214 SIR W. M. KAMSAY, ON ESPLORATION OP ASIA MINOR, AS BEARING 



Syria between A.d. 6 and 9, when he carried out the famous 

 valuation and taxing of property which led to revolt in Judaea, but 

 also held the command-in-chief of the forces and the military 

 governorship of Cilicia and Syria, somewhere between 8 and 5 B.C., 

 during which time he subdued the powerful robber race which 

 dwelt in the mountains between Galatia and Cilicia. The census 

 of Luke II. was thus certainly held in the course of this his first 

 term of office ; only Professor Ramsay thinks that, Ijecause Herod 

 had seriously offended Augustus in 8 B.C., and had to send two 

 embassies to Rome before the Emperor would be appeased, the 

 census was probably delayed from 8 B.C. to 6 B.C., so that our Lord 

 was born into the world in the last named year. 



Rev. Alexander Irving, D.Sc, expressed the great pleasure 

 he had felt in listening to this paper and his gratitude to Sir 

 William Ramsay for the light which his writings had thrown upon 

 the origin of the New Testament documents. His work. The Church 

 in the lioman Empire before A.D. 170, was in this respect the most 

 illuminating book he had met with since he read Mommsen's 

 Hidorij of tlu' Provinces of ilie Empire. The International Geological 

 Congress had imprinted upon the face of its publications the motto : 

 Mente et Malleo, w^hich might be freely translated, " With brains and 

 the hammer." That expressed in a concise phrase the leading 

 principle of geological method, and emphasized field-icorh as the 

 basis of that inductive science. Sir William had in his paper, and in 

 the splendid field-work, on which it was based, brought all serious 

 students to the position which enabled them to see that archa3ological 

 research (when rightly followed) was reducible to a method which 

 might be characterised by the phrase : Mente et Sjxitha, " With 

 l^rains and the spade." The great importance of the application of 

 the inductive method (getting your facts by careful and accurate 

 observation and then reasoning inductively from them), as in this 

 case, to the trustworthiness of ancient documents, could scarcely 

 be doubted. The contrary method of reasoning from negative 

 evidence, and of evolving ideas by mere scholars out of their inner 

 consciousness ; ideas which came to be accepted for a time as theories, 

 on account of the authority in the world of scholarship of those who 

 propounded them; ideas which were often characterised by their 

 nebulous origin in the region of what was called " higher criticism " 

 — he had long regarded as thoroughly unscientific. 



