CHRONOLOGY OP THE OLD TESTAMENT CHRONOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

two waya. If a king dies in the tenth year of his reign, for example, the calendar year may continue to be called his tenth; and the next calendar year will be the first of his successor. But it will also be possible to begin at once to date by the first year of the new king, making the next calendar year his second. In this latter case the public records will show more years (judging by the dates) than there actually are, by one in each reign. According to this method, the number of years from Rehoboam to Athaliah would be 90, which cannot be far from correct. The next period, however, — from Athaliah to Hezekiah, and from Jehu to the fall of Samaria, — gives us greater difficulty. Here we find the sum of years in one line to be greater than in the other by more than twenty. The various hypotheses which have been advanced to overcome this discrepancy do not concern us in the present article. All that we need to note is that the figures of the Hebrew text do not give us a sure basis for a chronology.

If this is true in what we have reason to suppose is the most reliable of the OT dates, the case is even worse when we examine the earlier period of the history. No doubt the authors of the Pentateuchal narratives thought themselves able to give the length of time which had elapsed from the creation of the world. There is no other way to interpret their language. In the genealogy of the sons of Adam, for example (Gn 5), we read how Adam was 130 years old when he begat Seth, Seth 105 years old when he begat Enosh, and so on down to the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in which the Flood came. The summing up of the figures gives us 1656 years from the Creation to the Flood.

The unhistorical character of the numbers in this table is now generally conceded. The conclusions of natural science concerning the duration of man upon the earth are enough to invalidate the calculation. But this gives additional Interest to the inquiry as to what the authors had in mind. It has been pointed out that if to the sum we have just obtained we add the years from the Flood to the E-xodus of Israel from Egypt, we get 2666, that is, two-thirds of 4000. Now the interest that the writer had in this calculation was probably due to the theory which he had formed or which had come down to Mm by tradition, that the length of time from the Creation to the coming of the Messiah would be 4000 years.

Four thousand is 100 generations of 40 years each. Any one who is familiar with the OT figures will recall how common it is to find 40 years as a round number. The 40 years of the wilderness wandering, 40 years of peace in the time of several of the Judges, 40 years each for David and Solomon, are sufficiently marked. Then we recall the 480 years from the Exodus to the building of the Temple — 12 generations of 40 years each. It is probable also that a similar term was counted from the building of the Temple to its rebuilding under Darius or to the end of the Exile, while it is not without signifi-cance that the duration of the Northern Kingdom was calculated to be 240 years.

All this shows that these late Biblical writers were dominated by a theory. It must be noticed also that more than one theory had an influence. The Greek translators, working in the second century before Christ, had a Hebrew text which differed considerably from ours in this matter of numbers. They reckoned nearly 600 years more from the Creation to the Flood than the sum in our Bible, while from the Flood to the Call of Abraham they make nearly 800 more. The copy of the Pentateuch which circulated among the Samaritans has a still different system. The question which of these systems is the earliest is still unsettled. It may be said to have only an academic interest, since we know that no one of them gives us authentic data for the antiquity of the world.

Fortunately our appreciation of the Bible does not depend upon the accuracy of its dates. In general the

picture it gives of the sequence of events from the time of the Judges down to the Fall of Jerusalem is correct. Of late years we have received welcome Ught on the dates of certain Biblical events from the Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions. These empires had made great advances in astronomy, and consequently in the regulation of the calendar. While they did not date from a fixed era, they had a reckoning of time which secured accuracy tor their historical records. Each calendar year was named for an official whom we call an epanym, and records were kept showing the series of eponyms with brief notes of the events in each one's year. These lists have come down to us in fragmentary form, but we are able by them to correct some of the dates of our Hebrew history. The accuracy of the Babylonian system has been tested by its records of eclipses as far back as the year B.C. 763.

More than a hundred systems of Biblical Chronology have been invented or reckoned out — another testimony to the uncertain nature of the Biblical data. The re-ceived system, which has found a place in the margin of our reference Bibles, is well known to be that of the learned Archbishop Ussher. By the Babylonian canon we are now able to correct its figures. These are for the early period too high. Thus for David, Ussher gives us the date 1056. But reckoning back from the earliest Assyrian allusion to Israel, this should be about 1010. The amount of error is less as we come down to later times, and disappears at the Fall of Samaria. From David down to the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, there-fore, we are able to give approximately correct dates for our history. Before the time of David there must be some uncertainty, which up to the present time has not been much mitigated by the Egyptian inscriptions. From the time of the rebuilding of the Temple under Darius we are also in uncertainty, though this period does not bulk largely in the received OT.

H. P. Smith.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.— In this article it is proposed first to examine the books of the NT, so as to determine as far as possible their relative chronology, — that is, the length of time between the principal events narrated ; and then to investigate the points of contact between the NT and secular history, and thus to arrive at the probable dates of the incidents in the former. It must, however, be remembered that the Gospels and Acts are not biographies or histories in the modern sense of the terms. The writers had a reUglous object; they wished to teach contemporary Christians to beUeve (Jn'20^'), and were not careful to chronicle dates for the benefit of posterity. Sir W. Ramsay points out (.St. Paul the Traveller', p. 18) that a want of the chronological sense was a fault of the age, and that Tacitus in his Agricola is no better (until the last paragraph) than the sacred writers. It must also be noted that reckoning in old times was inclusive. Thus 'three years after' (Gal I's) means 'in the third year after' (cf. Ac IQs- " with 20"); 'three days and three nights' (Mt 12") means 'from to-day to the day after to-morrow ' (Mt 172=). Cf. also Gn 42"'-

I. Relative CHRONOLoaY. — 1. Interval between our Lord's birth and baptism. — This is determined by Lk 3" to have been about 30 years, but the exact interval is uncertain. The RV translates: 'Jesus himself, when he began (lit. beginning) [to teach (cf. Mk 4i)], was about thirty years of age,' and so most moderns, though the word 'beginning,' standing by itself, is awkward; it perhaps denotes the real commencement of the Gospel, the chapters on the Birth and Childhood being introductory (Plummer). The difficulty of the phrase was early felt, for the Old Syriac and the Peshitta Syriac omit the participle altogether, and Clement of Alexandria (.Strom, i. 21) has merely 'Jesus was coming to his baptism, being about,' etc. The AV, following Irenseus and also the Valentinians whom he was opposing, renders: ' began to be about 30 years of age,' which can

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