primarily a Greek church. The second stage must be the com- | parison 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, Einführung in das griechische Neue Testament (Göttingen, 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 (Göttingen, 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 abendländische Text d. Apostelgeschichte (Leipzig, 1900); G. Salmon, Some Thoughts on Textual Criticism of the New Testament (London, 1897); Schmidtke, Die Evangelien eines alten Unsialcodex (Leipzig, 'K. L.) 1903). 4. Higher Criticism. The New Testament is a scries 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 scemed to exist in order to prove the Church's conclusions, not to tell its own tale. The Nouum Instrumentum published by Erasmus in 1516 (see above, Textual Criticism) contained more than the mere Editio Princeps of the Greek text: Erasmus accomErasmus. panied 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 noncanonical writers. This discrimination of sources is the startingpoint of scientific criticism. 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 The 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 Eg from the preface to the Acts: "Dionysius, bishop of the Corinthians, a very ancient writer, quoted by Eusebius, writes that Peter and Paul obtained the crown of martyrdom by the command of Nero on the same day." And again: Some industrious critics have added (to the narrative of Acts) that Paul was acquitted at his first trial by Nero.. This conjecture they make from the 2nd Ep. to Timothy.... " .. should be transferred by the Reformed Churches to the Bible "The Bible, the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants "¿ð 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. 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 Influence of textual doctrines of Christianity, and in many communities the customs of the Church, were held to be inferences criticism. 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. Rational ists. 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 "Wolfenbüttel Fragments," ie. 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. Strauss The phrase is Chillingworth's (1637), who may be described as a Broad High-churchman. 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. Tübingen school. 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 Tübingen 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 1 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 Later views. 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. articles on the books of the New Testament. The selection here 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. The Tübingen school founded by Baur dominated the theo-J. Estlin Carpenter, The Bible in the 19th Century (London, 1903); logical 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. 5. New Testament Chronology. 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 The subject of the chronology of the New Testament falls at once so much alike and so different, has resulted in the demon-naturally into two distinct sections-the chronology of the stration of the priority of Mark, which " was known to Matthew Gospels, that is, of the life of Christ; and the chronology of and Luke in the same state and with the same contents as we the Acts, that is, of the apostolic age. have it now." 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. 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. iii. 39) as being the work of Matthew the Apostle, but the identification is not certain. 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 from it, ceases to contain any chronological evidence. nearer the truth with the years 3 or 2 B.C. (see Irenaeus, Haer. | But St Luke's account, when the name of Quirinius is subtracted III. 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.1 (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.' It is a curious coincidence that a medieval Jew, R. Abarbanel (Abrabanel), records that the conjunction of these particular planets in this particular constellation was to be a sign of Messiah's coming: It is just conceivable that his statement may ultimately depend on some such ancient tradition as may have been known to Chaldaean magi. (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 άpxóuevos wσel ¿TÛD TOLÁKorra, of which words two opposite misinterpretations must be avoided: (L) ápxóuevos does not mean (as Valentinian interpreters thought, Iren. II. xxii. 5 [xxxiii. 3]; so also Epiphanius, Haer. l. 16) "beginning to be thirty years" in the sense of not yet quite thirty," but "at the beginning of His ministry," as in Lule xxiii. 5; Acts i. 22, x. 37; (ii.) woel krûv tplákopra 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 er 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 e que for the Baptism is the synchronism of the commencement of the Baptist's public ministry with the fifteenth year of the rule (yeμovía) of Tiberius. Augustus died on reth 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 predecesser probably from the grant to him of co-ordinate authority with Augustus over the provinces made in A.D. 11 (see, for the paralle 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 od quem for the Baptism is the synchronism of the first Passover mentioned after it with the forty-sixth year of the buildag 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. Quatrième Évangile, 1903, p. 293, that the number was intended 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. by the evangelist as purely figurative, and is therefore destitute | simplifies the whole chronology, since "the feast" which was "near of all historical meaning. "in vi. 4 would then be identical with the feast of Tabernacles arranged to fall within the space of a single year, between the Passmentioned in vii. 2, and all the time-notices of the Gospel could be over of ii. 13 and the Passover of xi. 55. But of the four authorities alleged, Irenaeus (11. xxii. 3 (xxxiii. 1]) 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 the then widely spread tradition of the single-year ministry-is view, no doubt, of reconciling the witness of the fourth Gospel with Origen himself." interpretation; the choice between them will follow from the view taken of the general chronological arrangement of the Gospel. (B) 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. 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 (ii) Interpretation (a) iv. 35: which is to be taken literally, the at least two years, since the plucking of the ears of corn (April-harvest" (about May)? It does not seem possible to rule out either "four months to harvest" (about January), or the " fields white to June) marks a first spring; the feeding of the five thousand when the grass was fresh green (xλwpós: 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 (a) v. 1, oprh A B D. Origen, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, Paschal Chronicle; neoprý CLA 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. (8) vi. 4. Tò áoxa 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 (iii.) Arrangement.-So far the amount of possible latitude left For a first (ii. 13, 20), second (vi. 4), and third (xi. 55) Passover is not so great as to obscure the main outline of the chronology. 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; six days before Passover: ii 13. Passover is near and Jesus goes up x. 22, Dedication; xi. 55. Passover is near; xii. 1, Jesus at Bethany 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 evangelist drew up his narrative on the basis of a two years' rather evidence is at present obtainable, the conclusion that the fourth 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 between 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. (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. xvш. 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 ness 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 nes 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. Direct material for answering the question when and how far astronomical calculations replaced simple observations as the basis of the Jewish calendar is not forthcoming. Jewish traditions represented the Sanhedrin as retaining to the end its plenary power over the calendar, and as still fixing the first day of every month and the first month of every year. But as it is quite inconceivable that the Jews of the Dispersion should not have known beforehand at what full moon they were to present themselves at Jerusalem for the Passover, it must be assumed as true in fact, whether or no it was true in theory, that the old empirical methods must have been qualiñed, at least partially, by permanent, that is in effect by astronomical rules. Exactly what modifications were first made in the system under which each month began by simple observation of the new moon we do not know, and opinions are not agreed as to the historical value of the rabbinical traditions, but probably the first step in the direction of astronomical precision would be the rule that no month could consist of less than twenty-nine or more than thirty days-to which appears to have been added, but at what date is uncertain, the further rule that Adar, the month preceding Nisan, was always to be limited to twentynine In the same way the beginning of the Jewish year accord relation to the solar year But this relation was not, it would (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 15thing to the state of the harvest was supplanted by some more fixed 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, 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, I 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 backward If the Passover celebration could be anticipated by one day in a private Jewish family (and we know perhaps too little of Jewish rules in the time of Christ to be able to exclude this possibility), the evidence of the synoptic Gospels would no longer conflict with that of St John. A.D 28 Sat. Mar. 27 29 F. Ap. 15 Mar 17 Mar. 30 Ap. 18 " 30 Tu. Ap. 4 Ap. 5 Ap. 7 " 31 Sat Mar. 24 Mar. 25 Mar. 27 Sat. Ap. 12 W. Ap. I Ap. 12 Ap. 14 Ap. 3 or 4 It will be seen at once that Friday cannot have fallen on Nisan 14th in any of the three years A.D. 28, 31 and 32. The choice is narrowed down to A.D. 29, Friday, 18th March (Friday, 15th April, would no doubt be too early even for the 14th of Nisan); A.D 30, Friday 7th April; and A.D. 33, Friday, 3rd April (e) The Civil Year (consuls, or regnal years of Tiberius) in early Christian tradition. It is not a priori improbable that the year of the central event from which the Christian Church dated her own existence should have been noted in the apostolic age and handed down to the memory of succeeding generations. and the evidence does go some way to suggest that we have in favour of A.D. 29, the consulate of the two Gemini (15th or 15th year of Tiberius), a body of tradition independent of the Gospels and ancient, if not primitive, in origin. The earliest witness, indeed, who can be cited for a defrite date for the crucifixion gave not 29, but 33 A.D. The pagan chronicler, Phlegon, writing in the reign of Hadrian, noted under Olympiad 202-4 (A.D. 32-33), besides a great earthquake in Bithynia, an eclipse so remarkable that it became night |
