23. His Catholicity is to be noted finally. Though a Jew on the human side, yet He rose entirely above all merely national limits. ' He can be equally claimed by both sexes, by all classes, by all men of all nations.' * Even in His earthly ministry, though necessarily confined to His own nation (Mt 15**), His sympathy went beyond these bounds; cf. Mt 8='- l'5--'-, Lk 10™- H'"*, Jn 4=3-35 IQio 123W- «. He looked forward to the time when 'they shall come from the east r.nd west, and from the north and south ' (Lk IS^") ; cf. Mk 13'" and His last command, Mt 28'". So each race of men as it is gathered into the Church finds in Him its true ideal.
We have thus {)resented to us a Person in whom Divine power, wisdom, and goodness are joined with the highest and holiest type of manhood. The portrait is 'such as no human being could have invented We could not portray such an
image without some features vhicli would betray theiroii^in bein^ intioduted bvui liiinttd eirm", sinful mmiK And least of all could Jew s h iv'e
done so , foi this w is not by any mems the ideal of then mindb (Luthaidt, Fundaiiu ntal Ttutlis of Chnitiantty, 295 f , and notes) bee also artt on Divinity and Hum\nit\ or Christ, and on Names and Titles
LiTEEATDEE — Sandav s ' Jesus Christ ' Ottl(>^ 1 ' Incarnation and other articles in Hastin„'9 DB , Gore, Bampton Lectnres Liddon Bampton Lectureh , Stalker, Ilnago
and Dl
' See Gore, Bampton Led 108 f
\V . H. Dundas.
AUGUSTUS.— The designation usually applied to Caius (Jctavius, son of Caius Octavius and Atia, grandson of Julia the sister of C. Julius Coesar, grand-ncpliew (if tin' T)i<'t,itiir aud iiltiiiiately his adopted .son uii.l luii. \\i- \\:is I1..111 2.3rd Sept. B.C. 63, not far liom llip ■ ll(,u-c' ,,11 the Palatine afterwards built till him ; duil.-ucd Kiiiperor B.C. 29; honoured with the title of ' Augustus ' B.C. 27 ; died 19th Aug. A.D. 14 at Nola, when he had almost reached the age of 77.
If we take B.C. 6 as the corrected date for the birth of Jesus, we find that Augustus was then in his 58th year, had already been Emperor 23 years, and had before him 20 more. Though his reign thus runs parallel with the Christian era for 20 years, there is but a single allusion to him in the Gospel history (Lk 2'). In the NT writings there are but three other instances of the use of the name Augustus. Of these one only (Ac 27') can be held as possibly pointing to him, the other two (Ac 25-' and 25-') mean the reigning Ca;sar (RV ' Emperor '), in both cases Nero. Even that soli- tary allusion to Ca?sar Augustus might have had no place in the Gospel record, had it not been St. Luke's aim to 'trace the course of all things accurately from the first.' In ' drawing up his narrative ' he makes it evident that Nazareth, not Bethlehem, was the home of Joseph and Mary, and that the ' enrolment,' originating in a decree of CiBsar Augustus, was the occasion of the journey from Nazareth within a little time of the expected birth. The Syrian governor is named with the view of fixing the date, as was the custom in those days. Theophilus, as a Roman official, would have access to the list of provincial governors, and must have at once understood the exact period meant. Thus Augustus' contact with Jesus, so far as Scripture deals with it, begins and ends with Lk 2'.
It need not surprise us that there is no further reference in the 20 years of contemporaneous history that followed. The birth of Jesus took place in a remote part of the Empire and in an insignificant town of Judah. The first 30 years of His life, with the exception of the brief sojourn in Egypt, were spent in the obscure, even despised, Nazareth. Among His townsmen He was known only as the carpenter (Mk 6^), or the carpenter's son (Mt Ly=). Though the arrival of the wise men from the East, with the inquiry as to the birth of 'the King of the Jews,' 'troubled Herod' and ' all Jerusalem with him ' (Mt '2^), the commotion caused by their advent soon passed with the tyrant's death in B.C. 4. Even the Massacre of the Innocents ' from two years old and under ' in Bethlehem may never have been heard of in the palace of Augustus, or, if heard of, would have made very little impression, owing to the many acts of cruelty that had marked Herod's reign. It was about this very time that Augustus is reported to have said that it was ' better to be Heiod's sow than his son (M luuli "^ituin u 4)
For St Luke with his n 1 It ured Greek
wrwing to a Roiiiaii othi_i I 1 to gi\e a
distinct place in his re ord t lli census as
of a woiU wide enrolment later rest irf h, wq can add tl duced a periodic census in chosen lan^uaf^e of St Luk
AUGUSTUS
AUGUSTUS
up from Galilee as an act once for all completed (i»s^i!), and an enrolment begun and having a continuance (f^epiimo xitTi; i!r»}./>«^ir««i).* The further description of the census as 'the first' accords with this, not the first under Quirinius, but the first of a series. For those to whom St. Luke wrote the decree was memorable as 'the first' that affected the Jews. Other enrol- ments may have taken place before it under Augustus, as the review by the Emperor himself in the celebrated Monumentum Ancijranum bears, but there is no contradiction between that and the Evangelist's testimony. Three distinct censuses are there named (in B.C. 28, B.C. 8, and in a.d. 14). Only the number of Roman citizens is gi\en in each case, as all others might not ha\t' bL-eii considered worthy of being mentioned in the Emperors Memorials. Important light has recently been thrown on the system of enrolments in the Roman Empire through t lie Labours of various scholars referred to by Prof. W. M. Ramsay in his volume Was Christ bomat Bethlehem? Thetombs and even the dust-heaps of Egypt are pro\ing that enrolments of households there were quite common, and even that a cycle of 14 years was observed. Applying this cycle to the period immediately before and aft«r the Christian era, we bring out well-known dates, B.C. 8 and a.d. 6, the former marking a Roman-citizen census taken by Augustus, and the other that of the 'great census,' when the disturbances took place in Palestine which were quelled by Quirinius. There is thus a strong presumption, amounting almost to proof, that B.C. S is the most likely date for the issue of the decree referred to in LfcS'. The delay between B.C. 8 and B.C. 0, so as to have it coincide with the corrected date for the birth of Jesus, may be accounted for by the strained relations existing about the time between Augustus and Herod, and also between Herod and his subjects. As it seems to have been the first enrolment of Jews under the Empire, it is easy to conceive that tune was needed to overcome Jewish scruples.