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Mat_2:1
Some will smile at this question, and will answer it by another question—Does not the date of the present year answer that very plainly? Eighteen hundred and fifty-two years since, of course.”
Then in what year was our Lord born?
“In the year one, of course,” some will answer.
“In the year 0, of course,” others will affirm.
Then here, to begin with, is a year’s difference, seeing that some count one at the moment Christ was born, while others do not count one till the first year of his life had expired.
But there is greater difference still. A marginal note at the head of our English New Testaments informs us, that Jesus was born in the “fourth year before the account called Anno Domini,” by which account, therefore it would seem that the year of our Lord, which we call 1852, is really 1856—leaving us to infer that the person who first calculated the year of Christ’s birth was mistaken to this extent. Nor should this surprise us, seeing that it was not done until the sixth century—a most unscientific and uncritical age. It was not until then that the usage of counting from the birth of Christ began, and it was but slowly that it acquired prevalence—so that, although, with differences, it was generally established in the eighth century, it cannot be said to have become universal in Christendom until the fifteenth.
Lately the whole question has been re-examined by continental and English scholars with much care; and although the precise year of our Lord’s birth is still uncertain, a reasonably near approximate has been attained. The safest process, indeed the only attainable one, is to find, as nearly as we may, the year of Rome in which the event occurred. For this there are certain data in the gospels and in Josephus which, without leading us to absolute certainty, will not allow us to go far astray. We will endeavor to state this very briefly. As a preliminary, it may be well to remind the reader, that the first year of the present vulgar era coincides with the year 753 of the building of Rome (a.u.).
According to Mat_2:1, Jesus was born in the reign of Herod the Great, and not long before his death. Now Herod died in the year of Rome 750, just before the Passover. If, then, we make an allowance of time for the purification, the visit of the magi, the flight into Egypt, and the remaining there till Herod was dead—for all which not less than six months can well be required—it will follow that the birth of Christ cannot in any way be fixed later than the autumn of the year of Rome 749, being four years beyond the present era.
Again, Luk_3:1-2 says, that John the Baptist entered upon his ministry in the fifteenth year of Tiberius; and, further on (Luk_3:23), that Jesus was “about thirty years of age” at the time of his baptism by John. Now if, as is quite likely, John commenced his ministry at the same age as Jesus, we may, by reckoning back thirty years, ascertain the time of John’s birth, and, consequently, that of Jesus, who is known to have been six months younger. Now, reckoning from the death of Augustus, in the year of Rome 767, the fifteenth year of Tiberius, who succeeded him, commenced August 29, a.u. 781; and going back thirty years, we find that John must have been born not earlier than August 29, a.u. 751, and our Lord of course not earlier than a.u. 752—a result differing by three years from that obtained from Matthew. But Tiberius had been associated with Augustus in the empire certainly two years, and probably three, before the death of the latter; and if, as may be well presumed, Luke reckons from this the commencement of the reign of Tiberius, the date deduced from his statement coincides entirely with that drawn from Matthew.
Further, in Joh_2:20, the Jews say, “Forty and six years was this temple in building.” Now, Herod commenced the temple in the eighteenth year of his reign, coinciding with a.u. 732; if, therefore, our Lord was—at the time of his first Passover, forty-seven years after, as is probable—thirty and a half years of age, this would carry back the year of his birth to the autumn of the year of Rome 748.
Moreover, a tradition, preserved by the Latin fathers, on a point wherein authentic information is easily obtainable by them, makes the death of Christ to have taken place in the consulship of C. Rubellius and C. Fufius, that is, in a.u. 782. If, therefore, the duration of our Lord’s ministry was three and a half years, making his age thirty-three and a half at the time of his death, this takes us back to the same date of 748 a.u.
From the concurrence of all these data, it would appear that the birth of our Lord cannot have taken place later than the year of Rome 749; but it may have been a year or two earlier, if we suppose the period of six months too short to cover the interval between the birth of Jesus and the return of the family from Egypt, on hearing of Herod’s death. Some think that it could not have been less than one, two, or three years. Taking all things into account, we suppose it could not well have been less than between one and two years. The uncertainty on this point seems the sole remaining difficulty. And the result is, that the birth of our Lord cannot well have been less than four years anterior to the present era, and may have been a year or two more. Upon the whole, we do not feel satisfied with less than a year more, and this would throw back the true date five years before the present era—so that the present year of 1852 would be actually the 1857th year since the birth of our Lord.