The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (4th ed.)

Not one of our Evangelists expressly tells us how long the public ministry of Jesus lasted; but while the synoptical writers give us no clue to a decision on the subject, we find in John certain data, which seem to warrant one. In the synoptical gospels there is no intimation how long after the baptism of Jesus his imprisonment and death occurred: nowhere are months and years distinguished; and though it is once or twice said: μεθ’ ἡμέρας ἓξ or δύο (Matt. xvii. 1, 2), these isolated fixed points furnish us with no guidance in a sea of general uncertainty. On the contrary, the many journeys to the feasts by which the narrative of the fourth Evangelist is distinguished from that of his predecessors, furnishes us, so to speak, with chronological abutments, as for each appearance of Jesus at one of these annual feasts, the Passover especially, we must, deducting the first, reckon a full year of his ministry. We have, in the fourth gospel, after the baptism of Jesus, and apparently at a short interval (comp. i. 29, 35, 44, ii. 1, 12), a passover attended by him (ii. 13). But the next feast visited by Jesus (v. 1) which is indefinitely designated a feast of the Jews, has been the perpetual crux of New Testament chronologists. It is only important in determining the duration of the public life of Jesus, on the supposition that it was a passover; for in this case it would mark the close of his first year’s ministry.

We grant that ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων, THE feast of the Jews, might very probably denote the Passover, which was pre-eminent among their institutions:33 but it happens that the best [276]manuscripts have in the present passage no article, and without it, the above expression can only signify indefinitely one of the Jewish feasts, which the author thought it immaterial to specify.34 Thus intrinsically it might mean either the feast of Pentecost,35 Purim,36 the Passover,37 or any other;38 but in its actual connection it is evidently not intended by the narrator to imply the Passover, both because he would hardly have glanced thus slightly at the most important of all the feasts, and because, vi. 4, there comes another Passover, so that on the supposition we are contesting, he would have passed in silence over a whole year between v. 47, and vi. 1. For to give the words, ἦν δὲ ἐγγὺς τὸ πάσχα (vi. 4), a retrospective meaning, is too artificial an expedient of Paulus, since, as he himself confesses,39 this phrase, elsewhere in John, is invariably used with reference to the immediately approaching feast (ii. 13, vii. 2, xi. 55), and must from its nature have a prospective meaning, unless the context indicate the contrary. Thus not until John vi. 4, do we meet with the second passover, and to this it is not mentioned that Jesus resorted.40 Then follow the feast of Tabernacles and that of the Dedication, and afterwards, xi. 55, xii. 1, the last passover visited by Jesus.

According to our view of John v. 1, and vi. 4, therefore, we obtain two years for the public ministry of Jesus, besides the interval between his baptism and the first Passover. The same result is found by those who, with Paulus, hold the feast mentioned, v. 1, to be a passover, but vi. 4, only a retrospective allusion; whereas the ancient Fathers of the Church, reckoning a separate Passover to each of the passages in question, made out three years. Meanwhile, by this calculation, we only get the minimum duration of the public ministry of Jesus possible according to the fourth gospel, for the writer nowhere intimates that he has been punctilious in naming every feast that fell within that ministry, including those not observed by Jesus, neither, unless we regard it as established that the writer was the apostle John, have we any guarantee that he knew the entire number.

It may be urged in opposition to the calculations, built on the representations of John, that the synoptical writers give no reasons for limiting the term of the public ministry of Jesus to a single year:41 but this objection rests on a supposition borrowed from John himself, namely that Jesus, Galilean though he was, made it a rule to attend every Passover: a supposition, again, which is overturned by the same writer’s own representation. According to him, Jesus left unobserved the passover mentioned, vi. 4, for from vi. 1, where Jesus is on the east side of the sea of Tiberias, through vi. 17 and 59, where he goes to Capernaum, and vii. 1, where he frequents Galilee, in order to avoid the Jews, to vii. 2 and 10, where he proceeds to Jerusalem on occasion of the feast of Tabernacles, the Evangelist’s narrative is so closely consecutive that a journey to the Passover can nowhere be inserted. Out of the synoptical gospels, by themselves, we gather nothing as to the length of the public ministry of Jesus, for this representation admits of our assigning him either several years of activity, or only one; their restriction of his intercourse with Jerusalem to his final journey being the sole point in which they control our [277]conclusion.

It is true that several Fathers of the Church,42 as well as some heretics,43 speak of the ministry of Jesus as having lasted but a single year; but that the source of this opinion was not the absence of early journeys to the feasts in the synoptical gospels, but an entirely fortuitous association, we learn from those Fathers themselves, for they derive it from the prophetic passage Isa. lxi. 1 f. applied by Jesus (Luke iv.) to himself. In this passage there is mention of the acceptable year of the Lord, ἐνιαυτὸς Κυρίου δεκτὸς, which the prophet or, according to the Evangelical interpretation, the Messiah is sent to announce. Understanding this phrase in its strict chronological sense, they adopted from it the notion of a single messianic year, which was more easily reconcilable with the synoptical gospels than with that of John, after whose statement the calculation of the church soon came to be regulated.

In striking contrast with this lowest computation of time, is the tradition, also very ancient, that Jesus was baptized in his thirtieth year, but at the time of his crucifixion was not far from his fiftieth.44 But this opinion is equally founded on a misunderstanding. The elders who had conversations with John the disciple of the Lord, in Asia, πρεσβύτεροι οἱ κατὰ τὴν Ἀσίαν Ἰωάννῃ τῷ τοῦ Κυρίου μαθητῇ συμβεβληκότες,—on whose testimony Irenæus relies when he says, such is the tradition of John, παραδεδωκέναι ταῦτα τὸν Ἰωάννην,—had given no information further than that Christ taught, ætatem seniorem habens. That this ætas senior was the age of from forty to fifty years is merely the inference of Irenæus, founded on what the Jews allege as an objection to the discourse of Jesus, John viii. 57: Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? language which according to Irenæus could only be addressed to one, qui jam quadraginta annos excessit, quinquagesimum autem annum nondum attigit. But the Jews might very well say to a man a little more than thirty, that he was much too young to have seen Abraham, since he had not reached his fiftieth year, which, in the Jewish idea, completed the term of manhood.45

Thus we can obtain no precise information from our gospels as to how long the public labours of Jesus lasted; all we can gather is, that if we follow the fourth gospel we must not reckon less than two years and something over. But the repeated journeys to the feasts on which this calculation is founded are themselves not established beyond doubt.

Opposed to this minimum, we gain a maximum, if we understand, from Luke iii. 1 ff. and 23, that the baptism of Jesus took place in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, and add to this that his crucifixion occurred under the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate. For as Pilate was recalled from his post in the year of Tiberius’s death,46 and as Tiberius reigned rather more than seven years after the fifteenth year of his reign,47 it follows that seven years are the maximum of the possible duration of the ministry of Jesus after his baptism. But while one of these data, namely, that Jesus was crucified under Pilate, is well attested, the other is rendered suspicious by its association with a chronological error, so that in fact we cannot achieve here even a proximate, still less an accurate solution of our question. [278]