214 LIE QT. -COLONEL G. MACKINLAY, THE DATE 



Evangelist, writing for Romans, would discredit his work by such a 

 fanciful conceit was, in his humble judgment, sheer nonsense. 



The fact remains then that while Scripture had nowhere given the 

 date of the Nativity it had fixed with absolute accuracy the year 

 A.D. 29 as that in which the Lord entered on His public Ministry; 

 and thus, assuming that the Ministry lasted three and a half years, 

 they could witli certainty fix A.D. 32 as the date of the Crucifixion. 

 This being so the question they were discussing there was purely 

 academic, and it must be made subordinate to this definite and 

 salient fact. If he began to discuss in detail the points raised by 

 the paper, they would all lose their dinner. Moreover he had dealt 

 with them exhaustively in his book which Mr. Trench had cited in 

 such .flattering terms. He could not conclude without expressing 

 his surprise that a discussion of the date upon the Nativity 

 should ignore the labours of the greatest of our chronologers, 

 Fynes Clinton, whose dictum is definite: — "The earliest possible 

 date for the Nativity is the autumn of 6 B.C., eighteen months 

 before the death of Herod in 4 B.C. The latest will be the autumn 

 of 4 B.C., about six months before his death, assumed to be in 

 spring 3 B.C." 



Professor Langhorne Orchard pointed out that not all the 

 arguments brought forward in the paper might be thought con- 

 vincing. Certainly, they were not all of equal strength. But 

 while it was true (as had been remarked) that the strength of a 

 chain was only that of its weakest link, it should be remembered 

 that the author's reasoning consisted of several chains of argument, 

 and the weakness of a single chain might not impair the strength 

 of others. 



The strongest arguments were those furnished by the cycles of 

 Roman census-taking, the contemporaneous rule in Syria of 

 Quirinius and Saturninus, the lunar eclipse which gives certitude 

 to the date of Herod's death, and the strong probability that the 

 enrolment took place at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles. By 

 these arguments, the author had made out a case not indeed of 

 demonstration, but of considerable probability. The date 8 B.C. 

 must be held to succeed as against 6 B.C. With regard, however, 

 to the Crucifixion year, whether A.D. 29 be, or be not, the correct 

 date, they would do well, in face of the criticisms of Mr. Townsend 

 Trench and Sir Robert Anderson, to suspend judgment. 



