were removed, as it could easily be, the paralytic could be let down from the edge of the roof proper to the very spot where Jesus was. The expressions in Mark, though applicable to the breaking through of an earthen roof, describe this proceeding equally well. James Patrick.
TILGATH-PILNESER.— SeeTlGLATH-PlLESER.
TILON (^ere jiS-B, Keth. pVm ; B 'Ivijjp, A QCKiir, Luc. 0uAei/i). — A son of Shimon, 1 Ch 4-".
TIMiEUS, only Mk 10«.— Father of the blind beggar Bartim^us (vol. i. p. 248). If the name be Greek, it must be written Ti/xaios, and thus WH write even the second name Ba/jri^iaios ; if it be Semitic, like most names in -aios in the NT, it must be Ti/iatos, like Za^'xcttos, Ba/j^oXo/iatos, etc. Both suppositions have their difficulties. Again, ' the son of Timseus ' (ulis Ti^aiou) seems a mere translation of BapTi/taios. Ecclesiastical tradition gives to the name the meaning ' blind ' (see Unomastica sacra, ed. Lagarde, 176, 35, Bapniioios vl&s Tvip\6s ; 66, 10 (Jerome) : Barsemia filiua ciecus, quod et ipsum quidam corrupte Barti- maium legunt).* Ng?, k;-d means ' blind ' ; but how are we to get from seme to timait Jastrow (Dic- tionary, p. 532 ; simUarly, Krauss, Lehmoorter) mentions from l;foh. rabba to Ec 9' 'i-i r^•^2 i'lit'in- 'i •D-a, but Yalk. Koh. 979 has only ■n'jcc i, and with Dalman, Aramaisch ■ neuhcbrdisches Worterbiwh, p. 162, we must perhaps read 'DV = Simeon. The Thesaurus Syriacus (4S6, 1462) mentions a place 'D'p r'3. The Syriac 'V^ersions, including the Arabic ■Patian, Syrus Sinaiticus, and the Palestinian Syriao (Land, Anecdota Syriaca, iv. 141), read Tirnai bar Timai, the Egyptian CatencB as published by Lagarde (1886, p. 101), BAPTIMEXUC IIcoHPI ^■TIMENOC. Origen connected the name with tj/itJ (6 TTji Tt/i^s itrwvvp^o^) ; Strauss thought of iveTlp.(i)v in v.''* ; others of y^KOa ' unclean ' ; Neu- bauer (Studia Biblica, i. 57) would spell it »i?'0, against the general rule that t = b. The ety- mology is still obscure, and so is the relation of the account of Mark to that of Luke and Matthew. See Schmiedel, Em:. Bibl. i. 489-491 ; Nestle, Mar- ainalien, 1893, pp. 83-92 ; art. Bartim.«US in voL I. p. 248. Eb. Nestle.
TIMBREL.— See Tabret.
TIME.— i. Eras.— The Bible offers insufficient data for confident generalizations regarding the methods employed at various periods for measur- ing and indicating the passage of time. We should naturally expect considerable changes in these methods as tlie Israelites passed through various phases of civilization and modes of living. The literary records, however, do not completely reflect all these modified conditions, and just as Josephus translates the current Jewish dates of his age into their Macedonian equivalents, so earlier writers would probably date past events in accordance with their own rather than with the ancient systems of the calendar. Until the 2nd cent. B.C. we know of no fixed era from which events were dated by the Israelites. The books of the M.accabees show us the Seleucidean era (be- ginning B.C. 312) in full force. This era (minyan Yevanim ' numbering of the Greeks,' or minyan shetaroth ' numbering of documents') was the first to be adopted and the last to be rejected by the Jews ; it survived among the Egyptian Jews till the IGLli cent. A.D. The ordinary Seleucid era began with the autumn of the year B.C. 312; but Schiirer (IIJP I. i. p. 37) maintains that the
* Od the Syriac lexicograpbera (Bar All, Bar Balilul) get Nestle, MaTginaXieii, p. b7.
authors of the books of the ^laccabees reckon the ytiir from the spring season, though later Jews counted from the autumn (Tishri). AVellhausen rejucts Schiirer's theory {IJG* 25$). Several of the Hellenistic cities founded along the seacoast of Juda»a and in the north had eras of their own in the Greek period (after Alexander the Great), but the onlj- exact Jewish parallel is found in the time of Simon the Maccabee (143-'2 B.C.). ' In the hundred and seventieth j-ear (of the Seleuci- dean era) was the yoke of the heatlien taken away | from Israel. And the people be^'an to write in their instruments and contracts, " In the first year of Simon the great high priest and captain and leader of the Jews" ' (I Mac Hi'"). No documents so dated are extant, but it has been doubtfully conjectured [but see art. Money in vol. iii. p. ] 42411'.] that some silver coins bearing the vear j numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and the inscription c-Vm- j np^F, etc., refer to this era. That the era of Simon ■wa.s of short duration is certain ; even in 1 Mac. (14^) it is only employed side by side with the ! more permanently used Selucidean epoch.
The prevalent method of dating events both in OT and NT is by regnal years of monarchs, or by synchronism with other events [see CmiOXOLOGY]. 1 he Kxodus from Eg\ pt was sometimes taken as an era(l K 6>, cf. Ex 19', Nu 33^^); and Ezekiel (1') perhaps turns the refonnation of Josiah (B.C. Ui^-l) to this purpose. It is unlikely that the 'thirtieth year' refers to Ezekiel's own age [but see Uudde in Expos. Times, Oct. I'JOO, p. 3911'., and Aug. I'JOl, p. 52of.], though the patriarchal dates are often collated with the ages of various char- acters. At the beginning of the Christian era, the Jews were compelled to adopt the j-ear of the Homan emperors as their norm ((!raetz. History of the Jew, Eng. tr. ii. 1.S4). The erection of Solomon's temple (1 K 9'"), the commencement of the Egjptian entanglement (Gn 15'^), the Baby- lonian Exile (Ezk 33-' 40'), and such natural phenomena as a remarkable earthquake (' two years before the ea,rtli<iuake,' Am 1'), were also in a minor degree used as eras. Soon after the time t< Christ, the Jews must have devised a method of counting by anno mundi, for the Talmud assumes that something like 4u00 years separated the destruction of the temple from the Creation. The dating by A.M. first occurs in the Seder Ilndoroth, a work attributed to Jose ben Chalafta. The Jewish system ditt'ers from the Dionj'sian era (6th cent. A.D. ), and, while Ussher dates tlie Christian era as 4UU4 a.m., the current Jewish numbering assigns the year 3760 A.M. to the beginning of that era. Thus the Jewish year beginning September 1901 is .^UU'2 A.M. Jews in later times occasionally used the Mohammedan era, and dated from the Hegira. There is no indication whatever that the Jews ever turned the jubilee period to calendar use in the .same manner in which the Olympiads were employed. They nmy, however, have niiide use of the idea of the dor or 'generation.'