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Untitled Article
we ourselves possess in the gospels , and of this they do not seem to have made any consistent use . " In matters of chronology , " says Mr . Benson , " their errors are so remarkable , that I should feel almost inclined to follow the course pursued by
Sir Isaac Newton upon the present question , and , rejecting their irreconcilable testimonies altogether , attempt to explore a path for myself , without any regard to the statements which they have made , were it not that such a proceeding might be construed into a confession of weakness , and want of dependence upon the truth of the hypothesis which I defend . "
We are under no such restriction ; and we proceed to consider , as the essential point , what information we derive from the gospels themselves . It is desirable to bear in mind that there were three national festivals instituted by Moses , at which every adult Jew was under a general obligation to attend : —the Passover , near the close of March , or in the former
part of April ; the Pentecost , seven weeks after the Passover ; and the Feast of Tabernacles , towards the end of September . There was another considerable festival , called the Feast of Dedication , which was celebrated about the beginning of December ( in commemoration of the purification of the Temple by Judas Maccabaeus ) ; but this was not instituted by Moses , and attendance upon it was not obligatoiry upon any one .
If our Lord's ministry lasted above three years , it included four Passovers ; and the Pentecost and the Tabernacles each occurred three times : and besides these ten national festivals , the Feast of Dedication occurred three times If it lasted only one year and a few months , then the following festivals occurred in it—the Passover , the Pentecost , the Tabernacles , the Dedication , and a second Passover . A slight acquaintance with the gospel history will satisfy the mind , ( if not prepossessed with any hypothesis on the
subject , ) that it affords no countenance to the larger number of festivals ; for we are not informed that our Lord was present at more than four national festivals ; and even supposing that the Passover spoken of in John vi . 4 , was not the last Passover , still there are Jive national festivals which are in no way ever noticed in the gospels . This objection obviously rests much less upon the hypothesis that the ministry of Christ included only three Passovers and two of each of the other festivals .
On examining the Gospel of Matthew and that of Mark , we find mention of one Passover only—that at which our Lord was crucified : and from these gospels alone we should be unable to say that his ministry lasted even a year . The Gospel of Luke gives no further information respecting the duration of Christ ' s ministry ;* but he specifies the period of the commencement of John's preaching , viz . the 15 th year of Tiberius , in which year the two
* The event recorded in Luke vi . 1 — 5 , ( and also by St . Matthew and St . Mark , ) must have occurred not long after a Passover ; and the expression tv < ra . f $ @a . T < § £ LiT £ po 7 rpa > T < ji >—the second-first sabbath—however this may be understood , shews that it was at an early period of the Jewish year , which commenced somewhere between the former part of March and the former part of April : but this does not
prove that a Passover intervened between our Lord ' s baptism and the commencement of his public preaching in Galilee . Independently of St John ' s Gospel , there is no sufficient evidence of more than one Passover between his baptism and his crucifixion ; and those who dwelt principally on St . Luke ' s narrative , might easily lonn llie opinion that John ' s ministry began in the same year with the death of I'luist .
Untitled Article
On the Chronology and Arrangement of the Gospel Narratives . 169
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1831, page 169, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2595/page/25/
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