CHAP. II.

The Vulgar Era, and the Death of Herod.

THE Vulgar Era, at the 1819th year of which we have now arrived, is decidedly wrong, and has evidently been formed upon partial views and unsound principles. For by fixing the birth of Christ to the 25th of December in the 753rd year of Rome, it can scarcely be made to agree with any of the other dates with which we have been furnished either by St. Matthew or St. Luke.

From St. Luke himself it may be probably inferred, and by St. Matthew (ii. 1.) it is both expressly asserted and circumstantially implied, that Jesus was born "in the days" and before the death of "Herod the king;" and under that name the Evangelists undeniably referred to Herod the Great, the duration of whose life and reign it is impossible to extend beyond the conclusion of the 751st year of Rome. The truth of this will

e Written in the month of August, 1818.

be made satisfactorily to appear in the progress of the inquiry. But, according to the hypothesis of the vulgar era, the birth of Christ did not occur till the conclusion of the 753d year of Rome, a considerable time after, instead of before the death of Herod. The inaccuracy The inaccuracy of the vulgar era is therefore sufficiently evident, but it will be found upon examination to be no easy matter to correct the error which has been thus proved to exist. One thing however is plain, that, if the two preliminary chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke be admitted as genuine, every system of evangelical chronology which does not regard the birth of Christ as previous to the death of Herod is radically and thoroughly defective. For my own part, convinced as I am after the most mature deliberation of the genuineness of those chapters,' I cannot but consider a knowledge of the time of

'The genuineness of any portion of a work, whether sacred or profane, is best and most satisfactorily determined by the balance of external evidence-by the testimony of manuscripts, versions, and quotations or references in subsequent authors. Internal evidence ought to be very strong indeed before it is permitted to countervail a conclusion legitimately drawn from the sources I have just mentioned; and upon this ground alone, upon the preponderating mass of evidence in favour of the genuineness of the first two chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke, I should steadily resist the operation of the Socinian pruning knife. It is upon this ground alone, that 1 John, chap. v. verse 7, can have been given up by any divines of the established church, and I do not see why a similar course of reasoning should not apply affirmatively as well as negatively.

Herod's death as the point upon which the whole question turns, and shall therefore proceed to lay the first foundation of the following work in as precise a determination of that much disputed date, as the nature and difficulty of the case will permit.

No approximation, sufficiently accurate to be useful, can be obtained as to the year of Herod's death, from estimating his supposed age at the time. For though it is known that he was about 70 years old when he died, yet there is a considerable degree of uncertainty as to the period of his birth, and after all, our infor

I have made many fruitless attempts to remove the uncertainty and ascertain the date of Herod's birth. The difficulty is rendered insurmountable by a false reading in that passage of Josephus, upon which our conclusions depend. In one place Josephus informs us that Herod was constituted governor of Galilee when very young, and in another he limits his expression by stating that he was then about 15 years of age. Now it is universally allowed that Herod was appointed governor of Galilee in the consulship of Calvinus and Vatinius v. c. 707. v. c. 707-15=692 and 692+69=761. He was of course therefore, according to this computation, born about the 692d, and died about the 761st year of Rome, 10 years later than we should be led to suppose by every other mode of calculation. To remove this discrepancy it has been conjectured that we ought to read 25 instead of 15 years in the preceding passage of Josephus, and thus fix the birth and death of Herod 10 years earlier than before, his birth about u. c. 682, his death u. c. 751. This new reading may be defended by many irresistible computations. But still the weight of MS. testimony is decidedly against it, and it does not therefore follow

mation with respect to his age is not sufficiently definite to yield any precise result.

If any certainty, therefore, is to be gained upon the subject, it must be derived from a comparison of the duration of his reign, with the time of its commencement, as stated by Josephus; for if once we give up our reliance upon the authority of that historian, there is an end to the inquiry, and we have no longer any solid foundation upon which to rest a single argument.

h

Now Josephus expressly informs us that Herod began his reign when Calvinus and Pollio were consuls at Rome, Pollio for the first and Calvinus for the second time. Upon the authority of Pagi and others this consulship may be considered as beginning on the first of January and ending on the 31st of Dec. J. P. 4674. Within that period, therefore, we must seek for the commencement of Herod's reign.

in the present stage of the argument that it is so undeniably correct as to be made the basis of other calculations. We must not presume to say 25 is the true reading, and upon that assumption proceed to determine the date of connected events. We must rather first of all determine, by other means, the dates of those connected events, and from those determined dates deduce the propriety of the conjectural reading. It is one of the results, not one of the premises of our argument.

h Antiq. Jud. lib. xiv. cap. 26.

'Pagi Dissertatio Hypatica seu de Consulibus, p. 192.

This period may be still farther reduced, and the commencement of Herod's reign fixed to the latter half of the 4674th year of the Julian Period by a consideration of the circumstances which occurred between the battle of Philippi and the nomination of Herod to the kingdom of Judea.

The battle of Philippi was fought in the October of the 4672d year of the Julian Period. After that battle Anthony went into Asia and there conferred upon Herod and Phasael the title and authority of tetrarchs of Judea.* We may conceive, therefore, that this appointment took place in the latter part,' say December, J. P. 4672. In the second year after this event Pacorus the Parthian invaded and took possession of Syria, Dec. 4672 +1=Dec. 4673, which is therefore the earliest date that can be assigned for this invasion of Syria; but it most probably took place early in the spring of J. P. 4674, the time universally chosen by the ancients for the commencement of their military operations.

m

After the pentecost which immediately followed that invasion, that is, after the pentecost on the ninth of June J. P. 4674, Herod fled from

Antiq. lib. xiv. cap. 22, 23.

lib. i. cap. 11.

compared with de Bell. Jud.

'Lamy. Appar. Chron. Part I. cap. v. §. 3.

Antiq. Jud. lib. xiv. cap. 24. p. 495. A. and B. "Lamy. App. Chron. Part I. cap. vi. p. 31.