CHAP. VII.

PROBABLE DATE OF OUR SAVIOUR'S CRUCIFIXION,

SECTION I.

Duration of our Saviour's Ministry.

HAD chronologers been contented to be guided in their decisions by the plain and positive declarations of the Evangelists without endeavouring, by the transposition of chapters and conjectural emendations of the text, to compel the New Testament to confirm their preconceived and predetermined theories, there could have been no serious difficulty in settling the duration of our Saviour's ministry. St. John is supposed to have written his Gospel after all the other Evangelists, and to have composed it, as we learn from the traditions of the church, with the double view of supplying the omissions of his precursors, and meeting the heresies and temper of the times in which he lived; now there is no point in which St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke are more

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particularly obscure than the dates of the events which they have recorded in the ministry of our Lord, and the order in which those events succeeded each other. St. Luke and St. Mark very frequently pursue the same arrangement, but that of St. Matthew is materially different. In confirmation therefore of the supposed intention of St. John in the composition of his history, we find nothing in which he is more clear and precise than the orderly succession of the circumstances he relates. He seems to have made it his peculiar care to elucidate the darkness of the other Evangelists upon this subject, by giving an account of the actions of Jesus in a regular series; and I do not at this moment recollect a single instance either of anticipation or retrospection throughout the whole course of his narrative. Now St. John has distinctly noticed three several Passovers in our Saviour's ministry, a first, a second, and a third after his baptism, the last of which he plainly designates as the Passover of the crucifixion, without giving any hint, or making use of any expression which would intimate that he left any Passover unnoticed. It would seem therefore to have been the opinion of St. John, and his opinion ought to be held decisive, that our Saviour's ministry, reckoning its duration from the period of his baptism to his death, did not continue quite three years. If, as we have agreed in the pre

ceding chapters, our Lord was baptized in the month of November, it may be estimated at about two years and a half. Such also is the opinion of some very ancient and respectable Christian writers: it is certainly the opinion of Epiphanius, perhaps also of Tertullian, and at the conclusion of his life, and in his most celebrated and judicious work, of the learned Origen: it is likewise asserted by the composers of the Harmonies attributed to Tatian and Ammonius; by the author of the second epistle of Clement to the Romans; and by the compilers of the Apostolical Constitutions, and of the interpolated Epistles of Ignatius. It is right however to observe, that there is a great and irreconcileable difference of opinion amongst several of the Fathers upon the subject; a difference, therefore, which leaves us at full liberty to draw our own conclusions from the Sacred Writings themselves, without endeavouring to make our calculations correspond with the fanciful or incorrect notions and prejudices of each various author. With this remark I would very gladly have dismissed the subject, and relying upon the authority of St. John, as before stated, have proceeded to deduce the date of the crucifixion from that statement; but I am precluded from

thus quitting the difficulty by the objections of those who have framed a different hypothesis, and attempted to prove, from the Gospel of St. John itself, that the number of Passovers ought to be either extended to more, or confined to fewer than three.

I. There are some who would extend the number of Passovers in our Saviour's ministry to four or five, and the number of years to somewhat more than three or four. To accomplish this object they maintain that, besides the three Passovers already enumerated, there is another to be found in the first verse of the fifth chapter of St. John: "After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.”

1. It is a first and obvious remark upon this verse, that the passage cannot be considered as decisive in favour of the opinion which it is produced to support, because it does not assert what, in order to answer the end desired, it ought to assert, that this feast was a Passover: it merely states, that "after this there was a feast of the Jews," and whether it was or was not a paschal feast, is a legitimate subject of doubt and enquiry.

Now that this feast was not a Passover would appear probable from the tenor of the Evangelist's

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narrative. St. John relates that our Saviour remained in Judea after the first Passover in his ministry until he "knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John." He then "left Judea and departed again into Galilee." In his passage through Samaria it was that he met and conversed with the woman of Sychar at Jacob's well, and converted many of the Samaritans. Two days after this "he departed thence and went into Galilee," and there healed the son of the nobleman of Caper"After this," observes the Evangelist, "there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem." It is therefore natural to imagine that this was a feast of Pentecost or of Tabernacles, rather than a Passover, because there is nothing necessarily to imply the lapse of so great a space of time, as intervened between Passover and Passover.

naum.

On the other hand, however, it has been argued that this was a Passover from what Jesus said to his disciples whilst at Sychar in his journey through Samaria. "Say not ye, There are yet four months and then cometh harvest." From this expression they imagine that it wanted four months to the

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Chap. iv. 1.

e Ver. 43.

d Ver. 3.

'Chap. iv. 35.