CHRONOLOGY
CHRONOLOGY
reigned
17
years.
In this way the
of the years of
reign in the lines of Israel and Judah, according to the
synchronisms, would be increased in each case by two
years-for Jehoahaz would have reigned, according to
the synchronism, 16 years instead of
and Jehoash
39 instead of
the traditional numbers would
undergo no alteration.
Even without this slight
dation-adopted in the
edition of the
LXX,
and
demanded by Thenius,
and Kamphausen
-it is apparent that it is the sum of the
of reign that forms the basis on which the synchronistic
are calculated.
In this process, however,
though the individual
have not been disregarded,
it has been impossible, especially in the case of the
kings of
N.
Israel, to avoid important variations.
Care however has been taken not
to alter the synchronism of
I t is
of note that the following reqnirements
are satisfied :-Jerohoam’s reign runs parallel with those of
Rehohoam and Ahijah
(I
K. 14 15
7)
is king during
reign of Asa
(I
K.
survives Ahah
and Ahaziah and reigns contem
with Jehoram
of Israel
K.
3
the deaths of Jehoram of
Israel and Ahaziah of Judah fall
the same year
K.
Amaziah and Jehoash of Israel reign contemporaneously
( z
K.’
14
and
is a contemporary of Jotham and Ahaz
( z
K.
Although the synchronistic dates have thus not been
attained without regard to tradition, they are obviously,
as
to the youngest parts of the text,
not
a
standard for chronology. They apply to the past a
method of dating with which it was quite unacquainted.
This is true not only of the practice, which could never
be carried out in actual life, of connecting the years of
one kingdom with reigns of kings in a neighbouring
kingdom, but also of the methodical practice, pre-
supposed in such
a
of indicating in an exact
and regular way the years within one and the same
kingdom, by the years of reign of its king for the time
being. In such texts as we can, with any confidence,
assign to pre-exilic times, we find nothing but popular
chronologies associating an event with
some other important event contem-
porary with it (cp Is.
6
I
20
I
).
The few dates according to years of
kings given in
history (as,
I
K.
may be ignored.
They are too isolated, and must
rest
in the writings and portions which treat of the
latest pre-exilic times) on subsequent calculation, or be
due to interpolation (cp also the dates introduced by
the Chronicler in deference to the desire felt at a later
date for exacter definition of time, of which the Books
of Kings still knew nothing
:
Ch.
and
especially
16
1)-though it is perhaps possible that,
even without there being
a
settled system, some pro-
minent events might, occasionally and without set
purpose, be defined by years of reign.
In any case,
dating by native kings must be regarded
as
at least
older than the artificial synchronism between Judah and
Israel.
Dating by the years of kings was thus never
tematicallv used bv the Hebrews so
as
thev had
kings.
The;
this
useful method from the Babylonians,
and
introduced it into their
his-
~
~~~~
~~~
~.
~~~~~
~~~~~~
_ ~ ~ _
torical works compiled during the exile (cp Wi.
A T
especially pp. 87-94).
Thus
the question
how the
dealt with the year of a king’s death
whether they reckoned the fraction of a year that
remained before the beginning of the next year to the
deceased king, or made the first year of the new king
begin at once-disappears.
There can be no doubt
that the synchronisms, as well as the dates and years
of reign in general, presuppose the Babylonian method
(the only satisfactory one), according to which the rest
of the year in which any king died was reckoned to the
need take no account of the indeoendent narratives of
C
HRONICLES
traditional years
5);
they do not agree even with the
Whether the account
is
correct need not here be considered.
last of his reign, and the first year of the new king was
the year at the beginning of which he already wore
the crown,
By giving up the synchronisms we are thrown back
for the chronology of the monarchy
on
the sums of the
years of reign of the individual kings.
The hope of finding in these numbers
trustworthy material for chronology, and
thus solving the singular equation
about
242
Israelitish years represent
Judean years, could he
realised only on one condition. One might simply sub-
tract the
242
Israelitish years from the total for Judah, and
regard the
of 18
as
falling after the conquest
of Samaria.
Nor
is
there anything in the synchronism
to prevent this operation, for that may have started from
an incorrect calculation in putting the fall of Hoshea
as
late as the reign of
A
clear veto, however, is
laid
on
procedure on other grounds.
If we subtract
the superfluous 18 years ( 6 years of Hezekiah and the
last
of Ahaz) from the total for Judah, all that is left of
Ahaz’s reign parallel with the Israelitish years of reign
is the first 4 years. Therefore Pekah, who was murdered
nine years before the
of Samaria
K.
must, at
the accession of Ahaz, have been already five years dead,
which is impossible, since, according to
this
king was attacked by him.
The expedient of simple
subtraction, therefore, fails the embarrassing equation
remains, about
242
Israelitish years 260 Judean
:
nay,
since no objection can be raised against the contem-
poraneousness of the deaths of Jehoram of Israel and
Ahaziah of Judah,
Israelitish years=
165
Judean.
If the totals are thus unequal, very great inequalities
appear, naturally, in the details. Efforts have been
made to remove them but this has not been achieved
in any convincing way.
15 5
states that during the attack of leprosy from
his
Azariah suffered in the last years of his life,
Jotham was over the palace and judged the people of the land.’
Even
were we to found
this statement the theory that the
years of reign of father and son that ran parallel t o each
other
were counted twice over in the
and 16 assigned
to
their respective reigns, and also
to
suppose that during all
these
years the father was still alive, there would still remain
744
Israelitish
Judean.
Mistaken attempts of this kind are, moreover, the less
to be taken into consideration that, as will appear
even the lowest total of
years for the interval from
Jehu to the fall of Samaria is more than
years too high.
From
all this it results that the individual numbers of
years of reign, as well as the totals, are untrustworthyand
useless for the purposes of a certain chronology, even if
it be admitted
within certain limits or in some
points, they may agree with actual fact.
The untrustworthiness of the numbers
becomes plainer when the principle ac-
cording to which they are formed is
clearly exhibited.
In 1887
E.
(see below
85)
that at least
in the
case of the Israelitish kings ’the several
to
the
respective. reigns rest in
on an artificial fiction.
H e
then thought that the series of kings of Jndah and indeed those
also of the house of Jehu, ‘show no such
hut
t o
Bleek-We.
he soon observed a playing with
figures
also
in the items for Judah.
with the
kings of Israel down to Jehoram, we find an
reign of
years. I n the case of Omri and Jehoram this is the exact
nnmher, whilst for Jerohoam,
and Ahab we ‘have
in round numbers
and for the
Elah
and’ Ahaziah (the immediate successors of the kings provided
with the
period)--2 years each. This is as if we had 8
kings with
years each, making a total of
exactly
years. Moreover, the totals for the first and the last four of
these are each almost exactly 48. In the next part of the series
as We.
emphasises we have for the kings from Jehu to
a
total of
which makes an average of 16 for each.
One might also urge the remarkable fact that, even
as
Jehu
with his
years reigned ahout as long as his two successors
so
the
years
of Jerohoam
11. also exactly equal the
of the reigns of his successors.
In the Judean line, on the
other
hand a similar role is played by the figures
and 80.
to
the destruction of Samaria in the 6th year of
Hezekiah, we have
Asa
Jehoshaphat
Strictly, Baasha has exactly 24 assigned him.
CHRONOLOGY
+
Jehoram
+
Ahaziah
+
Athaliah
Jehoash
40,
Amaziah
38
years and
from
point
till
the last date
the
37th year
of
Jehoiachin,
we
have
and
also
+
Jehoiachin
years:
If
we
might
Kamphausen,
be
inclined
to
find
all this only a
freak
of
chance,
suspicion would be raised
on comparing the
total
for
the kings
Israel
with the number
in
I
K.
6
I
still
more
observing
that
is also
the
total of
years
from the
building
of
the temple of Solomon
to
the begin-
ning of a new
epoch-the epoch that opens
with the
conquest
of
Babylon hy
and
the
possibility
of
founding
second
Theocracy and
setting
about
the
building
of the
second
temple. (The
years
of
Solomon from
t h e
building
of the
temple
years,
to
the
fall
of
years,
t o the
fall
of
Jerusalem
years
the
Exile, give exactly
years )
There ran hardly, then, be any mistake about the
artificiality
of
the total as well as of the various
items. If so, the origin of the present numbers for the
years of reign of the individual kings,
which the
synchronistic notices are founded, must fall in a
period later than the victory of Cyrus over Babylon,
and chronology cannot trust to the correctness of the
numbers.
For all that, it may be conjectured the numbers in
individual instances are correct; but which are such
cases, can be known only in some way
independent of the numbers. Sometimes,
indeed, the narrative of Kings or a prophetic writing
can
decide the point but without help from outside we
could not
go
far.
I n itself it cannot be more than
probable that the last kings of Judah appear with the
correct numbers. These numbers give Hezekiah
K.
Manasseh
55
Amon
Josiah
31
Jehoahaz
Jehoiakim
Jehoiachin
and Zedekiah
11
years
thus,
years in all, embodying
an
estimate
of
years
from the fall of Saniaria to the conquest of Jerusalem.
Thus, the earliest that the dates according to years of
kings can lay claim to consideration
is
in Jeremiah and
Ezekiel. Here grave mistakes
retrospective calcula-
tion (for even they rest
on
that) seem to be excluded by
the nearness of the time.
Naturally no account can be
taken of the statements of the Book of Daniel, which
did not originate till the second century
B.C.
it knows
the history of the fall of the kingdom of Judah
of
the exilic period only from tradition, and cannot be
acquitted of grave mistakes (see D
ANIEL
,
For the last period, reaching from the fall of Jerusalem
to the beginning of the Christian era, we have in the
Hebrew
O T
itself but few historical re-
cords. Beyond the introduction of the law
in the restored community the historical
narrative does not conduct
us.
For the
short interval preceding it we are referred
to the statements in the prophets Haggai and Zechariah
and in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
These, how-
ever, show that the Jews had learned in the interval
how to date exactly by years of reign.
The writings
mentioned give dates by years of the Persian kings.
All difficulties in the way of a chronology of this period,
however, are not thus removed.
The names Darius and
Artaxerxes leave us to choose between the several bearers
of these names among
the
Hence both
the first and the second of the three Dariuses have been
regarded as the
mentioned in the OT, and
even all three Artaxerxes have been brought into con-
nection with the
of Ezr.
Then, again,
the transpositions and actual additions that the Chronicler
allows himself to make increase the difficulty of knowing
the real order
of
events.
I n the case of Darius,
indeed, only the first can, after all (in spite of
and
Imbert), be seriously considered.
The chief interest, accordingly, lies in deciding as to
the date in
which sets the return of Ezra in
It is
to be noted that this passage
( 7
has
been revised by the Chronicler (see
E
ZRA
A
N
D
N
E
HE
M
I
A
H
,
Books of), and in both verses the
the seventh year of
C
H
RO
N
O
L
O
GY
is
open, from its position' or
of coniiection, to
he suspicion of not being original. Kosters accordingly,
eaving this datum wholly out of account,
'94) that Ezra made his first appearance in
with the
(see I
SRAEL
, 57) immediately
Nehemiah's second arrival there, while Artaxerxes
was still on the throne, and introduced the law
Jan Hoonacker,
on
the other hand, accepted the datum
but believed that it had reference to
II.,
and accordingly set down the date of
Ezra's arrival as in the seventh year of that king
397
B . c . ) .
[Marquart ( ' D i e Organisation der jiid.
nach dem sogenannten
Gesch.,
thinks that the careers of
Nehemiah and Ezra can fall only
a
few decades earlier
the reported
of Jews to Hyrcania
Artaxerxes
Nehemiah's Artaxerxes
he thinks, Artaxerxes
Mnemon.
He finds no
of Ezra's presence in Jerusalem during the
welve-years' governorship of Nehemiah the reference
to Ezra
Neh.
is
addition of the Chronicler.
Nehemiah, too, is nowhere mentioned in
Ezra
(Neh.
are interpolated).
Internal evidence alone can
the date of Ezra.
Neh.
13
is connected
naturally with Ezra
9
Ezra's arrival then
in the time after Nehemiah's return to Susa;
the text of Ezra
(which belongs to the redactor) has
in transmission
368
or
365 was the original
reported.
Nehemiah's second arrival, a t any rate,
after the promulgation of the Law
proposes to read in Neh. 136 ' a t the end of
his days'
implying a date between 367 (364) and
359. Cheyne, in
a
work almost devoid of notes, but
called ' t h e provisional summing up of . special re-
searches,' differs in some respects
in
his chronological
view of the events alike from the scholars just referred
to,
and from Ed.
who is about to be mentioned.
(See his
after
the
'98,
translated, after revision by the author, by H. Stocks
under the title
D a s religiose
der
nnch
'99).
Like Marquart he doubts the correctness
of the text of Neh.
514
but he is confident that the
Artaxerxes of Ezra-Nehemiah is Artaxerxes
I.,
and
that Nehemiah's return to Susa precedes the arrival
of Ezra with the Gola.
The incapacity of Nehemiah's
successor (the Tirshatha?) probably stimulated Ezra to
seek a firman from the king, though the terms of the
supposed firman in Ezra7 cannot be relied upon.
Ezra seems to have failed at the outset of his career,
and it was the news of this failure, according to
Cheyne, that drew Nehemiah
a
second time from Susa.
Klostermann's treatment
of
the chronology in Herzog
cannot be here
Ed. Meyer's thorough discussion
how-
ever, has convinced the present writer that we are not
entitled to call in question the arrival of Ezra before
Nehemiah, and consequently that the datum of Ezra
be right after all.
If
so,
Ezra returned to
Jerusalem with the
in 458
B.
having it for his
object to introduce the law there.
I n this, however, he
did not succeed. I t was not until after Nehemiah had
arrived in Jerusalem in 445
B.C.
clothed with ample
powers, and had in the same year restored the city walls
with his characteristic prudence and energy, that Ezra
was a t last able to come forward and introduce the law
under Nehemiah's protection
(445
B
.c.).
From this
date onwards till 433
B.C.
(cp Neh. 136) Nehemiah
continued
Jerusalem.
Shortly after 433
perhaps in
obtained a second furlough.
How long this lasted we do not know
but its import-
ance is clear from Neh.
The
O T
offers no further chronological
material for determining the dates of the
last
centuries before Christ.
But the essay was 'completed zgth
August 1895 (p.
CHRONOLOGY
CHRONOLOGY
The apocalypse of Daniel cannot he held to bridge over the
gap between Ezra and the time of the Maccabees with any
certainty, for it is the peculiarity of these apocalypses to point
to past events
a veiled way and it is in fact only what
we know otherwise of the
Syria and
Egypt and of the doings of Antiochus Epiphanes that makes
an unherstanding and an estimate of the
in the
Book of Daniel possible. Besides, its intimation (9
that
from
the destruction of Jerusalem
Nebuchadrezzar (586) to
the death of Antiochus Epiphanes
we are to reckon a
period of
years-shows how inaccurate
the chronological knowledge of the writer was, and how much
need we have to look
for other help.
Astronomy would furnish the surest means for deter-
mining the exact year and day of events, if the
OT
or
be tempted
to
go
so
as to suppose
a solar eclipse to explain the sign on the-sun-
dial of Ahaz given to Hezekiah by Isaiah
(Is.
perhaps also the ‘standing still of the sun at Gibeon’
(Josh.
Rationalistic
as
this
may seem, Ed. Mahler (see
38 for
title of work) has not been content to
stop here,
has discovered many solar eclipses in-
timated
the
OT
:
he even finds them in every pro-
phetic passage that speaks of
a
darkening of the sun.
In
this way he has been able to determine astronomically
a whole series of events. Before
we
can accept these
results, however, we must examine more carefully the
foundation on which they are reared.
For example, Mahler assigns the Exodus to the 27th March
B.C.
which was a Thursday, because fourteen days before
that day there occurred a central solar eclipse. This calculation
rests on Talmudic d a t a l that assign the darkness mentioned in
Ex.
to the
of Nisan, and explain that that day, and
therefore also the
of Nisan was a Thursday. In Ex. 10
indeed we
of a darkness
three days
;
hut Mahler argue:
that
note of duration really belongs not to
hut to
23,
and is
simply to explain how ‘intense and terrifying was
the impression which the darkness produced on the inhabitants
of
that no one dared for three days to leave his
house. I t is just as arbitrary to assume in Gen. 15
an eclipse
enabling Abraham to count the stars before sunset, and then to
use the eclipse for fixing the date of the covenant then con-
cluded
hen
The time a t which search
is
to he made for this eclipse Mahler reckons as’
years
before the Exodus, since
tradition thus explains the
number
assigned in Ex.
to the stay in Egypt, whilst on
the other hand it makes the 400 years assigned in Gen.
to the bondage begin with the birth of Isaac. The desired
eclipse Mahler finds on 8th Oct. 1764
about
years
before the Exodus
.
see above).
if possible is the
of Gen. 28
and
which
relies for the determination of the beginning and
the end of the twenty-years’ stay of
in Haran.
The
solar eclipse indicated
him in Gen. 28
(‘because
the sun was set must have been, he argues, in the evening, and
would thus
the eclipse that occurred on the 17th Feh.
B
.c.,
whilst Gen.3232 (‘and the sun rose upon him’) must
indicate a morning eclipse, which occurred on
May
B
.C.
If we add that for the victory of Joshua a t Gibeon (Josh.
10 12-14) he has found a solar eclipse calculated to have occurred
on
Jan. 1296
B
.c.,
we have for the earliest period the following
items :-
E
ARLY
D
ATES
.
Abraham’s
(Gen. 15 5
1764
B
.C.
Jacob‘s journey to Haran (Gen. 28
.
.
return home (Gen. 32
.
.
.
1581
Exodus (Ex.
. .
.
27th March
Joshua’s victory a t Giheon (Josh.
10 12-14)
. .
1296
Even more artificial
The attempt to do justice to Is. 38 8
the assumption of a
solar eclipse is at least more interesting. According to this
theory all the requirements of the narrative would be met if a
solar
had occurred ten hours before sunset, since in that
case the index could have traversed over again the ten degrees
which owing to the eclipse, it had ‘gone down,’ and
would
have
made its usual indication. Such an eclipse has, more-
over, been found for 17th June 679
B
.c.,
whence since the sign in
question belongs to Hezekiah’s fourteenth
his reign must
have covered the years
B
.C.
The further calculations which
fix a whole series of dates on
the ground of misunderstood passages are likewise quite unsatis-
factory. Thus, Amos is made
to announce to Jerohoam
the solar eclipse of 5th May
B
.C.
Is.
163 and Micah36
are made to refer to that of the
Jan. 68
B
c.
in the time of
Hezekiah and Joel who is represented as
in the time of
Manasseh, is made
indicate no fewer than three solar eclipses
Tan. 662.
661.
and
B
.c.:
CD
2
I
O
4
4
further ’nrged
30 18 and 328 to the solar eclipses of
May
557
and
Nov.
556 ;
Nah.
1 8
to that of 16th March
; Jer. 4 23
2 8
to
that on
Sept. 582 (in the time of Josiah); and
Is.
to
that on 5th
March 702
(in the time of Ahaz); and, finally, that even the
fight against
can. accordins to
5
be with certaintv
-
-
fixed
Aug.
B.c.
Bv
these ‘results’ with the
of the O T
himself justified in
following
chronological table for the time of the Monarchy
:-
TABLE
REMARKABLE
C
HRONOLOGY
:
D
I
V
IDED
M
ONARCHY
.
K
I
NGS
O
F
945-928 Rehoboam
.
928-925 Ahijam
.
.
.
,
.
Jehoshaphat
.
,
Joram
. .
852
Ahaziah
.
. .
.
. .
Joash
. . .
Amaziah
. .
.
Uzziah
. .
.
. ...
Jotham
. .
.
Ahaz.
. . .
693-664 Hezekiah
. . .
Manasseh
. .
.
. .
.
.
.
.
. ... .
579
.
.
.
579-568 Jehoiakim
. .
Jehoiachin
. .
.
.
.
years
3
I
year
7 years
55
3 months
years
3 months
years
It is only
a
pity that the imposing edifice thus erected
in the name of astronomical science rests
a founda-
tion
so
unstable-an artificial phantom, dependent on
a
Rabbinical exegesis, itself a mere creation of fancy.
The
OT
itself having thus failed to give sufficient
B.
Talm.
etc. see Mahler,
4 8
O
F
I
SRAEL
.
Jerohoam.
. . . .
Nadab
. .
.
.
.
. .
. . .
899-898 E l a h .
. .
.
. .
Zimri
.
.
. . .
Omri
Omri and
} .
.
.
. . . . .
Ahaziah
.
.
. . .
. . .
.
.
J e h u .
. . . . .
.
. . . .
Joash
. . .
.
.
Jerohoam
.
.
.
.
739
Zechariah 6 months,
.
738-728 Menahem
. . .
Pekahiah
. . .
.
.
Pekah hen Remaliah
.
.
697-688
.
. .
....
....
Mahler finds here a reference to the fall of Nineveh. H e
argues that the battle against the Lydians in which the day
became night (cp Herod. 1
battle which preceded the
fall of Nineveh-fell not
on
Sept.
B
.C.
on 28th May
585
B
.C.
Again
solar eclipse with the announcement of
which
(1
connects an allusion to the expedition
undertaken
Phraortes against Nineveh a t least twenty-five
years before its final fall is
to Mahler) one that happened
on
July 607.
CHRONOLOGY
CHRONOLOGY
cording to
8
(var.
foreign nations, which
so
often come
contact with Israel, can help
us.
In
so
doing we must consider in the first
place the Egyptians.
It
to Egypt that the narrative
of the origin of the people of Israel points; thither
escaped the remnant of the community of Gedaliah
and in the interval between these times, as also later,
the fortunes
of
Palestine were often intertwined with
those of Egypt.
The Egyptians themselves possessed no continuous
era for the quite unique mention, on a
stele
from
of the
year of the king
(accord-
'"
*'
ing to Steindorff probably none other than
the god Set of Tanis), is too obscure and
uncertain, and would not help
us
at all even were it
more intelligible. Nor yet does the
Sothis-period
help
us
much. This was a period of 1461 years, at each
recurrence of which the first days of the solar year and
of the ordinary year of 365 days once again coincided
for four years, or, what amounts to the same thing, the
Dog-star, from whose rising the solar year was reckoned,
again appeared on the
of Thoth.
The period was
never used for chronological
Nor have the
monuments fulfilled the expectation, not unreasonable in
itself, that by the help of inscriptions giving dates accord-
ing to two methods it would be possible, by calculation,
to reach
a
more exact chronology for Egyptian history.
The most learned Egyptologists, indeed, can themselves
determine Egyptian chronology only through combina-
tion with data from outside sources. The conquest
of
Egypt by Cambyses
the year
525
B.C.
furnishes
their cardinal point.
From this event, the years of
reign of the kings of the 26th dynasty
may be fixed with certainty by the help
of the data supplied by the monuments,
Herodotus, and
What lies before Psamtik I.,
the first pharaoh of this dynasty, however, is in the
judgment of Egyptologists more or less uncertain, and
therefore for other chronological determinations the
records of that earlier time are either not to be used ai
all or to be used with the greatest caution.
Still, even this short period, from
(the accessior
of Psamtik I.
)
to
is a help to
us
by supplying
points of reference. Through synchronisms of
and Judean history several events of the time are to
certain extent fixed. Thus Necho
11.
(middle of
B
.
C.
to beginning of 594
B
.c.)
is admitted to be
king who fought the battle at Megiddo that cost
his life. So mention is made in the O T of
(Apries), who reigned 588-569
B
.c.,
and was even dowr
to
564 nominally joint ruler with
(see
E
GYPT
,
69). Thus we get fixed points for the contemporarie:
of Necho
Jehoahaz, and Jehoiakim
for the contemporaries of Hophra-Jeremiah, and
Jews
Egypt (Jer.
neither for
battle of Megiddo nor for that of Carchemish can
year be determined from Egyptian data.
On the othe
hand, these Egyptian data are sufficient to prove tha
the astronomical edifice
of
Mahler is quite impossible.
For the time before Psamtik
I.
the rulers of th
dynasty may be fixed approximately
Tanutamon ruled alone only a short time
and therefore may fall out of account.
T h
data for his three predecessors do not agree (cp
E
GYPT
§
reigned according to the monuments, 26 years
reign, according to the monuments, was uncertain
The confirmation that Mahler (of.
p. 56
seeks fc
the date of the Exodus in the
that
Menephthah whom he holds to be the pharaoh of the Exodus
was
the beginning of a Sothic period, which ma
have happened in the year
B
.c.,
is
certainly weak,
the pharaoh who according to Ex. 14 was drowned could
have reigned after that for
17
years.
cording to
(var.
according to
it was 14 (var.
See
E
X
O
DUS
.
787
as our basis for the rest, the
. the monuments, we get the following
B.C.,
B.C.,
and
Still, according to the view of Steindorff,
whom we are indebted for these data, Taharka may
reigned
longer than twenty-six years, perhaps
long with Sabatalco.
Since, however, Ed. Meyer
ives
circ.
and makes
'aharka as early as
real master, although not till
89 official ruler, of Egypt (cp
Gesch.
343
&),
11
sure support is already gone. Besides, although
ccording to Meyer
344) the identity of
the Assyrian
and the Hebrew
( S o ' ,
or,
correctly, Save' or Seweh) in
17
4
is
ble, Steindorff has grave doubts as to the phonetic
quivalence of these names, and finds no Egyptian
for the battle of Altaku.
It is, therefore, very
to get from Egyptian chronology any certain
on two O T statements relating to Egypt-viz.,
hat
sent messengers to Hezekiah when he
of the expedition of
( 2
K.
Is.
.nd that Hoshea of Israel had dealings with
of
and was therefore bound and put into prison by
ihalmaneser
K.
For the chronology of the O T in still earlier times,
here is. unfortnnatelv. nothing at all to be pained from
Egyptology.
to-
I
K.
(cp
Shishak
was a
of Solomon. and in
he fifth year of Rehoboam went up against Jerusalem.
n spite, however, of the Egyptian
at
the list of cities conquered by him, his date
be determined
Egyptological grounds
(on
grounds it is usually given as about
).
to 'Zerah the Cushite'
we need not
to find any mention of
in Egyptian sources
Z
ERAH
).
The clay tablets found at
(see
I
SRAEL
,
6 ) , indeed, make some important contributions to
knowledge of the relations of
to Egypt
for the chronology they afford nothing certain.
We must get help from the chronology of Babylonia
we can, even approximately, determine the date
the correspondence. Then it seems probable that
111.
and Amen-hotep IV. reigned in Egypt
about
or
about 1380
B.c.,
at which
time, therefore, Palestine must have stood under the
of Egypt : the contemporaries of Amen-hotep
I. and Kurigalzu
I. of
Babylon-axe
assigned by Winckler to
and
respectively, and the contemporary of Amen-hotep IV.
11.-to
whilst R. W. Rogers,
on the other hand
(Outlines
the History
p.
gives
as
the probable
date of
and C. Niebuhr
(
Gesch.
Ass.
1896) accepts only one
and
places him and his contemporary Amen-hotep IV. in
the beginning of the fourteenth century
B.C.
As
in
these tablet inscriptions the name of the Hebrews has
not
so
far been certainly discovered,
so,
in the Egyptian
monuments generally, we cannot find any reminiscence
of a stay of Israel in Egypt or of their
Theories about the pharaoh of the oppression and the
pharaoh of the Exodus remain, therefore, in the highest
degree uncertain.
Neither Joseph nor Moses is to be
found in Egyptian sources : supposed points of contact
(a seven-years famine, and the narrative of
about Osarsiph-Moses in Josephus,
12728
on
this
Ed. Meyer, Gesch.
Aeg.
have proved,
on
On the inscription of Menephthah discovered
in
1896, see
E
GYPT
,
and
E
X
O
D
U
S
,
I
,
CHRONOLOGY
nearer
Apart, therefore, from
the dates of the rulers of the twenty-fifth and the twenty-
sixth dynasties, there is very little to be gained for O T
chronology from Egyptology. On Egyptian Chronology
see
also
E
GYPT
,
It is
much better supplied with chronological material, since
Assyriology offers much more extensive help.
CHRONOLOGY
Eponym year of
(Schr.
the thirteenth of
Sargon’s
rule in
Hence we
may identify this
year of
(the thirteenth year of Sargon’s reign in Assyria) likewise
with the year
B.C.
as the series is uninter-
rupted, all its dates become
W e can, then,
obtain astronomical confirmation of the correctness of
this combination (and
so
also of
trustworthiness of
the Ptolemaic Canon and the Assyrian
lists) in
the way hinted at already.
For,
if the
year of
is the year
the Eponym
year of
to which, as we saw above, there is
assigned a solar eclipse, must be the year 763 B
.c.;
and astronomers have computed that
on
the
June
of that year a solar eclipse occurred that would be
almost total for Nineveh and its neighbourhood. Thus
the Assyrian Eponym list may safely be used for
chrono-
logical purposes.
On the ground of the statements of this list, then,
we have, for the years 893-666
fixed points not to
called in question by which to date
the events of this period in Israel; for
the Assyrian inscriptions not only supply direct informa-
tion concerning certain events in Israel’s own history,
but also in other cases fix the date of contemporaneous
events which the narrative of the
OT
presupposes.
Then the Ptolemaic Canon, which from 747
on-
wards accompanies the Assyrian Eponym list, continues
when the Eponym list stops (in 666
and conducts
us
with certainty down to Roman times.
W e are thus enabled to determine beyond all doubt
the background of the history of Israel and Judah
893 downwards, and obtain down to Alexander the
Great the following valuable dates :-
TABLE
DATES
893
B.C. TO
A
LEXANDER
THE
G
REAT
Abr-niisir-pal.
859-825
Shalmaneser
782-773
Shalmaneser
Tiglat-pileser
726-722
Shalmaneser
Sargon (Arkeaiios
king of Babylon).
Sennacherib
Esarhaddon
Asaridinos
possesses, for
a
series of
years,
inscriptions containing careful
Eponyms,
lists, that is, giving the name
of the officer
whom the year
called, and
mentioning single important events falling within the
year. These brief notes alone are quite enough to give
the lists an extraordinary importance. Their value is
further increased, however, by the fact that the office
of
Eponym had to be held in one of his first years,
commonly the second full year of his reign, by each
king.
Hence the order of succession of the Assyrian
kings and the length of their ’reign can be determined
with ease, especially as names of kings are distinguished
from those of other Eponyms by the addition of the
royal title and of a line separating them from those that
precede them (cp
The monumental
character, too,
of
these documents, exempting them, as
it does, from the risk of alteration attaching to notes in
books, gives assurance of their trustworthiness.
Nor is
the incompleteness of the list supposed by Oppert a
fact. In regard to the order of succession no doubt is
possible.
The establishment of this uninterrupted series of
years can be accomplished with absolute certainty (as
we shall see below) by the help of an
eclipse of the sun assigned by the list to
the Eponym year of
of
In order
to be able to determine the eclipse intended, however,
and thus to fix the year astronomically, we have first to
bring into consideration the so-called Canon of
-next to these Assyrian Eponym lists, perhaps the
most important chronological monument of antiquity.
This Canon is a list giving the names of the rulers of
Babylon-Babylonian, Assyrian, and Persian-from
Nabonassar to Alexander the Great (the Egyptian
Ptolemies and the Romans are appended at the end),
with the number of years each
of
them reigned, and the
eclipses observed by the Babylonians and the Alex-
andrians-the years being reckoned according to the era
of
from that prince’s accession. The
trustworthiness of this document is proved, once for all,
by the astronomical observations it
from which
we learn that the beginning of the era of Nabonassar
falls in the year 747
The Canon can be combined with the Assyrian
Eponym lists, and the establishment of the latter with
certainty effected in the following way.
On
the one
hand, the Ptolemaic Canon assigns to the year 39 of
the era of Nabonassar.
B
.c., the accession of
Arkeanos
on the fragment of the Babylonian
list of kings); and,
on
the other hand, Assyrian clay
tablets identify this year, the first of the rule of
Sargon or Arkeanos) over Babylon with the
Cp also Wiedemann’s review
1894,
No. 25,
of
Laroche’s Questions
(Angers,
where the
Exodus is assigned to
The judgment of this competent
reviewer is that ‘the book is
but brings the question
of the Exodus no nearer to a solution.
1
I t bears the name ‘Ptolemaic Canon’ because it
in-
cluded in his astronomical work by the geographer and mathe-
matician Claudius
the contemporary of the Emperor
Antoninus
(therefore
150
A
.D.).
4
The proof is strengthened by the fragments of a Babylonian
list of kings published by Pinches in
[May, ’841,
part of which constitute an exact
to the beginning of
Greek list. and
its statements concerning
the
of the rulers.
5
More exactly (since the dates are reduced to the common
Egyptian year) on
first of Thoth
Feb.), not (as
to Babylonian official usage might have been ex-
pected)
on the
of Nisan
March) (cp
GBA,
488,
see below 26).
in
till
667
=first year of
reign
who perhaps reigned
.
.
.
.
continuation is supplied by the Ptolemaic Canon
which specifies the rulers of Babylon :-
667-648
Saosduchinos
Sam&-Sum-ukin).
674-626
Kinilanadanos.
Nabopolassaros (=
Nabokolassaros (=
and
Illoarudamos
559-556
Nerigasolasaros (=
555-539
Nabonadios
Kambyses
Dareios
I.
485-465
464-424
Artaxerxes
I.
Dareios
Artaxerxes
358-338
Arogos
335-332
Dareios
Here follows Alexander the Great, who died
B.C.
With regard to this summary it is to be noted that (as is a
matter of course in any rational dating by years ‘of reign-it
is certainlv the case in the Ptolemaic Canon) the vear
From the thirteenth year of his reign down to his death in
the seventeenth (and so, as the Ptolemaic Canon states, for
five
years) Sargon must have reigned over Babylon also.
789
CHRONOLOGY
CHRONOLOGY
as the first of any king is the earliest year at the begin-
ning of which he was already really reigning
:
in the preceding
year he had
to
reign on his predecessor's death. Short
reigns, accordingly, which did not reach the beginning of the
new year had to remain unnoticed, as that of
chad
in the year 556 which according to
lasted
nine
It
is
26.
Beginning
further to he noted that the beginning of
the year did not fall in the two lists on the
same day.
The Eponym lists make the
year begin on the first of Nisan, the
of March, while
the Ptolemaic Canon follows the reckoning of the ordinary
Egyptian year of 365 days, the beginning of which, as compared
with
mode of reckoning falls one day earlier every four
years. Thus, if in the
747,
as
was indeed already the
case in 748, the beginning of the year fell on the 26th of
February, the year 744 would
on
25th. For a period
of a hundred years this difference would amount to twenty-five
days. Thus the beginning of the year 647
B.C.
would fall
on
the
of February and so on. Therefore for the period
323
B.C.
the beginning of the year would always fall somewhat
near the beginning of
ours.
If, then, the chronological data of the O T were trust-
worthy, as soon
as
one cardinal point where the two series
-that of the O T and that just obtained
-came into contact could be established
with certainty, the whole chronology of the
O T would be at once determined, and the insertion of
the history of Israel into the firm network of this general
background would become possible. In the uncertainty,
however, in which the chronological data of the O T
involved, this simple method can lead to no satisfactory
result.
All points of coincidence must be separately
attended to and, although we may start out from a
fixed point in drawing our line, we must immediately
see to it that we keep the next point of contact in view.
Unfortunately, in going backwards from the earliest
ascertainable date to a remoter antiquity such
a
check
is not available.
The earliest date available,
as
being certain beyond
doubt, for an attempt to set the chronology of the O T
on a firm basis is the year
854
B
.c.,
in
which Ahab king of Israel was one of
the confederates defeated by
11.
(859-825) at
(Schr.
and
Since, how-
ever, the
O T
contains no reference to the event, it is
of no use for the purpose of bringing the history of
Israel into connection with general history till we take
into consideration also the next certain date, 842
in
which year presents were offered to the same Assyrian
king, Shalmaneser II., by Jehu
Within these thirteen years (854-842) must fall the death
of Ahab, the reigns of Ahaziah and Jehoram, and the
accession of Jehu.
Of this period the most that need
be assigned to Jehu is the last year, which may have
been at the same time also the year of Jehoram's death
for it may be regarded as quite probable that it would
be immediately after his accession that Jehu would send
presents to the Assyrian king to gain his recognition
and favour. On the
the traditional values
of the reigns require for Ahaziah two years
(
I
K.
and for Jehoram alone twelve years
K.
31)
:
so
there
appears to be no time left for Ahab after
854.
The
death of Ahab, however, cannot be assigned to
so
early
a
date as
The reigns of Ahaziah and Jehoram,
therefore, must be curtailed by more than one year.
The course of events from 854 to the death of Ahab in
the struggle with the Syrians has, accordingly, been
ranged in different ways.
Wellhausen
supposes that in consequence
of
universal defeat in 854 Ahab ahanboned the relation o
vassalage to Aram that
lasted till then and thus provokec
a Syrian attack' on Israel. Then, by the
a t Aphek
the second year and the capture of Benhadad he compelled tht
Syrians to conclude peace and to promise
deliver up
cities
had won from Israel
(I
K.
20).
As
Victor Floigl
1882,
94-96), indeed, supposes t h a
Ahah fell before Karkar
854)
and not before Ramoth
Gilead
to accomplish
he
to treat the narratives o
the Syrian wars
(I
K.
20
38-43
22
as quite
worthy.
of
year.
did not keep their promise he undertook in the third
rear of the peace the unfortunate
for the conquest of
in which he met his death
(I
K.
22).
Thus the
of Ahah
fall ahout the year 851. Schrader on the'
hand, sees in Ahab's taking part in the battle of
consequence of the conclusion of peace with Aram that
hllowed the battle of Aphek, and
it thus possible to
death to
so early a date as 853. Even if we
nclined to follow the representation of Schrader (Wellhausen's
much more attractive) the Assyrian notice of the battle of
in 854
least one point, that the beginning
Jehu's reign cannot be earlier than 842,
and the traditional
lumbers must he curtailed.
On
the question just discussed see
A
HAB
.
The year 842
B
.C.
may, therefore, be assigned
as
that
the accession of
In the same year also perished
king of Israel,
and
Ahaziah,
king of Judah, whilst Athaliah seized
.
the reins of government in Jerusalem.
If
from this
for
both
kingdoms, we try to go back;
with approximate certainty the year of the division of
the monarchy. The years of reign of the Israelitish
kings down to the death of Jehoram make up the
sum
of
ninety-eight, and those of the kings of Jndah down to
the death of Ahaziah the
of ninety-five whilst the
synchronisms of the Books of Kings allow only
eight years. Since the reigns of Ahaziah and Jehoram
of Israel must be curtailed
if we assume ninety
years as the interval that had elapsed since the partition
of the kingdoms this will be too high rather than too
low
an estimate.
The death of Solomon may, accord-
ingly, be assigned to
B.C.
Wellhausen
indeed, raises an objection against this, on the
ground of a statement in the inscription of Mesha but
the expression in the doubtful passage is too awkward
and obscure to lead us, on its account, to push back
the death of Solomon to
or even farther.'
In this connection it is not unimportant that the
statements of Menander of
in regard to the
Tyrian list of kings confirm the
assignment of
B
.C.
as
the
.-
mate date
of
the de&
of
According to the careful discussion that
Riihl has
devoted to this statement (see below
85
end), preserved to us
in three forms (first, in
second, in the
Chron. of Euseh., and third, in Theophilnsad
iii.
we may, assuming
Gutschmid's date of 814
B.C.
for the
foundation
of
fix on
as
the period of reign
of
or Hiram and on 878-866
B.C.
that of
or
Ethha'al. Now
was son-in-law of Ethha'al
(
I
K. 16
and since
at his accession in the year 878
B
.C.
was
thirty-six years old be could quite well have had a marriageable
daughter a few
later when Ahab
according to
I
16
reigned twenty-two
(about
B
.c.),
ascended
the throne. Moreover, Menander mentions a one-year famine
under Eithobalos, which even Josephns
with the three-year famine that, according to
17,
fell
in the beginning
the rei
of Ahah. Further, Eiromos
936)
may he identified
Hiram, the friend of Solomon (cp
I
K.
5
18 24
32 9
IO
and, whether we adopt the opinion
that Hiram the contemporary of David
S. 5
was the same
person as
Solomon's, or suppose that the name of
the better-known contemporary of Solomon has simply been
transferred to the
king who bad relations with David.
the year
930
B
.C.
for the death of Solomon, agrees excellently
with this
synchronism.
We. translates lines
thus
Omri conquered
whole
land of Medaha, and Israel dwelt there during his days and
half the days of his son forty years, and Kamos recovered it
in my days.
H e thus
a t an estimate
of
at least sixty
years for Omri's and Ahab's combined reigns since only by
adding the half of Ahab's
to
the part of
reign during
which Moab was tributary
the total of forty years attained.
It
is to be noted however
Israel
'
We. (so also
and Socin,
1886,
p . 13)
supplies as the subject to 'dwelt'
is lacking in the
inscription, and that even with this insertion the construction is
not beyond criticism.
Is it in the undoubted awkwardness of
the passage, not possible to
thus-' Omri conquered the
whole land of Medaba and held it in possession as long as he
reigned, and during
half of
years of
reign
son,
in all forty years.
But
yet in my reign
recovered it.'
In that case
is
no
ground for ascribing so many as sixty
years to
reigns of Omri and Ahab. Nay, the pocsibility is
not excluded, that
K.
3
5
is right in making the revolt of Moah
follow the death of Ahah, and then the futile expedition of
Jehoram of Israel and Jehoshaphat
of
Judah against Moab
could he taken as marking the
of the forty years.
792
CHRONOLOGY
CHRONOLOGY
If it has been difficult to attain sure ground in the
early period of the divided
it is even less
.
possible to determine anything with
certainty about the period preceding
Solomon's death.
If the data of the
concerning the reigns of Solomon and David (40
years each,
I
1142)
have any value, David must
have attained to power about the year
B
.C.
Concerning Saul, even
I
gives
us
no real in-
formation, and regarding the premonarchic period the
most that can be said is that, according to the
discoveries at Tell-el-Amarna the Hebrews were, about
the middle of the fifteenth century
not yet settled
in
For the time, therefore, from the partition of the
kingdom down to the year 842
B.c.,
we must be content with the following
estimate :-
TABLE
~ ~ . - E
S
T
I
MA
T E
O F
R
EIGNS
:
D
E
A
TH
OF
S
OLOMON TO
A
CCESSION
OF
J
EHU
.
K
I
N
GS O
F
K
I
N
GS
OF
I
SRAEL
.
(?) -854 Jerohoam of Israel and his contemporaries Rehohoam and Ahijah in Judah.
Nadab
Ba'asha
of Judah certainly Contemporary with
Elah
Zimri
Omri
Ahab
Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, contemporary with Ahab,
Ahab at
Ahaziah, and Jehoram.
Ahaziah, king of Israel
Jehoram
Jehoram, king of Judah.
Death of
Israel
Ahab's death
Death
of
Ahaziah of Judah.
From 842
B.C.
onwards, there is no fixed point till
Then we have one in
we come to the eighth century.
the eighth year of the Assyrian king
Tiglath-pileser
738
B
.C.
In
that year, according to the cunei-
form inscriptions, this king of Assyria
received the tribute of
of
When-the
OT
tells of this
15
it calls the Assyrian king
although elsewhere
( 2
K.
it uses the
other name, Tiglath-pileser.
Of the identity of the two
names, however, there can be no doubt
223
C O T ,
1
and we are not to think of the reference
being to a Babylonian king, or an Assyrian rival king,
or to assume that Tiglath-pileser himself, at an earlier
period, twenty years or more before he became king
over Assyria, while still bearing the name of Pul, made
an expedition against the land of Israel (so Klo.
p.
496). If we add that Ahaz of
procured for himself through a payment of tribute the
help of Tiglath pileser against the invading kings,
Pekah
of
Israel and Rezin of Damascus that, accord-
ingly, the Assyrian king took the field against Philistia
and, Damascus in 734 and 733 and that in
after
the
of Damascus, Ahaz
also
appeared in
to do homage to Tiglath pileser, there
remains to be mentioned only the equally certain date
of the beginning of the year 721
(Hommel,
676) for the conquest of Saniaria, to complete the list
of assured dates between 842 and 721.
The attempt to arrange the kings of North Israel
during this period is hampered by fewer difficulties in the
interval
than are to be found in
that between 738 and 721. If we assume
that Menahem died soon after paying
tribute, we shall still have in the 113 years
reckoned by the traditionary account from the accession
of Jehu to the death of Menahem a slight excess, since
for the period
we need only
years.
Still,
we can here give an approximate date for the individual
reigns. The latest results of
(in substantial
agreement with Brandes,
and Riehm)
are the following
Jehoahaz
Jehoash
Jeroboam
11.
782-743 (or before
Zechariah and
perhaps also in 743, Menaheni
(or
745 to after 738).
For the last
period,
on
the other hand, from the death of Menahem
to the conquest of Samaria, the traditional reckoning
gives thirty-one years, whilst from 737 to 721 we have
hardly sixteen. The necessary shortening of the reigns
We modify them only to the extent of giving as the first
year of a reign the year at the beginning of which the king was
already
power, and adding in parentheses the figures of We.,
in so far as they are
to
he found in his
793
is accomplished by Kautzsch in this way
:
Pekahiah
736, Pekah
Hoshea
Wellhausen
has abandoned his former theory that Pekahiah and
Pekah are identical, and makes the latter begin to
reign in
735.
To
Hoshea, the last king of Israel,
he assigns an actual reign of at least ten years, although
he assumes that according to
2
K.
he came
under the power of Assyria before the fall of Samaria.
For the Judean line of kings the starting-point is
likewise the year 842
in which Ahaziah of Judah
met his death at the
Jehu, and
,
Athaliah assumed the direction of the
government.
On the other hand, we do
not find, for the next hundred years, a single event
independently determined
perfect exactness by
years of the reigning king of Judah. W e must come
down as far as 734
B.C.
before we attain certainty.
know that at that time Ahaz had already come
to power, and we can only suppose (according to
he
not long before this succeeded
his father,' during whose lifetime Pekah of Israel and
Rezin of Damascus were already preparing for war.
The presents of King Ahaz to Tiglath-pileser in the
year 734
B
.C.
delivered Judah from the danger
that threatened it, and in
the conquered
Damascus the same king did homage to the victorious
Assyrian, and offered him his thanks (cp
K.
16
and
Schrader,
It is still difficult, however,
to allot the intervening time to the several kings of
Judah
for the traditional values for the reigns require
no
less than
years from the first year of Athaliah
to the death of Jotham, whilst between 842
B
.C.
and
734
B.C.
there are only
years at our
It is, therefore, necessary to reduce several of the
items by a considerable amount, and it is not to be
wondered at that different methods of adjustment have
been employed. The synchronism of events between
the history of Israel and that of Judah is too inadequate
to secure unanimity, and the mention (not quite certain)
of Azariah of Judah in Assyrian inscriptions for the
years
(cp Schr.
does not make
up the lack.
On
one point, however, there is agree-
ment: that it is in the cases
of
Amaziah, Azariah
(Uzziah), and Jotham that the deductions are to be
made.
The years
B
.c.,
for Athaliah are rendered
tolerably certain by the data concerniug Jehoash, the
infant son of Ahaziah
K .
1 1
I
Then we
need have no misgivings about giving Jehoash, who
was raised to the throne at
so
young an age, about
forty years.
If we take these years fully, we obtain
On early traces of certain elements afterwards forming part
of
Israel, see I
SRAEL
,
:
794
CHRONOLOGY
CHRONOLOGY
for the reign
of
Jehoash
835-796
B.C.
The date of
his death
indeed, be pushed still farther back;
but in any case his time as determined by these data
cannot be far wrong, for he must have been a con-
temporary of Jehoahaz the king of Israel
and, according to
K. 1218
also of
of Aram
to Winckler
804
).
From
795
to
734
there are left only
61
years, and in this interval
room must be found for Amaziah with twenty-nine
years, Azariah with fifty-two, and Jotham with sixteen
-no
less than ninety-seven years.
Even
if
we allow
the whole sixteen
of Jotham, who, according to
2
K.
15 conducted the government during the last
illness of his father, to be merged
in
the fifty-two years
of Azariah, we do not escape the necessity of seeking
other ways of shortening the interval.
reign
is estimated too high at twenty-nine years. The only
thing that is certain about him is that he was
a
contemporary of Jehoash of Israel
(797-783
cp
K.
14
It
is
pure hypothesis to assign him nine
years (We.), or nineteen years
and
instead of twenty-nine. The smaller number has the
greater probability, since the defeat that he brought on
himself by his wanton challenge of Jehoash of Israel
best explains the conspiracy against him
(2
K. 14
),
and he would therefore hardly survive his conqueror,
much more probably meet his death by assassination
a t Lachish not long after
B
.C.
(cp also
GVZ,
1559).
From the death of Amaziah to
734
reigned
Azariah and Jotham. T o discover the boundary between
the two, we must bear in mind the Assyrian inscriptions
already
which apparently represent Azariah
as
still reigning in the years
and must keep in
view that Isaiah, who cannot be thought of
as
an old
man when Sennacherib marched against Jerusalem in
the year
received his prophetic call in the year of
the death of Uzziah
(Isa.
6
I
) .
Accordingly, we cannot
be far wrong in assigning the death of Azariah and the
accession of Jotham as sole ruler to
B
.C.
More
than this cannot be made out with the help of the
at our disposal up to the present time.
If now the year of the conquest of Samaria
B
.c.)
were fixed with certainty according to the year of the
king then reigning in Judah, this would
appear the next resting-point after
734
B.
c.
The data of the
OT
do not agree, how-
ever, and none of them is to be relied upon.
This
is true even of the datum in
1813, lately much
favoured by critics, that Sennacherib’s expedition against
Palestine in the year 701
B.
C
.
was in the fourteenth
year of Hezekiah
(so
We.
p.
Kamph.
Die
der
p. 28
des
p.
37,
and
G
1606
).
In order to maintain the datum, it
is
not enough to say,
‘
The people of Judah are more likely to have preserved
the year of Hezekiah in which- their whole land was laid
waste and their capital, Jerusalem, escaped destruction
only through enduring the direst distress, than to have
preserved the year of Hezekiah in which Samaria fell.’
The
(cp
181 9) prefixing of the numeral
before
(cp Duhm,
of itself indicates a
later origin, and this is confirmed by what we have already
found as to these chronological data not belonging to
the original narrative. The number fourteen is based,
not upon historical facts, but upon an exegetical inference
from Is. 385, and a consideration of the twenty-nine
years traditionally assigned to Hezekiah, and must there-
fore rank simply with the scribe’s note Am.
I
:
‘
two
years before the earthquake.’
Even when we come to the seventh century, the
expectation that at least the death of Josiah in the battle
of Megiddo would admit of being dated with complete
accuracy by material from inscriptions is not fulfilled.
From Egyptian chronology, which does not mention
This
is forcibly urged
by
Kau. (cp. Kamph.
94)
and
has received the
assent
of
Duhm
and
Cheyne
Is.
795
the date of the battle, we gather only that it must have
been after
B.
since the conqueror, Necho
did
not begin to reign till that year. There is, therefore,
nothing left but to take as our fixed point the conquest
of Jerusalem in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar
586
B
.C.
K.
253
8).
For
the intervening time
we have to take into consideration, besides the death of
Josiah, the data supplied by Assyriology, which place
expedition against Hezelciah in
701
and imply Manassehs being king of Judah in the years
(cp Schr.
p.
466).
For the whole time from the death of Jotham to the
conquest of Jerusalem, tradition requires
years of
reign, whilst from
734
B
.c.,
when Ahaz was already
on the throne of Jerusalem--which year, if not
that of his accession, must have been at least the first
of his reign-to 586
B
.c.,
we have only
148,
or, since
we may reckon also the year
734
years. ’The
smallness of the difference of seven years, however,
shows that we have now to do with a better tradition.
Where the mistake lies we cannot tell beforehand. All
we can say is that it
is not to
be sought between the
death of Josiah and the fall of Jerusalem, since for this
interval twenty-two years are required by tradition, and
this agrees with our datum that Josiah must have died
shortly after
610
B
.C.
Let
us
see wnether another cardinal point can be
In
701
Hezekiah was reigning in Jerusalem.
When it was that he came to the throne, whether
before or after the fall of Samaria
(721
B.C.),
is the
question. In
Is.
we have an oracle against Philistia,
dated from the year of the death of king
chronological note which, like Is.
6
I
,
have import-
ance, if the oracle really belongs to Isaiah.
Winckler
and Cheyne [but cp Isaiah,
Addenda] regard
it as possible that the oracle may refer to agitation
in Syria and Palestine, in which the Philistines shared,
on
the accession of Sargon
(721
B
.c.),
when
king of
induced them to rebel, in reliance on the
help of
one of the Egyptian petty kings (cp above
on
So’,
Seweh,
On
this theory
the death of Ahaz
have to be set down about
the year
720
B.C.
As,
however, the authenticity of
the oracle
is
not certain,-in fact hardly probable (cp
Duhm, who even conjectures that originally there may
have stood, instead of Ahaz, the name of the second
last Persian king, Arses
is not safe to
it as fixing the death-year of Ahaz.
Of greater
value is the section relating to the embassy of
of Babylon to Hezelciah
20=
Is.
39).
Merodach-Baladan was king of Babylon from
721
to
710.
When, later, he attempted to recover his
position, he held Babylon for so short a
that an
embassy
to
the west would be impossible.
Thus,
Merodach-Baladan must have sought relations with
Hezekiah between
721
and
The beginning of the
reign of Merodach-Baladan, when in the year
721
or
720
he obtained possession of Babylon and held it
against Sargon. commends itself as the point of time
most suitable. After the battle of
which both
parties regarded as a victory for themselves,
it
must
have seemed natural to hope that the overthrow of the
Assyrian kingdom would be possible, if the west joined
in
the attack. Moreover, Sargon once describes himself
(Nimriid
1 8 )
as
the subduer of Judah,’ which
seems to mean that, on the suppression of the revolt in
Philistia, Hezekiah resumed the payment of the tribute
that had been imposed. In view of this, Winckler seems
to be justified in placing the appearance of the embassy
of Merodach-Baladan before Hezelciah in the year
720
or
Approximately, then, the year
721
may he
regarded
as
assured for the year of the death of Ahaz.
The first year of Hezekiah‘s reign is thus
720
B
.
C.
rather than
728
(Kau.), or
(We, and others). The
discrepancy of four years, which is all that now remains
For
fuller details
see
I
S
AI
A
H
,
6,
S
A
R
G
O
N
.
796
CHRONOLOGY
TABLE
SURVEY
D
EATH OF
SOLOMON
TO
THE
G
REAT
.
Dates.
854
842
738
734
Dates.
538
445
43
Dates.
797
795
789
743
739
736
735
733
637
597
596
I
S
R
A
EL
.
year
of
Jeroboam.
Reigns of Jeroboam,
Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri,
Omri,
part
of reign of
Ahab.
Ahab at battle of
Rest of reign of
Ahah: reigns of
Ahaziah
and
Jehoram.
Death of Jehoram (at the hands of Jehu).
Tribute of
Jehu to Shalmaneser
year of
Jehu
year of
Jehoahaz
year of
Jehoash
(797-783).
ear of
Jeroboam
II.
Shallum.
year
Menahem
Tribute of Menahem to
III.
Pekahiah.
year
of
Pekah
year of
Hoshea
Fall
of
Samaria.
year of
Rehoboam.
Reigns of Rehoboam,
Abijah, Asa,
part
of
reign
Jehoshaphat.
Rest of reign of Jehoshaphat : reigns of
Jehoram
and
Ahaziah.
Death of
(at the hands of
year of
Athaliah
year
of
year
of
Amaziah
year of
(789740).
year
Jotham
(739734).
at
year of
Hezekiah
Sennacherib's army before Jerusalem.
year of
Manasseh
(692-639).
year of
Amon
(638).
year of
Josiah
Battle of
Megiddo. Jehoahaz,
king.
year of
Jehoiakim
year of
Nebuchadrezzar
Jehoiachin
king.
year of
(596-586).
FALL
OF
JERUSALEM.
of
from Babylon.
The more important dates of the succeeding centuries.
year of
Evil-Meroclach
year of Cyrus
year of
Darius
I.
of
building of second temple.
year of
Artaxerxes
I.
(464-424).
visit
of
Nehemiah
to Jerusalem. Building
of
city-wall.
of Nehemiah.
visit of Nehemiah
to
Jerusalem. On
the
advent of
and the Introduction
of the law see above,
14.
of
Persian
Power :
Alexander the Great.
Liberator
of
Jehoiachin from prison.
Beginning of
Ptolemaic
dominion in Palestine, which continued with short
till
Beginning of the
Era of the
Svrian
dominion.
Execution of
Jonathan
(leader of
revolt since
limon
High-priest and
Prince.
I.
I.
king.
Xyrcanus
and
of
Jerusalem by Pompey.
Palestine a part of the Roman Province
of
Syria.
Xyrcanus
11.
under Roman sovereignty.
of Parthians.
Antigonus
made king
the Great.
On the dates of
the
Maccabees cp We.
n.
; 2nd ed. 263, n. 3 ;
3rd
ed.
n.
797
CHRONOLOGY
CHRONOLOGY
between the sum of the years of reign from the death
of
Ahaz to the conquest of Jerusalem, and the interval
586
B
.
between 139 years of reign and
actual
years-cannot be removed otherwise than by shortening
the reign of one or more of the kings.
The account
of
the closing portion of the line of kings has already been
found to merit our confidence. The shortening must
therefore be undertaken somewhere near the beginning
of the line of kings from Hezelciah to Josiah. The most
obvious course is to reduce the long reign of Manasseh
from fifty-five years to fifty-one (We., indeed, assigns him
only forty-five). This, however,
seem arbitrary, and
it will be simpler as well as less violent to divide the
shortening among all the four reigns.
If,
that is to say,
in the case of the years of reign of the kings from
Hezekiah to Josiah, tradition included (according to
popular practice) the year of accession and the year of
death, we may reduce the numbers for Hezekiah,
Manasseh, Amon, and Josiah by one each, and assign
them twenty-eight,
one, and thirty respectively.
Thus we get the following series :-Hezekiah
(28 years), Manasseh 692-639 (54 years), Amon 638
(
I
year), Josiah
years), Jehoahaz 608
year),
Jehoiakim 607-j97
years), Jehoiachin 597
year),
and Zedekiah 596-586
years).
The control over
the date of the death of Josiah from Egyptian history
which is to a certain extent possible turns out
to
be not
unfavourable to our results, since Pharaoh Necho
11.
began to reign in 610
and, as early as the end
of
or the beginning of
encountered the crown
prince Nebuchadrezzar at Carchemish (cp, on the date
of this battle which, in Jer.
is inaccurately assigned
to the fourth year of Jehoiakim, Winckler,
A
S
I
). Hence the year 608
B
.C.
for the battle of Megiddo
possesses the greatest probability.
That, among the
numerous dates for the last decades
of
the kingdom
of Judah which the O T furnishes, little inaccuracies,
such as that in the passage (Jer.
46
just cited, appear,
is intelligible
on
the ground (apart from others, as,
in the case of Ezek.
of their being the
of
later calculation. At all events, these variations are not
to be accounted for, with Hommel
by the
supposition that the Jews reckonedtheyears of
as well as those of their own kings, from the day
on
which they ascended the throne
to
the corresponding
day in the following year. The Jews, in adopting the
exact Babylonian chronological system, and applying it
to their own past history, did not mutilate it and render
it futile.
Beyond the points already referred to
the
chronology of the times after the conquest of Jerusalem
in 586
C
.
presents no difficulties worth
The Canon of Ptolemy
an assured framework into
which the data that have been preserved can be fitted
without trouble.
The tabular survey on t h e preceding page gathers
37.
After
together the
we
established.
At
the end is appended a continuation
indicating the most important dates
down to the last century
B.C.
K. M.
B. N E W TESTAMENT.
The chronology of the New
is of great
{subsidiary) importance for the study of the origins of
Christianity.
From the order of the
events
the primitive period it will be
possible to draw conclusions with regard
to the influence of one event upon another
the rapidity of the historical
will enable
to measure the power of the original impulse:
and only when the events have received their place in
contemporary history can they be fully understood.
799
Unfortunately, the task is attended with serious
culty, the causes of which need to be briefly described.
(
I
)
first Christians themselves had
no interest in chronology, whether with
reference to events concerning them as Christians, or
with reference to events of secular history.
This was
due not only to their separation from the world and
their limited horizon, but also, and still more, to their
sense of superiority to the world (Phil.
which
seemed to them already in process of dissolution
(
I
Cor.
and to their feeling that they had already begun
to
live in eternity.
( 2 )
The historical traditions of the
Christians were formed wholly with the purpose of
promoting Christian piety, and were therefore restricted
to a small number of events, the choice of which was
often, as it were, accidental, and the arrangement ac-
cording to subject rather than to time. Our chrono-
logical interest has, accordingly, to be satisfied with
inferences and combinations which often remain, after
all, very problematical and the gaps in the traditions
prevent
from constructing anywhere a long chrono-
logical sequence. (3) Of at least a
of the traditions
the historical trustworthiness is subject to such grave
doubt that we can venture to
them only with great
reserve, if at all.
( 4 )
In the
apart from some
notices in the Fourth Gospel, the only writer who
professedly gives chronological data is the author of the
Third Gospel and Acts.
He gives no account, however,
of the means by which he obtained these data. W e are,
therefore, unable to
his statements, and can treat
them only as hypotheses. As far as we know, the old
Catholic
Tertullian, Clement of Alex-
andria, Julius Africanus, and Hippolytus-were the first
to make chronological calculations.
Whether they
based them on any independent tradition or
themselves to inferences from our Gospels is uncertain
the latter is the more probable view.
data can
receive only occasional mention
(5) It
has
not
yet been found possible to give exact dates to certain
of those events of profane history which come into
question.
( 6 ) Further difficulty is caused by the
complicated nature of the ancient calendar, and by
the different usages in reckoning time and in beginning
the year. Side by side with the various eras
have
various methods of reckoning by the years of reigning
monarchs.
In the following article the years are designated
the numbers of our current Dionysian era, on the origin
of which see Ideler
By this reckon-
ing the year
I
B
.C.
coincides with the year 753
A.U.C.,
and the year
I
A.D .
with the year 754
The
years are treated as beginning on
Jan., as was the
case according to the Varronian reckoning in the period
under consideration.
The facts in detail are to a large extent
by Bratke and
Hilgenfeld in articles on the chronological attempts of
lytus in
An excellent guide through this labyrinth is Ideler’s
abridged and in part improved in his
(see below, 85).
The
important tables (of the sun and moon, and of eras)
are brought together from astronomical works by Gumpach,
d.
Chronol.
See further Bouchet,
E.
Muller in
d.
class.
Matzat
two vols.
Special service ’to N T Chronology has also been rendered by
Clinton,
1830,
ed.
;
and by
J.
Klein, Fasti
Leipsic,
Further
notices and many original contributions to the
subject are to he
in
i.
where, in an
is given
a
table (taken
Clinton) of parallel years
by Olympiads, and by the Seleucid, Varronian, and Dionysian
eras. The third appendix discusses the months of the Jewish
Calendar, and on p.
a bibliography of the very large
literature of that subject is to be found.-Important for the
chronology of the N T are also Wieseler Chronol.
der
vier
Chronol.
1848
and art.
Beitr.
der Evang.
.
Lightfoot
on ‘The Chronology of
Life
Biblical
Essays
(posthumous),
See also
B.
W.
Bacon,
New
Chronology of the Acts,’
Feb. 1898.
CHRONOLOGY
CHRONOLOGY
Parallel
TABLE
:
P
ARALLEL
D
ATES
Dates.
P
ROM
S
ECULAR
H
ISTORY
.
30
Aug. 14
A.D.,
and
Aug. 14
37
A
.
D
.
37
the
11
I
see
Schurer,
1301).
4
A
.D.
Archelaus ethnarch of Judrea Samaria and
Idumea (deposed and banished to
in Gaul).'
4
tetrarch of Galilee and
(banished to
On his relations to Aretas
districts.
as
part of the province of Syria.)
4
tetrarch of the north-eastern
(After his death his tetrarchy was governed
by
procurators, with their residence in
The
of
Archelaus was governed
Of
these the fifth.
of 36
was
Pilate.
36, Pilate sent to Rome to answer for his conduct.
36 Passover
in Jerusalem.
war, a t the Emperor's command, on
Aretas in retaliation for the latter's war against Antipas.
At the news of the emperor's death hostiliries suspended.
March
37, Herod
receives from
the title of
king with the tetrarchies of
Schurer,
604)
'and of Philip
also
that of
and in
41, also the provinces of Judrea and Samaria, previously
governed by procurators.
24th Jan.
Oct. 54.
Death
at
Caesarea. The territory
Agrippa after his death governed by procurators.
Expulsion of
N
ERO
, 13th Oct. 54-9th June 68.
64,
19th July,
of
66,
Outbreak of Jewish war.
56/6-62
and
June 68-20th
Emperor
July 69 in Egypt while
engaged in putting down the Jewish insurrection.
Recognised as Emperor in the East a t once throughout
the Empire not until after the death of
Died
June 79.
of
93-96, Persecutions of Christians, especially in Rome and
79-81.
81-96.
06-08.
Asia Minor.
Correspondence with
governor of
on the subject of the Christians in that province.
Insurrection of the Jews under
Our investigation will treat the
of
N T
chronolom in the following order
:
the
of
the life of Jesus
43-63), that of the
life of Paul
64-80),
that of the churches
in Palestine
other dates
The first and second of these divisions are wholly
separate from each other.
questions here relate
to
the year of Jesus' birth
,
the year of his public appearance
47
his age at
his entrance upon his ministry
the duration of
his ministry
and the year of his death
I.
The
Age
his
is not
that tradition is
In
itself, as a
CHRONOLOGY
OF THE
L
IFE O F
JESUS.-The
tale of years, the matter had
no
interest for the early Christians. That
Tesus was a man of mature years was
enough
why should they care
to
inquire how long he
Syria who had occasion to interfere in
of
Palestine were :
perhaps a t first 3
and
7
A
.
D
.
Census
instituted in
and
35-39
That Felix entered on his office in
possibly
and
that Albinus arrived in Palestine at latest in the summer of
62
are directly attested facts. That Festus succeeded Felix in
or 56 is only inferred. See below
On the day of his birth, for determining which there are
historical data, hut for which the church, after much vacillation
finally settled on
see Usener,
vol.
i.
later 6
latest)
A
.
D
.
26
801
lived quietly at Nazareth? W e
to
consider
two
passages.
(
I
)
J n .
857.
If the foolish question,
art not yet fifty years old, and
thou seen
? were authentic, it would only give a superior
imit, plainly put
as
high
as
possible on the ground of
he general impression from Jesus's appearance.
From
his no inference as to any definite number could he
lrawn, for
the Jews a man began to be elderly
tt fifty years, and the remark would merely have meant,
You
are still one of the younger men.'
If the question
not
authentic, it either testifies to the impression made
the account of Jesus in the tradition, that he was in
he best years of life (cp
4 3 39
or else the
ialf-century, as an age which he had not yet attained, is
ntended to form an ironical contrast
to
the many
from Abraham
to
the then present time.
In
.he ancient church,
22
is the only writer,
use of this passage for chronology he remarks
:hat the presbyters in
Minor had on the ground of
t ascribed
to
Jesus an age of forty to fifty years.
The text is here not quite certain, and
:he sense
of
the
probable reading is obscure.
What does
mean?
In
the Sin. Syr. it is
from the translation.
)
In
any case, the presence
about forbids us to use the number as if it were
rxact.
It
merely tells us that Jesus stood in the begin-
ning of adult manhood, and leaves undecided the
question whether he had just entered
on
his thirtieth year
was
already over thirty.
Moreover, whether the number comes from actual
historical recollection at all is made uncertain by the
that, according to Nu.
4 3 39,
from thirty to fifty was
the canonical age for certain ritual acts.
It is significant
that these two gospels, from Asia Minor, in so many
points similar, give for the age of Jesus in these two
passages the two
of this canonical term of years.
2.
The Length of the
evidence here points on the whole to one year. The
three years
the
parable of the fig-tree
are either arbitrarily chosen to
designate a short period or are
to
be
connected with the fact that the fig-tree commonly bears
fruit in three years (for the opposite view, see Wieseler,
202
).
The three days of Lk.
13
32
express
by a proverbial number both brief time
fixed limit
(for the opposite view,
311). From Mark and Matthew we get no light,
cause of the arrangement of the material by subjects
The plucking
of
the ears in
223
indicate the
time when the grain was ripe
that must have been
between the middle of April and the
of June,
before which time the harvest in Galilee is not ended.
Thus, if the incident was in the early months of Jesus'
ministry, it does not imply a duration of more than one
year. One year seems
to
have been the idea of the third
evangelist, who, like all the writers of the second century
except
and like many Fathers of the third
century,
very well have understood literally the
quotation from
Is. 61
which he puts
4
into
the mouth of Jesus.
In any case,
a
place can be found without
within the limits
of one
year for the entire contents of
the Synoptical gospels, while to fill out several years
the material is rather meagre. The feeling, shared (for
instance)
Beyschlag
1
that it
a violent and unnatural process
to
crowd the whole
development into the space of one year, is balanced by
the feeling of the
of the second and third centuries.
Even repeated visits to Jerusalem, if the
gospels really imply them, are, in view of the nearness
of
Galilee
to Jerusalem and of the many feasts (cp the
Gospel of John), easily conceivable within one year.
The early Christian Fathers were not disturbed in their
assumption of a single year by the Fourth Gospel with
its journeys
to
the feasts.
In the Fourth Gospel, apart from
64,
if we accept the
Lk.
323.
802
CHRONOLOGY
CHRONOLOGY
most common interpretation of
5
I
)
as
mean-
.
..
Pentecost, the feasts group themselves
into the course of a single year:
Passover
5
I
Pentecost
7
Tabernacles
Dedication
1155
Passover.
alone
233)
finds three passovers mentioned in the public
life of Jesus and, since he takes the second not from 64
but from
he, as well
as
Origen
(on
Jn. 435
tom.
must have had at 64 a different text from any
known to us.
The
also, according to Epiphanius
found mentioned in Jn. only a passover
at the beginning and one at the end of the ministry.
Positive ground for assuming the later interpolation of
64 (which could well have been suggested by the
of the following conversation)
be found
in the designation of the feast there, which is different
from that in
213
and
a designation combining
(so
to speak)
and
72.
So
also the introductory
formula
('was at hand') is suitable only
in
213
72
1155,
where a journey to the feast, which
does not here come in question, is to be mentioned.
Moreover, the meagreness of the narrative in Jn.
is much more comprehensible if the writer thought of
the whole ministry
as
included between two passovers.
H e can hardly have regarded the narrative in chaps.
3-5,
and again that
in
chaps.
7-11,
as
sufficient
to
fill out in
each case a whole year.
Otherwise, if the saying with
reference to the harvest (Jn.
4 3 5 )
is to be regarded as
anything more than a proverbial phrase (used for
the purpose of the figure which Jesus is employing)
there would be a period of nine months for which
no-
thing would be told but the conversation with Nicodemus
and the baptizing worlc of the disciples, and a stay
of six months in Galilee for which we should have
If, on the other
hand, only one year elapsed from the
purification of the temple to the destruction of the
'temple of his body,' we should have:
only
fifty days
perhaps
127
days
perhaps
fifty-eight days
perhaps 119 days.
In
reality,, however, even this year will have to be
shortened somewhat at the beginning for the purifica-
tion of the temple, which the Synoptists likewise connect
with a passover (but with the last one), cannot have
happened twice, and, while it is incomprehensible at
the beginning, it cannot be spared at the end of the
ministry. Whether, then, the baptism of Jesus was
before a passover, or whether the journey to John
in the wilderness may have followed a journey to the
passover in Jerusalem, it is wholly impossible to decide.
In
the latter case the complete absence from the
narrative of the baptism of all recollection of such a
connection would be singular
in the former it would
be strange that Jesus stayed away from the passover in
Jerusalem.
On
the other hand, since the forty days of
the temptation are surely a round number drawn from
O T analogies, they may safely be somewhat
and the walk with the disciples through the ripe corn-
fields in
on the sabbath is then chronologically
quite possible, even if the baptism was not until
immediately after the passover.
3.
The
Year
I
)
In
Llc.
3 1
we have, as the last of
several
nothing but chap. 6.
..
chronological notes
(1
5
26
2
notice of the date of the public
This notice is
ance of the Baptist.
clearly the product of careful
tion, and it is extremely unlikely that the evangelist
would have taken
so
much pains about fixing this date
if he had
not
supposed himself to be at the same time
fixing the year (for the Christian, the only year of real
importance in the history of the world) of at least the
beginning of the Messiah's ministry, which last, together
with the baptism of Jesus, Lk. regarded, as appears
from the whole tenor of his narrative, as the immediate
consequence of the appearance of the Baptist. Whether
he was right
in
this short allowance of time for the
preaching of the Baptist we need not decide; if
the ministry of the Baptist really did last longer, it
is
easily comprehensible that the previous time should have
escaped his knowledge.
What year, then, does Lk.
mean ? Following previous writers
on
the life of Jesus,
Weiss and Beyschlag have taken as the
point for
reckoning the year
in which
Tiherius was made co-regent
Augustus.
There
is
no
proof, however, that such
a
method of reckoning
was ever used.
appealed, nor the great dignity of Tiberius, adduced by
which
is
in any case to be ascribed to flatterers,
can establish this hypothesis and we shall have to take
the death of Augustus as the starting-point.
Now,
has proved that until the time of Nerva
the reckoning usually employed was by consuls, but
that when for any reason a reckoning by the years of
the emperor's reign was desirable, the years were
counted from the exact date of the beginning of the
Accordingly,
Lk.
must have reckoned the years
of Tiberius as beginning with 19th August, 14
The fifteenth year ran from 19th
28
to 18th August,
A
.D.
Although we cannot control
the sources from which
derived his
it is plain from the table of dates given above that the
notices in
3
I
do not contradict one another, and we
have no reason to doubt
information. We
this
in
spite of the fact that in one point he shows
himself not perfectly well-versed in Jewish affairs : the
Roman custom of having two consuls has perhaps led
him to misinterpret the fact that
in
the time of the
high-priest
(from about 18
to Easter
36
the latter's father-in-law, Annas, who had
been high priest in 6-15
was the real leader of the
Sanhedrim.
Lk. has talcen this to
that the two
were high priests at the same time (cp the same error in
In
forty-six years are said to have elapsed
from the beginning of the building of the temple to the
Neither the coins, to which Wieseler
beginning of Jesus' ministry and the
If
the
cleansing of the temple.
six years are treated as already past, this brings
us
to
A
.D.
Everything, however, is here uncertain-the
position of the cleansing of the temple at the begin-
ning of the ministry, and the authenticity of the
conversation, as well as the evangelist's method of
reckoning (on the supposition that the number comes
from
( 3 ) The public appearance of Jesus was
1882,
pp. 61-63.
'Das
Herrscherjahr in
der
altere
4
T h e imperial era introduced by Nerva which took as a
basis the tribunician year beginning with
December, the
tribunician year in which the emperor ascended the throne
counting as the first of his reign, did not actually come into
common
until the time of Trajan.
The method of reckoning the years of the emperor's
reign (namely beginning with
Tishri 766 A
.u.c.)
represented
by Gumpach
93)
as having been the universal custom
according to which he makes the fifteenth
of
begin with
Tishri
27 A.D.,
no one besides himself has
to
accept.
Keim
without any foundation that Lk. had
Josephus (Ant.
3
before him, and that
the two
revolutions there mentioned a s occurring in the procuratorship
of Pontius Pilate, which began in the twelfth year of Tiberius,
to have been in the thirteenth and fourteenth years of Tiberius,
and so hit on the fifteenth year
for
the Baptist. This
is
however, in contradiction with the fact of the large
of single notices in
Lk.
3
I
,
which implies careful investigation
and is in itself impossible, since Josephus first mentions the
Baptist in xviii. 5
and has already related the death of Philip,
which happened
as
the twentieth year of Tiberius.
7
Has
evangelist perhaps
Nerva's method of
reckoning? That yields the year
On the different
interpretations of the number, see Sevin,
pp.
CHRONOLOGY
CHRONOLOGY
with the
of the
(Mk.
1 1 4
Mt.
4
6
Mt.
cp Lk.
3
18-20).
Jesus was
baptized shortly before that (Mk.
1
and parallels),
and the
of the Baptist happened in the course
of Jesus' public ministry
7
Mt.
11
;
6
Mt.
with Mk.
6
14-16
Lk.
9
Mt.
T h e execution is related also by Josephus
(Ant. xviii.
6
who does not give the exact date, hut is led to mention the matter
in connection with the defeat of Antipas
Aretas (in the
or autumn of 36
which the nation believed to he
a judgment of God for the murder of John.
reasons
for making the war are said to have been two :
the divorce
of his d a n g h t h hy Antipas in order that the latter might marry
Herodias ; boundary disputes. From this
Holtzmann,
Hausrath, Schenkel, and Sevin have inferred that this divorce,
the rebuke of which by John led, according to the Synoptists,
to
John's death, must have been not long before 36
A
.D.
A
judgment of God, however, may well be delayed for six years,
provided the crime which the people believe to he punished
by it is not forgotten whilst a favourable moment for executing
human vengeance does not always arrive immediately. More-
over, it appears that boundary disputes were finally needed to
about the actual
From this war therefore, we can draw no inferences ahout the
date of the
martyrdom.
As to the marriage itself,
there is, in the first place, no reason to doubt the
tradition that the Baptist's courage occasioned his imprison-
ment. The account of Josephus neither excludes the assumption
that the tetrarch waited for a good pretext
arresting
John nor makes it impossible that his arrest and execution
should have been separated by a short imprisonment (cp Mk.
6
; Mt. 11
That Herodias's daughter was too old to dance
a t the feast is shown
A. von Gutschmid
1874, p.
to
wholly undemonstrable and a
banquet at Machserus
not inconceivable. That
to
Josephus, Machserus should have been a t
time in the
possession of Aretas and shortly afterwards in that of Antipas
we cannot indeed explain (cp Schurer, 1365) hut since
finds no difficulty in it, it has no force as a n argument. Since,
however, we cannot fix the date of the marriage, the whole
matter does not help
much and we can only say that there
is no sufficient evidence that
journey to Rome, on which
Antipas made the acquaintance of his brother's wife, and his
return to the tetrarchy, soon after which the marriage occurred,
were not between 27 and 30
A
.
D
.
The history of the Baptist presents, therefore, no
insuperable obstacle to the view that the fifteenth year
of Tiberius 29
A.
4.
Year
Jesus'
the crucifixion
certainly happened under Pontius
Pilate, its earliest possible date is
26
the
35
A.D.
The complete publicity
of
Jesus' death and its
,character as a civil event, its well-understood im-
portance
as
the starting-point
its unique
impressiveness, and its connection with the Jewish
passover, must have made it a chief object of the
awakening chronological interest of the early Christians,
and at the same time have given ground for believing
that the date could be fixed with reasonable certainty.
( a )
This suggests that probably the
chronological interest
of
the
third
Evangelist
3
I
)
was engaged as
little for the first public appearance of Jesus as for
that of the Baptist
:
that it was directed towards the
date of the
He preferred, however, not to
interrupt his narrative of the
Passion
by a chronological
notice, and therefore worked back from the date of the
crucifixion to the date of the beginning of Jesus' ministry,
and
so
to that of the beginning of the ministry of the
Baptist.
This is confirmed by the fact that the date in
Lk.
is,
with the exception of the 'acceptable year
of the Lord' in
the last date that
Lk.
gives.
If,
as we have concluded above, Lk. really had a whole
year
mind, he must have put the death of Jesus into
the next (the sixteenth) year of Tiberius-that is, at the
passover of 30
14
).
See the account, with criticism, of Keim's theory and of
Wieseler's objections to it, in
Clemen,
d e r
thinks otherwise, and
reckons out 33
; but
argument is wholly inconclusive.
A
different view is held
Bratke,
Stud.
who holds that Lk. regarded the fifteenth year of Tiberius
80j
That Lk. had worked hack one year from the sixteenth year
was the view of Julius
On the other
Clement of Alexandria took
fifteenth year
of
as the year of Jesus' death ; a s did probably Tertullian,
whose statement that Christ was crucified in the consulate of
.he two
(29
A
.
D
.)
doubtless rests on Lk. 3
and
was
made on purpose to avoid confusion from the later
of reckoning (cp above
47)
which would have led
to
the year 28
A
.D.
The
in the received text of
that Jesus revealed himself
he
with
other notices, and looks
ike an ancient correction intended to combine the statement in
:he text that Jesus was crucified in the fifteenth year of Tiberius
with
later traditional view of a three-year
theory explaining the conduct of Pilate at
:he trial
of
Jesus by the censure received from Rome
between 31 and 33
lacks all founda-
tion and so does the theory (Sevin, p.
that the hostility between Pilate and Herod (Lk.
was possible only after the complaint against
Pilate (as to the date
of
the complaint, cp Schiirer
in which Antipas had a share.
Hostility between
the Roman procurator and Herods heir must have been
the rule, not the exception.
( c )
If,
spite of what has been said above, the
fourth Evangelist counted three passovers
in
the public
life
of
Jesus (cp above,
and the
period of forty-six years from the be-
ginning of the- building of
temple is to be taken
seriously (cp
his chronology also would yield the
year
for the death of Jesus.
final decision cannot be reached from the
Jewish Calendar.
On the one hand, the Synoptists put
the crucifixion on Friday, the
Nisan,
John on Friday, the 14th (Mk.
1 5 4 2 ,
Lk.
Mt.
Jn.
On the other
hand, although the astronomical new
have been
computed for the possible years with a difference of but
a few minutes between the computation of Wurms and
that of Oudemans, and the days of the week can be
difficulty is caused by various
irregularities in the Jewish calendar-
system. First, the beginning of the month
was determined, not by the astronomical new
but
by the time when the new moon was first visible. which
depends partly on the weather and on the season of the
year, and is always at least from twenty-four to thirty
hours later
the astronomical new moon. In order
to prevent too great divergence of the calendar, it was
prescribed, however, that no month should in any case
last more than thirty days,
that no years should
contain less
four or more than eight such
'
full
months.
Secondly, the intercalary years create com-
plication.
A thirteenth month was added to the year whenever on the
16th Nisan the barley was not yet ripe: hut this was forbidden
in the sabbatical years, and two intercalary years in succession
were not allowed.
only sabbatical year in our period (com-
puted hy the aid of
I
49 53, and Jos. Ant. xiv.
; cp
15
I
was, according to Schurer, 33-34
A
.D.
;
according to Sevin
and others," 34-35
Any one of the six preceding years
identical with the 'acceptable year,' and put the death of Jesus
into that year
A
.D.
Arguments similar to Bratke's are to
found in
De
and in Caspari,
1869.
So also Schurer, 1 369.
Cp. Gelzer,
S.
Africanus
die
1880 1 48.
the attempts to reconcile this
see the com-
mentaries and the books there mentioned.
Cp Wurms in Bengel's
vol.
;
Ideler,
1
; Wieseler, Chronol.
d e r
Evv.
and
Beitr.
der
Evu.
Gesch.,
1869 ; Gumpach,
Oudemans,
de
1863;
Caspari,
1869
Schwarz,
Kaf.
1872 Zuckermann,
4
Cp, besides the
work of Gumpach, Caspari,
21-25 Sevin, 58-61 ; Anger,
in
Artts
ratione,
1833,
38;
Gesclz. d.
Zuckermann
und
Breslau,
Gratz,
d.
1878, p.
Rbnsch, in Stud.
1870,
1875, p. 589
.
_-
806
CHRONOLOGY
might have been an intercalary year. At the end of 28-29
however, there
no need of an intercalated month, because
the 15th
fell on 16th April 29
and on 5th April 30
A
.
D
.
(so
according to Wurms according to
and Schwarz
one day later). At the end of
there
have been an
intercalary month for the
Nisan would otherwise have
fallen on
or
March, 37
but with an intercalary
month on
April. In 32
the
Nisan fell on
April; in 33
on
April.
If,
however, 33-34 was a
sabbatical year an extra month would have had to be inter-
calated at the
of 32-33, and then the
Nisan would have
on
May, 33
and
April, 34
A
.
D
.
if
34-35
was
the sabbatical year, the extra month would not have
been inserted
the end of 33-34., Thus, i n
A
.
D
.
the
Nisan would have remained and
The Jewish empirically
determined dates all fell, however, one or two days later than
these astronomical dates.
If we take the days of the week into account, in the
years 29, 32, and 35
neither the 14th nor the
Nisan could possibly have fallen on
Friday.
On the other hand, if 33-34
was not a sabbatical year (and
so
32-33
not an intercalary year), the 14th Nisan may have been
celebrated on Friday, 4th April 33, which would corre-
spond to the view of the Fourth Gospel.
This year,
however, is excluded if Jesus died
the
Nisan,
and it
impossible in either case if, as is more likely,
33-34 was the sabbatical year, and so 32-33 had
thirteen
There is, therefore, no great prob-
ability on the
of 33
On the other hand,
the
Nisan
have fallen on Friday, 23rd April
34
A.D.
This is hardly possible for the 14th Nisan,
as
the astronomical new moon occurred at 6.42
7th
April,
so
that the
Nisan can have been put at the
latest on 9th April (so Sevin, 144). No other line of
evidence, however, points to the year 34, and this
ing by the calendar suits just as well the year 30 of Lli.
for in that year the
new moon
occurred at
8.08
March,
so
that the 1st
Nisan
have been
on Friday, 24th March, and
the
have fallen on Friday, 7th
The
Jesus'
Birth.-Dionysius Exiguus,
according
to
the proofs given by Sanclemente
4
8 )
and confirmed by Ideler
started in his reckoning from
the incarnation, and followed the common
methodfor the years of reigning monarchs.
His view was that Jesus was born on the 25th De-
cember, 754
and
so
he counted the whole year
754
a.s
A
.
D
.
The view defended by
and
that he assigned the nativity to 25th December 753, and
ignored the five following days, is wrong.
In this reckoning, which gradually came to be
universally accepted, Dionysius departed from the
dating for which
and
8)
are the oldest witnesses; which
dating, based only on the information given in the
Gospels, put the nativity in 751
A.u.c.
3
Dionysius, perhaps because he had no means of fixing
the date of the census under
in
2,
or the
death of Herod in Mt.
2 ,
seems to have reached his
result by putting the public appearance
of
Jesus one
year later than that of John
year of Tiberius, Lk.
and reckoning back thirty years.
Since we have
seen that the thirty years of
3
is a round number,
perhaps drawn from the
OT,
we are thrown back on
narratives of the nativity.
Lk. gives two points.
( i . ) He says
( 1 3 6 )
that
Jesus was six months younger than the Baptist, whose
conception happened under Herod
(15).
It- does not, however, follow
that the birth of Jesus fifteen months later was alsc
under Herod, and, even if
the
evangelist thought
so,
Wieseler in
u.
; Caspari i n
1877,
Riess,
1880
p.
;
and other works mentioned in Schiirer,
See for the year
33
A
.D.
the exact reckoning in Schegg
So also Gnmpach,
d.
1853
94.
CHRONOLOGY
tis
view cannot have rested on documentary evidence.
Lk. may have drawn his inference from the
act that the Baptist died six months before Jesus.
Lk. says
that Jesus was
at the time
vhen a census, ordered by Augustus for the whole
empire, was being
in Judrea and
Galilee, and that this was while Cyrenius
undoubtedly Publ,
Quirinius) was governor
n
Syria.'
Such a census, however,
legally
in the reign of Herod, and a governorship of
in Syria before Herod's death is chronologically
since at the time of Herod's death ( 4
)
Varus (who put down the insurrection
ng that event) was still governor in Syria, whilst his
were
Saturninus (9-6
B. C.
)
(attested for
I O
Josephus, who relates the
ast years of Herod in much detail, has no knowledge
such a census, but says that the census of 7
A.D.
was
.he first, and something altogether novel for the Jews.
may be that Quirinius was governor
.of
Syria for a
time
B
.
C.
)
as successor to Varus, as he
was afterwards from 6
A.D.
until (at the latest)
I
A.
D.
but in his first (problematical) governorship a
for
which had fallen to the share of
is likewise impossible. On the
hand,
:he census
under Quirinius in 6-7
A.
after
deposition of Archelaus, is well attested (cp Jos.
xviii.
I
and
2
I
xx.
5
xi.
1
I
,
Acts
[
Lk.]
and may have been in
of
a general
imperial command intended to be executed as occasion
should arise in the several provinces.
This could, how-
ever. have applied only to imperial provinces (including,
therefore,
not to senatorial provinces : that is, it
would not be universal.
Further,
(
I
)
even this census
could not have
the Galileans, who were subjects
Antipas; and
it
have been taken as the
basis for a poll and property tax, at the
not at
the ancestral, home of the subject, for the latter would
have been in most cases hard to determine, and such a
procedure was in general impracticable. ( 3 ) Moreover,
Mary could not possibly be affected by it, because she
was not of the lineage of David (cp G
ENEALOGIES
,
and in such cases
authorities dealt with the male
representatives of the women.
The account in Lk. rests, therefore, on a series of
and the most plausible view is that the
list, or the tradition which he followed, for
combined the birth of Jesus with
the census under Quirinius, and assigned to
the latter a wrong
Perhaps Lk. simply confused Archelaus with his
father, for the former was very probably,
Antipas.
occasionally called Herod. This confusion of the two
Herods would have been all the easier if after Herocl
the Great's death
really was for a while
governor
of
Syria.
The same confusion may have
caused
and Tertullian to adopt the year
3
B.C.
for the birth
of
Jesus. The imperial census of Lk. is
perhaps a confusion of the census under Quirinius, put
incorrectly into the year 3
B.
with the remembrance
of the census
of
Roman citizens throughout the empire
which was actually ordered by Augustus in 6
for
the two events lay only two years apart.
who
(cp
47 above, on the two high priests in Lk.
was none too well informed on Jewish matters,
have inferred from
'
the family of David' that Joseph's
home was really in Bethlehem, and have supposed this
fact to be the true means of combining the already
current tradition of the birth in Bethlehem with the
incontestable tradition that Jesus was a Nazarene.
If
See the
investigation by Schiirer, 1
A
chronological error is not without analogies in
The
of Thendas
is
well known, and the collection
for the poor in Acts 11
,is perhaps confused
that of
Acts 21 whilst the
of the various famines
in
the
time
into one world-wide famine (Acts 11
28)
very
closely analogous to the case of
census.
808
CHRONOLOGY
CHRONOLOGY
these suppositions are admissible, the kernel of truth in
the narrative would be that Jesus was born not far from
the end of the Herodian period, and that the Roman
rule was set up in his earliest childhood. In both these
political occurrences an inner connection with the events
which brought in
the
Kingdom
was doubtless
observed in very early times, and the interest in making
the closeness of this connection as clear
as
possible may
have led to the enrichment of the narrative.
From Mt. we have
as
chronological evidence the
star and the slaughter of the innocents.
ing attempts, however, to subject this
star to astronomical laws do violence to
the idea of the narrator.
star moves in its own free
paths, appears
disappears, travels and stands still.
Even if the evangelist is wrong, and a conjunction or
a
comet lies at the basis of the story, it is impossible
determine froni what phenomena astrologers of ‘the East’
supposed themselves able to draw such inferences. The
star shines only in the legend, and derives its origin from
Nu.
and the apocalyptical imagery (cp Rev.
It has been matched by similar legendary stars at the
birth and at the death of many of the great men of the
heathen world.
As
to the murder of the innocents, if it were a
historical fact, Jesus must be supposed, since the male
children were killed from two years old and
to have been not less than a year
old, even
if
the murder was just before
Herods death: and in that case, since Herod died
shortly before the Passover of 4
B
. c . ,
Jesus must have
been born at the latest in
Josephus, however,
although he narrates with the most scrupulous exactness
all the horrors of Herods last years, has no knowledge
of the murder of the children.
On the other hand, he
gives almost exactly the same story
as
relating to Moses
(Ant.
xi.
9
the other suspicious circumstances in the narrative
in Mt.
cannot be set forth here.
In view of the
natural tendency of legends to connect important events
with one another and to mirror their mutual relations,
we
cannot infer from Mt. more than that Jesus was
probably born shortly before or after the death of
Herod-the
result that we reached from
The only results which have
a
very high degree of
probability are the date 30 A. for the death of Jesus,
and the period
of
about
year for the
of
his public ministry.
Besides this,
it
also probable that Jesus was born in
the agitated times when death was snatching the sceptre
from the hand of Herod the Great, and when with his
successors the Roman rule in
was coming again
in sight.
TABLE
OF
JES
U
S
, PROBABLE
D
ATES
.
circa 4
?-Birth of Jesus.
circa
28/29
of public work.
of Jesus.
C
HR
O
N
O
L
OGY OF THE
L
I
FE OF
starting
-
point for Pauline chronology must be the
journey to Rome, for here we can make
connection with the dates supplied by
history. The events immediately
journey
preceding-namely, the arrival of Festus in
Palestine, the
of
the proceedings against
Paul (Acts
251-6),
the hearing and the appeal
and
(27
I
)
the shipment of the prisoner-probably
followed one another rapidly; but the actual date
of
the arrival of Festus is matter of dispute
(see
the literature
Schurer,
I
n. 38, to which must now be added
0.
Holtzmann,
N T
1895, p.
125
248
Blass,
Acta
Ap.
1895, p.
Harnack,
Die Chron.
Lit.
1
For the most part the preference
is
given
to the year
60
or
59
since it was at the latest in
the summer of 62 (more probably in that of 61) that
llbinus succeeded Festus, and for the events related
Festus’s term
of
office one year will suffice. The
to an earlier date ‘is that it might not leave
for the events of the life of Paul, and that, ac-
to
at the imprisonment of Paul,
had already been in office ‘many years’
(That the courtly Josephus casually
nentions
as
wife, which she did not
till several years later, cannot be adduced as
a
argument in the same direction.
)
By the side of this commonly received date, however,
much earlier one has been advocated
Thus Kellner proposes
54
A
.
D .
Weber and
3.
Holtzmann, the summer of
55
Blass and Harnack,
j6
(Harnack,
0.
Holtzmann takes his
from Tacitus, Harnack starts from the chronology
Eusebius, the claims of which to our confidence his
abours have materially enhanced.
He shows that there
s
no ground for the common suspicion of the dates
by Eusebius for the procuratorships preceding and
that of Festus.
Eusebius s date for the year preceding the accession of Felix
from that of Tacitus by only one year. Nor is the difference
my greater
the date of his removal. According to Tacitus
Pallas fell into disfavour a few days before the fourteenth birth!
lay of Britannicus, which fell in the middle of Feb. 55
to
Josephus Pallas obtained of Nero an acquittal for
brother Felix from
accusation made by the Jews after his
Now, as Nero ascended the throne on the 13th Oct.
the time left under him by these two dates
is clearly too
for the events narrated hy Josephus. Two solutions are
Tacitus may he wrong by a year
the age of
; it may have been his fifteenth birthday, so that it
not till 56 that Pallas fell into disfavour
;
or else even after
fall Pallas may still have
access to the Emperor. Now,
Eusebius in his Chronicle supports the year 56 as that of the
of Festus, since he assigns it to the second year of
(Oct. 55 to Oct. 56; on the textual certainty of this date
iee Harnack, 236, n.
2).
If Felix entered on his
as
to Eusebius he did, between Jan.
and Jan.’
‘according to Tacitus between Jan. 52 and Jan.
he could in
.he summer of 56 be described in case of need, if we compare
:he average length of procuratorships, as having been in
Any objection, in fact, to this number 56 for the
accession of Festus, supported by Tacitus and Eusebius,
could come only from the requirements of the life of
Paul. We shall, therefore, leave the question open for
the present.
From the date thus obtained for the relegation of the
prisoner to the tribunal at Rome, let us in the first
place make our way backwards.
If, as we shall
see
to be probable, Paul carried out
the plan mentioned in Acts
2 0
his arrest must have
been a t Pentecost under the procurator
Felix, who
(2427)
prolonged the proceedings
for two years until his retirement from office.
This
mention of Felix
the two-years imprisonment in
Caesarea
are, indeed, regarded as
by
Straatman
1, De
der
and especially by
Weizsacker
1886,
but
the improbability of certain details, on which they rely,
is not conclusive, and, on the other hand, the rise of
this circumstantial narrative cannot be explained on
the ground that it is
a
doublet to Acts
That
Felix should hold over the prisoner for the chance of a
change of sentiment in Jerusalem, and, this change not
having come about, should finally leave him in prison
in the hope of leaving one popular deed to be remem-
bered by, agrees with his character and the habit of
procurators.
That Acts tells nothing about these two
years is much less surprising than its silence about the
year and a half
Corinth and the three years in
Ephesus.
That a provisional imprisonment of two
years could be imposed even on a Roman citizen is
By
(the article ‘Felix’ in
[Roman Catholic], 1887
Weber
Gesch. der
des 9.
des
1889,
0.
Holtzmann
Harnack
following such older scholars as Bengel,
Siiskind,
and Rettig.
810
CHRONOLOGY
shown by the two-years imprisonment in Rome.
It
is likewise obvious that Paul would not have had his
case transferred to Rome except in dire necessity.
The dry notice in Acts 24
27
is, therefore, without
doubt trustworthy, and the arrest of Paul
is
to be put
two years earlier than the arrival of Festus---that is, at
Pentecost
54
or 58.
For the events before the arrest in Jerusalem we
give the dates in two numbers : one on the assumption
that this happened at Pentecost 54
;
the
other, that it was
in
58. The journey to
Jerusalem from Philippi (Acts 204-21
which is related, with the exception of the episode at
from the we-source,'
begun
after 'the days of unleavened bread,' and there is
no
reason for supposing that Paul did not carry out his
plan (20
of arriving at Jerusalem by Pentecost. The
itinerary from the beginning of the Passover is given
us as follows :-At Philippi (Passover) seven days to
Troas five days a t Troas seven days to Patara eight
days,-in all twenty-seven days. This leaves twenty-
two days before Pentecost, which was ample for the
journey to Jerusalem except in case of a very exception-
ally nnfavourable passage from Patara to the coast of
Syria.
Of these
days twelve were occupied
as
follows :-At Tyre seven days,
to
one, to
one, to Jerusalem two to three; so that ten
days remain for the voyage from Patara to Tyre (which
in ordinary weather required four to five days) and
for the stay at Czsarea, the duration of neither of
which is stated.
the stops, which in view
of
the brisk coasting-trade were surely not necessary,
we may infer that satisfactory progress was made by
the travellers. The departure from Philippi, which was
the conclusion of Paul's missionary career,
is,
therefore,
to be put just after the Passover of the year of the arrest.
For the dates earlier than this point, the chronologist
would be wholly at sea without Acts; and no good
CHRONOLOGY
Paul wrote
Cor.; at the end of this year or the
beginning of the next in Corinth, Romans, and the
letter of introduction for Phoebe to the Christians
at
Ephesus (Rom.
About this time may belong,
too, the undoubtedly authentic note Tit.
3
12-14
in
which case the Macedonian Nicomedia is meant, and
the plan for the winter was not carried out.
The stay in Ephesus had lasted, according to
8
over two years and
a
quarter (Acts2031 speaks
reason appears for not trusting the
information which it gives.
On the
great
which ended at
Paul had started from
(
I
Cor.
Acts
and journeyed by way of Troas, where he carried
on his work for a short time
does
not
mention Troas at all), to Macedonia
Cor.
7 5 ) .
That he stayed there long is not
for, if he had
done so, the length of his stay would probably have
been given as in the case
Greece (Corinth).
Moreover, the plans made in Ephesus
(
I
Cor.
1 6 5
Cor.
)
had in view only
a
short stay in Mace-
donia, for
(
I
Cor. 168 cp
6 )
expected
to
leave
Ephesus after Pentecost (which fell somewhere between
May and
June) and to be in Corinth so early
that, even if he should not decide to pass the winter
there, his visit should, nevertheless, not be too short.
This would allow
at
most three months
on
the way.
Now, he may have waited rather longer in Macedonia,
in order to learn the impression made by
(the
bearer of
Cor.
)
but, even
so,
we cannot reckon more
than from four to five months for the whole journey.
In
Corinth itself he stayed
three months,
and then
to
Macedonia, where he surely did
not stay long, since he had been there just three
months earlier. Moreover, he had, no doubt, formed
in Corinth his plan of being in Jerusalem by Pentecost,
the additional time which the unexpectedly long
journey (occasioned by Jewish plots,
which
made the direct route impossible) must have cost him
would of itself have forbidden an unnecessarily long stay.
H e probably, therefore, reached Philippi but little before
the Passover and we have for the whole journey from
Ephesus through Troas, Macedonia, Greece, and back
to Macedonia
eight to ten months-namely,
about the space of time from Pentecost
53/57
to
Pass-
over 54/58.
In the
of
53/57
in Macedonia
Or autumn
;
see C
ORINTHIANS
,
of three years), s o that
must-have
come
to
Ephesus at Pentecost or in the
summer of
From there, after he had already
sent one letter to Corinth
( I
Cor.
he wrote in the
beginning of 53/57 our
I
Cor., and later had occasion
to write to Corinth for yet a third time
Cor.
7
: the
letter is perhaps preserved in
Cor.
From this long stay in Ephesus, which doubtless
formed the second great epoch in Paul's missionary
activity in the Greek world, we go back to
the first-namely, the first visit to Corinth
cp
I
and Cor.). This appears to have
lasted about two years, since
to
the one year and a half
of 1811 must be added, in case
refers only to the
time spent in the house of
the previous
time, in which Paul was trying to work from the
gogne as a base, as well as the later
of
How
much time lay, however, between the
departure from Corinth and the arrival at Ephesus in
we cannot tell, although the very sketchiness of
our only authority
makes it easier to
believe that the author is drawing here (except for the
words,
from a written
source than that he relies on oral tradition or his own
imagination.
Oral tradition would either have omitted
the journey altogether, or have narrated what happened at
Jerusalem in some detail. All suspicion of tendency is
excluded by the brevity and obscurity of the passage.
For the journey thus barely mentioned in Acts one year
would be ample time.
In that case
would have left
Corinth in the summer of 49/53, having arrived there in
the summer of
In the beginning
of
this period
of two years
was written. (The genuineness
of
Thess. must be left undetermined.
)
Before the long stay in Corinth falls the Macedonian
mission, with the necessary journeys, which, however,
occupied hut one day each
For the
whole journey from Troas to Corinth
a
few months would
It
is, therefore, possible that Paul set out after
the opening of navigation in March of the same year
in the summer of which he arrived for his long stay in
Corinth.
U p to this point the probability of the
is
very considerable.
The results may be
as
follows
:-
TABLE VIII.
-L
IFE O
F
P
AUL
:
E
NTRANCE
INTO
E
UROPE
TO
AT
R
OME
.
from
Troas, followed by mission
in
Summer
and Acbaia.
I
Thess.
Summer
to Jerusalem and
tioch ;
journey through Asia Minor to Ephesus.
Summer
Pentecost
way of Troas
and Macedonia to Achaia and return to Philippi.
Passover-Pentecost
with the contribution,
from Philippi to Jerusalem.
in
Autumn
57/61. -Journey to Rome.
in Rome.
Passing now
to
the period before
we find
that Acts supplies us with far less trustworthy accounts
and is wholly without dates nor have we
any Pauline epistles written in these years.
Highlyprobable, nevertheless (jnst because
of the peculiar way in which it is given), although not
See, however, C
ORINTHIANS
,
18.
812
CHRONOLOGY
CHRONOLOGY
without editorial additions, is the representation preserved
in Acts1540-168, that Troas was the goal of a zigzag
journey from Antioch in Syria through the interior of
Asia Minor.
The seeming restlessness (Acts
a t any rate in the latter part of the inland journey-may
imply that the time occupied was comparatively short.
In
that case, the start from Antioch might fall in the
year 46/50
but even that is very problematical. We
are, therefore, thrown back for the chronology wholly
Here, however, it is not
perfectly plain whether the fourteen years
in
2
I
include or follow the three years in 118. For the
former view may be
the change
of
prepositions
after') and
in the course of,'
but
this can be explained better
An
(
then
having been introduced in
between the two
of
and
2
I
,
was used, instead of
in order
not to exclude the space of time between the two
of
and
the fifteen days in Jerusalem.
(Perhaps, also, in
21
the three years had completely
elapsed before the first visit, whereas the second visit
have been made in the course of the fourteenth
year.
) On
this view seventeen years would have elapsed
from theconversion of Paul to the conference in Jerusalem,
out
of which time he had spent three years in Arabia and
fourteen in Syria and Cilicia
(1
17
The latter period
was certainly, the former (at
occupied in the work
of
an apostle (Gal.
123
After the conference in Jerusalem followed a stay in
Antioch ( 2
11-21).
Since 3
I
is introduced without any
sign of transition, the simplest supposition is that this
(31
RV
'open setting forth') and its
results (that is, the mission in Galatia) come chrono-
logically after, but not too long after, the events
narrated previously.
This would agree, also, with the
most natural interpretation of Gal.
If we look now at the parallel narrative in Acts, there
is, in the first place, no doubt that in
we have
Acts, as in Galatians, Paul and Barnabas
come with others in their company to Jerusalem, and
return to Antioch after arriving at an understanding with
the church in Jerusalem.
To
Antioch come also, in both
cases (although in Acts no mention is made of a visit of
Peter), members of the Jerusalem church, who might in
Acts also, just as in Galatians, have been said to come
from James.
In
Acts
11
27-30
however, we find,
besides, mention of another earlier journey of Paul and
Barnabas from Antioch to Jerusalem and back again,
after the journey from Damascus to Jerusalem (Acts
9
26-30
Since Gal.
makes this im-
possible as a separate visit to Jerusalem, the two visits
from Antioch (Acts
and Acts
15)
must have been
really one
this would explain the further points of
resemblance that
on
both occasions (in one case after,
in the other before, the journey of the apostles) prophets
come from Jerusalem to Antioch
1 1 2 7
and that
both times, although in different ways, a contribution
of
money plays a part
Gal.
Cp also to
the elders'
Now, although this visit
is in general more accurately described by
there
are many reasons for thinking that it is chronologically
placed more correctly by Acts
11
27
T h e insertion by mistake a t the end of chap. 1 4 is easy to under-
stand
;
for whilst large parts of chap.
and the whole
15
are certainly the work of the final author of Acts (notice that
the style is the same as in Acts 1-12), a t the same time the 'we
source' can he detected (as is now more'and more widely held)
a s far hack as 13
I
,
and we can ascribe to it the return to Antioch
as
well as the later departure for the journey of
(without the intervening narrative), although we can no longer
restore the original connection. Accordingly, since the
had
not been
before Acts 13J to give a concrete account of
any Gentile mission, a n undated account (perhaps not perfectly
accurate)
of
a
conference in Jerusalem (to which the missionaries
came from Antioch) which treated the subject of Gentile
missions could be inserted after
better than earlier. The
author may have bad some reason to suppose that the contri-
bution of money (the fact but not the date of which be had
learned :
it
was not mentioned in his source as the occasion
on
Gal.
the same events described as in Gal.
2.
the last visit of
Paul
t o
Jerusalem;
must have
brought on the occasion of the earlier stay in Antioch. If
io
we can see bow, in consequence of the two periods of
in Antioch, he was led to suppose that there had been
wo visits to Jerusalem and so to create a contradiction to Gal.
All this becomes
more probable if the districts visited
n Acts 13
could. be called Galatia hv Paul : a
which
:an now
regarded as proved
is
Paul
have called them
(Gal.
(see
G
A
L
A
TI
A
).
the other band, it can be seen in Acts 15
that a t the
the great question
ahout the Syrian Christians.
about those whose conversion is related in Acts
If these hypotheses are correct, between the
in Jerusalem (Gal. 2
I
)
and the journey from
to Macedonia
lie the missionary
journey
begun and ended at Antioch, and
the zig-zag tour through Asia Minor
the beginning of the original account of which has been,
somewhat confused by the insertion of
One year, however, is not enough for these journeys.
The hindrance hinted at in Acts166
may perhaps
have been connected with the winter season, if the date
[March
which we have ventured to give above
for the passage from Troas to Macedonia is correct.
In
that case the missionaries would perhaps have passed
the preceding winter in Antioch
the
missionary journey of
would then fall in the
open season before this winter and thus the departure
from Antioch related in Acts
would have been
two years before the
from Troas to Europe
(that is, in the spring of 45/49), and the conference
in Jerusalem immediately before-perhaps (if we may
infer from analogies) at the time of the Passover.
The conversion of
Paul would fall (Gal.
21)
fourteen
or
seventeen years earlier-that is, in the year
or
28/32.
When Gal. was written is for the
general chronology a matter of
TO
the table given above should there-
fore be prefixed
:-
TABLE
~ ~ . - L
I F E
O F
P
AUL
: C
ONVERSION TO
ENTRANCE INTO
E
UROP
E
.
or
of Paul.
34/38 or
visit to Jerusalem.
Three-years stay in
and Damascus.
Eleven- or fourteen-years work in Syria and
One-yearjourney through
Three further passages can perhaps serve as proof of
The first
con-
taining the mention of the famine under
Claudius, loses, indeed, its significance,
if the visit there mentioned had as its object the agree-
ment
the mission-fields, not the bringing
of
a
contribution
but it perhaps explains the
combination
of this journey (of 45/49
A
.
D.
)
with the death
of
James the
son
of Zebedee, which
happened
between 42 and 44. Josephus
tells
( A n t .
xx.
5 2
and 26
153) of a famine in
which can well be put in one of these years, and so
could have been foreseen in the preceding year (cp
Schiirer,
1
n.
8).
By a singular coincidence there
was in 49 also, one of the alternative years for the
journey of
and Barnabas to Jerusalem, a much
more widely extended famine (see, for authorities,
Schiirer,
i b . ) .
It is possible, then, that the author
knew that the conference was in a
year,
it, by mistake with the famine of 44 instead
of that of 49, and that this assisted the confusion
which resulted in the creation of
an
extra visit to
For the different possibilities see the Introductions to the
N T for the latest hypotheses, Clemen,
Cilicia.
in Jerusalem, mission in Galatia.
the results reached
1893.
We
can make nothing of the statement in
Even were its authenticity beyond dispute we have no means
whatever of determining the year of the
referred to
and Wieseler's choice of 56 or 57
devoid
any solid foundation. Nor is it possible to infer any date from
the
in Acts
of Agrippa and Berenice's presence in
a t the time when Paul's case was
CHRONOLOGY
Jerusalem.
The confusion of the two famine years is
the more pardonable because both fell under Claudius
the transformation of the two local
into one
which affected the whole empire is easily explicable.
All this, however, is simply a possibility. If the year
of the conference was 45
the two journeys dis-
tinguished by Lk. would fall
so
close together that we
can easily understand their being regarded as distinct,
on the supposition that Lk. knew nothing of the raising
of a collection and its delivery
on
the occasion of Paul's
last journey to Jerusalem, but did
of a famine
about the time of the conference and of succour given
to the primitive church through Paul.
The second notice is that of the expulsion of the Jews
from Rome under Claudius, which was (Acts
The
year, however, of this edict, which
(
also
is not certain. Wieseler
conjectures,
without conclusive arguments, that it was issued in the
year
of
the expulsion of the mathematici
Ann.
Dio
is, in
52
( 7 6 ,
ed.
1882)
gives
as
the date,
the authority of Josephus (in the existing text of whose
writings we find
no
mention of the matter), the ninth
year of
date not favourable to
the earlier alternative reached above for
of
Paul's
arrival in Corinth, the summer
of
Orosius's
statement, however, cannot be verified.
Finally, from Acts924
and
Cor.
1132
it
appears that Paul's first visit to Jerusalem was
before Paul's arrival at Corinth.
occasioned by a persecution at
a
time when a viceroy' of Aretas, king
of the
resided at Damascus.
The latest Damascene coins with the
head of Tiberius (which form one of the proofs brought
together by Schiirer,
n. 14, to prove, against
Marquardt and Mommsen, that Damascus was not all
the time under Arabian rule) belong to the year 33-34,
and it is in itself not probable, though it is possible,
that Damascus was given to Aretas by Tiberius, who
died in March 37
while under
such
favours are well known.
If Caligula's reign bad
already begun, the flight of Paul would have fallen a t
least two years later than all but one of the dates assigned
for it above.
However, the argument is uncertain.
Nothing known to us makes the possession
of
Damascus
by Aretas in the last years of Tiberius actually impos-
sible. If that should be excluded by discoveries
of
coins or other new evidence, we should then (the
often assailed genuineness of
Cor.
being pre-
supposed) have to combine the numbers
Gal.
2 1 (so
that there would be only fourteen years between
Paul's conversion and the conference in Jerusalem),
or to shorten the time estimated for the mission in
Asia Minor and Europe,
or
else to omit from the
life of Paul the two-year imprisonment in
under the procurator Feiix.
'At the same time, the coins of Tiberius for the year
33-34 exclude the year 28 as that of Paul's conversion.
If we assign the imprisoninent to 54, the data of Gal.
must be explained
referring to the total of fourteen
years,
so
that
conversion would fall in
In
favour of this is its nearness to the death of Jesus.
For
I
Cor.
does not w-ell permit an interval of
any length between Jesus' death and Paul's arrival at
Damascus.
Conversely, the same consideration
de-
mands that, if we regard
58
as the date of the imprison-
ment, we should calculate from the statements in Gal.
a period of seventeen years, so that 32 would be the
year of Paul's conversion. Neither series, accordingly,
conflicts with what we know of those times but it may
readily be asked : Are we warranted in casting discredit
on the statements of Eusebius?
How now stands the case with reference to the
close of Paul's life?
The travellers set out for
CHRONOLOGY
Rome in the autumn of
56
or 60, and arrived in the
spring of the subsequent year (Acts
For the next two years
was kept in easy imprisonment, and to
this period belong Colossians and Philemon,
assign them to the Czsarean imprisonment.
After the lapse of the two years
the trial,
about which we have some information from a note
to 'Timothy now incorporated in
Tim., and from
Philippians.
Of its duration and issue we know
nothing.
The prediction that Paul would die without
meeting his friends again
the sudden
breaking
off
of Acts, and the utter absence of all trace
of any later activity
on
the part of the apostle, will
always incline one to believe that Paul's presentiment
was fulfilled, and that his trial ended in a sentence of
death.
If
so,
the great apostle died in the course of
the year 59 or 63.
either case his martyrdom
was before the persecution of Nero, and had no
connection with it.
Nor does any of the older
narratives conflict with this. When Eusebius in his
Chronicle assigns the death of Peter and Paul to the
fourteenth or thirteenth year
of
Nero (the number
varies in different texts)-Le., 68 or 67
is in
conflict with himself, for he elsewhere sets this event in
the beginning
of
the persecution of Nero, which beyond
all question was in the summer of 6 4 ; and more-
over,
as
Harnack insists
241
),
his date lies under
the suspicion of being occasioned by the legendary
twenty-five years stay of Peter at Rome, in combination
with the story that the apostles left Jerusalem twelve
years after the death of Jesus :
+
25
make
But neither is the tradition
of
the
death of the two apostolic leaders by
any means
so
well grounded
as
assumes
).
In Eusebius, the contemporaneousness lies
under the same suspicion as the date.
Clem. Rom.
chap.
5
gives no hint of it, and the summary introduction
of other sufferers in chap.
6
gives us no right, in face of
the
of the sufferings endured by Peter and
Paul during the whole of their apostolic activity, to
apply all that
is
said in chap.
6,
and therefore the death
of these apostles, to the persecution of Nero.
The
testimony of Dionysius
H E
26
8),
(
After both teaching together
as
far
as
to Italy,
they suffered martyrdom at the same time') is to be
taken
If
the two great apostles
died a violent death for their faith in Rome under Nero,
it is easy to see how tradition might lose sight of
interval of one year or five years, and bring the two
martyrdoms together.
The rapidity with which in the
popular memory Paul receded
Peter, a pheno-
menon already noticeable
Clem.
and Ignat.
(ad
4), admits
of
a peculiarly simple explanation
if Paul was withdrawn from the scene
so
much sooner.
Whatever testimony can be found in
literature
down to Eusebius for the liberation
of
Paul from his
first imprisonment at Rome has been
collected anew by Spitta
Gesch.
des
1).
In truth, all
that can
taken account of before Eusebius is the
apostle's intention intimated in Rom.
24
and mentioned
in the Muratorian
(except that the apostle's
plans were
so
often upset by events), the Pauline
fragments of the Pastoral Epistles (if they ought not
also to be brought within the period of missionary
activity known to
since otherwise they would present
the post-captivity labours as a strange repetition of
preceded the captivity), and the expression
boundary
of
the west in Clem.
Rom.
It
is only the last that we can take seriously.
Since,
however, Ignatius speaks of Rome as
west,' ad
and Clement himself has immediately before
opposed
to
(
east
meaning therefore
at least Rome among other places, it is not at all
CHRONOLOGY
CHRONOLOGY
difficult, especially keeping
in
view the Pauline metaphor
of the
(conflict), to suppose that it is this
Rome) that is indicated
as
If, in spite of
this, the hypothesis of the liberation of
Paul
should be
accepted, we should have to add to our chronological
table
:
59/63. -Liberation of Paul;
64.--
Martyrdom.
The apostle's eventful life would thus
end with a period completely obscured in the popular
memory, a period the events of which have not left
a
trace behind.
TABLE
OF
P
AUL
: L
AST
P
ERIOD
.
(autumn).-Paul
set
out
for
Rome.
57/61
Rome.
imprisonment
; Col.
Philem.
of
Paul.
[otherwise]
of
Paul.]
C
HRONOLOGY O
F
THE
C
HURCHES IN
P
A
L
ES
-
T I N E . - ~ .
If the dates
so
far accepted are correct, the
whole Palestinian development described
by the author of Acts (almost our only
authority for this period) between the
death of
and the conversion of Paul, finally
culminating in the death of Stephen and the dispersion
of the church
in
Jerusalem, must
be
crowded into the
limits of two years, or possibly even of a single year.
According
to
I
Cor.
15
there happened in this space of time the
appearance
of
Jesus to Peter and the twelve (as to the
time and place
of
which it is not possible to reach a
certain conclusion, but with which the return to Jerusalem
is
most clearly connected), his appearance to the
500
brethren (perhaps to be identified with the occurrence
narrated in Acts
2,
which in that case was
in
Jerusalem,
and, if Acts 2 is correct, fifty days after the death of
Jesus), the conversion of him who afterwards became
head of the church
of
Jerusalem, James the Lord's
brother (since this beyond doubt happened a t the time
of the appearance to him mentioned in
I
Cor.
and
the conversion (by the same means) of many who after-
wards became missionaries.
The necessity of
a
repre-
sentation of the Hellenists (Acts
6
suggests that from
the return of the twelve until that time a considerable
period had elapsed, which is, however, very insufficiently
filled out by the narratives in chaps.
As
to
later events, in the
in Acts
9
11
illustrating the geographical
extension of Christianity, the author
plainly does not mean to assert that the
events described followed
one
another
in
mutually exclusive periods of time.
If the accounts are
historical, the missionary operations of Philip and Peter
were undertaken while Paul was working in Damascus
and Antioch (including Syria) in
or
A.
D
.
The anonymous beginnings of Christianity in Damascus
and Antioch belong, of course, to the time before Paul
took hold
in
those places.
If the recollections lying at the
basis of Acts
11
22-26
are approximately correct, Barnabas
must have left Jerusalem finally for Antioch not very
long after Paul's first visit to Jerusalem in 34/38 or
35/39
A.D.,
and Philip
by that time have already
removed to Caesarea (Acts
3.
After these events we hear nothing until the death
of James the son of Zebedee between 41, the year
in
which Herod Agrippa I. began to rule over
and
44, theyearof
Iftheaccountin
Acts is correct, about this same time Peter left Jerusalem
permanently
and James the Lord's brother
must have already berome the leader of the church
With this agrees excellently the abun-
dantly attested old Christian tradition that the twelve
left Jerusalem twelve years after
Jesus'
death (see
in Harnack,
I t may be in error
simply in transferring to the twelve what applied only
to their head, Peter. At all events, Acts tells
us
nothing
The traditions are, however, very scanty.
of the ten left after the death
of
James. The twelfth
year would be 42
In that case
must have
sought, immediately after his accession, by his proceed-
ings against the Christians to secure the confidence of
the Jews.
4. If the results reached above with reference to what
we read in Acts15
and
are right, our next
information relates to the year 45 or 49, when Peter,
Paul, and Barnabas gather again a t the conference
round James, a t whose side (Gal.
appears John, the
son
of Zebedee. Paul and Barnabas return to Antioch
Peter leaves Jerusalem again very soon, and lives for
a
while among the Christians a t Antioch (Gal.
5. In
54/58, when Paul comes to Jerusalem with the
contribution, James is master of the situation (Acts
21
18).
This is the last information from the
about
the church in Palestine.
6.
According to the received text
of
Josephus
(Ant.
xx.
9
I
),
James suffered martyrdom in 62-that is, under the
high priest
(son
of the high priest of the same
name known to us from the Gospels)-but before the
arrival in
of Albinus, the successor of the pro-
curator Festus.
(After Festus's early death Annas had
been appointed high priest by Agrippa
The passage
is not free, however, from the suspicion
inter-
polation.
Hegesippus
(Eus.
H E
23
seems to
have put the death of James somewhat nearer to the
destruction of
Shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem
(
A.
D
.
70)
the Christians removed to Pella in
The year is
not certain, but was probably 67, when, after the down-
fall of Cestius, Jewish fanaticism overreached itself.
I N T H E
H
ISTORY
O F
PRIMI-
TIVE
C
H
R
I
ST
IA
N
ITY
. -Here can be men-
tioned .only those few points on which a
stray ray of light happens to fall.
I n the
nature of the case, detailed discussions can be given only
in the special articles.
I
.
Peter, the last trace of whom we
found in
A.D.
45/49, or somewhat later, at Antioch,
was later a travelling missionary after the manner
of
Paul,
is
to be inferred from the allusions to him in
I
Cor.
322
95.
I
Pet.
5
even if the epistle was
not written by Peter,
his intimate association
with Paul's former companions
and
and
I
Pet.
1
his missionary activity in the provinces of
Asia
For this latter there was room at any rate
after the imprisonment of Paul in 54/58, and for most of
the provinces even before that time : namely, from the
moment when Paul transferred his chief activity to
Macedonia, Achaia, and Asia.
In regard to Peter's stay
in Rome, for which
I
Pet.
is
an argument (it is
certainly to be put later than the end of Paul's trial),
and in regard to the question whether it was in the
persecution after the fire in
Rome
(July 64) that he
suffered martyrdom (cp Clem. Rom.
see
P
ETER
.
The assumption
of
a
contemporaneous martyrdom
of Paul and Peter finds
110
support in the earliest
documents : see above,
79.
to John's residence in Ephesus and his
end,
see
J
OHN
.
3. Whilst the persecution under Nero was doubtless
in the main limited to Rome,
the
last years of Domitian,
especially in Asia Minor, in consequence of the insistence
on
the worship of the Emperor, may have been a period
of many conflicts with
T o this time (say 93-96) many scholars assign Hebrews
and
I
Peter (while others carry them down to the reign
of Trajan),
as
well
as
the Apocalypse of
ohn (see the special articles).
Not much
ater, perhaps about the end of the first
writings.
For
further
discussion, with
references to
sources
and
biblio-
graphy
see
Schiirer,
especially
die
Ramsav.
The
Church
in
the
818
CHRYSOLITE
century, were written Ephesians, the Third
Gospel,
and
Acts.
Gospel
of
Mark must, apart possibly from
some later additions, have been written before this;
there is no need to suppose
a
much later date than
70.
The Fourth Gospel, after which, probably, came the
Johaunine epistles, can well, by reason
of
its near rela-
tion to
and for other reasons, have been written at
the same time as, or not long after, the Third Gospel.
The first third of the second century best suits the latest
books of the NT-Matthew, the Pastoral Epistles, and
James, all
of
them doubtless products of the Roman
church.
Jude may have been written somewhat earlier,
2
Peter somewhat later.
See the Introductions to the
N T and Harnack,
TABLE
O
THER
D
ATES
(
or
of Philip and Peter in Palestine.
34/38 or
removes to Antioch.
Between
and
of James, son of Zebedee; Peter
(Gal. 2
resides a t Antioch
brings contribution to Jerusalem (Acts
21 18).
Later.-Peter becomes
a
travelling missionary.
62 or later?-Death
of
James.
Christians remove from Jerusalem to
of
Jerusalem.
Not much after
Gospel of Mark written.
93-56
and
I
Pet.
to many): Apoc.
About end of
Lk Acts Jn. Epp.
of
Jn.
First third of znd
Ja., Pet.
B
IBLIOGRAPHY
.
A.
der
Chron.
vols.
and
d e r
;
H.
Gesch. des
1874
Schrader,
1878
;
B.
Neteler,
A
Zeitrechnung
Miinster, 1879, pt.
1885, pt.
1886: Hommel,
in
Leipsic,
Floigl Gesch. des
1883
(COT,
Chron.
1887 ; Lederer,
Die
1888 ; Winckler,
A T
1892; Kautzsch,
1894
(a
tabular chronological
to the end
of the second century
ET
by J.
Taylor) ‘Zeitrechnung’ by Kiehm in his
pp.
;
by Gust.
P R E P )
Die
Chronol. der Gesch.
Aeg. Bab.
Chr.
also
the
the time of
the
Judges: Noldeke,
des
A
For
the Monarchy (besides the histories of Israel): Wellhausen,
des Buchs der Kbnige
der
des
in
Krey, ‘Zur
des B.
der Konige in
pp.
;
W.
R.
1882, pp.
ed.
ed.
Kamph.
Chron. der
cp
3
Klostermann
pp.
Riihl, ‘Die
des
von Ephesus
in the
Phil.
pp.
and ‘Chron.
der Konige von Israel
Juda,’ in
Benzinger,
the
‘De
chron.
bet Perz. tijdvak der Joodsche geschied.’ in
Royal
Academy Literature Section,
trans.
lated into German in
of
essays.
etc.
:
A. van
nacker
e t le second temple
and
Pan
I.;
Esdras
en
(reply to Kue.),
Kosters,
Israel in
he,
;
Ed. Meyer, Die
des
1896 : Charles
C . Torrey, The
and
of
Ezra-Neh., 1896.
B. New
the literature cited
in
the course
the article, especially 40 (note) and
51-56
(notes).
Cp
C. H. Turner in Hastings’
DB.
leaves Jerusalem ; James leader.
(Gal. 2
85)
39-84).
CHRYSOLITE
one
of
the found
of the wall of the New Jerusalem in the
(Rev.
21
IO).
It is not improbable that in ancient time
the term was applied to
a
particular shade of
See
S
TONES
.
In modern
Chrysolite is the name generally given to the yellow
o
yellowish-green varieties of olivine, the transparen
varieties being known as peridote (cp
T
OPAZ
).
CHURCH
in
is
used
to
translate
in Ex.
28
(cp Ezek.
Aq.
transliterate], Dan.
[see Sw.]). I n Ezek. 28 13
has ‘chrysolite,’ but
lsewhere E V ‘beryl,‘ which more probably represents
ee B
ERYL
,
3,
S
T
O
NE
CHRYSOPRASE,
CHRYSOPRASUS
one
of
the foundations
of
the wall of the New
in the Apocalypse (Rev.
21
In ancient
imes the term was perhaps applied to a shade of B
ERYL
;
The word does not occur in
has chrysoprase’
or
in Ezek.
16 where AV
has
‘agate’ and
‘ruby’ (see
C
HALCEDONY
);
and haa ‘chrysoprase’ also for
Ezek. 28
where EV has emerald’ and
carbuncle’ (see C
ARBUNCLE
,
E
MERALD
).
In mod.
he chrysoprase is an agate coloured apple-green by the presence
oxide of nickel.
CHUB, RV
C U
B
Theod.
f correct, is the name of a people
;
but
has
and
is doubtless right in
Cub,
as a corruption of
which
repeatedly in the plural form L
UBIM
See
M
INGLED
P
EOPLE
.
CHUN,
R V
I
Ch.
an
city
by
Ges.
(following
V 8
34)
with the
modern
(Rom.
between Laodicea and
Hierapolis. The reading
is, however, certainly
(cp
in
See
and, for a
suggested emendation, M
EROM
.
CHURCH
I.
Name
and
word
has an important history behind it when
it first appears in Christian literature.
It
was
regular designation of the
as-
sembly of the whole body
of
citizens in
a
free Greek state, ‘called
out’
or summoned to the
transaction
of
public business.
It
had then been
employed by the Greek translators
of
the
OT
as
a
natural rendering
of
the Hebrew
(see A
SSEMBLY
),
the whole ‘congregation’
of
Israel, regarded in its
entirety
the people of God.
A
less technical Greek
usage, current
the apostolic age, is illustrated by the
disorderly assemblage in the theatre at Ephesus (Acts
19
where we find also by way
of
contrast a reference
to the lawful assembly’
39,
The Jewish usage is found in Stephen’s speech when
he speaks of Moses
as
having been in the church in
the wilderness’
(738).
Thus the traditions
of
the word
enabled it to appeal alike to Jews and Gentiles as
a
fitting designation of the new people of God, the
Christian society regarded as a corporate whole.
In this full sense we find it in Tesus’ declaration to
Peter,
I
will
2.
NT
usage
in Gospels.
build my church’
:
Mt.
Here it
re-
garded
as
the divine
that is to
be
the keys
of
which are to
be placed
the apostle’s hands :
see
B
INDING
AN
D
L
OOS
IN
G
.
It is thus equated with ‘the kingdom of
heaven’ which Christ has come to establish, each of
the designations being derived from the
of
the sacred commonwealth. The force of the phrase,
as well
as
the emphasis given by the position
of
the
pronoun in the original, comes out if for
a
moment we
to
substitute the word Israel’ for the word
church
’
(Hort)
;
and the thought thus finds
a
parallel
in the quotation of Amos
in Acts
I
will
build again the tabernacle of David which is fallen
down.
The only other passage where the word
in the
Gospels
Mt.
18
where ‘the church’ is contrasted
with the one or two more whom the erring brother
has refused to hear.
We are here again reminded of
the whole congregation of Israel from which offenders
were cut off: the delinquent becomes henceforth
as
one
who belongs to the ‘nations’ outside, and as a traitor
Though
represents
(B
ERYL
) in Gen.
2
12.
820
CHURCH
CHURCH
.
to the chosen people
6
It is possible indeed that the primary reference in this
place
be
to
the Jewish
but if
so,
the
principle remains unchanged for the Christian
;
and i n either case, while some local embodiment of the
Church is thought of
as
the means by which action is
taken, the meaning is that the whole weight of the
divine society is to be brought to bear upon the offender.
While the Christian society is still confined within the
walls of Jerusalem, the church' is the designation of
the whole body of the believers,
as
con-
trasted with the other residents in the
city (Acts
511
cp
8
I
3)
but it is possible that the
appellation
,is
here due to the historian himself,
the events many years later. When, as the result
of Stephen's testimony and death, believers are to be
found in all parts of Palestine, they are still summed up
in the same single word : the church
(RV
not the
churches,' AV) throughout the whole of
and
Galilee and Samaria had peace, being builded' (Acts
9
cp Mt.
as above). The same full sense of the
word is found in Paul's epistles at a time
when Christian communities were estab-
lished in various cities of Asia Minor and of Greece
:
apostles, prophets, and teachers are set in the church
by God
(
I
Cor.
'the church
of
God' is con-
trasted with Jews and Greeks
The Church is thus the new chosen people: it is
the Israel of God' (cp Gal.
6
16).
Jews and Gentiles
who enter it are merged into unity
the two are made
one (Eph. 214
16).
It is the body of Christ,'
as
inseparable from him.
Christ and the Church
are not two, but one-as it was written of earthly
marriage, they twain shall be one flesh (Eph.
The main practical anxiety of Paul's life appears to
have been the preservation of the scattered communities
of Christians, which had sprung up under his preaching,
in a living unity with the earlier communities of Palestine,
so
as
to form with them a single whole, the undivided
and indivisible representative of Christ in the world.
.
It is noteworthy that Peter never
the word
Yet, in spite of the absence both of this
word and of the Pauline metaphor of
'the body,' no writer displays such a
wealth of imagery in describing the holy society.
Once
he speaks of it
as a
holy nation
(
I
Pet.
twice as
a 'people'
I
O
),
twice as a 'house'
twice
as a
flock
( 5
3),
twice
as
a
priesthood (2
5 9),
and
twice again, in
a
word wholly his own,
as
a
brother-
hood' ('Love the brotherhood,'
217
:
'your brotherhood
which is in the world,'
59).
Side by side with the full sense
of
the word
we find another and a wholly natural use of it, which
seems at first sight to conflict with the con-
ception
of
unity which is dominant
the
The
new Israel of God,' like its predecessor, was scattered
over a wide area.
Wherever Christians were gathered
as such, there was the Church
of
God. Hence we find
such an expression as at Antioch, in the church, there
were prophets and teachers
the participle throwing emphasis upon the
' i n
what
the church,'
and again, 'the
church of God which is in Corinth'
and even, the
church that is in their house' (Rom.
In all these
cases the sense of unity
be felt : it is the one
Church, thought
of as
existing in various localities.
From this, however, it is an easy passage to
of
'
the
church of the Thessalonians
( I
Thess.
1
I
Thess.
1
I
)
and even to use the word in the plural, the churches
of Galatia or
of
Asia
( I
Cor.
16
I
the churches
of
God'
Thess. 14). The transition is naturally
found on Greek ground, where the use of
the plural would be helped by its common employment
for the
of Greek cities
whereas in Palestine,
where the Jewish connotation of the word was more
821
passages we have hitherto examined.
sensibly felt, it was more natural to speak of the local
representative of the
under the designation of
(cp Jas.
The
then, are the local embodiments of
the Church
:
the distribution of the one into many is
purely geographical.
The unity
unaffected : there is no other Church than
'the church of God.'
When we pass
outside the canon we find the same conception of the
Church both
as
a living unity and
the divinely pre-
ordained successor to the ancient Israel.
Thus in the
Shepherd the Church appears .to
as
an aged
woman, even as Sion had appeared to Esdras
a
barren woman
(4
Esd.
10
44).
She is aged, because
she was created first of all things, and for her
the
world was made' (Herm.
Vis.
24).
Again, in the
ancient homily formerly ascribed to Clement of Rome
(chap.
we read of the pre-existent, spiritual Church,
'created before
sun
and moon,' and manifested at
length in the flesh. In the
system, more-
over,
appears
as
one of the
Cp.
too,
8,
iv.
8.
The earliest
use of the term the Catholic Church (Ignat.
8
:
Lightf.) emphasises the unity and
universality of the whole in contrast with the individual
congregations
not, as in the later technical sense, its
orthodoxy in contrast with heretical systems
:
Wherever
Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church'
primitive conception of the
Church thus regards it
( u )
as
essentially one, admitting
of no plurality except such as is due to
local distribution, and
as
succeeding
to the peculiar position of privilege
hitherto occupied by the sacred Jewish Commonwealth,
so
that even Paul in writing to Gentiles thinks of it
as
the Israel of God.'
In
correspondence with the two
parts of this conception it is natural to expect in the
development of its organisation
a general unity in
spite of local and temporary variety, and
( b )
a
tendency,
both at the outset
from time to time afterwards, to
look back to the more prominent features of Jewish
religious institutions. Weekly gatherings for liturgical
worship, the recognition of holy seasons and holy
are examples of elements of religious life which passed
over naturally and at once from the Jewish to the
Christian Church and these were elements which the
experience of the scattered Judaism of the Dispersion
had proved and warranted
as
amongst the strongest
bonds of practical unity.
Had. the apostles separated immediately after Pente-
cost for the evangelisation of the world, it might easily
have happened that, while the general
needs
of
the societies founded by their
labours were, to
a
large extent, the same
in various districts, the institutions developed to meet
those needs might have presented
a
most astonish-
ing variety.
As
a matter of fact such a
of pro-
on their part was impossible.
The direct
command of Christ had indicated Jerusalem
as
the
first scene
of
their work; but, even apart from this,
the very clearness with which from. the first they
recognised the new society to be the divinely appointed
issue and climax
of
the old, must have hindered them
from perceiving at once all that was involved in the
complementary truth
of
its universality. As
a
matter
of
fact they clung to the sacred centre of the old
national life until the development of events gradually
forced them into
a
wider sphere. Hence a
of
years was passed within Jerusalem itself, and in the
most intimate relation with the religious institutions of
the Jewish people, of whom, at that time, all the
believers formed
an
integral part.
Accordingly the
new society had time to grow into a consciousness of its
own corporate life within a limited area the pressure
of practical difficulties led to the
of
822
CHURCH
CHURCH
tions specially designed to meet them and, when the
earlier limitations began gradually to disappear in
consequence of Stephen’s wider conceptions and the
crisis which they brought upon his fellow-believers, and
the society
w-as
now scattered like seed over the
countries, this corporate life had already given signs of an
organised growth, and the home church at Jerusalem
had become in some sense
a
pattern which could not
fail to influence all subsequent foundations.
These first
years in Jerusalem, then, demand careful study, if the
development
of
Christian institutions is to be securely
traced.
The brotherhood which was formed by the baptism
of the earliest converts was, at the outset, practically
a
guild of Judaism, faithful to the ancient
creed and worship, and with no thought
of
a
severance from the religious life of
the nation.
Its distinctive mark was not
neglect of
Jewish ordinances,
the adherence to new duties and
privileges of its own.
‘They were continuing stead-
fastly in the teaching of the apostles and the fellowship,
the breaking of bread and the prayers’ (Acts
2
42).
The temple worship was not forsaken
( 3
I
)
hut it was
supplemented
( 2 4 6 )
by the breaking of bread at home.’
The first note of this brotherhood was its unity
:
they
had one heart and
soul’
(432)
they claimed nothing
that they possessed as their private right, but held all as
a
trust for the good of the whole they would even on
occasion sell their property and bring the proceeds to
As
the numbers increased, these simple and extemporaneous
methods were found to be inadequate.
Thus the
common tables, at which the poorer dependents re-
ceived their daily provision, proved an occasion of
friction between the two elements of Hebrew and Greek-
speaking Jews, of which the brotherhood, from the
was composed. Organisation was
necessitated, if the unity of the body was
‘
to remain unimpaired and seven men were
accordingly appointed to serve tables
( 6
the
criticism of these narratives cp
C
O
MM
UN
IT
Y
O F
G
OO
DS
.
Thus was made the first essay in providing for the
discharge of the functions of the whole body through
representative members.
No
distinctive title is given
by the historian to these seven men. Their office was
to serve
in respect of it, therefore, they
could
termed servants
it is probable
that the word deacon remained for some time
a
mere
description of function, rather than a title such
as
it
afterwards became. The naturalness of this institution
-the response to a new need which was certain in
form or other to recur, wherever the society was planted
-is a most important feature of it. There is no
to suppose that it was suggested by any Jewish institu-
tion. The number of the persons chosen was a
number in
a
community consisting of Jews; but the
institution itself was a purely spontaneous development,
designed to meet
a
necessity which was wholly new.
Thus far we find
two kinds of distinction which
in any way mark
off
individual members of the society
from the general mass. The apostles are
the natural leaders
:
to them all look, both
for religious teaching and for practical
guidance through them discipline
on
one memorable
occasion is enforced it is they who suggest a remedy
for the first difficulty which
was
occasioned by increas-
ing numbers
and their hands are laid on the seven
men whom, at their
the whole brotherhood
has selected to serve on its behalf. The seven, on the
other hand, are ordained to humble duties
their
function is not to
but to serve through them the
society fulfils its common responsibility of providing for
the needs of its poorer members.
The dispersion after Stephen’s death distracts
the apostles for distribution to the needy
On the fact that they are nowhere styled
see alsc
C
O
MM
U
N
ITY
OF
$ 5 . ’
from the Church in Jerusalem for a while.
Some years later, when the apostles had
begun to evangelise other parts of Palestine,
we get another glimpse of it at
a
time of
hreatened famine. Contributions are sent from the
at Antioch to aid the poorer brethren in
it is not to the apostles, however, that the gifts
brought, but to ‘the elders’
a
class of
vhich we
hear for the first time in the Christian
Thus it would seem that the necessity of
eaving the apostles free for wider work had issued in a
urther development of organisation in Jerusalem but
t is only incidentally that we learn that
a
new step has
taken.
W e have no indication in Acts of the
elation
of
the seven to these elders.
Peter’s imprisonment, which immediately follows, is
.he occasion
of a
further notice bearing on the practical
government of the church in Jerusalem.
‘Tell these things to James and to the
says the apostle after his release (1217).
The position of prominence thus indicated for ‘ t h e
brother of the Lord’ prepares
us
for the leading part
which he subsequently takes in the conference of the
apostles and elders, when a question of vital import-
ance has been referred from Antioch to Jerusalem
Many years later, when
Paul
arrives
on
an
important errand, his first act is thus described by an
:
On
the morrow Paul entered in with
us
unto James, and all
elders came together’ (2118).
It is clear, then, that James had come to
a
position in the church at Jerusalem-a position
gained, it
be, by no formal accession to power,
resulting rather from his relationship to Jesus and
his well-known sanctity of life yet
a
position clearly
recognised by the apostles, and foreshadowing the
climax of a series
of
developments in the universally
established
of the monarchical episcopate,
W e have thus, in the early history of the church in
Jerusalem, notices, for the most part merely incidental,
of the gradual development of
in response to the growing
necessities of a corporate life. The humblest offices of
the daily service
by which the
bodily needs
of
the poorer members were supplied, are
discharged by the church through seven representatives.
The guidance of the whole body is found to have
devolved upon men whose title of
elders reminds us
of the elders of the Jewish people; and in this case
there is
no
reason for doubting that the new institution
was directly suggested by the old.
These elders are
the
by which the church in Jerusalem holds
formal intercourse with the church elsewhere.
Lastly,
at the head
of
all, but acting in close concert with the
elders, we see James holding
an
undefined but unmis-
takable position
of
authority.
We must be careful to avoid
a
confusion between
this development of administrative organs of the body
and that other form of service, rendered
to it by those who discharged the various
functions of evangelisation, exhortation,
and instruction
Acts
6 4 ) .
The
two kinds of service might often meet in the same
persons
:
thus, at the outset, the apostles themselves
were, necessarily, at once the instructors and the
administrators
of
the society-at their feet, for example,
gifts for the community were laid, as at a later time
they were brought to the elders-and, on the other
hand, we read of
Philip the evangelist, who was one
of the seven‘
Quite apart from these, however,
we have a mention of ‘prophets,’ of whom Agabus is
one, as coming from Jerusalem
(11
27).
The incidental nature of the references to those who
discharged these functions of administration and instruc-
tion prevents us from knowing to what extent the
church in Antioch resembled in its organisation the
church in Jerusalem. We only learn that it contained
CHURCH
CHURCH
'
prophets and teachers
(13
I
)
:
we hear nothing of its
elders or other officers.
When, however, Paul and
Barnabas, going forth from the church in
Antioch, founded communities in various
cities of Asia Minor, they appointed, we are
expressly told, elders to administer them
In
this they probably reproduced an institution already
known at Antioch, with which both of them had together
been brought into contact in Jerusalem
As Paul travelled farther west, and Christian societies
sprang up in a more purely Greek soil, the Church's
independence of Judaism became continually clearer
and we might reasonably expect to find elements of
Greek social life exerting an influence upon the develop-
ment of Christian organisation.
At the same time
we must bear in
that Paul himself was
a
Jew, that
to the Jews in every place he made his first appeal,
that his epistles indicate that there was
a
considerable
Jewish element among those to whom he wrote, and
that we have clear evidence that, at first, at any rate,
his organisation of administration was based
a
Jewish precedent.
In
his earliest letters to a European
church Paul urges the recognition and esteem of those
who labour among you and preside over you in the
Lord, and admonish you,' thus implying a local
administration, though not further defining it
( I
Thess.
at the same time he demands absolute
obedience to the injunctions which he sends them in
the joint names of himself and Silvanus and Timotheus
If we try to draw from the study
of
Paul's epistles a
picture of a Christian society in a Greek city, we may start
by observing that the members of it are distinguished
one from another mainly by their spiritual
gifts
Of these the highest
is
prophecy, which
is freely and sometimes distractingly exercised, by any
who possess it, in the ordinary meetings of the society.
Other gifts too, such as those of healing, give a certain
natural pre-eminence to their possessors. Over all we
recognise the undefined but overshadowing authority of
the apostolic founder. Such is the most elementary
stage, and we cannot sharply distinguish it from that
which immediately follows.
Leading men fall into
classes, with obvious divisions (not in any sense
stereotyped orders) separating them from the general
mass : apostles, prophets, teachers-clear grades
of
spiritual prestige, though by no means marked off as a
hierarchy. The teachers are mainly local in the exercise
of their functions
the prophets are local to some
extent, but moving from church to church, and
nised everywhere in virtue of their gift; the apostles
are not local, but essentially itinerant, belonging to the
whole Church.
This ministry expresses the more distinctly spiritual
side of the Church's activities. But the community
needs, besides, to be governed and discipline must be
exercised in the case of unworthy members. It must
have representatives who can formally act on its behalf,
either in dealing with individuals or in carrying
on
com-
munications with sister communities.
Again, there are other functions of the Church's life
which call for executive officers. The care of the sick
and the poor was
a
primary duty
so,
too, was the exer-
cise of the
hospitality to travelling brethren.
These duties involved
an
administration
of
the common
funds collected for such pnrposes, and generally of
corporate property.
Servants of the Church were thus
called for to perform these humble but necessary
functions, and responsible superintendents to see that
they were duly performed. This class of executive
ministers we find in the bishops and deacons'
whom Paul greets in the opening
words of his epistle to the Philippians and the qualifi-
cations demanded
of
them in the Pastoral Epistles
afford valuable indications of the nature
of
their service.
All these elements of moral or formal authority would
Thess.
314).
be more or less distinctly present in every community,
expressing the activity and life of
community itself
in various forms. In different localities development
would proceed at different rates of progress but in all,
the same general needs would have to be met, and
would help towards a comparatively
uniform result.
The earlier and the more rapidly
developing societies would serve
as
natural model
to
the rest.
I n
speaking thus we do not lose sight of the control-
ling inspiration of the divine Spirit promised by Jesus
to be the Church's
W e rather recognise the
presence of a continuous inspiration, developing from
within the growth of
a
living organism, not promulgating
a
code of rules to be imposed from without upon each
community at its foundation.
The scanty and scattered notices of church
in the N T need, for their interpretation, all the
light that can be thrown upon them by the
,practice
Christian communities,
so
far
as
it can be ascertained from the remains of
their earliest literature. . Here again, however, the
evidence is still sparse and incidental, though of late
years it has been increased, especially by the recovery
(1883)
of the
the Apostles.
The date of
this book is quite uncertain.
It is of a composite nature
and preserves very early documents in a modified form.
There is
no
agreement among scholars as to the locality
to which it belongs. It may represent a community
lying oiitside the general stream of development and
preserving, even to the middle of the second century, a
primitive condition which had elsewhere, for the most
part, passed away. This view does not materially lessen
its value
as
an illustration of an early stage of Christian
life; but we must be careful not to generalise hastily
from its statements when they lack confirmation from
other quarters.
In the
Teaching
(chaps.
then, we have instruc-
tions relating to
BAPTISM
3),
fasting, and the
E
UCHA
RIST
The following chapters introduce us
toppostles and prophets they provide tests for their
genuineness, and
as
to the honour to he
paid to them. The apostles travel from place to place,
making but the briefest stay the prophets appear to be
the most prominent persons in the community in which
they reside (see P
ROPHET
). In comparison with them,
bishops and deacons seem to hold but a secondary
place.
The community is charged to appoint fit persons
to these offices, and not to despise them
for they too
minister the ministry of the prophets and teachers.'
There is no mention whatever of presbyters.
In all this
we seem to be
on
the verge of a transition.
The ministry
of extraordinary gifts is still dominant but the abuses
to which it is liable are keenly felt : the humbler local
ministry, though despised by comparison, has the future
before
Other illustrations from the early literature will be
found under
B
I
SHO
P
It must suffice here
to
say in conclusion that, before the close of
the second century, the long process of
development had issued in a threefold
ministry-a bishop, presbyters, and deacons-being at
length generally recognised in all Christian churches.
In
point of time, as well as of method, we have an
exact parallel to this development both in the settlement
of the canon and in the formulation of the Apostolic
Creed. The more abundant literature of the end of the
second century shows us a generally accepted standard
of ministry, of canon, and
of
creed. In each case the
need of definiteness and of general uniformity had
gradually made itself felt, and the Christian con-
sciousness, guided and expressed by eminent leaders,
had slowly solved the problems presented to it.
In
each case we have evidence of that growth which is the
Cp Harnack on 3
Jn.,
15.
826
CHURNING
prerogative and proof of life in the social
as
in the
individual organism.
J. A. R.
CHURNING
Prov.
33
see M
ILK
.
CHUSHAN BISHATHAIM
3
8
RV
CHUSI
a
men-
tioned in Judith
to
define the position of
(see A
KRARATTINE
).
It may possibly be the mod.
5
m.
W.
of
CHUZA
W H ] ; Amer.
RV
prefers
the house-steward of Herod (Lk.
husband of J
OANNA
.
The name is probably identical
with the Nabataean
The steward may well have
been
of
foreign origin as were the Herods themselves.
See
Feb.
1899,
CIELING.
See C
EILING
.
CILICIA
[Ti. WH]).
From southern
Cappadocia the range of Taurus descends in a
direction to the sea, reaching it in a com-
plex of mountains constituting that pro-
jection of coast which divides the bay
of
Issus
(Skandertin) from that
of
Pamphylia.
The
extended partly over the Taurus itself, and partly be-
tween it and the sea (Strabo,
thus bordering upon
Pamphylia in the
W.,
and Lycaonia and Cappadocia
in the
N.
in the
E.
the lofty range of Amanus separated
them from Syria. The country within these boundaries
falls into two strongly marked sections.
‘Of
beyond Taurus a part
is called Tracheia
(rugged), and the rest
[E.]
Pedias (plain). T h e former has a
narrow seaboard, and little or
no level country : that part of
which lies under Taurus is equally mountainous, and is thinly
inhabited as far a s the northern flanks of
range-as far, that
and
This district hears
Cilicia
extends from
Soli
and Tarsus as far as
Issus, and as far
N.
a s the Cappadocians
on
N.
flank of
Taurus. This section consists for the most parr of plains and
fertile land’
considerable streams-Pyramns, Sarus, Cydnus,
and Calycadnus-descend from Taurus to the bay
of
Issus.
For a long time
rude W. district remained
practically outside
pale of
:
we are here
concerned only with the eastern part, Cilicia Pedias or
Campestris.
Difficult passes, of which there are only
a
few, lead through the mountains into the neighbonring
districts. The famous
some 30 miles
N.
of Tarsus, gave access to Cappadocia and
W.
Asia
Minor in the other direction the Syrian Gates and the
pass of
communicated with
Syria
through
these two passes ran the
E.
trade route from Ephesus.
The military importance of the Cilician plain thus in-
cluded within the angle of the Taurus and Amanus
ranges
is
finely expressed by Herodian
(34).
Owing
to
the barriers of Mount Taurus, the geographi-
cal affinity of Cilicia is with Syria rather than with Asia
Minor. It would be only natural. therefore,
that there should be references to it in O T
(cp also
4,
end).
Nor are these
wanting. Archaeological criticism indicates three O T
names as more or less certainly meaning Cilicia.
The
first is C
APHTOR
which, however, probably
had
a
more extended application, and referred to
coast-regions of Asia Minor besides Cilicia. Caphtor
was the first home of the Philistines it probably repre-
sents the Egyptian
Thesecond is
or
E.
which Solomon imported
horses,
as
we learn from the emended text of
I
K.
(see
H
O
RSE
,
3,
n.). The third is Helak, the Hilakku
Josephus identified with Cilicia the
of
Gen.
Jon.
1 3 (A n t .
I
).
T h e land of
also,
which adjoined
Gesch.
u. Ass.
must have included a part of Cilicia
5
a).
3
to
Maspero
Cilicia is the
(cp
which is often mentioned with
in the
Egyptian inscriptions.
Is
this name connected with
CINNAMON,
of the Assyrians, which has been restored by
‘74,
p.
Geiger
and
Lagarde
in Ezek.
( M T has the
impossible
thine army
’
; read the sons of
and
of
Helak‘). The same name probably occnrs in
Egyptian inscriptions under the form Ka-ra-ki-Sa,
originally
follows from
res-
toration that there was, according to Ezekiel, a Cilician
as
well as
a
Phoenician and a Syrian element in the
garrison of Tyre in
586
The close physical relation of Cilicia and Syria
explains their political connection during the early
Roman Empire.
Cilicia was usually under
the
of Syria
53
where
C
cp
Ann.
under
a
separate governor, however, in
57
A.D.
Ann.
perhaps as a
measure after the
disturbances
of
A . D .
(Ann.
is
credited with its reconstruction as a distinct province,
in 74
A.D.
but
his action was apparently confined to
the reduction of part of
Tracheia to the form of
a
province, which was united with that
o
Cilicia (Suet.
8).
In
A.D.
C
Tracheia, was certainly an imperial province,
under a
but in what year
this state of things began is not
N o
infer-
ence can be drawn from the use of the word ‘pro-
vince’
in the question of
(Acts
The connection between Cilicia and Syria is illustrated
in
the N T by such passages as Acts162341 Gal.
where Syria and Cilicia’ are almost a single term
and conversely the omission of Cilicia from the super-
scription
of
I
Pet.
1
I
,
where the enumeration of provinces
sums up all Asia Minor
N. of
the Taurus, is
upon the close connection between the churches in
Cilicia and the
of
Antioch in Syria
The presence
of
Jews in Cilicia must date principally
from the time when it became part of the Syrian king-
doni
(cp Jos.
Ant.
34).
It must have been the hill-
men
of
Cilicia Tracheia that served
the guard of
Alexander
(Jos. Ant.
1 3 5 ,
43).
In
apostolic times the Jewish settlers were many and
influential (Acts
Paul visited his native province soon after his con-
version (Acts
9
Gal.
and possibly founded then
the churches of which we hear in Acts
It is
probable that
in
his ‘second missionary journey’ he
followed the usual commercial route across the Taurus
to Derbe (Acts
cp Str. 537):
article of
export
I
S
interesting to the
student of the NT.
The goats’-hair cloth called
was exported to be used in tent-making (cp
Varro,
R.X.
Paul was taught this trade,
supported himself by means of it
in
the house of Aquila
at Corinth (Acts
and elsewhere; cp Acts
(See
Routes in Cilicia,’ in Arch.
Ti. WH]
;
Ex.
3023
Pr.
Cant.
4
14
Rev.
hears
the same name in Hebrew as in Greek and English, and
this
is
almost certainly
a
word borrowed from the farther
Lagarde
(
199)
maintains that Hebrew
borrowed the name from Greek but against this there
is the statement
of
Herodotns
that the Greeks
learned the word from the
is
the fragrant inner bark of
Nees
that is now called cinnamon. As
correctly stated
by Fliick. and Hanh.
however, ‘none of the cinnamon of
the ancients was obtained from
and ‘the early notices
of cinnamon as a product of Ceylon are not prior to the
century’
468). Accordingly, it is probable that,
as these writers suggest, the cinnamon of the ancients was
3 6 . )
W.
M.
As.
T h e derivation from
most unlikely.
3
Cp
1575.
’
828
CINNEROTH
Cassia
which was obtained,
as it is still, from S.
T h e source
of this
is
Cassia,
as
has been
shown by Sir
W.
Thiselton-Dyer in
20
The name
given to the district
W.
of
Cape
must be taken in a loose sense as referring
to
the commerce of the Erythrean Sea. Like
cinnamon
was thus brought along the regular trade-route
E.
Asia.
See A
LOES
,
3.
From whatever source cinnamon was obtained, it
appears thrice in the O T among aromatic spices, and
in Rev.
18
13
among the merchandise of the apocalyptic
Babylon. Thus the Jews must have been tolerably
familiar with it.
See C
ASSIA
,
I
NCENSE
,
6.
N.
T.
I
K
.
RV
CIRAMA (
[A]),
I
Esd.
CIRCLE OF JORDAN
CIRCUIT
Neh.
See P
LAIN
(4).
CIRCUMCISION
the cutting
away of the foreskin
For surgical
and other details of the operation as
practised in later Judaism, reference may
he made to the Mishna
264) and
to
the literature
cited at the end of this article.
It
was performed not
only on the (male) children of the Israelites, but also
.
upon all slaves
(as
being members of the household and
sharers in its worship), whether born within the house
or brought in from abroad (Gen.
17
usage which
plainly points to a great antiquity.
In P
it is enjoined
that all aliens
who desire to join in the Passover
shall be circumcised (Ex. 1248) in the
period it
was
also the condition for the admission of
proselytes.
The age for receiving the rite
fixed by the Law for
the eighth day after birth (Lev.
cp Gen. 214
etc.
)
even on the sabbath the sacred ordinance had tc
be observed (Jn.
although in case
of sickness of the child
a
short delay was permitted
(cp
For the performance of
office all
male Israelites were fully qualified
customarily the duty fell
to
the head of the house (Gen.
That in the earlier times it could be performed
(of course only in exceptional cases) by women
from Ex. 425 but this was not allowed by later custom.
According to Josephus
(Ant.
xx. 2 4 ) it was not
to employ the physician; at the present day it is
business of
a
specially-appointed official, 'the
At the close of the first century
B.C.
the naming
o
the child accompanied his circumcision (cp Lk. 159 2
but there is no indication of any such usage in the O T
indeed, in the older times, the two things were
dissociated, the child receiving its name
as
soon as
was born (cp, for
213
18
etc..).
The origin of the rite among the Hebrews is obscure
One of the views represented in the O T is that it
introduced by Joshna (Josh.
who, a
by divine
mand circumcised the people with knives
o
flint, and thereby rolled away the reproach of Egypt,
wherefore the name of that place was called Gilgal
rolling") unto this day.' Verses
4-7
are an
designed to bring the narrative into conformity with
view of
that circumcision had merely been in abeyanc
during the years of wandering; cp Hollenberg in
Si
'74, 493
in
Z A T W
6132
('86).
see J
OSHUA
, 7.
The 'reproach of Egypt,' unless w
in Persian and Arabic it
is
called
(Chines
wood).
So
E V
According
t o
in Josh.
the knives
flint referred
to
were buried with Joshua in
See P
LAIN
(4).
the Hill of the Foreskins,'
CIRCUMCISION
re to do violence to the narrative, can only be inter-
reted as meaning that in that country the children of
had been uncircumcised, and therefore objects of
and scorn.
It is impossible, however, to
the narrative in Joshna
as
strictly historical it
rather
to
the category of etymologizing legend,
designed to explain the name and origin of the
anctuary of Gilgal. Possibly Stade is right in his
(see above) that the legend arose from the
tance that in ancient times the young men of Benjamin
of certain Benjamite families were circumcised on the
of the Foreskins
at
Gilgal.
Another view of the origin of the rite is given in the
of the circumcision of the son of Moses (Ex.
4
for here also the intention manifestly is to
lescrihe
its
first introduction among the Israelites there
s
no suggestion of any idea that it had been
a
Hebrew custom. The general meaning of the
is that Moses had incurred the anger of
made himself liable to the penalty of death, because
was
a
bridegroom of
because he
not, before his marriage, submitted himself to this
Zipporah accordingly takes a flint, circumcises the
instead of her husband, and thereby symbolically
the latter
a
'
bridegroom of blood,' whereby the
math of
is appeased (see We.
345).
Both narratives notwithstanding, it is necessary to
back the origin of this rite among the Hebrews to
a
much earlier date. True, it
is
no sufficient
proof
of
this that
P
1 7 )
carries it
to
Abraham, and that everywhere in the Law
the custom is assumed to be of extreme antiquity.
More
to the point are the facts that Gen. 34 also represents it
pre-Mosaic, while the use of
of flint (which was
kept up see Ex.
Josh.
also indicates
a
high antiquity.
What most
of
all compels
us
to
this
conclusion, however, is the well-ascertained fact that
circumcision was in no way
a
practice peculiar to the
Israelites. It was common to
a
number of Semitic peoples
in antiquity: Edom, Ammon, Moab all were circumcised
(Jer. 9
25
of the nations of Palestine the Philistines
alone were not (cp, for example, Herod. 236
104)
the
Arabs
also practised this rite, which, in the Koran,
is taken for granted as
a
firmly-established custom. Nor
is it less widely diffused among non-Semitic
Of
special interest for
us
here is its existence among the
Egyptians for from
a
very early period we meet with
the view that, within
of the ancient
circumcision had its native home in Egypt, from which
it had spread
not
only to the other peoples of Africa,
but also to the Semites of Asia
(so
Herod. 236204
Sic. 331 Strabo
17824).
It certainly was known in
Egypt from the earliest times (Ebers,
Egypt
and we have the express testimony of
Herodotus
(236)
and
(2210, ed. Mangey) that
all Egyptians were circumcised (cp Josh.
5
where the
same thing is presupposed
539
Ebers,
op.
278
although, it is true, their testi-
mony has not been allowed to
pass
wholly unquestioned.
One piece of evidence for the Egyptian origin of the rite
would be the fact that to the Semites of the Euphrates,
who had no direct contact with Egypt, circumcision was
unknown. In any case, however, it would be illegitimate
to suppose that it was borrowed from Egypt directly by
the Hebrews-say, for example,
at
the time of the sojourn
in Egypt
for the nomads of the
peninsula
appear to have practised it from
a
very remote period.
As to the original meaning of the rite equally divergent
views have been held. The
offered fall in
See G
ILGAL
.
the main into two groups- (I) The
Herodotus asserts that the
had
it
for the
sake of cleanliness, whilst other ancient writers regard it
The facts
of its present diffusion have been collected most
fully by
Ploss,
Kind
der
CIRCUMCISION.
GIRCUMGISION
as
a
prophylactic against certain forms of disease (Phil.
de
2210,
ed. Mangey
Jos.
c.
Ap.
A
similar theory is still put forward here and there by
various nations (cp
Ploss,
op.
and it was in great
favour with the rationalists of last century (see,
Michaelis,
4
186
also
1246).
Recent anthropologists, such as Ploss,
give greater prominence to the fact that with many
peoples (if not with most) circumcision stands, or origin-
ally stood, closely connected with marriage, and regard
it
as
an operation preparatory to the exercise of the
marital functions, suggested by the belief that fruitfulness
is thereby promoted
already Philo,
cp
C
UTTINGS
OF
F
LESH
,
4).
The religious
:
It
is impossible to decide the question by mere reference
to the present conditions, or to the explanation which
ancient or modern peoples themselves give.
On the
one hand, it is not to be expected that the original mean-
ing of the act should be permanently remembered
;
on the
other hand, evidence can be adduced in support of either
theory.
There are broad general considerations, how-
ever, which lead inevitably to the conclusion that, in the
last resort, the explanation is to be sought in the sphere
of religion. All the world over, in every uncivilised
people, whether of ancient or of modern times, practices
such as this are called into existence, not by medical
knowledge, but by religious ideas. It is to the belief
about the gods and to the worship of the gods that all
primitive ethics must be traced.
In this there is nothing
to prevent practices, grown unintelligible through the
religious motives having gradually faded into the back-
ground, being supplied with other reasons, in this case,
sanitary.
the other hand, inasmuch
as,
to
by
its wide diffusion, circumcision must have arisen spon-
taneously and independently in more places than one,
there is nothing -to exclude the possibility of diverse
origins.
The primarily religious nature of circumcision being
granted, we must nevertheless be careful not to carry
back to the earlier times the interpretation put upon it
by later Judaism.
According to
P
the rite is a sym-
bolical act of purification (in the ritual sense)
the
foreskin represents the unclean. This conception of
circumcision is presupposed in the symbolical applica-
tions of the expression to be met with in the discourses
of
the prophets (see below, 7). For the earlier period,
however, we have no evidence of the presence of
any such idea, nor is there any analogous conception
to make its existence probable.
The notion
so
fre-
quently brought forward in explanation of the idea,-
that the sexual life, as such, was regarded as sinful,-is
in truth nowhere to be met with in the OT.
The
ancient conceptions of clean and unclean are all of them
of a wholly different nature
see
C
LE
A
N
AND
U
N
-
In general, circumcision is to be regarded as a ritual
tribal
This view is favoured by several con-
*
siderations.
Not only among the Jews,
but also among the Egyptians and most
other peoples by whom circumcision is
practised, the uncircumcised are regarded as
as aliens from the tribe and its worship-and
as
such are looked upon by the circumcised with contempt.
peoples who do not practise circumcision we
find analogous tribal marks filing or removal of teeth,
special tattooings, in some cases still more drastic muti-
lations of the
organs (semi-castration and the
like). Finally, with most peoples, circumcision used
to be performed at the age of puberty.
By its means
the grown-up youth was formally admitted among the
men, received all the rights due to this position, and,
particular, the permission to marry (hence the fre-
quent connection already alluded to between circum-
cision and marriage).
The full-grown man becomes
for the first time the fully-invested member of the tribe,
and, in particular, capable of taking part in its religious
CLEAN.
'unctions.
It is fitting then that he should wear the
of his tribe.
Snch
a
badge has always
a '
religious
membership of a clan carries with it the right to
participate in the tribal worship (see G
OVERNMENT
,
and, for early times, to be outside the tribe and
outside its worship meant the same thing.
Thus the
act of circnmcision had, in the earliest times, a sacral
meaning. Like all other initiation ceremonies of the
in the Semitic religions, circumcision had attributed
to it also the effect of accomplishing a sacramental
communion, bringing about a union with the godhead.
To
this extent the explanation of circumcision as of the
nature
of
a sacrifice (Ewald) is jnst originally circum-
cision and sacrifice served the same end.
For the old Israelite, in particular, the view just stated
is confirmed by the identification of the two conceptions
uncircumcised
and
unclean
see
especially, in this connection, Ezek.
31
18
where in the under-world the
uncircumcised have assigned to them a place by them-
selves, away from the members of the circumcised people.
The receiving of the tribal mark is
a
condition of
(Gen.
34).
Among the' Israelites also it was
the marriageable young men who were circumcised
(Josh.
see above,
In
manner,
as
already noticed, in Ex.
circumcision, as a token of
marriageability, is brought into connection with marriage
itself
cp the expression bridegroom of blood.'
The
same narrative also explains the circumcision of young
boys as a surrogate for that
of
men (cp We.
This custom-of circumcising boys when quite
young-may have arisen very early,
as
soon as the
political aspects of the rite fell into the background.
the
loses political significance, and becomes
purely religious, it
is
not necessary that it should be
deferred to the age of
manhood indeed the natural
tendency of pious parents will be to dedicate their child
as
early as possible to the god who is to be his protector
through life' (WRS
328).
This last
general statement is particularly apposite in the case of
circumcision.
N o mention of circumcision is made either in the
decalogue or in any other of the old laws.
This silence
cannot be explained on the ground merely
that as a firmly established custom the rite
did not require to be specially enjoined rather does it
prove that, for the religion of
in the pre-exilic
period, circumcision had ceased to possess the great im-
portance which we are compelled to assume for it in the
old Semitic religion nor was the same weight assigned to
it which it subsequently acquired in Judaism.
In par-
ticular the prophets took up towards it the same
attitude as they held towards sacrifice, that is to say,
they looked upon
it
as of no consequence
so
far as the
worship of
was concerned. Such a prophet as
Jeremiah, for example, sets himself in the most marked
manner against the high appreciation of circumcision
still prevalent among the masses in his day, when he
places the circumcision of the Israelites exactly on the
same level with that of the Egyptians, Edomites,
Ammonites, and
and threatens all alike with
the divine judgment as being circumcised in
or as uncircumcised
is, as not having
the circumcision of the heart (Jer.
cp
4 4
6
I
O
By this very fact-that they contrast with
the circumcision of the flesh that of the heart, the ears,
the lips-the prophets gave the first impulse to the
later symbolical interpretation of the rite as an act of
pnrification.
This last, as already stated, is dominant in Judaism.
In the post-exilic period the rite acquired a quite differ-
ent position from that which it had
previously held.
substitutes for
the sacrificial worship,
longer possible, the sab-
bath and circumcision became the cardinal
Document Outline
- Title
- Preface
- Abbreviations, symbols, and Biblioraphical Notes
- Practical Hints to the Reader
- Aalar - Achsah
- Acts of the Apostles
- Acua - Ain
- Airus - Amphipolis
- Amplias - Apocalypse
- Apocalyptic Literature
- Apocrypha - Ariel
- Arimathaea - Asshurim
- Assideans - Azzur
- Baal - Baca
- Bacchides - Bastard
- Bat - Beth-Basi
- Beth-Birie -Box Tree
- Bozez - Bush
- Bushel - Canon
- Canopy - Chariot
- Charity, Feasts of - Chronology
- Chronology - Circumcision
- Cis - Conduits
- Coney - Covenant
- Coverlet - Cyrus
- Dabarah - David
- David, City of - Dial and Sun-Dial
- Diamond - Dysentary
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