Appendix II, Note B: The Date of the Nativity

In tréating of the date of the birth of our Lord, the arguments in favour of an earlier date than that which is here adopted are too well known to be left unnoticed. Christology (Arnold’s trazs.), § 737.

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Dr. Farrar states the question thus in his Zéfe of Christ
(Excursus I.) : —

“Our one most certain datum is obtained from the fact that Christ was born before the death of Herod the Great. The date of that event is known with absolute certainty, for (i) Josephus tells us that he died thirty-seven years after he had been declared king by the Romans. Now it is known that he was declared King A.U.C. 714; and, therefore, since Josephus always reckons his years from Nisan to Nisan, and counts the initial and terminal fractions of Nisan as complete years, Herod must have died between Nisan A.U.C. 750, and Nisan A.U.C. 751, ae. between B.c 4 and B.c. 3 of our era. (ii) Josephus says that on the night in which Herod ordered Judas, Matthias, and their abettors to be burnt, there was an eclipse of the moon. Now this eclipse took place on the night of March rath, BC. 4, and Herod was dead at least seven days before the Passover, which, if we accept the Jewish reckoning, fell in that year on April 12th. But according to the clear indication of the Gospels, Jesus must have been born at least forty days before Herod’s death. It is clear, therefore, that under no circumstances can the nativity have taken place later than February B.c. 4.”*

This passage is a typical illustration of the relative value attached to the statements of sacred and profane historians. In the histories of Josephus an incidental mention of an eclipse or of the length of a king’s reign suffices to give

* Dr. Farrar’s book has done much to popularize a controversy which hitherto has interested only the few. It may be well to notice, therefore, that his sweeping statement as to the date of Herod’s death is doubtful (see Clinton, Fasti Rom., A.D. 29), and that Josephus does sof always reckon reigns in the manner indicated (see p. 262, post), “absolute certainty,” before which the clearest and most definite statements of Holy Writ must give place, albeit they relate to matters of such transcendent interest to the writers that even if the Evangelists be dismissed to the category of mere historians, no mistake was possible,

The following is a more temperate statement of the question, by the Archbishop of York, in an article (Fesus Christ) contributed to Smith’s Bible Dictionary :- — “Herod the Great died, according to Josephus, in the thirty-seventh year after he was appointed king. His elevation coincides with the consulship of Cn Domitius Calvinus and C. Asinius Pollio, and this determines the date A.U.C. 714. There is reason to think that in such calculations Josephus reckons the years from the month Nisan to the same month, and also that the death of Herod took place in the beginning of the thirty-seventh year, or just before the Passover; if then thirty-six complete years are added, they give the year of Herod’s death, A.U.C. 750.”

According to this, the commonly received view, Herod’s death took place within the first six days of a Jewish year, and these days are reckoned as a complete year in his regnal era. Now it is admitted that in computing time the Jews generally included both the terminal units of a given period. A signal and well-known instance of this is afforded by the words of the Lord Himself, when. He declared He would lie in death for three days and nights. What meaning did these words convey to Jews? Four-and-twenty hours after His burial they came to Pilate and said, “We remember that that deceiver said, while He was yet alive, ‘After three days 1 will rise again;’ command, therefore, that the sepulchre be made sure until the third

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day.” * Had that Sunday passed leaving the seal upon the tomb unbroken, the Pharisees would boldly have proclaimed their triumph; whereas, by our modes of reckoning, the resurrection ought to have been deferred till Monday: night, or Tuesday morning.t

Again, it may be assumed that Herod’s accession dated in fact from B.c. 40, and, therefore, that B.c. 4 was the thirty-seventh and last year of his reign. Further it is probable he died shortly before a Passover. The question remains whether his death occurred at the beginning or toward the close of the Jewish year.

Josephus relates that when the event took place Archelaus remained in seclusion during seven days, and then presented himself publicly to the people. His first reception was not unfavourable, though he had to yield to many a popular demand then pressed on him; and after the ceremonial, he “went and offered sacrifice to God, and then betook himself to feast with his friends.” Soon, however, discontent

* Matt. xxvii. 63,64; comp.2 Chron. x. 5-12. ‘* He said unto them, Come again unto me afer three days... so Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day?”

+ Whether such a system of reckoning appears strange or natural depends on the habit of thought of the individual. A professor of theology might have trouble in defending it in class, but a prison chaplain would have no difficulty in explaining it to his congregation! Our own civil day is a vvy@npepoyv, beginning at midnight, and the law takes no cognizance of a fart of a day. Therefore in a sentence of three days’ imprisonment, the prescribed term is equal to seventy-two hours; but though the prisoner seldom reaches the gaol till evening, the law holds him to have completed a day’s imprisonment the moment midnight strikes, and the gaoler may lawfully release him the moment the prison is opened the second morning after. As a matter of fact a prisoner committed for three days is seldom more than forty hours in gaol. This mode of reckoning and speaking was as familiar to the Jew as it is to the Aaditués of our police courts,

wp: - vi a and disaffection began to smoulder and spread, and fresh demands were made upon the king. To these again he yielded, though with less grace, instructing his general to remonstrate with the people, and persuade them to defer their petitions till his return from Rome. These appeals only increased the prevailing dissatisfaction, and a riot ensued. The king still continued to parley with ‘the seditious, but, “upon the approach of the feast of unleavened bread,” when the capital became thronged with the Jews from the country, the state of things became so alarming that Archelaus determined to suppress the rioters by force of arms. This was “ufon the approach of the feast,” and the Jews considered the Passover was “nigh at hand” upon the eighth day of Nisan, when they repaired to Jerusalem for the festival.*

The Passover began the 14th Nisan. This final riot took place during the preceding week. The earlier riot occurred before that again, ze¢., before the date of the incursion of Jews for the festival, the 8th Nisan. This again was preceded by some interval, measured from the day following the court mourning for Herod, which had lasted seven days. The history, therefore, establishes conclusively that Herod’s death was more than fourteen days before the Passover, and therefore at the close and not at the beginning of a Jewish year.

But which year? His death must have been afer the

* ‘€ When the people were come in great crowds to the feast of unleavened bread on the eighth day of the month Xanthicus” (#e., Nisan) (jos, Wars, vi. 5, 3- Comp. John xi. 55; xii. 1). “The Jews’ Passover was nigh at hand, and many went out of the country up to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. Then Jesus six days before the Passover came to Bethany.”

1 eclipse of 13th March, B.c. 4® But the eclipse was only a month before the Passover of that year, and his death was fourteen days at least before the Passover; could then the events recorded by Josephus as occurring in the interval between the eclipse and the king’s death have taken place in a fortnight? Let the reader turn to the Antiquities and judge for himself whether it be possible. The natural inference from the history is that the death was not weeks but months after the eclipse, and therefore, again, at the close of the year.

The correctness of this conclusion can be established by the application of the strictest of all tests, that of referring to the historian’s chronological statements,

In his Wars (ii. 7, 3), Josephus assigns the banishment of Archelaus to the minth year of his government; in his later work (Anz, xvii. 13, 3); he states it was in his tenth year. And these dates are given with a definiteness and in a manner which preclude the idea of a blunder. They are connected with the narration of a dream in which Archelaus saw a number of ears of corn (nine in the Wars, ten in the Antiquities), devoured by oxen, — presaging that the years

* There was no lunar eclipse visible at Jerusalem between that of the 13th March B.c. 4 and that of 9th January B.c. 1. Many writers take the latter to be the eclipse of Herod, and assign his death to that year. That of B.c. I was a fine total eclipse, totality coming on at fifteen minutes past midnight, whereas that of B.C. 4 was but a partial eclipse, and the greatest magnitude was not till 2 h. 34 m. a.m, (Johnson, Eclipses Past and Future). But though every consideration of this character points to B.c. 1 as the date of Herod’s death, the weight of evidence generally is in favour of B.c. 4. Of recent writers, the former year is adopted by Dr. Geikie (Life of Christ, 6th ed., p. 150), and notably by the late Mr. Bosanquet, who argues the question in his WVessiah the Prince, and more concisely in a paper read before the Society of Biblical Archzology on 6th June, 1871.

of his rule were about to be brought abruptly to an end. Now whether a ruler be Christian, Jew, or Turk, his ninth year is the year beginning with the eighth anniversary of his government, and his tenth year that beginning with the ninth anniversary; and it is mere casuistry to pretend that there is either mystery or difficulty in the matter. It is evident that the difference between the two statements of the historian is intentional, and that in his two histories he computed the Ethnarch’s government from two different epochs. But if Herod died in the first week of the Jewish year, as these writers maintain, this would be impossible, for Archelaus’s actual accession would have synchronized with his accession according to Jewish reckoning. Whereas if his government dated from the cose of a Jewish year, 4.D. 6* would be his ninth year in fact, but his tenth year according to Jfishna rule of computing reigns from Nisan.

In numerous treatises on this subject will be found an argument based on John ii. 20, ‘‘ Forty and six years was this temple in building.” According to Josephus (it is urged), “‘ Herod’s reconstruction of the temple began in the eighteenth year of his reign,”t and forty-six years from that date would fix A.D. 26s the year in which these words were spoken, and therefore as the first year of our Lord’s ministry. That writers of repute should have written thus may be described as a literary phenomenon. Not only does Josephus not say what is thus attributed to him, but his narrative disproves it. ‘The foundation for the statement is that either

* This is the year specified by Dion Cassius for the Ethnarch’s banishment, Clinton, 7, 4, A.D. 6. t Farrar, Life of Christ, App. Exc. I, in his eighteenth or nineteenth year* Herod made a speech proposing to rebuild the temple. But the historian adds, that finding his intentions and promises thoroughly distrusted by the people, “the king encouraged them, and told them he would not pull down their temple till all things were gotten ready for building it up entirely again. And as he promised them this beforehand, so he did not break his word with them, but got ready a thousand waggons, that were to bring stones for the building, and chose out ten thousand of the most skilful workmen, and bought a thousand sacerdotal garments for the priests, and Aad some of them taught the art of stone-cutters, and others of carpenters, and then began to build; dut his was not till everything was well prepared for the work.’+ What length of time these preparations occupied, it is of course impossible to decide, but if, as Lewin supposes, the work was begun at the

Passover of Bc. 18, then forty-six years would bring us

exactly to A.D. z2g — the first Passover of the Lord’s ministry,