Elsewhere the meaning is livinr;, mostly in direct opposition to dead, as Nu 1(5^" ' If . . . they go down quick into the pit,' compared with v.^ ' They . . . went down alive into the pit' (Heb. in both □••!:, AV follows Tindale, RV 'alive' in both) ; Ps 55" ' Let them go down quick into hell' (RV 'alive into the pit'); clearly in the phrase ' the quick and the dead,' Ac 10''-, 2 Ti 4', 1 P 45. Cf. Jn 7^ Wye, 'Flodis of quyke watir schulen Howe of his wombe'; Knox, M'orks, ni. 232, 'Thair upon foUowit sa cruell persecutioun, under the name of justice, that na small noumber wer burnit quick ' ; Barlowe, Dialogue, 58, ' It is enacted throughoute Suytzerland among the Oe- colampadyanes, and in dyvers other places, that whosoever is founde of the Anabaptystes faction, he shall be tlirowen quycke into the water, and there drowned ' ; Tindale, Expositions, 189, ' As there is no sin in Christ the stock, so can there be none in the quick members, that live and grow in him by faith ' ; Fuller, Holy State, 9, ' He that impoverisheth his children to enrich his widow, destroyes a quick hedge to make a dead one.'
In He 4'^, though the same Gr. word (fii') is used as in the passages quoted above, the meaning is more than merelj' living, rather alive, almost lively, ' For the word of God is quick and power- ful' (Rhem. ' livel}' and forcible'). And tliis is nearest of all to the derivation of the word, its base being the Teut. kivika, ' lively,' connate with Lat. vivus. Cf. Milton, Areopag. (Hales' ed. p. 7), ' Against defaming it was decreed that none should be traduc'd \>y name . . . and this course was quick enough, as Cicero writes, to quell both the desperate wits of other Atheists, and the open way of defaming, as the event shew'd.'
To quicken is to give life to, wliether physically or spiritually. In OT it is always the tr. of i;n (Piel of n;n to live), which also means to preserve life, but when tr'' ' quicken ' in AV always means to bless with spiritual life. In NT the Gr. is either iuoiroUoi or its compound avv^uioiroiim (Eph 2*, Col 2", tr'' ' quickened together with '). In Jn 5^' the phj-sicaJ and spiritual meanings are placed side by side, ' For as the Father laiseth up tlis dead and quickeneth them ; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.' J. HASTINGS.
QUICKSANDS (Ac 27", RV Syrtis).— The Syrtes, Major and Minor, are situated on the N. coast of Africa, in the wide bay between the headlands of Tunis and Barca. They consist of -sandbanks occupying the shores of the Gulfs of Sidra on tlie coast of Tripoli, and that of Gabes on the coast of Tunis or Carthage. They have been considered a source of danger to mariners from very early times, not only from the shifting of the sands themselves, but owin" to the cross currents of tlie adjoining waters. Thus in the .^neid of Virgil (iv. 40 f.) we find them referred to—
• Hinc GwtOlsa urbes, ^enua insuperabile bello : Et Numidtt infnfini ciugunt, et inhospitA SyrtiB.'
In the last voyage of St. Paul on his way to Italy the ship in which he and his companions were sailing was at the mercy of the tempest, and was drifting before the N.E. wind EURAQUILO, after leaving the shelter of the island of Cauda. Tliere was every reason, therefore, to fear that they might be driven on the Syrtis, which was situated to the leeward of their course; but owing (it may
QUINTUS MEMillUS
QUIVER
183
be supposed) to the rotatory movement of the wind they were driven into the sea of Adria (Ac 27").*
E. Hull. QUINTUS MEMMIUS.— See Memmius (Quin-
TUS).
QUIRINIUS, CENSUS OF. — The statement of St. Luke (2'"') as to how tlie birth of Clirist came to take place at Bethlehem rather than at Nazareth, has produced an amount of discussion of wliicli tlie world is rather wear}'. We should have had less of this, if apologists had not been ready to admit, and opponents eager to maintain, that to prove that the evangelist has here made a misstatement, is to imperil, if not demolish, the authority of his Gospel as an inspired writing. Notliinj; of the kind Is at stake. We have no right to a-ssume that inspiration secures infallible chronology ; and St. LuKe bases his claim to be heard, not on inspira- tion, but on the excellence of his information and his own careful imiuiry (Lk l'""). Yet even well- infomied and careful wTiters sometimes make mistakes, and he maj- have done so here.
There is no serious diliiculty about the statement that Augustus ordered that there should be a general census throughout the Roman Empire (2'). It is true that there is no direct evidence, inde- pendent of Luke, of any such decree ; and we know that in some provinces no census was held during the reign of Augustus. Nevertheless there is evidence that jieriodic enrolments were made in EgjMit {Clas. Ri'.i: Mar. 1803) ; and a Roman census in Judaea at the time indicated, in consequence of general orders issued by Augustus, is not improb- able (Suet. Aug. 28, 101, Cal. 16 ; Tac. Ann. i. 11. 5, 6 ; Plin. Nat. Hist. iii. 2. 17). The real difficulty is about the parenthetical remark in v.''.