I.itkkati'up.. — The ftillest discussion of this subject took jtlnre In a lengthy corres|iuiulenco In T/ie Academy, towards the eiul of 1MI4 and beginning of Is'JS.
iii. The Genealogies. — At the time when it was Uiought lUMcs.sary at ;dl costs to bring one biblical statement into visible harmony with anuiher, two hypotheses were in f;ivoiir for recnniiling the gene;ilogy of our Lord pre.'ierved in .\!t 1'"'' with that in I.k ;t2J-3". Tlie.se were (d) the hypothesis of adoption or levirate marriage, acconling to which the aeliial descent nught differ at several points from the legal descent, so that tliero might be two e(pially valid genealogies running side by side ; and (>i) the hypnihesis that the one geiiealo.iiy miL-ht lie that of .loseph, as the reputed father of .lesiis. and the other genealogy (piefinibly St. I.uki's^ that of Mary. A certain haiulle seemed
to be given for this latter .suppo.sition by the Iradi- titni which was said to be found in the Talmud (tr. Chdijuj. 77, col. 4, Meyer- Wci.ss), that Mary was the daughter <if Kli. [This statement ajipears to be founded on a mistake, and should be given up ; see (i. A. Cooke in Gore, Vixsertationa, p. 39 f.]. It was felt, however, that this view could only be maintained by straining the text of the Gospel ; and it is now generally (though not quite univers- ally) agreed that both genealogies belong to Joseph. On the other hand, the theory of levirate marriage or adoption, though no doubt a possible explanation, left too muih the impression of being coined to meet tlu^ ditliculty. The criticism of to-day prefers to leave the two genealogies side by side as inde- pendent attempts to supply the desiderated proof of Uavidic descent. Were they the work of our present evangelists, or do they go back beyond them ? Hoth genealogies appear to have in com- mon a characteristic which may point to opposite conclusions as to their origin. That in the First Go.spel bears upon its face its artificial .structure. The evangelist himself points out (Mt 1") that it is arranged on three groups of fourteen generations, though these groups are obtained by certain de- liberate omissions. That would be, in his ca.se, consistent with other peculiarities of his Gospel : he evidently shared the Jewish fondness for arti- licial arrangements of numbers (Sir .fohn Hawkins, JJii)-ic Si/nnplira', p. 1,'jl ff. ), From this fact we might infer th.at the stem of descent had been drawn up by him.self from the <)T and perhaps some local tradition. If such tradition came to him in writing, the li.st might still conceivably have endeil in some such way as that which is found in the Sinai-Syriac, though if the list was tir.st committed to writing in the Gospel the probability that it did so would be considerably diminished.
It would .seem that a like artificial arrangement (77 generations = 7 X 11) underlies the .wnealogy in Lk. Hut as this is not in the maniu'r of the Third Evangelist, and as he iloes nut api'car to be con- scious of this feature in his list, it woulil be more liroliable that he found it ready to his hand. In that ca.se it would be natural that it .should come from the same source as chs. 1. 2, which would invest the genealogy with the high authority of those chapters. We cannot .speak too confidently, but the conclusion is at least spontaneously sug- gested by tho facts.
iv. The Census of Quirinlus. — Until a very .short tinu' ago the best review of the whole ijuestioii of the Census of tinirinins (Lk ■2'-'') was that by Schiirerin XTZG § 17, Anhang 1 (IIJI'i. ii. 1(15 ff.). This was based upon a survey of the whole previous literature of the subject, and was really judicial, if somewhat severely critical, in its tone. As distinct from the .school of H;iur, which was always reaily to sacrilice the Chrisli;in tradition to its own recoiistruciioii of the history. Dr. Schiirer is an excellent representative of that more cautious method of in(|uiry which carefully collects the data and draws its conclusions with no pre- ]>o.ssession in favour of the biblical writers if also without prejudice against them. In the ]ireseiit instance he summed up rather adversely to the statements in St. Luke ; and in the state of historical knowledge at the time when he wrote ( 181HI), that he should do su was upon his principles not surprising.
According to St. Luke, our I,ord was born at Heth- leheni on the occasion of a general 'enrolment ' (axo- ypaifi^i) iinlered by the emperor .Vugu.stusaml carried out in I'alestine miiler Quirinins as governor of .Syria. The dale was lixeil as being before the death of Herod, which took |>lace in ll.c. -i ; and it w;us explained that .loseph and .Mary, as belonging
G-IO
JESUS CHRIST
JESUS CHRIST
to the lineage of David, had gone np to enter their names at Bethlehem, David's city.
There were several points in this statement which seemed to invite eriticism. (i.) In the tirst pl.tce, there was no other evidence that Augnstus ever ordered a general census of the empire, although there was good reason to think that he look pains to collect statistics in reganl to it. (ii.) F.vcu if he had ordered such a census, it seemed doubtful whether it would be carried out in a kingdom which possessed such a degree of inde- pendence as Judaja. And (iii.) if it had been con- d\uted in the Roman manner, there would have been no necessity for Joseph and JIary to leave their usual place of residence. Further, (iv. ) wliile it was allowed, on the strength of a well-known inscription, that Quirinius probably twice held office in Syria, yet, as it was known that Sentius Saturninus was governor B.C. 9-7, and Quiuctilius Varus at least li.c. 7-4, it was argued that Quirinius' lirsl term of otfioe could not be before lit'. 0-1, i.e. after the death of Herod, (v.) As there Wivs, in any case, a census of .Judrea conducted by (^uir- iuius after its annexation by the Romans in .\.l). (!, it was thought that St. Luke had a confused recollection of this, and antedated it (in the (Jospel, though not in Ac 5^") to the lifetime of Herod.