that Marcellus was appointed to succeed him, and that he arrived just after the death of Tiberius. Now, Tiberius died in the year 790, therefore Pontius Pilate was appointed Procurator of Judea in 780. But Luke states that he was Procurator in the 15th year of Tiberius, or, according to the common reckoning, in the year 782. According, however, to Mr. Rowe, the 15th year of Tiberius was in the year 779, which was upwards of a year before Pontius Pilate's appointment; therefore Luke could not have intended to date the 15th year of Tiberius from the year 764. 66 If the preceding view of chronology be correct, it necessarily follows, that our Saviour was not born until after the death of King Herod, and that, therefore, Luke could not have written the history attributed to him. It is presumed that this assertion will be further supported by a brief examination of his undisputed writings. Now Luke, as Mr. Rowe admits, rests the authenticity of his history on the fact of his having derived it from those who were from the beginning eye-witnesses and ministers of the word. Let it be asked, from what beginning? Certainly, from the beginning of the public manifestation of Christ, for until this period there were no "ministers of the word." It is just and natural, therefore, to conclude that he would commence his history from this event, rather than, without giving his readers any notice, make another beginning of a narrative which was to extend through twelve years, then leave a chasm of eighteen years, and finally leap to "the beginning" which he had previously announced. It is also not unworthy of remark, that Luke, in the commencement of the Acts of the Apostles, does not intimate that his former treatise, meaning his Gospel, contained the least information respecting our Lord, beyond all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up." And in chap. ii. ver. 22, he relates that Peter addressed his audience in the following terms: "Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved (rather pointed, or marked out) of God among you by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him," &c. Now, neither the statement of Luke, nor the address of Peter, would have contained the whole truth, if the former, in his Gospel, had inserted a great deal more, and embracing a different period, than he here intimates that it comprised; and the latter knew that our Lord had been marked and pointed out in a most extraordinary and miraculous manner long before God did any miracle, wonder or sign, by him. Further, there is not the slightest evidence from which it can be inferred, that the apostles had the least personal knowledge of Christ prior to his baptism; and had they known or believed that he was designated to be the Messiah before he was conceived, his subsequent miraculous conception and birth, and the wonderful circumstances said to have attended the nativity, their whole conduct from their appointment until the ascension, and their uniformly profound silence on a subject so singular and important, are, beyond expression, most marvellous and unaccountable. Considering, then, that the disputed passages in Matthew and Luke were by some sects rejected as spurious from a very remote age of Christianity ; that since the church so early and infamously prostituted its interests to the favour of secular and half-pagan governments, the mere fact of their antiquity deserves little weight; that the two narratives of the nativity contain palpable contradictions; that it is impossible to reconcile the facts of ancient chronology with the times and circumstances with which they have been identified; that the undisputed writings of Luke are at utter variance with the suspected portions attributed to him; that our Saviour and his Apostles never betrayed any knowledge of these extraordinary events; and that the whole conduct of the latter is totally inconsistent with the supposition that they believed them, -no person can justly be blamed, and much less ought any one to be treated with ridicule and contempt, who feels compelled to refuse his assent to the truth of histories so suspicious, and so surrounded by difficulties and contradictions. PEACE AND HOPE AND REST. MOURNER! thou seekest Rest. Rise from thy couch, and dry thy tears unblest, Thou seekest Health; and how? But Hope hath left thee too, 'Mid many griefs and comforts all too few. To earth; but seek the helps which God hath giv'n See where she soars, bright as the star of ev'n. Dost thou seek Peace? and where ? 'Mong thine own withered hopes? She is not there, Lay thy heart open to the infants' mirth, Tend the bright hopes of others from their birth, Seek Peace and Hope and Rest: And as the eagle flutters o'er her nest,' And bears her young, all trembling, weak and blind, So shall the Lord thy God thy spirit bring To where eternal suns their radiance fling. *Deut. xxxii. 11. J. V. CANONICAL AUTHORITY OF THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS. (Continued from p. 248.) 3. FROM the testimony adduced under the first head of our inquiry, it appears that all the books of the Old Testament which are now deemed prophetical, were recognized as sacred by the authors of the Jewish Talmud, and consequently formed part of the canon of the Old Testament as early as the fourth or fifth century after Christ; and from the additional testimony brought forward under the second head, and supplied by the catalogues of Jerome, Origen and Melito, who flourished in the fourth, third and second centuries of the Christian era respectively, we learn that these books were regarded as authentic, and that no doubt was entertained as to their credibility by these learned Fathers of the Christian church.* The next step in our inquiry will carry us back to the celebrated Jewish writers, Josephus and Philo; the former of whom flourished towards the close, and the latter about the middle, of the first century. No formal enumeration of the books of the Old Testament is contained in the works of either of these writers; but the testimony which each of them bears to the authenticity and credibility of the prophetical books is highly important, and demands the attentive consideration of all who feel anxious respecting the issue of the present inquiry. There is in Josephus's Treatise against Apion,† a passage in which he speaks of the sacred books of the Jews collectively as not exceeding twentytwo in number, and thirteen of these he ascribes to the prophets: but the terms in which he alludes to these books are so vague, that it is impossible to ascertain, from the passage itself, either by what particular individuals he supposes them to have been written, or what was the exact nature of their contents. We are enabled, however, to identify them with the books contained in the Jewish canon of the present day, by a reference to the catalogues of the Talmudists and the Christian Fathers. The actual number of books contained in the Old Testament, according to the division adopted in our printed Bibles, is thirty-nine. These are reduced by Origen and Jerome to twenty-two, by considering Ruth as a supplement to the book of Judges, Nehemiah as a continuation of Ezra, Lamentations as an appendix to Jeremiah, and the two books of Samuel, those of Kings, those of Chronicles, and the twelve minor prophets, as each one book. The Talmud makes the number of books twenty-four, by detaching Ruth from Judges, and Lamentations from Jeremiah; but its enumeration does not differ in other respects from those of Origen and Jerome. It is morally certain, therefore, that the "twenty-two books, which," according to Josephus, "contain the records of all past times, and are justly believed to be divine," were in substance the same as the twenty-two enumerated by Origen and Jerome, the twenty-four specified by the Talmudists, and the Similar testimonies occur in the writings of other Christian Fathers; but Jerome and Origen have been selected on account of their pre-eminence as biblical scholars, and Melito on account of his great antiquity. The reader who wishes for further evidence may cousult Hody de Text. Bibl. (Oxon. Fol. 1705) L. iv. C. 4, p. 644, and Doederlein, Institutio Theologi Christiani, (Ed. Sexta, Norimoergæ et Altorfii, 1787,) Proleg. C. iii. Sect. ii. § 40, pp. 160-164. † Lib. i. C. viii. thirty-nine contained in the English and other modern versions of the Jewish Scriptures. Of these twenty-two books Josephus attributes five to Moses; and it is evident, from his description of them, both as to the period of history which they comprise, and the general nature of their contents, that they must have been the same as those which still exist under the name of the great Jewish Lawgiver. Of the other books he ascribes thirteen to the prophets who succeeded Moses; and the remaining four, he informs us, contained "hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life." But of the particular books included under each head of this three-fold division, if we except the first, we possess no certain information. The second probably contained all the books usually ascribed to the prophets, historical as well as prophetical, including that of Daniel; and the third appears, from the description given of the writings contained in it, to have included the books of Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, with the addition of some other book usually placed by the Jews among the Chetubim or Hagiographa. But although Josephus does not expressly enumerate the books of the prophets in this triple classification, other passages occur, in various parts of his writings, which amply supply the deficiency, and from which we are led to infer, without hesitation, that the whole of these books were familiar to him, and that he not only consulted them as forming part of the literature of his country, but reposed the most implicit faith in the predictions which they contained, and regarded those predictions as the infallible oracles of divine truth. He styles Isaiah, "the prophet from whom Hezekiah obtained an accurate knowledge of all future events:" he quotes the prediction contained in Isa. xix. 18, 19, which Onias is said to have alleged, in order to promote his design of erecting a temple at Leontopolis, in Egypt; and says that the accomplishment of this prediction took place about six hundred years after its delivery:† he speaks of the book of prophecies which Isaiah left behind him, and alludes to the restoration of the Jews, and the rebuilding of the temple, as events which had been foretold by Isaiah nearly a century and a half before the temple was destroyed: ‡ and, at the close of his account of Hezekiah's audience with the ambassadors of Merodach Baladan, and his subsequent interview with Isaiah, (Isa. xxxix.) he says, that "this prophet was universally acknowledged to be a holy and wonderful man in speaking that which was true, and that he committed all his prophecies to writing, and left them behind him in books, in order that their accomplishment might be traced by posterity from the events."§ Of Jeremiah he says, that he phesied concerning the calamities by which Jerusalem was to be overtaken, and left behind him a written account of the capture of Babylon, and the final destruction of the Jewish nation under Vespasian and Titus: and of Ezekiel he remarks, that he delivered similar predictions, and was the first who bequeathed to posterity written descriptions of these events. He speaks of "the book of Daniel" as occupying a place " among the sacred writings;" quotes and refers to it repeatedly; attests the accuracy of the predictions which it contains; and sums up his testimony to the excellence of Daniel's character, as a prophet of God, in these words: "All these things Daniel left # Antiq. Lib. ix. C. xiii. § 3. † Ibid. Lib. xiii. C. iii. § 1, 2; Bell Jud. Lib. vii. C. x. § 3. Antiq. Lib. xi. C. i. § 2. Ibid. Lib. x. C. v. § 1. § Ibid. Lib. x. C. ii. § 2. pro behind him in writing, as God had pointed them out to him; so that those who read his predictions, and see how they have been accomplished, wonder at the honour which God conferred upon him." * The writings of the twelve minor prophets, it is well known, were formerly regarded as one book, on account of their being generally written upon one roll, and this division of them appears to have prevailed in the time of Josephus ; for we find him speaking of them as "the other prophets, who were twelve in number." In this collective form, however, he alludes to them no more than once, and that in the most incidental manner possible: † nor does he mention more than four of them by name in the whole of his writings. Jonah he styles a prophet; and he gives the particulars of his history as related in the book which now goes under the name of Jonah, referring his readers to "the Hebrew books," as his authority. Nahum he also styles a prophet; and from him he quotes a long passage relating to the destruction of Nineveh, (Nahum ii. 8-13,) introducing, however, according to his general practice, such verbal alterations as he deemed necessary to adapt it to the taste of his Heathen readers,§ for whose use his "Antiquities" were composed, and to please whom he has often made additions to the concise and simple language of the sacred writings, which tend rather to obscure and disfigure than to embellish his narrative. In the eleventh book of his Antiquities,|| he mentions Haggai and Zechariah by name, as two prophets who flourished after the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity; and describes the difficulties which his countrymen experienced in rebuilding the temple and city of Jerusalem, and the encouragement which they received from these two prophets, but makes no direct quotation from the books which we now have under their names. The above testimonies, brief and incidental as they are, possess no small value, as coming from a writer who was thoroughly acquainted with the books esteemed sacred among the Jews, and who not only regarded the writings attributed to the prophets as the genuine productions of those whose names they bear, but was also fully impressed with an idea of their great importance as vouchers for the truth and divine origin of the Jewish religion. But the evidence in favour of the authenticity and credibility of the prophetical books of Scripture, contained in the works of Josephus, though not so full and circumstantial as we may now wish, is just such as the nature of the works themselves would have led us previously to expect. A Christian, writing for the information of Christians, or a Jew addressing himself exclusively to Jews, would have proceeded in a more systematic manner; and, if he had found it necessary to allude to the fulfilment of predictions contained in the writings of the prophets, would have done it in a more confident and triumphant tone: but a Jew engaged in the composition of a work, the professed object of which was to interest strangers in the history of his own nation, would naturally and almost necessarily pursue the plan which Josephus has pursued, not forcing upon the attention of his readers those parts of the narrative which partake of a miraculous character, but glancing at them sparingly and with caution, and even apologizing, on some occasions, for their introduction. Hence it is that Josephus so frequently has recourse to such qualifying expressions as the following, whenever he finds himself called upon to make any allusion to the writings of the prophets: "I cannot Antiq. Lib. x. C. x. xi.; Lib. xii. C. vii. § 6. Il Cap, iv. § 5. + Ibid. Lib. x. C. ii. § 2. § Ibid. Lib. ix. C. xi. § 3. |