Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1883 — A Wrong Calculation [ARTICLE]

A Wrong Calculation

catnnthiartH of thaHbrigtiim era; Some 7490 t SLd^n' wM ? ch te h STto Sta’Sith this point. He examined four copper coins, newly discovered, which were struck in the reign of Herod Antipas, Was born hot in 754 but 749 years after the fotinriftfation of Boffifi, and therefore that the present year is 1888 instead of 1883; This opinion the prolessor tries to corroborate by the testimony of the evangelists, According to St. Matthew, Jesus was born toward the end of the reign of Herod the Great, and when that King died Jesus was yet a little child. According to St. Luke Jesus waa born in the year in which, by virtue of a decree of Augustus Caesar, Cyronius, Governor of Syria, made the first census of Judea. Again St. Luke says that St. John began to baptize in the fifteenth year of the reign Tiberius Caesar, and in that year baptized Jesus, who was then 30 years of age. As to the first testimony can be no misunderstanding. Christ, being born in 779, was of course yet a baby in 750', when Herod died. But the other testimony needs some explanation. From the breviarium imperil (census of the empire) which was added to the! will of Augustus Caesar, it is evident that a thorough census of the countries that composed the Boman empire must have been made. In fact Augustus had three censuses of his empire made, namely, 726, 746 and 766. As St. Luke says that in Judea the first census was made during the reign of Herod, the oensus must have been ordered in 746. Probably the census was begun in Judea in 747, and Prof. Sattler thinks it was not made in Jerusalem earlier than 749. He finds that the four coins enable him to make clear the testimony of the Evangelist as to the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius. ThoughJAugustus died on Aug. 19, 767, yet the beginning of the reign of Tiberius must be counted a year and a half earlier (February 766), when he was appointed co-regent. Therefore the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius falls in 780, when St. John baptized Jesus, who was then about 80 year of age. An evangelist says that Christ began, to preach forty-six years after the temple at Jerusalem was built by Herod. Now, it is known that the building of the temple was begun eighteen years after Herod wais appointed by the Boman Senate as regent of Judea, or in the year 734 from the foundation of Borne. Adding forty-six to that year, it gives 780 as the year in wl ich Christ began to preach. If all these calculations of Prof Sattler are correct then the Christian era beg?n five years earlier than is usually supposed.—New York Sun.