HISTORY OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 30, 22 November 1873, Page 13

HISTORY OF OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

it i n By the AhU J - E - Dahbas. translated from the French for the Nuw Zeaiaicd Tablkt.) -t * • • Identical Testimony of Tertuxlian. ™r?»& Oin fcls Pro7eP ro7ed T ; we might be dispensed from insisting further JJw-"??:, Nevertheless, the time i a come to elucidate more £?- •? j?I the Pomts that sophistry has tried to obscure. We ntll £ the t eßt 'raonie3— Roman, Greek, and Jewish-of Augustus, Tacitu S Suetonius, Dion Cassius, Josephus j "they mean, in very S2™ ♦ ) % J e beOM raade to B& y ' the y do nofc horrow fche^ statement from the Gospel of Luke ; " and yet they speak as he did. i TO, 08 '"" rt» e 7 nncre * er existed— that they are null and void— there wouLil still remain a host of witness whose word would carry con--victicvn with it, and whose inconvenient testimony rationalism in vain «™ V ltße f of « b 7b 7 unking them in the suspected category of Christian authors." Every day we hear of the tribunals accepting the evidence of the "Christians." What right fc M rationalism to enow more seventy here than the magistrates f Let us judge of it by a single example. Towards the year 204 of our era, a famous lawyer, whose decisions figure in the Digest, beside those of Papinian, TreP° mUß » apdUlpian. went from Carthage to Rome. He was born, and bad lived a long time in Paganism. The courage of the martyrs, whose intrepidity in death he witnessed daily, made him a Christian. Jdis name of Tertullian— already illustrious, at a time wheo the science •ot law was the highway to honour -became still more -notorious by the fact ot his conversion. The Roman world was curious to learn what there could bo in the despised doctrine of Clmstto seduce an eminent j urn-consult. In this peculiar situation we may .feel assured that the questions of fact will be put by Tertullian with the accuracy familiar to Barristers. Now, here is what Tertullian wrote at Rome in the year 294: « The original documents of the census of Augustus are preserved iv the archives of Home. Their evidence relative to the Dirtn ot Christ forms an authentic testimony."* Thus speaks a .Koman lawyer to a whole society on the wutch, -ready to lay hold of and criticise the smallest inadvertence in his language. It is thug he expresses himself only a hundred and ii% years after the death of Augustus, when the remembrance of that glorious reign was still as living m Rome as that of Louis XlV. can be in France; when the subject of debate was a fact, such as an universal cenau*— basis of all taxation, deeds of property, hereditary prerogatives attached to the - title of citizen-of all the conditions of birth, family, or rank in the empire. And our sophists pretend to believe that Tertullian evokes t7 p. emen , fc wholly new to the Romans, "borrowed from .Uifce ! When the jurisconsult appeals to the public archives of Botne, to the original documents of the census of Augustus, do our ■literati take that to mean that Rome has no other archives, no other original -vritings than « the Gospel of Luke ?" In truth, this would be to make too great a sport of human reason on behalf of rationalism The testimony of Tertullian oi itself would suffice to overturn *the famous syllogism of Strauss, developed as it is by the paraphrasing ■otins new disciples. . 24. UNEXPECTED AND ItnrOLTOTABY TESTIMONY OT MoDßfctf Rationalism.

But rationalism lias prepared a fresh surprise for us. We have just heard it affirm that " the texts by which it is sought to prove that some of the operations for statistics and tribute commanded by Augustus must hive extended to the dominion of the Herods, either do°not mean what they have been made to say, or are from Christian authors, who have borrowed this statement from the Gospel of Luke." Now, .here, m the same paragraph, without any transition whatever, we are 'told tnat the census of Judea was made in the 37th year from the era of Achum, by Quinnus, the Roman governor of Syria. Is it possible . that rationalism should be ignorant that Augustus was still reigning in the 37th rear from the era of Actium ? It is a well-authenticated fact howeve-, that the first Roman emperor died, a septuagenarian, in the year 44 from the era of Actium : consequently, in the year 37, the census of Judea, uade by Quirinus, was effected in the name of Augustus. But listen to the very -words of the critic: such a contradiction 13 rather too unlikely. '' The census effected," he says, "by Quirinus to which legend attributes the journey from Bethlehem, is at least ten years later than the year in which, according to Luke and Matthew Jesus was born. The two evangelists, in effect, place the birth of Jesus under the rei 2 n of Herod- ( Mat th. ii, 1, 19, 22 - Luke i, 5). NW the census of Quinr.us did nob take place until after the deposition of Archelaus, i c., ten jeors after the death of Herod, the 37th year from the era of .Actium— (Josephus, Ant., xvii, xiii, 5, xviii, i, 1, ii, 1). The I inscription iormerly brought forward to prove that Quirinus had levied two censuses is recognised as false— (see Orelli, Inscrip. Lat., No. 623 and the supplement of Henzen in this number ; Borghesi, Pastes Connlaires [yet unpublished], in the year 742)." Impossible to be mistaken here. The critic fays positively that "in the 37th year fi-om the era of Actmm, after the deposition of Archelaus, not a partial enrolment, but a regular census, of Judea was made by Quirinus " Now Archelaus was deposed by Augustus. Archelaus was son of Herod • 'his territory' was violated by Augustus. Quirinus was sent into Judea by Augustus. Augustus survived for seven years the 37th year from the era of Actium. Then, modern rationalism, which one would aot suspect of borrowing "its statement from the Gospel of Luke," Wd whose word "implies," in very truth, a contradiction^ teachea with Tertulhan and St. Luke that there was a census of Judea made under Augustus ! What does jt matter that- ordinary readers should not be informed what emperor reigned in the 37th year from the era of Aclium ? What dots it matter that they should uot even susnecfc ArcheJaus of having anything in common with " the Heroda'"! * They may. be permitted to ignore the name of the prince who deposed Avchelaus. yo one is obliged to know, as Josephus did, that the Koman procu-

hZ%*$T' l " Bl ? M i 96nt \ Qtc L Judea b * u g aßtu9 J «*d «» Tacitus, that he held the rank of consul, that he was the friend of the emperor! and the preceptor of his grandsons. These ddtaih, it is true, prove the contradiction of the entic. But the sileiree with which the critic surrounds them, attests, at the same time, the scrupulous delicacy with which he iseeks to veil the'spefetacle of thin contradiction from the sight