Note 14 — Chapter III · LOCALITY AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS.

There is a graver difficulty in the synoptical statement, considered in relation to the Mosaic law and Jewish custom. The law rigorously required that every Israelite should appear before Jehovah yearly at the three principal feasts (Exod. xxiii. 14 ff.), and the reverence of Jesus for the Mosaic institutes (Matt. v. 17 ff.) renders it improbable that, during the whole course of his ministry, he should have undertaken but one journey of observance.14 The Gospel of Matthew, however, be our judgment what it may as to the date and place of its composition, did certainly arise in a community of Jewish Christians, who well knew what the law prescribed to the devout Israelite, and must therefore be aware of the contradiction to the law in which the practice of Jesus was involved, when, during a public ministry of several years’ duration, only one attendance at Jerusalem was noticed, or (in case the synoptical writers supposed but a single year’s ministry, of which we shall speak below) when he was represented as neglecting two of the great annual feasts. If then, a circle in close proximity to Jewish usage found nothing offensive in the opinion that Jesus attended but one feast, may not this authority remove all hesitation on the subject from our minds? Besides, on a more careful weighing of the historical and geographical relations, the question suggests itself, whether between the distant, half Gentile Galilee, and Jerusalem, the ecclesiastical bond was so close that the observance of all the feasts could be expected from a Galilean? Even according to the fourth gospel, Jesus omitted attending one passover that occurred in the period of his public career (John vi. 4).