The 15th Year of Tiberius
By Daniel Gregg
The text in Luke 3:1 tells us that the word of the Almighty came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar. This is the only text in the New-Made Covenant writings to give us a numeric date connected to the reign of a ruler, and it is all the more remarkable since the Covenant of Old comes with times seasons and historical dates all over. From this date we can anchor the entire ministry of the Messiah. From this date we can test true teaching and false teaching. From this date we can find out everything that the Church has been deceiving Christians about—eventually if you follow the conclusions that can be figured from it. It is also an essential starting point for every celebration and anniversary concerning the Messiah.
Why is this important? Because the Church has collectively created a comprehensive, yet chaotic and contradictory system of chronology designed to conceal the truth from their own eyes lest they be made responsible to obey it. In order to escape this trap, we must go line upon line and fact upon fact.
I have stated the primary and original cause of the Church's false calendar: rejection of Torah. But from this cause have flowed a host of secondary causes which are nearer. Christians nowdays are tripping over the secondary causes or fallout from the primary cause, without even realizing what the original problem is. Even the Torah observant faithful in Messiah Yeshua are still tripping over the secondary fallout inherited from the Church. We have to address both the prime cause and the secondary traps that flowed from it. If we just try to fix the secondary traps then the primary cause will just creat more secondary traps. But if the primary cause if fixed: rejection of the appointed times in Scripture, God can work to clear out the secondary problems. We have to address the problem at both levels. The collective and primary cause is from Church tradition, and this is Torah rejection. But the secondary causes, especially in biblical chronology do not at first appear to address the prime cause. But they do. And that is why the secondary problems exist, because the Church had to create them to protect themselves from revelation of the prime error.
Now one may think that the regnal year of a pagan ruler mentioned in the text is of no importance. In fact, one might be inclined to ignore all chronology outside of Scripture. However, Scripture, after using its own internal dates, for the first time, uses one in Jeremiah 25:1. With this text the precedent is set for supplying the dates of a pagan ruler in Scripture. From Creation until the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the Scripture gives no external dates whatsoever, for 3535 years. However, in the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods, the Bible not only supplies chronological data linked to pagan empires, it makes it the foundational bridge to the new-made covenant of continuing the complete chronology it had been building all along. What this means is that the author of Scripture is vouching for and certifying the accuracy of the pagan dates referred to. So while pagan timelines are subject to all manner of corruption that Scripture is protected from, these few dates used by the text were judged to have an accurate enough foundation to be worth using, and more than worth using, but like Rahab was a foreginer in the Messianic Line, so also the chronology of the nations has been made a critical link to Messiah.
It is thus all the more amazing that the only numerical reign year mentioned in the New Made-Covenant is from the pagan empire of Rome. And all the further amazing that this date is used to anchor the ministry of the most important person in history: Messiah Yeshua. And it is very concerning that the Church which was was supposed to keep the truth safe, has done everything in its power to move this date, the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, from its true position in history, in order to deceive Christians concerning the deep connections between the new-made covenant, the Torah, and the appointed times that Messiah Yeshua mandated on Mt. Sinai and throughout Scripture for us to keep and observe.
Even though Scripture has vouched for the accuracy and utility of this 15th year figure, fierce disputes in the Church have served to reduce the timing to complete confusion. I can tell you in advance that the reason for the confusion stems from the refusal of the Church to accept the conclusions that an honest line of reasoning based on this number leads to. So let us expose the error.
The Church has wanted to change the 15th year of Tiberius to a time when it was not, because they decided that Messiah rose from the dead on a Sunday, and then mistranslated all their bibles to agree with themselves, all because they rejected the seventh day Sabbath, and any part of the Torah they regarded as a "Jewish" matter. They also changed the proper interpretation of Daniel 9, which is properly based on the Sabbatical year. But the Friday Sunday corruption came first. This is the initial cause of the corrupt chronology. There are many other secondary causes downstream from this primary cause.
Returning to the 15th year of Tiberius, which is to be dated from Tishri 1, AD 38 to Tishri 1, AD 29, they wanted to move this date backward by 1, 2, or 3 years, in order to target a Friday in AD 30 for the crucifixion. And by doing so they turned the beginning into the end. For AD 30 is the beginning of Yeshua's public ministry. The line stated above for the 15th year, is the ordinary calculation according to Scriptural standards used by the house of Judah for its kings. Understand this, there is an ordinary means of reckoning regnal years established by Scripture, and Rome itself did not count any regnal years! So that leaves only the local custom, and in Judea, the local custom used a Tishri 1 epoch for the civil year, and the accession year method for kings.
Rome did not have a standardized count of regnal years to be used by all its provinces and client kings for dating the Emperors. Counts used in the provinces were all according to the local calendar. Each Province had its own epoch for the civil year by which reign years of the Emperors were counted. Even though Rome had a civil year with a January 1 epoch, they did not use it to count reign years of their rulers. Each year had two consuls elected or appointed, and the year was referred to by using the names of the consuls. There was no official total of a reign incrementing year to year.
But in certain Roman provinces matters were different, and the custom was according to each nation in its province. In Egypt the year epoch was on August 29 in the time of Tiberius; this was a fixation of Thoth 1 on the Egyptian calendar. In Syria and Macedonia the epoch was the first new moon after the autumnal equinox, which was called ΔΙ 1. In Judea the civil epoch was Tishri 1. So you see we cannot rely on Rome to tell us when the numbering of a regnal year turned over for a Roman Emperor. They did not even count their own years. The Roman Principate chose to avoid counting regnal years to mantain the illusion of the Roman Republic. They used the Consular System and Tribunician counts to refer to various years.
We have three calendars in three Roman Provinces, Egypt, Judea, and Syria, with Judea right in between the other two. In Egypt every civil matter used the Egyptian calendar, which was locked by Rome by this time so that Thoth 1 always fell on August 29 of the Julian year. This was the calendar used by the Ptolemaic Empire in Egypt. In Syria, the Seleucid Empire used the Macedonian Calendar, sometimes called the Syrio-Macedonian Calendar. In this calendar the new year began on the month of ΔΙ on the first day, which varied according to the moon from late September to late October. And in Judea, Galilee, and every Jewish household, the first day of the civil year was Tishri 1. I say civil year because this is the epoch for kings. Tishri 1 is also used for religious appointements.
So this is three kingdoms, Egypt, Judea, and Syria. These are represented by three coin mints during the Roman period, the Alexandrian Mint, the Jerusalem Mint, and the Antioch Mint. The coins were issued according to the local epoch for the year. Antiochian coinage bore dates linked to ΔΙ 1. Egyptian coinage bore dates linked to Thoth 1. Judean coinage bore dates linked to Tishri 1. And it was not just the coins. But tax collectors issued tax receipts in Egypt dated with a regnal year of the Emporer in according to the Thoth epoch. Tax collectors in Judea issued receipts with the year of the Emperor according to the Jewish Tishri 1 epoch. Tax collectors in Syria issued their receipts using ΔΙ 1 as the standard year. Rome did not overrule the system of these countries. They worked with it to extract as much money as they could.
So every Jew that had land or tools or trade was given a receipt by a scribe that said they had paid their tax. A copy was made in a tax ledger kept by the State, and guarded. There was even a head tax, a tax for just being alive. If you could not prove with a document, that legally had to show the reganal year of the Emperor, that you had paid your tax, then the fines and punishments were severe. The coins bore the date of the Emperor's reign, though in Judea generally not his image. It was not the expensive coins. It was the cheapest copper or bronze coins of all. Do you now get the idea that this vast economic engine leaves in immovable footprint! And in Egypt and in Syria it was the same. Just a slightly different beginning point in the autumn from Judea. Egypt led on August 29, Judea in the middle on Tishri 1, and Syria on the eighth month (ΔΙ 1), a space of about 2 months. ΔΙ 1 is the standard scribal shortening of the Syrian month name, equivalent to Cheshvan or Marcheshvan, meaning "the eighth month"; but in Greek ΔΙ is name of the chief pagan god, meaning "of Z." So in Antioch, a Jewish scribe put down ΔΙ on state documents and Cheshwan others.
These countries have three capitols, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch. The 15th year of Tiberius is hemmed in on everyside. Let us go back to debunking that Rome had any sort of reign year system based on January 1. They did not. They left each region they governed to use the calendar of their fathers. That they did not is important, because Church calendar apologists have used part years counted as whole numbers to set Tiberius reign back a year! Otherwise their calculations and apologetics do not work.
Now this Roman system might seem confusing to us, just as ancient "year names" would be. But the Romans did keep lists of their consuls from which a relative count from one year to another could be determined, or by which the number of years a person reigned could be counted, but there was no official count, and a person would count, if they counted, according to their own conventions or assumptions. The consular lists were literally engraved in stone and posted in the capitol. These fasti lists spanned more than a thousand years, from 509 BC to AD 541. Whenever they wanted to date an event, they put down the names of the consular year. No regnal years were used. And in fact, to put a regnal year down was considered taboo in Rome, because to Rome wanted to view itself as a republic and not a kingdom ruled by a king. When Roman historians counted "reign" years, they counted from the anniversary of the accession, which no common person could remember. So they used the consuls names to refer to the year an event happened. If you wanted to calculate, then you had to go to a consular list and count for yourself. Yes, this was complicated.
So to figure out when the 15th Year of Tiberius was in Luke 3:1 we cannot rely on Rome. Rome itself did not have a readily understood or unambiguous choice for Luke to use. But Luke did have obvious choices, and providentially it does not matter which of the obvious choices he made, becasue the results are all the same in the three systems, Antiochean, Judean, and Egyptian. We can look to Luke's own home town, and to the usage that the Jews would use in Judea. Luke came from Antioch in Syria, and yet he was a Jewish Convert who spent a good deal of his life living in Judea and traveling the Roman Empire. We will find that the epochal date of his home town, Antioch, and the epochal date of Judea are so close as to make little difference in getting the proper application of his date in Luke 3:1 pinned down. Tishri 1 and ΔΙ 1 are very close. In fact in the year AD 14, the two dates differed by exactly 30 days (Tishri 1 = Sept 15; ΔΙ 1 = October 15).
Some will say that ΔΙ 1 was fixed to October 1, but the only proof of this comes from much later in AD 208. By that time Antioch had lost its status as a favored free city in the Empire. So the Romans imposed their own order on Antioch and made them fix ΔΙ 1 to October 1. But if it were so, then the defference would be 15 days, even less than 30. It should be pointed out that after the second Jewish Revolt, the Jewish Tishri 1 epoch was no longer used or allowed to be used for tax collection. It was abolished by the Romans. Thus you see, to claim that ΔΙ 1 was on October 1 in the first century is the same as claiming that September 1 was used in Judea as the civil administration epoch!
First I will cover the Judean convention for counting reign years, then I will discuss the Syrian convention, with a more particular focus on the actual case with Tiberius. When a ruler dies and the appointed heir takes office after his death, the convention is for the remainder of the year up to Tishri 1 to be counted as the accession year. That is, it receives a 0 for the new king. A document dated for the new king in year 0 will say, "In the beginning of the reign of X," or "When X took the throne," or "When X entered office," and no number will be appended.
Now Augustus died on August 19th of AD 14, and this date is dated by the Romans with the consular years Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Appuleius. It is absolutely known what the translation of consular years is into AD years. Now in Judea Tishri 1 began on September 15th, AD 14 Julian. This date I computer calculated for the 7th new moon of that biblcal year. So according to the Judean convention, the time up to Tishri 1 would be Tiberius' accession year, and the time from Tishri 1 onward would be his 1st year, or year no. 1. until Tishri 1, AD 15.
The Church calendar apologist has argued that Tiberius' years as mentioned in Luke are to be calculated by a coregency dating back to AD 12. However, this theory will not hold up. The Alexandrian Mint issued a year 1 coin for Tiberius, but this is in AD 14. The Antioch Mint also issued a year 1 coin, and this also begins in AD 14. Furthermore, the Judean Prefects issued coins dated by Tiberius' years. A famous Gratus coin bears the date of the 2nd year of Tiberius. This Gratus coin goes in the summer of AD 16. Gratus also struck coins for years 3, 4, 5, and 11. Pilate stuck coins for years 16, 17, and 18. Gratus ruled for 11 years and Pilate for 10 years. Pilate was dismissed from his job in AD 36 and ordered back to Rome to face trial only to arrive in the spring of AD 37 after Tiberius had died. As a consequence, all of these coins point to a regnal year count for Tiberius in Judea beginning after the death of Augustus.
The prutahs minted by the prefects Gratus and Pilate had no images on them. The value of these coins made them pocket change to the Jewish people. Note this: every single prutah issued by the prefects of Judea had the regnal year of Tiberius stamped on it. They also explicitly said in Greek, "TIBERIOY KAICAPOC" "of Tiberius Caesar"; there were no undated coins. Modern scholars have estimated that millions of these copper prutahs were struck and in active circulation during the reign of Tiberius. Hundreds of dies have been identified by examining the strikes used just for year 16, 17, and 18 coins. If a die can produce 10,000 to 30,000 coins, that is a lot of coins. The total runs from 5 to 10 million.
What do these copper coins prove? They prove that the Judeans had no notion of a coregency between Augustus and Tiberius. Their very pocket change witnessed against it. Their tax documentation witnessed against it. Furthermore, I remind the reader that the coins of the Antioch and Alexandrian mints also witnesses against it. And Finally, Rome itself issued no coins with regnal years dated on it. This was only done in the three provinces that dated regnal years, Egypt, Judea, and Syria.It has been supposed that Luke used some odd counting of a co-regency. But it would indeed be odd. In fact, it would be nowhere on the radar of his readers as anywhere close to obvious. This kind of confusion would be the last thing Luke, who was a very careful historian in all other respects, would ever want to do. In fact, the suggestion that he did is never made by anyone acquainted with the contemporary facts who lived at the time, nor at any time until much later when the knowledge of the provincial accounting procedures was sufficiently lost to allow a contradictory or presumptive narrative of events to rearrange the chronological facts.
The co-regency narrative came about when Church calendar apologists were unable to construct their chronologies of the new-made covenant using the actual 15th year of Tiberius. As they collected more and more empirical data and learned to use astronomical calculations to figure out when the biblical holy days fell, they found out that it did not agree with the narrative they inherited from Christendom. So they had to retroactively manipulate the 15th year of Tiberius in order to make it fit with their calculated choices for a date of the crucifixion, AD 30.
One may well agree that there was a coregency. But shared regnal power is not the same as overlapping regnal year counts. We must not conflate or equivocate the two concepts. The ancient world has lots of coregencies, some of many years, but without overlapping reign length counts. Typically, what will happen is that the reign years of the junior regent will simply not be counted until the senior regent dies. The people of Judea would have no problem with Tiberius sharing power with Augustus and yet not counting those years in a reign count. And those that were familiar with Rome knew that the Roman state did not count any years at all! So the choices on the table were Egypt, Judea and Antioch.
There were no tax documents, coins, or contemporary historians that ever counted Tiberius' years from AD 11 to 13! Not in Antioch, not in Jeruslaem, and not in Alexandria. And each of these cities had large Jewish populations. All the financial data from that time ignored the co-regency. This was so plain that anyone counting otherwise would have to explicitly state they were counting outside the norm to have any chance of being understood.
Luke was definitely writing from a Jewish Point of view, and we will see in a while that the Antioch point of view gives the same results. Nehemiah confirms the accession year method precedent using a Tishri epoch. Xerxes died in 465 BC in August, and so by the accession year method his 20th year comes to Tishri 446 to Tishri 445 BC. The relevant British Museum Tablet is mentioned in the charts. The proof that Judea used a Tishri epoch while Persia used a Nisan epoch comes from Nehemiah 1:1, in the 20th year, in the month of Kisleu, and then this is followed by 2:1, in the 20th year and the month of Nisan. The text is only true if Judea is shifting the Nisan epoch of Persia to a Tishri epoch in Judea. So if Judea did this to Persia, which did count its own reign years, then how much more they would use their own system for Roman reigns. How much more would the standard Judean regnal system work out when Tiberius became Emperor much closer to the Tishri 1 epoch than Artaxerxes did!
Antioch
There is a coin of Antioch minted with a double date, year 1 of Tiberius and year 45 of the Actian Era. The Actian Era begins on September 2, 31 BC, when the famous naval battle of Actium was fought between Augustus and Mark Antony. The Antioch Mint used a ΔΙ 1 calculation what they call the Actian Era, which was the nearest ΔΙ 1 coming after the naval battle. When Augustus died, it was year 44 of the Actian Era in AD 14. And in fact, Augustus has a rare coin with year 63 of another Era, the Caesarean Era also dated in the 44th of the Actian Era. This is a double dated coin with two eras on it. It was probably issued as a special coin at the Caserean games in Antioch in the summer of AD 14 just before Augustus died.
Now the Caesarean Era was special to the city of Antioch. It was created to honor Julius Caesar who had granted Antioch the status of a free city in the summer of 47 BC. For Caesar had traveled from the court of Cleoptra to Asia that year, and had stopped at Antioch for 9 days. Antioch backdated this era to the summer of 49 BC, when Caesar's to when Caesar's conquest of Rome (after he crossed the Rubicon) had been retroactively legalized by the Roman Senate. As a result, the first coins issued with an Caesarean Era date have the year three on them.
Now this Caesrean Era, meaning "of Caesar" because it counted years of his legalized rule, even if ex post facto, was a special era of Antioch. They created it. For this reason they updated this era in the middle of the summer in at the same time they held the Caesarean games. When these two eras are put side by side, it will be seen that Actian Era year 44 and Caesrean Era year 63 only overlap between midsummer AD 14 and ΔΙ 1 AD 14 (October 15). It should be further understood that Augustus died on August 19, and that this news did not reach Antioch until around Sept 17. So the window for this coin on the overlapping era is only a few months! It may be that the Mint Master at Antioch, when hearing the news of Augustus's death (as a rumor) rammed out the last of his metal allotment for the year Ca. 63/ A. 44 coin in a few weeks. Precisely because Rome would not have issued new instructions yet, because Tiberius was refusing his position, or at least pretending to until Sept. 17.
Year 63 of the Caesarean Era started in the summer of AD 14. So there was only a brief window in which this coin could be minted. What this proves is that when the 63rd year of the Caesarean Era rolled over in the summer of AD 14, it was still the 44th year of the Actian Era.
Provincial mints were tightly controlled by Rome. Antioch was no exception. They had to get official permission from Rome for the issue of gold and silver coins. Standard imperial protocol mandated that they issue coins stamped with dies made from an official impression of the image of the Emperor, which had been sent from Rome. It would be unusual for them not to do so. The image on the year 45/ year 1 of Tiberius coin is definitely made by the usual method of first obtaining an official bust from Rome for the image, showing compliance with official policy. Now in Rome, Tiberius was not voted emperor until Sept 17 or 18. Yes, he was in fact the absolute ruler, but to maintain the illusion of the republic they had a vote, mainly an internal senate affair in which Tiberius feigned he was too old for the job, and that the rule of the Empire should be divided up among others, so the Senate had to beg him to take the job. To further the illusion, offical busts and seal impressions for coins were not made until after this vote. Here is the key fact: it takes more than two weeks for a ship to bring the image of the new emperor to the Antioch. And how do we know they got the impressions for the dies from Rome? Because it is clear that the dies from distant mints used the same impressions. So by the time the Antioch Mint could get going, the Syrian year epoch had already rolled over on ΔΙ 1 (October 15).
This means the Tiberius year 1 coin was minted between the epoch of October 15, AD 14 and October 4, AD 15. Also that the 45 year of the Actian Era ran up to October 4, AD 15 (ΔΙ 1). So that is when this issue ceased. It should be noted that Actian year 45 begins after Tishri 1, AD 14, after the Senate vote on Sept 17. It begins on Oct. 15, AD 14. Since the year beginning on Oct. 15 is year 1 of Tiberius, it continues until Oct. 4, AD 15. This is the Antioch version using their local epoch for the new year. In Judea, Tishri 1 was after the death of Augustus, but before the Senate vote. Nevertheless, it follows the accession year convention to count the first year between Tishri 1, AD 14 and Tishri 1, AD 15.
Putting the 15th Year to Use
The 15th year translates to Tishri 1, AD 28 to Tishri 1, AD 29 in Judea (Sept. 9, AD 28 to Sept. 28, AD 29), or in Syria, October 9, AD 28 to Sept 28, AD 29. This is the year when John the Baptist came of age to be inducted into the priesthood and received the word of God in the wilderness.
At the end of Luke 1, last verse, it says that "he was in the desert until the day of his public installation for Israel." This is one of Luke's chronological markers. He is telling us that when he came of age to be a priest that this is when he started proclaiming the word of the Almighty (cf. Luke 3:1). And the customary age is age 30, and this can be confirmed, because there are 5 months of age between Yochanan and Yeshua, and Yeshua was "almost 30" just a bit later in the same chapter. So if we know what season Yeshua was born in, then we back up 5 months to know what season John was born in.
The story of the Shepherds tells us the season of Messiah's birth. The only time that the Shepherds can come into the town fields of Bethlehem is between the end of harvest and the rains. This means after about Elul 15 to Tishri 15. During the spring season, the Shepherds have to take their sheep to the wilderness, too far from town to simply run up to the town and find the Messiah. They are not allowed to run their flocks in the town lands during the growing season. And during the wet and winter season they shelter their animals in the wilderness or downsize their flocks. They use caves and enclosures so that the flocks can shelter by night, and eat the winter grass in the middle of the day. And that is a strictly daytime operation. They would not be in the field at night. They would be in the shelters.
So now this implies that John came forth preaching the word in the spring season (since we have to back up 5 months from the fall), which intersects the 15th year of Tiberius in the spring of AD 29. And then approaching the fall of that year, Yeshua is "almost 30," which the Greek more precisely means. Some suppose that he was 30 plus or minus 5 years, as if Luke did not know and was just giving a range, but Luke knew Yeshua's mother, and he interviewed her, as he makes plain in his introduction. So he knew exactly how old Yeshua was. He puts "almost 30" because that is even more precise then saying he was "29"; it means toward the end of the 29th year getting close to 30, which means it was nearer Tishri 1.
If we now work forward, we can discover that the Passover in John chapter 2 must be that of AD 30. For this is the very next Passover in line after the fall of AD 29. And if we back calculate Yeshua's age, which would be age 29 between the autumn of AD 28 and the autumn of AD 29, then will will arrive at the autumn of 2 BC for his birth.
Valerius Gratus became the Prefect of Judea in AD 16 taking office in the spring or early summer. During this year he minted the prutah coins with year 2 of Tiberius stamped on them; he also minted prutah coins for year 3 of Tiberius in the next year. The year 3 mintage was significantly more extensive than year 2. This is direct evidence that Gratus did not come into office right as the start of Tiberius' year 2, but some way into it. The mintage window for the year two coins is estimated as just a few months. These coins are rated as scare or rare. Their striking quality is also considered crude, irregular or blundered. Gratus minted prutot for the 4th, 5th, and 11th years of Tiberius. He predecessor, Annius Rufus, did not mint any coins during his four years.
There is no reason that Tiberius would have to replace Annius Rufus right away. In fact, Tiberius had a habit of delaying replacements and keeping governors in office for unusually long tenures. Tiberius' policy was to leave as many of Augustus' appointees in place as possible, i.e. to leave the machinery of the empire undisturbed. Under Augustus' a governor served one to three years. Tiberius radically extended this to six, ten, or even fifteen years; his philosophy was that a new governor would fill his pockets as fast as he could, but a long serving one had already filled his pockets and would be more lienient!
The number of coins issued in year 45 Actian/ Year 1 Tiberius (AD 14/15) was plentiful compared to the meagre number issued in AD 16/17. The 3 Tiberius/ Actian year 47 coin was in fact the last time the Actian era was used in Antioch.As shown in the charts adjacent to AD 14/15 The Egyptian papyri log the 1st year of Tiberius in a December month and a June month on the Egyptian calendar. This shows that there was not short, days long year 1 of Tiberius, "Dieckmann shews both from coins and from papyri that the first year of Tiberius, as reckoned in Egypt, must have been the year ending in A.D. 15 on August 29. In fact, as Victor Emil Gardthausen (August 26, 1843 – December 27, 1925) has pointed out in Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift, 40 (1920), p. 615, we know that this first year contained both a Choiak 19 (December 15) and an Epiphi 6 (June 30)" (J.K. Fotheringham).
Also shown in the charts on the Actian Era adjacent to 3 BC to 1 BC, are the coin IDs showing the switchover from Actian Era year 29, Augustus consul XII (3 BC), to Actian year 29, Augustus consul XIII (2 BC), to Actian year 30, Augustus consul XIII (2 BC). This means that Actian year 29 was current from Jan. 1, 2 BC, and switched over to Actian year 30 before 2 BC finished. So according to the Antioch epoch this is ΔΙ 1 in 3 BC to ΔΙ 1 in 2 BC. This evidence destroys any notion of counting a "short" Actian year between Sept. 2, 31 BC and ΔΙ 1, 31 BC.
The conclusion is that Tiberius 1 is fixed in Egypt and also the Actian Era is fixed by the coins so that Actian year 45, which is year 1 of Tiberius in Antioch cannot be moved backwards without denying the dates on the coins, that is 3 issues from 3 to 2 BC and the Augustus coin from AD 14, Ca. 63/A. 44. And in Judea the Gratus' prutot minted with year 2 of Tiberius agree exactly with our reckoning. Egypt, Judea, and Syria stand united in the evidence they present for the 1st year of Tiberius.
The slightly variant beginnings of the 1st year of Tiberius translate to the year AD 29 as follows. The 15th year in Egypt ended on August 29, AD 29. The 15th year in Judea ended on Tishri 1, AD 29, and the 15th year in Antioch ended on ΔΙ 1, AD 29. Thus in the spring of AD 29, when John came preaching the word, it was the 15th year of Tiberius all the way from the Nile Valley, through gates of Jerusalem, and into the Orontes Valley.
The secondary causes of wanting to move the 15th year of Tiberius backwards are these. 1. An incorrect calculation of Daniel 9 based on 490 years starting with either 458 BC or 457 BC, in which the middle of the last seven years is supposed to be the crucifixion year, and wanting to have the birth of Messiah in 4 BC. As I said before, the primary cause if the rejection of Torah, and the acceptance of the Friday to Sunday chronology of the crucifixion. This primary cause has resulted in a lack of attention to the texts and information necessary to avoid erroring on Daniel 9 and the birth of Messiah, and so these become the promiximate secondary causes of the errors.