'"t S°ee"t"e'''oerara of Babylon, Tractate /|c.A.A« J. nafto, the yeu, year, fol. 2a: 'Our rabbis teach that a king who micends the throne on the _29th Adar bm completed a J ear as soon as he reaches Nisan 1." .... , , ■>„„-„„
1 The emperor's answer to the deputation sent U> Rome on this subject is dated in the consulship of Kulus and Pompeiua Silvani.s ; and if these were, as is generally assumed cOT«tUc. »H "<•.•(■ of A. I). 45, the letter will (all somewhere alter the early months of that year. (Older editors read wp, "«•'«?«' ".^'"m •I.^x,.„, but the latter word is simply a retrunslation of luia in the interior Latin MSB ; Niese o.ii.ls it. and marks " If """•l But to date by other than the coimites orcfi«<iro would be so uniral, it not unexampled, that (especially ■" the absence of anv other proof of the existen.'e ot these particular «u.:fecti) the cenuineness of the letter must be considered doibtful.
CHRONOLOGY OF NEW TEST.
CHRONOLOGY OF NEW TEST. 4]^
was contemporary with Failus, namely, tlie con- version of Helena ami Izates, lie continues the digression through the long chapters XX. ii. iii. iv., bringing the history of Ailiabene down to a point much later even than this visit: and then, after returning to Fadus and recording the revolt snd death of Theudas under him, he goes on to bay that his successor was Tiberius Alexander, ' in whose time it clianced that the great famine in Jud.Ta occurred in which ' Helena acted so gener- ously. After Alexander, of whom nothing further is related except the execution of the sons of Judas the Galilean, Cumanus comes as the new procurator ; in the 8th year of Claudius [A.D. 48], Herod king of Chalcis dies. These two last events are reversed in liJ : ' after Herod of Chalcis' death Claudius gives his kingdom to the younger Agrippa, and Cumanus succeeds Alexander.' Both accounts, in fact, treat the two changes as practically sim- ultaneous, so that Josephus certainly places Cumanus' arrival in A.D. 48. Thus the whole tenure of both Fadus and Alexander falls within the limits of the years 44—18 A.D. ; and since the bulk of the events recorded under the former is considerably the greater, Alexander cannot have arrived before, saj', the spring of A.D. 46. This is the terminus a quo for Helena's visit ; and as Helena had not apparently heard of the famine before she arrived, it is the terminus a quo for the famine also, while Josephus' language leaves no doubt that 'the great fiimine' ran its whole course under the same governor. It is therefore possible that it should be placed, or placed partly, in A.D. 47 ; it is certain that even the earlier part of the crisis cannot be placed before A.D. 46 (Ant. XX. i. 1, 2, ii. 1, 5, V. 1, 2; BJ U. xii. 1).
4. The I'ruionsulshij) of Sergius Paulus in Cyprus. — The name of this governor has been found in a Cypriote inscription i-rl llavKov [di'S]wrdTou ' in Paulus' proconsulship,' but unfortunately without any sj-nchronism which would lix the year. On the other hand, a dedication to Claudiu.s in the name of the city of Curium in Cyprus by the proconsul L. Annius Bassus, 'in accordance with a decision previously taken by the proconsul Julius Cordu.s,' is signed 'in the 12th year,' i.e. of the emperor, A.D. 52. Cordus' tenure, if, as seems to be iHiplied, he was Bassus' immediate predecessor, will cover the year 51, so that in neither of those two years can place be found for Paulus. (Ces- nola, Cyprus, p. 425; Boeckh, CIG 2632.)
5. The Expulsion of t/ie Jexos from Rome, under Claudius is recorded in Suetonius {Claudius 25), ludwos impuiiore Chresto assidue tumultuantes Soma expulil ; but as this writer's method is to group together the events in any one reign of similar character — in this case dealinj^s with the provincials — no suggestion of a date la given at all. Tacitus, whose Annals, however, are extant during the last seven years only of Claudius' reign, A.D. 47-54, says nothing of the Jews, though he mentions, under A.D. 52, the expulsion of the astrologers from Italy, a measure at once 'cruel and ineirective.' Orosius, A.U. 417 (Hist. vil. vi. 15), is the earliest authority to give a date, Claudius IX. = A.D. 49, quoting it as from .Josephus ; but, in fact, Josephus is as silent as Tacitus, not about the date only, but about the whole matter. Nor is there any reason to believe that Orosius had access to Josephus direct ; the only other reference to him (vil. ix. 7) appears to Ixi repeated from Jerome's Chronicle. It must therefore remain uncertain whether or not Orosius' source in this case is trustworthy. [Ramsay (St. Paul, p. 68) supposes that all Orosius' dates for events under Claudius are a year too early (as miglit easily be the case if, for instance, he was copying a chronicler like Eusebius, whose Ist of Claudius
VOU I. — 27
began, not in Jan., but in Sept. A.D. 41 ; see below, No. 8. a), so that this expulsion would then rather belong to A.D. 50.]
(i. The Proconsulship of Gallio in Achaia must fall after A.D. 44, in which year (Dio Cassius, Ix. 24) this province, taken by Tiberius in A.D. 15 into his own hands, and ruled thenceforward by Ic.fjati proprwtnre (dfTKTrpi-njyoL), was restored to the control of the senate, and to administration \>y proconsuls (ai'OinraTOi). Further, if Gallio so far shared the disgrace of his famous brother Seneca — who was only recalled in A.D. 49 (Tac. Ann. xii. 8) from an exile that had lasted about eight years — that he would have been passed over while it lasted, then the terminus a quo is not 44 but 49, or rather, since the proconsuls entered on their provincial governments early in the year, A. D. 50. At the same time, the distinction between tha method of appointment to imperial and to sena- torian provinces was just this, that the emjjeror was quite unfettered m his choice, while, in the other case, all ex-holders of offices in Rome, ex-con- suls and ex-pra;toi"s, succeeded naturally to sena- torian governorships; Dio, for instance (loc. cit.), describes this verj' change as one from selection to lot : TTjif d^ 'Axaia** Kai ttjv MaveSofi'ai' alperois &pxov<nv i^ o^TTio 6 Tt(3^/)ioy ^o^e dtSofi^va^ ajr45tt>K€v 6 KXai/5tos Tore t<() KXriptf. Still, it is likely enough that candidates obnoxious to the government either did not stand at all, or were unsuccessful by arrangement at the balloting. Gallio, then, entered on ollice in Achaia certainly not before A.D. 44, and probably not before 49, or even 5U.*