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to have it executed on the 25 th of December , 749 , when the dreaded infant would be just ripe and ready ( barring dreams ) to be murdered when he was exactly " two years old /' with " all the children that were in
Bethlehem , and in all the coasts thereof , under" that age . And thus Herod might shew the Jews how silly a thing it was for them to suppose that the " Scripture cannot be broken" ( John x . 35 ) ; might reply to his father , ( John viii . 44 , ) that though the Son of God could never " dash
his foot against a stone , ( Matt . iv . 6 , Luke iv . 11 , ) that was no proof that a man could not cut his throat , and might congratulate himself on having done more than all the gates of Hell can do ( Matt xvi . 18)—conquered the
kingdom , of heaven , frustrated all its plans some thirty years before the time appointed for their maturity , and secured his seat upon the throne for as many years more as he had sat on
it already ( no small time ) ; though he was now so worn out with age and disease , and the anxious , corroding cares , disappointments and vexations of a wicked and a miserable reign , that he died about three months
afterwards , in March , 750 . The dreams would not stand at all in the way of this , for neither the Jews , nor Herod , nor , as I think , his father , though he passes for " a deep one , " would know any thing about them , or their
success . But the chronological difficulty that occurs in the introductory chapters to Luke , independently of those prefixed to Matthew , has not yet been considered in its full extent . Hitherto it has only been extended to the
conceplion or John the ISaptist ; but it appears to me to reach even the birth of Jesus himself : for the same note of time first taken up by the pseudo-Luke , as a date in order to point out in what king ' s days the angel appeared to Zaeharias , seems to be studiousl y continued and carrried oa by him till he arrives at the birth of Jesus .
Elizabeth is stated to have conceived " in the days" wherein the Lord looked on her , ( i . 25 , ) that is , immediately after the appearance of the angel . After " those days , " that is , those days of Herod which followed immediately after , she conceived , and hid herself live months ( ver . 24 ) . H
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is not barely said , " afterwards . " The Greek is not // . ere arciTa , [ jleto , raura , or v ^ -s ^ ov , but the very words used before are used again : Taura ^ t < x $ ^ spa ^ is coupled with /^ tra , as if for the express purpose of informing the reader , that the days of her concealment were the same days identified before , the
days of Herod , who is thus pointed out to be still living at the expiration of the five months . The very same mark of time is carefully repeated for the purpose of carrying on the reign of Herod , in the 39 th verse . " In those days , " in Herod ' s days , Mary arose and went on a visit to her cousin . And lastly , in ch . ii . 1 , it is said , that " in those days , " i . e ., in the
days of Herod , were accomplished the days that Mary should be delivered , and she brought forth her first-born son ( Li - 6 , 7 ) . In this last place , the pronoun in the Greek is different from that used in verses 24 and 39 ; being the one usually employed when reference is made to a more remote antecedent , and seems here intended to carry the reader back to the days first mentioned in ch . i . 5 , " the days of Herod the kino * of Judea . "
Dr . Paley also understands the phrase " those days , " as intended to fix the birth of Jesus to the reign of Herod ; for he says , that " St Matthew , and St . Luke also himself , relates that Jesus was born in the time of Herod . " ( Evidences , Vol . II . p . 187 , 2 nded . 1794 , 8 vo . ) It is probable too , that the spurious chapters which have usurped the name of Matthew , and those which have usurped that of Luke , were written by the same author . And if so , this
furnishes an additional reason for sup posing- that the one account , as well as the other , was meant to place the birth of Jesus in the days of Herod . The chronology , therefore , of the parasitical fungus which passes for the first two chapters , cannot he reconciled with that of the third chapter of
Luke , if the commonly-received month and day of the nativity be adopted , unless Ilcrod were living on the 2 «> tn of Dec ., 752 . But , according to
DrCarpenter , he died in March , 7 ^ ' - Such is the difficulty that results from the date which the firs t chapter of the spurious Introduction to Ijukc requires us to assign to the birth ° Jesus , when compared with that which
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262 The Introductory Chapters to Luke ' s Gospel Spurious :
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1822, page 262, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2512/page/6/
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