43 
Christ! ; gescbichtlicli-chronologische Untersuchungen.” Both 
works agree at fixing the birth towards the close of B.C. 7, i e. 
six years before our Christian era ; and which accords with the 
overwhelming amount of evidence in fixing the date of the 
Passion at A.D. 29. 
12. The historical testimony that the crucifixion took place 
during the consulship of the Gemini, a date as well ascertained 
as that of the Council of Nice, is, with the exception of 
Epiphanius, a Greek father who flourished in the fourth century, 
perfectly uniform. Whether we regard the earliest authorities, 
such as the apocryphal Greek Gospel of Nicodemus, written 
in the middle of the second century, or the words of Tertullian 
at the close of the same, who writes : “ In the fifteenth year of 
the reign of Tiberius Christ suffered, whose sufferings were 
completed within the time of the 70 hebdomads under Ti- 
berius Caesar, Bubellius Geminus and Rufus Geminus being 
consuls, in the month of March at the time of the Pass- 
over ; ” * the undeviatiug testimony of history shows that the 
Passion took place in the year which answers in our era to 
A.D. 29. 
13. The testimony of Tertullian is peculiarly valuable on this 
point ; not only because he wrote of an event so comparatively 
near to his own time (which might be compared to an historian 
of the present day mentioning the time when the Hanoverian 
dynasty ascended the British throne), and he tells us that the 
“Acta Pilati” f was his authority for the statement, but also 
because he enters into such minute details, which agree to the 
year A.D. 29, and to that year alone. Thus, the singular fact 
that both the consuls on that memorable year bore the same 
name must have been well known to the primitive Christians, 
and handed down by tradition unto the time of Tertullian — the 
truth of the crucifixion having taken place during the month 
* Tertullian Aclvers. Jud., § 8. 
t The Romans possessed something like our Annual Register in their 
Acta Senatus and Acta Divina Populi ; as it was customary for the 
provincial governors to send the acts of their governments to Rome for 
the Emperor’s use. Hence Pontius Pilate sent to Tiberius an account of 
the crucifixion, to which Justin Martyr alludes in his First Apology, 
written about the middle of the second century, saying, “ And that these 
things were so done you may know from the acts made in the time of 
Pontius Pilate.” So Tertullian in his Apology , written a few years later, 
when speaking of the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, says, “ Of 
all these things relating to Christ, Pilate himself, in his conscience already 
a Christian, sent an account to Tiberius, then Emperor.” ( Apol ., c. 21.) 
