Milford chronicle., 1957-12-20

cile the DiOnySian sequence with certain events
and personages mentioned in the Gospels, for
which, with the help of Joephus Tacitus and
others, dates can be approximated with some
confidence One example is the tax census
decreed by the Emperor Augustus that made
necessary the journey of Joseph and Mary from
Nazareth to Bethlehem, thus enabling the full
fillment of the messianic prophecy.
There certainly was such a Roman census
about A. U. c. 759 or 760-that is about A. d.
6 or = which brought about the a5ortive
bellion mentioned in Acts v:37 though there
may very well have been an earlier census
about dozen years or more before st. Luke,
however explicitly mentions the census con-
cerned with the Nativity as having taken
place in the administration of Publius Sui
picius Quirinus as governor of Syria Now
this Quirinus became governor in A. u. G..
758, A. ID. 5, so that the next year the
one following might seem the probable date
of the First Christmas, and some still prefer
to accept 1T as such despite the contrary testi-
mony of the other Evangelist Matt ii BID
concerning the Flight into Egypt and the Mas
sacre of Innocents.
Herod the Great. who ordered that fearful
crime died in B. G. "a. U. G. 750). About two
years earlier there had occurred that rare and
brilliant conjunction of the planets Mars, Jupi-
ter and Saturn which some astronomers are
tempted to equate with the marvellous Star that
the Wise Men had followed from none knows
where desert and upland and plain to
Bethlehem All this had led some to conclude
that Quirinus must also have had another and
earlier term as governor; though if Tacitus
(dist. v:9) is to be trusted on the point the
Roman governor of Syria in the final years of
HerodS reign was Publius Quintilius Varus
who was later to perish with his legions in
the disaster of Teutoburger Valid. Others say
that governor" is a mistranslation of the
Greek and that Quirinus at that time must
have been a sort of special legate In any
event it was from the Wise Men, as st. Mat
thew tells us, that Herod learned of the omen
and its messanic import. Agonized by linger-
ing illness, hated by his subjects, fearful for
his life and probably more than half insane
the Judean monarch, himself usurper, was
prone to scent conspiracy on every side; and
the story of these strange and travel-weary
visitors seemed to him proof of yet another
deep-laid plot against his throne
Herod was one of those sinister and un-
fathomable supermen, compound of madness
and political genius, who have so often troubled
history and with whom our own age has be-
come all too familiar. He had won the royal
power in Judea by the familiar processes of
treachery and murder and kept it by assiduous
vassalage to the Roman power-allying him
self in turn with Pompey, Julius Cassius An
tony and Octavius-and by the, ruthless
determination of all real and potentia!
rivals, including three of his own sons
Idumaean by birth, Herod was a Jew
by expediency, for though it was he who
rebuilt the Temple at Jerusalem, he built
another to Jupiter Capitolinus at Caesares
M in which he did not scruple to offer sacri-
flee and shrine to the Divus Augustus |
Otherwise he kept an outward observance
siden+ of the Jewish law, thus leading Augustus
sident on learning of the execution of young
lsurer Antipater, to exclaim in disgust that it |
EDITOR was safer to be Herod's pig than to be
Editor one of his offspring. With the Hungarian |
- horrors fresh in our memories, and |
We accustomed to the notion of |
the blood purge a political instru- |
n ment we have perhaps some understand |
ing of the mentality and motives of the |
Judean tyrant
All this, to be sure, is of mainly intel |
lectual interest, though it may help to |
cents remind us that the long and sorely troub- |
led land of Palestine was, even in those
- days of the Pax Romano, place of fear, |
ice violence, blood and anguish The ques- |
tion of dates has little or nothing to do |
with the meaning of the miracle of love |
that we commemorate next Wednesday; |
,r,D for in the world of faith ard charity that |
M most Of us seek to revisit, if only briefly |
inted at this season, it can make difference |
pre- whether the calculations of the Abbot |
SIS Of Dionysius were correct or not The birth |
~ ~-os1e Of Jesus at Bethlehem, though unnoticed |
by Roman and Jewish annalists, is never |
the theless historical fact: but it is in our
ed IN hearts rather than in historical specula- |
{. tion that He must be born and reborn, |
If we are ever find that peace on earth"
promised so long ago to those astonished |
. shepherds in the pastures of Bosg.