59. Divergencies of the Evangelists on the Chronology of Jesus' Life?... (Chapter 3. Locality and Chronology of the Public Life of Jesus.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Strauss, David Friedrich)

IN considering the chronology of the public life of Jesus, we must distinguish the question of its total duration, from that of the arrangement of its particular events.

Not one of our evangelists expressly tells us how long the public ministry of Jesus lasted; but while the synoptic writers give us no clue to a decision on the subject, we find in John certain data, which seem to warrant one. In the synoptic 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: meq h(meraj e(c or duo (Matt. xvii.1; xxi. 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 ^{P.288} (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 chronologi.sts. 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 "the feast of the Jews" might very probably denote the Passover, which was pre-eminent among their institutions; 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, Thus intrinsically it might mean either the feast of Pentecost, Purim, the Passover, or any other 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 hn de egguj to Pasxa (vi. 4), a retrospective meaning, is too artificial an expedient of Paulus, since, as he himself confesses, 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, ff 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 synoptic writers give no reasons ^{P.289} for limiting the term of the public ministry of Jesus to a single year: 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 cast 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 synoptic 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, as well as some heretics, 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 synoptic Gospels, but an entirely fortuitous association, we learn from those Fathers themselves, for they derive it from the prophetic passage Isai. Ixi. 1 f. applied by Jesus (Luke iv.) to himself. In this passage there is mention of the acceptable year of the Lord, which the prophet or, according to the Gospel 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 reconcileable with the synoptic 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.

But this opinion is equally founded on a misunderstanding. The elders who had conversations with John the disciple of the Lord, in Asia, on whose testimony Irenaeus relies when he says, "such is the tradition of John," had given no information further than that Christ taught, aetatem seniorem habens. That this aetas senior was the age of from forty to fifty years is merely the inference of Irenaeus, founded oil what the Jews allege as an objection to the discourse of Jesus, John viii. 57: You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham? ^{P.292}

Here, however, the points of contact between this evangelist and his predecessors are at an end, until we come to the last journey of Jesus; and if they are too uncertain to promise even a simple division of the synoptic materials by the two Passovera, how can we hope, by the journeys of Jesus to the feast of the Jews, to the Feast of Tabernacles, or to the Feast of Dedication, if that be a separate journey, to classify chronologically the uninterrupted series of Galilean occurences in the first three Gospels? Nevertheless this has been attempted by a succession of theologians down to the present time, with an expenditure of acumen and erudition, worthy of a more fertile subject: but unprejudiced judges have decided, that as the narrative of the first three evangelists has scarcely any elements that can give certitude to such a classification, not one of the harmonies of the Gospels yet written has any claim to be considered anything more than a tissue of historical conjectures.

It remains to estimate the chronological value of the synoptic writers, apart from John. They are so frequently at variance with each other in the order of events, and it is so seldom that one has all the probabilities on his side, that each of them may be convicted of numerous chronological errors, which must undermine our confidence in his accuracy. It has been maintained that, in the composition of their books, they meditated no precise chronological order and this is partially confirmed by their mode of narration. Throughout the interval between the baptism of Jesus and the story of the Passion, their narratives resemble a collection of stories, strung together mostly on a thread of mere analogy and association of ideas.

But there is a distinction to be made in reference to the above opinion. It is true that from the purport of their narratives, and the indecisiveness and uniformity of their connecting phrases, we can detect their want of insight into the more accurate chronological relations of what they record; but that the authors flattered themselves they were giving a chronological narration, is evident from those very connecting phrases, which, however indecisive, have almost always a chronological character.

The incidents and discourses detailed by John are, for the most part, peculiar to himself; he is therefore not liable to the same control in his chronology from independent authors, as are the synoptic writers from each other; neither is his narration wanting in connectedness and sequence. Hence our decision on the merits oi his chronological order is dependent on the answer to the following ^{P.293} question: Is the development and progress of the cause and plan of Jesus, as given by the fourth evangelist, credible in itself and on comparison with available data, drawn from the other Gospels? The solution to this question is involved in the succeeding inquiry.