Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 27:106 (Apr 1870)
Article: The Year Of Christ’s Birth
Author: Theodore Dwight Woolsey

BSac 27:106 (April 1870) p. 290

The Year Of Christ’s Birth1

Rev. Theodore D. Woolsey

Within a few months two German scholars of note have written on the Chronology of the New Testament — the one, Professor Wieseler, of Greifswald, a theologian; the other, A. W. Zumpt, of Berlin, a classical scholar, eminent for his archaeological researches. Wieseler’s work is a supplement to his well-known “Chronological Synopsis,” and in regard to the date of our Lord’s birth takes substantially the same ground with that work, and with an Essay of his on the Chronology of the New Testament, which appeared in the twenty-first, or third supplement, volume of Herzog’s Encyclopedia, in 1866. We will go no further into his views at present than to say that he places the birth of Christ in the early months of 750 u.c, a short time before the death of Herod, and that he explains Luke 2:2 as meaning that the taxing there indicated took place before Quirinius was legate in Syria. This explanation we hold to be entirely indefensible, as we have endeavored to show in another place. It is, indeed, a convenient solution of a serious difficulty; but we are compelled to reject it as philologically untenable.2

Zumpt’s work (das Geburtsjahr Christi) is wholly devoted to the investigation of the year of our Lord’s birth. He adopts the view which many have espoused, since San Clemente’s work, de vulgaris aerae emendatione, appeared at Rome in 1793, that Christ was born in the year 747 of Rome, that is, between two and three years before the death of Herod. We propose in this Article to give a report of

BSac 27:106 (April 1870) p. 291

the arguments of this learned scholar, and to subject them in a few points to a critical examination.

The early Christian writers had no traditions touching the birth of Christ. Their statements rest on calculations made by themselves, or derived from their predecessors, which are overthrown, for the most part, by better ones; and even Tertullian, who has preserved a very important account of the date of the taxing, falls into error when he discusses the chronology of our Lord’s birth for himself. But there is an independent tradition of the date of Christ’s death, which, as we shall hereafter see, has a bearing on the question of the nativity.

The arguments thus all turn on the meaning and comparison of passages in the Gospels, and the main question is: How can they be synchronized with the known history of the times? One fact in particular, the death of Herod, may be said to have been determined beyond doubt. An eclipse of the moon and va...