Note 41 — Chapter III · LOCALITY AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS.

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 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.