tions our Lord's departure over the sea of Galilee, and his feeding the five thousand, he says nothing of the Passover's being near at hand: whether because he did not read this circumstance in his copy of St. John's Gospel, or because he overlooked it, I do not undertake to say.

That others besides Irenæus, entertained the same opinions respecting the age of our Lord, appears from a passage of Augustin, which I have produced elsewhere. It appears also from the avTiKeiμeva of Stephen Gobarus, of which Photius has given us an abstract e; ὅτι ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς ὁ Χριστὸς λ'. ἐνιαυτῶν ὑπάρχων ἐσταυρώθη· καὶ ὅτι οὐ λ'. ἀλλὰ γ'. καὶ λ'· καὶ ὅτι οὐ γ'. καὶ λ'. ἀλλὰ μ'· καὶ ὅτι οὔτε λ'. ἐτῶν οὔτε μ'. μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πλέον, οὐ πολὺ τῶν ν'. ἀφεστηκώς.

It is observable that this writer, whose work consisted of a collection of contrary opinions upon questions of fact or of doctrine-knew of no opinion, except the last two, which did not suppose our Saviour to be either thirty, or thirty-three, years old at his death; and therefore his ministry, between his baptism and his death, to have been of one year's, or of three years', duration.

The same writer, loc. cit. l. 42, mentions an opinion that Christ ascended into heaven on the day after his resurrection from the dead, upon the sixteenth day of the month which may render it less extraordinary that others on the contrary, like the Valentinians, should have thought there was even more than a forty days' interval between those two events.

Epiphanius, quoting from one of these Valentinian authors, (though the passage in the original is exceed

d Opera, iii. 36. De Doctrina Christiana, lib. ii. 42. Vide Dissertation iv. vol. i. 245. e Photius, Codex, 232. page 290. l. 14.

ingly corrupt,) writes thus f: The everlasting Word of God was born about the fortieth of Augustus. The same author added, he says, On the XII of the Kalends of July or June, I cannot tell which, in the consulship of Sulpicius Camerinus, and Buteo Pompeianus.

The fortieth of Augustus bears date from U. C. 711: and the birth of Christ would thus be placed May 21. or June 20. U. C. 750 or U. C. 751. The important circumstance in this tradition is that the nativity is supposed to have taken place in the spring quarter of the year: an opinion which Epiphanius does not attempt to controvert, except by considering it possible that it might have confounded the nativity with the annunciation; and if, as some persons had thought, Christ was born at the end of seven months, instead of nine, the nativity might yet take place on the 6th of January; which is his own date for it.

As to the two consuls, in whose year the nativity is said to have happened, it is in vain to search for them in the Fasti, U. C. 750 or U. C. 751. Yet that Epiphanius had some real foundation for the statement which he has made, is proved by the following references. Syncellus tells us that our Lord was born on the twenty-fifth of Chasleu or December, in the fortythird (leg. 42.) of Augustus, év vπaтeia ZovλTIKίov Kaμeρίνου, καὶ Γαΐου Ποππαίου, ὡς ἐν ἀκριβέσι καὶ παλαιοῖς ἀνTiурápois péρeral. The forty-second of Augustus, it is true, would be U. C. 752: and these two were consuls U. C. 762. On the same authority Syncellus asserts that our Saviour suffered, coss. Nerone iii. et Valerio Messala b, U. C. 811.

Perhaps the source of these traditions is indicated in the fragment published by Muratori, and ascribed to Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem about the end of the f Opera, i. 450. D. Alogi, xxviii. xxix.

gi. 597. 5.

h i. 607. 9.

third centuryi: in which the nativity is placed viii. Kal. Jan. Sulpitio et Camerino (corrige Camerino et Sabino) coss. (U. C. 762:) the baptism viii. Idus Jan. Valeriano et Asiatico (Asiatico et Silano, U. C. 799.) and the passion x. Kal. April. Nerone iii. et Messala coss. U. C. 811. To explain these dates, or to pretend to account for their origin, would be an hopeless undertaking yet the last of them is consistent with the opinion that our Lord suffered at forty-nine or fifty. And the first of them might be produced by confounding two things together; viz. the birth of Christ in the forty-second of Augustus, and yet in the consulship of Sulpicius Camerinus and Poppæus Sabinus. The former of these answered to U. C. 752, the latter to U. C. 762, between which the difference is ten years.

A ten years' difference in the era of the first consulate, or the accidental omission of ten successive names in some copies of the Fasti, before U. C. 752; might make a particular consulate, according to one mode of computation, belong to U. C. 752, which according to the truth would belong to U. C. 762. The old Valentinian author, however, quoted by Epiphanius, joins the consulate in question with the fortieth of Augustus. The consuls, U. C. 750, which would answer to that year, were C. Calvisius Sabinus, and L. Patienus Rufus and considering the many corruptions of the readings both of names and numbers, in the extant works of Epiphanius, it is just possible that, instead of Sulpicius Camerinus and Buteo Pompeianus, (the last of which names appears nowhere,) he might actually have written Calvisius Sabinus and Patienus Rufus.

CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS—Opera, i. 407. 18. i Reliquiæ Sacræ, ii. 49. ad calcem.

Stromatum i. 21. 1. 18: εἰσὶ δὲ οἱ περιεργότερον τῇ γενέσει τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν οὐ μόνον τὸ ἔτος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν προστιθέντες· ἣν φασιν ἔτους κή. Αὐγούστου ἐν πέμπτη Πάχων καὶ εἰκάδι. οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ Βασιλείδου καὶ τοῦ βαπτίσματος αὐτοῦ τὴν ἡμέραν ἑορτάζουσι, προδιανυκτερεύοντες ἀναγνώσε

απο

φασὶ δὲ εἶναι τὸ πεντεκαιδέκατον ἔτος Τιβερίου Καίσαρος, τὴν πεντεκαιδεκάτην τοῦ Τυβὶ μηνός· τινὲς δὲ αὐτὴν ἑνδεκάτην τοῦ αὐτοῦ μηνός. τό τε πάθος αὐτοῦ ἀκριβολογούμενοι φέρουσιν οἱ μέν τινες τῷ ἑκκαιδεκάτῳ ἔτει Τιβερίου Καίσαρος, Φαμενώθ κέ· οἱ δὲ Φαρμουθὶ κέ· ἄλλοι δὲ Φαρμουθὶ ιθ', πεπονθέναι τὸν Σωτῆρα λέγουσιν. καὶ μήν τινες αὐτῶν φασι Φαρμουθὶ γεγεννῆσθαι κδ' ἢ κέ.

With regard to these dates, if the first of Thoth in the Egyptian year be supposed to correspond to the 29th of August, the 11th of Tybi answers to January 6, and the 15th to January 10: the 25th of Phamenoth to March 21: the 19th of Pharmuthi to April 14: the 24th of Pharmuthi to April 19: the 25th to April 20: and the 25th of Pachon to May 20.

I think it is evident from the perusal of this passage, that as to the quarter of the year to which the Baptism, the Birth, and the Passion of Christ, were respectively referred by these opinions, Clement did not disagree with them. If he speaks of the curiosity of their authors in terms approaching to censure; it is only because they had attempted to go further, and to ascertain not merely the time of the year, but the very day of the events in question in each instance.

Under these circumstances, it is scarcely to be supposed that Clement himself would think of fixing the day of the Nativity; and much less of assigning it to a quarter of the year the very reverse of that which is specified above. Yet this must be the case, if, as he proceeds, loc. cit. to say, from the birth of Christ to

the death of Commodus, there was 194 years', one month's, and thirteen days' interval.

The death of Commodus happened on December 31, U. C. 945k and consequently the birth of our Lord, on this principle, would bear date November 18 or 19, U. C. 751. But Clement himself places the Nativity in the twenty-eighth of Augustus, which he dates from the reduction of Egypt, August, U. C. 724: and consequently he places it either U. C. 751, or U. C. 752. It could not be in U. C. 751; for he supposes the Passion itself to take place in the fifteenth of Tiberius, U. C. 782, when our Lord was thirty years of age. Hence, at whatever time he supposed him to be thirty, U.C. 782, at the same time he must have supposed him to be born, U. C. 752. Reckoning, as he does, the reign of Augustus at 43 years, and placing the Nativity in his 28th, and the Passion in the fifteenth of Tiberiusthirty years after the birth of Christ; he must have supposed our Lord to have lived fifteen years and six months under Augustus, and fourteen years and six months under Tiberius: and consequently to have been born in the spring of U. C. 752, as he suffered in the spring of U. C. 782.

The truth is, that nothing is more corrupt than the numeral readings which occur in the text of Clement. It would be an endless task to specify all the instances of this corruption, which might be produced. The subject under discussion supplies one: for whereas the sum total of the interval between the birth of Christ and the death of Commodus, is stated at 194 years, and upwards; the particular details amount to 200 years, and upwards, involving an error of excess of at least six years. In another passage-where the reigns

k Dio, lxxii. 22. Capitolinus, Pertinax, 4. Herodian, i. 49–55. ii. 5.