. Velleius Pat. ii. 53. 
 
 IV. It follows then that Pom- 
 pey arrived and perished, in 
 Egypt, within about ten days of 
 the battle of Pharsalia ; that is, 
 if he arrived and perished pridie 
 
 kal. Octobris, the battle had 
 taken place about September 20 
 previously. 
 
 V. The same conclusion fol- 
 lows from the motions of Cae- 
 sar ; who set out to the Hel- 
 lespont on the third day after 
 the battle, and arrived in Egypt 
 on the third day after he set 
 sail from the Hellespont, or on 
 the third day after the death of 
 Pompey. Appian, De Bello Civ. 
 ii. 88, 89. Florus, Epitome, cxii. 
 Dio, xlii. 6, 7. Lucan, Pharsalia, 
 ix. 1004. 
 
 It agrees also with the testi- 
 mony of the poet Lucan, who 
 places the arrival of Pompey at 
 the autumnal equinox : Tempus 
 erat, quo Libra pares examinat 
 boras, | Non uno plus sequa die. 
 Pharsalia, viii. 467 : that is, Sep- 
 tember 24. viii. kal. Oct. Pliny, 
 H. N. xviii. 74. These testi- 
 monies, I think, are sufficient to 
 establish the fact that the date 
 of the battle of Pharsalia, at 
 least nominally , was either Sep- 
 tember 20, U. C. 706, or not 
 much before that day. 
 
 By two ancient Kalendaria, 
 however, the Amiterninum, and 
 the Antiatinum, the date of the 
 battle of Pharsalia is placed v. 
 
 idus Sextiles that is, on the 
 
 ninth of August in the same 
 year. Eckhel, Doctrina Numm. 
 Vett. iv. 400. Cf. Fasti Verrii 
 Flacci. 
 
 What then shall we say to 
 these different dates? — There 
 is but one mode of reconciling 
 them together, and even that is 
 not without its objections : the 
 ninth of August is the rectified, 
 and consequently the true date ; 
 but the twentieth of September, 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 521 
 
 the coins of Antioch, later than the time of Silanus, 
 the last of his presidents of Syria. The question then 
 
 or about that, is still the nomi- 
 nal. 
 
 The year, U. C. 708, when 
 Caesar rectified the Calendar, 
 was an ordinary intercalary year ; 
 and therefore so was the year of 
 the battle of Pharsalia, U. C. 
 706. Suet. Julius Caesar, 40 — The 
 Calendar was rectified, accord- 
 ing to Dio, by intercalating six- 
 ty-seven days in all, and not 
 more : which must consequently 
 include the ordinary intercalated 
 month ; xliii. 26 — This ordinary 
 intercalary month, called Mer- 
 kedonius, was a month of twen- 
 ty-two or twenty-three days, 
 and usually inserted after the 
 vii. kal. of March, February 
 23. In the year 706, before the 
 month of August or September, 
 this month had been already in- 
 tercalated. Censorinus. De Die 
 Natali, xx. Macrobius, Sat. i . x 3 . 
 
 Now the difference between 
 sixty-seven and twenty-two is 
 forty-five : whence, in the year 
 U. C. 706, after an intercalation 
 of twenty-two days already made, 
 the difference between the nomi- 
 nal and the true date of the 
 battle of Pharsalia, fought some- 
 time in the summer, ought to 
 be just forty-five days. Let us 
 suppose that August the ninth 
 was the true date. From that 
 to the twentieth of September, 
 there are forty-three days, and 
 from that to the twenty-second, 
 there are forty-five, inclusive of 
 the two extremes. I have shewn 
 that the battle of Pharsalia 
 could scarcely have been fought 
 nominally before the one, and 
 might have been fought nomi- 
 nally on the other ; and the co- 
 
 incidence thus established may 
 lead to the inference that it was 
 actually fought on the latter. If 
 so, the true date of this cele- 
 brated battle may be August 9 ; 
 but its nominal date must be 
 September 22, U. C. 706. 
 
 Yet even this explanation is 
 not without its difficulties : for 
 Censorinus, loco citato, and Ma- 
 crobius, i, 14, assert one of them 
 that Caesar intercalated sixty-se- 
 ven days, between November and 
 December, after having before 
 intercalated twenty-three in the 
 usual place in February ; the 
 other, that the year of confusion 
 contained four hundred and for- 
 ty-three days in all ; which im- 
 plies the same thing. On this 
 principle, the difference between 
 the true date and the nominal 
 date of the battle of Pharsalia, 
 even after the usual intercala- 
 tion, would be sixty-seven days, 
 and not forty-five ; and the bat- 
 tle, instead of being fought on 
 the ninth of August, must have 
 been fought on the eighteenth 
 of July. Nor does it appear to 
 me that there are any means left 
 of escaping this further diffi- 
 culty, except by giving up the 
 authority of one of the two, 
 either Censorinus or the Fasti. 
 I do not know that Censorinus 
 is confirmed in his statement by 
 any other authority as ancient 
 as himself ; and Dio, who in 
 point of antiquity is as good an 
 authority as Censorinus, whose 
 age was the consulate of Ul- 
 pius and Pontianus, U. C. 991, 
 (cap. xxi.) seems to have had 
 some such statement as his ex- 
 pressly in view, when he tells 
 
522 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 still remains, at what period in his reign was this era 
 adopted ? There is no proof that it was in being for 
 
 us that Caesar intercalated only 
 sixty-seven days ; though some 
 persons thought he intercalated 
 more : for surely the intercala- 
 tion of twenty-two or twenty- 
 three days, distinct from these, 
 which must do as much in pro- 
 portion to the rectification of 
 the year, as the intercalation of 
 sixty-seven, could not be un- 
 known to Dio ; or, if he was 
 aware of it, passed over by him 
 without notice. 
 
 In the Polyhistor of Julius 
 Solinus, there is a very singu- 
 lar assertion on this point. After 
 stating that the Roman year, as 
 settled by Numa, began to con- 
 tain three hundred and fifty-five 
 days ; and then the confusion 
 produced in the course of time 
 by the irregularity of the inter- 
 calations ; he adds, Itaque Caesar 
 universam lianc inconstantiam, 
 incisa temporum turbatione, com- 
 posuit ; et ut statum certum 
 praeteritus error acciperet, dies 
 xxi. et quadrantem simul in- 
 tercalavit : quo pacto regradati 
 menses, de cetero statuta ordi- 
 nis sui tempora detinerent. ille 
 ergo annus solus trecentos 
 xliiii. dies habuit. Polyhistor, 
 i. §. 45. If there is any error 
 here in the text, there is a 
 double error : one at dies xxi. 
 et quadrantem, instead of dies 
 lxxxix. et quadrantem ; and 
 the other at trecentos xliiii. 
 instead of quadringentos xliiii: 
 and this double error is so im- 
 probable, especially in the ab- 
 sence of authority from manu- 
 scripts for correcting these num- 
 bers ; that we are justified in 
 supposing rather that there is 
 
 no error, but that the text stands 
 as the author revised it himself. 
 In this case, he must have con- 
 ceived that Csesar reformed the 
 year, by taking away days, not 
 by adding to them. 
 
 But not to dwell upon the 
 authority of the Polyhistor, or 
 the correctness of its readings ; 
 let me observe that the number 
 of days, which Caesar interca- 
 lated in what is called the year 
 of confusion, could not be 
 greater than the existing dif- 
 ference at that time, between a 
 given date in the civil year and 
 the corresponding date in the 
 solar or tropical year. Let us 
 assume the date of the vernal 
 equinox in each. This date, 
 when fixed by Caesar, in the 
 rectified year, was a. d. vm. 
 kal. Aprilis, March 25. This 
 date then must have been sup- 
 posed the true date of the 
 vernal equinox in the year of 
 confusion. In the year U. C. 
 705, however, three years before 
 that, (because when Marcellus 
 and Lentulus were consuls, and 
 Julius Caesar was employed a- 
 gainst Petreius and Afranius in 
 Spain, Dio, xli. 1 — 39. Caesar, 
 De Bello Civ. i. 5 — 41 :) we have 
 the implicit testimony of Cicero 
 ad Atticum, x. 17, 18, that the 
 date of the same equinox was not 
 earlier than prid.idus,scil. Maias, 
 nor later than xvn. kal. Jun. 
 Prid. idus Maias answers to May 
 14: and if Cicero means any 
 particular day by the equinox 
 as such, the context intimates 
 that he means this. 
 
 It would seem, then, that U. C. 
 705, the date of the vernal equi- 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 523 
 
 the first eleven years after the battle of Actimn. There 
 is no coin of Antioch extant and bearing such a date 
 
 nox was May 14; and U. C. 
 709, in the first Julian year as 
 such, it was March 25. Between 
 March 25 exclusive, and May 
 14 inclusive, the difference a- 
 mounts at the utmost to fifty 
 days only ; and consequently the 
 difference between the solar and 
 the civil year, if estimated by 
 the dates of the same cardinal 
 point in either, the vernal equi- 
 nox, respectively, amounted to 
 fifty days only. In this case, 
 what more would be necessary, 
 U. C. 705, in order to restore 
 the balance between them, than 
 an intercalation of fifty days, in 
 its proper place ? But even this 
 difference is probably too great. 
 
 If the vernal equinox, at the 
 time of the correction of the 
 calendar, U. C. 708, was rightly 
 fixed to March 25 ; then, on the 
 principle of the anticipation of 
 the equinoxes, though estimated 
 only at eleven minutes, three 
 seconds annually, the date of 
 the vernal equinox, U. C. 39, in 
 the first year of Numa Pom- 
 pilius, six hundred and sixty- 
 nine years before U. C. 708, 
 must have fallen five days, four 
 hours, and twelve minutes, ear- 
 lier than the corresponding time 
 U. C. 708. If this time then, 
 U. C. 708, was rightly fixed to 
 March 25, the same time, U. C. 
 39, must have been March 30. 
 
 Now the true measure of the 
 difference between the solar and 
 the civil year, at the time of the 
 reformation of the calendar, is 
 the amount of the difference be- 
 tween any given date in that 
 year in the time of Numa Pom- 
 pilius, before the year had yet 
 
 become disordered, and the cor- 
 responding date in the same 
 year, immediately before its rec- 
 tification. There cannot be a 
 better date for estimating this 
 amount, than the date of the 
 vernal equinox ; for the preces- 
 sion of the equinoxes being a 
 fact altogether unknown to the 
 ancients, the date of this equi- 
 nox at one time would neces- 
 sarily be supposed the same as 
 its date at another ; nor could 
 this date in the first year of 
 Numa Pompilius have been 
 March 30, and three years before 
 the correction of the Calendar 
 by Caesar, have been May 14, 
 unless, in consequence of the 
 disorder which had gradually 
 crept into the year of Numa, 
 March 30, as it was once, had 
 been advanced into the place of 
 May 14, as it had become before 
 the correction. 
 
 Now between March 30 ex- 
 clusive, and May 14 inclusive, 
 the difference is precisely forty- 
 five days. I should infer, then, 
 that the exact amount, by which 
 the length of the civil at this 
 time exceeded that of the solar 
 year, was forty-five days ; and 
 consequently that an intercala- 
 tion of forty-five only would be 
 wanted to restore them to a 
 level. If Caesar actually inter- 
 calated no more than sixty-seven 
 days in all ; this conclusion would 
 be wonderfully in accordance 
 with the matter of fact : for the 
 twenty-two days, over and above 
 the forty-five, made up the or- 
 dinary intercalation — which be- 
 longed, ex consuetudine, to the 
 same year — and would be want- 
 
524 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 as, referred to the year of that battle, would fall at any 
 point of time between U. C. 723 and U. C. 735 : the 
 earliest of them bears date anno EK. or <rK. 25 or 26 
 only : and this is not an unimportant distinction. 
 
 For it is a well authenticated fact, that U. C. 724, 
 after the reduction of Egypt, Augustus spent the win- 
 ter in person at Antioch ; and also that, U. C. 734, ex- 
 actly ten years after, he did the same again. It is well 
 known also that the decennials of the emperors, and 
 especially the decennials of the first of the emperors, 
 Augustus 01 , were wont to be distinguished by peculiar 
 honours, above any other periods in their reigns. The 
 year U.C. 734 was the close of the first, and the beginning 
 of the second of the decennials of Augustus, dated from 
 the battle of Actium : and from the time of the visit to 
 Syria, and to other parts of the East, which took place 
 in this year, it is capable of proof that many cities of 
 the East either instituted a fresh date on their coins, or 
 incorporated a new one with the old 11 . It is nothing 
 incredible that Antioch might do the same ; and, con- 
 sequently, that the Actian era was not adopted by it be- 
 fore U. C. 734 or 735. Any coins of Augustus, then, 
 or of his presidents, struck before this year, would still 
 be referred to the iEra Caesarea, U. C. 705. 
 
 Let the coins in question, without taking into consi- 
 deration the name which appears upon them, but sim- 
 ply the dates which they exhibit, be so referred. The 
 earliest of them must have been struck between the 
 autumn of U. C. 729, and the autumn of U. C. 730 ; 
 the next between the autumn of U. C, 730, and the 
 
 ed in that year, for its proper time, though each had begun, 
 purpose, (the restoration of a two years before, from the same 
 lunar to an equality with a solar point of time, 
 year,) at the end of two years’ 
 
 m Eckhel, Doctrina Numm. Vett. viii. 475. 
 
 n Ibid. iii. 46. 47. and elsewhere. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 525 
 
 autumn of U. C. 731 ; the last between the autumn of 
 U. C. 731, and the autumn of U. C. 732. Nor is it 
 necessary to suppose that this last coin was struck in 
 the latter half of the year in question. If it was struck 
 in the first, and directly after U.C. 731, ah auctumno , it 
 would still exhibit the date 27. Hence, though these 
 three coins all belonged to the same president, they 
 would not necessarily prove that he was three years in 
 office : they would prove simply that he was in office at 
 the earliest, U. C. 729, cth auctumno ; and at the latest, 
 U.C. 731 , ah auctumno ; that is, for only two years in all. 
 
 Now the year U. C. 729 was a year posterior to the 
 first Actian solemnity : for though the Actian festival 
 was instituted and the city Nicopolis was founded in the 
 year U. C. 724, and both by Augustus, to commemorate 
 the battle of Actium — and though the Actian games, 
 like the Olympic, were quinquennial, or celebrated 
 after every fourth year complete*; yet the first Actiad, 
 properly so called, took place U. C. 726, when Augu- 
 stus celebrated it in his sixth consulate, along with 
 Agrippa ; and it was just over, U. C. 727 or 728°. 
 Some year after the first Actiad, and before the second, 
 is specified by Josephus as the time when Herod re- 
 ceived from Augustus an accession of territory, in the 
 tetrarchy of Lysanias, whom Antony had put to 
 death, U.C. 718, to gratify Cleopatra* 5 ; and which 
 after his death, and until it was assigned to Herod, 
 had been farmed by one Zenodorus t *. Concerning 
 the exact time of this grant there cannot be much ques- 
 tion. It was prior to the arrival of Augustus in the 
 
 * Strabo, vii. 7. §. 6. 461. calls the Actia an Olympic or quin- 
 quennial ay a>v. 
 
 o Dio, li. 1. liii. 1. Cassiodori Fasti, p. 6. Suet. Augustus, 18. Tiberius, 6. 
 p Dio, xlix. 32. Jos. Ant. Jud. xv. iv. i. Q Ant. xv. x. i — 3. Bell. i. xx. iv. 
 
526 
 
 Dissertation Fourteen th . 
 
 East, U. C. 734 r : it was prior to the first mission of 
 Agrippa, U. C. 731 s : it was soon after the first Actian 
 celebrity* ; that is, either U.C. 727, U.C. 728, or U.C. 
 729- It is consequently not the original grant to that 
 effect, but the final ratification of it, accompanied by 
 the rest of the territory of Zenodorus, (whose death 
 had just happened very opportunely,) and as proceed- 
 ing from Augustus in person, U. C. 734, when he was 
 present on the spot, to which Dio alludes v . 
 
 Now before the gift was made, and, consequently, so 
 early as U. C. 728 ; and after it had been made too, 
 consequently as late as U. C. 729 or U.C. 730; there 
 was a president in office whom Josephus denominates 
 Varro. It may be proved that this president could 
 not have come into office before U. C. 728 ; nor very 
 probably have gone out of it before U.C. 731, or U.C. 
 732 : and on this proof, out of deference to the import- 
 ance of the point itself, I shall enter with some degree 
 of minuteness. 
 
 The course and particulars of the whole of these pro- 
 ceedings were as follows. The people of Damascus, being 
 molested by the freebooters who lodged in this portion 
 of the dominions of Zenodorus, laid a complaint against 
 them before Varro*: Varro communicated this complaint 
 to Rome : Augustus wrote back word that he should 
 exterminate the freebooters by force of arms : Varro 
 executed these commands, and thereby dispossessed 
 Zenodorus of so much of his territory : which territory 
 so dispossessed Augustus finally commanded to be be- 
 stowed on Herod. It is manifest, therefore, that the 
 
 * Zenodorus is mentioned by belonging to liis regency ; and 
 
 Strabo, Lib. xvi. cap. 2. §. 20. their expulsion by the Roman 
 
 333. as well as this molestation government, 
 of the Damascenes by the A rja-rai 
 
 r Ant. xv. x. 3. s lb. x. 2 . t Bell. i. xx. 4. v liv, 9. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 527 
 
 complaints of the Damascenes to Varro must have been 
 made in one year, but the military operations against 
 the freebooters, in consequence of the orders of Augus- 
 tus, must have been undertaken in the next. It does 
 not indeed clearly appear, whether the emperor in- 
 structed Varro how to dispose of the territory dispos- 
 sessed, at the same time when he sent orders that it 
 should be dispossessed ; or afterwards. The Antiqui- 
 ties assert the former, and the War asserts the latter. 
 I will suppose however the former ; which appears to 
 me the most probable of the two. 
 
 Now to oppose the diminution of his territory, when- 
 soever it was projected, and before it had yet taken 
 place, Zenodorus went himself to Rome ; but not suc- 
 ceeding in his suit, he returned in time to dispose of 
 a part of Auranitis, (one of the districts included in the 
 intended grant to Herod,) for the sum of fifty talents, 
 to the neighbouring Arabians ; before the transfer had 
 yet taken place. To the part so alienated Herod and 
 the Arabians, who had bought it, both laid claim ; and 
 on this question they were at issue with each other, 
 when Agrippa arrived in the East. 
 
 The mission of Agrippa was subsequent to the return 
 of Zenodorus home ; and the decision of the dispute in 
 question was subsequent to his arrival, when he was win- 
 tering at Lesbus ; and that was in the winter of U.C. 732. 
 I think, then, it is evident that the journey of Zeno- 
 dorus to and from Rome, cannot be placed earlier than 
 U. C. 729 ; nor consequently Herod’s first accession of 
 territory, in this part of his dominions, before the same 
 year at least. The military operations of Varro there- 
 fore must have been executed in U. C. 7^9 ; and, con- 
 sequently, the complaint of the Damascenes, in the 
 first instance, must have been laid before him in U. C. 
 
528 
 
 Dissert a tion Fourteenth . 
 
 728. If so, he was president of Syria and in office, 
 both U. C. 728 and U. C. 729*. 
 
 If however Varro was actually president U. C. 728 
 or U. C. 729 , and continued to be so until U. C. 730 
 or U. C. 731 ; the terra of his office was exactly coinci- 
 dent with the period embraced by the coins, as referred 
 to U. C. 705. Hence, if the name of Varro might only 
 be expressed in Greek by that of Varus, or the name 
 OTAPPHN be confounded by any means with the name 
 OTAPOS; we should account for the origin of these 
 three coins in a way which, instead of committing their 
 dates irreconcilably with contemporary history, would 
 render them entirely at unison with it. Now both these 
 
 * It makes in favour of the 
 same inference, that the Anti- 
 quities place the bestowal of this 
 accession of territory upon He- 
 rod, after the building of Sebas- 
 te ; that is, after U.C. 729, which 
 was the year of the foundation of 
 Sebaste u ; and yet before the 
 iirst mission of Agrippa, which 
 was certainly U.C. 731. If so, 
 the accession must have been 
 made either U. C. 729, or U. C. 
 730, or early in U. C. 73 1 : and 
 it is clear from the context that, 
 whensoever it was made, it was 
 made while Varro was still in 
 office. 
 
 It is not certain whether Jo- 
 sephus dates the first Actiad as 
 here mentioned, from the time 
 when it ought to have been first 
 celebrated, viz. U. C. 728, or 
 from the year when it was ac- 
 tually first celebrated, viz. U.C. 
 726. He makes no use of the 
 Actiads, as notes or divisions of 
 time, in any other part of his 
 
 works, except in this single in- 
 stance. But, from whatever 
 point of time he may deduce it ; 
 U. C. 729, or even U. C. 730 in 
 particular, would still be some 
 year posterior to the first Actiad 
 as such ; the former the first year 
 after it, if dated from U.C. 728, 
 and the latter the fourth year af- 
 ter it, if dated from U. C. 726. 
 I am inclined to think that he 
 follows the former computation ; 
 because Herod himself is said 
 to have instituted quinquennial 
 games in honour of Augustus, 
 which were manifestly in imita- 
 tion of the Actian. The time of 
 these games comes between the 
 discovery of the children of Ba- 
 bas, in the eleventh or twelfth 
 year of Herod, on the one hand v , 
 and the foundation of Sebaste in 
 his thirteenth, on the other w ; 
 that is, they were instituted be- 
 tween U.C. 727 and U.C. 729*; 
 and most probably in U. C. 728. 
 
 u xv. viii. 5. ix. r. v Ant. xv. vii. io. viii. I. w lb. viii. 5. ix. 1. 
 
 x See Eckhel, Doctrina Numm. Vett. iii. 440. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius, Luke ii. 2. 52 9 
 
 cases are possible. The name of Varro is found ex- 
 pressed, even in Latin inscriptions and in Latin writers, 
 by Varo or Baro x ; as the name of Varus is found 
 expressed in like manner by Varrus ; which brings it 
 still nearer the resemblance to Varro. Even in the 
 Greek text of Josephus, where the name occurs, it has 
 been confounded with Varus. There can be little ques- 
 tion that in point of etymon and in meaning originally 
 the two names were almost the same*. The one would 
 be much more readily inscribed on a coin of small di- 
 mensions (like these) than the other. The masters of 
 the mint at Antioch, who were most probably Greeks, 
 and among whom as yet there had been neither a Varro 
 nor a Varus, without any impeachment of their accu- 
 racy, might either think the names absolutely the same, 
 or believe themselves justified in giving to the name of 
 Varro or Varo a form the most convenient, or most 
 agreeable to the genius of their own language : which 
 would be OYAPPOS or OY APOS, not OYAPPQN or 
 OYAPQN. It is at least a remarkable coincidence, be- 
 yond the power of mere chance to have produced, that 
 coins, struck in the consecutive years 25, 26, 27, and re- 
 ferred to the proper era of Antioch, U.C. 705, may all have 
 belonged to Varro ; but referred to the era of the battle 
 of Actium, can none of them except the last with any 
 probability be attributed to Varus. I think this con- 
 sideration alone should decide the question, whether the 
 name of Varus, which appears on these coins, is not 
 really the name of Varro f. 
 
 * Upon the origin of the name latus, in Illyrico hostem, Varro- 
 of Varro, Servius ad iEneid. xi. nem nomine, quod rapuerat, et 
 743, observes ; Varro enim, cum ad suos portaverat, ex insigni 
 de suo cognomine disputaret,ait: facto meruisse nomen. 
 
 Eum, qui primus Varro sit appel- f Besides the Gens Terentia, 
 
 x Rasche, Lexicon Universal Rei Nummariae. Forcellini Lexicon totius Lati- 
 nitatis. Cf. Suidas, in Ovdpowos. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 M m 
 
530 
 
 Dissertation Fourteen th . 
 
 The account which Josephus has given us of the 
 reign of Herod was taken from the history of a con- 
 
 there was another Roman family 
 which bore the cognomen of Var- 
 ro, the GensVisellia; one of whom 
 is mentioned as legate of Lower 
 Germany, U.C. 774, and another, 
 or the same, as consul, U.C. 77 7 X . 
 We read also in contemporary 
 history of a Vibidius Varro, a 
 Cingonius Varro Y, and a Varro 
 Muraena z . It is no objection, 
 therefore, that Terentius Varro, 
 whom Dio alludes to as employ- 
 ed against the Salassi, U. C. 
 729 s , is known from the consu- 
 lar Fasti to have died U.C. 731, 
 so immediately after entering on 
 the consulate, that the name of 
 Calpurnius Piso alone commonly 
 appears for that year in his stead. 
 The president of Syria could not 
 be this Terentius Varro ; but he 
 might still be some Varro, either 
 of the Terentian or of the Visel- 
 lian family. 
 
 The year U. C. 727, was the 
 year of the partition of the pro- 
 vinces b ; whence, if Varro was 
 in office U. C. 728, or U. C. 
 729, it becomes probable that 
 he was the first governor of 
 Syria appointed after that par- 
 tition ; especially as a different 
 person may be proved to have 
 been in office there as late as 
 U. C. 727. 
 
 The president of Syria at the 
 time of the battle of Actium, 
 U. C. 723, and also at the time 
 of the reduction of Egypt, U.C. 
 724, was Quintus Didius bb . He 
 
 had consequently succeeded to 
 L. Calpurnius Bibulus ; whom 
 Appian proves to have died in 
 the government of Syria c ; and 
 whom one of his coins, described 
 by Eckhel d , and struck while he 
 was Prsefectus Classi of Anto- 
 ny’s, demonstrates to have been 
 still alive U. C. 722. 
 
 The president next to Didius, 
 as it may be justly presumed, 
 was Valerius Messala Corvinus, 
 the celebrated orator, -who was 
 consul along with Augustus 
 U.C. 723 e : for the measures 
 projected and begun by Didius 
 against the gladiators of Antony, 
 who had been settled at Daphne, 
 near Antioch, U. C. 724, are 
 said to have been executed by 
 him f . 
 
 Messala commanded along 
 with Augustus at the battle of 
 Actium, September 2, U.C. 723 ; 
 and immediately after it, accord- 
 ing to Appian s, he was dispatch- 
 ed by him against the Gauls, 
 who were beginning to revolt. 
 The poems of Tibullus, whose 
 patron Messala was, shew us 
 in more than one passage that 
 for the successes which he obtain- 
 ed in Gaul, he was sometime al- 
 lowed the honours of a triumph. 
 Hunc cecinere diem Parcae fa- 
 talia nentes | Stamina, non ulli 
 dissoliienda deo : | Hunc fore, 
 Aquitanas posset qui fundere 
 gentes, | Quern tremeret forti 
 milite victus Atax. | Evenere ; 
 
 x Tacitus, Ann. iii. 41. iv. 17. y Ibid. ii. 48. xiv. 45. Suet. Augustus, 
 
 19. z The brother of Proculeius, and of Terentia, the wife of Maecenas : 
 
 Dio, liv. 3. a liii. 25. b liii. 2 — 12 — 15. bb Dio, li. 7. Jos. 
 
 Ant. Jud. xv. vi. 7. Bell. i. xx. 2. c B. C. iv. 38. d yi. 57. Vide 
 
 also Dio, 1 . 9. e Dio, 1 . 10. f li. >j\ £ B. C. iv. 38. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius, Luke ii. 2. 531 
 
 temporary and eyewitness, whom he has frequently 
 occasion to mention, Nicolaus of Damascus ; and this 
 
 novos pubes Romana triumphos 
 | Vidit, et evinctos brachia ca- 
 pta duces. | At te victrices lau- 
 ros, Messala, gerentem, | Por- 
 tabat niveis currus eburnus e- 
 quis. Liber i. vii. i — 8. And 
 again — Gentis Aquitanae celeber 
 Messala triumphis, | Et magna 
 intonsis gloria victor avis. Liber 
 if i- 33 * 34 - 
 
 The triumph in question is 
 alluded to in the following fra- 
 gment ; among the Catalecta as- 
 cribed to Virgil. Pauca mihi, 
 niveo sed non incognita Phcebo, 
 
 | Pauca mihi doctse dicite Pe- 
 gasides. j Victor adest, magni 
 magnum decus ecce triumphi, | 
 Victor, qua terrae, quaque pa- 
 tent maria : j Horrida barbaric* 
 portans insignia pugnae, | Ma- 
 gnus ut CEnides, utque superbus 
 Eryx. 
 
 Appian, loco cit., attests the 
 fact of this triumph ; and the 
 Fasti Triumphales exhibit a tri- 
 umph of Messala Corvinus, pro- 
 consule , over the Aquitani, ex a. 
 d. vii. kal. Oct. U. C. 727. 
 
 That these successes were 
 earned between the time of the 
 battle of Actium, U. C. 723, and 
 the time when Augustus finally 
 set out to Asia in the next year ; 
 which was within thirty days af- 
 ter midwinter, U. C. 724 11 ; is 
 proved by the following lines of 
 Tibullus. An te, Cydne, canam, 
 tacitis qui leniter undis | Caeru- 
 leus placidis per vada serpis a- 
 quis; | Quantus et, aetherio con- 
 tingens vertice nubes, | Frigidus 
 intonsos Taurus alat Cilicas ? | 
 Quid referam, ut volitet crebras 
 
 intacta per urbes | Alba Palae- 
 stino sancta columba Syro; [ Ut- 
 que maris vastum prospectet tur- 
 ribus aequor, | Prima ratem ven- 
 tis credere docta Tyros ; | Qua- 
 lis et, arentes cum findit Sirius 
 agros, | Fertilis aestiva Nilus ab- 
 undet aqua? Liber i. vii. 13 — 
 22. 
 
 It is manifest from the order 
 of this description, which be- 
 ginning with the river of Cyd- 
 nus in Cilicia terminates in 
 Egypt ; that Messala had jour- 
 neyed from the former extremi- 
 ty, through Cilicia, Phoenicia, 
 Palestine, in their order, as far 
 as the latter; where he must 
 have arrived either before or 
 during the annual rising of the 
 Nile ; that is, the middle of the 
 summer. Augustus took the 
 same course in his invasion of 
 Asia, U. C. 724, to the time of 
 the capture of Alexandria, on 
 the first of August, or soon after 
 it, in the same year 1 ; whence 
 it is manifest that Messala ac- 
 companied him throughout it. 
 It follows also that Messala was 
 just setting out for Asia, when 
 Tibullus was left in Corcyra ; 
 and wrote the third elegy of the 
 first book k . Ibitis ASgaeas sine 
 me, Messala, per undas ; | O 
 utinam memores, ipse cohors- 
 que, mei ! for he expected then 
 (had he not been prevented by 
 this illness) to have accompanied 
 him to Egypt. Nunc, dea, nunc 
 succurre mihi — nam posse me- 
 deri j Picta docet templis multa 
 tabella tuis — | Ut mea votivas 
 persolvens Delia voces | Ante 
 
 h Dio, li. 4. 5. Suet. Augustus, 1 7. i Dio, li. 5. 9. Jos. Ant. Jud. xv. vi. 7. 
 Suet. Augustus, 17. Macrobius, Saturnalia, i. 12 . k Cf. Propertius, Liber i. vi. 
 and iii. ix. 53—56. 
 
 Mm2 
 
532 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 is an additional reason why in those particulars, which 
 he relates of the last years of Herod’s reign, he should 
 
 sacras lino tecta fores sedeat ; | 
 Bisque die, resoluta comas, tibi 
 dicere laudes | Insignis turba 
 debeat in Pharia. 27 — 32. The 
 goddess, whom he is apostro- 
 phizing, is the goddess Isis, the 
 tutelary genius of Egypt. Vide 
 lines 23, 24 1 . 
 
 Messala then was still with 
 Augustus in Egypt U. C. 724. 
 It is probable that he accompa- 
 nied him to Syria the same year ; 
 and when Augustus finally left 
 the East to return to Rome, 
 U. C. 725, that he remained be- 
 hind invested, for the present, 
 with proconsular authority over 
 both Syria and the rest of the 
 newly conquered provinces. In 
 this capacity he must have re- 
 mained until the time of his tri- 
 umph, U. C. 727. And as the 
 tables shew that he was in that 
 year at Rome, in order to cele- 
 brate the triumph ; so does Eu- 
 sebius, in Chronico, prove that 
 he must have been there U. C. 
 728, which is but a little later ; 
 for he makes him the first urbis 
 prsefectus, and appointed in the 
 eighteenth year of Augustus ; 
 though he supposes him to ab- 
 dicate the office in six days af- 
 terwards 111 . The same thing is 
 implied by Tibullus also in an- 
 other passage of Liber i. vii. 
 57 — 62, where the allusion to 
 the roads is a proof that Messala 
 was one of those triumphales vi- 
 
 ri n , who had assisted Augustus 
 in the reparation or construction 
 of the roads, begun, according 
 to Dio, U. C. 727 °, though 
 perhaps not finished until some 
 years after p, U. C. 735 or U.C. 
 7384. 
 
 It seems, then, to be pre- 
 sumptively certain that no go- 
 vernor of Syria, after Messala, 
 could come into office before the 
 autumn of U. C. 727, at the ear- 
 liest ; nor very probably until 
 the middle of U. C. 728. At 
 this time, as we had reason to 
 conclude, Varro was in office; 
 which being the case, it follows, 
 as a necessary consequence, that 
 he had been appointed to suc- 
 ceed Messala. Now a four years’ 
 presidency in his instance, as 
 well as in so many others, would 
 make his government continue 
 to the autumn of U. C. 73 2 ; and 
 a three years’ presidency, to the 
 autumn of U.C. 731: so that, 
 even in this last case, a coin 
 might be struck bearing the date 
 27, which yet, if referred to the 
 era of U. C. 705, would come 
 within the term of his govern- 
 ment. Hence, though Marcus 
 Agrippa, as often as he was sent 
 into Asia, should be reckoned 
 among the ordinary governors 
 of Syria ; yet as his first mission 
 did not take place until U. C. 
 73 1; nor until after Augustus’ re- 
 covery from his sickness in that 
 
 l The passage, however, does not necessarily imply that Delia herself would be 
 in Egypt ; as Isis, at this time, had abundance of worshippers at Rome, m Apud 
 
 Hieronymum. Vide also Dio, lii. 21. Tacitus, Ann. vi. 11. 11 Suet. Augustus, 30. 
 
 o liii. 22. P Eckhel, Doctrina Numm. Vett. vi. 105. Dio, liv. 8. q Cf. Tibullus, 
 iv. i. 137 — 142 : which, beginning with Gaul, and ending with Syria or Upper 
 Asia, seems to be a sketch of Messala’s military career between U. C. 723 and 
 U. C. 727. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 533 
 
 be implicitly trusted. To return then from this di- 
 gression — the length of which must be excused by its 
 
 year ; nor even until a little be- 
 fore he abdicated his eleventh 
 consulate r , (which Suetonius 
 will prove s was either six or 
 nine months from the begin- 
 ning of the year 1 :) it is ma- 
 nifest that he could not have ar- 
 rived before the middle of U.C. 
 731. Nor did he proceed, even 
 then, to Syria; but continued 
 all the while at Lesbos. 
 
 It is very doubtful however 
 whether Agrippa upon either of 
 his visits, is to be reckoned a- 
 mong the ordinary governors of 
 the East. Dio indeed may ap- 
 pear to imply thus much ; but 
 Velleius Paterculus and Jose- 
 phus speak a different lan- 
 guage u ; and represent his mis- 
 sion as one which extended, with 
 an authority equal to that of 
 Augustus himself, over all Asia. 
 His mission, then, was like that 
 
 of Caius Cassius, U. C. 71 i x ; of 
 Caius Caesar, U. C. 753 ; of 
 Germanicus, U. C. 77 o; and of 
 Corbulo, in the time of Nero y ; 
 not one of which can be proved 
 to have interfered with the re- 
 gular administration of the pro- 
 vinces, or the ordinary succes- 
 sion of governors in particular in- 
 stances ; though the parties so de- 
 puted possessed an extraordina- 
 ry authority over all. Paetus was 
 still governor of Armenia, when 
 Corbulo was endued with pro- 
 consular power over all Asia ; 
 and Piso in particular was ap- 
 pointed to the presidency of Sy- 
 ria, at the very time when Tibe- 
 rius determined to send Germa- 
 nicus into the East. The con- 
 duct of Agrippa in his office 
 proves, in short, that he is no 
 more to be numbered among the 
 governors of Syria, than of any 
 
 r Dio, liii. 3 2. s Vita, 26. t Quinque medios consulatus, a sexto ad undecimum, 
 annuos gessit. This implies either that the sixth consulate or the eleventh was held 
 for a year ; and the latter is the more natural sense, were it not that Dio (loco 
 cit.) is at variance with it. According to his account, the consulship in question 
 was abdicated just before the tribunician authority was decreed to Augustus for 
 life, that is, before June 27, U. C. 731. The Fasti Consulares seem to confirm 
 Dio ; for they exhibit one consul suffect in place of Augustus, at the time when 
 they mention also the reception of the tribunician authority. But they do not 
 specify the date of the appointment : which, however, I should conjecture was not 
 earlier than the kalends of July. It is to be observed, indeed, that Dio places the 
 abdication of Augustus, at the time of the Feriae Latinae ; liii. 32, 33. But these 
 Feriae might be held late in a given year, as well as early. 
 
 Agrippa was sent into the Bast, while Marcellus was still alive. Dio, liii. 30. 33, 
 places his death this year, U. C. 731. Pliny, H. N. xix. 6, shews that he was alive 
 on the first of August, at least, in Augustus’ xi consulate, U. C. 731, when the 
 ceremony to which he there alludes took place. Still that he died soon after this 
 ceremony, and, consequently, as we may presume, in the same half year, is proved 
 by Propertius, iii. xviii. 11. Quid genus, aut virtus, aut optima profuit illi | 
 Mater, et amplexo Cae.saris esse focos ? | Aut modo tarn pleno fluitantia vela the- 
 atre, | Et per maternas omnia gesta manus ? | Occidit, et misero steterat vigesi- 
 mus annus. | Tot bona tarn parvo clausit in orbe dies. | I nunc, tolle animos, et 
 tecum finge triumphos, | Stantiaque in plausum tota theatra juvent. | Attalicas 
 supera vestes, atque omnia magnis | Gemmea sint ludis : ignibus usta dabis. 
 Marcellus, it is tlms said, died in his twentieth year ; and was born, consequently, 
 U.C. 712. u Velleius Pat. ii. 93. Jos. Bell. i. xx. 4. Ant. xv. x. 2. 
 
 3. xvi. ii. 1. iii. 3. xii. iii. 2. x Cicero, Philippica, xi. 12. y Tacitus, 
 
 Ann. xv. 25. 
 
 M m 3 
 
534 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 importance — to our original subject; the consideration 
 of the census at the Nativity *. 
 
 To this census the reference in the early Christian 
 writers is as regular, as that to the Acts of Pilate s . 
 To decide upon its nature or its object, regarded as a 
 state measure of the reigning emperor’s, may be ex- 
 tremely difficult ; but its use in a providential point 
 of view is too obvious to be mistaken. Coinciding 
 with the time of the birth of Christ, it fulfilled a most 
 essential purpose ; by bringing that event to pass in 
 Bethlehem, where it was necessary to the accomplish- 
 ment of prophecy that it should come to pass. Yet 
 without the interposition of such an event as this cen- 
 sus, there is no reason to suppose that our Saviour 
 would not have been born where his reputed parents 
 had probably been born, and where they were certain- 
 ly living both before and after his birth ; viz. at Na- 
 zareth. 
 
 The censorian power was decreed to Augustus first, 
 U. C. 725 l . From that time forward, he held repeated 
 censuses : Censum tamen populi ter egit: prirnum ac ter- 
 tium cum collega, medium solus u ; his colleague in the 
 first instance being Marcus Agrippa, and in the second, 
 
 other of the contiguous regions ; 
 whence it is by no means a mat- 
 ter of course that even his arri- 
 val, however early in U. C. 731, 
 would supersede Varro, before 
 the term of his office had expir- 
 ed. He exercised his great 
 powers with equal moderation : 
 and therefore would supersede 
 no one (who did not otherwise 
 deserve it) prematurely. 
 
 * We may take leave of the a- 
 
 bove subject with the following 
 quotation from Eckliel, respect- 
 ing the difficulties sometimes ex- 
 hibited by coins. Non raro ars 
 nostra objicit numos, nequaquam 
 subseratos et maligni commatis, 
 sed probos, eosque obvios, quos 
 domare nullo ingenio possis, 
 et quorum indiciis chronologicis 
 fidem habere nequeas, nisi to- 
 tum et ab reliquo agmine tuto 
 stabilitum ordinem invertas. 
 
 s Justin Mart. Apologia, i a . 55. 1 . 12 : 69. 1 . 17. Dialogus, Pars ii da . 306. 1 . 3. 
 Tertullian, Adv. Marc. iv. 7. Operum i. 200: 19. Ibid. 261 : 36. Ibid. 340: Ad- 
 versus Jud. 9. Operum ii. 311: De Carne Christi, 2. Operum iii. 343. Chryso- 
 stom, Operum ii. 356. C. In Diem Natalem D. N. J. Christi, cap. 2. t Dio, 
 lii. 42. u Suet. Augustus, 27. 
 
535 
 
 On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 as we have seen elsewhere v , being Tiberius. The Ancy- 
 ran monument confirms Suetonius w , and shews that 
 the censuses in question were held in U. C. 7 26, U. C. 
 746, and U. C. 767, respectively. The end of the first 
 census, U. C. 726, is implicitly alluded to by Dio x ; and 
 the middle one proleptically in U. C. 743, where he 
 says, that Augustus, d7roypa(pdg re erol^raTO, ravra ra 
 virdpyovrd oi KaOdrep ris iSicorrjg cnroypa'^sdiuLevov ; and 
 also a Senatus lectio L This was after the censorian 
 power had been again renewed in his person ; once in 
 U. C. 735 ; and again in U. C. 742 z — before either of 
 which times though not censor he was exercising the 
 censorian power, U. C. 732 a , at a time between the 
 first renewal and the original grant *. 
 
 We have no mention of any renewal after the second 
 instance of it : which is probably owing to a chasm in 
 the History of Dio, subsequent to U. C.747 or U.C. 748. 
 But there is mention of Augustus’ holding a census in 
 U. C. 757 b , by virtue of his proconsular authority — 
 dvOvirarov e^ovcrlav — affecting persons of a certain pro- 
 perty in Italy ; but none out of it, nor any under that 
 rate of property within it. The reason, assigned by 
 Dio for this distinction in the former case, is a proof 
 that censuses, out of Italy, were not uncommon things, 
 any more than within it : and what he says of the mo- 
 
 * Ovid, Tristium ii. i. 541 : 
 Carminaque edideram, cum te 
 delicta notantem | Praeterii to- 
 ties jure quietus eques. Also, 
 Fasti, vi. 647 : Sic agitur cen- 
 sura, et sic exempla parantur, | 
 Cum vindex, alios quod monet, 
 ipse facit. The time of each of 
 these allusions to Augustus’ ex- 
 ercise of the censorian power 
 
 probably comes between the 
 years U. C. 735 and 742. The 
 latter certainly does so: for it 
 refers to his having pulled down 
 the magnificent house of Vedius 
 Pollio, when it was left to him by 
 will, U. C. 739, and erected the 
 PorticusLiviae upon the site of it. 
 Dio, liv. 23. 
 
 v Supra, 340. Dissertation viii. w Tacitus, iv. 839. x liii. 1. 
 z Ibid. 10. 28. 30. a Ibid. 2. b lv. 13. 
 
 M m 4 
 
 y liv. 35. 
 
536 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 live which induced Augustus to lay aside the charac- 
 ter of censor, and to assume that of proconsul, alludes 
 to something which he had said on a similar occasion 
 before. No trace of this statement appears at pre- 
 sent*; whence we may collect that it must have been 
 contained in the part which has perished ; and there- 
 fore would probably have come in after U.C. 748. 
 
 In this case, some general census might be going 
 on about U. C. 749, — which is the period of this in St. 
 Luke ; and such a census as Augustus had instituted 
 by virtue not of his censorian but of his proconsular 
 authority as such ; the former of which might possibly 
 be restricted to Rome or Italy, the latter would extend 
 over the provinces. The three censuses, above referred 
 to, were certainly all of the former kind : but there 
 are clear proofs, in contemporary history, of particular 
 censuses at least which affected the provinces. Thus 
 there was one census going on in Gaul so early as 
 U. C. 727 ; another in U. C. 741 or 742 ; and a third 
 at the time of the death of Augustus, U. C. 767 1°; 
 and Strabo, who wrote his Geographica between the 
 accession of Tiberius and the death of Germanicus d , 
 alludes to them as common things : rjKovo-a 7 ovv ev 
 fjLia twv /cad’ rj/uas TL/mricrecov, 1 revraKoerlovs avSpas TifirjOerrag 
 Imrucov ? Ta$eiTavovs e . This was in reference to Spain ; 
 and he mentions a similar fact with respect to Patavi- 
 um in Italy f , at a recent census, most probably U.C. 7 67. 
 
 I think it therefore exceedingly probable that, if we 
 possessed in Dio the particulars of U. C. 7 49, and of 
 
 * Unless it be understood to was sent into Gaul after his 
 refer to what precedes in the consulship ; that is, U. C. 766 
 sentence just before. ineunle ; most probably on ac- 
 
 t Suet. Caius, 8 : Germanicus count of this census. 
 
 c Dio, liii. 22. Flori Epitome, 134. 136. 137. Gruter, p. dii. Tacitus, 
 Ann. i. 31. 33. d Lib. vi. cap. 4. §. 2. 315. e iii. 5. 451. f v. t. §. 7. 106. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. £. 537 
 
 the succeeding years, to the time of the death of Caius 
 Caesar ; something would be found on record, calcu- 
 lated to illustrate the census of St. Luke. How far 
 the assertion of Suidas £ — r O Se Kaicrap Avyovo-ros, 6 
 /JLOvapyfio'aS) elkoulv avSpas tov$ aphrrovs tov /3lov kou tov 
 Tpoirov €7Tl\e^aiULeV09 9 €7Tl TTUOraV TY\V Tfiov VI rtJKOODV e^e- 
 
 ire/Ji^e' Si’ wv airoy pa<pas eTTOLrjcroLTO tcov re avOpcoTiov kou 
 ovcioov — is entitled to credit, I do not undertake to 
 decide. It may allude to what is recorded by Dio of 
 the last year but one of the reign of Augustus ; when 
 he is said to have dispatched a number of commission- 
 ers — >aWov<? aWy — to take down an account of the pro- 
 perty of both cities and individuals 11 : or what is more 
 probable, it refers to some earlier event. The number 
 of the commissioners supposed by Suidas, agrees with 
 the number of the provinces, both popular and impe- 
 rial, into wdiich they must have been sent 1 : and in 
 other respects the assertion contains nothing incre- 
 dible *. 
 
 * If there is any weight in 
 the objection to the fact of a 
 census orbis at the nativity, from 
 the silence of contemporary his- 
 tory about it ; the same objection 
 applies with equal force to the 
 fact of a geometrical survey of 
 the empire, under the reign of 
 Augustus ; about which contem- 
 porary history is not less silent, 
 and yet which, as it maybe proved 
 from competent testimony, did 
 actually take place some time in 
 the reign of Augustus. 
 
 For example, an author is 
 occasionally quoted in the Geo- 
 graphica of Strabo, under the 
 general name of 6 %o opoypdc^os, 
 as one by whom a geometrical 
 
 survey of the empire had been 
 made and committed to writing, 
 before his own time at least ; 
 that is, before U. C. 77 1 or 772. 
 And that this was executed un- 
 der the directions of the Roman 
 government, and by surveyors 
 who were most probably Ro- 
 mans themselves, may be col- 
 lected from the fact that the 
 measurements of the chorogra- 
 phus in question were expressed 
 in Roman miles, not in Grecian 
 stades, or any other kind of mea- 
 sure. 
 
 But the most abundant testi- 
 mony to the fact in question is 
 contained in the Rei Agrariae 
 Auctores. 
 
 As 
 
 S ’Airoypa<pv- h lvi. 28. i Dio, liii. 2 — 12. Strabo, xvii. 3. §. 25. 705 — 709. 
 
538 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 There is one circumstance, connected with the cen- 
 sus at the nativity, which appears to me indisputably 
 
 As first, p. 109, apud Julium 
 Frontinum de Coloniis. 
 
 Huic addendse sunt mensurae 
 Limitum et Terminorum ex li- 
 bris Augusti et Neronis Caesa- 
 rum : sed et Balbi mensoris, 
 qui temporibus Augusti omnium 
 provinciarum et civitatum for- 
 mas et mensuras compertas in 
 commentarios contulit, et le- 
 gem Agrariam per universitatem 
 provinciarum distinxit ac decla- 
 ravit. 
 
 The same statements occur 
 again, Ibid. p. 141, 142. Cf. 
 likewise p. 118 and 142. 
 
 Again, p. 50, apud Aggenum 
 Urbicum ; in Julium Frontinum 
 Commentarium . 
 
 Hunc agrum Frontinus ita 
 remansisse testatus est, sed vi- 
 deamus ne forte postea jussu 
 principis alicui datus sit, qui 
 terram metiri denuo praeceperit ; 
 sicut Caesaris Augusti tempori- 
 bus factum est. 
 
 Again, p. 148, Fragmenta Ter- 
 minalia, sive de Terminis. 
 
 Jubente Augusto Caesare, Bal- 
 bo mensore, qui omnium provin- 
 ciarum mensuras distinxit ac de- 
 claravit per testimonia quae su- 
 prascripta, et fines locorum ter- 
 minantur (leg. terminant.) Cf. 
 p. 254. Nicolai Rigaltii notas. 
 
 Again, p. 255, Latinus etMys- 
 rontius. 
 
 Nam in locis montanis ter- 
 minos posuimus rotundos, quos 
 Augusteos vocamus, pro hac 
 ratione, quod Augustus eos re- 
 censuit, et ubi defuerunt, lapides 
 alios constituit, et omnem ter- 
 ram suis temporibus fecit remen - 
 surari, ac veteranis assignari. 
 
 For the probable age of the 
 
 writers here quoted, I refer to 
 the testimonies premised to the 
 collection of their writings. If the 
 first mentioned of them, Julius 
 Frontinus, was the same Julius 
 Frontinus who flourished in the 
 reign of Nero, and was an old 
 man in the reign of Trajan, a 
 friend of Pliny the younger, and 
 his predecessor in the auguratus, 
 if not also the septemviratus ; his 
 testimony would be very valu- 
 able. But he quotes in the same 
 work de Coloniis, laws or acts 
 of Hadrian, Severus Antoninus, 
 and Commodus : so that he was 
 probably a later writer. 
 
 Again, in the 5 2d Epistle, lib. 
 iii. p. 57. ad sinistram of the 
 Varise of Cassiodorus, after 
 some general remarks on the 
 subject of geometry, agrorum 
 mensura , he proceeds, 
 
 Augusti siquidem temporibus 
 orbis Romanus agris divisus, 
 censuque descriptus est, ut pos- 
 sessio sua nulli haberetur incer- 
 ta, quam pro tributorum susce- 
 perat quantitate solvenda. hoc 
 auctor Hyrummetricus redegit 
 ad dogma conscriptum : quate- 
 nus studiosus legendo possit 
 agnoscere, quod deberet oculis 
 absolute monstrare (forsan, mon- 
 strari.) 
 
 All these authorities, we per- 
 ceive, concur in attributing the 
 act of this survey of the empire 
 to Augustus; and Julius Fron- 
 tinus, in particular, calls the 
 surveyor by whom it was exe- 
 cuted Balbus ; quoting the very 
 book which he had compiled in 
 the execution of the undertak- 
 ing. Cassiodorus refers to this 
 book also, but calls its author. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. £. 
 
 539 
 
 certain : and this is, that it did not concern Judaea 
 any more than the rest of the Roman empire. ’E^Xde 
 
 Hyrummetricus ; which is pro- 
 bably a .corruption for agrome- 
 tricus, or chorometricus : and is 
 in any case not a proper name, 
 but a term of appellation. 
 
 In the Preface to the Cosmo- 
 graphia of ^Ethicus, the fact of 
 a survey and measurement of 
 the empire is also asserted ; but 
 it is ascribed to the Roman se- 
 nate, and made to bear date from 
 the consulship of Julius Caesar 
 and Antony, U. C. 707, B. C. 
 47, and to take up thirty-two 
 years in completing. But, in 
 ascribing it either to Julius Cae- 
 sar or to the Roman senate, it 
 is contradictory to the other au- 
 thorities, all of whom attribute 
 it solely to Augustus. The 
 names of the geometers by 
 whom the different parts of the 
 empire were measured, are also 
 mentioned by .Ethicus ; viz. Ze- 
 nodoxus, Theodotus, and Poly- 
 clitus ; but the name of Balbus 
 does not appear among them, 
 who yet was either the sole, or 
 the principal person, in the con- 
 ducting of the survey under Au- 
 gustus. 
 
 It is well known that Au- 
 gustus left behind him a brevi- 
 arium imperii, written out with 
 his own hand: Tacitus, Ann. i.i 1: 
 Suet. Augustus, 102,7: Dio, lvi. 
 33: to the compilation of which, 
 as described byTacitus, some such 
 work as that of Balbus, was 
 evidently necessary. How long 
 before his death it was composed, 
 does not appear. Suetonius in- 
 deed, Augustus, 28, 1, speaks 
 of a rationarium imperii as in 
 existence at a time which from 
 Dio, liii. 30, is seen to have 
 
 been U. C. 73 1 : but that docu- 
 ment, it also appears from Dio, 
 contained an account only of 
 the military strength and the 
 revenues of the empire ; what 
 might very properly be called a 
 rationarium, but not so proper- 
 ly a breviarium imperii, as that 
 is called which Augustus left 
 behind him at his death, because 
 it was, in brevi, a description of 
 the whole empire. 
 
 If the fact of a grand geo- 
 metrical survey of the empire, 
 undertaken by the government 
 and executed with due care and 
 attention, was as likely as any 
 thing to have been noticed by 
 the general historian of the 
 times — then as there is no men- 
 tion of such an event in Dio, 
 before U. C. 748, up to which 
 his account of every year of the 
 reign of Augustus is regular and 
 connected ; nor after U. C. 757, 
 from which to the end of his 
 reign it continues to be so still 
 — we may presume that the fact 
 itself happened sometime be- 
 tween these two extreme dates, 
 during which there is a chasm 
 in the continuity of the history 
 of Dio. 
 
 Along with a general mea- 
 surement of the empire, might 
 very naturally be ordered to 
 proceed, a general census of the 
 inhabitants of it also. The two 
 things at least are so obviously 
 connected together, that the fact 
 of either of them is a strong pre- 
 sumptive argument of the fact 
 of the other. We know the one 
 of these facts from the testi- 
 monies above produced ; and we 
 have seen that it could not have 
 
540 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 Soy/ua irapd K alcrapos Avyovcrrov , d7roypd(p6o-0ai irdcrav 
 Tt]v oiKovimevt]v k : on the meaning of which words there 
 ought not to have been more than one opinion among 
 the learned. I should consider it a waste of time to prove 
 that 7 rdcra rj oiKov/xevt] is never used, nor ever could be 
 used, by any writer who paid the least regard to pro- 
 priety, for less than the compass of the Roman empire ; 
 which at the present period was almost the compass of 
 the habitable world. Aleylcmj S' rj crvixiracra , rjvi rep iSlax kci- 
 Xov/me v oiKov/j.evt]v l . We may meet with instances of the li- 
 mited use of oiKOv/ULevrj , as 7racrr]9 avOis rrjs oiKOVjULevijS , rr^s virb 
 tol9 Tore ovcrrjg — irdcrav . . . tv\v oiKOviuevqv rrjv U7r’ 
 
 clvtov ovorav — Nepw . . . crretpavoi TrjvJSiav oiKovjuer^v ^ — 
 OVK dv T £?, (TK07T0V 7 TOppCO TO(~6V(]OV, \lyOl TrfV P WfAaiCOV 7TO- 
 
 A iv €TTLTO[j.bv Tvjs oiKovu-Svtjs m i but not with instances of 
 its use to denote one particular country ; much less 
 with 7 rdcra *] oiKovjj.evy] in any such sense ; than which 
 it is scarcely possible to conceive a more extraordinary 
 catachresis. There are no instances at least of such 
 an use in the Christian scriptures ; and to cite Acts 
 xi. 28, as a case in point, would be only litem lite re- 
 solver e : for it is just as probable that o\v\v rr\v o'lkov - 
 
 happened before U. C. 748, nor 
 after U. C. 757, or we should 
 have had it noticed in the regu- 
 lar part of the history of Dio. 
 We know the other from the 
 Gospel of St. Luke ; and we 
 know further that, coinciding 
 with the year of the nativity, it 
 was either ordered or was going 
 on, U. C. 750. This is actually 
 within those two extreme dates, 
 between which there is an hia- 
 tus in Dio j and where only we 
 
 should expect to find the fact of 
 any thing of importance in the 
 history of Augustus, not other- 
 wise mentioned by an historian 
 as careful to record every thing, 
 (and much even of very little 
 importance,) which happened in 
 the same reign, as Dio appears 
 to have been. 
 
 * Trjv 8e 'Pw/irjv, aOavarov , ev- 
 TV)(ri Kokoiviav, OLKOVfievqv rrjs yrjs 
 . . . in (ov 6 fiacre : Dio, lxxii. 15 . 
 De Commodo. 
 
 k Luke ii. 1. 1 Strabo, i. 1. page 23. m Dio, xxxix. 9. lxvii. 8. lxiii. 14. 
 
 Athenseus, Deipnosophistae, i. 36. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 541 
 
 ixqvy]v there means at least the Roman empire, as that 
 irdcrav r^v oiKOv/mevrjv does SO here. 
 
 Notwithstanding however the universality of the 
 measure, it may very justly be doubted whether it 
 was a proper Roman census. Judaea was once sub- 
 jected to such a census — of which this is the descrip- 
 tion given by Josephus : K vprjviog Se . . . eVJ 2i tplas irap- 
 
 tjv, in to K aicrcipos SiKCuoSorrjs tov c'Orovg dirccjTaXiJievog , kcu 
 Ti/irjrijg Ttov ovcrim > yevrjcroiuLevos l and again, dir OTifj.r\cr 6 /ke- 
 ros Te avTwv Ta9 ovcrlas, kcu diro^edaro/kevos ra ’A pye\aov 
 
 ^p^/uaTa n l and again, ciTroTf/U^crd^te^o? ret ci) 2 )vpla° . The 
 first object of a just Roman census was to ascertain the 
 value of property ; arid there could be no such measure 
 which did not include this valuation*. Consequently 
 the proper designation of such a census is that of an 
 a 7 roTi/juicng — or of chr or i^aras ; both which appellations, 
 as well as other phrases of a similar import, are applied 
 to it indifferently by Josephus. 
 
 It is clear however from the account of St. Luke, 
 that the census at the nativity paid no regard to the 
 value of property. The case of the Holy family is a 
 proof of it. If they possessed any property it must 
 
 * There cannot be a better 
 proof of this assertion than the 
 well-known passage from the 
 speech of the emperor Claudius, 
 Super civitate Gallis danda, as 
 exhibited in the facsimile of the 
 Tabulae Lugdunenses, apud Gru- 
 terum, page dii. on which it was 
 engraved : Quod opus, quam ar- 
 duum sit nobis nunc cum ma- 
 xime, quamvis nihil ultra, quam 
 ut publice notae sint facultates 
 nostrae, exquiratur, nimis magno 
 experimento cognoscimus. If a 
 census might be held, though 
 
 with no other object in view, 
 yet simply for the sake of ascer- 
 taining the amount of property; 
 if that was reason enough for 
 its institution, even when there 
 was none else ; it seems a neces- 
 sary consequence, whatever other 
 purposes a census might have in 
 view, that to ascertain the rate 
 of property must always have 
 been one; whatever other rea- 
 sons might cooperate with this, 
 there could be none sufficient to 
 have produced it independent of 
 this. 
 
 o xvii. xiii. 5. 
 
 n Ant. xviii. i. 1. 
 
542 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 have been at Nazareth : they could have none at Beth- 
 lehem, where they were obliged to lodge at an inn. A 
 census then which required them to repair from one 
 place where their worldly possessions lay, to another 
 where they had nothing of their own, must have had 
 some other object in view ; not the estimation of pro- 
 perty. 
 
 Now the term, which St. Luke employs to describe 
 its object, is strictly and properly applicable to an en- 
 rolment per capita ; to an dnrap'iO /itjar 19 or numbering 
 of the people : but not to a census of property. No 
 one can question whether dnro*/pd<peo-0ai 9 however ab- 
 solutely and independently used, may denote thus 
 much ; but it may reasonably be doubted whether, in 
 the absence of all limiting circumstances, which might 
 shew that the enrolment was to regard property as 
 well as persons, it could be equivalent to d7rori/xd(r0ai *. 
 The exact version of these texts of St. Luke, as it ap- 
 pears to me, would stand as follows P: 
 
 Now it came to pass in those days, that there went 
 
 * The following are some in- 
 stances of the occurrence of cbro- 
 ypd<p€(r 6 cu : which I have taken 
 at random. 
 
 ’E/ceXevoi/ anoypa(f)eaOai navras : 
 Xenophon, Hell. ii. iv. 8 — kcu ov- 
 T(o 8 r) anoypd^ovrai navres : Cyri 
 Disc. ii. i. 19 — evia\ov S’ e^ecrn pev 
 nacriv dnoypa\j/apevois eKKkrjcrid^eiv 
 Kai 8 iKa£ei.v’ eav S’ dnoypa\jsdpevoi , 
 
 k , t. X: Aristotle, Politica, iv. x. 
 
 7 — dneypdyjsavro pev ovv tear avrov: 
 
 Plutarch, ASmilius Paulus, 38. 
 — tcdv pe v ovv eniemeov avbpatv ovb- 
 e\s aneypatyaro npos rrjv ar pa- 
 re lav: Diodorus Sic. xvi. 30 — 
 dnoypafaaOai KeXevaas rovs vi ro^pe- 
 ovs : Dionysius Hal. Ant. Rom.iv. 
 
 TO, 660. 1. 8 — rovs ovbeva nXrjpov 
 e\ovras r£>vno\ira>v npos eavrbvano- 
 ypa(f)ecrOai : Ibid. 660. 1 . I 5 — eW- 
 Xevaev anavras ‘P copalovs anoypa- 
 (peadal re /cat ripacrdai ras ova las : 
 
 Ibid. 14. 676. 1 . 8. 
 
 In all these cases, the word 
 means only, people’s giving in 
 their names ; causing their names 
 to be taken down ; enrolling 
 themselves, per capita ; and the 
 like. I will conclude with the 
 following from Julian, apud Cy- 
 rillum, lib. vi. 213. A: 6 nap vpiv 
 Krjpvrrdpevos ’I rjaovs, els rjv rd>v 
 K aiaapos vnrjKocov. . .(f>are pevroi av- 
 rov anoypd\lfa<T0at pera rov narpbs 
 Kai ttjs prjrpos eni Kvprjvlov. 
 
 P Chap. i. 1 — 5. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 543 
 
 forth a decree from Caesar Augustus, to cause the 
 whole empire to be enrolled. And all persons went 
 to enrol themselves, each to his own city. And Joseph 
 also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, 
 unto Judaea; to the city of David, which is called 
 Bethlehem ; because he was of the house and family 
 of David : to enrol himself along with Mary, espoused 
 unto him for wife, being great with child. 
 
 A reason is here assigned which has nothing to do 
 with the valuation of property, but very much with an 
 enrolment per capita . Joseph and Mary went up to 
 Bethlehem, not because they possessed any property 
 there ; but because they belonged to the house and 
 family of David. O ikos and 7 rarpla are entirely dis- 
 tinct from K\r)f)ovo/jLia ; and there is consequently no 
 allusion to patrimony or inheritance, in any way what- 
 ever. The distinction of tribes and families was still 
 kept up among the Jews, but that of inheritances had 
 long been lost; and the observance of the year of Ju- 
 bile, an institution directly subservient to that dis- 
 tinction, was therefore no longer in being ; nor accord- 
 ing to Maimonides % had it been, since the return from 
 captivity. An enrolment per capita would necessarily 
 require the Jews to repair to the places where their 
 genealogical records were kept : a valuation of property 
 could be made only where they were residing, and had 
 possessions on the spot. 
 
 I am persuaded therefore by St. Luke’s description 
 of the present census, that it was merely of the former 
 kind, and not of the latter. And this conclusion agrees 
 best with the testimony of Josephus ; which strongly 
 implies that, before the mission of Quirinius, in the 
 tenth of Archelaus and the year U. C. 760, neither 
 
 H De Anno Jubilaei. 
 
544 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth. 
 
 Syria nor Judaea had yet been subject to a census of 
 any other description. It is incredible too that Au- 
 gustus, especially in U. C. 749, when his preexisting 
 differences with Herod had been satisfactorily made 
 up, and he was better inclined towards him than ever r , 
 would think of exposing him to a mark of subjection 
 and dependence, than which none could be more com- 
 plete. Nor is it to be supposed that Judas of Galilee, 
 and others of the same way of thinking as he, would 
 not be as ready to oppose a Roman census at this pe- 
 riod, as ten or eleven years after. 
 
 What shall we say, then, to the meaning of the cele- 
 brated text, Luke ii. 2! ? 
 
 I. We may observe, that any such version as this — 
 This taxing was the first of Cyrenius, governor of 
 Syria — would be liable to a great objection ; not mere- 
 ly on the score of the fact asserted ; nor because the 
 participle r/ye/uLovevovrog might not be used instead of 
 rjye/iovos ; but because if it were used a7r\co9 for a name 
 of office, it could not be used without the article. Of 
 this rule an hundred examples might be produced from 
 Josephus, Dio, and other writers ; but no valid excep- 
 tions to the contrary. 
 
 II. Such a version, as — This taxing was first made, 
 or, avrri r) a7roypa(prj , The taxing itself was first made, 
 that is, first took effect, when Cyrenius was governing 
 Syria — would not be liable to this objection ; but it 
 would contradict St. Luke ; who plainly implies that 
 the a7roypa(pr] 9 such as it was, was carried into effect 
 immediately : and it is inconsistent also with the reason 
 of the thing. For it is palpably absurd to suppose that 
 a measure would be commanded U. C. 749, which was 
 not to be executed until U. C. 760; or vice versa , 
 
 r Ant. Jud. xvi. x. 9. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 545 
 
 that one would be executed in U. C. 760, which had 
 been commanded in U. C. 749.* 
 
 * There is no reason indeed 
 to suppose that Quirinius was 
 in the East about this time at 
 all. If he had been there, his 
 name would have appeared a- 
 mong the judges at the trial of 
 Herod’s two sons. For he 
 was one who had been consul 
 U. C. 742 ; and, therefore, was 
 of consular dignity, U. C. 749 ; 
 and who, since his consulate, 
 had added to his reputation by 
 the fame of a successful cam- 
 paign against the Homonaden- 
 ses, a tribe of Cilicia s ; which 
 had procured him the honours 
 of the Triumph. But what ren- 
 ders it most improbable that he 
 was sent into the East, on any 
 special commission, U. C. 749 or 
 750, is the fact that he was ap- 
 pointed rector, or principal ad- 
 viser, to Caius Caesar — Armeni- 
 am obtinenti : which must have 
 been after the death of M. Lol- 
 lius, (who had originally accom- 
 panied Caius in that capacity ;) 
 and was probably in U.C. 755 t ; 
 for it was after Caius had 
 made peace with Phraates, yet 
 necessarily before his death ; 
 consequently, neither earlier 
 than U.C. 755, nor later than 
 U. C. 756. Nor did Lollius die 
 a natural death, but took poison; 
 though Velleius Paterculus, loc. 
 cit. says he did not know whether 
 the death of Lollius was volun- 
 tary or accidental ; only that it 
 was intra paucos dies — after his 
 disgrace. 
 
 Suet. Tiberius, 9-14. Tiberi- 
 us, who retired to Rhodes, U.C. 
 748, it is said, first desired leave 
 
 to return, U. C. 753, and was 
 kept there against his will two 
 or three years longer, at least; 
 at which time, though Caius Cae- 
 sar was alive, yet Lollius being 
 in disgrace, the latter it is most 
 probable died sometime either 
 U.C. 755 exeunte, or U.C. 756 
 ineunte. 
 
 Nor, except there had been a 
 sufficient interval of time be- 
 tween the death of Lollius, and 
 the return of Tiberius from 
 Rhodes, which was probably not 
 long before the death of Caius 
 Caesar, Feb. 21, U.C. 757, though 
 Paterculus, ii.103, places it U.C. 
 755, could Quirinius have had 
 an opportunity of paying his 
 court to Tiberius there ; as Ta- 
 citus, Ann. iii. 48. asserts he did. 
 
 Suetonius, Tiberius, 49, tells 
 us, Quirinius prosecuted Lepida, 
 formerly his wife, post vigesi - 
 mum annum veneni olim in se 
 comparati. Tacitus, Ann. iii. 22, 
 23, places this prosecution U.C. 
 773 exeunte: the crime, there- 
 fore, laid to her charge, had 
 been committed U. C. 753, or 
 U.C. 754. But there is a diffi- 
 culty with respect to their mar- 
 riage : for Tacitus informs us 
 that before Lepida was married 
 to Quirinius, she had been es- 
 poused to Lucius Caesar : nor is 
 it likely that until his death, 
 (August 20, according to the 
 Antiatine Calendar, U. C. 756,) 
 she would be given in marriage 
 to another. 
 
 Among the inscriptions in O- 
 rellius, there is one u , which if 
 genuine recognises Quirinius as 
 
 s Tacitus, Ann. iii. 48. Strabo, xii. 6. §. 5. 191. 
 Pliny, H. N. ix. 58. u y 0 l. j. Art. 625. 
 
 VOL. T. N n 
 
 t Velleius Pat. ii. 102. 
 
546 
 
 Dissertation Fourteen th . 
 
 It seems to me, then, that the safest course is to 
 understand the words of St. Luke, as a parenthetic 
 admonition not to confound this a7roypa(pi] at the birth 
 of Christ, with the much later and much more me- 
 morable ct 7 ro<ypa(pri in the time of Cyrenius. Such an 
 admonition was necessary in itself ; and was justly to 
 be expected from the accuracy of this Evangelist. In 
 this case, the text must be rendered — This enrolment 
 took place before Cyrenius was governor of Syria — 
 and the difficulties which may still be raised about it 
 will concern nothing but the use of i rpcoros, instead of 
 7rporepos 9 whether adverbially or as a preposition. 
 
 The substitution of the superlative for the compara- 
 tive is not an uncommon idiom in the Greek language v ; 
 and of the use of 7rpcoro ?, in particular, for ir porepos, 
 St. John supplies four instances, of which there can be 
 little question — i. 15. 27. 30. xv. 18. 1 John iv. 19; 
 and perhaps St. Matthew and St. Mark two more — 
 Matt. xxvi. 17. Mark xiv. 12 — in both which had 
 irporepa been used instead of 7 rpdm? the construction 
 would have been similar to this of Herodotus : er rij 
 
 7T porepr] vvkti twv HavaOrjvaloov — rrj irpOTepaiy Ttjs varrart]? 
 KaracrTa(TL 09 fieXXovo-rjg ecrecrOcu w : or to this of Plato ! 
 
 legate of Syria, and a census as 
 held at Apamea by his com- 
 mand : and it is certain, even 
 from Josephus, that he was both 
 governor of Syria, and holding 
 a census in that province, as 
 well as in Judaea, U. C. 760 ; to 
 which this inscription must al- 
 lude: and the fact of disturb- 
 ances among the Ityraeans, to 
 which it also alludes, as coin- 
 ciding with the same event, con- 
 firms this conclusion, rather than 
 
 otherwise. 
 
 The question however who 
 might be governor of Syria, at 
 the time of the census which 
 preceded the nativity, is of little 
 importance ; for I am entirely 
 of their opinion who maintain 
 that it would be conducted in 
 Judaea particularly by no go- 
 vernor of Syria, but by Herod 
 himself, or by officers of his ex- 
 clusive! v- 
 
 v Matthise Gr. Gram. ii. §. 464. 
 
 w v. 56. ix. 9. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius, Luke ii. 2 . 
 
 547 
 
 cTvye yap rfj irporepalq t*}? Slier]? r] 7 rpvfj.va earre/uL/aevr] rov 
 
 7 r\o/ou* x . Colossians i. 15. supplies another instance 
 in a compound form — irpcororoKos Trao-rjs Krlo-eco ? — which 
 it is absurd to render in any way but by — Begotten 
 before all creation j\ f, On Se IladAoo ovSe]? 7rpcoro? <jtyi- 
 crerai, iravrl 7rov SrjX ov? — ravr el jaev Trap erepoi? rj eypa- 
 cj)e v 7rpa)TOv 9 rj e(pvX a^Orj /3e/3at6T€pov z — ovSevyap aXX 6 tt pco- 
 tov...ov$' avayKaiorepov, ovSe arvjuupopcoTepov . . . u 7 reAa/ 3 e a — 
 to v dpyiepea irpwTO? rjo-iracraTO^ — irpeoro? Te avrov tjcnrd- 
 eraro c — ovSev aXXo ir parr over 1 tt pwrov, rj rrjv rpofprjv dico- 
 /uuo’Oovcri Tdov tepwv — 7r(S? ov% diraa’iv evapye? w? 
 
 dTrdvTosv /J.ev tcov Trap 9 ''EXXjjn cropcov 6 Oecnrecrio? Mcocr^? 
 irpecrfivTaros rjv { . In like manner, the comparative is 
 used for the superlative : avrrj y dp iraawv rcou iv Ty ^Evpla 
 A 1/j.vy] 7 rA arvrepa Ka\ /ael^oov KaOea-rrjKev % — eXeeivorepoi 
 7T CLVTCDV dv6p007TC0V ^ h . 
 
 * Cf. Thucydides, v. 75 : Xe- 
 nophon, Hell. v. 1 . 35 : Plutarch, 
 Julius Caesar, 32. 
 
 t Cf. Justin Martyr, Dialogus, 
 319. 12: top rrpeoTOTOKoi > tcop ttclp- 
 tcop 7 ToirjpaTcov. Ibid. 406. 25 : 
 ©f ov be e< tov eipai tckpop, npooro- 
 TOKOV TCOP oXcOP KTiapaTOP. Ibid. 
 430. I 8 : 6 yap Xpnrros, npcororoKos 
 nao-rjs KTicrecos a>v, Ka'i apx*) KaXiv aX- 
 Xov yevovs yeyove. Hermas, Pastor, 
 iii. 9. 12: PP. Apost. 73: Fi- 
 lius quidem Dei omni creaturci 
 antiquior est , ita ut in consilio 
 Patri suo adfuerit ad condendam 
 creaturam. Confer CEcumenius 
 in Novum Testam. ii. 120. D. 
 Comm, in locum ; and Arethas, 
 in Revel, iii. 14. apud CEcume- 
 nium, ii. 684. D. 
 
 X Xenophon, Hell.v. iv. 1 : npw- 
 rov ovb ’ vcj) epos tcop nanroTe avdpdo- 
 ttcop KparrjOevTes — Cyri Disciplina, 
 iii. i. 1 1 : tovtov av, 7 rpcoros elne, 
 7r orepov, k , r. X — Theophrastus, 
 De signis pluviarum, ad jin. 420: 
 eern be apeipov npcorov yeveaSai /3o- 
 peiop vbcop votlov Kal rois (fovopepois 
 Ka\ rois £(bois — Aristotle, Meteoro- 
 logica, i. xii. 24. line 8 : bio 7 roX- 
 Xot, orav to vbcop yfsvgai ra^v fiov- 
 XrjOaKTip, els top rjXiop nOeacri TTpco- 
 top — Cleomedes, 7rep\ perecopaop , i. 
 8. §. 41. p. 52 .* 01 yovp n eperaiy 
 npbs rfj aparoXfj ohcovpres, re cr (Tap- 
 er ip dopais tt poor 01 Xeyoprai eprvyxa- 
 peip rfj eKftoXfi rov rjXiov tcop 'ifirjpoop 
 TTpos bverpais oikovptodp — Ibid. §. 
 
 43 . p. 5 5 : y®P °^ r<0? r< * KaT i l 
 
 TO (TXVP a a ^ T fi) npdiTOlS CLP TOIS 
 
 x Phaedon, p. 2. 1. 1. y Chrysostom, Operum vii. 648. B. I11 Matt. Ho- 
 
 milia lxv. 3. z Jos. Contra Apionem, ii. 41. a Ant. Jud. ix. xiii. 1. 
 
 b xi. viii. 5. c xii. iv. 3. ‘I Plutarch, Roman* Quaestiones, Operum 
 
 vii. 155. f Cyrill, Contra Julianum, i. 14. A. B. 6 Jos. Contra Apionem, 
 i.22. 1182. h 1 Cor. xv. 19. Vide also Matt. xi. 11. xiii. 32. Mark iv. 31. 
 Luke vii. 28. ix. 48. Ephes. iii. 8. 
 
 N n 2 
 
548 
 
 Dissertation Fourteenth . 
 
 Nor is this usage peculiar to the Greeks : 
 
 Primus humum fodito, primus devecta cremato 
 
 Sarmenta, et vallos primus sub tecta referto : 
 
 Postremus metito. Virgil, Georg, ii. 408. 
 
 The construction of tt poor 09 adjectively for 7 rpo or 
 irporepov — like that of vcttcltos for peTa or vcrrepov — 
 would necessarily require the participle of the verb 
 fjyepLovevco, without the article ; and either in the past 
 or present tense ; as in these passages of Herodotus : 
 
 J/ I (3rjpni Toov Ilepcr aw eytVero rjpipa — 
 Charito, Lib. v. 85. line 24: Set 
 Se' npcorov to3v Xoyow anavTas nap - 
 nvai rovi avaynaiovs iv rrj St ktj — 
 Synesius, apud Dionem Chrys. 
 25. 1. 19: ravTrj S rj naAiv top" EX- 
 Xrjva tov (3ap(3apov npcoTov ay to — 
 Aristides, Scholia, 362. 1. 33 ; iva 
 bd^rj ort noXv npa>TOs"Oprjpos nXa- 
 tcopos — Plutarch, Cato Min. 43 : 
 Kat ovk e(f) 0 T] npcorov afaOels, teat 
 ndXtv avanTpiyfsas tero npos to firjpa 
 — Dionysius Hal. Ant. Rom. v. 
 77, 1034. 15 : d>v nvas Ka\ (3ana- 
 
 vois npoiTov fiKLvaro Diogenes 
 
 Laertius, Thales, Lib. i. §.24 : 
 npooros Se teat ttjv verrepav tov prjvos 
 TpiaKaba et7re — SS. Deperditorum 
 Vaticana Collectio, 1. Pars i. 
 75. D. Eusebii Queestiones ad 
 Marinum, 3 : npcoTa Se rjyeinBai Ta 
 7 rapa t<o 'ltodvvrj drjXovpeva, rw v napa 
 tg> M arBaico (frepopiv a>v — Ibid. j6. 
 A: rjv S’ ovtos bevrepos tov napa 
 T<» ’icodvvr) bebrjXarpivov — Eusebii 
 Chronicon, apud Syncellum : M«- 
 c Tea Se, (faiXaXrjOios elneiv, tovtoo v pe v 
 vedtTepov, t£>v Se nap ’ ^EXXrjntv ap- 
 XatdXoyovpivcov npcnfivTaTov. k,t.X. 
 
 — Justin Mart, ad Grsecos Co- 
 hortatio, 9. 62. 1. 11: iva yve 5re 
 on navnov tqtv nap ’ vpiv . . . 7roXXo) 
 npecrfivTaros yiyovev 6 . . . M covnijs 
 
 —Ibid. 12. 70. 1. 17 : navraxodev 
 
 ovv yviovai pabiov, oti noXXcd ap- 
 XaiOTaTrjp nanidv t<ov ef-coOev toro- 
 pid>v ttjv Mo ovniios inropiav eivai 
 crvpftaivei — Theophilus ad Au- 
 tolycum, iii. 22. p. 364 : « 
 
 yap tovtohv to>v apxatcov Set Kvvrai 
 Kal to. to>v Xomcov nvyypappara 
 ecr^ara etVat tcov bid Moocrecos rjpiv 
 bebopivcov ypapparcov, k, t. X — 
 Theodorit, Operum iv. 739, ad 
 ealeem : rj dyvoetTe, ort Matvaijs . . . 
 navroiv inn rd dv vpeTepcov . . . 7rpe- 
 
 o-fivTaTos — Arrianus, In Epicte- 
 tum, lib. i. cap. 10. p. 60 : evSvs 
 iyd> npedros orav rjpipa yivrjTai, piKpa 
 vnopipvrjnKopai, nva inavayv&vai 
 pe Set — 2Elian, De Natura Ani- 
 malium, viii. 1 2 : evOev rot teat tg> 
 < pCkavOpoanoTaTG) 6ed>v lepov dffirjKav 
 avrbv, feat inevffrrjptnav * AnKXrjniov 
 Oepanovra eivai , ot npd>Toi pov ravra 
 
 dvixvevaavTes — Scholia ad Arati 
 Phenomena, 282: 6 ovv Alydne- 
 pa>s npedros inn tov c Y S po^oou rrj 
 6 inn — 2 Sam. xix. 43, accord- 
 ing to the o' : /oat tvart tovto appe- 
 nds pe, feat ovk iXoylndr) 6 Xoyoy 
 pov np&Tos pot tov ’IodSa, int~ 
 c TTpi>\rai tov fiantkia ipot ; — He- 
 rodian, iii. 38 : iva o(f)6fi npd>Tov iv 
 Tois fianiXeiots, rj uKovnBrj ttjv fiant- 
 Xciav napakafiiov — Suidas, nXdf«X- 
 Xa : npd)Trj Se tov avbpos eYeXeurq- 
 ntv. 
 
On the census of Cyrenius , Luke ii. 2. 
 
 549 
 
 rplry yeverj /mera MiVoo TeXevrrjcravTa — irpo Svvtos rjXiov 
 — €? v A fxacriv /3aariXevo-avra l . Or in these of Josephus or 
 Julian : airo be o-Tparri'yovvTos ’I^crou — €7rl Titov 'Pod- 
 lULatcw /3aariXevovT09 — Kara tov OlviSci tov /SacriXev - 
 
 ovra k . 
 
 II po Kvpfjvlov rjye/uiovevovTog, or riye/uiovevcravTos — and 
 Mera K vprjviov riyeyovecovTa, or rjye/uLovevoravTa — would 
 have been equally appropriate to express, the one, Be- 
 fore Cyrenius was governor ; and the other, After 
 Cyrenius was governor : and the same thing would 
 hold good of Tporepov instead of n rpo, or of vcrrepov in- 
 stead of /uLera. I consider 7 rpwrrj to be so employed in 
 the present instance by St. Luke. 
 
 i vii. 1 71. v. 50. ii. 43. k Ant. Jud. ix. xiv. 1. Allian, De Natura Ani- 
 
 malium, xi. 15 : Ibid. 40. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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