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LIEUT.-COL. G. MACKINLAY, R.A., ON 



called A.D., and we read that He was thirty years of age when He 

 began His ministry — that would make Him about thirty-four years 

 old. Then we add the 3J years, and make His life 37 J years. Are 

 we to reckon the chronology of the Authorised Version as being 

 altogether out of date 1 



Mr. Rouse. — The idea of Christ being born 4 B.C. is utterly 

 untenable, inasmuch as Herod died just before the Passover in 4 B.C. 

 {cp. Josephus War, I, xxxiii, 8 ; H, i, 3 ; Ant. XV, xiv, 5 ; XVH, vi, 4, 

 Whiston's Notes); and Christ must have been over a year old 

 when Herod ordered that all children should be destroyed "from two 

 years old and under," which in all likelihood was before the final 

 illness began which took about two months to carry him off. 

 Moreover, since the census in the course of which Christ was born 

 could not have been held at Passover time, when the whole 

 population of Palestine was shifting to and fro and Jerusalem was 

 iilled with Jews from other countries, and since the last previous 

 season when flocks graze at night and so are watched by their 

 shepherds is from August to September, it was in one of those 

 months, at least a year and a half before Herod's death, or at least 

 in 6 B.C., that the Lord was born (Lewin and Ramsay prove). 

 The chronology, therefore, that appears in the margin of our 

 Authorized Version is palpably wrong. 



Dr. Pinches. — I am sure we are all very glad to hear anything 

 which has any bearing upon the chronology of the New Testament. 

 We are always looking to see where we stand and how far the 

 records are trustworthy. I think there is no doubt from what I 

 have heard that Colonel Mackinlay's paper has contributed very 

 materially upon that point ; but naturally there is one thing which 

 we will have to consider and our chronologists in general will have 

 to consider, the question of the revision of the date generally 

 ^issigned to the birth of Our Lord. Upon the chronological point it 

 is not my intention to make any remarks. Chronology is my weak 

 point, and I will leave that alone ; but there are one or two notes 

 upon the Morning Star which have occurred to me and which may 

 be of interest. 



Colonel Mackinlay has pointed out in his remarks that the name 

 ■of the planet Venus among the Bal)ylonians was Dilbat ; the Greek 

 form of which, I remember, is Delephat, pointing rather to the form 

 Velebat, and that is explained by Nabaf, meaning " She who 



