There is, however, one casual statement of Ter- tullian*s which serves in remarkable fashion to bridge the gap left by the dissociation of Quirinius' name from the census of the Nativity. The Marcionites defended their Doketic views of Christ's humanity by appeal to his own question,
* Who are my mother and my brethren ? ' inter- preted as a denial of all human relationships ; the a.ssertion of the Jews, * Thy mother and thy brethren stand without,* became on their view a mere desire to 'tempt' Christ. Tertullian reminds them inter alia that Christ's family could ea-ily have been discovered from the (census known to have been taken under Augustus in Judsea by Sentius Saturninus : census constat actos sub Aiigusto nunc in Judcsa per Sent ium Sat urninum apud qiios genus eius inqtiirere pottiisse.nt (adv. Marcioneni, iv. 19). Here, of course, if Tertullian had said Quirinius, he would have been merely re- peating St. Luke ; but he names instead Quirinius' penultimate predecessor, governor about u.C. 0-6. Whether or not Tertullian liimself means to connect this census with the Nativity is not quite clear i
CHRONOLOGY OF XEW TEST.
CHRONOLOGY OF NEW TEST. 405
the point is, that the name Satuminus, since it can hardly be a mere slip for St. Luke's Quirinius, must have come from an independent authority, possibly the same as supplied another reference to Saturnmus in Tert. de pallio^ i. In general trust- worthiness, Tertullian is immeasurably inferior to St. Luke ; but a Roman Ia\\'yer could command familiar access to many sources inaccessible to a physician from the provinces, and it is hardly rash to believe that in this one instance the former has by a happy chance preserved the evidence which at once conhrms and corrects the latter, — confirms the fa !t of a census, and correcte the name from Quirinius to Satuminua.*
If this correction be accepted, the census taken while Satuminus was Syrian legate cannot fall later than the time when Varus succeeded him, in or before the middle of B.C. 6. The order of events in St. Matthew will permit of an interval of two or three years between the Nativity and Herod's death ; and the data appear to be best harmonized by attributing the census of the Nativity to B.C. 7 or the beginning of B.C. 6.
2. The Month and Day of the Nativity.— Of these J nothing is really known ; for the patristic evidence, interesting in itself, though too voluminous for discussion here, leads to no real results. It must Bulfice to say that the oldest traditional date for Christmas Day is, in the East, Jan. 6, in the West, Dec. 25. The earliest trace of the one is the observance of Jan. 6 as the festival, not of the birth of Christ but of his Baptism, by the Basilidian Gnostics of the time of Clement of Alexandria {Strom, i. 21.147, p. 408) ; and a Gnostic tradition is worth nothing at all. The other tirst appears in Hipp^lytus' newly-recovered Fourth Book on Daniel (p. 19, 1. 2> and was probably deduced by him irom March 25, a day which in his Chronicle marks not only the Crucifixion but the Conception, the ^^vfffts XpiffTov side by side with the irdOos.
B. The Interval between the Nativity and THE Baptism. — St. Luke relates that Jesus at the time of the Baptism was about 30 years of age, 3'^ atVrds ^Jy 'IrjaoOs dpx6fX€voi (hfffl irCoy TpidKOVTa. The word ipx<i^vos does not qualify the description of age, as supposed by the earliest known interpreters, Valentinians of the Ptolenuean school ap. Iren. II. xxii. 5, ad baptismum venit nundujn qui triginta annos fuppleverat, sed qui inripcret esse tarw/uayn triginta annorum ; and so, too, Epiphanius, lifer. li. 16, TpidKovra fxiv irufv dW ov ir\i}p7}V 5i6 \iyn *Apx^f^''os. It rather means * when just commenc- ing his ministry,* an idiomatic use of dpx^cr^at paralleled in Lk 2Z^ dp^d^evos dird rijs TaXtXatas ; Ac 1^ dp^dfievoi dvb toO /SaTrWff^iaros '\wdvov ; Ac 10^ dp^dfxevos dwd r^s raXiXoiat fjLcrd rb ^avTiafia fl iK-fipv^cv 'IuKin;t,
The chronolo(pcaI reference, in fact, U limited to the words mc-ti irw* xfii»M*fTm, into which iu turn ttie niuuntn^ has been read that our Lord waited till ho hud complL'tod the ao years of an authorized teacher. Hut Jemnh ideoii do not seem to have attached *ny auch importance to this particular a^e. The minimum limit for the Levitical service, even if orig-mally ao, —and a«alnBt Nu 4a-"(ilch.). 1 Ch 23i» are to be set Nu 43.47 (LXX)«**, which fpve 25,— had been reduced to 20 before the Mme of the Chronicler {\ Ch 'i^'-"- ^), who oMcribea the chantje to David. On the other nand, so far aa there was any olticial age (or teaching, it was not SO but 40 : see ttie trealiine Abwla Zara \n the Bab. Talm. fed. Frankfort, 1715. fol. Ili/> : quoted by Schoctt^en, ad toe): Ad quodnam veto irtatis Tnovi^ntutn ex^tfctandum att anteqtiatn uir dvctiu alion docere posait f Kt-Hp. Ad ezactos annoB qxuidratjinta. Similarly, Ircniuus con- trails the prima indoU't iuvting of 30 years with the magutri ptr/wtam <Etatem, which appears to bo 40 (ii. xxli. 4. 6). The traces of an age standard of 30 for difTerent officei ol the Christian minibtr>- are due, of course, directly to thl» »ery ■tati'iuentin St. Luke ; lo expressly the Council of Neo-Caiaarea, I 11.