The New Testament plainly declares that Christ was born shortly prior to the death of Herod the Great. The most perfect history we possess of Herod's life is found in the works of Flavius Josephus, who acknowledged indebtedness to the "Commentaries of King Herod," and to the works of "Nicolaus of Damascus, the historiographer of Herod." It should be remembered that for his facts Josephus depended entirely on others, because Herod died almost 40 years before Josephus was born and therefore, however accurate Josephus might be individually, he was liable to be mistaken by the error of others. Let us turn to the XIVth book of his "Antiquities," because it contains a statement of than ordinary precision which bears directly on the date of Herod's death and may rightly be regarded as the corner stone of Josephus' calculations regarding Herod's reign. It is there recorded that Hyrcanus began to rule in the "3d year of the 177th olympiad" [B.C. 70/69]. At first sight, one cannot help being pleased, that in so important a matter, Josephus took special pains to be exact, for nowhere else in all his writings does he give the year of any olympiad. It was his custom simply to announce the olympiad and leave the reader to guess in which one of four years the event took place. However, in this one instance he gave the year and left nothing to be supplied. This apparent accuracy has led many readers astray, for they have lost sight of the fact that his statement is not historically correct. It is a well-established fact that Pompey took Jerusalem on the 24th day of May, B.C. 63, that he deposed Aristobulus and made Hyrcanus monarch. According to this, the brothers reigned about 6¾ years. Josephus, however, states that one reigned 3 years and 6 months [XIV. 6. 1], and the other reigned only 3 months [XV. 6. 4], making a total of 3¾ years instead of 6¾ years. Here, then, we have discovered a huge gap of about 3 years in the reckoning of Josephus. We believe this is the first time that public attention has been directed to this grave error: we say grave, because it has led the Christian world astray and fostered the belief that Christ was born in B.C. 5 instead of the year B.C. 2. Happily, Eusebius escaped this pitfall.