Note 33 — Chapter III · LOCALITY AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS.

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 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.