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The Coming Prince
CHAPTER VIII: "MESSIAH THE PRINCE"
JUST as we find that in certain circles people who are
reputed pious are apt to be regarded with suspicion, so it would seem
that any writings which claim Divine authority or sanction inevitably
awaken distrust. But if the evangelists could gain the same fair hearing
which profane historians command; if their statements were tested upon
the same principles on which records of the past are judged by scholars,
and evidence is weighed in our courts of justice, it would be accepted
as a well-established fact of history that our Savior was born in Bethlehem,
at a time when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria, and Herod was king in Jerusalem.
The narrative of the first two chapters of St. Luke is not like an ordinary
page of history which carries with it no pledge of accuracy save that
which the general credit of the writer may afford. The evangelist is treating
of facts of which he had "perfect understanding from the very first;"
(Luke 1:3) in which, moreover, his personal interest was intense, and
in respect of which a single glaring error would have prejudiced not only
the value of his book, but the success of that cause to which his life
was devoted, and with which his hopes of eternal happiness were identified.
The matter has been treated as though this reference to Cyrenius were
but an incidental allusion, in respect of which an error would be of no
importance; whereas, in fact, it would be absolutely vital. That the true
Messiah must be born in Bethlehem was asserted by the Jew and conceded
by the Christian: that the Nazarene was born in Bethlehem the Jew persistently
denied. If even today he could disprove that fact, he would justify his
unbelief; for if the Christ we worship was not by right of birth the heir
to David's throne, He is not the Christ of prophecy. Christians soon forgot
this when they had no longer to maintain their faith against the unbroken
front of Judaism, but only to commend it to a heathen world. But it was
not forgotten by the immediate successors of the apostles. Therefore it
was that in writing to the Jews, Justin Martyr asserted with such emphasis
that Christ was born during the taxing of Cyrenius, appealing to the lists
of that census as to documents then extant and available for reference,
to prove that though Joseph and Mary lived at Nazareth, they went up to
Bethlehem to be enrolled, and that thus it came to pass the Child was
born in the royal city, and not in the despised Galilean village.[1]
1. Bethlehem, "in which Jesus Christ was born, as you
may also learn from the lists of the taxing which was made in the time
of Cyrenius, the first Governor of yours in Judea." — Apol.,
1., § 34.
"We assert Christ to have been born a hundred and fifty years ago, under
Cyrenius." — Ibid., § 46.
"But when there was an enrollment in Judea, which was then made first
under Cyrenius, he went up from Nazareth, where he lived, to Bethlehem,
of which place he was, to be enrolled," etc. — Dial. Trypho, §
78.
And these facts of the pedigree and birth of the Nazarene
afforded almost the only ground upon which issue could be joined, where
one side maintained, and the other side denied, that His Divine character
and mission were established by transcendental proofs. None could question
that His acts were more than human, but blindness and hate could ascribe
them to Satanic power; and the sublime utterances which in every succeeding
age have commanded the admiration of millions, even of those who have refused
to them the deeper homage of their faith, had no charm for men thus prejudiced.
But these statements about the taxing which brought the Virgin Mother up
to Bethlehem, dealt with plain facts which required no moral fitness to
appreciate them. That in such a matter a writer like St. Luke could be in
error is utterly improbable, but that the error would remain unchallenged
is absolutely incredible; and we find Justin Martyr, writing nearly a hundred
years after the evangelist, appealing to the fact as one which was unquestionable.
It may, therefore, be accepted as one of the most certain of the really
certain things of history, that the first taxing of Cyrenius was made before
the death of Herod, and that while it was proceeding Christ was born in
Bethlehem.
Not many years ago this statement would have been received either with ridicule
or indignation. The evangelist's mention of Cyrenius appeared to be a hopeless
anachronism; as, according to undoubted history, the period of his governorship
and the date of his "taxing" were nine or ten years later than the nativity.
Gloated over by Strauss and others of his tribe, and dismissed by writers
unnumbered either as an enigma or an error, the passage has in recent years
been vindicated and explained by the labors of Dr. Zumpt of Berlin.
By a strange chance there is a break in the history of this period, for
the seven or eight years beginning B.C. 4.[2] The list of the governors
of Syria, therefore, fails us, and for the same interval P. Sulpicius Quirinus,
the Cyrenius of the Greeks, disappears from history. But by a series of
separate investigations and arguments, all of them independent of Scripture,
Dr. Zumpt has established that Quirinus was twice governor of the
province, and that his first term of office dated from the latter part of
B.C. 4, when he succeeded Quinctilius Varus. The unanimity with which this
conclusion has been accepted renders it unnecessary to discuss the matter
here. But one remark respecting it may not be out of place. The grounds
of Dr. Zumpt's conclusions may be aptly described as a chain of circumstantial
evidence, and his critics are agreed that the result is reasonably certain.[3]
To make that certainty absolute, nothing is wanting but the positive testimony
of some historian of repute. If, for example, one of the lost fragments
of the history of Dion Cassius were brought to light, containing the mention
of Quirinus as governing the province during the last months of Herod's
reign, the fact would be deemed as certain as that Augustus was emperor
of Rome. A Christian writer may be pardoned if he attaches equal weight
to the testimony of St. Luke. It will, therefore, be here assumed as absolutely
certain that the birth of Christ took place at some date not earlier than
the autumn of B.C. 4.[4]
2. Josephus here leaves a gap in his narrative; and
through the loss of MSS., the history of Dion Cassius, the other authority
for this period, is not available to supply the omission.
3. Dr. Zumpt's labors in this matter were first made public in a Latin
treatise which appeared in 1854. More recently he has published them
in his Das Geburtsjahr Christi (Leipzig, 1869). The English reader
will find a summary of his arguments in Dean Alford's Greek Test.
(Note on Luke 2:1), and in his article, on Cyrenius in Smith's
Bible Dict.; he describes them as "very striking and satisfactory."
Dr. Farrar remarks, "Zumpt has, with incredible industry and research,
all but established in this matter the accuracy of St. Luke, by proving
the extreme probability that Quirinus was twice governor
of Syria" (Life of Christ, vol. 1. p. 7, note). See also
an article in the Quarterly Review for April 1871, which describes
Zumpt's conclusions as "very nearly certain," "all but certain." The
question is discussed also in Wieseler's Chron. Syn. (Venables's
trans.) In his Roman history, Mr. Merivale adopts these results unreservedly.
He says (vol. 4., p. 457), "A remarkable light has been thrown upon
the point by the demonstration, as it seems to be, of Augustus Zumpt
in his second volume of Commentationes Epigraphicae, that Quirinus
(the Cyrenius of St. Luke 2.) was first governor of Syria from the close
of A. U. 750 (B. C. 4), to A. U. 753 (B. C. l)."
4. The birth of our Lord is placed in B. C. 1, by Pearson and Hug; B.
C. 2, by Scaliger; B. C. 3, by Baronius, Calvisius, Suskind, and Paulus;
B. C. 4, by Lamy, Bengel, Anger, Wieseler, and Greswell; B. C. 5, by
Ussher and Petavius; B. C. 7, by Ideler and Sanclementi (Smith's Bible
Dict., "Jesus Christ," p. 1075). It should be added that Zumpt's
date for the nativity is fixed on independent grounds in B. C. 7. Following
Ideler, he concludes that the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and
Saturn, which occurred in that year, was the "Star" which led the Magi
to Palestine.
The dictum of our English chronologer, than whom none more
eminent or trustworthy can be appealed to, is a sufficient guarantee that
this conclusion is consistent with everything that erudition can bring to
bear upon the point. Fynes Clinton sums up his discussion of the matter
thus. "The nativity was not more than about eighteen months before the death
of Herod, nor less than five or six. The death of Herod was either in the
spring of B.C. 4, or the spring of B.C. 3. The earliest possible
date then for the nativity is the autumn of B.C. 6 (U. C. 748), eighteen
months before the death of Herod in B.C. 4. The latest will be the of
B.C. 4 (U. C. 750), about six months before his death, assumed to be
in spring B.C. 3."[5] This opinion has weight, not only because of the writer's
eminence as a chronologist, but also because his own view as to the actual
date of the birth of Christ would have led him to narrow still more the
limits within which it must have occurred, if his sense of fairness had
permitted him to do so. Moreover, Clinton wrote in ignorance of what Zumpt
has since brought to light respecting the census of Quirinus. The introduction
of this new element into the consideration of the question, enables us with
absolute confidence, adopting Clinton's dictum, to assign the death of Herod
to the month Adar of B.C. 3, and the nativity to the autumn of B.C. 4.
5. Fasti Romani, A. D. 29.
That the least uncertainty should prevail respecting the
time of an event of such transcendent interest to mankind is a fact of strange
significance. But whatever doubt there may be as to the birth-date of the
Son of God, it is due to no omission in the sacred page if equal doubt be
felt as to the epoch of His ministry on earth. There is not in the whole
of Scripture a more definite chronological statement than that contained
in the opening verses of the third chapter of St. Luke. "In the fifteenth
year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea,
and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of
Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene,
Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John
the son of Zacharias in the wilderness."
Now the date of Tiberius Caesar's reign is known with absolute accuracy;
and his fifteenth year, reckoned from his accession, began on the 19th August,
A.D. 28. And further, it is also known that during that year, so reckoned,
each of the personages named in the passage, actually held the position
there assigned to him. Here then, it might be supposed, no difficulty or
question could arise. But the evangelist goes on to speak of the beginning
of the ministry of the Lord Himself, and he mentions that "He was about
thirty years of age when He began."[6] This statement, taken in connection
with the date commonly assigned to the nativity, has been supposed to require
that "the fifteenth year of Tiberius" shall be understood as referring,
not to the epoch of his reign, but to an earlier date, when history testifies
that certain powers were conferred on him during the two last years of Augustus.
All such hypotheses, however, "are open to one overwhelming objection, viz.,
that the reign of Tiberius, as beginning from 19th August, A.D. 14, was
as well known a date in the time of Luke, as the reign of Queen Victoria
is in our own day; and no single case has ever been, or can be, produced,
in which the years of Tiberius were reckoned in any other manner."[7]
6. Luke 3:23. Such is the right rendering of the verse.
The Revised Version renders it: "And Jesus Himself, when He began to
teach, was about thirty years of age."
7. Lewin, Fasti Sacri, p. 53. Diss., chap. 6: The joint-principate
theory of the reign of Tiberius, elaborately argued for by Greswell,
is essential with writers like him, who assign the crucifixion to A.
D 29 or 30. Sanclementi, indeed, finding "that nowhere in histories,
or on monuments, or coins, is a vestige to be found of any such mode
of reckoning the years of this emperor," disposes of the difficulty
by taking the date in Luke 3:1 to refer, not to John the Baptist's ministry,
but to Christ's death. Browne adopts this in a modified form, recognizing
that the hypothesis above referred to "falls under fatal objections."
He remarks that "it is improbable to the last degree" that Luke, who
wrote specially for a Roman officer, and generally for Gentiles, would
have so expressed himself as to be certainly misunderstood by them.
Therefore, though the statement of the evangelist clashes with his conclusion
as to the date of the Passion, he owns his obligation to accept it.
See Ordo Saec., §§ 71 and 95.
Nor is there any inconsistency whatever between these statements
of St. Luke and the date of the nativity (as fixed by the evangelist himself),
under Cyrenius, in the autumn of B.C. 4; for the Lord's ministry, dating
from the autumn of A.D. 28, may in fact have begun before His thirty-first
year expired, and cannot have been later than a few months beyond it. The
expression "about thirty years implies some such margin.[8] As therefore
it is wholly unnecessary, it becomes wholly unjustifiable, to put a forced
and special meaning on the evangelist's words; and by the fifteenth year
of Tiberius Caesar he must have intended what all the world would assume
he meant, namely, the year beginning 19th August, A.D. 28. And thus, passing
out of the region of argument and controversy, we reach at last a well-ascertained
date of vital importance in this inquiry.
8. As Dean Alford puts it (Gr. Test., in loco):
"This hosei tpiakonta
admits of considerable latitude, but only in one direction, viz.,
over thirty years."
The first Passover of the Lord's public ministry on earth
is thus definitely fixed by the Gospel narrative itself, as in Nisan A.D.
29. And we are thus enabled to fix 32 A.D. as the year of the crucifixion.[9]
9. "It seems to me absolutely certain that our Lord's
ministry lasted for some period above three years" (Pusey, Daniel,
p. 176, and see p. 177, note 7). This opinion is now held
so universally, that it is no longer necessary to set forth in detail
the grounds on which it rests; indeed, recent writers generally assume
without proof that the ministry included four Passovers. The most satisfactory
discussion of the question which I know of is in Hengstenberg's Christology
(Arnold's trans., §§ 755-765). St. John mentions expressly three
Passovers at which the Lord was present; and if the feast of John 5:1
be a Passover, the question is at an end. It is now generally admitted
that that feast was either Purim or Passover, and Hengstenberg's
proofs in favor of the latter are overwhelming. The feast of Purim
had no Divine sanction. It was instituted by the decree of Esther,
Queen of Persia, in the 13th year of Xerxes (B. C. 473), and it was
rather a social and political than a religious feast, the service in
the synagogue being quite secondary to the excessive eating and drinking
which marked the day. It is doubtful whether our Lord would have observed
such a feast at all; but that, contrary to the usual practice, He would
have specially gone up to Jerusalem to celebrate it, is altogether incredible.
This is opposed, no doubt, to the traditions embodied in
the spurious Acta Pilati so often quoted in this controversy, and
in the writings of certain of the fathers, by whom the fifteenth year of
Tiberius was held to be itself the date of the death of Christ; "by some,
because they confounded the date of the baptism with the date of the Passion;
by others, because they supposed both to have happened in one year; by others,
because they transcribed from their predecessors without examination."[10]
10. Clinton's Fasti Rom., A. D. 29.
An imposing array of names can be cited in support of any
year from A.D. 29 to A.D. 33; but such testimony is of force only so long
as no better can be found. Just as a seemingly perfect chain of circumstantial
evidence crumbles before the testimony of a single witness of undoubted
veracity and worth, and the united voice of half a county will not support
a prescriptive right, if it be opposed to a single sheet of parchment, so
the cumulative traditions of the Church, even if they were as definite and
clear as in fact they are contradictory and vague, would not outweigh the
proofs to which appeal has here been made.
One point more, however, claims attention. Numerous writers, some of them
eminent, have discussed this question as though nothing more were needed
in fixing the date of the Passion than to find a year, within certain limits,
in which the paschal moon was full upon a Friday. But this betrays strange
forgetfulness of the intricacies of the problem. True it is that if the
system by which today the Jewish year is settled had been in force eighteen
centuries ago, the whole controversy might turn upon the week date of the
Passover in a given year; but on account of our ignorance of the embolismal
system then in use, no weight whatever can be attached to it.[11] While
the Jewish year was the old lunisolar year of 360 days, it is not improbable
they adjusted it, as for centuries they had probably been accustomed to
do in Egypt, by adding annually the "complimentary days" of which Herodotus
speaks.[12] But it is not to be supposed that when they adopted the present
form of year, they continued to correct the calendar in so primitive a manner.
Their use of the metonic cycle for this purpose is comparatively modern.[13]
And it is probable that with the lunar year they obtained also under the
Seleucidae the old eight years' cycle for its adjustment. The fact that
this cycle was in use among the early Christians for their paschal calculations,[14]
raises a presumption that it was borrowed from the Jews; but we have no
certain knowledge upon the subject.
11. "The month began at the phases of the moon…and
this happens, according to Newton, when the moon is eighteen hours old.
Therefore the fourteenth Nisan might commence when the moon was 13d.
18h. old, and wanted 1d. oh. 22m. to the full. [The age of the moon
at the full will be 14d. 18h. 22M.] But sometimes the phases was
delayed till the moon was 1d. 17h. old; and then if the first Nisan
were deferred till the phases, the fourteenth would begin only
1h. 22m. before the full. This precision, however, in adjusting the
month to the moon did not exist in practice. The Jews, like other nations
who adopted a lunar year, and supplied the defect by an intercalary
month, failed in obtaining complete accuracy. We know not what their
method of calculation was at the time of the Christian era" (Fasti
Rom., vol. 2., p. 240); A. D. 30 is the only year between 28 and
33 in which the phases of the full moon was on a Friday. In A. D. 29
the full moon was on Saturday, and the phases on Monday. (See Wurm's
Table, in Wiesler's Chron. Syn., Venables's trans., p. 407).
12. Herod. 2:4.
13. It was about A. D. 360 that the Jews adopted the metonic cycle of
nineteen years for the adjustment of their calendar. Before that time
they used a cycle of eighty-four years, which was evidently the calippic
period of seventy-six years with a Greek octaeteris added. This is said
by certain writers to have been in use at the time of our Lord, but
the statement is very doubtful. It appears to rest on the testimony
of the later Rabbins. Julius Africanus, on the other hand, states in
his Chronography that "the Jews insert three intercalary months
every eight years." For a description of the modern Jewish calendar
see Encyc. Brit. (9th ed., vol. 5., p. 714).
14. Browne, Ordo saec., § 424
Indeed, the only thing reasonably certain upon the matter
is that the Passover did not fall upon the days assigned to it by
writers whose calculations respecting it are made with strict astronomical
accuracy,[15] for the Mishna affords the clearest proof that the
beginning of the month was not determined by the true new moon, but
by the first appearance of her disc; and though in a climate like that of
Palestine this would seldom be delayed by causes which would operate in
murkier latitudes, it doubtless sometimes happened "that neither sun nor
stars for many days appeared."[16] These considerations justify the statement
that in any year whatever the 15th Nisan may have fallen on a Friday.[17]
15. See ex. gr. Browne Ordo saec., §
64. He avers that "if in a given year the paschal moon was at the full
at any instant between sunset of a Thursday and sunset of a Friday,
the day included between the two sunsets was the 15th Nisan;
"and on this ground he maintains that A. D. 29 is the only possible
date of the crucifixion. As his own table shows, however, no possible
year (i. e., no year between 28 and 33) satisfies this requirement;
for the paschal full moon in A. D. 29 was on Saturday the 16th April,
not on Friday the 18th March. This view is maintained also by
Ferguson and others. It may be accounted for, perhaps, by the fact that
till recent years the Mishna was not translated into English.
16. Acts 27:20. Treatise Rosh Hashanah of the Mishna deals
with the mode in which, in the days of the "second temple," the feast
of the new moon was regulated. The evidence of two competent witnesses
was required by the Sanhedrin to the fact that they had seen the
moon, and the numerous rules laid down for the journey and examination
of these witnesses prove that not unfrequently they came from a distance.
Indeed, the case of their being "a day and a night on the road" is provided
for (ch. i., § 9). The proclamation by the Sanhedrin, therefore, may
have been sometimes delayed till a day or even two after the phases,
and sometimes the phases was delayed till the moon was 1d. 17h. old
[Clinton, Fasti Rom., vol. 2., p. 240]; so that the 1st Nisan
may have fallen several days later than the true new moon. Possibly,
moreover, it may have been still further delayed by the operation of
rules such as those of the modern Jewish calendar for preventing certain
festivals from falling on incompatible days. It appears from the Mishna
("Pesachim") that the present rules for this purpose were
not in force; but yet there may have been similar rules in operation.
17. See Fasli Rom., vol. 2., p. 240, as to the impossibility
of determining in what years the Passover fell on Friday.
For example, in A.D. 32, the date of the true new moon, by
which the Passover was regulated, was the night (10h 57m) of the 29th March.
The ostensible date of the 1st Nisan, therefore, according to the phases,
was the 31st March. It may have been delayed, however, till the 1st April;
and in that case the 15th Nisan should apparently have fallen on Tuesday
the 15th April. But the calendar may have been further disturbed by intercalation.
According to the scheme of the eight years' cycle, the embolismal month
was inserted in the third, sixth, and eighth years, and an examination of
the calendars from A.D. 22 to A D. 45 will show that A.D. 32 was the third
year of such a cycle. As, therefore, the difference between the solar year
and the lunar is 11 days, it would amount in three years to 33 3/4 days,
and the intercalation of a thirteenth month (Ve-adar) of thirty days
would leave an epact still remaining of 3 3/4 days; and the "ecclesiastical
moon" being that much before the real moon, the feast day would have fallen
on the Friday (11th April), exactly as the narrative of the Gospels requires.[18]
18. The following is the scheme of the octaeteris:
"The solar year has a length of 365 & 1/4 days; 12 lunar months
make 354 days. The difference, which is called the epact or epagomene,
is 11 & 1/4 days. This is the epact of the first year. Hence the
epact of the second year = 22 & 1/2 days; of the third, 33 &
3/4. These 33 & 3/4 days make one lunar month of 30 days, which
is added to the third lunar year as an intercalary or thirteenth month
(embolismos), and a remainder or epact
of 3 3/4 days. Hence the epact of the fourth year =11 & 1/4 + 3
& 3/4=15 days; that of the fifth year =26 & 1/4; of the sixth,
37 & 1/2, which gives a second embolism of 30 days with an epact
of 7 & 1/2. The epact, therefore, of the seventh year is 18 &
3/4, and of the eighth =18 & 3/4 + 11 & 1/4= just 30, which
is the third embolism with no epact remaining." — BROWNE, Ordo
Saec., § 424. The days of the Paschal full moon in the years A.
D. 22-37 were as follows; the embolismal years, according to the octaeteris,
being marked "E":
- A. D
22 ... 5th April
23 ... 25th March
24 ... 12th April
25 ... 1st April
26 ... 21st March
27E ... 9th April
28 ... 29th March
29E ... 17th April
30 ... 6th April
31 ... 27th March
32E ... 14th April
33 ... 3rd April
34 ... 23rd March
35E ... 11th April
36 ... 30th March
37E ... 18th April
This, moreover, would explain what, notwithstanding all the
poetry indulged in about the groves and grottoes of Gethsemane, remains
still a difficulty. Judas needed neither torch nor lantern to enable him
to track his Master through the darkest shades and recesses of the garden,
nor was it, seemingly, until he had fulfilled his base and guilty mission
that the: crowd pressed in to seize their victim. And no traitor need have
been suborned by the Sanhedrin to betray to them at midnight the object
of their hate, were it not that they dared not take Him save by stealth.[19]
Every torch and lamp increased the risk of rousing the sleeping millions
around them, for that night all Judah was gathered to the capital to keep
the Paschal feast.[20] If, then, the full moon were high above Jerusalem,
no other light were needed to speed them on their guilty errand; but if,
on the other hand, the Paschal moon were only ten or eleven days old upon
that Thursday night, she would certainly have been low on the horizon, if
she had not actually set, before they ventured forth. These suggestions
are not made to confirm the proof already offered of the year date of the
death of Christ, but merely to show how easy it is to answer objections
which at first sight might seem fatal.
19. Luke 22: 2-6
20. Josephus testifies that an "innumerable multitude" came together
for the feast (Ant., 17., 9, § 3); and he computes that at a
Passover before the siege of Jerusalem upwards of 2, 700, 200 persons
actually partook of the Paschal Supper, besides the foreigners present
in the city (Wars, 6., 9, § 3).
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