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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.
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Untitled Article
position to Luke ' s statement that John the Baptist received his commission in the fifteenth year of Tiberius , without some reference to the difference in these accounts .
That they are absolutely inconsistent ( if Luke used the same date as to the commencement of Tibe-Tius ' s reign ) appears thus i
Tiberius ' s fifteenth year was from Aug . A . D . 28 , to Aug . A . D * $ 9 . The Consuls received their office at the beginning of the year ; and this determines the death of
Christ to the Passover A . D . 29 . Now there certainly were two Passovers between the baptism and the death of Jesus ; and the baptism of Jesus must have been &t
least six weeks before the Passover A . £ >• 38 . ; and therefore itcould not ( if the statements of the early Christians ate correct ) h&ve occurred in the fifteenth yeat of
the sole empire of Tiberius * But the Baptist appears to have been exercising his nhinistry for soirte months before the baptism of Jesus : and therefore could net
possibly have received his com * mission in the fifteenth year of Ti- ? berius ' s sole empire , if Jesits was crucified in the fifteenth ? The last date is a point which was pro * bably to be ascertained by the public records of Rome ; and
Lardner has surely shown , ftora other considerations , that Luke might have dated from the commencement of Tiberitis ' s joint government with Augustus * : bub the ground on which I most f&& \ sj that the contradiction between the
statement of Ltike and that of th ? e early Christians , is so direct ? ami obvious , ( if the same node of calculation respecting Tiberiuls ^ s -- ' ¦ i ¦ ¦¦ - i ¦ | _ , - . , , - , ¦ . r - \
• Sec Work * vol . I . p . 35 $ —37 * .
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reign were universally adopted ) that they could not have made their statement , if they had not spoken of a known fact , arid that
they could scarcely have passed by the apparent contradiction , if the difficulty had not been very easily solved from the common modes of calculation .
Supposing , therefore , that Luke ( ch . iii . 1 , ) did reckon from the time when Tiberius was associated with Augustus in the government of the empire , no difficulty takes place in the chrtmology of the In *
troduction , except what arises from thfc ceusus spoken of ch . ii . 1 . ; and the chief difficulty of this vanishes , when Luke ' s Introduction is considered independ - ently of that to Matthew ' s Gospeh Luke declares { ch , iii . % S *) that
Jesus Was about thirty years of &ge when he began his ministry ^ or more definitel y * according to the opinion of many , that he had completed his thirtieth year at that time * Now supposing Jesus to / have been baptized in Jan . A « D . 28 . * . he must have been born
before Jan . B * C . 3 .: I think hd was born near the close of the year 4 $ before the vulgar aefra , < perhaps six or eight months after the death of Herod .
But the Introduction of Luk £ , in the ophfrion of B . " gi ^ es a lotig detail of what hapipened to Jeste in the datys of Herod the king .- "
* If thte . fifteenth year of the proconsular government of Tiberius began Aug . A . p . a 6 . J ohn may have received his commission about thcntiddle of A . D , 37 . Upon this supposition the
beginning of the year 28 is a very convenient period for the baptism « f Jesus . There ytous an old tradition that Jesus was baptired Jan . 6 th ; which sufficiently well iccofds vrith all tht rtbtcs of tittkt in the Gospels .
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14 On the Tntroduttion to St . Luke ' s Gospel .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1811, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2412/page/14/
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