which he dates ix Kal. April, he reckons to the consulate of Cæsario and Atticus 369 years. This gives for the Passion A. D. 28, and the error is precisely the same as that which we have noticed in the Computus Paschalis.

§ 81. Those writers who assign later dates generally state as their reason for so doing the three passovers mentioned by S. John.

Apollinarius of Laodicea (in S. Jerome, Comm. Dan. ix.) xxx. anno æt, juxta Lucam, cæpit Dominus evangelium prædicare, et juxta Johannem per tria paschata duos postea implevit annos. Exinde Tiberii sex supputantur anni. The year thus marked is A.D. 31.

S. Jerome: Comm. in Esai. ix. Scriptum est in Evangelio secundum Joannem per tria pascha Dominum venisse in Jerusalem, quæ duos annos efficiunt. This father elsewhere identifies the 14th of Nero A. D. 68 with the 37th after the Passion, and the 7th of Nero with the 30th: (Greswell, i. 463): this makes his date u. c. 784, A.D. 31.

Eusebius, likewise appealing to S. John, estimates the Lord's ministry at 3 years. Dem. Ev. viii. 400: so Theodoret in Dan. ix. The object here was to make the term of the Lord's ministry identical with the half-week in Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks. Eusebius's date is Ol. 202. 4, A. D. 33, to which he was the more inclined "as in Phlegon of Tralles, a chronographer of the second century, and in other writers, he found the mention, in Ol. 202, of a great eclipse of the sun, accompanied by an earthquake, which he conceived must be the same with the darkness and earthquake of the Passion. He did not consider that the Jews celebrate their passover only at the full of the moon, and that an astronomical eclipse can happen only at the time of new moon." (Ideler ii. 418.)'

"S. Epiphanius's date for the Nativity is Jan. 6, in the 42nd of Augustus B. C. 2, and in the 33rd [as he supposes] of Herod... for the Baptism, 8 Nov. A. D. 28: for the Passion, 20 March, A.D. 31. The age of our Lord at His Baptism, he

1" M. Wurm has cleared up this point by help of calculation, and has found that in Ol. 202. there was only one con

siderable solar eclipse visible in Western Asia, namely that of 29 Nov. U.c. 782=29, A. D." Id. note.

supposes to be 29 years and 10 months exactly: His age at the Passion, 32 years 74 days: and the precise length of His ministry from the Baptism to the Crucifixion, 2 years 134 days." (Greswell, App. p. 87.)

§ 82. The opinions, then, of the early christian writers may be thus summed up.

(1.) There is a very ancient tradition, followed very generally by the Latin Fathers in particular, which assigns as the year of the Passion the 15th of Tiberius in the consulate of the two Gemini, or A. D. 29.

(2.) At a later period, some seem to have supposed that the ministry of the Lord beginning in the 15th of Tiberius, the Passion must be referred to the 16th, A. D. 30.

(3.) Others again, identifying the years of Tiberius with consular years, were led to designate A.D. 29 (Passover) as the 16th Tiberius.

(4.) Others, finding three passovers noted in the text of S. John's Gospel, found it necessary to measure two years at least from the first of those passovers to the Crucifixion.

And lastly, others, comparatively late writers, were led by their own interpretation of Daniel's prophecy to assign a term of 3 years, measured from some point in the 15th of Tiberius so as to end at A.D. 33.

§ 83. Now we have seen that the year 29 is the only year between 28 and 33 which fully satisfies the astronomical condition that the 14th Nisan shall coincide with a Friday. And this is the very year assigned by the almost uniform tradition of the Latin church, if not of the Alexandrine also. Is it at all incredible (as Sanclemente suggests) that the true date of the year became known in the West by means of Pontius Pilate, who, as we have seen, returned to Rome in the death-year of Tiberius? or, through the apostles Peter and Paul, who suffered martyrdom at Rome?-or, is it anywise improbable that the latin Christians may have derived their knowledge of the true date from those Acta Pilati, to which we find Christians so confidently appealing in very early times? Thus S. Justin Martyr, addressing the emperor, says: καὶ ταῦτα ὅτι γέγονε δύ νασθε μαθεῖν ἐκ τῶν ἐπὶ Ποντίου Πιλάτου γενομένων Ακ (Apol. 1. 56. see also § 71.) And Tertullian in his Apologeticus i. 6. Ea omnia super Christo Pilatus, et ipse jam

των.

pro sua conscientia Christianus Cæsari, tunc Tiberio, renunciavit. That these Acta, or the writing regarded as such, noted the very day of this great event, we know from the statement of Epiphanius, though that writer disparages the authority of the document. The passage is remarkably apposite to our purpose, and shall be given in the writer's own words. Hær. i. 420: Ἀπὸ τῶν ̓́Ακτων δῆθεν Πιλάτου αὐχοῦσι τὴν ἀκρίβειαν εὑρη κέναι, ἐν οἷς ἐμφέρεται τῇ πρὸ ὀκτὼ καλ. ἀπριλλ. τὸν Zwτηра пεπоVОéval. This is the 25th March, the date assigned by Tertullian, Hippolytus, Lactantius, S. Augustin. Now observe what follows:—ἔτι δὲ εὕρομεν ἀντίγραφα ἐκ τῶν Πιλάτου, ἐν οἷς σημαίνει πρὸ δεκαπέντε Καλ. Απρ. τὸ πάθος γεγενῆσθαι. That is, there were copies of the Acta Pilati in Epiphanius's time in which the date given was 15 Tiberius 15 Kal. Apr. 18th March, a. D. 29 :— the very day which was urged upon us by the astronomical element of the question.

=

Nor is it difficult to explain the origin of the other date, 25 March. Before the council of Nice, that day was supposed to be still, as at the Julian reformation, the day of the vernal equinox. On that same day, as it was supposed, the Incarnation of the Eternal Word commenced, that is to say, nine months before the received date of the Nativity, 25 Dec. This day therefore seemed to have a peculiar fitness, which in fact is often dwelt upon by S. Augustin' and others. Hence the addition of one week to the true date may easily be accounted for. But this is not all. Hippolytus (A. D. 222) was led to this date by his own paschal cycle, which marked the year 29 as one in which the 14th of the moon fell on a Friday. It so happens that his cycle, a double octäeteris, is in error, and the amount of error accumulated in 192 years amounts to just seven days. That is, in the year 221 A.D., the year preceding the commencement of his canon, the 14th of the paschal moon did fall, as he from actual observation states that it did, on the

1 S. Augustin. de Trin. iv. 9. Quæst. in Exod. 90.-The same Father repeatedly comments on the fitness of the 25th Dec. to be the day of the Nativity, namely, as being the day of the winter

solstice, after which the days begin to lengthen. Opp. iv. 2123. A. v. 1284. D. Serm. 186-194.

2 Infra, Institutes of Chron. § 426.

25th March. He assumed that at the end of every term of sixteen years, reckoned either way, from that year, the same concurrence must take place, and therefore that the date was the same in the year A. D. 29 which precedes A. D. 221 by 12 times 16, or 192 years. But the fact is, that eight Julian years fall short of 99 mean lunations by rather more than a day and a half, consequently the error accumulated in 24 × 8 years amounts to about 37 days, between which and one lunation there is a difference of 7 days, just the same difference, and in the same direction, as between the 18th March, the true paschal date, and the 25th, erroneously indicated by the cycle3.

$ 84. In conclusion, I observe, that the period which S. Epiphanius assigns to our Lord's life on earth is very nearly the same as that which results from the conclusion at which we have arrived. From the 8th December B. c. 5., our approximate date of the Nativity, to the 18th March A. D. 29, are 32 years 100 days. Epiphanius gives 32 years 74 days. Again: Epiphanius places the Nativity in the 33rd year of Herod, which he erroneously identifies with the 42nd of Augustus. The 33rd year of Herod began 1 Nisan B. c. 5. Epiphanius's yeardate of the Nativity is, therefore, virtually the same as ours, and the day is only a month later Consequently, his year of the Passion is virtually the same as ours: A. D. 29, and the day (13 kal. Apr.) only two days later. He was misled by the Fast Consulares, or mistook their meaning: for he gives the consular years thus:

Coss. Duobus Geminis.

Coss. Rufo et Rubellione.

Coss. Vinicio et Longino Cassio.

But in fact the two Gemini are the same individuals as Rufus and Rubellio. He had heard that the two Gemini were

* In the same way, I doubt not, those "over-curious" calculators of whom S. Clement of Alexandria speaks, obtained their dates. They used the cycle of 84 years, which being composed of a Callippic period (76 years) and an Octäeteris is in error by about a day and a half in defect. The calculation probably started from the end of two such cycles, i.e.

A.D. 29+2 x 84 = 197 A. D., and consequently would give as the day of paschal full moon in A. D. 29 either 21 Mar. or 20 April, 3 days later than the truth. Thus the statement of S. Clement attests the year A. D. 29. That neither day of that year fell on a Friday did not occur to the calculators as any objection to their result.

consuls in the 15th of Tiberius, and therefore wholly identifies that year with the consular year; then, by mistake, he assigns a Rufus and Rubellio as the consuls of the 16th Tiberius, A. D. 29, and gives, rightly, Vinicius and Cassius as those of the year 30, in which year, as being two years from the year of the Baptism, he conceived himself obliged by the mention of three passovers in S. John to place the Crucifixion'.

COROLLARY.-On the duration of our Lord's Ministry, from the Baptism to the Passion.

§ 85. It appears from the preceding argument, that the date of the Crucifixion can be no other than the passover of A. D. 29, or 15th Tiberius, which is the very date (as to the year) assigned by the constant tradition of the Latin Church, and (in year and day) by the Acta Pilati, as reported by S. Epiphanius.

Our conclusion, however, seems to have landed us in a difficulty of no slight moment. For S. Luke says in the beginning of his history of our Lord's ministry, ἐν ἔτει δὲ πεντεκαιδεκάτῳ τῆς ἡγεμονίας Τιβερίου Καίσαρος κ. τ. λ.....ἐγένετο ῥῆμα Θεοῦ ἐπὶ Ἰωάννην τὸν Ζαχαρίου υἱὸν ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ. This 15th year of Tiberius, according to the Roman reckoning, began 19 August A. D. 28, whence to the date, as above given, of the Crucifixion are but seven calendar months. It is obviously impossible that the ministry of John the Baptist should have begun so short a time before the Crucifixion, for S. John mentions at least one passover after our Lord's Baptism besides the passover of the Crucifixion it follows therefore that the Baptism did not take place, nor John's ministry commence, in the 15th Tiberius, according to the strict Roman reckoning. And the difficulty is

1 Eusebius, H. E. ii. 5, regards the calamities which came upon the Jews through the hostility of Sejanus as a judicial infiction τῶν κατὰ τοῦ Χριστοῦ τετολμημένων ἕνεκεν. Now the date of Sejanus's overthrow is 18 Oct. A.D. 31. This opinion, as Mr. Greswell has shown, (Diss. i. 445. Ed. 2.) implies at least as early a date as A.D. 30.-Again: the

well-known story of Tiberius's proposition to the Senate for the worship of Christ, as understood by the ancients, implies the same thing. For it is said to have failed, præcipue cum et Sejanus, præfectus Tiberii, suscipiendæ religioni obstinatissime contradiceret. Orosius, Hist. vii. 4. (Greswell, ib. 444.)