ON THE HISTORICAL TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 215 



That parchment or papjTus was used as well as stone or clay^ 

 and probably more often, for recording events in the flourishing- 

 period of the Israelite Kingdoms, is proved by the Siloam inscription ; 

 the writing, of which as Sayce has pointed out, is not upright 

 and stiff, but sloped and free like that of a man wont to write with 

 ink upon paper. 



Since even that most destructive critic, Harnack, has joined tho 

 mass of deep scholars in acknowledging that Acts and Luke are two 

 parts of one author's book, it seems hardly needful to cite the 

 important coincidence discovered by Blass and quoted in Professor 

 Ramsay's book, JFas Christ Bom in Bethlehem ? that the Codex 

 Bezae of the sixth century shows a peculiar spelling of the name of' 

 John in Luke and Acts, where, save in three instances only, it occurs 

 as Joanes, whereas in the three other Gospels it is almost invariably 

 spelt Joannes. [But one might further add that since the name is 

 the Grecized form of the Hebrew Johanan, it would be natural for 

 the other gospel writers, who were Hebrews, to spell it with two 

 Ti's ; whereas if the name in a Greek dress had already grown fairly 

 common among the Grecian Jews, it may well have lost one of its. 

 n's in practice and been therefore naturally spelt with one by the- 

 Macedonian Luke.] 



It had long been noticed that Luke correctly gave the peculiar 

 titles of the rulers of particular cities and provinces evangelised by 

 Paul ; but it was thought at one time that Cyprus was an exception, 

 inasmuch as a province so small and apparently in full tranquillity 

 would have been governed by a prsetor or a proprietor, not by c% 

 proconsul. But a Greek inscription was found by General Cesnola 

 at Soloi, a Cyprian town, dated " in the proconsulship of Paulus." 



This fact, which Professor Ramsay records in his work St. Paul 

 the Traveller (p. 74 and note) is parallel to another, which he himself 

 has been the first to establish. From the discoveries of Kenyon,. 

 Grenfell and Hunt, and others, confirmed by his own researches. 

 Professor Ramsay proves that from 22 B.C. down to a.d. 231, at 

 least, there was a census of population held in Egypt and Syria and 

 probably the whole of the Roman Empire once in every fourteen 

 years. This would make one due in Syria (which, of course, 

 included Palestine) in 8 B.C. xVgain, by comparing the fragment of 

 a monument to Quirinus, found at Tibur, with the records of 

 Suetonius and Strabo, he ascertains that Quirinus not only governed 



