the thing had been done by him before his advancement to the station from which he received the name of governor. And this, as we contend, is precisely the inaccuracy which has produced the difficulty in Saint Luke.

At any rate, it appears from the form of the expression, that he had two taxings or enrolments in contemplation. And if Cyrenius had been sent upon this business into Judea, before he became governor of Syria (against which supposition there is no proof, but rather external evidence of an enrolment going on about this time under some person or other 5), then the census on all hands acknowledged to have been made by him in the beginning of his government, would form a second, so as to occasion the other to be called the first." 6.

Josephus (Antiq., xvii. c. 2, sect. 6) has this remarkable passage: "When therefore the whole Jewish nation took an oath to be faithful to Cæsar, and the interests of the king." This transaction corresponds, in the course of the history, with the time of Christ's birth. What is called a census, and which we render taxing, was delivering upon oath an account of their property. This might be accompanied with an oath of fidelity, or might be mistaken by Josephus for it.

None of the solutions of the difficulty in Luke ii. 2 can be pronounced satisfactory. Neither that in the text nor that in the note is consistent with the Greek idiom. Much less so is the suggestion of Tholuck and others, that

II. Another chronological objection arises. upon a date assigned in the beginning of the third chapter of Saint Luke." "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar,Jesus began to be about thirty years of age:" for, supposing Jesus to have been born, as Saint Matthew, and as Saint Luke also himself relates, in the time of Herod, He must, according to the dates given in Josephus and by the Roman historians, have been at least thirty-one years of age in the fifteenth year of Tiberius. If He was born, as Saint Matthew's narrative intimates, one or two years before Herod's death, He would have been thirty-two or thirty-three years old at that time.

πρώτη may mean before," i.e. "this first taxing took place before Quirinus was President of Syria." Nor does that proposed by Mr. Birks (Notes in his edition of Paley) appear more satisfactory, viz. that yeμovevovтos may be paraphrased "having the execution of it," for then it is difficult to see why Zupías should have been added. The most probable explanation is, that Saint Luke laid stress on the word éyéveto, in this sense:-This first taxing was carried into effect when Quirinus, &c.; i. e. it had been prepared some years before, but was not until then actually levied. That St. Luke erred through ignorance or failure of memory is not probable, especially since it is evident, from Acts v. 37, that he was well acquainted with this taxing of Quirinus.-EDITOR.

'Lardner, part i. vol. ii. p. 768.

This is the difficulty: the solution turns upon an alteration in the construction of the Greek. Saint Luke's words in the original are allowed by the general opinion of learned men to signify not, "that Jesus began to be about thirty years of age," but "that He was about thirty years of age when He began His ministry." This construction being admitted, the adverb "about gives us all the latitude we want, and more especially when applied, as it is in the present instance, to a decimal number; for such numbers, even without this qualifying addition, are often used in a laxer sense than is here contended for.8

III. Acts v. 36. "For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting himself to be somebody;

Livy, speaking of the peace which the conduct of Romulus had procured to the state, during the whole reign of his successor (Numa), has these words :*-" Ab illo enim profectu viribus datis tantum valuit, ut, in quadraginta deinde annos, tutam pacem haberet :"+ yet afterwards in the same chapter, "Romulus," he says, septem et triginta regnavit annos. Numa tres et quadraginta." +

*Liv. Hist. c. i. sect. 15.

["It was so powerful, through the strength imparted by this progress, that it had quiet peace for forty years afterwards."]

[Romulus reigned thirty-seven years. Numa, fortythree."]

to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves: who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered, and brought to nought."

Josephus has preserved the account of an impostor of the name of Theudas, who created some disturbances, and was slain : but according to the date assigned to this man's appearance (in which, however, it is very possible that Josephus may have been mistaken 9), it must have been, at the least, seven years after Gamaliel's speech, of which this text is a part, was delivered. It has been replied to the objection,' that there might be two impostors of this name: and it has been observed, in order to give a general probability to the solution, that the same thing appears to have happened in other instances of the same kind. It is proved from Josephus, that there were not fewer than four persons of the name of Simon within forty years, and not fewer than three of the name of Judas within ten years, who were all leaders of insurrections. And it is likewise recorded by this historian, that upon the death of Herod

Michaelis' Introduction to the New Testament (Marsh's translation), vol. i. p. 61.

the Great (which agrees very well with the time of the commotion referred to by Gamaliel, and with his manner of stating that time, "before these days") there were innumerable disturbances in Judea.2 Archbishop Usher was of opinion, that one of the three Judases above mentioned was Gamaliel's Theudas; and that, with a less variation of the name than we actually find in the Gospel, where one of the twelve Apostles is called, by Saint Luke, Judas, and by Saint Mark, Thaddeus. Origen, however he came at his information, appears to have believed that there was an impostor of the name of Theudas before the nativity of Christ.5

IV. Matt. xxiii. 34, 35. "Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and seribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city; that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar."

There is a Zacharias, whose death is related in

2 Antiq., lib. xvii. c. 12, sect. 4.

3 Annals, p. 797.

Orig. cont. Cels., p. 44.

Luke vi. 16. Mark iii. 18.

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