On this page
-
Text (2)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
-and it is also allowed , that the date of a decree , and its subse q uent execution , must , in every case , necessarily mark «* two different and distinct eras . " Still , however , it remains to ba proved , that there was in fact a cha 3 m of nine years between the decree of Augustus and the census of Cyrenius : and
without this , there is a manifest absurdity in supposing that all the inhabitants of Judeajournied to their respactive towns , preparatory to a taxation which was not to be made , according to Mr . Rowe , until a great portion of them were probably dead . But the fact is , that , under the Roman empire , the census and consequent taxing were always simultaneous operations , included tinder the single term " censum aqere *"
The next point which Mr . Rowe labours to enforce , and from which he concludes that Mr , Belsham ' s Calm Inquiry " is completely falsified , " is founded on his alleged discovery , that the word vjysfMvin ' , applied by Luke to the 15 th year of Tiberius , designates his government or administration , as distinctive from his reign , notwithstanding this term may , and sometimes necessarily does , signify reiqn . But admitting for a moment Mr . Rowe ' s
interpretation to be correct , it still remains to be inquired , from what authority he states his supposed government of Tiberius to have commenced in the year 764 ? If any period must be assigned to this event , it ought surely to be that in which Tiberius was adopted by Augustus , and admitted to the joint administration of the affairs of the Roman empire ; and there exists good evidence for believing this to have happened in the year 756 , and that he received no subsequent accession of power until the death of Augustus Allowing , then , that the undisputed history of Luke states our Lord to have been about thirty years old in the 15 th year of the government of Tiberius ,
we must necessarily date his birth fifteen years prior to the year 756 , or in the year 741 ; but this is a dilemma in which it is apprehended that Mr . Rowe would not willingly involve the Evangelist We possess , however , other and most respectable means of ascertaining , with some exactness , the chronology of this period . It is well known that Herod died in the year 750 , and was succeeded in the ietrarchy of Trachonitis by his son Philip . Now
Josephus [ Jewish Antiq . B . xviii . Ch . iv . Sect . 6 ] states , that this Phili p died in the 20 th year of the reign of Tiberius , after he had been tetrarch 37 years ; therefore his death took place in the year 787 , which was exactly 20 years after the death of Augustus . In the fifth chapter he g ives an account of the war between Aretas and Herod the tetrarch , occasioned by
the indignity offered by the latter to his wife , who was Aretas ' s sister , in proposing to divorce her that he might marry Herodias . He then proceeds to relate the destruction of Herod ' s army by the treachery of fugitives from the tetrarchy of Philip , and observes that this calamity was thought to have befallen Herod as a punishment for the murder of John the Baptist . Therefore ,
notwithstanding the detail of these circumstances immediately follows the history of the death of Philip , it is clear that they must have preceded that event , though probably not long , otherwise the fugitives referred to could not have been " from the tetrarchy of Philip . " Now , if Luke , as Mr . Rowe asserts , intended to date the 15 th year of Tiberius from the year 764 , and if John , as was the fact , survived this 15 th year at most only two years , he must have
been beheaded in the year 781 , at least six years before the death of Philip , riotwithstanding Josephus , a most minute and accurate historian , states both events to have happened about the same time . There is , however , another passage in Josephus which seems to be completely conclusive against Mr * Howe ' s suggestion . In Bk . xviii . Ch . iv . Sect . 2 , he states , that Pontius Pilate , after residing ten years in Judea , was sent to Rome by Vitellius *
Untitled Article
On the Prefaces to Matthew find Luhd . 329
Untitled Article
VOL . I . Z
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1827, page 329, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1796/page/17/
-