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which he was about to suffer he had not yet testified, but he was shortly to testify, in his own person, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country; and when he did testify it, it was by the example of the reception, which he experienced, on the part either of his townsmen of Nazareth, in particular, or of his countrymen of Galilee, in general, with both of whom his ministry, though formally begun among them first, yet ultimately failed alike. It is not improbable, that this very visit to Nazareth was with a view to have begun his ministry there; and the previous visit to Cana, with the second miracle which then took place, recalling, perhaps, the remembrance of the first also, might have been designed, among other uses, to prepare for this result. But on this subject something more will be said elsewhere o.

Diss. viii. part ii.

DISSERTATION VII.

APPENDIX.

Coincidence of a Sabbatic year with the beginning of our Saviour's ministry.

IT is a well-authenticated fact, that the Sabbatic year was as strictly observed among the Jews, after the return from captivity, as it had ever been before it-and, perhaps, more soaΚαὶ τὸ ἕβδομον ἔτος ἀνείσφορον εἶναι—Χωρὶς τοῦ ἑβδόμου ἔτους, ὃν Σαββατικὸν ἐνιαυτὸν προσαγορεύουσιν· ἐπειδὴ ἐν αὐτῷ μήτε ἀπὸ τῶν δένδρων καρπὸν λαμβάνουσι, μήτε σπείρουσι —Vide also the sequel of the same section. If this, then, was the case, and the journey through Samaria, considered in the last Dissertation, had coincided with any part of a year of rest, it must be morally improbable that an allusion should, at that time, have been made either to the usual period of sowing the seed, or to the ripeness of the corn, and the proximity of the harvest. Nor would it constitute any dif ficulty that our Lord was in Samaria, and not in Judæa; for the Samaritans, as we may collect from the following passage in Josephus, observed the Sabbatic year, as well, and at the same times, as the Jews: 'Aioúvтav åçiévai tòv φόρον αὐτοῖς τοῦ ἑβδοματικοῦ ἔτους· οὐδὲ γὰρ αὐτοὺς σπείρειν ἐν αὐτῷς.

A year of rest began with seed-time in one year, continued until seed-time in the next: and its observance consisted in leaving the lands uncultivated, the gardens and the vineyards untouched. There was, consequently, neither

a Maimon. De anno Jubilæi. passim. xiv. x. 6.

2-7.

Ant. Jud. xi. viii. 6.

b Jos. Ant. Jud. xi. viii. 5. d Exod. xxiii. 10. 11. Lev. xxv.

harvest, nor ingathering, during it, except of such productions of the soil as might have sprung up of themselves; and that, too, not as the property of the owners of the soil, but as open to all, or as especially the right of the poor and the stranger.

Now there is clear proof, in contemporary history, of four different Sabbatic years—and at great intervals of time from each other—any one of which being assumed as actually such, a table may be constructed of others, either before, or after, it—as may be requisite. The first of these years bears date from the seed-time of the 150th year of the Era Seleucidarum-the first year of the Maccabean Dynasty, as such-that is, B. C. 163e: the second, from the seed-time in the first year of John Hyrcanus, dated from the death of his father-that is, the seed-time, B. C. 135f: the third, from the seed-time of the year when Jerusalem was taken by Herod and Sosius—that is, as we have seen elsewhere, B. C. 378: the fourth, from the seed-time of the year, before the destruction of the city, and of the temple, of Jerusalem, by Titus-that is, A. D. 69 h.

Besides these, there are three more, which, if not expressly declared to be such, have yet been proved, on grounds of strong presumption, to have been soi.

The truth of the fact, in each of these instances, will be made apparent by the following Table, which extends from 150. Eræ Seleucidarum, to A. D. 70. the year of the destruction of Jerusalem-and, proceeding merely on the assumption that the first of the number was a Sabbatic year, renders it demonstratively certain that the rest were all so likewise. Each of these coincidences, to which any argument is attached, is denoted by an asterisk.

⚫ 1 Macc. vi. 26-49-54. Jos. Ant. Jud. xii. ix. 3. 5. viii. 1. B. i. ii. 4. Vide also vol. i. Diss. iv. Appendix ii. xiv. xvi. 4. xv. 1. 2. vol. ii. Diss. iv. i. 4. Mishna, and the Sedar Olam. Diss. xiii. 565. vol. ii. Diss. i. 37. 51.

f Ibid. xiii.

* Ant. Jud.

Appendix i. h Maim. De anno Jub. i Vol. i. Diss. iv. Appendix i. 199.

Table of Sabbatic years, from B. C. 163. or 150. Ær. Sel. to A. D. 70: every such year extending from the first of Tisri in one year, to the first of Tisri in the next.

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Of the above years that, with which I am chiefly concerned at present, is the twenty-eighth in order, from A. U. 780. or A. D. 27. to A. U. 781. or A. D. 28. It is in this year, but in the first half of this year, A. U. 780. or A. D. 27. and, consequently, before the periodical return of the Sabbatic year, which would not begin until the September following, that I suppose the journey through Samaria to have taken place. There would be the regular harvest in this year, and an allusion to the approaching season of reaping, or to the fulness of the fields around, might now not only be possible, but, if there was still any vestige remaining of that particular Providence, which at a former period of the Jewish history had been pledged to bless the sixth year in a triple proportion to any otherk-peculiarly apposite and striking.

On any other hypothesis, which should place this journey in the month of December the same year, as there could be no regular seed-time, or process of sowing, then arrived, or going on-so neither could there be any allusion to themmuch less any literal allusion, such as would necessarily imply that they were then arrived, or then going on. I look upon this coincidence, which, even according to my own arrangement, treads as closely on the verge of an inconsistency, as without falling into it was possible, to be one which could have been produced by the matter of fact alone.

It is not, however, to be disguised from the knowledge of the reader, that the calculation of Sabbatic years, according to the received principles of the modern Jewish reckoning, (principles, which have been sanctioned by the authority of many learned chronologers,) would differ from the above, so far as in each instance to antedate the year in question, by placing it in the year before. Yet, notwithstanding this, there can be little hesitation what mode of computation, in a case of this kind, ought to be followed, instead of what-whether the computation of the Jewish Rabbins, or that of the book

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