A. Tin: Date OF THE Nativity.— 1. The Year. — a. St. Matthew tells us that Jesus Christ was born in the reign of Herod the Great, who at some period not more than two years afterwards ordered a massacre of all the infants at Bethlehem, and that the Holy Family lied to Egypt, where they remained for the rest of the kings lifetime (Mt oi. 13-18. IB). Thus Herod's death is the terminus ad quern for the Nativity.
For the chronology of the eventfl of Jewish history of NT times, the primary authorities are the BJ and Ant. of Joscphus (quoted throughout this article in the critical edition of B. Niese, Berlin. lS87-180ri). Josephus nowhere stAtes the exact year of Herod's death, but he gives the length of his reign from two more or less tixed starting-points, and the lenglli <if bis three successors' reigns to more or less fixed concluding points, (i.) Ilerfid when he died, not very long before the Passover, bad reigned 37 years • as king de jure slhce the Roman decree of the 184lh 01ynij)ia<i (middle of B.C. 44 to middle of B.c. 40], and eon. Bulship of Doniitius CalvinuB and Asinius Pollio [B.C. 40] ; Ant. XIV. xiv. 4, 6, XVII. viii. 1 ; BJ I. xxxiii. 8. Thus the ilecroe belongs to the first half of no. 40 : but as It Is uncertain even so whether the month was earlier or later than the month (March?) of Herod's death, it is uncertain also whether the 37th year had begun before March B.C. 4, or only before Slan-'h B.C. 3. (ii.) He had reigned also 34 yearn as king de facto since the death of Antigonus ; and Antigonus died 'on the day of the great Fast (Sept. -Oct.] in the consulship of M. Agrippa and Canidiiu GalluB (B.o. 87], '27 years to a day since tlie entry of
• That Is, aocordingr to the general rule of ancient calcula- tions,—to which attention Is hero called once for all,— not 37 years or something over, but 37 yeare or something less.
404 CHKONOLOGY OF NEW TEST,
CHRONOLOGY OF NEW TEST.
Pompej into Jerusalem in the oonaulship of Antonius and Cicero ' (B.C. 63 less 27 = B.C. 36]. 0( these two discordant reckoning's for Antigonus' death, 34 yean from the first would put Herod's death in the beginning of b.0. 3, 34 from the second in the beginning of B.c. 2; and if the second may reasonably be set aside as due to the confusion of all chronology previous to the introduction of the Juhan calendar in B.C. 46, even b.c. 37 is inconsistent with the evidence of Dio, a later but equally well informed historian, who names the consuls of b.c. 38, Claudius and Norbanus, so that the 34 years would expire in e.o. 4 (Jos. Ant. XIV. iv. 3, xiv. xvi. 4, xvii. viii. 1 ; BJ i. xxxiii. 8 : Dio, xlix. 22). (iii.) Of Herod's successors, Archelaus, king of Jud»a, was banished in the consulship of Lepidua and Arruntius [a.d. 6], when in the ninth year of his reign according to BJ, the tenth according to Ant. Aa his accession was near the beginning of t^e year, the former reckoning would throw it probably in B.C. 3 (possibly in B.o. 4), the latter probably in B.C. 4 (possibly B.C. 5). If the two may be reconciled by supposing that the banishment fell very early in a.d. 6, before the anniversary of the accession, and that Ant. reckons Archelaus' second and succeeding years from Jan. 1, both would point to B.C. 4 ; if otherwise, 4 n(. as the later and fuller work is more likely to have corrected an earlier error than to have introduced a new one, BO that B.C. i is in any case the more probable date {BJ u. vii. 3; Ant. xvn. xiii. 2, 3, cf. Vita, 1; Dio, Iv. 25. 27). (iv.) Herod Philip, tetrarch of Trachonitis, reigned 37 years, and died in the 20th year of Tiberius— that is, reckoning from Augustus* death in August a.d. 14, between August a.d. 33 and August a.d. S4, which would leave Herod Philip's accession doubtful between B.O. S and 4 (Ant. xvni. iv. 6). (v.) Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, was issuing coins as late as his 44tb year ; and as his banishment by Gains Caligula (March a.d. 37-Jan. a.d. 41) can hardly have been later than a.d. 39— his rival and nephew, Herod Agrippa, left Palestine after him, and was apparently at Lyons with the emperor in the winter of a.d. 39-40 — his 2nd year would go back to B.C. 4, and his accession (since the Jewish princes apparently reckoned their years from Nisan 1) to the year preceding Nisan 1 b.c. 4 (Dio, Iv. 24 ; see further, Philo in Ftaaniin, 6, ed. Mangey, ii. 521 ; Jos. Ant. xviii. vi. 11, vii. 2 ; Madden, Coins of the Jews^ p. 122).
Thus the year of Herod's death was probably b.o. 4, possibly B.O. S ; and one further note of time in Josephus may help to resolve the doubt. An eclipse of the moon occurred at a moment when Herod, lying at Jericho in his last illness, had partially revived. He grew worse again, and was taken to the baths of Callirrhoe across the Dead Sea ; but when all remedies failed he was brought back to Jericho, and thither as a last caprice of tyranny he summoned to his bedside all the leading Jews of Palestine, intending a general massacre of them at the moment of his death. Then the long expected authorization from Augustus of the execution of Antipater arrives and is at once acted on ; five days later the king succumbs himself. The funeral rites occupy a week, and soon afterwards the Passover is 'close at hand' (Ant. xvii. vi. 4-ix. 3). Now the only lunar eclipses visible in Palestine during b.c. &-3 were those of March 23, B.C. 6, Sept. 16, B.C. 6, and March 12-13, B.C. 4. But unless the events just catalogued can be spread over 12 or 13 months, from March 12, B.C. 4, to March 31 (the oasoover of B.C. 3), which is very unlikely, the year b.c. 3 for Herod's death is excluded. If, on the other hand, one month seems as much too little for them as twelve are too much, the ecUpse may be that of September, b.c. 6, the king's death falling six months afterwards, about March, B.o. 4.