Parthia or Bactria, would be four months on the road; and he indulges the conjecture, that the star had appeared nine months before they set out, at the period of the Annunciation. The order of Herod, however, by no means proves that the star had appeared so long as thirteen months before. On the contrary, his sweeping and ruthless edict would doubtless be framed so as to make all sure, by providing against the difficulty of ascertaining the precise age of an infant under a year old; and we may therefore take the age of thirteen months as the extreme. Besides, the order would not be issued till some time had elapsed. Herod would doubtless conclude, at first, that the Magi were prosecuting their search at Bethlehem and in its vicinity; he would expect them not readily to abandon their object; and it would not be till he had actually ascertained their departure out of his dominions, that he would conclude they had found the object of their search, but not returned to inform him of their success. On being convinced of this, his vindictive rage burst forth; a rage not unmixed with jealous misgivings and alarm. But, by that time, days and even weeks might have elapsed, and Joseph and Mary, as well as the Magi, had escaped out of his territories. The Presentation in the Temple might take place in the interval.* Supposing, then, the star to have first appeared at the time of the Nativity, (which seems to us the more natural supposition,) if the Magi set out immediately, and were not quite six weeks on their journey, they might arrive just before or about the time of the Presentation. But if, as Mr. Greswell supposes, their journey would occupy four months, and some delay took place in preparing for it, they could not have reached Jerusalem till Our Lord was five or six months old. In that case, Joseph and Mary must have returned to Bethlehem after the Presentation in the Temple.

'If,' says Mr. Greswell, the birth of Our Lord took place at the beginning of April A. U. 750, (B. C. 4,) then it may be rendered presumptively certain' (a strange expression!) that the Magi arrived in Jerusalem at the beginning of the following August; and consequently, in all probability, that the flight into Egypt could not have been delayed much beyond the middle of the same month. The passover was celebrated the next year on Mar. 31, about a fortnight after the death of Herod; and that Herod was dead before the holy family were instructed to return, is indisputably clear. It is a singular fact, that, in the year after his birth, when Christ the True Passover was absent in Egypt, there was, strictly speaking, no passover celebrated

* Dr. Benson supposes it to have taken place between the arrival of the Magi at Jerusalem and their arrival at Bethlehem; and he unreasonably assumes, that Herod sent forth his emissaries the next very morning after the Magi had left him, on not finding them return immediately.

as usual in Judea; a circumstance almost unexampled in the previous history of the Jews. The cause of this anomaly was, the disturbances which ensued upon the death of Herod, and which, by the time of the arrival of the paschal day, had reached to such a height, that Archelaus was obliged to disperse the people, by force of arms, in the midst of their sacrifices.' Vol. I. p. 338, note.

Dr. Benson, in his "Chronology of Our Saviour's Life"*, fixes the death of Herod in the spring of J.P. 4711 (B.c. 3.), which answers to the date adopted by Mr. Greswell. Lardner fixes it a year earlier. The arrival of the Magi, Dr. B. assigns, on very precarious data, to the middle of February, J.P. 4710; and he fixes the time of Our Lord's birth in April or May of J.P. 4709, answering to A.U.C. 749 or B.C. 5., which is a year earlier than Mr. Greswell's date. All that the narrative requires for its consistency is, that the birth of Christ took place not less than about a year before the death of Herod; it may have been two years; but Mr. Greswell's learned and ingenious calculations will probably be thought to establish with tolerable certainty the date which he has adopted, four years prior to the vulgar era, or J.P. 4710.

Part the Second of the Harmony opens with the sublime exordium of St. John's Gospel, ch. i. 1-18, which forms an introduction not less appropriate to the character and design of his Gospel, than the Genealogy does to St. Matthew's; but there is the same difficulty in placing it in a harmony. By making it commence a new part, this difficulty is concealed, rather than obviated. The reader must be sensible, however, of the violence committed in separating verses 15-18 from ver. 19 et seq. of the same chapter, in order to interpose, in parallel columns, the accounts furnished by the other evangelists, of the Ministry of the Baptist, the baptism of Our Lord, and the Temptation. The chronology requires this, unless sect. 1. had been postponed till after sect. 7. The fact is, that, although the whole of St. John's Gospel is clearly of a supplemental character, it is the least susceptible of being blended with the other narratives; and Calvin, we cannot but think, decided wisely in excluding it from his Harmony, and reserving it for distinct commentary in an unbroken form.t

See Eclec. Rev. Vol. xvi. p. 336.

+ Doddridge introduces the exordium to St. John's Gospel in his 2nd section, immediately after Luke i. 4, and as a sort of parenthesis between that brief preface and the commencement of Luke's history. This is, perhaps, the best place it could occupy in a harmony. The genealogies, he inserts in sect. 9., immediately after Matt. i. 25. The visit of the Magi, he places after the purification, but, in his notes, treats the true order as doubtful.

In the account of the Temptation, Mr. Greswell adopts the order of St. Matthew as the true one. Yet, it does not follow, he remarks, that St. Luke's account contains a trajection; that is, an undesigned and inaccurate transposition. The moral end proposed by the narrative in either, though it must have been partly the same, might have been partly distinct, so far as to require St. Matthew to observe the actual order of the event, and to induce St. Luke to make a corresponding change in it.

The order of the temptations is the order of their strength; that is, they begin with the weakest, and proceed to the strongest; for any other order would manifestly have been preposterous. And the end of the whole transaction is, to represent Our Lord tempted in all points, like unto ourselves, yet without sin; attacked in each vulnerable part of his human nature, yet superior to every act, and to all the subtlety of the Devil.' Vol. II. p. 186.

Now which of the last two temptations was apparently stronger, would afford room for a difference of opinion. We agree with our Author, that the third, according to St. Matthew's arrangement, besides being actually the strongest temptation, and one which only the true Christ could have withstood, would also appear the strongest in the eyes of a Jew. But St. Luke might have reason to think that, to a Gentile reader, the second would appear the strongest, as the force of the last would not be appre ciated, except by those who were looking for a temporal Messiah. To the Gentiles, it might appear in the light of a temptation addressed simply to the desire of honour, wealth, or power, and therefore of inferior strength to the second, which was addressed more directly to the principle of intellectual pride.

For the history of their own philosophers could furnish instances of persons whom their natural strength had enabled to surmount the former; but few or none of such as, unassisted by the grace of God, had not fallen victims to the latter. Hence, if St. Luke wrote for the Gentile Christians, as St. Matthew had written for the Jewish, he would as naturally place the second temptation last, as St. Matthew, on the other supposition, had placed the third.' Vol. II. p. 187.

This explanation is not only ingenious, but, we think, carries with it high probability. At all events, it is much more reasonable to suppose that St. Luke had some design in deviating from the order of St. Matthew, than that he transposed the order through error or negligence, or considered it as of no consequence. If we suppose his order to be the true one, and that St. Matthew's was the deviation from historic precision, we may in like manner conclude, that the arrangement had relation to the specific design of that Evangelist. But we think that the internal evidence is in favour of the former opinion. In order to estimate the strength of the third Temptation, it should be considered, that it was ad

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dressed to him who was by right king of the Jews, in his regal character; and that the offer was made by the Tempter in the semblance of an angel of light; who might lay claim to this power, not as independent of the Almighty, but as the delegated ruler over the kingdoms, agreeably to the received opinions of the Jews respecting the subordinate government of the world by angels, which were supposed to be countenanced by the language of the prophet Daniel.* The words of the Tempter, "For that is delivered to me," imply no higher pretensions than to a derived and delegated authority. And when we add to this, that the very homage which the Tempter claimed as an acknowledgement for the splendid donation, was no more than an Apostle was about to pay involuntarily to a true angel of light, when he was prevented by the heavenly messenger; we may well conceive that the temptation was one which even a good man, to say nothing of an impostor or an enthusiast, if no more than man, would have found irresistible.

Between the Temptation and the commencement of Our Lord's ministry in Galilee, there occurs a hiatus in the first three gospels, which is supplied by John i. 19-iv. 54. Mr. Greswell has devoted several dissertations to the illustration of this supplemental relation, and of the notes of time which St. John's Gospel affords with regard to the duration of Our Lord's ministry. In his Harmony, between the fourth and fifth chapters of John, he introduces the events recorded, Luke iv. 14-v. 39, and the corresponding portions of Matthew's and Mark's Gospels, which bring down the narrative, according to his hypothesis, to the close of the first year of the ministry of Our Lord. Accordingly, Part the third of his Harmony commences with John v. 1., which he supposes to refer to a Passover. As this is a controverted, and certainly a doubtful point, and one which has employed much learned discussion, we must transcribe the Author's reasons for adopting a conclusion in which he differs from Dr. Benson and some other eminent critics, although the greater number of commentators take it for granted that the Passover is meant. One reason for the contrary supposition is, that the indefinite mention of a feast would not seem likely to designate the principal Jewish festival. Mr. Greswell thus meets this objection.

I. The absence of the Greek article in speaking of this feast, unless its presence would infallibly have denoted the Passover, proves nothing at all; but leaves the question as open as before. The truth is, that, as the Jewish calendar contained at least three feasts, all of equal antiquity, and of equal authority, the article could not stand xar x before one, any more than before the rest, unless that one had come, in

See Dan. x. 13, 20,

+ See Rev. xix. 10. xxii. 9.

the lapse of time, to be placed, for some reason or other, at the head of the rest; a circumstance of distinction which, as I have shewn elsewhere, from Josephus and from other authorities, (and which St. John's expression, directly after—ἦν δὲ ἐγγὺς ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων, ἡ n Evonyia contributes critically to confirm,) might have held good of the feast of Tabernacles, but could not of the feast of Passover.

II. If the feast, John v. 1. was not the next Passover to ii. 13, the Passover, vi. 4. must have been so; and the feast, v. 1. must have been some feast between the two, and, consequently, some feast in the first year of our Saviour's ministry; after the Passover belonging to that year, but before the Passover at the beginning of the next: that is, it must have been either the Pentecost, or the feast of Tabernacles, or the Encania, within the first twelve months of his ministry. It could not have been the Pentecost, for, as I have shewn in the last dissertation, our Lord's return into Galilee out of Judæa was just before the arrival of this feast. Nor could it have been the Encania, for the Encania fell out in the depth of winter, at which time no such assemblage of sick and infirm persons, as was supposed at the time of this feast, could have been found about the pool of Bethesda. Nor could it have been the feast of Tabernacles; because at that feast of Tabernacles, and in the first year of his ministry, our Lord was engaged upon the circuit of Galilee. And it is a general argument why it could have been no feast in the first year of our Lord's ministry whatever, that the strain of the reflections, from v. 17 to the end, which were then delivered, would be incompatible with such a supposition. The ministry of our Saviour, and, consequently, the trial of the Jews, must have been going on at least for one year, before the futurity of his rejection, and the consequent fact of their infidelity,could be so far certain, as to admit of their being argued with, as we find them argued with on this occasion.' Vol. II. pp. 237, 8.

The remarkable expression which occurs Luke vi. 1, and which has given rise to such numerous conjectures, Mr. Greswell elsewhere shews, agreeably to Scaliger's conjecture, was intended to denote the first regular sabbath after the sixteenth of the 'Jewish Nisan, and consequently, either in, or directly after, the "Paschal week. If so, he contends, we have in that passage an indication of Our Lord's attendance at a passover which the narrative of Luke (as well as the parallel narrations of Matthew and Mark) proves to have been at least a year before the Passover referred to John vi. 4. He therefore concludes that John v. 1. decidedly points to a previous Passover, the second in our Lord's ministry. In a note, the following additional considerations are

* Rendered according to the genius of the Greek language in its compound phraseology, it denotes, first after the second, and not second after the first; primo-secundus, not secundo-primus.' That is, the first sabbath after the second day of unleavened bread, from which the fifty days were reckoned to the Pentecost.'

See Vol. II. pp. 286-293. So, Doddridge.