of one another, and yet will be found to coincide in a common result, no inconvenience is likely to arise from my beginning with the latest first. When St. Paul, on the last visit to Jerusalem, recorded in the Acts, was brought before the Jewish Sanhedrima, Ananias presided at the Sanhedrim, in quality of the highpriest, and yet St. Paul did not know him to be the highpriest; or rather, he did not know that there was at that time any high-priest. The true meaning of his reply—oʊx ᾔδειν, ἀδελφοὶ, ὅτι ἔστιν ἀρχιερεύς—upon which I ground this inference, has been much obscured by the inaccuracy of the authorized version;-I wist not, brethren, that he was the high-priest. I do not object to the rendering of the historical present, ő eσTI, by was, for that is more agreeable to the genius of our language, as the other is to the idiom of the Greek, than the contrary: I object only to the rendering, ὅτι ἔστιν ἀρχιερεὺς, standing absolutely as it does stand, and yet supposed to stand for the name of the high-priest officially, as if it had been expressed, őti éσtìv å åpxiepeùs, or as if the whole had stood, οὐκ ᾔδειν, ἀδελφοὶ, τοῦτον ὅτι ἐστὶν ὁ ἀρχιερεύς. The party who had just reproved St. Paul, speaking under his own impression, had very naturally said: Tòv apXiepéα ToŨ Oenũ 201dopeîs; and St. Paul, if he had meant to be understood of any particular person as high-priest, would have expressed himself with equal propriety. There is a case, very much akin to each of these passages, at Acts xix. 2. St. Paul enquired of the disciples at Ephesus, si tveũμa ἅγιον ἐλάβετε πιστεύσαντες ; where, as he did not mean the Holy Ghost absolutely, but some one or other of the gifts or the graces of the Holy Ghost, he could not so properly have used the article, as omitted it: Have ye received any Holy Ghost-that is, any gift or xápioua of the Holy Ghost-in consequence of your having believed? To this the disciples replied, ἀλλ' οὐδὲ, εἰ πνεῦμα ἅγιον ἔστιν, ἠκούσαμεν. No, so far from that, we have not even heard that there * Acts xxiii. 1—5. b Vide Acts ix. 26. 38. xii. 9. xix. 2. was any Holy Ghost: we did not know there was any such gift to be received. On the same principle the reply of St. Paul, oux few, adeλφοί, ὅτι ἔστιν ἀρχιερεὺς, which is so far exactly analogous to this, ought to be rendered in a similar manner; I did not know, brethren, that there was any high-priest. The correctness of this version, I think, is unimpeachable; and while that is the case, no words can more plainly declare at what juncture critically the speaker must have come to Jerusalem, or been standing before the council; viz. at a time when there was no regular high-priest, but either some one who was altogether usurping the office, or some one who, at the utmost, was only pro tempore acting in his stead. This some one, in either case, was doubtless Ananias; and the history of Ananias is as follows. Herod of Chalcis, either the year before, or the very year of, his death, that is, either before, or in, the eighth of Claudius, removed Joseph the son of Camudus, whom he had appointed to the priesthood a few years befored, and constituted Ananias the son of Nebedæus in his stead. This was also the year in which Cumanus succeeded to Tiberius Alexander. After this, some time between the eighth of Claudius, as before, and the end of his twelfth, Ananias was sent to Rome by Quadratus, the governor of Syriae; and he was sent upon a charge of high treason. From the time of this mission, consequently, he was no longer high-priest; but, instead of him, at a point of time coincident with, or at least not later than, the first of Nero, Jonathan, son of Ananus, the Annas of the Gospel history, and known in Josephus as Ananus the son of Seth; which Jonathan was sent to Rome as well as Ananias *g, and either had been * It is said, indeed, in the Antiquities, xx. vi. 3. that Ananias only, and his son Ananus, who was before captain of the temple, were so sent; and perhaps this was more probably the case. Ant. Jud, xx. v. 2. d lb. i. 3. e Ib. vi. 2. B. ii. xii. 6. vii. I. B. ii. xii. 5. 6. appointed high-priest at the time of the deposal of Ananias, or was so upon their return in common from Romeh: of which return, as they were acquitted of blame by Claudius', there can be no doubt in the case of either. The next high-priest, of whom mention occurs, was Ishmael, a different person from both the former; appointed by Agrippa the youngerk, and before the close of the administration of Felix. Between the first of Nero, then, and the appointment of Ishmael, either there was no regular high-priest at all, or it was Jonathan. But Jonathan, not long after his appointment, was assassinated at one of the feasts, through the instrumentality of the Sicarii, but by the subornation of Felix1. This assas sination, therefore, was either in, or after, the first of Nero; yet before the deprival of Felix; and the deprival of Felix was prior to the loss of the influence of his brother Pallas, or, rather, while that influence was still at its height m Now the influence of Pallas with Nero depended altogether on his influence with Agrippina the mother of Nero, and her influence with Nero himself; and as Agrippina was assassinated by Nero, in the month of March, A. U. 812. the fifth year of his reign, so was Pallas himself put to death four years after, A. U. 815. in the eighth or ninth". His influence with Nero, therefore, could not have been at its height later than the fifth of Nero; it had already begun to decline as early as his second, A. U. 808.o The deprival of Felix, then, cannot be placed later than the fifth of Nero; nor, consequently, the appointment of Ishmael later than the fourth. It follows, therefore, that between the death of Jonathan, either in, or after, the first of Nero, and the appointment of Ishmael, either in, or before, the fourth, there was no regular high-priest. The duration of this interregnum may, perhaps, be limited as follows. The appointment of Ishmael is placed in the Antiquities after the sedition between the Jews and h B. ii. xii. 5. k Ant. xx. viii. 8. Ant. xx. viii. 5. i Ant. xx. vi. 3. B. ii. xii. 7. mAnt. xx. viii. 9. Ant. xx. viii. 5. B. ii. xiii. 3. n Tac. Ann. xiv. 1. 4. 65. the Greeks at Cæsarea; the sedition at Cæsarea is placed after the appearance of the Egyptian false prophet; the appearance of the Egyptian false prophet is placed after the assassination of Jonathan; St. Paul's arrival at Jerusalem was after that appearance also P, but two years, if not more, prior to the removal of Felix9; the removal of Felix was later than all these events, yet not later than the fifth of Nero. We may safely conclude, then, that the death of Jonathan could not have taken place, as not before the first, so neither after the second, of Nero; and the appointment of Ishmael, as not before the second, so neither after the fourth, of the same reign: and the critical period during which there might be either no high-priest, or some one usurping his office, or merely filling it for a time, will lie between the last half of the second, and the first of the third, of Nero. That Ishmael was appointed at the last of these times I think is implied by a remarkable mistake of Josephus himself. Antiquities iii. xv. 3. mention is made of a famine, or dearth, in Judæa, when Claudius was Emperor, Ishmael was high-priest, and not long before the Jewish war; all which criteria cannot possibly concur together of any famine in the reign of Claudius whatever, and more especially of the famine mentioned in the Acts, and considered at large in the preceding Dissertation. Ishmael was never highpriest under Claudius at all; in the first year of whose reign Herod Agrippa appointed Simon, called Cantheras', and before the third, Matthias, son of Ananuss, and Elionæus, son of Cantheras t: and in the third, or the fourth, Herod of Chalcis appointed Joseph, son of Camudus", and in the seventh, or the eighth, Ananias the son of Nebedæus, after whom the succession, until the time of Ishmael, was perpetuated in Jonathan, the son of Ananus. The high-priest, then, during the great famine, was Joseph, the son of Camudus; and though Ishmael had been so, still what happened at the latest, in the fourth of Claudius, P Acts xxi. 37. 38. 9 lb. xxiv. 27. Ant. Jud. xix. vi. 2. * Ib. viii. 1. " Ib. xx. 1. 2. 3. Ib. 4. twenty-two, or twenty-three, years before the beginning of the war, could not be said to have happened but a little before it. The frequency of famines, however, besides the great famine, at this period of contemporary history, is a well-attested fact, and in reality only the completion of our Saviour's prediction to that effect, in the prophecy delivered on mount Olivet. Suetonius alludes to Assiduas sterilitates, and Tacitus to Frugum egestas, et orta ex eo fames; both towards the end of the reign of Claudius; in which they are followed by Eusebius and by Orosius also. And if Dio does not specify the same things, it is because after A. U. 802. and the marriage of Claudius and Agrippina, he gives no particulars at all, but passes over the rest of his reign in silence. Yet in the Antiquities, directly after the appointment of Ishmael, in the description of the violences committed by the higher orders of the priests on the inferior, there seems to be clear intimation of some period of dearthw. Josephus might mean this, though by a lapse of memory he has assigned it to the time of Claudius, and not of Nero; a lapse of memory which is easily accounted for, if this, like the former, happened in the third year of the reigning Emperor, and in the first year of the presiding high-priest. And this famine being not quite nine years prior to the war, might well be said to have happened but a little before it. The power of appointing the high-priest rested at this time with the younger Agrippa, whose dominion, as possessed under Claudius, had been considerably enlarged on the accession of Nero. Towards the end of the reign of Claudius he was certainly absent at Romey; and if the Agrippa, who is mentioned by Tacitus, as commanded by Nero to cooperate with Corbulo against the Parthians, and upon the Euphrates, was the same with this Agrippa the younger, it is plain that, whether he was at Rome, or not, in the first of Nero, the execution of that commission kept Suet. Claud. 18. Tac. Ann. xii. 43. Oros. vii. 6. Euseb. Chron. w xx. viii. 8. - * Ant. xx. viii. 4. B. ii, xiii. 2. y xx. vi. 3. B. ii. |