the Passover when our Lord was crucified, has led many to prefer the date of Eusebius. The argument is thus stated by Mr. Cuninghame. "From the year 28 to 34, the only Passover full moon which falls on Friday or Saturday is that of the year 33, upon Friday, April 3rd. That of 29 falls on Sunday April 17th; of 30, on Thursday April 5th; of 31, on Tuesday March 27th; of 32, on Monday April 14; of 33, on Friday April 3rd, and of 34, on Thursday April 22nd; and thus the death of our Lord is pinned down to April 3rd of the year 33, according to the voice of all chronologers for some centuries, with the exception of Sir Isaac Newton and Dr. Hales, including Usher, Whiston, Prideaux, Vossius, Kennedy, Lloyd, Calmet, Helorans and Bedford."

This last assertion is very erroneous. Mann, More, Bianchini, and Sanclementi, whom Ideler speaks of as the fullest on this subject, and several others, besides the writers already named, have not received the date of Eusebius. The authority of the rest resolves itself mainly into the strength of one argument, drawn from the place of the full moon, and until the last eighty years the lunar tables were too inaccurate to justify a decision which rested on their evidence alone. The most scientific chronologers of late, as Ideler and Browne, think the supposed demonstration either quite ambiguous, or else favourable to the earlier date which they propose.

Let us examine it more closely. In the previous statement there is an evident ambiguity. It is there left quite indifferent whether the full moon be on Friday or Saturday, in order that Friday may be the Passover-day. The rule drawn from Josephus and Philo is, that the Jewish day (from evening to evening) of the full moon, is the 15th of Nisan, or the day following the Passover. Three premises will thus be required to make the argument hold. First, that the full moon, in the proposed year, shall fall between the sunset of Friday and Saturday; secondly, that the rule of Josephus and Philo gives the Passover-day actually held; and thirdly, that the Crucifixion was on the 14th, and not as many writers have always supposed, on the 15th of Nisan. But the full moon of A.D. 33 does not fall after the sunset of Friday. The actual rule, by which the Jews fixed the Passover-day, is involved in much doubt, and several different views may be plausibly maintained. Finally, the three first evangelists yield as powerful an argument that Thursday was the 14th of Nisan, as the account in St. John for assigning it to the following day.

The time of the Paschal full moon, for these six years, is given by Mr. Browne, as calculated from Delambre's lunar tables. We have tested one of them by the later tables of Damoiseau, and

believe that their accuracy may be relied on within a few minutes. The list is as follows:

Passover.

14-11h. 11m.
3-16h. 3m.

March 28, Sunday.
March 18, Friday.
April 16, Saturday.
April 6, Thursday.
March 26, Monday.
April 13, Sunday.
April 2, Thursday.

A.D. 28. March 29 5h. 26m. March 18-21h. 16m. A.D. 29. {April 17-3h. 7m. A.D. 30. April 6-22h. Om. A.D. 31. March 27-13h. 18m. A.D. 32. April A.D. 33. April From these data Mr. Browne infers that the only year where the 14th of Nisan, or Passover day, falls on Friday, is A.D. 29, at the earlier date of March 18th. "In the year 33, which is Usher's date, it may be a question whether the 14th of Nisan was not Friday, April 3rd: for perhaps the rule of adjustment does not admit of being so rigorously interpreted, but that the full moon, occurring two and a half hours before sunset, may have been conceived to belong to the night of April 3-4. In virtue of the astronomical element of the question, the choice lies between these two years at most, and, on a rigorous application of the paschal rule, is limited to the former only."

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Mr. Cuninghame, however, objects, that Mr. Browne has here changed his ground, in order to exclude the later date. A difference of only four hours in the hour of full moon, is thus made to involve the difference of a whole day in the time of the Passover." The objection, in this form, has no real warrant. Such a result must follow the strict adherence to any astronomical rule whatever. Thus, if Easter Sunday were to be held the Sunday after the first actual full moon after the 21st of March, the difference of one hour, or even of ten minutes, in longitude, might require it to be celebrated either a whole week earlier, or four weeks later, at London, than at Rome or Jerusalem. The rule which Mr. Browne adopts is deduced from Philo and Josephus. The first tells us that the Passover is held on the 14th of Nisan, when the moon is about to be full, and again," that the moon becomes full on the 15th day." From this and other passages, Mr. Browne and Mr. Greswell alike infer that the Jewish day, on which the full moon fell, was always reckoned the 15th of Nisan. If so, it is clear that the 14th of Nisan could be on Friday, only in March 29, the date which Mr. Browne has preferred.

The case is just the same as occurs in the next page of the Synopsis, with regard to the Pascal month. Josephus and Philo say that the Passover was held in the month Nisan, when the sun was in Aries. Here the case is reversed. Mr. Browne and Mr.

Greswell plead for some relaxation of the rule, and Mr. Cuninghame argues against it. "Mr. Greswell," he remarks, "tries to overthrow these testimonies, by saying, that the sun's being in Aries must be with some latitude. Now the assertion amounts to this, that the sun being in Aries at the Passover, may signify that he is not in Aries; that is, it amounts to a direct contradiction." It is, however, only such a contradiction as the respected author has himself adopted two pages before. Mr. Browne might reply with equal truth. "Philo declares that the Passover is celebrated" "when the moon is about to become full. Mr. C. asserts that this must be taken with some latitude, which amounts to this, that the moon's being about to be full, may signify that she is some hours past the full, which is a direct contradiction."

The result of the whole, thus far, is very simple. If the words of Philo and Josephus are turned into a precise rule for the Passover day, the year 33 will be excluded, and only March, A.D. 29, will satisfy the condition. If their words, again, as explained above, are made a strict rule for the Passover month, the date of Mr. Browne is excluded in its turn; but the year 33 will remain inadmissible on the former ground. The natural inference is that neither rule can be strictly relied upon, and that some latitude, in both cases, must be allowed. Thus either March, A.D. 29, or April, A.D. 33 might possibly be the date of the crucifixion.

Mr. Cuninghame, accordingly, rejects the rule of Philo about the Passover-day, and adopts another, of which the elements, he thinks, are very simple. "The first of Nisan was reckoned from the evening when the new moon was first seen, which could not usually be in less than eighteen hours from the conjunction." "The new moon of March, A.c. 33 was on the 19th, about 10 o'clock at night, twenty-two hours later than Mr. Browne's dates require. Computing fourteen days from the following evening, being the 1st of Nisan, we arrive at the evening of April 2nd as that of the Passover. We thus pin down the Passover to Friday, April 3, as the day stamped with the seal of astronomical science, and the theory of Mr. Browne crumbles in the dust."

The zeal of the excellent author has here again betrayed him into a direct inversion of his own reasoning, just two pages before. He there emphatically tells us, that Mr. Browne's exclusion of Mr. Greswell's date, April, A.D. 30, is "perfectly just," because the Passover-day would then fall on Thursday. Yet this is directly refuted by his own reasoning in the above extract. If we adhere closely to the supposed rule, deduced from Philo, then Mr. Browne is clearly right in asserting that the Passovers of A.D. 30 and of A.D. 33 would fall on a Thursday. But if we adopt

the other rule, which fixes the 1st of Nisan by the first phase of the new moon, then the year 29 will be excluded, but the years 30 and 33 are equally admissible. If the moon was full, April 6, A.D. 30, at 10 in the evening, her age would be just eighteen hours at the same time on Thursday evening, a fortnight earlier, or March 23. She would then have been set several hours, and her first visible phase would be on Friday evening, the 24th, which would begin the first of Nisan; and the Passover-day, or the 14th of Nisan, would clearly be on Friday, April 7. The demonstration of the later date falls then to the ground, as before.

The error, in both of these learned writers, lies in claiming for this one test a force of demonstration, which the data will not allow. Many besides Epiphanius, have supposed that the Jews fixed their Passover by a cycle which was defective. The testimonies of Philo and Josephus render this highly improbable, since they both declare that it was fixed directly "by the moon." If so, the three years, A.D. 28, 31, 32, appear to be excluded by this one test. But unless we make assumptions without any certain warrant, or interpret those words into a strict rule, fatal to the very dates in favour of which it is advanced, and unreasonable in its own nature, any of the three other years may be the date of the Passion, so far it is determined by the Passover-day alone. Mr. C., in two successive pages, adopts two rules which differ a whole day from each other. By one rule, he excludes Mr. Greswell's date; and by the other, he excludes that of Mr. Browne, and justifies his own. This may show how wide is the difference, in such delicate inquiries, between the name and the reality of absolute demonstration.

So far, then, as astronomy is concerned, the dates of Mr. Browne, Mr. Greswell, and Mr. Cuninghame agreeing with Usher, or March 18 A.D. 29, April 7 A.D. 30, and April 3 A.D. 33,-are alike possible. Mr. Greswell, indeed, has embarrassed his own by two serious errors, a groundless fancy of a mistake of two days in the solar tables, and a wrong calculation of the time of full moon. Hence he refers the Passover, A.D. 30, to Wednesday, April 5, which he maintains to be a Friday—a mistake which Mr. Browne has exposed with some severity. But the two errors almost neutralize each other, and the actual time of the full moon in that year, as we shall see presently, will agree very well with the history in the gospels.

To prove our assertion, three points are now to be established. First, that the objection to the early date of the Passover, A.D. 29, is by no means decisive. Secondly, that Mr. Browne's conclusion, from Philo, that the Passovers of A.D. 30 and 33, must have been

on Thursday, is equally unproved. And thirdly, that the facts of the gospel history, while they may be reconciled with the two other dates, would have a peculiar harmony with the astronomical elements which the Passover moon of A.D. 30 supplies.

The present rule for the celebration of the Passover, is that it is held on the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Hence Mr. C. contends that March 18, nearly a week before the equinox, is too early a date, and the year 29 entirely excluded. From the paschal chronicle of Hippolytus A.D. 222 and the commentary of Bucherius, Mr. Browne and Mr. Greswell both infer that the paschal limit, before the Council of Nice, was March 18th. Hence the former writer conceives the objection against the date he has adopted to be quite groundless.

Mr. C., on the contrary, argues that this earlier cycle was condemned by the Council of Nice, and therefore erroneous. "On this declared error Mr. Browne builds his date of the Passion. It appears indeed from authorities cited by Mr. Greswell, that in the fourth century the Jews had adopted the practice of celebrating the Passover before the equinox; but they are justly charged with deviating therein from the customs of their forefathers, who, according to Philo and other ancient writers, always celebrated it after the equinox."

Now since the paschal limit of the Christians, by its very nature, was borrowed from that of the Jewish Passover, the certain fact that March 18th was accounted the limit in A.D. 222, must surely be a better guide to the early practice of the Jews than a contrary decision of the council, a whole century later. The question is one, not of astronomical skill, or moral duty, but of actual observance; and the canon of Hippolytus must have more weight, to prove March 18 the paschal limit once in use, than modern astronomy or the Nicene canons to prove the reverse.

But Philo and Aristobulus are alleged to disprove the earlier date of the Passover. The former writes (Gresw. I. 327) thus: "The sun completes two equinoxes each year, one in Aries, and the other in Libra; and shows a clear proof of the excellence of the number seven, for each equinox occurs in the seventh month, and in them it is appointed by law to celebrate the greatest and most notable feasts." Such a passage is as unlike as possible to a scientific rule for the exact limits of the Passover. Taken strictly, it would prove the opposite to that for which it has been alleged. Philo does not assert, as Mr. C. appears to suppose, that the Passover feast was held when the sun was somewhere in Aries, but at the equinox, and this would be strictly true, only if the Passoverday were to lie between the 15th and 22nd of March.