emarkable message:
"When therefore the whole Jewish nation took an oath to be faithful to
Caesar, and the interests of the king." This transaction corresponds in
the course of the history with the time of Christ's birth. What is
called a census, and which we render taxing, was delivering upon oath an
account of their property. This might be accompanied with an oath of
fidelity, or might be mistaken by Josephus for it.
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II. Another chronological objection arises upon a date assigned in the
beginning of the third chapter of Saint Luke. (Lardner, part i. vol. ii.
p. 768.) "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius
Caesar,--Jesus began to be about thirty years of age:" for, supposing
Jesus to have been born as Saint Matthew and Saint Luke also himself
relate, in the time of Herod, he must, according to the dates given in
Josephus and by the Roman historians, have been at least thirty-one
years of age in the fifteenth year of Tiberius. If he was born, as Saint
Matthew's narrative intimates, one or two years before Herod's death, he
would have been thirty-two or thirty-three years old at that time.

This is the difficulty: the solution turns upon an alteration in the
construction of the Greek. Saint Luke's words in the original are
allowed, by the general opinion of learned men, to signify, not "that
Jesus began to be about thirty years of age," but "that he was about
thirty years of age when he began his ministry." This construction being
admitted, the adverb "about" gives us all the latitude we want, and more
especially when applied, as it is in the present instance, to a decimal
number; for such numbers, even without this qualifying addition, are
often used in a laxer sense than is here contended for.*

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* Livy, speaking of the peace which the conduct of Romulus had procured to
the state, during the whole reign of his successor (Numa), has these
words: "Ab illo enim profectis viribus datis tautum valuit, ut, in
quaaraginta deiade annos, tutam proem haberet:" yet afterwards in the
same chapter, "Romulus," he says, "septera et triginta regnavit annos.
Numa tres et quadraginta." (Liv. Hist. c. i. sect. 16.)
_________

III. Acts v. 36. "For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting
himself to be somebody; to whom a number of men, about four hundred,
joined themselves: who were slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were
scattered and brought to nought."

Josephus has preserved the acc