DR. ZUMPT ON THE YEAR OF CHRIST'S BIRTH.* ALL Biblical
scholars know the difficulty which has arisen as to Luke's chronology of our Lord's life. Of all the Evangelists, Luke alone assumes, when he speaks of chronology at all, anything of the accuracy of a regular historian ; and yet, as it happens, the only minute specifications of time which his gospel contains have botu of them, till within the last few years, been the causes of a great deal more doubt than they have resolved. Now, first, as to what he tells us as to the birth of Christ. He says that in the days of Herod, the King of Judea, in other words, Herod the Great, the father of John the Baptist received a supernatural prophecy of a son's birth, who was accordingly born within the year ;—that our Lord's birth took place within a few months of this event, and, therefore, presum- ably, also during the lifetime of Herod the Great. Indeed, if we are to trust the account of St. Matthew even only so far as proving the general belief of contemporaries that Herod survived Christ's birth and so threatened His life as to render a flight from Judea necessary,—and for this at least it seems good, igno- rant as St. Luke seems to be of the asserted flight into Egypt,— there is every reason to believe that the birth of our Lord pre- ceded the death of Herod the Great by at least a year, if not more. Now, the death of Herod the Great took place in the beginning of the year B.C. 4, —which seems to prove that our era is post-dated more than five years at least. But Luke gives us an apparently mere accurate means of determining the exact date. Ile prefaces his account of the birth by saying, in general phrase, " And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed" [literally, inscribed in census-lists], " and this was the first taxing " [or census] " of Quirinius when ruling Syria ; and all went to be taxed" [or inscribed in the census lists], " every one into his own city." Now, this passage has given rise to a double difficulty. First, Quirinius is named by Josephus as the governor of Syria and the author of a census in which all the property of the Jews was estimated for taxing purposes, a good deal later, in A.D. 6, and nothing is directly known of any previous census, still less of any conducted by him,—the part of Josephus's history referring to this period being wanting. In the next place, the mode of census-taking indi- cated in St. Luke's narrative, of assembling all the members of one house in a single town supposed to be appropriated to that house, is one for which there is no Roman precedent. To add to the difficulty and apparent confusion of St. Luke's chronological notices, he gives us the date of John the Baptist's first entrance on his public ministry, which, as in the case of his birth, preceded • Des Geburtsiehr Christi: Geseltiehtlieh—Chronologische Untersuehurtgen. Von A. W. Zumpt. Leipzig : Teubner. (The Year of Christ's Birth: Historical and Chrono- logical Investigations. By A. W. Zumpt. Leipzig.) apparently by not more than a few months that of Christ, as hap- pening in the " fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,"— which is, for the most part, identical with the 29th after our era. Now, St. Luke adds that when Christ entered on His ministry, which was some months later than this date, He was about thirty years old, whereas if He was born over a year before the death of Herod, He must have been at this time at least 34. At first sight, then, St. Luke's chronology is neither consistent with history nor with itself.
Dr. A. W. Zumpt, the nephew of the celebrated philologist and grammarian, and himself a Latin scholar and student of Roman history of very high reputation in Germany, has set himself in the treatise of which we give the title below to unravel the tangle of difficulties here presented, and to some extent, at least, has achieved a very remarkable success. After the fashion of German learning, which thinks no labour superfluous which can serve to unlock a single historical difficulty, he has given us a perfectly exhaustive treatise on the chronology of the Syrian administrations between B.C. 6 and A.D. 6, and on the Roman mode of taking the census for taxing purposes both in Roman and in subject provinces, to which he has added, as having the most intimate connection with his subject, a very acute discussion of the exact year of the Cruci- fixion. It would be absolutely impossible, of course, for us to follow him into detail, but we must give an outline of his very ingenious argument to prove that there was really a Syrian administration of Quiriuius, antecedent to that mentioned by Josephus as beginning in A.D. 6, and that there is, at least, much reason to believe that Quirinius completed in it an earlier census of Judea than the one he afterwards commenced, and one, moreover, founded on different principles and conceived for the purpose of imposing a different kind of tribute,—a poll-tax, such as we know to have existed in our Lord's time.
The Lieutenant-Governorship of Syria was in the time of Augustus and Tiberius one of the highest of offices. It was held only by those who had filled the office of Consul,—by an imperial legatus of the highest rank, who had full military command of all the legions in the province. Syria included, of course, much beside Judea, and the Procurator of Judea was a mere subordinate under him. Had it not so happened that there was no Lieutenant- Governor of Syria present in the province during the greater part of Pontius Pilate's Procnratorship,—Tiberius, who was very jealous of his greater subordi nates, keeping the Lieutenant-Governor of Syria in Rome and advisedly leaving the administration there to subordinate officers of lower rank,—Pontius Pilate would have had comparatively little of the unenviable responsibility and authority which he exercised in relation to our Lord's death. Now, strangely enough, both our historical auth orities for the Roman administrations of Syria between the years 4 B.C. and 4 A.D. are defective at the same point. In Dion Cassius's history there is a gap of nearly 10 years between 6 B.C. and 4 A.D., within which all continuous history is missing, and only isolated facts are mentioned here and there. Josephus tells his story in full up to the death of Herod the Great, and mentions the disturbances which followed his death, the journey of his heirs to Rome, the insurrection of Alexander the Sidonian, Archelaus's return to Judea, and how he made and unmade high priests, and married his brother's widow. But just here his narrative breaks off, and nothing further is told of Archelaus's government till the accusation brought against him before the Emperor in the tenth year of his rule, when he was summoned to Rome and deposed. Hence both the authorities fail for the very time to which Luke's notice apparently refers. We know that Caius Sentius Saturninus, a governor of consular rank, admin- istered Syria from 9 B.C. to 6 B.C., that Publius Quinctilius Varus, also a man of consular rank, came to Syria in 6 B.C., and we have proof of his continued rule in 5 B.C. and 4 B.C. In this last year King Herod died. Repeated disturbances arose in Judea, which were suppressed by Yarns, and thence- forward, i.e., after the summer of this year, 4 B.C, we hear no more of Yarns. Indeed, our next direct evidence of any Roman administrator of Syria is a coin struck at Antioch in the autumn of 4 A.D., on which Lucius Volusius Saturninus is named as the Roman Governor of Syria. Between these dates the direct evidence fails. To fill up the gap it has been supposed that Caius Caesar, the grandson and adopted son of Augustus, who was sent by the Emperor with full power to Asia, B.C. 1, to wage war against the Parthians in Armenia, was made Governor of Syria, and retained that office till A.D. 4, when he died of a wound re- ceived in Armenia. It would be quite possible that Yarns had held the Governorship of Syria for a year or two after B.C. 4, and that Caius Caesar might have been nominated governor for some time before he actually left Rome. If this were so, the gap would be pretty
well filled up, and no room at all left for that earlier administration of Quirinius, apparently asserted by the evangelist Luke ; and if not for his administration, of course not for any census of Judea earlier than that of A.P. 6, in which be bad any part. In this case, then, Luke would be convicted of a gross chronological error of ten years or more,—of shifting back to a period in close connec- tion with the death of Herod the Great, a census and an adminis- tration of Syria which did not begin till after the deposition of Archelaus in the early summer of 6 A.D. It is on the discussion of this question that Dr. Zumpt displays his full strength. He weaves together a close chain of facts and ingeniously verified inferences, which render it all but absolutely certain that Publius Sulpicius Quirinius was one of the Lieutenant-Governors of Syria during the interval, and at all events very likely that he really completed a census of Judea long anterior to that commenced by him in A.D. 6.
First of all, Dr. Zumpt shows that Caius Caesar cannot have really been appointed to the governorship of Syria ; for soon after his arrival in the East, Caius Caesar visited Egypt, a province separated from Syria, and standing under a distinct administration, whereas any officer who passed the borders of his own province into another without special command was guilty of treason. Moreover, Orosius expressly states that Caius Cassar was sent to settle the affairs of the provinces of Egypt and Syria, while Suetonius attributes to him a general authority over the eastern part of the Empire. Moreover, we know that when he won a victory in Armenia, Caius Caesar himself received the title of Imperator, no less than Augustus,—which implies that he had an independent command and waged war "under his own auspices," as the phrase went. All this proves that he was entrusted with a special mission to the East by a Senatus- Consultant, and not merely made a legatus of the Emperor in Syria. But if so, it is certain that it was not Caius Caesar's adminis- tration which fills up the gap in the list of Syrian governors. Here comes another piece of evidence. Tacitus tells us that Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, — a man of consular rank,— was appointed by Augustus as counsellor (rector) to Caius Caesar when the latter was sent to Armenia. This honour was, moreover, conferred on Quirinius just after he had con- quered a fort of the Homonadenses in Cilicia, and had received a triumph for his victory. Now Dr. Zumpt demonstrates by a most ingenious and exhaustive discussion that the Homonadeuses must at that time have been under the Governor of Syria, and that Quirinius must have been Lieutenant-Governor of Syria when he conquered this fort and received the triumph. But Caius Caesar left for the East, 1 B.C. of our era, hence Quirinius must have been Lieutenant-Governor of Syria before that time. This ingenious proof Dr. Zumpt confirms by some very striking secondary evidence in relation to the proceeding of Tiberius in rela- tion to Germanicus, when, at a later date, Augustus sent him to the East, nominally to settle the troubles there, really to get a rival of whom he was jealous out of the way. What Tiberius then did was to give Germanicus as his coadjutor a Lieutenant-Governor of Syria, Cneus Piso, who was appointed to the governorship of Syria ex- pressly for the purpose of being associated with Germanicus, as his assistant in the work of settling the affairs of the East. Now Dr. Zumpt argues that as we know that Quirinius must have been really Lieutenant-Governor of Syria by the triumph over the Homonadenses, just before be was associated with Caius Caesar in the Eastern mission, he was, in precisely the same manner, chosen for the prince's counsellor expressly because his position in Syria and his military prowess fitted him for the task,—and he conjectures that in all probability he was sent to Syria at the time Archelaus was sent back by Augustus as King of Judea. Quinctilius Yarns was greedy, and far too much lie with Archelaus to be trusted in Syria by Augustus as a check upon Archelaus. Hence, in all probability, Augustus replaced Varus by Quirinius when he consented to confirm Archelaus's title to Judea. We confess that we think Dr. Zumpt has established beyond a doubt that Quirinius was really the governor of Syria before his appointment in A.D. 6, and that he was, in all probability, appointed in B.C. 4.
But then B.C. 4 would be after the death of Herod, and, accord- ingly, not at the time specified for our Lord's birth ? Certainly. But Dr. Zumpt remarks that Luke does not say our Lord was born under the rule of Quirinius in Syria, but only during that census of Judea which was " the first census of Quirinius as governor." Now a census, especially in provinces unused to them, was a very cumbrous and long business, and often lasted many years. Tertullian, who was here certainly not copying from any sacred writer, but speaking from some other and inde-
pendent source of information; — and, indeed, some source of information quite inconsistent with his own interpretation of St. Luke's narrative, though Tertullian did not know it, —tells us at the end of the second century, "it is certain that under Augustus censuses were held in Judea under Sentius Saturninus, in which any one could investigate his descent ;" and in another passage he says that public census tables which classified the Jewish people by tribes, families, and houses, for a long time were hung up for public inspection ; and Dr. Zumpt believes that it is to these " public tables " Josephus referred in tracing his own descent. We have, then, respectable evidence from other sources that a personal census such as St. Luke describes, referring every Jew to his proper family and house, was really taken, and taken partly under Sentius Saturninus. Now Dr. Zumpt points out in confirmation of this that there was in the year 10 B.C. a very special activity at Rome in the direction of promoting provincial censuses. Seutius Saturninus was made Governor of Syria 9 B.C., and was therefore very likely desired to take a census at once iu the way most agreeable to the Jewish people—which would, doubtless, be one recognizing their ancient tribal divisions, since the second census of Quiri- nius, which was conducted on the Roman principle and meant as a basis for a property tax, not for a poll tax, certainly did cause insurrection and violent disaffection. Dr. Zumpt conjectures that this first census-taking which must naturally have been a very slow affair, if conducted on the tribal principle indicated both by St. Luke and by Tertullian's statement, may easily have lasted five years, and have been completed only under Quirinius (whose "fist census " it would then be called, in contrast to his second census, begun when he was made Governor of Syria for the second time in A.D. 6). Sentius Saturninus was succeeded in the governorship of Syria by Quiuctilius Varus in B.C. 6, and Dr. Zumpt supposes that if the names of Joseph and Mary were registered in tables made under his rule, as Tertullian seems to have asserted, the birth of our Lord cannot have taken place later than B.C. 7.
Dr. Zumpt confirms this by a very learned and ingenious discus- sion of St. Luke's statement as to the date at which John the Baptist. entered on his ministry, and as to the year of our Lord's death, which point, as he shows, to the year 26 A.D. for the former event and 29 A.D. for the latter. For the details of this discussion we have no room here, but we may say thatDr. Zumpt accepts the tradition which assigns the crucifixion to the fifteenth year of Tiberius (reckonedin the imperial fashion from the death of Augustus) being also the year of the consulship of the two Gemini, while he understands St. Luke's statement that John the Baptist entered on his ministry in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, to mean the fifteenth year of Tiberius's first elevation to imperial authority over the provinces, i. e., the fifteenth year from the time when he was associated by Augustus with himself in authority as co-regent of the provinces, and im- perator of the troops,—an event which Dr. Zumpt puts at the end of the year A.D. 11,—which yields the year 26 A.D. for the date of John the Baptist's first public appearance. And Dr. Zumpt shows that with regard to the reign of Herod and also with regard to that of Augustus himself, the ancient provincial writers fixed quite different points for the commencement, according as they calculated from the various stages in the gradual process of their elevation to power. Certainly the first year in which Tiberius held over Syria the proper imperial power was the year of his association with Augustus, and not the year in which he succeeded him.
We do not attach much weight to Dr. Zumpt's confirma- tion of his calculations as to the year of Christ's birth by showing that in B.C. 7 there was a thrice-repeated con- junction of Jupiter and Saturn in the sign of the Fish, which might have had for the astrological students of that time a very great importance, and possibly have corre- sponded to St. Matthew's account of the "star in the East" which led the Magi to Bethlehem. It is not easy to see how such a conjunction could have pointed out any particular spot on the earth's surface, and if the marvel related by St. Matthew is so far legendary, it is hardly a historic datum at all. But the main discussions of this marvellously learned book,—from which the student of Roman customs will gain a most curiously complete con- ception of the progress of Roman policy in relation to the census,— assuredly tend to substantiate the historical character of St. Luke's incidental chronological notices ; and what is more, confirm St.
John's statement that at the very beginning of our Lord's ministry the building of Herod's temple had already gone on for forty-six years. Beyond this result, of itself of great importance to the critical student of the Gospels, Dr. Zumpt's discussion of the chain - of events to be pieced together is so skilful and exhaustive as to give the reader a good deal- of the pleasure always caused by all exhaustive discussions of historical evidence which really lead to a distinct conclusion. The results of the book are of no little practical value, but the scientific interest of the analysis itself will have a great intellectual charm for most readers quite independent of its bearing on the credibility of St. Luke's statements.
Previous page
