III. LIST OF HIGH-PRIESTS FROM THE ACCESSION OF HEROD APP. VI Appointed by Herod the Great Archelaus. Quirinius Valerius Gratus. Vitellius Agrippa I. Herod of Chalcis Agrippa II. . 1. Ananel. 2. Aristobulus. 3. Jesus, son of Phabes. 14. Jonathan, son of Ananos. 25. Jesus, son of Gamaliel. The People during the last war 27. Phannias, son of Samuel. THE DATE OF THE NATIVITY. 701 APPENDIX VII. ON THE DATE OF THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD. (Vol. i. Book II. ch. iii. and other passages.) So much, that is generally accessible, has of late been written on this subject, and such accord exists on the general question, that only the briefest statement seems requisite in this place, the space at our command being necessarily reserved for subjects which have either not been treated of by previous writers, or in a manner or form that seemed to make a fresh investigation desirable. At the outset it must be admitted, that absolute certainty is impossible as to the exact date of Christ's Nativity--the precise year even, and still more the month and the day. But in regard to the year, we possess such data as to invest it with such probability, as almost to amount to certainty. 1. The first and most certain date is that of the death of Herod the Great. Our Lord was born before the death of Herod, and, as we judge from the Gospel-history, very shortly before that event. Now the year of Herod's death has been ascertained with, we may say, absolute certainty, as shortly before the Passover of the year 750 A.U.c., which corresponds to about the 12th of April of the year 4 before Christ, according to our common reckoning. More particularly, shortly before the death of Herod there was a lunar eclipse (Jos. Ant. xvii. 6. 4), which, it is astronomically ascertained, occurred on the night from the 12th to the 13th of March of the year 4 before Christ. Thus the death of Herod must have taken place between the 12th of March and the 12th of April-or, say, about the end of March (comp. Ant. xvii. 8. 1). Again, the Gospel-history necessitates an interval of, at the least, seven or eight weeks before that date for the birth of Christ (we have to insert the Purification of the Virgin-at the earliest, six weeks after the Birth -the Visit of the Magi, and the murder of the children at Bethlehem, and, at any rate, some days more before the death of Herod). Thus the birth of Christ could not have possibly occurred after the beginning of February 4 B.C., and most likely several weeks earlier. This brings us close to the ecclesiastical date, the 25th of December, in confirmation of which we refer to what has been stated in vol. i. p. 187, see especially note 3. At any rate, the often repeated, but very superficial objection, as to the impossibility of shepherds tending flocks in the open at that season, must now be dismissed as utterly untenable, not only for the reasons stated in vol. i. p. 187, but even for this, that if the question is to be decided on the ground of rain-fall, the probabilities are in favour of December as compared with February-later than which it is impossible to place the birth of Christ. 2. No certain inference can, of course, be drawn from the appearance of 'the star' that guided the Magi. That, and on what grounds, our investigations have APP. VII APP. pointed to a confirmation of the date of the Nativity, as given above, has been fully explained in vol. i. ch. viii. (see specially p. 213). 3. On the taxing of Quirinius, see vol. i. pp. 181, 182. 4. The next historical datum furnished by the Gospels is that of the beginning of St. John the Baptist's ministry, which, according to St. Luke, was in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, and when Jesus was 'about thirty years old' (St. Luke iii. 23). The accord of this with our reckoning of the date of the Nativity has been shown in vol. i. p. 264. 5. A similar conclusion would be reached by following the somewhat vague and general indication furnished in St. John ii. 20. 6 6. Lastly, we reach the same goal if we follow the historically somewhat uncertain guidance of the date of the Birth of the Baptist, as furnished in this notice (St. Luke i. 5) of his annunciation to his father, that Zacharias officiated in the Temple as one of the course of Abia' (see here vol. i. p. 135). In Taan. 29 a we have the notice, with which that of Josephus agrees (War vi. 4, 1, 5), that at the time of the destruction of the Temple 'the course of Jehoiarib,' which was the first of the priestly courses, was on duty. That was on the 9-10 Ab of the year 823 A.U.C., or the 5th August of the year 70 of our era. If this calculation be correct (of which, however, we cannot feel quite sure), then counting the courses of priests backwards, the course of Abia would, in the year 748 A.U.C. (the year before the birth of Christ) have been on duty from the 2nd to the 9th of October. This also would place the birth of Christ in the end of December of the following year (749), taking the expression' sixth month' in St. Luke i. 26, 36, in the sense of the running month (from the 5th to the 6th month, comp. St. Luke i. 24). But we repeat that absolute reliance cannot be placed on such calculations, at least so far as regards month and day. (Comp. here generally Wieseler, Synopse, and his Beiträge.) RABBINIC TRADITIONS ABOUT ELIJAH. 703 APPENDIX VIII. RABBINIC TRADITIONS ABOUT ELIJAH, THE FORERUNNER OF THE MESSIAH. (Vol. i. Book II. ch. iii. p. 143.) To complete the evidence, presented in the text, as to the essential difference between the teaching of the ancient Synagogue about the Forerunner of the Messiah' and the history and mission of John the Baptist, as described in the New Testament, we subjoin a full, though condensed, account of the earlier Rabbinic traditions about Elijah. Opinions differ as to the descent and birthplace of Elijah. According to some, he was from the land of Gilead (Bemid. R. 14), and of the tribe of Gad (Tanch. on Gen. xlix. 19). Others describe him as a Benjamite, from Jerusalem, one of those who sat in the Hall of Hewn Stones' (Tanch. on Ex. xxxi. 2), or else as paternally descended from Gad and maternally from Benjamin. Yet a third opinion, and to which apparently most weight attaches, represents him as a Levite, and a Priest-nay, as the great High-Priest of Messianic days. This is expressly stated in the Targum Pseudo-Jon. on Ex. xl. 10, where it also seems implied that he was to anoint the Messiah with the sacred oil, the composition of which was among the things unknown in the second Temple, but to be restored by Elijah (Tanch. on Ex. xxiii. 20, ed. Warsh. p. 91 a, lines 4 and 5 from the top). Another curious tradition identifies Elijah with Phinehas (Targum Pseudo-Jon. on Ex. vi. 18). The same expression as in the Targum ('Phinehas—that is Elijah') occurs in that great storehouse of Rabbinic tradition, Yalkut (vol. i. p. 246 b, last two lines, and col. c). From the pointed manner in which reference is made to the parallelism between the zeal of Phinehas and that of Elijah, and between their work in reconciling God and Israel, and bringing the latter to repentance, we may gather alike the origin of this tradition and its deeper meaning.2 For (as fully explained in Book II. ch. v.) it is one of the principles frequently expressed by the ancient Synagogue, in its deeper perception of the unity and import of the Old Testament, that the miraculous events and Divine interpositions of Israel's earlier history would be re-enacted, only with wider application, in Messianic days. If this idea underlay the parallelism between Phinehas and Elijah, it is still more fully carried out in that between Elijah and Moses. On comparing the Scriptural account of these two messengers of God we are struck with the close correspondence between the details of their history. The Synagogue is careful to trace this analogy step by step (Yalkut, vol. ii. p. 32 d) to the final deliverance of Israel, marking that, as that by Moses had for ever freed his people from the 1 This question is fully discussed in Ber. R. 71 towards the close. Comp. also Shem. R. 40. For fuller details we refer to our remarks on Gen. xlix. 19 in Appendix IX. 2 I cannot agree with either of the explana tions of this passage offered by Castelli (II APP. VIII |