Chapter VII: Part 7

Besides these works the chief efforts of textual critics since WH have
been directed towards the elucidation of minor problems, and the
promulgation of certain hypotheses to explain the characteristics
either of individual MSS. or of groups of MSS. Among these the works
of Sanday, Corssen, Wordsworth, White, Burkitt and Harris on the
history of the Old Latin and Vulgate, and especially the work of
Burkitt on the Old Syriac, have given most light on the subject. These
lines of research have been described in the preceding section on the
_apparatus criticus_. Other noteworthy and interesting, though in the
end probably less important, work has been done by Blass, Bousset,
Schmidtke, Rendel Harris and Chase. The outline of the chief works is
as follows:--

_F. Blass._--In his various books on the Acts and third gospel Blass
has propounded a new theory as to the "Western" text. He was struck
by the fact that neither the Western can be shown to be derived from
the Neutral, nor the Neutral from the Western. He therefore conceived
the idea that perhaps both texts were Lucan, and represented two
recensions by the original writer, and he reconstructed the history as
follows. Luke wrote the first edition of the Gospel for Theophilus
from Caesarea; this is the Neutral text of the Gospel. Afterwards he
went to Rome and there revised the text of the Gospel and reissued it
for the Church in that city; this is the Western (or, as Blass calls
it, Roman) text of the Gospel. At the same time he continued his
narrative for the benefit of the Roman Church, and published the
Western text of the Acts. Finally he revised the Acts and sent a copy
to Theophilus; this is the Neutral text of the Acts. This ingenious
theory met with considerable approval when it was first advanced, but
it has gradually been seen that "Western" text does not possess the
unity which Blass's theory requires it to have. Still, Blass's textual
notes are very important, and there is a mass of material in his
books.

_Bousset and Schmidtke._--These two scholars have done much work in
trying to identify smaller groups of MSS. with local texts. Bousset
has argued that the readings in the Pauline epistles found in [Hebrew:
alef]^c H and a few minuscules represent the text used by Pamphilus,
and on the whole this view seems to be highly probable. Another group
which Bousset has tried to identify is that headed by B, which he
connects with the recension of Hesychius, but this theory, though
widely accepted in Germany, does not seem to rest on a very solid
basis. To some extent influenced by and using Bousset's results,
Schmidtke has tried to show that certain small lines in the margin of
B point to a connexion between that MS. and a Gospel harmony, which,
by assuming that the text of B is Hesychian, he identifies with that
of Ammonius. If true, this is exceedingly important. Nestle, however,
and other scholars think that the lines in B are merely indications of
a division of the text into sense-paragraphs and have nothing to do
with any harmony.

_Rendel Harris_ and _Chase._--Two investigations, which attracted much
notice when they were published, tried to explain the phenomena of the
Western text as due to retranslation from early versions into Greek.
Rendel Harris argued for the influence of Latin, and Chase for that of
Syriac. While both threw valuable light on obscure points, it seems
probable that they exaggerated the extent to which retranslation can
be traced; that they ranked _Codex Bezae_ somewhat too highly as the
best witness to the "Western" text; and that some of their work was
rendered defective by their failure to recognize quite clearly that
the "Western" text is not a unity. At the same time, however little of
Rendel Harris's results may ultimately be accepted by the textual
critics of the future, his work will always remain historically of the
first importance as having done more than anything else to stimulate
thought and open new lines of research in textual criticism in the
last decade of the 19th century.

The time has not yet come when any final attempt can be made to bring
all these separate studies together and estimate exactly how far they
necessitate serious modification of the views of Westcott and Hort;
but a tentative and provisional judgment would probably have to be on
somewhat the following lines. The work of WH may be summed up into two
theorems:--(1) The text preserved in the later MSS. is not primitive,
but built up out of earlier texts;. (2) these earlier texts may be
classified as Western, Alexandrian and Neutral, of which the Neutral
is the primitive form. The former of these theorems has been generally
accepted and may be taken as proved, but the second has been closely
criticized and probably must be modified. It has been approached from
two sides, according as critics have considered the Western or the
Neutral and Alexandrian texts.

_The Western Text._--This was regarded by WH as a definite text, found
in D, the Old Latin and the Old Syriac; and it is an essential part of
their theory that in the main these three witnesses represent one
text. On the evidence which they had WH were undoubtedly justified,
but discoveries and investigation have gone far to make it impossible
to hold this view any longer. We now know more about the Old Latin,
and, thanks to Mrs Lewis' discovery, much more about the Old Syriac.
The result is that the authorities on which WH relied for their
Western text are seen to bear witness to two texts, not to one. The
Old Latin, if we take the African form as the oldest, as compared with
the Neutral text has a series of interpolations and a series of
omissions. The Old Syriac, if we take the Sinaitic MS. as the purest
form, compared in the same way, has a similar double series of
interpolations and omissions, but neither the omissions nor the
interpolations are the same in the Old Latin as in the Old Syriac.
Such a line of research suggests that instead of being able, as WH
thought, to set the Western against the Neutral text (the Alexandrian
being merely a development of the latter), we must consider the
problem as the comparison of at least three texts, a Western
(geographically), an Eastern and the Neutral. This makes the matter
much more difficult; and an answer is demanded to the problem afforded
by the agreement of two of these texts against the third. The obvious
solution would be to say that where two agree their reading is
probably correct, but the followers of WH maintain that the agreement
of the Western and Eastern is often an agreement in error. It is
difficult to see how texts, geographically so wide apart as the Old
Latin and Old Syriac would seem to be, are likely to agree in error,
but it is certainly true that some readings found in both texts seem
to have little probability. Sanday, followed by Chase and a few other
English scholars, has suggested that the Old Latin may have been made
originally in Antioch, but this paradoxical view has met with little
support. A more probable suggestion is Burkitt's, who thinks that many
readings in our present Old Syriac MSS. are due to the Diatessaron,
which was a geographically Western text. It may be that this
suggestion will solve the difficulty, but at present it is impossible
to say.

_The Neutral and Alexandrian Texts._--WH made it plain that the
Alexandrian text was a literary development of the Neutral, but they
always maintained that the latter text was not confined to, though
chiefly used in Alexandria. More recent investigations have confirmed
their view as to the relation of the Alexandrian to the Neutral text,
but have thrown doubt on the age and wide-spread use of the latter.
Whatever view be taken of the provenance of _Codex Vaticanus_ it is
plain that its archetype had the Pauline epistles in a peculiar order
which is only found in Egypt, and so far no one has been able to
discover any non-Alexandrian writer who used the Neutral text.
Moreover, Barnard's researches into the Biblical text of Clement of
Alexandria show that there is reason to doubt whether even in
Alexandria the Neutral text was used in the earliest times. We have no
evidence earlier than Clement, and the text of the New Testament which
he quotes has more in common with the Old Latin or "geographically
Western" text than with the Neutral, though it definitely agrees with
no known type preserved in MSS. or versions. This discovery has put
the Neutral text in a different light. It would seem as though we
could roughly divide the history of the text in Alexandria into three
periods. The earliest is that which is represented by the quotations
in Clement, and must have been in use in Alexandria at the end of the
2nd and beginning of the 3rd century. It is unfortunately not found in
any extant MS. The second stage is that found in the quotations of
Origen which is fairly well represented in [Hebrew: alef] B, though
Origen seems at times to have used MSS. of the earlier type. The third
stage is WH's Alexandrian, found in the quotations of Cyril of
Alexandria and a few MSS. (esp. CL [Xi] [Delta] [Psi]). It is clearly
a revision of the second stage, as WH saw, but we can now add that it
was not merely a literary revision but was influenced by the tendency
to revive readings which are found in the first stage but rejected in
the second.

It thus seems probable that WH's theory must be modified, both as
regards the "Western" text, which is seen not to be a single text at
all, and as regards the "Neutral" text, which seems to be nothing more
than the second stage of the development of the text in Alexandria.
But the importance of these modifications is something more than the
doubt which they have thrown on WH's theories: they have really
shifted the centre of gravity of the textual problem.

Formerly the Greek uncials, which go back to the 4th century, were
regarded as the most important source of evidence, and were supposed
to have the decisive vote; but now it is becoming plain that still
more important, though unfortunately much less complete, is the
evidence of the versions and of quotations by early writers. Both of
these point to the existence in the 3rd and even 2nd century of types
of text which differ in very many points from anything preserved in
Greek MSS. Yet there is no doubt that both of them ultimately
represent Greek MSS. which are no longer extant. The question,
therefore, is whether we ought not to base our text on the versions
and ecclesiastical quotations rather than on the extant Greek MSS. Two
positions are possible: (1) We may defend a text based on the best
existing Greek MSS. by the argument that these represent the text
which was approved by competent judges in the 4th century, and would
be found to exist in earlier MSS. if we possessed them. The weak point
of this argument is the lack of evidence in support of the second
part. The only possible sources of evidence, apart from the discovery
of fresh MSS., are the versions, and they do not point to existence in
the 2nd or 3rd century of texts agreeing with the great uncials. It is
also possible to argue, as WH did, on the same side, that the purest
form of text was preserved in Alexandria, from which the oldest
uncials are directly or indirectly derived, but this argument has been
weakened if not finally disposed of by the evidence of Clement of
Alexandria. It is, of course, conceivable that Clement merely used bad
MSS., and that there were other MSS. which he might have used,
agreeing with the great uncials, but there is no evidence for this
view. (2) If we reject this position we must accept the evidence as
giving the great uncials much the same secondary importance as
Westcott and Hort gave to the later MSS., and make an attempt to
reconstruct a text on the basis of versions and Fathers. The adoption
of this view sets textual critics a peculiarly difficult task. The
first stage in their work must be the establishment of the earliest
form of each version, and the collection and examination of the
quotations in all the early writers. This has not yet been done, but
enough has been accomplished to point to the probability that the
result will be the establishment of at least three main types of
texts, represented by the Old Syriac, the Old Latin and Clement's
quotations, while it is doubtful how far Tatian's Diatessaron, the
quotations in Justin and a few other sources may be used to
reconstruct the type of Greek text used in Rome in the 2nd century
when Rome was still primarily a Greek church. The second stage must
be the comparison of these results and the attempt to reconstruct from
them a Greek text from which they all arose.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The literature of textual criticism of the New
Testament is so great that only a few of the more important modern
books can be mentioned here: H. von Soden, _Die Schriften des Neuen
Testaments_ (i. 1902-1907); E. Nestle, _Einfuehrung in das griechische
Neue Testament_ (Goettingen, 1909); F.G. Kenyon, _Handbook to the
Textual Criticism of the New Testament_ (London, 1901); C.R. Gregory,
_Textkritik des Neuen Testament_ (Leipzig, 1900-1902), and _Die
griech. Handschr. des N.T._ (Leipzig, 1908); Westcott and Hort,
_Introduction_ (vol. ii. of their _New Testament in Greek_, Cambridge,
1882). The history of criticism is dealt with in all the
above-mentioned books, and also in F.H. Scrivener, _Introduction to
the Criticism of the New Testament_ (London, 1894). For other points
especially important (besides books mentioned in the preceding
section) see F. Blass, _Acta Apostolorum_ (Goettingen, 1895; and an
editio minor, with a valuable preface, Leipzig, 1896); Rendel Harris,
_Four Lectures on the Western Text_ (Cambridge, 1894); F. Chase, _The
Syro-Latin Text_ (London, 1895); W. Bousset, _Textkritische Studien_
(Leipzig, 1894); B. Weiss, _Der Codex D in der Apostelgeschichte_
(Leipzig, 1897); A. Pott, _Der abendlaendische Text d.
Apostelgeschichte_ (Leipzig, 1900); G. Salmon, _Some Thoughts on
Textual Criticism of the New Testament_ (London, 1897); Schmidtke,
_Die Evangelien eines alien Unzialcodex_ (Leipzig, 1903). (K. L.)

4. _Higher Criticism._

The New Testament is a series of early Christian writings which the Church came to regard as canonical, i.e. they were placed in the same category as the Old Testament, the writings which the Christian had inherited from the Jewish Church. Just as the ancient Scriptures were considered to be the Word of God, so that what they contained was necessarily the true and inspired doctrine, so also the New Testament was available for proving the Church's dogma. The assured canonicity of the whole New Testament resulted in its use by the medieval theologians, the Schoolmen, as a storehouse of proof-texts. Thus the New Testament seemed to exist in order to prove the Church's conclusions, not to tell its own tale.

Erasmus.

The _Novum Instrumentum_ published by Erasmus in 1516 (see above, _Textual Criticism_) contained more than the mere Editio Princeps of the Greek text: Erasmus accompanied it with a Latin rendering of his own, in which he aimed at giving the meaning of the Greek without blindly following the conventional phraseology of the Latin Vulgate, which was the only form in which the New Testament had been current in western Europe for centuries. This rendering of Erasmus, together with his annotations and prefaces to the several books, make his editions the first great monument of modern Biblical study. Medieval Bibles contain short prefaces by St Jerome and others. The stereotyped information supplied in these prefaces was drawn from various sources: Erasmus distinguishes, e.g., between the direct statements in the Acts and the inferences which may be drawn from incidental allusions in the Pauline Epistles, or from the statements of ancient non-canonical writers.[54] This discrimination of sources is the starting-point of scientific criticism.

The Reformers.

The early champions of Church reform in the beginning of the 16th century found in the Bible their most trustworthy weapon. The picture of Apostolical Christianity found in the New Testament offered indeed a glaring contrast to the papal system of the later middle ages. Moreover, some of the "authorities" used by the Schoolmen had been discovered by the New Learning of the Renaissance to be no authorities at all, such as the writings falsely attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite. When, therefore, the breach came, and the struggle between reformers and conservatives within the undivided Church was transformed into a struggle between Protestants and Romanists, it was inevitable that the authority which in the previous centuries had been ascribed to the Church should be transferred by the Reformed Churches to the Bible. "The Bible, the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants"[55] did really express the watchword of the anti-Romanist parties, especially towards the close of the acuter struggle. At the beginning of the movement the New Testament itself had been freely criticized. Luther, like his countrymen of to-day, judged the contents of the New Testament by the light of his leading convictions; and in his German translation, which occupies the same place in Germany as the Authorized Version of 1611 does in English-speaking lands, he even placed four of the books (Hebrews, James, Jude, Apocalypse) in an appendix at the end, with prefaces explanatory of this drastic act of criticism. But though we may trace a real affiliation between the principles of Luther and modern German critical study--notably in the doctrines of the Gospel within the Gospel and of the residual Essence of Christianity--Luther's discriminations were in the 17th century ignored in practice.

Influence of textual criticism.

From cover to cover the whole New Testament was regarded at the beginning of the 18th century by almost all Protestants as the infallible revelation of the true religion. The doctrines of Christianity, and in many communities the customs of the Church, were held to be inferences from the inspired text of the Scriptures. The first serious blow to this view came from the study of textual criticism. The editions of Mill (1707) and of Wetstein (1751) proved once for all that variations in the text, many of them serious, had existed from the earliest times. It was evident, therefore, that the true authority of the New Testament could not be that of a legal code which is definite in all its parts. More important still was the growing perception of the general uniformity of nature, which had forced itself with increasing insistence upon men's minds as the study of the natural sciences progressed in the 17th and 18th centuries. The miracles of the New Testament, which had formerly been received as bulwarks of Christianity, now appeared as difficulties needing explanation. Furthermore, the prevailing philosophies of the 18th century tended to demand that a real divine revelation should be one which expressed itself in a form convincing to the reason of the average plain man, whatever his predispositions might be; it was obvious that the New Testament did not wholly conform to this standard.

Rationalists.

Strauss.

But if the New Testament be not itself the direct divine revelation in the sense of the 18th century, the question still remains, how we are to picture the true history of the rise of Christianity, and what its true meaning is. This is the question which has occupied the theologians of the 19th and 20th centuries. Perhaps the most significant event from which to date the modern period is the publication by Lessing in 1774-1777 of the "Wolfenbuettel Fragments," i.e. H.S. Reimarus' posthumous attack on Christianity, a work which showed that the mere study of the New Testament is not enough to compel belief in an unwilling reader. Lessing's publication also helped to demonstrate the weakness of the older rationalist position, a position which really belongs to the 18th century, though its best-remembered exponent, Dr H.E.G. Paulus, only died in 1851. The characteristic of the rationalists was the attempt to explain away the New Testament miracles as coincidences or naturally occurring events, while at the same time they held as tenaciously as possible to the accuracy of the letter of the New Testament narratives. The opposite swing of the pendulum appears in D.F. Strauss: in his _Leben Jesu_ (1833) he abandons the shifts and expedients by which the rationalists eliminated the miraculous from the Gospel stories, but he abandons also their historical character. According to Strauss the fulfilments of prophecy in the New Testament arise from the Christians' belief that the Christian Messiah must have fulfilled the predictions of the prophets, and the miracles of Jesus in the New Testament either originate in the same way or are purely mythical embodiments of Christian doctrines.

Tuebingen school.

The main objection to this presentation, as also to that of the rationalists, is that it is very largely based not upon the historical data, but upon a pre-determined theory. Granted the philosophical basis, the criticism practised upon the New Testament by Paulus and Strauss follows almost automatically. Herein lies the permanent importance of the work of Ferdinand Christian Baur, professor of theology at Tuebingen from 1826 to 1860. The corner-stone of his reconstruction of early Christian history is derived not so much from philosophical principles as from a fresh study of the documents. Starting from Galatians and I Corinthians, which are obviously the genuine letters of a Christian leader called Paul to his converts, Baur accepted 2 Corinthians and Romans as the work of the same hand. From the study of these contemporary and genuine documents, he elaborated the theory that the earliest Christianity, the Christianity of Jesus and the original apostles, was wholly Judaistic in tone and practice. Paul, converted to belief in Jesus as Messiah after the Crucifixion, was the first to perceive that for Christians Judaism had ceased to be binding. Between him and the older apostles arose a long and fierce controversy, which was healed only when at last his disciples and the Judaizing disciples of the apostles coalesced into the Catholic Church. This only occurred, according to Baur, early in the 2nd century, when the strife was finally allayed and forgotten. The various documents which make up the New Testament were to be dated mainly by their relation to the great dispute. The Apocalypse was a genuine work of John the son of Zebedee, one of the leaders of the Judaistic party, but most of the books were late, at least in their present form. The Acts, Baur thought, were written about A.D. 140, after the memory of the great controversy had almost passed away. All four Gospels also were to be placed in the 2nd century, though that according to Matthew retained many features unaltered from the Judaistic original upon which it was based.

Later views.

The Tuebingen school founded by Baur dominated the theological criticism of the New Testament during a great part of the 19th century and it still finds some support. The main position was not so much erroneous as one-sided. The quarrel between St Paul and his opponents did not last so long as Baur supposed, and the great catastrophe of the fall of Jerusalem effectually reduced thorough-going Judaistic Christianity into insignificance from A.D. 70 onwards. Moreover, St Paul's converts do not seem to have adopted consistent "Paulinism" as a religious philosophy. St Paul was an emancipated Jew, but his converts were mostly Greeks, and the permanent significance of St Paul's theories of law and faith only began to be perceived after his letters had been collected together and had been received into the Church's canon. All these considerations tend to make the late dates proposed by Baur for the greater part of the New Testament books unnecessary; the latest investigators, notably Professor A. Harnack of Berlin, accept dates that are not far removed from the ancient Christian literary tradition.

Literary criticism of the Gospels points to a similar conclusion. A hundred years' study of the synoptic problem, i.e. the causes which make the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark and Luke at once so much alike and so different, has resulted in the demonstration of the priority of Mark, which "was known to Matthew and Luke in the same state and with the same contents as we have it now."[56] This Gospel may be dated a very few years after A.D. 70. Luke and Matthew appear to have been published between 80 and 100.[57] Besides the Gospel of Mark these Evangelists made use of another document, now lost, which contained many sayings of Jesus and some narratives not found in Mark. This document is by many scholars identified with the "Logia," mentioned by Papias (Eusebius, _Ch. Hist_. in. 39) as being the work of Matthew the Apostle, but the identification is not certain.

The Johannine writings, i.e. the Fourth Gospel and the three Epistles of John, represent the view of Christ and Christianity taken by a Christian teacher, who seems to have lived and written in Asia Minor at the close of the 1st century A.D. The value of the Fourth Gospel as a narrative of events is a matter of dispute, but the view of the personality of Jesus Christ set forth in it is unquestionably that which the Church has accepted.

The discoveries of papyri in Upper Egypt during recent years, containing original letters written by persons of various classes and in some cases contemporary with the Epistles of the New Testament, have immensely increased our knowledge of the Greek of the period, and have cleared up not a few difficulties of language and expression. More important still is the application of Semitic study to elucidate the Gospels. It is idle indeed to rewrite the Gospel narratives in the Aramaic dialect spoken by Christ and the apostles, but the main watchwords of the Gospel theology--phrases like "the Kingdom of God," "the World to come," the "Father in Heaven," "the Son of Man,"--can be more or less surely reconstructed from Jewish writings, and their meaning gauged apart from the special significance which they received in Christian hands. This line of investigation has been specially followed by Professor G. Dalman in his _Worte Jesu_. The study of the Semitic elements in early Christianity is less advanced than the study of the Greek elements, so that it is doubtless from the Semitic side that further progress in the criticism of the New Testament may be expected.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--See the separate bibliographies to the separate
articles on the books of the New Testament. The selection here given
of the vast literature of the subject has been drawn up with the idea
of setting the student on his way. 1. _General and
Historical._--Jerome's _Prefaces_ (to be found in any R.C. edition of
the Vulgate); Luther's _Prefaces_ (to be found in German-printed
editions of Luther's Bible); F. Seebohm, _The Oxford Reformers_ (3rd
ed., London, 1887)--for Erasmus; M. Creighton, "Chillingworth" in the
_Dict. of Nat. Biogr_.; Chr. Schrempf, _Lessing als Philosoph_
(Stuttgart, 1906); J. Estlin Carpenter, _The Bible in the 19th
Century_ (London, 1903); A. Schweitzer, _Von Reimarus zu Wrede_
(Tuebingen, 1906). 2. _For the Synoptic Gospels._--W.G. Rushbrooke,
_Synopticon_ (London, 1880), (trans. in _The Common Tradition of the
Synoptic Gospels_ by E.A. Abbott and W.G. Rushbrooke, London, 1884),
Sir J.C. Hawkins, _Horae Synopticae_ (Oxford, 1899); Prof. Julius
Wellhausen, _Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien_ (Berlin, 1905),
_Das Evangelium Marci_ (1903), _Das Ev. Matthaei_ (1904), _Das Ev.
Lucae_ (1904)--these four books make one work; Prof. A. Harnack,
_Lukas der Arzt_ (Berlin, 1905). 3. _For the Fourth Gospel._--K.G.
Bretschneider, _Probabilia_ (Leipzig, 1820); Matthew Arnold's _God and
the Bible_, chaps, v., vi. (still the best defence in English of a
Johannine kernel, new ed., 1884); W. Sanday, _Criticism of the Fourth
Gospel_ (Oxford, 1905); A. Loisy, _Le Quatrieme Evangile_ (Paris,
1903); Prof. P.W. Schmiedel, _Das vierte Evangelium gegenueber den drei
ersten_ (Halle, 1906). 4. _For the Semitic Elements in the
N.T._--Prof. G. Dalman, _Die Worte Jesu_ (Leipzig, 1898), (Eng.
trans., _The Words of Jesus_, 1905); Prof. Johannes Weiss, _Die
Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes_ (1st ed. 1892, 2nd ed. 1900). The
Protestant view of the New Testament in Prof. A. Harnack, _Das Wesen
des Christentums_ (Berlin, 1900), (Eng. trans., _What is
Christianity?_, London, 1901) may be compared with the Liberal
Catholic view in A. Loisy, _L'Evangile et l'Eglise_ (2nd ed., 1903).
(F. C. B.)

5. _New Testament Chronology._

The subject of the chronology of the New Testament falls naturally into two distinct sections--the chronology of the Gospels, that is, of the life of Christ; and the chronology of the Acts, that is, of the apostolic age.

_The Chronology of the Gospels._

The data group themselves round three definite points and the intervals between them: the definite points are the Nativity, the Baptism and the Crucifixion; the age of Christ at the time of the Baptism connects the first two points, and the duration of his public ministry connects the second and third. The results obtained under the different heads serve mutually to test, and thereby to correct or confirm, one another.

1. The date of the Nativity as fixed according to our common computation of Anni Domini (first put forward by Dionysius Exiguus at Rome early in the 6th century) has long been recognized to be too late. The fathers of the primitive church had been nearer the truth with the years 3 or 2 B.C. (see Irenaeus, _Haer._ 111. xxi. 3 [xxiv. 2]; Clement of Alexandria, _Strom_. i. 21, p. 147; Hippolytus, _in Danielem_, iv. ed. Bonwetsch, p. 242; [Tertullian], _adv. Judaeos_, 8). What may be called the received chronology during the last two centuries has pushed the date farther back to 4 B.C. But the considerations now to be adduced make it probable that the true date is earlier still.

(a) _Evidence of St Matthew's Gospel_ (i. 18-ii. 22).--The birth of Christ took place before the death of Herod, and the evidence of Josephus fixes the death of Herod, with some approach to certainty, in the early spring of 4 B.C. Josephus, indeed, while he tells us that Herod died not long before Passover, nowhere names the exact year; but he gives four calculations which serve to connect Herod's death with more or less known points, namely, the length of Herod's own reign, both from his _de jure_ and from his _de facto_ accession, and the length of the reigns of two of his successors, Archelaus and Herod Philip, to the date of their deposition and death respectively. The various calculations are not quite easy to harmonize, but the extent of choice for the year of Herod's death is limited to the years 4 and 3 B.C., with a very great preponderance of probability in favour of the former. How long before this the Nativity should be placed the Gospel does not enable us to say precisely, but as Herod's decree of extermination included all infants up to two years of age, and as a sojourn of the Holy Family in Egypt of unknown length intervened between the massacre and Herod's death, it is clear that it is at least possible, so far as the evidence of this Gospel goes, that the birth of Christ preceded Herod's death by as much as two or three years. What is thus shown to be possible would, of course, be necessary if we went on, with the astronomer Kepler, to identify the star of the Magi with the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn which occurred, in the constellation Pisces, in May, October and December of 7 B.C.[58]

(b) _Evidence of St Luke's Gospel_ (ii. 1-8).-The birth of Christ took place at the time of a general census of the empire ordered by Augustus: "it was the first census, and was made at the time when Quirinius was governor of Syria." Against this account it has been urged that we know that the governorship of Syria from 10 or 9 B.C. down to and after Herod's death was held successively by M. Titius, C. Sentius Saturninus, and P. Quintilius Varus; and further, that when Judaea became a Roman province on the deposition of Archelaus in A.D. 6, Quirinius was governor of Syria, and did carry out an elaborate census. The notice in the Gospel, it is suggested, grew out of a confused recollection of the later (and only historical) census, and is devoid of any value whatever. At the other extreme Sir W. M. Ramsay (_Was Christ Born at Bethlehem?_, 1898, pp. 149 ff.) defends the exact accuracy of St Luke's "first census" as witnessing to the (otherwise of course unknown) introduction into Syria of the periodic fourteen years' census which the evidence of papyri has lately established for Egypt, at least from A.D. 20 onwards. Reckoning back from A.D. 20, the periodic census should fall in 9 B.C., but Ramsay alleges various causes for delay, which would have postponed the actual execution of the census till 7 B.C., and supposes that Quirinius was an imperial commissioner specially appointed to carry it out. The truth seems to rest midway between these extremes. St Luke's statement of a general census is in all probability erroneous, and the introduction of the name Quirinius appears to be due to confusion with the census of A.D. 6. But the confusion in question would only be possible, or at any rate likely, if there really was a census at the time of the Nativity; and it is no more improbable that Herod should have held, or permitted to be held, a local census than that Archelaus of Cappadocia in the reign of Tiberius (Tacitus, _Ann_. vi. 41) should have taken a census of his own native state "after the Roman manner." But St Luke's account, when the name of Quirinius is subtracted from it, ceases to contain any chronological evidence.

(c) _Evidence of Tertullian._--Strangely enough, however, the missing name of the governor under whom the census of the Nativity was carried out appears to be supplied by an author who wrote more than a century after St Luke, and has by no means a good reputation for historical trustworthiness. Tertullian, in fact (_adv. Marcionem_, iv. 19), employs against Marcion's denial of the true humanity of Christ the argument that it was well known that Sentius Saturninus carried out a census under Augustus in Judaea, by consulting which the family and relationships of Christ could have been discovered. This Saturninus was the middle one of the three governors of Syria named above, and as his successor Varus must have arrived by the middle of 6 B.C. at latest (for coins of Varus are extant of the twenty-fifth year of the era of Actium), his own tenure must have fallen about 8 and 7 B.C., and his census cannot be placed later than 7 or 7-6 B.C. The independence of Tertullian's information about this census is guaranteed by the mere fact of his knowledge of the governor's name; and if there was a census about that date, it would be unreasonable not to identify it with St Luke's census of the Nativity.

The traditional Western day for the Christmas festival, 25th December, goes back as far as Hippolytus, _loc. cit_.; the traditional Eastern day, 6th January, as far as the Basilidian Gnostics (but in their case only as a celebration of the Baptism), mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, _loc. cit_.

2. The interval between the Nativity and the Baptism.

_Evidence of St Luke's Gospel_ (iii. 23).--At the time of his baptism Jesus was [Greek: archomenos osei etoi triakonta], of which words two opposite misinterpretations must be avoided: (i.) [Greek: archomenos] does not mean (as Valentinian interpreters thought, Iren. 11. xxii. 5 [xxxiii. 3]; so also Epiphanius, _Haer._ li. 16) "beginning to be thirty years" in the sense of "not yet quite thirty," but "at the beginning of His ministry," as in Luke xxiii. 5; Acts i. 22, x. 37; (ii.) [Greek: osei etoi triakonta] does not mean "on attaining the full age of thirty, before which he could not have publicly taught," for if there was by Jewish custom or tradition any minimum age for a teacher, it was not thirty, but forty (_Bab. Talm_. ed. 1715, fol. 19 _b_; Iren. _loc cit_.). St Luke's phrase is a general one, "about thirty years old," and cannot be so pressed as to exclude some latitude in either direction.

3. The date of the Baptism.

(a) _Evidence of St Luke's Gospel_ (iii. 1).--A _terminus a quo_ for the Baptism is the synchronism of the commencement of the Baptist's public ministry with the fifteenth year of the rule ([Greek: aegemonia]) of Tiberius. Augustus died on 19th August A.D. 14, and, reckoned from that point, Tiberius's fifteenth year might be, according to different methods of calculation, either A.D. 28, or 28-29, or 29. But any such result would be difficult to reconcile with the results yielded by other lines of investigation in this article; among alternative views the choice seems to lie between the following:--(i.) The years of Tiberius are here reckoned from some earlier starting-point than the death of his predecessor--probably from the grant to him of co-ordinate authority with Augustus over the provinces made in A.D. 11 (see, for the parallel with the case of Vespasian and Titus, Ramsay, _St Paul the Roman Traveller_, p. 387), so that the fifteenth year would be roughly A.D. 25; or (ii.) St Luke has made here a second error in chronology, caused perhaps in this case by reckoning back from the Crucifixion, and only allowing one year to the ministry of Christ.

(b) _Evidence of St John's Gospel_ (ii. 13, 20).--A _terminus ad quem_ for the Baptism is the synchronism of the first Passover mentioned after it with the forty-sixth year of the building of Herod's Temple. Herod began the Temple in the eighteenth year of his reign, probably 20-19 B.C., and the Passover of the forty-sixth year is probably that of A.D. 27. While too much stress must not be laid on a chain of reasoning open to some uncertainty at several points, it is difficult to suppose with Loisy, _Quatrieme Evangile_, 1903, p. 293, that the number was intended by the evangelist as purely figurative, and is therefore destitute of all historical meaning.

On the whole, the Baptism of Christ should probably be placed in A.D. 26-27; and as the Nativity was placed in 7-6 B.C. (at latest), this would make the age of Christ at his Baptism to be about thirty-two, which tallies well enough with St Luke's general estimate.

4. The interval between the Baptism and the Crucifixion, or, in other words, the duration of the public ministry of Christ.

(a) _Evidence of the Synoptic Tradition and of St Mark's Gospel_ (ii. 23, vi. 39, xiv. 1).--The order of events in the primitive synoptic tradition appears to be faithfully reproduced in St Mark; and if this order is chronological, Christ's ministry lasted at least two years, since the plucking of the ears of corn (April-June) marks a first spring; the feeding of the five thousand when the grass was fresh green ([Greek: chloros]: about March), a second; and the Passover of the Crucifixion a third: and these three points are so far removed from one another in the narrative that the conclusion would hold, even if the general arrangement in St Mark were only roughly, and not minutely, chronological. On the other hand, it may be true that an impression of a briefer period of ministry naturally results, and in early generations did actually result, from the synoptic account considered as a whole.

(b) _Evidence of St Luke's Gospel_ (ix. 51-xix. 28 compared with iv. 14-ix. 50; iv. 19).--Still stronger is the impression of brevity suggested by St Luke. The second and larger half of the narrative of the ministry is introduced at ix. 51 with the words, "It came to pass as the days of His assumption were coming to the full, He set His face firmly to go to Jerusalem," under which phrase the evangelist cannot have meant to include more than a few months, perhaps not more than a few weeks; so that even if the earlier and shorter half of the account, which describes a purely Galilean ministry ("Judaea" in iv. 44, if it is the true reading, means Judaea in the sense of Palestine), is to be spread over a longer period of time, the combined narrative can hardly have been planned on the scale of more than a single year. St Luke himself may have understood literally, like so many of his readers in ancient times, the reference which he records to the "acceptable year of the Lord" (iv. 19 = Isaiah lxi. 2): see, too, above, 3 (a) _ad fin_.

(c) _Evidence of St John's Gospel_ (ii. 13, "the Passover of the Jews was near," and 23, "He was in Jerusalem at the Passover at the feast"; v. 1, "after these things was a feast [or 'the feast'] of the Jews"; vi. 4, "and the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was near"; vii. 2, "and the feast of the Jews, the Tabernacles, was near"; x. 22, "at that time the feast of dedication took place at Jerusalem"; xi. 55, "and the Passover of the Jews was near": besides iv. 35, "say ye not that there is yet a period of four months and harvest cometh? behold, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see the fields that they are white to harvest"). This catena of time-references is of course unique in the Gospels as a basis for a chronology of the ministry; and it is not reasonable to doubt (with Loisy, _loc. cit_., who suggests that the aim was to produce an artificial correspondence of a three and a half years' ministry with the half-week of Daniel; but many and diverse as are the early interpretations of Daniel's seventy weeks, no one before Eusebius thought of connecting the half-week with the ministry), that the evangelist intended these notices as definite historical _data_, possibly for the correction of the looser synoptic narratives and of the erroneous impressions to which they had given rise. Unfortunately, difficulties, either (i.) of reading, or (ii.) of interpretation, or (iii.) of arrangement, have been raised with regard to nearly all of them; and these difficulties must be briefly noticed here.

(i.) _Readings_ ([alpha]) v. 1. [Greek: eortae] A B D, Origen,
Epiphanius, Chrysostom, _Paschal Chronicle_; [Greek: ae eortae]
[Hebrew: alef]CL[Delta] 1-118, 33, the Egyptian versions, Eusebius,
Cyril-Alex. (Irenaeus?). The balance of internal evidence--copyists
being more likely to accentuate than to diminish the precision of a
note of time--inclines, like the balance of external evidence, against
the article, ([beta]) vi. 4, [Greek: to pascha] is read by all known
MSS. and versions; but it has been argued by Hort (in Westcott's and
Hort's _New Testament in Greek_, appendix, pp. 77-81) that four
ancient authorities omitted the words, and that their omission
simplifies the whole chronology, since "the feast" which was "near" in
vi. 4 would then be identical with the feast of Tabernacles mentioned
in vii. 2, and all the time-notices of the Gospel could be arranged to
fall within the space of a single year, between the Passover of ii. 13
and the Passover of xi. 55. But of the four authorities alleged,
Irenaeus (11. xxii. 3 [xxxiii. i]) and the Alogi (_ap_. Epiphanius,
_Haer._ li. 22) were giving catalogues of Passovers "observed" by
Christ (at Jerusalem), and therefore naturally omitted a mere
chronological reference like vi. 4: Cyril of Alexandria, in so far as
his evidence is adverse to the words, appears to be incorporating a
passage from the _Commentary_ of Origen, not extant _in loc_.; and the
only writer who perhaps really did omit the words--with the view, no
doubt, of reconciling the witness of the fourth Gospel with the then
widely spread tradition of the single-year ministry--is Origen
himself.

(ii.) _Interpretation_ ([alpha]) iv. 35: which is to be taken
literally, the "four months to harvest" (about January), or the
"fields white to harvest" (about May)? It does not seem possible to
rule out either interpretation; the choice between them will follow
from the view taken of the general chronological arrangement of the
Gospel. ([beta]) v. i.: if "the feast" is read, a choice remains
between Passover and Tabernacles (the definite article would not be
very definite after all); if the more probable "a feast," the greater
feasts are presumably excluded, but a choice remains between, at any
rate, Pentecost (May), Trumpets (September), Dedication (December) and
Purim (February). Here again the decision will follow on the general
chronological arrangement which may be adopted.

(iii.) _Arrangement._--So far the amount of possible latitude left is
not so great as to obscure the main outline of the chronology. For a
first (ii. 13, 20), second (vi. 4), and third (xi. 55) Passover are
established, with two indeterminate notices (iv. 35, v. 1) between the
first and second, and two determinate notices (vii. 2 Tabernacles in
October, x. 22 Dedication in December) between the second and third.
But of late years an increasing desire has been manifested, especially
in Germany and America, to manipulate the fourth Gospel on grounds of
internal evidence, at first only in the way of particular
transpositions of more or less attractiveness, but latterly also by
schemes of thorough-going rearrangement. The former class of proposals
will as a rule hardly affect the chronology of the Gospel; the latter
will affect it vitally. The distinction here drawn may be illustrated
from the earliest instance of the former and one of the latest of the
latter. In 1871 Archdeacon J.P. Norris (_Journal of Philology_) wished
to transpose chapters v. and vi.--ch. vi. was, like ch. xxi., a
Galilean appendix, and was inserted by mistake at somewhat too late a
point in the body of the Gospel--and to read "the feast" in v. 1,
identifying it with the Passover which was near in vi. 4: in any case,
whether "the feast" = Passover, or "a feast" = Pentecost, were read in
v. 1, the transposition would not affect the two years' ministry. In
1900 Professor B.W. Bacon (_American Journal of Theology_, p. 770)
proposed a rearrangement of the whole Gospel, according to which the
time-notices would occur in the following order: vi. 4, Passover is
near; iv. 35, the fields white to harvest = May; v. 1, "a feast" =
Pentecost; vii. 2, Tabernacles; x. 22, Dedication; xi. 55, Passover is
near; xii. 1, Jesus at Bethany six days before Passover; ii. 13,
Passover is near and Jesus goes up to Jerusalem (ii. 23, an
interpolation) for the Passover of the Crucifixion; and the ministry
would thus be reduced to a single year. Such a scheme does not lend
itself to discussion here; but as far as evidence is at present
obtainable, the conclusion that the fourth evangelist drew up his
narrative on the basis of a two years' rather than a one year's
ministry appears to be irrefragable.

Not only do the fourth and second Gospels thus agree in indications of a two years' ministry, but the notes of the middle spring of the three (John vi. 4; Mark vi. 39) both belong to the feeding of the 5000, one of the few points of actual contact Detween the two Gospels.

The question, however, may still be raised, whether these time-indications of the two Gospels are exhaustive, whether (that is) two years, and two years only, are to be allotted to the ministry. Irenaeus (ii. xxii. 3-6 [xxxiii. 1-4]), in favour of a ministry of not less than ten years, appeals (i.) to the tradition of Asia Minor; (ii.) to the record in St John that Christ, who was thirty years old at the time of his baptism, was addressed by the Jews as "not yet [i.e. nearly] fifty years old": but both his arguments are probably derived from a single source, Papias's interpretation of John viii. 57. With this exception, however, all ancient writers, whether they enumerated two or three or four Passovers in the Gospel history, believed that the enumeration was exhaustive; and their belief appears correctly to represent the mind of the author of the Fourth Gospel, seeing that his various notes of time were probably in intentional contrast to the looser synoptic accounts. Moreover, the wide currency in early times of the tradition of the single-year ministry (Ptolemaeus, _ap._ Iren, loc. cit.; _Clementine Homilies_, xvii. 19; Clem. Alex. _Strom._ i. 145, vi. 279; Julius Africanus, _ap._ Routh, _Rell. Sacr._ ii. 240, 306; Hippolytus, _Paschal Cycle_ and _Chronicle_; Origen, _in Levit. Hom._ ix. 5, _de Principiis_, iv. 5) becomes more difficult to account for the farther it is removed from the actual facts.

5. The date of the Crucifixion.

(a) _The Roman Governor._--Pontius Pilate was on his way back to Rome, after ten years of office, when Tiberius died on the 16th March A.D. 37 (Josephus, _Ant._ XVIII. ii. 2, iv. 2). Luke xiii. 1, xxiii. 12, show that he was not a newcomer at the time of the Crucifixion. For the Crucifixion "under Pontius Pilate" the Passover of A.D. 28 is therefore the earliest possible and the Passover of A.D. 36 the latest.

(b) _The Jewish High-Priest._--Caiaphas was appointed before Pilate's arrival, and was deposed at a Passover apparently not later than that of the year of Herod Philip's death, A.D. 34 (Josephus, _Ant._ XVIII. ii. 2, iv. 3-v. 3). The Crucifixion at some previous Passover would then fall not later than A.D. 33.

(c) _The Day of the Week._--The Resurrection on "the first day of the week" (Sunday) was "on the third day" after the Crucifixion; and that "the third day" implies an interval of only two days hardly needed to be shown, but has been shown to demonstration in Field's _Notes on the Translation of the New Testament_ (on Matt. xvi. 21). The Crucifixion was therefore on a Friday in some year between A.D. 28 and 33 inclusive.

(d) _The Day of the Jewish Month Nisan._--The Passover was kept at the full moon of the lunar month Nisan, the first of the Jewish ecclesiastical year; the Paschal lambs were slain on the afternoon of the 14th Nisan, and the Passover was eaten after sunset the same day--which, however, as the Jewish day began at sunset, was by their reckoning the early hours of the 15th Nisan; the first fruits (of the barley harvest) were solemnly offered on the 16th. The synoptic Gospels _appear_ to place the Crucifixion on the 15th, since they speak of the Last Supper as a Passover;[59] St John's Gospel, on the other hand (xiii. 1, 29, xviii. 28), distinctly implies that the feast had not yet taken place, and thus makes the Crucifixion fall on the 14th. Early Christian tradition is unanimous on this side; either the 14th is mentioned, or the Crucifixion is made the antitype of the slaughter of the Paschal Lamb (and the Resurrection of the first fruits), in the following authorities anterior to A.D. 235: St Paul, 1 Cor. v. 7, xv. 20; Quartodecimans of Asia Minor, who observed the Christian Pascha on the "14th," no matter on what day of the week it fell; Claudius Apollinaris, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, all three quoted in the _Paschal Chronicle_; Irenaeus (apparently) iv. x. 1 [xx. 1]; [Tertullian] _adv. Judaeos_, 8; Africanus, in Routh, _Rell. Sacr._ ii. 297. The Crucifixion, then, should be placed rather on the 14th than on the 15th of Nisan.

These four lines of inquiry have shown that the Crucifixion fell on Friday, Nisan 14 (rather than 15), in one of the six years 28-33 A.D.; and therefore, if it is possible to discover (i.) exactly which moon or month was reckoned each year as the moon or month of Nisan, and (ii.) exactly on what day that particular moon or month was reckoned as beginning, it will, of course, be possible to tell in which of these years Nisan 14 fell on a Friday. To neither question can an answer be given in terms so precise as to exclude some latitude, but to both with sufficient exactness to rule out at once three of the six years. (i.) The difficulty with regard to the month is to know how the commencement of the Jewish year was fixed--in what years an extra month was intercalated before Nisan. If the Paschal full moon was, as in later Christian times, the first after the spring equinox, the difficulty would be reduced to the question on what day the equinox was reckoned. If, on the other hand, it was, as in ancient Jewish times, the first after the earliest ears of the barley harvest would be ripe, it would have varied with the forwardness or backwardness of the season from year to year. (ii.) The difficulty with regard to the day is, quite similarly, to know what precise relation the first day of the Jewish month bore to the astronomical new moon. In later Christian times the Paschal month was calculated from the astronomical new moon; in earlier Jewish times all months were reckoned to begin at the first sunset when the new moon was visible, which in the most favourable circumstances would be some hours, and in the most unfavourable three days, later than the astronomical new moon.