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Sejanus, Pilate, and the Date of the Crucifixion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Paul L. Maier
Paul L. Maier
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan
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Extract

It seems paradoxical that the event which has divided our reckoning of time into years B.C. and A.D. should itself seem largely undatable. The birth of Christ is variously assigned to the years ranging from 7 to 2 B.C. The terminus ad quem must certainly be the death of Herod the Great, since the king was very much alive during the visit of the Magi in the Christmas story. According to Josephus, Herod died soon after an eclipse of the moon and not long before a Passover. Emil Schürer's chronology of Herod's reign from the accounts of Josephus, which has long been standard, identifies this as the lunar eclipse which took place on the night of March 12/13, 4 B.C., and which would have been visible in Judea. It also occurred one month before the Passover that year. On this basis, the birth of Jesus could not have been later than the spring of 4 B.C., and most likely took place in the winter of 5/4 B.C.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , March 1968 , pp. 3 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1968

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References

1. Matthew 2:1; cf. also Luke 1:5ff.

2. Josephus, , Antiq., xvii, 6, 4Google Scholar; and xvii, 9, 3.

3. See the discussion by Schürer, Emil, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1896ff.), I, i, 465.Google Scholar

4. Cf. Finegan, Jack, Handbook of Biblical Chronology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 230ff.Google Scholar

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8. Luke 2:2.

9. Finegan, op. cit., 300.

10. These and succeeding Biblical citations are from the Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise specified.

11. Luke 3:1-3a.

12. Suetonius, , Tiberius, xxi.Google Scholar

13. Filmer, op. cit., 283.

14. Luke 1:3.

15. Acts 23:26; 24:2.

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17. Josephus, , Antiq., xv, 11, 1Google Scholar. Josephus apparently contradicts himself in Wars, i, 21, 1Google Scholar, where he states that Herod restored the Temple “in the fifteenth year,” though possibly this is an error in the text. The evidence from Antiq. seems more reliable here, since the fifteenth year would seem irreconcilably early. This difficulty, however, is more easily resolved in the Filmer chronology, see Filmer, op. cit., 296.

18. Finegan, op. cit., 277.

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28. “Praefectus Iudaeae” was Pilate's official title rather than “procurator.” The latter familiar ascription is based on what has now proven to be anachronisms in Josephus, (Wars, ii, 9, 2Google Scholar) and Tacitus, (Annals, xv, 44)Google Scholar. In the summer of 1961, an Italian archaeological expedition found a two-by-three-foot stone at Caesarea in Palestine with the following important inscription, as reconstructed by Antonio Frova: “CAESARTENS. TIBERIEVM PONTIVS PILATVS PRAEFECTVS IVDAEAE DEDIT.” See Frova, Antonio, “L'Iscrizione di Ponzio Pilato a Cesarea,” Rendiconti Istituto Lombardo (Accademia di Scienze e Lettere), 95 (1961), 419–34Google Scholar. This inscription is also discussed by Lifshitz, B., “Inscriptions latines de Césarée,” Latomus, XXII (1963), 783Google Scholar; and Degrassi, Attilio, “Sull 'Iscrizione di Ponzio Pilato,” Rendiconti dell 'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Clause di Scienze morali, storiche e fiologiche, XIX (Marzo-Aprile 1964), 59–65Google Scholar. Despite their reconstructions, Frova's original suggestion seems most appropriate.—Clearly, then, governors of Judaa were called prefects during the reigns of Augustus aud Tiberius. Claudius first changed their title to procurator. The New Testament very accurately refrains from calling Pilate procurator, using instead ηΥεμων, governor.

29. Tiberius retired to Campania and Capri in 26 A.D., leaving the affairs of government largely in the hands of Sejanus. See Tacitus, , Annals iv, 41, 57Google Scholar; Suetonius, , Tiberius, xli.Google Scholar

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34. Josephus, , Antiq., xviii, 3, 1Google Scholar; Wars, ii, 9, 2–3Google Scholar. Eusebius, , Ecclesiastical History, ii, 5, 7ff.Google Scholar, is just a reflection of Josephus. A fresh interpretation of this incident is provided by Kraeling, Carl H., “The Episode of the Roman Standards at Jerusalem,” Harvard Theological Review, XXXV (10 1942), 263–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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36. Luke 13:1.

37. Stauffer, Ethelbert, “Zur Münzprägung und Judenpolitik des Pontius Pilatus,” La Nouvelle Clio, I and II (1949–1950), 495–514.Google Scholar

38. Tacitus, , Annals, iv, 41.Google Scholar

39. Dio Cassius, lviii, 2, 7ff.; lviii, 3, 8.

40. Philo, , De Legatione ad Gaium, xxiv, 159–161Google Scholar, Colson's, F. H. translation in The Loeb Classical Library, X, pp. 81–83.Google Scholar

41. It seems more than coincidental that no quadrans coin in Palestine after 30/31 A.D. shows the despised pagan lituus symbol. Evidently Pilate stopped minting something which would be offensive to the Jews. See Stauffer, loc. cit., and, on Pilate's coinage in general: Hedley, P. L., “Pilate's Arrival in Judea,” The Journal of Theological Studies, XXXV (1934), 56–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kindler, A., “More Dates on the Coins of the Procurators,” Israel Exploration Journal, VI (1956), 54–57Google Scholar; and Oestreicher, B., “A New Interpretation of Dates on the Coins of the Procurators,” Israel Exploration Journal, IX (1959), 193–195.Google Scholar

42. Philo, , De Legatione ad Gaium, xxxviii, 299–305.Google Scholar

43. Doyle, A. D., “Pilate's Career and the Date of the Crucifixion,” The Journal of Theological Studies, XLII (1941), 190–193.Google Scholar

44. Suetonius, , Tiberius, xlviGoogle Scholar. See also Bammel, Ernst, “Philos ton Kaisaros,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, 77 (04 1952), 206–210.Google Scholar

45. Patristic evidence, unfortunately, is very unreliable in any attempt to arrive at a precise date for the crucifixion. No two church fathers seem to agree. Others, like Eusebius, offer different dates in different writings, though in one version of his Chronicon, Eusebius supports a 33 A.D. dating in stating that Jesus suffered “in the nineteenth year of the reign of Tiberius,” which he further qualifies by citing a reference from Phlegon regarding an abnormal solar eclipse and earthquake which took place that year. (Eusebius, , Chronicon, ii, p. 535Google Scholar, ed. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca.) The eclipse, of course, is intended as a possible explanation of the darkness which the Gospels record in connection with the crucifixion (Matthew 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23: 44). According to Tertullian, the darkness was a “cosmic” or “world event,” (Apologeticus xxi, 20)Google Scholar. Phlegon, a Greek from Caria writing a chronology soon after 137 A.D., reported that in the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad there was “the greatest eclipse of the sun,” and that “it became night in the sixth hour of the day [i.e., noon] so that the stars even appeared in the heavens. There was a great earthquake in Bithynia, and many things were overturned in Nieaea.” (Fragment from the 13th book of Phlegon, Olympiades he Chronika, ed. by Keller, Otto, Rerum Naturalium Scriptores Graeci Minores (Leipzig: Teubner, 1877) I, 101Google Scholar, translation mine.) An actual eclipse of the sun, of course, was impossible on Nisan 14, since the Passover occurred at the time of the full moon. Nevertheless, Phlegon's reference to the unnatural darkness and earthquake form an interesting parallel to the Gospel record, and the date he assigns these phenomena provides additional astronomical support for the chronology proposed above; “the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad” extended from July 1, 32 A.D. to June 30, 33. Since Christ was crucified in the spring, 33 A.D. would be the year.