OF THE NATIVITY WAS 8 B.C. 



217 



AVhiston's view, and he draws attention to the fact that Clement of 

 Alexandria {c. A.D. 180) believed the Nativity to have occurred in 

 the 28th Augustus, or A.D. 1. 



He thinks an erroneous gloss, " This taxing was first made 

 when Cyrenius was governor of Syria," Luke ii, 2, has crept into 

 the text. 



I would urge in reply that the words referred to in Luke ii, 2, 

 occurs in all the oldest MSS. There is absolutely no textual reason 

 to suppose that it is a gloss which has crept into the text. Colonel 

 Conder states in his book, The Cif>/ of Jerusalem, that Herod was 

 recognised as King by Augustus in -40 B.C. Practically all modern 

 chronologists agree that the eclipse of 4 B.C., not that of 1 B.C., was 

 the one which shortly preceded Herod's death. Although February 

 is often fine in Palestine, the weather in that month could hardly 

 be sufficiently reliable to enable large numbers of people to trave 

 over the mountains. If the Nativity took place in February, the 

 death of Herod must have been some months later, hardly before 

 the middle of the year, because he ordered the destruction of all 

 infants of two years old and imder, and from this fact we must 

 judge that the king considered that the Nativity had taken place 

 several months previously. 



Luke iii, 1, 2, tells us that John began his ministry in the 

 fifteenth year at Tiberius ; no estimate places this later than A.D. 29. 

 If Christ were born A.D. 1 He could therefore hardly have been 

 much more than twenty-eight years of age when John began to 

 preach, and barely twenty-nine years old when He HimseK began 

 His Ministry, and yet Luke iii, 23, assiu-es as that He was then 

 about thirty years of age. Dean Alford tells us this means more 

 not less than thirty years of age. 



In reply to our chairman it is generally allowed that our 

 Christmas day was adopted in place of a heathen festival connected 

 with the old Sun worship at the winter solstice. 



My thanks are due to Canon Girdlestone for pointing out that 

 the subject of the papers is the accuracy of the date 8 B.C. for the 

 Nativity, not that of A.D. 29 for the Crucifixion. The date of this 

 latter event is only referred to incidentally, and even if it differs 

 from A.D. 29 by a very few years, the date 8 B.C. may still be 

 supported by it, because Dean Alford tells us that the expression 

 " about thirtv years of age " admits of consichrahle latitude. 



p 2 



