Library › St Irenaeus of Lyons › Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching

Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching

St Irenaeus of Lyons, tr. Robinson, 1920

Chapter 74

And again David (says) thus concerning the sufferings of Christ: Why did the Gentiles rage,¹ and the people imagine vain things? Kings rose up on the earth, and princes were gathered together, against the Lord and his Anointed. For Herod² the king of the Jews and Pontius Pilate, the governor of Claudius Caesar,³ came together and condemned Him to be crucified. For Herod feared, as though He were to be an earthly king, lest he should be expelled by Him from the kingdom. But Pilate was constrained by Herod and the Jews that were with him against his will to deliver Him to death: (for they threatened him) if he should not rather do this⁴ than act contrary to Caesar, by letting go a man who was called a king.

Notes

Ps. ii. 1 f.
Cf. Acts iv. 25 ff.
Pilate was procurator of Judaea for ten years (27-37). Claudius did not become emperor until A.D. 42. The statement here made is therefore inconsistent with the chronology of history: but it agrees with the view, expressed in II, xxxiii. 2ff., that our Lord reached aetatem seniorem, that is, an age between 40 and 50: a view which is largely based on John viii. 57: “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? ” For these words seemed to Irenaeus to show that He could not have been much less than fifty at the time when they were spoken. See C. H. Turner’s art. “Chronology” in Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible.
The Armenian is here uncertain.