No dates in the NT are expressed by the consuls, but in early Christian times such dates were some- times used. Thus they found their way into Eusebius and other important later authorities for the early history of Christianity ; and often very important questions relating to early Christian chronology turn on this system of dating. The list of consuls entering office on 1 January is almost complete ; but nothing like a complete list of con- suls suffecti can as yet be recovered.
3. Dating by priests or other officials.—This was originally a mere variety of the system of dating by monarchs ; for in many of the ereat religious centres the priest at an early period was a dynast or priest-king, who ruled over the people of the god as his representative and the interpreter of his will. In later times, when in general the priest had sunk to a much humbler level, the old custom still continued. Under the Roman Empire the governor of a province was often mentioned to specify a date: the Roman governor exercised the supreme power, and was in a sense a monarch for the time of his office, and, in fact, where a mon- archy was formed into a province (for example, Asia, Bithynia, Cappadocia, etc.), the first governor succeeded the last king. In the Imperatorial pro- vinces, such as Syria or Palestine, in which the governor regularly remained in office for several successive years, this way of dating was of small use without specification of the number of years of office (which was very rarely made, as it attributed too much of the monarchic character to the gover- nor, and would be likely to offend the emperor) ; in the Senatorial provinces, where the governor by an almost invariable rule remained only one year, it was more useful.
4. Devices of historians for indicating important dates.—To lessen in some degree the difficulties en- tailed by such complicated and narrowly restricted systems of chronology, it was an occasional practice for historians to indicate the time of an event by several different ways of reckoning, when they wished to mark a date carefully, and to make their chronology readily intelligible to different classes of persons. Thus Thucydides (ii. 2) in- dicates an important date by the Athenian archon, the Lacedzemonian ephor, and the forty - eighth year of the priestess Chrysis in Argos, and by the fifteenth year of the Thirty Years’ Peace. “As a rule this was done, even by the most careful, only for some one or two critical events in their narrative. For the rest of the narrative they generally contented themselves with indicating the beginning and end of the single years more or less carefully, making the critical event a means of connecting the narrative as a whole with other departments and periods of history.
According to that traditional’ practice among historians, St. Luke dates the call of John the Baptist very elaborately, not merely by the fifteenth year of Tiberius, but also by the Roman procurator of Palestine, by the high priests (whom he seems to consider joint-priests), and by the tetrarchs of Galilee, of the Itureo - Trachonitic land, and of Abilene. It is remarkable that he does not name the Roman governor of Syria, when he mentions the unimportant tetrarch of the small Syrian territory of Abilene ; the governor of Syria was not brought into any relation with the subject of his narrative, but neither was the tetrarch of Abilene. It is also remarkable that he numbers
NUMBERS, HOURS, AND YEARS
the year only of Tiberius and not of any of the tetrarchs. :
We must understand that this elaborate dating is intended ta.connect the whole book with general history, as was the usage of other ancient writers. There is no other purpose served by the carefully stated synchronisms. Now, the call of John the Baptist is of importance in the book only as lead- ing up to the baptism of Jesus by John; and we enerelsve must understand that the dating is re- lated to the baptism as well as to the call of John. If some vague, indefinite interval elapsed between the call and the baptism, the careful dating would be absolutely valueless for the book, whereas we have been forced to the view that such careful dating was used only for a critical point in the chronological sequence of the narrative.
5. Character of the dating in the NT.—Of the small number of dates which are given in the NT, most are specified according to the reigns of sovereigns; but a very few are expressed by officials or priests. Generally they are stated in the vague Greek fashion, ‘when Quirinius was governor of Syria,’ or ‘in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas’; and on this analogy, even when monarchs are concerned, ‘in the days of Herod the king,’ or ‘ Herod being tetrarch of Gali- lee’ (Mt 21, Lk 1° 2? 3!-2). The solitary exact date in the NT is the year of Tiberius, already dis- cussed. This looseness as regards time seems more marked, when it is observed that almost all those scanty indications of dating are found in St. Luke: only one allusion that aids in providing a historical setting for the narrative is given by any other writer (Mt 21). The few allusions to contemporary history that occur in the other writers are forced on them by their story; St. Luke alone makes intentionally chronological statements.