216 



LIEUT. -COLONEL G. MACKINLAY, THE DATE 



It is true that all were ignorant of any such instance (except in 

 St. Luke's Gospel) when these words were published in 1903, but 

 since that time Messrs. Kenyon and Bell have found an example of 

 persons ordered to the ancestral home in order to be enrolled, as 

 quoted on p. 200 of this afternoon's paper. 



We thus see that Professor Gardner's theory of the historical 

 untrustworthiness of St. Luke is supported on precarious negative 

 evidence, which has since been destroyed by recent discovery, and 

 yet Professor Burkitt still approves of Professor Gardner's deductions 

 of six years ago ! 



Canon Girdlestone states and a gentleman writes, that if the 

 Nativity were 8 B.C. and the Crucifixion A.D. 29 that Christ would 

 have been about thirty-four years of age when He began His Ministry. 

 It must be remembered, however, that there is no year 0 in chron- 

 ology ; A.D. 1 follows immediately after 1 B.C. Consequently, from 

 autumn 1 B.C. to autumn A.D. 1 is only one year — not two years. 

 It is easily seen, therefore, that if Christ were born in the autumn 

 8 B.C., and began His three-and-a-half-years' ministry in autumn 

 A.D. 25, that He must then have been just thirty-two years, not 

 thirty-four years of age. The same considerations apply to the 

 remark of another correspondent, that if Christ were born 8 B.C. and 

 died A.D. 29 He must have suffered at the age of thirty-seven. His 

 age under our supposition was then only thirty-five-and-a-half years, 

 as He was born in autumn and died in the spring. 



Colonel Conder writes that Josephus dates the beginning of 

 Herod's reign of thirty-seven years from his capture of Jerusalem, 

 which was 37 B.C., because that historian states that the battle of 

 Actium took place in the seventh year of his reign; this date is 

 known to have been 2nd September, 31 B.C. There was a total 

 eclipse of the moon on the 9th January, 1 B.C., visible at Jerusalem, 

 whereas that of 13th March, 4 B.C., on which Whiston (whom all 

 later writers have followed) relied, was only a small partial eclipse. 

 Colonel Conder thinks that Herod died in the early spring of the 

 year after this total eclipse, viz., in A.D. 1, at which time of year he 

 states that fine weather often prevails on the Judsean mountains, 

 rendering travel possible. He does not think that the action of 

 the shepherds indicated hot weather, because sheep are kept in 

 caves in Palestine, chiefly in winter. He believes that Dionysius 

 Exiguus was more correct than modern chronologists who adopt 



